Keeping net neutrality means resisting the establishment of a digital hierarchy that may do just as much damage as our increasingly wide economic hierarchy.


by Sean Riley, member Socialist Party of Arizona, Billy Wharton, co-chair Socialist Party USA -

As socialists we recognize and support the existence of a truly free and open internet, maintained by the principle of net neutrality. We reject the proposals being made by the digital media giants backed by the politicians they have purchased who wish to segregate the internet by dividing access to it between high-speed fee-paying users and those who receive low-speed access without a charge. The internet is the “Great Cloud” through which many of us work, play, and communicate. It must be maintained as it is, outside of the rules of the capitalists who carry a definition of property rights too narrow for this anarchic technological mass.

The corporate behemoths who lease out our internet lifelines would have us believe that they should be free to do as they see fit. These entities, empowered by a sense of corporate personhood, feel that they should be allowed to organize a 'pay-to-play' internet. If allowed to be put into effect, every step of the communication process would be subject to additional fees, controls, and content monitoring that the corporations would arbitrarily determine. We cannot allow such changes to pass.

The debate about net neutrality is a perfect illustration of how obsolete the rules of the capitalist system are. The internet has fostered revolutionary changes in the way people build communities, identities and invent new ways of conversing. However, this sort of unregulated free association is a threat to capitalist profit motive. In response, capitalists attempt to impose market rules in order to commodify these new relations even if the process of commodification ruins or severely limits the new relations. Simply put, the narrowness of capitalism, its need to profit from every act that makes us human, will destroy the complex interconnections the internet has helped us all establish.

As Socialists, we believe that the internet is not broken, and Google-Verizon must not be given free hand to "fix it". Does the airline industry own the sky? Does the trucking industry own the streets and highways? No, these vital arteries are there for all, as it must remain with the internet. We should also note that the origins of the internet itself lie with publicly funded research conducted by the US military.

Socialists believe in freedom – the freedom to associate with one another, the freedom to access information and the freedom share our thoughts, ideas and emotions without corporations telling us how fast or slow we can do so. As such, we reject any legislative attempt to end net neutrality or even seemingly "progressive" reforms that reduce net neutrality to a frozen set of relations that could eventually be regulated. The internet should be allowed to exist as it is – through a fluid association of ad-hoc networks

Keeping net neutrality means resisting the establishment of a digital hierarchy that may do just as much damage as our increasingly wide economic hierarchy.

check out the Socialist Party USA

At a time when the economic crisis and the government’s responses to it already discriminated for the rich and against everyone else...




by Richard Wolff -

December 18, 2010 - The tax bill/deal just voted by Congress and signed by the President further widens the gap between rich and poor in the US. That gap has been widening over the last 30 years. The US already ranked among the nations of the world with the most unequal distributions of wealth. The estate tax cuts just passed will only make the US more unequal, as will other provisions of the new law.

Today’s New York Times (p. B1) quotes an official of the American Bar Association citing a statistic that says much. In 1977, 10.5 per cent of those who died paid some federal taxes on the estates they left, whereas in 2011, under the new law, less than half of 1 per cent will do so. Obama’s new tax law means that the first $10 million left to heirs will have no estate tax to pay to Uncle Sam while being required to pay 35 % on whatever they leave over $10 million. Under the existing law (passed in 2009), the comparable numbers were $7 million and 45 %. Various gift tax maneuvers and other legal means remain available to the richest citizens to evade even these reduced estate taxes.

Estate taxes have been justified and used in countless countries for centuries. Indeed, many of the 50 states in the US continue to impose estate taxes (and/or the slightly different ‘inheritance taxes”) using the same justification. Basically, the idea is that even the most minimal commitments to democracy and equality of opportunity require that all citizens begin with roughly equal resources and supports. Hard work, talent, and commitment should determine each individual’s successes rather than the wealth that one’s parents did or did not leave behind. So estate taxes were seen as ways to both support the government’s activities and help produce a more level playing field for each generation.

What Obama’s tax bill does is directly contradict all this. It reduces the support for state activities from estate taxes while enhancing the inequality of starting points among our citizens. At a time when the economic crisis and the government’s responses to it already discriminated for the rich and against everyone else, this new tax bill takes that social injustice some steps further.

from Rick Wolff's Blog

The rich once again have had their way in the arena of big-money sports. The ink was barely dry on the election certificate of Minnesota's new governor, department store heir Mark Dayton, before he rolled over for zillionaire Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf and the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell.

As a result, despite Democrat Dayton's lame funding offerings, it's virtually certain a goodly portion of a new stadium for the Vikings will be paid for by Minnesota's already foreclosed, homeless, jobless, and even food-deprived taxpayers.
Isn't this a microcosm of capitalist America---the rich ripping off the common folk for all they can get?

Ironically, it's some Minnesota Republicans---budget hawks and deficit hawks---who maintain the state first must deal with its $6.2b deficit. They're far less concerned with the state' social problems, however.

I'm proud of the neologism I created to describe Dayton's capitulation: Obama-esque.

Will Shapira
Roseville MN
651-493-7473

by Andalusia Knoll

17 December 2010 - For the past two weeks in Cancun, Mexico parallel conferences on climate change have taken place. One gathered behind closed doors and police barricades in a luxury beach side resort. The others met in downtown Cancun bringing together members of civil society, indigenous communities, environmental groups and campesinos from all over the world in encampments of shared food, housing and informational forums.

Over the past 15 years we have become accustomed to this scenario – where the powerful leaders of the world pay little attention to those representatives of social movements and civil society whom they allow inside their meetings and those that clamor at their doors demanding justice. Not surprisingly the COP 16 ended as many of these conferences do, with the signing of a non-binding agreement guaranteeing market-based solutions to climate change and a complete disregard for human and indigenous rights.

While world leaders and mainstream environmental movements are declaring the meeting a victory, social movements have declared this agreement a complete failure. Bolivia, as the one dissenting voice to the final agreement, says they will file a complaint with the International Court of Justice in The Hague against the text approved in Cancun.

Many of the accords in the final COP16 document make official proposals that had been circulated at the Copenhagen talks in December 2009. These include the creation of a “green climate fund” which will supposedly raise $30 billion to give to developing countries to combat climate change by 2012. Yet there is no text about how this money will be raised. The agreement also approved Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), a market-based strategy to “preserve” forests. Countries have also pledged to lower their greenhouse gases by a small amount that critics say will still lead to a 3.2C rise in temperatures – far higher than the 2C generally considered to be a level of "safe" warming and also countries disregarded any talks concerning a second commitment of the Kyoto Protocol.

These agreements stand in sharp contrast to the demands of the social movements who gathered outside the talks and also with the accords that were reached at the People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth which took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia in April 2009; with the participation of more than 35,000 people from 142 countries. These accords demand that countries lower their emissions to lead to no more than 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature and require developed countries to transfer technology and aid money to developing countries who are suffering the worst effects of climate change. The Cochabamba accords, and those people at the alternative gatherings in Cancun who are advocating for these accords, have a general framework to guarantee the Rights of Mother Earth, including the right to clean air, the right to water as the source of life, and the right to be free of contamination, pollution, and genetic modification.

