"Fracked Gas Exports," by Juliette Zephyr

Our excellent young female guest writer Juliette Zephyr shows up for another guest post about a subject that has unfortunately been neglected on this blog.

Fracked Gas Exports

by Juliette Zephyr

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you have heard of the disturbing prevalence of a natural gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” all across the country. It’s been happening in rural areas, where residents have to cope with the effects it has on their groundwater as well as the air quality. In Pennsylvania, the problem got so out of hand that it inspired a groundbreaking documentary, Gasland (2010), which highlights the grim consequences of this dirty method of extracting fuels. The percentage of fracked gas actually kept and sold in the U.S. is marginal – after the fuel is fracked, it is then typically sent for export to countries in Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Anywhere corporations have undertaken fracking projects, the result has been very real and large-scale contamination of surrounding water and air. Yet corporate powers lobby for more projects in states that can ill afford the environmental upheaval, the destruction of plant and animal habitats, and the pollution of the area that would ensue. Shale basins in this country which contain natural gas are especially vulnerable to opportunistic corporations which will try to convince a local jurisdiction that taking advantage of these natural resources would lead to more jobs for Americans and less reliance on foreign oil. Anyone who tries to come forward with an alternate view is silenced, with groups such as Marcellus Shale Earth First being targeted by the government as a “terrorist group,” and victims of water and air contamination being labeled and dismissed as delusional nutcases. Since it doesn’t appear that such projects are creating new jobs for Americans or helping us to rely less on foreign oil, it seems that the only authentic benefit of exporting these fuels is the profit reaped by oil companies. In layman’s terms, the process of fracking involves these three steps: 1. Drilling a fracking well. A well of sorts must be drilled into a geological formation, such as shale. A pipe is inserted in preparation for the Step 2. 2. Fracturing the rock/sediment/tight sands. Let us continue to use shale as an example. In order to fracture the shale rock, “fracking fluid” is pumped into the well. In addition to water and sand, this fracking fluid can contain up to 600 chemical additives. The high pressure injection of these chemicals eventually causes the rock to fracture. 3. Natural gas from the rock then flows back up the well. This is what fracking is, in a nutshell. Studies show that more than 9 Any fracking fluid that returns to the surface is called “flowback,” and can pollute the surrounding areas and threaten indigenous species and their habitats. Research has also determined that methane is a significant byproduct of fracking. In most cases, and certainly in Pennsylvania, methane leak rates into the atmosphere are occurring at 100-1,000 times what the EPA initially estimated. Now, solely for the purposes of full disclosure, I, as a Maryland resident who resides where the Susquehanna River meets the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay, have a personal bias when it comes to my desire to see all fracking projects, both in my home state as well as the entire country, fail. I live in a natural scenic area, marred only by a nearly nuclear power plant, that attracts tourists year-round. The Chesapeake Bay is already extremely polluted, and any export facilities on the bay would be a catastrophe. I lament that our own governor, Martin O’Malley, is planning to approve an export terminal in Cove Point (southern Maryland), which would be situated right on the bay. It would be the first of its kind here on the East Coast. As bay ecologists are observing, any fracking chemicals present in one part of the bay are going to turn up in other parts of the bay too. It is a perilous scenario. Even more ghastly, experts have issued warnings that the proposed facility could be at risk for serious fires and explosions because of the explosive chemicals required to liquefy the gas. This area has residential neighborhoods, schools, and businesses. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has rubber-stamped the project, which is being managed by a Virginia-based company called Dominion Resources. Fracked gas from Appalachia is going to be liquefied and then sent for export right here on the water. It will apparently end up in Asia when all is said and done. For people in our area, this has turned into a battle that no one wanted to fight, but FERC and these Dominion scumbags have forced our hand.

Juliette Zephyr, guest author.
Juliette Zephyr, guest author.

Two Americans Infected with the Ebola Virus!

Two American health care workers, a physician and another volunteer, have become infected with the Ebola virus while working with Ebola patients in Liberia. The physician, D. Kent Brantly, is in very serious but stable condition, and the woman, Nancy Writebol, is in serious but stable condition. For a lot of conditions such as war wounds, serious condition is often something you will survive. But for Ebola, serious to very serious condition is quite grave because it is a bird of a different feather altogether. Ebola has a mortality rate of up to 9 The recent Ebola epidemic has hit Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It has killed 672 people so far, making it the deadliest Ebola outbreak so far. One of Liberia’s top physicians recently died of the disease. Ebola is harbored by some sort of an animal, possibly a bat or rodent. To date, no animal carrier or reservoir for Ebola has yet been found. Destruction of jungle and especially the killing of large fauna, much of which has already been exterminated in West Africa for something disgusting called “bush meat,” has the effect of radically increasing rodent populations in disturbed habitat in which megafauna have been removed. Man’s encroachment into the jungles of Africa and especially the disturbance of intact jungle habitat and ecosystems is thought to play the most important role in the emergence of these new diseases. For instance, HIV jumped from the chimpanzee SIV virus to humans, in turn transforming itself to HIV, via the stupid practice of slaughtering monkeys and apes for bush meat. In butchering up bush meat from these animals, bush meat hunters invariable get monkey or ape blood all over their hands and arms at the very least. It was in this matte that HIV moved into the human population.

Female – Male HIV Transmission in the US

John writes:

I scheduled an appointment with my doctor tomorrow, and I am going to ask her to give me an HIV test, maybe also check for other diseases. I read up on HIV transmission in several countries and on certain cites it says transmission is mainly heterosexual. How is this possible? By this do they mean that it’s mostly men giving it to women? I also read on several websites that the highest concentration of HIV viral cells is in semen, followed by blood, and then vaginal fluids right? Can you get HIV from just exposure to vaginal fluids? What are the chances (in fractions/ratios/percentages) of getting HIV from one incident of vaginal sex with a woman of unknown status when there are no visible cuts/abrasions, no blood present, and her vagina is naturally wet? The CDC says the risk for insertive vaginal sex is about 2 in 10,000. I suppose this is reduced greatly since I have had no symptoms of sickness, there were no cuts or abrasions present, and the vagina was wet, also I’m circumcised and I took a piss shortly after the sex and I washed my dick right after in the shower. (I read that non-circumcised men are at greater risk because the virus can get caught under the foreskin and stay there) How can one even get HIV from vaginal sex with no cuts or abrasions? It would have to travel very far up the urethra in order to get into the bloodstream. Or are the cuts so small (microtears) that they are invisible to the naked eye? Anyways, taking my test tomorrow (I didn’t specify to the doctor that I was taking a test for STI’s I just made an appointment with plans to tell them there, as there is no specific option for STI test when scheduling online) What is your verdict Robert?

Those vaginal fluid titers are so low that I am amazed it even transmits. Women -> men HIV transmission is heavily associated with men having diseases like Herpes that cause ulcerating sores. The virus goes in via that opening. It is also associated in vaginal sex with vaginal and/or penile bleeding. Honestly, this is a blood borne illness. Men get it via exposure to blood. If you’re not exposed to blood, you probably will not get it. Really men get this disease in two different ways. 1. Receptive homosexual anal sex. 2. IV drug use which involves sharing needles. You can get it other ways, but that is a small percentage of the transmission. As far as heterosexual transmission goes, the disease goes from males to females and then it stops! Women are the end of the line as far as transmission goes. That CDC figure is really 1/10,000, and that is if she is HIV positive! A study in the 1980’s (Nancy Padian study) had a number of couples discordant for HIV and followed them for 5 years. By that time the men had had sex with their HIV positive wives ~700 times. Even after screwing them 700 times over 5 years, 8 You can also get it from having anal sex with a woman because there can be some minor bleeding on her end when you do that, and that would expose your penis to blood.

