Goodies to read and other stuff …
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April 6, 2006
OT 06-30
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This may be an interesting book:
Author Kinzer Charts ‘Century of Regime Change’
Why does a strong nation strike against a weaker one? Usually because it seeks to impose its ideology, increase its power, or gain control of valuable resources. Shifting combinations of these three factors motivated the United States as it extended its global reach over the past century and more. This book examines the most direct form of American intervention, the overthrow of foreign governments.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not an isolated episode. It was the culmination of a 110-year period during which Americans overthrew fourteen governments that displeased them for various ideological, political, and economic reasons. Like each of these operations, the “regime change” in Iraq seemed for a time — a very short time — to have worked. It is now clear, however, that this operation has had terrible unintended consequences. So have most of the other coups, revolutions, and invasions that the United States has mounted to depose governments it feared or mistrusted.
…
Throughout the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty-first, the United States repeatedly used its military power, and that of its clandestine services, to overthrow governments that refused to protect American interests. Each time, it cloaked its intervention in the rhetoric of national security and liberation. In most cases, however, it acted mainly for economic reasons — specifically, to establish, promote, and defend the right of Americans to do business around the world without interference.
…
By a quirk of history, the United States rose to great power at the same time multinational corporations were emerging as a decisive force in world affairs. These corporations came to expect government to act on their behalf abroad, even to the extreme of overthrowing uncooperative foreign leaders. Successive presidents have agreed that this is a good way to promote American interests.
Defending corporate power is hardly the only reason the United States overthrows foreign governments. Strong tribes and nations have been attacking weak ones since the beginning of history. They do so for the most elemental reason, which is to get more of whatever is good to have. In the modern world, corporations are the institutions that countries use to capture wealth. They have become the vanguard of American power, and defying them has become tantamount to defying the United States. When Americans depose a foreign leader who dares such defiance, they not only assert their rights in one country but also send a clear message to others.
…
Having marshaled so much public and political support, American corporations found it relatively easy to call upon the military or the Central Intelligence Agency to defend their privileges in countries where they ran into trouble. They might not have been able to do so if they and the presidents who cooperated with them had candidly presented their cases to the American people. Americans have always been idealists. They want their country to act for pure motives, and might have refused to support foreign interventions that were forthrightly described as defenses of corporate power. Presidents have used two strategies to assure that these interventions would be carried out with a minimum of protest. Sometimes they obscured the real reasons they overthrew foreign governments, insisting that they were acting only to protect American security and liberate suffering natives. At other times they simply denied that the United States was involved in these operations at all.
…
Most “regime change” operations have achieved their short-term goals. Before the CIA deposed the government of Guatemala in 1954, for example, United Fruit was not free to operate as it wished in that country; afterward it was. From the vantage point of history, however, it is clear that most of these operations actually weakened American security. They cast whole regions of the world into upheaval, creating whirlpools of instability from which undreamed-of threats arose years later.
Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House
Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well.
These scientists — working nationwide in research centers in such places as Princeton, N.J., and Boulder, Colo. — say they are required to clear all media requests with administration officials, something they did not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, point climate researchers — unlike staff members in the Justice or State departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to reporters — were relatively free to discuss their findings without strict agency oversight.
Three months ago the Russian energy giant Gazprom forced Ukraine to pay sharply higher prices for natural gas. At the time, the story was portrayed as a political struggle for control in Kiev. But last week Gazprom announced it was tripling gas prices in Belarus, a country that is politically close to the Kremlin. Moldova has been forced to accept a doubling of prices over the next three to four years, and the other former Soviet republics are already paying market prices for Russian gas.
The truth is that these price increases are not political. Rather, they reflect worrisome economic and geological facts about Russian gas fields. The Kremlin is not simply trying to use Gazprom to reassert authority in Belarus, Ukraine or anywhere else. There are in fact deep problems with Gazprom — problems created by its inefficient management and a looming decline in gas production.
…
The gas shortage is likely to become most acute over the next few years. If there is an unusually cold winter in 2008, the year of Russia’s presidential election, then Gazprom will face a politically unpleasant choice: whether to cut off internal customers (voters) or the Western customers who are the firm’s main source of hard cash.
Hmm – may be, may be not. I am not sure what the authors intentions are.
Gazprom is just the commercial arm of the Kremlin’s politics like Elf Aquitaine was to France. It enjoys a degree of secrecy and non-transparency that makes even the folks at Bechtel and Halliburton jealous.
And it is still highly ineffecient, just as it was in Soviet days. But to increase efficiency, they would have to let in foreign investors, which would mean loosening their political control.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 6 2006 10:12 utc | 4
An war is going on between State Department and DoD for some time. Now its out in the open.
Rumsfeld Challenges Rice on ‘Tactical Errors’ in Iraq
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking about when she said last week that the United States had made thousands of “tactical errors” in handling the war in Iraq, a statement she later said was meant figuratively.
