Ten Years of The Big Issue

In the latest issue of The Big Issue, the editorial extols how business solves a social problem. It is really not Capitalism that makes it work but a form of Socialism. Could the mechanism of how this magazine works give an indication of how to implement Socialism in Australia?

Graeme C. Wise, Patron, The Big Issue, concludes the editorial in the 03-18 July 2006 issue of this magazine with:

I have long held the belief that the brightest minds gravitate to the business sector and that if we encourage businesspeople to apply their problem-solving abilities to social needs, we greatly increase the chance of finding real and eduring solutions.

I am proud to see this enterprise blossom into a viable and successful business solution to a social problem. In the past decade, more than 3000 people throughout the country have sold The Big Issue and used it as a means of pulling themselves up. Many people have found a new direction and a sense of purpose. In turn, they have made us more aware of how we can help others by giving them a hand up, not just a hand out.

Emphasis Mine

Under Capitalism, a successful business is a profitable one. It cannot be otherwise: it has to regenerate the capital invested within a reasonable time.

In the addendum to the editorial, Martin Hughes notes that:

Although The Big Issue runs on the positive energy between readers and vendors, it takes a massive effort just trying to maintain that connection every fortnight. Simply put, we wouldn't have survived all these years without the spirited band of volunteers, staff, writers, illustrators, photogrpahers, advertisers, creative types, lawyers, accountants and other folk who donate their services and work for discounted rates to sow a little more compassion in the community. On the behalf of the thousands of marginalised people who've steadied their lives with the help of The Big Issue, heartfelt thanks and an Australia-sized warm fuzzy to you all.

Emphasis Mine

Here we see the true inner workings of the magazine: there is a lot of free or cheap labour. This keeps costs down so that the vendors can sell the magazine at a reasonable price and get a reasonable return for their investment.

In a Capitalist sense, the magazine is a failure because its income does not cover the costs, hence the need for volunteer labour. In a Socialist sense, this magazine is a great sucess because it brings together people for a worthwhile purpose to fulfill a social need.

The business knowledge that is accumulated and used under Capitalism is still useful under Socialism because it is the knowledge of how to make people work together in a productive fashion to achieve a common goal.

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A House Divided

Billmon explores the issue of A House Divided. He considers the differences in US politics to be based on culture. He admits that this is a great simplication. He also considers what happened during the Spanish Civil War to be similar to the strains experienced by the USA now.

On the other hand, that America is now divided neatly into increasingly hostile cultural camps is generally treated as received wisdom. But culture is a tricky word, hard to define, and not really amenable to the kind of short-hand stereotypes (rural rednecks listen to Garth Brooks while urban liberals sip mocha lattes) that journalists like Tierney exist to propagate.

In his book The Cousins' Wars, Kevin Phillips suggested that there is indeed a deep-seated duality to Ango-American politics and culture that can be traced back as far the English Civil War. It separates high church Anglicans from low church dissenters, Puritans from Cavaliers, and merchant and financial elites from landowning and military ones. Every hundred years or so (1642, 1776, 1861) these opposing tendencies have a go at each other.

One could, I suppose, add the domestic disturbances of the late 1960s to that list. But, as the '60s demonstrated (in both senses of the word) American society and culture have changed radically since the days when British and American cousins fought their wars. So have the opposing camps. The great influx of eastern and southern immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the New Deal, the civil rights movement, the realignment of the South, the Vietnam War, feminism, gay liberation -- all these have stirred the melting pot, creating new alliances, new interests and, not least, new hatreds and resentments.

If I had to boil our modern kulturkampf down to two words, they wouldn't be blue and red, they would be "traditionalist" and "modern." On one side are the believers in the old ways -- patriarchy, hierarchy, faith, a reflexive nationalism, and a puritanical, if usually hypocritical, attitude towards sexual morality. On the other are the rootless cosmopolitians -- secular, skeptical (although at times susceptible to New Age mythology) libertine (although some of us aren't nearly as libertine as we'd like to be) and less willing to equate patriotism with blind allegiance, either to a flag or a government.

These differences can also be explained by class war. The dates he mentioned were events in the struggle between Capitalism and Feudalism, and between Capitalism and Slavery.

The old ruling class does not go quietly. They hang on tenanciously to their power.

The Spanish Civil started out as a war between the Feudal landlords and the Capitalists allied with the Socialists and Anarchists but ended up as a war between the Feudalists and the Communists.

The regional differences in the US and in Spain are based on the degree of industrialisation. The more industry, the greater the influence of the Capitalist is.

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Beware of the Rapture

Kevin Hilferty warns us to Beware of the Rapture in the June 2006 issue of Annals Australasia (pp.17-23). (The WikiPedia has an article on Rapture.) He is clearly worried by the influence that the rapture believers have in right wing US and Israeli politics.

A trechant critic of rapture promoters is Barbara R. Rossing, a New Testament scholar and associate professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicargo. She maintains that the rapture is a fraud of momumental proportions, as well as a disturbing way to instill fear in people.

'The rapture is a racket,' she wrote in the first sentence of her recent book The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in The Book of Revelation. 'Whether precribing a violent script for Israel or survivalism in the United States, this theology distorts God's vision for the world.

'In place of healing, the rapture proclaims escape. In place of Jesus' blessing of peace making, the rapture glorifies violence and war. This theology is not biblical. We are not raptured off the earth, nor is God. No, God has come to live in the world through Jesus. God created the world. God loves the world, and God will never leave the world behind!'

p.22

Emphasis Mine

On a local level, the escape mentality is very much alive in Christian communities here in Sydney. When they see me out selling the Party paper, they say that they are not worried by the troubles because Jesus is coming soon. They see no need to become politically involved in order to change the world for the better. They expect to be literally spirited away before things get too bad.

This is an extremely responsible attitude given the ideas of stewardship that Jesus proclaimed: we are responsible for the world. It is up to us to improve things.

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GIs May Have Planned Iraq Rape, Slayings

GIs May Have Planned Iraq Rape, Slayings

Investigators believe American soldiers spent nearly a week plotting an attack in which they raped an Iraqi woman, then killed her and her family in an insurgent-ridden area south of Baghdad, a U.S. military official said Saturday.

This story only came to light because of the beheadings of two US soldiers.

Those troops under investigation are from the same platoon as two soldiers kidnapped and killed south of Baghdad this month, another official said Friday. Their mutilated bodies were found June 19, three days after they were abducted by insurgents near Youssifiyah, southwest of Baghdad.

The military has said one and possibly both of the slain soldiers were tortured and beheaded. The official said the mutilation of the slain soldiers stirred feelings of guilt and led at least one member of the platoon to reveal the rape-slaying on June 22.

The senior Army official said the alleged incident was first revealed by a soldier during a routine counseling-type session. The Army official said that soldier did not witness the incident but heard about it.

A second soldier, who also was not involved, said he overhead soldiers conspiring to commit the crimes and then later saw bloodstains on their clothes, the Army official said.

It looks like the beheadings were pay-back for the rape and mass murder.

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Che Mural Removed

Che mural removed! A victory for intolerance and a defeat for freedom of expression!

Condemn Blue Mountains Councils' censorship of art!

The controversial murals of Che Guevara and Mike D, painted on a private building in Wentworth Falls, have been painted over by the owner, under pressure from the Blue Mountains' City Council and a tiny number of vocal right-wingers. According to knowledgable sources, the owners ``voluntarily'' destroyed the murals exactly one month after they received a council notice ordering them to either remove the murals within 30 days or lodge a ``restrospective DA'' at a cost of $165!

The murals, which were visible from the Great Western Highway, were painted by aerosol artist Dan Lualdi with the permission of the building's owners. The original order to destroy the art was made after the BMCC received a complaint from ``a resident''. Lualdi described the order by the BMCC as ``mass censorship'' and pointed out that he had had many positive reactions to the giant portraits. That it was the political content of the murals that the ``resident'' and the BMCC found objectionable seemed to be confirmed by a council spokesperson, who told the April 5 Blue Mountains Gazette: ``The owner could legitimately have a different mural painted on the wall.'' Lualdi pointed to the hypocrisy of the council's decision: ``There are billboards everywhere that are sexist and offensive, yet these two murals are deemed offensive by somebody and ordered to be removed. I just don't get it and I am interested in what other people think.''

