The Largest Minority

January 31st, 2009 by Sam

The Financial Times described the mood at this week’s meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos as one of “sobriety and self-recrimination.” Yet this didn’t stop JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon from expressing his frustration at government leaders, admonishing them to “just get on with” bailing the banking system out:

“Politicians are playing catch as catch can. I haven’t yet seen people get all the right people into the room and close the door and put a solution up on the wall,” he declared to Davos delegates, triggering a rare outburst of spontaneous applause. “This stuff is getting old! I just wish they would get on with it!”

Dimon, however, assures usthat JPMorgan Chase “will be fine … we have got plenty of capital.”

This would be similar to a burglar/arsonist looting a building, setting it ablaze, and then complaining that the fire department needs to “just get on with” putting the fire out, as “[t]his [fire] stuff is getting old,” all the while assuring us that he would be fine regardless, since he had gathered plenty of loot.

File under: beyond chutzpah.

January 27th, 2009 by Sam

This week in capitalism, Marvin E. Schur, a 93-year-old man living in Bay City, MI, froze to death in his home days after the City Electric Light & Power company restricted his use of electricity because of unpaid bills.

Schur died “a slow, painful death,” said Dr. Kanu Virani, who performed the autopsy. “Hypothermia shuts the whole system down, slowly,” Virani said. “It’s not easy to die from hypothermia without first realizing your fingers and toes feel like they’re burning.”

Schur’s neighbors discovered Schur’s body on January 17th.  They said the indoor temperature of Schur’s house was below 32 degrees.  George Pauwels Jr., who discovered Schur with his wife, said Schur “had a little bit” of dementia. The temperature in Bay City, according to weather.com, reached as low as -9 degrees  between January 13th, when the power company placed a limiter on Schur’s electrical service, and January 17th, when Schur’s body was found.

“His furnace was not running - the insides of his windows were full of ice the morning we found him,” Pauwels said. “This (limiter) is supposed to regulate the amount of electricity he was using, but still allow enough power to run the furnace.  Obviously, it didn’t work.”

Phil Newton, director of the electric department, said the company has “almost two full-time people just dedicated to going around and turning people on and off and putting on limiters. It’s just really bad.”

Schur owed around $1,100 in unpaid bills.  Some states have laws making it illegal to shut a person’s power off in the winter, presumably to prevent power companies from killing customers.

The Bay City Manager, Robert V. Belleman, said he didn’t believe the city did anything wrong.  “Neighbors need to keep an eye on neighbors.”

Nine days after Schur’s death, the Bay City Commission voted 5-3 to raise the prices of electricity by 3%.

In case you forgot, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

June 28th, 2008 by D.C.

Warning: This post may contain a Canadian point of view.

Grouping of copyright and Supporting PaperworkCopyright Symbol and Supporting Paperwork Printed copyright symbols over registered copyright forms, document frames

GH Wise ©2007

Did you ever wonder why Canada introduced a new Copyright Bill recently even though in the past the public disapproval of a similar bill caused it to be squashed? Well there is a very good article on Canada.com that purports the United States has a hand in getting the maple leaf nation to quickly pass a controversial copyright law.

Michael Geist (the very same Michael Geist that started a Facebook group petitioning against the original changes to the Copyright legislation) argues:

The public campaign was obvious. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins
was outspoken on the copyright issue, characterizing Canadian copyright law as
the weakest in the G7 (despite the World Economic Forum ranking it ahead of the
U.S.).

The U.S. Trade Representatives Office (USTR) made Canada a fixture on
its Special 301 Watch list, an annual compilation of countries that the U.S.
believes have sub-standard intellectual property laws. The full list contains
nearly 50 countries accounting for 4.4 billion people, or approximately 70 per
cent of the world’s population.

Most prominently, last year U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and John
Cornyn, along with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, escalated the
rhetoric on Canadian movie piracy, leading to legislative reform that took just
three weeks to complete.

Read the rest of this entry »

June 24th, 2008 by D.C.

It is difficult to face the rising cost of oil prices these days, but is it really worth it to tap into oil supplies that would destroy a protected wildlife reserve? I think the preservation of the environment should be foremost in the minds of the United States government. They protected these areas for so long, and to give it up now seems to be a slap in the face to people that lobbied to have them saved in the first place.

 Besides, the oil that would be produced from this new oil source would not become available right away and would take years for the effects of the newly introduced oil to take effect. This oil crisis is making sane people act irrationally. We do not need to lose sight of the important things. It makes no sense to fix a problem in the present, but only to create a bigger problem in the future.

