People Before Profit blog

Millions Still Face Hardships After Pakistan Floods

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 10:42:00 +0000

Pakistanis continue to face humanitarian hardships and large portions of the country's southern province of Sindh remain under water three months after sever flooding displaced millions, a humanitarian aid group reported this week.

According to Oxfam, in the most affected region, Sindh, more than a million people are displaced, their homes damaged or destroyed. Tens of thousands of families, who had sheltered in schools and other buildings, are now being newly-displaced as schools re-open. Large areas of land are still under water and some communities remain surrounded by flood waters.

The remaining water threatens the effectiveness of the global aid effort, and government officials are predicting the water may not recede for six months.

Hidayat Siyal will not be able to return to her village in Bubak Union Council, Sindh for months because of the water. She is staying at a relief camp in Jamshoro district.

“We are unemployed and have no money. Normally, we farm on our landlord’s land and have got heavily into debt," she said. “It will take at least a year and a half before we can harvest. We should grow wheat next; but it is impossible to plant because of the floods. We are facing huge losses.”

Oxfam also reported that international, amounting to only $1.7 billion in pledges, or little more than $40 per person, has been drying up. Meanwhile, reports of disease and malnutrition are on the rise.

There have already been 99 confirmed cases of cholera since the start of the floods. According to the United Nations, 10 million people are in need of immediate food assistance. The funding shortfall is so serious that existing regular food rations to 3.5 million people could be in jeopardy.

Tens of thousands of families, who had sheltered in schools and other buildings, are now being newly-displaced as schools re-open.

Mohamad Razi, 19, who is staying in a relief camp, said, “It’s too flooded to go back home. The water is six feet high. No-one will be able to plant anything. We should be planting next month, but we will have to wait a year."

The flood will harm his livelihood for years to come, he said. He bought a tractor on credit and should pay back the loans in monthly installments. “I was hoping to may repayments after the harvest; but our crops were ruined and we wont be able to farm for quite a long time Maybe they will re-possess or tractor. It’s a big disaster.”

“The crisis is far from over. Parts of southern Sindh, the worst-hit area, still remain a disaster zone. When the world’s attention was focused on Pakistan’s flood victims there was a chance of seeing substantial aid being delivered. But as the worst of the flood waters have receded so has the promise of significant funding”, said Neva Khan, Oxfam’s director in Pakistan. “The UN emergency appeal is less than 40 per cent funded. Many of the world’s richest countries are failing the flood victims, who are amongst the poorest and most vulnerable in the world.”

Across the country nearly two million homes are damaged or destroyed and 7 million people do not have adequate shelter. With winter a few weeks away, there are fears that malnutrition rates, pneumonia and other respiratory infections will sharply increase.

Photo: Mohammad Razi, 19, says flooding will prevent him from planting crops, and as a result the tractor he bought on credit may be repossessed. Courtesy Oxfam

A Boot to the Head

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 04:16:00 +0000

There she was, thrown to the pavement by a Republican in a checkered shirt. Another Republican thrusts his foot in between her legs and presses down with all his weight to pin her to the curb. Then a Republican leader comes over and viciously stomps on her head with his foot. You hear her glasses crunch under the pressure. Holding her head down with his foot, he applies more force so she can't move. Her skull and brain are now suffering a concussion.

The young woman's name is Lauren Valle, but she is really all of us. For come this Tuesday, the right wing -- and the wealthy who back them -- plan to take their collective boot and bring it down hard on not just the head of Barack Obama but on the heads of everyone they simply don't like.

Teachers union? The boot!

Muslim-looking people? The boot!

Thinking of retiring soon? The boot!

Living in a house you can no longer afford? The boot!

Doing a bit better with your minimum wage? The boot!

Stem cell research, the bullet train, reversing global warming? Ha! The boot for all of you!

What? You like your kids being covered by your health plan 'til they're 26? The boot for them and the boot for you!

In love with someone of your own gender? A double boot up the ass for every single one of you sick SOBs!

Hoping there's a few jobs left here in the U.S. when you graduate? How 'bout just a nice boot to your head instead?

And most importantly, the last boot is saved for the black man who probably wasn't born here, definitely isn't a Christian and possibly might be the Antichrist sent here to oversee the destruction of our very way of life. A boot to your head, Obama-devil!

Yes, one big boot is poised to stomp out whatever hopey-changey thing we might have had two years ago and secure this country in the hands of the oligarchs and the culture police.

And if they win on Tuesday, they plan to show no mercy. They will not speak of bipartisanship or olive branches or tolerate any filibuster threats. They will come in and do the job with a mandate they'll perceive the electorate will have given them. They will not fart around for two years like the Democrats did. They will not "search for compromise" or "find middle ground." They will not meet you halfway on the playing field. They know that touchdowns aren't scored at the 50-yard line. Unlike our guys, they're not stupid or spineless.

Make no mistake about it, my friends. A perfect storm has gathered of racists, homophobes, corporatists and born agains and they are on fire. Two years of a black man who secretly holds socialist beliefs being the boss of them is more than they can stomach. They've been sick to death since the night of 11/04/08 and they are ready to purge. They won't need a rope and tree this time to effect the change they seek (why bother when a nice shoe on another's skull will do just fine, thank you).

They simply need to get their base to the polls (done), convince enough people Obama is responsible for the fact they don't have a job or a secure home (done), and then hope enough of us Obama-voters are so frustrated, disappointed and downright mad at the Dems (done) that we'll either stay home Tuesday or, if we vote, we won't be carpooling with 10 others to the polls.

Done? Or not?

These Republicans mean business. Their boots are all shined and ready. But they've got one huge problem:

The majority of Americans don't agree with them.

The majority want the troops home. The majority want true universal health coverage. The majority want the thievery on Wall Street to be stopped. The majority believe that global warming is happening, that social security shouldn't be privatized and that unions are a good thing.

Too bad the majority party has done precious little to bring about the change for which the majority voted. Yes, change takes time. But try telling that to someone who hasn't worked in two years. Or who hears the knock of the foreclosure sheriff at the door. The booted-up minority knows how to make hay in a situation like this. All they need is us, the disappointed, dismayed, disgusted us.

What say you? Stay home and punish the weak-kneed, sell-out Democrats? Or spend every free moment you have between now and Tuesday trying to protect what little progress has been made so we can live to fight another day (even if it is with "allies" like a Democratic Party that will more than likely still not get the message of what they need to do -- and has, in fact, spent much of the past two years giving progressives the boot)? Perhaps our job, post-election, is to provide a gentle but swift boot in the bee-hind of the party whose mascot is an ass.

Right now, we've got 112 hours. Seems like enough.

Photo: Tea Party activist and Rand Paul campaign worker Tim Proffitt (pictured on the left) has been charged with assault for stomping on the head of woman with whom he disagreed politically. The woman suffered a concussion and bruises.

Vote for Hope

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 04:07:00 +0000

Original source: Huffington Post

The electorate is bitter and angry. It's no wonder. Foreclosures rise while Wall Street bankers, whose recklessness caused this grave recession, grab million dollar bonuses. Unemployment is stuck at 9.5 percent, but corporations continue to ship jobs overseas.

The level of acrimony showed itself Monday in Lexington, Ky., when a group of men supporting Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul threw a woman backing Democrat Jack Conway to the ground and stomped on her head.

This is not the hope America voted for in the fall of 2008. Now another election is upon us. On Tuesday, voters can choose candidates capitalizing on bitterness, or they can return to hope and provide time for change to play out. Voters can stay the course with the President whose basic philosophy is a Biblical one - that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. Or Americans can empower Republicans who believe it's every man for himself, who espouse the view that a man's success is his own, and, equally, each man is solely responsible for all of his setbacks.

This midterm election is about how those disparate Republican and Democratic values will play out in legislation. Do Americans want to live in a Republican country that blames individuals for their unemployment in an economy creating only one position for every five jobless workers? Or do Americans want a country that lives by the Democratic philosophy that government must aid, not blame, the unemployed, that it must give a hand up, not a slap in the face, to the suffering?

Hard as it is during troubled times, as difficult as it may feel after some legislative efforts have fallen short of important idealistic goals, let's build a country of hope, one in which we help our fellow Americans.

That virtuous aim, of course, is the subject of ridicule. Here's Sarah Palin mocking optimistic Americans at a Tea Bagger event in February, "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?"

But come out to vote for hope Tuesday anyway; stand up to the malevolent bullies.

What the bullies want is a country where workers are on their own: for health insurance, for income security in their old age, for surviving another Wall Street collapse. For everything.

Unemployment insurance is a good example. Over the past year, the GOP has scorned the jobless, calling them lazy freeloaders. Republicans repeatedly voted against extending unemployment benefits. From the GOP point of view, Wall Street's crash didn't cause the economic collapse and high unemployment. No, according to Republicans, each unemployed worker is responsible for his situation, and it's not the role of government to intervene to help. That philosophy is behind Republican South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer's comment that the unemployed, like stray animals, should not be fed: "You are facilitating the problem if you give an animal or person ample food supply."

Come out Tuesday and vote for hope, vote to aid the unemployed.

Wall Street reform is another example of Republican "on your own" philosophy. Before the stock market crash of 1929, the unregulated American financial system whipped the economy in wild boom and bust cycles. The frequent crashes and runs on banks were called panics. In Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, Congress imposed rules on Wall Street and the banking industry. For the next sixty years the economy largely avoided panics. Then Congress lifted the regulations, and the crash of 2008 wrecked the economy. Former President Bush responded by proposing and orchestrating the Wall Street bailout. But his party vigorously opposed re-regulation to avoid another economic disaster. The GOP voted against the legislation restoring protections for the economy, investors and consumers. Republicans believe government has no business policing the free market or interceding for investors and consumers because individuals are solely to blame for everything that happens to them.

Come out Tuesday and vote for hope, vote to protect hardworking Americans against financial fraud and the machinations of powerful, multi-national financial firms.

