pdxtran
Minneapolis
I'm convinced that low corporate tax rates are ultimately responsible for this wholesale disregard for the welfare of workers.
The Republicans like to blame current unemployment problems on "high taxes." In their utopia, there would be no corporate taxes at all, and everyone would have a job. Or so they claim.
This line of propaganda works because most Americans do not realize that hiring people actually REDUCES a company's taxes. Unlike individuals, who are taxed on all their income minus a couple of minor exclusions and deductions, businesses are taxed ONLY on what is left over after they have met all their expenses, including employee wages and benefits. No profit, no taxes.
In the days of high corporate taxes, there was a financial incentive to hire people, upgrade facilities, buy equipment, develop new products, contribute to charity, and do other things that benefited the economy and society as a whole, because the money spent on these was not taxable.
When Reagan lowered corporate tax rates and the top rates on personal income and capital gains, shareholders received a sudden windfall. Understandably, they liked this. They began pressuring managers to increase profits from quarter to quarter, no matter what.
This was the era in which the business press glorified the "lean and mean" companies and the corporate raiders who bought other companies and gutted them.
Most companies had only a limited amount of "dead wood," so the next step in increasing profits was to outsource as much blue collar work as possible, first to non-union, cheap labor states, and then to cheap labor countries.
But how do you keep raising profits quarter to quarter when all your production is outsourced? Easy! You start outsourcing the white collar and technical jobs to India and China. Then you go around writing opinion pieces in business journals and newspapers about how you're forced to do it because American workers are lazy and have a sense of entitlement. (Talk about projection!)
Those workers who remain are told that they must accept longer hours, no raises, and reduced benefits, "because of the poor economy." Who is going to protest when there are so many unemployed out there?
Having attended two Ivy League schools for graduate school, I know that there is a certain type of wealthy person who does not see the rest of us as real human beings worthy of respect. Some are that way due to having led a sheltered life. Others are just plain cutthroat greedy and dismissive of anyone who can't make piles of money.
Meanwhile, retail and service businesses, the ones that can't be outsourced to China or Mexico, suffer because their former customers, ordinary middle class people, are afraid to spend money.
If I were in charge of this country's economy, I'd raise taxes on individuals and corporations to pre-Reagan era levels. That would make ditching workers a less attractive proposition. It would also take the trust fund parasites down a much needed peg or two.
26.7.10
Truth vs. "Home in Palo Alto with a swimming pool"
In a SPIEGEL interview, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 39, discusses his decision to publish the Afghanistan war logs, the difficult balance between the public interest and the need for state secrets and why he believes people who wage war are more dangerous than him.
SPIEGEL: You are about to publish a vast amount of classified data on the war in Afghanistan. What is your motivation?
Assange: These files are the most comprehensive description of a war to be published during the course of a war -- in other words, at a time when they still have a chance of doing some good. They cover more than 90,000 different incidents, together with precise geographical locations. They cover the small and the large. A single body of information, they eclipse all that has been previously said about Afghanistan. They will change our perspective on not only the war in Afghanistan, but on all modern wars.
SPIEGEL: Do you think that the publication of this data will influence political decision-makers?
Assange: Yes. This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war. The archive will change public opinion and it will change the opinion of people in positions of political and diplomatic influence.
SPIEGEL: Aren't you expecting a little too much?
Assange: There is a mood to end the war in Afghanistan. This information won't do it alone, but it will shift political will in a significant manner.
SPIEGEL: The material contains military secrets and names of sources. By publishing it, aren't you endangering the lives of international troops and their informants in Afghanistan?
Assange: The Kabul files contain no information related to current troop movements. The source went through their own harm-minimization process and instructed us to conduct our usual review to make sure there was not a significant chance of innocents being negatively affected. We understand the importance of protecting confidential sources, and we understand why it is important to protect certain US and ISAF sources.
SPIEGEL: So what, specifically, did you do to minimize any possible harm?
Assange: We identified cases where there may be a reasonable chance of harm occurring to the innocent. Those records were identified and edited accordingly.
SPIEGEL: Is there anything that you consider to be a legitimate state secret?