April 15th, 2007 by Manila Ryce

I realize I’m cutting it a bit close on Sunday night with this week’s This Week in Capitalism, but I had shit to do. Better late than never. Enjoy.

Eugene Debs was a progressive and prominent figure in his community, and a founding member of the International Labor Union. In 1884 he was elected to the Indiana state legislature as a Democrat. However, Debs became frustrated with certain conservative unions, and disillusioned with the unproductive legislature of his political party, as many Democrats are today. His dedication to the labor movement and willingness to enact change made Debs adopt a more confrontational approach than his fellow Democrats.

In 1894 Debs was an organizer of railroad workers in the American Railway Union and led a nationwide boycott in support of Pullman Palace Car Company workers, who were striking against a 28 percent wage cut. The entire railway system came grinding to a halt, and the capitalist state reacted with full force. The federal government obtained an injunction, and President Cleveland sent the United States Army on the grounds that the strike was hindering the delivery of mail. US troops fired into a crowd of five thousand strike sympathizers in Chicago, killing thirteen and arresting seven hundred. Debs was one of those who was arrested, violating a court injunction which prohibited him from doing or saying anything to assist in a strike.

During his six months in prison Debs read socialist literature such as the works of Karl Marx. It was then that the reality of an American class struggle became clear to him. Debs switched from being a Democrat to being a Socialist. He was released from prison in 1895 and started his socialist political career, devoting the rest of his life to the cause of the working people.

He ran as a socialist for the presidency in 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912. The 1912 election won Debs 6 percent of the country�s vote, which is an all-time high for any Socialist Party candidate. In 1914, Europe was involved in World War I, and propaganda was beginning to turn Americans against the Germans. In 1917, President Wilson and Congress brought the nation into the war. The Espionage Act was quickly passed.

The Espionage Act was an unconstitutional federal law which made it a crime to say anything discouraging the armed forces. However, Debs was undeterred by the fact that he may serve time for his anti-war message. He knew that the war was a direct result of economic interest, and that the ideological differences between opposing parties were just topics of convenience to rally the public.

During this week in capitalism, Eugene Debs was imprisoned for opposing US entry into WWI after he gave an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. During the speech, Debs told listeners; “Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder…. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.”

Mr. Debs’ constitutional rights were violated in the interest of capitalism, as many others were and still are to this day. He was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison. Before sentencing, Debs told the judge, �Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.�

Debs appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction under the Espionage Act. This act would later be extended by the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it illegal to speak out against the government at all.

In 1920, while in prison, Debs ran one last time for the presidency. He received nearly one million votes as a convict. On Christmas Day in 1921, President Warren G. Harding released Debs from prison, commuting his sentence to time served. Debs had fought for the rights of prisoners in the penitentiary, and on the day of his release, the warden ignored prison regulations and opened every cellblock to allow over two thousand inmates to say goodbye to Eugene Debs. A roar went up as Debs left the prison. He died five years later at the age of 70 in Elmhurst, Illinois. In 1924, Eugene Debs was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Finnish Socialist Karl H. Wiik on the ground that “Debs started to work actively for peace during World War I, mainly because he considered the war to be in the interest of capitalism.�

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March 25th, 2007 by Manila Ryce

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, was appointed to his position on February 23, 1977, in part, because he was a timid conservative. More progressive priests within the Church, especially those who were openly Marxist, strongly opposed the decision.

Less than three weeks after Romero was appointed archbishop, Rutilio Grande, a progressive Jesuit friend of the archbishop, was assassinated in a hail of machine gun fire for creating self-reliance groups among the poor. The next day, Romero announced he would not attend any state occasions, nor meet with the president until Grande’s death was investigated. The right-wing government ignored Romero’s calls and the press was silent. It was then that the archbishop had a change of political views and began to speak out against the poverty, social injustice, assassinations, and torture taking place in El Salvador.

In 1979, Romero was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In the same year, the Revolutionary Government Junta came into power, and like most oppressive dictatorships in recent history, the junta was backed by the CIA. Things went from bad to worse as a wave of even more human rights violations came in with the new government. Within the first week of the take over, Amnesty International reported 100 deaths from political violence. Death squads formed by members of the Salvadoran military were murdering priests, peasants, labor organizers, raping nuns, and mutilating bodies all with US funding and training. Archbishop Romero’s high profile in a mostly Catholic country made him one of the most dangerous critics of the new government and the rich controlling El Salvador.

