intheav.com Blogs - Cybertariat - The red corner

'Patriot' Act vs democracy

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:31:50 +0000

avbornbred: �Can you [Cybertariat] explain your comments about our...liberty being destroyed? How is that happening? Since 911 there have been attacks. But, overall, our government has created policies - some outrageous - that have worked so far ... thanks to the Patriot Act.� �posted to the thread entitled �I would have pissed on them, too, Marine� Though his own words - �some outrageous� - should be enough to convince avbornbred that the added security that the so-called Patriot Act has allegedly provided us with is not worth the accompanying loss of liberty, I will say that three (3) key provisions of the Patriot Act (Section 213, Section 215 and Section 505) are its most outrageous. Section 213 greatly and unconstitutionally expands the political state�s capacity to perform criminal search warrants - which in no way have to involve so-called terrorism - and seize the property of individuals, including American citizens, without informing the targeted individual for several weeks if not several months. These are know as �sneak and peak� warrants which were granted by the US Congress on a permanent basis without any type of sunset provision. Section 215 enables the FBI to confiscate a huge panoply of personal belongings and information - embodying library, business and medical records - through the use of stealth intelligence tools which do not require the presence of criminal activity. Although such documentation may only be received through a court order, judges are legally compelled by Section 215 to grant such �requests� thereby reducing the constitutional process known as �judicial review� to nothing more than a rubber-stamping process. Section 505 lowers - quite substantially - the evidentiary standards for NSLs (national security letters), that are disseminated at the sole discretion of the US Department of Justice, administer an all-encompassing gag order on targeted individuals and are in no way subject to judicial review. These supposed �national security letters� may be utilized in order to confiscate an extremely wide variety of personal financial and business records, and may also be employed by FBI and/or Homeland Security officials to secure membership lists of institutions that allow for so much as limited Internet services (i.e., blogs within, say, Earth First�s website). This section - Section 505 - is also of a permanent nature; without a sunset provision. Now of course at this point many a political reactionary will state something to the effect of �Well, if it helps to put an end to Islamic terrorism, I�m all for it� and/or �If you�re not involved in terrorist or criminal activities, you haven�t anything to be concerned about.� But, aside from Benjamin Franklin�s admonishment that �Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither,� it must be considered that the alleged �terrorist attacks� that have taken place since America�s 911 have, in actuality, been little if anything more than law enforcement nuisances that have been carried out by utterly inept, Keystone Cops-like characters that have often ended up doing harm to themselves while managing to harm absolutely no one. The �Shoe �Bomber,�� the �Underwear �Bomber,�� the highly ineptly assembled �Time Square car �bomb� that smoldered like a 4th of July �snake� firework, etc., have not been terrorist attacks, they have been comedies of error. The simple fact of the matter is that this supposititious �terrorist threat� that the political state and its lapdog capitalist media keep to hyping is virtually nonexistent because the Islamic terrorism - actually the Wahhabi terrorism - that Osama bin Laden and a very few others believed would spread like wildfire throughout the world has simply failed to materialize. But to hear the likes of the Homeland Security agency go on and on with its multicolored alert system and such, one would think that Wahhabi �terrorists� are somehow able to carry out large-scale attacks on American soil at will - and for good reason: the political state - at the behest of the capitalist class - desperately needs for we workers to believe that this �terrorist threat� is much more than the mere annoyance that it actually is in order to further dismantle the Constitution and Bill of Rights as well as to justify constant increases in this society�s already bloated military budget. So has the Patriot Act, as avbornbred stated, �worked so far�? As a means of countering terrorism? No. After all, the threat of terrorism as it relates to the United States is all but nonexistent. But as exemplified by its Sections 213, 215 and 505, the Patriot Act has worked to all but eliminate our freedom of association, our freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, our right to legal representation, our right to speedy and public trials, and even our freedom of speech and religion. And that, to me, was the very intent of the Patriot Act in the first place. Why? Because just as democracy is incompatible with the workplace, so too is democracy incompatible with the "needs" of capitalism at large, for democracy has forever been a threat to infinitesimally small ruling classes and the present-day American capitalist class is certainly no exception. Its system of industrial/economic production has wrought social problems which it nor its political system can possibly solve. So it - through its political system - necessarily turns to social repression in order to protect itself and to ensure its continued existence. Its only possible response to the crime, drug abuse and alcoholism that its antisocial system breeds is social repression. Its only possible response to the growing degree of unemployment, poverty, the extreme economic gap between capitalists and workers, unequal educational opportunities, and still other issues driving the Occupy Wall Street movement, for example, is social repression. Its only possible response to opposition to its imperialist wars - its natural resource wars - is social repression. In order for the capitalist class� political state to carry out such repression - in direct response to the rapidly disintegrating state of the capitalist system - the civil liberties of workers must be compromised and, if possible, completely eliminated. Ergo, the function of the titular Patriot Act and other Draconian, anti-constitutional measures. To put it another way, the capitalist class� plutocracy is enacting repressive legislation in order to protect the capitalist class and its economic system from the working class. Moreover, the capitalist class has long endeavored to prevent workers from being able to organize themselves (read: the Taft-Hartley Act and other anti-trade union legislation.) The short of it all, is that capitalism always has been and is in fact becoming increasingly incompatible with democratic principles. And the longer that we continue to accept - indeed embrace the continued existence of capitalism, the more its plutocracy will try to do away with the hard-fought-for democratic gains of past generations by way of capitalist class-serving legislation the likes of the �Patriot� Act. Finally. Although avbornbred and all other political reactionaries will forever fail to comprehend the Patriot Act�s ominous nature (despite its blatantly obvious unconstitutional characteristics), it is my hope that this post will cause less ideologically developed - perhaps younger readers - to understand that, unlike the capitalist class, the working class possesses a vested interest in preserving and expanding democracy. It is also my hope that the less ideologically developed will come to the realization that socialism, which would be firmly grounded in and dependent upon the democratic control of all institutions, including the economy, is fundamentally inseparable from democracy. ***** Yours in revolution. Guy R. Marsh Lancaster 93536 Member at-large (since 1990) Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) http://www.slp.org/ (Please note that the following type of comment posts will be deleted from this thread: those containing childish or otherwise offensive material; those containing cut-and-pasted material that exceed fifty-percent of their total content; and those containing video clips regardless of whether or not they might be accompanied by any amount of original writings [the embedding of URLs or �hotlinks� within comment posts which serve to direct readers to video clips will be accepted provided that all such posts also contain original writings of no fewer than fifty words]. Thank you.) ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

America: A secular, democratic republic

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:47:43 +0000

Within his quickly archived thread entitled "NATIVITY IN TEXAS UNDER ATTACK [12.15.11]," avbornbred asked: "If the United States is not a Christian nation, then what is it?" The United States is a secular, democratic republic. As such and as per it's Constitution's Establishment Clause which expressly forbids the official establishment of one religion over all others, the US is anything but a Christian nation. Unlike the Iranian government which was able to have officially declared Iran to be an Islamic nation or, say, the Israeli government which was able to have officially declared Israel to be a Jewish nation, the US government is legally devoid of the ability to officially declare the US to be a Christian nation nor a nation of any other religion. avbornbred: "Besides a county free of tyranny and kings, what was the country formed upon?" Although a thorough response to that question lies well beyond the limited nature of this post, an admittedly simplified answer is that the US - the US Constitution - was formed upon the basic principles of Classical Liberalism as set forth by the likes of Thomas Paine, Thomas Hobbes, Francois Voltaire and David Hume. Classical Liberalism sets forth the protection of human liberty by way of the protection of such things as property rights and of the right of the individual to the benefits of his or her labor power. The short of it all is that this nation's founding had absolutely nothing to do with Christianity. In fact, to study not only the Constitution but also the personal beliefs of the majority of the key founding fathers is to know that, if anything, the US was founded, in part, upon the principle of freedom from religion rather than upon any type of religious principles. avbornbred: "As I seem to recall, when the president of the United States is sworn into office, he places his right hand on a Bible (a Christian book, in case you did not know) and swears his oath to office." Yes they do, but that practice does not begin to suggest that our founders did not intend for there to be a separation between church and state. After all, the Constitution does not stipulate that presidents or any other government officials place a hand upon a bible nor to recite the phrase "so help me 'God'." In fact, the exact opposite is the case because the portions of the US Constitution having to do with oaths of political office are of an utterly secular nature and, accordingly, are evidence of the fact that America's founders did indeed intend for there to be a clear and distinct separation between church and state. Article II, section I of the US Constitution reads as follows: "Before he enters upon the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation: 'I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'" Therefore, there is absolutely nothing within the Constitution's Article II, Section I that requires oath-takers to take their oaths upon a bible. The reason behind what has become the tradition of oath-takers swearing upon a bible has to do with George Washington having been sworn in as President of the United States within the state of New York whose then-state constitution required that office holders swear their oaths on a bible. (As an aside, the federal officials responsible for Washington's swearing-in ceremony were unaware of New York's law vis-a vis the use of a bible during such ceremonies and were forced to scurry-about at the last moment in search of a bible.) The reason for what has become the tradition of oath-takers stating "So help me 'God'" at the end of their oaths has only to do with the fact that Washington simply ad-libbed "So help me God" at the end of his oath of office. avbornbread: "As for far-right Christian fundamentalists, they have made statements condemning homosexuality. But they are not rounding up gays and killing them." No they are not. Then again, the United States is not a Christian nation. Were it a Christian nation, then it is safe to assume that an Ayatollah Khomeini-like head-of-state and those who would surround him would see to the execution of not only LBGT peoples but also Marxists, atheists and other freethinkers. avbornbred: I still don�t understand how the left says we are not a Christian nation when every couple of blocks, even here in the Antelope Valley, there is a Christian church. I guess they are just structures and that people don�t go to those churches to worship and practice their Christian religious beliefs.� First of all, the fact that the United States is not a Christian nation is not something that is given to partisan politics. Reasonable political conservatives are no less likely to recognize the secular nature of the American political state than are political progressives. Secondly, yes, there seems to be a Christian church located within �every couple of blocks� throughout the United States. Yet so too does there seem to be a fast �food� outlet located within every couple of blocks throughout the United States. But does that fact mean to suggest that the US is officially a fast �food� nation? Well, as much as the extremely high prevalence of fast �food� diets would seem to intimate otherwise, no, it is not. And the same holds true with respect to Christianity; were there to be a Christian church on each and every block in America, and were each and every American also a Christian, America still would not be a Christian nation. avbornbred: �There are more churches, even more Islamic mosques than atheist structures.� Beyond the obvious question of �What is it that constitutes �an atheist structure� (the �STAPLES Center� and such?), what of the number of churches in the United States? I mean, if one day the number of Islamic mosques within the US were to surpass its total number of churches, the likes of avbornbred would not likely conclude that �the US is now an Islamic nation,� no? avbornbred: �When you add the number of religious structures of [Christianity and] all other religions, you really do see that America is a land of religion.� Indeed it is. And, as Ray Cunneff mentioned within avbornbred�s original thread, that religious diversity is a manifestation of the First Amendment�s Establishment Clause rather than of anything related to Christianity itself. For it is abundantly obvious that, were this to be an officially sanctioned Christian nation as is the case in Iran, that diversity would not exist. Notes: * Ironically, the bible used during George Washington�s swearing-in ceremony was a Masonic bible that came to be secured from a nearby Masonic Lodge literally minutes before Washington was to have been sworn in. So, in keeping with tradition, perhaps a Masonic bible should always be used for such ceremonies ;-) ***** Persevere.. Guy.. ***** (Please note that the following type of comment posts will be deleted from this thread: those containing childish or otherwise offensive material; those containing cut-and-pasted material that exceed fifty-percent of their total content; and those containing video clips regardless of whether or not they might be accompanied by any amount of original writings [the embedding of URLs or "hotlinks" within comment posts which serve to direct readers to video clips will be accepted provided that all such posts also contain original writings of no fewer than fifty words.] Thank you.)

