The vision thing

Chris Dillow writes about The vision thing.

One thing makes me hopeful — that this election was not a victory for austerity. The two main austerity parties — Tories and LibDems — saw their share of the vote fall by 14.4 percentage points whilst the two clearest anti-austerity parties (SNP and Greens) gained a combined 5.9 percentage points.  

On the other hand, though, I'm pessimistic. Ukip's success* shows that there is also public support for anti-market policies: Ukippers (and indeed many other voters) favour (pdf) controls on prices and rents as well as on immigration. And whilst a slogan "we'll put you in control" should in theory be a popular and coherent way of promoting worker democracy, I see very little public demand for it.

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I think the difference between austerity in Greece and the UK is that austerity in Greece was an existental crisis. Austerity there was threatening the idea of Greece. Whereas in the UK, austerity was a way of keeping the super-rich happy enough to stay there in order to spend enough to keep some of the people happy.

It is probably very early in the development of the workers' consciousness in places like the UK to talk about worker democracy. However, the workers in places like Venezuela can see the benefit of this through the nearness of Cuba and the effects in their daily lives. Thus, they are developing their consciousness at a faster pace.

This is probably due to that the effects of colonialism was never disguised in Venezuela as it was in the UK. Only a heavy hand of the military there kept things under control. Now that the military has aligned with the workers, there is an awakening of how society can be better organized.

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Guantanamo horrors shift military men's views

Phil Shannon writes that Guantanamo horrors shift military men's views.

The price Hicks was to pay for an end to his existence of fear, pain and despair, however, was the tag of “convicted terrorist”. This was despite Hicks’ guilty plea being coerced under extreme duress and, this year, ruled void in the US courts.

Mori, who retired from the military in 2012 and joined the social justice section of an Australian law firm, played a vital role in justice for Hicks. But he reminds the readers of his valuable book that “it was they, the Australian public, who got David Hicks out. I hope that the people of Australia never forget that.”

Like Mori, Sergeant Joe Hickman was “a patriotic American” and he was proud to finally get to “meet the enemy” as a guard in Guantanamo in 2006.

“Keeping terrorists locked up was an important job,” Hickman writes. But, like Mori, he also had standards, namely a belief in “basic American principles of decency”, even towards those he had been told were “evil men bent on destroying our country”.

Decency, however, was decidedly lacking in the “excessively punishing” detention conditions, cultural insults and “Rodney King-style beatings” of cuffed and shackled detainees.

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Here are two (2) US military men who defied the system because of their commitment to their principles. Their core values took them on a journey to the progressive side of politics. They had realized that the proclaimed conservative principles espoused by their superiors and government was a sham. They remembered that true conservatism is about the defence of rights. And they both paid a personal price for adherence to their principles.

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Rallies demand end to Aboriginal community closures

Rallies demand end to Aboriginal community closures.

Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance said: “These forced closures are indisputably an act of genocide that will have grave consequences for the people forced, under duress, to leave country. It is an act of cultural genocide that will damage vital cultural connections to country.

“It also signals an impending ecocide, resulting from the mining exploration and aggressive destruction of Aboriginal land that will inevitably ensue.”

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The mills of Capitalism grinds people down into autonomons shedding all identity: cultural; historical; personal. People should just be workers and consumers—nothing more.

Joining in this Aboriginal resistance helps us reclaim our own identity and humanity.

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"Serious" politics

Chris Dillow writes that "Serious" politics is flummery.

Politics has many ways of creating and sustaining what Paul Krugman calls "Very Serious People" and Nassim Nicholas Taleb "empty suits" — men (generally men) whose judgments (always judgments) are sensible, sober, and wrong. One reason why I'll be voting Green is to reject this flummery.

Another thing: one might ask why there is no political party with entirely sound economics — one that: is concerned about productivity; anti-austerian; pro-market (in the right institutional framework); and egalitarian. But that's another question. 

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Dillow writes that the mass media is complicit in framing the economic debate in terms that are acceptable to the Capitalist elite. The system cannot be questioned. Instead, the debate is about how to save the Capitalists from their own stupidity.

The idea of being pro-market is interesting. I suppose I am pro-market in that people should decide how the economy operates. It is ruled through the market of ideas and discussion.

Society, as a whole, should take responsibility for how the productive forces are used.

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Baltimore Riots Were Caused by Capitalism and Cops, Not Poverty

Ted Rall writes that the Baltimore Riots Were Caused by Capitalism and Cops, Not Poverty.