Following the Council's clumsy attempt to censor the murals, the BMCC and the Gazette were deluged with outraged letters protesting the attempt and defending the right of free expression in the Mountains. An online opinion poll conducted by the Gazette (at http://bluemountains.yourguide.com.au/poll.asp?question_id=1971), in which more than 350 people have voted so far, revealed that more than 80% oppose the murals' destruction, with just 13% in support. In the letters column of the Gazette, it soon became clear that the vast majority of those demanding the removal of Che in particular were driven by a right-wing opposition to what Che represents and were calling for censorship, pure and simple.

Even though the BMCC's bureaucratic intimidation and disregard for free speech has succeeded, let's tell the council that it is unacceptable and should never be repeated in our city. Please send an email to the BMCC at council@bmcc.nsw.gov.au condemning the BMCC's censorship. Send a letter to the Blue Mountains Gazette at editorial.bmgazette@ruralpress.com . Please send copies to bluemountains@socialist-alliance.org . If you haven't already, vote in the online poll on the murals at http://bluemountains.yourguide.com.au/poll.asp?question_id=1971

In solidarity,

Terry Townsend,
Blue Mountains Socialist Alliance

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Quid est veritas?

Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" When he had said this, he again went out to the Jews and said to them, "I find no guilt in him. John 18:38

Emphasis Mine

Howard compares Iran to Nazi Germany

Prime Minister John Howard was among three world leaders who today said an Iranian bill, which reportedly would force non-Muslims to wear coloured badges in public, was akin to Nazi Germany.

However, Teheran emphatically denied the report, in a Canadian newspaper, that the law would force Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians to wear a yellow, red or blue strip of cloth, respectively, on their clothes.

The National Post newspaper, citing human rights groups, had reported that Iran's parliament had passed a law this week that set a public dress code and required non-Muslims to wear special insignia.

While acknowledging they had no details beyond the newspaper report, Mr Howard and leaders from the United States and Canada went on the offensive, all evoking the atrocities of Nazi Germany.

Mr Howard, speaking in Ottawa after a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said the suggestion was further indication Iran was heading down the wrong path.

"If that (the report) is true, I would find it totally repugnant," Mr Howard told reporters before the report was debunked.

"It obviously echoes the most horrible period of genocide in the world's history and the marking of Jewish people with a mark on their clothing by the Nazis, and anything of that kind, would be totally repugnant to civilised countries.

"If it is the case, it's something that would just further indicate to me the nature of this regime.

"It's a calculated insult, if it's true, not only to Christians but most particularly to Jews."

Mr Howard was joined in the attack on Iran by the US and Canada, who said they had no details on the issue beyond the newspaper report.

...

Emphasis Mine

I would think that Howard believes that truth is whatever suits them at the time. Here is the man who lied about the Children Overboard, AWB scandal, GST, the Tampa, Refugees, Iraq, Siev X, etc., asking us to condemn a regime on a false report planted in a Canadian newspaper. Prof. Juan Cole exposes the whole sordid affair in Another Fraud on Iran: No Legislation on Dress of Religious Minorities.

Since Iran is now an offical enemy, any lies that support the pro-war parties in Canberra, Washington and London are acceptable.

Note that Howard was being circumspect in his comments. But it is amazing that one newspaper report can spark such a furious condemnation while the mass of evidence for global warming is seen as insufficient. I suppose that whatever reinforces your prejudices is believed, while that challenges your belief system is suppressed.

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Learning from Hitler and Nazi Propaganda

Learning from Hitler and Nazi Propaganda

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Censorship of Che mural sparks uproar

The Blue Mountains Socialist Alliance writes

The inspiring image of Che Guevara, the legendary leader of the Cuban revolution, is at the centre of an anti-censorship battle in Sydney's famed Blue Mountains. As the front page of the April 12 Blue Mountains Gazette put it: 'Almost 40 years after Che Guevara died at the hands of the Bolivian Army, the Cuban revolutionist is embroiled in a new uprising in the seemingly tranquil villages of the Blue Mountains.'

What triggered the Mountains' transformation -- at least for a few weeks -- into Australia's Sierra Maestra? It began when the April 5 Blue Mountains Gazette reported that the Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) was attempting to force the owners of a disused Wentworth Falls petrol station to destroy two large murals, including one of Che Guevara. The murals, visible from the Great Western Highway, were the work of aerosol artist Dan Lualdi and were painted the permission of the building's owner.

The Labor council claims the order to destroy the art was made after it received a complaint from 'a resident' and that the appropriate 'development application' for the murals had not been sought. Lualdi has described the order by the BMCC as 'mass censorship' and told the Gazette that he has had many positive reactions to the giant portraits. Lualdi pointed to the hypocrisy of the council's decision: 'There are billboards everywhere that are sexist and offensive, yet these two murals are deemed offensive by somebody and ordered to be removed. I just don't get it and I am interested in what other people think.' That it is Che in particular that the 'resident' and the BMCC found objectionable was confirmed by a council spokesperson, who told the Gazette: 'The owner could legitimately have a different mural painted on the wall.'

The newly formed Blue Mountains branch of the Socialist Alliance issued an email appeal and leaflet calling for all supporters of free speech and artistic expression to write letters of protest to the BMCC and the Gazette: 'While one anonymous conservative `resident' may find a big Che confronting, I think all of us who find his image inspiring need to speak out against this blatant political censorship and also defend what Che stood for.'

The April 12 Gazette reported that it had been 'inundated with impassioned pleas demanding large murals of Guevara, and Beastie Boys singer Mike D, remain untouched'. While the Gazette only published a small proportion of those received, copies sent to the Socialist Alliance reveal that dozens of letters were sent to the BMCC and the Gazette. They included letters from members of the Socialist Alliance, the Greens and the ALP, as well as trade unionists and local artists. Letters have come from as far afield as Canberra, South Australia and Canada. The April 19 Gazette reported that Che's censorship 'continued to generate an influx of letters to the Gazette ... A council spokesperson told the Gazette council has also received many letters about the matter'.

Many letters have drawn the link between this attempted act censorship and the wider assault on civil liberties. The CFMEU's Tim Vollmer described the BMCC's action as 'an outright act of censorship and a genuine threat to artistic and political freedom in the Mountains'. Daniel Banyer from Wollongong urged that 'in a world where people's freedoms and rights are being curtailed by governments, it is imperative that these forms of creative political art be respected and protected'. A Blackheath resident asked the BMCC: 'The thin end of the wedge has already gone into our freedom of expression and this is a larger slice. I have a friend who lives in the USA ... where the ... Homeland Security law forces [the librarian] to advise them of the name of anyone taking out of the library certain listed books. If you think what you're doing is any different to this, think again.'

The controversy has also sparked a discussion about Che himself. Noel Willis of Winmalee wrote in the Gazette that 'while Che may not be everybody's cup of tea, he is regarded by millions around the world as the symbol of resistance against oppression, the eternal struggle of the poor and weak against the ruthless drive for profit by the rich and powerful. Surely, in a world dominated by Bush and his followers we could do with a few more like Che!' And in his letter to the Gazette and the BMCC, Terry Townsend, from the Blue Mountains Socialist Alliance, noted: 'Despite the efforts of the powers that be to bury Che's legacy, 30 years after his death he remains an important symbol for those who have had enough of the poverty, exploitation and destruction that capitalism causes. With the escalation attacks of the Howard government on this country's working people, Che's inspiration is sorely needed. In the small town in Bolivia were Che's body was taken after his murder, someone has written the slogan on a wall: `Che -- alive as they never wanted you to be'. His inspiring image at Wentworth Falls confirms this yet again.'

Greens' councillors are expected to take up the issue at the next BMCC meeting. It seems that the council may be preparing to quietly back down in the face of overwhelming opposition. The April 19 Gazette reported that 'council staff will meet the owner of the property this week to discuss a possible option that would permit retention of the murals -- including the Che Guevara one -- by means of submitting a retrospective development application'.