Food Sovereignty and Campesino Movements

This last point abut Genetic Modification and people's opposition to it was expressed loud and clear at the encampment of La Via Campesina, an international movement of “peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers.” Participants wrists were adorned with bracelets embroidered with the words “Food Sovereignty! Monsanto leave!” and banners hung throughout the meeting space declaring that campesinos both have the knowledge and experience to cool the planet with their small scale farms.

Alberto Gomez, one of the Mexican leaders with La Via Campesina said, “Food sovereignty is at the core of all strategic planning and policies concerning agriculture and commerce and also policies to combat inequality and poverty.”

Via Campesina along with other groups including National Assembly of Environmentally Affected Peoples, the Movement for National Liberation, the Mexican Electricians Union (SME) and Otros Mundos, organized 30 caravans to travel to Cancun. The caravans started from six different destinations but all stopped at places that exemplify environmental destruction and resistance, including farmers in Hidalgo fighting against a large dam that catches Mexico City's sewage, people occupying a government building in protest of a new Super highway in Jalisco, and the countless communities fighting contamination of their lands and rivers from pig factories and industrial parks. Mickey McKoy participated in one of the caravans as a member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and a delegate for the US based Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. He comes from an area of Appalachia ravaged by coal mining and mountain top removal and likened their struggle against
corporate greed and pollution to many struggles in Mexico. McKoy said the caravan gave him inspiration to keep doing this work “As long as i remember these faces that I've seen and these voices that I've heard I will carry on and hopefully inspire others to do the same.”

REDD/REDD + and False Solutions

One of the most controversial agreements that came out of COP 16 was the “Reduction of Emissions for Deforestation and Forest Degradation” more commonly known as REDD or REDD + a market based program for climate mitigation strategies. At the luxurious JP Marriott, Ban-Ki Moon, UN Secretary General, Sam Walton, the CEO of Walmart, Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, various politicians and renowned Kenyan conservationist Wangaari Mathaii and Jane Goodal all lauded REDD as the panacea to the depletion of the world’s forests and indigenous peoples. Zoellick said, “REDD+ is a winner, it is key to climate change mitigation and is one of the best chances to save our tropical forests and the people and animals that depend on them.”

Yet a few kilometers away from the Marriott credentialed observers at COP16 were being denied entry to the Moon Palace if they had an anti-REDD sticker on their credentials badge. Tom Goldstooth president of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) was kicked out and had his credentials revoked, following a press conference held by youth, members of grassroots organizations and indigenous leaders calling for Climate Justice. He spoke to TV program Democracy Now! about the irony of indigenous people's voices being kept out when they can “teach humanity how to survive climate catastrophe” and added that he was merely “telling the truth about the treachery of carbon trading and REDD—and the insanity of the mitigation and solution to climate change based around a market-based system.”

IEN brought a 17 person delegation to advocate for the rights of indigenous people and also produced the REDD reader, which addresses the program as a “false solution” to climate change and calls it Colonialism of the forests. IEN also joined with indigenous delegations from all across Latin America, the Philippines and Africa. Miguel Palacin, an indigenous leader from Peru, along with the Ecuadorian organization Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), believes that proposals like REDD will lead to the commercialization of forests and Mother Earth at large: “Forests will no longer be the heritage of the people but instead of the state. According to this new legislation the trees will belong to those who pay for them, which makes this issue very complicated. Forests are not just trees, forests are alive, in the forests are animals, plants, and the indigenous people who have protected them.”

Many argue that REDD would prevent indigenous people from accessing their land because the forest from which they have subsisted on for centuries is now considered an ecological reserve which they can’t enter. According to numerous articles in IEN's REDD reader, this has already been happening in Ecuador and Peru among others. Countries like Papa New Guinea are now being scouted by venture capitalists looking for land to purchase and then sell for carbon offsets.

The criticism of REDD doesn't stop there. Opponents say that REDD also encourages the creation of monoculture plantations of pine, eucalyptus or teak trees which decision makers consider equivalent to natural bio diverse forests. Additionally, many people from the global north says that REDD allows their countries to continue with their carbon intensive projects, such as Tar Sands extracting oil in the sands of Canada, and the operation of polluting power plants and factories all across the U.S., Europe and Asia. Kerri Fulton with Youth for Climate Justice from Washington, D.C. said, “What we find in these carbon offset programs is that they will decide to plant a tree plantation in another country and think that they reduced their carbon emissions, but they didn't actually stop the emissions at the source. We are dealing with people who live next to huge polluting industries in the U.S. in communities of color and low income communities. That
pollution is what we want to see reduced at its source.”

Cultural Resistance and Independent Media

The thunderous sounds of Zampoña music played on wind instruments by indigenous members of the Bolivian delegation echoed throughout the hallways of the climate forums and the streets of Cancun during all of the week's marches. At night Jaroneros picked their Jaranas, and belted out lyrics of paz and justicia with Son Jarocho music, a traditional Mexican folk style that has recently become popular in resistance movements across Mexico and the United States.

A group of young autonomous anti-capitalists known as “Anti-Cap, Anti-Cop” traveled from Mexico City in a veggie oil-powered bus graffitied with a homage to Lee Kyung Hae, a South Korean Farmer who took his life at the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests that took place in Cancun in 2003, in protest of the WTO’s neoliberal policies. As the march weaved through the streets of Cancun an Anti-Cop team plastered the walls with wheat-pasted posters created by an international collective of artists addressing climate change and systematic change. When the Anti-Cop bus arrived at the Via Campesina march where hundreds had gathered on the December 7th day of action against Climate Change, it had atop of it an enormous silver inflatable hammer, a protest relic left over from the mobilization in Copenhagen. Separating the protesters’ road blockade from the locations of the Climate Talks was a large metal wall blocking the highway along with hundreds
of Mexican federal police. Anti-Cop and friends joyfully charged the wall with the silver hammer blazing in the wind above them, then launched it over the police barricade. As the corporate and independent press gathered to record this powerful moment, a member of Anti-Cop explained their martillazo with a Bertolt Brecht quote “Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it” and went on thanking all the independent media for transmitting the message.

Independent Media played a strong role throughout the gathering. At the Climatico Dialogo a media collective from Chiapas called Koman Ilel hosted a week long live video stream while simultaneously members of a network of popular communicators across Mexico, Boca de Polen and ALER hosted Clima Radio, a live radio broadcast. A few blocks away in the encampment of Via Campesina members of Ke Huelga Radio from Mexico City, and Mexico Indymedia transmitted all of the live forums concerning Food Sovereignty and the speech given by Bolivian President Evo Morales. Members of IEN produced a daily TV show on Red Road Cancun which hundreds of people from more than 30 countries worldwide tuned in to. These independent media outlets not only informed the global populace, but also opened spaces for exchange among participants, something that was lacking in the top-down forums that both alternative spaces hosted.

