People Before Profit blog

Recession is On, McCain Offers More Bush Policies

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:08:00 +0000

10-30-08, 12:04 pm

Nine straight months of job losses, a collapse in consumer spending, growing home foreclosures, and few good signs for the future, all point, economists now say, to the fact that recession has overtaken the economy.

Today, things appeared to get worse. The government released its quarterly GDP estimates showing the economy shrank by 0.3 percent. The collapse was fueled by the sharpest drop in consumer spending in 28 years, economist Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) told reporters on a teleconference after the report was released.

Bivens blamed the the contraction of consumer spending that led to the recession primarily on the collapse of the housing market.

In addition, government data revealed that state and local governments are struggling to make ends meet and dragging down economic growth, and labor income has also fallen over the past three consecutive quarters, Bivens said.

Consumer spending is linked to labor income, Bivens noted. People can only spend in the economy when they have good paychecks or credit. Since both income is falling and debt has many working families unable to continue to spend at the same rates, consumer spending has suffered.

'I think this bodes badly for the coming year,' he said. 'We really have to wonder, since consumer spending is contracting, where are we going to get a boost to economic growth? And it's not from workers' paychecks for the foreseeable future.'

The GDP report hints that a quick recovery is unlikely, added EPI head Jared Bernstein. 'American consumers have hit a wall they haven't seen in 17 years,' he said. The report signaled a lack of strong demand, which is needed right now to turn the economy around.

Bernstein noted a bright spot in the GDP report. Federal government spending added to economic growth, but not enough to overcome the collapse in consumer spending, he said.

In addition, Bernstein argued that 'supply-side' stimulus such as more tax breaks for corporations or investors is simply unable to turn the economy around. Supply-side policies do not boost consumer spending in a significant way. A demand-side stimulus package is needed instead, he stated.

Bernstein offered several key demand-side measures. First, the federal government needs to make cash available directly to states to overcome budget shortfalls and help them make ends meet. Second, unemployment insurance benefits should be extended to cover long-term unemployed workers. Third, safety net programs like food stamps, low-income energy assistance, and the like should be boosted. Finally, infrastructure investments should be made to create jobs and increase economic activity.

The analysis offered by Bernstein and Bivens points to sharp practical and ideological differences between John McCain's and Barack Obama's economic proposals. In line with Bush's thinking that one-remedy-fits-all-recessions, McCain has offered more supply-side concepts: tax breaks for corporations and wealthy investors.

On the other hand, Obama, demonstrating a keener understanding of the nature of the current crisis, has proposed solutions closer to what the EPI economists advocated. Obama has offered direct economic relief for working families in the form of tax breaks to prime the pump of consumer spending as well as investments in job creation through infrastructure developments.

For his part, McCain has already failed to lead his party to pass such a stimulus package in late September. Instead, after an erratic and confused response to the Wall Street bailout, McCain sat on the sidelines as Senate Republicans filibustered a Democratic bill that would have injected new resources into the hands of working families.

McCain's right about one thing. He has indeed been tested. But he has failed that test.

--Reach Joel Wendland at

Japan: Declassified Document Reveals Agreement to Relinquish Jurisdiction Over US Forces

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:12:00 +0000

10-30-08, 10:09 am

A declassified US document clearly states that in a closed-door meeting Japan agreed to renounce its primary right of jurisdiction in crimes committed by US military personnel unless they are 'of material importance to Japan.'

The document was discovered in September at the US National Archives in College Park, Maryland, by Niihara Shoji, an international affairs researcher. This is the first official document to directly confirm the existence of such a secret agreement, although there have so far been various declassified documents that suggest the existence of such a document.

On October 23, Niihara revealed the document at a news conference in the Diet.

'The purpose of the secret arrangement was to forgo indicting US military personnel as much as possible, and it is still in force,' said Niihara.

The agreement was signed on October 28, 1953 by Justice Ministry bureaucrat Tsuda Minoru and Lt. Col. Alan Todd.

It said, '[T]he Japanese authorities do not normally intend to exercise the primary right of jurisdiction over members of the United States Armed Forces, the civilian component, or their dependents subject to the military law of the United Sates, other than in cases considered to be of material importance to Japan.'

Yamazaki Masanori, who accompanied Niihara at the news conference, is fighting the Japanese government and US forces in court over the murder of his wife by a US serviceman in Yokosuka in 2006.

He said that the secret agreement explains the unreasonable attitude and defiance of representatives of the Japanese government and US forces in court.

The revelation of the agreement 'will be very useful in my court struggle. We can no longer endure crimes committed by US servicemen in silence,' said Yamazaki.

Naito Isao, a lawyer speaking on behalf of the Japan Peace Committee, pointed out that the renunciation of jurisdiction is related to a major responsibility of the government of a sovereign nation, which is to protect the people. The secret agreement 'raises the question whether we can allow the unequal Japan-US relations to legally continue,' he said.

Israel Tries to Block Gaza Health Conference

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:08:00 +0000

10-30-08, 10:06 am

Original source: IRIN News

RAMALLAH, 30 October 2008 (IRIN) – Some 100 academics and mental health workers were denied entry to the Gaza Strip to attend an international medical conference, but the conference took place anyway – by video link, with one group gathering in Gaza City and another in Ramallah.

The conference, organized by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) on 27-28 October, focused on the mental health impact of the Israeli blockade of the enclave (since June 2007 when Hamas took over).

However, for many this 'virtual' method proved less productive, as the foreign experts and local health workers were generally unable to conduct sustained discussions and take advantage of each other's knowledge and proficiency.

'It made it harder to exchange experiences,' said Samir Qouta, a psychologist at the Islamic University in Gaza, told IRIN.

'Denying the foreigners entry to Gaza made mutual interaction impossible, but still the conference took place – and that in itself is a big achievement,' said the GCMHP's Husam el-Nounou.

Gaza's border crossings were closed, exports banned and imports restricted to humanitarian goods after the Islamist Hamas movement took over in the territory.

The denial of entry for many of the Gazan health workers and visiting experts served to highlight just how isolated the enclave is from the rest of the world.

Israeli security officials said the conference was political in nature and would have helped serve the interests of Hamas.

Conference goers denied they had any interest in partisan issues.

Few mental health experts

'According to my research, the siege is affecting social and economic life,' said Qouta, adding 'the impact is especially clear on the children.'

'The quality of life has really deteriorated,' he said.

Health experts say lack of medication and a shortage of specialized doctors in the enclave are having an adverse effect on people's well-being in general, but mental health is particularly affected as there are very few experts in the enclave, and patients cannot easily travel abroad.

'The siege is making it worse. The people are suffering more,' Qouta said.

Even with the difficulties in running the conference, many participants felt they still learned and were able to share with each other, using technology like the video link and email.

'Also, our colleagues in Gaza now know they have support and solidarity from mental health experts abroad,' said W.H.G. Wolters, a clinical psychotherapist from the Netherlands who attended the conference.

He noted the tough challenges mental health workers in Gaza face in carrying out their work.

'The workers face severe stress and traumatization, in addition to having to face their own survival in the difficult situation,' Wolters said.

In some cases, they had to treat their own family members, further complicating an already daunting job.

Keeping Banks Afloat: Government Gives Markets a Helping Hand

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:35:00 +0000

10-30-08, 9:33 am

Original source: The Guardian (Australia)

It is impossible to keep count of the billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money being handed out by governments and central banks to salvage the largest financial institutions and shore up a crisis-ridden capitalist system. Markets continue to tumble — hopes that each drop will be the last are quickly dashed by another fall. One can only wonder how long governments and central banks can remain solvent. The whopping October 10 crash was soon followed by more drops — by Monday this week the Australian Stock Exchange ASX200 Index had reached a four-year low of 3729.4 — a massive 45 percent below a record high of 6828.7 on November 1, 2007.

The global financial crisis is rapidly spreading into the broader economic, social and political spheres, with no end in sight. Governments continue to give the failing markets a no-strings-attached helping hand.

The Eurozone countries at a meeting on October 12 committed a total of 1.7 trillion euros (1,700 billion) to a rescue plan. This follows on from the US government’s $US700 billion and the hundreds of billions before that. No one is discussing where this money is coming from: how much is being printed, how much was from stored surpluses and how much from future cuts to welfare, education, health, etc, is not publicized. In the end, it is coming from the hard earnings and suffering of the ordinary working people of those countries.

Australia is no different; the budget surpluses were created from understaffing of hospitals, underfunding of schools, lack of public housing and subsistence pensions and welfare benefits. Expect further cuts in government spending in social welfare and other essential public services; the government as no intention of slashing military spending or corporate welfare.

Those who placed their faith in China and a booming mining industry providing Australia with immunity from the global crisis are having second thoughts. The shares of Rio Tinto and BHP were among those experiencing falls on the stock market as investors watched commodity prices fall and a slowing down in production by the world’s largest steel producers in China. China is not immune to international economic developments. As the US, Europe and other markets slide into recession, orders for products from China will contract, and with them demand for Australian minerals and other resources.

It might be hard to believe looking at the price of petrol in Australia, but oil prices fell to their lowest for a year — to $US81 a barrel earlier this month after peaking at $US147 a barrel in July. Petrol should be back down under a dollar a liter, not the $1.45 to $1.65 a liter as found in different parts of Australia. The oil companies are making a killing at the petrol bowser.

As the global financial crisis deepens and penetrates further into other sectors of the economy, governments, central banks and the financial conglomerates continue to thrash out their next moves.

The focus has shifted from rescuing the large investment houses and insurance companies to dealing with the credit squeeze and ensuring liquidity of the financial sector and now the solvency of the big retail and commercial banks.

Recession

The next stage of the developing economic crisis is recession. Already companies have started laying off workers, investment plans are being re-examined or put on hold, including in Australia’s mining industry. The Australian government’s $10.4 billion in handouts to pensioners, seniors, carers, parents and first time new homebuyers is an attempt to pump prime the economy — sustain consumption and give the housing industry an injection.

Some lessons have been learnt from past economic crises — don’t keep cutting consumption as that reduces demand and accelerates the downward spiral of business crashes, higher unemployment and even less spending. If workers don’t have the money to spend, the capitalists cannot sell their products to make profits.

In the US and the European Union (EU) thousands of workers have been sacked and economies have begun contracting. Every day companies downgrade profit expectations or report losses, and announce more sackings. The major car companies, the backbone of the US manufacturing industry, are amongst the latest to announce more sackings.

Blank check

In line with its counterparts in Britain and Europe, the Australian government announced measures to prevent a loss of confidence in the banking system. It originally indicated that bank, credit union and building society deposits would be protected up to a limit of $20,000. This limit was later removed, and by the end of last week Treasurer Wayne Swan had announced a cap of $1 million — which will mainly affect businesses.

Protection for amounts above that cap would be available at a price through a form of insurance. The government has also extended its guarantee to cover savings in local branches of foreign banks.

The government’s measures to protect the banks have had repercussions in other areas of the financial sector. Thirteen of Australia’s top 20 cash management trusts have frozen withdrawals of assets to halt the flood of withdrawals as investors began moving their funds to government guaranteed bank accounts.

Many of these investors are self-funded retirees and pensioners. The funds include AXA, Perpetual and Australian Unity. They hold an estimated $22 billion of funds belonging to 180,000 Australians. The funds are pressuring the government for similar guarantees.

The government’s immediate response was to tell those affected to contact Centrelink which will be reviewing the value of pensioners’ assets (some have lost up to 20 or 30 percent) and adjusting pensions accordingly. Thousands more people will become eligible for a pension following the crash in the value of their investments.