Speaking during a radio interview on WDAY in Fargo, N.D., on Tuesday, Rumsfeld said calling changes in military tactics during the war “errors” reflects a lack of understanding of warfare.
Sidney Blumenthal reports in the Guardian:
Under the pretence that Iraq is being pacified, the military is partially withdrawing from hostile towns in the countryside and parts of Baghdad. By reducing the number of soldiers, the administration can claim its policy is working going into the midterm elections. But the jobs the military doesn’t want to perform are being sloughed off on state department “provisional reconstruction teams” (PRTs) led by foreign service officers. The rationale is that they will win Iraqi hearts-and-minds by organising civil functions.
The Pentagon has informed the state department it will not provide security for these officials and that mercenaries should be hired for protection instead.
As they fight each other, they probably have less time to fight other countries. Fine with me.
Going away for seven to eights days. Won’t be posting for that period. Keep up the good work on the site. We’seen some very valuable discussion here of late.
Posted by: jdp | Apr 6 2006 12:04 utc | 6
the ctr for media & democracy has a new report out zeroing in on the use of vnr propaganda on tv “news”, Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed
Over a ten-month period, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) documented television newsrooms’ use of 36 video news releases (VNRs)—a small sample of the thousands produced each year. CMD identified 77 television stations, from those in the largest to the smallest markets, that aired these VNRs or related satellite media tours (SMTs) in 98 separate instances, without disclosure to viewers. Collectively, these 77 stations reach more than half of the U.S. population. The VNRs and SMTs whose broadcast CMD documented were produced by three broadcast PR firms for 49 different clients, including General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One. In each case, these 77 television stations actively disguised the sponsored content to make it appear to be their own reporting. In almost all cases, stations failed to balance the clients’ messages with independently-gathered footage or basic journalistic research. More than one-third of the time, stations aired the pre-packaged VNR in its entirety.
…
In sum, television newscasts—the most popular news source in the United States—frequently air VNRs without disclosure to viewers, without conducting their own reporting, and even without fact checking the claims made in the VNRs. VNRs are overwhelmingly produced for corporations, as part of larger public relations campaigns to sell products, burnish their image, or promote policies or actions beneficial to the corporation.
Posted by: b real | Apr 6 2006 14:38 utc | 7
Ass Deep in Duck Soup
Hope The ICC does not see this.
I think I’ll head out to Paraguay on an extended vacation.
Posted by: Groucho | Apr 6 2006 14:46 utc | 8
that kinzer book sounds interesting, but keep in mind that edward herman & noam chomsky used kinzer’s reporting on nicaragua to provide empirical support for their propaganda model laid out in the book manufacturing consent
Posted by: b real | Apr 6 2006 14:55 utc | 9
Groucho,
Pakistan is one of our most dubious “allies” in the War on Terrorism: it has allowed nuclear technology to fall into the hands of various rogue nations.
The perpetrator, Dr. Khan, had his wrist duly slapped, which was all that Pakistani president Musharraf could do with him, as he is a national and Islamic hero, the father of the “Islamic bomb”.
And don’t foget where those lads who blew up the London subway last July came from.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 6 2006 15:01 utc | 10
oh, the humor
U.S. won’t seek U.N. human rights panel seat
The United States has decided not to seek a seat on the new U.N. Human Rights Council…
The United States was virtually alone in voting against the council when the U.N. General Assembly approved the its creation last month. U.S. officials claimed not enough was done to prevent abusive countries from becoming members.
no kidding, if the u.s. was indeed offered a seat 😉
Posted by: b real | Apr 6 2006 15:08 utc | 11
“Did you ever imagine in your wildest dreams that after Vietnam we’d be doing this again?”
Posted by: Groucho | Apr 6 2006 15:31 utc | 12
@Groucho – I can´t reach the smirkingchimp site – “404 forbidden”
Can you send me an email address of that site’s writer/owner/operator so I can ask them to get me off their denial list? (How did I get on there in the first place?)
some comic relief: seems judas made a bigger sacrifice than his friend, jesus, the god, ever did.
Posted by: slothrop | Apr 6 2006 16:30 utc | 15
slo,
so according to the Gosepel of Judas, Jesus had a death wish. i.e., he was suicidal, ergo he was certifiably looney. And they based a religion on this guy?
Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 6 2006 17:38 utc | 16
I think the theological conundrum is called “kenosis.” god comitted suicide in order to suffer in doubt of himself. and judas, as depicted by kazantzxakis, makes the supreme sacrifice.
all hail judas iscariot.
crazy ass religion.
Posted by: slothrop | Apr 6 2006 17:44 utc | 17
A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the
Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him.
He asked, “What are all those clocks?”
St. Peter answered, “Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a
Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move.”