Health insurance reform provides one of the clearest examples of Republican "on your own" philosophy. The GOP proposed that "reform" consist of granting individuals small tax breaks, about a quarter the cost of health insurance, while revoking breaks given companies that provide health coverage to workers. This, Republicans said, would "free" companies from providing insurance and "free" individuals to choose their own plans. It would have liberated individuals to negotiate coverage and claims payment with giant, sophisticated, lawyer-laden insurance corporations. If an individual got a bad deal, one that enabled the insurer to drop coverage when he got sick, deny coverage to his sick child or raise rates continuously, well, then, that would be the fault of the individual purchaser. Republicans have promised that if empowered, they will repeal the Democrats' Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Come out Tuesday and vote for hope, vote to support the health insurance reform law that uses the power of government regulation to shield policy holders from insurer abuses, that lowers costs and that enables nearly all Americans to obtain insurance.

Retirees should be "on their own" as well, Republicans believe. Some in the GOP even contend Social Security is unconstitutional. Others want to cut it or privatize it. What privatizing means is getting the government out of the business of collecting Social Security taxes to ensure that all workers receive benefits after retiring. Instead, Republicans want workers to be on their own to invest for their retirement. If there's another market "panic" - which could happen if Republicans repeal Wall Street reform - and workers lose their "privatized" retirement savings in the crash, the GOP's response would be that individuals must take responsibility - their loss is their fault.

Come out Tuesday and vote to keep America's promise to provide basic income security to all elderly citizens. Vote to be your brothers' and sisters' keeper and for them to be yours. Vote for hope.

Socialism? The Rich Are Winning the US Class War: Facts Show Rich Getting Richer, Everyone Else Poorer

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:55:00 +0000

Original source: CommonDreams.org

The rich and their paid false prophets are doing a bang up job deceiving the poor and middle class. They have convinced many that an evil socialism is alive in the land and it is taking their fair share. But the deception cannot last – facts say otherwise.

Yes, there is a class war – the war of the rich on the poor and the middle class – and the rich are winning. That war has been going on for years. Look at the facts – facts the rich and their false paid prophets do not want people to know.

Let Glen Beck go on about socialists descending on Washington. Allow Rush Limbaugh to rail about “class warfare for a leftist agenda that will destroy our society.” They are well compensated false prophets for the rich.

The truth is that for the several decades the rich in the US have been getting richer and the poor and middle class have been getting poorer. Look at the facts then make up your own mind.

Poor Getting Poorer: Facts

The official US poverty numbers show we now have the highest number of poor people in 51 years. The official US poverty rate is 14.3 percent or 43.6 million people in poverty. One in five children in the US is poor; one in ten senior citizens is poor. Source: US Census Bureau.

One of every six workers, 26.8 million people, is unemployed or underemployed. This “real” unemployment rate is over 17%. There are 14.8 million people designated as “officially” unemployed by the government, a rate of 9.6 percent. Unemployment is worse for African American workers of whom 16.1 percent are unemployed. Another 9.5 million people who are working only part-time while they are seeking full-time work but have had their hours cut back or are so far only able to find work part-time are not counted in the official unemployment numbers. Also, an additional 2.5 million are reported unemployed but not counted because they are classified as discouraged workers in part because they have been out of work for more than 12 months. Source: US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics October 2010 report.

The median household income for whites in the US is $51,861; for Asians it is $65,469; for African Americans it is $32,584; for Latinos it is $38,039. Source: US Census Bureau.

Fifty million people in the US lack health insurance. Source: US Census Bureau.

Women in the US have a greater lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related conditions than women in 40 other countries. African American US women are nearly 4 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women. Source: Amnesty International Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA.

About 3.5 million people, about one-third of which are children, are homeless at some point in the year in the US. Source: National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

Outside Atlanta, 33,000 people showed up to seek applications for low cost subsidized housing in August 2010. When Detroit offered emergency utility and housing assistance to help people facing evictions, more than 50,000 people showed up for the 3,000 vouchers. Source: News reports.

There are 49 million people in the US who live in households which eat only because they receive food stamps, visit food pantries or soup kitchens for help. Sixteen million are so poor they have skipped meals or foregone food at some point in the last year. This is the highest level since statistics have been kept. Source: US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.

Middle Class Going Backward: Facts

One or two generations ago it was possible for a middle class family to live on one income. Now it takes two incomes to try to enjoy the same quality of life. Wages have not kept up with inflation; adjusted for inflation they have lost ground over the past ten years. The cost of housing, education and health care have all increased at a much higher rate than wages and salaries. In 1967, the middle 60 percent of households received over 52% of all income. In 1998, it was down to 47%. The share going to the poor has also fallen, with the top 20% seeing their share rise. Mark Trumball, “Obama’s challenge: reversing a decade of middle-class decline,” Christian Science Monitor, January 25, 2010. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0125/Obama-s-challenge-reversing-a-decade-of-middle-class-decline

A record 2.8 million homes received a foreclosure notice in 2009, higher than both 2008 and 2007. In 2010, the rate is expected to be rise to 3 million homes. Sources: Reuters and RealtyTrac.

Eleven million homeowners (about one in four homeowners) in the US are “under water” or owe more on their mortgages than their house is worth. Source: “Home truths,” The Economist, October 23, 2010.

For the first time since the 1940s, the real incomes of middle-class families are lower at the end of the business cycle of the 2000s than they were at the beginning. Despite the fact that the American workforce is working harder and smarter than ever, they are sharing less and less in the benefits they are creating. This is true for white families but even truer for African American families whose gains in the 1990s have mostly been eliminated since then. Source: Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz, State of Working America. http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/swa08_00_execsum.pdf

Rich Getting Richer: Facts

The wealth of the richest 400 people in the US grew by 8% in the last year to $1.37 trillion. Source: Forbes 400: The super-rich get richer, September 22, 2010, Money.com

The top Hedge Fund Manager of 2009, David Tepper, “earned” $4 billion last year. The rest of the top ten earned: $3.3 billion, $2.5 billion, $2.3 billion, $1.4 billion, $1.3 billion (tie for 6th and 7th place), $900 million (tie for 8th and 9th place), and in last place out of the top ten, $825 million. Source: Business Insider. “Meet the top 10 earning hedge fund managers of 2009.” http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-top-10-earning-hedge-fund-managers-of-2009-2010-4

Income disparity in the US is now as bad as it was right before the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s. From 1979 to 2006, the richest 1% more than doubled their share of the total US income, from 10% to 23%. The richest 1% have an average annual income of more than $1.3 million. For the last 25 years, over 90% of the total growth in income in the US went to the top 10% earners – leaving 9% of all income to be shared by the bottom 90%. Source: Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz, State of Working America. http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig/2008/01/19.pdf

In 1973, the average US CEO was paid $27 for every dollar paid to a typical worker; by 2007 that ratio had grown to $275 to $1. Source: Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz, State of Working America. http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig/2008/03/SWA08_Wages_Figure.3AE.pdf

Since 1992, the average tax rate on the richest 400 taxpayers in the US dropped from 26.8% to 16.62%. Source: US Internal Revenue Service. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07intop400.pdf

The US has the greatest inequality between rich and poor among all Western industrialized nations and it has been getting worse for 40 years. The World Factbook, published by the CIA, includes an international ranking of the inequality among families inside of each country, called the Gini Index. The US ranking of 45 in 2007 is the same as Argentina, Cameroon, and Cote d’Ivorie. The highest inequality can be found in countries like Namibia, South Africa, Haiti and Guatemala. The US ranking of 45 compares poorly to Japan (38), India (36), New Zealand, UK (34), Greece (33), Spain (32), Canada (32), France (32), South Korea (31), Netherlands (30), Ireland (30), Australia (30), Germany (27), Norway (25), and Sweden (23). Source: CIA The World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html

Rich people live an average of about five years longer than poor people in the US. Naturally, gross inequality has consequences in terms of health, exposure to unhealthy working conditions, nutrition and lifestyle. In 1980, the most well off in the US had a life expectancy of 2.8 years over the least well-off. As the inequality gap widens, so does the life expectancy gap. In 1990, the gap was a little less than 4 years. In 2000, the least well-off could expect to live to age of 74.7 while the most well off had a life expectancy of 79.2 years. Source: Elise Gould, “Growing disparities in life expectancy,” Economic Policy Institute. http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20080716/

Conclusion

These are extremely troubling facts for anyone concerned about economic fairness, equality of opportunity, and justice.

Thomas Jefferson once observed that the systematic restructuring of society to benefit the rich over the poor and middle class is a natural appetite of the rich. “Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to…the general prey of the rich on the poor.” But Jefferson also knew that justice can only be delayed so long when he said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

The rich talk about the rise of socialism to divert attention from the fact that they are devouring the basics of the poor and everyone else. Many of those crying socialism the loudest are doing it to enrich or empower themselves. They are right about one thing – there is a class war going on in the US. The rich are winning their class war, and it is time for everyone else to fight back for economic justice.

Africans Express Appreciation for Cuban Health Cooperation

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:24:00 +0000

HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 25 (acn) Cuba’s cooperation in the field of health, particularly to fight malaria, is highly appreciated in Africa, where over the last few days that help has intensified

The Public Health Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Victor Makwenge Kaput, recently met in his office with a team of specialists from the Caribbean island’s Labiofam Company, the www.cubaminrex.cu Web site reported.

These experts will carry out a pilot study in a commune in Kinshasa, the capital, as part of a program to fight that disease.

Malaria is the main cause of the high mother-child immortality rate in the country, as well as other social ills like the high level of labor absenteeism registered,” said the Minister.

The study will be carried out in the community of Kimbaseke, with a population of a little over one million people.

The meeting was broadcast by the Congolese national television, which included an interview with Cuban ambassador Luis Castillo.

For its part, the Daily Graphic, Ghana’s main newspaper, announced that 80 new Cuban professionals will arrive to that nation over the next few months to join the Medical Brigade present in 10 of the country’s regions.

The newspaper reported that the establishment of a factory to make a product for the biological control of larvae in Ghana and another one in Nigeria to speed up the elimination of malaria is under consideration.

Labiofam and the Tanzanian government have also set up new cooperation projects to combat that scourge.

The use of Griselesf and Bactivec, two products obtained by that entity to control vectors, favor the reduction of mortality in people suffering from dengue, malaria and other transmissible diseases in the African continent.