Super takes a bashing

While the government has virtually signed a blank cheque to save banks from insolvency, it has done nothing for to assist workers and retirees with the heavy losses that are being experienced in superannuation funds. Private funds continue to charge exorbitant fees — around 1-2 percent on the amount of assets remaining — regardless of performance!

Industry funds appear to have performed better — or should I say not as badly as their private counterparts. Super funds are losing an estimated $1 billion a day of workers’ retirement savings as the global financial crisis deepens, according to a report in The Weekend Australian (October 25-26, 2008).

The losses vary according to the types of investment and their location. Shares, currencies, hedge funds, private equity, property and the more highly speculative derivatives have suffered considerable losses and continue to bleed. Much will depend on the individual worker’s choice of investment areas or the fund’s default allocation where choice was not exercised.

Time to put people first

The US, the British, the EU and the Australian governments have no intention of changing policy direction. They have yet to come up with a single policy that gives priority to the interests of the people; instead their actions are designed to protect the big end of town, those who created the mess in the first place. The billions of dollars being thrown at the financial sector could have been directed to assisting people, to rebuilding the public sector and taking control of the financial sector.

Immediate reforms are needed that put people first, before private profits. These include a publicly owned and controlled bank, which is run in the interests of the community. The pooling of superannuation savings into a national public fund, owned by the members and funds, could be used to build infrastructure, provide public housing and other socially desirable investments.

This would secure workers’ retirement incomes and at the same time create real jobs in the real economy. The age pension should be increased and the means and assets tests rolled back. Other welfare benefits also need to be raised in line with the pension.

Millions of Australians have been hurt and suffered considerable financial losses already in this economic crisis. It is crazy that their retirement savings are being gambled away on highly speculative markets or that they should on retirement be faced with a large lump sum and have to make financial decisions on how best to invest it to ensure an adequate income for life.

Retirement should be an opportunity to enjoy leisure time and feel secure with a guaranteed regular income, not having to worry about what the markets are doing.

Global Capitalism 'On the Edge of Abyss'

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:18:00 +0000

10-30-08, 9:34 am

Original source: People's Voice

In an Oct. 21 statement noting that global capitalism is 'on the edge of the abyss,' the Canadian Labour Congress says that 'dramatic recent events have thrown into sharp relief some chronic and long-standing problems of our global and national economic system: an over-developed financial sector which has fueled rampant speculation rather than productive, job-creating investments in the real economy; huge returns for senior executives and corporate insiders while the wages and the incomes of working families have stagnated; rising household debt instead of a fair sharing of productivity gains with workers; over-reliance on the export of raw resources; a deep crisis in our manufacturing and forest industries; and massive global financial imbalances driven by unbalanced and unfair trade.'

'The age of deregulated neo-liberal global capitalism is over,' the CLC says, adding that 'Financial collapse has led not just to the discrediting of an ideology, but also to a major reassertion of the role of governments in maintaining systemic financial stability.'

The CLC calls for a coordinated international response to 'avoid future financial crises by strengthening government regulation of the banks and other financial institutions, and by extending the scope of government regulation to include hedge funds and private equity groups.'

Other measures advocated by the Congress include restrictions on capital flight, deeper cuts to interest rates, and a transactions tax on all securities trading to discourage short-term speculation and to raise government revenues.

More government assistance to the Canadian banks, says the CLC, should be given 'only in return for an equity position, with a view to increasing the power of the federal government to regulate and supervise the banks on an ongoing basis' and to help ensure lines of credit.

Rejecting the 'myth that Canada has not experienced a housing bubble,' the CLC says the CMHC be able to draw upon government funds to refinance distressed mortgages at lower rates.

Another reform advocated by the CLC is public reviews of all major corporate mergers and acquisitions, with approval dependent on real investment and employment.

Responding to the wave of corporate greed which helped fan the crisis, the CLC calls for restrictions on stock option compensation to executives, a surtax on very high incomes, and full inclusion of capital gains in taxable income.

Predicting that the only real question is 'how deep and prolonged the crisis will be,' the CLC rejects right-wing demands for budget slashing.

The Congress advocates an immediate emergency fiscal stimulus of at least $10 billion over each of the next two years, mainly directed to energy efficiency and renewable energy projects including building retrofits and public transit, to create at least 200,000 jobs. Priority should also be given to public infrastructure and affordable housing projects.

The CLC also urges 'sectoral economic strategies to rebuild our industries, particularly the hard-hit manufacturing and forestry sectors. Further corporate tax cuts should be cancelled and replaced by direct government support for new private sector investment in machinery and equipment, research and development and training.'

Turning to the social sector, the CLC proposes 'major investments in child care and early learning, home care and long-term care and high quality public education. Post-secondary education and training programs must be expanded to help upgrade the skills of laid off workers.'

The current Employment Insurance system, it says, 'will leave many Canadians out in the cold, unable to qualify for benefits... With an accumulated surplus of more than $50 billion in the EI Account, the federal government must maintain and increase benefits, and also expand spending from the EI Fund to pay for labour adjustment and training programs.'

The Congress warns that 'the financial crisis, combined with a major recession, threatens to produce a severe pensions crisis as companies in major difficulties face large pension fund deficits.' It urges a national pension guarantee fund supported by a financial transaction tax, and limits on investments in hedge funds, private equity and other risky assets.

Pointing out that 'the roots of this crisis lie not just in the excesses of finance, but also in the fundamental imbalance of power between workers and employers,' the Labour Congress says that 'when people earn decent wages, all parts of the economy do well. As was shown in the 1930s, this will be achieved not just through more government intervention in the economy, but also by building strong unions and increasing the bargaining power of labour.' This should include anti-scab legislation, protections for new union organizing through card check certification, and first contract arbitration.

The CLC statement is noteworthy for its forceful condemnation of the capitalist crisis, although the wide-ranging measures it advocates to soften the impact do not include any mention of genuine public ownership and democratic control of the economy. Given the social democratic orientation of most of Canada's trade union leadership, this is no surprise.

Perhaps more to the point, while the statement correctly notes the need for a stronger labour movement, the CLC has not initiated any plans for a major public campaign on the economic crisis. As job losses mount and Canadian workers face an uncertain future, it is to be hoped that the CLC and the Quebec trade union centrals will take the lead in launching such a mass fightback – sooner rather than later.

Not Naming the System: Say It Ain’t So, Capitalism?

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:21:00 +0000

10-29-08, 1:19 pm

People of the United States. Capitalism. Capitalism. People of the United States. There, you’ve been introduced. Don’t say I’m not a good host.

Lately there’s been all kinds of talk about Capitalism’s ugly kid brother; Socialism. There has also been a ton of scary doomsday talk about needing to hurry up and give starving bankers emergency money. And even more talk about needing to pass Bills like they were going out of style – yesterday.

And suddenly, look! Here comes the bailout! There it is. And there it went. No posing for pictures, no comment, no autographs. Afterwards, Hank “Goldy” Paulson takes care of his friends at the Wall Street saloon, where he buys everyone a round or 700 billion, on him. Actually, on us.

The next morning, like so many pretentious Pauls on the road to too many Starbucks, it suddenly becomes clear to all us worker types. Having been rudely awoken by some sober bolt of lighting we come to the realization that we Main Streeters just got made by a bunch of proverbial fat cats on Wall Street – using tactics that are, get this, Socialist! Lucky bastards.

Overnight our evil and meddlesome government has turned more, well, eviler. It’s turned Socialist! “Socialism for the rich” is the mob’s cry! Socialism for the Rich on CNN, Socialism for the Rich on AlterNet, Socialism for the Rich on daytime talk shows, bloggers, notes passed in class, The Washington Post, tagged on city walls, uploaded to Youtube, gossiped in supermarket checkout lines, etc. Socialism is all the rage they say, it’s what the kids are all into.

Then, I’m assuming, to mark the glorious 91st Anniversary of the October Revolution that juggernaut of a presidential ticket, McCain/Palin, go around this past month giving Karl Marx and his wacky ideas even more primetime exposure by calling Barak Obama a socialist. I don’t know about you but all this talk of Socialism in October makes me very nostalgic.

The use of the word Socialism has been used to hide the reality of something even more misunderstood to U.S. Americans than Socialism or Communism, mainly, Capitalism. And while the McCain/Palin crowd ravenously shouts down the words “spread the wealth” as if it meant “Praise Satan”, Barak Obama has suddenly become more Marxist than Marx. Meanwhile we poor saps have been duped into being put on the road to Socialism and the horrors of a money-less world called Communism.

But is all this uproar even valid? Was the bailout really Socialism? Does Obama really want to replace the Constitution was Das Kapital 1, 2 and 3? Does Obama prefer to be bought out by Wall Street in the morning or more towards the evening when things are a little quieter and a little bit calmer?

In a recent phone interview with the radio program Guns & Butter, financial economist and historian, Michael Hudson, further elaborated on the recent “Socialist” rhetoric and the uncritical way so many Americans sopped it up. His was an even less hopeful view of what’s next for the U.S.

“This is nothing like Socialism at all”, Hudson proclaimed against the charges thrown at the bailout. “When you give away money to the wealthiest class, this is old fashion Kleptocracy and it’s a step back toward Feudalism. It is not a step toward Socialism at all.”

And yet according to the media here comes Barak Obama, you know, that one. The newest Socialist leader without facial hair, primed to take over the U.S. and turn us all into uniform laboring masses with nothing to show but hot gruel for dinner. But hey at least we will have our depressing state subsidized housing that we can call home when all is fails. Oh, wait. Ok, so a lot of us don’t have state sponsored housing. Lots of us are about to have no housing. Some of us (me) rent. So who’s the sucker now, huh? Ok, that’s beside the point.

Any way all this talk of Socialism in the midst of yet another crisis in the history of Capitalism struck me as very interesting, nay, revealing. Why did people, when hearing about this bailout, say that a bunch of rich people getting free money was somehow Socialist and not, say, oh I don’t know, Capitalist? I mean isn’t the whole idea of you going to work for a certain number of unnecessary hours of the day to produce wealth for someone else (beyond what you actually need for yourself) kinda the whole point about Capitalism, that Capitalism is the ultimate screw over job since slavery? And if Hudson is correct than we need not worry about a new red menace but instead welcome the resurgence of pleasantries like debtor’s prisons or those really uncomfortable stocks they use to put people in.

Many of us don’t really know the economic and ideological system we live under. We do, however, apparently know and understand the system of our worst enemy from yesteryear. And of course the powers-that-be know all too well that this “Evil System” is much more dangerous than Islamic fundamentalism because it actually offers an inclusive, just counterargument to our current system. So when Capitalism was again blatantly robbing us blind in 2008, it had us so fooled we blamed it on Socialism! We never even stopped to question Capitalism, as it continued on its merry way, only to disappear into the shadows once more.

I remember when I was weaned, from a very young age in public school, on the fundamentals of Marxist economic theory. As I am sure you were. I mean it’s so obvious, when you look around this country, how we all breezed through the Dialectic, by second grade we completely understood that so-called Communism has never existed despite what Stalin or Capitalism wished us to believe, in the fifth grade we mastered our Historical Materialism qualifying exams in one sitting and we laid out those C-M-C’s or M-C-M’s down like pros.

And yet somehow with all the Marxist theory we’ve been forced fed since pre-school we totally blanked on the idea that Socialism and not Capitalism was meant to give away money to a bunch of faceless mega-millionaires who ruled you like a ruler everyday, forever and ever, until your offspring took your pencil-pushing place at the workplace. What went wrong? Why couldn’t we remember the right answer on this super easy test?

