Tag Archives: economic justice

Boston IWW Commerates Sacco and Vanzetti

On Saturday, August 29th at Boston Common members of the Boston Industrial Workers of the World gathered to remember the tragedy of justice carried out by the State of Massachusetts against two men wrongly accused of committing of robbing a payroll clerk at gunpoint.

Marred by ethnic prejudice, perjured testimony, suspected collusion of the defense counsel with the prosecution, admittance of irrelevant testimony concerning the political activities of both men, conflicts of interest with the judge and other judicial errors, Nicola Sacco and Bartemelo Vanzetti were sentenced to death electrocuted at the Charleston State Prison on August 23, 1927 as innocent men.

The case garnered international attention as the public worldwide noted that the prosecution, for lack of real evidence, made use of the prejudice, racism and red-baiting in American society at the time to convict the two men.  To this day the case still conjures up study and debate.  No one who studies history can deny that the events leading up to the deaths of these two men, had more to do with their anti-war, anti-capitalist and pro-worker activities than with the crime they were accused of committing.

Most importantly, the case draws a hard lesson about the extreme tension between workers and the unfettered growth of industrial capitalism in America and Europe.  Activists who fought for worker justice, who spoke out against World War 1 were actively pursued as what we’d today call “terrorists”, rounded up, beaten, abused and oppressed in an effort to stem the tide of resistance to the newly developing and growing capitalist state.

One would do well to recall that the abuse and corruption of the American judicial system continues to disempower, abuse and control those entities of society that serve the capitalist interest best when exploited.

Click here for further details on the case.

Nicola Sacco’s statement to court after being sentenced to death (9th April, 1927)

I am no orator. It is not very familiar with me the English language, and as I know, as my friend has told me, my comrade Vanzetti will speak more long, so I thought to give him the chance. I never knew, never heard, even read in history anything so cruel as this Court. After seven years prosecuting they still consider us guilty. And these gentle people here are arrayed with us in this court today.

I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class and the rich class, and there will be always collision between one and the other. We fraternize the people with the books, with the literature. You persecute the people, tyrannize them and kill them. We try the education of people always. You try to put a path between us and some other nationality that hates each other. That is why I am here today on this bench, for having been of the oppressed class. Well, you are the oppressor.

You know it, Judge Thayer – you know all my life, you know why I have been here, and after seven years that you have been persecuting me and my poor wife, and you still today sentence us to death. I would like to tell all my life, but what is the use? You know all about what I say before, that is, my comrade, will be talking, because he is more familiar with the language, and I will give him a chance.

You forget all this population that has been with us for seven years, to sympathize and give us all their energy and all their kindness. You do not care for them. Among that peoples and the comrades and the working class there is a big legion of intellectual people which have been with us for seven years, to not commit the iniquitous sentence, but still the Court goes ahead. And I want to thank you all, you peoples, my comrades who have been with me for seven years, with the Sacco Vanzetti case, and I will give my friend a chance.

Statement of Bartolomeo Vanzetti after sentencing:

“If it had not been for this thing, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, justice, for man’s understanding of man, as now we do by accident. Our words – our lives – our pains – nothing! The taking of our lives – lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler – all! That last moment belong to us – that agony is our triumph.”

Below, 2007 documentary, lots of original film footage, detailed.

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The American Stinker Lays Another Pooper

Hard at work for the corporate agenda.

Stephen McCann a classic plutocrat and contributor to the site American Stinker and the site linked to the magazine, American Spectator, sits on the Stinker pot and performs the rectal birth of a tract so full of lies even the lowest of parasites might have to bring out the lie detector.  Compensated at a rate of a mere 4.5m a year, Mr. McCann gets passive into that very narrow canal of American mogul-lovin’.  Sitting firmly within the top 1%, possibly the top .01% of wealth holders globally, the Australian McCann we’re sure gets a big BFF ranking from the plutocrat class here in the states.

So onto his scribbles from the war room water closet and why we should really give a damn what he says anyway. First off, its worth pointing out that although McCann sits in his house on the near bottom of the globe where our winter is his summer, he seems awfully disturbed by certain sectors of the American population known commonly as the “left”.

Yeah you all you pro-choice, tree hugging, union thug, anti-racist, anti-war leftists, this fine gentleman is fed up with your anti-austerity politics you hear? He’s had it with your desires for justice and equality and wants you to grow up and practice some good old austerity.  Concerned as he is with the deficit in the United States  … er… his portfolio.   He’s sick and tired of “The Childishness of the American Left” and he’s going to tell you why.