What are the chances (in fractions/ratios/percentages) of getting HIV from one incident of vaginal sex with a woman of unknown status when there are no visible cuts/abrasions, no blood present, and her vagina is naturally wet?

Incredibly low. Something like 1/1,000,000.

Dumb Article About Blacks and HIV

Here. I am getting tired of these idiotic articles. This article wants to destroy the “myth” that HIV in the Black community is being caused by closeted gay and bisexual men on the “down low” or having gay sex in secret and then passing it on to women. In fact, that is what is causing almost all of the HIV in the Black community. A certain amount of it may be caused by Black men acquiring HIV via sharing needles and then giving it to Black women via sex, but the article points out that that IV drug use is not such a serious problem in the Black community. HIV in the Black community goes like this: Closeted Gay and bisexual Black men on the down low acquire HIV from having gay sex, often with other gay and bisexual Black men. -> They have sex with Black women and give it to them that way. Or: Black men acquire HIV from sharing needles with other IV drug users. -> They have sex with Black women and give it to them that way. The article says that (presumably non IV drug using) “heterosexual Black men” are spreading most of the HIV in the Black community. That has to be a great big fat lie. Are heterosexual men spreading much HIV to women in the Hispanic and White communities? Well of course not. Then why would they be spreading it to women in the Black community? Answer: They aren’t. There is some HIV being spread here in the US from female to male, but it’s not very common at all. In fact, it is rather rare. The reason for all of these articles is simply propaganda. If most of the people getting HIV are gay and bisexual men and IV drug users and their partners, no one very much cares about those people. It’s basically, “Let em die.” So they spread the huge lie that vast numbers of HIV infections are being spread from non IV drug using straight males and females to each other. Why? Non IV drug using straight people are the vast majority of Americans. Once you convince them that they are at risk, then they will plunk down the money to try to stop the disease. If they are not at risk, they won’t plunk down the cash, and the at-risk groups will continue to die. That’s all it is – politics. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Alt Left: Heterosexual HIV Transmission in Southeast Asia

John writes:

If you look at the transmission statistics for several Asian countries, it will say “heterosexual” is the main form of transmission. Laos, Thailand and Vietnam included.

Anyways, several of my friends from Southeast Asia say they barebacked prostitutes several years ago (10+ years ago) and nothing happened to them, and now they have families (a wife and kids) and they are showing no health problems. Not that I advocate barebacking whores because it seems risky (even if you don’t get HIV, you can still get some other nasty disease or infection), but they were lucky.

Well in Thailand the disease there probably started originally with IV drug users, and that still drives a great deal of it. IV drug users give it to each other, and then those men take it home and give it to their wives. That is what is driving the epidemic in Southern Thailand on the peninsula around the Phuket region.

Then a lot of it was going due to transmission from whores to their clients. This was mostly the Thai whores were serving Thai men, and that scene is a lot sleazier that the more high class ones that serve Westerners. The ones that serve Thais were working in brothels where they had to serve many men a day, and after a while, they did not even get turned on anymore, so they were getting fucked dry. This can cause some bleeding, so these whores were bleeding when they were having sex. The bleeding was spreading it heterosexually to the Thai men.

However, some Thai whores who were serving Westerners were also HIV positive, and there was some transmission taking place to the Western customers. There are reports, though not common, of Western men barebacking Thai whores only one time and getting HIV.

But an information campaign got a lot of those whores to use condoms and now the rate of female -> male HIV in those brothels is very low to none.

I have no idea what is driving the spread of HIV in Laos and Vietnam, but Thailand had a serious HIV problem at one time at least.

In addition, that particular subtype of HIV does seem to spread easier female -> male. They even proved this scientifically when they tested HIV positive women who had this subtype. Titers were significantly higher in vaginal fluid in these Thai women then they are in US HIV positive women who have the subtype B clade. The subtype B clade for whatever reason seems to mostly want to spread via blood. Titers in vaginal fluid of women with the B clade are so low that I wonder how they can even transmit the illness.

There are other subtypes in parts of the world outside of the US and Europe. Some of these are in places where there seems to be is more HIV spread by heterosexual contact than in the US, where it mostly goes:

HIV drug user male -> other male HIV drug user -> woman -> transmission stops.

For whatever reason, almost all HIV in the US has always been clade B since the start of the epidemic. The other subtypes have just not made it over here yet in any real numbers, though there are some non-B clades in Europe.

HIV: A Bloodborne Illness

HIV is a blood-borne illness. If she is bleeding in her vagina during sex, obviously it will be easier to transmit HIV to her via semen. If she has blood in her vagina, that does make it easier for a woman to transmit HIV to a man. Please keep in mind! This is a blood-borne illness! It needs to get into your damn bloodstream. It’s found in the blood in huge quantities. Don’t mess around with other people’s blood! If it has HIV in it, you could acquire HIV via contact with that blood. Semen also has a large amount of HIV in it but not as much as blood. Vaginal fluid, honestly, has pretty low levels, and when I look at those titers, they seem so low that I wonder how it even transmits. There is almost no HIV in saliva, and whatever is there, the titers are way too low to transmit. Swallowing semen is probably pretty safe. Saliva kills HIV dead, just like that. If the saliva doesn’t kill it, when it gets to your stomach, your stomach acids will make short work of it. Even though there are high levels of HIV in semen, that semen has to come in contact with the bloodstream in order to transmit. The stuff’s got to get right into your blood. This is why it transmits during needle sharing. Even if there is a small amount of blood with HIV in it on the needle, you stick that needle right into your damn bloodstream, and you can get HIV that way. HIV is a hard disease to get unless you are an IV drug user or a male homosexual. To give you an example of how hard it is to get it, Hepatitis B transmits 50-100X more easily than HIV, and Hepatitis B isn’t al lthat easy to get either.

Rightwing Lie: China Is a Free Market Capitalist Country

I’m not a libertarian, my politics is best described as social democrat. I’m just a realist that understands what a spectacular failure the communist project has been. “Mao built up and industrialized China.” In 1988, average wages in China were about 3,00 Yuan, now it is 47,00 Yuan. Today’s China owes more to Deng Xiaoping than it does to that maniac Mao. China liberalized its economy but didn’t liberalize its politics. It’s a state capitalist economy, not communist by any means. I have first hand experience; I’m part-owner of a mid-size factory that produces goods for my company here. And have you ever been to Shanghai? The closest thing to capitalist paradise.