Not having been born during the heyday of McCarthyism I don’t know the extent to which Americans were brainwashed on the Red Menace. I am not sure on the exact numbers of people from one generation to the next that inherited the unquestioned hatred for Communism, Socialism or Karl Marx like some people inherit shiny heirlooms or casserole dishes. But what I do know is that growing up I never knew anything about Capitalism. But Communism, though vague and fuzzy, I do remember. Take that one rite of passage we all experience: The “Commie” insult. I remember the first time someone said it. I immediately knew that it was a bad thing but I didn’t know why. And it was even more weird given that we knew so very little about current politic events since, you know, we were in the fourth grade. Somehow the “Capitalist!” or “Cappie!” insult never caught on.

But when was the last time someone really explained to you what Capitalism was all about? When, before all this economic calamity, did you hear “Capitalism” in the news and media so much? Even I felt strangely uneasy whenever newscasters or journalists uttered or wrote the word “Capitalism”. Capitalism, Capitalism, Capitalism. I was uneasy because I was not use to seeing or hearing or reading any examination of this word except in crazy Communist newspapers or from out of work Leftists. It is indeed better for some, it seems, to let the sleeping dogs of capitalism lie (and cheat and steal and murder).

Capitalism works because it is unexamined by the people who keep it going. Us. It works because it is unfamiliar even though it’s been around some 500 odd years or so. Capitalism works because when times are good for you it hides the places where times are bad for others. But then when times are bad for you it blames everything and the kitchen sink. Everything except Capitalism that is. Capitalism works because we don’t know anything about it. Sure politicians claim to know about it, so do writers for economic newspapers and magazines, so do college professors, so did Alan Greenspan. But what about everyone else?

All we wage labor lovers do know is that we have to go to work tomorrow and pay the bills the next day, or maybe the day after that. If we don’t, we starve. That’s what everyone says right? Or maybe, just maybe, we’d organize. Who knows? In the end though, there is still one truth in our so-called post-modern world of non-truths: the Capitalist system we are born, live and die under remains for many of us a total stranger.

A couple years ago this college professor Michael D. Yates (I know what I implied about college professors but this one is ok) wrote a book called Naming the System. It was basically explaining how you could blame all of your problems on Capitalism and still get rich. Well, not quite. But what it was doing was making a valid argument, one that is needed now more than ever. We need to name the system. Call it out. We need to expose Capitalism and all it’s grievous faults as Capitalism. We need to make everyday connections between peoples all over the world though this understanding. Between wage earners here and there. We need to examine what we are all doing here in the name of Capitalism day after day.

And sure you can keep calling it “Empire” or “Imperialism” or “The Man” or “The Shitstem” or just plain old “The System”. But peel through the names and you will find the core of the matter. Capitalism. And I know what you are thinking, just when you thought we had already established Al-Qaeda as the new evil that gets to threaten the entire world this century here comes that damn Karl Marx to jinx our blissful economic lives. Move over Osama here comes Karl.

And so here, at the end of this piece, I will not look to extricate myself from Marx after using his ideas and words to sound radical but not too radical. No. Nor will I end this piece, declaring like some blowhard recently did from an article in The Economist that,

Over the past century and a half capitalism has proved its worth for billions of people. The parts of the world where it has flourished have prospered; the parts where it has shrivelled have suffered.

No, I won’t end with that. Capitalism, may be said to survive on quotes like these because again, there is zero critical analysis of just what happened in those places where it “shrivelled” up. The problem lies somewhere besides Capitalism. Exit the notion that the failures of markets over there in places we shall not speak of have no other culprit but dark skined fools who didn’t believe enough in what they were told to do. Exit U.S. foreign policy. Exit U.S. history since World War I. Exit other people’s realities from the pages of The Economist. Exit Capitalism, again and again.

No, I already believe. Like many of you, I’m a believer. So, you know, I got no beef with Karl Marx. But having said this, I like to think of Marx nowadays like my dear old papá. He’s gotten me this far in life but at some point I will do my own thing. And that’s ok. We will all have to get there in different ways. Just start getting there. Name the system and pass it on.

But I won’t forget you dear old Karl, I mean, Dad. Always respect your elders, and, uh, always s cite your original sources. After all, Karl Marx said it would be like this.

John McCain's Twisted Tax Logic

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:21:00 +0000

10-29-08, 9:18 am

I saw something earlier this week that even brought a chuckle to the CNN news team. A newswomen in Atlanta, who elsewhere openly expressed a clear bias in favor of John McCain, read these words to Joe Biden, 'From each according to his ability to each according to his need,' and then asked Biden if Senator Obama's tax program wasn't Marxism. Biden asked her if she were seriously asking him that and then laughed, and she looked angry and disgruntled.

Actually, given the way the media has dealt with communism, socialism, Marxism, it wasn't so funny. What the McCain campaign is trying to do, as its position grows more desperate, is to convince working-class voters that Republican tax cuts for the rich and the corporations have really been for them. The implicit argument is that giving billions to billionaires is the way working families keep their 'hard earned money,' and that Barack Obama's moderate and modest call for tax cuts for working families directly is 'socialism,' which, in a hard twist of weird logic, would take money away from working families.

As any child in a socialist country today could tell the Republicans, the principle of socialism is 'from each according to his ability to each according to his work' in a predominantly planned, publicly-owned economy. Under capitalism, those who 'hard working' people, work for others who profit from their work by keeping their labor costs as low as possible.

Capitalists confine their 'hard' work to managing their money, their investments, which is the wealth that the working class produces. Furthermore, a whole industry of 'financial planners' exists for them and the upper management of the corporations function as 'organization men' (what capitalist journalists still call 'apparatchiks' when the are dealing with functionaries under socialism) whose personal wealth derives from their service to their CEOs and CFOs, not from 'hard work.'

From each according to his ability to each according to his need is the ideal of Communism, of a future society that can come into existence after a long period of socialist development. In other words, a long period in which the productive forces have developed on the principle of each according to his ability to each according to his work, a period which would have people with special skills and abilities rewarded differentially on how much their labor has benefited the society as a whole, the common good or as the constitution of the US says, the general welfare, not what their stock portfolio is, or what they can sell in a marketplace.

David Gergen, a man I usually don't listen too much since he reminds me of a political bookie (someone who worked for Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton as a political consultant), looked pained on CNN as he listened to this nonsense. Still, he noted that the Democrats hadn't answered the 'charges' too well, reminding CNN's viewers about Theodore Roosevelt's support for progressive taxation not unlike Obama's more reserved tax policy. But Gergen did have a point, which showed that he had retained his faculties after working for Nixon and Reagan, itself something that is pretty impressive.

Socialism as a system, and there are many varieties, has at its center public ownership and public planning for production and distribution of goods and service. Regulation and taxation come into play where there is a private sector, but there is no need to tax productive public property under socialism and no real need to tax personal property (automobiles, homes, anything else) owned for personal use. Wealth is in effect reorganized under socialism, not redistributed, returned to the producers of wealth, labor.

But I don't expect the McCain campaign to understand any of that. They view private property the way socialists view public property, and have not only preached, but much more importantly have practiced enormous redistribution of wealth from the general population of wage and salaries earners to the corporations and the rich, which is why some critics call their policies 'socialism for the rich.'

Chilean Ruling Coalition Reaches Out to the Communist Party

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:17:00 +0000

10-29-08, 9:15 am

Original source:

Chilean presidential hopeful and currently Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) Jose Miguel Insulza admitted that the Chilean ruling coalition could loose next year’s election. But he also proposed closer ties with the Communist Party to impede further vote erosion.

Disappointed with the showing of the coalition in Sunday’s municipal elections Insulza said that “for years I’ve argued that it is very difficult for the opposition to win an election in Chile, because you don’t win a presidential election with 36 percent of the vote, but it is most possible that the ruling Concertación could loose, which is not the same”.

He added he hoped the ruling coalition “has learnt a lesson but at the same time we don’t jump to conclusions.”

Last Sunday, the conservative opposition won the mayoral races in Chile’s main cities, although the coalition managed to keep ahead in Councillors votes.

However Insulza praised the results from the “pact by omission” between the ruling coalition and the Communist party and proposed that the relation should be advanced.

“I think the pact by omission worked and could have worked even better, as was shown in several municipalities” in direct reference to certain towns and counties where the understanding enabled the agreed candidate to win.

In the same line Jose Antonio Viera-Gallo, cabinet secretary for the Michelle Bachelet administration proposed a consensus joint presidential candidate for next year with the Communist party and why not giving them some “technical posts” in government and possibly in a “future cabinet.”

Camilo Escalona, chairman of the Chilean Socialist Party also praised the pact by omission arguing that the “scare campaign launched by right wingers against communism no longer is receptive among the electorate.”

The Chilean communist party has a long tradition in Chilean politics having belonged to ruling coalitions last century in the early seventies under Socialist president Salvador Allende and even before in the late thirties with the Popular Front.

The latest public opinion poll taken before Sunday’s municipal elections showed that former Chilean presidents Ricardo Lagos and Eduardo Frei figure among the leading presidential hopefuls for December 2009 elections among declared militants and followers of the ruling coalition.

The CERC poll based on 1,200 interviews nation wide in early October has Mr. Lagos leading with 23 percent, followed by Mr. Frei, 17 percent; Mr. Insulza, 16 percent and Soledad Alvear, leader of the Christian Democrats with 13 percent.

Compared to three previous similar polls, Mr. Lagos remains ahead, Mr. Insulza stagnant and Ms. Alvear drops from 25 percent. Mr. Frei more than doubles his standing. More over Mr. Frei is ahead 47 percent to Ms Alvear’s 33 percent inside the Christian Democrats.

However the CERC opinion poll also gives opposition conservative Sebastian Piñera as the candidate with most chances of becoming Chile’s next president followed distantly by Lagos with five percent. But when asked more specifically who you would like as the next president, Mr. Pinñera support drops to 37 percent and Lagos to seven percent.

Bush Orders Purge of 200,000 Ohio Voters

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:17:00 +0000

10-28-08, 2:15 pm

Voting rights organizations this week rejected a Bush administration effort to interfere in Ohio's electoral process by ordering a purge of some 200,000 voters from that state's voter rolls. The US Supreme Court earlier this month declared such an effort to purge voters illegal.

In a letter to the Department of Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union described the Bush administration's actions as an 'intrusion' that 'represents partisan politics at its worst.' Purging so many voters on a phony basis just prior to the election 'invites chaos and undermines the integrity of the democratic process,' the letter added.

Last Friday, at the urging of Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner, the White House requested the Justice Department investigate whether 200,000 newly registered Ohio voters must reconfirm their registration before November 4th or be purged, according to the ACLU.

New voter registrations have tended to favor Democratic candidates in Ohio.

With this action, the Bush administration is attempting the to swing the election in Ohio to John McCain by demanding that state match as many as 200,000 voter registration forms to other government databases. If exact matches are not found, that voter registration would be eliminated.

If, for example, a voter used a middle initial on her driver's license but happened to put her full name on the voter registration form, under the Bush voter purge plan she would be a candidate for losing her right to vote. If a licensing bureau employee accidentally misspelled a voter's name when entering it into a government database, that voter could lose their right to vote.