While the Catholic Church was the voice for social justice for many living under the oppression of the Soviet Union, its followers in Latin America felt abandoned. The liberation theology of Latin American priests tended to mix Marxist activism with Christian theology, and the Church was skeptical of this combination. Fearing such a philosophy excluded certain social classes and would turn people against all hierarchy, including the Church itself, the pope rejected those who adopted it. Pope John Paul II feared all things communist, and went on the offensive against liberation theology, which he linked to the suffering he had witnessed as a youth in Poland. Thus, when Monsenor Romeros came to Europe in 1980 to receive an honorary doctorate by the Catholic University of Leuven, his plea for support against capitalist oppression was turned down by the Holy See.

Monsenor Romero also spoke out against the US military aid which was enabling his government to continue its reign of terror. In February 1980, he wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter, explaining that continued US support would “undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights”. The US had sent $1.5 million to El Salvador every day for 12 years. In his letter, Romero stated, “You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people.” Once again, his plea was ignored. Two months later he would be assassinated by men trained in the US.

Without the support of two of the world’s most respected humanitarians, Romero still continued his non-violent struggle. On March 23, 1980, the archbishop gave a homily broadcast throughout the country calling for soldiers to disobey the government’s orders and to obey God’s higher calling. He said, “Brothers, you are from the same people; you kill your fellow peasant. No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God. In the name of God then, in the name of this suffering people I ask you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God: stop the repression.” Romero’s invitation for the army to mutiny was met with thunderous applause.

During this week in capitalism on March 24, 1980, one day after his plea for soldiers to disobey the government, Romero was shot to death during mass. The assassination was carried out after Romero had given his homily, and some report that his blood was spilled into the communion wine. At least two of Romero’s right-wing assassins were trained by the US at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. The school has trained over 6,000 guerillas to support far-right regimes and form death squads in Latin America. Due to negative press, the school now operates under the name Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, and now trains roughly 1,000 students per year.

Archbishop Romero’s funeral was attended by more than 250,000 mourners. Given the circumstances, some viewed the funeral as a protest in itself, making it the largest demonstration in the history of Latin America. However, the ceremony was interrupted by government security forces that exploded a bomb and fired shots into the crowd. Between 20 and 50 people died during the mass panic which ensued. The assassination of Romero by the rich and far-right government pushed the political violence in El Salvador into a full-fledged civil war. Despite military aid and advisors sent from the US to support the capitalists, the Revolutionary Government Junta ended in 1982.

Ten years after Monsenor Romero was assassinated, the sitting archbishop of San Salvador prepared documentation for the beatification and canonization of Romero into sainthood. The documents were accepted by the pope, and Romero was given the fitting title “Servant of God.” The beatification and canonization process continue to this day. In 1996, Pope John Paul II seemed to have changed his opinion of liberation theory as he prayed at Romero’s tomb. He told Salvadoran church officials he believed Romero was a “martyr.” Today, with globalization, extensive privatization, and deteriorating economic conditions in Latin America as a whole, Archbishop Romero has enjoyed an increase in popularity more than 25 years after his death.

Days before Romero’s murder he told a reporter, “You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.”

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March 17th, 2007 by Manila Ryce

On March 11th, 2004, the Madrid train bombings left 191 people dead and 2,050 wounded exactly two and a half years after September 11th and just three days before Spain�s Sunday elections were to take place. The immediate reaction in the Spanish media was to blame the Basque separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or ETA, for the attack. Right-wing government officials, eager to hold on to their control, were all too ready to monopolize on such suspicions. To divert negative press away from their pro-Bush policies, government officials openly placed the responsibility for the death and destruction on leftist elements.

However, most people saw past the charade, as incoming evidence pointed to the fact that the bombings were actually carried out by Islamic militants in response to the Spanish government�s support for the invasion of Iraq. It was now clear that working class people around the world would continue to be the victims of western imperialism. No longer was the violent resistance against imperialism confined to the mosques and market places of India, Iraq, Bali, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine, and Egypt, but so too were the citizens of London, Israel, America, and Spain experiencing the same violence in bus terminals, airports, and general hubs of transportation.

Hours before the Sunday election, a video was discovered in which a man, identifying himself as an al-Qaeda spokesman, claimed responsibility for the attack. “This is an answer to your cooperation with the Bush criminals and their allies,� the man said. �This is an answer to crimes which you committed in the world, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there will be more, so help us God.”

During this week in capitalism, on March 14th, 2004, the people of Spain voted against their country�s support for the war, occupation of Iraq, and the governing right-wing People�s Party. In an upset win, the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers� Party (PSOE) won a plurality of seats in the Congress of Deputies to become the largest party of government, while the conservative People�s Party lost 39 seats, ending eight years of right-wing rule.

