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In the News Today
Jason
God EmperorArrakis Moderator
Apparently, the Patriot Act is now being used to arrest and detain minors without due process of law according to a WRAL 5 News report. Constitution? What's that?
In other news, From the Boston Globe:
Way to go, Maine and New Hampshire!
In other news, From the Boston Globe:
Maine and New Hampshire took steps toward the approval of gay marriage today, bringing to five the number of New England states that have moved to legalize marriage between same-sex couples in the past five years.
Governor John E. Baldacci of Maine became the first governor in the country to sign a gay marriage bill into law without being spurred to action by a court decision. In New Hampshire, legislators took the last of several votes approving a gay marriage law. Governor John Lynch, a Democrat like Baldacci, will have five days to veto the bill, sign it, or let it become law without his signature.
Governor John E. Baldacci of Maine became the first governor in the country to sign a gay marriage bill into law without being spurred to action by a court decision. In New Hampshire, legislators took the last of several votes approving a gay marriage law. Governor John Lynch, a Democrat like Baldacci, will have five days to veto the bill, sign it, or let it become law without his signature.
Way to go, Maine and New Hampshire!
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Comments
Looks like a false alarm as the boy's mother is apparently full of shit according to the South Bend Tribune:
Capp said he has indeed charged the teen and has asked a judge to waive him into adult court, a motion that is pending. The boy has appeared in court three times, once in North Carolina for an initial hearing and a detention hearing, and twice in Indiana for a continued initial hearing and a status hearing, Capp said.
Capp said the boy’s mother has been apprised of each hearing. She attended the one in North Carolina but did not attend the ones here.
Capp said he declined to comment further because federal statutes limit public disclosure of information related to a juvenile case.
The boy’s mother did not return repeated messages the The Tribune left for her Thursday.
My apologies to the FBI for spreading this non-story.
One of the headlines is President Obama's new budget proposal. On Thursday, Obama sent Congress a detailed budget outlining various cuts in funding for certain programs while increasing it for others. While I agree with some of his decisions, I disagree with him on others.
Of the proposals that I agree with, one is his plan to end $26 billion in oil and gas industry tax breaks," which he called "unjustifiable loopholes" in the tax system that other industries do not get (Obama touts $17 billion 'lot of money' budget cuts). I think the reasons why this is a good thing are self-explanatory.
His proposals to (1) eliminate federal support for a $35 million-a-year radio-based marine navigation system rendered obsolete by the satellite-based Global Positioning System, (2) increase child nutrition programs by $1 billion, (3) set up a $1 billion program to develop or rehabilitate housing for the poor and (4) stop paying states and counties that keep illegal immigrants in their jails also seem like good ideas.
Of the proposals that I disagree with, the main ones are his plan to slash the benefits program for families of slain police and safety officers from $110 million to $60 million and his plan to put $2 billion more into merit-based teacher pay.
The reason for the latter is that while it sounds like a good idea to pay well-performing teachers more, the main criteria for judging teacher performance under No Child Left Behind is standardized testing. This essentially means that teachers are being rewarded more for "teaching to the test" than quality teaching, which ultimately undermines the quality of teaching (especially in reading and math) and leads to a potential decline in the teaching of higher-order thinking (No Child Left Behind's Emphasis on 'Teaching to the Test' Undermines Quality Teaching).
I'm also not happy with his plan to scrap a $142 million program to help states pay to clean up abandoned mines.
Another big story concerns Speaker Pelosi and the newly released report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency.
According to the Washington Post, the report says that Pelosi was "briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda suspects, seeming to contradict her repeated statements that she was never told the techniques were actually being used." The memo notes that the Pelosi-Goss briefing apparently covered "EITs [enhanced interrogation technique] including the use of EITs" on Abu Zubaida.
Looks like Speaker Pelosi isn't going to be able to sweep this issue under the rug anytime soon.