4 The system is set up so that the market is a tool which can be manipulated by the state any way they wish. They can even shut down whole industries if they want to. The market serves society and operates at the behest of the state in contrast to capitalist countries were society serves the market and the state is beholden to the capitalists, not the other way around. In China the market is a tool for the development for the productive forces only, not a form of politics as it is in most capitalist countries. In China the state runs the country and the market just makes stuff, as opposed to capitalist countries were the market not only makes stuff but also runs the state. I know a number of Communists and Marxists who approve of what the CCP is doing in China. Even on Maoist boards, the CCP has a lot of supporters. That right there implies that there is something other than radical free market capitalism going on. Almost all of the banking is done by large state banks. The government spends a tremendous amount of money on society in general and lately on developing the rural areas. I believe that all schooling continues to be free. The Chinese state is completely non-imperialist overseas. In fact it has extremely fraternal relations with North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Laos and Vietnam. No purely capitalist state would ever have friendly relations with those countries. If China were a pure capitalist state, they would be attacking all of those countries like the US does. Much of the growth in the Chinese economy has actually taken place in enterprises that are actually formally run by labor collectives and small municipalities. Cities run enterprises within their boundaries and compete with other cities for workers. The better the enterprise does, the more money the workers get. Not exactly the sort of exploitation Marx discussed in the Labor Theory of Value. All state firms are formally owned by their workers due to a Mao era law. All of the income from the firm goes to the workers themselves, but they are generally required to hand back 9 Capitalists in the West are yelling all the time that they are at an unfair advantage with their Chinese competitors due massive state subsidy of their Chinese competitors. But wait, I thought state subsidy made firms less competitive? How much superior are the capitalist firms when state-subsidized firms regularly kick their asses? Although much of the collective system was dismantled in countryside when they got rid of the village communes (an action that has caused severe problems) they still have local irrigation boards that control much of the farmland infrastructure. Those small farmers do not make enough money to fund irrigation projects and they won’t cooperate on them anyway. So the state moved in, and the state spends a lot of money running all of the irrigation in agricultural China and it does a great job of it. You can see that the state plays a large role in Chinese agriculture. There are homeless in much of the capitalist world, but there are no homeless in China. It is illegal to be homeless. If you are homeless, the cops will pick you up and put you into a shelter right away. If you are not from the city, then they send you back to your home in the countryside. Obviously the state plays a huge role in preventing homelessness. Most housing is state housing. Due to the many rural people leaving to go the cities (which is causing a lot of problems) the state is spending a vast amount of money to improve the rural areas to keep the people on the farm. Does that sound like something a capitalist government would do? No capitalist government would ever spend a vast amount of money on its rural poor. There have been 200 million excess deaths in India because India chose the capitalist road as opposed to the various socialist roads the Chinese have taken. Malnutrition in India is 5 Chinese life expectancy was the same as India’s in 1949 and since then, Chinese live much longer than Indians. Those extra years add up to 3-4 million excess deaths occurring in India every year, purely due to India’s economic system. 6 That China surpasses India in all of these regards is not the result of Chinese capitalism. It is the pure result of Chinese socialism. Without the tremendous buildup of agricultural, educational and industrial bases of the economy, none of this growth could have taken place.

The Side Effects of Statin Drugs

New report condemns their use. I have been on these drugs for some time due to high cholesterol. It is interesting that while they indeed do lower cholesterol, they do not have a lot of other obvious benefits aside from that, and in addition, they have a lot of bad side effects.

References

Sultan, Sherif and Hynes, Niamh. July 2013. Robert LindsayPosted on Categories Health, Medicine, Public Health1 Comment on The Side Effects of Statin Drugs

Ex-Army on Mass Immigration

Ex-Army has a new post up reprinting one of my posts and putting up one of his own. Here it is:

Despite what they say, just about the entire political class is in favor of amnesty first of all, and then more and more and more immigration, legal and illegal. And you can extend that to the whole MAG (Media, Academia, Government). Now, they all want it for their own grubby little reasons, but they all say it will just improve the bejeezus out of the economy and everything else, to have unlimited hordes of uneducated, unskilled, Third-World immigrants pouring in over the border. It seems that even an idiot could figure out that when you have an oversupply of a commodity (unskilled labor), the price (wages) of that commodity falls. When it falls far enough, unskilled Americans can’t afford to take the unskilled jobs, because they can get more money from welfare, so that’s what they do, and they get zero work experience, and stay unemployable forever. Then the immigrants catch on to the deal, they go on welfare, and then we need to let a few million more uneducated, unskilled, Third-World immigrants in, and the cycle continues. Make no mistake about it, people. If you are a worker, or would like to be a worker, amnesty is going to hike your taxes and cut your pay. The left, of course, couldn’t care less about actual working people. They think of them as a bunch of nasty Archie Bunkers who ought to lose their stupid jobs. Serve ’em right. Racist bigots.

There are some problems with this at it is typical of the contempt that US conservatives have for liberals, who according to them are just bad people with bad motives. But that’s where the Right goes wrong. US liberals are not bad people with bad motives. They are good people with good motives. They are “do-gooders.” Now, the Right can feel free to bash do-gooders all they want to, but after all, in doing so, they are displaying contempt for people for trying to do the right thing.

Despite what they say, just about the entire political class is in favor of amnesty first of all, and then more and more and more immigration, legal and illegal. And you can extend that to the whole MAG (Media, Academia, Government). Now, they all want it for their own grubby little reasons,

This is not exactly true. The entire US political class it not in favor of amnesty. They entire US Democratic Party is. The Republican Party is divided. Before, they were against amnesty, and it is in this way that I am a conservative, as I am against amnesty. The Republican Party is under extreme pressure to cave in on amnesty, and it is only the hardliners such as the Tea Partiers that are holding the line on this issue, but it keeps coming back like a whack a mole. The political class of the Republican Party is now 10 Ex-Army is correct that the entire media class is pro-amnesty. Why this is is uncertain. Most reporters are liberals, and many are Jewish. Many newspapers are owned by Jews who have ethnic reasons for supporting mass immigration. Most other newspapers are simply owned by corporations who support mass immigration because of the wage-lowering and more consumers = more business effects. Academia supports mass immigration because they are liberal do-gooders. They really believe that the whole world has a right to come here to better their lives and that it is cruel to keep them out. They have blinded themselves to the massive downside that this will have for us as a nation because they want to think of their causes are pure good causes that will not have any downside.

but they all say it will just improve the bejeezus out of the economy and everything else, to have unlimited hordes of uneducated, unskilled, Third-World immigrants pouring in over the border. It seems that even an idiot could figure out that when you have an oversupply of a commodity (unskilled labor), the price (wages) of that commodity falls.

It is true that both the Left and the Right all insist that mass immigration is the greatest thing for the economy since sliced bread. This is probably due to the more consumers = more business line. However, something that is good for the economy is not necessarily good for labor. Obviously, mass importation of unskilled labor lowers the cost of that labor and ultimately depresses wages. We have seen it right here on the ground in California, and I don’t care how many lying studies they produce to show that mass immigration does not lower wages, we here in California know firsthand that it does. The Right is overjoyed that mass immigration lowers wages. The Left simply denies that it does as that would go against their ideology, and they blind themselves to the downside of their projects for ego-defensive needs. Do-gooders can’t exactly be pushing things that have bad effects. Then they would not be do-gooders anymore. Instead they would be do-badders. In order to protect the ego from this attack, they deny that their agenda has bad effects.

When it falls far enough, unskilled Americans can’t afford to take the unskilled jobs, because they can get more money from welfare, so that’s what they do, and they get zero work experience, and stay unemployable forever.

