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No return to the 1930s! Statement of SEP presidential candidate

steveargue2 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:58:46 GMT

[LIberation News is giving critical support to the Socialist Equality Party's U.S. presidential campaign. The following is presidential candidate Jerome White's statement on the economic crisis. -Steven Argue, for Liberation News]

No return to the 1930s! For the public ownership of the banks!

Statement by SEP presidential candidate Jerome White

17 September 2008

The bankruptcy of Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers and the forced takeover of Merrill Lynch are the latest demonstrations of the collapse of American capitalism. All the lies and propaganda about the supposed infallibility of the “free market” are being discredited. The people of the US and the world are confronting a financial catastrophe on a scale not seen since the Great Depression.

What is revealed in this crisis is not merely the recklessness, incompetence and greed of America’s financial elite, but the failure of capitalism—an economic and political system that subordinates the needs of society to profit and personal enrichment.

Who is going to pay for this crisis? Here the US corporate and political establishment agrees: working people must accept a drastic reduction in their living standards to bail out the Wall Street investors and banking executives who are responsible for this debacle.

The American ruling class has for decades championed “private enterprise” and the wonders of the market as the pinnacles of human civilization, capable of solving all problems, while socialism has been denounced as evil and oppressive. Over the past 30 years, the operations of big business were deregulated—under both Republican and Democratic administrations—removing all legal restraints on corporate profit-making and the personal accumulation of wealth.

The ruling class responded to the crisis of American capitalism by carrying out a deliberate policy of deindustrialization, which wiped out millions of jobs and decimated cities like Detroit. Vast industrial resources were destroyed, and the savings of workers were plundered in order to free up capital for the most parasitic forms of financial speculation.

Increasingly, wealth was separated from the creation of real value. Corporate corruption and insider dealing became the norm, and vast fortunes were amassed in the hands of a small layer of the population.

The Financial Times recently reported that compensation for major executives of the seven largest US banks totaled $95 billion over the past three years, even as the banks recorded $500 billion in losses. Of course, neither Barack Obama or John McCain suggest that this money should be paid back.

Now that this orgy of financial speculation has produced a disaster, the corporations and banks are determined to roll back the conditions of the working class to the 1930s to pay for the crisis.

Obama and McCain are absolutely committed to the defense of capitalism and America’s financial elite. The next president—whether a Democrat or Republican—will move to gut entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security and support the corporate attack on jobs and living standards.

McCain’s sudden discovery of “greed” on Wall Street is laughable, coming as it does from a long-time defender of the US corporate establishment. Obama’s complaints about a lack of oversight ignore the role of the Clinton administration, whose policies helped fuel the speculative explosion and sub-prime mortgage crisis. Obama is a no less committed defender of the financial elite, receiving more campaign cash from Wall Street firms such as Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs than John McCain.

The Democratic candidate proposes no criminal investigations and refuses to hold anyone responsible, making his proposals for “regulation” thoroughly meaningless. In comments Tuesday, moreover, Obama declared his full support for the capitalist system, saying the “free market has been our engine of our progress,” which “rewarded the innovators and risk-takers.”

It is precisely these “risk-takers” and “innovators” who concocted the debt instruments and derivatives used to funnel billions into the hand of the wealthy. Meanwhile, the working class—which had been declared virtually obsolete in the “new economy”—is, as Marxists have always insisted, the only producer of real value.

It is indicative of the decrepit state of American democracy that the bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, followed by Wall Street insurer AIG—which will essentially double the national debt while providing nothing for distressed homeowners—was taken without the slightest political debate or discussion. This underscores once again that behind the trappings of democracy, the American political system is a plutocracy, i.e., a government of, by and for the rich.

The alternative to capitalism and financial catastrophe is socialism—the reorganization of economic life to meet social needs and not private profit.

I call for:

* A public auditing of corporate finances and the personal accounts of the top management of the financial institutions over the past decade.

* The recovery of the vast sums of money that have been pocketed by the wealthy elite. Those responsible for the economic devastation must be brought to justice.

* A massive public fund to make whole all of the victims of predatory lending and the collapse of home values. All home foreclosures must be immediately halted, and funds made available to provide quality housing for all.

* Trillions of dollars for rebuilding basic industry, cities and the country’s infrastructure. This should be paid for through the establishment of a genuinely progressive tax system that drastically increases taxes on the wealthy, and through the dismantling of the gigantic US war machine.

* Transforming the giant banks and financial institutions into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities, with measures taken to protect small shareholders. The financial resources of society—which are the product of the labor of millions of working people—must not be left in the hands of a financial aristocracy.

* Reorganizing the economy on the basis of a rational, democratic and egalitarian plan guided by the socialist principle of production for human need, not the enrichment of a wealthy elite.

Insofar as the Democrats even mention the economic crisis, it is to promote economic nationalism and the pitting of American workers against workers in other countries. In fact, the global consequences of the breakdown of American capitalism have demonstrated: (1) the integration of the world economy, and (2) the pressing necessity for the international unity of the working class in the struggle to defend jobs and living standards.

The SEP encourages all forms of mass opposition to attacks on social services, the gutting of jobs and the wave of home foreclosures. This crisis has proven that the capitalist class is unfit to direct economic and political life and that working people must establish genuine democratic control over society.

This requires a political break with the two parties of big business and the building of a mass political party of the working class fighting for a socialist alternative. I encourage workers and youth to support our election campaign, contribute to our fund and, above all, make the decision to join and build the Socialist Equality Party.

From the World Socialist Website
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/stat-s17.shtml

Distributed by Liberation News
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 0 replies

video facts on Sara Palin

Leslee — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:13 GMT

http://womenagainstsarahpalin.org/

Why Sarah Palin should not be Vice President

Palin has actively sought the support of the fringe Alaska Independence Party. Six months ago, Palin told members of the group, who advocate for a vote on secession from the union, to "keep up the good work" and "wished the party luck on what she called its 'inspiring convention'.

Palin favors drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Palin questioned the science behind predictions of sea ice loss linked to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade."
In 2008, the state of Alaska under Palin's guidance sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne in an attempt to reverse his decision to list polar bears as a threatened species.

Palin opposed a state initiative that would have banned metal mines from discharging pollution into salmon streams.

Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was sponsored by BP.

Palin is extremely anti-choice. She doesn't even support abortion in the case of rape or incest. "I am as pro-life as any candidate can be,"

Palin wrote on July 1, 2002, to the Alaska Right to Life board, according to the Anchorage Daily News

Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She's said she will only support abstinence-only approaches.

Palin was not a very good mayor, according to one Wasilla resident. "Far from being a fiscal conservative, Palin left Wasilla in debt, was intolerant of "divergent opinions" and "has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help." Read the story in the Anchorage Daily News.

Palin supports the aerial shooting of wolves in Alaska -- despite ballot measures in the state in which voters twice since 1996 have voted to end the practice. (This according to the Wall Street Journal)
As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in themóshocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, "news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor."
After she took office as mayor in November 1996, Palin asked for letters of resignation from six department heads based on allegations that they were still supporting the former mayor. She also fired Police Chief Irl Stambaugh, who unsuccessfully sued her for wrongful termination, according to court records.

She DID support the Bridge to Nowhere (before she opposed it). Palin claimed that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. But in 2006, Palin supported the project repeatedly, saying that Alaska should take advantage of earmarks "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."

THE FACTS: Palin did abandon plans to build the nearly $400 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport. But she made her decision after the project had become an embarrassment to the state

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 1 reply

New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan

steveargue2 — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:34:34 GMT

New tribe against the occupation of Afghanistan
http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

Massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan began in 1978 and continues to this day. The ongoing war in Afghanistan continues to kill thousands of Afghan civilians and cause extreme suffering due to horrendous injuries, the displacement of people from their homes and livelihoods, home invasions, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests and torture, and the general humiliation of the Afghani people.

As this author stated for Liberation News on September 12, 2001:

“Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S. government has done with it's bombing of civilian populations in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. The U.S. bombings of just these countries, not to mention many other U.S. acts of war, murdered millions of civilians. Terror against civilians is never justified…

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen. With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing women for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate [oil pipeline] interests.” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2001

The Taliban was put in power by U.S. intervention. U.S. occupation today is a cause for war and continues to keep an extremely reactionary religious government in power. Afghanistan had secular governments with much wider women's rights before the U.S. began its massive intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970's. All U.S. imposed governments have been religious and anti-women. In Afghanistan, the Afghanis are better qualified to solve the problems caused by U.S. imperialism than U.S. imperialism is.

Yet rather than get out of Afghanistan Obama and McCain are proposing more troops, more helicopters, and more war.

NO TO THE BIPARTISAN OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN!!!!

NO TO OBAMA and MCCAIN'S PROPOSED SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN!

U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW!

http://tribes.tribe.net/outnow#

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 0 replies

Obama on Blackwater-A glaring hint that he isn't going to pull out.

Tedster — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 05:39:13 GMT

AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about the future of Blackwater and also the bases here in the United States. But first, let me play for you a little exchange I had with Barack Obama, asking him about Blackwater. He had come to Cooper Union a few months ago to talk about the economy, and afterwards in the rope line, I asked him.

AMY GOODMAN: Would you call for a ban on the private military contractors like Blackwater?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I’ve actually—I’m the one who sponsored the bill that called for the investigation of Blackwater in [inaudible], so—

AMY GOODMAN: But would you support the Sanders one now?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Here’s the problem: we have 140,000 private contractors right there, so unless we want to replace all of or a big chunk of those with US troops, we can’t draw down the contractors faster than we can draw down our troops. So what I want to do is draw—I want them out in the same way that we make sure that we draw out our own combat troops. Alright? I mean, I—

AMY GOODMAN: Not a ban?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I don’t want to replace those contractors with more US troops, because we don’t have them, alright? But this was a speech about the economy.

AMY GOODMAN: The war is costing $3 trillion, according to Stiglitz.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: That’s what—I know, which I made a speech about last week. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Barack Obama.

JEREMY SCAHILL: This is interesting. I mean, this is one of the more interesting exchanges I’ve seen with a presidential candidate on this issue. I mean, it almost never gets raised at all.

