Re: [Marxism] Bernanke Says Rising Wages Will Lift Spending
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 2010-08-04, at 12:01 AM, michael perelman wrote: The New York Times Headline Says It all. This beats Greenspan some of Greenspan's worst predictions. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/business/economy/03fed.html?scp=2sq=bernankest=cse And then there's this from the NYT: August 3, 2010 More Workers Face Pay Cuts, Not Furloughs By STEVEN GREENHOUSE New York Times The furloughs that popped up during the recession are being replaced by a highly unusual tactic: actual cuts in pay. Local and state governments, as well as some companies, are squeezing their employees to work the same amount for less money in cost-saving measures that are often described as a last-ditch effort to avoid layoffs. A new report on Tuesday showed a slight dip in overall wages and salaries in June, caused partly by employees working fewer hours. Though average hourly pay is still higher than when the recession began, the new wage rollbacks feed worries that the economy has weakened and could even be at risk of deflation. That is when the prices of goods and assets fall and people withhold spending as they wait for prices to drop further, a familiar idea to those following the recent housing market. A period of such slack economic demand produced a lost decade in Japan, and while it is still seen as unlikely here, some policy-making officials at the Federal Reserve recently voiced concern about the possibility because the consequences could be so dire. Pay cuts are appearing most frequently among state and local governments, which are under extraordinary budget pressures and have often already tried furloughs, i.e., docking pay in exchange for time off. Warning that they will have to lay off people otherwise, many governors and mayors are pressing public employee unions to accept a reduction in salary of a few percentage points, without getting days off in exchange. At the University of Hawaii, professors have accepted a 6.7 percent cut. Albuquerque has trimmed pay for its 6,000 employees by 1.8 percent on average, and New York’s governor, David A. Paterson, has sought a 4 percent wage rollback for most state employees. State troopers in Vermont agreed to a 3 percent cut. In California, teachers in the Capistrano and Pacheco school districts have accepted salary cuts. “We’ve seen pay freezes before in the public sector, but pay cuts are something very new to that sector,” said Gary N. Chaison, an industrial relations professor at Clark University. Outsize pension costs and balanced budget requirements are squeezing many states as tax revenue has come up short. It is impossible to say how many employers have cut workers’ pay, because the government does not keep such statistics. Economists say a modest but growing number of employers have ordered wage cuts, especially in the public sector. In a 2010 survey by the National League of Cities, 51 percent of the cities that responded said they had either cut or frozen salaries of city employees, 22 percent said they had revised union contracts to reduce some pay and benefits, and 19 percent said they had instituted furloughs. Some businesses are also cutting workers’ pay, often to help stay afloat or to eliminate their losses, although a few have seized on the slack labor market and workers’ weak bargaining power to cut pay and thereby increase their profits and competitiveness. Economists note that wages continued to increase in 2008 after the recession began, even adjusted for inflation. But those wages have been flat for the last 18 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mr. Chaison says the latest wave of private-sector pay cuts is reminiscent of those in the early 1980s, when many companies — especially those with unionized work forces — cut wages in response to a recession, intensified competition from imports and new low-cost competitors spawned by government-backed deregulation. Now, as then, companies frequently say that compensation for unionized workers, in both wages and benefits, is out of line. For instance, the Westin Hotel in Providence, R.I., after failing to reach a new contract with its main union, has sliced wages 20 percent, saying its previous pay levels were not competitive with those at the city’s many nonunion hotels. Factory owners sometimes warn that they will close or move jobs to lower-cost locales unless workers agree to a pay cut. In its most recent union contract, General Motors is paying new employees $14 an hour, half the rate it pays its long-term workers. Sub-Zero, which makes refrigerators, freezers and ovens, warned its workers last month that it might close one or more factories in Wisconsin and lay off 500
Re: [Marxism] The Banality of Anti-Israel Lobby Doctrine
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yes, I was referencing the anonymous activist. Dennis has told me off-list who it is, and it's a name I respect for her writing. All I can say is she must travel in totally different circles from me to have that opinion. And it's not that I haven't seen that crowd in action: at the first conference of the National Assembly, some particularly vile wing-nuts were arguing the lobby runs the US line. On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 11:52 PM, Joseph Catron jncat...@gmail.com wrote: I'm pretty sure Andrew was referencing Dennis' anonymous long-time activist in the struggle against Zionism, not you. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] David Moore responds to J****** B******