While many are disillusioned by the outcomes of the talk, it is clear that the worldwide movement for Climate Justice was strengthened. People vowed to take this struggles back to their respective communities and also go to the next COP meeting in Durban, South Africa to continue advocating for the rights of indigenous people and against the commercialization of the air, water, and Mother Earth.

***
Andalusia Knoll is a multimedia journalist, popular educator and organizer who lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is a producer with the national Criminal Justice Dialogue Project Thousand Kites, a reporter for the worker collective Free Speech Radio News and an organizer with the NYC Community/Farmworker Alliance who work in alliance with The Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

As more details emerge about the sex crimes allegations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, we host a debate between two feminists: Jaclyn Friedman argues the sexual assault allegations shouldn’t be dismissed just because they’re politically motivated, while Naomi Wolf says by going after Assange, the state is not embracing feminism, it’s "pimping" it.

Read more about "sex by surprise"

by Moisis Litsis -

Mr. Lebowitz, is Marxism still relevant today? I ask because, despite the profound crisis of global capitalism, the Left, in all its varieties, has failed to mobilize people.

Marxism analyzes capitalism as a system with specific property relations and tendencies (including the tendency to crisis). We see its value right before our own eyes. In contrast, non-Marxist theories substitute a mythical model for reality and, when the model manifestly doesn't fit reality, they conclude that the model is perfect and what's wrong is the reality.

For example, they say that the crisis is not inherent in capitalism, but a result of bad capitalists, bad bankers, bad credit, bad governments, bad mistakes. Many people no longer believe that capitalism is perfect, but still think that there is no alternative. Marx understood that there was an inherent tendency for workers to regard the demands of capital as normal.

It is not easy to reverse this perception -- especially when the media and academia tend to make Marxist analysis invisible. We must recognize, however, that another problem was the political error of the Left: the adoption of an old model which dictates to people, rather than learn from them.

You talk about "socialism of the 21st century." Do you mean the kind of "authoritarian state socialism" of former Communist regimes of Eastern Europe? Can private capital exist in a future socialist society?

I think the best answer is one given by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano about the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. He said that we were invited to a funeral, but the deceased wasn't ours. I stress that we must return to Marx's conception of a society which, directed towards the full development of human capacities, necessarily requires profound democracy and participatory decision-making in communities and workplaces (which did not exist in the East European model).

Is there room for private capital?

I prefer not to be dogmatic on this issue. A future socialist society should ensure such conditions as transparency, workers' decision-making, and accountability to communities and society.

If private capital can meet these requirements, which are what I would call "conditions of socialism," it's all well and good. But I think that private capital would exclude itself because it would not fulfill the conditions demanded by society. Nevertheless, that is something that remains to be seen.

Would you comment on your experience as advisor to Mr. Chávez's Bolivarian government in Venezuela? We hear allegations of authoritarian trends. . . .

Although I was a consultant to several ministries in the past, I now direct a program on human development and transformative practice at a research institute affiliated with the Ministry of Education. In this capacity, I mainly come in contact with social movements (of workers and communities) and find it very exciting the way people are learning through practice. There will always be tensions between the impatience of those above and the experience of those below, but I trust the will of those below to fight for what they need and how President Chávez addresses the needs of these movements (particularly with respect to management by workers and communities)

Of course, except that about Venezuela we always hear allegations of violations by the government. That is not surprising since the international media broadcast the voices of the Venezuelan opposition and the Venezuelan private media (which constitute a de facto opposition party to the right of Fox News). There is a reason for this. Why, for example, don't we hear about the murders of social activists (trade unionists, etc.) in Colombia?

I tell people that, if they want to learn about Venezuela, they should come and see for themselves, but until then they could read the alternative media on the Internet about what is excluded by the capitalist press.

How do you see the current crisis in Europe? Will the euro survive? And is there any danger of a return to nationalistic rivalries like those of the 1930s?

The crisis in Europe should be seen in the context of the crisis of global capitalism. It has, however, its own characteristics due to internal economic imbalances in Europe and the dominant position of German and French banks.

I cannot predict how it will be resolved, but I think that, in the absence of an effective struggle against the attempt to make the workers bear the burden of solving capital's problem, capital will be strengthened at the expense of everyone else.

How can the experience of Latin America help us in our struggle against the debt?

There is a real lesson to be learned from Ecuador, where a committee to audit the external debt revealed the extent to which the debt had been inflated without any benefit for the people of Ecuador.

I think the answer is debt cancellation; but opening the books is a good start!

***
Michael A. Lebowitz is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Simon Fraser University and the author of Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class (winner of the 2004 Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize), Build It Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century, and The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development. He is Director, Program in Transformative Practice and Human Development, Centro Internacional Miranda, in Caracas, Venezuela. The original interview "Ψάξτε πώς φούσκωσε το χρέος σας και διαγράψτε το" was published by Ελευθεροτυπία on 4 December 2010. MRZine thanks the volunteer translator who wishes to remain anonymous.

From MRZine

by Len Krimerman, Willimantic Inter-Cooperative Zone (WICZ)-

Like many of you reading this, I drink Equal Exchange (EE) coffee at home and wherever else I can, and am happily aware that EE is both itself a worker cooperative and draws its coffee supply exclusively from small agricultural cooperatives throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia. But - again, like many of you - until recently I knew next to nothing about these other co-ops, aside from some few sentences and photos on EE coffee bags.

This was dramatically altered a few weeks ago when my food co-op in Willimantic, CT hosted Pedro Antonio Ascencio from Cooperativa Las Colinas (The Hills) in El Salvador. Pedro's talk had to be scheduled at the unconventional hour of 9AM due to other stops on his east coast speaking tour, but it still drew about 20 food co-op members, and we all stayed till the end to hear his own inspiring story and that of his co-op.

Through Gene Stevens, a splendid translator, Pedro told us that he joined the Colinas Cooperativa in 1987 as a pruner, weed remover, and picker of coffee beans, but within a decade had become the Secretary of both their Marketing Committee and the overall Workers' Council. He is now the President of the co-op's Management team, and Director of Marketing.

What enabled - and drew - him and the others to work cooperatively, we asked. In response, we learned that many of the founders had worked under very brutal, exploitive, and dangerously unsanitary conditions, picking coffee for distant landowners who cared little for the wages, safety, or health of their workers. And who cared even less about the community surrounding their plantation and processing facilities - often using toxic chemicals that killed off both indigenous plant and animal species.

Due to modest agrarian reforms in the early 1980s, groups of coffee employees were able to purchase their own lands and cultivate their own crops. Las Colinas wanted more than anything to avoid the harsh injustice and life-threatening conditions they had previously endured, so the equality and respect for labor provided by a co-op was a very natural choice. Today, Pedro's co-op has a wage structure that pays all of its over 150 workers the same wages and benefits for the same number of hours worked. (Their slogan, we were told, is "Everyone in bed, or everyone on the floor.") And they also encourage leadership from the entire workforce, having established numerous "teams" or "project committees" headed by different co-op members. The Co-op, we learned, is actually owned equally by some 95 families, and operates on over 1,000 acres in the very mountainous municipality of Tacuba; about 225 acres are not intended for coffee cultivation.