Barack Obama—this is the reality about this. Barack Obama understands this issue extremely well. His staff has been on top of this for quite some time. He—what he said to you is true. He did introduce the legislation in the Senate that has become the Democrats’ official legislation on these private security companies, and he did it eight months before Nisour Square. So, clearly, Barack Obama is someone who has been following this very closely. He understands it very intimately.

What’s interesting—and you raised this with him—is that he won’t take the step toward actually trying to ban these companies. Representative Jan Schakowsky and Senator Bernie Sanders have put forward legislation called the Stop Outsourcing Security Act in the Congress, and Barack Obama has said he’s not going to come onboard and support that legislation.

Interestingly, when I reported in The Nation that Obama would not support that legislation, which seeks to ban the use of these companies in US war zones, Hillary Clinton, five days before the Texas and Ohio primaries, the day my piece comes out, she responds by putting a statement on her website saying that she’s going to endorse Bernie Sanders’ legislation, and she becomes the single most important US political figure to come out for a ban. Now, I’m glad that Hillary Clinton did that, and I look forward to her making this one of her top legislative priorities after the primary season is over.

But on Barack Obama, he’s in a very complicated situation, because his Iraq plan actually is not a plan to end the occupation of Iraq. It’s to continue it with a different label attached to it. And so, you hear him there talking about how “I don’t want to replace contractors with US troops.” The reality is, and Barack Obama knows this very well, his Iraq plan could not be implemented if he was against the use of Blackwater or other private security forces. And the reality is, he’s probably going to have to use these companies for two to three years at a minimum, unless he makes it an aggressive point of trying to shut them down. He might even have to use Blackwater for the first year of his administration.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/2/blackwater_jeremy_scahill_on

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 1 reply

Iraqi Oil Workers Tell Chevron "Hands Off Iraq"

steveargue2 — Mon, 26 May 2008 22:17:38 GMT

Iraqi Oil Workers Tell Chevron "Hands Off Iraq"

In a letter to Chevron executives and shareholders (and to ExxonMobil, who meet the same day), Iraqi Oil Workers Unions call on Chevron to end the occupation and stop pushing for the Iraq Oil [Theft] Law. This message will be delivered by antiwar, environmenta, and labor organizers as a protest converges on Chevrons annual shareholder meeting. Their message is below. This event will be on Wednesday May 28, at 7am at Chevrons Corporate headquarters in San Ramon. For more information, see: http://bayareadirectaction.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/may-28-demand-justice-from-chevron/

******************
To: The Shareholders of ExxonMobil and Chevron Corporations and All Peace Loving People of the World

From: Hassan Juma’a Awad, President, Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU)

We call upon the governments, corporations and other institutions behind the ongoing occupation of Iraq to respond to our demands for real democracy, true sovereignty and self-determination, free of all foreign interference.

Five years of invasion, war and occupation have brought nothing but death, destruction, misery and suffering to our people. In the name of our “liberation,” more than a million of our citizens have been killed or wounded, our nation’s schools, hospitals and other infrastructure have been destroyed, our neighbourhoods have been bombed, our homes have been broken into, our children have been traumatized, many of our family members and neighbours have been assaulted and arrested, our national treasures have been looted, and nearly twenty percent of our people have been turned into refugees.

The continued occupation fuels the violence in Iraq rather than alleviating it. The occupation has helped to foment and then exploit sectarian divisions and terror attacks where there had been none.

The Ba’athist legislation of 1987, which banned trade unions in the public sector and public enterprises (80% of all workers), is still in effect and continues to be enforced against us. Our union offices have been raided. Union property has been seized and destroyed. Our bank accounts have been frozen. Our leaders have been beaten, arrested, abducted and assassinated. Our rights as workers are routinely violated. This is an attack on our rights and the basic precepts of a democratic society. It is a grim reminder of the shadow of dictatorship still stalking our country.

We call upon you and all the world’s peace-loving peoples to help us to end the nightmare of occupation and restore our sovereignty and national independence so that we can chart our own course to the future.

1) We demand an immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from our country, and utterly reject the agreement being negotiated with the USA for long-term bases and a military presence. Iraq must be returned to full sovereignty.

2) We demand the passage of a labour law promised by our Constitution, that adheres to ILO principles to protect the rights of workers to organize, bargain and strike, independent of state control and interference and on which Iraqi trade unionists have been fully consulted.

3) We demand an end to meddling in our sovereign economic affairs by the International Monetary Fund, the USA and UK, and multinational energy corporations, and recognition that no major economic decisions concerning our services and resources can be made while foreign troops occupy our country.

4) We demand that the US government, oil companies and others immediately cease lobbying for the oil law which would fracture the country and hand control over our oil to multinational companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron. We demand that all oil companies be prevented from entering into any long-term agreement concerning oil while Iraq remains occupied. The Iraqi government must tear up the current draft of the oil law, and begin to develop a legitimate oil policy based on full and genuine consultation with the Iraqi people. Only after all occupation forces are gone should a long term plan for the development of our oil resources be adopted.

We seek your support and solidarity to help us end the military and economic occupation of our country.

We look forward to the day when we have a world based on co-operation and solidarity.

We look forward to a world free from war, sectarianism, competition and exploitation.

******************
Also See:

Take the Profit Out of Global Warming and War, Nationalize the Oil Industry
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/05/24/18501994.php

Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/10/18478172.php

Join the Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

Distributed by Liberation News, Subscribe Free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 10 replies

Take the Profit Out of Global Warming, Nationalize the Oil Industry

steveargue2 — Sat, 24 May 2008 22:22:50 GMT

Take the Profit Out of Global Warming and War, Nationalize the Oil Industry

Global Warming, the Biggest Threat to Humanity and Other Living Things

By STEVEN ARGUE

In Myanmar the death toll from a cyclone is, according to the Red Cross, between 69,000 and 128,000 people, with many more deaths possible from disease and starvation. Adding to the ferocity of the storm’s impact has been the fact that much of the mangrove habitat that had protected the Myanmar coast has been cleared. In addition, with strong parallels to Bush’s refusal to accept thousands of well trained and well equipped aid workers who would have saved lives in New Orleans, the repressive capitalist government of Myanmar has hindered the ability of international aid workers to do what needs to be done to save lives in Myanmar.

Last year, China had their worst cyclone in over 50 years. Around the world, warmer oceans are increasing the frequency and severity of hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons. This is happening because the world’s warmer oceans feed more moisture into these tropical storms. As a result, computer models of global warming also project hurricanes in places that haven’t had them in known human history. One of these projections was that hurricanes would form in the South Atlantic. Fitting predictions, the first ever known South Atlantic hurricane made landfall on southern Brazil in 2004.

Last year Tokyo had a warm winter, with no snow cover for the first time in recorded history.

California is having the driest spring in 150 years, with regular water shortages in the long-term projections as a result of global warming. Already, on May 22, a wildfire started in the Santa Cruz Mountains, burning thousands of acres and destroying homes. That fire has yet to be contained. With wildfires starting this early, there is reason to fear this upcoming fire season in California.

The Santa Cruz area has a Mediterranean climate. These climates are characterized by winter rainy seasons and dry summers. Places with Mediterranean climates around the world are facing dryer weather with more wildfires. This is also happening in Greece and Australia. Forests and chaparral are burning up as habitats are changing and adjacent deserts are expanding.

The ice sheets in the arctic are disappearing at an ever increasing rate, and some of the latest predictions now project the potential of northern summer ice sheets completely disappearing within six years, bringing on the extinction of the polar bear and other species. As the white ice and snow disappears, dark ocean absorbs more of the sun’s heat, and escalates the rate of global warming even further.

In 2005 the Amazon River basin faced a drought never seen in recorded history. For the first time in recorded history a stretch of the Amazon River went completely dry in 2005, with causes attributed to a combination of less rainfall, smaller glaciers in the Andes (as a result of melting), and deforestation. Computer models predict that the rains that are necessary for the continued flow of the Amazon River will dry up due to the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean, causing moisture to fall directly as rain into the Atlantic rather than being blown inland. In addition to these projections saying that the Amazon River will dry up as a result of global warming, they also say that the Amazon rainforest will begin a regression first to grassland ending with the massive desertification of the Amazon Basin within the next one-hundred years. This, and other processes of desertification around the world, will, like rising oceans, cause starvation, massive refugee crisis’s, and also cause mass extinction of plant and animal species. Presently, the trees of the Amazon Forest remove greenhouse carbon from the atmosphere, but as climate changes and the forest disappears, this process will reverse itself, and the region will be adding carbon to the atmosphere.

Today, every national academy of science of the industrialized world recognizes human caused global warming as a fact. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences who explicitly use the word "consensus" on the issue.

Yet there are a few voices who claim that human caused global warming is a myth. Among these is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a foundation funded by ExxonMobile. Under pressure, ExxonMobile declared they would no longer fund such groups. Yet, a study of ExxonMobiles tax returns showed they were lying and that they were still funding 14 other similar groups. Among these is the organization “Frontiers for Freedom” who recently issued a report that was dedicated to attacking Al Gore and global warming science.

The problem of global warming is one that will, and is, devastating the planet’s environment, causing mass extinction of species while also destroying agricultural and habitable land through rising oceans, more severe hurricanes, droughts, more unpredictable weather, increases in tropical diseases, the slowing of ocean currents causing year round freezing weather with a potential ice age in the northern hemisphere combined with higher temperatures closer to the equator, and the potential of runaway global warming with the melting of the ocean’s methane hydride that could actually cause the extinction of the human species as well as most other species on the planet.

The United States is still the biggest contributor to global warming in the world. Per capita, China has much lower carbon emissions than the United States. Likewise, historically their output is also much less than the United States. No country outdoes the extreme per-capita output of US consumerism, nor do they outdo the historic US output, output which stays in the atmosphere for a long time and continues to contribute to global warming today.

China needs to deal with their pollution too, but their carbon footprint per person is much, much lower than the United States. In addition, the growing output in China is, to a large extent, being done by US corporations who have moved to China, so once again, US capitalists are largely to blame, even for Chinese carbon output. Yet, the Chinese Communist Party’s abandonment of socialism, and lack of true workers democracy under one party Stalinist rule, is also part of the problem.