Capitalism: '...the borders remain porous' (Part II)

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 02:49:27 +0000

Those who contend that I do not condemn the capitalists who benefit from undocumented immigration are correct, for I condemn and call for the abolition of that which allows for the existence of capitalists and undocumented immigration in the first place - the capitalist system of production itself. As evidenced by my having written " ...the simple fact of the matter is that, although social ills the likes of undocumented immigration and unemployment have been worsened by NAFTA and other international agreements, capitalist treaties and trade are not the cause of said social ills" (ninth paragraph), it is my belief that the human beings known as capitalists are simply not the problem. Matter-of-factly, were we to eliminate the capitalist system thereby assimilating capitalists into the working class as useful producers, no longer would human beings be compelled to leave their loved ones behind and engage in the dangerous endeavor known as undocumented immigration. But, beyond NAFTA, CAFTA and still other capitalist-class-serving international trade agreements, what is it that causes undocumented immigration? First of all, the United States is within a set of circumstances in which its economy is swimming in capitalist-held capital while Mexico is swimming in idle labor power much more than what we are. Given the immutable rules of capitalism these two forces carry with them the consequence of poverty stricken Latino workers crossing imaginary lines without caring as to whether or not they are breaking any laws. For their part, agricultural capitalists, hotel and restaurant capitalists, construction capitalists and others hire undocumented workers precisely because they are undocumented and therefore far more exploitable than are American citizens. (The need to grant citizenship to the undocumented precisely for that reason being the subject of another thread.) Ergo, all of this occurs largely unchecked simply because the demands of the capitalist system are much stronger than is the American public's demand that immigration laws be enforced. So too does capitalism's laws of international competition serve to exacerbate undocumented immigration. The still rather crude Chinese capitalist system, for example, is so exploitive of its working class and natural environment that it is able to undersell Third World-produced commodities, including those produced within Mexico. The ever-present possibility of runaway inflation is also a factor behind undocumented immigration. Were the relationship between undocumented workers and the capitalist who employ them not to exist, these capitalists would use it as an excuse to raise the cost of food and other consumer goods thereby setting in motion yet another round of inflation. Moreover, since the price of foodstuffs are amongst the most pivotal of the laws governing capitalist economies, the cost of nearly everything would rise in direct proportion to rising food prices. In conclusion, the lot of you can and likely will continue to complain about the symptoms of the social ill known as undocumented immigration. But unless and until a majority of the American citizenry arrives at the understanding that it is the capitalist system itself rather than "'greedy' capitalists" that created undocumented immigration, it will never end and surely worsen. Therefore, to stand in support of the capitalist system of production is to stand in tacit support of undocumented immigration. ***** Yours in revolution. Guy R. Marsh Lancaster 93536 Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) (Please note that the following type of comment posts will be deleted from this thread: those containing childish or otherwise offensive material; those containing cut-and-pasted material that exceed fifty-percent of their total content; and those containing video clips regardless of whether or not they might be accompanied by any amount of original writings [the embedding of URLs or "hotlinks" within comment posts which serve to direct readers to video clips will be accepted as long as all such posts also contain original writings of no fewer than fifty words.] Thank you). *********************************************************

Undocumented workers and public services

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 03:12:20 +0000

To me, depriving undocumented workers of the public services that their taxes pay for is an affront to simple human decency. Yes, I wrote "public services that their taxes pay for" because undocumented workers do pay taxes. In fact, approximately seventy-percent of undocumented workers pay personal income taxes, Social Security taxes and Medicare taxes. But, there are those who insist upon promoting the false notion that the undocumented constitute a gigantic drain on this society's social welfare programs, public schools, hospitals etc. In actuality, however, the federal government's social welfare reform act of 1996 barred undocumented workers from virtually all federally-funded social welfare programs including housing assistance, food stamps and all forms of Medicaid. The only public services that the undocumented may avail themselves to are K-12 public education and emergency medical services. And, to all but the supremely ignorant, whether our undocumented brothers and sisters own their homes or whether they rent their homes, they pay property taxes which support public schools as well as other public services. Yes, US-born children of undocumented workers are eligible for various food stamp programs. But it is only they - amongst their family members - who are so eligible. And the average food stamp benefit for such children is but approximately ninety-six-dollars per month or twenty-four-dollars per week - $3.24 per day. This all the while the capitalist class writes off millions of dollars worth of golf ball "expenses" each year, and all the while our nativists say little to nothing about such corporate wealthfare programs. Apparently, subsidizing the material needs of poorer, US-born children regardless of the immigration status of their parents is a "bad thing" while the subsidizing of the capitalist class' golf balls fails to elicit any type of response from our xenophobes. What a lovely society we have here. What a lovely society indeed. Now of course many undocumented workers do in fact place a burden on certain US border cities where they first arrive, unemployed and without money. But mean-spirited - indeed inhumane Draconian anti-immigration legislation is not the solution. I believe that the solution would be for the federal government to give these border cities the surplus tax monies that it collects from undocumented workers. This would serve to defray the cost that such cities and counties incur by providing public services to undocumented workers and their families. So perhaps the most important reason that US border cities are so burdened is because of the federal government's failure to institute some sort of guest worker program. A program of that kind could, as such programs have in the past, match workers with agricultural capitalists and the like ahead of time so that these workers would not be stranded and unemployed in border cities for extended periods of time. Indeed and as I stated earlier this day and within a separate thread, the alleged cost of undocumented workers is a false issue that has been invented by those who do not want immigrants of color to be here in the first place and regardless of whether or not undocumented workers contribute to this society or not. But the undocumented do contribute to this society. They most certainly do. ***************************************************** Yours in revolution. Guy R. Marsh Lancaster 93536 Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) (Please note that the following type of comment posts will be deleted from this thread: those containing childish or otherwise offensive material; those which contain cut-and-pasted material that exceed fifty-percent of their total content; and those containing video clips regardless of whether or not they might be accompanied by any amount of original writings [the embedding of URLs or "hotlinks" within comment posts which serve to lead readers to video clips will be accepted as long as all such posts also contain original writings of no fewer than fifty words.] Thank you.) *****************************************************

Socialist critique of the 'Third Industrial Revolution'

