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WWL Radio #193 Monsanto / Gagging the Press

Diane Gee — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:28:45 GMT

Listen to Diane Gee with Special Guests Susan Sunshine-Earth Poet and Dan Green live on WWL Radio Friday, May 17th at 6pm EDT!

Listen live by clicking the link icon below:

Susan will be updating us about the world-wide March Against Monsanto, even as this week we lost a crucial ruling by the Supreme Court against the poison giant.
Then, Dan will be joining us to talk about all the implications of the secret collection of the AP's complete phone records, and what Chris Hedges calls the "Death of Truth."
The government now claims powers even Hitler didn't claim. They are preparing for a totally Fascist takeover - Business & Government vs the People. Arm yourself with knowledge - listen in!

The call in number is 646-929-1264 to join the conversation!

Tip: In order to comment in the show's companion chat, you must create a BTR account, its free and only takes seconds. Chat is monitored during the show, so make yourself heard.

Miss the show? The podcasts are available at the link above, or at the Wild Wild Left

Join Wild Wild Left Radio every Friday at 6pm ET, with Hostess and Producer Diane Gee to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective....

WWL Radio: Bringing you controversial, cutting edge, revolutionary, "out there where the buses don't run" LEFT perspective since January of 2009!

Socialist Party of Michigan Mother's Day Speech

Diane Gee — Mon, 13 May 2013 00:13:02 GMT

Amazingly, their agenda melded nicely with what I had prepared... I altered on the fly, like I always do, to address their specifics. But not too shabby for my 1st public speaking engagement.

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: Are CIA Mockingbirds Still Nesting in Nicaragua? by Justina

Anti-Capitalist Group — Sun, 12 May 2013 21:46:11 GMT

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega celebrating Sandinista election victory in 2006 in the Revolutionary Plaza, Managua.

"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." - CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. (from "Katherine The Great," by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)

Thus Davis chronicles the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) official campaign to turn American newspapers, into conduits for its anti-communist ideology which began after World War II. It was called "Operation Mockingbird". Perhaps the operation would have been more accurately named "Operation Cuckoo" as the cuckoo will lay its egg in another bird's nest and steal the original. With this propaganda operation and spying operation, the CIA effectively threw objectivity out of the nest of American journalism and put CIA denominated news in its place.

The CIA was successful in capturing the nests of the biggest newspapers in the U.S., including the the "Washington Post", the "N.Y. Times" , and the "Los Angeles Times", among many others. They all still seem to be on team. During the years of the Contra war against the lawful Sandinista government in the 1980's, the CIA employed similar methods here in Nicaragua. Is it still going on here?
When I first investigated moving to Nicaragua in 2012, I asked a friend there about which newspapers I should read there. I was told "none of them". She said that the two biggest national Spanish language dailies, "La Prensa" and "El Nuevo Diario" were both strongly opposed to the current Sandinista government. Of the two, "La Prensa", was the most virulently anti-Sandinista, akin in tone to Fox News vicious attacks on Obama's bone fides.

Thus when I moved to Nicaragua, I began reading the lessor evil, "El Nuevo Diario", on a daily basis. About three months ago, that paper changed radically. From being something akin to a neighborhood shopping newspaper, El Nuevo Diario suddenly expanded into four sections, in color, one section totally devoted to economic news, along with a large variety of reprints of stories from the New York Times.

Many of El Dario's international stories now routinely take pot-shots at left wing governments such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, although largely avoiding La Prensa's Fox-like screams against President Ortega.

"La Prensa", likely the biggest national paper, is owned by Violeta Chamorro and her family. In the 1980's during the Contra war, her paper routinely attacked the Sandinistas and received U.S. funds for their efforts. She was, in 1990, the first of the three U.S. funded anti-socialist presidents. She ended the 11 year reign of the revolutionary socialist Sandinista party. Chamorro and her two U.S. approved and funded successors spent the next 16 years, allowing the U.S. government to once again call the shots in Nicaragua. Restored to power, the local capitalists' representatives virtually demolished all the social welfare programs that the Sandinistas had put in place when they ousted Somoza family dictatorship in 1979.

In 1979, the Sandinista movement ( officially the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or FSLN).) had come to power after years of a revolutionary war that successfully ended the Somoza regime.

The Sandinistas, begun as a small, clandestine, Marxist anti-Somoza guerrilla group in the early 1960's, was named after Augusto César Sandino, a revered national hero for successfully evicting the U.S. Marines from Nicaragua in 1932. Sandino's rebel forces had made the continuation of the U.S.'s 20 year military occupation untenable. The FSLN was so-named by one of its main theoreticians and founders, Carlos Fonseca. Dying in a firefight with Somoza's National Guards in 1976, he didn't live to see victory. The FSLN's heroism against the hated dictatorship, however, earned it massive popular support which culminated in Somoza's ouster and the FSLN attaining power, first under the auspices of a ruling unity junta and then with Daniel Ortega's election as president in 1984.

Upon defeating Somoza in 1979, the Sandinista movement introduced a vast socialist program of nationalizing land, creating worker cooperatives, both agrarian and industrial, and combating the then massive illiteracy by sending thousands of teams of students into the countryside and barrios to teach reading and writing, reportedly reducing the iliteracy rate from 50.36% to 12.94% in some five months The Sandinistas also set up a huge network of free, community based health clinics, providing health care to millions who had never before had access to such services.

The U.S., in the person of then President, Jimmy Carter, was politely civil to the new Nicaraguan government. But, with his loss to Ronald Reagan in 1981, the U.S. attitude turned openly and actively belligerent. (For an excellent and detailed account of Reagan's anti-Sandinista efforts, see Stephen Kinzer's "Blood of Brothers -- Life and War in Nicaragua" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, N.Y., 1991)

Thereafter, the Sandinista efforts to bring economic and social equality to the nation, were viciously obstructed by Reagan, who set about using the U.S.'s vast resources, both legal and illegal, to create and maintain the " Contra" war against the Sandinista government, forcing the fledgling government to divert needed resources to its defense against the armed might of the U.S. which had created a proxy army, based in Honduras, to destabilize and destroy the new government.

Funding the Contra army against the Sandinista government was only one arm of the Reagan government's attack. According to the Inventory of Conflict and Environment's case study by Ellie Klerlein on "Environmental Effects of Nicaraguan Armed Conflicts", the U.S. blocked World Bank and other foreign development loans, imposed restrictions on U.S. trade, including reducing Nicaragua's sugar quota by 90%, and canceled its Overseas Private Investment Corporation insurance, needed to attract international loans and investment.

Reagan's attempts to destabilize the Sandinista government were ultimately successful. By the time of the 1990 Nicaraguan election, after nine years of fighting to survive as an independent nation, the economy was in ruins. Kler in her case study cited above, puts the number of war-related deaths at 43,000. Thousands more were crippled by injuries. Food supplies were insufficient due to the Contra's disruption of normal farming. As a result, the social fabric was in tatters.

Although the U.S.'s Contra army never succeeded in defeating the Sandinista movement militarily, the war so wrecked the economy that the U.S., by pouring a million of U.S. taxpayers' dollars into the anti-sandinista opposition's electoral efforts, were able to elect the U.S.'s approved unity candidate, Violeta Chamorro.

Virtually the first act of the Chamorro-led government was to grab back the land from the small farmers cooperatives that the Sandinista government had allocated to them from the nationalization of the Somoza family and friends ' holdings. The majority of the previously nationalized companies suffered the same fate.

Before their fall in 1979, two generations of the Somaza family dictatorship and its friends had acquired the majority of the assets of the whole country, including most of its arable land and virtually all its industries.

The first Somoza dictator, General Anastasio Somoza García, had taken presidential power in 1936. Formerly, he was head of the U.S. trained and equipped National Guards, which he employed to assassinate Augusto César Sandino in 1934. (See Kinzer, above,for details on General Somoza's nasty history.)

General Anastasio Somoza ruled, officially and occasionally by proxy, until assassination 1956 by a young rebel poet. Thereafter Somoza's eldest son took over until his own death, of natural causes, in 1956. Then the next eldest son, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, took over the presidency. The Somoza family ruled with an iron and greedy fist through the force of its personally controlled National Guard. After Somoza Debayle fled the country in 1979, remnants of his National Guard formed the nucleus of the U.S. created Contra force. (Kinzer, in "Blood of Brothers" gives a detailed account of Reagan's military creation and maintenance of the Contras.)

Under the Somoza regime, the majority of the Nicaraguan population had owned nothing and lived in brutally poor conditions, without access to health care, education or land. Electoral votes were bought wholesale. It was a sham democracy controlled by the Somoza's and their brutal and thoroughly corrupt National Guards. These were the conditions which gave rise to the Sandinista guerrilla group in the early 1960's and to the wide-spread hatred for the dictator.

During the 60's and 70's, even the upper class Chamorro family were vocal anti-Somoza opponents, even losing one activist publisher son, Pedro Chamorro, to assassination by the dictator in 1978. Perhaps that was one of Somoza's most critical mis-steps. Thereafter even the U.S. withdrew their support.

By early 1979, virtually the whole country was supporting the Sandinista revolutionaries, who had taken control of most of the cities and towns. By July, even the National Guard had disintegrated. Somoza and his followers hurriedly left the country, taking millions from the national assets with them. The Sandinistas had won and would remain in government for next 11 years.

After the 1990 election, however, Pedro Chamorro 's widow, Violeta, was elected to office and she and her neo-liberal opposition supporters, set upon dismantling the vast community health care and free public education system that the Sandinistas had put into place. They simply diverted its funding.

In 2006, after 16 years of going backwards economically and socially, the FSLN's Daniel Ortega, was again voted into the presidential office.

President Ortega immediately began re-building the shattered Sandinista social welfare programs, but he softened many of their previous socialist economic policies, successfully walking a fine line between cooperation with many of the U.S. controlled International Monetary fund and World Bank policies and those of Chavez's Bolivarian socialist inspired programs of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) a progressive Latin American cooperation and development organization which has funded many large projects in Nicaragua.

Much to the distaste of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Ortega has been a strong ally of Venezuela's Chavez government and now that of Nicholas Maduro, but he has also managed to juggle the World Bank and IMF investment demands with those of ALBA's Bolivarian idealism to win re-election in 2011. He dances very well on thin ice.

During President Obama's recent visit to Costa Rica, President Ortega joined other Central American leaders for a polite dinner meeting with Obama, but immediately left the group to fly to Venezuela to attend a memorial for his former close ally and friend, President Hugo Chavez. There he was outspoken in his support for the socialist Maduro and critical of U.S. meddling in Venezuela's post-election politics. Unlike the most Latin American countries, the U.S. has refused to recognize Maduro's victory.

The Sandinista government of today definitely pursues a "mixed economy" program, actively expanding social programs, such as health care, education, housing for the poor, micro-credits to small businesses, and job training, while encouraging foreign capitalist investment and providing sizable tax benefits to privately owned local and foreign industries.

President Ortega has seen, in the dead flesh of his own people, the dire effects of too openly flaunting U.S. capitalism's economic hegemony. One suspects that Ortega will continue to quietly improve social conditions while courting more U.S. and foreign capitalist investment, thus hoping to avoid reawakening the active wrath of the North American colossus. If one is to judge by Nicaraguan national dailies, however, the U.S. is still maintaining its CIA funded propaganda war on the Sandinistas.

Perhaps Ortega is only waiting for his fellow Latin American countries in the Chavez-inspired CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) group (the U.S. and Canada were expressly excluded) to carry out their plans for a Latin American defensive military alliance. The U.S. and Canada were excluded from CELAC membership. Hopefully one day such an alliance might give socialist-minded countries like Nicaragua a better chance to thrive without U.S. interference. In the meantime, I expect President Ortega will keep on ice dancing, despite the fact that the the U.S.'s Operation Mockingbird may keep on singing its anti-socialist tunes in the Nicaraguan media.

Happy Mother's Day!

Diane Gee — Sun, 12 May 2013 13:55:00 GMT

Mother's Day Proclamation
by Julia Ward Howe*, 1870

The First Mother's Day proclaimed in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe was a passionate demand for disarmament and peace.
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

In honor of this wonderful sentiment, I will be making my first public speech in Lansing this afternoon, in front of the Socialist Party of Michigan Meeting.

The next Socialist Sunday is also Socialist Mother's Day - the annual day that traces its origins back to Julia Ward Howe's 1870 call for a "Mother's Day for Peace" - centered on globally unified struggle and demand for military disarmament and "the great and general interests of peace."

SPMI State Membership Meeting - http://spmichigan.org/event/sp...

