American Drones KIll 28 Innocent People for Every "Bad Guy"

Ted Rall writes that American Drones KIll 28 Innocent People for Every “Bad Guy”.

As a frequent critic of U.S. government policies, I’ve sometimes worried that Obama might sic one of his killer air robots on me. Thanks to Reprieve, I feel relieved. Even if Obama targets me, after all, it’s likely I’ll be reported killed multiple times while remaining alive and well…while hundreds of random people walking the streets get blown up willy-nilly.

Obama’s remote-control drone murderers are the embodiment of evil in the 21st century: careless, alienated, remote, bloodless. They also symbolize contemporary political culture: arrogant, corrupt and stupid.

Emphasis Mine

The US military kills 28 innocent people for every terrorism suspect! If that is not a war-crime, I do not what is.

No wonder the US government does not want to subscribe to the International Criminal Court: most of the high officials in the US government and military would awaiting trial.

Yet as Malcolm X said, the media has made us hate the oppressed and love the oppressor. Most of the reporting is about how these drone strikes are keeping us safe. Legality is reserved for those in control. Indeed, there is a means and residency test on legality: you have to have sufficient income and reside in the right place to be able afford the nicety of legality.

So much for the Capitalist promise of equality before the law.

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100K Homeless in Gaza face severe Flooding, Cold as UN Declares State of Emergency

Juan Cole reports on 100K Homeless in Gaza face severe Flooding, Cold as UN Declares State of Emergency.

“The flooding is exacerbating the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza caused by blockade and the unprecedented destruction from the latest Israeli offensive,” the UN agency said in a post on its Facebook.

The agency, which is already massively stretched due to the summer’s conflict, said that it was “providing emergency fuel to supply back-up generators for pumping stations, portable pumps, municipalities, water, sanitation and health facilities.”

The brutality of the illegal Israeli blockade is adding to the misery of the Palestinians as it is meant to. The whole Israeli policy is make Palestinian so miserable so that they flee Greater Israel forever and never come back, thereby making Greater Israel ‘Arab-Frei’.

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Economists vs Politicians

Mark Thoma posts excerpts from Chris Dillow's post on Economists vs Politicians.

Dillow posits three (3) reasons for the growing distance between economists and politicians:

1. Academic idealism and isolation
2. Public self-absorption
3. Media complicity

4. …Political journalists have been complicit in creating a hyperreal bubble of mediamacro which perpetuates witless ideas (such as conflating the economy with the deficit) to the exclusion of such good ones as might exist.

Or, the fourth reason could be that economics is currently not useful in maintaining the status quo. The economists are failing in their ideological duty in creating plausible reasons for the current economic and political regime.

Instead, they are looking at the facts and finding reasons to criticise neo-liberalism. How dare they? Next thing, you know, they will be quoting Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

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The fear of freedom

Seth Godin highlights The fear of freedom.

We live in an extraordinary moment, with countless degrees of freedom. The instant and effortless connection to a billion people changes everything, but instead, we're paralyzed with fear, a fear so widespread that you might not even notice it.

We have more choices, more options and more resources than any generation, ever.

At present, this subjective freedom is only available for those with the objective reality of sufficient cash.

But it does highlight the mental contraints that workers operate under. We have our freedom of action severely circumscribed at work through regulations, policies, fiats, decrees, etc. We cannot make a move without consulting our managers and they, in turn, consulting their managers, ad finitum.

As we enter a Communist society, we are going to face this fear of freedom. It was the same fear that slaves faced after emancipation. “How do we fend for ourselves?” Our minds have been crippled by this dependency on the bosses for making decisions that rightfully should have been ours.

It is the private ownership of the means of production that gives the bosses the legal and moral to make these decisions. Take these means of production into our own hands, and we take responsibility for our lives through making decisions and living with our mistakes.

It is only then that we can grow as human beings with full adult responsibility in our lives, instead of being cowering children asking for some more.

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Ferguson erupts -- anti-racist protesters demand justice

Barry Sheppard reports that Ferguson erupts -- anti-racist protesters demand justice.