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:47:27 +0000

(Rather than to respond to Ray Cunneff's The Third Industrial Revolution within that thread, I have elected to respond via the creation of this new thread for archival and retrieval purposes.) ***** Quoted from Jeremy Rifkin's latest and aforementioned book entitled The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, published by Palgrave Macmillian, 2011. Jeremy Rifkin: "Our industrial civilization is at a crossroads. Oil and the other fossil fuel energies that make up the industrial way of life are sunsetting, and the technologies made from and propelled by these energies are antiquated. The entire industrial infrastructure built off of fossil fuels is aging and in disrepair. The result is that unemployment is rising to dangerous levels all over the world. Governments, businesses and consumers are awash in debt and living standards are plummeting everywhere. A record one billion human beings - nearly one-seventh of the human race - face hunger and starvation." While the days of the world's carbon-based economy are unquestionably numbered, and while I agree that certain technologies and all forms of fossil fule-fed propulsion are antiquated, precisely none of this can be rightfully attributed to any level of global unemployment. Jeremy Rifkin is an economist and writer whom I respect and one whose work I often find to be informative. But his statement that peak oil, antiquated fossil fuel-based technologies and an aging industrial infrastructure have resulted in "unemployment...rising to dangerous levels all over the world" is a part of that which makes Jeremy Rifkin anything but the Marxist economist that he is sometimes referred to as. Unemployment is the result of three basic factors: 1) the fact that, under capitalism, industrial production is geared toward satisfying the economic needs of capitalists rather than toward the satisfying of humankind's material needs; 2) because of the fact that we workers cannot buy all of the commodities that we produce and; 3) because ongoing improvements to the means of production (e.g., computerization and robotization) enable capitalists to increase production and thus profits while employing fewer and fewer workers. These three main tenets of capitalism result in unemployment - in that, once production quotas are met, once the sales volume of finished commodities drops to a certain point, and once jobs become automated, workers are then laid off, permanently in many cases. (So too are these and other such contradictions of the capitalist system those which constantly tend toward economic recessions and depressions.) To verify what I have written here thus far, we should only have to perform a cursory examination of the primary industry of which Jeremy Rifkin wrote of; the oil industry. As of 2010 and according to EconMatters, "US Crude Oil Refining Capacity [was] Near [a] 30-year High." This despite of the dismal state of the US economy and despite of the fact that America's newest oil refinery opened during the year 1977. So if any number of oil refinery workers have been laid off of late, those lay offs would have been due to the ever-dwindling supply of oil as well as to the oil industry's desire to keep gasoline prices artificially high by way of not constructing additional refineries. These hypothetical layoffs would have had no connection to the oil industry's physical infrastructure - its means of oil/economic production - which appear to be operating rather well, wouldn't you say? Too, does Jeremy Rifkin's "unemployment is rising to dangerous levels..." suggest that he deems a certain level of unemployment to be acceptable? Of course he does. After all, he is, in the end, a capitalist economist. As such, he may even be of the belief that an unemployment rate of, say, five-percent is "healthy" for the economy." That is to say - healthy for capitalists because a reserve pool of labor (Marx) helps to keep wages as low as possible; it assures capitalists with a ready supply of additional workers when needed; it supplies them with replacement workers during strikes; and it keeps them chalk-full of cannon fodder for their - the capitalist class' - wars. Nor does peak oil, sunsetting technologies and the like have anything whatsoever to do with the reality that "Governments...and consumers are awash in debt and [that] living standards are plummeting everywhere." (I intentionally omitted the word "businesses" from Rifkin's "Governments, businesses and consumers..." since, save for many small businesses, most businesses are clearly not "awash in debt." In fact, as Barrack Obama demonstrated earlier this year when he all but literally begged them to begin spending a bit of it, most "Fortune 500" businesses are awash in cash not debt.) Governments and consumers/[workers] are in fact awash in debt and experiencing plummeting living standards. This, however, has everything to do with the fact that more and more working-class-produced wealth is being funneled into fewer and fewer capitalist coffers while it has nothing to do with Jeremy Rifkin's aforementioned reasoning. The average American worker has not enjoyed an increase in real wages (those adjusted for inflation) since 1973 all the while capitalists have become infinitely more wealthy, and governments are faced with tax bases that are declining accordingly as well as with its own ever-increasing plutocratic nature. Simply put, the capitalist class is now buying government influence like never before because, among other reasons, most capitalists now wish to pay less money, or preferably no amount of money, in the form of taxes. Jeremy Rifkin: "It is becoming increasingly clear that we need a new economic narrative that can take us into a more equitable and sustainable future...In my explorations, I came to realize that the great economic revolutions in history occurred when new communication technologies converge with new energy systems. New energy regimes make possible the creation of more interdependent economic activity and expanded commercial exchange as well as facilitate more dense and inclusive social relationships... In the coming era, hundreds of millions of people will produce their own green energy in their homes, offices and factories and share it with each other in an 'energy Internet,' just like the way we now create and share information online. The democratization of energy will bring with it a fundamental reordering of human relationships, impacting the very way we conduct business, govern society, educate our children and engage in civil life." [Emphasis not in original.] Clearly, Jeremy Rifkin and all Marxists can agree that "[i]t is becoming increasingly clear that we need a new economic narrative that can take us into a more equitable and sustainable future." But, after reading all of the excerpts posted to the Huffington Report, and while I freely acknowledge that Jeremy Rifkin is of a much deeper intellect than what I am, not to mention a far superior writer, I have been unable to imagine how this "energy Internet" will bring about "a fundamental reordering of relationships." Rifkin tells us that this fundamental reordering of relationships will stem from the "democratization of energy" without his ever telling us of who would own this futuristic "energy Internet." Would it be owned and administered collectively by those who would use it and contribute to it, or would it be owned and controlled by energy capitalists? Given his repeated mentioning of the CEOs, business leaders and representatives of various political states he is working with in the "development" of "the energy Internet," one can only assume that Jeremy Rifkin is pushing his energy Internet with an eye toward its being owned by the same, old, related powers that be - energy capitalists. Therefore, I am also unable to imagine how in the world this energy Internet could possibly constitute the democratization of energy production or, moreover, how it could usher in a "fundamental reordering of relationships" while wanting of the social ownership and democratic administration of this new Internet - while wanting of a fundamental reordering of relationships. Jeremy Rifkin speaks of a grid which users/producers could pull from and contribute to. So it would of course be a physical structure similar to if not identical to the current system of electricity distribution. This is a system which is now mainly owned by Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, Con Edison and other privately held utility firms. Yet Rifkin makes no mention of the certainty that these utilities would not relinquish ownership, control and thus the profitability of that system of electricity distribution. The concept of lateral power - of "using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid that acts just like the Internet" (Rifkin) is, to me, a sound and viable concept. But I do not see it coming to fruition within the overall framework of the prevailing economic order. I hope to be mistaken, but I do not believe that I am mistaken. To gain an insight as to who it is that may be mistaken and who it is that may be correct, let us examine a portion of Jeremy Rifkin's past writings. Within his The End of Work..., Putman Publishing, 1995, Jeremy Rifkin wrote: "During the 1950s, automation began to take a toll on America's manufacturing sector...Hardest hit were unskilled jobs in industries where black workers were concerned. Between 1953 and 1962, 1.6 million blue-collor jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector. While the unemployment rate for black Americans had never exceeded 8.5 percent between 1947 and 1953 and the white rate of unemployment was only 5.9 percent." Were Jeremy Rifkin a Marxist he may have also stated that capitalism's cheerleaders of that era asserted that layoffs created by automation and other improvements to the means of production were temporary and that new jobs would be created to reemploy those workers. But, as evidenced by the fact that both "black unemployment rates" and "white unemployment rates" have steadily increased since the 1960s, that never happened. Rifkin added that "Today [1995], the very same economic and technological factors are starting to affect large numbers of white males with potentially dire consequences for society at large. New jobs will be far too few to absorb the many millions of workers displaced by new technologies. If the productivity gains of the Information Age are not shared but used mainly to enhance corporate profits, chances are that the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots will eventually cause widespread social disintegration and increased levels of crime and imprisonment on a scale previously unknown in the United States." To be sure, all of this has come to pass. But I would ask Jeremy Rifkin what he thought the reason was that capitalists installed and continue to install labor-saving technologies if not to "enhance corporate profits." So yes of course "the productivity gains of the Information Age" are not being shared, Mr. Rifkin. After all, a corporation's one and only responsibility is to create an ever-increasing rate of profit rather than to share productivity gains by, say, paying their workers more while allowing them to work fewer hours. Too, what does the drastic increase in black unemployment during the 1950s and 1960s show us? What indeed are the "economic factors" that "are starting to affect large numbers of white males" (Rifkin) if not the economic contradictions that govern the capitalist system of production? So although Jermey Rifkin's End of Work... is long on accurate descriptions of the symptoms of capitalist rule, it is devoid of a solution which is, I believe, the establishment of the social ownership and democratic administration of the means of production - the establishment of Marxian socialist society. In turn, I also believe that, while it would be a wonderful technology that would fit quite perfectly within the framework of a futuristic socialist society, the "energy Internet" will never be permitted to come about within capitalist society, at least not within uber-capitalist America. ***** Yours in revolution.. Guy R. Marsh Lancaster 93536 Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) (Please note that the following type of comment posts directed to this thread will be deleted: those containing childish or otherwise offensive material; those which are off-topic; those which contain cut-and-pasted material that exceed fifty-percent of their total content; and those containing video clips regardless of whether or not they might be accompanied by any amount of original writings [the embedding of URLs or "hotlinks" within comment posts which serve to lead readers to video clips will be accepted as long as all such posts also contain original writings of no fewer than fifty words.] Thank you.) ________________________________________