In addition, Las Colinas has created a safe, poison-free work environment, in part by choosing to produce only 100% organic coffee beans. This decision, Pedro told us happily and proudly, has brought back many types of plants and animals, e.g., armadillos, which had virtually vanished under the plantation owners. The co-op has also introduced a treatment system for water used in processing so that it can be recycled safely for irrigation.

"Pretty good", I thought. But, there was more. Following the 7th Cooperative principle, Colinas has dedicated itself to "community improvement". The co-op has contributed land to build a school and a soccer field, and runs a free medical transportation system for its local community.

Our dialogue with Pedro lasted two full hours, and ranged from the relationship of Colinas to other El Salvador co-ops (there's an association of small producers of coffee called APECAFE) to whether the country's drug and gang wars had adversely affected the small cooperatives ("Not yet, thankfully.", Pedro told us.) But the most interesting question, for me at least, was asked by a young girl of maybe eight or nine, who had been actively taking notes throughout the presentation, apparently for a school project.

She asked, "Will all the Colinas children grow up to be farmers?" (Her mother seemed delighted with this question.) "Yes", Pedro replied, but without some of the conviction of his other responses. Later when asked about Las Colinas' future plans, he mentioned that Equal Exchange, their Fair Trade distributor for many years, is helping them develop a scholarship program to support the education of their young people. Maybe, I thought, this will lead to cooperative opportunities and enterprises other than coffee farming for some of the next generation.

After Pedro left to continue his east coast tour, I began shopping, and at various points, bumped into all three managers of the Willimantic Food Cooperative - Alice, Bruce, and Shandra. "Great session and such a good idea;" I said, "maybe we could try something similar with cooperative enterprises right here in eastern Connecticut..." They agreed, especially since there are now about a half dozen new or emerging cooperatives in Willimantic alone - that's a story for another GEO issue - and we're planning to begin that effort later this Fall.

***
Pedro can be reached at pedro-coop.lascol@hotmail.com [1]; his telephone number is: 7441-9169. His tour was sponsored and supported by Equal Exchange, and more information about the Colinas co-op can be found at: www.equalexchange.coop/profile-of-las-colinas-in-el-salvador [2].


from Grassroots Economic Organizing

Russian-born artist Raphael Soyer is best known for his compassionate, naturalistic depictions of urban subjects. His sensitive, penetrating portrayals include a broad range of city dwellers: Bowery bums, dancers, seamstresses, shoppers, office workers and fellow artists. Historically, Soyer is associated with the social realist artists of the 1930s, whose art championed the cause of social justice.

Born in Tombov, Russia in 1899, Soyer emigrated with his family to the United States in 1912. His siblings included a twin brother, Moses, and a brother, Isaac, who became successful artists. After settling with his family in New York City, the young Soyer pursued an art education at Cooper Union from 1914 to 1917, at the National Academy of Design from 1918 to 1922, and intermittently at the Art Students League.

Soyer was referred to as an American scene painter. He is identified as a Social Realist because of his interest in men and women viewed in contemporary settings which included the streets, subways, salons and artists' studios of New York City, although he avoided subjects that were particularly critical of society. He also wrote several books on his life and art.

His brothers Moses Soyer and Isaac Soyer were also painters.

Soyer's earliest work was consciously primitive in manner. Until the late 1920s, he typically used frontal presentations, shallow pictorial space and figures rendered in caricature. Later, he developed a brushy, more gestural style that was tonal rather than coloristic. These early works are reminiscent of the paintings of Edgar Degas.

Soyer's interest in depicting his urban environment was expressed early in his career in works such as Sixth Avenue (ca. 1930-1935, Wadsworth Atheneum). As the Depression continued, the artist turned more and more to subjects directly related to the prevailing economic difficulties. One result of the mass unemployment of the 1930s that caught Soyer's imagination was the new role of independent working women. Hemmed in by the crowd, the self-absorbed women in Office Girls (1936, Whitney Museum of American Art) are shown walking to or from work. Soyer's sympathetic study of unemployed men in Transients (1936, University of Texas) is an example of a less propagandistic social realist work. In addition to paintings, he executed a number of lithographs of Depression scenes.

Soyer developed his subjects from New York City's poorer sections. Unlike the painters of the Ashean School 25 years earlier, Soyer and his contemporaries did not view the city as a picturesque spectacle. Instead, they dwelt on the grim realities of poverty and industrialization. Soyer's work, however, is less issue-oriented than that of fellow social realist artists Philip Evergood and Ben Shahn.

After 1940, Soyer began to concentrate on the subject of women at work or posing in his studio. His technique grew more sketchy during the 1950s, but in his ambitious painting Homage To Eakins (1964-1965, National Portrait Gallery), he rendered the figures in a manner typical of his early work.

Between 1953 and 1955, he edited Reality. He later wrote Painter's Pilgrimage (1962), Homage to Thomas Eakins (1966), Self-Revealment: A Memoir (1969) and Diary of an Artist (1977). In 1967, Soyer was given a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and his paintings have been displayed at many museums and galleries. He has taught at the Art Students League, the New School and the National Academy of Design in New York City.

from Rogallery

Friends,

We are almost half way to our Winter Fundraising goal of $3,000. These funds are a vital part of keeping a democratic socialist voice alive in America. And democratic socialism is needed now more than ever!

We live in country in which the top 1% of the population monopolize nearly 25% of the total income. A country where the yearly salary of one former bank executive, Ken Lewis of Bank of America, could care for the needs of two thousand families. Where people routinely go without jobs, healthcare and, increasingly, proper nutrition.

Your donations allow us to keep socialist organizers in our communities. To directly challenge the power of the Bank CEOs, the anti-immigrant politicians and the war makers. We do this in the streets and at the ballot box where our candidates present powerful voice for socialism.

You can donate online by credit card here:
Socialist Party USA Donations

Or by check this way:
SPUSA
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NY, NY 10012

Thank you. Keep up the struggle!

Peace,
Billy Wharton
co-chair, Socialist Party USA

by Rick Wolff -

The economic crisis that Obama rode to victory in 2008 also rode him down in the 2010 elections. Obama and his economic advisors badly "mismanaged the crisis." While the Obama team seems to have learned little from its failure, we need to draw its lessons if we are to reduce the costly social consequences of that defeat.

Obama's administration decided to handle the severe crisis inherited from Bush by following standard Keynesian economics. It undertook massive new spending. First it bailed out banks and other large corporations (AIG in insurance, GM in automobiles, etc.). Then it "stimulated" the economy by boosting spending on goods and services by all levels of government. Standard Keynesian practice also includes not taxing corporations and the richest 10% of US taxpayers to raise the money for all that new spending. Instead, the government borrows that money to cover the difference -- the deficit -- between tax receipts and increased spending. (Super Keynesians like Paul Krugman want more spending and thus bigger deficits.)

No doubt Obama's team worried that large US corporations and the 10% richest individuals would react badly if they were taxed more to enable Washington to spend more. However much they contributed to the crisis and however much they benefit from government spending, corporations and the rich want others to pay for that spending. When have those two groups ever willingly behaved otherwise? They prefer lending to Washington over being taxed by Washington. So the Obama team spent more by borrowing more (much of it from the same corporations and rich people that it had not taxed).