Assange: There is a legitimate role for secrecy, and there is a legitimate role for openness. Unfortunately, those who commit abuses against humanity or against the law find abusing legitimate secrecy to conceal their abuse all too easy. People of good conscience have always revealed abuses by ignoring abusive strictures. It is not WikiLeaks that decides to reveal something. It is a whistleblower or a dissident who decides to reveal it. Our job is to make sure that these individuals are protected, the public is informed and the historical record is not denied.
SPIEGEL: But in the end somebody has to decide whether you publish or not. Who determines the criteria? WikiLeaks considers itself to be a trailblazer when it comes to freedom of information, but it lacks transparency in its own publishing decisions.
Assange: This is ridiculous. We are clear about what we will publish and what we will not. We do not have adhoc editorial decisions. We always release the full primary sources to our articles. What other press organization has such exacting standards? Everyone should try to follow our lead.
SPIEGEL: The problem is that it is difficult to hold WikiLeaks accountable. You operate your servers in countries that offer you broad protection. Does WikiLeaks consider itself to be above the law?
Assange: WikiLeaks does not exist in outer space. We are people who exist on Earth, in particular nations, each of which have a particular set of laws. We have been legally challenged in various countries. We have won every challenge. It is courts that decide the law, not corporations or generals. The law, as expressed by constitutions and courts, has been on our side.
SPIEGEL: You have said that there is a correlation between the transparency for which you are fighting and a just society. What do you mean by that?
Assange: Reform can only come about when injustice is exposed. To oppose an unjust plan before it reaches implementation is to stop injustice.
SPIEGEL: During the Vietnam War, US President Richard Nixon once called Daniel Elsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, the most dangerous man in America. Are you today's most dangerous man or the most endangered?
Assange: The most dangerous men are those who are in charge of war. And they need to be stopped. If that makes me dangerous in their eyes, so be it.
SPIEGEL: You could have started a company in Silicon Valley and lived in a home in Palo Alto with a swimming pool. Why did you decide to do the WikiLeaks project instead?
Assange: We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we have and to do something that is meaningful and satisfying. This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying. That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.
Interview conducted by John Goetz and Marcel Rosenbach
SPIEGEL: You are about to publish a vast amount of classified data on the war in Afghanistan. What is your motivation?
Assange: These files are the most comprehensive description of a war to be published during the course of a war -- in other words, at a time when they still have a chance of doing some good. They cover more than 90,000 different incidents, together with precise geographical locations. They cover the small and the large. A single body of information, they eclipse all that has been previously said about Afghanistan. They will change our perspective on not only the war in Afghanistan, but on all modern wars.
SPIEGEL: Do you think that the publication of this data will influence political decision-makers?
Assange: Yes. This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war. The archive will change public opinion and it will change the opinion of people in positions of political and diplomatic influence.
SPIEGEL: Aren't you expecting a little too much?
Assange: There is a mood to end the war in Afghanistan. This information won't do it alone, but it will shift political will in a significant manner.
SPIEGEL: The material contains military secrets and names of sources. By publishing it, aren't you endangering the lives of international troops and their informants in Afghanistan?
Assange: The Kabul files contain no information related to current troop movements. The source went through their own harm-minimization process and instructed us to conduct our usual review to make sure there was not a significant chance of innocents being negatively affected. We understand the importance of protecting confidential sources, and we understand why it is important to protect certain US and ISAF sources.
SPIEGEL: So what, specifically, did you do to minimize any possible harm?
Assange: We identified cases where there may be a reasonable chance of harm occurring to the innocent. Those records were identified and edited accordingly.
SPIEGEL: Is there anything that you consider to be a legitimate state secret?
Assange: There is a legitimate role for secrecy, and there is a legitimate role for openness. Unfortunately, those who commit abuses against humanity or against the law find abusing legitimate secrecy to conceal their abuse all too easy. People of good conscience have always revealed abuses by ignoring abusive strictures. It is not WikiLeaks that decides to reveal something. It is a whistleblower or a dissident who decides to reveal it. Our job is to make sure that these individuals are protected, the public is informed and the historical record is not denied.
SPIEGEL: But in the end somebody has to decide whether you publish or not. Who determines the criteria? WikiLeaks considers itself to be a trailblazer when it comes to freedom of information, but it lacks transparency in its own publishing decisions.