The US government and illicit drugs

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 03:35:13 +0000

(Note: Given the peculiar and frenetic Hwy138's tendency to delete his New Blogs shortly after their having been posted, I have elected to create and post this New Blog in response to the intimation that the US government carries out illicit drug activities toward the creation of "the New World Order.") ***** As someone who organized quite heavily during the mid-to-late-1980s around the issue of the US government's involvement in the importation and sale of heroin and cocaine (having worked with the former Christic Institute, and having personally brought journalist Michael Benner and Col. James "Bo" Gritz to the AV to address audiences at the Lancaster City Library and AVHS, respectively, I too deem said involvement to be abundantly obvious. In fact, in my opinion, we needn't look any further than the fact that, by his own admission, Col. Oliver North's personal notes, which he maintained in his capacity as Ronald Reagan's liaison to the then Nicaraguan "Contras" or "Somocistas," contained more than four-hundred pages having to do with the purchase, importation and sale of hundreds of tons of cocaine. These were personal notes which pointed to North's direct involvement in the trafficking of cocaine and notes which were a part of those that came to be so famously shredded by North's secretary, Fawn Hall. Looking further, simply for good measure, we find that, although he was granted a presidential pardon by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, the government of Costa Rica has permanently barred Oliver North from reentering Costa Rica due to North and his then associates having used that country as a transfer point for both illicit drugs and weaponry; weaponry which was destined to the aforementioned Somocistas in support of their war of terror against the people of Nicaragua and their then Sandinista government. (As an aside, it was also the case that, many of the weapons that Oliver North supplied to the Somocistas were purchased with monies obtained from the Israeli government which, at the behest of the US government, sold weaponry to the Iranian government in an effort to achieve the release of six Americans who were being held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian Lebanese terrorists. This served as the basis for what later became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.) Not only did then (1989) Costa Rican President Oscar Arias declare Oliver North to be persona non grata due to the findings of a Costa Rican congressional subcommittee on illicit drug trafficking within Costa Rica, he also banned the following five individuals: 1) Then CIA Chief of Station in Costa Rica Joseph Fernandez; 2) American-born Costa Rican rancher John Hull (an Indiana native and longtime friend of former Vice-President Dan Quayle and family. Hull fled Costa Rica upon his having been indicted by the Costa Rican government); 3) Oliver North's then closest assistant Robert "Rob" Owen (also indicted by the Costa Rican government and also another native of Indiana and friend of Dan Quayle); 4) Ronald Reagan's National Security Adviser John Poindexter (convicted of numerous felonies having to do with the Iran-Contra Affair) and; 5) General Richard Secord (also convicted of numerous Iran-Contra-Affair-related felonies which were later vacated by the US Supreme Court). The aforementioned Costa Rican congressional subcommittee also found that Oliver North was directly accountable for Panama's now US-imprisoned General Manuel Noriega's role within the somocista-cocaine supply network. Moreover, Costa Rican authorities cited Oliver North as having been responsible for the drug smuggling activities of at least eight pilots who were then employed by the Central Intelligence Agency's "Air America," including Eugene Hassenfus whose C-123 cargo plane was, as alluded to by Sovereignty Soldier within another thread, shot down by the Nicaraguan military. (It should be noted, however, that, although the downing of Hassenfus' C-123 was a pivotal event [in that it served to expose the Iran-Contra Affair], the aircraft was, at the time and contrary to Sovereignty Soldier's statement, carrying munitions intended for use by Somocistas rather than cocaine to be used by Americans. Relative to the Iran-Contra Affair, Panama was the only country in Central America to which South American-produced cocaine was flown. It - Panamanian territory - served as a "hub" or "transfer point" for the munitions that were purchased with the proceeds from the sale of cocaine and weapons that were sold to Iran by the Israeli government. These munitions were then flown from Panama directly to Nicaragua or, in many cases, to Honduras and then smuggled into Nicaragua for use by the Somocistas in direct violation of not only the US Constitution but also the US Boland Amendment. The cocaine in question was either transported directly from South America (predominately, Colombia) to the United States, or flown to Panama whereupon it was transferred to US entry points within Mexico and the Caribbean by way of "Air America." In closing and in reality, it is much more than abundantly obvious that elements within the United States government have been involved in not only the trafficking of South American cocaine but also Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern heroin. The little known fact that it was the Panamanian government and NGOs, such as the Christic Institute, rather than the US government and its corporate media that exposed the majority of the particulars surrounding Iran-Contra is simply a fact. The fact that a majority of Americans remain ignorant to a sizable portion of the events and personalities having to do with the Iran-Contra Affair changes nothing. With all of that having been said, there is, to me, no amount of evidence which would support the intimation that certain people within the United States government have trafficked in illicit drugs for purposes related to the bringing about of a "New World Order." The CIA's heroin dealings in Southeast Asia began with the agency's "need" to support its secret and thus highly unconstitutional wars in Laos and Burma during the 1960s and 1970s and have simply continued on in support of still other covert activities, not to mention the simple greed of individuals the likes of Richard Armetagee, Tomas Klines, and Theodoor "Ted" Shaklee.* But none of this is carried out towards the establishment of this right-wing fable known as the "New World Order." It has only to do with meeting the needs of the "Present World Order" - aka capitalism. Yes, the capitalist system of production is now in its global stage (its final stage), and so one may well refer to it as the "New" World Order, but it is really nothing more than the same old thing - capitalism. And that same old thing may be likened to, while returning to a familiar theme, a heroin addict. Only this addict's drug of necessity is something known as growth. In brief, capitalism must grow or, much like a heroin addict without heroin, it will die. Therefore, capitalism's benefactors and their hangers-on will do anything that they have to do in order to supply their system with new marketplaces and sources of raw materials - with growth. What that translates into are such things as the Somocistas' war against the people of Nicaragua. It was a war that elements of the US government lent material support to simply because the Nicaraguan people had the "audacity" to overthrow a brutal US-installed and supported dictator that helped to facilitate the flow of the drug known as growth to the US capitalist class. Was and is Nicaragua a small and rather insignificant country vis-a-vis the interests of the US capitalist class? Yes of course. Nonetheless, like Vietnam, Iran, Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and others before it, Nicaragua was setting a "bad" example that, if followed by other nation states, could have eventually spelled disaster for our addict - the capitalism system (aka the "Same Old World Order"). * The spelling of these names have been altered. Too, the US government's trading in illicit drugs predates the CIA's involvement; having its roots in China decades earlier. ***** Yours in revolution.. Guy R. Marsh 93536 Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) Proviso (added 09.15.11): The following type of comment posts directed to this thread will be deleted: those containing childish or otherwise offensive material; those which are off-topic; those which contain cut-and-pasted material that exceeds fifty-percent of the total content; and those containing video clips regardless of whether or not they might be accompanied by any amount of original writings (the embedding of URLs or "hotlinks" within comment posts which serve to lead readers to video clips will be accepted as long as all such posts also contain original writings of no fewer than fifty words. (Note: This proviso appeared - nearly verbatim - at the bottom of the majority of my New Blogs until approximately six [6] months ago (a time in which I had thought that all of this forum's participants understood these stipulations. But I was in error.) Therefore, I have reinstated said proviso going forward and retroactively as it relates to this thread. All comment posts which stood in violation of this proviso have been removed. Thank you.) ***** ***** *****

Homophobia kills (Part II)

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:01:58 +0000

Within the seventy-forth (74th) comment post of the New Blog entitled Lancaster wins in court, avbornbred wrote: "I agree with [Cybertariat], you are gay or bi' by CHOICE." (I had written, within the seventy-second (72nd) comment post of "Lancaster wins in court," "Yes, Larry [Hux] did not choose to be heterosexual, yet somehow I 'did' choose to be bisexual." [The meaning of my comment being really quite obvious].) So, avbornbred, were you attempting to be humorous, or has Christianity now caused you to be so delusional that you actually believe that I meant that homosexuality and bisexuality are matters of choice, or was it because you are even less intelligent than what you appear? I have on several occasions asked you whether or not you chose to be heterosexual, but you have yet to answer my question because you know perfectly well that I did not choose to be bisexual any more than what you chose to be heterosexual. So too do you know that, were you to answer my question, thereby acknowledging the fact that no one's sexuality is a matter of choice, you would then have to acknowledge that homosexuality and bisexuality are completely natural conditions. Ergo, as a Christian, you would also have to admit that "God" created lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders. But, short of your shedding that form of insanity known as fundamentalist Christianity, never will you do that. So you continue on with your wholly transparent game. So go ahead and keep to clinging to the Christianity-induced idiocy which illogically asserts that homosexuality and bisexuality are matters of "choice"' as you surely will, but it will only continue to demonstrate to we rationalists that you are nothing other than a typically simpleminded bigot. ***** To the blogger who sent a personal message to me yesterday which stated that the teaching of "gay history is unnecessary," I will say that, the belief that the teaching of LGBT history is unnecessary is indistinguishable from when the teaching of black history was widely believed to be unnecessay. To deny the contributions to American society that have been made by various LGBT individuals is to also deny a portion of America's history as well as its culture. Moreover, since ignorance begets fear which oftentimes leads to violence towards those who are misunderstood, teaching young children that LGBT peoples are really no different than straight people will serve to greatly lessen the prevalence of such hatred and violence just as the teaching of black history has accomplished with respect to black Americans. ***** Persevere.. Guy R. Marsh Lancaster, 93536 Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) ***** ***** *****

Homophobia kills!