Even the staid corporate New York Times editorialised: “Mr. McCulloch’s announcement sounded more like a defense of Officer Wilson than a neutral summary of the facts …

“For the Black community of Ferguson, the killing of Michael Brown was the last straw in a long train of abuses they have suffered daily at the hands of the local police …

“The police are justifiably seen as an alien, occupying force that is synonymous with state-sponsored abuse.

The case resonates across the country in New York City, Chicago and Oakland because the killing of young Black men by police is a common feature of African American life and a source of dread for Black parents from coast to coast.

Emphasis Mine

As usual, the mass media is distorting the truth and turning the rest of us into racists:

It defies common sense to believe that unarmed Brown, who was some distance away from Wilson, turned to run at a cop firing a hail of bullets at him. The fact that much of the media has given Wilson national TV time to spout this nonsense is nauseating.

It was an illustration of African American revolutionary Malcolm X's warning about the media in the most violent of all the “advanced” capitalist countries: “If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Emphasis Mine

Sheppard concludes that:

It is clear the protests are unlikely to quickly die down and the anger has the potential to spark a mass struggle against the racist violence that marks capitalist America.

Until the white people see themselves as human beings in common with black people, this struggle will eventually be extinguished by white fear of loss of entitlements under a racist society. Then another atrocity occurs, and the same cycle of violence and hand-wringing comes into play again and again.

Black people can present all of the arguments and facts they like, but racism is not to going to be seriously challenged until white workers seek a common cause with all workers against the Capitalists. And you can be bloody sure that the Capitalists are going to pull out all stops to make sure that never happens.

Remember we are neither black nor white, we are all human beings!

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Challenging the globalisation of indifference: Pope Francis meets with popular movements

Judith Marshall, from Steelworkers Humanity Fund reflects on Challenging the globalisation of indifference: Pope Francis meets with popular movements

After the three days in Rome with the popular movements, the Pope, then has continued to take the church into the centre of the ideological battle grounds of neoliberalism, firm in his determination to make the contemporary church walk with the poor and excluded and discarded. The popular movement participants have returned to their organisations and the day to day struggles for land, housing and work. The moments of dialogue in Rome have served to strengthen the convictions of both the church and the popular movements that these are the right battles to be fighting.

The problem with the Catholic Church's stance is that Communism and Socialism are still anathema. Membership of a Communist party is grounds for excommunication.

So the Church wants the luxury of criticising Capitalism without proposing an economic and political alternative.

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Ted Rall: They Shoot White People Too, Don't They?

Ted Rall reminds people that They Shoot White People Too, Don’'t They?

There is considerable evidence that white privilege won’t protect you from being beaten or otherwise abused when you fall into the clutches of white (or black) cops. In 2000 I was roughed up by an LAPD motorcycle cop for no apparent reason, other than the fact that he didn’t like the cut of my jib. (He charged me with jaywalking, which as a New Yorker I do often, but wasn’t doing then.)

In the United States, local law enforcement has a license to kill — and if they use it, the odds are, nothing will happen to them. Black or white, the smartest course of action when you fall into their clutches is with deference and courtesy, including when declining to answer questions, which is your right.

Although white people are less likely to be killed by the police without good reason, we are not immune. We should shed this stupid idea that we are safe because we are white.

The pain and suffering of non-whites is our pain and suffering because we are all human beings.

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Who Will Wind Up Holding the Bag in the Shale Gas Bubble?

Yves Smith asks Who Will Wind Up Holding the Bag in the Shale Gas Bubble?

Even though OilPrice reported that US rig count had indeed fallen as oil prices plunged, John Dizard at the Financial Times (hat tip Scott) gives a more intriguing piece of the puzzle: the degree to which production is still chugging along despite it being uneconomical. The oil majors have been criticized for levering up to continue developing when it is cash-flow negative; they are presumably betting that prices will be much higher in short order.

Emphasis Mine

Anyone who thinks that Capitalism is inherently rational should ponder the fact that the investors are pouring money into businesses that are losing money and will lose money for the foreseeable future.
Yet the laws of motion for Capitalism compels them to behave in this manner. Capital must be invested in order to be reproduced. Since Capitalists compete against each other, they must join in the frenzy lest someone succeeds more than they do. Thus, bubbles are born.
The individual Capitalist is no longer a maven of industry or an originator but rather a financial investor. The era when the former was king has long past as noted by Lenin back in 1917.
The extremely low interest rates encourage very large leverage on investments. That is, an investment has very small percentage that is actually the investor's own money while the rest is borrowed. So the investor stands to lose a small amount of money with the possibility of very large returns because of the low interest rates.
It is 2007/08 all over again.