Liberals believe capitalism is a good system prone to excesses, which they propose to mitigate via reform and regulation: poverty, income inequality and racism associated with class are flaws in an otherwise laudable economic model.

But that’s not true. Poverty, and the racism that goes with it, are features, not bugs. The ruling classes require a permanent underclass to exploit directly, and serve as a warning to workers not to ask for big raises, shorter hours or other improvements in workplace conditions — be quiet, lest you wind up like them.

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Racism is also used to divide the working class against itself. Other sources of division are sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.

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Venezuela: Priorities of a Socialist Government

Venezuela shows what Socialism is like.

Venezuela slashes military budget by 34%

Social housing project delivers 700,000th home

This shows the priorities of a Socialist government.

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The Cops Have Met Their Enemies: They Are Us

Ted Rall writes that The Cops Have Met Their Enemies: They Are Us.

In many American cities, particularly those with majority white police forces in minority neighborhoods, the police are an occupying army. They view the locals not as citizens whose taxes pay their salaries, who are in fact their bosses, but as dangerous, troublesome rabble to be contained, controlled and suppressed. The militarization of domestic policing, which dates back to the 1950s and the establishment of the first SWAT team in Los Angeles, further separates gendarmes from civilians via training derived from warfare, heavy body armor and wildly excessive firearms.

Trust in the cops is at a record low, thanks in part to ubiquitous cell phone and security camera videos that document police abuse so meticulously that it’s no longer possible even for white law-and-order types to deny accusations by blacks that the cops are treating them like dirt. Look for the cop-citizen gap to widen further as the police increasingly treat whites — for example, during the crackdown against the Occupy movement — badly as well.

The cops have met their enemy, and he is us.

And now there’s no denying it.

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This is also known as 4GW. And also as Class Warfare.

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Heartless, clueless?

Chris Dillow asks if Capitalists are really Heartless, clueless?.

One is a form of naive cynicism which regards inequality and injustice as natural and inevitable, and so attempts to fight it must be futile and foolish whilst defenders of the system are hard-headed realists.

The other is a tendency to underweight the incompetence of those who are on the side of the rich.

Hostile portrayals of capitalists have for decades been of Gradgrindian figures grinding the faces of the poor rather than of bumbling oafs. And today bankers are routinely described as greedy when in fact what distinguishes them from the rest of us is their stupidity: most of us like a pound, but we didn't destroy an entire industry.

What this misses is the likelihood that a lot of success in business might be due to dumb luck.

In this sense, the claim that the the rich are heartless, by understating their stupidity, actually helps to legitimate inequality.

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What motivates the Capitalists is the defence of their class interests. And what defines their class is the control of the means of production. Thus, their class interest is to preserve that control.

How that control has evolved over time has been from direct control of personal property to the control of providing finance necessary for the operation of a business.

In the early days of Capitalism, the Capitalist was the man who owned and ran the business. This is the small businessman. This is the image that the petite bourgeoisie has of the Capitalist despite the radical changes over the past five (5) centuries. The confrontation between Capitalist and their enemies was at personal level and direct.

The capitalist then evolved to the stockholder who sat on the board of directors. Control and ownership was shared, but the Capitalist was still visible at the head of the firm. This started with the East India Company and its ilk in the seventeenth century and continued until the late nineteenth century with Andrew Carnegie, J.P.Morgan, etc.. The confrontation now evolved to be between masses of people: unions versus troops and police. The proxy war was waged throught the political system.

Nowadays, the Capitalist controls the finance provided to businesses. The control of businesses is indirect. Capital is owned—not the business. The political process has been subverted by international organisations such as the World Bank, IMF, ECB, WTO, and through treaties such as 'free-trade' deals. The Capitalist has vanished from the real world, yet their power is greater than before.

Now, the Capitalists dare to discipline entire nations: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Spain, Italy, Iran, China, North Korea, etc.. Anyone who defies the existing world order can expect to be attacked and destroyed.

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Productivity, Robots, China, Growth

Mike Shedlock writes about Productivity, Robots, China, Growth.

Congratulations. You are more productive than ever. Just don't expect to be paid more for it. In reality, some machine is doing all that for you.

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With China rapidly automating, the idea of cheap, replacable labour is in the dustbin of history.

This poses two (2) problems for Capitalism: reduction in the available surplus value; and reduction in the purchasing power of the working class. Without an income, workers cannot purchase goods and services, and profits cannot be materialised. Without workers, Capitalists cannot convert the surplus value of labour into profit.