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Doesn't this thread title breach list policy on naming list members? Cheers, John Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] David Moore responds to J****** B******
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 8/4/10 5:23 PM, ataif wrote: Doesn't this thread title breach list policy on naming list members? yes, and the next time Lou does it, i will suspend his posting privileges for five minutes. more seriously, please do not use subscriber names in marxmail posts. in this particular case J B probably doesnt care, but best to be safe. Les Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Answering Paul Berman's Islamophobia
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/aug/19/righteous-wrong/ Righteous Wrong August 19, 2010 by Malise Ruthven --- The Flight of the Intellectuals by Paul Berman Melville House, 299 pp., $26.00 Nomad: From Islam to America by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Free Press, 277 pp., $27.00 Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman Norton, 220 pp., $13.95 (paper) Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents by Ian Buruma Princeton University Press, 132 pp., $19.95 Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name by Timothy Garton Ash Yale University Press, 464 pp., $35.00 (to be published in September) At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, stands an exhibit that is for some more unsettling than the replicas of the Warsaw Ghetto or the canisters of Zyklon B gas used at Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next to blown-up photographs of emaciated corpses from the death camps there is a picture of the grand mufti of Palestine, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, reviewing an honor guard of the Muslim division of the Waffen SS that fought the Serbs and antifascist partisans. The display includes a cable to Hajj Amin from Heinrich Himmler, dated November 2, 1943: “The National Socialist Party has inscribed on its flag ‘the extermination of world Jewry.’ Our party sympathizes with the fight of the Arabs, especially the Arabs of Palestine, against the foreign Jew.” There is also a quote from a broadcast the mufti gave over Berlin radio on March 1, 1944: “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This is the command of God, history and religion.” As the Israeli historian Tom Segev suggests, “the visitor is left to conclude that there is much in common between the Nazis’ plan to destroy the Jews and the Arabs’ enmity to Israel.” Paul Berman’s new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, makes the connection even more explicit. Although defeated in Europe, the virus of Nazism is, in his view, vigorously present in the Arab-Islamic world, with Hajj Amin the primary source of this infection. Instead of being tried as a war criminal, Hajj Amin was allowed to leave France in 1946, after escaping from Germany via Switzerland. A trial, Berman suggests, might have “sparked a little self-reflection about the confusions and self-contradictions within Islam” on matters Jewish, comparable to the postwar “self-reflections” that took place inside the Roman Catholic Church. Hajj Amin received a hero’s welcome on his arrival in Egypt, where he renewed his connections with Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, whom he had previously supplied with funds from Nazi Germany and ideas for SS-type military formations. The Brotherhood proved fertile soil for the Nazi bacillus. As a result of Hajj Amin’s return, Berman concludes, “the Arab zone ended up as the only region in the entire planet in which a criminal on the fascist side of the war, and a major ideologue, to boot, returned home in glory, instead of in disgrace.” Planet Berman evidently excludes India, where Subhas Chandra Bose, who broadcast anti-British propaganda for the Nazis before creating the Indian National Army to fight with the Japanese, is now honored in the pantheon of national heroes in Delhi’s Red Fort. It also excludes Finland, where Gustaf Mannerheim, commander of the Finnish forces that fought with the Germans against the Soviets and volunteered recruits for the Waffen SS, was elected by parliament to serve as the country’s president from 1944 to 1946. In 2005 he and his predecessor, Risto Ryti, who served a ten-year prison sentence for allying Finland with Nazi Germany, were voted the country’s top two national heroes in a survey by the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Berman, however, is not to be bothered by inconvenient truths that might arrest the flow of his rhetoric. His vision is crassly ideological: facts that might interfere with his argument—such as al-Banna’s stated belief that Nazi racial theories were incompatible with Islam, as well as other complicating factors—are liable to be discarded or ignored. (clip) Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Leftist historian battles back