“Oh,” said the man, “whose clock is that?”
“That’s Mother Teresa’s. The hands have never moved, indicating that she
never told a lie.”
“Incredible,” said the man. “And whose clock is that one?”
St. Peter responded, “That’s Abraham Lincoln’s clock. The hands have moved
twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life.”
“Where’s George Bush’s clock?” asked the man. “Bush’s clock is in Jesus’
office. He’s using it as a ceiling fan.
Posted by: annie | Apr 6 2006 18:02 utc | 18
When I first heard that joke 40 years ago, it wasn’t lying, but masturbation – as told by a Catholic lad. Go figure. You usually made a member of the group the butt.
Posted by: gmac | Apr 6 2006 22:47 utc | 19
Slothrop’s story of Judas is coming up very shortly(ET) on CNN.
Posted by: Groucho | Apr 6 2006 23:28 utc | 20
the berlusconi who will win this weekend has his little record ;
affaire lodo mondadori – corruption of magistrate – guilty = precription
aff. all iberian – corruption – guilty = prescription
aff. all iberian – doctored accountability =made unguilty by his own law
aff sme 1 – judicial corruption – guilty = prescription
aff. lentini – doctored accounts – = made unguilty ny his own law
aff. p 2 – perjury – amnesty
aff. macherio – fraud & doctored accounts =presciption
on & on over thirty ‘convictions’ – clean & cold – & like his gangster predecessor andreotti – he will die in his bed
why in hell we condone such bags of skin containing nothing but bile filth murder & lies is our shame
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 7 2006 0:11 utc | 21
Counterpunch has an interesting article entitled
When Will Americans Wake Up?
Get on Message with the Sissy French
By DON MONKERUD
Why aren’t young people here aren’t taking to the streets along with their French counterparts to demand better treatment from employers and the government. A second question might be why the U.S. labor movement isn’t out on the street with them.
French young people are angry that they face 20 percent employment, and they’re angry that the government’s “solution” to this crisis is a law that would allow employers to fire them “without cause” any time within three years of their being hired.
Young Americans face similar jobless rates, but forget three years’ probation; they can be fired any time throughout their careers without their employer having to give a reason. Heck, they can be fired for having the wrong bumper sticker on their car in the company parking lot. The only people who cannot be fired casually like that in America are the 9 percent who still have a union, and even then, it’s getting increasingly easy for the boss to give workers the sack.
Why the militancy in France, and the lack of it here in America?
Of course there is an inherent paradox in the author’s query. That is the campaign by French youth is doomed. It’s failure will put it down in history as the last great public campaign by French youth. The paradox is in the answer to the question, that the reason for failure is that the Tories can be certain the campaign will never move beyond the borders of age 18-30 or beyond the physical borders of France. Conservative forces know this because they have seen the exact same phenomenon in other countries.
In years to come expect to hear the following words from the two species of French people that this disaster will have engendered.
The first type is the once youthful, but now fast approaching middle age, ‘entrepreneur’. He/she will be saying:
“It was after that last demonstration at the Gare du Norde when all around was the broken bodies, blood and tears. The smart ones had taken off. I realised then it was every man for himself, so I went home and decided to develop a plan for a way to carry myself onwards. I wouldn’t care if employment probation was two days or twenty years, it wouldn’t matter because from now on I would work for myself (sic).”
Expect to hear that remark much more often than the next one which will be spoken by many more. Those multitudes will have found that their voices don’t carry nearly as far or as loud as the first voice. If “FRATERNITIE” had been shown to have died when the protest didn’t move beyond French youth; “EGALITIE” inevitably followed.
Anyway most of the participants, particularly those who were young but not university educated will say: “We were betrayed. Right when we could have cracked the French Govt, we wavered there was no-one else to stand with us, so we blew it. Those bastards took everything.”
How can the Tories have been so certain they would win? Because that the way it has panned out since Arthur Scargill led the English coalminers out in the ’70s.
It would take far too long to detail all the causes of this destruction of solidarity amongst working people.
Working people that a generation back would give up a days pay rather than work with goods made from the sweated labour of other workers, even if the workers were thousands of miles away, spoke a different language and prayed to a different god.
That wouldn’t have stopped them but it would’ve have mattered in as much as the industrial action wouldn’t have been motivated by self protection, more by a desire to assist a comrade where ever he/she was.
For me two things in particular stand out, but these are my bugbears, others will have different ones. They are that the concentration of media ownership has made the creation of false realities about as complex for Murdoch of that ilk as having a shit, and the relegation of the leadership of workers movements into a stepping stone on to bigger and better things and not an end in itself meant union leadership would compromise when they should have fought.
Everyone will disagree. For example I have been telling any French person that would listen (ie none) that this so-called ‘economic rationalism/globalism’ is not some purely Anglo Saxon condition. That its time of release in a society is determined by the degree of that society’s corruption of the welfare state model. That is, economic rationalism is successfully introduced just as soon as the voters become disillusioned with most else.