Despite the severity of this problem and the key role the United States has played in creating it, the U.S. government and corporate leaders do worse than nothing, and have blocked and sabotaged all potential solutions for the past fifty years up until the present.

The United States needs an emergency program to dramatically lower carbon emissions. Without it we are doomed. Yet both ruling capitalist parties in the United States have been in the back pockets of big oil and coal, and have refused to do anything. A first step to save the planet and end imperialist wars, once the people gain power, will be the nationalization of the energy industries.

The first scientist to discuss global warming was Swedish Chemist Svante Arrhenius, a chemist who made many discoveries essential to modern chemistry, who in 1896 warned that a doubling of the world's atmospheric carbon dioxide would increase the world's temperatures by five to six degrees Celsius. With catastrophic implications, this is very close to current predictions. By 1957, scientists Roger Revelle and Hans Suess at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California put out the first warnings about human caused global warming that were taken seriously by the scientific community. Yet, despite this information being readily available for fifty years, the U.S. government and U.S. corporations failed to act in a favorable way at that time, and presently they continue to be an obstacle to action on global warming.

The current lack of action is due to the massive profits that continue to be made by the big oil corporations, and the political strength they have in being able to buy the politicians in Washington. Nothing short of nationalizing the oil industry, a move that would take corporate profit out of continued greenhouse gas emissions, will break this country from its suicidal drive towards profits at the price of the destruction of the entire planet. Yet the nationalization of oil will not take place within the current power structure of a nation ruled by two capitalist parties that are only elected through the support of massive contributions from the extremely wealthy and the backing of the corporate media. Although there will be a hard struggle ahead, only a revolutionary democratic socialist movement that comes from below can achieve the transformations of the power structure needed to nationalize oil and save the planet.

Today, the full extent of the problem of human caused global warming is the focus of considerable scientific research. World temperatures have already increased significantly and are rising at an alarming rate. As global temperatures have risen, ice shelves and glaciers in the Arctic, Antarctic, and mountains have been rapidly melting. So much ice has melted and dropped in the Ocean that the maps of Antarctica have had to be redrawn. In Greenland, it has been found that the increased layer of melted water between glaciers and the ground below is in fact greatly increasing the speed in which glaciers slide into the ocean.

All of this increased water in the world’s oceans is causing sea levels to rise. The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is projected to be the first island nation to be completely submerged by global warming. Rising saltwater has already destroyed crop land and is contaminating their ground water. As a result, Tuvaluans now only drink rainwater and have to import a much greater portion of their food than they did in the past. The nation of 9,300 has already begun a program of evacuating 75 people per year from their islands, with 3,000 Tuvaluans already living overseas. Not only is Tuvalu taking the question of global warming seriously enough to begin evacuation of their islands, their tiny poor nation has decided to spend the $1.5 million per year necessary to be members of the United Nations in order to advocate world action against global warming. While what is happening to Tuvaluans is alarming, the coming elimination of Tuvalu from the planet is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the human and environmental crisis that will be caused by rising seas. As the trend continues, much of low lying nations such as Bangladesh and Vietnam are projected to be swallowed by rising waters, creating millions upon millions of refugees, and destroying some of the most productive crop land in the world, bringing with it a massive humanitarian crisis of refugees and starvation as well as the extinction of many species. In addition, low lying areas of the United States, such as Manhattan and Florida, will be submerged as well.

One disturbing theory regarding global warming makes the seemingly contradictory projection that global warming will trigger a new ice-age. Yet a large and growing body of scientific evidence does back this prediction. It is based on the fact that ocean currents in the Atlantic, including the Gulf Stream, are expected to disappear as a result of large amounts of fresh water melting and disrupting ocean currents. These currents move cold water from the north Atlantic south as well as warmer water north, mitigating what would be the extremes between both northern and southern climates. Twenty thousand years ago, at the height of the last ice-age, a reduction of ocean currents by two thirds drastically decreased the temperatures of the northern hemisphere and plunged much of North America and Europe into year-round winter. Already, measurements of ocean currents off of Greenland indicate that ocean currents there have decreased by 20%. The transformation of most of North America and Europe into frozen wasteland will, like rising oceans and desertification, cause mass starvation, a massive refugee crisis, and also cause mass extinction of plant and animal species.

Much of global warming is proceeding at even faster rates than original dire predictions, due to what are called positive feedback loops. These are phenomena that are caused by global warming on the one hand, and are accelerating global warming on the other. Among positive feedback loops is the melting of ice and snow. As more ice melts, warmth from the sun that was reflected back out of the atmosphere by light colored snow and ice; is more readily absorbed by newly exposed darker colored ground and ocean water. This is why the arctic is currently heating up at a much faster rate than anywhere else.

Carbon sinks, things that take global warming causing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, are also being destroyed by global warming. Fossil fuels (when they aren’t burned) such as oil and coal are the ultimate carbon sinks, where prehistoric carbon was moved out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and buried in the ground. Unfortunately, as these fuel sources are burned, their carbon is now being released back into the atmosphere. Some other important carbon sinks are forests and peat bogs, where these plants take carbon dioxide out of the air and convert it into sugars, carbohydrates, and cellulose. While direct human destruction of forests and peat bogs for lumber, fuel, and cropland is destroying these important carbon sinks, so too do phenomena such as global warming caused desertification.

Another important carbon sink, caught in a global warming related positive feedback loop, are the activities of the ocean’s forams, tiny organisms that, in their massive numbers, use up vast amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide as it passes freely between the atmosphere and the oceans. When forams die, much of the carbon they’ve converted drops with their shells to the bottom of the ocean. Yet, this process is now being interrupted by the increased acidity of the oceans caused by the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans. Forams are unable to function properly under these conditions of higher acidity and are thus removing less carbon from the atmosphere.

So a number of causes have been identified where increased carbon dioxide and increased global warming cause even more atmospheric carbon dioxide and more global warming. In addition, the most dire predictions dealing with positive feedback mechanisms is the melting of methane hydride on the bottoms of the world’s oceans. As the oceans heat up, the melting of this material will release methane gas into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is even worse than carbon dioxide. A leading theory on the cause of the Permian extinction 251 million years ago, an extinction episode that killed off 95 percent of all species on earth, is that the extinction episode was first triggered by carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by Siberian volcanoes for an extended period of time that led to global warming that reached temperatures high enough to melt methane hydride on the bottom of the oceans.

The combination of high carbon dioxide and methane gas concentrations in the atmosphere then dramatically increased the temperatures of the oceans, causing them to become anoxic. The oceans became anoxic because as water gets warmer it holds less oxygen. In addition, warmer ocean waters circulate less, moving less oxygenated water from the ocean’s surface deeper into the ocean.

Anoxic waters no longer support most advanced plants and animals, but they do support a number of species of bacteria that are adapted to such conditions. These bacteria include species that produce hydrogen sulfide as a waste product of their metabolism. Hydrogen sulfide is poisonous to humans and other organisms dependent on oxygen. It is thought that large amounts of hydrogen sulfide from the world’s heated anoxic oceans entered the atmosphere and killed off almost all life on land during the Permian Extinction. Human caused global warming today, if it is not stopped, may well set in motion the same series of events, and wipe out most species on earth, including the human race.

As U.N. secretary-general Ban told delegates at the December 2007 U.N. climate conference in Bali, "We are at a crossroad, one path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear." Yet despite a willingness on the part of a number of nations to take some action, and despite overwhelming scientific evidence, the United States, the worst polluter of gasses causing global warming in the world, refuses to sign on to international agreements limiting greenhouse gas emissions. While most environmentalists agree that these Kyoto protocols are not enough, the United States signing on to them would at least be a step in the right direction. If the United States continues to do nothing in regards to global warming except participate in denial while spewing the worst per-capita carbon emissions in the world, the human and environmental catastrophe of global warming will become much worse, and human extinction becomes more and more likely.

In advocating something be done, American environmentalists often point to many individual things people can do to slow one’s personal impact on global warming. These include driving less and generally using combustion engines less, recycling, becoming a vegetarian or vegan, consuming less, using solar or wind energy, planting trees, avoiding cutting down trees, and saving forests and peat bogs. All of these things are positive in reducing greenhouse gasses, and should be encouraged, but without the problem being tackled on a wider societal level, such individual actions amount to a mere drop in the bucket as petroleum and auto-industries sabotage wider solutions, and millionaires like Arnold Swartzenegger try to make up for what they apparently lack in their pants by driving around with his fleet of eight gas-guzzling hummers.

One wider societal solution would be converting the United States to electric cars, and making them more efficient with hybrid technology while also cleaning up the grid by converting more power sources to solar and wind generated power. This should be combined with providing much greater subsidies to mass transportation. Yet, the oil industry and other major corporations of the United States, along with their subservient politicians in both the Democrat and Republican Parties, have blocked every major step towards this kind of progress over the last 50 years.

As Alexandra Paul from Bay Watch stated in a PBS interview, “[…] power as in ‘the power structure’ is why we are still using gas in cars.” In the interview she described how GM decided not to re-lease her electric car, nor any other that they had leased out, and instead took all of these working cars back from their customers in 2002 and crushed them. Toyota also took similar actions destroying their electric vehicles in California at the same time. The only reason these companies ever produced and leased these cars was that they were forced to do so by a California law passed in the 1990’s. The law was inspired by the fact that cities like Los Angeles are over-polluted, largely due to combustion engines, and electric cars with energy coming from power plants produce fewer smog and greenhouse gas pollutants. Yet, when these companies were no longer legally forced to put out electric cars in order to do business in California, they stopped doing so and destroyed the ones they had already produced. When electric cars were on the market, they were available only for lease except a few that Toyota agreed to sell under public pressure. So, when the car manufacturers were no longer forced to have their popular electric cars out on the market, they not only stopped producing them, they took back the ones that were actively being leased and destroyed them.

The auto manufacturers claim that these cars were unpopular, and that is why they stopped producing them as soon as they could. Yet, when the cars were being leased there were waiting lists for the cars that were longer than what was available. The various manufacturers, in taking these vehicles off the road and destroying them, did so in order to destroy their very example as an alternative. This lets us in on a very important secret. Through their hostile actions against the electric car they have informed us that they are wed to the interests of the oil companies. This could be, in part, due to the fact that the planned obsolescence of cars with combustion engines is harder to engineer into electric cars. So these cars apparently didn’t break down enough to promote auto sales and auto parts sales. So the auto industry is involved in what amounts to, in terms of ethics, a criminal conspiracy to rip-off consumers and destroy the future of this planet in order to achieve short-term profits.