In economic news, the Associated Press reports that:
But the total number of people receiving jobless benefits climbed to 6.35 million, a 14th straight record.
The four-week moving average of initial jobless claims, which smooths out volatility, totaled 623,500 last week, a decrease of more than 30,000 from the high in early April. Goldman Sachs economists have said a decline of 30,000 to 40,000 in the four-week average is needed to signal a peak.
Meanwhile, retailers' business last month was helped by warmer weather, tax refunds, and a shift in the Easter holiday, helping Wal-Mart and many mall clothing chains post better-than-expected results.
But consumer sentiment and business in many areas remains weak, and analysts expect a drawn-out recovery as unemployment remains high and other economic woes persist. Warehouse store operator Costco Wholesale Corp. reported a deeper-than-expected same-store sales drop, hurt by the closing of its stores on Easter.
In a separate report, the government said that productivity, the key ingredient to rising living standards, grew at a 0.8 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter, slightly better than the 0.6 percent increase that economists had expected. Wage pressures, as measured by unit labor costs, increased at a 3.3 percent rate, down from a 5.7 percent spike in the fourth quarter.
While wage pressures outpacing productivity normally would raise alarm bells about inflation, the threat of any price spikes is seen as remote. Regulators and economists are not worried about inflation since many workers are more concerned about keeping their jobs in the recession than demanding higher wages.
Hmm. Inflation sucks, but I'm not sure that the fact workers are too afraid to demand higher wages — even though weekly wages are said to be below levels achieved in the 60s when adjusted for inflation — is a good thing. To me, this illustrates the glaring lack of worker protection and job security more than anything else.
Also being reported is the public release of the government's stress test findings. According to the Oregonian, Federal regulators "ordered 10 of the nation's 19 largest banks to raise a total of $75 billion in new capital to ensure their survival should the economic downturn worsen." Unfortunately, the Oregonian also noted that, "For consumers, the results could mean it will be even harder to borrow during the next 18 months."
I seem to remember that the original purpose of the government's $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, which funnelled massive amounts of tax-payer money to the major banks while slashing interest rates, was to stimulate more lending. So now we're being told that not only has the government's $700 billion bailout failed to unfreeze the credit market and stimulate lending, but its new stress test results and subsequent new capital requirements will make it even harder to borrow in the next 18 months!
What in the hell are these people doing? Who are they really trying to help? Why aren't we doing more about it like firing our banks and putting our money into local credit unions?
Finally, I read three interesting letters to the editor in today's Oregonian. The first is an open letter to President Obama by G.R. Johnson:
First, to review that each student's share of the national debt is $36,667 and rising, according to statements by the GAO, the OMB and U.S. Budget Watch. Add in $56 trillion for the unfunded entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) and you get a total commitment of $67.2 trillion, or $220,409 per person, including around 33 million kids under the age of 18.
Second, to explain the ethical and moral considerations that justify borrowing several trillion dollars from future generations without their approval and without advising them how the magnitude of this debt will impact their entire lives.
I hope you will agree that it is a matter of honor and decency that these questions are answered by those who authorized borrowing at a rate never before seen in our history. It would seem you would welcome the opportunity to explain these things to those who will be burdened with the payments for as long as they live.
The second is by DR. Herman M. Frankel concerning H.R. 676:
"A public plan would drive private insurance companies of out of business," ("Health Secretary: No single-payer plan," May 7, Page A7).
Exactly. Private insurance companies are in the business of generating earnings by standing between patients and their doctors. Too often, they obstruct access and decrease quality by preventing patients from seeing their doctors (through exclusions, high co-pays and deductibles, and low annual maximums), withholding approval for needed medical tests or procedures and delaying or denying payment.
Is this why so many Americans and a many practicing physicians favor the single-payer program described in H.R. 676, the bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), and 75 co-sponsors, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Oregon AFL-CIO, 38 other state AFL-CIOs, and more than 450 other union organizations, including 20 Oregon unions, and more than 40 state, county, and city governments?