Total automation is the death of Capitalism.

Workers can only survive in such a system by finding niches that are difficult to automate. This requires training and development. Workers will have to become self-directed because businesses are losing the profitability to do this for their workers.

In other words, workers will have to think like Communists in such a world. They will have to develop an appreciation of the Marxist critique of Capitalism so that they can understand how Capitalism works. They will have to develop their own abilities—they can no longer be passive receptables of corporate wisdom.

Economic survival means that workers cannot wait for governments to come to their aid. Workers have to develop their own abilities and solidarity.

But this only takes us part of the way towards a Communist revolution. Whether workers, in general, have the stomach for this remains to be seen.

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Syria, Yemen Conflicts only seem to be about Sunni-Shiite from 30,000 Feet

Juan Cole writes that Syria, Yemen Conflicts only seem to be about Sunni-Shiite from 30,000 Feet.

JUAN COLE: I see evidence of al-Qaeda thinkers, like Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was the number-two man for a long time, before bin Laden was killed, being influenced by Marxist thought, and radical Marxism. This is very clear in the technical terms that the Muslim far-right uses. They talk about a vanguard. This was a Leninist term. In some radical forms of Marxism, activists were impatient with the working class, which seemed not to want to fulfill its historical duty by rising up against the business classes, and so it engaged in sabotage—not everywhere all the time, but there were some groups that did that kind of thing in hopes of provoking a class war, because they knew the business classes would call upon their agents, the police, to crack down hard on sabotage and workers’ activism and so forth.

I think that al-Qaeda picked up this kind of thinking from the Marxist fringe in places like Egypt and so forth. I think that it is a deliberate strategy on their part, the sharpening of contradictions, or the heightening of contradictions, as it’s called. I think it explains everything that happened in Iraq.

I remember reading a New York Times piece in 2005 or so that al-Qaeda in Iraq had blown up a pet shop. There were pieces of rabbits and snakes wiggling on the ground. This author in The New York Times expressed himself with amazement. He said, “We should get out of Iraq now, because we can’t understand why you would do that. And if you don’t understand what your enemy is doing, then you should not be there.”

I understood exactly what they were doing. They were hitting soft targets. They were hitting businesses. It was a Shiite-owned pet shop. What they were trying to do was to get the Shiites’ goat in Iraq. They were trying to provoke a civil war, because they hoped that the Shiite clans who were being hit would go and attack Sunnis, and if they went and attacked the Sunnis, then al-Qaeda could go to the Sunnis and say, “Gee, you seem to be being attacked. We could protect you.”

So by provoking attacks on their own community, they actually could parlay that into power.

At the time, I was skeptical that they could succeed in this, but you come to last June, and they took over Mosul, the second-largest city in the country, in exactly this way—by continually provoking the Shia, getting reprisals going, and then going to the Sunnis against whom the reprisals were waged and saying, “You need protection.” By that time, the Mosulites said, “Yes, we do. Would you please come in,” even though Mosulites are cosmopolitan, secular-minded people. But they were willing to bring in this radical fundamentalist group just because they were tired of being targeted by the Shiite government.

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Marxists should always be sharpening the contradictions—but only through political means. We are offering an alternative political explanation for events. We want to show that there are Communist and Capitalist narratives at play in the world around us.

Marxists have rejected the terrorist mentality. Terrorism, as shown by events over the past twenty (20) years, has strengthen the Capitlist state through greater legal power, greater reliance on force, and the ready support of such measures by the population. Support for the government is almost reflexive once the terrorism aspect is highlighted.

The Capitalist is always willing to suppress the working class whenever it feels its interests are threatened. But it can, and has, retreat before determined resistance by a significant portion of the working class.

Marxists, at this stage of the struggle, are engaged in educating and radicalising the working class through mass actions, propaganda, and agitation. We join in the daily struggle to sharpen our political awareness of how the world works.

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Protests against racist police killings sweep US

Protests against racist police killings sweep US.

Protesters demanding widespread reform of the police took the streets on April 14, as killings of unarmed black men have become all-too frequent in US headlines.

Activists from various right groups rallied in different cities throughout the country. Signs carried by the protesters in New York read: “Stop Police brutality and mass murder.” Protesters spread the message on social media websites using hashtags, including the popular #BlackLivesMatter.