Can anyone else remember when ‘the English disease’ wasn’t a penchant for electing govts that would strive to do as little as possible for their voters, while the leadership spread their cheeks for corporations?
No, in those days English disease was regarded as having a penchant for ‘downing tools’ and going on strike at the drop of a hat.
This is not to imagine that all is hopeless and that from now until we finally blow ourselves up, most human lives will be expended on the hamster wheel of work, consume, dump-work,consume,dump.
Though it does mean the chances of seeing a decent society within a couple of generations are pretty damn slim.
Cause if just one or two largish economies had managed to stay functioning under a variation of the ‘caring society’, as soon as things got really really bad for Joe Citizen in a ‘rational’ economy, Joe Citizen could cast his eyes around and spot another way that was just keeping on keeping on.
With all major caring societies long gone, some poor bugger somewhere in the future is going to have to re-invent the wheel.
Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 7 2006 3:38 utc | 22
There is one big problem with bringing down a government: there is only one place for it to fall, which is sqarely on the heads of those trying to topple it.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 7 2006 5:43 utc | 23
Was this in the NYT? And if not, why not?
Ambassador Edward Peck – Of Course there is an Israeli Lobby (Scroll down)
The London Review of Books recently published an article, by Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, on the Israel lobby’s negative impact on U.S. domestic and international interests. The expected tsunami of rabid responses condemned the report, vilified its authors, and denied there is such a lobby—validating both the lobby’s existence and aggressive, pervasive presence and obliging Harvard to remove its name.
All democracies have lobbies. Shrill insistence that no groups promote Israel is ludicrous. Opinions differ on the long-term costs and benefits for both nations, but the lobby’s views of Israel’s interests have become the basis of U.S. Middle East policies. That this influence largely results from the efforts of people determined to exercise their democratic prerogatives is not open to question—or to challenge.
The dangerous, unacceptable result of that lobbying, however, is the stifling of public debate. Knowing the fiercely negative reactions to accurate, detailed reporting of controversies surrounding Israel, the media fail to cover Israel’s violations of every principle for which the United States—and Israel—loudly proclaim they stand. There is only rare, skimpy coverage of the ongoing Israeli mass punishments, house demolitions, illegal settlements, assassinations, settler brutality, curfews and beatings. On the other hand, the blind Palestinian rage generated by decades of receiving humiliating, savage suppression in their homeland is reported in lurid, bloody detail.
The lobby’s effectiveness at control was illustrated two years ago. Both government and media condemned China when it arrested, and accused of espionage, a Chinese citizen–Green Card holder visiting from the U.S. Neither the U.S. government nor media has ever protested—has never even mentioned—Israel’s years-long multiple arrests and protracted detentions of American citizens, without charge or trial. In September 2000, CNN interviewed four Americans who had been tortured, the only report on this compelling story, and the network has since been forced to refuse selling recordings of that news segment, “Americans Mistreated in Israeli Jails.” America would have been fully informed had any other country committed these acts.
…
As the only nation unstintingly providing Israel with vast amounts of money, arms and unhesitating political protection, the United States is perceived as the key facilitator of 40 years of occupation and oppression. The massive, growing political, economic and human costs of continuing that close relationship merit public, knowledge, discussion and debate. The Israel lobby prevents it, as Mearsheimer and Walt have carefully documented.
Posted by: jj | Apr 7 2006 5:55 utc | 24
dear Anonymous at 11:38
Kleenex Workers
Was it only three years ago that some of our puffed up patriots were denouncing the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” too fattened on Camembert to stub out their Gaulois and get down with the war on Iraq? Well, take another look at the folks who invented the word liberté. Throughout the month of March and beyond, they were demonstrating, rioting, and burning up cars to preserve a right Americans can only dream of: the right not to be fired at an employer’s whim.
The French government’s rationale for its new labor law was impeccable from an economist’s standpoint: Make it easier for employers to fire people and they will be more willing to hire people. So why was Paris burning?
What corporations call “flexibility”—the right to dispose of workers at will—is what workers experience as disposability, not to mention insecurity and poverty. The French students who were tossing Molotov cocktails didn’t want to become what they call “a Kleenex generation”—used and tossed away when the employer decides he needs a fresh one.
You may recognize in the French government’s reasoning the same arguments Americans hear whenever we raise a timid plea for a higher minimum wage or a halt to the steady erosion of pensions and health benefits: “What?” scream the economists who flack for the employing class. “If you do anything, anything at all, to offend or discomfit the employers, they will respond by churlishly failing to employ you! Unemployment will rise, and you—lacking, of course, the health care and other benefits provided by the French welfare state—will quickly spiral down into starvation.”