The American left is the most self-indulgent, arrogant, and spoiled group of people on the face of the earth.  They live in a nation facing national bankruptcy and societal upheaval — a country presently subsisting on the residue of past economic achievements.  Yet the only things that matter to them are their lifestyles and imposing their self-determined superiority on rest of the American people.

Social upheaval?  Could it be the social upheaval of a population sick and tired of the 1% wealthiest “imposing their self-determined superiority on the rest of the American people”?  Seems to many of us here in the US that once an economic system existed wherein at least there was some hope that a rising tide would raise all boats.  That with the work of the left through government regulation and correction,  social inequities would soon begin to disappear and anyone, a person of color, a woman, a disabled person, could as the old saying goes, capture the American Dream by working on a finally leveled playing field.

But as we all know now, the job of straightening out 300 years of socialized inequality takes some sacrifice from everyone and we’ve had our share of resistance.  Us lefties always do after a while tend to get all misty-eyed and go on about hard to quantify issues such as racial justice, gender equality and LGBT rights, worker’s rights and a clean and healthy planet.   We on the left have known for quite some time that the existing system favors a certain group of people and we have tirelessly pointed this fact out.  Basically many of us figured out after about 5th grade that the Land of the Free we learned about ain’t exactly free for a large portion of the population.

Unlike the minority who upon their birth are cloistered among nannies, private schools, Ivy League colleges and a nice inheritance, the majority of people in this country live quite modest lives.  We on the left selfishly have worked tirelessly for little money (because where do you think money comes from?), to champion causes not particularly popular with the ownership class.

We have repeatedly marched down streets, sat in halls, picketed and boycotted businesses to protest the sending of our young people to die for the myriad wars that benefit only the 1%, protested and worked toward changing injustices from gay rights to women’s rights, from working against racism, to saving the planet from industrial destruction, all in the name of that selfish idea; justice.

Do we have a superiority complex? Possibly, if one equates having a sense of fervent duty to the social contract of humanity; yes possibly if one takes seriously the precept of the prophet of our Christian based culture; “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Done Unto You” All this while swarmed by a capitalist campaign of mass consumption, exploitation and greed.  We on the left have worked tirelessly to draw attention to how global capitalism exploitation kills humans and the planet.

But let’s take our lesson from Mr. McCann and hear about his concerns about the debt and the GDP; essentially his global balance sheet shall we?  First McCann draws our attention to an NPR interview:

The true indebtedness of the United States now exceeds $222 trillion.  Appearing on National Public Radio in August of 2011 Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff of Boston University said:

If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, and subtract all the taxes we expect to collect, the difference is $211 Trillion.  This is the fiscal gap.  That is our true indebtedness.

Since that interview, the indebtedness has increased by another $11 trillion.

Well it seems the kind professor was making an effort to point out that with falling revenues from tax cuts, funding wars will drain the treasury.  Tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans became all the fashion when Ronald Reagan proved just how easy it is to fleece the American people as long as you lie to them enough.  So easy that H.W. Bush and Bush the Younger have pushed the envelope further not only cutting taxes for their buddies but also borrowing to finance some major military adventures.  So again the professor points out that when the boss cuts your pay, going to Disneyland may not be such a good idea.

But let’s take the boss analogy a step further.  When your boss learns that you’ll  work just as hard on $7.25/hour as you would on $15/hour, especially if he promises you get a ticket to Disneyland, do you think he’ll go back to $15?.  Nope, you’ve just got suckered.  Boss got just as much work out of you for less and what’s more he didn’t bother to tell you he borrowed from your pension fund to pay for those tickets to Disney, what a deal!

Not rocket science, nor a big secret.

Then further down, McCann rails about the GDP versus expenditures.  The fact is, just looking at the GDP fails to consider so many other factors that have caused the largest economic slump since the Depression.  As is detailed on a page here a bit back, McCann doesn’t bother to tell his dear readers that while the GDP has failed miserably, corporate earnings  have multiplied upward for the last three generations, while earnings growth for those who work for a wage has stagnated since about 1979.  Also McCann fails to mention that those who possess high wealth have enjoyed as much as a 200% or more increase in their portfolio value at the same time.