Send an email to the BMCC at council@bmcc.nsw.gov.au demanding that the order for the murals to be painted over be rescinded. Send a letter to the Blue Mountains Gazette at editorial.bmgazette@ruralpress.com explaining why you oppose the ban on Che's portrait. Please send copies to bluemountains@socialist-alliance.org

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Big Brother Is Listening

As you should be aware, Big Brother Is Listening (Web Link May Require Paid Subscription) according to Mr. James Bamford in Atlantic Monthly (04/06) Vol. 297, No. 3, P. 65.

Technological advancements have widened the scope of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, while the legal barriers to such eavesdropping have been lowered with a White House mandate that permits the NSA to place Americans on watch lists and monitor their communications without first obtaining permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court. Previously a court order was required, and could only be secured if the NSA showed that it had probable cause to eavesdrop on people suspected of involvement with terrorist organizations. Now people can be placed on watch lists by NSA shift supervisors who have a "reasonable belief" of involvement, and the number of Americans targeted by the NSA has consequently ballooned from perhaps 12 annually to 5,000 over the last four years, according to sources. If innocent people are marked because they fulfill these highly subjective criteria, they may be denied visas, federal jobs, or other services and privileges without ever knowing why. The NSA's surveillance methodology is signal intelligence, in which electronic communications containing vast quantities of emails and phone calls are intercepted and run through computers that flag specific words, phrases, names, phone numbers, and Internet addresses, and forward these communications to analysts. Also clearing the way for greater NSA surveillance is the FCC's extension of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to cover "any type of broadband Internet access service" and new Internet phone services, while the two congressional intelligence committees tasked with protecting the public from privacy abuses have abnegated their responsibilities. The NSA likes to hire people away from providers of critical telecommunications system components, offering them the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art equipment and contribute to national security. Furthermore, a great deal of the telecommunications industry secretly cooperates with the NSA in its eavesdropping efforts.

Emphasis Mine

What mealy-mouth liberalism! The White House has NOT lowered ...the legal barriers.... It has broken the law! You know, the law! That fundamental principle of any civilised society.

And of course, no crime is without those abet it by carrying it out and those who ignore it. Your silence makes you an accomplice after the fact.

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What is a Racist?

I had two interesting discussions on Saturday (11 March 2006) when I was out selling Green Left Weekly. Both of these discussions were about Abbott and Costello press the race button. The front page had the following headline:

Howard's RACIST hypocrisy: Don't let him divide us!

Both discussions were about the use of the Prime Minister's name. The headline implied that John Howard PM was responsible for the racism. The problem is that people see the headline as: Howard's RACIST. They do not see the word, hypocrisy.

One observation that followed was that white people (with one exception) disagreed with the purported headline, while non-whites agreed with it. As Tim Wise once wrote that whites do not see racism because they are the beneficiaries of racism. Indeed, white people are very offended that they would be considered racist.

The first discussion was about whether John Howard PM was a racist or not. The second was about whether calling John Howard a racist achieved anything.

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La Alianza del Socialista en las Montañas Azules

Sunday April 2, 2pm: Launch of a Blue Mountains branch of the Socialist Alliance: Upstairs, Family Hotel, Parke St, Katoomba

Come and meet other Socialist Alliance members who are living in the greater Blue Mountains region (Lapstone to Lithgow). It will be an opportunity to share your ideas about what the Socialist Alliance should campaign around in our area, and discuss whether to stand candidates in local, state and federal elections in the mountains.

Anyone who agrees with the aims and objectives of the Alliance can join. Annual membership rates are: $60 waged, $24 low waged, $12 unwaged and $6 high school students. Join online or join up at the meeting.

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Poor Little Rich City

Peter Boyle writes that Howard’s rule: 10 years too long. The longevity is attributed as:

It’s the economy, stupid, chorus the pundits. What do you expect after 15 consecutive years of economic growth?

...

A detailed study, carried out by the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training, found that 60% of Australians feel that their lives are a lot less secure now compared to ten years ago. Greater job insecurity makes people more fearful of recession.

The two major contributors to economic growth over the last decade — the housing price boom and the mainly China-driven resources boom — have had an uneven impact on people’s lives.

First, the rich got richer.

The Howard government has presided over a massive transfer of income share from wages to corporate profits. Profit share of national income rose from 23% in 1996 to a record 26.2% in 2005. Further, between 1990 and 2005 the average annual regular cash earnings of company chief executives, who were also members of the Business Council of Australia, went from $514,000 to $3.4 million. Their incomes now outweigh the average full-time wage earner by a ratio of 63 to 1.

Homeowners might feel better off but mortgages are a bigger strain. For example, the number of Sydney households suffering “housing stress” — where more than one third of income goes on rent or mortgages — has jumped by more than 50% in the past decade. Repayments on first home loans swallow nearly 40% of average incomes.

The housing bubble has really enriched a few and made many others feel wealthier for a while, boosting their spending on credit. However, it has also frightened many into not rocking the boat. Coalition fear campaigns about the alleged danger of a return to higher interest rates under Labor bite hard in the mortgage belts.

Emphasis Mine

In the SMH, Sydney is portrayed as Poor little rich city, this theme is expanded upon. Those with assets have benefited both from their shares portfolio and properties.

The figures reveal how the economic fortunes of the city's people have ebbed and flowed in the past two decades and particularly in the past six years.

Despite the recent sluggish performance of the NSW economy, on the very broadest measure of living standards things are as good as they have ever been.

Income per head of population is at a record high. It has risen 12.4 per cent, adjusted for inflation, since the beginning of 2000, 2.1 per cent over 2005, and by almost half since March 1987.

The wealth of Sydneysiders has also soared. The median house price has risen more than 70 per cent and the value of the typical small share portfolio has gone up by almost 60 per cent in the past six years.

Shares are worth 2½ times what they were in 1987, and property prices are a staggering five times higher.

Emphasis Mine

The SMH report leaves out the effects of cutbacks in government services to the have-nots.

Here we have material interests determining political choices. Those with assets will vote for Howard because they see themselves as better off. Those without assets see no political alternative because the ALP tries to beat Howard at his own game. So Howard wins because he rewards his followers and there is no effective opposition (via the ALP).

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Rachel Play Postponed

"Rachel Corrie" production in New York is postponed due to the current "very edgy" political situation in Israel.

Film star Alan Rickman is protesting an Off Broadway theater's decision not to bring his hit London play "My Name is Rachel Corrie" to New York this spring.

...

Rickman told The Guardian that the New York Theatre Workshop's decision was an act of "censorship born out of fear." New York Theatre Workshop director Jim Nicola said the play, which his company had not formerly announced it would present, is being postponed due to the current "very edgy" political situation in Israel.

...

Emphasis Mine

The very reason that the political situation is edgy that the play should be presented. People need to have a different perspective to that being presented by the corporate media.

I found this article via Mickey Z.

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David Irving

I agree with the major points of George F. Will's argument why the imprisonment of David Irving means Less Freedom, Less Speech (Free registration required to view article):

What folly. What dangers do the likes of Irving pose? Holocaust denial is the occupation of cynics and lunatics who are always with us but are no reason for getting governments into the dangerous business of outlawing certain arguments. Laws criminalizing Holocaust denial open a moral pork barrel for politicians: Many groups can be pandered to with speech restrictions. Why not a law regulating speech about slavery? Or Stalin's crimes?

Some defenders of the prosecution of Irving say that Europe -- and especially Austria, Hitler's birthplace -- rightly has, from recent history, an acute fear of totalitarians. But that historical memory should cause Europe to recoil from government-enforced orthodoxy about anything.

American legislators, using the criminal law for moral exhibitionism, enact "hate crime" laws. Hate crimes are, in effect, thought crimes. Hate-crime laws mandate enhanced punishments for crimes committed as a result of, or at least when accompanied by, particular states of mind of which the government particularly disapproves. Governments that feel free to stigmatize, indeed criminalize, certain political thoughts and attitudes will move on to regulating what expresses such thoughts and attitudes -- speech.

Emphasis Mine

I suppose that this moral pork barrelling fits in with the idea that we are not supposed to think only obey. Why should we evaluate the arguments for and against the Holocaust, when the Government has a law saying that it happened?