And last but not least, the third is about America's "awful moral turning" since WW II by Chuck Hillestad:
How did the Greatest Generation manage to spawn the Worst Generation?
What a truly depressing statistic. In fact, it's statistics like this that have made me lose faith in the ability of capitalism to ever address the needs of humanity. With all of the wealth and resources at our disposal, it's a travesty that so many people are going hungry; and with the focus of production always on profit rather than need, it's a travesty that will continue for the foreseeable future.
Palzang
No, but I can still try.
The answer is simple. Because it seems to me that the system is inefficient when it comes addressing the needs of humanity.
According to one UNEP report, "over half of the food produced today is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain."
Just look at how much perfectly good food is thrown away by grocery stores, for example. People actually make a living out of cooking and eating the perfectly good food they throw away. Hell, even Giles Coren, restaurant critic for the British newspaper The Times, did a segment about it on the The F Word. (He ate a banana right out of the garbage, and then proceeded to have a picnic with everything they collected.)
And what about the 30 million tons of unwanted fish currently discarded at sea per year? How many people could that feed?
In addition, food that could go to feeding people goes instead to things like feeding livestock and the production of biodiesel. The same UNEP report underscored the fact that "over one-third of the world’s cereal harvest is being used as animal feed" and cautioned that "continuing to feed cereals to growing numbers of livestock will aggravate poverty and environmental degradation," while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that "soaring food prices brought intense focus ... on the inflationary role of biofuel production."
The world as a whole — but especially wealthy, industrialized nations like Canada and the United States and other large producers like Brazil, China, the EU, India, etc. — has the capacity to produce enough food to feed those who can't produce enough on their own, but due to the lack of profit involved it doesn't.
As one article in Forbes illustrates, even though genetically modified seeds are the potential "saviors of the global hungry":
The bottom line is that under the current system, profit is the determining factor in agricultural advances, production, storage and distribution.
In the United States, for example, supply control policies were used to decrease overproduction until 1996 to control prices. Why? Because too much supply equaled lower prices, and lower prices equaled lower profit. And this "problem" isn't just limited to the United States.
The Economic Times had a story earlier this year about wheat oversupply and profits in India. It notes that, "To add to the problem of too much unsold stocks, India is poised to reap another good harvest this year. In short, Indian wheat prices look set to plummet in a market where customers—corporate and retail—will be wooed with a vengeance."
Of course many countries like Canada and the United States do distribute food aid to poor and famine-plagued countries, but not nearly enough. And it can be argued that they do so in order to get rid of surplus that might otherwise lower prices, and subsequently, profits. As Alan Maas puts it, "The effect is to keep food prices high at home and undercut competitors abroad, especially in developing countries—while the world's poor go hungry."
I may be wrong, but I'm convinced that the ICFI is right when they conclude that:
I'm not trying to vilify capitalism, I simply don't think that the capitalist system (or at least the way that it's currently structured) will ever be able to address the needs of humanity as a whole. So even though I think capitalism has contributed a lot to the development of society — contribution which I sincerely appreciate — it has its limits; and I think the fact that an estimated 1 billion people will go hunger illustrates that.
As I've said before, perhaps socialism is the next evolution of economics that will lead the world to a wonderful new level of prosperity and cooperation, and then again, perhaps not. But ultimately, I think it all depends on what direction we want to take our global society.
I suspect that Adam Smith was right in that the pursuit of self-interest will improve the general welfare, but only when we realize, as a collective whole, that we are all in this together. Otherwise, with the focus of production always on profit rather than need, I don't see how anything will ever change.
The problem isn't greed on our part, its the outright inability to get the food to the people who need it. How on Earth can we ship food to parts of Africa where there are no paved roads? No airports? Where the nearest coastline is hundreds of miles away? Where theres a new government in place every 10 years, and militia groups control the country side?
The logistics are the biggest problem, closely followed by corruption."