So in summary, tax cuts sent the money into the hands of the plutocrats, cuts in services such as housing, poverty programs, cuts in agency funding, cuts in education funding also sent more money to the plutocrats which for some reason never came back home.  All the while corporations learned that lay-offs reward richly (and thus rewarded their CEO’s thusly), temp labor is a pip and people will work for dogs on mere promises. Add to that the people’s gullibility for tall tales about scary hordes that must be brought down by fancy artillery and young Americans’ lives and you’ve got one heck of a mess.

Now Mr. McCann, being only human can’t help but look a gift horse in the mouth.  As if fleecing the American and global population hasn’t made him rich enough, he’s now concerned about the possible collision of the health of his portfolio with the health of our nation.

Yet these estimates do not include the full impact of ObamaCare, which could add another $17+ trillion.

Now taking away the fact that McCann seems to think that Americans don’t need affordable healthcare like Australians enjoy, let’s just focus on his concern about our fiscal health shall we?  Wait what’s this? All over the internet sites figures keep quoting the CBO and its research that purport that in fact, the ACA will reduce the deficit by $210 billion, not increase it.  So in other words, McCann is either very poorly informed or just telling lies because he doesn’t think we should have public healthcare like his homeland does.  We’d suggest that McCann follow the old rule; those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.  Oh, Australia doesn’t fund healthcare for rich guys, oh well.

On the other side of the ledger: the annual Gross Domestic Product (the value of all economic activity in the U.S.) is $15.6 trillion.  The indebtedness to GDP ratio is a staggering 14.2 to 1 and guaranteed to further accelerate if Barack Obama is re-elected.

See Disneyland borrowed on your pension fund. We explained that already.  Mr. McCann hopes to impress and bamboozle his readers with statistics and figures that really say the same damn thing no matter how you turn them around; the rich guys spent all our money and borrowed to the hilt for whatever our paychecks couldn’t cover.  Pretty simple; you spend more than you making, you going to end up bankrupt.

The United States is not facing bankruptcy, it is bankrupt.  The primary factor that has kept the nation afloat over the past four years is that the dollar, albeit temporarily, remains the world’s reserve currency, thus allowing the Federal Reserve to print enormous sums of money to cover the Obama budget deficits and flood the global market with near worthless cash.  Today it requires $100.00 to purchase the same goods $10.00 purchased in 1950.

Firstly, the Federal Reserve does not print money! Contrary to popular belief, the Fed is not some super-secret club full of special presses stamping out benjis to add to the “money supply” as they please.  So we can dispense with this quickly and move on, please see the following comic made up by the Fed in an attempt to dispel ignorance.

Comparing the value of the dollar today to its value in 1950 is much like picking up

Oh do we need to go back what was good in 1950 compared to today? Like the fact that nearly 50% of American workers were union members? That save for the social inequities that still existed, many people enjoyed a prosperity most young Americans cannot even imagine today.  Taxation was progressive and effective with the top tiers paying as much as 90% of their income, so revenues were high, wages were healthy and what’dya get? A healthy economy!  Infrastructure expenditures were up, employment rose and the standard of living in the US rose for a large majority of Americans above nearly the entire world.

Increased indebtedness due to wars funded on borrowing, money policy that shifted wealth from the commoners to the elites and the resulting bust in GDP growth among the population that depressed revenues and consumption seems an indication of selfishness, but of the leftie kind.

As a further comparison, the total annual GDP of all the countries on earth is $70 trillion.  The American indebtedness alone exceeds that amount by a factor of 3 — which contributes mightily to a world drowning in debt and facing an inevitable debt crisis and financial collapse, which will trigger a massive global depression.

Thanks again in large part of levering of the American economy by the elites on the backs of the working people who have seen their share of the pie steadily decrease even though their production has rivaled other first world countries for decades.

Currently, just 58.4% of the civilian population is employed, as compared to 64.3% twelve years ago.  Factoring in the growth of the population during that period, this drop represents over 22 million Americans unable to find work.  Since January 2009, 74% of all new jobs created in the U.S. were in the lowest-paying sectors of the economy, thereby stifling any chance of upward mobility and growth in median income which has fallen by 9% since January 2009, and average household wealth that has declined by nearly 40% over this same period.  This failure is a byproduct of a tsunami of government regulations, mandates, and taxes which has nearly destroyed the innovation and business and job-creation that made the American economy so vibrant over the latter part of the 20th century.  That innovation has now moved overseas, along with over 7.5 million high-paying goods-producing jobs since 2000.