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The cases aren't really comparable. I've defended and would continue to defend Ward Churchill, warts and all. This isn't because he did what I regard as solid history, but because he did what he was hired, promoted, and tenured to do Fashions change and the university bosses shouldn't be allowed to foster fashions that they then decide to dismiss people for following later. Bellesiles' gun book wasn't in my field nor particularly in my interest. I'm not sure that he actually came to any conclusions that merits regarding him as a Leftist, save maybe in the eyes of the neocons. Certainly, nobody I know who read it and buzzed about how great it was any kind of a radical. As to his current book, there are decades of grad students who have done work in and around the 1877 strike, who should have been given their shot at publishing. Stanley Katz and the Ivy geniuses may talk about giving someone a second chance,but they preside over a profession that is reluctant to give anybody not in the club their first chance. That's a simple reality. What happened in Bellesiles' case does seem to me unjustifiable and unfair, but it's very, very, very common in academe. So common that it rarely gets merits any notice at all...much less a piece in the New York Times. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] query re author on Palestine in the 30s and 40s
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Good suggestion. Here you go: http://www.newjerseysolidarity.org/resources/kanafani/kanafani4.htm On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 10:36 AM, Tom Cod tomc...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe you can post a link to info about this revolt because I think, sadly, most people have never even heard of it. Thanks so much. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] query re author on Palestine in the 30s and 40s
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What is ironic about this revolt is that Neville Chamberlain committed nearly half the British army to suppressing it, all the while allowing Hitler to extend his influence throughout Eastern and Central Europe. Of course, I'm not sure that Chamberlain thought that Hitler's power in that region was a bad thing.--Tom On Aug 4, 2010, at 11:03 AM, Andrew Pollack wrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Good suggestion. Here you go: http://www.newjerseysolidarity.org/resources/kanafani/kanafani4.htm On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 10:36 AM, Tom Cod tomc...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe you can post a link to info about this revolt because I think, sadly, most people have never even heard of it. Thanks so much. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/ marxism/biastg%40embarqmail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Marilyn Buck
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Our comrade in struggle, Marilyn Buck, died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. She was released from prison last week and died at home in New York CIty. Susie Day, now the Assistant Editor of Monthly Review, did a remarkable interview with Marilyn and Laura Whitehorn, which appeared in the summer 2001 issue of Monthly Review. I had the privilege of editing this summer issue and was deeply moved by the interview. You can read it at http://monthlyreview.org/0701day.htm. Michael Yates Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Labor Note
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Your post is interesting to me on a few levels. In part, because I am not even sure I fully understood it. The folks on this list appear to be a whole lot smarter than me, so I try to watch and learn, but tonight I thought to chime in a little. I hope that is OK. So, the labor movement: You mentioned that labor and the Civil Rights Movement are not connecting. But, are you talking about the past or the present? My concern is that, if you are talking about present times, you could be potentially overlooking a lot of what we are doing in labor day in and day out. If you are, in fact, talking about current times with labor and Civil Rights, please let me know and I will work to provide examples of how both have come together, work(ed) together, and have got things done (to an extent) ... together. I also clunk Civil Rights groups with religious groups, which have also been instrumental in our work in labor. The argument for less money being spent on legislative matters and more on organizing is the very argument that split the AFL-CIO in 2005. Meanwhile, the breakaway unions haven't proved that less money spent on their AFL dues = more organizing. In fact, both labor federations probably spend about the same on both as they did in 2004. (For the record, I spent years with one of the larger breakaway unions, and recently took my talents and work to another huge breakaway union). That's just to say that I am not exactly partial to the AFL-CIO, I do however believe we need a united labor force in the United States. Money spent on legislative matters is critical to our work, unfortunately. We need to elect candidates who will at least try to maintain some kind of budget control so that City- and State- workers don't have to endure furloughs, pay cuts, contract busting, etc. While I don't support a lot of these candidates, this is what we have to work with. I don't mean to say that I am one of those best of two evils kind of people, but we don't have a third party that can do for our workers what the current Dems at least pretend to take on. Our issues are often absorbed by the Democratic Party