My response:
Their reply:
Which, I should note, is a good point. That's basically the UN's assessment too.
Yes, definitely, you should, we all should, but just don't expect it to cure the problem!
Palzang
One of today's biggest headlines involves Nike. According to today's edition of the Oregonian, Nike is planning on cutting a total of 1,750 workers, including 500 at their Oregon headquarters, even though the company itself has been relatively successful during the current recession.
As the article points out, "Nike's sales have actually held up fairly well during the recession, growing consistently until its last quarter." So why the huge layoff? Apparently, it's part of a massive restructuring plan that's been in the works since February.
That's right. Despite the fact that Nike has fared relatively well throughout the current economic slump, the company is ever on the lookout for ways to cut costs — including laying off more than 7% of the 6,800 workers at Nike headquarters in Oregon — in order to realign the business for the future.
So just what will Nike do with the estimated $225 million in "savings"? Will it share that money with the rest of its employees who are lucky enough to keep their jobs? It's possible, but not likely.
According to the article, "Nike hasn't said what it plans to do with that savings, but Svezia [a New York investment analyst who follows the company for Susquehanna Financial Group] said the company may try to expand in fast-growing countries such as China or experiment with new retail strategies." As Svezia put it, "Nike is a growth company. They need to spend to generate growth."
Too bad that growth will come at the expense of Oregon workers, among others.
In other news, Speaker Pelosi continues to defend her previous denial that she was briefed about the use of waterboarding. According to the Huffington Post:
The CIA's response: "It is not the policy of this agency to mislead the United States Congress."
Of course not. The CIA would never do anything like that. But then again, it's Nacny Pelosi we're talking about here. I don't know who I distrust more.
Meanwhile, the LA Times reports that President Obama's war-funding measure easily passed the House on Thursday despite the fact that 51 Democrats dissented.
Cheers to the 51 Democrats who stood up to President Obama and voted against his $97 billion war-funding measure — which will largely go to financing Obama's strategy of adding 21,000 U.S. troops and trainers in Afghanistan and counterinsurgency training in Pakistan — and jeers to Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) who voted for the measure while at the same time saying, "This is a bill that I have very little confidence in." (Um, then don't vote for it?)
In local news, the Oregonian reports that a Portland woman who was injured during an arrest in 2006 won $18,500 in a settlement after she sued the Portland Police Bureau, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office and the Cherry Park Condominium Association. According to the article:
An attorney for the condo association argued that it was more like 3 feet.
Trivol -- a Ukrainian immigrant who speaks almost no English -- felt targeted by what the suit describes as repeated, xenophobic harassment by the association and its president at the time, Michael Graybeal. Trivol's husband had been arguing with the tow-truck driver and had sliced one of the truck's tires with a knife.
According to the suit, Officer James Botaitis and Deputy Bret Burton forced Trivol to the ground by putting her in a hold, snapping a bone in her arm, on May 27, 2006. Trivol said the officers stepped on her back and pushed her face to the mud, as seven of her children and grandchildren watched.
Good for her. She deserves every penny of it after the police BROKE HER ARM while wrestling her to the ground.
In yet another documented case of police brutality, the police contended that she was "swearing, yelling and blocking the truck as she stood in the street in front of her home" and "charged at the tow-truck driver and kicked Burton in the shin as he lifted her." But, as the story continues, "prosecutors dropped the case after her attorneys submitted dozens of photographs taken by a neighbor showing her giving police and the driver lots of space as she stood on the sidewalk."
Fortunately, attorney Allen Peters was kind enough to send a letter to the Portland Police Bureau and the sheriff's office reminding them that, "Law enforcement officers do not have a right to order people to be silent and to remove themselves from a public sidewalk, and it is outrageous that these particular officers believe otherwise."
Finally, I read three interesting letters to the editor in today's Oregonian. The first is by Erin Quinton highlighting the current contract status (or lack thereof) of Portland teachers:
Painting: Farewell! No time to set up or clean up.