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The thinking behind these protests is mistaken: the police are not there to defend society against the criminals; but to defend the rich criminals against the poor members of society. This attitude determines the direction of police violence which is against the poor.

There are the misguided police officers who believe that they serve the community. It takes some time for the real situation to penetrate their thick skulls. Then they either leave or succumb to the pervasive corruption that the police are forced to immerse themselves.

In theoretical terms, the state serves the interests of the ruling class. And the police are merely the agents of violence in the service of the state. Everything flows from that.

In order to stop the police brutality, it is necessary to change the social order into a classless society.

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Huge rallies against WA community closures

Rachel Evans and Jemma Nott write that there were Huge rallies against WA community closures in Sydney and Melbourne.

Rebel Hanlon, assistant secretary of the NSW construction division of the CFMEU denounced capitalism’s role in the oppression of Indigenous people, including mining companies' land grabs and Deicorp, the developers threatening to move Indigenous people off the Block in Redfern.

He pledged the unions support for the campaign to maintain Aboriginal housing in Redfern. A contingent of Maori construction workers gave an energetic solidarity Haka.

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Here we have an advanced worker understanding and articulating the linkage between oppression of Aborigines and the engine of Capitalism. The building unions have a long history of workers educating themselves in the workings of Capitalism. This is why the governments have been keen to quash the militancy of the building unions.

The latest attempt to quash the CFEMU was commented on in Royal Commission 'prejudiced and biased':

Any defiance against the ruling class is a crime. A crime is defying the natural order of things.

And since Capitalism is currently the true natural order of things, workers who ask for and fight for decent working conditions and wages are against the natural order of things in which the Capitalists alone determine what is right and fair.

As I wrote in State governments share blame for (Not) Closing the Gap:

To really solve this problem requires all non-indigineous Australians to confront their racist attitudes towards Aborigines, and begin to redress the wrongs inflicted on them.

This requires that we acknowledge the racist basis for Capitalism and the invasion of Australia.

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Israeli Forces Target Journalists in West Bank

Mel Frykberg writes that Israeli Forces Target Journalists in West Bank.

On another occasion, I was accompanying a Palestinian ambulance which was trying to reach Jelazon camp to help Palestinian youths injured during clashes with the IDF.

Several military jeeps blocked the roads leading to the camp and refused to move when asked by the ambulance driver.

After I got out and spoke to the soldiers, showing them my credentials yet again, the jeep moved to the side and allowed the ambulance to continue.

The Israelis still appear to be sensitive to a certain degree to how they are portrayed in the Western media.

This has become apparent to me when covering violent clashes. As soon as it has been established that I am Australian, white and a woman, the aggression of the Israeli soldiers has abated and they have tried to get me on side by asking me if I am alright and warning me to take care,

However, I know that I too could easily fall prey to Israeli ammunition if I am not exceedingly careful so, on this basis, I choose to stay well away from the frontlines of clashes.

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Here is someone using their white privilege to benefit the oppressed, but they are acutely of the limits of that privilege as Rachel Corrie found to her cost.

Given the sensitivity of the Israeli government to pressure from Westerners, we should be our relative privilege to relieve the sufferings of the Palestinians through supporting the BDS campaign.

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Spain at 70% non-Carbon Electricity: Will it be 1st Net Carbon Zero G-20 State?

Juan Cole writes that Spain at 70% non-Carbon Electricity: Will it be 1st Net Carbon Zero G-20 State?.

If Spain doubles its wind generation from 22% of its energy mix to 40% in the next five years, as it plans, then that would take it to 87% of its electricity from renewables and nuclear. The other 13% may well be supplied by solar, allowing the decommissioning of the coal plants, assuming the government reverses its decision to remove solar subsidies, which has hurt investors in that sector. Note that fossil fuel industries typically get government subsidies, which the MSM doesn’t usually talk about, and that Spain is especially at risk from climate change effects such as desertification and sea level rise, so “subsidies” for clean energy would save the country trillions of dollars over time.

Spain, a country of 47 million people, has a gross domestic product of $1.4 trillion, making it the world’s 14th largest economy and ranging it with Australia and South Korea in that regard. If it can go completely to renewables and nuclear with regard to electricity generation, then it may well be the first large, economically consequential country to go entirely green.