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 03:05:47 +0000

As much as I would like to view the hate-speech crime that was committed at the Texas Cattle Company earlier this week as a simple case of vandalism, I cannot because I possess a very clear understanding of the fact that homophobia kills. Along with the thousands upon thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people who are murdered each year, worldwide and due to nothing more than their respective sexualities, so too are there countless suicides by LGBT people each year which, according to mental health experts, are not the consequence of the victim's sexuality, but rather the result of the way in which LGBT peoples are treated by society. For when a human being lives with rejection on a daily basis, and society largely devalues one's personhood, it often becomes a struggle to sustain perspective and to understand that the problem lies with other people's perceptions, rather than with one's own perceptions, which is precisely the reason why rates of suicide are substantially higher amongst LGBT people than they are amongst heterosexual people. The highest price for homophobia is paid by young lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders. Young LGBT peoples who are entering into adulthood and who have begun to understand that they are different, and that that difference is - by and large - rejected by "straight" society, frequently find self-acceptance as being extremely difficult to achieve. That is the reason why young lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders committ suicide infinitely more frequently than do young heterosexuals. Moreover, and although sociopolitical reactionary Christians could not possibly care any less, acts of alleged vandalism - of spray-painted "KILL ALL GAYS" can be the tipping point of suicidal behavior. ***** "Straight Americans need an education of the heart and soul. They must understand - to begin with - how it can feel to spend years denying your own deepest truths, to sit silently through classes, meals, and church services while people you love toss off remarks that brutalize your soul." --Bruce Bawer, The Advocate, April 28, 1998. (Emphasis mine and for reasons having to do with that which is very personal.) "One should no more deplore homosexuality than left-handedness." --Towards a Quaker View of Sex. (I so appreciate gentle religions.) Finally, that which often seems as though it was written especially for me: "Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves?" --Frederich Nietzsche ***** Persevere.. Guy R. Marsh Lancaster, 93536 ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Open borders and free markets

Mon, 30 May 2011 16:44:39 +0000

In response to my statement that "I believe that it is I who remains this forum's only advocate of open borders," avbornbred asked "Can you tell me what the benefits [would be] of having open borders?" First of all, my support of open borders - of their being no borders at all - is not something that stands within the framework of capitalist society, but rather within that of a futuristic socialist commonwealth. Yes, as I alluded to through my having listed Albert Einstein's famous The splitting of the atom has changed everything save for our mode of thinking...as a result we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe, the now outmoded notion of sovereign states is both artificial and dangerous. But, since capitalism still exists, the notion of the state is not outmoded. In other words, were borders to be deleted anytime soon, it would surely and quickly lead to socioeconomic disaster. The irony here, I think, is that, if open borders were to come to fruition within the existing economic order, it would come about by way of the political or plutocratic state rather than the demands of socialists because the US capitalist class would then be able to use unchecked immigration as a tool of socioeconomic terrorism against workers just as it does now to one degree or another. (That, however, is not to say that the ever-present downward pressure upon wages would not endure were it not for undocumented immigration for it would so endure - for the downward spiral of workers' wages is an inherent and inescapable contradiction of the capitalist system that is in no way dependent upon any one factor, including undocumented immigration. It is only to say that undocumented immigration and even documented immigration tend to exacerbate the downward pressure upon wages.) I believe that as it now stands, the American plutocracy largely enforces current immigration laws ostensibly for the benefit of its citizenry but, in actuality, for the benefit of capital and therefore the capitalist class. Yet that could change very rapidly given the capitalist class' capricious economic "needs." Additionally, although some capitalist societies are in possession of the room with which to expand their populations and workforces, others do not. Great Britain, for instance, happens to be dangerously overpopulated as are the Netherlands, Japan and Italy. Where this condition exists, the respective political states are saddled with a prevailing duty to deter further overpopulation in the name of their citizenry's but in real service to economic stability and thus to the benefit of their respective capitalist classes. So, no, this Marxian socialist does not suppport the opening or borders while capitalism continues on. Doing so, to answer avbornbred's question, would benefit no one outside of the capitalist class and its hangers-on. Nonetheless, it would do us good to recall Albert Einstein's statement from time to time in order to remind ourselves that time is indeed of the essence. Now of course none of this precludes our helping workers in other countries, such as Mexico, who are being forced into mass emigration due to antisocial trade agreements the likes of NAFTA and CAFTA. Putting pressure on politicians to rescind those horribly one-sided agreements would go a long way toward both stemming the flow of undocumented immigration and improvIng the lives of American workers. Beyond that, one thing is for certain; that all of the demands for more stringent border enforcement, all of the Minutemen-like protest rallies, and all of the vigilante border patrols will do little to so much as stem the flow of undocumented immigration simply because desperate human beings will always find ways of doing desperate things. As a Marxian socialist, I will say that, if we workers do not put an end to capitalism and all of its social relations, including nationalism, everywhere, the chances of complete social breakdown coupled with the growing possibility of a global nuclear holocaust are great. In his book Daniel De Leon: Internationalist (New York Labor News, 1944), the late Arnold Petersen (a past national secretary of the Socialist Labor Party) wrote: Capitalism cannot survive as we understand the term. What will survive (on a worldwide scale) will consolidate itself as an international economic imperialism; and this we know also: In such a world the workers will continue as industrial serfs, their social status further degraded, their individual liberties further restricted, and their hope of early emancipation from economic serfdom, from wage slavery, deferred to an uncertain future - the distance of which none would be able to foretell. Yes, Arnold Perersen wrote that in 1944, before the beginning of America's so-called halcyon days of the 1940s and 1950s, but how thoroughly modern-sounding it is, no? ***** Within AV Town Crier's thread entitled L.A. Times article, PKShaw wrote: The market provides its own moratorium; builders respond to market demand. In response, Matt Keltner wrote: Yeah, the 'free market' also turned the Antelope Valley into the Section 8 capitol of Southern California...Section 8 people wouldn't have come to the Antelope Valley in the numbers they did had their not been ample housing. That ample housing was driven by greedy landowners and power brokers here that were more concerned about fattening their bank accounts than about the overall health and social stability of the local community. Is it just a coincidence that most of them no longer live where they made their money? That's the 'free market' for you! Make money without accountability. Quite true, Matt. For the free market - the freedom of a tiny minority of individuals to ride roughshod over the social majority - has demonstrated its propensity for failing the social majority time and time again. Whether it be the robber barons of the late nineteenth century, America's copious number of economic recessions and depressions, the 1980's Savings and Loan disgrace, or the recent housing bubble crisis which spawned this discussion, the free market/capitlism has shown itself to be irrational from the perspective of workers - the social majority. So it is of little wonder that capitalists and petty capitalists, such as the owners of, say, the Kaufman and Broad Homes Corp., and Frank Visco, have remained utterly committed to the idea of the so-called free market despite the social havoc left in their wake. But, after all, the interests of capitalists are seldom if ever in line with the interests of workers. Therein lies capitalism's chief inherent contradiction, and therein lies the nexus of not only the Antelope Valley's housing debacle but also of America's housing debacle in general. I believe that the problem with free market cheerleaders the likes of PKShaw, Matt, is that they adhere to an ideology while believing that ideology to be a theory, that is to say, if capitalism were representative of free markets, then, by logical extension, there would exist efficiency and economic growth within those markets, and everyone would benefit. But, as noted by Matt's well-stated analysis of the Antelope Valley's housing market, and as reinforced by PKShaw's groundless "The free market provides its own moratorium..." that is strictly a belief, it is not a fact. Moreover, their ideology is used to protect and perpetuate a misanthropic economic system that is firmly predicated upon endless accumulation as well as one that now has precious little to do with production but, rather, with speculation - speculation which, amongst other such things, has led to the deindustrialization of American society and the subsequent loss of millions of well-paying jobs. Finally, I am of the mind that Matt's sobering interpretation of the Antelope Valley's housing glut has furnished us with an insight having to do with the deficiencies of the ideology held by PKShaw and millions of others, which has held sway over the American mindset since at least the early 1980s, and which has vowed to lift all boats; but instead has greatly weakened the standard of living of tens of millions of workers, and heightened social inequality and social insecurity within the Antelope Valley as well as within the rest of American society. This, then, leaves us with the question: What type of economic system would truly serve the needs of human beings? ***** Yours in revolution.. Guy R. Marsh.. Lancaster, 93535.. Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) ***** ***** *****