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Reynolds punctures the 'great Australian silence'

John Rainford argues that Reynolds punctures the 'great Australian silence'.

Reynolds is one of a pioneering group of historians, anthropologists and others who have transformed our understandings of traditional Aboriginal society and the relationship between Indigenous and settler Australians.

In his latest book, he provides evidence that supports his contention that it was the war of conquest fought against Aboriginal people that made the nation, not the 1915 ill-fated invasion of Turkey.

Conflict came within weeks of the foundation of Sydney and was apparent on every frontier for the next 140 years.

Yet while the large-scale killing of Warlpiri people by police at Coniston in Central Australia in 1928 can be used as a convenient date to mark the end of officially endorsed killing, the brutality has never ended.

This is the brutal reality of a settler society such as Australia, USA, or Israel. The indigenous population is subjected through genocide and their land is expropriated by the settler elite. Yet all settlers bears the guilt of this atrocity because we have benefited from the crime.

It is at an unconscious level that most white Australians condone this ongoing violence against Aborigines. They do not have to do themselves, just merely accept the system that does it for their benefit.

We cannot be truly free of the guilt of the past until we overthrow this racist system and reform ourselves so that we become human beings rather than black-fellow and white-fellow.

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Mark Latham's fantasies of a middle-class 'utopia'

Phil Shannon reviews Mark Latham's fantasies of a middle-class 'utopia'.

The centrepiece of Latham’s alternative, “minimalist” politics is government by experts. Expert bodies would take charge of fiscal policy, climate change policy and other areas of government dereliction.

Such old-hat technocratic solutions, however, would only further blow out what Latham justly deplores as Australia’s “democratic deficit”. Experts are not ideology-free and would themselves be elite members of the Bubble — only minus any democratic accountability.

Latham is right to say the current system is broken but it is the capitalist form of democracy — economic rule by the rich, political rule by their class buddies — that is the problem.

The ideologues of Capitalism are facing a crisis of legitimacy. They are smart enough to realise that people seeing that Capitalism is not working for them. The ideologues want us to believe that this is not real Capitalism, the political system is corrupted by money, etc.

But no Capitalist will go as far to admit that Capitalism has run its historic course and must be replaced by something better.

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Filmmaker: Israel's ethnic cleansing must stop

Filmmaker: Israel's ethnic cleansing must stop.

In a move that surprised many — and symbolises Israel's growing isolation and global opposition to its crimes — former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr has publicly declared his opposition to Israeli policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

…

And is not just high-profile former politicans like Carr who are discovering the truth about Israeli apartheid and history of ethnic cleansing. Many Israelis are not taught the history of genocide and dispossession through which the Israeli state was created.

Like many people who grow up in colonial-settler societies — such as Australia — learning the truth can be a shock.

Similar to the Israeli film-maker, Lia Tarachansky, I have been on a long journey from being a pro-Zionist, racist, white Australian. It has involved study, meeting Palestinians and Aborigines, learning about the hidden history, and a lot of self-reflection.

I used to write letters of support to the Israeli embassy, hand out pro-Israeli flyers at University, speak in support of Israel when I could.

But then there was the case of the cold-blooded murder of a twelve year-old boy in the arms of his father. I could not understand how the Israelis could so blatantly lie about what happened: how it was the father's fault. Probably, I would have believed that it was a mistake, and the IDF would be profoundly sorry that it had happened.

The arrogance of the IDF spokes-people was such that they could sell any lie to the people.

I wrote a letter to the Israeli embassy expressing my disgust at what had happened, and to say that I could no support Israel. Their reply repeated the same lies and they said that they were sorry to lose my support.

This is a journey that all workers have to make. It is not easy. It is hard on one's ego to find out that one has been lied to so blatantly over a long time. And all of those authority figures that one trusted are all part of this sordid economy of lies and omission.

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How professionals think

Dan Little looks at How professionals think.