It was for this reason that the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that Ohio could not use such a matching system as the evidence shows that discrepancies are numerous. Studies in Los Angeles County, New York City, Seattle, and Florida in recent election cycles found that between 15 and 30 percent of government databases contain typos and data entry errors that might have disqualified voters under matching schemes. If such a process is used in Ohio, many thousands of lawfully registered voters are likely to lose their right to vote, the court ruled.

Other than partisan politics, the Bush administration's effort to purge Ohio voters has neither a legal basis nor practical one, the ACLU charged. “Despite the lack of any credible evidence of voter fraud, the White House continues to pursue this probe,' the letter to the Justice Department read. 'If this purge goes forward, lawfully registered voters could be removed from the rolls as a result of typos or other innocent discrepancies.'

The ACLU insisted that the Justice Department refuse Bush's demand to purge voters and uphold the right to vote in Ohio.

What Are Polls Hiding?

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:44:00 +0000

10-28-08, 10:42 am

Public opinion polls are deliberately designed to NOT reveal what the American people are really thinking, writes David W. Moore in his recent book The Opinion Makers.

In this book, Moore points out that people at times often hold opinions on some matters that are superficial and at other times view other problems and issues thoughtfully and deeply. Pollsters go out of their way to smooth over this complex reality because media clients want clear cut expressions of opinions.

People are also often unclear about the complexities of the issues they are asked about, so pollsters fill them in order to get a definite answer. The probelm, however, this makes respondents no longer a representative sample. Sometimes pollsters do ask if people have heard about the issue, other times they don't – depending on the issue and the kind of responses they want. 'That's' Moore says, 'a deliberately manipulative tactic that cannot help but undercut pollsters' claims of scientific objectivity.'

When asking for opinions pollsters should always have a question that asks if the respondent knows or cares about the issue. Understanding the level of the public's understanding or knowledge about an issue is just as important as knowing what it thinks and 'suppressing it for commercial or other purposes is simply unacceptable.'

Moore also says a question should be asked about the 'intensity' of the opinion. Pollsters should also stop supplying information to the respondents as that makes the poll 'hypothetical' rather than an actual reflection of what people are thinking.

The following rule should be applied. Any poll that does not reveal that at least 20 percent of the respondents are 'disengaged' has probably been manipulated. The poll 'should be viewed with deep suspicion.'

Another thing to be wary of, according to Moore, is a device called the 'national electorate.' During primary season most polls take a nationwide survey and try to predict the primaries on that basis. This is why they are so often off course. It is too expensive to take state by state polls so the cheaper, and less accurate, 'national electorate' is polled instead. If it can't be gotten rid of then at least, after asking 'If the election were held today who would you vote for?' add a question about the degree of support for the respondent's choice – i.e., definitely would vote for, leaning towards but might change, have not really decided, etc.

In a section of the book called 'Fuzzy Opinion' we learn that wording can determine the outcome of a poll. For example, if you ask a question about the government's wanting to ban some action and use the term 'not allow' instead of 'forbid' more people will say they agree with the government. More people will agree with programs labeled as 'assistance to the poor' that if the term 'welfare' is used. More people will support 'gay and lesbian relations' than 'homosexual relations.' So pollsters know how to get the results they want once they figure which buzz words to use or to avoid.

Even the order of the questions can make a poll fuzzy. Given a choice between two answers most people choose the second to the first. The order of questions is also important with multiple questions. Moore gives the example of Bill Clinton getting a better rating when he was listed after Al Gore rather than before.

Moore concludes that 'any measure of public opinion is at best a rough approximation of what people are thinking.' The margin of error is only one of many ways polls can be misleading. He ends his book by saying the polls could be a better reflection of reality if they would only honestly try to measure the 'extent of public disengagement' and not publish 'false results to conceal public ignorance and apathy.' However, there is no evidence that any of the major media polls are willing to do this. He hopes that their many contradictions will eventually shame them into being more honest with the public. As of now, they are doing a disservice to the democratic process.

--Thomass Riggins is associate editor of Political Affairs.

McCain Recycles Bush's Economic Policies

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:40:00 +0000

10-28-08, 10:38 am

John McCain's desperation took a few big rhetorical leaps this week as he tried to portray himself as just another anti-Bush candidate. McCain spoke in Cleveland, which has been especially victimized by 30 years of Reagan-Bush policies, from the de-industrialization, job loss, anti-public sector cutbacks. There, McCain claimed that both he and Barack Obama 'disagreed' with George W. Bush, but while Obama thought that 'taxes were too low,' he thought that 'spending was too high.'

Spending for what? Public sector jobs programs that would raise the income of Cleveland's citizens along with the citizens of other industrial and 'former' industrial cities? Spending for interest payments on a federal debt that has increased from $1 trillion to over $10 trillion in the last 28 years. (It should be mentioned that Clinton, with all of his other flaws, was the only president in that time period who really did get the deficit under control). Spending on for the military which has increase nearly five times in that period and is today nearly double what in 1991 with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union?

McCain didn't say. Instead he said that 'I have been through tough times like this before, and the American people can trust me, based on my record and results, to take strong action to end this crisis, restore jobs, and bring security to Americans. I will never be the one who sits on the sidelines and waits for the economy to get better.'

McCain's 'economic plan' is almost beside the point. All one can say is that it has two parts, neither of which are especially in the interest of working families, and both of which are unshockingly identical to Bush's economic polices. First, he has proposed to further bail out banks by buying up bad mortgage paper at face value. How this will be done and paid for are unclear. The devil 'is in the details,' the fine print, which predatory politicians like McCain are no more willing to discuss than the predatory mortgage lenders. Second, he has proposed 'incentives' to get people to save more and more tax cuts for large corporations. It's classic Bush.

McCain shouldn't be taken seriously in any way. He has never been through tough economic times like this. He was born into a distinguished naval officer family and had all the benefits and welfare state security that the military brings. He has no record of producing real results on much of anything during his years in Congress, except one of fighting with both friends and foes, endless grandstanding as a foe of pork barrel politics, meaningless legislation to deal with campaign financing, and that is it.

McCain, over the decades, has more or less followed the Republican politicians who have gotten 'results' in Congress over the last generation, 'results' that have been disastrous for the American people and the people of the world.

The truth is that McCain doesn't understand what a modern military leader is, much less the head of a government. He has never shown the capacity to delegate authority, take advice, learn, go beyond his overweening personal ambition and the resentments which have always followed from his failure to achieve the military and later political prizes that he wanted. Now he has the 'least valuable' Republican political nomination since 1964, a nomination that he has further devalued by his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Instead of posturing as if he knows something about the economy, McCain might have a joint TV appearance with Palin and replay a scene of Richard Nixon's 1952 'Checkers speech,' drop the military toughness image and portray himself as a 'hard working' middle-class man who will fight for 'America' and the 'middle class' against the 'crooks' on Wall Street and the 'Communists' aka 'socialists' aka 'Marxists' aka 'redistributors of wealth.' He might even point to Palin ala Nixon and refer to her 'good Republican cloth coat' – minus $149,775 in wardrobe expenditures. Palin might then mention a little cocker spaniel she saved from a Polar Bear whom liberals were trying to put on the endangered species list and together they would try to ride a wave of anti-Wall Street, anti-Communist/Socialist and anti-Polar Bear hysteria in to the White House. Who knows? It is, given the level of McCain's arguments, as likely to work for him as anything else.

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.

Why is a Philosophy of the Natural Sciences Needed?

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:37:00 +0000

My answer to the question “Why is a philosophy of the natural sciences needed?” will take the form of several distinct components. Before enumerating them, I should point out that no separate Marxist philosophy of the natural sciences exists distinct from dialectical and historical materialism. Marxist philosophy of the natural sciences is the methodological application of dialectical and historical materialism to investigations in the various natural sciences.

1. The logic of the Marxist analysis of social development is based on the philosophical system of dialectical and historical materialism. Dialectical and historical materialism together constitute a unitary philosophical system. Comprehensive philosophical systems, or worldviews, are always universal in character, embracing the spheres of nature, society, and thought. In asserting the validity of their philosophical system, Marx and Engels felt it necessary to demonstrate that dialectical and historical materialism provide the universal logical basis for understanding processes of change in the spheres of nature and society as well as in the thought processes by which this understanding comes about. Engels stressed this in his work on the dialectics of nature when he wrote: “The fact that our subjective thought and the objective world are subject to the same laws, and, hence, too, that in the final analysis they cannot contradict each other in their results, but must coincide, governs absolutely our whole theoretical thought. It is the unconscious and unconditional premise for theoretical thought” (Engels 1987, 544).

2. By the 1870s, Marx and Engels had essentially established the law-governed revolutionary transformative character of the process leading from capitalism to socialism. They had laid the theoretical basis for a revolutionary political movement that would be needed in this process and participated actively in its formation. Already in 1844, Marx put forth the view: “The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses” (1975, 182). An ideologically strong revolutionary political movement is needed to bring this material force into being. The material character of this movement was further elaborated by Lenin in outlining the organizational character of the party of a new type in What is to be Done? The reformist undermining of the thesis that a revolutionary movement is necessary was based on the mechanistic projection that the operation of dialectics of nature would inevitably bring about the self-destruction of capitalism, making unnecessary a class struggle oriented toward socialism. Therefore, according to Bernstein, and later Kautsky and Hilferding, the task of socialists was to work for reforms within the capitalist system (Azad 2005, 504). By ignoring the necessity of ideological struggle for the cause of socialism, they effectively discarded historical and dialectical materialism and turned dialectics of nature into a mechanistic determinism. But the transition from capitalism to socialism differs from previous societal transformations in that the process can only be brought about with conscious understanding of its nature and necessity. Life under the material conditions of existence under capitalism serves as the source for acquisition of this consciousness among the masses, but this acquisition cannot occur spontaneously through economic struggles. The consciousness must be imparted to them by the party that is guided by historical and dialectical materialism.

3. The Hegelian Marxists, such as Lukács, Korsch, and Gramsci, argued that dialectics is not applicable to nature and that in fact its application to nature is the source of the mechanistic determinism that led to reformism (Azad 2005, 307, drawing on Callinicos 1976, 70). In making this argument, they also rejected the Leninist reflection theory of knowledge as the basis for the Marxist-Leninist concept of the relationship between the two fundamental philosophical categories, matter and ideas. The understanding of this relationship lies at the heart of the Marxist concept of the scientific method. The idealist character of this view led to giving overriding priority to the development of a socialist consciousness while paying inadequate attention to strengthening the material organizational basis of the class struggle. Despite the common idealist character of their philosophies, Lukács, Korsch, and Gramsci differed considerably in their political orientation. Although Gramsci’s philosophical inclinations leaned toward idealism, he was in fact a Leninist in politics (Gedő 1993, 15, citing Argeri 1976, 141).

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the effectively reformist attempt to deny the applicability of dialectics to nature took the additional form of separating Marx from both Engels and Lenin. Marx was characterized affectionately as a humanist, while Engels and Lenin were characterized as crass materialists. Supporters of this view (for example, the well-known Israeli political scientist Shlomo Avineri) assert unabashedly that Marx never accepted the applicability of dialectics to nature, and that we have only Engels’s word for his doing so. Such assertions are made in spite of the fact that Avineri and others of that school were well aware of Marx’s letter to Kugelman in which he wrote that “the dialectical method” is “the method of dealing with matter” (27 June 1870, 528). Actually it was not necessary, of course, for Marx to state explicitly (although clearly he did) that dialectics applies to the sphere of nature. Hegel had already spelled this out in his works, as did Marx himself in Capital and elsewhere. Underlying the attempt to deny the applicability of dialectics to nature is a strong anti-Communism that dissociates itself from any political, organizational forms of class struggle. Reassertion of the integrity of historical and dialectical materialism and its applicability to nature, society, and thought strengthens the theoretical basis for engaging in day-to-day organized political struggle essential for opening up space for the development of a socialist consciousness.