Another patent lie, since the 1980’s government sectors on all levels have suffered massive cuts and laws that regulated finance, commerce and trade have been modified to favor corporate growth over national growth.  Couple that also with the outsourcing of the white color and blue collar sectors then mix in outflows of investment dollars to those offshore operations and you have decreased consumption within the US market as workers’ buying power decreases,  increased outflows of revenue from the what production remains (as it flows upward and not into worker’s pockets)  into the coffers of tax-free havens, off-shore trusts, third world sweat-shop factories and overall global manipulation of labor, finance and government regulation. Whew and McCann calls us selfish for bitching about it?

The reaction of the self-described progressives to this dire scenario?  Sweep the facts under the rug or ignore them completely, as it appears that the most important things in their lives are the legalization of gay marriage, free contraceptives and abortifacients, worshiping at the altar of extreme and discredited environmentalism, mocking and undermining all organized religion (except Islam), and telling the American people what they can eat, where they can live, what may be taught in their schools, how they must operate their businesses, and what health care they can access.

Au contraire Mr. McCann, while the left has beat the drum of reigning in the cowboy plutocrats, ending the wars, regulating off-shoring, stopping the trade treaties that favor global corporatism and bringing back a truly progressive taxation strategy, the right wing has gone on an endless campaign of distraction by fighting gay marriage and rolling back women’s rights to bodily sovereignty.  We didn’t choose to put these issues front and center, the Republicans did and we have been forced 24-7 to fight these battles on basic human rights, while the economy suffers global moguls continue to rake in the money.

Yes, Mr. McCann we bleat on and on about the importance of an educated and healthy population.  We voice and express concerns about how exploitative capitalism, on which your portfolio and business model relies, has caused irreparable harm the planet we call home.  But we know, worrying about an endangered planet and humanity causes your portfolio to wilt like you probably do when you’ve run out of Viagra in the middle of the deep blue on your shiny yacht after your escort has finished dictating for you.

To the true believers on the left, re-electing Barack Obama is not a matter of what is or is not good for the country; rather, for the majority on the left, the primary motivation is geared solely toward defeating their sworn enemy: conservatives and Republicans, whom many falsely believe are a right-wing horde determined to create a theocracy and impose old-fashioned morality.  But what they fear most from the right is a determination to reinstitute unfettered individual freedom and concomitant economic growth, which would relegate the American left to the back bench of American society.

Yeah we got it.  Apparently McCann seems to have a misunderstanding of American history? We’re not going to the back of the bus as much as the GOP, Tea Partiers and others wish.  In fact, its pretty clear the country is changing and electing a black president only constituted the beginning.

Thus, to them, what the policies of Barack Obama and his radical minions are doing to the long-term fate of nation is immaterial as long as Obama regurgitates his support for the various causes that are near and dear to the coalition that makes up the left.  There are two common threads to the belief system of American progressives: 1) an omnipotent central government controlled by them, and 2) an assumption that there is a bottomless pit of money to be siphoned from an equally bottomless pit of wealth.  But this is not the same nation that experienced unprecedented prosperity from 1946 to 2007.  It is not the same nation in which these narcissists on the left grew up, never knowing national adversity or trauma.

1. Yes, we do in fact represent every single portion of humanity not represented by the guests on your yacht Mr. McCann, yes we do in fact believe that the government’s role is to put selfish pricks like you where you belong — in the palm of our sweaty, hard working hands.

2. We do indeed see a bottomless pit of money — our money that we worked damn hard for that you stole from us through your wrangling and perverting our government to allow you to extract every penny from our efforts and give as little back to us as possible.

And we also know that the national prosperity has been in decline for us ever since your patron saint, Ronnie Reagan took office here and began to strip every single protection from greedy, self centered, hypocritical plutocrats like yourself.   We’ve suffered enough trauma under the reign of the greedy and we’ve had it.

The manner in which these progressives, and their titular leader Barack Obama, are conducting themselves in the current campaign season is indicative of their arrogant and immature mindset.  To the vast majority on the left, this campaign is merely a game played out on the playground of American politics, wherein they childishly engage in name-calling and temper tantrums reminiscent of spoiled brats determined to get their way, regardless of the consequences.

Well, to the vast majority of Americans this playground is ours and its our damn business how we play it out and we’d like it if global moguls like yourself keep your filthy paws out of our political and electoral business.  We are indeed determined to get our way but it seems last we knew, the bamboozled foot soldiers of the plutocracy were the ones throwing the biggest temper tantrums about having a Kenyan born Islamic black man chosen as the president of their whites-only fiefdom.  But like most spoiled brats, you people just refuse to take your marbles and go home to cry to mama, nope, instead you have to put millions into SuperPACS and keep trying to play petty games with our political system to feed your own selfish desires.