In contrast, Australia gets 92% of its electricity from burning coal, petroleum and natural gas, even though the continent has abundant solar and wind. Its current prime minister, Tony Abbott, is closely tied to Big Oil and is a climate change denialist. Mexico, another country with a GDP similar to that of Spain, also is a major carbon polluter. Canada’s GDP is a bit larger than Spain’s but it is also a major dirty energy polluter, endangering the earth with its irresponsible dumping of C02, a dangerous and powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

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In the Capitalist scheme of things, Australia's role is to be a reliable supply of minerals, such as iron and uranium, as well as a major coal supplier.

Despite the success of the Renewable Energy Target program of the previous government, the Abbott government is doing all it can to discourage investment in renewable energy. Unfortunately, the political climate in Australia supports such a move. Coal is seen as more manly than wind and solar.

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Rand Paul Proves That the American Political System is Broken

Ted Rall writes that Rand Paul Proves That the American Political System is Broken.

I am tempted to argue that Paul is wrong, and that he would be better off personally as well as politically sticking to his guns. After all, he has, or at least has had, these popular positions all to himself. Why follow the lead of Al Gore, who foolishly decided not to emphasize his credibility as an environmentalist in 2000?

Be that as it may, let's focus on the big takeaway: the perception among the political class that, to be electable, you have to adjust your positions to conform to the banal, the uninspired, the illegal, with total disregard for the will or the greater good of the American people.

Broken.

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What better example of the corruption of the political system under Capitalism than that fomerly principled people like Rand Paul adjust their principles so that they can get enough money from the plutocrats in order to run for elected office. This is something his father never did.

Paul's principles may be wrong in their understanding of how society work, but he and his father fought for them against a hostile media and political machine of the Republican Party.

Those principles were the legitimate expression of the petite bourgeoisie. They were libertarian in nature because they were the yearning of a class who saw Capitalism as dynamic and inclusive. With the conversion of Paul on the road to Washington, these yearnings are no longer articulated by a national political figure. The petite bourgeoisie are now silenced like the working class.

This silencing of the petite bourgeoisie is dangerous in that they are more likely to turn to fascism in order to gain political expression to their economic yearnings. Although fascism has initially been a reaction against the plutocrats, the latter have always been successful into fashioning fascism to their own ends and destroying any residual resistance by the working class.

The reason for this relatively easy subversion of fascism is that fascism has a very poor understanding of how Capitalism works. Due to the ideological blindess, fascism totally rejects the Marxist critique of Capitalism. It is without this anchor in reality that Marxism provides, fascism eventually drifts into the maws of the hated Plutocrat.

The working class are the only ones who can correctly use Marxism to understand how Capitalism works and can be overthrown. The reason is that the working class daily lives the class conflict and experiences the exploitation and alienation under Capitalism. The petite bourgeoisie are blind to these things out of necessary for them to function in a Capitalist society.

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Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance burns butcher's apron in defiance of racist 'Reclaim Australia' rally

Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance burns butcher's apron in defiance of racist 'Reclaim Australia' rally.

In more recent times, this flag also represents the malicious and racist treatment of ethnic minorities. The flag represents a white nation, a nation built by white people for white people.

Members of WAR didn't just burn the Australian flag, we set fire to an expression of Australian racism in an act of anti-colonial resistance. Burning the Australian flag is an act of defiance against the colonial state, a symbolic gesture of our continual fight for freedom and a message that is hoped to reverberate outside of the monopolised media within this country.

Our ultimate goal is to end the colonial control of our lands and lives and to restore our tribal sovereignty. We want freedom and independence and we will continue to fight to rid our people and our communities of the interfering and oppressive hands of the colonial Australian state. We call on Australian government to cease violent domination of Aboriginal lives and immediately stop all destruction of Aboriginal land and culture across this continent.

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Other symbols of Australian nationalism, such as the Southern Cross and the Eureka Stockade, are also symbols of colonial oppression and racism. The miners at the Eureka Stockade raised the Southern Cross flag and went on a pogrom against the Chinese miners and merchants in a nearby settlement.

Even in the resistance to state oppression, the oppressed found time to oppress others.

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Movie Review: Home (2015)

The movie, Home, is Anti-American propaganda.

I have decoded the movie as follows:

• The Boov are the Americans
• The Gorg are the Muslims
• Oh is Edward Snowden
• Captain Smerk is the American Government

Captain Smerk steals a valuable artifact from the Gorg, This artifact is literally the future of the Gorg. Smerk does not understand why the Gorg want this artifact so badly, but uses his possession of it as his claim to power.