Little posits three (3) models about how actors arrive at their choices and behavior:

1. Rational Choice
2. Pragmatist Action
3. Character

Little examines a paper

…that appears to show that a certain segment of white-collar professionals (bankers) make very different decisions about their actions depending on the “frame” within which they deliberate (link). If they are thinking within the everyday frame of personal life and leisure, their actions are as honest as anyone else’s. But if they are prompted to think within the frame of their professional environment, their actions become substantially less honest. That professional environment is the large international bank.

Emphasis Mine

Littke concludes that:

These findings suggest that we should explore further the notion that actors possess distinct mental frames that they can take up or put aside readily, and that lead to very different kinds of behavior when confronting the same kinds of problems. Further, we should consider the possibility that these frames are highly portable and contingent: the actor can be led to choose one frame or the other, with important behavioral consequences. This finding seems to point in the same direction as ideas advanced by Kahneman and Tversky in much of their work together, including Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.

Emphasis Mine

My own take on Little's reading this paper is that it is a refutation of the Capitalist lie that all people are naturally greedy and that Capitalism is the best system that harnesses this so-called 'innate greed'.

This paper gives me hope that we can truly build a Communist society because people will tend to adapt their behaviour and expectations of norms to fit that society. This also means that a Communist society has to be built through continual agitation and propaganda until the people accept that acting in these new ways a better society can be built.

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Protests against closure of 150 Aboriginal communities

Alex Salmon reports on Protests against closure of 150 Aboriginal communities in Western Australia.

Amnesty International released a statement urging the Western Australian government not to forcibly evict Aboriginal people from the communities, as demolishing houses and denying indigenous people the right to practice their culture is a breach of human rights and international law.

Tammy Solonec, a human rights lawyer working with Amnesty International, slammed the hypocrisy of Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett for admitting that closing the communities will be traumatic for the people involved, while continuing a policy that will force indigenous people to break their connections to land and culture and force them to move to larger towns where they will have greater exposure to drugs, alcohol, violence and crime.

Destruction of a people's culture is considered to be genocide under international law.

But, if Australian Governments followed international law, they would admit refugees, restore Aboriginal land rights, not go to war in Iraq or Afghanistan, recognise the rights of the Palestinians to their own state. Such laws only applies to the official enemies of the US, not to its client states.

So why should workers fight for the right of Aboriginal communities to stay together on their ancestral land? It is about the rights of communities to determine their own future. It is about respecting the culture of others.

It is these things that will make a Communistic society viable.

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Scott Morrison narrows the meaning of 'refugee'

Jay Fletcher writes that Scott Morrison narrows the meaning of ‘refugee’.

It is these millions of people who suffer while Australia enforces a racist closed-borders policy. “Draining the pool” in Indonesia may force this suffering further from Australia’s shores, but it still exists and it is growing exponentially worse.

However, the fight at home is still urgent. A bill drafted by Morrison would make changes to the Migration Act and the Maritime Powers Act that, former PM Malcolm Fraser said, would “enshrine in law the mistreatment of asylum seekers and refugees who flee to our country to escape persecution, torture and death”.

The ASRC [(Asylum Seeker Resource Centre)] has made one of more than 5000 submissions to the Senate inquiry being held on the bill. The advocacy and support centre said the bill will, “see the Minister give himself an unprecedented level of power to make life or death decisions about individual asylum seeker cases, without court oversight”.

In a briefing explaining the big changes proposed in the bill, the ASRC said: “The Bill narrows the meaning of refugee, ignoring previous court decisions and stacking the odds against refugees.

This xenophobia of the Australian working class against refugees prevents them from developing their political consciousness on internationalism. Unfortunately, this is very entrenched in the psyche.

But this does not mean that the party should give up or minimise its stance on racism and acceptance of refugees. It is vital for a Communist society to be anti-racist and accepting of all who seek help and refuge. A Communist cannot operate otherwise.

What this does mean that each party member has to wage their own internal war against racism and xenophobia. By recognising such a struggle, we can help others on their journey to being ant-racist and anti-xenophobic.

It will be this journey that transforms us into workers ready for a Communist society because we will regain our humanity and practice seeing the long-term. This is in contradistinction to the rabid racism and alienation we are forced to consume to under Capitalism.

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