Just as capitalist ownership is blocking the production of electric cars, so to does capitalist energy ownership block the development and production of wide-scale wind and solar energy. As Monica Hill stated in the Freedom Socialist Newspaper:

“[...] it takes a great deal more labor and energy to harness wind and solar power, at present, than to extract oil. Oil men are clear on the subject. "Renewable energy," said former Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond in the British newspaper Economist, is "a complete waste of money." When Raymond retired last December, Exxon Mobil reported profits of $36.1 billion — the largest in U.S. history. Raymond personally raked in $400 million that year. Clearly, when wind and solar power finally get developed, it won't be thanks to capitalist industry. There is no solution for skyrocketing consumer costs and plunging planetary health as long as control of the energy industry remains in the hands of the monster oil industry and its kindred financial and industrial monopolies.”

With the production of wind and solar, once again, capitalist ownership and capitalist profits are the barriers to the steps needed to save the planet.

Just as big oil profits from the destruction of the planet, they are also a major influence in the drive for war against countries that have eliminated private ownership of oil wealth. U.S. intervention against the popular democratic governments of Venezuela and Bolivia is increasing because these countries have nationalized their energy industries and are using oil profits for things such as education and healthcare, instead of that money going directly into the pockets of multi-national oil corporations. Similarly, oil was nationalized under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and oil revenues were used, in part, to benefit the Iraqi people. Now, under a U.S. imposed puppet government in Iraq, there have been attempts to privatize Iraqi oil fields, but resistance from Iraqi workers has so far prevented it. Once again, the drive for higher corporate oil profits is a destructive force for the world’s people and environment.

While the United States government has no right to intervene in other countries to tell them what to do with their own resources, especially when those countries are making better use of resources than would be done in the hands of U.S. and British oil companies, the U.S. also has no right to destroy the entire planet for the profits of a few oil companies. This, combined with the overwhelming corrupting power big oil has on U.S. politics leads one who is interested in the future of this planet to one inevitable conclusion. The oil industries of the United States need to be nationalized under the democratic control of the people.

While taking the profit out of war and environmental destruction through the nationalization of oil and other energy industries may sound logical to most people, inevitable questions naturally arise in people’s minds.

A common myth promoted by those who have profits to gain through private ownership is that private ownership is more efficient. Yet an honest look shows public ownership is always better. A good example is socialized medicine in Europe, which is much cheaper and better than American healthcare, resulting in giving countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom longer life expectancies and lower infant mortalities than the United States. Ending capitalist profit, a form of theft to line the pockets of the wealthy in the first place, is just plain more efficient.

Even public ownership of energy, on a small scale, isn’t without precedent in the United States. Electricity in Los Angeles is publicly owned. Because it is publicly owned, money isn’t being siphoned away in the form of profits going to shareholders and CEO’s. In addition, the bottom line is not the profits of shareholders and CEO’s. As a result, electricity is provided at rates much cheaper than in the rest of California, and it is done in a more environmentally friendly way. In fact, since electricity is publicly owned, people in LA were able to put an initiative on the ballot to shut down their nuclear power plants. The measure succeeded, and people in LA, while they are still forced to pay for the nuclear plants that were constructed and shut down, they still pay less for electricity due to the superior efficiency of ending corporate profit through public ownership.

In the United States, public ownership of the oil industry would not only take away profit incentives for war and environmental destruction, but money made from such enterprises could go towards human and environmental needs such as saving the environment, and towards healthcare and education, as nationalized oil money is used in Venezuela.

Yet Venezuela is also facing a crisis, both because the United States is hostile to what the revolutionary Chavez government is doing there with oil money, but also because there are still capitalists that control much of the Venezuelan economy. Through that control they are able to sabotage other sectors of the economy in their attempts to overthrow the Chavez government. Capitalist interference in food distribution has been one of the most recent acts of sabotage, where capitalists have had food stuffs that they were refusing to put on the shelves for sale. How Chavez deals with this, and other capitalist sabotage of the economy, will determine whether or not the Venezuelan Revolution survives.

Immediately after the Cuban Revolution, Castro and the rest of the Cuban revolutionary leadership was tested in a similar way. The first nationalizations by the Cuban revolutionary leadership were in agriculture. Before the revolution, under the U.S. backed Batista dictatorship, much of the Cuban land was owned by the American capitalist Rockefeller family through the United Fruit Company. Peasants worked for low wages on this land during the on season, and starved during the off-season. Immediately, upon taking power, the Castro government carried out their promise of land reform and United Fruit Company land was expropriated. Resources from sugar production were no longer used to only enrich the Rockefeller family, but instead used to bring food, education, and medicine to peasants and their children. Yet, the United States and American capitalists never forgave this intrusion on capitalist property, and American capitalists sabotaged production in other sectors of the economy, including by refusing to refine oil. In response, the Castro government nationalized the entire economy and announced the building of a socialist economy in Cuba.

This necessity of socialist revolutions to carry out sweeping nationalizations in order to stop capitalist sabotage of the economy was first recognized in 1905 by Leon Trotsky in his work “Results and Prospects” and later developed further in “The Permanent Revolution”.

It is through the Cuban nationalization of the entire economy that the Cuban revolution has not only been able to survive, but they have been able to implement socialist energy policies that are not based on profit, but are instead based on human and environmental needs. While Cuban socialized medicine has brought about a medical system that has produced a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality than the United States, Cuba’s planned economy has also benefited the environment. It is as result of those policies and priorities that the World Wildlife Fund has said that Cuba is the only country with passing environmental policies in the world. Yet, those policies on one tiny island nation will not be enough to save the planet. As Fidel Castro stated at the U.N. in Rio in 1992:

“An important biological species is in danger of disappearing due to the fast and progressive destruction of its natural living conditions: mankind. We have now become aware of this problem when it is almost too late to stop it. It is necessary to point out that consumer societies are fundamentally responsible for the brutal destruction of the environment.”

Here, Castro is right, and Cuba does serve as a model. Yet, when we look at the Cuban model of socialism, we must pick and choose what aspects are healthy and which aspects should not be copied by other socialist revolutions.

While the Cuban socialism has achieved much, one key ingredient for a healthy society is missing. That ingredient is democracy. A similar observation was made of the Soviet Union in 1918 by German socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg. While being supportive of the Russian revolution, she was at the same time opposed to the dictatorial methods of the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky in the Soviet Union. Rosa Luxemburg instead advocated revolutionary democratic socialism.

The Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, were swept to power in a popular revolution that called for an end to the war with Germany, land reform, and socialism. Besides the betterment this revolution meant for the workers and peasants in general, including access to healthcare and education, giant strides forward were made for oppressed nationalities, Jews, women's rights, and gay rights. Before the revolution, under Czarist rule, Jews were routinely slaughtered in the thousands in government-sponsored pogroms. Peasants were the property of feudal landlords, and huge numbers of drafted young peasants were dying in the inter-imperialist war with Germany. This all ended with the Russian Revolution. In addition, gay rights and the right to abortion were legalized for the first time in any country with the birth of the Soviet Union and backward anti-woman practices such as bride-price and forced marriage were made illegal. Priorities were made of literacy and meeting the basic needs of the people. These were huge advances made by a revolution that had inherited a poor economically backward nation, soon to be further devastated by civil war and the invasion of many imperialist armies.

Yet, Rosa Luxemburg, while praising the advances made by the Russian Revolution, did not excuse the lack of democracy in the Soviet Union. She saw the Marxist concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in a completely different way than Lenin and Trotsky. She saw this simply as the toiling majority becoming the dictators over the capitalist minority that once held power. For that majority to actually be in charge, however, they would need democratic organs, universal suffrage, and democratic rights. For Lenin and Trotsky, the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" fit more into bourgeois models of individual dictatorship by those in power. As Rosa Luxemburg states in her 1918 work, the “Russian Revolution”:

“Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only a bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders with inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule [...] a dictatorship, to be sure, but not dictatorship of the proletariat [...].”

A different position by Lenin and Trotsky, more in league with that of Rosa Luxemburg, could have produced a much better and more open society that would have made Stalin's type of rise to power through skullduggery, corruption, and terror within the ranks of the party much more difficult.

Rosa Luxemburg did not see this question as being counterpoised between bourgeois democracy (democracy for the rich as we have in the United States) on the one hand (defended by fake "socialists" who had betrayed socialism and become administrators of capitalist exploitation and war), and dictatorial communism on the other. Instead, she rejected both and fought for a socialist society with nationalized industries where the working class has democratic control. It is this essential banner of revolutionary democratic socialism that must be fully revived in order to not repeat the mistakes of the past, and in order for people to take our movements for environmental survival and socialism seriously and want any part in them.

It was a very unfortunate error of history that the first socialist revolution was carried out with the anti-democratic errors of Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin amplified those errors for his own personal gain. Due to the influence of the Russian Revolution, both morally and financially, the undemocratic errors of the Russian Revolution were copied by most socialist revolutions after, including the Cuban revolution. While recognizing the advantages of the Cuban socialist model over U.S. imposed dictatorship and a corporate controlled economy, it is important not to repeat their undemocratic errors.

Yet, there is nothing inherently democratic about a private economy. As was shown in the example of publicly owned power in LA, with the ability of the people to shut down unsafe nuclear power plants, public ownership is more democratic than private ownership. Private ownership allows a few extremely wealthy people to control not only industrial policies where public input and control is essential for a healthy environment, but their private control of vast financial resources also gives them control of the two established political parties in the United States. Public ownership on a wider scale, with a broadly socialized economy, tied to full democratic rights and universal suffrage, will allow the United States to become a much more democratic country than it is today, and will allow the people of this country to begin the measures needed to save the planet.