Assange: This is ridiculous. We are clear about what we will publish and what we will not. We do not have adhoc editorial decisions. We always release the full primary sources to our articles. What other press organization has such exacting standards? Everyone should try to follow our lead.
SPIEGEL: The problem is that it is difficult to hold WikiLeaks accountable. You operate your servers in countries that offer you broad protection. Does WikiLeaks consider itself to be above the law?
Assange: WikiLeaks does not exist in outer space. We are people who exist on Earth, in particular nations, each of which have a particular set of laws. We have been legally challenged in various countries. We have won every challenge. It is courts that decide the law, not corporations or generals. The law, as expressed by constitutions and courts, has been on our side.
SPIEGEL: You have said that there is a correlation between the transparency for which you are fighting and a just society. What do you mean by that?
Assange: Reform can only come about when injustice is exposed. To oppose an unjust plan before it reaches implementation is to stop injustice.
SPIEGEL: During the Vietnam War, US President Richard Nixon once called Daniel Elsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, the most dangerous man in America. Are you today's most dangerous man or the most endangered?
Assange: The most dangerous men are those who are in charge of war. And they need to be stopped. If that makes me dangerous in their eyes, so be it.
SPIEGEL: You could have started a company in Silicon Valley and lived in a home in Palo Alto with a swimming pool. Why did you decide to do the WikiLeaks project instead?
Assange: We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we have and to do something that is meaningful and satisfying. This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying. That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.
Interview conducted by John Goetz and Marcel Rosenbach
19.7.10
french letter(s)
Jeancocteau
San Francisco
Les nouveaux pauvre, Americain! Welcome to the third world, you have officially arrived. Your Bourgeois delusional dreams of grandeur are finally over, you have succeeded beyond your wildest dreams. This is what happens when you outsource your industries to third world countries, you eventually become a third world country. If Americans were not so brain washed by the Chamber of Commerce that what is good for business is good for America..etc...you have to produce things, all wealth comes from labor, this is basic economic theory. If you can reduce the labor costs by paying someone 50cents an hour then you can reap so much more profit. Short term profits have killed America, and the American middle class. When there is no more middle class, who do you think are going to buy all these products? I don't think China or America has ever really thought about this..thats what is so scary, these people are evil. They don't care about America or our future. This is treason really. They are traitors, these corporate Chamber of Commerce interests sold out America, will Americans ever fight back?
Concerned Citizen
Anywheresville, USA
Over the past 40 years or so technological change, population increases, efficiency increases and the ability to "off shore" many jobs (from manufacturing to white collar) means that there is NOW and for the foreseeable future, FAR MORE PEOPLE who need and want jobs than there are jobs. Period. Education, as we are seeing very bluntly and painfully, is not the solution. We have too many EVERYTHING -- too many stockbrokers and too many ad execs and too many parking lot attendants and too many web designers....EVERYTHING.
We are looking at a future where probably 2 in 10 people will not be able to find any sort of full-time work (with benefits) of ANY kind, never mind if it is Wall Street or the Family Dollar store in Dayton, Ohio. They will be stuck doing the most menial jobs, part-time and temporary, and completely unemployed for much of the year.
We need to start thinking about ways to increase the number of jobs,and to encourage whatever people we can to get out of the work force. This means EARLIER retirement -- not working til 70! -- it means making stay-at-home moms and dads an economically viable proposition, perhaps with extended family leave or tax breaks. It means a shorter work day, such as in France (35 hours a week) and longer European style vacations (mandatory six weeks).
It means limiting overtime harshly -- perhaps with double time pay, and not just time-and-a-half -- as today, one way employers limit the number of people they hire is by forcing overtime (often unpaid) and calling nearly everyone a manager or exempt to enable this.
Some people work almost solely to get affordable group health care, so NATIONAL SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE (which we have stupidly avoided once again) would mean that a fair chunk of current workers could either stay home or be self-employed -- work as artists, writers or musicians -- or live off their trust funds -- and not take a job from another person who possibly needs it far worse.