The Socialist Party of Michigan meeting will be held at 2pm on Sunday May 12th, at the the Capital Area District Library - Downtown Branch (401 S. Capitol Ave., Lansing, MI 48933). We will be meeting in Gallery B on the lower level floor.

SPMI state membership meetings are open to public observers and we warmly welcome all interested persons to attend.

At 4pm, Diane Gee, host of Wild Wild Left Radio (http://www.wildwildleft.com/), will lead a discussion on reaching out to folks who do not think they are socialists and building a people's media to counter the mainstream media.

Jake is going to be my camera man. How cool is this?

WWL Radio #192 Obama: "School's Out - for Dollars!"

Diane Gee — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:38:33 GMT

Listen to Diane Gee live on WWL Radio Friday, May 10th at 6pm EDT!

Listen live by clicking the link icon below:

We are going to recap information about the Police State, from Boston to the addition of Assata Shakur to the "tewwowist list."
Mainly? As the Mom of a child about to enter High School, I have to wonder what kind of educational system he will inherit for his children. President Obama proclaimed this, which is National Teacher's Week as National CHARTER Schools Week, and redubbed May Day - known worldwide as International Workers Day as "Loyalty Day" in sickeningly Orwellian Doublespeak.
President Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan joined Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder on Monday for a whirlwind tour of how he tried to circumvent the state's ban on school vouchers and channel public money to privately operated schools.

The call in number is 646-929-1264 to join the conversation!

Join Wild Wild Left Radio every Friday at 6pm ET, with Hostess and Producer Diane Gee to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective....

WWL Radio: Bringing you controversial, cutting edge, revolutionary, "out there where the buses don't run" LEFT perspective since January of 2009!

Shock and (L)Awe

Diane Gee — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:30:26 GMT

It was a scene of science fiction in January of 1968, a slave collar that would bring instant compliance by bringing the wearer to his knees in excruciating pain. Through electric shock, men and women were forced to battle one another as gladiators for the entertainment of disembodied beings in the episode The Gamesters of Triskelion.

It was a shocking, to pointedly pun, idea.. so monstrous and alien that we in our grand enlightenment would never consider such a thing. Slavery was over. Never again. And Americans didn't torture.

It was 1968 and the Civil Rights Bill was passing. It was 3 months before MLK was gunned down. Freedom was the cry of the day, with heavy doses of Peace and Love mingled throughout.

No government, foreign, domestic or alien would ever do such a thing to us.
They had killed John, Bobby, Martin and Malcolm. Vietnam ended, a victory for the Left, but more as a result of the mainstream media showing the images that turned middle class Americans thirst for blood into revulsion. Still? For a while we believed.

They would never do it to us. Then they did.

We were shocked and outraged, yet the murderers were not imprisoned, and eventually the Guard paid a little fine to the families, and most of us forgot about it. Except we didn't forget, exactly. We remembered just enough to make us fear protesting anymore. By the time the FBI shot up the Jumping Bull Ranch on Pine Ridge, they had convinced us that even in self-defense? Shooting back at the FBI who attacked you unprovoked meant to expect the full force of the Police State (as it was then) would be upon you, and that fabricated evidence or not? Someone would pay. They had to make an example of what happens to anyone standing up to the State. Yet, as cruel and wrong as it was, as corrupt as every iota was, Leonard Peltier got a trial and is in jail.

The 80's brought a more complacent time, Ronnie Raygun's forays into the Middle East did not garner reaction. In a time of relative peace and prosperity, services for our mentally ill were cut, and military spending skyrocketed. We needed Star Wars technology for security, and the ramping of hyper nationalism began.

By the 90's? Ruby Ridge and Waco happened. It was the beginning of normalizing extra-judicial murder. They painted stories of bad people, likely true, and the brave heroism of the Feds who torched 76 women and children and men. They told us the people set themselves on fire. The abuses of the Feds fed the fears of the fringe, the crazy became crazier, and militia movements surged. Enter the insane Timothy McVeigh, and domestic terrorism was born. The man and his partner Terry Nichols killed 168 people and injured over 800. He was rightly found guilty, and executed for his crime.

We all know what the New Pear Harbor brought. 9/11 changed everything, right? At first we got upset about warrantless wiretapping. Then it became the new normal. We didn't like it, but got used to every keystroke we make being monitored, and the idea that any phone call may or may not be under surveillance.

We tortured.

We incarcerated people indefinitely without charge, trial or evidence - many over 10 years now.

We started wars with people that had nothing to do with 9/11, and while people objected?

The newest normal became "free speech zones" in which anti-war protestors were kettled behind barbed wire, out of the view of the media, and away from the politicians they sought to influence. We were told this was for "security."

PAT Acts came and went and were replaced by ever more extreme PAT Acts. A 'panty bomber' who was walked onto a plane by Homeland Security managed to torch only his genitals, and forever burn away our right to not be strip searched in public.

Tasers became the new toy, and the floodgate of our tax dollars were opened to the MIC's R & D departments for ever more draconian means of crowd control.

Our new Hopium-filled donut of a President deemed by Executive decree that US citizens could be killed on sight if he considered them a threat, and because it was only a "brown Muslim" father and son? America did not object. One has to wonder how many we do not hear about that just disappear. The creamy filling of the Brand D puppet was that and the sickening NDAA. Now even journalists can be charged with abetting the "enemy" for reporting anything that reveal our "enemy's" perspective. And the enemy is not just Al Qaida, it is anyone the Government deems to be a "terrorist." Now, version 8,673 of CISPA is on the table again. You will comply. Governors are taking over cities, disenfranchising the people, austerity is coming as the rich got 3x richer in the last 2 years.

The Occupy movement was kettled, beaten, maced and tased into submission. Laws were passed to make it a federal felony to protest anywhere that a Secret Service Officer may or may not be present, with or without your knowledge. Protestors were called violent, when by and large they were not. They were called a threat to security by the police that abused them. They were called terrorists.

I have painted a meager, but bleak picture of a timeline of lost rights, and new-found aggression against our citizens for a reason. You cannot take the recent events without understanding it's historical genesis and realizing that each slip down the slope becomes a precedent for a new normal that is NEVER diluted or changed. Once gone? Our rights never come back.

Think of 300 unarmed black men slain a year by Police, most notably in Oakland, California and its surrounding area - and no policeman is ever found in the wrong.

Fast forward to Boston and the bombing that occurred in that city. As stated in my report at the time:

IF THE SHUT DOWN OF ALL OF BOSTON WAS TO "PROTECT" THE CITIZENRY - THEN WHY WAS IT LIFTED HOURS AND HOURS BEFORE THEY CAUGHT DZHOKAR???
The only answer to that is obvious. It was never about their security.

They are treating this as terrorism, feebly trying after the fact to connect it to extreme Islam with sudden "discoveries" of new evidence that fits the narrative; evidence they did not have when they made the terrorist claim in the first place. Convenient, yes?

Let me be perfectly clear here. YOU ARE IN NO MORE DANGER THAN YOU WERE BEFORE 9/11 NOW. YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE HIT BY A FALLING SATELLITE THAN TO BE HURT IN A REAL TERRORIST ATTACK.

The Martial Law of Boston was less than shocking to us.... remember it was a mere few weeks prior that combined police forces stormed a mountain in California, with the FBI at their sides to burn Chris Dorner alive rather than bring him in and try him. There was Military grade equipment on that raid too. But not nearly as much as in Boston.

Think about the fact that in a manhunt for one person, we have become accustomed to tanks and armored personnel carriers rolling through our streets. All they have to do is utter the WORD terrorist and illegal search, human right abuses and murder become ordinary.

The normalization of these kind of actions requires a great deal of fear-pandering to the public. The Left was appalled at the treatment of Occupy, which was generally a leftish movement. The Right was calling for them to be taken down as dirty, lazy, hippie scum. To them, Socialists and Communists are terrorists.

The right is usually on board with law-n-order badass policing. In order to get the centrists to back it, another attack by "Muslims" had to trigger the Pavlovian fear carefully bred by the Rovian disinformation campaign of 9/11. White middle class is horribly xenophobic, that is their trigger, and they want the "terrorsist" caught by ANY means necessary.

How to get the Left on board? In the wake of the failed attempt at sane gun control, trot out some right wingers with guns, and they too will be crying "terrorists" with the right, happy to have the Government step in with extreme prejudice and keep them safe. Guns are their fear-trigger. Even the leftish rag Salon is pandering to that fear, citing the chance that some Libertarian doofus will get a 1000 men to brave marching on Washington with loaded rifles to prove they have 2nd Amendment rights.

In 1968, the ACLU backed the right of the KKK to march through a Black neighborhood. In 2013, types who once believed in that sort of thing wants to tag these idiots "terrorists" and see them taken out by any means necessary.

If they break the law, let them be arrested, charged, tried, and pay the penalty. As Dorner should have been. As perhaps the Tsarnaev's should have been. You know, old fashioned police work, without the Military Police State?

Once there is a group who you want stripped of their rights to be treated as citizens, rather than enemy combatants, you lose those rights for you and your target group as well. There is no grey area on the slippery slope to hell.

Its not just the big takeovers to fear. Its not just the sound cannons that can either drop you to your knees in pain, or suffocate you by making a vibration so hard your lungs cannot inflate nor the microwave cannons that will burn your skin off your body should they every want to put down a protest. Its the everyday treatment of US citizens that should really make your skin crawl.

Kill a cop 40 years ago? You are a newly branded TERRORIST! (with all that implies incuding and up to murder by drone)

Show insolence to a cop now, and the Police shoot you.

If its not enough to be brutalized if they let you live and thrown in jail? They have ways of making you confess. Ask Bradley Manning.

No, there is more. The newest tool in the arsenal really, really goes back to the unthinkable of electronic slave collars. I shit thee not.

A corrections officer friend of mine reported:

Electronic control cuffs, which are worn around the ankle and cannot be removed by the wearer, can be activated to cause pain compliance through electric shock, by remote control. This is of great concern, and not just do to the potential for torturing inmates, but because the technology can go far beyond controlling inmates. People could be required to wear one to gain access to political or sports events, while driving, in the class room, or in the work place.

So if torturing you into compliance wth remote control pain application isn't enough? They can inject you with sedatives against your will with a different set of cuffs.

How did we survive the murder of a president, a million hippies marching against Vietnam, race riots and hundreds of US wars without all this? Without calling citizens "terrorists," while still allowing legal counsel and trials, while having privacy and free speech? Without indefinite detention and torture?

How did we survive it?

Because we hadn't been brainwashed into the fear.

When they break out the suffocation cannons, and microwave cannons to put down a demonstration of people we hate or fear, will we applaud? Because once that is acceptable for ANYONE, they now have carte blanche to use that on us. Once accepted as the new normal, they will always be able to justify its use.

V for Vendetta could not have been more prophetic.

Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

The have Shocked us, and in our Awe we have let the Law become Lawless.

We have let freedom become slavery. We have let "Terrorism" become the tool by which we ourselves are terrorized by the state.

In 1968, unthinkable science fiction. In 2013, reality. I know why you did it, too.

Because they weren't coming for you....

No Show Tonight

Diane Gee — Fri, 03 May 2013 19:07:45 GMT

I know, I have been skipping far too often lately, but I find myself more and more with little to say. Had a death in the family too today, my cousin. Just not in the mood.

I suppose I am going to lose listenership if I keep slacking every few weeks.

Last week was wonderful, the brave families of the pig-slain victims coming on. I just am out of rant today.

Sorry!

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: We Aren't Crazy. Capitalism Is.

Diane Gee — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:13:17 GMT

Simple Reasons Capitalism Isn't Your Friend

I realize our group here in the halls of orange-land are small. I think most dKos readers are truly interested in the general betterment of humankind. Most of the problem is that Capitalism has always sold itself as a merit system. Its really not. I am going to try and show you why.

First and foremost, the most basic thing Capitalism is, is an EXTRACTION SYSTEM. Buy low, sell high. Make cheap, price at the highest the "market" will bear. These are the common sense adages we have been taught since birth. How else can you make a dollar, right? Without money, how in the world would anything work; buying a place to live, food, clothing, and any amenities we enjoy for leisure time.

Yet, if you think about it - the collapse of the market, and the austerity being imposed on the people while the rich make record profits is no aberration. Its the system doing exactly what it is supposed to do. What it always does. It extracts from the bottom to fill the top. What they told you is a lie to make you work against your own interests.