It is time to grow up and understand that the America that could absorb all the excessive spending, promises, and left-wing fun and games is no more.  This nation cannot survive on its present course, and if that course is not dramatically reversed, those on the left will suffer as much as if not more than the bulk of the American people they are trying to rule.  History has shown repeatedly that when an overwhelming political and social catastrophe strikes a nation, the people turn against the ruling class, often with a vengeance.  In the United States, that ruling class is presently dominated by the American left.

You’re absolutely right Mr. McCann, the country can no longer continue on this course.  Scientists say if we don’t make radical life style and consumption changes we may not have a planet worth living on in another twenty or thirty years.  History has indeed shown repeatedly that when aristocrats and their inbred offspring are allowed to run things, they tend to make a big damn mess of the house and leave the adults to come and clean it up.  The clean up time has begun and we’re ready to evict you and your lying friends.  Thanks for playing Mr. McCann, there’s a spot in the back of the bus for you.

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Save Public Education – The Core of Democracy!

Save Our Schools! Rally – September 22, 2012

Veteran’s Park, Manchester New Hampshire

4 – 6pm

For more info: See Facebook

The Corporate Education Reform Agenda

by Tom Crean for Socialist Alternative

It is becoming increasingly clear that the future for working class and poor youth in the United States is bleak. Three years into the most severe economic and social crisis of the capitalist system since the Great Depression, the unemployment rate for teenagers 16-19 years old is 26 percent. A recent study by Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies points out that the employment-population ratio-the ratio of the number of people employed to the total working-age population- which is a broader measure of labor market health than the unemployment rate, has fallen by about 20 percentage points over the past decade to 25.6 percent for teenagers. This is a record low in the post World War II period.

The picture is even worse when looking at the situation for poor black and Latino youth. The employment-population ratio for African Americans ages 16 to 19 was 14.4 percent in July. Since middle class youth will still go to college and one way or another find their way into jobs, albeit perhaps jobs that pay less than the ones they would have expected to get in the past, the picture is not as grim for them. But a whole generation of poor youth now essentially has no experience of paid employment. This is truly a lost generation.

Why begin a discussion of the state of education with unemployment statistics? This is the right place to start because most people would agree that a key aim of education should be to prepare young people for a better life than their parents had. The corporate elite that dominates our society also looks at education in relation to the future, but from the more narrow perspective of training the next generation of workers.

Continue reading: Save Our Schools!

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Screw the Troika!

Europe is awakening to resist the efforts of the German-led bankers to use the Euro to squash public services and safety nets in order to increase profits for the global elites.  Mirroring in many ways the strategies imposed upon Americans here at home by capitalist elites, the global capitalists have started the slaughter of the people’s rights on European soil as well.

Here, the site Igualistarista puts out the call from Portuguese resistance activists to stand up and protest against the austerity measures pressuring Portugal, Greece, Italy and Spain in an effort to get them to succumb to secondary status to as laborer-serf countries for European capitalist interests.  So without further delay:

Screw the Troika, We Want Our Lives!

This is a call to protest made in the last few days by Portuguese activists for a new day of protest against what is known as the Troika (the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank). You can find the protest and the original call in Portuguese here:

Que se Lixe a Troika! Queremos as nossas Vidas – Screw the Troika,  We Want Our Lives!

It is necessary to do something extraordinary. It is necessary to take to the streets and squares in both our cities and our countryside. To join voices and hands. This silence is killing us. The noise of the mainstream media fills the silence, reproduces the silence, spreads the network of lies that puts us to sleep and annihilates our desire. It is necessary to do something to reverse the submission and resignation, to do something against the filtering of ideas and against the death of the collective will. It is necessary to once again call upon our voices, arms and legs, of everyone who knows it is in the streets that the present and the future is decided. It is necessary to overcome the fear that is constantly spread and, once and for all, see that we no longer have much to lose, and that the day will come when everything has been lost because of our silence and our surrender.

Read the rest of this excellent post Igualistarista

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Why Occupy Monsanto Anyway?!

A very good explanation of what GMO’s are and why we should all be concerned, straight from the heart of Monsanto headquarters, St. Louis.   Don Fitz and his Green Time TV has two activists from St. Louis who have worked hard on educating people on the GMO issue.