Whenever governments run deficits by borrowing, corporations and the rich become concerned about a resulting problem: who will be taxed to pay the interest on the government's borrowings and to pay back the lenders? To make sure it would not be them, corporations and the rich shifted a significant amount of their political and financial support to Republicans for the mid-term elections. That shift aimed to ensure that no future taxation of business and the rich would force them to pay for deficits. In a capitalist crisis, that's how economic policy works when no organized opposition exists to prevent it.

As 2009 passed into 2010 and government deficits ballooned, the worries of corporate America and the rich deepened. They saw unemployment rise and stay around 10% and a flood of foreclosures eject millions from their homes. They saw Obama losing support from his electoral base as economic conditions kept deteriorating. They feared that he might be tempted (politically compelled) to regain his base's support by taxing corporations and the rich rather than middle and poorer citizens. Then some Obama remarks blamed Wall Street for helping to cause the crisis and criticized the high executive salaries in corporations receiving government aid. In response, a significant portion of corporations and the rich decided to block Obama from moving any further in such directions.

The way to do that was clear: help Republicans. They reliably oppose taxes on corporations and the rich by blocking all tax increases. Corporations especially interested in preventing Obama from other efforts to recoup his base -- such as regulating energy companies after the Gulf of Mexico disaster -- helped the Tea Party's total demonization of Obama and Washington. Media exposure for the Tea Party -- its activities and candidates -- became extraordinary and often quite favorable. Media attitudes toward Obama became much less sympathetic. Funds shifted to Republicans and lobbying against Obama's legislative efforts ramped up.

Obama's team ignored the classic flaw in Keynesian deficit spending policy: underestimating the political struggles over taxes. Middle and lower income individuals were desperate to ease the burdens of the recession on them, while corporations and the rich had no intention of accepting such burdens. As the crisis persisted (no drops in unemployment, foreclosures, job deterioration, etc.) and deficits soared, Obama's base felt increasingly betrayed as very little improved for them. Meanwhile, corporations and the rich shifted support toward Republicans in significant numbers. By mid-2010, it was already too late for Obama. The six months before the November elections were, for many Democrats, like watching an approaching car wreck from inside the car yet powerless to stop it.

Had Obama pursued a different set of policies from the beginning, he might at least have had a chance to avoid the November 2010, electoral results. At the peak of his popularity and support early in 2009, he might have used them to blunt the resistance of corporations and the rich to pay for the increased spending needed to overcome the crisis (and thereby reduce or eliminate the deficits). Only a massive, popular mobilization could frighten (persuade) them that paying all sorts of taxes and other costs of government programs was preferable to risking a mass anger and opposition that might demand far more basic social change at the expense of corporations and the rich. After all, it was massive popular mobilization that enabled FDR to do some of that in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Nowadays, when no trade union upsurge nor sizeable socialist and communist parties exist to mobilize a left opposition, Obama himself would have had to help build one to avoid the defeat he suffered this November.

Obama missed his chance. His advisors, said to include "experts on the Great Depression," misunderstand its political economy, consequently misadvised Obama, and thereby produced a political defeat. A new political formation able and willing to mobilize a majority around its interests is required. It could win a possible exit from the economic crisis by taxing corporations and the rich to enable increased government spending. That modest program would reduce or avoid deficits. Middle and lower income people would then face fewer or no cuts in public employment and services and no need for tax increases. With that program and with government spending focused on jobs and affordable housing, Obama might also have developed into a popular hero along the lines of FDR rather than become a shaky first-term President.

***
Rick Wolff is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and also a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. He is the author of New Departures in Marxian Theory (Routledge, 2006) among many other publications. Check out Rick Wolff’s documentary film on the current economic crisis, Capitalism Hits the Fan, at www.capitalismhitsthefan.com. Visit Wolff's Web site at www.rdwolff.com, and order a copy of his new book Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do about It.


from Rick Wolff's Website

Global Day of Listening to Afghans
19th December 2010

Why not listen?

Why not love?

To share the pain of Afghans and people in conflict all over the world, please join us in Afghanistan by taking a few minutes on the 18th & 19th of December 2010 to Skype call us or call us directly, from wherever you are

Email youthpeacevolunteers(at)gmail.com

1. To arrange a call on the 18th & 19th of December 2010

OR

2. To support our Open letter from Afghan Youth to our World Leaders,

by emailing “YES, Why not listen?”

Please call us…tell us when your heart has pain

***

Open letter from Afghan Youth to our World Leaders


Dear Mr Obama, Mrs Clinton, Mr Petraeus, Mr Rasmussen, and all our world leaders,


We are Afghans and we ask the world to listen.

Like yourselves, we couldn’t live without the love of our family and friends.

We were hurt by your criticism of Mr Karzai for voicing the people’s anguished pleas, “Stop your night raids.”

Please, stop your night raids.

If you could listen, you would have heard 29 NGOs in Afghanistan describe how we now have “Nowhere to Turn”.

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/conflict_disasters/nowhere-to-turn-afghanistan.html

If you could listen, you would also have heard Mr Karzai and the 29 NGOs express concern over your Afghan Local Police plan; the world will henceforth watch our militia killing the people, your people and our people, with your weapons and your money.

If you could listen, you would have heard the sound of your drones crystallizing the nights of hatred among the Afghan, Pakistani and global masses.

Instead, we hear your determination to ‘awe, shock and firepower’ us with Abrams tanks. We hear distant excitement over your new smart XM25 toy, a weapon you proudly proclaim will leave us with ‘nowhere to hide’.

Nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide.

Your actions have unfortunately dimmed our hopes that we the people could turn to you. Along with our Afghan war-makers, you are making the people cry.

Yet, we understand. You are in the same trap we’re in, in a corrupt, militarized mania.

Love is how we’re asking for peace, a love that listens, and reconciles.

And so, we invite you to listen to the people of Afghanistan and to world public opinion on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans, to be internet-broadcast from Kabul this December.

It is time to listen broadly and deeply to both local and overseas Afghan civil groups and the numerous alternative solutions they have proposed for building a better socio-political, economic and religious/ideological future for Afghanistan.

We have shared the pain of our American friends who lost loved ones on September 11, by speaking with and listening to them.

Though, if the world could listen like these American friends did, the world would know that few Afghans have even heard about September 11 and that no Afghans were among the 19 hijackers. The world would have heard our yearnings as we were punished over the past 9 years.

If the world could listen, they would know how much we detest the violence of the Taliban, our warlords, any warlord, or any bullet-digging finger-trophy troops.

And now, for at least another four more years, we will grieve over souls who you are unwilling to ‘count’ and we are unwilling to lose.

It is extra painful to us and to your troops because clearly, there are non-violent and just alternatives.

We understand the pain of financial hardships but try telling an Afghan mother about to lose her child or a soldier about to take his life that the only way their illiterate and angry voices can ruffle the posh feathers of our world leaders is when it disturbs not their human or truth deficit, but their trillion dollar economic deficits. How do we explain that without denuding ourselves of human love and dignity?