Nearly every week when I am out selling the Party newspaper, I have arguments with a Holocaust denier. This has been going for years, but I persist. He is willing to listen to me in spite of my speech impediment, and I am willing to try to counter his arguments. I am not very good but, at least, I try. Other Party comrades just shut him out. We will not convince each other, but a dialogue is opened up.

In defending the right of David Irving and other Holocaust deniers to the right of free speech, I am defending my rights to the same.

But this challenges the orthodox views of those who believe because someone in authority said something was true. If they had to think for themselves, they would be lost. Their whole lives have been built around the fact that correct thinking brings material rewards: they get the promotion at work because they agree with the boss.

People do not realise how important free speech is to the working of Capitalism (as well as Socialism and Communism). Capitalism primarily relies on innovation: things that have not been done before. Those in authority are not the fount of all wisdom. No human being can know everything or is right all of the time. Assumptions and ways of doing things must be constantly challenged. This is in order to achieve continual improvement. This leads to competitive advantage. Those businesses who asquiesce to the owner in all things will eventually go broke. No one knows who will come up with the next killer application. This is the dynamism of Capitalism. We all have a part to play. And we cannot have innovation without free speech.

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Miguel de Unamuno

Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, the rector of the University of Salamanca in 1936, gave the following speech to an audience of fascists (including Franco's wife):

All of you are hanging on my words. You all know me and are aware that I am unable to remain silent. At times to be silent is to lie. For silence can be interpreted as asquience. I want to comment on the speech, to give it that name, of General Millan Astray, who is here among us. Let us waive the personal affront implied in the sudden outburst pf vituperation against the Basques and Catalans. I was myself, of course, born in Bilbao. The bishop, whether he likes it or not, is a Catalan from Barcelona.

Just now I heard a necrophilous and senseless cry: 'Long live death'. And I, who have spent my life shaping paradoxes must tell you as an expert authority, that this outlandish paradox is repellent to me. Let it be said without any slighting undetone. He is a war invalid. So was Cervantes. Unfortunately there are too many cripples in Spain now. And soon there will be even more of them if God does not come to our aid. It pains me to think that General Millan Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology. A cripple who lacks the greatness of Cervantes is wont to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him. General Millan Astray would like to create Spain anew, a negative creation in his own image and likeness; for that reason he wishes to see Spain crippled as he unwittingly made clear.

This is the temple of the intellect, and I am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to persuade you would need what you lack: reason and right in your struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to think of Spain.

pp.120-121
Antony Beevor
The Spanish Civil War
Cassell
UK:1999

Emphasis Mine

An alternative version of this speech is given at Miguel de Unamuno, reply to speech made by Millán Astray, in Salamanca (12th October 1936) and another version is at Argument with Unamuno.

Would any of us have the balls (or ovaries) to say these things in the midst of fascist militia? I could say these things but no one would understand me! Perhaps there is an advantage to having a stutter after all.

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Deep Shit Situation

The week after the third annnivsery of the huge mobilization against the start of the current Iraq War (15 February 2003) has left the world in a deep-shit situation:

• Suicide Bombing of Saudi Oil Complex Foiled leaves the oil markets nervous. Al-Qaeda may succeed next time. Hello $2-$3 a litre. (My wild guess!)
• Shiite protests Roil Iraq after the bombing by guerriillas of the domed Askariyah shrine in Samarra. Hello civil war! Get the troops out of there! Now!
• State of emergency in Phillipines. Another front-line state in the War on Terror in trouble.
• The Cartoon protests continue! Hello clash of civilizations!
• The Iranian Nuclear standoff continues
• So does the North Korean Nuclear standoff.
• The controversy over the take-over of some US ports by a Dubai company has the US press in hysteria over the smuggling of nuclear weapons into the USA. Whereas the truth is that there was little security before. The NBC demonstrated that the smuggling of radioactive material was possible. Only 7% of cargo is inspected. And the vaunted radioactive detection failed!
• The USA moved one step closer to a totalarian state with George W. Bush saying is above the law while the USA is at war!
• The housing market teeters along. The bubble may be slowly deflating.

Historians (if a future exists) may wonder how all of this came to pass. One clue may be in the authoritarian cult discussed by Glenn Greenwald when he asks Do Bush followers have a political ideology? Another clue could be that The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile.

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Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough

Seumas Milne write that Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough for the right-wingers.

Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries". Now Göran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Yesterday, declaring himself delighted at the first international condemnation of this "evil ideology", Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.

Emphasis Mine

Indeed, the Economist magazine has the following definition for Communism:

The enemy of CAPITALISM and now nearly extinct. Invented by KARL MARX, who predicted that feudalism and capitalism would be succeeded by the "dictatorship of the proletariat", during which the state would "wither away" and economic life would be organised to achieve "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". The Soviet Union was the most prominent attempt to put communism into practice and the result was conspicuous failure, although some modern followers of Marx reckon that the Soviets missed the point.

Emphasis Mine

So instead of relegating Communism to the dust bin of history, some of the right-wingers are not so sure anymore. On the streets, I do not get any comments about Communism being dead. I think events in South America have put the frighteners up people.

Further on, Mr. Milne writes:

Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained that "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive". Perhaps the real problem for Lindblad and his rightwing allies in eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough - and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart and buried it at the crossroads at midnight.

Emphasis Mine

The desire of people for a just and equitable society cannot be swept aside as some utopian dream. We are not all callous and calculating individuals. Some of us care about our neighbours. Indeed, it is the second of the two commandments that Jesus gave to us.

Mr. Milne concludes that:

No major 20th-century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today's Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order - and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering and bloodshed. With the new imperialism now being resisted in both the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubts about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for political and social alternatives will increase. The particular form of society created by 20th-century communist parties will never be replicated. But there are lessons to be learned from its successes as well as its failures.

Emphasis Mine

The very success of Capitalism is driving people to seek alternatives either in an Islamic or a Socialist state.

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No Sympathy

The front page of today's Daily Telegraph screams

NO SYMPATHY
Their drug operations would have destroyed
thousands of lives - now they'll pay with theirs

This does not apply to the following:

• John Howard's illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan with at least 100,000 dead and millions of lives destroyed;
• James Hardie and the thousands of workers' lives destroyed through asbestos poisoning;
• The CEOs of companies where their workers work long hours in unsafe conditions;
• The bureaucrates who hound pensioners for overpayment of pensions;
• The bank managers who foreclose on small businesses, farms, and homes thereby increasing the suicide rate;
• The ministers and bureaucrats who imprison refugees in concentration camps thereby destroying their lives;
• The polluters who destroy the health of millions in Australia;
• The capitalist system who consigns thousands of young and old people to grinding unemployment;
• The ministers and bureaucrats who consign Australian Aborigines to the most wretched condition possible so that many are dead or blind by the age of 40;

As Dick Cheney well knows, members of the ruling class can shoot people and get away with it. The criminals run the system. So why are still supporting the Capitalist system?

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What values will you pass on?

Last Sunday (12 February 2006), I saw the following outside of a church in Western Sydney. (OK! I admit it! I am Westie!)

What values will you pass on?

A couple of weeks ago, I saw Dr. Ruth Peters write Got bad kids? Time to take a look at yourself. She states correctly that values begin in the family. She lays down the following plan:

Make a list of values, attributes, qualities, and behaviors that you admire. ...

Then, make a list of values, attributes, qualities, and behaviors that you definitely do not wish to see developing in your family. ...

Together pare down both lists to those descriptors that you agree upon. ...

Set a family meeting to present and discuss your lists with the kids. ...

As a family, periodically review the appropriateness of the values listed within your family code.

This is all well and good except when the government and others in high standing behave in a barbaric manner. And other people make excuses for them. (See Jeanne d'Arc's article about Fear itself.)

How can you pass on moral values in an immoral society? With great difficulty, I would imagine.

Here the immorality is committed and excused by those who profess moral values.

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Hamas Election

I got upbraided today about an article in the Green Left Weekly about the election of Hamas to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). The points made were:

• Hamas is a terrorist organisation
• Hamas is not representative of the Palestinian people
• The Socialist Alliance should not be seen to be supporting Hamas
• Fatah was corrupt
• The real alternative would have been a workers' party

It is all well and good to promote a socialist solution. But the main problem is that socialist movements within the Middle East have been throughly smashed through the collusion of CIA, Mossad, the Baathists, and various political Islamist movements. The left of the political spectrum in the Middle East is represented by the political Islamist movements such as Hamas.