St. Louis Occupy has worked hard developing Occupy Monstanto, which event in September will have many workshops to draw attention to the evils of GMO seeds.  Monsanto has waged a near-terrorist campaign against farmers throughout the Midwest.  Recently the farmers lost a suit filed against Monsanto in Missouri federal court on behalf of nearly 300,000 farmers, but they intend to press on.  Of course, in the “socialist” country of Canada, where corporations don’t yet reign supreme, one farmer did in fact win against Monsanto.

As mentioned in the video above, Monsanto has worked to incorporate the popular pesticide, Roundup, into the DNA structure of plants.  While the corporate rigged FDA has given a wink and nod to Monsanto on its Frankenstein GMO work, Roundup has its own set of problems.

Logo for crop-ready GMO Roundup soybeans.

Available at any home store, great on Dandelions and your genetic makeup!

As a large portion of the Midwest depends upon farming for their living, Monsanto’s push to own the agricultural business in the entire Midwest or even possibly globally presents a serious national autonomy and security risk.  Throughout the Midwest, small-scale farming operations dwindle under the pressure of large-scale corporate operators.  Indebtedness  incurred through efforts to keep up with ever increasing yield pressures also hampers development of green and sustainable farming methods.  While starving farmers apparently gives pop stars an opportunity to boost sales with fund-raiser events, they never challenge how capitalist practices have distorted the importance of a safe food supply and sustainable agricultural practices for national health and security.

Not Science Fiction – A Story of Corporate Charity

The perfect picture of the charity of Monsanto lies in the story of the East St. Louis plant that it built.  In order to evade taxes from East St. Louis, the plant received the go-ahead from the state of Illinois to incorporate its land into a township called Sauget.  Yes that’s right, its own town.  Simply so it won’t have to pay East St. Louis one dime of property or any other tax.  But that doesn’t stop East St. Louis from regularly spilling effluent into the streams that run into East St. Louis.

Sauget does not employ the impoverished residents of St. Louis as a matter of practice, instead its workers commute from outside of town.  East St. Louis in one of the most impoverished cities in America.  But executives, press and others usually think of this building when they think of Monsanto, the headquarters in the city of St. Louis.

Other good links about Monsanto:

Monsanto Watch

One good thing to see is when major companies battle which other — blood and money shed on both sides.

Shut Down Monsanto!

Now that you know what kind of scum they are, see their slick promo site

Overview of the Monsanto sponsored Herbarium at the St. Louis Botanical Gardens

As if all the above isn’t creepy enough for you, here’s an overview of a meeting of the WAF — a pro-corporate NGO which as the executive for the organization states in a pro business St. Louis mag, We’ve invited governors from agriculture-producing states the world over to come discuss the impacts of agriculture policy decisions at the local level,” says Kathy Moldthan, WAF executive vice president and chief operating officer. The governors will be accompanied by business delegations from their states, “who will network with other businesspeople from around the world and explore investment opportunities,” Moldthan adds.”

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In Our Pupils – Poem by Antonia Lassar about Africa

Told about this poem by Matthew Richards,  a local poet who saw her perform it in person.

Antonia Lassar

In Our Pupils

My heart has started to stamp like the herds.
I breathe this air,
But my eyes open like passports.
The cover says America,
but has Africa stamped on every page.
My mother escaped South African Apartheid
before I was even an idea,
so in elementary school when pictures of Africa didn’t look like me,
I couldn’t understand
why African American and black had to mean the same thing.
So last year I moved back to my mother’s continent
and now my DNA is woven
in strings of African beads.
But I can’t escape the first-look-only comparisons
from kids and the adults who act like them
that I don’t look African.
And I have to ask what they mean by African.
If they mean my skin won’t burn,
then I’m wearing sunscreen, not African.
If they want to see a Masai warrior,
a child soldier,
an elephant
then I expect all Americans
should look like Rosie O’Donnell.
But if they mean black, they’re right.
Africa isn’t a skin color—it’s black.
Africa is our pupils,
the way they will always open to the world,
no matter how much dust the wind blows at them.
Being African is like sweat on a glass of water;
it doesn’t depend on the color of the cup
but on the temperature of what’s inside.
Too often newspapers spell the word Africa
and assume one culture, one language, one problem.
The biggest problem facing Africa
is people thinking it really is like our pupils,
just empty space.
I am Africa. You can see me.
And sometimes I will sound like drums,
and sometimes like Sebeqabele gpi thapha nguqo ngqothwane
but sometimes you can barely hear me over the rain,
and we both fear that I may be washed away.
I mold my hands
into the shape of my continent
not to keep you from my borders,
but to show you how much like clay we all are.
Don’t worry about the Africans,
love the humans.
When the first human was born,
it didn’t know enough to call itself African,
but it hasn’t stopped crying ever since.
And you can blame it on famine, or war, or the fallout of capitalism
but Africa isn’t suffering,
it’s reminding you what your birth sounded like.