The Western commercial system is extractive. It exists to extract more from consumers than it supplies in products and services. Its goal is profit, and profit literally means to make more (pro-ficere). Its goal has never been to improve the human condition but to exploit it. It works like this:
Consider two water tanks, initially each partially full, one above the other. One gallon of water is dumped from the upper tank into the lower one for each two gallons extracted from the lower tank and pumped into the upper tank. Over time, the lower tank ends up empty and the upper tank ends up full. The circulation of water between the tanks ends.

Extraction Capitalism is real, and it is you they are extracting from.

The Business Insider just reported "Profits Just Hit Another All-Time High, Wages Just Hit Another All-Time Low."

You may, or may not have seen the viral video about income inequality. People generally think they would like to make more. But somehow they have convinced us the system is fair. Worse? They have kept it where few of us have any idea what is really going on.

Think too, about this little factoid while you view the below. Koch Brothers' Wealth Grew By $33 Billion in 3 Years As America's Schools Report 1 Million Homeless Kids.

"In one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression, the billionaire Koch brothers who habitually rail against government's unfair burden on the wealthy, have almost doubled their net worth to a combined $64 billion."

How much do they really need? They could give every kid a cool Mill, and still be the fattest cats on the block. But they won't. They are Capitalists.

Its not just "broken at the moment." It always has been.

Some of you may remember the kinder, gentler Capitalism that Workers demanded after the 1st Depression. But it is also plain to see the cycle began anew. In history, Empires always fall because people get tired of serving Elites. And every gain made by workers has been violently opposed by the PTB - and won with the blood of the workers.

Remember too, that while "regulation" may have been highest in the 1970's and wages the most fair, there was still a broad segment of our society that has always endured poverty. Urban blacks, Appalachian whites, recent immigrants all have had to live on the most meager of wages because in order for profits to work, somebody has to make next to nothing. Miners. Railroad builders. The people in the fields that pick your food for you. Textile workers. Sweat shops.

There has never been a time there were not slums in this country. It is NOT because some people "don't work hard enough." It is not because "some people are inherently less suited to succeed."

It really is obvious that wealth begets wealth, and poverty begets poverty. The American Dream they sold you is largely myth. It is not only the lower education system being "locally tax based" thus inherently inferior in low income neighborhoods; but higher education is economically slated to be accessible only to those with high incomes, or those who borrow from those with high incomes (bankers) and are willing to enrich them even more in both interest rates paying off that loan, and as lower level lackeys working for them to pay it off. Its more. There is a class cronyism involved.

If perhaps you have ever been, or been privy to the Upper Middle Class's affairs: Country Club meetings, high end Golf Outings, perhaps a Gallery Opening... you understand it is who you know more than what you know. Consider that there is an almost exponentially tighter cronyism in the Millionare's club, and the Billioniare's? You can't get within a "billion" miles of it.

They share opportunities among themselves, like builders in the UMC share contracts among themselves. No matter how good a architect or builder your low income cousin is? He will never get the city contract to create the new stadium unless he knows someone. Classes really help keep the next layer down, which serves the top just dandy.

This brings up a sub-point to this section. In the US the white middle to lower middle class uses the same cronyism to exclude people of color, except hiring them for the very lowest wage jobs. For extraction capitalism to work? Racism (and sexism) is part and parcel of the mechanics of it.

We have always had a caste system here, the dots are as just as indelible, but painted with the supposedly invisible ink of racism and classism. The land of opportunity keeps opportunities rare for the poor.

The Myth of Repression.

The myth says we have the "greatest system on Earth" and "no other system can work!" We hear it all the time: Look at how repressive Russia was, how evil China is, how it brings dictators and loss of personal freedom. Those were never truly non-capitalist states, they just became state capitalists with different elites. I'll let the scholars argue that one. This is just you and I here, regular people, considering the sanity of thinking Capitalism sucks.

I'm not going to bore you with why I think they failed. I'll just plant one idea. If I started a company in Michigan to give away free electricity, how long do you think I would last before somehow my company imploded by outright sabotage, bad press, failed inspections via payola, if not assassination attempts on me? Nothing happens in a vacuum - and to a whole world of Elites living large? There was nothing more dangerous than the idea of sharing the wealth. They were up against that.

Now, instead? Think of the worst human rights violators in recent history. For me, Saudis come to mind. Women are stoned for being raped. The poor have their hands cut off for stealing a loaf of bread. That place is as Capitalist as they come. The rich sell the oil and live in Palaces, the poor starve.

Pinochet who killed and tortured bazillions of his own? Not only a Capitalist, but OUR Capitalist!

I'm sure if you think about it - you can think of many more.

You really cannot have a Dictator without Capitalism - because it needs an untouchable Elite with the military might to keep people from rising against it. If people are free enough to control their own destinies, they would never vote for their own oppression.

(until here and now....)

Nothing Else Can WORK!

I know, for most of you, hearing the wisdom of dead guys from a time that is nothing like what we live in now makes your eyes roll back in your head. I get it. I've been reading some Marx, and if nothing else he was a dry and pedantic fucker who always took a thousand words to say what could be said in few. Yet, for his time, he was brilliant and comprehensive.

Without getting all economic professor and mathy? Its pretty simple. I figure we ourselves not only create ALL wealth, we ARE wealth. Or value, or both. You get what I mean, even as an average Joe. They haven't got shit without us.

If you light your grill with a matchstick? Hours of work went into making it, and chances are only a couple people are getting rich off of it. But matchsticks don't grow on trees, they are made from them. Someone cut the wood, someone else milled it down, someone trucked the raw materials, someone ground the toxic chemicals for the burn tip, someone ran the machine to dip them in, someone boxed it and someone shipped them out.

A lot of hours in that puppy, which lasts only seconds. POOF! Matches are cheap, but trust me, even with mechanization, all kind of hands are on that match before you touch it. And the companies that make them make a good profit, or they no longer would.

Now the CEO of that company probably takes in 500k a year. He didn't invent it. He didn't design the machines. He doesn't run the machines. He never even touches them. All he does is find ways to pay less to make the matches, and make more off of selling them. He is rewarded solely for screwing the people who make them, and the consumers into paying more than they are worth. He doesn't "work." He is paid for being a predator. You see, there are only 2 materials more or less (simplifying for example) so there is little budge room on that - the money is made on the fact matches don't exist without human labor. There is no product without us; hence we are really the real producer of all wealth. All of it. We just don't get to keep it.

So, the "greatest system on Earth" is one in which we work our asses off to get a few guys rich, while begging to be paid enough to live on while creating the products that make them rich? It doesn't reward by merit and hard work. Really. It rewards whoever is the biggest greedhead.

Ponder it for a second: If every time you had another couple over for dinner, they raced to get the biggest steak, power-slammed your beer, ate all the dessert before your kids could even have a tiny slice... I guarantee you would not invite the assholes over again. Yet this is who we willingly serve with our work. Greedheads. Dig?

But competition is healthy!

Ahhh, the John Wayne theory of rugged individualism and the hardy pioneer. They competed, the Indians died, and they "deserve" our respect for becoming ranchers and farmers. Cue the cattle drive rushing to be the 1st to get your cattle to market! Lets be faster, tougher, smarter, work harder! Which all sounds fine and dandy until you are hungry and reaching for that biscuit you cooked, and some overstuffed idiot snatches it quicker than you, and you go hungry. That is what competition is, what Capitalism does.

Actually, deep down, you know this is bullshit. Sharing is good. You learned it in kindergarten. Thats why we donate to charities. But wouldn't it be nice to eliminate poverty instead? We can't get there by making more greedheads, that is, lifting the world into our aggressive form of industrial competition. To have winners, someone HAS to lose.

Here's a thought. Maybe work isn't the sainted ethic you think it is. Maybe we could work way less and no one would go hungry. Maybe all this work and consume, make crappy products that wear out so you have to buy more, and work to have the money to buy more is illusion - simply to keep the money pouring upward into that tower of which we spoke above.

We are in an age of extreme pollution, overpopulation and quickly dwindling resources. The Capitalist model would rather have your local grocery chain throw out half their produce every week than lower prices. Heck, some places have made it illegal to collect rainwater, and certainly Monsanto wants it to be impossible to grow your own food. Remember Victory Gardens? They were before my time - but now you couldn't plant one to feed your kids without paying someone royalties. Does this seem sane to you?

We have the technology to produce lasting products, to create free renewable energy. We have the capacity to not only grow, but deliver food to every person on Earth. Picture buying a car or refrigerator than never broke. A battery that would last forever. Less landfills, no payments. There is a reason we cannot have these things. There is no profit for the very few in it.

There is a reason in the US, we send jobs to places like Bangledesh and let them toil for pennies in factories that kill them. More profit for the few.

Here's a question. When garments were made in the US by Unions, they were still cheaper than they are now made for pennies. Where did the "value" of their abuse go? To you? Hell no. To the rich, and we enabled it on their blood.

Socialism means Too Much Government

The government you have now? Or the government by and for the People? I see nothing wrong with using our collective pool of money (and that is what taxes are supposed to be) to serve ourselves the things we could not have alone.

No one but the insane would want more of their already dwindling money to pay for taxes, right? Yet, it is true that places with the highest taxes have the highest happiness ratings. They never worry about illness - they have free healthcare. They get free education. They have no homelessness, while we now have more empty foreclosed upon homes than homeless here.

Right now, nearly every Social agreement we have has been PRIVATIZED - and we are doing worse than ever. How is that "market" working out for you? Not only that? The profits - are theirs alone (private gains) while we bail out their losses! (publicize loss) What a rip off!

You are not getting your money's worth now for a reason. The rich not only aren't paying taxes, they are taking the lion's share of our collective bank account out in subsidies and overblown contracts, all abetted by the Politicians they have purchased.

This what Capitalism does. It funnels to the top, then uses that money and power to codify laws to keep the power and money flowing to the top.

Socialism is DEMOCRATIC. It does not allow for a system where private, self-interested people can accrue that much power. Now, it doesn't make you nationalize your small flower shop. It does create laws where you have to pay fairly and caps profits to a reasonable level. It does nationalize the things that meet our basic needs: BANKING, (so it cannot be predatory) utilities, education, health and housing.

To ever get to a more Communist world, Socialism is a necessary step. People need to feel safe enough and become educated enough to create their own systems of cooperative effort. I know, I know, the Capitalists are cringing and the pure Marxists are annoyed by that. This is my opinion. While the idea of people taking over factories is good, and owning their labor and sharing the fruits of what they create is grand - Marx was working toward Industrialization as a goal. We need to become post-industrial. Once we are, there will be less need for a Centralized Goverment.

Once we have a system that is more green, based on stability and sustainability, owning production would be a natural result. Instead of "making a profit" for town A and competing for the market with town B - the goal should be providing said product A for their area and receiving product B in return for our own.

Still? Less is more. There is no reason in the world that people need to work more than 20 hours a week - either in a field of their "calling" or as rotating voluntary service to keep infrastructure running. While no model will ever cover the shoe fetish of some, nor the video-game addiction of others? These extras could be "paid for" with labor.

I realize this is simplistic - but my goal here is to open eyes to the possibilities of another way, not argue to dust the minutia of implementing it.

But what of the lazy leeches?

"I want to do nothing when I grow up!" ~ said no child ever.

Prior to the industrial age, people had what I lovingly dub "callings." Healing, mechanical, building, music, art, a love of animals, or growing things. I don't think anyone ever wanted to be a miner. But think - the need to dig in the earth for fossil fuels would be gone, and the value of rocks for pretty things - gold, diamonds, etc - all symbols of classology - would become far less valuable. In a better world, who are you and what have you done to improve the world would be the bastion of esteem over what trinkets you own.

Sure, there will always be less desirable jobs. Garbage removal. Sewer maintenance. Cleaning. Those should be either paid a premium, or be mandatory volunteer for a short period in everyone's life to access the benefits of society. If you think that is ridiculous, the model of restaurant management makes sure that to be hired to that position, you do every job in the place for weeks before you get to manage it. You have to have hands on empathy and the ability to provide the service to run a restaurant. Mostly done in case someone calls in? It has created respect for the people they manage.

If you are using the public education system to be a brain surgeon? Wonderful. It won't kill you to have to serve as janitorial staff for a semester part time while starting in your field. See how that works? Everyone begins to have mutual respect for the shoes of others.

Most people who do not work would prefer to. They are just ill-fitted or ill-suited for the dehumanizing, unappreciated work they do. Marx called this alienation. I call it round peg in square hole syndrome. I would love to teach teenagers science, but never had the money for college. I love working as a gardener, though it doesn't pay well. I have enjoyed working in inventory management and tool repair for the big three. I am now too old and sore, but rocked out waitressing. I hate cubicles and offices - I am entirely unsuited for sedentary work. I prefer to have to move around during my day. I used to love to work on cars, and can fix nearly everything.