I'm sure creative and smart folks have even MORE ideas than this. But this is a starting point -- and we need to put our thinking caps on about this. THE JOBS ARE NOT COMING BACK. The jobs have been disappearing for thirty some years now. The handwriting has been on the wall. Telling people pretty lies -- promising things that don't exist -- training people and worse, taking their money for bogus pointless "re-training programs" is inexcusable.
We need to be honest with them and ourselves. If you are out of work today -- if you have been unemployed for over a year, and are not getting interviews -- even worse, if you are over 45 -- it is very likely you will never work again in (fulltime, with benefits) in your life.
San Francisco
Les nouveaux pauvre, Americain! Welcome to the third world, you have officially arrived. Your Bourgeois delusional dreams of grandeur are finally over, you have succeeded beyond your wildest dreams. This is what happens when you outsource your industries to third world countries, you eventually become a third world country. If Americans were not so brain washed by the Chamber of Commerce that what is good for business is good for America..etc...you have to produce things, all wealth comes from labor, this is basic economic theory. If you can reduce the labor costs by paying someone 50cents an hour then you can reap so much more profit. Short term profits have killed America, and the American middle class. When there is no more middle class, who do you think are going to buy all these products? I don't think China or America has ever really thought about this..thats what is so scary, these people are evil. They don't care about America or our future. This is treason really. They are traitors, these corporate Chamber of Commerce interests sold out America, will Americans ever fight back?
Concerned Citizen
Anywheresville, USA
Over the past 40 years or so technological change, population increases, efficiency increases and the ability to "off shore" many jobs (from manufacturing to white collar) means that there is NOW and for the foreseeable future, FAR MORE PEOPLE who need and want jobs than there are jobs. Period. Education, as we are seeing very bluntly and painfully, is not the solution. We have too many EVERYTHING -- too many stockbrokers and too many ad execs and too many parking lot attendants and too many web designers....EVERYTHING.
We are looking at a future where probably 2 in 10 people will not be able to find any sort of full-time work (with benefits) of ANY kind, never mind if it is Wall Street or the Family Dollar store in Dayton, Ohio. They will be stuck doing the most menial jobs, part-time and temporary, and completely unemployed for much of the year.
We need to start thinking about ways to increase the number of jobs,and to encourage whatever people we can to get out of the work force. This means EARLIER retirement -- not working til 70! -- it means making stay-at-home moms and dads an economically viable proposition, perhaps with extended family leave or tax breaks. It means a shorter work day, such as in France (35 hours a week) and longer European style vacations (mandatory six weeks).
It means limiting overtime harshly -- perhaps with double time pay, and not just time-and-a-half -- as today, one way employers limit the number of people they hire is by forcing overtime (often unpaid) and calling nearly everyone a manager or exempt to enable this.
Some people work almost solely to get affordable group health care, so NATIONAL SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE (which we have stupidly avoided once again) would mean that a fair chunk of current workers could either stay home or be self-employed -- work as artists, writers or musicians -- or live off their trust funds -- and not take a job from another person who possibly needs it far worse.
I'm sure creative and smart folks have even MORE ideas than this. But this is a starting point -- and we need to put our thinking caps on about this. THE JOBS ARE NOT COMING BACK. The jobs have been disappearing for thirty some years now. The handwriting has been on the wall. Telling people pretty lies -- promising things that don't exist -- training people and worse, taking their money for bogus pointless "re-training programs" is inexcusable.
We need to be honest with them and ourselves. If you are out of work today -- if you have been unemployed for over a year, and are not getting interviews -- even worse, if you are over 45 -- it is very likely you will never work again in (fulltime, with benefits) in your life.
15.7.10
a stroll on the bio-pharma lane
Dr. Cashrules
Kansas
The pharmaceutical industry is a huge mess, which has little, if anything, to do with making people healthy. The way the system is currently designed, if it's more profitable for a pharmaceutical company to put you at greater risk, it will do so. And sometimes the US gov't will help them brush it under the rug. Note a recent investigative report concerning the big, high-publicity lawsuit the US gov't filed against Pfizer, after the company blatantly went against FDA approvals and marketed a drug for all sorts of alternative uses, which the FDA had specifically noted could be dangerous and could put people at greater risk.