Media Watchdog Focuses on Lack of Political Diversity at PBS

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:44:00 +0000

Media Advisory
PBS Responds to FAIR Studies
Ombud echoes concerns, but producers question need to broaden sources
10/25/10

The PBS ombud and representatives of the public television programs studied in FAIR's new report, "Taking the Public Out of Public TV," have responded (10/21/10) to the research that shows an elite, inside-the-Beltway slant to the programs' guestlists.

As he has in the past (10/6/06), PBS ombud Michael Getler largely agreed with FAIR's analysis. "If you keep calling the same known and comfortable suspects, you pretty much know what you will get," Getler wrote in his October 21 column.

After noting that some of the programs feature women and people of color as reporters and hosts, he wrote:

I do, however, think that the PBS programming focused on by FAIR does have a diversity issue--one that is also covered in the FAIR report and which I have also referred to in earlier columns. It is the rather narrow band of commentary and analysis that is presented on these programs. I have made the point in previous columns that public affairs programming seems to operate within a rather safe comfort zone that straddles the center. Certainly that has its place, but there are huge disparities of opinion in this country about everything from the war in Afghanistan to the public option in healthcare and the strongest voices are not heard very often.

That's where the loss of Bill Moyers Journal and Now With David Brancaccio come in, especially Moyers. Moyers had devoted fans and critics but whatever one thinks of him, he allowed the airing of important, intelligent and provocative views that rarely found a voice elsewhere on television.

So, here's my quick review of the programs and the issue. I think PBS can still do better on the diversity front and that everybody will be better off, especially the viewers, if this is done properly. As a viewer, I would not have ranked the race/ethnicity/gender part of that as an obvious problem, but the FAIR analysis is a good reminder and renewable challenge, especially about the need for more public interest guests.

I have said many times that I have a very high regard for the NewsHour and, even as a news junkie, I feel as though I learn something almost every evening watching it. On a personal level, I'd like to see a widening of the views expressed about the crucial issues confronting our country, and a more challenging brand of questioning. I don't believe Washington Week under Gwen Ifill is not mindful of diversity. I think she goes out of her way to work it in as best she can. On the other hand, for anyone who follows news closely, this program does have a predictable set of characters and a heavy dose of conventional wisdom if you follow this stuff during the week.

Getler's take shares many of the concerns FAIR raised in its report. Unsurprisingly, those responsible for the programs being studied largely challenged FAIR's report.

NewsHour executive producer Linda Winslow wrote: "As in its previous studies of the PBS NewsHour (1990 and 2006), FAIR seems to be accusing us of covering the people who make decisions that affect people's lives, many of whom work in government, the military, or corporate America. That's what we do: we're a news program, and that's who makes news."

That definition of newsworthiness--what powerful people say and do--guarantees the marginalization of important views that would contribute to national discussions about those "decisions that affect people's lives." A program that sought to convey a more expansive view of news and politics, whether on public broadcasting or anywhere else, would work to bring different perspectives to the air. That does not seem to be a priority at the NewsHour. As FAIR's study found:

-- Viewers were five times as likely to see guests representing corporations (10 percent v. 2 percent) than representatives of public interest groups who might counterweigh such moneyed interests--labor, consumer and environmental organizations.

-- On segments about the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the most frequent story of the study period, viewers were four times as likely to see representatives hailing from the oil industry (13 percent of guests) as representatives of environmental concerns (3 percent).

-- On segments focusing on the Afghan War, though polls show consistent majorities of Americans have opposed the war for more than a year, not a single NewsHour guest represented an antiwar group or expressed antiwar views. Similarly, no representative of a human rights or humanitarian organization appeared on the NewsHour during the study period.

Winslow continued:

We make it a point to question the decision makers, and when we do we also make it a point to include other views that provide balance and/or a different perspective either in the same program, or one produced soon after. We try to book the most qualified guests we can for every segment; when they are people who work for the government, the military or corporate America, their sex, age, ethnicity and political affiliation reflect decisions made by the people who hired (or voted for) THEM.

It is difficult to reconcile this description of the NewsHour's editorial approach with FAIR's new study, or with FAIR's previous research on the program.

Washington Week host and managing editor Gwen Ifill had a brief response to FAIR's report:

As you know, Washington Week's guestlist is drawn from a pool of Washington-based correspondents who cover high-profile beats. For that reason, our roundtables are less diverse than I would like. But we have dramatically expanded the number of women on our bench, commensurate with their numbers in the Washington press corps. I, for one, look forward to the day when the same can be said for D.C.-based reporters of color.

As FAIR noted, Ifill's program relies solely on Beltway journalists primarily from commercial media outlets. Ifill has made clear that she does not welcome journalists who would voice an "opinion" on the show--though one could argue that much of the Beltway analysis on the show amounts to an echoing of establishment opinions, which are not recognized as such only because they are universally shared by all present. While it is encouraging that Ifill agrees that the shows roundtables are not very diverse, it would be more helpful to rethink Washington Week's restrictions and invite reporters from other, non-corporate outlets who might offer a different perspective.

Charlie Rose executive producer Yvette Vega wrote that since the show "has been shown on public television for 19 years," researching the show's guest list for three months "may not be a current reflection." She countered by referring to a six-week stretch that she suggests was more diverse. Vega closed by writing: "We deeply appreciate the work and dedication of FAIR. It's organizations such as those that keep all of us reaching further and farther in presenting guests and programs that are both varied and diverse. I hope they will continue to do the good work they are doing. We will continue to expand and look for as many views as possible on a topic and subject."

Writing on behalf of Need to Know--the program produced by New York station WNET that is the successor to the Bill Moyers Journal and Now--WNET vice-president of content Stephen Segaller responded:

By providing only a cursory overview of Need to Know's extremely varied and balanced content, but a detailed assessment of the racial profile of our on-air guests, FAIR seems to equate racial and gender representation in the stories with balance or diversity in reporting. This nose-counting exercise is at its core an inaccurate representation of our commitment to balanced and enterprising journalism, but at the very least it should be complete.

The FAIR study sought to give readers and viewers a sense of the program's early broadcasts, to judge how the program could be considered an adequate replacement for the Moyers Journal and Now. Looking at the racial and gender diversity of the program--or any other program, for that matter--should not be dismissed as mere "nose-counting." It is a quantitative expression of who these programs consider worth quoting or interviewing, and it conveys one obvious and dramatic bias in their presentation.

This plays out in relation to specific content as well, as we demonstrated. For example, none of the program's economic segments in its first three months featured a single person of color, and men outnumbered women eight to five--this during an economic crisis in which black unemployment is dramatically higher than white unemployment, and which single black women entered with a median wealth of only $100.

But lack of racial and gender diversity was not FAIR's only criticism of Need to Know. As our report documented, the program featured more corporate sources than public interest advocates (20 appearances to 12). On the BP oil disaster, corporate sources (12) were more numerous than environmental experts (7). On discussions of the Afghan War, as FAIR noted: "The war segments featured 43 sources, nearly half of whom were associated with the military: 14 were current or former military and seven were family of military. Another nine were government sources, including those with military backgrounds like John McCain."

In short, studying racial and gender diversity alongside the occupational diversity of sources demonstrates that all of these public TV programs present guests drawn primarily from elite institutions, which tend to be more white and male than the public at large.

The key question is whether these programs, or public TV programmers in general, think they should be broadening their horizons. Some of the responses suggest that this responsibility is taken seriously. Other responses are more discouraging, as when NewsHour's executive producer wrote: "Again, as in past years, FAIR seem to have confused the PBS NewsHour with all of PBS, when they quote the 43-year-old Carnegie Commission Report about public broadcasting. The PBS NewsHour covers the news as fairly and impartially as we can. Period."

Arguing that there is some meaningful distinction between the goals of PBS and a show called "The PBS NewsHour" seems a waste of energy. More to the point, the reason FAIR cites the "43-year-old Carnegie Commission Report" is because this is the foundational document for public broadcasting in the United States. It lays out the rationale behind the creation of a public media, and the role that a public broadcasting system is supposed to play in the larger media landscape.

As FAIR--and many others--have consistently pointed out, the Carnegie vision for public broadcasting is one where those "who would otherwise go unheard" have a voice, and that such programming would enable viewers to "see America whole, in all its diversity." Whether the programs under examination like it or not, that is the standard by which public television should be judged. To hear a top official from the preeminent newscast on public television say that this is out of date or old-fashioned is distressing, to say the least.

Read all of the responses in Getler's online column:

http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/2010/10/fair_vs_pbs_again_1.html

US Tries to Trip China at Starting Line of Green Energy

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 08:50:00 +0000

On October 15, the US announced an investigation into China's clean energy industry under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which empowers the US president to take measures against unfair or discriminatory trade practices by other countries.

But this time the investigation is not focused on traditional industries or a single product. It focuses on green technologies, including wind and solar products and high-performance batteries and efficient cars.

It is aimed at the future of an entire industry.

This move may have been prompted by the postponement of the report on China's exchange rate policy, or as a domestic sop for the mid-term elections. It could also be a way to put pressure on China and open the way for US firms to dominate China's highly competitive domestic market.

Challenging China's green development is a misplaced move. First of all, environmental technology should be encouraged worldwide to meet the global challenge of climate change.

China has made efforts to develop clean energy and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. China has increased its use of hydro and nuclear power, as well as improving its wind power capacity from 2.59 million kilowatts in 2006 to 25.58 million kilowatts in 2009, a tenfold increase. This saves 16 million tons of coal a year. China produces 40 percent of the world' solar cells.

The US provides its own subsidies to its energy industry. Compared with the traditional fossil fuels such as coal and oil, clean energy is very limited, with higher early investment and prices, and needs help from the government in the initial stages.

The US provided $25.2 billion in subsidies to renewable energy last year, whereas in China, direct subsidies total less than 30 billion yuan ($4.5 billion), although there are also some supportive tax policies.

China will become the world's largest clean energy market. Over the past few years, US companies have obtained a substantial share in the Chinese wind power market.