The Right is obsessed with welfare. That’s what they are all about. All they talk about all day and all night is welfare. Which is a good reason for the Left to never discuss it at all. Discussing it at all makes you a rightwinger. The truth is that it does not pay more in the US to “go on welfare” than it does to work. In some highly advanced welfare states such as Britain, under certain circumstances it did, especially if you were a single Mom raising kids as you got a child allowance. Get your kids on disability and into government housing, and you’re in like Flynn. I knew a woman who was scamming the British system in order to stay home and raise her kids, who by now were teenagers. She flat out told me that in she was working the system to the extent that she would lose money if she went to work. We should design welfare states so that you always make more money if you go to work than if you stay on relief. That’s the only way a welfare state makes any kind of sense. In the US, it’s never more profitable to “go on welfare” than it is to work. Forget it. First of all, in the US, you can’t just “go on welfare.” If you lose your job, you might get unemployment, but it’s a pittance, and it doesn’t last long. That’s all you get. You might be able to get some Food Stamps, but I don’t know anyone who refuses to work because the Food Stamps might end. You can stand in line and wait for 2-3 years for Section 8 to open up, but I don’t know anyone who refuses to work because they will lose their Section 8. The system is designed to reward you for working. If your income falls low enough, you can get Medicaid, but I don’t know anyone who refuses to work because they won’t get Medicaid anymore. If you don’t work, you can’t eat, pay your bills, drive your car, buy anything or pay your rent. If you don’t work in the US, you can’t survive, period, so everyone pretty much has to work at something. You can go on disability, but this is very hard, and if there is nothing wrong with you, you won’t get it. Even if there is something wrong with you, you will get turned down over and over before you get accepted. Then everyone will hate you for being on disability. You always make more money working than being on disability. I do know people who stay on disability rather than work because if they go off, they lose their medical coverage, which is either Medicaid or Medicare. The problem is that there is no national health care system in the US due to conservative opposition. So the conservatives have created this problem for themselves. But the truth is that you can’t survive on disability even if you are really disabled as it pays so little. It doesn’t even pay enough to survive to be honest. No one is living it up on disability. Most are grubbing by in a very depressing existence at a near sub-survival level. Many are working a bit on the side to supplement the disability, but most of them are not really capable of working fulltime anyway. Even those who stay on disability due to fears of losing medical care are not really capable of working as I see it. Most would not be hired by anyone, and if they were, they would soon be fired.

so that’s what they do, and they get zero work experience, and stay unemployable forever.

The number of people in the US that unemployable due to no work experience is very low. I have honestly never met one in my entire life. I know a person who was on disability for mental stuff, and they had never really worked. At one time, they got much better, and they got a job. They got fired after a few months, which is typical for people on disability for mental stuff, and then they deteriorated and apparently decided never to do that again. But they had landed a good government job even with no work experience because they had a university degree. The Right loves to talk about “unemployable” people. Perhaps there are unemployable Americans. I haven’t the faintest idea. But I am not sure if I have ever met one, and most that I did meet were already collecting disability. The unemployable Americans due to no work experience must be very small in number.

Then the immigrants catch on to the deal, they go on welfare, and then we need to let a few million more uneducated, unskilled, Third-World immigrants in, and the cycle continues.

This is not true. Immigrants to the US do not “go on welfare.” They are banned from most social programs as it is, since they only take citizens. Most legal immigrants also don’t “go on welfare.” I have never met a single immigrant, legal or illegal, who was on any kind of welfare program of any type. Most immigrants to the US have a very strong work ethic, often stronger than Americans. It is an endless rightwing trope that illegal aliens flood into the US “to go on welfare.” Go to any conservative anti-illegal website, and this is all they talk about. “They come here for the welfare!” And it’s the biggest lie on Earth. The number of illegal aliens who come to the US “to go on welfare” must by vanishingly small. First of all, that would be a very stupid reason to come to the US since illegals are not eligible for any programs, and those they are eligible for through their kids don’t even pay the bills. It is certainly not true that millions of illegals “go on welfare” creating a labor shortage, necessitating importation of more illegals. The only way this is somewhat true is that if if you legalize illegals, many of them don’t want to work in the fields anymore, so you need to import more illegals to work in the fields. But it is simply not true that there is a labor shortage in US fields. I live in the biggest agricultural region in the US, and there is no farm worker labor shortage here. In fact, farm worker unemployment is around 1 Certainly there is no need for mass immigration to combat labor shortages. These labor shortages do not exist in the US and exist only in the lying mouths of US businessmen, particularly farmers and owners of high tech companies and their lying lackeys in media and politics. The fake labor shortages are constantly conjured up by US capitalists in order to import more immigrants and guest workers to drive down wages even further.

Make no mistake about it, people. If you are a worker, or would like to be a worker, amnesty is going to hike your taxes and cut your pay.

He is correct that mass immigration will cut your pay if you are worker, but probably only if you are a low skilled worker. Some workers such as tech workers are also being impacted. However, it will not raise your taxes. Conservatives like to say that everything on God’s green Earth is going to “raise your taxes.” Lately, the Democratic Party has gotten in on it too, claiming that some rightwing projects are going to “raise your taxes.” This is stupid. Liberals should not be decrying anything that raises taxes. If you are a liberal and you bemoan things that are going to “raise your taxes” you’re not a liberal anymore. Liberals support taxes. We love taxation. We can’t get enough of it. Taxes in the US are far too low and need to be vastly increased, mostly on the rich and the corporations. The truth is that almost no political project is going to “raise your taxes.” National health care would probably necessitate some sort of a tax increase, but it is uncertain how that would work out. Most projects that increase the size and scope of government functions need to be paid for in some way or another. Mass immigration does increase the costs to government as the immigrants cost more than they produce in taxation to pay for themselves. Immigrants simply don’t pay for themselves; they cost money. The increased costs will probably just be dealt with by cutting more and more services and running up bigger and bigger deficits as raising taxes is a political death wish anymore. Bottom line is that illegals or mass immigration in general does not really raise your taxes. Instead they increase the costs of government, leading to large deficits and major cutbacks in state services.

The left, of course, couldn’t care less about actual working people. They think of them as a bunch of nasty Archie Bunkers who ought to lose their stupid jobs. Serve ’em right. Racist bigots.

This probably isn’t true. In my whole life I might have met one White leftist who felt this way. Your average middle class liberal likes proles about as much as rightwingers do. Like or dislike of the working class is a class issue, not a politics issue. Both rightwing and liberal middle class types don’t really care to hang out with proles all that much, as they both think they are low class. But the only people I have ever met who had utter contempt for low wage workers were all rightwingers, and most of them were young men. It is hard to find a liberal who expresses contempt for working class people. I am not even sure that they exist. Some of the rich have contempt for working class people, but those are mostly young rich males. Contempt for proles does not seem to be acceptable in US culture. As one moves further to the Left, you will find more sympathy for proles, so support for proles and working class people is actually a function of politics in a sense in that it is almost a requirement for being a true liberal or Leftist. There are liberals who are fairly rightwing for a liberal who are dubious about “the workers and peasants.” But they came from an upper class background, and they were not that liberal anyway. As they moved further to the Left with time, their support for and comfort with proles increased. The problem is that most of the Right’s rhetoric is simply untrue. Most of their talking points are frankly falsehoods, but they are things that conservatives want to believe, as they want to believe that the world actually works in the twisted way that their vision says it does. They don’t want to confront reality either. No one does, not the Left, not the Right, really nobody. It is much more comfortable to lie about the world than to see it for what it really is. When you see the world in realis, most of the ideology that you have carefully constructed over a lifetime is stripped bare and revealed to be either lies or nonsense, mostly set up to make you feel good about the world or your view of it in some way. Revealing your lifelong biases as a pack of lies is very painful, and most people just do not want to confront that monster, so they content themselves on comfortable illusions.