The FDA approved Bextra only for arthritis and menstrual cramps. It rejected the drug in higher doses for acute, surgical pain. Promoting drugs for unapproved uses can put patients at risk by circumventing the FDA's judgment over which products are safe and effective. For that reason, "off-label" promotion is against the law.
But with billions of dollars of profits at stake, marketing and sales managers across the country nonetheless targeted anesthesiologists, foot surgeons, orthopedic surgeons and oral surgeons. "Anyone that use[d] a scalpel for a living," one district manager advised in a document prosecutors would later cite.
A manager in Florida e-mailed his sales reps a scripted sales pitch that claimed -- falsely -- that the FDA had given Bextra "a clean bill of health" all the way up to a 40 mg dose, which is twice what the FDA actually said was safe....
Internal company documents show that Pfizer and Pharmacia (which Pfizer later bought) used a multimillion-dollar medical education budget to pay hundreds of doctors as speakers and consultants to tout Bextra.
Pfizer said in court that "the company's intent was pure": to foster a legal exchange of scientific information among doctors.... But an internal marketing plan called for training physicians "to serve as public relations spokespeople."
Where the story gets scary is in what happened when all this came out. Federal officials announced a criminal case over this, but they didn't actually sue Pfizer directly. Instead, they sued a (not kidding) subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Pfizer, which was basically set up just take the brunt of this lawsuit:
According to court documents, Pfizer Inc. owns (a) Pharmacia Corp., which owns (b) Pharmacia & Upjohn LLC, which owns (c) Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. LLC, which in turn owns (d) Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc. It is the great-great-grandson of the parent company.
But it was only that last one, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., that was sued -- and the report also notes that this company just happened to be set up the same day that Pfizer and federal officials worked out a deal for it to plead guilty -- even though it, as an entity, hadn't done anything.
Why did they do this? Well, if Pfizer itself had been found guilty then it would be barred from Medicare and Medicaid, and prosecutors figured it would effectively close down Pfizer -- and Pfizer was deemed "too big to fail" like that. Why? I have no idea. If the company really did have to close down, it seems likely that others would have picked up the company's various products -- and perhaps done so without putting people's lives at risk.
Really, the problem here is the way the entire system is set up. The FDA requires expensive and involved clinical trials. This is very good, because we want to make sure that any drugs actually do what they're supposed to do, and don't have serious side effects or cause even worse problems. But, the system is currently set up so that the pharmaceutical company itself is in charge of paying for and running those clinical trials, which creates two very problematic situations. First, it gives the company all sorts of incentives to fudge the results or to pretend the results said something different than they really did (see the example above, or Merck with Vioxx) and second, it contributes to the "expense" that a drugmaker can claim comes from developing a new drug, which is part of why it demands patent rights. But if you break out the costs of the clinical trials, the marketing-hidden-ad-development-costs, and the amount of research that's actually funded by gov't grants -- you find that pharmaceutical firms really aren't spending nearly as much as they claim. A big part of the issue is the clinical trials, and that's leading to all sorts of questionable behavior. In the past, some have suggested that such trials should be conducted by the gov't, rather than by the pharma companies themselves. While I'm not sure that's the answer, it's pretty clear that the existing system is not working, if our end goal is to make people healthier.
Kansas
The pharmaceutical industry is a huge mess, which has little, if anything, to do with making people healthy. The way the system is currently designed, if it's more profitable for a pharmaceutical company to put you at greater risk, it will do so. And sometimes the US gov't will help them brush it under the rug. Note a recent investigative report concerning the big, high-publicity lawsuit the US gov't filed against Pfizer, after the company blatantly went against FDA approvals and marketed a drug for all sorts of alternative uses, which the FDA had specifically noted could be dangerous and could put people at greater risk.
The FDA approved Bextra only for arthritis and menstrual cramps. It rejected the drug in higher doses for acute, surgical pain. Promoting drugs for unapproved uses can put patients at risk by circumventing the FDA's judgment over which products are safe and effective. For that reason, "off-label" promotion is against the law.