Yet? I cannot find work that will provide for my son and I in any of those fields. Capitalism made them all too low paying. Again, it's what it does.

Instead, most of us are related to producing or selling crap we don't need to people who can't afford it, who in turn have to do the same. All to never really be SECURE in our homes or food or illness - so some few can be Bazillionaires.

A safety net for the infirm or those with special needs is a wonderful thing. Is a person born with disabilities less worthy of food than you?

Its Capitalism that is crazy, not we, the Anti-Capitalists.

Consider two water tanks, if you will, sharing an endless cycle of refreshing one another.

Thats what we are about, really.

Its not scary.

Its not rocket science.

Its not un-doable, though those in the top tank would love you to think so.

Its having security, self-worth, cooperation, more free time and a greener planet.

Its about never, ever stamping someone into poverty to get ahead.

We have to end this insane extraction system and unify to "all of us".

Join the Anti-Capitalist Group.

Here be Sanity!

WWL Radio #191 The War Zone at Home

Diane Gee — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:07:55 GMT

Listen to Diane Gee live on WWL Radio Friday, April 26th at 6pm EDT with Special Guests Dionne Smith and Reyna Duenez.

Listen live by clicking the link icon below:

Its been a frightening couple weeks here in the homeland. I feel for my dear friends in Boston who had to endure both the bombing, and the frightening Military Exercise ran thereafter. There were Militarized raids in Oakland following Boston's - and no reason was given for those.
I'll examine the inconsistencies in that story, and perhaps more importantly - speak to the "New Normal" of living under a military occupation here in the States. Yet for people of color in this country? This has been Normal forever.
A series of events in Southern California are going to be protesting the epidemic of Police brutality and murder of unarmed, innocent people of color. The movie "Crimes of Police" is premiering in Stockton tomorrow to set the stage... followed by an Oxnard College "Justice for Our Community" event and be culminating in a Statewide March from Camino del Sol Park.
We will be talking to Ernest Duenez Jr.'s sister Reyna. Ernest was shot 11 times while trying to exit his truck - his foot was tangled in the seatbelt. He was unarmed.
Dionne Smith, the mother of James Rivera - boy of 16 who was shot over 48 times by the Stockton, CA police will also be joining us.

Our own troops are being used against us. We are living in a War Zone, and we are their enemies. They are killing us with immunity. Our lives have no value to them.

The call in number is 646-929-1264 to join the conversation!

Join Wild Wild Left Radio every Friday at 6pm ET, with Hostess and Producer Diane Gee to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective....

WWL Radio: Bringing you controversial, cutting edge, revolutionary, "out there where the buses don't run" LEFT perspective since January of 2009!

CISPA: We Have More Money than You, That's Why.

Diane Gee — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:00:09 GMT

The government needs to data mine us for our security, we are told. But why in the world would our bosses need our Facebook passwords?

The only answer is whoever has the most money gets to control every aspect of your life. What a way to make the upper middle class gatekeepers for the lower classes.

Why should any PRIVATE citizen have the right to have your PASSWORD which allows them to:

Delete your account
Erase your posts
Delete your pictures at will
Write under your name
Read your Private Messages
Change your banner or icon
Friend/unfriend people they choose for you
Block sites they don't want you to read

And more?

Is that son of the owner so much more entitled as "Management" that he should control what the engineers, who create the schematics for the products he produces, private social lives?

Is some small business owner above creeping around his employees private lives looking for juicy IM's or snooping through private pictures for his own depraved sexual pleasure, or things he could use to black mail them?

Just because they have better jobs and more money?

Is it so they can screen employees and not-hire anyone who might be a Union organizer, or advocate striking against unfair practices?

This is just one more way of spying on dissenters - and using private people to now do what the Government should not be doing anyway. Now its not just spying, it is handing them the reins to CONTROL what your own writing may or may not be.

They are waging Class warfare. CISPA is to prevent us from fighting back, and now its not just the Government. They are using anyone with more money than you.

Because, you know, the Rich should just have all the power. Get it?

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the Paterson Silk Strike by JayRaye

Anti-Capitalist Group — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:05:20 GMT

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn with Pat Quinlan, Carlo Tresca,
Adolph Lessig, and Big Bill Haywood
Paterson, New Jersey 1913

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Arrives

On January 27, 1913 at the Doherty Silk Mill in Paterson, New Jersey, a workers committee requested a meeting with management. They wanted an end to the hated four-loom system which had doubled their work load with no increase in pay, and had caused the lay-offs of many of their fellow workers. When four members of that committee were fired, 800 silk workers, almost the entire work force, walked off the job spontaneously. They were without union organization to back them up. Being mostly foreign-born, non-English-speaking, unskilled workers, the AFL's United Textile Workers did not want them.

But, in fact, there was another textile union in Paterson at that time: the IWW's National Industrial Union of Textile Workers, Local 152 which local organizers, Ewald Koettgen and Adolph Lessig had established over several years of organizing. It was there, with this stalwart band of 100 Wobblies, that the strikers found a union willing to back up their strike. As it became clear that Doherty would not bargain with the strikers, Local 152 request help from IWW headquarters in Chicago.

On February 25, 1913, national IWW organizers, Pat Quinland, Carlos Tresca, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn arrived to speak at a mass meeting. All three were arrested that night at the meeting. Strikers followed them to the jail and held a rally outside the jail, singing and shouting for their release. Women shouted, "When the strike is won, Gurley Flynn will be the boss!"

By the time Big Bill Haywood arrived, later that week, the strike had spread to silk mills across Paterson. 300 mills were shut down, and 25,000 silk workers were on strike. Big Bill advised the strikers: "fold your arms or put your hands in your pocket and let the manufacturers do the worrying."

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaking to Strikers
Paterson, New Jersey 1913

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks to Strikers

Meetings, rallies, marches, speeches, and singing were features of any IWW strike, and the Paterson Silk Strike fit that mold. Mass meetings were held every morning, and shop committee meetings each afternoon. Each shop elected two strikers to represent them on the shop committee, and this was the committee that ran the strike. There were also special meetings for the women and children who made up more than half of the strikers.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was much beloved by the strikers. Reporter Art Shields describes the strikers reaction to her:

Fifteen to twenty-thousand strikers and sympathizers were applauding a beautiful young woman, whose passionate voice reached everyone in the crowd. She spoke from a high platform heaped with gorgeous flowers. But violets and roses paled before this twenty-one-year-old beauty, and I fell in love with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn at first sight.
I wasn't her only captive. No other woman speaker except Mother Jones won so many hearts as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. She won them in struggles against big exploiters, not in quiet lecture halls....
And there was a dramatic scene when Elizabeth called an Italian girl she knew to the platform. This was a pale, thin teenager..Elizabeth embraced her and then said, "The silk bosses are killing Angelica. They are working her to death. They put her on four looms instead of two. She's working twice as hard as before."
..."But that isn't all the silk bosses did to Angelica. They didn't give her enough to eat." Angelica, she said, was the only support of a sick mother and her younger brothers and sisters. Her father was dead. Her family was hungry The family seldom ate meat. "She's also striking," Elizabeth said, "for a raise to give her family enough to eat."
The silk bosses are robbers, Elizabeth continued. The cars they are driving, the diamonds their wives are wearing, the rich food their families are eating, their winter vacations in Florida's sunshine-all come from the labors of Angelica and twenty-five thousand other silk workers. "And when you win the raises you are fighting for," she said, "you'll get back only a little of what you produced. But these raises are just a beginning. The time is coming when you will run these plants for yourselves."

"She got to be an idol with us."

Irma Lombardi was a young seventeen-year-old striker. She left us this description of Gurley Flynn:

Gurley Flynn called a meeting just for the women one day. She started with that lovely way of hers. She looked at us and said, "Would you like to have nice clothes?" We replied, "Oh, yes." "Would you like to have nice shoes?" "Oh,yes." we shouted. "Well, you can't have them. Your bosses' daughters have those things!" We got mad. We knew it was true. We had shoes with holes, and they had lovely things. Then she said, "Would you like to have soft hands like your bosses' daughters?" and we got mad all over again. She was a beautiful speaker. She got be an idol with us.

Sophie Cohen was the child of a former mill worker. Though not a striker, her father was passionate in his support of the strike, and often brought her to the rallies. She later remembered Gurley Flynn:

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
IWW Organizer

Gurley Flynn looked just like the pictures we see of her now. She was young, vibrant, enthusiastic. She wan't really a good speaker, but she gave so much of herself in her talks. She would come at night to the soup kitchens. There were big cauldrons of soup set up in a lot next to the church and she would get up on a platform. There were red flares around her, and she'd get them singing and then she'd talk with them. It was just the thing people needed to keep them together and give them courage.

Sundays in Haledon

Meetings were not allowed in Paterson, but the nearby town of Haledon had a Socialist mayor who welcomed the strikers. On Sundays thousands of strikers marched to Haledon. A striker's family offered the use of their two-story house. Speeches were given from the upper balcony to the crowd gathered below in the street and in the large green field opposite the house. Gurley Flynn later remembered those Sunday meetings fondly:

Sunday after Sunday , as the days became pleasanter, we spoke there to enormous crowds of thousands of people-the strikers and their families, workers from other Paterson industries, people from nearby New Jersey cities, delegations from all over America and from foreign countries. People who saw these Haledon meetings never forgot them.

But there was a deeper reason for going to Haledon on Sundays, Gurley Flynn explained:

Because Sunday is the day before Monday. Monday is the day that a break comes in every strike, if it is to come at all during the week. If you can bring the people safely over Monday they usually go along for the rest of the week. If on Sunday, however, you let those people stay at home, sit around the stove without any fire in it, sit down at the table were there isn't much food, see the feet of the children with shoes getting thin and the bodies of children where the clothes are getting ragged, they begin to think in terms of "myself" and lose the spirit of the mass and the realization that all are suffering as they are suffering...And so our original reason for going to Haledon was to give them novelty, to give them variety, to take them en masse out of the city of Paterson some place else to sort of picnic over Sunday that would stimulate them for the rest of the week.

Mass Arrests
On the picket lines, the strikers were subject to daily mass arrest. Many were sentenced to ten or twenty days, some to six months at hard labor. Most of the strikers went straight back to the picket line upon their release. Seventeen-year-old Hannah Silverman was arrested three times. She was back on the picket line the next morning each time she was released. Big Bill Haywood hailed her as "the greatest little IWW woman in America." When Carrie Torello was arrested, she gathered her children together, put them in the patrol wagon and told another striker, "If you see Freddie, tell him to come to Jail."

The Paterson Press
The Paterson Press openly called for violence against the IWW organizers, calling for the formation of a vigilance committee to drive them out of town:

Los Angeles, Akron, Denver, Ottowa, and other cities kicked the I.W.W. out of town in short order...What is Paterson doing to discourage this revolutionary horde?

And another example:

Akron, Ohio, could not find a law to banish this dangerous revolutionist [Big Bill] and his cohorts but a citizens' committee of 1000 men did the trick in short order. Can Akron, Ohio, accomplish something that Paterson, N.J., cannot duplicate? The Paterson Press dislikes to believe it, but time will tell.

WE NEVER FORGET
On Thursday, April 17, 1913, Modestino Valentino was murdered by private detectives, hired gunmen imported from New York by the mill owners. This man's only crime against the mill owners was that he was standing on his own front porch watching the strikers hoot at the scab-herders. He was not a striker, nor was he a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. The hooting so bothered the gunmen that they felt compelled to open fire on unarmed workers. Gurley Flynn described how he died:

[He] grabbed his child and started through the doorway, when he was shot in the back. His wife grabbed the child and her husband fell and dead at her feet.

Gurley Flynn went with a committee of strikers to visit the widow:

She was in bed, awaiting the birth of a second child. On the other side of a folding partition was the casket of her dead husband, parallel to the bed. The priest came in while we were there but he made no objection to our request [for the I.W.W. to provide for the funeral.] She was a simple grief-stricken woman, who expressed her sympathy with the strikers, many of whom were her neighbors. She placed the blame where it belonged-on the company thugs who murdered her husband. It was a tragic example of force and violence by the employers in the class struggle-a worker dead , a woman widowed, two children, one unborn, left orphans-a story repeated all too often in my experience.

According to IWW historian, Fred Thompson, five workers in all lost their lives in the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913.