What more can we say?

How else can we and our loved ones survive?

How can we survive with hearts panicking in disappointment while perpetually fleeing and facing a ’total’ global war, a war that wouldn’t be questioned even in the crude face of a thousand leaks?

We would survive in poverty, we may survive in hunger, but how can we survive without the hope that Man is capable of something better?

We sincerely wish you the best in your lives.

We are Afghans and we ask the world to listen.

سلامت باشین!

Salamat bAsheen!

Be at peace!

Meekly with respect,

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

by David McReynolds -

Wikileaks indicated that China has expressed some reservations about the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea (DPRK), even contemplating its possible unification with South Korea. (It isn't much of a secret that China is worried that, in the event of the collapse of the DPRK, China might be overwhelmed by refugees). It is my assumption that the DPRK had already wanted to broaden its openings to the world, and not be so heavily dependent on China as its only ally. (In a piece I sent out earlier this week I had noted the visit by two delegates from the DPRK to a conference in Norway of the International Peace Bureau, and the odd visit of three North Korean trade unionists in 1997 looking for contact with the "U.S. Labor Party").

As some of you know, I'm a terrible proof reader, and should let someone check this first, but let me send this out as a bit of history while the time is right - which is now. This is a story which doesn't begin in Asia at all, but with the German Democratic Republic (GDR). So here it is, my first and final draft of some diplomatic memories.

My own role is, at best, merely a guest at history's table, but I have had the chance to see some things before others were aware of them. I had been in East Berlin a couple of times during the height of the Cold War and found it terribly oppressive. The police, whom I remember as dressed in grey, marched through the streets with their rifles. The apartment buildings had none of the wonderful bursts of flowers in window boxes which one saw in even the poorest sections of West Berlin. On one occasion the members of the War Resisters International Council, of which I was a member, were meeting in West Berlin and were invited by the GDR's Peace Committee to dinner at what I think was called the Bertold Brecht House. We had to chose our delegates with care - one or two would not have been permitted past the Berlin Wall because of involvement with dissidents. Our delegation included a courageous Danish member of our Council who had been active in the underground during the war, and our Chair at the time - the redoubtable Myrtle Solomon.

There was one brief moment of unease when a little "pocket calculater and clock", which I carried in my jacket and which sounded the time once every hour, beeped during the middle of something I was saying. I turned to my jacket pocket and said "Be quiet". I assume the GDR folks were convinced it was a CIA device recording all.

The GDR sent delegations to the US and on one occasion the US Peace Council asked if I would host their delegation. I said yes, and, knowing that most of the time they would have been wined and dined in the spacious apartments of Communists in New York City, I said we would meet at my apartment, a fourth floor walkup on the Lower East Side. I spent all day cleaning the house and preparing a meal of genuine chili (no beans)and rice.

We had a small group of our people, Paul Mayer and Norma Becker were there - I'm not sure who else. The Germans were very late in coming, Norma, who had a habit of smoking pot, had broken out a joint and passed it around, so that when the Germans finally did come "our side" was mildly high. The occasion was rather stiff and formal. They were talking in platitudes about peace and democracy, while we wanted to have a real discussion. At one point, somewhat impatient, I said "This is all very interesting, but we would like to have your views on Solidarity". (The Polish union was just then much in the news). I'm afraid my question brought the meeting to an early conclusion, and their American minders got them safely out.

But from time to time, at the office of War Resisters League, I would have visitors drop by from Pravda, from the Soviet Peace Committee and, somewhat oddly, a young man from the GDR Consulate in Washington DC. The Soviets always brought a bottle of vodka, and while I had by then stopped drinking, it was shared with friends.

One afternoon the young man from the GDR came to visit, shortly after Yuri Andropov had assumed command of the Soviet Union. He told me to expect major shifts in Soviet policy. He said "I've been to parts of the Soviet Union that are off limits to tourists - the situation is not good. There will be changes, so great you may not believe them". Andropov, who had headed the KGB, had been a hard-liner in dealing with the crisis in Czechoslovakia in 1968. But he was, as my East German friend had said, a man who sought major reforms in the Soviet Union. (It was during his time in office that Samantha Smith was invited to the Soviet Union - Samantha was an American child who had written Andropov urging peace). When his health began to fail, he strongly urged that Gorbachev replace him. That however, didn't happen - Cherenenko took his place before, in turn, falling ill and dying. That was when Gorbachev became the head of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was the KGB candidate.

Because of that visit from the young man from the GDR who had told me what Andropov would do, (but who had died before he could do it), when the first signs of change came from Gorbachev, I knew something major was in the wind. At about that time I was going down to Washington DC to give a talk to a pacifist group. My friend from the GDR suggested he meet me for lunch. When we met, I said "I'm not clear what we are supposed to talk about - the FBI is probably following me and the CIA is certainly following you".

On my last trip to East Berlin I asked a young friend who lived in West Berlin to take me across the wall so that I could meet with East German dissidents. I met first with some student dissidents and then with some East German pastors. As I was leaving the pastors I said "I'm going next to meet with the official committee - should I tell them that I've met with you or would that place you in a difficult position?" They said "By all means tell them you've met with us - it is important for the official committee to know that these discussions are going on - in fact, we'll drive you there", and so they drove me to the headquarters of the GDR's Peace Committee. Clearly things had eased enormously from my first visit to East Berlin.

Looking back on this after the collapse of the GDR I realized that what the GDR was doing in a somewhat clumsy way was to try to "open a door to the West", to see if they might find ways of having relations with the West, rather than going through Moscow. Tragically that movement toward change in East Germany ended with the collapse of the GDR. Very strange, that year. I had a wall calendar in my office which I'd been sent by the GDR - before the year was out, the calendar was still up but the GDR had vanished.

In looking at the DPRK I suspect that at least some of those in high places in Pyongyang would like to have a more open window to the West. China has been a very good friend, having sent its own troops to die in the Korean War, and supplying food and energy to a country that is desperately poor. But if I were in Pyongyang and read the Wikileaks in which China and the US discussed possible futures for Korea, I'd want to look for more options. It is quite certain - there is no doubt of this in my mind - that some key forces in the US want to maintain the state of "no peace/no war" with North Korea as an excuse to keep US bases in South Korea and Japan in an effort to encircle China. But there are other key figures - certainly former President Jimmy Carter - who feel that this hard line military approach is neither safe nor sensible.

Thus the kind of relations between the Christian Churches in North and South Korea are of special importance. And the relief work of the Mennonites, while totally non-political, provides a door through which both sides can get a better sense of the other.

Remember the famous "Ping Pong Diplomacy" in 1971, when a team of American ping pong players, who had been in Japan, were invited to China, the first break in the wall, opening the door, eventually, to the visit by Nixon.