But with billions of dollars of profits at stake, marketing and sales managers across the country nonetheless targeted anesthesiologists, foot surgeons, orthopedic surgeons and oral surgeons. "Anyone that use[d] a scalpel for a living," one district manager advised in a document prosecutors would later cite.
A manager in Florida e-mailed his sales reps a scripted sales pitch that claimed -- falsely -- that the FDA had given Bextra "a clean bill of health" all the way up to a 40 mg dose, which is twice what the FDA actually said was safe....
Internal company documents show that Pfizer and Pharmacia (which Pfizer later bought) used a multimillion-dollar medical education budget to pay hundreds of doctors as speakers and consultants to tout Bextra.
Pfizer said in court that "the company's intent was pure": to foster a legal exchange of scientific information among doctors.... But an internal marketing plan called for training physicians "to serve as public relations spokespeople."
Where the story gets scary is in what happened when all this came out. Federal officials announced a criminal case over this, but they didn't actually sue Pfizer directly. Instead, they sued a (not kidding) subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Pfizer, which was basically set up just take the brunt of this lawsuit:
According to court documents, Pfizer Inc. owns (a) Pharmacia Corp., which owns (b) Pharmacia & Upjohn LLC, which owns (c) Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. LLC, which in turn owns (d) Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc. It is the great-great-grandson of the parent company.
But it was only that last one, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., that was sued -- and the report also notes that this company just happened to be set up the same day that Pfizer and federal officials worked out a deal for it to plead guilty -- even though it, as an entity, hadn't done anything.
Why did they do this? Well, if Pfizer itself had been found guilty then it would be barred from Medicare and Medicaid, and prosecutors figured it would effectively close down Pfizer -- and Pfizer was deemed "too big to fail" like that. Why? I have no idea. If the company really did have to close down, it seems likely that others would have picked up the company's various products -- and perhaps done so without putting people's lives at risk.
Really, the problem here is the way the entire system is set up. The FDA requires expensive and involved clinical trials. This is very good, because we want to make sure that any drugs actually do what they're supposed to do, and don't have serious side effects or cause even worse problems. But, the system is currently set up so that the pharmaceutical company itself is in charge of paying for and running those clinical trials, which creates two very problematic situations. First, it gives the company all sorts of incentives to fudge the results or to pretend the results said something different than they really did (see the example above, or Merck with Vioxx) and second, it contributes to the "expense" that a drugmaker can claim comes from developing a new drug, which is part of why it demands patent rights. But if you break out the costs of the clinical trials, the marketing-hidden-ad-development-costs, and the amount of research that's actually funded by gov't grants -- you find that pharmaceutical firms really aren't spending nearly as much as they claim. A big part of the issue is the clinical trials, and that's leading to all sorts of questionable behavior. In the past, some have suggested that such trials should be conducted by the gov't, rather than by the pharma companies themselves. While I'm not sure that's the answer, it's pretty clear that the existing system is not working, if our end goal is to make people healthier.
14.7.10
the socioeconomics of the quiet
pdxtran
Minneapolis
There are more of us (ordinary people) than there are of them (banksters, currency manipulators, outsourcers of jobs, etc.) Yet the American people remain strangely passive, especially compared to workers in other countries. Why is that?
Part of the answer may lie in the way our communities have grown up since the end of World War II. With the majority of Americans living in suburbia, we no longer have natural gathering places, natural hangouts, natural venues where we can interact with our neighbors. Instead, we have strip malls, megamalls, big box stores, and chains of coffee shops and bars that are all owned by large corporations and look identical whether you're in Miami or Seattle. The main sources of community are high school sports (another mindless distraction) and megachurches (sources of distorted versions of Christianity and right-wing political propaganda). We spend hours a day in our cars, and some people travel from a garage at home to a garage at work, never interacting with another human being as they are subjected to radio-based indoctrination in trivia (the typical pop music station), right-wing politics (AM radio), or Beltway conventional wisdom (NPR). If this nation ever had a tradition of sitting around with one's neighbors and talking seriously and non-polemically about the state of the country, it is long lost.
So each discontented person thinks that he or she is alone. Back in 1991, I was on a plane to Hawaii when I overheard a flight attendant talking to the Middle Eastern couple in the row in front of me. "I wasn't for that Gulf War," she said, "but everyone else was, so I kept my mouth shut."