because they need our votes and money, that's easy enough. But, we are working daily to keep certain politicians accountable when they are elected. Easier said than done, and it costs a crap-ton of resources. To return to the organizing stuff: We are, in fact, organizing. In the last three months alone I'd been part of a team that brought more 70,000 nonunion workers into the union. As we plan for first contracts these workers will see an increase in pay, defined work rules, a grievance process, paid sick time, vacation time ... and the list goes on. (This of course varies from shop to shop, we are not currently organizing with a Master Contract, though I wish we were). At victory time I have held workers crying with happiness that they actually did it -- they raised their voices, and were heard. It is the most incredible experience. The problem is that we can organize all day long, but with existing contracts getting busted into because of the 'economy', smear campaigns leading to de-certification, and corporations claiming they can no longer do business in the US because of their cost of labor - and therefore will move to Mexico - what do you want to do? We can have workers vote on pay cuts, but when it comes down to it, they are asked to take pay cuts because of really stupid business decisions that were made behind closed doors and did not include any of our input. We have to fight this stuff both politically and on the ground. We need to get NAFTA revisited, one promise of change, we need to wrap our heads around CAFTA, another promise of change, we need to get the Department of Labor working for the people and not the corporations, etc. On the ground we have to do an enormous amount of knowledge-transfer. Many workers don't know what NAFTA is anymore than what a CBA is. We break it down, get away from the alphabet soup, teach, listen, support. We have to break out the myths and get to the reality (this is a big deal right now around healthcare reform). In one local union I am working with there is a widespread issue going around from shop to shop. The corporations have clearly been trained on what they can and cannot say to the workers. So, they are going around to the workers and saying, in so many words, that with the new healthcare reform there will be a lot of changes. We might have to freeze wages, get rid of people and start using more technology. They are scaring the hell out of people. We stop what we are doing and go into myth-breaking-control ...fun stuff, but it can only be done with member to member organizing, not coming from the International's office in DC. A big part of my work
Re: [Marxism] Victory for Same Sex Marriage in Federal Court
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Adam Richmond wrote: http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2010/08/eek-the-prop8-decision-is-here.html one of the more interesting and well argued legal decisions i have seen in a long time ... Shane, Fred, your take? Les Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Victory for Same Sex Marriage in Federal Court
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Aug 4, 2010, at 10:09 PM, Les Schaffer wrote: one of the more interesting and well argued legal decisions i have seen in a long time ... Shane, Fred, your take? Les I thought it was brilliant--as good an attempt at irreversability as could be. The quote from Scali's dissent makes it virtually impossible for the SCOTUS to reverse him without reversing themselves on the whole gay-rights issue. Shane Mage Porphyry in his Abstinance from Animal Flesh suggests that there are appropriate offerings to all the Gods, and to the highest the only offering acceptable is silence. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Victory for Same Sex Marriage in Federal Court
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Aug 4, 2010, at 10:29 PM, Shane Mage wrote: On Aug 4, 2010, at 10:09 PM, Les Schaffer wrote: one of the more interesting and well argued legal decisions i have seen in a long time ... Shane, Fred, your take? Les I thought it was brilliant--as good an attempt at irreversability as could be. The quote from Scali's dissent makes it virtually impossible for the SCOTUS to reverse him without reversing themselves on the whole gay-rights issue. A further thought: This may not even be appealable unless Schwarzenegger decides to do the appeal (Brown is on record that Prop 8 is unconstitutional). The State of California was the defendant and the proponents were there by permission of the Court. How would that give *them* the right to appeal an order to the State of California to stop enforcing Prop 8? Shane Mage Porphyry in his Abstinance from Animal Flesh suggests that there are appropriate offerings to all the Gods, and to the highest the only offering acceptable is silence. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/shmage%40pipeline.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] query re author on Palestine in the 30s and 40s