The author (Ehrenreich) describes the US workplace atmosphere, I think, fairly well:
Years ago, there was a theory on the American left that someone—maybe it was me—termed Worsism: the worse things get, the more likely people will be to rise up and demand their rights. But in America, at least, the worse things get, the harder it becomes to even imagine any kind of resistance. The fact that you can be fired “at will”—the will of the employer, that is—freezes employees into terrified obedience. Add to that the fact that job loss is accompanied by a loss of access to health care, and you get a kind of captive mentality bordering on the kinkily masochistic: Beat me, insult me, double my workload, but please don’t set me free!
It’s a win/win/win situation for the corporadoes. (A) refuse to pay your taxes and/or start an expensive war. (B) this weakens the welfare state so that benefits “must” be cut and “we can’t afford universal health care”. (C) this means that unemployment now means genuine hardship, hunger, homelessness, lack of health care for one’s family. (D) workers terrified of unemployment because of (C) will accept lower wages, longer hours and worse work conditions.
as the employing class you don’t even have to *invest* anything to demoralise your workers, weaken unions, and drive wages down. all you have to do is *refuse to invest* in the society. win/win/win!
Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 7 2006 6:05 utc | 25
@ralphieboy “There is one big problem with bringing down a government: there is only one place for it to fall, which is sqarely on the heads of those trying to topple it.”
That’s a known in the debating game as a non sequitur isn’t it?
It sounds apt but it means absolutely nothing and since it lacks the benefit of humor is neither edifying nor entertaining
Posted by: Edgar Beaver | Apr 7 2006 7:02 utc | 26
@ remembereringgiap
Things may not be so black as you fear with regard to
Sunday’s election in Italy. Berlusconi recently referred
to the those who will vote against him as “coglioni”,
which has prompted the optimistic view that a victory
for the anti-Berlusconi coalition is assured on physiological grounds “ci sono sempre due coglioni per ogni
testa di cazzo”. (there are always two “nuts” for every
prick).
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Apr 7 2006 7:11 utc | 27
Why would Rumsfeld order a General to sniff through Hillary Clinton’s tax records?
PENTAGON POKES INTO HILL & BILL $$ PAPERS
A high-ranking Pentagon official has been snooping around Hillary and Bill Clinton’s personal financial records, The Post has learned.
The Defense Department big shot recently scoured Sen. Clinton personal financial filings – which are required by Senate rules and publicly available.
The records contain information about her investments and debts, including ex-president hubby Bill Clinton’s income and speaking fees.
U.S. Joint Forces Command Deputy Legislative Director Cordell Francis dug through Clinton’s records a week after news broke last month that Bill had advised Dubai leaders on how to navigate U.S. political concerns over its ports deal, Senate records show.
Francis was required to register his personal data with the Senate in order to access Clinton’s records. The Post reviewed a list of people who had accessed the senator’s documents.
The former first lady serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. But Francis had no interest in poking around the personal treasure troves of any of the 23 other committee members, records show.
DeAnander
Yep one of the worst exports of US corporate M.O. is the notion that a worker should feel grateful to his employer for giving him the opportunity to be exploited.
This situation was true in very few other societies and even now in a lot of Asian, African and some European countries you don’t offer a person (particularly a family breadwinner) a job lightly. A job is permanent. You can’t swap employees just like a pair of pants
Nike doesn’t seem to have this problem but I’ve met more than a few ex-pat small business people in Asia who haven’t grasped this one.
The classic example is the bar owner who has managed to (somehow) get permission to open a business in some little beach community, hopefully soon to be a resort.
Just leaving aside for one moment the complications of being in the alcohol business in an Islam culture (it’s not always that clearcut), there are going to be people who will expect to be taken into consideration.
For example it is almost certain that the village headman or equivalent will have a relation who wants the position of head barman/bar manager/maitre de or whatever.
The unwary are likely to make two basic errors here. Firstly they may be silly enough to think this is a bribe, which it most certainly is not. It is the local community leader’s entitlement and offers a person about the same rights as a western businessman gets from paying tax. That is none.
Secondly if the ex-pat is a noobie, he/she may imagine that if the bar manager “doesn’t work out” that employee can be dismissed.
In fact employment of a male breadwinner in this circumstance can often mean the employer has accepted responsibility for keeping the whole family. That is feeding, clothing and sheltering the whole family if things get extreme and for whatever reason the concern ‘fails to thrive’ for a while.
Which is why the prospective employee is going to offer to introduce his boss to the family in quite a formal way. Too often western ‘businessmen’ imagine that this is just a courtesy that they need pay little heed to or even worse imagine they may ‘be on’ with a daughter.
There have been any number of very nasty incidents throughout South East Asia sometimes even going as far as murder, because ex-pats haven’t taken the time and trouble to understand a system that can work very well for them if only they do comprehend it.