In a similar way, the American government steals the future of the Muslim Arabs from them by controlling their oil reserves. It is this control of oil that allows the USA to dominate the world's economy. The US government cannot understand why the Arabs want to use their oil for their own development rather than for the maintenance of US power.

In terror, the Boov flee the Gorg. The mere mention of the Gorg sends the Boov into panic. Captain Smerk proposes the invasion of Earth as the solution to their problem. He assures them that the population of Earth would be well taken care of, and would welcome the Boov as liberators. Since Boov technology is far superior to anything on Earth, the invasion is easily accomplished.

The panic after 11 September 2001 sent the US government on a series on invasions and interventions around the world: Afghanistan, the Phillipines, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc. The superiority of US weaponery made these easy for the US military. In Iraq, especially, the US troops were told that they would be welcomed as liberators.

What is striking about the movie is the Boov invade homes and snatch terrified people. The Boov round up all of the Earth's population and resettles them in refugee camps in the middle of the Australian desert. (This would infuriate any Australian government.) The population of Earth are understandably angry at the Boov for this rough treatment.

The Boov cannot understand why the population of Earth should be so angry with them. 'Tip' is especially angry at the descretion of cerished cultural artifacts by the Boov. Her main gripe is the turning the head of the Statue of Liberty into a likeness of Smerk.

Oh causes a crisis releases an e-mail to the entire universe. This causes Oh to become a furgitive.

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Anand Gopal: How to Create an Afghan Blackwater

Tom Englehardt posts an extract from Anand Gopal's book, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, in which Gopal relates How to Create an Afghan Blackwater.

Of course, even in the new Afghanistan there was no such thing as a free lunch. In return for privileged access to American dollars, Sherzai delivered the one thing U.S. forces felt they needed most: intelligence. His men became the Americans’ eyes and ears in their drive to eradicate the Taliban and al-Qaeda from Kandahar.

Yet here lay the contradiction. Following the Taliban’s collapse, al-Qaeda had fled the country, resettling in the tribal regions of Pakistan and in Iran. By April 2002, the group could no longer be found in Kandahar — or anywhere else in Afghanistan. The Taliban, meanwhile, had ceased to exist, its members having retired to their homes and surrendered their weapons. Save for a few lone wolf attacks, U.S. forces in Kandahar in 2002 faced no resistance at all. The terrorists had all decamped or abandoned the cause, yet U.S. special forces were on Afghan soil with a clear political mandate: defeat terrorism.

How do you fight a war without an adversary? Enter Gul Agha Sherzai — and men like him around the country. Eager to survive and prosper, he and his commanders followed the logic of the American presence to its obvious conclusion. They would create enemies where there were none, exploiting the perverse incentive mechanism that the Americans — without even realizing it — had put in place.

Sherzai’s enemies became America’s enemies, his battles its battles. His personal feuds and jealousies were repackaged as “counterterrorism,” his business interests as Washington’s. And where rivalries did not do the trick, the prospect of further profits did. (One American leaflet dropped by plane in the area read: “Get Wealth and Power Beyond Your Dreams. Help Anti-Taliban Forces Rid Afghanistan of Murderers and Terrorists.”)

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The Americans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They had defeated the Taliban and expelled Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in 2001.

Yet, the economic logic of Capitalism requires an on-going war against somebody. Whether it is the feudal monarchs of Europe, the native peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia, or the islands of the Pacific. Capitalism must always expand or face collapse.

Through the good offices of people, like Gul Agha Sherzai, the Americans now have their endless war. US and Afghan companies can suck the US Treasury dry for their own benefit. This is not immoral under Capitalism. Companies exist to make profits in legal ways.

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Counter-rallies challenge 'Reclaim Australia'

Chris Peterson & Sarah Hathway write that Counter-rallies challenge 'Reclaim Australia'.

Indigenous activists were prominent in the counter-mobilisations against Reclaim Australia.

Burgess's efforts to disguise his anti-Aboriginal racism are in line with the “Reclaim Australia” organisers strategy of denying their racism and framing their rallies in terms of opposition to “Islamic extremism”. This has been enabled by the increasing scaremongering around a much exagerated threat of terrorism and scapegoating of Muslims and asylum seekers by mainstream political parties and media — tactics used to diverrt attention from unpoular government policies and justify anti-democratic laws.