4. One of the principal reasons for attention to dialectical materialism by natural scientists is the clarity it brings to understanding processes of change in all the natural sciences. I found it an invaluable tool both in my teaching of physics and my research on the conceptual foundations of physics. In most of the twentieth century, the dominant philosophy of science was logical positivism, which gave birth to the concept that basic properties in any science have to be defined by operational definitions. The leading textbook of introductory physics at US universities in the 1970s was Fundamentals of Physics by David Halliday and Robert Resnick. In the 1974 edition, we read: “One view is that the definition of a physical quantity has been given when the procedures for measuring that quantity are specified. This is called the operational point of view because the definition is, at root, a set of laboratory operations leading to a number with a unit” (1). Although this was presented as “one view,” no other view was presented. Another 1970s textbook, Physics, by Chris Zafiratos, in discussing units of time, gives an operational definition of the second by the swings of a simple pendulum. It continues, “In this manner the romantic, philosophic question, ‘What is time?’ is ignored in favor of a definition so that we can get on with the study of motion” (1976, 3–4). As Lenin pointed out, however, fundamental properties cannot be defined, because if a property is fundamental, there is nothing more fundamental with which to define it (1962, 146). In the dialectical-materialist view, fundamental properties in a given field are akin to philosophical categories, the building blocks of logical thought. The meaning of fundamental properties is determined by the interrelationships among them as expressed through the laws of the particular scientific field invoking them. In reality, operational definitions in physics are not definitions at all, but procedures for standardizing the units in which they are measured. Largely as a result of the Marxist critique of logical positivism, operational definitions began to fade away from physics textbooks, as did logical positivism itself.

Another change in the direction of the Marxist dialectical understanding is the change in the textbook statements about the subject matter of physics – from characterizing it as the study of invariances (that is, the unchanging character) of matter to the increasingly current characterization as the study of changes in the physical world.

Prior to the 1920s, the concept of causality in physics was based on the principle that a single cause produces a single effect. With the emergence of quantum physics in the 1920s, this principle was thrown into confusion because it turned out that a single cause could produce a variety of effects. The outcome of a precisely established experimental process could not be predicted uniquely, but only statistically. This seemed to invalidate the philosophical principle of determinism. Marxist physicists – Paul Langevin in France, Vladimir Fock in the Soviet Union, and Mituo Taketani in Japan – showed that a materialist concept of determinism was not locked into what was essentially the mechanistic principle that a single cause produces a single effect. They demonstrated that acceptance of statistical laws as fundamental laws of physics is still an expression of determinism consistent with a materialist outlook (for details, see Freire 1995, and Hörz et al. 1980, 83–114).

In the 1920s, the famous Marxist biochemist Joseph Needham introduced in biology the philosophical and methodological concept that is designated today as levels of organization and integration of matter. For example, in physics we now have fields of specialization called elementary particle physics, nuclear physics, atomic physics, molecular physics, solid-state physics, etc. In the dialectical-materialist view, each level of organization and integration of matter represents a qualitative transformation from the level below it. Each level requires study for its own laws of behavior; this is an understanding quite opposite to the mechanistic reductionism that sought to explain the sciences by seeking the simplest parts of a physical system and basing its laws on them. The Marxist critique of racist theories of intelligence argues that attempts to factor out the cultural component of intelligence from the genetic component represent an incompatible mixing of the genetic level of the human being with the social level.

A dialectical-materialist content is reflected in any progress scientists make in moving the theory of a natural science forward, whether or not all scientists are conscious of it. A notable example of this is in Isaac Newton’s concept of inertial mass. Newton’s mechanics have long been considered the principal source of mechanistic thought. Yet he quantifies the (inertial) mass of a physical body by asserting its proportionality to the inertial resistance to a change in motion in the presence of an external force. In this way, he establishes the meaning of (inertial) mass by relating it to the interaction of two opposing forces. In his reasoning, he uses the Aristotelian dialectic of the realization of the actual from the potential by asserting that this inertial resistance (which he called “vis insita, or innate force of matter”) “only exerts this force when another force, impressed upon it, endeavors to change its condition” (Newton 1934, 1:2; for a more detailed discussion, see Marquit 1990).

5. Philosophy of the natural sciences is also needed because of the interconnection between the natural sciences and societal development. This interconnection exists, of course, whether or not natural scientists concern themselves with it. The problem is that natural scientists, in their education and work, tend to ignore this interconnection and focus intensely and narrowly on their particular fields of theory and practice, oblivious to the consequences of their work on other fields. Consider, for example, the Green Revolution, a development in agricultural technology that increased agricultural production in many developing countries. Its application, however, also contributed to the growth of surplus rural populations that migrated to cities with no plan to absorb them, resulting in huge slums.

One can cite numerous scientific and technological advances that when introduced into the economy subsequently endangered human life – most notably through the destruction of the physical environment. In particular, inadequately tested new materials and chemicals have been introduced with toxic properties causing tragic results. How does this come about?

Initial answers to this question may be to fault regulatory agencies and to cite the absence of regulatory legislation that would require adequate testing before the products are approved for use. While regulatory legislation requiring adequate testing is an absolute necessity, the initiative for signaling such testing should be built into the scientific methodology employed by the scientists involved in the development. But this is not done. A major reason for this disastrous omission is that educational and research institutions in most cases relegate philosophy to the social sciences, and in doing so isolate philosophy in a separate department. Philosophical research in the natural sciences is then perceived as a diversion from actual sciences. Instead, philosophy should be integrated into the individual disciplines of the social and natural sciences.

The failure to integrate philosophy into each discipline deprives natural scientists of intimate contact with the conceptual foundations of their sciences. They are left ignorant of understanding the broad scope of the interconnections of their fields with other fields unless they happen to self-educated in the philosophical literature concerning their fields as well as in philosophy in general.

The problem here is that when research in philosophy of physics is carried out by philosophers in a philosophy department, the tendency is to view the results of such research as a contribution to philosophy. Benefits of this research are effectively confined to other philosophers, who are not those doing the science. In contrast, when a physicist deals with philosophical problems of physics, it is not in order to make a contribution to philosophy, but rather to apply philosophical knowledge to the understanding of physics. The narrowness that is inevitably associated with mechanistic applications of science and technology can only be overcome by incorporating awareness of the dialectical interconnections among the sciences into the education and work of natural scientists.

Conclusion

Dialectical and historical materialism came into being as a philosophical system because Marx and Engels needed it to uncover the evolutionary process guiding societal transition from capitalism to communism. With this tool, they were able to unravel the political economy of capitalist production, especially the source of capitalist profit; and to establish the interconnection between the material conditions of life and the consciousness that arises from these conditions. They recognized that imparting this knowledge to the working class and its allies would give them an indispensable weapon: the understanding that the revolutionary transformation from capitalism to socialism is conditioned on the development of an ideologically alert mass movement aware of its historical mission. Their studies of the natural sciences enabled them to show how the development of the material forces of production (natural resources, tools, and labor), integrated with empirical and scientific knowledge about them, lies at the heart of societal change.

The spheres of nature, society, and thought all enter into Marx and Engels’s theoretical analyses. In laying the foundations of dialectical and historical materialism, Marx and Engels gave natural scientists, as well as social scientists, a most valuable methodological tool for research in the individual disciplines and demonstrated the danger of ignoring interconnections among the various fields of the natural and social sciences.

--Erwin Marquit is Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Minnesota, and a contributing editor of Political Affairs. This paper was presented in abbreviated form at Communist University of Britain 2008, Croydon, London, 18 October 2008.

REFERENCE LIST

Azad, Bahman. 2005. “The Scientific Basis of the Vanguard Party of the Proletariat.” Nature, Society, and Thought 18, no. 4:303–33.

Callinicos, Alex. 1976. Althusser’s Marxism. London: Pluto Press.

Colletti, Lucio. 1972. From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and Society. London: New Left Books.

Engels, Frederick. 1987. Dialectics of Nature. In vol. 25 of Collected Works, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 311–588. New York: International Publishers.

Freire, Olival Jr. 1995. “Dialectical Materialism and the Quantum Controversy: The Viewpoints of Fock, Langevin, and Taketani.” Nature, Society, and Thought 8, no. 3:309–25

Gedz, András. 1993. “Gramsci’s Path through the Tension between ‘Absolute Historicism’ and Materialist Dialectics: Marxism as Historical Philosophy.” Nature, Society, and Thought 6, no. 1:7–40.

Halliday, David, and Robert Resnick. 1974. Fundamentals of Physics. Revised printing. New York: Wiley.

Hörz, Herbert et al. 1980. Philosophical Problems in Physical Science. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press.

Lenin, V. I. 1962. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Vol. 14 of Collected Works. Reprint 1972. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Marquit, Erwin. 1990. “A Plea for a Correct Translation of Newton's Law of Inertia.” American Journal of Physics 57 (September): 867–70.

Marx, Karl. 1975. “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law.” In vol. 3 of Collected Works, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 3–129. New York: International Publishers.

———. 1988. Letter to Kugelman, 27 June 1870. In vol. 43 of Collected Works, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 527–28. New York: International Publishers.

Newton, Isaac. 1934. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. 2 vols. Translated by Andrew Motte, revised translation by Florian Cajori. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1934.

Zafiratos, Chris. 1976. Physics. New York: Wiley.

Labor Takes to the Airwaves to Protect Voting Rights

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:36:00 +0000

10-27-08, 11:32 am

Aimed at protecting the voting rights of minority voters, the AFL-CIO last week launched a special voters' rights protection program accompanied by a series of radio ads in several major cities across the country.

The special voting rights protection program will focus on several battleground states: Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, and Florida. But it will also include cities in Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. The goal is to provide resources and educational materials to Latino and African American voters about their voting rights in order to prevent violations on Election Day, Nov. 4th.

The effort will be led by local labor leaders and unions in coalition with faith-based groups, civil rights organizations, civil liberties and civil rights attorneys, and community groups.

As part of the program, the AFL-CIO created Spanish-language radio advertising, starring actor Edward James Olmos, which details voter protections issues. In addition the labor federation has published a bi-lingual flier called a 'Voter Bill of Rights' that highlights the voting laws and requirements of specific states. The bilingual fliers are being distributed to 20,000 voters in Nevada and New Mexico.

In addition, AFL-CIO affiliate, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), has launched a 'Tu voz es mi voz' (your voice is my voice) campaign aimed at reaching thousands of Latino voters prior to the election.

As part of this campaign, union members will be canvassing in cities with significant Latino populations who may be able to impact the election's outcome. Canvassers will be distributing voter information in Grand Rapids and Detroit, Michigan, Philadelphia and Allentown, Pennsylvania, and cities in Northern Virginia.

Town hall meetings on voter rights are scheduled for several communities in central Florida. In addition bi-lingual radio ads are set to air in cities in Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as 14 other key media markets across the country.

The labor federation is also recruiting volunteer nonpartisan poll monitors to help address voting problems such as long lines, the misuse of provisional ballots, and improper demands for voter identification.

'It's time to turn around America, and we will start by protecting our right to vote and making sure that every single vote is counted,' said AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, in a press statement. 'Many Hispanics will be first time voters in this election, making them especially vulnerable to voter intimidation and misinformation, which is why we are making a special effort to reach out and educate them.'