New literacy and math centers each week with a variety of differentiated materials to meet each child's learning needs: Ha!
Small group instruction during writing: Gone.
Clean tables? What germs? Boogers rule!
Replenish art supplies: The closet is on the other side of the building and by the time I pick up the key and collect materials half my prep time is gone.
Field trips: Goodbye. No time to make calls, arrange dates and details of trips, fill out the three-page application for scholarships for our Title I school, etc.
Biweekly classroom newsletter with cute pictures of kids: No can do.
Score writing assignments, create individual folders for individual skills support, fill out summer reading list for the library: Don't even ask!
You get the idea. I implore the district to return to the bargaining table, be cognizant of what most of your teachers donate to their jobs and settle the current negotiations immediately.
The second is from Hunt Norris, a former banker, who argues for more borrower protection from outrageous bank fees:
As the restrictions on interstate banking came down, I have observed an alarming increase in bank fees. I checked the CPI for August 1973 and compared it to the CPI for March 2009. This index has risen 371.6 percent over that time period. If overdraft fees had increased the same amount as the CPI, today those fees would be $14.15. I checked the minimum wage for 1973 and found that it was $1.60. Today the minimum wage is $7.25, a 353.1 percent increase.
During my 17 years as a banker, our branches in the poorest neighborhoods were the ones that generated the greatest income from overdraft fees, meaning the people paying the most in overdraft fees were the people who could least afford it. In 1973, at minimum wage, it took 1.9 hours of work to earn enough money to pay one overdraft fee. In 2009, it takes 5.4 hours of work to pay one overdraft fee. These fees are out of control.
Whether the reason is a reduction in competition due to interstate banking or some other reason, the free market is not keeping these fees in check. Governmental regulation, in my opinion, is necessary for the protection of the consumer.
And last but not least, the third is about the closing of the Oregon School for the Blind by Carlene Benson:
It's disappointing that none of the legislators and state administrators involved have the integrity to talk about what this is really all about. This is not about education. It's always been about the property and it's very disingenuous to pretend otherwise, especially at the expense of the blind children who will not get these services anywhere else if the Oregon School for the Blind is closed. They are at the school now because it's already been decided through their Individual Education Plan process that their own districts can't provide the needed services, and that the School for the Blind is the best place.
With governors from opposing political parties and residents who often share only sports rivalries, Minnesota and Wisconsin are being drawn into the unusual alliance by financial circumstance. The sharing, officials in the two states say, could save them $20 million over the next two years.
Lawmakers in at least nine other states, and countless cities and counties across the country, are also engaged in a kind of barter system, often allowing them to cut the size of government, split their costs and share services. Some of the makeovers might have made sense at any time, but the urgent political will to change — cut jobs, close offices and give up power — was absent before the recession.
"What you have is an economy that is forcing people to share," said Joseph N. DiVincenzo Jr., the county executive in Essex County, N.J., which (for $4 million a year) began accepting juvenile detainees this spring from neighboring Passaic County, which closed its own facility (to save $10 million a year).
Reading this story, the first thing that came to mind was Marx's famous words from his Critique of the Gotha Programme detailing the basis for a future phase of society in which a communal economic system replaces a private one:
The irony is that as much as conservatives in the U.S. have denounced "socialist" principles in the past year or so, in the midst of the current economic downturn they're unwittingly seeing the wisdom of those very same principles:
By last month, it had blossomed into a blow-by-blow, 130-page report on the services they intend to share, like inspecting amusement rides and making license plates (Minnesota inmates may soon be pressing Wisconsin’s endangered-species plates). On nearly every front, the two states are considering buying in bulk, sharing computer systems and swapping intelligence about contracts that could be found more cheaply.
"We had been talking about it over the years, and we have had some minor collaborations," said Gov. James E. Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat. "But with the Wall Street collapse and the effects of that rolled out across the country, it was time for us to really, out of necessity, intensify those talks."