Yet, while all of this may seem reasonable, it does beg the question, “How do you propose to gain such a far reaching goal in a country that has an entrenched power structure that is more engaged in privatization than nationalization?” This is the hardest question. It will take the organization of a revolutionary party firmly committed to these goals that is not interested in compromise with the current power establishment. The goal of such a party must be for power, but history has also shown that such parties and movements can become powerful enough at times to scare the power structure into making some of the needed reforms. Even relatively small parties that stick to radical convictions that seem to be on the very fringes can, in times of discontent and sudden revolutionary turmoil, become the majority. As issues worsen in the United States around war, environmental destruction, lack of healthcare, and a possible coming economic collapse, the possibilities of a sea-change in the relatively passive U.S. population becomes more and more likely.

It is with these understandings that the first steps are being taken to establish the Cool Earth Party on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism, which includes the following demands:

1. Immediate action to save the planet by cutting greenhouse gas emissions!
2. Nationalize the Oil Industry, Other Energy Industries, and the Auto Industry!
3. U.S. Troops Out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, and the Philippines!
4. End US Military Aid to Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, and All Other Oppressive Governments in the World!
5. End US Imperialism!
6. For Socialized Medicine!
7. No to Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia!
8. For proportional democracy with guaranteed equal time for parties in the media, outlaw big campaign spending, and outlaw electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections).
9. For Class Struggle Methods to Achieve these Goals, Including Strikes, Mass Protests, Alternative Media, Acts of Conscience and Rebellion Within the US Military, and the Building of a Revolutionary Democratic Socialist Party.
10. Towards Revolutionary Democratic Socialism in the United States!

Such a party will necessarily start small. But, I think, time will tell that such an organization is not only essential for the survival of the planet, it is also an idea that can become popular quickly because it is an idea whose time has come.

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1950: 100,000 Executed by Imperialism's Korean Dictatorship

steveargue2 — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:55:46 GMT

[The US war of aggression in Korea murdered 5 million Koreans. Part of that murder was the cold blooded executions of over 100,000 leftists and suspected leftists by the South Korean government in 1950. Over 54,000 U.S. soldiers died in the U.S. war to defend that murderous U.S. imposed regime. The following AP article exposes what many on the left have known about for decades, but has been hidden from the general public in the United States by the government and corporate media. -Steven Argue]

AP Probes 'Cold-Blooded Slaughter' in South Korea
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003805038

By CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, The Associated Press

Published: May 18, 2008 4:15 PM ET

DAEJEON Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.

With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.

The mass executions - intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners - were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century. They were ``the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War,'' said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a 2-year-old government commission investigating the killings.

Hundreds of sets of remains have been uncovered so far, but researchers say they are only a tiny fraction of the deaths. The commission estimates at least 100,000 people were executed, in a South Korean population of 20 million.

That estimate is based on projections from local surveys and is ``very conservative,'' said Kim. The true toll may be twice that or more, he told The Associated Press.

In addition, thousands of South Koreans who allegedly collaborated with the communist occupation were slain by southern forces later in 1950, and the invaders staged their own executions of rightists.

Through the postwar decades of South Korean right-wing dictatorships, victims' fearful families kept silent about that blood-soaked summer. American military reports of the South Korean slaughter were stamped ``secret'' and filed away in Washington. Communist accounts were dismissed as lies.

Only since the 1990s, and South Korea's democratization, has the truth begun to seep out.

In 2002, a typhoon's fury uncovered one mass grave. Another was found by a television news team that broke into a sealed mine. Further corroboration comes from a trickle of declassified U.S. military documents, including U.S. Army photographs of a mass killing outside this central South Korean city.

Now Kim's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has added government authority to the work of scattered researchers, family members and journalists trying to peel away the long-running cover-up. The commissioners have the help of a handful of remorseful old men.

``Even now, I feel guilty that I pulled the trigger,'' said Lee Joon-young, 83, one of the executioners in a secluded valley near Daejeon in early July 1950.

The retired prison guard told the AP he knew that many of those shot and buried en masse were ordinary convicts or illiterate peasants wrongly ensnared in roundups of supposed communist sympathizers. They didn't deserve to die, he said. They ``knew nothing about communism.''

The 17 investigators of the commission's subcommittee on ``mass civilian sacrifice,'' led by Kim, have been dealing with petitions from more than 7,000 South Koreans, involving some 1,200 alleged incidents - not just mass planned executions, but also 215 cases in which the U.S. military is accused of the indiscriminate killing of South Korean civilians in 1950-51, usually in air attacks.

The commission last year excavated sites at four of an estimated 150 mass graves around the country, recovering remains of more than 400 people. Working deliberately, matching documents to eyewitness and survivor testimony, it has officially confirmed two large-scale executions - at a warehouse in the central South Korean county of Cheongwon, and at Ulsan on the southeast coast.

In January, then-President Roh Moo-hyun, under whose liberal leadership the commission was established, formally apologized for the more than 870 deaths confirmed at Ulsan, calling them ``illegal acts the then-state authority committed.''

The commission, with no power to compel testimony or prosecute, faces daunting tasks both in verifying events and identifying victims, and in tracing a chain of responsibility. Under Roh's conservative successor, Lee Myung-bak, whose party is seen as democratic heir to the old autocratic right wing, the commission may find less budgetary and political support.

The roots of the summer 1950 bloodbath lie in the U.S.-Soviet division of Japan's former Korea colony in 1945, which precipitated north-south turmoil and eventual war.

In the late 1940s, President Syngman Rhee's U.S.-installed rightist regime crushed leftist political activity in South Korea, including a guerrilla uprising inspired by the communists ruling the north. By 1950, southern jails were packed with up to 30,000 political prisoners.

The southern government, meanwhile, also created the National Guidance League, a ``re-education'' organization for recanting leftists and others suspected of communist leanings. Historians say officials met membership quotas by pressuring peasants into signing up with promises of rice rations or other benefits. By 1950, more than 300,000 people were on the league's rolls, organizers said.

North Korean invaders seized Seoul, the southern capital, in late June 1950 and freed thousands of prisoners, who rallied to the northern cause. Southern authorities, in full retreat with their U.S. military advisers, ordered National Guidance League members in areas they controlled to report to the police, who detained them. Soon after, commission researchers say, the organized mass executions of people regarded as potential collaborators began - ``bad security risks,'' as a police official described the detainees at the time.

The declassified record of U.S. documents shows an ambivalent American attitude toward the killings. American diplomats that summer urged restraint on southern officials - to no obvious effect - but a State Department cable that fall said overall commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur viewed the executions as a Korean ``internal matter,'' even though he controlled South Korea's military.

Ninety miles south of Seoul, here in the narrow, peaceful valley of Sannae, truckloads of prisoners were brought in from Daejeon Prison and elsewhere day after day in July 1950, as the North Koreans bore down on the city.

The American photos, taken by an Army major and kept classified for a half-century, show the macabre sequence of events.

White-clad detainees - bent, submissive, with hands bound - were thrown down prone, jammed side by side, on the edge of a long trench. South Korean military and national policemen then stepped up behind, pointed their rifles at the backs of their heads and fired. The bodies were tipped into the trench.

Trembling policemen - ``they hadn't shot anyone before'' - were sometimes off-target, leaving men wounded but alive, Lee said. He and others were ordered to check for wounded and finish them off.

Evidence indicates South Korean executioners killed between 3,000 and 7,000 here, said commissioner Kim. A half-dozen trenches, each up to 150 yards long and full of bodies, extended over an area almost a mile long, said Kim Chong-hyun, 70, chairman of a group of bereaved families campaigning for disclosure and compensation for the Daejeon killings. His father, accused but never convicted of militant leftist activity, was one victim.

Another was Yeo Tae-ku's father, whose wife and mother searched for him afterward.

``Bodies were just piled upon each other,'' said Yeo, 59, remembering his mother's description. ``Arms would come off when they turned them over.'' The desperate women never found him, and the mass graves were quickly covered over, as were others in isolated spots up and down this mountainous peninsula, to be officially ``forgotten.''

When British communist journalist Alan Winnington entered Daejeon that summer with North Korean troops and visited the site, writing of ``waxy dead hands and feet (that) stick through the soil,'' his reports in the Daily Worker were denounced as ``fabrication'' by the U.S. Embassy in London. American military accounts focused instead on North Korean reprisal killings that followed in Daejeon.

But CIA and U.S. military intelligence documents circulating even before the Winnington report, classified ``secret'' and since declassified, told of the executions by the South Koreans. Lt. Col. Bob Edwards, U.S. Embassy military attache in South Korea, wrote in conveying the Daejeon photos to Army intelligence in Washington that he believed nationwide ``thousands of political prisoners were executed within (a) few weeks'' by the South Koreans.

Another glimpse of the carnage appeared in an unofficial U.S. source, an obscure memoir self-published in 1981 by the late Donald Nichols, a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, who told of witnessing ``the unforgettable massacre of approximately 1,800 at Suwon,'' 20 miles south of Seoul.

Such reports lend credibility to a captured North Korean document from Aug. 2, 1950, eventually declassified by Washington, which spoke of mass executions in 12 South Korean cities, including 1,000 killed in Suwon and 4,000 in Daejeon.

That early, incomplete North Korean report couldn't include those executed in territory still held by the southerners. Up to 10,000 were killed in the city of Busan alone, a South Korean lawmaker, Park Chan-hyun, estimated in 1960.

His investigation came during a 12-month democratic interlude between the overthrow of Rhee and a government takeover by Maj. Gen. Park Chung-hee's authoritarian military, which quickly arrested many then probing for the hidden story of 1950.

Kim said his projection of at least 100,000 dead is based in part on extrapolating from a survey by non-governmental organizations in one province, Busan's South Gyeongsang, which estimated 25,000 killed there. And initial evidence suggests most of the National Guidance League's 300,000 members were killed, he said.

Commission investigators agree with the late Lt. Col. Edwards' note to Washington in 1950, that ``orders for execution undoubtedly came from the top,'' that is, President Rhee, who died in 1965.

But any documentary proof of that may have been destroyed, just as the facts of the mass killings themselves were buried. In 1953, after the war ended in stalemate, after the deaths of at least 2 million people, half or more of them civilians, a U.S. Army war crimes report attributed all summary executions here in Daejeon to the ``murderous barbarism'' of North Koreans.

Such myths survived a half-century, in part because those who knew the truth were cowed into silence.