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There is Perry Anderson's piece from NLR August 2001 at http://www.newleftreview.org/A2330 which has something on the 35-9 revolt. There is also a good blog on Orde Wingate's role in putting down the revolt and in training the Zionist death squads, called Special Night Squads, (of special interest is his relationship with Moshe Dayan) at http://ellissharp.blogspot.com/2006/05/orde-wingate-war-criminal.html. An interesting Wiki is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Night_Squads I found this paragraph below to be especially interesting: It shows that to put down the Palestinian uprising the British had to form an alliance with the Haganah, and in so doing they helped prepare the way for the Zionist victories of 47-8. comradely Gary [The Defence of Palestine: Insurrection and Public Security, 1936-1939 Charles Townshend The English Historical Reviewhttp://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/action/showPublication?journalCode=englhistrevi, Vol. 103, No. 409 (Oct., 1988), pp. 917-949] * The political dangers of this [a military alliance with the Zionists] were too obvious for it to be seriously contemplated, and the nearest the authorities came to mobilizing the Jews (apart from the bucolic home-guard activities of the Jewish Settle- ment and Supernumary Police) was through the - distinctly subter- ranean - Special Night Squads. The authorities joined the Jews underground, as it were, with strikingly successful results; but they thereby signed the death warrant of the Mandate. By simultaneously breaking up the unstable Palestinian national movement, and fostering mainstream military Zionism (as distinct from the terrorist extremism of the Irgun, Lehi and 'Stern gang'), they not only skewed the symmetry of interests which gave British rule its claim to legitimacy, but went far to create the very force that finally undermined British rule in Pales- tine after I945. (p. 937) * Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism-Thaxis] US to Attend Hiroshima Memorial for First Time
US to Attend Hiroshima Memorial for First Time By Shingo Ito August 3, 2010, Agence France-Presse via common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/03 HIROSHIMA, Japan - Sixty-five years after a mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima, the United States will for the first time send an envoy this Friday to commemorate the bombing that rang in the nuclear age. Its World War II allies Britain and France, both declared nuclear powers, will also send their first diplomats to the ceremony in the western Japanese city in a sign of support for the goal of nuclear disarmament. Japan, the only country that has ever been attacked with atomic bombs -- first on August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima, and three days later in Nagasaki -- has pushed for the abolition of the weapons of mass destruction ever since. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who arrives in Japan on Tuesday, will be the first UN chief to attend the ceremony. UN spokesman Martin Nesirsky said Ban wanted to draw attention to the urgent need to achieve global nuclear disarmament. In Japan, a pacifist nation since its WWII surrender six days after the Nagasaki bombing, memories of the nuclear horror still run deep. To read more, go to http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/03 _ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] non-rightwingers win in Rep and Dem parties
This could be interpreted that the dialectic of Tea Party's impact in Michigan is leftish candidates won in both Dems and Reps parties, i.e. Michiganders rejected the Tea Party move. Snyder is the most centrist of the Republican candidates. Bernero is a slightly throwback type of urban mayor. Charles Snyder, Bernero turn their focus to November Gov race pits GOP's tough nerd against Dems' angriest mayor Mark Hornbeck / Detroit News Lansing Bureau Michigan's race for governor will be a matchup of opposites: Democratic Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, the experienced politico who has held four different public offices, against Republican Ann Arbor businessman Rick Snyder, the entrepreneur who has never held elective office. Bernero coasted past House Speaker Andy Dillon in Tuesday's Democratic primary while Snyder bested four opponents. Snyder, 51, is a soft-spoken, almost shy Battle Creek native who calls himself one tough nerd. He sailed through the University of Michigan with three degrees, found work as an accountant, ran Gateway computers and then became a successful venture capitalist. From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20100804/POLITICS02/8040370/Snyder--Bernero-turn-their-focus-to-November#ixzz0vdyd685w ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Monopoly Media Manipulation
Monopoly Media Manipulation http://www.michaelparenti.org/MonopolyMedia.html May 2001 In a capitalist “democracy” like the United States, the corporate news media faithfully reflect the dominant class ideology both in their reportage and commentary. At the same time, these media leave the impression that they are free and independent, capable of balanced coverage and objective commentary. How they achieve these seemingly contradictory but legitimating goals is a matter worthy of study. Notables in the media industry claim that occasional inaccuracies do occur in news coverage because of innocent error and everyday production problems such as deadline pressures, budgetary restraints, and the difficulty of reducing a complex story into a concise report. Furthermore, no communication system can hope to report everything, hence selectivity is needed. To be sure, such pressures and problems do exist and honest mistakes are made, but do they really explain the