This is the reality on the ground. It is no good pining for a fictional alternative. The WCPI is so small within Iraq that it did win any seats in the recent elections. The Communist Party of Israel gets between 3 and 6 seats in the Knesset according to WikiPedia.

This is in line with the general trend within the world outside of South America.

Adam Hanieh wrote in PALESTINE: The end of a political fiction?

Hamas’ landslide victory in the January 25 elections for the 132-seat Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) is an unprecedented turning point for politics in both Palestine and the broader Middle East. For the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, an official administrative power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has strong popular support and is not directly beholden to Israeli or Western interests.

Cde Hanieh sees the real problem facing Hamas is a military response:

If Hamas makes good of its promise not to sustain the structures of occupation then this will be a huge setback for Israeli and US interests in the region. The situation, however, defies simplicity due to the labyrinthine network of factions and interests located throughout the PA apparatus.

The PLC is a weak body and considerable power officially remains in the hands of Abu Mazen and the presidential office. The security forces — in particular the Preventative Security branch — remain Fatah-led under the nominal control of Abu Mazen.

A number of commentators have raised the fear that the election results could herald a repeat of the 1991 Algerian experience, where the election victory of the Islamic party FIS was overturned by a military coup and led to prolonged civil war. Any repeat experience in the Palestinian context would undoubtedly see the involvement of the Israeli military and security apparatus in both provoking and maintaining internal armed strife.

...

A terrorist organisation participating in an electoral process is a good thing because they have come to the realization that more can be achieved by talking to people than by threatening them. However, Hamas is exposed because they opposed the wishes of the American and Israeli ruling classes.

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Rocking the Foundations

*** Monday, February 20, 7.30pm sharp, Tris Elies Night Club, Katoomba: Green Left Weekly presents 'Rocking the Foundations' ***

A film about the New South Wales Builders' Labourers' Federation, 1940-1975. It is an outstanding historical account of the Green Bans introduced by the radical NSW BLF, led by Jack Mundey and the late Bob Pringle. The BLF in the 1970s responded to requests by the community to preserve inner-city parkland and historic buildings. The union transformed into a militant, democratic union prepared to fight for its members rights, wages and conditions. One of the first women to be accepted as a builders' labourer, filmmaker Pat Fiske traces the development of a union whose political and industrial activities challenged the notion of what a union should be. Today, as workers face the vicious attacks of the Howard government, the example of the BLF is more relevant than ever.

Phone 4787 7859 or 0428 826 347 for more info.

An exhilarating and complete account of the Green Bans -- one of the most important developments in union history. An uplifting film for the sheer energy of the people involved.

John Hinde, ABC Radio.

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Dr Carolus Wimmer

The Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network <www.venezuelasolidarity.org>proudly presents...

Latin America in Revolt

**Dr Carolus Wimmer**

Deputy to the Latin American Parliament,
International Relations Secretary of the Venezuelan Communist Party

When: Saturday February 25, 6pm

Where:187 Thomas St, Haymarket

As the US war machine bogs down in Iraq, a continent is rising in revolt. Hear outstanding Venezuelan revolutionary Dr. Carolus Wimmer speak about how the new socialist revolution in his country is empowering the poor majority to use the country's vast oil wealth to bring education, health care, housing and dignity to millions of people who were excluded and marginalised under "neoliberal" capitalism. Together with revolutionary Cuba, Venezuela is demonstrating that "another world is possible". Don't miss this opportunity to hear about Venezuela's inspiring alternative.

Cost: $10/5 concession (to cover tour costs)

BOOKINGShighly recommended- seats limited. 

Ph 9690 1977 or 1800 634 206  HOW to get there? See below!

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The Enemy of My Enemy

Greg Saunders at This Modern World chastises Cindy Sheehan for cozying up to Pres. Hugo Chavez of Venezeula as The Enemy of My Enemy…

Getting cuddly with Hugo Chavez and thanking him for "supporting life and peace"? Do you know anything about Hugo Chavez other than the fact that he hates George Bush? Here’s an eye-opener from Human Rights Watch:

Amendments to Venezuela’s Criminal Code that entered into force last week may stifle press criticism of government authorities and restrict the public’s ability to monitor government actions, Human Rights Watch said today.

...

For those of you who have the knee-jerk reaction of defending anyone described as “leftist”, just because Chavez helps the poor by providing cheap petroleum, sending doctors into the barrios, and setting up a market to provide partially-subsidized food, doesn’t change the fact that he’s acting like a despot. Harassment of political opponents and the slow crawl toward a one-party state are things I hate about George W. Bush and the Republican party, so I don’t see why Chavez should get a free pass.

Here a liberal wants Pres Hugo Chaverz to obey universal principles of free speech. In the nice world view of liberals, everyone is given the same rights. What wooly-headed idealism! Do the exploiter and the exploited have the same rights? No!

What liberals forget is that all laws are oppressive! It is who is oppressed that makes a law just or not. The Sexual Assault laws oppress rapists yet the laws are just in that regard.

In the comments section of that post, the argument seems to revolve around several issues:

• Pres. Chaverz is doing good to the poor
• Pres. Chaverz faces a hostile media
• The USA is actively working to overthrow Pres. Chaverz
• Ms Sheehan discredits the Anti-War movement by this association

Being an ex-Fundie, let's see what the Bible says (Matthew 25):

³⁴ Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶ naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.' ³⁷ Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?' ⁴⁰ And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Nothing about a Bill of Rights there! The Final Judgement is all about the practical things of life for the poor and oppressed.

What the liberals are blind to is the class struggle. There is a struggle for supremency between the rich and the poor. The rich are doing all in their power to stay rich. These are the mob that lie, kill and maim to get control of the Iraqi oil. Theirs is the dictatorship of the bourgeious.

It is time for the liberals to decide which side they are on. There is no middle position. There is no virtue without cost.

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The End of Oil

Paul Roberts writes in The End of Oil that the reasons for the 2003 Iraq War were that:

...this war obviously had at least something to do with oil. Nonetheless, though the war was "about oil", that was true in a way that most of Bush's critics failed to grasp. It wasn't simply that an Iraq without Saddam would enrich Bush's energy allies (although it would). Nor was the connection merely that war in Iraq would bolster America's military and economic presence in the region - or keep Iraqi oil from falling into the hands of Chinese, Russian, and French oil companies - although this was the intended effect. Rather, it was that liberating Iraq, and its oil, was the key to the neoconservatives' vision for the future of American power - and for the new geopolitics of oil.

It is a radical vision. At a stroke, the administration hopes to depoliticize what has for nearly a century been the quintessential political commodity and, in the process, remove the last real obstacle to American power. As Michael Klare, professor of world security studies at Hampshire College, told the Toronto Star last year [2003], in the eyes of the Bush administration, unlocking OPEC oil, "combined with being a decade ahead of everybody else in military technology, will guarantee American supremacy for the next fifty to one hundred years." Cheney and Rumsfield "see control of oil as merely part of a much bigger geostrategic vision," argues Chris Toensing, an analyst who works on the Middle East Research and Information Project. "By controlling the Gulf and the Middle East, the United States gains leverage over countries that are more dependent on the Gulf for oil, like China and Europe."

Emphasis Mine, but italics in original

Roberts, Paul (2004), The End of Oil, Bloomsbury:UK, p.112

This creates a quandary for the US Anti-War Movement: for to oppose Bush's war in Iraq is to oppose the continued hegemony of US power that supports their standard of living. Idealism can only go so far before the associated costs start to affect one's lifestyle. This is why Bush, Howard, and Blair can ignore the bleatings of the Anti-War crowd because the majority are not prepared to make the sacrifices that a retreat from Iraq would entail. They would like to be 'nice' in a painless sort of way.