Radio ads with similar messages about voting rights and designed to reach African American voters will be aired in key cities such as Detroit, St, Louis, Philadelphia, Jackson, Mississippi, Toledo, Ohio among others. These ads will feature hip-hop artist Ludacris and TV's Judge Mathis.

'The overall objective of our voter protection campaign is to have the nation's citizens successfully get to the polls, cast ballots, and have their ballots counted,' said American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) National Vice President for Women and Fair Practices Andrea E. Brooks. 'Americans cannot continue to have their ability to participate in the democratic process taken away from them.'

McCain's Health Plan is 'Worse for Women'

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:50:00 +0000

10-27-08, 9:47 am

John McCain's health care proposal would endanger women's access to health care coverage and would fail to fully cover women's health needs, a joint study by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund revealed last week.

The study, titled 'Worse for Women,' focused on two key aspects of McCain's proposals. By eliminating tax incentives for employment-based health care coverage and taxing health benefits, McCain's plan undermines the employment-based system of health benefits, forcing women and their families to pay thousands more for health insurance.

According to the study, 59 million women and their families who depend on getting health care benefits through their jobs risk losing those benefits under McCain's plan. (This portion of the analysis also suggested that in addition to 59 million women, 101 million additional Americans also face losing their coverage if McCain is elected.)

In addition to this sweeping impact on working families, the study also found that McCain's plan to deregulate the health insurance industry, along the lines of the banking industry, would directly harm women.

McCain's deregulation proposal would allow insurance companies to avoid current state requirements to cover specific health care services, including screenings for cervical cancer and HPV, HPV vaccinations, contraceptives, maternity care, and breast reconstruction. In addition, McCain's deregulation scheme puts at risk coverage for access to gynecologists, breast cancer screenings, sexually transmitted diseases screenings, and coverage for pre-existing conditions, including pregnancy.

As many as 30 million women with pre-existing conditions could be adversely impacted, the study found.

'Rather than giving women more control over their health care decisions, as Sen. McCain promises to do, his health plan would take away women’s ability to access critical health care services,' the report noted.

In a statement, Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said, “What McCain has proposed is a radical health care plan that would deregulate the health care industry, let insurance companies deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, even pregnancy, impose a health care tax, would not guarantee coverage of cancer screenings, and would potentially leave millions of women who receive employer-based health insurance at risk of losing their coverage.”

The Center for American Progress Action Fund, a co-author of the study, found that the McCain health care tax would force many families to more for insurance. “For most taxpayers, McCain’s tax credit quickly becomes a tax increase,' the organization's spokespersons concluded. 'The value of the tax credit quickly falls behind rising health care costs, meaning most households with employer coverage today would soon see a tax increase. Families earning $40,000, for example, would receive a small tax cut in 2009, but by 2018 they will be paying more than $2,800 more a year in taxes.” In addition, soaring costs in health care adversely impact women more than men. The Guttmacher Institute reports that women of childbearing age spend 68 percent more in out-of-pocket health care costs than men, in part because of reproductive health-related supplies and services.

The conclusions found in the report prompted the Planned Parenthood Action Fund this week to launch a new TV ad in the battleground state of Virginia, highlighting some of these finding.

See the ad here:

Island of Lead-tainted Toys

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:39:00 +0000

10-27-08, 9:37 am

EarthTalk From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: There has been a lot of news about lead-tainted children’s toys being recalled. Where are these toys ending up and are they creating pollution problems there? -- Michael O’Laughlin, Tigard, OR

The biggest problem with the recall of millions of lead-tainted toys over the last few years has been getting shops and consumers to comply. According to Mattel—which has issued dozens of recalls in recent years, including some 2.2 million Chinese-made toys contaminated with lead paint—historically only about six percent of recalled toys are returned. For those that do come home to roost, Mattel sells or reuses the zinc and some of the resins they contain, and then recycles as many of the other components as possible, off-loading the lead to companies that specialize in the safe disposal of hazardous materials.

But what becomes of the 94 percent or so of the recalled lead-tainted toys that don’t make it back to Mattel? Many of them no doubt have found a comfortable home with a child somewhere long before word of the recall—ignored or missed by parents—got out. Of the remaining toys, some of those that were recalled in the summer of 2007 ended up on auction website like eBay and business-to-business sites like Made-in-China.com—and then eventually into the hands of unwitting consumers, many of them overseas.

Unfortunately, there is still no federal law or regulation against reselling recalled toys, although some members of Congress are trying to change that. For its part, eBay has agreed to try to keep recalled products off its auction website, but enforcement can be a challenge.

The fact that these toys got out there for sale in the first place is the real shame, as research has shown that kids who have been exposed regularly to lead or lead paint have lower IQs and may experience learning disabilities as well as behavioral problems.

The good news might be that recalls are getting more exposure than ever, with better results. Illinois-based RC2 Corporation has already gotten back upwards of 70 percent of the 1.5 million lead-tainted Thomas & Friends wooden railway toys it recalled just last year. While there is still no nationally accepted procedure governing the disposal or recycling of such items, individual companies are bound by the laws of their respective states regarding disposal of the harmful materials. Those who worry about lead leaching out of landfills and into groundwater and soils would like the see the federal government mandate strict safety rules for dealing with lead and other hazardous materials.

Consumers unsure about whether a particular toy or other item has been part of a recall should check online at the “Recalls and Product Safety” section of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website. If a given product has been recalled, you can probably return it to the store where you bought it and let them deal with the hassle of getting it to the manufacturer. Or if you know an item was recalled for hazardous materials, you can drop it off at your local municipal hazardous waste collection facility. The website Earth911 provides a comprehensive national database of such facilities coast-to-coast.

CONTACTS: Mattel Product Recalls, service.mattel.com/us/recall.asp; RC2 Recall Information, recalls.rc2.com; U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, www.cpsc.gov; Earth911, www.earth911.org.

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

Troy Davis Gets Third Stay of Execution

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:34:00 +0000

10-27-08, 9:32 am

Original source: The Atlanta Progressive News
(APN) ATLANTA - A federal appeals court in Atlanta stayed the execution of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis just days before his latest scheduled execution. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals granted Troy Anthony Davis a stay Friday afternoon, October 24, 2008, after his attorneys asked the court to do so on Wednesday, October 22. He had been scheduled for execution for Monday, October 27, 2008 and local organizations have been holding rallies and other events in recent days. This is the second time in one month and the third time in 16 months that Davis has been granted a reprieve. 'Upon our thorough review of the record, we conclude that Davis has met the burden for a provisional stay of execution,' the court ruling handed down by Judges Joel Dubina, Rosemary Barket, and Stanley Marcus said. 'It's not an appeal yet. It's a request for more litigation. In order to file [a separate appeal], they have to ask for permission,' Sara Totonchi, Chair of Georgians For Alternatives to the Death Penalty (GFADP), told Atlanta Progressive News. Permission for a new round of appeals is required under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper reported. In their court filing Wednesday, attorneys argued that Davis is innocent and that his execution would violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The last case 'wasn't based on actual innocence,' Totonchi said. 'It was asking for a new trial based on the recantations. Sure, the recantations get at the innocence issue, but they are not innocence in themselves,' Totonchi said. 'There's always another card that death penalty lawyers have to pull out. Some of his older lawyers got creative with this one,' Totonchi said. Davis, who was set to die for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail, had appeared to exhaust all his legal avenues after the Supreme Court of the US announced October 14, 2008, that it would not take up his appeal. That court issued a stay of execution September 23, 2008, just two hours before his last scheduled execution. Since Davis's 1991 conviction, seven of nine eyewitnesses used by the prosecution have changed or recanted their testimony in sworn affidavits. Attorneys for Davis argue that these recantations, coupled with the fact the prosecution never produced a murder weapon or physical evidence linking Davis to the crime, show there is too much doubt to carry out an execution. Davis has gone through a grueling series of appeals, trying desperately to get any court to hear new evidence and possibly grant a new hearing or trial. Friday's decision provides a glimmer of hope. 'It's a first step toward what we've been asking for for a decade, which is getting our evidence heard before a judge,' Jason Ewart, lead attorney for Davis, told Atlanta Progressive News. The court said Friday the stay is conditional and Davis's attorneys must now present facts that show he can meet the 'stringent requirements' necessary to move forward with another round of appeals, according to the decision. Attorneys have 15 days to file a brief on their arguments with the Eleventh Circuit. After the court receives that brief, the Georgia attorney general's office will have 10 days to file their response. Martina Correia, Davis's sister, said she was doing an interview when she received the news. 'It's like beyond words,' Correia told APN. 'It was just amazing because all I could do was think of my brother who has faced death three times. It has to be a traumatic experience. I'm ecstatic and I'm praying that this gives us time.' Activists supporting Davis reacted with joy over Friday's decision. 'Amnesty International is heartened to learn of today's stay of execution from the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,' Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), said in a statement. 'Until this point, the compelling issues in this case have been virtually ignored, leaving Georgia vulnerable to the possibility of killing an innocent man. The Court must be commended for serving as the fail safe for justice.'

Supporters turned out Friday morning in driving rain to participate in a mock funeral procession, marching to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles office with a casket filled with 140,000 petitions asking for clemency for Davis. The parole board granted Davis a stay in July 2007 just 24 hours before his first scheduled execution. After hearing arguments from both sides on September 12, 2008, the Board denied clemency for Davis. By that time, Davis's first round of appeals had been exhausted except for the Supreme Court of the US. The crowd then delivered two letters signed by clergy from across Georgia and around the world to Gov. Sonny Perdue's office. Totonchi said it was there activists heard the news. 'We are elated to hear that Troy Davis has yet another stay,' she told Atlanta Progressive News. 'We're grateful the court stepped in and stopped what would have been a travesty of justice.' Groups like AIUSA and GFADP have helped bring international attention to the case. Noted figures such as Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev. Al Sharpton, and former President Jimmy Carter have all asked for clemency for Davis. The European Union issued a statement October 22, 2008, denouncing Davis's scheduled execution. Correia told APN she received a phone call Friday from the French ambassador from the European Union expressing support for her brother. Thousands gathered across the United States and around the world Thursday, October 23, 2008, for an international day of solidarity. Hundreds gathered at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta Thursday night. 'We won't allow you to take Troy Davis without a fight,' Ed DuBose, Chair of the Georgia conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said at the rally. 'How in God's name, when there is so much doubt, can you put a man to death?' Cox asked Thursday. 'What happened to Officer MacPhail was terribly wrong - we hate it. We do not honor Officer MacPhail by executing a man who is possibly innocent.' --Jonathan Springston, Senior Staff Writer, is reachable at jonathan@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

India’s Moon Mission

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:30:00 +0000

10-27-08, 9:28 am

Original source: People's Democracy

Despite heavy rain over several previous days, the skies cleared sufficiently early Wednesday (October 22) morning over Sriharikota to enable a textbook launch of India’s historic and first mission to the Moon. At the time of going to press, the Chandrayaan-1 satellite was in orbit around Earth awaiting a series of sling shots that would take it to its destination orbit around the Moon, after which the mission’s scientific studies would start.

Even though many crucial hurdles remain to be crossed, the successful launch itself has been greeted with euphoria in India and significant notice abroad. Chandrayaan (“vehicle to the moon” in Sanskrit) has been widely hailed as showcasing India’s growing and impressive capabilities in space technologies and as a welcome addition to the pool of scientific knowledge about the moon and, indirectly, about the Earth and the wider solar system. But it has also received some criticism, chiefly that such missions yield little tangible benefit, that developing countries like India can ill afford such esoteric experiments and that the considerable sums of money spent of them are incongruous in a nation still plagued by chronic poverty.