Hunger, the Great Strikebreaker

In spite of the courage shown by the strikers and their leaders, the silk strikers were defeated. Some small concessions were made by a few of the mill owners, but for the most part, strikers went back to work defeated. Some had been replaced by scabs and were never rehired. Gurley Flynn partially blamed the Pageant for the loss of the strike, asserting that it was a distraction from strike duties. It was a financial disaster also, which only further discouraged the strikers. But in the end the strike was lost because the strikers were starving. Gurley Flynn later spoke of the suffering that the strikers endured before they were driven back to work by hunger:

I saw men go out in Paterson without shoes, in the middle of winter and with bags on their feet, I went into a family to have a picture taken of a mother with eight children who didn't have a crust of bread, didn't have a bowl of milk for the baby in the house,-but the father was out on the picket line. Others were just as bad off. Thousands of them that we never heard of at all. This was the difficulty that the workers had to contend with in Paterson: hunger; hunger gnawing a their vitals; hunger tearing them down; and still they had the courage to fight it out for six months.

Let us honor their courage and sacrifice by continuing the struggle for social and economic justice.

Solidarity,
JayRaye

SOURCES

The IWW: Its First Seventy Years 1905-1975
-by Fred W Thompson & Patrick Murfin
IWW Press, 1976

The Rebel Girl
My First Life (1906-1926)
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
NY, 1979

Women and the American Labor Movement
From Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I
-by Philip S Foner
NY, 1979

My Shaping-Up Years
-by Art Shields
NY, 1982

Solidarity Forever
An Oral History of the IWW
-ed by Bird, Georgaks, & Shaffer
Lake View Press, 1985

Words on Fire
The Life and Writing of
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
-by Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall
Rutgers U Press, 1987

Rebel Voices
An IWW Anthology
-ed by Joyce L Kornbluh
Charles H Kerr Pub, 1988

US-fookin-badass-A, Baby!

Diane Gee — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 18:26:38 GMT

Yayyyyyyy Piggies! Go USA! Thank you, and please inspect my every key stroke (CISPA) inspect my vagina for signs of abortion and search my house weekly for subversive materials like (gasp) actual BOOKS! After all? If I have nothing to hide, I won't mind the invasion.
Red White and Blue, bitch!
They can take a city down! I let them scare me! Go oppressors! Badass! WOOOOOT!
Hell, they looked up things about Islam on the net, so they must be ter'ists. If they had looked the Jeebuz like God intended 'em to, they wouldn't be all full of hate at the US, 'cpetin that Phelps fella... who does not represent us good Christian types. But all Muslims are alike.
Didya see them cool tanks? All them cops looking all robocop and totally kick? Snipers everywhere. Better than my videogames. Man, I wish that kid HAD done suicide by cop. Wanted to see them blow his feckin head off. We didn't get to see blood on the Dorner one either. Things would be different if I was in charge.

Apparently, critical thinking and reporting is now CT and the above bubbaism is the only acceptable way to think anymore.

I will never be or do that. I have powers of observation and logic.
I truly think it had to be horrifying and frightening.

Our dear friend Peter Reed (weeping for brunnhilde) was live posting on FB about it - his building was the epicenter of the search, his car was the in all the TV footage. His landlord had bullets come through his wall.

My day began with these series of posts from him - I have known him for years.

Peter B. Reed
Yesterday
There's some kind of fucking manhunt outside of my window. I heard lots of shots, then some kind of explosion and now there's a fucking manhunt outside of my window, lots of police running around, lots of cars, lots of screaming, police dogs...what the fuck is going on?

Peter B. Reed
Yesterday
Guys with FBI and ATF jackets right outside my window.

Peter B. Reed
Yesterday
News is just reporting there are multiple undetonated explosive devices around Laurel St. (and I live at 75 Laurel St.) "on the street." And in Watertown, there are as many as five different crime scenes "a few streets removed from Laurel." I hope I don't end up dead.

Then he even joked, "I finished the last drops of my Jameson, moved onto the last drops of my Ballantine's and AFT et. al. chased me back inside when I ventured out for a cigarette."

(not his house, just indicative)

Peter B. Reed
Yesterday
The big strong man with the machine gun told me they're "evacuating" houses...told me to wait by the door...I guess they're taking us somewhere?

This is him.

The did not tear up Peter's house, but this and stories like it were all over twitter.

Despite fearing for my friend (who is home and fine by the way) as I watched all 4 news channels, followed twitter, read accounts of other FB people - I began to think it all smelled funny.

I was not alone in this - yet some reviled daring to question it at all. "They are terrorists! We are in danger!" Yes, I get that, and my friend was in as much danger from 25,000 very nervous, assault rifle wielding Policeman as one scared teenager. Death by cop of unarmed Black men in the US happens over 300 times a year on average.

I question the authenticity of the two young men, who may well have been patsies on the run, once they saw their faces on TV as suspects. Everyone knows what happens to Muslims after 9/11. I mean Gitmo is still full of hunger striking, innocent men. "Someone has to pay," is the motto of the FBI. And the CIA. Hell, all the alphabet soup boys.

They tried valiantly, but could not find one person who had a bad thing to say about them. One smoked pot and drank with his buddies, and helped autistic kids. The other married a Christian. Not exactly Muslim extremists. Neither one had a single person say that tell tale phrase we usually hear when someone goes whack, "He seemed kind of nice, but there was always something odd about him..." or "He was a loner.."

The closest they got was the older ones admission of having a hard time getting US friends that understood his Chechnyan background. Who hasn't had a "no one understands me" moment?

They picked the wrong patsies. These kids were relative saints. The image of them looks shopped. And even if they did make the mistake of being on the street that Monday, their real crime is being the only Muslim-looking people with hats on. Because the victims repeatedly said "Big men (both kids are frail of build) with hats left the backpacks."

Hell, I noticed the CI spooks at the marathon before they leaked it to Alex Jones to make anyone who did notice it look insane. I noticed all the posts by spectators who asked why they had bomb dogs all over, and military types there who claimed prior to the bomb going off, they were "running a drill."

I wanted to know, too. I still want to know how 2 kids on the run can carry enough IED's (and pressure cookers aren't light) to leave a trail of them like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs while running both on foot and by car all over a city.

The plot itself gets even more ludicrous from here.

They shut down the Greater Metro area surrounding Boston. Not just the area they chased him into. Not just the city itself. They closed an entire enormous US city and induced Martial Law. The TV bobbing bouffants questioned it at first, then someone obviously smacked them, and the mantra began. Every minute - "Do not open your door except to a police officer."

IOW - don't trust your family friends or neighbors, just the pigs. They repeated it on the average of once every 60 to 90 seconds. What better way to create such a fabric of fear that people become willing partners in this human experiment of control?

If they came to my house with no warrant or cause I would tell them to get one or fuck off. I would likely be arrested. One after another, they made entirely illegal searches, and the Nation says nothing.

I feel like I am watching even good people, sit in the proverbial frog pot while it boils them to death.

If we ever had our own Arab Spring over austerity? These are the images they want imprinted in your brain. Total killing machine terror. Dissenters will be terrorists. Whistle blowers already are! Bradley. Manning.

This was no more overkill than Chris Dorner's burning at the cottage stake.

This was a planned drill and exercise. Over and over, I saw cops laughing, right from the beginning; grinning ear to ear as if having the time of their lives. I am certain the chance to play with all the DHS hardware and be Rambo made their tiny peckers hard, and the she-pigs wet. I was told this was going to happen. One of my friends, an ex-secret ops guy, laid out to me LAST year all the contingency plans they have to shut down every major city in case of "unrest." He said they drill all the time, and often use a small excuse to break out and train all the HS trained cop toys and plans.... a year ago, Then the copbque in Cali, now this? Yeah, it reeks of it.

Let me ask a question here:

IF THE SHUT DOWN OF ALL OF BOSTON WAS TO "PROTECT" THE CITIZENRY - THEN WHY WAS IT LIFTED HOURS AND HOURS BEFORE THEY CAUGHT DZHOKAR???

The only answer to that is obvious. It was never about their security.

They didn't do Martial Law on 9/11.

And the new normal is "No reporting or witnesses." It was first done with the Deepwater Horizon spill where armed thugs pushed reporters off public beaches. Now, Exxon creates no fly zones over any spill, hijacking our public airspace to cover their asses. The same is now done in any Police Action. The shove reporters back behind tape for their "personal safety." REALLY? Remember when journalists went to War Zones and Disaster areas to cover the story? If they know and choose to take that risk, who can tell them they cannot.

What part of Freedom of the Press don't you get? What part of controlling the Press and not allowing them to witness State actions equals Fascism is no one getting?

There is a reason they demanded all cell phones be turned off. No pictures, no video, no citizen reporting. And people bought it.

Worse, the spin they were putting on it in the Media. I live blogged this while watching.

A talking head just said they may have done it because they hear in the US that we are doing wrong, raping killing etc abroad and it warped them - I see, war protestors are the problem. Criticizing the US causes terrorism.

Not the rape and murder. Talking about our rapes and murders. Got that? Heard it more than once.

As usual, the day 3 of our own were killed by what was likely a drill gone wrong, or a false flag attack? No one batted an eye about the 30 killed about the same time by our drone strikes.

Except maybe my kid, who came home Monday to me watching the Marathon tragedy unfold. He said, "Oh, this is horrible. I feel bad for them. But I wonder how many other innocent people are standing around, never hear or see the drones and BAM! We do the same shit to them." My kid, who happens to not look Muslim. My kid, who if he did, would and could be framed easily enough just because I write shit like this. Because I whistleblow. Because I question. Because I hate the Police State. Because I believe what Ben Franklin said to Thomas Jefferson in a letter about giving up Liberty for Security and deserving neither. My kid, who was in Washington DC with his school at the time, learning about Jefferson and our founding fathers. Yeah.

Is that conspiracy theorist of me?

NDAA says no. (sidebar, in googling stop ndaa . org - the site no longer comes up in the search - I had to paste it in the address bar to get there... I find that very odd, too)

Missives like this, in their opinion make me an enemy of the State. Luckily I am far too obscure to get much notice from them. I am no one, with few readers. Unlike Glenn Greenwald who pointed out we should care about young Dzhokar's rights and that another of the rights our beloved D-prince-dreamy has rolled back is Miranda.

Framing is nothing new, unless you believe the magic power steering bullet theory.

What happened yesterday was a Military Drill and Social Experiment. In the end? They had people cheering their own rights being taken away, applauding the military that had guns pointed at them. Never even considered the ridiculousness of all that hardware for one small boy. A boy whose crime was likely seeing his own face as "suspect" on TV, and making a run for it, well aware of what happens to anyone Islamic here after 9/11.

People obeyed like sheep, people applauded their oppressors.

They were trapped at shopping malls, bus stations, their airports, their jobs or their homes. They had guns pointed at them, were searched and had all kinds of deadly robots and killing machines roll by them.

I'm not cheering, I'm scared as shit. Not only of the pig/military/alphabet alliance and the men who direct them. I'm scared that our own citizens are too stupid to live. Too stupid to learn from history. Too blind to see the obvious inconsistencies in front of them.

Just like Sandy Hook and JFK - they want a single shooter, maybe a family of baddies, the "good guys" to win, so they can turn off the movie and feel like they got a good plot ending. Its unbelievable.

People get exactly what they deserve, my husband used to say. Yesterday, they got an action movie of the Police State we have become, and nearly all of them willingly, joyously played bit parts. This was a Play. Theater. Kabuki with live ammo. Some of them not-so-willingly, like my friend Peter, who knows what its like to be a Black Man in the Police State. Dress smart, smile, and keep your hands up. You might live. I get that.

U - S - Fookin - A Baby!

Seig Hiel!

This is only a test. Except when the Test is no Longer a Test, its the New Normal.

Welcome to the Machine...

AC Meetup: Maggie's Dead, but Thatcherism lives on: Thoughts from a Beleaguered Island

Anti-Capitalist Group — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:01:58 GMT

BY: NY brit expat

The state funding of a funeral for Margaret Thatcher (estimated cost £10m) and the claims that she was the greatest post-war prime minister mourning for "Boadicea in pearls" (yes, I couldn't make that up) in the Commons is still not ringing true on the streets of Glasgow, Brixton, Leeds, and Bristol where impromptu parties celebrating her death sprung up; the police are so worried that they have started monitoring social media sites fearing demonstrations at the funeral.

Given that the last funeral of this type for a politician (as opposed to a member of the royal family) was held for Winston Churchill, the "everything but state funeral in name" is causing a bit of a fuss, especially as austerity is taking food out of the mouths of the poor and disabled. The arrogance and cynicism of the ruling class in Britain in the face of the misery they are causing is making even the most resigned of the British population to grumble.