Oh how Capitalism blinds one to the nasty brutality of the system: one can ignore the exploitation, sexism, militarism, racism, etc. as long as one benefits. These people are like the Pridurki in Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum's study of co-operation and collaboration of people with the Gulag:

Although the brutality that reigned in the Gulag was different, in its organisation and effects, Nazi and Soviet camps were similar in this respect: the Soviet regime made such use of prisoners, tempting some into collaboration with the repressive system, raising them above the others, and granting them privileges which allowed them, in turn, to help the authorities exert their power. It is no accident that Filshtinky concentrated, in his story, on the ever-improving wardrobe of his female acquaintance: in the camps, where everything was in chronic shortage, tiny improvements in clothing or food or living conditions were enough to persuade prisoners to co-operate, to strive for advancement. Those prisoners who succeeded were the pridurki, or 'trusties'. And once they attained that status, their lives in the camps improved in a myriad small ways.

Emphasis Mine, but italics in original

Applebaum, Anne (2004), Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps, Penguin Books:Australia, p.331.

In Marxist terms, these people are class collaborators. They co-operate with the ruling class: prison authorities, capitalists, etc. Instead of standing with others in their struggle (prisoners, workers, etc.), these class collaborators enforce the rule of the oppressors in exchange for better material conditions.

The crisis in the Anti-War movement reflects the crisis in the class collaborators' caste: there is a conflict between their conscience and their material conditions. One or the other has to prevail. In the past, the material conditions (aka lifestyle) prevailed.

This why the leadership of the Anti-War movement has to be prised away from the dead hands of these class collaborators. Let them have their 4WD, plasma TVs, skiing holidays, etc. The rest of us will have to content ourselves with a world of peace and justice!

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Australia: West Papua’s Bad Neighbour

Green Left Weekly presents a public forum on Australia: West Papua’s Bad Neighbour at

7pm on Wednesday Feb 15,
Resistance Centre
23 Abercrombie St
Chippendale

Speakers will be:

• Max Lane Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific
• Joe Collins Australia-West Papua Association

In West Papuan asylum seekers need our support, Sarah Stephen writes

The asylum seekers had hung a huge banner which read: "Save West Papua people soul from genocide intimidation and terrorist from military government of Indonesian. Also we West Papuan need freedom peace love and justice in our home land." But if not for photographer Damien Baker and the Cairns Post, which hired a helicopter, we might never have seen the boat and its political message.

Emphasis Mine

And

ICJ Australia representative Justice John Dowd pointed out on January 19 that the asylum seekers "should not be sent offshore processing camps in Nauru or Manus Island as they are quite distinct from other boat arrivals as they have come directly from the place where they were persecuted. The 1951 Refugee Convention requires that states do not punish asylum seekers for illegal entry if they have come directly from a place where their lives were threatened."

Emphasis Mine

Once again, the Australian government aligns itself with the persecutors and punishes the victims for daring to escape. This is not out of malice but simply to protect the interests of Australian businesses in Indonesia.

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One Cool Cat

While visiting Mickey Z, I got hooked by a silly quiz and found that I am a

Cool Kitty! Hey, you're one cool cat! Nothing
really gets to you as you feel there are more
important things in life than getting angry or
holding a grudge.

What kind of cat are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

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Happy Birthday, Jesus

Mickey Z asks the following question in Happy Birthday, Jesus:

Here’s the best question of all: If an omnipotent god wanted to spread his message and save his people, why did he send his son to Bethlehem 2000 years ago? Call me crazy, but I’m thinking if he set up Jesus in a Times Square office with a laptop and a wireless connection, well…you get the idea.

Let’s face it, dumping the messiah into a manger in a small town in Palestine some 2000 years ago ain’t exactly the type of decision an omnipotent being would make. I mean, I’m reaching more people on-line in one day than Jesus met in his entire life. Hmmm...that gives me an idea.

This is essentially the same argument put forward in Superstar in the Jesus Christ, Superstar musical:

...
You'd have managed better
If you'd had it planned
Now why'd you choose such a backward time
And such a strange land?

If you'd come today
You could have reached the whole nation
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication
...

Both of these quotes assume the history of the world and the technological development would have proceeded unchanged even if Jesus was born in the first century CE. Even if these developments would have occurred without the Incarnation happening then, there are theological reasons that the first century CE was the lastest time for the Incarnation:

• The destruction of the Second Temple occurred in 69 CE along with Jerusalem and the dispersal of the Jews from Palestine;
• The development of Jewish Apocalyptic thought was maturing in the first century CE;
• The elevation of the Roman Caesar to a living god; and
• The Roman occupation of Palestine.

The important point is that Jesus was born a Jew, taught as a Rabbi, and died a Jew. Up until 69 CE, the largest concentration of Jews was in Palestine. The Second Temple was there in Jerusalem. Along with the Temple, there was the theology of sacrifice for the remission of sins.

Jesus' teaching was Jewish. The subsequent development of theological understanding of Jesus' message was done in the reflection upon the Temple sacrifical rituals. The place for Jesus' teaching had to be around the Temple. This means that Jesus had to be born no latter than 35 CE in Palestine in order for him to teach. This late date would not allow for the development of a Jewish understanding of Jesus' teaching.

Another important point is that the Roman occupation accelerate the development of Jewish Apocalyptic thinking. This occupation sharpened the end-time development in Jewish thinking escpecially towards the Messiah (which was an important component of Jesus' teaching). With the assumption of a living godhead by Caligula, the crisis with Rome deepened.

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Gangsters' hold on Sydney is safe

Following the recent riots along Sydney's beaches, Ms Miranda Devine says that the Gangsters' hold on Sydney is safe. She writes that:

FORGET Clover Moore as the Grinch of Sydney's Christmas. The "Lions of Lebanon" with their Glock pistols and Molotov cocktails have put her to shame this holy season. While the NSW police lock down entire beachfront suburbs, instruct stores to stop selling baseball bats, and apply the full force of the law to pasty-faced nerds with a taste for Nazi literature, they continue to cower from the real hardmen, the Lebanese-Australian criminal gangs of Sydney's south-west who have ruled the roost in this city for at least a decade and now number in their thousands.

And she concludes that:

That Iemma's electorate is at war with former premier Bob Carr's former electorate of Maroubra is a handy synchronicity. It highlights the ALP's long-term culpability in creating the monster that is plaguing the city, its history of ethnic branch-stacking and "whatever it takes" tactics to shore up support in the heartland electorates of the south-west, its policy of spin and cover-up which is at last coming undone.

As one passenger last week told taxi driver Adrian Neylan, who has chronicled the violence on his weblog, "the gangs have won".

Indeed they have, but the recent display of official cowardice in the face of the criminal gangs of Sydney's south-west is just a taste of the way Sydney has been run for a decade.

Emphasis Mine

O how the past is quickly forgotten:

• The Vietnamese crime gangs of Cabramatta who were the problem in the 1980's.
• The Bikies since the 1960's
• The Mafia from around Griffith during the 1970's
• The Irish gangs since 1788
• The Chinese Triads since the 1850's
• And there are probably some that I have overlooked

One thing you can say about crime is that it is multicultural. At the same time, it is a recurring theme throughout Capitalist and other societies.

What intrigued me about Ms Devine's comments were the similarity to the idea put forward in Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum's study of the use of the criminals to maintain power:

Nevertheless, it was relatively rare for the thieves to aim their 'justice' at those running the camps. By and large they were, if not exactly loyal Soviet citizens, then at least happy to co-operate in the one task that Soviet authorities set for them: they were perfectly happy, that is, to lord it over the politicals - that group to quote [Evgeniya] Ginzburg again, 'even more despised and outcast than themselves'.

Applebaum, Anne (2004), Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps, Penguin Books:Australia, pp.270.