'The Shock Doctrine': In praise and critique

Wed, 18 May 2011 02:44:08 +0000

*** *** *** Author Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Metropolitan Books, 2006) presents the hypothesis that an investment tactic known as "shock therapy" advanced by the United States and its allies throughout the past few decades employs crises that nations and regions become immersed in to create something similar to the electroshock "therapy"' that was once administered to the mentally ill toward an effort to cure their disorders. Its socioeconomic equal are the ideas that were advanced by capitalist economists - most especially by adherents of the "Chicago School" once headed by Milton Friedman - who promoted the theory that cataclysmic events bring about a desirable climate for economic investment - in reality, capitalist exploitation. Taking advantage of national insolvencies, hyperinflation, trade-deficit impediments and natural disasters the likes of earthquakes and tsunamis, Naomi Klein affirms that the promoters of "shock therapy" depend upon victimized regions and nations being "brought to their knees" by crisis. Then, the "bailing out" process begins which is oftentimes given over to the whims of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and still other pro-capitalist institutions. These so-called shock therapy measures include - but are not limited to - the privatization of publically-owned properties, the slashing of social spending, business deregulation, massive layoffs and wage reductions; all of which and in turn create abject poverty for millions of workers while enabling capitalists to purchase a nation's most valuable assets at bargain-basement prices." In the September, 2004 issue of Harper's magazine, Naomi Klein countered the notion that the ongoing military occupation of Iraq was the end result of George W. Bush not having a plan. She asserted to the contrary; that "The Bush administration certainly did possess a plan for what it would do after the war: put simply; it was to lay out as much honey as was possible, and then just sit back and wait for the flies" (a reference to the many capitalists that would surely come buzzing into the now subservient nation for exploitation and profit). "A country of 25 million people would not be rebuilt as it had been before the war...it would be erased, disappeared. In its stead would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laisaez-faire economies, a utopia of which the world has never seen before. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their thirst for profit would be put into place," all the while the accompanying death, disaster and misery suffered by the Iraqi working class has been ignored by the capitalist media. (Emphasis mine.) "imperial Pro-Consul" L. Paul Bremer, appointed by George W. Bush to oversee this capitalist feast shortly following the "shock and awe" on the eve of the United States' military invasion of Iraq, went to work during his two-month appointment. Bremer, according to The Shock Doctrine: "Fired 500,000 Iraqi public workers, including soldiers, doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers and printers: Opened the borders to unrestricted imports (emphasis not in original): Lowered corporate taxes from 40 percent to 15 percent and opened ownership of Iraqi assets to 100 percent outside of the natural resource sector, while permitting 100 percent of the profits to be taken out of Iraq: Memorialized Saddam Hussein by maintaing his harsh impositions on trade unions and collective bargaining: Privatized 200 publicly-owned companies even though the United States didn't own them, a minor legalistic detail ignored by precisely those who cherish private ownership above all. Nonetheless, everything from washing machine manufacturing to cement plants was to be put on the auction block, the 'crowning piece' of Bremer's efforts," (Emphasis not in original.) It is now well-known how this capitalist utopia became a dystopia - with death, infectious diseases, US-sponsored torture, civil war and every social pathology known to humankind having descended upon the Iraqi people. Thus revealed, we can now see - firsthand - the barbarism of capitalism that we Marxists so often write and speak of. This, then, brings us to the relevance of The Shock Doctrine as well as socialism. Think of the observation made by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in The Communist Manifesto - that the everyday markets within the capitalist system of production "are too narrow"' to take in "the wealth created" through the system of private ownership of the means of industrial/economic production. Therefore, the resulting crisis of overproduction can only be overcome "On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones [Marx and Engels]." Consequently, as the expiration of labor increases, the amount of economic wealth accumulated begins to exceed the expansion of markets and still other traditional investment opportunities, even within the context of an ever-increasing globalized economy. An inevitable result of this is that, the push toward war grows more powerful. The ecological disasters that are already beginning to unfold upon earth - particularly global warming and, accordingly, the melting of the glaciers and polar caps - are viewed as being investment opportunities. And when those sort of things fail to suffice, the destruction rained down upon the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States and its imperialist allies are seen as exceptional opportunities for expansion and thus investment. To be sure and as I alluded to within an unrelated thread this very morning, "disaster capitalism" did not come about during the 1970s as Naomi Klein asserts, it has been with us since at least the 1850s when Karl Marx and Frederick Engels first observed that capitalism itself foretells of disaster. ***** Persevere.. Guy Robert Marsh Lancaster, 93536 Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) ***** ***** *****

Trade unionism (Part II)

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:39:15 +0000

What is the problem with trade unionism? Why is it that trade unions are in a state of retreat at a time in which the need for worker solidarity is greater than perhaps ever before? Why is it that trade unions are seemingly unable to unite workers in order to resist the devastating social effects of stagnating and even falling wages, labor-saving technologies, and organized, right-wing assaults against the very concept of collective bargaining such as that which is currently unfolding in Wisconsin? These are questions which need to be answered because they are of vital importance to each and every member of the working class. But, as recent discussions within this very forum have shown, dialogue concerning trade unionism and trade unions too often result in rancor and irrationality rather than in fact and logic. This - to me - demonstrates the high degree of confusion which exists with respect to the question of trade unionism. Too, as a now twenty-seven-year member of the AFL-CIO's United Food & Commercial Workers union (UFCW), I find that trade unions have utterly failed to prove to the working class that they are able to defend and to promote working class interests. Although it is seemingly lost upon a large number of this forum's participants, there is in fact strength in unity and disunity leads only to weakness and, ultimately, to defeat. The basis of unionism is a sound one, but trade unions fail to unite workers. They fail to so much as protect the tiny and still diminishing number of us who are members of trade unions and who pay our dues. As a Marxist-DeLeonist, it is my contention that trade unions are committed to principles that are antithetical to the material interests of the working class and that that is the very reason they fail to unite workers and why they have become hindrances to workers' struggles to defend themselves against economic exploitation. Trade unions proudly refer to themselves as unions, but they are in no way whatsoever based upon principles of working class unity. In fact, given their historical role of organizing workers by craft rather than by class - the working class, trade unions actually "serve" to further divide workers. However, as a longtime and often active member of a trade union myself, I take no pleasure in the lodging of such charges, but I find these charges to be grounded in sound and coherent reasoning. In fairness, it must be noted that it is an historical fact that trade unions were born out of intense and often violent struggles between the capitalist class' henchmen and workers. The focus of these struggles was the partitioning of the commodities and services that workers produced into wages and profits. For as long as the capitalist class was able to negotiate with individual workers (as at least one of this forum's participants has foolishly advocated), workers were all but defenseless, which is the very reason why workers began to form trade unions in the first place. But the capitalist class' economic exploitation of the working class did not end in the wake of a few workers having managed to form trade unions. Trade unionism only allowed for workers to resist in groups. In the beginning, the capitalists who owned the means of industrial/economic production - the factories, railroads, mines as well as the machinery and tools required to operate them - attempted to destroy the fledgling trade unions. Driven by the ever-present profit motive and competition from their rivals, these capitalists endeavored to suppress wages and to exact still more production out of their workers - their wage slaves. The workers, compelled by necessity and by the natural desire to transcend a state of continuous wanting of life's essentials, resisted and tried to raise their wages. It was, therefore, akin to dividing, say, an apple into two separate parts. Were one part to be larger then the other part had to be smaller - and this was the case whether the capitalist class' "apple" was bigger, as in boom periods, or smaller, as during economic depressions. Consequently, the neverending struggle over labor's share is not only a struggle between workers and their respective employers. It happens to be a struggle between the entire working class and the entire capitalist class - a class struggle that is intrinsic to and inseparable from the capitalist-worker relationship. Upon their having been first organized, many modern-day trade unions paid lip service to the class struggle. I wrote "paid lip service to the class struggle" because the AFL-CIO and all other trade unions acknowledge capitalism as a continual economic system. Rather than endeavoring to construct a classless society in which economic exploitation, unemployment, underemployment and poverty would come to be eliminated, trade unions tie their purpose to an inexplicit " good wages for a good day's work." To be sure, within the capitalist system, labor - or labor power - is nothing more than a commodity, a mere means of production that the capitalist class purchases within the labor market just as surely as it purchases raw materials within the raw materials market, and just as surely as cattle are purchased within the cattle market. Ergo, by accepting capitalism as a constant economic order, so too do trade unions accept the notion that workers must accept their commodity status forever. And it is our status as commodities that are bought within the labor market which lays bare our standing as wage slaves. Trade unionism [Part 1] Wage slavery (Part I) Wage slavery (Part II) Wage slavery (Part III) ***** Good evening.. Persevere.. Guy Robert Marsh.. Lancaster, 93536.. Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) ***** ***** *****