media’s overall performance? True the press must be selective, but what principle of selectivity is involved? I would argue that media bias usually does not occur in random fashion; rather it moves in more or less consistent directions, favoring management over labor, corporations over corporate critics, affluent whites over low income minorities, officialdom over protestors, the two-party monopoly over leftist third parties, privatization and free market “reforms” over public sector development, U.S. dominance of the Third World over revolutionary or populist social change, and conservative commentators and columnists over progressive or radical ones. Suppression by Omission Some critics complain that the press is sensationalistic and invasive. In fact, it is more often muted and evasive. More insidious than the sensationalistic hype is the artful avoidance. Truly sensational stories (as opposed to sensationalistic) are downplayed or avoided outright. Sometimes the suppression includes not just vital details but the entire story itself, even ones of major import. Reports that might reflect poorly upon the national security state are least likely to see the light of day. Thus we hear about political repression perpetrated by officially designated “rogue” governments, but information about the brutal murder and torture practiced by U.S.-sponsored surrogate forces in the Third World, and other crimes committed by the U.S. national security state are denied public airing, being suppressed with a consistency that would be called “totalitarian” were it to occur in some other countries. The media downplay stories of momentous magnitude. In 1965 the Indonesian military — advised, equipped, trained, and financed by the U.S. military and the CIA — overthrew President Achmed Sukarno and eradicated the Indonesian Communist Party and its allies, killing half a million people (some estimates are as high as a million) in what was the greatest act of political mass murder since the Nazi Holocaust. The generals also destroyed hundreds of clinics, libraries, schools, and community centers that had been established by the Communists. Here was a sensational story if ever there was one, but it took three months before it received passing mention in Time magazine and yet another month before it was reported in the New York Times (April 5, 1966), accompanied by an editorial that actually praised the Indonesian military for “rightly playing its part with utmost caution.” Over the course of forty years, the CIA involved itself with drug traffickers in Italy, France, Corsica, Indochina, Afghanistan, and Central and South America. Much of this activity was the object of extended congressional investigation — by Senator Church's committee and Congressman Pike’s committee in the 1970s, and Senator Kerry's committee in the late 1980s. But the corporate capitalist media seem not to have heard about it. Attack and Destroy the Target When omission proves to be an insufficient mode of censorship and a story somehow begins to reach larger publics, the press moves from artful avoidance to frontal assault in order to discredit the story. In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News, drawing from a year-long investigation, ran an in-depth series about the CIA-contra crack shipments that were flooding East Los Angeles. Holding true to form, the major media mostly ignored the issue. But the Mercury News series was picked up by some local and regional newspapers, and was flashed across the world on the Internet copiously supplemented pertinent documents and depositions supporting the charges against the CIA. African American urban communities, afflicted by the crack epidemic, were up in arms and wanted to know more. The story became difficult to ignore. So, the major media began an all-out assault. A barrage of hit pieces in the Washington Post and New York Times and on network television and PBS assured
[Marxism-Thaxis] Too Big Not To Organize
Too Big Not To Organize An international coalition of unions, led by SEIU, tries to unionize capitalism's core: the banks. By Mike Elk July 29, 2010 In These Times This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6273/ BOSTON--Through the blare of screeching feedback from portable translation headsets and microphones, unionized bank workers from Brazil, England, Chile, Germany, and Uruguay are encouraging American workers to undertake an unprecedented campaign against a common enemy: Grupo Santander, the global banking giant which last year took control of Sovereign Bank. The largest bank in the Euro-zone, where it is based, Santander is the world's eighth largest banking company by market capitalization. While the company is very good at generating profits around the world (it's the world's fourth largest bank by profits), this international meeting is focusing on something else: how the bank's new U.S. branches might become as unionized as branches in Europe and Latin America. Santander bank branches are on average 75-percent unionized outside the United States, according to UNI Global Union Finance Director Oliver Roethig because most other industrialized nations have unionized banking sectors. In the United States, however, less than 1 percent of all front-office bank workers are organized. In fact, the unionized janitors working for contractors that clean Sovereign Bank's headquarters in Boston, Mass., often make more