Why a Moral Capitalism (Social Democracy) Is Hardly Even Possible

A rightwing capitalist from India posts:

So the problem that you have is basically with the ideals and goals of capitalism, which are to make money. I really don’t have a problem with talented and deserving folk making money with the sweat of their brows or the tapping of their keyboards or whatever. I also realize that some sort of socialism is necessary, say, for making public parks, public roads, public hospitals and schools and so on. But you need to weigh practicalities of each system. While I applaud the lofty ideals of Marx and Engel, I agree with the far more practical considerations of Machiavelli, who considered humans to be motivated by selfishness and greed. That selfishness and greed are what drive the economy, at least in capitalist countries. Want more money? Work harder, work smarter, find out new ways to get the shit done, indulge your selfish fancy and think up new stuff that plugs in a wall socket… so on. Thing is, such systems tend to have a better overall life quality, because opportunities are inherently legion. It’s no wonder that while nobody would want to cross jungles full of poisonous snakes and swim dangerous waters for getting to India, a whole lot of Indians would cheerfully do so to get to the US. Let’s consider a country still mired in socialistic ideals: India (China cannot be considered, thanks to Deng Xiaoping). In the 1990s, things got so bad they had to ship their gold bullion to the Bank of England just to meet the deficit. They then realized they had to get rid of their over-bloated behemoths of Public Works companies. These companies were a direct result of socialist practicality: they devoured huge amounts of money to feed their officials and never got anything done. How did things go that way? I call it “crony socialism”. The government officials, perpetually in power, simply did not give a shit about anybody or anything, and answered to no one. The socialist government reveled in its poverty and penurity, and wore it like a crown. The mindset of the government, upon acquiring power, became so draconian that a for-the-people, socialist state saw major uprisings, like the Naxalite movement and later secessionist movement in Punjab and the Jayprakash Narayan Movement in Uttar Pradesh and Behar. And these weren’t exactly occupy wall street stuff, these were very serious and sometimes armed insurgencies, and resulted in actual bloodshed and thousands of deaths. Coming from an inherently socialist state, I say socialism is evil, having experienced it myself. Coming from an inherently capitalist state, you say capitalism is evil, having (I assume) experienced its excesses yourself. No system is perfect, I suppose. PS> I’ll give you a good point of attack: you can say that since Indians suck, their version of everything sucks, even socialism. However, socialism has been abandoned the world over. China abandoned it, and later USSR states abandoned it too.

We do not think that they ever had any real socialism in India. Indian socialism was a sick joke. It was “crony socialism.” The world is not giving up on socialism. Most countries on Earth are a mixture of socialism and capitalism. A place like the USA has too much capitalism and not enough socialism, and a place like Cuba has too much socialism and not enough capitalism. China is still a very socialist country, but they have gone much too far in the capitalist direction. It’s been a catastrophe. For instance, millions of Chinese are now dying for lack of healthcare. THIS is what the capitalists all over the world are cheering about! All those people dying! You can’t have any kind of functional state under capitalism with public roads, schools, health care, parks, etc. because the capitalists hate all of that stuff and will always try to dismantle it. Most capitalists are not like you. Most capitalists do not even believe in public schools, health care, roads, parks, etc. They want to get rid of all of that stuff, especially the roads, schools, etc. So the media and the state in capitalist society soon get captured by these capitalist radicals, which are the super-rich and their bought politicians and owned media outlets. So the schools, health care, roads, and parks in a capitalist state gradually start to wither away and get destroyed. Examples: Schools: Since 1980, conservatives have declared war on public schools in the US. They have defunded public schools at all levels out of ideology. The want it to that only the rich can afford to go to college. They are also ideologically committed to privatization of schooling and they oppose public education out of ideology. Since 1980, countless public schools in China have been closed down. Many of these were opened during the Cultural Revolution. In most of the 3rd World, public eduction is defunded and the rich send their kids to private schools. Health care: Since 1980, there have been continuous attacks on the NHS, the British health care system. That is because the Thatcherites and the neoliberal rightwing “Labor” are ideologically opposed to the NHS because they don’t believe in public health care. Austerity has been delightfully pushed by the capitalist classes (the very rich) all over the world since 1980. It ruined Africa and Latin America for decades. Now they are pushing it in Europe and the US. There is no real reason to engage in austerity, but the rich simply see this as an opening to destroy the public sector which they hate, so they are using this opportunity. In any fiscal crisis under capitalism, the rich and the capitalists will use this crisis to engage in austerity to destroy the hated public sector. Roads: US roads are falling apart because the rich and the capitalists do not believe in funding them out of ideological opposition. They simply think it is a waste of money. Parks: US parks have been defunded for many, many years now, ever since Reagan. The rich and the capitalists always hate public parks and they always try to defund them and shut them down. Here in California, many of the parks have shut down. They probably do this out of sheer ideology. You can’t make money off a park, and the capitalists and the rich only care about things that make money. If you can’t make money off something, it’s worthless by definition. I actually think that capitalism is absolutely evil, but I also agree that it works better than its alternatives. It’s the worst system on Earth, except for all the others, something like that, borrowing from Churchill.

STD Overview for the Straight, Single Male in the US

If you’re a White guy in the US banging non-prostitutes, you won’t get much in the way of STD’s anyway. White non-prostitutes do sometimes have chlamydia, Trichomonas, Herpes 2 and genital warts, but they are not that common. I know a guy who used to pick up prostitutes off the streets and he caught gonorrhea twice, both times from a Black woman. Syphilis is rare in the White non-prostitutes community. In the straight community in the US, it is usually found among Hispanic prostitutes who service illegal aliens. I’ve never met a man who got HIV from a woman in the US. With chlamydia and gonorrhea, you get symptoms. You get burning with chlamydia, and with gonorrhea, you get very strong burning and a yellowish discharge. Gonorrhea goes away with about three days of antibiotics. Syphilis is very rare, and you get strong symptoms, mainly a chancre. You won’t mistake a chancre for anything else. There are often symptoms with genital warts, but in many cases, you have the wart virus with no symptoms. You can go to the doctor and get them burned or frozen off, and you should. I recommend that all young men get the HPV vaccine as it can cause cancer in males. They are only offering it to females, which seems wrong to me. Past a certain age, 8 You will get symptoms with Herpes 2. You get blisters in the genital area, and in the early stages you also get flu-like symptoms. Then it sort of goes into remission, and only comes out once in a while. You take pills as soon as it shows, and it goes away again. It’s incurable, but it’s practically nothing to be honest. I know a guy who screwed more women that most armies, and he kept on getting Herpes over and over from different women. You would get a new infection in a new place. But really you only have one infection. It’s just coming out in different spots. Anyway, 1 out of 6 adults has it, so you’re not alone. Trichomonas is nothing. Males get no symptoms. However, you can give it to a woman, and she gets a nasty infection which goes away in few days with an anti-parasite medication. HIV is really nothing to worry about, but be careful with streetwalkers, as they might have it. If you have regular sex with an HIV positive woman, you might get it, maybe. A great big huge maybe. The rest of the venereal diseases are pretty much confined to the gay male community and for all intents and purposes, you don’t have to worry about them if you are straight.

Are Oriental Massage Girls Safe?

BX Monger writes:

You missed out and should have boned her good. Most of these MP babes are cleaner than the avg chick you may meet in a bar and bang. Some of the older MP babes that only do handjobs will put out on occasion, and it’s the tightest p*ssy on earth. 40 yo single Korean babe with no kids and rare romp occasionally likes being ravaged!

I don’t discuss my own experiences on there, but from talking to my friends, those Asian massage parlor chicks in the US ain’t got a damned thing. I have friends who used to go to those places all the time. They told me they never caught a damned thing. Talking to numerous men over a period of years: No cases of: Gonorrhea Chlamydia Genital warts Herpes 2 Syphilis HIV Trichomomas Not one single case.