``My mother destroyed all pictures of my father, for fear the family would get an image as leftists,'' said Koh Chung-ryol, 57, who is convinced her 29-year-old father was innocent of wrongdoing when picked up in a broad police sweep here, to die in Sannae valley.

``My mother tried hard to get rid of anything about her husband,'' she said. ``She suffered unspeakable pain.''

Even educated South Koreans remained ignorant of their country's past. As a young researcher in the late 1980s, Yonsei University's Park Myung-lim, today a leading Korean War historian, was deeply shaken as he sought out confidential accounts of those days from ordinary Koreans.

``I cried,'' he said. ``I felt, 'Oh, my goodness. Oh, Jesus. This was my country? It was true?'''

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission can recommend but not award compensation for lost and ruined lives, nor can it bring surviving perpetrators to justice. ``Our investigative power is so meager,'' commission President Ahn Byung-ook told the AP.

His immediate concern is resources. ``The current government isn't friendly toward us, and so we're concerned that the budget may be cut next year,'' he said.

South Korean conservatives complain the ``truth'' campaign will only reopen old wounds from a time when, even at the village level, leftists and rightists carried out bloody reprisals against each other.

The life of the commission - with a staff of 240 and annual budget of $19 million - is guaranteed by law until at least 2010, when it will issue a final, comprehensive report.

Later this spring and summer its teams will resume digging at mass grave sites. Thus far, it has verified 16 incidents of 1950-51 - not just large-scale detainee killings, but also such events as a South Korean battalion's cold-blooded killing of 187 men, women and children at Kochang village, supposed sympathizers with leftist guerrillas.

By exposing the truth of such episodes, ``we hope to heal the trauma and pain of the bereaved families,'' the commission says. It also wants to educate people, ``not just in Korea, but throughout the international community,'' to the reality of that long-ago conflict, to ``prevent such a tragic war from reoccurring in the future.''

CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, The Associated Press
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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McCains pastor

Tedster — Thu, 22 May 2008 05:10:53 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErC1IJeHnyc

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 5 replies

The Politics of Ignorance & Fear by Mumia Abu-Jamal

steveargue2 — Sat, 24 May 2008 01:28:16 GMT

The Politics of Ignorance & Fear
[col. writ. 5/17/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

As the presidential race inches toward November, it brings with it all kinds of detritus, flushed from the hidden psyche of millions.

Politicians are used to representing the hopes of others: they're just as used to dashing those hopes against the hard walls of reality.

For millions of women, the first real chance of a female president has excited their hopes, some pending for generations. For millions of Black men and women, the first real chance of a Black president had excited their hopes, some deeply held for nearly a century.

For most people, however, politics is the art of unrequited hope, for politicians promise the moon, and deliver star dust.

There is, after all, a reason why millions of Americans are so cynical about politics, for they've learned that cynicism from the bitter well of experience.

But consider these voices drawn from those we call the white working class; middle-aged Al and Evelyn Landsberg; he, a lifelong Republican who recently switched political parties, and was quoted as telling a Washington Post reporter recently that Sen. Hillary R. Clinton (D.-N.Y.) would get his vote, although she wasn't great. Clinton was, however, a good deal better than her opponent, "you know, uh Embowa. He'd take this country right down the tubes."

His wife, Evelyn, cited data she gleaned from emails, saying, "From what I can tell, if he (Embowa?} becomes president he will refuse to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and we will leave Iraq unprepared." She added, "I'm not going to sit at home and let that happen."*

It's amazing to think that, several generations ago, millions of Blacks were denied the right to vote through bogus literacy tests, while millions of ignorant whites voted unhindered, by virtue of birthright.

Politics is often seen and interpreted as, well, 'the will of the people.' It is often described in lofty judicial decisions and thick political science texts as democracy in action--the People choosing their Government, and ultimately, the American 'way of life.'

Yet, how much is simply unbridled ignorance? How much is simply blind racial hatred? How much is just plain silliness?

And how much has this been force fed by the corporate media, which can almost beat a dead horse back to life?

If the role of the media is merely to reinforce and buttress our collective ignorance, what can democracy mean?

When ratings become the end-all, be-all of the corporate media, how can it be anything but a mad dash to a mass echo chamber, where ignorance is multiplied into mega ignorance, and wars become inevitable through rumor?

--(c) '08 maj

[*Source: Saslow, Eli, "Not Just Talking About Change: The Democrats have registered more than a million new voters in the last seven primary states, "Wash. Post, May 5-11, 2008 [Nat'l Wkly. Ed.], p.16]

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner in the United States, for more on his case read:

Top Ten “Fry Mumia” Myths Debunked
(Myth #1) “Five eyewitnesses saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner.”
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/19/18436405.php

Also See:
Closing Our Eyes Won’t Make Racial and Ethnic Inequalities Disappear
by STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/21/18473855.php

Distributed by Liberation News, Subscribe free:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

Join the Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

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Why Dems and Republicans Are Agraid of Two Words: Peak Oil

Tedster — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:23:48 GMT

AlterNet
Why Dems and Republicans Are Afraid of Two Words: Peak Oil
By Kelpie Wilson, TruthOut.org
Posted on May 22, 2008, Printed on May 22, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/85841/

In 1956, M. King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist with Shell Oil, presented a paper to the American Petroleum Institute that predicted US oil production would peak in the early 1970s and then follow a declining curve, now known as Hubbert's curve. But Hubbert almost didn't get to give his paper. He got a call from his bosses at Shell, who asked him to "tone it down." His reply was that there was nothing to tone down. It was just straightforward analysis. He presented the paper, unedited. You can read the whole story here.

Since that time, the oil industry and its political supporters have done everything they can to tone down the message that oil is a finite resource and that we will run out of it some day. Why would they do that? To further the short-sighted, short-term pursuit of profit. In 2004, Shell finally got caught in a lie about the size of its oil reserves. The company had inflated the stated size of its oil reserves to keep stock share prices high because who wants to invest in a company -- or an industry -- that is going the way of the dinosaurs?

Since 1956, the world economy has proceeded under a sort of oil company spell that has woven the illusion all around us that oil depletion is so far into the future that we don't need to worry about it. That belief was essential to support the aim of an endlessly growing economy. There have been a few hitches in that strategy.

In 1972, just as oil production in the United States reached its all-time peak, a group of computer modelers from MIT released a study called "The Limits to Growth." They predicted a steep decline in natural resources of all kinds. Because reserve numbers for many minerals, including oil, were not accurately known back then, they looked at different scenarios. Some showed us running out of oil before 2000 and some showed the peak occurring toward the middle of the 21st century.

The pro-growth faction reacted quickly and scathingly to the idea that there could be limits to growth. The MIT scientists were treated like Cassandras in academia and in the press. This strategy of killing the messenger, the bearer of bad news, soon permeated American politics. Jimmy Carter tried to grapple with the energy crisis in the late 1970s with support for energy alternatives and conservation, but he was ridiculed by the media and American consumers were not able to hear the message. Ronald Reagan walked away with the presidency and promptly tore the solar panels off the roof of the White House. Ever since then, it has somehow been "not polite" to talk about limits to growth.

Today, despite skyrocketing oil prices, most politicians still avoid the term "peak oil." Most of the media still treat peak oil advocates with skepticism, using epithets like "fringe" and "so-called"to describe peak oil theory. To be clear, peak oil is often misunderstood. The date that the world reaches peak oil is not the date we actually run out, but the date that we stop increasing production. This is followed by a "plateau" where oil production is flat.

Eventually, oil production will decline. Even a plateau is a big problem for a world economy that is based on growth. In a world where 850 million are still going hungry and 3 billion out of 6.5 billion live on less than $2 a day, stagnant oil production means an end to development models based on economic growth. The statistics show that oil production has been flat for more than two years now. These facts are simple. As Hubbert said back in 1956: "Nothing sensational about it, just straightforward analysis."

And yet the most powerful institutions in our society continue to do everything they can to avoid confronting the truth. Fortunately, a vast network of independent citizens, academics and renegade oil company employees has kept probing at the truth and attempting to educate the public about peak oil. You can find their work online at sites like energybulletin.net and theoildrum.com.

These networks have not only exposed the real statistics about oil production constraints, but they have begun to grapple with how the world should respond to this unprecedented crisis. Anyone who is interested in a firsthand encounter with the intrepid "peakists" might check out an upcoming conference. The International Conference on Peak Oil and Climate Change: Paths to Sustainability takes place from May 30 to June 1 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Michigan Congressman Vernon Ehler will launch the conference. Ehler is a member of the House Peak Oil Caucus, which was founded by another Republican, Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland. The Peak Oil Caucus is co-chaired by Democrat Tom Udall, but it has only 15 members in all. There is no similar group in the Senate and very few other politicians will use the term peak oil. None of the current presidential candidates have made peak oil an issue. Bartlett's press secretary, Lisa Wright, said that Bartlett has talked about peak oil with John McCain but not with Obama or Clinton. When I asked if McCain would take on the peak oil issue, Wright said, "I would not describe Senator McCain as being nearly as knowledgeable or committed as Representative Bartlett on the issue."

When speaking of energy issues, politicians will often use the euphemism of energy security, acknowledging that the US has only three percent of the world's oil reserves and warning that most of the rest of it belongs to unfriendly or unstable governments. While there is truth to this type of statement, it sets up a framework for conflict by creating the perception that there is plenty of oil left but bad people are keeping it away from us.

Both Democrats and Republicans buy into this view. In this election season, some Democrats seem even more willing than Republicans to play the oil fear card and promote quick-fix measures that are ineffectual or downright ridiculous. First there was the gas tax holiday proposed by John McCain and seconded by Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama distinguished himself by resisting the idea.

The economics of it make no sense. It would at best save the average motorist about $30 over a summer of driving, and at worst the increased demand would drive up gas prices. Obama's position shows he understands that oil supply is not meeting demand, even if he has not used the words "peak oil."

In the last two weeks, Congress has seen a slew of silly proposals from both sides. Democrats want President Bush to twist Saudi arms to get the kingdom to produce more oil. If that doesn't work, they want to cut off their arms -- weapons that is. Senator Reid plans to bring an expedited resolution to the Senate floor that would block $1.37 billion in arms sales to the Saudis unless they increase oil production by one million barrels a day.