"I wasn't for that war," I said. Other people seated around us also spoke up and said that they had opposed the Gulf War. It was striking. About eight people, randomly seated in one section of a plane bound for Hawaii, were all saying that they had disagreed with what the media were telling us (the official story being that 90% of the public supported the Gulf War).
I can't help comparing my hometown of Minneapolis, a typically sprawling American city with suburbs proliferating dozens of miles out, with Portland, Oregon, where I lived for 10 years. Portland is rather left-leaning politically, and I participated in two different 30,000-person demonstrations while I lived there. Minneapolis is also left-leaning (Dennis Kucinich won 27% of the Democratic caucus vote in 2004), but it seems incapable of putting on an impressive demonstration. The best it can do are sad-looking gatherings of 500 people.
Upon reflection, I blame the layout of the cities for the difference. Portland has one central downtown with superb transit leading to it, lots of distinct neighborhoods, and lots of locally owned businesses. Minneapolis's downtown is fragmented, there's another complete city (St. Paul) across the river, public transit is mediocre, and neighborhoods seem more exclusively residential than they do in Portland. Information doesn't get out and apathy reigns.
Right now there are millions of unemployed Americans. Why aren't they marching on their own state capitals, if not on Washington? Why not? Because they're all suffering alone. Because the way our cities have grown in the past 60 years has destroyed much of our former social fabric. Because the right-wing and even the establishment press has made "union" a dirty word.
I'm reminded of a woman who was interviewed after the Ceausescu regime fell in Romania. (If you'll recall, the revolution began when people heckled one of the dictator's speeches.) "We could have done this at any time," she mused. "Why did we wait?"
Unemployed Americans could and should be in the streets, demanding to receive as much consideration as the banksters, the military-industrial complex, and the health insurance companies. I wonder how many of them have even considered the possibility or talked it over with other unemployed people.
Minneapolis
There are more of us (ordinary people) than there are of them (banksters, currency manipulators, outsourcers of jobs, etc.) Yet the American people remain strangely passive, especially compared to workers in other countries. Why is that?
Part of the answer may lie in the way our communities have grown up since the end of World War II. With the majority of Americans living in suburbia, we no longer have natural gathering places, natural hangouts, natural venues where we can interact with our neighbors. Instead, we have strip malls, megamalls, big box stores, and chains of coffee shops and bars that are all owned by large corporations and look identical whether you're in Miami or Seattle. The main sources of community are high school sports (another mindless distraction) and megachurches (sources of distorted versions of Christianity and right-wing political propaganda). We spend hours a day in our cars, and some people travel from a garage at home to a garage at work, never interacting with another human being as they are subjected to radio-based indoctrination in trivia (the typical pop music station), right-wing politics (AM radio), or Beltway conventional wisdom (NPR). If this nation ever had a tradition of sitting around with one's neighbors and talking seriously and non-polemically about the state of the country, it is long lost.
So each discontented person thinks that he or she is alone. Back in 1991, I was on a plane to Hawaii when I overheard a flight attendant talking to the Middle Eastern couple in the row in front of me. "I wasn't for that Gulf War," she said, "but everyone else was, so I kept my mouth shut."
"I wasn't for that war," I said. Other people seated around us also spoke up and said that they had opposed the Gulf War. It was striking. About eight people, randomly seated in one section of a plane bound for Hawaii, were all saying that they had disagreed with what the media were telling us (the official story being that 90% of the public supported the Gulf War).
I can't help comparing my hometown of Minneapolis, a typically sprawling American city with suburbs proliferating dozens of miles out, with Portland, Oregon, where I lived for 10 years. Portland is rather left-leaning politically, and I participated in two different 30,000-person demonstrations while I lived there. Minneapolis is also left-leaning (Dennis Kucinich won 27% of the Democratic caucus vote in 2004), but it seems incapable of putting on an impressive demonstration. The best it can do are sad-looking gatherings of 500 people.