In 2009, the US-based General Electric Company exported 340,000 kilowatts of wind power capacity to China, while exports of solar power equipment from the US are also mostly shipped to China. Attacking China's energy market will only damage US firms.

The differences between the energy consumption structure in China and the US are the main factors that are affecting the competition of US technologies in the Chinese market. Since the financial crisis, the US has been seeking cooperation with China over clean energy technologies, but US firms have not seriously studied China's energy structure and market.

China is still mainly reliant on coal, whereas the US uses primarily oil and gas for its energy needs. Factors such as climate, geographical environments, power grid structure, and customer demand and distribution differ sharply between the two nations, and the technical requirements for clean energy technologies are different.

This makes it difficult for the US clean energy technologies to enter the Chinese market. Also, there are many other challenges for Chinese companies entering the market in the US.

China should be cautious of a possible cascade effect brought by the US Section 301 investigation, if other countries use it as an example. During the financial crisis, due to the competition from Chinese battery manufacturers, German battery manufacturers proposed to conduct anti-dumping investigation on China's solar industry.

We should enhance our innovation and competitiveness in the area of core clean energy technologies. After the financial crisis, China is able to stand at the same starting line as other developed countries on the clean energy technology.

We have an excellent chance to catch up with or even surpass the developed countries. Thus, both the government and the energy companies need to increase investment in R&D and innovation.

The author is the CEO of China Energy Investment Net. forum@globaltimes.com.cn

Can Pollution Affect My Child's IQ?

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 08:37:00 +0000

EarthTalk®
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Can pollution affect my child’s IQ? -- Ellen Franzen, Portland, OR

A spate of recent studies suggests that pollution can indeed affect the intelligence of children of all ages (even those still in utero). The primary culprit is smog—ground level pollution comprised of vehicle and smokestack emissions that can form a dense haze on and near busy roadways. While smog has long been known to be a health hazard for asthmatics, heart patients and the elderly, only recently have we begun to learn about its unique effects on our young people.

A 2007 Harvard School of Public Health study found that children between the ages of eight and 11 living and attending school in areas of Boston with higher levels of traffic pollutants scored an average of 3.7 points lower on IQ tests than children living in less polluted areas. “The effect of pollution on intelligence was similar to that seen in children whose mothers smoked 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant, or in kids who have been exposed to lead,” reports Dr. Shakira Franco Suglia, lead author of the study.

A 2009 Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health study of the effect over a five-year period of exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)—toxic pollutants that come from the combustion of coal, diesel or gas—showed even greater effects on the offspring of expecting mothers living in parts of Harlem and the Bronx in New York City. Researchers found that those children exposed to the highest amounts of PAH pollution had IQs some 4.31 to 4.67 lower than non-exposed kids.

“These findings are of concern because these decreases in IQ could be educationally meaningful in terms of school performance,” says Frederica Perera, the study’s lead author and the Columbia Center’s director, adding that the effects of PAHs were similar to the findings of the damage caused by low-level lead exposure. “This finding is of concern because IQ is an important predictor of future academic performance, and PAHs are widespread in urban environments and throughout the world.”

Several other U.S. and international studies in 2009 and 2010 found evidence suggesting that common urban pollutants affect more than just intelligence in kids. Frequent exposure has also been linked to low birth weight and small head circumference as well as miscarriage and preeclampsia (hypertension during pregnancy). “Some researchers believe that traffic pollution acts like secondhand smoke or marijuana use, restricting oxygen and nutrients delivered to the fetus,” reports Hilary Evans in E – The Environmental Magazine, adding that others believe that prenatal exposure to pollutants changes human cell development and causes problems later in life.

Columbia’s Perera is optimistic that we can work our way out of such problems. “Fortunately, airborne PAH concentrations can be reduced through currently available controls, alternative energy sources and policy interventions,” she says. Indeed, urban planners, regulators and eco-entrepreneurs are experimenting with different methods of reducing smog and other pollutants in problem areas. But until such techniques are perfected and clean-up mandates enforced, those living near busy roadways or otherwise polluted areas put their families at risk every time the front door opens.

CONTACTS: Harvard School of Public Health, www.hsph.harvard.edu; Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health, www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/mailman/ccceh.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Photo by Stockbyte

What, Me? Racist?

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:57:00 +0000

Original Source: Truthout.org

More than a few seemingly earnest attempts have been made by the Republicans and the Tea Partiers (which are, as it turns out, the same thing in the end) to deflect accusations that their ranks are riddled with racists. No, our contempt and rage and vitriol has nothing to do with our Black President, or his African family heritage, or his last name. No, no, we just hate health care reform and stuff. No, really.

Hm.

Ask the folks in Virginia how much this rings true. Virginia Beach is the hometown of the state's current Republican Governor, Bob McDonnell, whose love of all things historic motivated him to blow off the darker aspects of the slavery era in the South by declaring April to be Confederate History Month. The move was widely condemned by civil rights organizations, but boy howdy, did it ever endear McDonnell to the GOP base, as well as the Tea Party (which, again, are the same thing).

The Governor isn't the only denizen of Virginia Beach to enjoy a bout of good old-fashioned race-baiting. A few months back, a fellow named Dave Bartholomew, who is the chairman of the Virginia Beach Republican Party, came across a nifty little email that he thought spoke some heavy truths. Rather than keep the little gem to himself, Bartholomew forwarded it far and wide via his party chair email address. The content of the email read:

MY DOG

I went down this morning to sign up my Dog for welfare.

At first the lady said, "Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare".

So I explained to her that my Dog is black, unemployed, lazy, can't speak English and has no frigging clue who his Daddy is.

So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify...

My Dog gets his first check Friday.

Is this a great country or what?

Nah, not racist.

The best part, for me, is Bartholomew's defense for his actions (after getting caught, of course): he forwarded it without reading it because "he was first getting familiar with the Internet." Yup, that makes sense. It makes so much sense, in fact, that Bartholomew resigned almost immediately after his brand of humor became public, rather than become a "distraction" for the midterm elections.

Yes, Dave, this is a great country.

So great, in fact, that organizations seeking to register voters and organize early voting for the upcoming elections are getting lambasted by Tea Party groups with racist and threatening emails. The most recent example of this has been taking place in Houston, where the group Houston Votes has received a pile of emails from Tea Party activists attacking them for perpetrating "voter fraud." The emails leave nothing to the imagination...with, of course, all magical spelling intact:

"You liberial scumbags should be hung by the neck in public ! We are on to your voter fraud. Keep it up you MOTHER FUCKERS and you will soon be put down for a long dirt nap! Your nothing but a bunch of white guilt ridden assholes, NIGGERS and greasy mexican spics! The WAR is comming and we are going to dispose of each and every one of you while we take OUR (White) nation back."

There was also this:

"Citizen's from all over Texas will be coming to Houston to watch you fraudulent Marxist pigs. Be forewarned, you will be watched at every turn, and your corrupt Marxist organization will be targeted!"

And this:

"I see you're all into fraud. Why do you want to change Texas? You want it to be like a third-world nation? Texas is great - and you want to change it into a third world state. No thank you. Your fraud won't work. You were caught red handed. Live with it. We know all about it."

And, of course, this:

"i hope everyone of you American hating A-holes are thrown in prison for cheating our country and trying to assure socialism.GO TO HELL."

The Tea Party group behind this calls itself the King Street Patriots, and they have apparently dedicated themselves to protecting the purity of the vote in Texas. So dedicated are they, in fact, that the Justice Department has begun gathering information on the King Street Patriots amid allegations that the group has been intimidating voters, messing with poll workers, and disrupting lines of voters once early voting got underway. According to witnesses, this Tea Party harassment has been taking place in Black and Hispanic voting districts exclusively.

Try to contain your shock.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Photo: Tea Party rallier promotes racist backlash against President Obama in Wisconsin (courtesy cometstarmoon, Flickr, cc by 2.0)

Report: Tea Party Activism Tied to Extremists and Turning Violent

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:46:00 +0000

The Tea Party and its Republican Party handlers are on the defensive this week after an Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights report linked several prominent Tea Party leaders to extremist and openly racist organizations.

To cite some examples, the IREHR report revealed that Karen Pack, a leader of the Wood County Texas Tea Party in Texas, has been linked to the KKK. According to the report, Pack, who is a self-described "Christian, Tea Party member, a Constitutionalist and a Patriot" has been listed as an official supporter by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and a subscriber to a periodical published by a so-called White Patriot organization.

Another leader of the Tea Party movement is Roan Garcia-Quintana of Mauldin, South Carolina, who was identified as "advisor and media spokesperson" for the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina. As the IREHR report notes, Garcia-Quintana serves also as a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the "direct descendant of the white Citizens Councils that fought to defend Jim Crow segregation during the 1950s and 1960s."

Dale Robertson helped found and serves as the president of 1776 Tea Party with an online membership located in several cities across the Southwest and South, from Mesa, Arizona to Miami, Florida. According to the report, Robertson's extremist, anti-immigrant views have been well-publicized. In a media statement, Robertson urged a vigilante response to immigrants: "“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. If the Republican Party or the Democrat Party does not turn Conservative, and soon, then it will leave the Tea Party no choice but to take them over and clean house.” In 2009 "Robertson attended a Tea Party event in Houston with a sign reading 'Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar.'” He has circulated racist e-mails depicting President Obama as a pimp and has a record of promoting anti-Semitic speakers on his radio program.

Head of design, marketing, and advertising for the Council of Conservative Citizens newsletter in Florida is Peter Gemma, who also belongs to the ResistNet Tea Party. He is joined in that group by Tucson, Arizona native Clay Douglas who uses their website to promote his anti-Semitic blatherings on his Free American website and radio program. Douglas is known to have blamed Jews for the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Another ResistNet Tea Party activist is Arkansas native Billy Joe Roper, founder of a group called "White Revolution." Roper's group favors racial segregation and regularly denounces civil rights laws.

Virginia native and Tea Party activist, Larry Pratt was a leading figure in the anti-government militia movements in the 1990s, has participated in KKK, Aryan Nations, and so-called Christian Identity groups, which along with white supremacy preach that Jews are Satanic and people of color are "mud people."