Clement Attlee's legacy of social cohesion and mutual support is destroyed and ignored by those who are bringing Maggie's dreams to fruition. Thatcher was a politician who argued that there was no such thing as society and championed individualism, a politician who destroyed the manufacturing and industrial sectors in Britain, who worked very hard to destroy the union movement and the rights of workers in Britain. She undercut and then enabled the sell-off of social housing and eliminated rent control for private housing, which is part of the problem underlying the lack of social housing today, along with the continuing government commitment to private ownership. She is lauded as the so-called greatest peacetime Prime Minister of the 20th century, yet called Nelson Mandela a terrorist, while embracing Suharto and Pinochet. Let's not forget the 10 Irish prisoners who died in 1981 during a hunger strike while demanding political prisoner rather than criminal status. Let's also consider the last-gasp of British colonialism in her defense of the Malvinas, while ignoring the US invasion of Grenada.

A quick comparison between the two of them should settle this discussion handily:

In the midst of all this revisionist history, my complaint that some feminists are calling a woman who detested feminists and feminism "A feminist Icon" seems almost an after-thought. I really do question why President Obama wants his beloved daughters to see this woman as worthy of emulating due to her "shattering the glass ceiling" while she brought the roofs down on other women. Should they decide to shatter the glass ceiling themselves, I hope they remember not to destroy and disparage the lives of those below them.

The recall of Parliament to laud Thatcher and her accomplishment produced little but dribble; however, a big Thank You to Glenda Jackson for at least speaking the truth!

My only consolation is that she will not be alive to see her wildest dreams come to fruition; however her legacy lives on. The fight against her legacy has been on-going not only in Britain but in the whole world. Unfortunately, her right-wing policies are those that are dominant in the advanced capitalist world today, and have been thrust by the World Bank on countries throughout the capitalist emergent economies and periphery. This fight must not cease, and indeed its intensity must increase if we are to destroy neoliberalism, which is threatening workers' rights and incomes and the lives of the poor and disabled in the name of protecting the interests of capitalism and capitalists on the back of the majority living in those countries. In Tory Britain, Thatcher's process of dismantling society to benefit the few to the detriment of the majority, continues at speed; the question of whether this can be stopped and reversed depends on the willingness of the majority of Britain to fight for the universality of the social welfare state.

1. The Attack on the State Sector and the Universal Social Welfare State in Britain

On April 1st (which is a rather fitting day when you think of it, though like most April fool's jokes it is not at all funny,) all of the cuts introduced by the Con-Dem government came into effect. These include wide-ranging cuts in benefits across the social welfare state, the privatisation of service contracts for the NHS to bring theNHS under EU competition law (see also: http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/...), cuts in pensions, frozen state sector workers wages, job loss throughout the state sector at all levels, closures of public services due to central government cutbacks and the undermining of public education through the forced introduction of academies (similar to charter schools in the US) even at the primary school level.

Cuts in benefits:

While explaining cuts in benefits; what needs to be understood is that unlike the US, there is a universal social welfare state in Britain and only part of it was means tested. For example, child benefits used to be given independent of income and wealth. The extension of means testing and the general attack on the poorest and disabled is an important part of the discussion, as benefits guaranteed to others beyond the poorest and disabled have also been introduced over time. Now the system is being shifted from one which is universal to one more like that in the US where only the poorest are covered, and then very poorly indeed.

A general cap to the amount of benefits claimants can receive has been introduced; £500/week for those households with couples and lone parent households (single adult household with no children are capped at £350/week). This means that the cumulative total of all benefits are capped including rent (and housing benefit), food, disability payments, and child benefits. While those numbers sound like a lot of money, they are not when rent is included. Additionally, benefits and pensions have been re-indexed from the Retail Price Index to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), with the main difference between the two reflecting housing costs. As such, increases in benefits and pensions will be lower due to the use of the CPI and does not reflect the true costs of living. Added to this is the 1% cap on increases in benefits which means that benefits do not even keep pace with inflation, even measured by the woefully inadequate CPI.

Most of these cuts are limits based upon the Bethamite principle of Less Eligibility (that is, those on benefits or on poor relief must have worse standards of living than those doing independent work) where those on relief/benefits cannot earn more than those that are in work. Supposedly, it is to guarantee the importance of the principle of work. However, we have an additional consideration that must be addressed: increased precariousness of work, low wages especially for unskilled labour (which comprise the majority of jobs), and high unemployment means that wages are already too low.

The government has been touting the possibility of differential wages for areas of high unemployment. Some regions would actually have lower wage rates irrespective of wage contract and negotiations. With wages and incomes falling and the introduction of flexible labour markets, the wages of working people are often below the minimum wage, which is alreadynot a living wage. Given the principle of lesser eligibility, people dependent upon benefits must have lower incomes than those that are working which are already below social subsistence level. Social subsistence has been undermined and the incomes of the poor are falling towards physical (i.e., biological) subsistence levels.

But what happens when there are no jobs as has been the case since the crash of 2008?

If there are few jobs, labelling the unemployed as lazy slackers only serves to demonise them. Divide and rule is effective as a mechanism to split people. However, what is essential to understand is that lowering benefits to force the unemployed into work will not create jobs, it only impoverishes people. Moreover, low levels of productivity in Britain indicate that some companies are trying to keep workers on, rather than sacking them, while waiting for an upturn in the economy. What that means is that if (and that is a big if) the economy picks up, employment will not necessarily rise as bosses may then make workers work harder rather than hiring new people. As such, better opportunities for the unemployed may not come back for a long time, if they ever do come back.

Transition in job-seekers benefits linked to "voluntary" labour and increased numbers being sent to mandatory work activity aka Workfare:

Initially introduced under New Labour, the mandatory work activity was used to force those on long-term benefits to get work training. Under the current government, this was extended to include "volunteering" often in commercial companies for no pay beyond benefits received under threat of loss of benefits. The government was taken to court by two of these "volunteer" workers and lost the case. However, the claim of forced labour by those who brought the suit was rejected; it is an understatement to say that this is a questionable decision as workers were threatened with commensurate loss of benefits affecting themselves and their families. That is, almost by definition, "forced labour." The case was rejected as the Secretary of Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, to mandate this programme did so without parliamentary approval.

The courts also said that those whose benefits were suspended should be repaid; this amounted to 250,000 jobseekers, forced into "voluntary" labour and who were then sanctioned, receiving £130m in rebates. A bill to deny these people the rebate went before Parliament. Leadership in the Labour party, instead of opposing it, abstained, while 44 Labour MPs broke ranks with the party whip and did vote against it. (See: http://welfarenewsservice.com/...; http://graduatefog.co.uk/...; http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/...). It was this move on the part of the leadership of the Labour party, and both Liam Byrne (Shadow Secretary of work and pensions) and Ed Milliband's insistence on linking work to benefits, that led to many shocked supporters finally realising that they could not count on the Labour party.

Disability Benefits:

The replacement of Incapacity Benefits with Employment Support Allowance (ESA) includes an assessment by a private company ATOS to ascertain whether you are truly disabled (£Up to £105.05/wk) or can be placed in a Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) (£Up to £99.15/wk) or belong on Job Support Allowance (££56.80/wk). During the first 13 weeks after application for ESA, you can only get £56.80 (if you are under 25) and £71.70 (if you are over 25) (see: https://www.gov.uk/...).

There were two forms of Incapacity benefits: 1) contribution based for temporary illnesses and sickness (contributory); 2) non-contributory based upon disability.

If you are rejected for ESA, then you are supposedly eligible for Job-seekers allowance (£56.80/week) if you are over 18 and able and available for work (which many people that are wrongly rejected for ESA are not); you will not be eligible for contributory disability benefits as you haven't been contributing to the fund. However, many people who are wrongly rejected for ESA are not available for work due to their inability to work. ATOS assessments are notoriously unrealistic and the vast majority of decisions are overturned upon appeal (where, of course, you are not getting the correct level of benefits during the period of appeal)

The elimination of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) meant to help you cope with added expenses for being disabled and its replacement by Personal Independence Payment(PIP) and the fact that you must face an ATOS assessment (along with the elimination of the middle rate of DLA benefit of £51.85/wk) will certainly create additional hardship. How much you get depends upon your mobility and the assistance you need (see: https://www.gov.uk/...). Moreover, Carer's benefits are tied to receipt of DLA (Carer's Allowance is £58.45 a week to help you look after someone with substantial caring needs), so if the person you are caring for loses DLA or PIP, carer's benefits will also be lost even though carer's responsibilities are not eliminated). If you are over 65, instead of applying for PIP you will need to apply for AA which does not contain a mobility portion. Finally, the elimination of the Independent Living Fund (helping people with disabilities live independently) will add extreme hardship to those people with disabilities trying to live independently in the community rather than in residential homes or with their families.

Housing Benefits cuts:

Cuts have been introduced to the amount given for housing benefit; the purpose of these cuts is to clear out the centre of London for the wealthy and to shift those who are on housing benefits to outer boroughs. For those in social housing, the benefit cap of £500 applies; you cannot get any more money than that per month. If you are living in private accommodation and getting housing benefits, according to Shelter:

"your housing benefit will be 'capped' according to the size of your home. You will only get housing benefit up to a maximum of:

•    £250 pw for 1 bedroom

•    £290 pw for 2 bedrooms

•    £340 pw for 3 bedrooms

•    £400 pw for 4 bedrooms or for any property with more than 4 bedrooms.

This is the maximum amount you will get even if you have a larger property (http://england.shelter.org.uk/...)."

Bedroom Tax:

The Bedroom tax is being laid against those on housing benefit and in social housing, with more bedrooms than the state deems they need. It's stated purpose is to free up insufficient numbers of housing for larger families.

According to Shelter:

"From April 2013, council tenants and housing association tenants will have their housing benefit entitlement reduced if the council decides their home is too big for their needs. This is often called the 'bedroom tax' or 'under-occupancy rule'.

The amount of rent you can claim housing benefit for will be reduced if you have one or more spare rooms. This means you will have to pay more of the rent yourself.

The amount of rent used to calculate how much housing benefit you're entitled to (your 'eligible rent') will be cut by a fixed percentage:

• 14% if you have one extra bedroom.

• 25% if you have two or more extra bedrooms. (http://england.shelter.org.uk/...)."

The shortage of housing with larger numbers of rooms derives from both the sale of social housing under Thatcher, insufficient building of social housing since then, and the concentration on private housing. Money is either to be taken out directly from housing benefits at the source or to be implemented at local levels if a recipient of housing benefit has extra rooms. This clearly will affect those who are disabled, as many have an adapted room for them to sleep in while carers (often spouses) sleep in the extra room; it will also affect grandparents who often care for their grandchildren, it is unclear if it will affect those who are foster parents as this is being further examined by the government.

Contrary to comparisons, this tax has no relationship to the Window Tax laid against the wealthy to raise revenue for the government or the Poll Tax which affected everyone and was far easier to mobilise against. This tax is specifically aimed at those receiving housing benefits while living in social housing as they view that those living in privately rented accommodation already make these decisions normally. According to the National Housing Federation, the proposal will affect an estimated 660,000 working-age social tenants - 31% of existing working-age housing benefits claimants in the social sector. 340,000 of these are single women (51%), 160,000 single men and 160,000 couples. Of those 660,000 affected, 420,000 (63%) are people with disabilities (see the equality assessment: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/...).

If this is an attempt to raise money, it is one of the most regressive taxes ever implemented, but it is not an attempt to raise revenue for the government. It is negligible - £14 per week, on average, for 660,000 people amounts to £9,240,000/week (£480,480,000/yr) from the very poorest: mostly single mothers and disabled people. (One week's benefit theft amounts to less than the cost of Thatcher's funeral, but I am sure that they can make up the costs); see http://www.dwp.gov.uk/...). That amount compared to a government's budget is essentially peanuts. This is an attempt to force people out of larger flats instead of building further social housing. All it will do is take money from those who cannot afford to lose anything, already.

Moreover, if they wanted to raise revenue, certainly they could earn a lot more introducing a financial transactions tax, or force corporations that are tax avoiding or evading to pay; just think how much they could have raised if they didn't cut corporate tax rates and the 50% tax on those earning over £150,000/year? Even more so, think how much more they could raise if they actually got their hands on the tax money withheld by individuals due to avoidance and evasion if they closed down the tax havens which the extremely wealthy use; but that would affect themselves and their friends and that is not something that this government wants to consider.