Why I Keep Bashing India

Steve asks:

what are you worried about anyway? That the little bit of Australia that crashed into Asia will start exporting its people to the west (even more than it has done)? Or you just don’t like the Indians suffering with their ‘crap culture’?

I am outraged at India the same way I am outraged at Republicans. What bothers me even more is that I am certain that Indians don’t even want to change. And India really is a threat to the rest of the world. If you look at that China Smack post of all the filth in India, this is where the worst and deadliest, most crazy and insane new bacteria and viruses come from. That threatens not only India but much of the rest of the world too. I am told that there are already bugs coming out of India that are resistant to almost all antibiotics. Some of the worst superbugs on Earth are coming out of India. As long as these idiots refuse to get their shit together or especially as long as they don’t even think they need to get their shit together, I will keep on bashing them. And their problem is almost exclusively due to their culture, which they could change, well, yesterday. I don’t believe in bashing people on essentialist grounds on things that they cannot change. I honestly think that Africans are better than (superior to) Indians. Indians are worse than Africans! Now is that pitiful or what? Of all of the horrors of Africa, at least there is no caste system. Instead of caste, there is tribalism. Now the question is which culture is worse? In addition, there is a human element. If you look at India, what you see is a culture that promotes an unbelievable amount of suffering in its people. Look at those people wallowing in filth, diseased, starving, abused, cheated, beaten, raped, tortured, murdered, jailed and continuously stolen from by the rich, the judiciary, the security forces, and you see a people whose suffering looks like a well with no bottom. Now the lower classes may have adopted a slave mentality, but they still suffer nonetheless. There may be well more compound human suffering (assuming you can quality such a thing) in India than anyplace else on Earth. That cries out for the outrage of any humanist. And we on the Left always fight against injustice. And if anyplace on Earth symbolizes injustice and suffering, it is India.

White Versus Black Homicide Rates in the US

Volodmyrr writes:

The population of whites is 82. 4.3344 of 8.2453 = 52. Blacks are responsible for 52. Is this correct?

There are some problems with these figures. Here are the updated figures for around this year:

US Population by

White            6
Hispanic (all)   1
Black            1
Asian             
American Indian   

Those figures are very much estimates. No one quite knows how many South Indians are in the US. Arabs are blended in with Whites, as are Jews. So the vast majority of Muslims in the US are in fact White. The figures for Whites and Hispanics are somewhat uncertain and may be off by a percentage point or two. The Hispanic figure is very hard to define and may or may not include illegal aliens. White Hispanics appear to be blended into Hispanic in this analysis. In particular, the mixed race category is very hard to even define, much less quantify. It was left out of this analysis.

Homicide rates by race
Rate per 100,000
Other            4.1
White            4.5
Black           34.4

Good God! Those figures are completely insane! Excuse me! But as you can see, the Black rate is fully 8 times higher than the White rate. The White rates itself is quite elevated compared to many White European countries. The Black rate is so high that it calls out for public discussion, which unfortunately is now completely blacked out and forbidden. If nothing else, the Black rate is a public health emergency. That’s why I write about Black crime on here. It’s the one negative thing about Blacks that most pro-Black White liberals will talk about. That’s their big worry and big concern, and they are not necessarily to shy to bring it up. I understand why Blacks get their back up about this. Suppose you’re a Black with a clean record who more or less obeys the law and certainly has never killed anyone. Your reaction is going to be, “Why are you going on about Black crime? I don’t commit any crimes! Leave me out of this!” Fair enough. But the vast majority of victims of Black crime are Blacks themselves. And if it’s a public health emergency anywhere, it’s a public health emergency in the Black community. And that’s something that Blacks ought to be concerned about. That’s why I appreciated Tulio’s post so much the other day. A figure that is 8X the White rate surely cries out for some sort of an explanation, and it’s a great problem for aspiring social scientists to crack their teeth on. At the very least, it cries out for extensive investigation. The standard liberal rejoinders about poverty, lack of education, lack of opportunity and racism get old real fast. There’s something more than that going on here. Anyway, all of these explanations really lead us nowhere. What is Ayn Randian America like nowadays? Are we about to get cracking on poverty, lack of education, lack of opportunity and racism? Not exactly. Ayn Randian America, exemplified by Republican Veep pick Paul Ryan, is about to throw in the towel on all of those problems, give it up, go home and declare victory or whatever. Spending on all of these problems is expected to decline radically in the future where it will not be zeroed out altogether. So we end up with a non-testable and non-falsifiable theory:

Observer: Why is there so much Black homicide? Liberal: Poverty, racism, lack of opportunity, poor education. Observer: Well, ok, since this stuff is not going away, can we at least ameliorate these problems and see if it affects the rate any? Liberal: Nope, these problems have always been with us and will be with us for the foreseeable future. Observer: Ok so there’s no way to even test your theory to see if it’s true or not, right?

Even worse is a circular theory that many toss about.

Observer: Why is there so much Black crime? Conservative parroting liberal argument: Poverty, racism, lack of opportunity, poor education. Observer: Well, why is there so much poverty, racism, lack of opportunity, poor education in the Black community? Conservative: Well, mostly due to crime I would say.

Now, this may well be true, but we aren’t solving anything with a circular argument. Racists use a similar circular argument:

Observer: Why is there so much Black homicide? Racist: LOL, did you just crawl out from under a rock? Niggers like to kill people. You never noticed that? LOL. Observer: Well, that’s interesting. But then why do Black people like to kill each other then? Racist: Why do niggers like to kill people? LOL! Because they’re niggers, that’s why! LMAO!

Well, perhaps that is true and perhaps it is not, but it’s hardly explanatory now is it? And it seems rather tautological. Good theory should be: Testable: You should be able to test it out somehow. If you can’t even test it, it’s more or less garbage and empty bloviating. Falsifiable: There must be some way that one could possibly prove the theory false if the facts came out in a certain way. If you can’t theoretically do that, the theory is just empty wind. This is where you get the saying, “Not only is it not right, but it’s not even wrong!” about some theories. Explanatory: Theory should attempt to explain the facts. Theories that fail to do that are said to lack explanatory adequacy. Saying that Black people commit tons of homicide because they’re a bunch of niggers is interesting and rather humorous, but it doesn’t really answer the question. That statement lacks explanatory adequacy because it fails to explain the facts on the ground in any way whatsoever. It’s the sort of answer that makes you feel puzzled as you walk away shaking your head.

From Bernie Sanders – No to Austerity!

Bernie Sanders on the latest debt ceiling talks.

Republican leaders talk about three or four trillion dollars in spending cuts over the next ten years, with no new taxes on the wealthy and large corporations and unless we turn the tide NOW, they will get pretty much what they want.

Please understand what they mean.  While no specific proposals have been adopted as of this date, here are some of the ideas which have been discussed.

SOCIAL SECURITY:  Revising the formula which determines cost of living increases (COLAs) so that in ten years, a 75-year-old will receive $560 a year less in benefits and in 20 years an 85-year-old will receive $1,000 a year less.  Further, another provision which would require that Social Security always be solvent for 75 years would likely mean even larger cuts in benefits.  All of this would take place despite the fact that Social Security has not contributed one penny to the deficit and has a $2.6 trillion surplus today.  This new formula would also cut back on the pensions of veterans. Why cut Social Security?

MEDICARE:  Raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67 and/or cutting benefits by $250 billion over ten years.  Now you tell me, how are 66 year old Americans with modest means going to afford health insurance with a private company – especially if they have medical problems?  It’s not going to happen.  They are going to suffer.  Some will unnecessarily die. Why cut Medicare?