Recent events not discussed in the report reveal how far Tea Party supporters of Republican candidates are willing to go in this election. For example, the race for Michigan Attorney General turned ugly this week when supporters of the Republican candidate's campaign lobbed anti-Semitic attacks on David Leyton, the Democratic candidate. According to a story in the central Michigan Morning Sun, one supporter of the Republican who had been used in campaign commercials posted a string of anti-Semitic comments on a news website, which "distilled down" said "the Jew lawyer Leyton had deprived her of justice, and the Jew who runs the site had connived to keep the suspect's ethnicity out of the paper." The newspaper lambasted the Republican campaign, saying it "owns the bigotry unleashed."

Another incident in Arizona revealed further how vicious and violent Tea Party activists can get to further their cause. Rep. Raul Grijalva was forced to close a congressional office in Tucson, Arizona this week after a staffer opened a letter covered with swastikas and containing what seems to have been toxic white power reminiscent of the attacks against leaders of Congress after September 11, 2001. This is the third of a string of attacks, including gun shots and bomb threats, against Grijalva's offices. Anti-immigrant groups are suspected of the attacks.

“These groups and individuals are out there, and we ignore them at our own peril,” said NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous in a press statement this week. “They are speaking at Tea Party events, recruiting at rallies and in some cases remain in the Tea Party leadership itself. The danger is not that the majority of Tea Party members share their views, but that left unchecked, these extremists might indirectly influence the direction of the Tea Party and therefore the direction of our country: moving it backward and not forward.”

Photo: Tea Partiers rally with well-known extremist Rep. Michelle Bachmann in Minnesota (courtesy Fibonacci Blue, cc by 2.0)

Asian Cities at Risk

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 08:59:00 +0000

Original source: IRIN News

BANGKOK, 20 October 2010 (IRIN) - Well-run, well-built cities can be among the safest places on earth to be when disaster strikes. However, where physical and social infrastructure is weak, they can be among the worst.

“Physical infrastructure, land-planning and the size of informal settlements are the biggest factors determining the impact of disasters on cities,” said N.M.S.I. Arambepola, director of Urban Disaster Risk Management with the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre in Bangkok. “With so many people migrating to the cities, many of the most vulnerable urban populations settle in the more disaster-prone areas where no one else wants to live.”

The disparity between well-planned and well-built wealthy cities, and poorer ones, - called the “urban risk divide” by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in its 2010 World Disasters Report - is especially acute in Asia, where someone in the Philippines is up to 17 times more likely to be killed by a natural disaster than someone in Japan, although the likelihood and frequency of disaster in Japan is higher overall.

With seven of the 10 most populous cities in the world, and an urban population expected to double from 1.36 billion to 2.64 billion by 2030, according to the UN Population Fund, the UN’s 2010-2011 disaster reduction campaign focusing on making cities more resilient is particularly relevant for Asia.

Tropical storms, floods, earthquakes and melting glaciers threaten urban populations in Asia, but where are some of the most dangerous cities to live if a natural disaster strikes?

Kathmandu, Nepal: Every year, settlements in Kathmandu valley experience floods and landslides but Kathmandu itself (population 1.5 million) is at particular risk. Records show that an earthquake happens every 75 years in the city. The last one, in 1934, killed almost 20,000. Scientists are expecting another quake of about eight on the Richter scale, which according to the Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS) would kill at least 50,000 people and leave an estimated 900,000 homeless. The surrounding Himalayan peaks and limited number of roads in and out of the valley would make relief efforts very difficult.

Manila, Philippines: Eighteen million residents of the Philippines largest city live in a coastal area prone to flooding during the June-November rainy season. Located in the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, Manila residents are also at risk of volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and earthquakes, and are exposed to about 20 cyclones a year. The growth of slums, estimated to house almost three million people, according to the UN Human Settlements programme (UN-HABITAT), is particularly at risk of flooding and landslides.

Dhaka, Bangladesh: Almost 30 percent of the 14 million people in this city live in slums along the water’s edge, exposing them to flooding. The Stanford-based earthquake disaster risk index lists Dhaka as one of the 20 most vulnerable cities in the world to earthquakes.

Mumbai, India: The fourth largest city in the world with 20 million people, and 6.7 million slum dwellers, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is also one of the top 10 most vulnerable cities in terms of floods, storms and earthquakes. According to the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), Mumbai is the most vulnerable in the world in terms of total population exposed to coastal flood hazard; it is among the world’s top six cities most vulnerable to storm surges; and it lies on an earthquake fault-line. Like many of Asia’s coastal mega-cities, most of the city is less than a metre above sea-level. With Mumbai accounting for almost 40 percent of the India’s tax revenue, any serious catastrophe here could have drastic economic consequences for the country.

Jakarta, Indonesia: Forty percent of the land area of Jakarta is below sea-level. As a result, its 10 million inhabitants are at risk of flash floods, particularly along the 13 river systems which pass through the Jakarta region. Jakarta also has a moderate risk of earthquakes due to the country’s location along the Indo-Asia subduction zone. With 60 percent of the nation’s money circulating in this city, any serious disaster would have country-wide economic effects. Furthermore, the high population density, averaging 14,000 people per square kilometre, a significant portion of which are slum-dwellers, increases a disaster's potential to cause harm.

Photo: Bangkok, Thailand (Swami Stream, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0)

Poem: The One-Leaflet Theory of Revolution

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 12:31:00 +0000

O God, O Muse, O Creative Spirit,
O shades of Revolution from generations gone,
I chasten my heart and bend my knee to implore you,
Send down,
to one so tired of working and waiting,
to one who winces with twinges of guilt
over a sinful night of dinner and music,
Send to this exhausted brain
that text of heavenly perfection,
that unearthly combination of letters and words,
that transcendent, pellucid, sonorous
expression of the people’s will
at this excruciating moment
that sublime manifesto of deliverance,
that noble pronouncement,
in a language all sentient beings may mystically apprehend,
Send down that one resplendent leaflet
leaping with imagination and potent with inventive genius

That will dilate the veins of indignation,
pump the blood faster through the heart,
lift cataracts from eyes,
and restore the halt and lame
to a full sprint toward the sun
to mold our class solidarity
into a fiery arm of victory
as glorious orchestras fill the air
with harmony no soul has ever heard
and the rhythm of masses marching as one.

And Muse or Spirit or God, please
do not forget to forward your flyer
in exactly that font and graphic design
your divine calculation determines
will awe and astound and amaze the population
into utter, confident conviction
that this, this one page of word and image,
be the prophetic answer to all our age-old prayers,
the long-sought comfort for all oppressed people,
the soothing balm to every hurt and wound,
the bugler’s final taps for numberless capital crimes.

And let it usher in a shining epoch of blissful peace
and art to please, delight, inspire,
that grants the joy of giving all we are able,
that blesses us with all we need.
O God or whoever, will this you bestow?

I’m listening.
Ready.
I’m sitting at my monitor prepared to transcribe.

Patient.
Patient!

Actually, I think I’m getting a little restless now.
I’m not hearing you.

‘Scuse me. Gotta get the phone.
Can I go out precinct walking today?!
Well, I was expecting a very important call.
It could come at any time.

But I can’t wait forever.
Yeah, I can go.
When and where do you need me?

--October 17, 2010

The Tide Has Changed: A Musical Essay and a Lesson in Humanity

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:46:00 +0000

If one tried to fit music compositions into an equivalent literary style, Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble’s latest release would come across as a most engaging political essay: persuasive, argumentative, rational, original, imaginative and always unfailingly accessible.

But unlike the rigid politicking of politicians and increasingly Machiavellian style of today’s political essayists – so brazen they no longer hide behind illusory moral façades - the band’s latest work is also unapologetically humanistic.

Those familiar with the writings of Gilad Atzmon - the famed ex-Israeli musician and brilliant saxophone player, now based in London – can only imagine that Gaza was the place that occupied his thoughts as he composed The Tide Has Changed.

The title track, an 11-minute melody, transmits the host of emotions that engulfed many of us when Israel began mercilessly pounding the resilient and hostage Gaza Strip in late 2008. First there were the simultaneous strikes which killed hundreds. Some of us woke up to watch the dreadful images of poor police cadets in Gaza reeling under the ceaseless bombardment in a heap of human flesh. Body parts of young men and their families scattered across burning buildings and pulverized concrete. Those still alive were hauling whatever remained of their bodies across the sea of the dead, mostly in their graduation uniforms.

It was a moment of disbelief, of questioning much of what we’d previously held to be true. It came as a shock and awe to our collective consciousness, and was further bolstered by endless days of constant shelling and tragedy. And the tide began to change as if the moment of death, of release, was the very moment of liberation. Gaza’s thousands of victims may have produced the nudge for millions around the globe to begin to finally confront their inner fear, their subtle sense of shame for allowing a tragedy of that magnitude to continue for all of these years.

As Gaza held strong proving once and for all that unspoken values – human spirit, the will of the people, the collective dignity of a nation – was stronger than all that military genius can possibly generate, millions went to the streets in a most disorganized, chaotic and yet genuine expression of human solidarity witnessed in many years.

The tide has changed, then, and continues to change. The frenzied and disorganized, yet real sentiments have become an unwavering and well-articulated commitment to justice. The shift cannot always be validated by numbers or demonstrated in charts, but is nonetheless felt widely. Israeli researchers refer to it as the global movement aimed at delegitimizing their country. They are laboring to link it to anti-Semitism somehow, but to no avail. Palestinians and their friends vary in their own reading of what happened during and after those fateful days, but contend it was Israel’s murderous acts that incepted and cemented the process of its own de-legitimization. Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble articulate it in music - melancholic at the start, but upbeat and unwavering later on.

And So Have We, another track, starts with the soft cries of Gilad’s saxophone, accompanied by the sound of drumbeat, and haunting vocals is a sad procession. It invokes the sounds and feelings of the Freedom Flotilla, laden with people from around the world united by a mute sense of powerlessness, then emancipation. When the hundreds of activists set sail abroad the Mavi Marmara and the other ships, they freed themselves and the rest of us from the stifling weight of inaction in the face of injustice. It lifted for a moment the huge burden on our collective conscience. It showed civil society at its best, its most humane members sailing and braving the high seas to extend a lifeline to Palestine, to Gaza, which had been left undefended, hungry and alone - but never defeated.