than the bank tellers and personal bankers, whose average wage is $10-$12 dollars per hour, despite individually producing millions of dollars in profits for the bank each year. But the financial sector, at the center of the U.S. economy, has never been unionized. The international workers and local leaders of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Communication Workers of America (CWA) gathered in July to use the clout of global union federations like the UNI Global Union to give labor a foothold in Santander's Sovereign operations, and potentially organize the industry from there. If Santander employees are heavily unionized overseas, and corporate profits are so robust, then why shouldn't American workers also join a union? Bank reform from the inside Santander has already responded to the organizing campaign, labor activists say, firing three Boston Sovereign workers in June for organizing activities--Steve Crowley, Janice DeJusi and Gary Rozenas. Crowley, who had worked at Sovereign for 30 years, was honored by the bank this spring for being a top seller, but was fired a week after signing a letter about office problems following Santander's acquisition of the bank. DeJusi and Rozenas were fired after talking to colleagues about forming a union, according to Andy Kerr of CWA. Santander has denied discriminating against employees for union activity, saying Sovereign Bank adheres to all U.S. labor laws. A Sovereign spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on union-busting allegations. When Santander acquired Sovereign, it immediately laid off 23 percent of its new subsidiary's workers. The company cut pay, slashed hours and doubled the cost of healthcare for workers. Sovereign workers knew they had to do something, so they approached SEIU last spring to help them organize. But why would SEIU, which has risen to prominence during the last 25 years in part by organizing janitors, be interested in organizing bank workers? Well, it started out in the 1980s; we would organize a building [where janitors worked]... and find out that the management firm that owned the building was really owned by a pension fund, which was owned by an investment firm, which was ultimately owned by a bank, says Stephen Lerner, the brainchild of SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign and now director of SEIU's Banking and Finance Campaign. This began a thirty-year process in which we began to discover how much power the big banks have. The theory is that if workers gain some control over the banks through the power of unions and the ability to strike, they could have a chokehold on one of the economy's key sectors. Our members are facing layoffs as a result of the economic crisis caused by the banks, says Lerner. They are screaming out to do something against the banks...scamming them with outrageous bank fees and sub-prime loans. The large corporations at the center of the subprime mortgage meltdown, such as Countrywide, often based pay for personal bankers on selling risky products. The more money I sold you and the higher the rate, the more money I made, said Donna Feener, a former Bank of America employee who worked in the company's credit card balance transfer department. The more outrageous fees and the higher interest loans they can sign you up for, the more workers who have a base salary of only about $10 an hour make. The Credit Card, Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act, signed into law last year, banned
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] US to Attend Hiroshima Memorial for First Time
Japan, the only country that has ever been attacked with atomic bombs -- first on August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima, and three days later in Nagasaki -- has pushed for the abolition of the weapons of mass destruction ever since. Which is why the governments of Japan have knowingly allowed/acquiesced to the US storing, transhipping and deploying nukes in Japan, right? Which is why their government never protests the US deploying nukes on the Korean peninsula, right? CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Kiss This War Goodbye
It's hard to say exactly why this crap was released when it was released, but it seems to amount to the same sort of bait and switch we got with the so-called 'Abu Graib' 'revelations'--let's entertain people with SM porn to distract them from our real war atrocities. It could be that some in the 'security' community realize there is no strategic importance to Afghanistan because it is a landlocked country. Certainly deploying 100,000 light infantry with marine airwings isn't going to 'pacify' it. So no doubt some within the national security state are pushing for, at most, an airbase and proxy wars through Kabul and Pakistan puppets, especially if India agrees to it. Meanwhile, they seem to be digging in to rationalize keeping the base-embassy complex in Iraq and 50,000 'trainers' there. Also, the Bushwar Obamaites warpig Demoncrats (along with their Repugnican coalition partners) have to figure out how to keep NATO from falling apart while at the same time financing 1.5 trillion dollars a year on 'national security'. Afghanistan is now clearly not the mission to give NATO a new reason for being. Good luck to them, may they rot in the hell that is the world they create everyday. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