This was to last until about 1947, when the wave of arrests after the end of the Second World War sent more political prisoners into the Gulag. Now the power relationship changed:

Almost as soon as they started appearing in the camps towards the end of the war, this new sort of prisoner began creating trouble for the authorities. By 1947, the professional crimminals no longer found it so easy to dominate them. Among the various national and criminal tribes who dominated camp life, a new clan appeared: the krasnye shapochki or 'red hats'. These were usually ex-soldiers or ex-partisans who had banded together to fight against the dominance of the thieves - and, by extension, against the administration that tolerated them. Such groups operated well into the next decade, despite efforts to break them apart. In the winter of 1954-5, Viktor Bulgakov, then a prisoner in Inta, a far northern mining camp in the Vorkuta region, witnessed an administrative attempt to 'break' a group of politicals by importing a contigent of sixty thieves into their camp. The thieves armed themselves, and prepared to start attacking the politicals:

They suddenly got hold of 'cold weapons' [knives], just as one would expect in that sort of situation...we learned that they had stolen the money and possessions of older man. We asked them to give the things back, but they weren't accustomed to giving things back. So at about two o'clock in the morning, just as it was turning light, we surrounded the barracks from all sides, and began attacking it. We started to beat them, and we beat them until they couldn't get up. One jumped through the window...ran to the vakhta, and collapsed on the threshold. But by the time the guards arrived, no one was there...They took the thieves out of the zone.

...

But the authorities took note. If political prisoners could band together to fight thieves, they could also band together to fight the camp administration. ....

pp. 418-9 ibid

Emphasis Mine

In Marxist theory, these criminal elements are part of the lumpenproletariat.

Roughly translated as slum workers or the mob, this term identifies the class of outcast, degenerated and submerged elements that make up a section of the population of industrial centers. It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements. In times of prolonged crisis (depression), innumerable young people also, who cannot find an opportunity to enter into the social organism as producers, are pushed into this limbo of the outcast. Here demagogues and fascists of various stripes find some area of the mass base in time of struggle and social breakdown, when the ranks of the Lumpenproletariat are enormously swelled by ruined and declassed elements from all layers of a society in decay.

Emphasis Mine

In any oppressive regime, the criminal elements are used to keep the majority of people down through fear. Witness the hysteria over crime figures. Even though we are told that the rates of crimes are decreasing, we are conditioned to become more fearful of crime.

The reason is that any oppressive system needs to keep people frightened (either of it or of external enemies). And when we are frightened, we are conditioned to run to the nanny state for safety and comfort.

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French Riots

Prof Juan Cole comments on The Problem with Frenchness in discussing the on-going French riots:

The French have determinedly avoided multiculturalism or affirmative action. They have insisted that everyone is French together and on a "color-blind" set of policies. "Color-blind" policies based on "merit" always seem to benefit some groups more than others, despite a rhetoric of equality and achievement. In order to resolve the problems they face, the French will have to come to terms with the multi-cultural character of contemporary society. And they will have to find ways of actively sharing jobs with minority populations, who often suffer from an unemployment rate as high as 40 percent (i.e. Iraq).

...

A lot of the persons living in the urban outer cities (a better translation of cite than "suburb") are from subsaharan Africa. And there are lots of Eastern European immigrants. The riots were sparked by the deaths of African youths, not Muslims. Singling out the persons of Muslim heritage is just a form of bigotry. Moreover, French youth of European heritage rioted quite extensively in 1968. As they had in 1789. Rioting in the streets is not a foreign custom. It has a French genealogy and context.

Emphasis Mine

Roger Stevenson comments on Prof. Cole's analysis:

I agree for the most part with your analysis of the historical factors and the neglect that French society in general has shown for the problems of minority ethnic groups. The housing problems and discrimination they face in everyday life are truly tragic. France was forced in the 50's and 60's to embark on large scale housing projects to house the increasing numbers of immigrant labor families that the economy needed, with the result that these large high rise apartment buildings are now ghetto-like neighborhoods that are often poorly maintained and very overcrowded.

The remnants of France's colonial empire are now stacked, often 12 stories high, in what the French call "rabbit cages." It is easy to understand how the youth of these underprivileged projects feel totally disenfranchised from the mainstream of French society. Many have dropped out of a very rigid education system, and the prospects for any kind of meaningful future in terms of a job, career, decent housing, a feeling of self-worth, etc., are very bleak.

Emphasis Mine

Al Jazeera posts Paris riots: Those are not Muslims:

The raging violence which has spread to 300 French cities and towns, and which the police hasn’t been able to extinguish yet, is reflecting the social, not religious, grievance, reports James Button in Paris.

Numerous media outlets and politicians made the assumption that unrest raised worrying concerns of a rise of “Islamic extremism” in France.

Those gangs are not Muslims, their heroes are American rappers like 50 Cent, and they harbour special hatred towards police- When they go to fight them they say they're "dancing with wolves", according to an editorial published on The Age.

Linking the unrest that has reached the heart of the French capital to “radical Islam” is misleading and irrelevant. France’s civil unrest should be compared to the riots that burnt down African-American ghettos across the United States in the 1960s.

Emphasis Mine

What is happening in France is similar to what happened in Macquarie Fields in 2005 and in Redfern in 2004:

• Youth riots in Sydney: the real story
• Car thieves, not police, to blame for chase deaths

Murray Smith writes, FRANCE: State of emergency called in face of widespread revolt

The term “riot” is in fact misleading. The revolt is the work of gangs of youth who know each other and who consciously turn their anger into acts of destruction of property — burning cars, schools, shops, buses — and attacks on the hated police. As one young man put it to the Madrid daily El Pais: “We don’t have words to explain what we feel. We only know how to speak with fire.” Beyond their immediate targets, their anger is directed against interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the hard-right hopeful for the 2007 presidential election, who has described them as “rabble” and “gangrene” and threatened to “hose down” their neighbourhoods. The only political demand that the rioters have put forward is for Sarkozy’s resignation.

Of course, there is a negative side to this revolt. It is easy enough to see that wreaking havoc in their own neighbourhoods causes damage to their neighbours and families. This can and is being exploited by the government to divide their communities between generations and between immigrants and non-immigrants. But when the despair of those to whom society offers no future explodes in revolt, it rarely does so in a neat, tidy and “politically correct” way. What is happening in France today recalls the explosions in the ghettoes of North America in the 1960s and the 1981 riots in England.

Emphasis Mine

In summary, people are pissed off at being treated as shit. And when the rulers do not listen to reason, unreason is the result. This revolt will be put down because the people do not have the political consciousness to understand why they are in this situation. This is just an angry and violent reaction to oppression. And that condemns this revolt to failure.

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Peter Drucker Dies

Patricia Sullivan writes that Management Visionary Peter Drucker Dies:

"There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer," [Peter Drucker] said 45 years ago. Central to his philosophy was the belief that highly skilled people are an organization's most valuable resource and that a manager's job is to prepare and free people to perform. Good management can bring economic progress and social harmony, he said, adding that "although I believe in the free market, I have serious reservations about capitalism."

It was a typical remark for a man who believed in the empowerment of workers and the futility of big government, which he called "obese, muscle-bound and senile."

Emphasis Mine

This is an interesting quote. A fuller version was posted by Martin Bento

"although I believe in the free market, I have serious reservations about capitalism. Any system that makes one value absolute is wrong." Interview in Inc., 1985 In The Frontiers of Management

Michael Lewis, in his review of The Man Who Invented Management, concluded:

One way of viewing Peter Drucker's career is as a spiritual exercise performed for the spiritually impoverished. ''Faith is not what today is so often called a 'mystical experience,' '' Drucker wrote in his 1949 essay on Kierkegaard, ''something that can apparently be induced by the proper breathing exercises or by prolonged exposure to Bach (not to mention drugs). It can be attained only through despair, through suffering, through painful and ceaseless struggle.'' In Drucker's attempt to bring a kind of faith to business there is a lingering mystery. How did a man with deep skepticism of capitalism, which he gave voice to over the decades, become the sage of the capitalist class? Could it be that somewhere deep in their hearts the men he advised shared his doubts?

Emphasis Mine

Again we have sloppy definitions. How can one consider free markets outside of Capitalism? This is the heart of Capitalism. Take away free markets and you destroy Capitalism. Introduce free markets and you introduce Capitalism. The two are inseparable.

Without a reference to The Frontiers of Management, I cannot find what Peter Drucker meant by free markets as distinct from Capitalism.

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Rize

Rochelle Siemienowicz reviews the movie Rize:

Down in the slums of Los Angeles, there is a new dance movement transforming the lives of underprivileged kids. It's called 'krumping' and it's so fast and athletic that the makers of this film have to tell us that the footage hasn't been sped up. The dancers move as if possessed, both by the spirits of their African ancestors and a furious rage at their powerlessness - Rodney King is often invoked. Instead of joining gangs, they paint their faces like clowns and engage in non-violent competitive dance-offs with rival troupes.