Much has been said about the Freedom Flotilla. Hundreds of television and radio shows ran discussions and debates about its significance. Thousands of articles were published, and many books will follow. Even YouTube was caught in the storm. But in the midst of articulation and counter-articulation, a sentiment so beautiful, so poetic was lost; no words can possibly describe the triumph of human dignity that day, no matter how lucid or earnest.

It really takes a bit of imagination. We have been forced to believe that the world is now divided between civilizations that are willing to fight and kill to impose their collective will on the rest of us. That we had no other option but to join that clash of civilizations or to perish. That ‘our way of life’ – whomever we might be – is now being challenged and threatened. That conflict is hardly based on class analysis, gender, racial or any other classification, but is a clash between religion-inspired collectives.

That was then. Now we have seen hundreds of people, of different religious beliefs, value systems, races and class affiliations leave their homes, families, livelihoods, and entire worlds behind, staring death in the face on their way to Gaza. They have confronted and defeated the old but persistent illusions. They have demonstrated that it isn’t what divides us that matters. What unifies us is much stronger, real, deserving, lasting and worthy of celebration.

The Tide Has Changed is not meant to be a sad melody, but the sound of people marching. It is the sound of boats reaching the shore. It is the sound of people’s collective retort to racism, hatred, siege and war. It is a well-deserved moment of triumph, of victory.

Old Trees and a Railroad Station in Stuttgart

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:27:00 +0000

A retired engineer of 66 loses an eye, forced from its socket by water cannon at short range. High school kids in an approved protest demonstration get beaten and excruciatingly blinded by pepper gas; over 400 people are injured in a major police attack, which failed completely in its aim: to end the protests. It happened on the now historical date of September 30th. A whole city was in a state of near shock and anger. And all that because of a railroad station and some ancient trees?

It sounds implausible in the usually calm, relatively well-off city of Stuttgart, the home of Mercedes-Daimler and Porsche. The capital of the southwest German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, which has been ruled since 1953 by Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats, together currently with the even more right-wing Free Democrats. What in the world moves thousands, ten thousands, sometimes a hundred thousand usually rather unpolitical people to shout, sing, pray, climb trees and jam the main square with their banners, posters, whistles and drums?

The excitement began in August, when people became aware that their big central station was to be leveled in order to build a modern underground station for high speed trains. Few people had anything against modern or high speed, but they liked the almost one hundred year old landmark in the middle of town with its big tower. They loved the open space around it, a park near the former royal palace with 282 tall, two-hundred-year-old chestnut trees. And not many Stuttgart people were eager to have one more business district erected there, even though some apartments would be thrown in. Even fewer liked the idea when they heard that the price of the dubious “Stuttgart 21” project, instead of the originally announced 3 billion Euros or the revised 5 or 7 billion, would most likely total 18 or 19 billion. Lots of schools and other good public buildings could be built or repaired with money like that, while Angela Merkel and her ministers were whining incessantly that “we must all tighten our belts,” which means cutting benefits for those who need them most.

The mayor, a CDU man, the governor of the state, also a CDU man, and Angela Merkel in Berlin, a CDU woman, all pointed out that the project, called Stuttgart 21, had been approved by the law-makers years ago and could not be dropped now, when work had already begun. Yet somehow this legally correct argument just didn’t get across, and thousands started wearing buttons with a line drawn through the Stuttgart 21 logo, and they started gathering in front of the station, more and more of them, louder and louder. For a while they demonstrated Monday evenings, like the famous demonstrators in East German Leipzig 21 years earlier. Then they gathered on weekends too, or any other day, sometimes in immense crowds for a city of 600,000 inhabitants.

The mayor sent more and more police, wrecking crews tore down one wing of the station, which only made people madder. Then came that terrible attack on September 30th, and the pictures of the elderly engineer with both eyes smashed and bloody and of youngsters moaning with burning pepper-sprayed eyes shook the entire nation. The videos of giant old trees being felled further enraged the nature-lovers, who got an injunction against further felling when it was found that a rare, endangered beetle species lives almost only in those trees.

Motivating many people, certainly, was an increasing awareness that a small number of wealthy, powerful companies with close political connections would rake in billions and also the feeling that, despite all parliamentary processes, they had been kept almost entirely in the dark. The official line in Germany has been that voters should elect parties and politicians to represent them and then leave it to them to govern, otherwise keeping their mouths shut. Often that is just what happens. But in recent months they have seen the government chopping away at their livelihoods in so many ways while the big fish profit, largely untaxed and untroubled. Resentment has been growing, and there seem to be many, perhaps after watching demonstrators in France, Greece and elsewhere, who want to make their voices heard. Merkel said they should wait for election day in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg on March 27th. But by then the trees and the station would be gone.

Politics are indeed involved. The LEFT, still unrepresented in the parliament there and few in number, has largely gone unmentioned, even when LEFT leader Gregor Gysi called a special session of the Bundestag in Berlin to take action against the police brutality. The Social Democrats, who had long approved the Stuttgart 21 project, finally climbed onto the bandwagon, but their wishy-washy opposition wins them few friends. It has been the Greens who have pushed their way into the limelight and who will probably prosper most, not only in the southwest but everywhere. As for the two governing parties in the state, both Christian Democrats and Free Democrats stand to lose immensely, unless they can somehow alter the situation before next March. For weeks and weeks they remained absolutely stubborn, but finally had to agree to a mediation attempt by a retired politician, one of the very rare progressive Christian Democrats. A possible solution would be a referendum, common in neighboring Switzerland but almost unknown here. Yet thus far this has been rejected. The end remains uncertain, while the demonstrations continue, rain or shine.

Republicans "Pledge" to Slash Veterans Benefits

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:30:00 +0000

Democrats ramped up their campaign against a Republican Party takeover of Congress this week with charges that the Republicans want to eliminate some veterans benefits passed in the Democratic-controlled Congress. If they take power, Republican Party leaders vowed in their "pledge to America" to target veterans benefits claiming they are not "paid for."

"The Republicans would like every Democrat, every veteran, every retired military person in this country to be muted in this election. We will not be muted," Max Cleland said on a national conference call, Oct. 18, with veterans on behalf of Organizing for America (OFA), the organizing arm of the Democratic National Committee.

"My feelings on veterans benefits," Cleland continued, responding to the Republican pledge to slash benefits, "they're all pre-paid. Veterans gave at the office."

"It is the moral obligation of this nation to take care of them," he added. While it is impossible for any government or treasury to replace the years they have sacrificed for their country, or "compensate them for lost time, lost hopes, lost lives or lost limbs," Cleland, a paralyzed veteran of the Vietnam War, said, it is our duty to do our best to care for them.

And the Democrats have lived up to that duty, he said. Since they took the lead in Congress in 2006 and since President Obama was sworn into office, "we have seen the greatest increase in the VA budget since World War II," Cleland pointed out. In the past 72 months of Democratic Party leadership, the VA has seen a budget increase of 45 percent.

"Democrats get it," he said. Voters who care about these issues care enough to send Democrats to Washington to ensure the government adequately fund and care for those who have made the ultimate sacrifices.

Cleland cited large increases in counselors and mental health professionals assigned to aid veterans with PTSD. The VA's health care budget is at its largest in decades. He also pointed to the new GI Bill – authored and passed into law by congressional Democrats over Republican objections – which specifically address the special needs of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to get into college and into the workforce. "The GI Bill is the best single veterans program ever devised," Cleland said.

The record shows that the Democrats and President Obama understand the needs of America's veterans, Cleland said. He urged veterans to exercise their right to vote on November 2nd and to support the candidates that are going to protect veterans benefits rather than the Republican Party which plans to slash VA budgets.

Republican Party leaders have vowed to cut non-military federal spending, including veterans benefits, in order to pay for new tax breaks for the very rich and for corporations that move jobs overseas.

Photo by Beverly & Pack, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Does Oil Drilling Cause Earthquakes?

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:08:00 +0000

EarthTalk®
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: What, if anything, fills the empty space underground created by the extraction of billions of gallons of oil? Could oil drilling be one of the causes of increasing amounts of land settling and sinkholes in oil rich areas? Can it cause earthquakes? -- Linda Anderson, Sedona, AZ

The crude oil (and natural gas) we drill for the world over is, for the most part, stored in tiny pores within rock up to only about three miles deep in the Earth’s hugely dense crust. At such depths, the oil there is under fairly high pressure. When it is removed, other liquids—usually water—move in to take its place, equalizing the pressure in the process. Sometimes oil extractors pump water into one side of an oil field to push oil toward wells on the other side, and the water replaces the oil accordingly.

In cases where other liquids don’t move in, such as in the North Sea off The Netherlands, the porous rock layer that harbored the oil originally can collapse after extraction, causing slight amounts of land settling (known as “land subsidence”) in the rock layer surfaces above, but typically no more than a few tenths of an inch per year.

Here in the U.S., land subsidence induced by the large volume extraction of underground resources including oil and gas “is more common than most people realize,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a government agency which collects, monitors, analyzes and provides scientific understanding about natural resource conditions, issues and problems. Flat coastal plains and wetlands near sea level are most at risk from this potential side effect.

Excessive ground water pumping, not oil or gas extraction, is the single largest source of land subsidence, says the USGS, but the agency cites several cases throughout the 20th century which they say demonstrate how “accelerated withdrawal of oil, gas and associated water from shallow unconsolidated reservoirs could lower the land elevation, cause minor earthquakes, and activate faults [around oil fields].”

Subsidence around large, mature oil and gas fields that coincide with faults could add enough stress to trigger small, locally based earthquakes as far as two kilometers away from the offending wells. Most geologists agree, though, that it is unlikely that oil and gas extraction could contribute to or cause major earthquakes, which are generated at depths far deeper than would be practical to drill for oil or gas. The USGS does suggest, however, that the continued withdrawal of oil and gas and the associated decline in underground fluid pressure could even contribute to coastal sea level rises by lowering coastal land elevations.