The Indonesian government was coming down pretty hard on migrant employers who were trying the old hire when you’re busy, fire them when you’re not M.O.
Nike doesn’t seem to have a problem with this but we shouldn’t forget Indonesian union organisers can end up as dead as last Friday’s fish. Still maybe Nike get away with it because Nike founder and chairman Phil Knight has never been to Indonesia, the site of his company’s largest manufacturing plant!
Back to the worker gratitude thing, does anyone else remember learning as a kid that slavery was when you had to work for no pay.
Any quick flick through the Greek or Roman classics some of which were actually written by slaves, will reveal that some slaves were indeed paid, sometimes exorbantly.
Of course if slavery isn’t about whether you get paid, but is about the freedom to work or not work as the employee chooses, it could be argued that slavery is still alive and well in the US along with many other western nations.
The fun comes when a central wage fixing process (ie the award system) is replaced by employment contracts. Unwary governments serving as corporate lackeys have sometimes actually made the ’employment contract’ a proper two way rights and responsibilities contract.
Big problem because the employers all too often build in all sorts of sanctions against just walking off the job with no ‘notice’ ie slavery, only to find those ridiculous courts imagine that means an employer must fulfil his part of the contract too. This can often mean not being able to dismiss a worker without a sound reason, and without going through a formal process.
Always funny to watch the politicians try and explain that when they said this would be a better, more secure system for employees as well as employers, they didn’t really mean it.
Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 7 2006 8:43 utc | 29
The american economic system informs the social system. Being predicated upon exceptionalism, in the classic sense i.e. individualism, unregulated economic free markets, and small government being the prime characteristics — have left ethical considerations (the common good) to what ever these characteristics happen to form as a result. This ruberic then leaves ethical considerations, if they were to be legislated, as a form of the dreaded socialism, so are discarded in favor of a morality of greed masked as ambition or initiative. This has of course produced a culture of individualism at the expense of community — manifested through a totemic system of evaluation predicated on consumption and display, not to mention a population cowed in the face of corporate socialism which they have unwittingly been conditioned identify with.
Posted by: anna missed | Apr 7 2006 9:50 utc | 30
@EdgarB,
I never did debating. I am just into staring-at-the-screen-over-a-cuppa-morning-coffee-and-posting. Thanks for the enlightening tips.
But do the French stand to gain anything by toppling their government and replacing it?
The French kicked out their Protestants ages ago, for which they have been spared the Protestant Work Ethic: work is a chance to redeem your unworthy soul, and if you also happen to get paid for it, so much the better.
And Americans have long since learned to live with the fact that employers are there to exploit their laborers: unless employers were gaining more benefits from their emploees’ work than they have to pay for it, there would be no profits and without profits, employers would have no incentive for hiring.
So now millions of Frenchmen and women are successfully protected from exploitation in that they have to exploiter to exploit them.
I am not sure that the American system is superior, with millions scraping by without benefits and with the sole security of knowing that if they get fired, they can always find another demeaning job at minimum wage. But it does give them a chance to redeem their unworthy souls…
Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 7 2006 13:21 utc | 32
Warrantless Wiretaps Possible in U.S.
In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales suggested that the administration could decide it was legal to listen in on a domestic call without supervision if it were related to al-Qaeda.
“I’m not going to rule it out,” Gonzales said.
…
In yesterday’s testimony, Gonzales reiterated earlier hints that there may be another facet to the NSA program that has not been revealed publicly, or even another program that has prompted dissension within the government. While acknowledging disagreements among officials over the monitoring efforts, Gonzales disputed published reports that have detailed the arguments.
“They did not relate to the program the president disclosed,” Gonzales testified. “They related to something else, and I can’t get into that.”
Translation: They are listening to U.S. domestic calls in a yet undisclosed program and their defense is to say it is legal – which it is not as they well know.
Something is weird with the financial markets. Gold, copper etc. topped yesterday. The German Dax fell 1% today just after the US opened. Just wondering. Any ideas?
B, I wonder if there’s any connection between Gonzales’s action of removing the cloak of deception further on Thursday, and the brief filed just one day earlier by the EFF:
http://tinyurl.com/g8wqq
They’re alleging that the NSA, with full cooperation and active assistance of AT&T, has intercepted “almost every international phone call or data transmission made through AT&T over the last four years.” It kills the defense that they’re using some sort of decision-making process as to who to tap.
This subject has been mentioned earlier here, but Marc Fisher has a good take on it on his Pravda on Potomac blog:
Hey, look, we’ll put some Muslim guys in robes, see, and we’ll send them to a NASCAR race in Virginia, you know, where the rednecks live, and we’ll give the guys prayer rugs and have ’em slap those babies right down in front of the speedway and have the guys kneel down right there, and we’ll have the cameras rolling, and then when those racist rubes walk by and get a load of this, we’ll get all their anti-Muslim venom on camera and we’ll have ourselves one dandy TV show!