Peak oil educator Richard Heinberg warns where all this confrontation might lead: "[S]uppose we get tough with the Saudis and end up destabilizing the kingdom so that forces unfriendly to us take over. Then we will feel more or less forced to invade in order to maintain access to our national drug of choice. Where would it end? Does any of this help?"

Meanwhile, what Democrats would do to the Saudis, Republicans want to do to the polar bear and the caribou. Republicans are generally in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) despite the fact that even at peak production it would meet only two percent of American's oil demand. But not all Republicans favor drilling in ANWR. Peak Oil Caucus Co-Chair Roscoe Bartlett thinks we should save the Arctic oil for a real emergency. Speaking in opposition to drilling, he said "I am having trouble understanding how it is in our national security interest to use up our little bit of oil as quickly as we can. If we could pump ANWR tomorrow, what would we do the day after tomorrow?"

Bartlett takes this position because he is operating with the knowledge that oil is finite and that the world is nearing or has surpassed peak production. If all members of Congress were operating within this framework, then we would see some very different policy proposals. I asked Lisa Wright why Bartlett's office thinks the peak oil issue has gotten so little traction in the media and with politicians. Wright blamed a human psychological condition known as cognitive dissonance, "the phenomenon that you only hear what you're interested in hearing."

"Hard truths are hard to talk about as well as hard to absorb," she said. "It's much easier to believe people who say that if we just have more American production then we wouldn't have to worry about foreign imports, without explaining that we're already pumping our minute portion of world reserves three or four times faster than the rest of the world. But we can't drill our way to self-sufficiency because you can't pump what's not there."

When asked if she saw peak oil becoming an issue in the presidential campaign, Wright said, "It will become a campaign issue if candidates make it an issue and candidates will choose to make it an issue if it shows up as being a motivating issue for voters." But, she said, "It's a chicken and egg conundrum. To the extent that voters become informed and aware through media, you'll find that candidates will follow. That's generally the way American politics works."

After years of toning down the message of peak oil in public discourse, voters need to let candidates know that now is the time to tone it up.

Kelpie Wilson is Truthout's environment editor. Trained as a mechanical engineer, she embarked on a career as a forest protection activist, then returned to engineering as a technical writer for the solar power industry.
© 2008 TruthOut.org All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/85841/

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 0 replies

The death of the american dream

Gianpaolo — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:06:58 GMT

In the last century when in the states existed a contestation of the global society and the autorities were more tolerant,the states were enimerated like one of the more democratic country of the world.The young people read Allen Ginsberg,Jack Kerouak,Timoty Leary and listened american music because they felt a cultural symbiosis with the american youth in spite of the worldwide criminal politic of the american establishment.Today is changed,no one say something of good about america and the americans in Europe and in the rest of theworld is worst,specially in the islamic countries america and americans are demonized as the greta satan.American dream is vanished as the big illusion of last century the communism.Perhaps I've been one of the last to speak bad about america because my grandmother was from NYC.Moreover the media brainwash the people worldwide with false images of the states,depicting this country as one in vanguard about ecology,healthcare and sociability.Well I was fascinated about all this.having had serious problems in my country; watch my blog on "My space.com"link Gianpaolo Mazzarella!I decided to come in the states,and my intention was to ask for political asylum in order to change nationality.My first stage was NYC,at that time I was a solidarity simpathizer.From my first days in Nyc I perceived that something was not working,I felt myself completely marginated,every attempt to meet some solidarity comrade vain.I spent some week to see the best NYC museums and then I went to California were I hoped to find more regard.I've been cited in a Jefferson Airplane song in the 90s and pubblished a letter over Kick it over magazine in Toronto and during the BDB insurretion in California a lot of episodes concerning my live and all the injustice I had to undergo in the past with some friends of mine came in light to show how much the american establishment was involved in the international fascistization.But in LA I still felt myself marginated and more robbed and demonized and feeling many hostilities,but these hostilities came not from police or rightists,in Ponza island where i work in summer that is near Gaeta Navy base,before to come in the states being my intention to damage nobody I asked the permit to come in the states.Those people have been very kind I have received provocations and in San Diego I was able to smoke marijuana freely,however I'm cardiopatic after years of injustices bullets and sexual abuses in my country.In San Diego the people was more friendly I had a nice feeling about hte people there.The last day of the year came I was at Obi hostel in Ocean beach,the people at reception just said me that I had to leave because I smoked a spinel in the bathroom,some teenagers had to go as well because they played a little bit loud their cassettes under the threat to call the sheriff.This was the thing that gave me more bitterness,to see how much some people were fascists in a country that before I thought democratic.Betraying of Solidarity ecosocialists apart I noticed the lack of an effort to sensitize the public opinion about city problems as the particulate or other problems that in Europe are normally faced like the recycling.In Venice beach La,that once was the place where Jack kerouak lived,I've never found anything of alternative,just false psychical readers and tarot readers and nonsensetrifles sellers with aflcio revolution mystifiers.Also walk in the street was quite boring at every corner a tyrannosaurus rex.Now I'm still in Italywith my usual economic problems that are perhaps worst than before but lukily I don't live in America.Perhaps some hostility came from my personal opinion about the Iraq war.I don't like any war but as I have testified the need of an action in Jugoslavia against the Milosevic massacrees I think that Iraq was in need of an action against the scithians,curds and political oppositions Sadam massacrees.I know that the usual kill for peace has fattened the war economy and has been a trick to raise the oil prices provokig also a big trauma to democracy.But there has been someone proposing to get rid of cars or someone proposing to get rid of plastic bugs?Just someone proposing to use paper bags to favour wood mafia or use ethanol to give more famine to the poor countries.And I don't want speak of the lack of public transportation.I've been in Ynio county,in Ridgecrest were I have appreciated the moral beautifulness of its inhabitants.But I've been three days in a motel because there weren't buses and taxis at allI think that the american dream like the italian dream will continue to die because nobody has the volutee to displace the bascula needle in a democratic sense.

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 12 replies

NYT: Obama admires Bush Sr.: ''no complaints about handling of Desert Storm"

steveargue2 — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:37:51 GMT

Support for Empire is support for Empire -- any way you cut it. There's a reason Corporate American bankrolled Obama's campaign
...
**************
"I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush. I don't have a lot of complaints about their handling of Desert Storm."

Source:
- Barack Obama, from David Brooks article, "Obama Admires Bush, NY Times, May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/opinion/16brooks.html?em&ex=1211169600&en=1577a90ae5048a04&ei=5087%0A

See:
Clinton and Obama: Failures on War and Global Warming
by STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/10/18478172.php

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 0 replies

California Supreme Court Overturns Gay/Lesbian Marriage Ban

steveargue2 — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:13:25 GMT

[This is a major victory! Thankfully, public pressure has made the California Supreme Court take the right stand. This decision that "domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage" is to the left of Obama and Clinton, both of whom oppose Gay/Lesbian marriage. -Steven Argue]

May 15, 2008

California Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:05 p.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The California Supreme Court has overturned a ban on gay marriage, paving the way for California to become the second state where gay and lesbian residents can marry.

The justices released the 4-3 decision Thursday, saying that domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage in an opinion written by Chief Justice Ron George.

The cases were brought by the city of San Francisco, two dozen gay and lesbian couples, Equality California and another gay rights group in March 2004 after the court halted San Francisco's month-long same-sex wedding march that took place at Mayor Gavin Newsom's direction.

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 2 replies

Police Break 60 Year Old Homeless Woman's Arm

steveargue2 — Sat, 10 May 2008 18:19:16 GMT

[Donna Deiss is a politically active homeless woman in Santa Cruz, who was also an advocate for tenants rights before she was unfairly evicted. The homeless in Santa Cruz, as well as activists who criticize the local government, are often victims of police harrassment, false arrests, and police violence. -Steven Argue]

60 Year Old Homeless Woman Says Police Broke Her Arm
by Robert Norse
Saturday May 10th, 2008

Donna Deiss called in last night to report that yesterday around 5 PM, Officer La Moss (Badge #114) assaulted her, broke her arm, and then put her in handcuffs when he attempted to question her at Three Tree Lot near Lighthouse Field. Deiss was taken to the Watsonville hospital, had to wait hours for x-rays, whichconfirmed her arm was broken.
Deiss reported the following to me in a phone message last night and an e-mail this morning:

She was talking with friends yesterday on Westcliffe Drive near her RV. An undercover police officer, whom she later identified as Officer LaMoss, arrived in a black unmarked car and said he wanted to talk to her and others in the group. She read La Moss a statement from the ACLU about the rights of community members vis a vis the police and walked to her RV.

The cop followed her. She got in and tried to close the door. Le Moss, not saying she was under arrest or detained, reached in and grabbed her right arm, pinching the skin as he twisted it behind her back, breaking it. She screamed her arm was broken, but his response was to call for backup. 4 more police cars arrived. She continued screaming for 911 and finally paramedics showed up.

The police said they were impounding her RV, which she lives in.

She was taken to Watsonville hospital, waited hours for x-rays and painpills. She is charged with battery and an additional charge. X-rays confirm her arm was broken. She needs an attorney and community support.

This is an account from Donna Deiss (with someadditions from her friend Shane). Donna has previously been harassed by rangers as part of the 'clear out the hippies' campaign at Three Tree Lot and the other lots around Lighthouse Fields. Recently the City's Parks and Recreation Department had its 'No RVs' signs painted over by state Rangers, for apparently violating state law and policy regarding parking (i.e. RVS are allowed to park).

See related stories: 'Harassment of Homeless in RVs, a Letter from Donna Deiss' at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/10/08/18452903.php ,

'Superintendant Hammack Stonewalls on RV Ban in Coastal Parking Lots' at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/09/12/18447267.php , and

'Coastal Access Denied to Motorhomes and Trailers in Santa Cruz' at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/08/30/18444952.php for related stories.