Their demands include preventing Sharia law from being enforced in Australia, to ban Halal certification, to introduce pride in the Australian flag and the national anthem at schools, and to ban the burqa (or equivalent). All of these demands, absurd or extremist as they are, can be regularly heard in federal parliament and in the opinion pages of the Murdoch press.

Despite claims that “Reclaim Australia” was not a racist or neo-nazi event, several participants had with visible SS and swastika tattoos.

The Melbourne counter-rally built on the success of the previous week's 15,000-strong rally for refugees, which the media largely ignored. In contrast, the media heavily reported “Reclaim Australia”.

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I especially love the slogan from the Aboriginal activists in the photograph below—Not Yours to Reclaim:

One could take the charitable view that the people at the “Reclaim Australia” rallies were completely unaware that they are swimming in a sea of racism: mass media; books; movies; official history; paintings; sculptures; television shows; political discourse; place names; etc.. This racism is so prevalent that it is invisible.

It only becomes visible and audible when someone takes the logical conclusion from this prevailing racism and ends up on YouTube sprewing a racist rant. Then they are shocked to learn what thought to be a reasonable conclusion based upon they know to be true, is virulently racist. You cannot build truth from lies.

I imagine it would be an extreme shock to them to learn that they are being lied to everyone they trust and respect. These people are only repeating what is received knowledge.

To even imagine that all of these nice and respectable people are propagandists for racism is frightening for most people to contemplate. To do would undercut their own rationality. Their world would collapse into a fog of helplessness.

It is safer to deny their own racism and lose empathy for the victims of racsim. Racism corrodes one's own humanity ever so subtlely until the swatiska is just a badge of honour:

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The Empty Feeling of McDonald's Pay Raise

Barry Ritholtz writes about The Empty Feeling of McDonald's Pay Raise.

But there are other issues worth discussing: Social media’s impact on consumers and competition for employees as the economy improves.

Both of these seem to have worked to the detriment of McDonald’s — especially among the millennial generation, which has voted with its dollars to eat at places that serve fresher, healthier food such as Chipotle. McDonald's also faces stiffening competition from burger upstarts such as Shake Shack, 5 Guys and Bobby Flay's Bobby’s Burger Palace.

Don’t underestimate the competition for quality workers at fast-food restaurants. The supply of people willing to do the difficult, dirty work of grilling greasy burgers and fries or interacting with drive-through customers is finite. Wal-Mart has similar issues finding qualified minimum-wage workers. And as the economy continues to slowly improve and unemployment declines, that pool of workers gets smaller. It really was just a matter of time before wages had to rise.

That is a positive development — especially for two companies with business models that are so dependent on government aid, tax breaks and Medicaid. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported in 2013, “Fast-Food wages come with a $7 billion side of public assistance.” Indeed, a higher portion of employees of fast-food restaurants receive taxpayer aid than in any other industry.

Wal-Mart isn't much better. As we noted, Wal-Mart employees receive $2.66 billion in government aid each year. That works out to $5,815 per worker, and $420,000 per store. Why private-sector employers require public assistance for their full- or part-time employees is beyond me. But it is why I've labeled these two corporate welfare queens.

Raising the minimum wage nationally to $12 would drive more of the employment costs back to the companies, which is where they belong. Estimates vary, but it would probably take a minimum wage of about $15 to make these companies' employees independent of state and federal aid.

It is worth watching to see what the tandem of social media and basic economics does to push these companies toward a higher minimum wage. With April 15th right around the corner, it would be nice to know that your tax dollars aren't going to subsidize huge for-profit, private enterprises.

Emphasis Mine

The limits of proletarisation have been reached. Basic jobs are being automated. Any job that can be learned by rote and through an instruction manual is one that can be done by a machine. Replacable workers have been replaced by machines.

Workers who can add value to the customer interaction are now needed. These workers do things that cannot be learnt by rote or through an instruction manual. They must be self-motivated to learn and try new things, and then to evaluate their own performance in order to improve.

In other words, they have to expand their consciousness about how the world works. They must educate themselves through study and interaction with other workers.

Economic survival is driving this expansion of worker consciousness. It is no longer adequate for a worker to be told what to think or what to do by a manager. The manager is now hopelessly lost in a rapidly changing environment.

A worker with a better understanding of how the political and economic system works is in a better position to see and take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

In my opinion, a worker with a Marxist understanding of the world is the one best able to survive in these turbulent economic. The primary reason is that Marxism gives the best description of how Capitalism works.

But it does not necessarily follow that a worker with a Marxist understanding will become a Communist.

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