Posted by: Groucho | Apr 7 2006 22:24 utc | 37
@b,
bound to happen sometime.
peak oil soon:
oil price up: inflation up.
buy gold to hedge against inflation.
price up.
Posted by: gylangirl | Apr 7 2006 22:25 utc | 38
Just thought of this, but if evidence gets out that the U.S. is tapping both every international and domestic phone conversation, and would likely have never had uttered a peep about it unless found out… just how is it that the U.S. can justify control over so much of the internet’s infrastructure? How much of the internet is the U.S. trying to monitor illegally as well?
If I were any other country concerned about the safety of information I’d want to rip it out of their hands as quickly and completely as possible.
just hear on french t v that berlusconi has asked for united nations observors for the elections which he feels will not be fair
even mussolini had manners
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 7 2006 23:05 utc | 40
groucho ,
nbc has been doing a series on race. i saw a segment where they put cameras in back of taxis and a fake driver who iniciated racist comments. some people went along, some people put up a good defense, and some just avoided the controvesy. but it mostly showed that americans in general were very , not only tolerant ,but open. after some time in ny, they moved it down to savanah and these 2 older women, w/their southern accents, very well off, listened to what the guy had to say, and then just sort of slapped him down, said, well i never would have my beautiful children if i had your pov. the only person who full on agreed w/the muslim insults was an old jewish lady in ny who agreed, send them all back. they also interviewed the participants once they got out of the cab. i think its important to have a national dialogue about race.
another segment they had some fake arguments in a park w/cameras set up to see how long it would take for people to step in. kids bullying others. moms intercepting. then couples fighting, to see if and who and how long it would take, if ever for passerbys to come to the defense of the victims. one of the women who intercepted a domestic dispute , when ask later ‘why did you do it’ responded ,’ i saw a nightline show about 6 months ago where it showed how people are sometimes afraid to do whats right in fear of retaliation, i remembered it.’ also, of all the incidents in the park, the one that required the longest for anyone to intercept was of the black woman being abused by the black man. that perhaps there was more fear for anyone to try to help.
i think in order to have a full understanding of racism it is good to see it in our faces and not just as private asides. when i hear someone make a racist remark, i confront them , its just my nature, and maybe people i know , know that if they say things in my presence, they will hear an earfull. also, most people aviod confrontation, they ‘go along w/the flow’, they don’t have the courage or know how to step up and takes the reins and do the right thing. where are our role models. it is really far out to see normal people, in their everyday walks of life, take on evil, racism, and controversy. you’ld be surprised that even at nascar, those heros exist, and maybe that’s what we would have seen, because they were the stars of the nbc specials i saw.
i’m not so sure what i think of the nascar situation, or what we might find there, the other shows they did, all in all, show that we have many many tolerant people here.
at a time where the government may be building internment camps for foreigners, or maybe not so foreign, and racism seems to be fermented by the right, we we need to have a dialogue. maybe the intention was positive,
Posted by: annie | Apr 7 2006 23:32 utc | 41
Latest metaphor by sport’s commentators in this part of the world:
“The game had more blunders than a George Bush speech”.
Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 8 2006 6:43 utc | 42
A Gallup editor in LA Times: Is Iraq worth it?
Gallup last year did measure Americans’ reaction to a list of nine possible foreign policy goals for the U.S. The idea of “building democracy in other countries” had the lowest importance rating of any on the list, far behind such goals as preventing future acts of terrorism and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Building democracy in other countries is a simplification of a broad and complex argument for the ultimate value of a democratic Iraq to the region. But the survey data don’t suggest immediate enthusiasm for this type of justification.
Finally, there is a fourth, more pragmatic rationale — one not put forth by the administration. Survey research shows that a strong majority of Americans believe that securing adequate supplies of energy is a very important U.S. foreign policy goal. These data suggest that the American public might actually believe this is an appropriate motivation for military action.
b,
if Americans are ready to shoot each other over a parking space or for being cut off in traffic, then it is only logical they are ready to shoot people over oil they need to keep the drive-by shootings going.
And besides, only weenies go solar.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 8 2006 11:10 utc | 44
you gotta admire the balls!
Silvio Berlusconi has made one final push to hang on to his job.
He told a rally in Naples that his opponents worshipped Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot. He has warned Catholics that the left includes “priest eaters”
Posted by: annie | Apr 8 2006 15:43 utc | 45
anie,
How does the Pope hold his liquor?
-By the ears!
(God foregive us blasphemers)
Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 8 2006 19:44 utc | 47
ralphienoy, i can’t BELIEVE you spelled my name wrong!
there are certain lines w/me, you simply do not to cross.