So those of us who are outside the doors of power should not think our actions do not count. The end of the Cold War was, in my view, made possible in part because the truly independent "European Nuclear Disarmament" movement (END) gave the Soviets some assurance that if they took the kind of gamble for peace which Gorbachev did, the Americans could not take advantage of it. (Tragically the West never realized the chance it had to move toward genuine disarmament and the dissolution of NATO - still trapped in its old game of domination it simply moved NATO's borders closer to Russia).

These are brief notes, typed in haste. They are meant to assure those of us who think all things in Korea are locked up solidly, that we must watch for any opening to extend a hand of friendship. Not because we are in love with the policies of the DPRK, but because the dangers of war are so much greater and more harmful to all sides than the risks of peace. Signals of great change often come as softly as a drop of water. An open hand achieves more than a closed fist.

***
David McReynolds was a chair of War Resisters International, and served as a co-chair of the Socialist Party USA. He is retired and lives on the Lower East Side in NYC. He can be reached at dmcreynolds(at)nyc.rr.com.

by Jill -

Dec. 6, 2010 - There’s a lot going around in bloglandia and on the interwebs about WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange’s sexual assault charge in Sweden; commentators are saying that Assange didn’t really rape anyone, and these are trumped-up charges of “sex by surprise,” which basically means that Assange didn’t wear a condom and so days later the women he slept with are claiming rape. Totally unfair, right?

Well, no, I’m not sure it’s that straightforward. The actual details of what happened are hard to come by, and are largely filtered through tabloid sources that are quick to offer crucial facts like the hair color of the women (blonde) and the clothes they wore (pink, tight), but it sounds like the sex was consensual on the condition that a condom was used. It also sounds like in one case, condom use was negotiated for and Assange agreed to wear a condom but didn’t, and the woman didn’t realize it until after they had sex; in the second case, it sounds like the condom broke and the woman told Assange to stop, which he did not. This is of course speculation based on the bare-bones reported description of events, but it’s at least clear that “this is a case of a broken condom” isn’t close to the whole story. (It’s also worth pointing out that the charge is actually a quite minor one in Sweden, and the punishment is a $700 fine).

Withdrawal of consent should be grounds for a rape charge (and it is, in Sweden) — if you consent to having sex with someone and part of the way through you say to stop and the person you’re having sex with continues to have sex with you against your wishes, that’s rape. That may not sound entirely familiar to Americans, since the United States has relatively regressive rape laws; in most states, there’s a requirement of force in order to prove rape, rather than just demonstrating lack of consent. Consent is more often used as a defense to a rape charge, and it’s hard to convict someone of rape based solely on non-consent. Some states, like New York, have rape laws on the books which include “no means no” provisions for intercourse — basically, if a reasonable person would have understood that the sex was not consensual, then that’s rape. It seems obvious enough, but those laws are not used nearly as often as forcible-rape laws; they
aren’t on the books in many states, and they’re difficult to enforce even where they are.

Withdrawal of consent gets even trickier. It’s an obvious enough concept for feminist thinkers who have spent more than 10 minutes considering the realities of sex and sexual assault: If you consent to sex but then at some point during sex withdraw that consent by telling your partner to stop, your partner should stop, and if your partner doesn’t stop then that’s assault. It’s not too hard, for those of us who have had sex, to imagine how this works — I have a difficult time imagining any decent human being hearing their partner say “Stop!” in the middle of sex and not, you know, stopping. I can’t imagine hearing my partner say “Stop” and not stopping. And if your partner is saying “Stop stop stop stop!” and you keep going, yes, you are raping them.

But the concept of withdrawing consent seems to be a little tougher for folks who think of sex as something women give to men (or men take from women); it’s definitely a tougher concept for folks who think that sex inherently sullies women. I suspect that the thought process goes, If the damage (penetrative sex) has already been done, then the situation can’t possibly turn into a rape, because the initial penetration itself occurred consensually, and it’s that penetration that’s the basis of the harm in any rape case. Consent, in that framework, isn’t the point. The U.S. is a bit of a patchwork when it comes to withdrawal of consent laws, with some states recognizing that withdrawal of consent is valid and that it is rape if you keep having sex with someone after they’ve said no, and other states either not touching the issue or not recognizing as rape situations where consent is withdrawn post-penetration. Making the Assange story juicier
blog-bait in the U.S. is the fact that we’re deeply wedded to the notion of rape as forcible; despite many of our best efforts, a consent-based framework for evaluating sexual assault is not yet widely accepted. So we hear “she consented to sex but only with a condom and he didn’t use a condom and now she’s claiming he raped her” and we go, “say what?”, because that’s so far removed from the Law & Order: SVU sexual assault model. When, really, if you evaluate sexual assault through the lens of consent rather than force or violence, the picture starts to look a little bit different.

Whether withdrawal of consent is what actually happened here is impossible to tell, so I’m not suggesting that Assange is a rapist or that these charges are 100% definitely on-point; I have no idea. But neither do the commentators who are saying that Assange did nothing more than have sex without a condom. And it’s important to counter the “haha sex by surprise those crazy Swedes” media narrative with the fact that actually, non-consensual sex is assault and should be recognized as such by law. Consenting to one kind of sexual act doesn’t mean that you consent to anything else your partner wants to do; if it’s agreed that the only kind of sex we’re having is with a condom, then it does remove an element of consent to have sex without a condom with only one partner’s knowledge. To use another example, if you and your partner agree that you can penetrate her, it doesn’t necessarily follow that she has the green light to penetrate you
whenever and however.

I’m not particularly interested in debating What Assange Did or Whether Assange Is A Rapist, and I’d appreciate it if we could steer clear of that in the comments section. Rather, I’m interested in pushing back on the primary media narrative about this case, which is that women lie and exaggerate about rape, and will call even the littlest thing — a broken condom! — rape if they’re permitted to under a too-liberal feminist legal system. In fact, there are lots of good reasons to support consent-based sexual assault laws, and to recognize that consent goes far beyond “yes you can put that in here now.” It’s a shame that the shoddy, sensationalist reporting on this case have muddied those waters.

UPDATE: As greater clarity is brought to these charges, it sounds like it was a lot more than “they agreed he would wear a condom and he didn’t.” According to the Press Association, “The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner … The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on August 17 without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.”

from Feministe

SOCIALIST CANDIDATE’S SUPPORTERS FOUND NEW ORGANIZATION TO FIGHT TO DEFEND OHIO JOBS AND SERVICES, RESIST KASICH

Supporters of the Dan La Botz, Socialist for Senate campaign of 2010 met in Columbus, Ohio over the weekend to found a new organization and launch a campaign to fight for jobs and public services in Ohio— they also pledged to resist the policies of Republic Governor-elect John Kasich. Dan La Botz was the Socialist Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio in November 2010 and received 25,000 votes.
The 23 labor and movement activists from cities throughout Ohio created the Buckeye Socialist Network (there will soon be a BuckeyeSocialist.org website). The Network’s first campaign is called DEFEND OHIO and will focus on defending public employees’ jobs and public services.

“Governor Kasich has unleashed a class war in Ohio,” said Dan La Botz. “And we intend to fight back. Kasich’s inauguration is the ideal occasion for Ohio’s working people to protest in at the Capital in Columbus and to show the governor that he is going to face four years of fierce resistance by unions and social movements."