Upon reflection, I blame the layout of the cities for the difference. Portland has one central downtown with superb transit leading to it, lots of distinct neighborhoods, and lots of locally owned businesses. Minneapolis's downtown is fragmented, there's another complete city (St. Paul) across the river, public transit is mediocre, and neighborhoods seem more exclusively residential than they do in Portland. Information doesn't get out and apathy reigns.
Right now there are millions of unemployed Americans. Why aren't they marching on their own state capitals, if not on Washington? Why not? Because they're all suffering alone. Because the way our cities have grown in the past 60 years has destroyed much of our former social fabric. Because the right-wing and even the establishment press has made "union" a dirty word.
I'm reminded of a woman who was interviewed after the Ceausescu regime fell in Romania. (If you'll recall, the revolution began when people heckled one of the dictator's speeches.) "We could have done this at any time," she mused. "Why did we wait?"
Unemployed Americans could and should be in the streets, demanding to receive as much consideration as the banksters, the military-industrial complex, and the health insurance companies. I wonder how many of them have even considered the possibility or talked it over with other unemployed people.
The political illusion machine that calls itself Western democracy...
http://www.spiegel.de/...
"Zizek loves to correct viewpoints when precisely the opposite is considered correct. He calls this counterintuitive observation. His favorite thought form is the paradox. Using his psychoanalytical skills, he attempts to demonstrate how liberal democracy manipulates people. One of his famous everyday observations on this subject relates to the buttons used to close the door in elevators. He has discovered that they are placebos. The doors don't close a second faster when one presses the button, but they don't have to. It's sufficient that the person pressing the button has the illusion that he is able to influence something. The political illusion machine that calls itself Western democracy functions in exactly the same way, says Zizek."
"I know that people often think I'm an idiot," he says that evening, "that nostalgic Leninist. But I'm not crazy. I'm much more modest and much more pessimistic."
Why pessimistic? In fact, it isn't absurd at all to assume that capitalism and democracy have reached a dead end. "That's true," says Zizek, "but I believe that the left is, tragically, bereft of any vision to be taken seriously. We all wish for a real, authentic revolution! But it has take place far away, preferably in Cuba, Vietnam, China or Nicaragua. The advantage of that is that it allows us to continue with our careers here."
"Zizek loves to correct viewpoints when precisely the opposite is considered correct. He calls this counterintuitive observation. His favorite thought form is the paradox. Using his psychoanalytical skills, he attempts to demonstrate how liberal democracy manipulates people. One of his famous everyday observations on this subject relates to the buttons used to close the door in elevators. He has discovered that they are placebos. The doors don't close a second faster when one presses the button, but they don't have to. It's sufficient that the person pressing the button has the illusion that he is able to influence something. The political illusion machine that calls itself Western democracy functions in exactly the same way, says Zizek."
"I know that people often think I'm an idiot," he says that evening, "that nostalgic Leninist. But I'm not crazy. I'm much more modest and much more pessimistic."
Why pessimistic? In fact, it isn't absurd at all to assume that capitalism and democracy have reached a dead end. "That's true," says Zizek, "but I believe that the left is, tragically, bereft of any vision to be taken seriously. We all wish for a real, authentic revolution! But it has take place far away, preferably in Cuba, Vietnam, China or Nicaragua. The advantage of that is that it allows us to continue with our careers here."
4.7.10
William Kunstler, The Terrible Myth
February, 1970
Transcript
And that is the terrible myth of organized society, that everything that's done through the established system is legal — and that word has a powerful psychological impact. It makes people believe that there is an order to life, and an order to a system, and that a person that goes through this order and is convicted, has gotten all that is due him. And therefore society can turn its conscience off, and look to other things and other times.
And that's the terrible thing about these past trials, is that they have this aura of legitimacy, this aura of legality. I suspect that better men than the world has known and more of them, have gone to their deaths through a legal system than through all the illegalities in the history of man.
Six million people in Europe during the Third Reich? Legal.
Sacco Vanzetti? Quite legal.
The Haymarket defendants? Legal.
The hundreds of rape trials throughout the South where black men were condemned to death? All legal.
Jesus? Legal.
Socrates? Legal.
And that is the kaleidoscopic nature of what we live through here and in other places. Because all tyrants learn that it is far better to do this thing through some semblance of legality than to do it without that pretense.
1.7.10
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