The repetitive nature of my participation

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:20:58 +0000

(Notice: Given the high likelihood that this parent post or "New Blog" will be re-posted sometime early Monday morning [2.14.11], readers are hereby advised not to respond until then; as any and all responses/comment posts will be automatically stricken upon said re-posting. Thank you.) ***** Begin... leonardpflemkin: "...I respect your opinions and the fact that you believe a Marxist society would be fairer to all. I agree with you except in one area: the fact that humans would still run the system. If there were a being that would be truly benevolent in the distribution of wages and goods, it would be the 'utopia' hoped for." Leonard's conditioned assumption (like that of many other intheav participants over the years) is, but of course, that socialist society would be antipathetic to human nature. Beyond one of the themes of my Human nature and the class struggle - that human nature is not given to greed, selfishness and a lack of benevolence; that capitalism's dog-eat-dog social environment has only perverted human nature, I will say that socialist society would not be in need of a benevolent being that would distribute wages and goods simply because no one individual would ever be entrusted with any such responsibility. No amount of socialist society's means of industrial/economic production would be for sale to any one individual or group of individuals. And all workers elected to all posts within the industrial government would be held directly accountable to those that elected them. (Again, I urge readers to familiarize themselves with the principles of socialist industrial government if for no other reason than to understand the parameters of the debate.) leonardpflemkin: "...the Marxist systems that I have been familiar with (Russia, Cuba, North Korea) have been failures due to the reasons I stated above. I know. I know. 'True Marxism has never been tried before. The reason true Marxism hasn't been tried is because it CANNOT work. With all of the respect due him, not only does Leonard's "response" bear absolutely no connection to anything that I have written within this thread, which is really quite typical of anti-socialists, so too is it a prototypical - indeed cookie-cutter-like "response" from yet another individual who is simply "playing-back" cold-war-era "recordings" of what it is that capitalist culture still needs for workers to "know" about Marxism. Leonard's "response" is the very sort of near-verbatim form letter that has been addressed to me on literally hundreds of occasions over the decades. His "...it would be the utopia hoped for"; his "I know. I know. True Marxism has never been tried before"; his "Human nature will not allow it"; his "It's the old line from Animal Farm 'Some pigs are created more equal than others'"; etc., are but obligatory phrases that have been regurgitated billions of times over and by people who have not the slightest understanding of the subject matter that they fancy themselves as being understanding of. That is exactly the reason why my "detractor's" so-called responses seldom if ever bear any relationship to what I have written; after lifetimes of being conditioned by capitalist culture, they simply lack the ability to think for themselves, or at least as thinking for themselves concerns Marxism which virtually none of them have ever bothered to study by way of original sources of Marxist literature. Lacking any sort of culturally-induced script with respect to industrial government, the class struggle and, say, surplus value nearly all Americans are devoid of the ability to discuss such issues in a meaningful fashion. Hence, the compulsory and roboticized "It is against human nature," "...it woulds be the utopia hoped for," "It's the old line from Animal Farm...," etc., etc., to brainwashed etc. With all of that having been said, the reason that a socialist society has yet to come to fruition has everything to do with the fact that Russia of 1917, China of 1949, Cuba of 1959, et al, were completely wanting of the material prerequisites that are entirely indispensable toward the development of socialist society. For the lot of these alleged socialist revolutions unfolded within the framework of agrarian or semi-agrarian societies. As Marxian social science clearly delineates, it is possible to bring about socialist society only within the context of an existing capitalist society - a fully industrialized society. This is because only then would it be possible for the mass of workers to organize themselves to the point to where they would be able to both take control of the industrial infrastructure which they built and to democratically administer said infrastructure through the aforementioned socialist industrial government. Agrarian societies and semi-agrarian societies, on the other hand, are simply far too socially defused to allow for such a high degree of industrial organization; a fact which has, quite unavoidably, always led to a whole host of other crippling deprivations regarding the establishment of a socialist commonwealth within the likes of the former USSR. And so it is for these reasons that "the [supposed] Marxist systems that [Leonard has] been familiar with have been failures rather than any kind of defect with respect to human nature. leonardpflemkin: "Given the choice between the two systems, I choose the capitalistic model...At least we all have an opportunity to better ourselves and to have a piece of the pie." Yes, although the working class' share of that proverbial pie grows smaller with each passing day, all of us enjoy the opportunity with which to better ourselves. But with an ever-increasing percentage of workers being reduced to superfluous status by way of permanent unemployment; others constantly vacillating between periods of employment and periods of unemployment and underemployment like never before; and as an ever-rising number of workers are having to work at two and even three jobs simultaneously, the old adage "Anyone can become rich" must be seen as being more of a function of indoctrination than anything else. Yes, as the likes of, say, Oprah Winfrey have shown us, anyone can "make it" within capitalist society. But are these very few and far between examples worth the continued - indeed the increasing suffering of tens of millions of human beings? Does this infinitesimally small collection of "rags to riches" stories merit the rapidly escalating economic dehumanization of an already large and still growing portion of society? To any sane and thinking individuals the answer should be a resounding "No." For, if nothing else, the odds of a worker such as our Leonard "striking it rich" no matter how hard he works at it are so remote as to be completely insignificant. Also, why is it that, within capitalist society, the phrase "bettering oneself" nearly always carry with it economic connotations? Perhaps it has much to do with the ruthless socioeconomic environment that the capitalist system so obviously fosters. Even when workers set out to simply make themselves better rounded human beings through a liberal arts education, the economic realities of having to make a living while attending school, not to mention the usually non-state-assisted high tuition costs, too often thwart such desires. The short of it is that, all too often if not virtually always, under capitalism, the desire to simply improve oneself as a human being is reduced to an economic equation that only a growing few of us are able to attain. Within a socialist setting, however, where workers would enjoy the full economic benefit of their labor power and/or their intellectual power, and would therefore be able meet their financial needs while working a significantly abbreviated workweek, those desirous of improving themselves simply for the sake of improving themselves would be more than able to do so. While no longer having to work in order to support both themselves as well as a tiny, nonproductive and, thus, parasitic class of individuals "formerly" known as the capitalist class, workers would then be free to explore the arts and humanities, history, science, athleticism or whatever else they were to aspire to. leonardpflemkin: "[Under capitalism] at least we all have an opportunity to better ourselves and to have a piece of the pie. After all, isn't that Karl [Marx] and Daniel [DeLeon] wanted...just a piece o' that pie?" No, that is not what Marx and DeLeon wanted. What they wanted was the self-emancipation of the working class and all that that would entail. They, like me, wanted to see an end to the wage system and to the establishment of a society in which human beings would allow themselves to keep all of the fruits of their labor; not but a piece of it. Accordingly, they wanted to see an end to the poverty, insecurity and class rule brought about by an economic system which sees to the economic enrichment of a few and to the concomitant impoverishment of an ever-growing percentage of society. leonardpflemkin: "I have the opportunity to, as you say, live on 'permanent vacation' if I can create a business that offers what people want and run it in a way that is profitable." Aside from the moral issue having to do with the acquisition of economic wealth that was created by the labor power and/or intellectual power of other human beings (aka surplus value), it must be asked: What are the odds of Leonard P. Flemkin becoming the next Mark Cuban or, say, Bill Gates? With their being but a tiny handful of such individuals during any particular epoch, and with the American working class now being some three-hundred-million "strong," those odds have to be somewhere in the neighborhood of tens of millions to one. Swelling such odds still more is the fact that the overwhelming majority of modern-day capitalists were simply born into a state of permanent vacation in that they inherited "their" wealth and, thus, their class standing; a minuscule minority within that minuscule minority may very well have accomplished it by way of their having launched their own companies or by "climbing the corporate ladder" or by playing "fast and loose," legally or otherwise, to the point to where they came to own significant shares of ownership. But the fact remains that nearly all of the members of the capitalist class were born into said class. So now it must be asked: Is it worth it for we workers to continue to tolerate the grotesque inequalities and social insecurities brought forth by capitalism so that we may "enjoy" the extremely remote possibility of our "striking it rich one day"? Is it worth the high likelihood of you or a loved one becoming a victim of a mugging, a burglary, a home invasion robbery, a car jacking or any number of other crimes borne of the fact that a dwarfish minority controls more socially produced economic wealth than does the vast majority, combined; while the members of that majority all too often fight one another for the few economic crumbs left to them? Is it worth the ever-escalating and far-reaching cost of the prison-industrial complex - a complex which warehouses an increasingly larger superfluous population which is a consummation of the reality that, under capitalism, industrial production is conducted for the sole purpose of meeting the financial "needs" of the capitalist class rather than meeting the material needs of all human beings? leonardpflemkin: "The Ben and Jerry's fellas are living well with their kinder, gentler, 'utopian' ice cream business." Yes, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield do indeed live quite well off of the economic wealth that is created by their employees/wage slaves. But, in recent years, Cohen and Greenfield have reneged on a number of their so-called kinder and gentler policies with respect to their employees. They ended their once widely lauded seven-to-one-pay-policy in 1995, just as they have also greatly curtailed their once rather generous health and retirement benefits - "generous" at least within the context of the capitalist system. This had everything to do with the fact that, above all else, the capitalists - Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield - wished to remain in business and, accordingly, to protect their class status. Simply stated, the economic realities of competition dictated that, regardless of Cohen's and Greenfield's allegedly altruistic motivations, employee pay and benefits must remain distant secondary business considerations. Profit/surplus value must be the only real consideration. (This later point should, with all respect due him, serve to reveal Leonard's intimation that it would somehow be possible to implement Marxist principles within a capitalist firm as being exactly what it is, wholly ridiculous. An island of socialism cannot possibly survive within a sea of capitalism. --Daniel DeLeon.) So, no, Leonard, it does not happen to be a desire of mine to live in a state of permanent vacation. It is not my desire to be a part of the problem. ***** Yours in revolution. Guy Robert Marsh Lancaster, 93536 Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) (Note: As per usual, the following sort of comment posts will be deleted: those containing childish or otherwise offensive content; those whose content consists of more than fifty-percent cut-and-pasted material; and those containing video clips - regardless of whether or not they might also be accompanied by any amount of original writings [the embedding of URLs or "hotlinks" within comment posts that serve to lead readers to video clips and other websites will be accepted as long as said posts also contain original writings of no fewer than fifty words.] I thank you all.) ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Placing blame where it belongs