– Antonia Lassar

Antonia Lassar hails from Boston, MA and South Africa, and has toured both the US and South Africa with her poetry. She is proud to be a recent graduate of the Boston University School of Theatre. This summer, Antonia traveled to North Carolina as a first time member of the Cantab Lounge National Poetry Slam Team. She is currently touring her one-woman show The God Box around the Northeast.

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Right Under Their Noses

On Monday morning scores of New Hampshire residents traveled to the St. Anselm’s campus to hear the newly minted Romney/Ryan duo speak.  They were in for a little surprise when they found out that actually, their tickets were not meant to get them into the door; they only served to identify them as the people they wanted out.

Like the rest of the Republican platform, Romney and Ryan’s substance lies somewhere within a computer file, within the confines of a paid staffers.  Apparently those staffers figured that having their employers stand before truly curious and inquisitive voters might prove a bit taxing.  And we know how Republicans hate anything that’s taxing; on the wallet or the brain.

The right-wing Union Leader apparently had some good connections for camera shots because the one they plastered all over the Tuesday edition and online made the event look like a Billy Graham revival event.  Responsible journalists would have mentioned that New Hampshire voters were turned away and replaced by Massachusetts bus-ins.  But those of us from New Hampshire know full well that to expect news from the Union Leader is a bit like expecting Ryan to just come out and admit he’s a selfish, brainless prick just like his running mate.

But what the staffers didn’t realize and the story the Union Leader missed was the truly grassroots support they had outside from the newly minted organization Americans for Inequality.  Formed apparently out of the mold of Rockefeller, Carnegie and the Koch Brothers combined, three of their acolytes were on hand to espouse Romney and Ryan’s economics.

Brave enough to just say it.

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England IWW Cleaner’s Strike Successful

From The Third Estate Blog: (link below)

Striking Cleaners Win Victory Against John Lewis

Cleaners at the flag ship John Lewis store on Oxford Street have won a fantastic victory against job cuts and low pay. The management have now agreed to withdraw, totally, plans for mass compulsory redundancy, and to give cleaners 10% pay rise, backdated to March – following a strike by staff who had organised themselves within the IWW.

Back in late July I went down to the John Lewis store to support the strike. I must confess that I was initially unsure as to whether the workers could win: at this point only a section of cleaning staff were actually organised in the union. What impressed though was the militancy and sheer presence of the picket line. Everybody who went in – whether they were colleagues, bosses, or delivery drivers  – was compelled to properly engage with the fact that their was a strike on. Meanwhile a very deliberate effort. was made to inform the shopping public of the dispute – both at the flagship store and at John Lewis’ sister store Peter Jones. (At one point the police were called to prevent a few of us leafletting outside the latter. To their credit, the police seemed rather amused that they had been called down and explained to the manager that it was not within their remit to stop people giving out leaflets).

More here.

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What a Damn Mess Indeed…

Excellent article (#130, November 2010) on the Left Business Observer Journal site:

What a damn mess

You were under the impression
That when you were walking forward
You’d end up further onward
But things ain’t quite that simple.
—The Who, “I’ve Had Enough” (1973)

The time seemed ripe for a comprehensive look at the state of the U.S. economy—not the usual a little of this, a little of that approach, but some measure of how it all fits together. It will come as no surprise to most readers that the state is dismal. Not only are the masses doing rather poorly, but even the most orthodox measure of all, GDP growth, is in the tank. But this is not perceived as an emergency in some circles, because the elite is doing very, very well. [more here].

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Ayn Rand Acolytes Have Finally Struck Pay Dirt

Certainly a part of Ryan and Mitt’s undeserving.

After all these years, the debunked pseudo philosopher has finally gotten herself a road to the White House.  Although long dead, her spirit has thrived in the hearts and minds of 15 year old males and selfish plutocrats looking for a way to justify their refusal to clean their rooms or their burning desire to keep their interest and dividends earnings/trust fund/insider trading windfall all to themselves.