As much as 90 percent of Spain was against the Iraq War and occupation. Jos� Luis Rodr�guez Zapatero, head of the PSOE, promised during the election that he would withdraw Spanish troops as part of his consistent opposition to the war. Shortly after taking office, Zapatero kept his word.

Terrorists have shown that there is no safe haven for the citizens of nations who exploit the poorer majority of the world. For some countries, such as America, the presence of terrorism was seized and manipulated by right-wing pro-capitalist elements, successfully giving credibility to their agenda. However, the pointlessness of this perpetual �tooth for a tooth� cycle was best understood by leftists in Spain who offered an alternative to voters. Voters realized that the bloodshed would not end unless the terrorists in their own government were out of power.

The PSOE was founded to represent the interests of the working class, and was inspired by the philosophy of Karl Marx. Though sympathetic to the plights of those exploited by imperialism, Marxism stresses at its most fundamental level that the fight against capitalism must be directed towards the upper percentile, and not the masses that share the common worldwide struggle. Though perhaps not as socialist as they once were when founded in 1879, the PSOE has offered a real solution to the growing problem of terrorism which both parties of the world�s only superpower have yet to comprehend.

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October 29th, 2006 by Manila Ryce

Like most countries in the world, Grenada gained its independence only after enduring hundred of years of European imperialism. The Spaniards were the first to exercise their control over Grenada, followed by the French, and then the English. In 1974 Grenada was finally granted its independence under Premier Sir Eric Matthew Gairy, the first Prime Minister of Grenada. However, Gairy was a far-right dictator with support from Augusto Pinochet. Grairy�s government became increasingly authoritarian as his list of human rights violations grew longer, and organized labor and the media became his targets. Leftist leaders decided to take back control of the country before things got any worse. As Grairy was speaking at the UN in New York City, a coup was staged in Grenada by Opposition Leader Maurice Bishop who declared himself the new PM.

Maurice Bishop was the head of the Marxist New Jewel Movement and decided to try his hand at ruling the country. Ideologically on the far-left to Gairy, Bishop dissolved parliament, established grassroots democracy initiatives, held no new elections while in office, and set up Worker�s Councils across Grenada. The US was wary of Bishop, especially since he was receiving aid from Cuba and the Soviet Union. However, to keep up good relations with America, Bishop allowed private enterprise to continue in Grenada. Nonetheless, Reagan openly spoke of the threat Grenada posed to the United States. Deciding that his policies were not radical enough, Bishop�s Deputy Prime Minister and long-time Stalinist friend, Bernard Coard, staged a military coup to overthrow him in 1983. Bishop was then executed, despite huge protests in favor of Bishop.

In this week in capitalism, the United States took advantage of Grenada�s post-coup instability and launched Operation Urgent Fury six days after the execution. Favoring military action over diplomacy, President Reagan went forward with the invasion, claiming that it was being done to evacuate the nearly 1,000 American medical students on the island. However, Mythu Sivapalan disputed this justification in the October 29th issue of the New York Times, stating; �Both Cuba and Grenada, when they saw that American ships were heading for Grenada, sent urgent messages promising that American students were safe and urging that an invasion not occur. […] There is no indication that the administration made a determined effort to evacuate the Americans peacefully. […] Officials have acknowledged that there was no inclination to try to negotiate with the Grenadian authorities.�

Operation Urgent Fury was meant to return Grenada to capitalism, while making it an example to other nations. President Reagan had rattled his saber in private talks with neighboring Caribbean nations before the invasion of Grenada, demanding favorable treatment to US capitalists in their countries. New incentives were needed for foreign investment, and future rebellions against imperialist exploitation were sure to be crushed. Reagan spoke of the Caribbean as �a vital and strategic commercial artery for the United States� which had vast �reservoirs of food and raw materials� important to American interest. The president also ordered a complete press blackout of the invasion. After Operation Urgent Fury was over, the Reagan administration created the National Media Pool which further empowered the Pentagon to control media coverage by only allowing designated sources to report at times deemed acceptable.

The military used the operation as a test run for experimental equipment, and to work out kinks in communications which could be repaired before America went on its next campaign against a potentially stronger enemy. A total of 7,000 American troops invaded the nation, which had a total population of 160,000. Three days after the invasion, the bulk of the fight was essentially over. One US soldier said, “With the equipment we have, it’s like Star Wars fighting cavemen.” It was only after the major operations were complete, that reporters were allowed to witness the mopping up of Grenada. The American public was spoon-fed joyful scenes of military victory, without the death and destruction. After ridding Grenada of its leftist leaders, the CIA spent $650,000 to fund a pro-American candidate in that year’s election.

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