Cuts to council tax benefits:

Unlike the bedroom tax, council tax benefits are widely accessed throughout the country. In fact, according to The Guardian, it is the most widely accessed means-tested benefit, with around 5.9m recipients. The central government has shifted responsibility to local councils to decide what to do while, at the same time, limiting what they can decide when it comes to who can and cannot be affected. Council tax benefits are forced to be cut by local governments (that is where they come from) and those who were formally exempted from paying will now be forced to pay. Various local councils have tried to address this in several ways, some choosing to protect the poor by cutting rebates to those living in more expensive housing, some spreading it equally meaning that the poor will have to come up with some more money to pay for the elimination of council tax benefits (http://www.guardian.co.uk/...and http://www.guardian.co.uk/...). It needs to be understood that while we are talking about something like £120/year, if you are living on £71/week, that is going to affect the incomes of the poorest.

Obviously, these cuts are cumulative and if you are among the unlucky losing benefits for being disabled, for example, you will be hit several times as this extraction from a chart from DEMOS shows:

	Benefit	Cuts Affected by	Number of Disabled People Affected	Loss per person by 2018	Total loss as a group
DOUBLE WHAMMY	ESA (WRAG)	Uprating by 1% of ESA; Time limitation of C-WRAG	88,000	£15506	£1.3bn
TRIPLE WHAMMY	DLA and ESA (WRAG)	Uprating by 1% of ESA WRAG Time limitation of C-WRAG Replacement of DLA with PIP	26,600	£17097-£23,461	£6.2bn
TRIPLE WHAMMY	DLA and under occupancy in social housing (bedroom tax)	A cut in housing benefit due to under-occupation A loss of DLA due to the introduction of PIP A reduction in housing benefit due to uprating by CPI A reduction in DLA due to uprating by CPI	264,600	£6,280	£1.66bn

Benefit

Cuts Affected by

Number
of Disabled People Affected

Loss per person by 2018

Total
loss as a group

DOUBLE

WHAMMY

ESA (WRAG)

Uprating by 1% of ESA; Time limitation of C-WRAG

88,000

£15506

£1.3bn

TRIPLE WHAMMY

DLA and ESA (WRAG)

Uprating by 1% of ESA WRAG

Time limitation of C-WRAG

Replacement of DLA with

PIP

26,600

£17097-£23,461

£6.2bn

TRIPLE WHAMMY

DLA and

under

occupancy

in social

housing

(bedroom

tax)

A cut in housing benefit due to under-occupation

A loss of DLA due to the introduction of PIP

A reduction in housing benefit due to uprating by

CPI

A reduction in DLA due to

uprating by CPI

264,600

£6,280

£1.66bn

2. Fight, Fight, Fight!

The fight-back against this government, and for that matter, against the capitulation of New Labour, is increasing as hardship is extending and people are understanding that the government's programmes are not really concerned with beating back government debt and deficit; it is about lowering living standards of the majority, undermining the social welfare state, privatising the NHS and privatisation of services, all of which are based upon a right-wing ideological agenda.

Union Action:

There are many Trade union actions. But, there is something new. For the first time since 1926, the word General Strike is being discussed seriously among unions. Unite called for a General Strike and there seems to be support among UNISON (see also: http://www.ft.com/...). The question of whether it is legal is being examined, as well as, whether enough support can be found to make it a real general strike. Shall we say the Labour party is not amused?!

Teachers' unions are discussing the next phase of the fight-back, with the two largest unions, NUT and NASUWT preparing for coordinated industrial action. This is important as NASUWT did not participate in the one-day strike last year which was supported by ATL and NUT, so this is a shift in alignments.

Movements

What is absent in Britain is a broad based national movement uniting employed and unemployed and various localised groups fighting austerity. However, that does not mean that anti-austerity activity is not occurring. From Councillors against the Cuts, local anti-cuts groups, to campaigns focussed on the impact of the cuts on the disabled (DPAC and Black Triangle Campaign) and those on benefits, to various groups fighting to protect the NHS and hospitals facing loss of departments (e.g., Lewisham, Whittington Hospital in Islington, Croydon, Bridlington in the Northeast of England, Mid-Wales), these movements exist and have been fighting the cuts. Most of them are grass-roots based organisations. For example, the Anti-Bedroom tax campaign is a broad grassroots campaign across Britain in response to the bedroom tax. Moreover, it is a campaign in which numbers of anarchists and those using direct action (UK Uncut) are participating and fighting (see: http://combatbedroomtax.blogspot.co.uk/; see also: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/...). There was also an occupation at Sussex University to protest privatisation of provision of services and commensurate job losses that lasted for 7 weeks; they were evicted on Good Friday.

The People's Assembly is an attempt to start creation of a national discussion around austerity.

"This is a call to all those millions of people in Britain who face an impoverished and uncertain year as their wages, jobs, conditions and welfare provision come under renewed attack by the government. With some 80% of austerity measures still to come, and with the government lengthening the time they expect cuts to last, we are calling a People's Assembly Against Austerity to bring together campaigns against cuts and privatisation with trade unionists in a movement for social justice. We aim to develop a strategy for resistance to mobilise millions of people against the Con Dem government.
The assembly will provide a national forum for anti-austerity views which, while increasingly popular, are barely represented in parliament. A People's Assembly can play a key role in ensuring that this uncaring government faces a movement of opposition broad enough and powerful enough to generate successful co-ordinated action, including strike action. The assembly will be ready to support co-ordinated industrial action and national demonstrations against austerity, if possible synchronising with mobilisations across Europe. The People's Assembly Against Austerity will meet at Central Hall, Westminster, on 22 June, 2013 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/...)"

Initiated by the Coalition of Resistance, the people's assembly is an attempt to bring together the unions and various anti-cuts groups and individuals opposed to austerity. 1,664 have already registered and paid for the People's Assembly. It is estimated that about 2-3000 people will be taking part in the event.

The question arises, what comes after this event? Will a national movement be able to be built? Again, much will depend on willingness of the participants to do this and the ability to provide a democratic platform to which all participants can have input and whether participants think what the best way forward will be.

Electoral Parties

Outside of the mainstream, there are three national electoral parties that have existed in Britain representing an opposition. There are local parties likeLewisham People Before Profits (http://www.peoplebeforeprofit.org.uk/...), but I will concentrate on the national parties. One is the Green Party, the other is the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) and the third is George Galloway's Respect party.

The Green party does not have an explicitly socialist agenda. In fact at local level where they have had some success, they have introduced cuts which have led to some members of the Green Left leaving the group. They have a single Member of Parliament, Caroline Lucas who has taken an anti-austerity position in the Commons (for an interesting analysis of the Green Party, here is Sean Thompson.

TUSC is a coalition of far left parties (Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party and Independent Socialist Network) with some left unions (Rail, Maritime and Transport, Fire Brigades Union) run under a federated structure where those on the leadership (made up of representatives of the various groups) have a veto over proposals. Its electoral success has been minimal and a movement supporting it between elections is literally non-existent. In fact, in the Eastleigh by-election for Chris Huhne's seat (in a constituency in which the major players have traditionally been the Tories and Lib Dems and where they probably should not have run and let the National Health Action party run for the opposition), they only got 62 votes. This election also heralded the rise of the right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP) as a serious player in first-past-the-post general elections, coming in second, edging past the Conservative Party. TUSCs lack of success during this period is a serious problem.

And then there is Respect ... Respect has become based around George Galloway's personal charisma. Galloway's incredible success in getting elected in Bradford raised the issue of whether this could be replicated elsewhere. And then we were treated to Galloway's comments about rape and Julian Assange which infuriated women (causing at least one female political candidate to leave the party) and made it quite clear that Respect was not the vehicle that could lead a broad left unity party. It still exists and still has a strong anti-imperialist perspective, but it cannot form the basis of a democratic broad left opposition.

Additionally, a new party has appeared on the ballots called the National Health Action Party (NHAP). This party has been deliberately set up to protect the NHS which is facing an attack by the government and was formed by healthcare professionals trying to preserve the NHS. It may have a broader anti-cuts agenda, but this is still under discussion. Primarily, this is a party of opposition to attempts at privatisation of the NHS. In the Eastleigh by-election, which was the first election they ran in, they received 392 votes.

New Directions

However, the fight against neoliberalism is taking some new turns with the beginnings of discussions towards the formation of a broad left party in Britain. In the absence of a coherent electoral opposition to neoliberalism, which has now been adopted by all three main parties, the question arises how can continued privatisation of the state sector, including the NHS, and the attack on the universal nature of the social welfare state be stopped and what can a left unity movement articulate as a positive programme?

The Left Unity discussions began with a call by Kate Hudson and Andrew Burgin (http://leftunity.org/...) in February. Several hard-left groups and individual members of the hard left answered this call.

Following the screening of his movie about Attlee's Britain "The Spirit of '45", in a Q&A, Ken Loach made an appeal to begin discussions for the formation of a new broad left political party. Within a few days there were 2000 signatories, within a week, groups started to be formed. There are now over 8000 signatures to Ken Loach's appeal and over 80 groups around Britain (including in Scotland and Wales), meetings are being conducted and discussion and debate has begun among hard-left groups and individuals. The groups are autonomous, with some led by members of Old Labour disgusted by the actions and beliefs of New Labour and some led by revolutionary socialists. Points of agreement so far are rejection of neoliberalism and the mainstream political discourse and the need for a broad left party. Specifically, the discussion is explicitly addressing whether a broad left party can be created. Excitingly, this is being driven from the bottom, membership will be individual, and a transitional leadership composed of leaders of local groups, individuals from various left organisations, and independent leftists has been created. A national meeting is planned for early this summer.

From its beginnings, the importance of women's rights and women's participation in the movement have been demanded; the importance of ensuring that the voices and participation of people of colour have been central to the debate and discussions. Finally, the Left has stood next to those struggling for the rights of the disabled - this has been recognised by ensuring that disabled people against the cuts are represented on the transitional organising committee. The recognition of race, class and gender as primary considerations is a major step forward. The importance of international solidarity, ecosocialism and democracy in the group also are central organisational concepts. On an explicitly socialist platform, they are not only trying to create a united broad left opposition, but will articulate a positive programme for change. Combined with an anti-austerity platform, a broad left party could serve to offer those fed up with the neoliberalism of the 3 main parties, and the right-wing shift of electoral political debate in Britain, a place to cast a vote for a truly left-wing party.

Needless to say, the whole left is not behind the movement. The Trade Unions themselves have not climbed on board as many are still wed to the Labour Party, but hopefully, if the movement develops, they will join. Some groups think that abandoning the Labour party is not appropriate, at this time. Other individuals (e.g., such asOwen Jones), are calling for a fight to shift the Labour party back to the left. Then there are the discussions of the hard-left parties (specifically the SP, SWP and Counterfire), which are wonderfully synthesised by Dave Kellaway here, if you are interested in the discussions of hard-left organisations on Left Unity.

I admit to going out into the back garden (mostly to spare my neighbours and passers-by my horrible singing) to sing "Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead" the day that Thatcher died. Many others did as well. Yes, it was politically incorrect, but sometimes we cannot help ourselves when we get carried away in the moment. Honestly, this horrible woman has more of a link with wicked witches than she does with being a feminist icon (i.e., nothing). In a really bizarre twist of the Thatcher mourning struggle, "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead", which has risen rapidly in the music charts will not be played in full on the BBC Radio 1 official chart show, even though it is at number 2 in the charts. Rather than banning the song, they are playing a clip of 4-5 seconds, ignoring that it is the people's choice in a music chart show. It is being treated as though Judy Garland was somehow expressing treason in the song written so long ago.

However, the death of Thatcher will not stop the neoliberal attack on the state sector and the universal social welfare state. Will Left Unity be successful at stopping it? Things are still in flux, but they are moving rapidly. We shall see what happens, but for the first time in quite a while, I am hopeful!

Injustice, Law, and the Judiciary in America

Diane Gee — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 15:30:06 GMT

By Professor John Kozy

"justice will become a light to nations"

The problems that afflict America, and perhaps all of Western civilization, are more profound than the very great and obvious evil in the hearts of people. Bankers revel in the dishonesty of greed, but do bankers make banking dishonest or does the dishonesty of banking defile bankers? Does the corruption of politicians sully the political system or does a befouled political system force politicians to be corrupt? More importantly, do iniquitous judges make the law unjust or does an insidious legal system deprave judges?

The American colonists were principally Northern Europeans, and in the Northern European nations, those that became Protestant during the Reformation, sin is always individual. So in those nations, if the legal system is unjust, it is thought that the judges are bad; reforming the system requires that they be replaced. But if the system forces the judges to be bad, replacing them won't be an effective reform. The replacing judges will become just as base as those replaced.