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:31:15 +0000

According to the Fox News story "Alleged AZ Shooter May Have Links To Pro-White Racist Organization," Jared Loughner may very well be but the latest political reactionary to resort to the use of gratuitous violence the result of the sort of incendiary and diversionary speech of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the many other right-wing, anti-intellectual entertainers. Apparently, Fox and still other news agencies have discovered connections between Loughner and a white racist, Tea Party organization known as American Renaissance. To be sure, as the economy continues to deteriorate for workers, and as the concomitant lack of economic opportunity continues to impact an increasing number of workers, the less intelligent and/or precarious amongst us will continue to blame people of color, immigrants, gay people, governments of all varieties, trade unions, etc. for the very real socioeconomic problems that beset both themselves as well as American society as a whole. Indeed, unless and until a majority of workers arrive at the understanding of the fact that it is modern-day, monolithic and, thus, decadent capitalism that lies at the root of these ever-growing social pathologies the number of such "nutjobs" will continue to rise and the scope of their violent acts will surely expand. The short of it is that, as more and more socially produced economic wealth continues to be concentrated into fewer and fewer capitalist-class hands (the result of decades-long stagnated wages, automation and other improvements to the means of production, business mergers and the like) less and less economic wealth is being left to we workers. As a result, more and more of us are having to compete against one another for what few crumbs that the capitalist class and their economic system allows us - more and more of us are at each other's throats. More and more of us, most especially those who refuse to expose themselves to a wide diversity of news and information (read: the simpleminded amongst us), turn to the blaming of their working-class brothers and sisters rather than the antisocial and unsustainable capitalist system for their life's problems. ***** Socialism or barbarism. --Daniel DeLeon ***** Persevere.. Guy Robert Marsh.. Lancaster, 93536.. Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) ***** Please note that all of the usual rules pursuant to participating within any all of "my" threads will apply here. Thank you. ***** ***** *****

Remote psychotherapy

Thu, 27 May 2010 14:58:10 +0000

In response to my response to his parent post entitled "Jim Crow wasn't enough..." Amir Raheem wrote: "Guy, I see your lunacy persists [sic]." (Lunacy: "a) "insanity, formerly supposed to change in intensity with the phases of the moon b) mental unsoundness, insanity. --Webster's New World Dictionary.) (Licenses to practice remote psychotherapy [those firmly grounded in their holder's utter desperation to discredit] for sale: Three-cents.) Amir Raheem (AR): "Based on what you wrote, either you haven't read the content of my post, or you did so with little comprehension [sic]," Oh please, Amir! Your fleeting and poorly written "Jim Crow wasn't enough..." bears no amount of political commentary. It is little if anything more than that which directs readers to a website where they may read the specifics of a law known as "Section 8 USC 1324." Complete with a sophomoric reference to the city of San Francisco, your post states nothing. AR: "And, as usual, you have thrown me into an ideological soup of nonsnse [sic]." Oh! I see. "Without realizing who I am or even trying to find out, you make silly presumptions and think they are factual [sic]." In actuality, my response was directed toward all black workers who have foolishly aligned themselves with white racists. Simply stated, it makes no presumptions concerning the individual - Amir Raheem. AR went on to write "You have never tried to get to know me. You never offered me a cup of coffee [sic]." Coffee? No. I did, however and on two separate occasions, invite you to have lunch at Don Cucos with Steve Marshall, other former KHJ employees and myself, but you declined. In fact, on that second occasion, I offered the then car-less-you a ride to Don Cucos. You accepted my offer but then "flaked out" upon my arrival at the station to pick you up. So, too, did I - during Christmas of 2006 - give you a brand-new, forty-dollar, coffee table book having to do with the US military's intervention in Vietnam. But you barely thank me for my thoughtful gift (one based upon my knowing you to be a Vietnam veteran), and, much like your friend of convenience - Randy Hall, you sure as hell did not reciprocate in any way whatsoever. So what say you take your "You have never tried to get to know me" and shove it up your goddamned ass, and then proceed to kiss my blood-red ass, Amir? As for your "I'll try and put it in terms that even the simplest thinking person can understand," what say you respond to my highly related Capitalism: '...the borders remain porous' with an equally lengthy and scholarly retort? Should you accept, I'll respond in kind and we'll, well, rock on from there. That way, you you'll be able to show the world just how very simpleminded I am, Amir. ********* Persevere.. Guy.. ********** Good day.. ************ ************ ************

The mythologies of 'God' and 'overpopulation'

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:19:09 +0000

The Duke: "If one were to assume for a minute that God does not exist, then would it not be interesting to determine where this God myth began and who designed this hoax that has affected billions of humans? If Guy is correct, then the God hoax has to be considered genius as it has spread to every corner of the planet. The person who constructed this fable needs to be identified, and I'm hoping that Guy can shed some light on the mystery [sic]." --forty-eighth comment post. In considering the origins of the God myth, I find any and all possible answers to the question "Who designed this hoax" as being unimportant if not completely irrelevant in that, in my opinion, the question of why - Why was the God myth created? - should be our only concern. (It can, I believe, be likened to the lingering questions surounding the assassination of Jack Kennedy: the why of it all being our only real interest.) Suffice it to say that, much like the origins of a particular language, the origins of the God myth are ancient, entangled and involve perhaps literally millions of individuals throughout the totality of human existence. As for The Duke's "...the God hoax has to be considered genius as it has spread to every corner of the planet," I will say that, to me, the God myth's continuation involves far more manipulation than it does any amount of genius; meaning that, to pacify and thus control the afflicted with snake oil of any variety requires but intrigue not genius. This goes to the very essence of Karl Marx's "[religion is] ...the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world" or his "Religion is the opiate of the masses. " So, in my mind, contemporaneous dogmatic religions are but cheap parlor tricks destitute of genius. Toward my answering The Duke's question "...where [did] this God myth begin...?" it is my opinion that, originally humankind's spirituality was organized along the lines of goddess worship mostly because women's ability to give birth to new life was regarded as being both divine and mysterious. But, once men came to understand their role with respect to human reproduction, goddess worship - matriarchy/cooperative society soon fell victim to a silent "coup d'�tat" which eventually led to the supplanting of goddess worship by god worship as the dominant expression of spirituality. So too, and accordingly, did this lead to the supplantation of matriarchy by patriarchy - by so-called individualism. To fasten the very best of intentions to the origins of god worship, I suppose that one might say that it was at least partly influenced by a desire of rather primitive peoples to elucidate the origins of not only themselves but the earth and the universe as well. But humankind now possesses a tremendously better understanding of the origins of our species, the earth and the universe; so much better, in fact, that had such an understanding been available all along then the God myth and thus religion would not likely have gained traction. No one now would choose to return to that stage of human social evolution when human beings enjoyed no real philosophy -when human beings only had mythology - when human beings believed that they inhabited a flat planet, or when it was believed that the earth was circulated by the sun rather than the converse. Indeed, never would humankind have invented theism were we to have known then what it is that we know now. And again, that was the best-case scenerio; one that does not take into consideration the aforementioned overthrow of matriarchy by patriarchy and all of its nefarious implications. ****************** In response to the same post which The Duke responded to (see hotlink listed above - forty-seventh comment post), a friend of mine asked: "Why did you say that 'poverty causes overpopulation' when everyone knows that overpopulation causes poverty?" (I hereby apologize for my not having better explained that statement.) As previously stated, poor people - most especially those residing in, say, Sub-Saharan Africa - are given to bearing a very high number of offspring due to the fact that the majority of babies born into squalid poverty do not survive to adulthood. And, due to a clear lack of such things as private pensions and government programs the likes of our Social Security program, the very poor are oftentimes completely dependent upon their surviving children to support them during their advanced years. However, alhough hunger is certainly rampant within these populations, that hunger is not caused by the need to bear a high number of children - by overpopulation. For hunger results from the production of foodstuffs as merchandise for sale with the intent to create profit. Not unlike the production of any other form of merchandise, the producton of virtually all foodstuffs is governed by the misanthropic concerns of agricultural capitalists and, of course, by the pressures of market demand which is obviously decided by one's income rather than by basic human need. Exacerbating these already bleak situations is the fact that, throughout many parts of the Third and Developing Worlds, as many as perhaps hundreds of millions of peasants have been driven from subsistence agriculture as agricultural capitalists have incorporated gigantic expanses of farmland in order to grow cash crops such as bananas and coffee to be exported for consumption within the Industrialized world. The infrastructures of these societies are then left underdeveloped as a result of these capitalist's antisocial behavior, and their economies are unable to expand quickly enough to assimilate both the displaced peasantries and normal increases in populations. Consider, for example, Haiti, where American-based rice capitalists have "dumped" large amounts of American-produced rice thereby forcing thousands of small, Hatian rice farmers out of the business and into the already overcrowded and desperately poor Hatian capitol of Port-au-Prince. This and many other practices of western capitalists and their governments - particularly the US government - is what keeps Haiti in a hopeless cycle of extreme poverty and therefore unable to cope with the aftermath of its recent earthquake. Given the astronomically high levels of unemployment and the very low wages within nations such as Haiti, poorer workers simply lack the sort of income required to buy the foodstuffs they need - even as massive amounts of food is to decompose in fields or storehouses in order to guarantee high prices and thus high profits for agricultural capitalists. Therefore, it is quite clearly the profit-driven capitalist system which causes overpopulation, poverty and famine. ********************* Persevere.. Yours in revolution Guy Robert Marsh Lancaster, 93536 Member-at-large (since 1990): Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890) ******************** Listen to non-commercial, listener-sponsored Pacifica Radio (tune to 90.7 FM, KPFK, Los Angeles; 98.7 in Santa Barbara County) *********************** (Note: As per usual, the following sort of comment posts will be stricken; those containing childish or otherwise offensive material; those whose content consists of more than fifty-percent cut-and-pasted material; and those containing video clips - regardelss of whether or not they might also be accompanied by any amount of original writings [the embedding of URLs or "hotlinks" within comment posts that serve to lead readers to video clips will be accepted as long as said posts also contain original writings of no fewer than fifty words]. I thank you all.) *********************** *********************** *********************** *********************** *********************** *********************** *********************** *********************** *********************** ***********************