As for sinkholes, modern oil wells tend to be much deeper than the depth where sinkholes typically can affect people. Nonetheless, in 1980 residents of the West Texas town of Wink awoke one morning to find a 370-foot wide, 110-foot deep sinkhole a couple of miles north of downtown. Geologists suspect the sinkhole formed as a result of historic (and by today's standards outdated) oil production practices in the area whereby extractors pumped saltwater out from underneath the surface and left a void that the above layer of earth eventually collapsed into. A second, even bigger sinkhole opened up nearby in 2002.

CONTACT: U.S. Geological Survey, www.usgs.gov.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Recession's Impact on Black and Latino Families

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 08:55:00 +0000

While much of the corporate media, most political pundits and much of the country's elected leadership would like to characterize America as a "post-racial" society in which "colorblindness" rules, newly released data reveals that racially-based economic inequalities may be at their worst levels since the 1990s.

According to fresh statistics from the Census Bureau, the recession and the housing crisis have most adversely affected African American and Latino families. In 2009, the median income for African American households fell 4.4 percent to just $32,584. That represents just 60 percent of the median income of white households. In the same period, Latino household saw a roughly similar income gap with white households, but actually saw a 0.7 percent rise in incomes.

Poverty rates for African Americans and Latinos also grew 1.1 percent and 1.9 percent respectively, the Census Bureau found. More than 21 million people who self-identify as African American or Latino live below the federal poverty line.

The federal government also reported that more than 50 million Americans went without health insurance in 2009. Almost half, or nearly 24 million, were African Americans or Latinos.

In addition recent Department of Labor data shows unemployment rates for African Americans stands at 16.1 percent, while Latinos are at 12.4 percent, totaling close to 6 million people.

While five years ago whites enjoyed a homeownership rate that was some 50 percent higher than African Americans and Latino, a figure that had been closing over the previous period, since the collapse of the housing market in 2007 and 2008 homeownership rates for African Americans fell substantially in 2009. In fact, Census Bureau estimates show that African Americans have fallen to the same rates as 10 years ago. Compared to 10 years ago, the rate of white homeownership has grown by more than four percentage point.

The importance of homeownership extends beyond simply the "American dream" of owning a home. High homeownership rates provide a financial basis for long-term family stability, educational opportunities, and community strength through a solid tax base.

This data reveals the impact of historically structured economic inequalities on African American and Latino working families. It reveals the extent to which all working families have a stake in pressing a political agenda that provides for the needs of working men and women: the need to create good-paying, union jobs, provision of universal healthcare, opportunities for housing, good schools, and effective and efficient measures to fight poverty.

The Republican Party, its ideology and its policies, lie at the heart of the economic crisis that expanded economic inequality. As one blogger for the AFL-CIO recently noted, the Republican plan to cut taxes for the richest Americans, to gut education funding by tens of billions of dollars, to privatize Social Security, and their push to repeal health reform has nothing in common with the needs either of working families of color or any working families, for that matter.

As Tony Carrk, a policy analyst for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, suggested, "Like so many families in America, communities of color are facing a stubborn job market, tighter budgets, and increased health care costs. The fact is that the Republican “Pledge to America” will make their situation worse, not better."

Photo: Oct. 2, working families united to call for economic policies that shift resources from war to creating jobs. (PW/Tim Wheeler)

Death and Profits: The Utility Protection Racket

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:43:00 +0000

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is a multi-billion-dollar privately owned, publicly regulated utility whose main function is to make enormous profits for its shareholders at great cost to ratepayers. I know this to be true; I’m one of the ratepayers.

Better than Bernard

The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) permits PG&E to charge rates that are 30 percent higher than the national average.

PG&E’s shareholders enjoy a guaranteed 11.35 percent yearly return on equity. That’s slightly higher than the 11 percent that swindler Bernard Madoff pretended to offer his investment victims. After Madoff was exposed, his victims were chided for not having realized that no one pulls down an 11 percent return year after year on the stock market. But PG&E investors take in more than that every year. And unlike Madoff, the company’s earnings are for real, guaranteed at a fixed return devoid of risk.

PG&E enjoys a captive consumer market of fifteen million customers in northern and central California. The utility is a shining monument to state-supported monopoly capitalism. If costs rise, then so do customer rates (in order to guarantee the 11.35 percent return). PG&E carries a $17 million insurance premium and additional millions in insurance deductibles; these expenses too are picked up by its ratepayers.

If northern and central California’s gas and electric services were publicly owned (yes, socialism), there would be no 11.35 percent skim off the top going to rich investors, no fat salaries and bonuses and huge severance packages pocketed by top executives, no billions of dollars in private wealth to be traded on the stock market. Customer rates would probably be one-third to one-half lower than they are today. And gas pipelines would be in better repair.

An Avoidable Catastrophe

Along with all the other expenses they bear, PG&E’s ratepayers usually pay for the enormous costs of utility accidents. This may still prove to be the case with the disaster recently visited upon San Bruno. On 9 September 2010, a PG&E pipeline blew apart. Gas explosions and flames ripped through the San Bruno community, taking the lives of at least eight people, injuring over fifty others (some very seriously), and completely destroying or damaging upwards of a hundred homes. An official from the National Transportation Safety Board described it: “My immediate assessment was the amazing destruction, the charred trees, the melted and charred cars, the houses disappeared.”

In the weeks before the catastrophe, residents had been reporting gas odors and had voiced fears about a leak. But this brought no action from the company. A state assemblyman from the San Bruno area noted that the torn pipeline was over 60 years old, having been installed in 1948. He criticized PG&E for its poor maintenance and lax response. After the explosion, it took the company almost three hours to shut off the gas supply.

Company officials had known since 2007 that the aged pipeline serving San Bruno needed to be replaced. As reported by The Utility Reform Network (TURN), a public interest group, the PUC had granted PG&E a $5 million rate increase to replace the pipeline in 2009, but the company never got around to doing the work. Instead PG&E overspent its budget on executive bonuses and delayed pipeline replacement until 2013.

Then it had the gall to request another $5 million rate increase to replace the same neglected section of pipeline. The disastrous September 2010 explosion likely would have been averted if the utility had dealt with the pipeline in 2009 as originally slated.

PG&E has a history of dangerous mishaps: improper piping allowed gas to leak from a mechanical coupling in 2006; a leak in Rancho Cordova led to an explosion that killed one resident and injured two others in 2008; over forty other gas pipeline accidents in the past decade. One wonders how many other California communities are at risk from aging and deficient pipelines. So much for the superior performance of a giant private-profit corporation.

Not in the Safety Business

This problem obtains not only in California. Throughout the United States people are at risk from improperly maintained gas lines belonging to private utilities that go largely unsupervised and unpunished. Average fines are less than $30,000 and not easily collected.

PG&E’s CEO, Peter Darbee, formerly of Goldman Sachs (how perfect), reassured the public that he was “focused on the tragedy” in San Bruno and on “how best to respond to the authorities involved.”

Darbee failed to mention that PG&E is not in the safety business. Like so many big corporations, it does what it can to cut corners on maintenance. The lower the maintenance costs, the higher the profits. The corroding pipelines fit well into the picture, like the corroding infrastructure of the entire society. Safety is not a prime concern for giant corporations, if any concern at all, because safety does not bring in any money. In fact, it costs money.

Like any other multibillion-dollar firm, PG&E is first and foremost in the business of making the highest possible payoffs for its shareholders and its executives. The system works just fine for those whose real job is to skim the cream, those who do not have to pay the costs. That is the alpha and omega of modern corporate capitalism.

Capitalism at Work

Lives were lost in San Bruno; homes were totally obliterated. Darbee and his cohorts should be facing jail sentences instead of golden parachutes. Even the Contra Costa Times (9/27/10)--no radical broadsheet--urged the PUC “not to allow PG&E to raise rates to cover the expense of the San Bruno explosion or the cost of doing more and better pipe inspections. These costs should be borne by PG&E managers, employees, and investors.” Certainly managers and investors.

Left out of the whole picture is how corporate malfeasance and corporate generated disasters are a reflection of the capitalist system. If a gas pipeline had exploded in communist Cuba, killing people and destroying homes, the incident would immediately have been treated by US commentators as evidence of the deficiencies of the broader economic system, as proof that socialism cannot do it right.

But disasters in our own society are seen simply as immediate mishaps, at worst, instances of negligence and mismanagement by a particular company, never as the outcome of a broader capitalist system that steadfastly puts profits before people, with immense costs passed along to the public.

The same is true of mining accidents, train wrecks, plane crashes, unsafe auto vehicles, unsafe consumer products and foods, toxic spills, offshore-drilling calamities and a host of other noxious things that corporate America foists upon us. Private industries are not in the safety business. All of them are in the business of creating the largest possible profits for their shareholders and their executives.

Pressed on the matter, they might admit as much. Steel magnate David Roderick once said that his company “is not in the business of making steel. We’re in the business of making profits.” The social uses of the product and its effects upon human well-being and the natural environment win consideration in capitalist production, if at all, only to the extent that they do not violate the profit goals of the corporation.

Better Things To Do

Rather than spend money on replacing aging pipelines, PG&E—just three months before the San Bruno catastrophe—poured $46 million of ratepayer money (ten times the amount needed for repairing the San Bruno pipeline) into the electoral campaign for Proposition 16. This initiative was designed to make it neigh impossible for local governments to purchase energy from alternative sources, impossible to get out from under PG&E’s monopoly grip. The proposition was miraculously defeated despite the company’s immense campaign outlay.

With thousands of miles of aging pipes to inspect and perhaps replace, PG&E continues to find other things to do. Through most of 2010, it was busy putting “smart meters” into people’s homes. The new meters do not need to be read by an employee out in the field. Instead data from residences and businesses are transmitted by a mesh network of radio signals.

Critics argue that the smart meters are too smart. They often inflate electric bills. Worse still, they may be harmful to our health. There is evidence that radio-frequency exposure is linked to cancer and other diseases. A number of ratepayers already complain of being sickened by the heavy doses from smart meters. PG&E gives reassurances that the frequencies pose no great danger but it continues to face community resistance and skeptical questions from independent investigators.