HOMELESSNESS AND POLITICAL REPRESSION, THE GREEN PARTY FAILS THE TEST IN SANTA CRUZ by Steven Argue
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2001/12/5085.shtml

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 4 replies

Americans aren't optimistic

Tedster — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:37:27 GMT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051201073_2.html?sid=ST2008051201102

U.S. Outlook Is Worst Since '92, Poll Finds
Results Give Democrats Edge

By Jon Cohen and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 13, 2008; A01

Americans are gloomier about the direction of the country than they have been at any point in 15 years, and Democrats hold their biggest advantage since early 1993 as the party better able to deal with the nation's main problems, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Despite more than eight in 10 now saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, coupled with growing disaffection with the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain, the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, remains competitive in a hypothetical general-election matchup with Sen. Barack Obama, the favorite for the Democratic nomination, and he runs almost even with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Those findings indicate that McCain continues to elude some of the anger aimed at his party and at President Bush, whose approval ratings dipped to an all-time low in Post-ABC polling. Maintaining a separate identity will be a key to McCain's chances of winning the White House in November. Overall, Democrats hold a 21-percentage-point advantage over Republicans as the party better equipped to handle the nation's problems.

As the Democratic race nears the end of its primary season, with the next round of voting happening today in West Virginia, this new national poll shows Obama with a 12-point advantage over Clinton as the preferred choice for the nomination.

More than six in 10 Democrats now say Obama is the one with the better shot at winning in November. Although Clinton retains her wide advantage as the more experienced candidate, for the first time Obama has the edge on being considered the stronger leader.

But there is no groundswell of public pressure for Clinton to quit the race, despite trailing in pledged delegates, the popular vote and now superdelegates. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said she should stay in the race.

One reason is that few Democrats seem concerned that the protracted nomination battle will hurt the party's chances in November. Only 27 percent said they thought it had done the party long-term damage. Most said the drawn-out contest has had no impact on the party's prospects (56 percent) or that it has been helpful (15 percent).

And most Democrats said they are confident that the party would rally around Obama should he become the nominee, although fewer than half said they are very confident. African Americans are somewhat more confident than whites, and nearly a quarter of Clinton supporters expressed doubt that the party would find unity once the nomination is settled.

In a hypothetical general-election head-to-head, Obama leads McCain by a slim 51-to-44-percent margin, with the public split 49 percent for Clinton to 46 percent for McCain. Against McCain, Obama does better than Clinton among voters who are African American, college-educated and younger. Clinton draws more support than Obama does against McCain among white voters who are older or female and those whose family incomes are less than $50,000 a year.

Age could be a significant obstacle for McCain. Only three in 10 said they were "entirely comfortable" with the prospect of a 72-year-old new president, about half as many as those who said they would be similarly comfortable with an African American or female president.

McCain romps against Obama among the 16 percent who think the country is headed in the right direction, but among the near-record 82 percent who hold a pessimistic view, Obama runs more than 20 points ahead of McCain. Similarly, about seven in 10 of those who disapprove of Bush said they would back Obama over McCain, while McCain picks up most of those who are still behind the president. The trouble for McCain is that Bush's approval has slipped to 31 percent, and has been lower than 50 percent for 38 consecutive months.

The economy remains the biggest issue on Americans' minds, although its importance dipped for the first time since last fall. In the new survey, 36 percent cited the economy and jobs as their top voting issue; 21 percent named the Iraq war. All other issues remained in single digits, including health care and the price of oil and gasoline.

Obama holds double-digit advantages over McCain on health care, gas prices and the economy. McCain has a 21-point lead on handling the U.S. battle against terrorism, which proved the marquee issue of the 2004 presidential contest. Obama and McCain run almost even on managing the war in Iraq and on immigration.

And on candidate attributes, Obama has a substantial lead as the one who is more likely to bring needed change to Washington, as well as sizable advantages on temperament, empathy and clarity of vision. McCain has a whopping advantage on experience and is widely seen as having greater knowledge of world affairs.

Obama and McCain are more evenly matched on leadership and "personal and ethical standards." In early March, McCain had an advantage as the stronger leader, while Obama had an edge on ethics.

Overall, Americans are evenly divided on whether a steady hand or a new direction and new ideas are more important, which is one big reason the general election would be closer today than generic impressions of the two parties suggest. McCain handily beats either Democrat among those prioritizing experience, while Clinton and Obama outpace McCain among those looking for a new course for the country.

Independents will be a key voter group in the fall, and currently they split 51 percent for Obama to 42 percent for McCain. In a Clinton-McCain matchup, 49 percent would back McCain, 46 percent Clinton.

McCain's relative strength among independents is a primary reason he outperforms the broader GOP. While more than four in 10 independents choose him against either Democrat, they prefer Democrats over Republicans by a 2 to 1 margin to cope with the country's central concerns.

At the same time, while McCain has made considerable progress in consolidating support within his party, only 47 percent of conservatives said they would definitely back him over Obama. A higher percentage of liberals, 56 percent, said they would be firmly behind Obama.

Much of the focus in the Democratic race has been on Obama's difficulty in winning the votes of working-class whites. Against Obama, McCain is ahead among whites without college degrees by 52 percent to 40 percent, not that different from McCain's advantage over Clinton in this new poll.

On another racially tinged issue, about six in 10 Americans said Obama has distanced himself about the right amount from his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but 27 percent said he has not gone far enough. These findings are little changed from April, even though Obama offered a much stronger denunciation of Wright after the earlier poll was taken.

Should Obama be the Democratic nominee, Clinton is by far the most popular choice to be his running mate. On an open-ended question, about four in 10 Democrats named her as their choice for the vice presidential nomination, with former senator John Edwards a distant second, at 10 percent.

But most Americans, including a slim majority of Democrats, said putting Clinton on the ticket would not have much effect on their vote in November.

Among Republicans, the sweepstakes appear to be even more wide open. Asked their preference for vice president, 12 percent said former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and 7 percent named former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. But nearly half, 47 percent, expressed no opinion.

The findings are based on telephone interviews with a random national sample of 1,122 adults from May 8 to 11. Results for the full survey have a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. Error margins for subgroups are larger.

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 0 replies

On This Anniversary of the Kent State Massacre

steveargue2 — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:41:08 GMT

On This Anniversary of the Kent State Massacre

By STEVEN ARGUE

Thirty eight years ago, on May 4, 2008, at Ohio’s Kent State University, the National Guard opened fire on students protesting the US war in Vietnam. The students were shot from distances of 275 to 400 feet, giving lie to claims that the students posed a threat to the Guardsmen. Four students were murdered and nine were injured. Nobody ever did time for those murders.

Before May 4, 1970, an anti-war movement had been building in the United States. The American people were increasingly impatient with the war, and an active anti-war movement helped build that kind of consciousness. People wanted an end to the war and Nixon kept promising a “light at the end of the tunnel.” On April 30, 1970, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. This was the opposite of what people wanted to hear. Protests erupted on campuses that had not had them in the past, like Kent State. For many, the cold blooded murder of students at Kent State and murders of students soon after at Jackson State, were the final straw.

Immediately after the Kent State shootings 8 million students went out on strike, and some Universities, such as Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. This brought an end to the war. The US government could not win the war because they were facing fierce battles from the Vietnamese and many US soldiers were actively resisting the war. Commanding officers were winding up dead as they tried to force soldiers to kill people in a foreign land for a war they did not believe in. Nixon could not win a war with drafted soldiers who refused to fight, and this was a factor that forced the U.S. government to withdraw from Vietnam.

Three million Vietnamese were murdered as a result of the US occupation of southern Vietnam and massive U.S. bombing of the north. Over 50,000 US soldiers died. It was resistance, both by the Vietnamese people, and the resistance of the anti-war movement in the United States that brought an end to the US occupation of Vietnam. Had the working class of the United States been ready to join that strike of 8 million students in May 1970, we would have potentially had a revolution in the United States, but at that time the working class was not ready.

Today, after the lessons of Vietnam, and after decades of bi-partisan union busting, outsourcing, privatization, and declining living standards for the US working class, the U.S. working class is now stepping out and taking the lead in the struggle against the criminal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. On May 1st, 2008 10,000 U.S. port workers of the ILWU went out on strike against the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, shutting down all 29 ports on the West Coast for eight hours. Within the union, Vietnam Vets were some of the strongest advocates of the strike.

Joining the strike in solidarity with the demand of immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq were the Iraqi port workers at Umm Qasr and Khor Alzubair. They joined U.S. workers in a deeply symbolic one hour strike to end the occupation.

In going out on strike, the union ranks of the ILWU defied the rulings of an arbitrator, who twice ordered them not to strike. They also defied the employers of the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) who declared the strike “illegal”. This is the kind of defiance the working class will need to emulate in other industries, both to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to start winning better contracts.

Today, over a million Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion. In addition, the U.S. has installed a religious death squad government where women's rights have eroded, the economy has deteriorated, the environment has been seriously devastated by the radiation of US DU weapons, millions of refugees have fled the country, people are often arrested without cause and tortured, the US bombs civilians from the sky, and basic infrastructure like water and electricity have been destroyed by the US and not rebuilt by the US occupiers.

It is also a war that has cost the U.S. thousands of lives, tens of thousands of casualties, and trillions of dollars in debt. Yet, for a few extremely wealthy Americans it has meant massive profits for military contractors and other businesses with contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, multinational companies like Exxon, BP and Shell are drooling as the U.S. government tries to force an oil law down the throats of the Iraqi people that would turn ownership of Iraqi oil over to these corporations.

Meanwhile, the pro-war Democrat Party voted for the war and keeps voting to fund it. Today, the Democrats are once again pushing for $178 billion in funding for the war. Neither Clinton nor Obama would promise to withdraw all troops from Iraq by 2013 ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC", New York Times 9/26/07). In addition, the two of them have offered differing versions of expanding these wars into Iran and Pakistan.

Whoever wins the upcoming election, it will take increased action by the working class to end these wars. ILWU member Jack Heyman is correct in saying of the May 1st strike against the war, “There's precedent for this action. In the '50s, French dockworkers refused to load war materiel on ships headed for Indochina, and helped to bring that colonial war to an end.” The longshore workers’ May 1st strike does indeed show the way forward. More strikes, and bigger strikes, along with building a workers’ party independent of the Democrats and Republicans, can indeed end these wars.

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posted in Dynamic Discourse - 0 replies

38th Anniversary of the Kent State Murders today, May 4

Tedster — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:26:16 GMT

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/04/today-is-38th-anniversary-of-the-kent-state-shootings/

posted in Dynamic Discourse - 3 replies