MEDICAID:  At a time when 50 million Americans already have no health insurance, Republicans and some Democrats are proposing to cut hundreds of billions from Medicaid which means that many men, women and children will lose the health insurance they have.  According to a Harvard University study, some 45,000 Americans die each year because they don’t get to a doctor when they should.  How many more will die if Medicaid is slashed?  How many children will be thrown off of the Children’s Health Insurance Program? Why cut Medicaid when it’s already been slashed to the bone?

EDUCATION:  Today, childcare and college education are already unaffordable for millions of working families and Head Start has long waiting lists.  If Republicans and some Democrats get their way, Pell grants and other educational programs will be deeply slashed.  Affordable childcare and a college education will no longer be possible for many families in our country. Why cut childcare and college education anymore than they’ve already been slashed?

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND INFRASTRUCTURE:  Forget about the government having the ability to protect the people from corporations who want to evade regulations within the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.  With massive cuts in the EPA, the resources will not be there.  Forget about this country having the investment capability to transform our energy system to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.  Forget about creating millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and improving our public transportation system.

Why cut environmental protection at all? Forget it. Why cut funds to infrastructure when your nation’s infrastructure is collapsing?

At a time of growing hunger in America there will be massive cuts to nutrition programs.  We have a crisis in homelessness, and there will be cuts to affordable housing.  While we need more funds for research and development in disease prevention and other areas, fewer funds will be available.  And on and on it goes.  Why cut hunger programs at a time of rising hunger? Why cut housing funds when we have a homelessness crisis? Why cut funds for R & D in medicine and science?

Alt Left: India: Hell on Earth

Here is an excellent piece about India that I got from an internet site. The author is unknown, but he may be a Dalit or low caste Indian. It sums up why India is such a Hellhole – Indians created it that way.

We had a commenter on here called Dota, an Indian Muslim who hates India way more than I do. He fled to Canada. He recently said that India is Hell, and its people are the scum of humanity. That’s a hard-hitting thing to say, but is it true? He lived there for many years and I did not.

It does appear that Indian society and culture itself is at the core of India’s problems, and I can’t help but think that the religion of Hinduism is a big part of the country’s problems. As Dota says, of all religions, Hinduism cares about people the least. A shocking statement, but is it true?

In another comment, I talked about the hundreds of millions of people starving, diseased, shitting outdoors and living in the streets or fetid slums of India. According to Dota, Indian elites feel that the Indian poor living and dying in Hell that is India deserve everything they get up to and including death. That’s why there’s so little effort to fix up the mess – the poor deserve their fate. They even deserve to die. A frightening remark again, but what if it is true?

And once again, this belief seems to circle back around to Hinduism once again. The Hindu religion seems to be at the very heart and core of India’s Hell on Earth.

Why Do 1 Million Indians Flee India Every Year?

Any crackdowns on illegal immigrants or restricting quotas abroad to Indians are a major concern to India’s politicians. The latest statistics from the US Department of Homeland Security shows that the number of Indian illegal migrants jumped 12

Here are some Indian facts:

Poverty Graph

According to the WFP, India accounts around 5

Around six out of 10 Indians live in the countryside, where abject poverty is widespread. 34.

The Current Account Balance of India

A major area of vulnerability for us is the high consolidated public-debt to GDP ratio of over 7

says the Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Mr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy.

According to the CIA World Factbook, the current account balance of India is -$375.1 trillion (minus) while China is the wealthiest country in the world with $426.1 trillion (plus). India listed at 182 and China at 1 [CIA: The World Factbook].

Human Development vs GDP growth

The Human Development Report for 2009 released by the UNDP ranked India 134 out of 182 countries based on measures of life expectancy, education, and income. India has an emigration rate of 0.

Population

According to the Indian census of 2001, the total population was 1.028 billion. Hindus numbered 827 million or 80.

Thus the caste system leaves lower caste Hindus as an oppressed majority in India’s power structure. Going by figures quoted by the Backward Classes Commission, Brahmins alone (

The 2004 World Development Report mentions that more than 2

Living Conditions of Indians

8

According to National Family Health Survey data (2005-06), only 4

Education

India has over 3

About 40 million primary school-age children in India are not in school. More than 9

While Japan has 4,000 universities for its 127 million people, and the US has 3,650 universities for its 301 million, India has only 348 universities for its 1.2 billion people. In the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities by Institute of Higher Education published by Shanghai Jiao Tong, only two Indian Universities are included.

Even the two much-ballyhooed IIT’s in India found only a lower worldwide slot (203 and 304) in the 2007 report. Although Indian universities churn out three million graduates a year, only 1

Health

India today allocates lower than

107,000 leprosy patients live in India. 15.

There are only 585 rural hospitals compared to 985 urban hospitals in the country. Out of the 6,39,729 doctors registered in India, only 67,576 are in the public sector, and the rest are either in the private sector or abroad. According to a survey by NSSO (National Sample Survey Organization), 4

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in India. India accounts for one-fifth of the global TB incident cases. Each year about 1.8 million people in India develop TB, of which 0.8 million are infectious cases. It is estimated that  330,000 Indians die from TB every year [WHO India].

Economy under Siege by Elite Hindus

In India, the wealth of 36 families amounts to $191 billion, which is one fourth of India’s GDP. In other words, 35 elite Hindu families own one quarter of India’s GDP by leaving 8

The dominant group of Hindu nationalists come from the three upper castes (Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas) that constitute only 1

India is also one of the most under-banked major markets in the world, with only 6 bank branches per 1,000 sq. kms., according to the World Bank, and less than 3

Corruption

According to TI, 2

Corruption is a large tax on Indian growth; it delays execution, raises costs, and destroys the moral fiber

says Prof. Rama Murthi. Transparency International estimates that Indian truckers pay something in the neighborhood of $5 billion annually in bribes to keep freight flowing. According to Rahul Gandhi, only

Discrimination Against Dalits

Crime against Dalits occur every 20 minutes in India. Every day three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and two Dalit houses are burnt down! These figures represent only a fraction of the actual number of incidents, since many Dalits do not register cases for fear of retaliation by the police and upper caste Hindus.

Official figures show that there are still 343 million manual scavengers in India from the Dalit community. More than 165 million Dalits in India are abused by their Hindu upper castes due to their birth [HRW Report 2007].

Human Rights

When it comes to human rights issues in India, it has not ratified the UN Convention against Torture, and its citizens do not have the opportunity to find recourse in remedies that are available under international law. The victims are trapped in the local Hindu caste system, which in every aspect militates against their rights.

India has a very poor record of protecting the privacy of its citizens, according to the latest report from Privacy International (PI). India scored 1.9 points, which makes it an ‘extensive surveillance society’. A score between 4.1 and 5.0 (the highest score) would mean a country consistently upholds human rights standards. PI is a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations.

Fake encounter killings are rampant in India. These extrajudicial killings are inspired by the theological texts of the Brahmins such as Artha Shastra and Manusmriti which teach espionage and torture methods. Every such killing of an innocent person branded a terrorist has encouraged the killer cops to target socially excluded communities like Dalits, tribals, and minorities.

India’s intelligence agencies like IB, RAW, etc. seem to be thoroughly infiltrated by foreign secret services which support powerful weapon-producing nations. Formed in 1947, IB is engaged in wiretapping, spying on political opponents, and sometimes indicting people on false criminal charges. The IB also has files on numerous authors, bloggers, and media persons.