This article takes a close look at the goals and tools of the mission, its significance for India both in science and technology and in a broader strategic sense, and also examines the issues raised by critiques of this mission which may also apply to space exploration in general.

Chandrayaan in context

The Mission itself is certainly not pathbreaking within the overall context of international space exploration. Chandrayaan may be India’s first mission to the Moon, but there have been as many as 68 others.

The former USSR conducted the first moon mission on Jan 2, 1959, followed swiftly by the US in March the same year. Japan broke the superpower duopoly in January 1990 by sending a spacecraft to orbit the moon, but with mixed results, followed by the successful Kaguya launch in 2006. The European Space Agency (ESA) launched a lunar probe in September 2003 and China sent its spacecraft Chang-e 1 to orbit the Moon in 2007. India is therefore the sixth nation (counting the EU as one entity) to demonstrate its capability to reach the Moon and, at least nascently, beyond.

After the flurry of unmanned Moon Missions in the 60s, and the dramatic manned missions by the US starting in 1969, interest in the Moon waned, with no lunar missions for almost 15 years during the 80s and 90s. Of late, though, there has been a sharp revival in lunar missions, prompted partly by the arrival of new players in the space, and perhaps more so, by the availability of improved technologies with a promise of richer findings. The USA has announced a $100 billion programme to return to the Moon by 2018, with all-new launcher and lander, the Moon being used here to test technologies for an extensive Mars mission.

So the question is, is India merely reinventing the wheel in a “me too” mission?

Chandrayaan basics

The Indian Moon Mission, Chandrayaan, was approved by the government in November 2003 on the basis of a proposal by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) developed over several years of spade work and peer review. Whereas India has launched many a rocket and placed several satellites in orbit around Earth, Chandrayaan is India’s first mission out of the near-Earth environment into deep space, a term nominally used to describe space beyond 100,000 km from Earth. In that sense alone, the Mission marks a significant scaling-up of India’s space programme and of technologies in several fields.

Chandrayaan-1 was launched by an upgraded version of ISRO's work horse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) with more powerful rockets and more propellant. This was the 14th PSLV launch, with only one failure, and a total of 29 satellites have been put into a variety of Earth orbits by them. The PSLV launch of the Chandrayaan, relatively heavy at 1,304 kg, and its accurate placement in transfer orbit, has solidified ISRO’s reputations as a reliable and cost-effective launch service provider, about which more later.

Perhaps the most significant technological up-scaling of India’s space capabilities under Chandrayaan has been the setting up of the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) consisting of an 18-m and a 32-m antenna at a new campus in Byalalu near Bengaluru. Whereas existing tracking stations are being upgraded to support the mission during the launch and early Earth Transfer Orbits up to a range of about 100,000 km, the new antennae will perform the tracking and control functions, and real-time downloading of information from the scientific instruments over the much greater distances of over 400,000 km involved in the lunar mission. More importantly, while the 18-m antenna is tailored specifically for Chandrayaan-1 mission, the state-of-art 32-m antenna can also support other planetary missions, for instance to Mars.

Mission and Payloads

So far only the first steps of the Mission have been covered. Chandrayaan was placed in its first orbit around Earth within about 18 minutes from launch and then into a highly elliptical orbit 22,858 km away from Earth at its longest (apogee) and 247 km away at its nearest (perigee). At suitable times, and after sufficient momentum has been gathered, the spacecraft’s motors would undertake a series of “sling-shot” firings to lift the craft to higher and more extremely elliptical orbits, the last with apogee at 386,194 km bringing it almost to the moon (see figure).

At around 200,000 km from Earth, the satellite will begin to experience significant pull from the Moon’s gravity, increasing as the craft gets closer to the Moon. At roughly 60,000 km from the Moon, the craft would have reached what is called Lagrange Point No.1 when it is ready for “capture” by Moon’s gravity. At this point, the craft is slowed down, allowed to be captured by the Moon, and its orbit further lowered to its ultimate intended 100 km circular orbit around the Moon where it will stay for two years.

Following this, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) would be ejected from Chandrayaan to crash onto the Moon’s surface, conducting various observations mostly on the way down but also after impact. Contrary to a lot of chatter in the media about “planting the Indian flag”, the MIP, having crashed, would be in no position to do this, but has been painted with the Indian tricolor to symbolically register India’s arrival on the Moon.

Chandrayaan carries 11 payloads, five Indian and six from different international partners, to carry out various tasks together contributing to the main scientific objectives of the Mission, namely to prepare a three-dimensional atlas of the Moon covering both the bright and dark sides and to conduct detailed studies on the distribution of various important chemicals and minerals, on the existence and availability of water ice (so called to distinguish it from other frozen liquids) and others while also seeking to develop and test different instruments.

Images and information on the composition of the very thin lunar atmosphere and of the fine dust thrown up by the landing impact would be sent back by the MIP throughout its descent and landing, and are expected to be useful in planning future missions especially soft landings. The spacecraft’s Terrain Mapping Camera would send back three-dimensional images of the lunar surface with high spatial and altitude resolution of 10 metres or lower. All earlier moon missions, including the US and Soviet manned and unmanned lunar missions, have together only looked at a relatively small area of the Moon’s surface, mostly on the bright side, so Chandrayaan’s 3-D atlas of the Moon will be a major new contribution.

The other Indian payloads include a High Spectral Imager (HySI) which will gather and transmit high-resolution mineralogical data of the lunar surface and also about the Moon’s lower crust by looking in craters at material that could have been brought up by crashing meteorites. A Lunar Ranger Laser Instrument (LRLI) will study the Moon’s topography and especially its gravity field about which very little is known, using lasers rarely used on the Moon. Adding significant value to the data, a High-Energy X-Ray (HEX) Spectrometer will conduct so far the highest resolution X-ray studies whose main aim is to examine the possibility of water having traveled to the lunar poles.

The spacecraft carries six international payloads selected on the basis of an Announcement of Opportunity by ISRO which has levied no charge thus conveying its commitment to international scientific collaboration.

Chandrayaan is the first partnership of USA’s NASA with India’s space program. Given the hiatus in American lunar missions, and its declared intention to return to the Moon in 2018, Chandrayaan has given NASA an opportunity to explore and study new potential landing sites through a Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (MiniSAR) which will also search for ice deposits near the lunar poles. NASA also has a Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) to map the composition and geographical distribution of mineral resources on the lunar surface, particularly on the permanently shadowed north and south polar regions.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has put on board 3 instruments which were also deployed on its earlier SMART-1 (Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology) lunar probe, but which would study the Moon over greater area and more intensively on Chandrayaan-1. An X-ray Spectrometer would look for and assess quantities of several elements, particularly magnesium and iron, which could give a clue as to the history of the Moon such as whether its surface was earlier molten magma. An Atom Reflecting Analyser would try to track and capture images of atoms taking off due to solar wind activity in the absence of a magnetosphere or atmosphere on the moon, while another near-infrared spectrometer would examine the composition of the Moon’s surface.

A new and interesting experiment is the Bulgarian RADOM or Radiation Dome Monitoring Experiment which will study the effects of radiation in the lunar and near-lunar environments. Such radiation is known to be a hazard to humans during extended stay in space and this study is expected to result in better predictive ability and design of protection gear for future space crews.

Consensus in the global scientific community is that these instruments, along with the infrastructure and methodologies of their deployment, represent a considerable advance over earlier efforts at gathering scientific data on and about the Moon.

Cost and Benefits?

Whenever issues of space exploration are discussed, questions arise as to the benefit to humans of the knowledge or experience generated, and especially whether the cost justifies these benefits. And it is common for such discussions to veer around to the spin-off benefits of space technologies, famous examples being Velcro fasteners, non-stick pans, alternative applications for space suits and so on. Of course, all technology development, especially in unfamiliar or extreme environments (and space is both) will have spin-off benefits. But this writer has always believed that no amount of frying pans can be used to weigh cost-benefits of space science. Science has always advanced through the quest for new knowledge and pushing known boundaries. And practical applications and benefits to human society have always followed, somewhat later, but often in ways that could not have been predicted earlier. Should early humans have asked what benefits could be expected by observing and calculating the movement of planetary bodies?

Of course, society should always weigh the costs and foreseeable benefits of science and of the knowledge that is sought to be generated. In this case, some aspects need to be put in perspective.

It is well known that basic science research is the foundation of advanced technological capabilities of a nation, and that India has lagged far behind what is desirable in this regard for many decades now. The space program offers one of the unfortunately rare theaters of scientific activity that can give a fillip to basic research in the country. Peer review of the Chandrayaan mission proposal also noted this as one of the important considerations in giving it approval, as did the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology.

A lot of comment has been made about the “high cost” of Chandrayaan in a poor country such as India. The total cost of Chandrayaan is Rs 360 crore or about $80 million. This includes about $20 million for the Deep Space Network whose infrastructure will be available for all future deep space missions. Europe’s SMART-1 mission cost about $180 million which is itself about one-fifth of usual European scientific space missions. Japan’s Kaguya lunar probe cost $487 million and even China’s Change-1 cost $180 million.

Chandrayaan’s cost of $80 million is roughly equal to that of a medium-sized passenger aircraft such as the stretched version of the Boeing 737 which costs $75-80 million, while the long-haul Boeing 777 passenger jet required by Air India costs about $240 million!

Not only is the Chandrayaan cost effective relative to similar missions by other nations, this relative low cost is itself a tremendous advertisement for Indian space services in a highly competitive launch industry, and will help generate enormous revenues for ISRO and its commercial arm, Antrix.

The big question mark does not belong with Chandrayaan-1 but with the projected manned lunar mission currently spoken of in 2020. There is absolutely no evidence to support any additional benefit of manned lunar landings, as compared to, say, space crew spending extended periods in a space station. The cost would be enormous with little benefit to show for it except for some chest thumping.

Speaking of which, the media coverage of and comments about Chandrayaan have revealed two disturbing trends.

The first was unnecessary jingoism, going far beyond justified national pride. And the second, more seriously, was its extension in projecting national advantage rather than a gain for the common human heritage. Some commentators spoke of the planting of the Indian flag as giving the right to India to extract minerals from the Moon at some future date, reminding one of the worst of colonialism when Europeans went around planting national flags in other peoples’ countries and “claiming” these territories as their own to exploit. Even some ISRO spokespersons and retired space scientists have regrettably spoken grandly about the possibility of future extraction of minerals from the Moon. Unfortunately, the international Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Agreement of 1979 are both silent on both such exploitation and on militarization of the Moon. Rather than join the US and some other nations in a race to exploit the Moon or use it for military purposes, India should take the lead in pushing for international agreements to prevent militarization of the Moon and any use of the Moon, such as national or private exploitation, that does not benefit all of humankind without damaging our planetary neighbor like we have damaged our own planet.

Without Growth Stimulus, World Plunges into Crisis

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:24:00 +0000

10-27-08, 9:23 am

Original source: l'Humanite

The US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB) lowered interest rates while the markets were in free-fall Wednesday morning, panicked by the continued financial crisis and its repercussions on the general economy. Heads of state maintained their plan, supporting banks and finance, but with no measures to help consumers. Fears of a depression have returned.