“Kasich,” said La Botz, “pledged to revoke the union organizing rights of home care and child care workers in Ohio. This is a vicious and despicable attack on the some of the state’s hardest working and lowest paid workers. And it is not so different from President Obama’s recent promise to freeze the wages of Federal employees. These attacks on public employees parallel the private employers drive for two-tier labor contracts intended to lower wages and they parallel attacks on social programs for low-income people in our society."

“We will be organizing working people to fight to defend public employees’ jobs, their wages, and their right to unionize. We will be fighting to defend all of the many services that these workers—teachers, social workers, water workers, garbage collectors, and so many others—provide. In doing so, we will be beginning the right to rebuild the power of unions in Ohio.”

Union members from the Teamsters, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, American Federation of Government Employees, Communication Workers of America, and United Food and Commercial Workers were among those in attendance at the founding meeting of the Buckeye Socialist Network. Representatives from Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton/Yellow Springs, Canton, and New Philadelphia attended the half-day meeting.

While the La Botz campaign organization called the meeting, the Buckeye Socialist Network will be an autonomous organization. Members of several different political groups attended the founding meeting including members of the Socialist Party, Solidarity, the Democratic Socialist of America, the Green Party, and the Ohio State Labor Party.

by Billy Wharton -

Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With Another Spoon
Jacinta Bunnell and Nathaniel Kusinitz
Reach And Teach / PM Press
September 2010
$10

Searching for a Christmas present that will help your children challenge the heterosexual norms of the nuclear family? This may not seem like a typical holiday season consideration, but for left-wing parents buying a gift for their children can mean a treacherous navigation through a world of militarism, frozen gender roles and idiocy (see the popular szu-szu pet). Luckily, our friends at PM Press have just the trick. A subversive coloring book that re-engineers popular fairy tales.

Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With Another Spoon was written by Jacinta Bunnell and illustrated by Nathaniel Kusinitz. Bunnell states in a short intro that what draws her to creating things for children “is the all out cross-dressing, binary-smashing disregard for gender norms” that children embrace.

And there is plenty of traffic across traditional gender roles here. A mighty monster who prefers petite dresses and a fancy dog to scaring people. A wedding cake with the inscription “Marriage is so gay” below it. And a smiling boy dressed as Wonder Woman above the line “Not every little boy wants to be Superman when he grows up.”

Each page contains these smartly drawn punk rock cartoons that challenge traditional gender politics in an obvious, but not overbearing manner. You get the feeling that this book is more about the fun of childhood than any grownup agenda. Yet, it will produce many teachable moments.

My 5 year-old daughter was particular drawn to a page that features a cute princess puckering up for a kiss with a frog. The air bubble above the princess expresses her true desires for a non-traditional outcome to her magical smooch. “I hope it’s another princess, I hope it’s another princess…” My daughter laughed out loud, before asking a series of questions. What a wonderfully disarming way to begin such a conversation.

So, if you are looking for a Holiday present that offers a bit more than empty kicks Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With Another Spoon might be an excellent fit. Good for a conversation piece with friends or as an educational resource for subversive youth. And anyway as my daughter observed, “It’s cute!”

by Kartika Liotard -

The European Parliament recently approved a resolution on 'solidarity between the generations' Sounds good, but the Parliament maintained a justified reputation for Orwellian language by including in the resolution a series of questionable initiatives allegedly designed to tackle the problem of an 'ageing society'.

The resolution, which fortunately has no legal force, creates an image of old people as a heavy burden. Inactive old people, and those in need of care, are blamed for unaffordable pensions and unaffordable care.

The German Christian Democrat who wrote the resolution, Thomas Mann, claims to want to maintain solidarity between the generations, yet lays the emphasis on the alleged need to run down state pension systems and promote private pension provision in their place. In reality, such an approach represents an attack on solidarity and will only worsen the already visible problem of poverty amongst retired people. Old people run the greatest risk of falling into poverty, and most poor people are now to be found amongst the old.

The resolution also favours a European Union package of minimum standards for care for the elderly, which would apply in all member states. Care of better quality and at a more affordable price would be excellent, but this proposal would create precisely the opposite. Minimum standards would open the door to the privatisation of care for the elderly, something which the EU has long sought. The implications of the Bolkestein Directive on the provision of services, for example, are that a market for such services would be created across the EU. This is not the way to ensure that old people can afford the necesary care, or that they receive the best possible care, or that people can continue to live as independently as possible for as long as possible.

Mann sees old people as consumers - rich consumers for preference - who represent a potentially profitable market sector with enormous growth potential. Old people can be sold products and services which enable them to lead longer and more comfortable, more independent lives. Of course this is in itself a reasonable goal, but not if it is seen primarily as a potential source of profit. Profit for whom? Is it the aim to give everyone the chance to enjoy such products and services, or is it mainly to give the economy a boost without paying attention to the real needs and actual financial capabilities of old people themselves?

Clearly Mann's resolution puts the economic interest of profit-making corporations first, rather than the needs of society or of human beings. The EU wants to see competition, privatisation, and reponibsility for one's own wellebing placed firmly on the shoulders of the individual. The intention is to realise these things through undermining state pension systems and other forms of social security and welfare, as well as socialised health care and care for the elderly. This is not the 'solidarity between the generations' mentioned in the resolution's title, but the bitter prospect of a bleak old age for all but the rich.

***
Kartika Liotard is a Dutch Member of the European Parliament affiliated to the United European Left/Nordic Green Left political group (GUE/NGL). Photo by John van Hulsen.

from Spectrezine

The date was chosen to honor the United Nations General Assembly's adoption and proclamation, on 10 December 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the first global enunciation of human rights. The formal establishment of Human Rights Day occurred at the 317th Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on 4 December 1950, when the General Assembly declared resolution 423(V), inviting all member states and any other interested organizations to celebrate the day as they saw fit.

The day is a high point in the calendar of UN headquarters in New York City, United States, and is normally marked by both high-level political conferences and meetings and by cultural events and exhibitions dealing with human rights issues. In addition, it is traditionally on 10 December that the five-yearly United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights and Nobel Peace Prize are awarded. Many governmental and nongovernmental organizations active in the human rights field also schedule special events to commemorate the day, as do many civil and social-cause organisations.

The theme for 2006 was the struggle against poverty, taking it as a human rights issue. Several statements were released on that occasion, including the one issued by 37 United Nations Special Procedures mandate holders
Today, poverty prevails as the gravest human rights challenge in the world. Combating poverty, deprivation and exclusion is not a matter of charity, and it does not depend on how rich a country is. By tackling poverty as a matter of human rights obligation, the world will have a better chance of abolishing this scourge in our lifetime....Poverty eradication is an achievable goal.
—UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, 10 December 2006

The 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights occurred on 10 December 2008, and the UN Secretary-General launched a year-long campaign leading up to this anniversary. Because the UDHR holds the world record as the most translated document (with more than 360 language versions available), organizations around the globe used the year to focus on helping people everywhere learn about their rights.

from Wikipedia -