What they're doing is still being done in the context of capitalism, but within this story about states bartering and sharing resources, I see the seeds of a communal economy based on cooperation in which the sharing of wealth is based on needs rather than profit. It's sad, yet encouraging. I find it sad that it's taking economic hard times for these people to actively share goods and services, but I find it encouraging that it's being done at all.
Yes, because individualism is so two centuries ago!
I'm aware of capitalism's flaws, but name one other system that has produced more wealth, more opportunity and more freedom for more people. Of course there is none, but let's keep holding onto the same utopian dreams that have only lead to misery for millions and in its extreme form, the greatest slaughter humankind has ever seen.
Nothing in this world is static, including economic systems. Nobody is denying the contributions of capitalism. Even Karl Marx praised the contributions of capitalism. As Paul D'amato mentions in his latest article for the Socialist Worker:
Why praise capitalism in a pamphlet proposing its overthrow? Because for Marx and Engels, this development of the productive forces brought about by capitalism created the material conditions to abolish class divisions and inequality. There is now absolutely no reason for there to be poverty in the world.
To me, the unequal distribution of wealth and the exploitation of its working-class citizens are one of the most salient critiques of capitalism, and I see nothing wrong with trying to find a system which takes the great achievements of capitalism and utilizes those achievements to create a more balanced, egalitarian society.
As for the snide comment about "holding onto the same utopian dreams that have only lead to misery for millions and in its extreme form, the greatest slaughter humankind has ever seen," I'd like to point out that what places like China and the Soviet Union had wasn't actually socialism. Real socialism is a mass movement towards economic democracy — collectively owned and democratically controlled production based on need rather than profit — and the creation of an egalitarian, classless society.
From what I understand, besides a very brief period just after the 1917 Russian Revolution, there wasn't even anything close to worker owned and democratically controlled production in either country, let alone the creation of an egalitarian, classless society. In my opinion, regardless of what they called themselves, they were extreme forms of state capitalism in which production was dominated by totalitarian political regimes. And in both cases, neither was an advanced capitalist economy to begin with, which, as far as I understand it, is a key component in Marx's theory concerning a successful transition from capitalism to socialism.
What you're referring to — if you were referring to places like the Soviet Union and China — was nothing more than state capitalism, not socialism. And this isn't simply some sort of modern reinterpretation of socialism as some like to suggest. In fact, this very point was made by Wilhelm Liebknecht in 1896 when he said:
Frederick Engels also made this distinction a decade earlier when he argued in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that state-ownership of certain industries isn't the same thing as socialism, nor does it solve the problems inherent in the capitalist system, most notably the exploitation of its working-class citizens.
Sure, every system has its flaws, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try new things if and when the old ones repeatedly fail to meet our needs. And, frankly, capitalism has hit a few rough patches in the last century (e.g., the Great Depression, Japan in the 90s, the current global financial crisis, etc.). Marx's analysis of economic crisis points to one of the major dilemmas of capitalism, that of over-production:
The way I see it, if democracy works so well in the political arena — seeing as how our last president, George W. Bush, declared it the mission of America to spread democracy and end "tyranny in our world" — why wouldn't it work just as well in the economic arena? I'm still not sure why that's a bad thing. Tyranny shouldn't be tolerated anywhere. In a truly democratic society, the rule of the people shouldn't be limited to one or the other but extended to both equally.
I don't think the idea of economic democracy is any more utopian than the Founding Fathers' idea of political democracy when they broke away from England, signed the Declaration of Independence and created a new representative democracy that many thought would never last.
Because nothing else ever works! Just because socialists called themselves "scientific" or because they reflected the "evolving nature" of people (think the "living constitution"), that doesn't mean that their "scientific" means ever worked. Or could.
I am a working-class citizen. How am I exploited? I am contracted by my employer freely and of my own will. I agree to work and they agree to pay me. If I don't feel I'm being compensated enough, I work somewhere else! Where is the exploitation in that?