The US Federal Reserve announced a 0.5 percent decrease of its direct rate Wednesday, to 1.5 percent (from two percent). The ECB decreased its principal direct rate to 3.75 percent from 4.25 percent.

Rate Decreases Do Not Stop the Slump

These decreases were planned. Indeed, the decrease in the Fed’s direct rate occurred simultaneously with the decreases from most of the central banks, particularly the ECB, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Canada. Meanwhile the world’s financial markets, worried by the impact of the financial crisis, continued their collapse.

This announcement came while alarming news arrived from financial sources. At the end of the day, Paris lost 8.18 percent, the CAC 40 index falling to its lowest level since December 2003 ; Frankfurt lost 7.41 percent, Mila 6.11 percent, and Amsterdam 9.05 percent.

In Moscow, The RTS and MICEX stock exchanges stopped trading 35 minutes after opening after 11.25 percent and 14.35 percent drops.

The European exchanges were also experiencing record lows.

After the announcement, the world’s exchanges, completely off course since Monday, had a moment of respite, and the Euro turned around.

But less than two hours later, pessimism returned. In Frankfurt, the DAX lost more than four percent, as well as the CAC 40 in Paris, and the Footsie in London. And Wall Street opened down over two percent.

For those involved in the market, this step is important, but not enough. For many economists, the action taken by the central banks is not a miracle cure.

'The effects of the decreased interest rates on market fundamentals will not affect investments for a year,' says Sylvain Broyer, an economist at Natixis, who attributes a 'psychological effect' to the measure.

The real problem is that credit is rare, due to a climate of mistrust in a market affected by the banks’ problem.

After the Paulson Plan, a Brown Plan for Europe?

Earlier, on Wednesday, Great Britain had launched a European support plan for the banking sector and asked for a European rescue plan without keeping the world exchanges from their hellish descent.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced, on Wednesday, that he had 'invited' the other members of the European Union to adopt a 'European Finance Plan' for the banking system.

He noted that he was 'in active consultation on a European finance plan' and had discussed it early that morning with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The idea of a European plan, suggested last week by France, was firmly rejected by Berlin, which prefers a national approach.

London announced a huge banking rescue plan that consists notably of a partial nationalization of the country’s biggest banks by acquiring a stake in the banks of up to 50 billion pounds (65 billion euros).

The eight banks involved are Abbey, Barclays, HBOS (currently being bought out by TSB), Nationwide Building Society, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered. All have confirmed their participation in the recapitalization scheme.

Great Britain’s Minister of Finance, Alistair Darling, also announced the release of a 200 billion pound line of credit (260 billion euros).

'It’s an important step for the future, but it is not the only one,' Mr. Darling affirmed on the Skynews channel. 'I am excluding nothing, we’ll do what we have to.”

But the governmental initiatives, which have proliferated since the Paulson plan, an allocation of $700 billion, last Friday in the US, seemed unable to check the downward spiral of the markets.

Toward a Depression-Recession?

Even more serious is the resurgence of the fear of depression. The various measures taken by the US to stabilize the financial system would normally have an inflationary effect, but for economists, the biggest danger is depression, at least in the short term.

Washington’s combined initiatives taken to avoid the collapse of the US financial system may approach $2 trillion.

“If it doesn’t work, we will obviously be worrying more about depression than inflation,' said Brian Levitt, an Oppenheimer Funds economist.

The collapse of the markets and of real estate prices, and the increasing difficulty businesses and families are having in obtaining credit, are not inflationary elements, nor is the decline, of some fifty dollars, in crude oil prices in the last few weeks.

For some, these events may seem a reminder of the long US depression of the 1930’s, characterized by the fall of demand, huge price decreases, and an inevitable increase in unemployment.

And foretelling indicators seem to be going in that direction. Consequently, the World Monetary Fund, last Wednesday, revising its initial predictions of world wide economic growth for 2008, now anticipates a slight decrease in its estimations from 4.1 percent to 3.9 percent, for July, and a sharp decrease for 2009, from 3.9 percent to 3.0 percent.

In its account on the 'world economic prospects', published several days before its fall meeting, the WMF indicates that 'The world economy is approaching a major turning point, facing the most dangerous stock market crash since the 1930’s.”

The IMF predicted a US recession, whose GNP should increase by 1.6 percent this year (as compared to the 1.3 percent predicted for July), but only 0.1 percent in 2009 (down from 0.8 percent). The IMF foresees that the world’s largest economy could shrink in the 4th quarter of ’08 and in the 1st quarter of ’09.

The Euro Zone will barely fare better, with 1.3 percent this year (as compared to the 1.7 percent predicted three months ago), and 0.2 percent next year (instead of 1.2 percent). France is one of the countries whose predicted GNP has been decreased the most. France will see very slow growth in 2008 (0.8 percent rather than the 1.6 percent predicted earlier), and in 2009 (0.2 percent instead of 1.4 percent).

A Third 'New Deal'?

In this context, those who demand stimulus plans for consumers and rigorous credit regulation to support growth – some even talking about resuscitating the 'New Deal' – are not always heard It was, however, the solution that capitalism ended up adopting during the Great Depression of 1929. Will we wait for equally dire consequences such as those in that crisis before we finally resolve ourselves to that solution?

--Translated by Jennifer Schmid.

US Investors Affected by Washington’s Economic Blockade of Cuba

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:21:00 +0000

10-27-08, 9:20 am

HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 25 (ACN) – By forbidding American companies to do business in Cuba, the US economic blockade caused the Caribbean nation’s economy a loss estimated at $300 million in 2007, according to Raciel Proenza Rodriguez, head of the North American Division of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation (MINVEC), during a press conference in Havana.

The figure was estimated by comparing the performance of other similar economies in the region, like Costa Rica, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Peru, the specialist explained.

The loss inflicted on Cuban economy is also based on the number of US investors who are interested in making investment on the Caribbean country. Nearly 3,580 US entrepreneurs visited Cuba on that interest between 1999 and 2007, with the largest annual number of them (806) in 2003.

The stiffening of the US economic blockade by the so-called Bush Plan has discouraged American business people from coming to Cuba, due to the high fines that could be imposed on those who step on Cuban soil; only nine visits were reported in 2007, Proenza Rodriguez said.

The extraterritorial US economic, financial and commercial blockade of Cuba chases enterprises of third countries, which do or might do business with Cuba, while Washington also makes pressure on international agencies to exclude Cuba from their agendas. Due to those pressures, the UBS Swiss bank rejected Cuba’s payment of its membership fee at the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies last year; the action prevented Cuba’s participation in the agency’s annual conference.

The US economic blockade, imposed on Cuba in 1962, has caused the country a loss amounting to $93 billion. Cuba will present a new resolution against the US hostile policy next Wednesday, October 29, at the UN General Assembly, which overwhelmingly rejected the genocidal US blockade with 183 votes in favor of the Cuban resolution last year.

From the Cuban News Agency

Climate Change May Drown Cities

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:18:00 +0000

10-27-08, 9:16 am

Original source: IRIN News

JOHANNESBURG, 24 October 2008 (IRIN) - People in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, prefer to commute in three-wheeled autorickshaws, taxis and buses that run on compressed natural gas (CNG), in their bid to slow down global warming.

CNG produces a lower level of greenhouse gases and is an environmentally cleaner alternative to petrol. Dhaka's residents are among the most vulnerable to global warming and don't want to become 'climate terrorists'.

The city is among more than 3,000 identified by the UN-Habitat's State of the World's Cities 2008/09 as facing the prospect of sea level rise and surge-induced flooding. The report warns policymakers, planners and the world at large that few coastal cities will be spared the effects of global warming.

Asia accounts for more than half the most vulnerable cities, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (27 percent) and Africa (15 percent); two-thirds of the cities are in Europe, and almost one-fifth of all cities in North America are in Low Elevation Coastal Zones (LECZ).

During the 1900s, sea levels rose by an estimated 17cm; global mean projections for sea level rise between 1990 and 2080 range from 22cm to 34cm, according to the UN-Habitat researchers.

The report points out that by 2070, urban populations in river delta cities, such as Dhaka, Kolkata (India), Yangon (Myanmar), and Hai Phong (on the coast near Hanoi in Vietnam), which already experience a high risk of flooding, will join the group of populations most exposed to this danger. Port cities in Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Vietnam, and India will have joined the ranks of cities whose assets are most at risk.

African coastal cities that could be severely be affected by rising sea levels include Abidjan (Cote d'Ivoire), Accra (Ghana), Alexandria (Egypt), Algiers (Algeria), Cape Town (South Africa), Casablanca (Morocco), Dakar (Senegal), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Djibouti (Djibouti), Durban (South Africa), Freetown (Sierra Leone), Lagos (Nigeria), Libreville (Gabon), Lome (Togo), Luanda (Angola), Maputo (Mozambique), Mombasa (Kenya), Port Louis (Mauritius), and Tunis (Tunisia).

Dhaka is wedged between huge rivers like the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, with hundreds of tributaries swollen with increasing glacial melt from the Himalayan ranges as a result of soaring global temperatures.

'The elevation in Dhaka ranges between two and 13 metres above sea level, which means that even a slight rise in sea level is likely to engulf large parts of the city. Moreover, high urban growth rates and high urban densities have already made Dhaka more susceptible to human-induced environmental disasters,' said the UN-Habitat report.

'With an urban growth rate of more than four percent annually, Dhaka, which already hosts more than 13 million people, is one of the fastest growing cities in Southern Asia, and is projected to accommodate more than 20 million by 2025.

'The sheer number of people living in the city means that the negative consequences of climate change are likely to be felt by a large number of people, especially the urban poor who live in flood-prone and water-logged areas.'

A total 634 million people in the world live in LECZ that lie at or below 10 metres above sea level, according to a recent report,Planet Prepare, by World Vision, a Christian relief, development and advocacy organization. Although LECZ constitute only two percent of the earth's landmass, they contain 10 percent of its population and have a higher rate of urbanization than the rest of the world.

Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UN, notes his concern about the prospect of large-scale devastation in his foreword to the UN-Habitat report, saying: 'Cities embody some of society's most pressing challenges, from pollution and disease to unemployment and lack of adequate shelter. But cities are also venues where rapid, dramatic change is not just possible but expected.'

Dhaka is preparing for flood protection. The government, prompted by frequent flooding in the 1980s, has already completed embankments, reinforced concrete walls and pumping stations in the most densely populated part of the city.

The UN report cautioned that Dhaka's solutions should also take into consideration unresolved development problems, such as the growing slum population, which has doubled in the last decade and shows no signs of abating.

The World Vision report pointed out that other urban centers not physically challenged by global warming would also face tremendous challenges, with the possible influx of 'environmental refugees' from affected cities.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has urged global greenhouse gas emission reductions of 50 percent to 85 percent by 2050, based on 2000 emissions, to avoid a 2°Celsius increase in global mean temperature.

Such an increase is expected to destroy 30 percent to 40 percent of all known species, generate bigger, fiercer and more frequent heat waves and droughts, and more intense weather events like floods and cyclones.

The IPCC and activists have called on the global community to focus on preventing global warming from crossing the perilous 2°C threshold, which requires keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations below 350ppm (parts per million).

'The problem is, they [concentrations] already stand at 385ppm (2008), rising by 2ppm annually,' said the World Vision report. 'Since there are no rewind buttons for running down emitted greenhouse gas stocks, implicational reasoning suggests immediate and stringent emissions cuts.'

Eminent scientists, such as James E. Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, are warning that even the 2-degree threshold may likely not be safe enough to avoid 'global disaster.'