Justice is a word often heard but rarely defined precisely. The families of victims often want "justice" but mean, I suspect, revenge. A trial is just if it conforms to the rules laid down to insure fairness, but everyone knows that justice is a rare result of actions taken in American courts. The innocent are routinely found guilty and the injured are rarely adequately compensated. The wealthy are treated differently than the poor, whites are treated differently than blacks and people of other races, businesses are treated differently than consumers or injured people. In America, this most fundamental civilizing institution fails over and over again to produce civilized results. How can that be? When did it begin? How extensive is the failure?

Philosophical and even common sense definitions of justice are rather simple: "the set and constant purpose which gives to every man his due" (Justinian I). The definition is simple; determining one's due is not. It can be anything from an eye for an eye to forgiveness. But when what one is due has been decided, not giving it is clearly unjust. Justice cannot be dispensed if a person's due is denied. By this standard alone, American jurisprudence and its legal system are not only unjust, they promote and institutionalize injustice.

Lets look at the Supreme Court in 1803 when the USA was an adolescent nation, merely 15 years old.

As I wrote in a previous piece, The Court's willingness to deny plaintiffs justice was demonstrated in Marbury vs Madison in which the Court held that Marbury was entitled to his commission as a Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia but was refused it on the basis of a legalistic claim that the Court lacked jurisdiction even though the Court had issued such writs of mandamus previously. No doubt, Justice Marshall wrote this opinion to keep the Court out of a rancorous political dispute between Republicans and Federalists going on at the time, but not only does the Constitution nowhere instruct the Court to act in that way, it clearly states that "We the People of the United States, in Order to . . . establish Justice . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." The date of the Court's opinion is February 24, 1803.

Marbury vs Madison is a seminal opinion; it established precedents that have continued to be exercised to this day, and the Court's refusal to mete out justice is one of them. For two hundred years, the Supreme Court has been an unconstitutional institution if judged by what the Constitution says.

So now, on March 27, 2013, the Supreme Court rejected a proposed class-action antitrust lawsuit against Comcast Corporation in which more than two million current and former subscribers sought to prove that the company had overcharged them after unfairly eliminating competition. The rejection was not based on the merits of the case but on a "technicality," which held that the proposed class of Comcast subscribers failed to meet formal legal guidelines for how to certify that evidence of wrongdoing was common to the group. Did it matter to the Court that more that two million people were dealt with unfairly by Comcast? Not in the least! Justice for more than two million people is not the Court's concern. Marbury in 1803 and more than two million Comcast subscribers in 2013. Always the same! The Justices of the Court are not concerned with justice. The Court has its procedures that trump giving every man his due.

Not giving everyman his due is a common occurrence in America. Some federal programs labeled "entitlements" are under attack. Republicans want them eliminated or at least reduced. But 'entitlement' means having a right to something; something to which a person has a right is an entitlement. No entitlement can be justly denied. But that simple linguistic fact seems to be lost on the people who comprise the American legal system.

The courts have also allowed a plethora of unjust business practices to flourish by merely doing nothing to stop them. Although they are manifestly unjust, they are so common that hardly anyone considers them objectionable. Take, for instance, the common claim of businesses that honest customers pay more than they would if shoplifting didn't occur. The implication is that prices are higher than required in order to compensate vendors for losses incurred by theft. But if that's what's going on, it's entirely unjust; it makes the innocent, honest customers, pay for the actions of criminals. Penalizing the innocent for the actions of the guilty is never just, never has been, never will be. Yet it is condoned in American jurisprudence.

Another similar but not identical legalized injustice displays how legalized injustice affects government as a whole.

Firms can legally avoid paying taxes on money made in America by shifting profits offshore to countries with minimal or no taxes. This "Tax dodging is not a victimless offense," says U.S. Public Interest Research Group analyst Dan Smith. "When companies use accounting gimmicks to move their profits to tax haven shell companies, the rest of us have to pick up the tab." Again the wrong group is legally required to pay the bill for the loss the government incurs from the legalization of this unjust practice.

To understand how all this came about requires a little history. American jurisprudence did not come into being with the ratification of the Constitution on June 21, 1788. American jurisprudence landed on the shores of North America with the Pilgrims on November 21, 1620. They brought the law with them; it was English Common Law.

In the twelfth century, judges bought their jobs from the king and in turn extorted bribes from litigants. Common law judges never sought to mete out justice, but their decisions did constitute a body of law that became "common," that is, that became commonly and uniformly practiced. William Blackstone, an English legal scholar known for his legal commentaries, described the Common Law as "the general customary law of the realm as interpreted by the royal judges."

This common law was adopted as the basis of the legal systems in the colonial constitutions and was the only law in America between the founding of the colonies and the revolution, so it naturally became part of American law when the nation was founded. But that turned the Constitution into a contradictory document.

The Constitution makes the Congress the legislating institution of the nation. But common law judges legislate from the bench. So when Marshall in Marbury assumed that it was the function of judges to say what the law (including the Constitution) is, America's purity as a representative democracy was sullied. Conflicts could now arise between what the people want as understood by their representatives and what the judiciary wants. These conflicts have created and exacerbated social conflicts in America ever since. The courts became representatives of America's merchant class and pitted that class against the common people. As the representatives of merchants, the courts have rigged the system so that the protection of property became more important than the welfare of people. No common man can ever receive his due in such a system. The merchant is always protected at the expense of the consumer. If the merchant experiences losses, those losses will always be transferred to the merchant's clients. The system reeks from the basic injustice that came about when English Common Law was absorbed without mention into American law. The Constitution never mentions it, and Article III does not grant the judiciary any legislating authority whatsoever. Yet the courts do legislate.

Judge Richard Posner has said that judges and lawyers have always been a cartel. Academics joined the cartel when law schools were created late in the 18th century. Yale law professor Fred Rodell said the legal trade is "a high class racket." American jurisprudence exists to benefit the purveyors of an economy that too is never mentioned in the Constitution. (Any reader who believes that my description of the judiciary in America is exaggerated needs only to read Justice Lewis Powell's Manifesto.)

In addition, common law actions are always adversarial. Actions consist of two lawyers who represent their clients before a supposedly impartial person or group that attempts to determine the truth by evaluating the evidence presented. A verdict is reached when the most effective adversary is able to convince the judge or jury that his or her perspective on the case is the correct one. For justice to ensue, the skills of counsels on both sides must be fairly equivalent. Of course, in practice, the skills are often vastly different, and cleverness often rules. Neither truth nor justice have an essential place in the action. A trial at law becomes a contest between opposing lawyers whose prize is the body of the accused or plaintiff. Justice in America is nothing but a lawyer's game, and when lawyers predominate in legislatures, the game is extended to legislating. Legislatures become two party contests. In America, it is a contest between Democrats and Republicans, but those names are meaningless place holders. Better names would be For and Against. One party offers and the other rejects, which means, of course, that little if anything ever gets done. In America, legislatures, especially the Congress, govern by paralasis.

America is a failed state. Americans have not formed a more perfect union, established justice, insured domestic tranquility, provided for the common defense, promoted the general welfare, or secured the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Domestically, by every measure, American institutions are effete. Social problems fester for decades without resolution. Social discord abounds. Violence is endemic. Food supplies are often contaminated. Healthcare is inadequate. Public education is in disarray. The physical infrastructure is in tatters. Internationally, American policy consists of merely bribery and threats of violence, and neither has worked effectively for more than half a century. What has brought America to its knees? The answer is English Common Law. It has eliminated justice from society, the kind of justice that people, even children, all understand. A just society requires fairness not favoritism.

As it now stands, America is incorrigible. It cannot be fixed. Nothing but a complete repudiation of all law that favors one group or person over others will suffice. But such a repudiation will leave little that Americans would recognize. If justice is a light to nations, injustice is their darkness.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage.

Open Letter to the NPA

Diane Gee — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:59:13 GMT

Editor's Note: I somehow got back in the email group for NPA (New Progressive Alliance) - and they have been having a week long debate on which party to back, each with their own list of complaints against one another's choices. I finally weighed in because it was like watching bickering kids fight... though there were some valid points made. Not to waste a shit ton of words, I am sharing it here... dg

The Problem with Purity

We have come down to some very basic evident truths in a long and convoluted journey here.

The most obvious is, to get on the National playing field, is one automatically corrupted? Alan has shown evidence that the Greens did not back labor in the casinos. However, Native Americans have traditionally been kicked to the proverbial curb by the body politic since we invaded their land and lay genocide to them. Time will tell if this was a reach out with compromise or a reach around for the money.

(Continued below)
My friend Elian, a gay activist, sees much the same problem. He says that the fight for marriage or gays in the military is not inherently evil - but it draws away from the problems of working class and poor gays. Full and equal employment. Health care. So many young gay kids end up on the street because their parents reject them, that poverty and illness is epidemic among them. To the kid selling his body on the street for a meal, because so few places will hire gays, marriage is a rich persons problem. To that same, young frightened kid, recruiters are predators, promising 3 squares, a bed and some future. He thinks that is promoting the war culture that ultimately is the downfall of the Nation.

I have had my own experiences (with some in this group) of being ostracized and marginalized because I refuse to toe the line of total disarmament for citizens. (I am for sane regulation) Who and by what means decides what is acceptable, and what is not? Anthony? The rest of you? Me? I will never understand why adults cannot agree to disagree on details while still fighting the good fight against a world in flames.

In the end? All this posturing and battling for "who to back" will be not only unproductive - it will be irrelevant.

The tide of austerity and massive poverty is sweeping down. The Police State's apparatus is fully engaged and prepared to act. The climate changes are upon us. And the Earth is so full of toxins and plastics it is becoming uninhabitable.

Sure, I want a Che, or a Chavez to come along. But it is unlikely - and were one to come along would the workers, the real source of all wealth realize their worth and step up to wrest control from the hand that starves them, or have they become too brainwashed to even consider the shadows on the cave wall may not be reality?

My choice in the POTUS cycle was a Socialist who went on Fox News and called extending unemployment "Obama's nanny state" or a Green Party candidate who while certainly not as left as I am, got arrested blocking Keystone and blocking foreclosures. Even among the 3rd party? We are reduced to a LOTE vote. I voted Stein.

There are hundreds of Socialist Parties, Communist Parties, Worker's Parties and they are all divided by some little nuance and bitter feelings about "what that guy said/did to me once." I realize NPA was an attempt to bridge that and gather under one umbrella these divided peoples. But just so? It is lead by a party that itself has set the divisionary rules by which a leftist has to comply or be expelled. These small groups will never make headway due to the nature of the body politic and the money and advertising needed to even have your name known. Yet, the largest of these, The Greens, has been grossly influenced by that money (moreso in Europe) and compromised.

Where does that leave us? Again, trying to reinvent the wheel - or fix a wheel that has been greased by unseen hands?

Its certainly a conundrum. And I hate to play the reactionary prophet of doom? But we are so fucked right now, that nothing short of a wide scale rebellion - refusal to pay, refusal to work and total shut down of the economic system - will make a difference. (insert adage about if elections worked they would be illegal here) People have been brainwashed into fear and loathing indeed. Of one another. Of groups. Of everything. We have become so isolated that we have forgotten even the vaguest ideas of compromise and hearing one another out. There are those that "think exactly like us" and "other" with no gray areas in between. Sad, huh?

Within 15 years, the planet will have warmed to the point of no return. The rich are the original "preppers" and see this coming. They want a die-off of useless eaters. From starvation or at the pointy end of their weaponry, they don't much care - that has been proven the world over, and the DeRp's (uniparty) are kabuki to that end.

Class warfare is on full-out global scale assault - Africa, and Asia, in blatant warfare, Europe in economic warfare, and South America in covert ops. At home? Well, anyone with eyes to see knows it is here too.

Each of our private battles is noble. Each worker's struggle is divine.

But ultimately? Until we back one party with all our might to at least crack this so far invincible shield of power they wield, or a party creates itself from the ether we can change nothing. And the more we squabble, the more they win.

I have offered little here but a stream of consciousness with my first cup of coffee.

I am a Socialist. But it will take either a huge shock to the system (which Klein has shown is usually exploited by the PTB) or massive generational reeducation (as Noam points out often) to get more than half a percent of the USer population on the same page as me.

I think the most worthy goal right now is to plant seeds of doubt in as many as we can so that when the proverbial feces meets said fan they understand what the problem is: the unbridled greed of the Capitalist system, which while portrayed as the only viable system will always lead to a collapse such as we are experiencing. It extracts. It is an extraction system, to take value up into the hands of fewer and fewer at the expense not only of humans, but the ecosystem we rely upon as well.

Anyway - no one person is a party or its legacy. If they are fighting the class war and for halting climate change? I have their back. The rest is arguing about how many teeth are in the sharks mouth while it is about to swallow you.

Peace out.

Diane