What is exploitation is the government taking my money (or anyone else's for that matter) to be used and given to people who don't work or feel themselves entitled to something.
Of course. It's such an easy thing to say. "Well the so-called communists killed 100 million people but they weren't really socialists/communists." But the same thing is true of capitalism! There has never truly been a full-blown capitalist economy. Not even in America. The state has always been involved to some certain extent even back in the 19th century.
Basically I want to own my own stuff and my own destiny! I don't want to be part of a "collective" or some mythical classless society that will never be. Because in a free-market society, classes are not static. My own father was raised dirt-poor and he is fairly well-off today. Starting where I am, I hope to even have a better standard of living than he has some day. Hard work, self-interest and the freedom to keep my own income and work for private industries is the best route to that goal.
From what I understand, besides a very brief period just after the 1917 Russian Revolution, there wasn't even anything close to worker owned and democratically controlled production in either country, let alone the creation of an egalitarian, classless society. In my opinion, regardless of what they called themselves, they were extreme forms of state capitalism in which production was dominated by totalitarian political regimes. And in both cases, neither was an advanced capitalist economy to begin with, which, as far as I understand it, is a key component in Marx's theory concerning a successful transition from capitalism to socialism.
And the New Deal failed entirely as even one of the biggest New Dealers Henry Mogethau admitted later. The Depression lasted much longer than it should have mostly because Hoover raised taxes ridiculously, raised tariffs, and Roosevelt's relentless war on business did nothing to abate the crisis.
The Founders never spoke of being "scientific." The American Revolution is unique in history precisely because it did not establish some sort of "dictatorship of the proletariat." It was quite a conservative revolution by historical standards. Unlike the Revolutions to follow in France and Russia (with the latter leading to the deaths of well over 20 million people), the aim of the American Revolution was to do away with a burdensome government and not create a much more tyrannical one.
I quite agree, KoB, and I wish I could live long enough to find out if the experiment is ever going to succeed.
Given the events of recent months, I think you're right.
Actually, from what I understand, both the February Revolution and the October Revolution were relatively bloodless. It was the subsequent civil war between the Bolsheviks and anti-Bolshevik and pro-monarchist forces that devastated Russia and lead to the deaths of millions of people.
And the Allied Power's intervention in Russia's Civil War on the side of pro-tsarist and anti-Bolshevik forces didn't help matters, either.
Well, speaking as somebody who actually lives in the Darkest Continent, it might help to work on paternalism and a few unchallenged assumptions.
And the debts owed to the World Bank and IMF are far more crippling than not having paved roads. Not to mention dumping nuclear waste all along the coast of Somalia -- you want to read the disability stats on that amongst young children? Or destroying the forests of the Niger Delta to ensure the oil pipelines of Shell etc stay in place. Propping up dictatorships to ensure cash-cropping continues. US foreign policy towards Africa has been an unmitigated disaster and that is unlikely to change.
If the West throws money at problems, you just help create dependencies and corruption. In South Africa and Zimbabwe, Aids is called 'fats' because so many social workers and hospital adninistrators have expensive cars and houses and overseas bank accounts. Those suffering from Aids are called 'thins' because they go on suffering and their emaciated condition doesn't change. The retrovirals are sold elsewhere at a profit. The monies are pocketed.
The samsara of human nature is not going to change with the shifting of imperfect political systems. We need to probe deeper even while we stay active in working for a more humane distribution of resources between North and South. Try again and fail better, as Samuel Beckett said.
Mary
With thanks for any opinions.
But there are different kinds of liberation, and material advantages or technology or IT access are not always the most important, especially as the West comes to the end of the fossil fuel era. In 40 or 50 years time, the West will be dealing with its own implosive chaos and the Third World may well be prospering and self-suficient.
Peace to you
Mary
"Pendulum swing like a pendulum do...."