Posted by: annie | Apr 8 2006 20:17 utc | 48
@b:
I dunno. I think it’s a far more important foreign policy goal to secure energy supplies than to “spread democracy”, but that doesn’t mean I want to go to war for it. Quite the contrary — the only sensible course is international cooperation, and vast research and construction projects for solar and wind power around the world. Otherwise, we’re just setting up future conflicts.
Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Apr 8 2006 21:25 utc | 49
Oh no shock! horror! The voice of the ‘new dems’, ‘the saviour of the party’ and the noughties “First Black President” (who never will be ..but that’s another story) has revealed the source of his courage, the impetus that drives him on to ‘save’ the US. . . . Yep this is truly a new style of dem politician. He stood on his hindlegs and risked his credibility for that basic dem principle. . . campaign funds.
As reported in Counterpunch by Alexander Cockburn Barak Obama ran to rescue well known liberal, humanist and faithful servant of the whip Senator Joe Lieberman. It was at a Connecticut dem fundraiser and it seems that even some of the overweight, slack-jawed, piggy-eyed ‘donors’ have begun expressing silent displeasure at Lieberman’s hawkish and generally rethug stance. ie they failed to reach for their chequebooks. But Cockburn tells it much better.
“. . . . at the other end of the country in Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman faced a decidedly cool audience at a big Democratic dinner at the end of March and got bailed out by his brother senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who told the crowd to haul out their check books and make sure Lieberman gets returned for another term.
What kind of a signal is this? Here is Obama, endlessly hailed as the brightest rising star in the Democratic firmament, delivering (at a closely watched political dinner, with Lieberman’s primary opponent, Ned Lamont, sitting in the crowd) a ringing endorsement to his “mentor”, Lieberman, Bush’s closest Democratic ally on the war in Iraq, and overall pretty much a symbol of everything that’s been wrong with the Democratic Party for the past twenty years. What a slimy fellow Obama is, as befits a man symbolizing everything that will continue to be wrong with the Democratic Party for the next twenty years. Every time I look up he’s doing something disgusting, like distancing himself from his fellow senator Dick Durbin for denouncing the torture center at Guantanamo, or cheerleading the nuke-Iran crowd. . . . . “
Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 8 2006 22:31 utc | 50
Ugg, sounds like he did everything but take the stage, make a snappy salute and exclaim “reporting for duty Sir!”.
Posted by: anna missed | Apr 8 2006 22:41 utc | 51
annie,
nexst time, I promise to remove the two-year-old daughter crawling about under my feet before posting. btw. you failed to note my spelling error “forgive” not “foregive”.
Bit it’s okay, I forgive you fore it…
Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 9 2006 6:18 utc | 53
ralphieboy, we have to stop meeding like this!
mutual foregivmess,
xx, annie
Posted by: annie | Apr 9 2006 6:46 utc | 54
This thread is almost dead, but I do hope Everyone Sees this…Was going to post it on the Flowers thread ‘cuz the news is so beautiful, but I was afraid that might be perverting/otherwise hijacking Annie’s wonderful work…
I found an exc. site – Future of the Union and this is the first post. (For those who don’t know Kokomo, Indiana it’s an unusual place. It’s politics are prob. close to Kansas, sitting as it does where the Industrial North of yore meets the Bible Belt.) Anyone else but me wondering when this would happen?
Solidarity Conference Coming To Kokomo This Weekend by Dave Stratman
April 7-9, 2006
Quality Inn (Located On US 31)
Kokomo, Indiana 46902
Meeting Introductions 7:ooPM Friday
Saturday & Sunday Begin With Registration At 8:00AM
Working people are under attack as never before. The institutions on which workers have depended–the Democratic Party and the unions have utterly failed to defend us. Democratic as well as Republican politicians support the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, savage cuts in social programs, outsourcing jobs, attacking public education, rewriting bankruptcy laws to benefit credit card companies. Union officials work with corporations to cut wages, rob retirees of their pensions, impose wage tiers, cut health care. They replace worker solidarity with worker-against-worker Company Teams. They support the war-makers in DC.
Meanwhile most working people, blue-collar and white-collar, employed and unemployed, remain unorganized and largely defenseless.
The politicians and the unions are part of the problem. We cannot rely on them and we cannot change them. We have to go around them, to create institutions that we control to fight for the values, the livelihoods, the future of working people.
SOLIDARITY NOW is a new organization formed in Peoria, IL in 2005. Our goals are to rebuild the culture of mutual support that is natural to working people, to fight for the goals of working people, and to build a movement for democratic revolution.
If you are an auto worker, a teacher, a nurse, a student, a professor, work in an office or school or hospital or university, are employed or unemployed, working or retired, we invite you to join Solidarity Now and to join us in Kokomo for our National Meeting.
I recommend scrolling down through the blog.
Posted by: jj | Apr 9 2006 20:03 utc | 55