Smart meters cut labor costs. Lower labor costs do not bring lower rates for ratepayers but higher profits for managers and stockholders. Never accuse PG&E of neglect or stupidity. The company knows what it is doing. In keeping with the essence of the corporate capitalist system, PG&E exists not to serve the public but to serve itself.

Photo: Seattle Municipal Archives, cc by 2.0

Hungry for Answers

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:26:00 +0000

When Paul Krugman and Martin Feldstein – Reagan's Chief Economist, Trilateral Commission, Group of 30.... – concur that there is literally no end in sight to the 10 percent - plus unemployment levels, and no known path to recovery without another major shift leftward in US politics; and that there is a 1 in 3 chances of another recession next year; and a 1 in 10 chance of catastrophe in the event of another "externality" (unpredicted war, climate crisis, currency shock, etc); and that the global scope of the crisis spells no cure through trade – its time sharpen our understanding of exactly what's happening to capitalism.

The Tea Party "movement" is largely a Fox and "Friends" fueled project, but the crowds of panicked citizens drawn to it, plus the One Nation demonstration draw of almost 200,000 people show that people are hungry for answers, and few have been forthcoming, at least in terms clear enough to be understood by the multitudes of millions.

Hardly less intimidating are the stories continuing to emanate from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that show a bloated US Military giving the finger to the president on even modest efforts to slow down and terminate these unproductive, adventuristic, un-winnable wars and their unsustainable costs.

New thinking about economics, new thinking about the future of society, new thinking about war and peace are needed. Old paradigms are not working. The forces of hate and negativity already unleashed in the mid-term election campaigns, and inflamed by unlimited, and secret, corporate money legalized by the criminal, sick majority on the Supreme Court will leave the streets of the country covered in blood if countervailing answers and forces are not forthcoming and mobilized.

In the past I have written frequently that in general – more socialism is needed, on many fronts. I am not a believer in "great leaps forward" nor do I think the foreseeable future argues for the abolition of markets or capitalism in many sectors of the economy.

Further, the "more socialism" I think we need bears no relation to the cold war stereotypes that lose many Americans who KNOW that what is happening is NEW, and DIFFERENT, even if it has been building for some time. However, unless the electoral process can find a way to substantially weaken the power of finance capital over the political and economic life of the country, and permit a rational balanced, long-range restructuring plan to go forward, then revolutionary and counter-revolutionary tactics will increasingly hold sway.

Make no mistake, in this writers view, reactionary forces led and funded by leading sections of finance capital, energy, defense corporations, and agribusiness will lay waste to democratic institutions to preserve their wealth and privileges. We will be compelled to defend those institutions with our lives. They have effectively nullified the US Senate, and the Supreme Court. No more aid to states and cities reeling from the economic crisis will be coming from a paralyzed congress. The House, if taken over or neutralized by the Republicans will become an endless waste of hearings on important matters like Michelle Obama's wardrobe or hair style, or Kenyan influences on the president.

We need a new vision. And the willingness of millions of patriots to save their country from ruin; and put ourselves IN THE WAY of this reactionary juggernaut.

(Photo by Mike Sheridan, courtesy Flickr, 2.0)

Celebrating German Unity and Fighting Back

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:21:00 +0000

Once again the time has come in Germany for bells to ring, fireworks to explode, politicians to declaim and media to drench us with joyful, endless reminders of events of twenty years ago and the evils they overcame. Last November it was the Fall of the Wall, now it’s German Unity which is so loudly commemorated, the final demise in 1990 of the German Democratic Republic, East Germany.

A majority certainly did rejoice, those whose families had been separated above all but also those who had felt so isolated from the real, the western world with its liberties, its free election choices and its modern consumer joys and travel opportunities.

Perhaps one sixth in the East had mixed feelings. They too had so often been dismayed by the republic’s leadership, not seldom careerist, too isolated from the people it ruled over, helpless in some ways while too often brutal in counter-productive attempts to stay in power. Yet that one-sixth consisted of people who had for years devoted hands and hearts to building an anti-fascist East Germany with no poverty, no homelessness, many equal rights for women, care-free, loving (and free) care for children and free education for all. Despite all the blunders which many had recognized and deplored it had achieved no small part of this agenda. Now, good or bad, it was all to go down the drain, with all their lives’ endeavors. Few of these people applauded the speeches, were awed by the fireworks or sang the Western anthem, “Deutschland über ales.” Many just despaired.

But others were re-assured by the fact that West Germany, too, had a strong social welfare system, in some respects nearly as good as in East Germany, in some respects better, thanks both to old traditions as well as to decades of political competition between the two states.

A few found solace in a very different direction. Their attempt to change the world had failed, not only because of the blunders and false paths but also because the other side was simply stronger, cleverer, and luckier from the start. But now, they hoped, as Germans who still dreamt of a better world, at peace and without the blood-thirsty warriors symbolized by names like Krupp, Siemens and BASF or by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, their efforts were no longer restricted to the small East German rump state but could extend to all Germany, Europe’s strongest economy, perhaps even to the rest of Europe which it often dominates.

This hope seemed a case of “delusions of grandeur.” Has it experienced even the slightest success? The answer is perhaps expressed with the handy German word: “Jein” – Ja and Nein.

The West German state and its men of wealth had soon almost totally destroyed the East German economy, not just the decrepit little factories waiting for credit but handsome state of the art factories as well, and far too many concert halls and theaters, vacation homes and thousands of recently-built, not always architecturally beautiful but comfortable apartment buildings, now emptied by a huge westward exodus of mostly young people hunting for jobs and a future.

Yet, as some had predicted, the traditional German social net meant that even the millions without a job did not go hungry, while those with no roof over their heads were largely those from broken homes, often drinkers or rebellious youngsters. Medical care was available and for many the advantages in terms of travel possibilities, consumer goods assortment and a decrease of dull propaganda outweighed any difficulties.

The socialists slowly recuperated from their losses in East Germany. At first dismissed as a dying ember, the PDS, a radically reformed descendant of the former ruling party, gradually won up to 20-30 per cent of the voters. It was opposed but grudgingly tolerated by the German leadership as long as it failed to surpass a useless 1 or 2 percent in the far larger regions of West Germany. The four older parties managed quite comfortably with no one really rocking the boat.

But after joining a rebellious new West German party in 2007 to form the LEFT (DIE LINKE), and aided by the charisma of the militant former head of the Social Democrats, Oskar Lafontaine, it soon splashed down onto the all-German political map, receiving nearly 12 percent of the national vote in 2009 and breaking into all but one of the western state legislatures where it competed (just missing out in right-wing Bavaria). And it drew a worrisome number of voters from both the Greens and the Social Democrats, a price paid for their cuts in the social net when they held government power.

Thus, as the earlier optimists had hoped, the stage for dramatic action had indeed been greatly extended, and the German LEFT sent encouraging signals to tattered left-wing parties and groups all over Europe.

But now, also all over Europe, and in the wake of a crisis which has not really ended despite all rosy media claims, an attack has been launched against the “common people.” Sarkozy and Berlusconi, the British Tories and even the Spanish Socialists want to counter financial and economic woes with “unavoidable austerity,” of belt tightening, not by the bankers and speculators who caused them, or the big companies now raking in profits again, but by those least able to make new sacrifices. Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats, after some hesitation and internal quarrels, has now stepped up its rough-riding attacks: cuts in allowances for children of the jobless, reduced assistance for home heating costs, bowing to all demands of the energy giants to lengthen the lives of nuclear power plants, opening the way for rent increases, rejecting a minimum wage law for the miserably underpaid, and big increases in health insurance taxes with an option for extra treatment charges while sparing the employers and increasing the split in medical care between the wealthy and the others, with all but basic dental care already forbiddingly expensive. Then, after lengthy debate about the miserly payments for the jobless, Merkel’s minister finally announced an improvement: five more Euros a month, about two subway fares.

Meanwhile, the tabloids in all Europe supported a dangerous new movement against Muslims (or, alternately Roma, or Gypsies). It has gained rapid strength, most recently in Sweden and the Netherlands, but also in Switzerland, Hungary, Denmark, Italy and France and has surfaced nastily in Germany with the racist book of a well-known banker. With so many losing confidence in all the present parties a new party of this kind in Germany could become an extremely dangerous menace, recalling all too acutely what once happened in Germany, then targeting Jews and today Muslims.

But where was the LEFT? For months it has been so busy with internal problems and quarrels about its future program and how militant it should be that all too few actions were taken on these burning issues. The Social Democrats and Greens, also currently in opposition, were quicker to take up the cudgels on various social issues. This is ironic, since many nasty “reforms” were passed by them when they were in office, like cutting taxes on the wealthy while raising the retirement age from 65 to 67. They must therefore count on voters’ poor memory and, indeed, the Greens especially have pushed up high up in the polls, even rivaling their frequent partners, the Social Democrats. They have led in opposing nuclear power plants and the storage of their dangerous waste materials and in the fight, now turned very bloody, against the expensive, detested new rail station in Stuttgart. But in Hamburg, where they share power with the Christian Democrats, they have sadly capitulated.

Finally this past week the LEFT stepped up its actions. Together with attack, the anti-globalization organization, it “occupied” offices of the Deutsche Bank in cities all over Germany. On Berlin’s shopping avenue, Kurfuerstendamm, 15 members of both groups moved in, stopped business, gave the staff chocolates to show their lack of animosity towards them, and put their signs in the big windows, while 150 sitting outside on the sidewalk sang and waved militant signs demanding that the bank pay for the crisis or calling for its nationalization. The same afternoon a long parade led by the Left walked through downtown Berlin, also denouncing the banks. The marchers. about a thousand, heard that up to 100,000 working people from all Europe were demonstrating in Brussels, they cheered at warm greetings from strikers in Athens and rejoiced that millions were on a one-day strike in Spain, that there were protests all over, even a big unexpected protest in Rumania.

Perhaps, after an all too quiet summer, things will move again. With attacks on pensions and the rights of labor now seemingly coordinated in the whole European Union the need for a coordinated, militant fight-back is crucial everywhere. A strong position by the German LEFT would justify the current anniversary jubilation.