I have no doubts this may very well come to pass. Those who have the necessity to survive, connected to the earth in a far closer relationship with nature, are the ones who ultimately will lead the way, and instruct those who have become so far removed from their roots, they have no clue how to survive without their Prada suits, Lamborghinis and lattes with extra shots.....:rolleyes:
Actually, in point of fact neither of you are right. Most of the millions you are speaking about were killed during the forced collectivization by Stalin in the 1930's (not to mention the killing of clerics at about the same time).
Palzang
Yes, Stalin's reign of terror lead to the deaths of between 20 to 50 million people when it was all said and done, but the estimated death toll resulting from the Russian Civil War alone is around 9 million.
My point was simply that the revolutions themselves were relatively bloodless.
Okay, well maybe initially they were relatively "bloodless." I guess in comparison to what came to follow in the victors' wake. Though nothing like the Cheka (created by Lenin at the onset of the Civil War) ever existed in the American Revolution. Rogue elements of the hodgepodge White movement were responsible for numerous executions and murders, but it is difficult to imagine a White victory ever having lead to the butchery on the same level of Stalin's collectivization in the 30s. (Interestingly enough, many American journalists who visited Stalin's Russia gushed over how it was "the future" around this same time)
Not to be outdone of course, Mao killed some 60 million people...in peacetime no less. The fact that roughly 6 times as many people were killed in China during Mao's reign than were in the Holocaust, and the fact that it is rarely even mentioned should be a badge of shame for all the "heroic" journalists and historians of that time period.
Again, if Chiang Kai-shek had been the victor instead of the Communist Mao in China, perhaps tens of millions of people would still be alive today. But as Stalin succinctly put it, "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."
Is it really any accident that anywhere people took power who considered themselves hard-core socialists/communists, millions of people were usually tortured or killed as a result?
To begin with, I don't take Russia as my political/economic model when discussing things like socialism. There are many different types of socialism out there, and the militaristic style of socialism that dominated Russia after the October Revolution is nothing I'd ever advocate. And neither would most democratic socialists/social democrats.
Hell, even Lenin warned the Central Committee in 1922 that: "Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution." And Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, denounced Stalin's Soviet dictatorship as a menace.
As for your comparison of the American Revolution to the Russian Revolution, I think it's like comparing apples to oranges. For one thing, Russia was in the midst of WWI at the time of their revolution. And after two relatively bloodless revolutions during this time, the country erupted into civil war; something that America didn't have to face until almost 100 years after their revolution was won. And, as I already mentioned, the Allied Power's intervention in Russia's Civil War on the side of pro-tsarist and anti-Bolshevik forces didn't help matters either.
Taking all of this into consideration, as well as other factors which I don't have time to mention, is it any wonder that the Bolshevik Party degenerated into what it did in an effort to hold on to power amidst the chaos and upheaval? That certainly doesn't excuse their actions, but I think you have to take the material conditions of any situation into consideration when trying to looking at history objectively.
That said, I agree with you on certain points. My initial response was just to give the basic definition of socialism in order to illustrate that what places like China and Soviet Russia had wasn't real socialism, which itself entails the self-emancipation of the working class and some form of democratic control of production. At the very least, in any form of state socialism (or state capitalism as some call it), the people must be in control the state. Otherwise, a dictatorship is a dictatorship no matter what you call it.
In Russia's case, the working class was decimated on the frontlines of WWI and the Russian Civil War, and the Bolshevik Party basically tried to substitute itself for the working class. During this time, the Bolshevik-lead government became increasingly more brutal and repressive in an effort to hold on to power amidst the chaos and upheaval. They suppressed rival political organizations and began taking away power from what was left of the directly democratic workers' councils. And these events paved the way for Stalin's rise to power and the formation of the USSR.
So while I think it's fair to point out the places where hard-core socialists/Marxists ran amok, I don't think it's fair to categorize all socialists as would-be Stalins, or the American Revolution as something sacrosanct when compared to the Russian Revolution. I'm not sure if that's what you're doing, but that's the impression I get.