Meet Paul Ryan, the newly minted Republican Vice Presidential candidate. Strapped onto Romney’s side like a Rugar onto an aging New Hampshire Libertarian, Ryan is posited as the one who will make Romney human.  Yes, Ryan, the self proclaimed student of the archetypical anti-human, Ayn Rand, will give the public the illusion that someone among the two of them gives a damn about someone besides themselves.

Already the Romney camp has had to decide to stuff down the press’ anxious inquiries into the details of the famous Ryan plan — you know, the plan that Newt Gingrich himself thought was going a little too far? Yeah, that Newt Gingrich, he of the “make mothers drop their babies where-ever to work at McDonald’s” Contract on America Gingrich, no shining Samaritan he. But that little glimmer of empathy made the GOP panic enough to furiously remind Newt that the Big Daddy GOP ain’t having any of that middling concern for old people, children and poor folks.   Ryan’s plan must succeed! Old folks wheel your chairs to the gallows! The time has come for the great sacrifice for Capital!

Can we imagine a world ruled by Romney and Ryan?  A world where insider trading becomes a right, where the sitting president’s offspring will run to hold the highest office in the land year after year? Where Congress won’t have to bother to have session because everyone knows the outcome already — what’s to argue? Where the television shows will blast sitcoms of happy rich people day and night and news casts will consist of lost puppy dogs and the weekly roll-call of prisoners condemned to death?

Can we imagine a world where housing subsidies are cut and a half million people will find themselves instantly homeless? Where the disease stricken or the mobility disabled will be left to hobble or crawl home to die because they can’t buy a hospital voucher? Will apartment buildings that once the landlords received subsidies for become abandoned as they can’t make the mortgage payments for lack of tenants that can pay rent on a Wal-Mart salary?  Will municipal welfare departments shutter their doors, lacking the resources to serve? Food pantries run dry, soup kitchens become over run, having to turn out before the line outside is exhausted?  Will entire neighborhoods turn black at night as power prices soar without subsidies to control them?

Will children who slept in parks, cars, alley ways, abandoned buildings, with no heat, no running water, filthy from the day before, shy away from school? Living with no place to study, with no cooked food to eat, living among a world of prosperity, what message will those children absorb?

Will murders rise as people in the cities fight over scarce resources? Will an armed suburban guerilla warfare begin as the inner city poor turn to the suburbs where once soccer moms plant homemade mines around their pristine three acre plot? Where angry and hungry inner city residents crouch behind mulberry bushes and stinkweed in the summer humidity to wait for the right moment to fire and overtake the house that has a water well and a churning diesel generator keeping the well stocked freezer going?  Will the police state expand, will martial law be called?

Paranoid some? Talk to your neighbors.  Talk to some “preppers”, one underground group among many convinced that the scenario described in the last paragraph isn’t too far off.  Unfortunately, what’s lost is the trajectory of how the nation could get there.  Its in our control, we don’t have to give up and allow defeat to define our future.

Often pundits and other observers remark on the poor memory of the American electorate.  While the poor recall of a politician’s remark or slip of judgment is one thing; to forget our entire human history is quite another.  Only within the last half of the last century did a huge portion of the human population get a chance to know what its like to have a place out of the rain and cold; to know when or where our next meal is coming from — or what it will be; a rat? a discarded piece of bread? a donation from the back of a UN truck?  A lot of that had to do with capital prosperity, but that, unlike the story repeated erroneously among the American public, did not happen naturally by the accumulation of capital alone.  It seems that people assume that the accumulation of wealth and capital assets automatically results in general popular prosperity, as if a natural occurrence as regular and reliable as the sun following the moon.

But the social contract did not fall out of the sky, it is not written in the bark of trees.  What is written in the bark of trees is the struggle of nature, of the universally understood vulgarity of nature that many like to not think about; the live and let live, the kill or be killed.  Paul Ryan’s mentor in spirit Ayn Rand celebrated the brute violence of survival and believed that all humans had attained their highest actualization when they begin to act as if they had no more self awareness than a snarling dog in a pack.

We have the capacity to become dogs; to emulate the most vile and base behavior and return to our mammalian roots.  But with our larger brains that developed the awareness we call “self”; the “I”, also came the awareness that without the ‘you’ — our mother, our father, our brother, our neighbor, that “I” becomes merely a weak, hungry mass of flesh whose worth can only be redeemed by the contribution made to the other — the community who can hear us cry out.  If Romney and Ryan get in the white house and do what they wish, we’ll need more than just a god to help us, we’ll each other and our memory.

Depression Era Daydream – http://seaheff.com/pages/comics.html

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