Made by music video director and Vanity Fair photographer David LaChappelle, Rize is sometimes unfocussed and sloppy, seemingly unsure of whether it wants to glorify or objectively observe what it finds. Nevertheless, it's full of pummelling energy and arresting visuals as it traces the roots of krumping back to an ex-jailbird called Tommy the Clown, who first combined hip hop music and dance with children's birthday parties. Today, more than 100 groups practise this 'ghetto-ballet'. Their pride and courage is inspiring (and, honestly, a little scary), and you only hope that they'll find a way to move their politics beyond their beautiful, gyrating bodies.

Siemienowicz, Rochelle (2005), 'Rize', The Big Issue, No. 241, 07-22 Nov 2005, p.36

Emphasis Mine

What Dr. Siemienowicz did not mention was the racism behind the origin of the dance: this was promoted as something that black people could do that white people couldn't. This gave the dancers a sense of false pride. They have fully absorbed the racist propaganda of a Capitalist society. Malcolm X has been forgotten. The only mention of Dr. King was on the closing credits from his I have a dream speech:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Towards the end of the film, a white youth and an Asian youth are shown participating in the dance, and being accepted by the black dancers.

Thoughout the film, the dancers comment that they are oppressed or discriminated against, but they do not move beyond that. When they do not try to understand the oppression or discrimination, they are accepting it as part of their life. It is just another part of their lives as is drugs and the gangs. Forty years have erased the memories of the marches and the speeches of the Civil Rights era. The dancers are angry without having any way of understanding the source of that anger. They use dance to drain that anger out.

One problem with black liberation (whatever its manifestation - marches, dance, music) is that it attracts poor whites, Asians, and Hispanics. But with this aggregation of non-blacks, the blacks feel overwhelmed. The problems of the blacks are big enough without all these other poor people tagging along. Blacks want to solve the problems of blacks not everyone else's. The blacks then try to exclude the others by saying that they should solve their own problems.

With this exclusion, the politics of blacks do not develop beyond racism. This attitude entrenches racism further by dividing people into races. Instead, the blacks should welcome the others in their struggle and expand their struggle to include all poor people as Malcolm X and Dr. King were starting to do before they were assassinated. The struggle is a class struggle of the poor against the rich. It is not black against white.

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Remembering The Gulag

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum concluded Gulag: A History with:

Already, we are forgetting what mobilized us, what inspired us, what held the civilization of 'the West' together for so long [during the 'Cold War']: we are forgetting what it was that we were fighting against. If we do not try harder to remember the history of the other half of the European continent, the history of the other twentieth-century totalitarian regime, in the end it is we in the West who will not understand our past, we who will not know how our world came to be the way it is.

And not only our own particular past. For if we go on forgetting half of Europe's history, some of what we know about mankind itself will be distorted. Every one of the twentieth-century's mass tragedies was unique: the Gulag, the Holocaust, the Armenian massacre, the Nanking massacre, the Cultural Revolution, the Cambodian revolution, the Bosnian wars, among many others. Every one of these events had different historical, philosophical and cultural origins, every one arose in particular local circumstances which will never be repeated. Only our ability to debase and destroy and dehumanize our fellow men has been - and will be - repeated again and again our transformation of our neighbours into 'enemies', our reduction of our opponents to lice or vermin or poisonous weeds, our re-invention of our victims as lower, lesser or evil beings, worthy only of incarceration or expulsion or death.

The more we are able to understand how different societies have transformed their neighbours and fellow citizens from people into objects, the more we know of the specific circumstances which led to each episode of mass torture and mass murder, the better we will understand the darker side of our own human nature. This book was not written 'so that it will not happen again', as the cliche would have it. This book was written because it almost certainly happen again. Totalitarian philosophies have had, and will continue to have, a profound appeal to many millions of people. Destruction of the 'objective enemy', as Hannah Arendt once put it, remains a fundamental object of many dictatorships. We need to know why - and each story, each memoir, each document in the history of the Gulag is a piece of the puzzle, a part of the explanation. Without them, we will wake up one day and realize that we do not know who we are.

Applebaum, Anne (2004), Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps, Penguin Books:Australia, pp.513-514.

Emphasis Mine

Our PM, John Howard, refers to parts of Australian history as the black-arm view. Other historians have played down the brutality of the frontier. The Australian ruling class wants people to forget about the ugliness of Australia's past. But as Ms Applebaum wrote in the end it is we in the West who will not understand our past, we who will not know how our world came to be the way it is. To fully understand the current state of Australia, we have to confront those ugly facts. Henry Reynolds

...has researched and explained the high level of violence and conflict involved in the colonisation of Australia, and the aboriginal resistance that resulted in numerous massacres of indigenous people. Reynolds, and other historians, estimates that up to 3,000 Europeans and 20,000 indigenous Australians were killed directly in the frontier violence, and many more aborigines died indirectly through the introduction of European diseases and starvation caused by being forced from their productive tribal lands.

It is this blindness towards the atrocities that have been committed in the past that blinds many Australians to the crimes being committed today by governments (both Liberal and Labour). We now have:

• Indefinite administrative dentention. This has been upheld by the High Court for the case of refugees. Capitalist legal used to hold that only a judge, in open court, could deprive a person of liberty. Now a bureaucrat can now do the same thing subject to appeals to other bureaucrats.
• A crime is now whatever the Executive determines it to be. A ministerial edict can classify an organisation as a terrorist one, and anyone who had any sort of dealings with it are then subject to arrest and trial. Stalin would have understood the logic of that. Specific acts and proveable intent are no longer needed to condemn someone of a crime.

The brutality of the past continues today for the same reason it existed in the past: to protect the interests of the ruling class.

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Wal-Mart and Minimum Wage

Chuck Asay drew a cartoon titled News Item: Wal-Mart Chief Asks Congress To Raise The Minimum Wage in which Mr. Asay writes:

• ...Wal-Mart already pays its workers an average wage of close to $10 an hour!, and
• That Wal-Mart wants to force small stores out of business by doing so.

According to Lee Sustar in Taking on Wal Mart (June 25, 2004)

... Wal-Mart’s unwillingness to pay a living wage. According to a study by Forbes magazine, Wal-Mart employees earn an average hourly wage of $7.50. That works out to roughly $15,000 a year--right at the federal poverty line of $15,060 for a family of three. ...

...

Employees aren’t the only people squeezed by the Wal-Mart machine. According to a study by the research group Good Jobs First, Wal-Mart extracted at least $624 million in government subsidies for its big distribution centers--in the form of infrastructure improvements, tax credits, financing, job training and more.

The subsidies are justified in the name of job creation. Yet Wal-Mart typically destroys jobs as well, driving out smaller competitors. "When they go in, they simply redistribute retail revenue," Phillip Mattera, one of the authors of the study, told Socialist Worker.

Emphasis Mine

Mr. Asay's contentionsre echoed in WSJ.com - Wal-Mart Urges Congress to Raise Minimum Wage says:

The proposal to lift minimum wage is particularly likely to raise eyebrows. Though Wal-Mart pays above the current $5.15 an hour minimum wage -- the average hourly wage among its 1.3 million U.S. workers is just under $10 an hour -- some of its smaller competitors don't pay as much. As a result, a boost in the minimum wage could pressure the profitability of Wal-Mart competitors.

"This makes it look like they're doing something for labor, but with little cost to themselves," says Lawrence Katz, professor of economics at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

But [Wal-Mart CEO] Mr. Scott, noting that minimum wage hasn't changed in almost a decade, described Wal-Mart's core customer base as finding it increasingly difficult to afford basic necessities between paychecks.

"We simply believe it is time for Congress to take a look at the minimum wage and other legislation that can help working families," he said./p>

Emphasis Mine

Mr. Scott has realised that poor people do not spend much. Increasing the amount of money poor people have will increase the sales of companies like Wal-Mart. So, it must be good for business. But all of the criticisms levelled at Wal-Mart over this concern the cost to business. People like Mr. Asay and Prof. Katz do not think this far. They think that by simply lowering costs, sales will increase and therefore profits without realising that there is less money to spend.

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