According to the National Human Rights Commission, as of 30th June 2004, there were 3,320,112 prisoners in Indian jails, out of which 2,390,146 were awaiting trial. More than 7

The bar association in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, has refused to represent 13 Muslim suspects accused of bombing courthouses in 2005. A large percentage of Indian police officers, attorneys, and judges appear regularly at events organized by notorious Hindu militant groups.

India is a parliamentary democracy, but nevertheless, it is not exactly a fully free society. The human rights group Freedom House ranks India as a 2 (on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 the highest) for political rights and 3 for civil liberties. Elections are generally free, but, notes Freedom House,

Government effectiveness and accountability are also undermined by pervasive criminality in politics, decrepit state institutions, and widespread corruption.

The State Department observes:

There were numerous reports that the government and its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals and insurgents, or staged encounter deaths.

Minorities

About 2

According to Mr. Tahir Mahmood, an Indian Muslim journalist,

The 2.

Discrimination Against Minority Muslims

Recently, Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee report admitted that 138 million Muslims across India are severely underrepresented in government employment, including Public Sector Units. Ironically, West Bengal, a communist-ruled state, reported no Muslims in higher positions in its PSU’s! The share of Muslims in government  and the lower judiciary in any state simply does not come anywhere close to their population share.

The only place where Muslims can claim a share in proportion to their population is in prison! Muslims represent 19.

A Muslim child attends school for three years and four months, compared to the national average of four years. Less than

There is a need to re-orient official strategies for ensuring better access of Muslim children to schooling outside the madrassas which cater to only

Discrimination in Media

Hindu upper caste men, who constitute just

The Hindu Other Backward Class groups, who are 3

Discrimination in the Judiciary

India’s subordinate courts have a backlog of over 22 million cases, while the 21 high courts and the Supreme Court have 3.5 million and 32,000 pending cases (2006) respectively. In subordinate courts, over 15 million cases are filed and an equal number disposed of annually by about 14,000 judges! Every year a million or more cases are added to the arrears. At the current speed, the lower courts will need 124 years to clear the backlog. There are only 13 judges for every million people.

Recently a parliamentary committee blamed the judiciary for keeping out competent persons of downtrodden communities “through a shrewd process of manipulation.” Between 1950 to 2000, 4

Dalits and Indian aborigines make up less than 20 out of 610 judges working in Supreme Court and state high courts.

This nexus and manipulative judicial appointments have to be broken

the report urged. [Parliamentary Standing Committee Report on Constitutional Review, Sudarshan Nachiappan]. Among 12 states with high Muslim populations, Muslim representation in the judicial sector was limited to 7.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, only 3

Discrimination Against Children

According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, India has the highest number of street children in the world. There are no exact numbers, but conservative estimates suggest that about 18 million children live and labor in the streets of India’s urban centers. Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta each have an estimated street children population of over 100,000. The total number of child laborers in India is estimated to be 60 million.

The level of child malnutrition in India is among the highest in the world, higher than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, says the report Extent of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition in India by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. While around 2

A quarter of all neonatal deaths in the world (2.1 million) occurred in India, says the UNICEF Report 2007. More than one in five children in the world who die within four weeks of birth is an Indian. Nearly 5

Discrimination Against Women

According to the 2001 census, female literacy in India is 54.1

There are an estimated 40 million Hindu widows in India, and the least fortunate of them are shunned and stripped of the life they lived when they were married. It’s believed that 15,000 widows live on the streets of Vrindavan, a Hindu holy city of about 55,000 population in northern India.

Many widows – at least 4

Nearly 9 out of 10 pregnant women suffer from malnutrition, about half of all children (4

Nearly 2

On average, one Indian woman commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute. In an Indian marriage, the woman should bring jewelry, cash, and even consumer durables as part of dowry to the in-laws. If they fail bring enough valuables, the victims are burnt to death – doused in kerosene and set on fire. The in-laws routinely claim that the death happened due to an accident.

Rape is the fastest growing crime in India. Every hour, Indian women suffer two rapes, two kidnappings, four sexual assaults, and seven incidents of husband- and relative-instigated cruelty [National Crime Records Bureau Report 2006].

Fetus Killing

The female to male birth ratio was feared to reach 20:80 by the year 2020 as female fetus killing is rampant. Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either just before they were born or immediately after, the Indian Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury related to Reuters.

According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys. The availability of ultrasound sex determination tests leads to mass abortions in India.

Around 11 million abortions are carried out in India every year, and nearly 80,000 women die during the process, says a report from the Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI).

Human Trafficking

Out of the 593 districts in India, 378 or 62.

9

Of the total women who are involved in sex work in the country, 6

India has 4 million prostitutes nationwide, and 6

High Crime Rate and Communal Riots

India reported 32,481 murders, 36,617 molestation cases 19,348 rapes, and 7,618 dowry deaths in 2006. NCRB found that Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes (1,940,711), followed by Maharashtra (1,910,788), Andhra Pradesh (1,730,909), Tamil Nadu (1,480,972), and Rajasthan (1,410,992) during 2006. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 1,822,602 riots in 2005 alone [Incidence Of Cognizable Crimes (IPC) Under Different Crime Heads,  Page 2, NCRB website].

On average there are more than 2,000 kidnappings per year in India. Under India’s notorious caste system, upper caste Hindus inherit key positions and control all the governmental branches. Violent crime goes largely goes unpunished due to the support of upper caste crooks.

Economic Crimes

Economic crime continues to be pervasive threat for Indian companies, with 3

* Corruption and bribery continue to be the most common types of fraud, reported by 2 * The average direct financial loss to companies was INR 60 Million (US $1.5 million) during the two year period. In addition, the average cost to deal with economic crime in India is INR 40 Million (US $1 Million), which is close to double that of the global and Asia Pacific average. * In 3 * In 5

Armed Conflicts in India

Almost every state has separatist movements, many of them armed.

A large number of Muslims were killed in the past few years across the country, and the numbers are on a steady rise.

On top of that, India has become a pariah for its neighbors. None of its neighbors appreciate their closeness to India, and they all blame it for meddling in their affairs.

6

According to an Indian official report, 165 of India’s 602 districts – mostly in Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh – are badly affected by tribal and Dalit violence, which the government terms “Maoist terror”.

India’s military spending was recorded at US $21.7 billion in 2006, and it planned to spend $26.5 billion during 2008/09 financial year. 8

India experienced a rapid increase in demand for security in the period following the Mumbai attacks, thanks to the world’s weapon industry! India is now one of the world’s most terror-prone countries, with a death toll second only to Iraq, says a report from the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington.

India’s crime rates, already some of the highest in the world, are also rising, as is the incidence of corporate espionage. Approximately 5.5 million private security guards are employed by about 15,000 security companies in India. As an industry, it is now the country’s largest corporate taxpayer [CAPSI report].

In 2005, Business Week reported that India became the largest importer of Israeli weapons, accounting for about half of the $3.6 billion in weapons exported by the Jewish state.

Do remember that 34 years ago, NSG was created by Americans? Hence it has been their onus to convince the group to grant the waiver to India to carry out the multi-billion dollar business as India is a large market,

said former Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Mr P. K. Iyengar.

The Booming Industry of Terrorism Experts and Security Research Institutes in India

With the emergence of Hindutva fascist forces and their alliance with neocons and Zionists, India witnessed a sharp increase in the number of research institutes, media houses, and lobbying groups. According to a study by the Think Tanks & Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, India has 422 think tanks, second only to the US, which has over 2,000 such institutions.

Out of 422 recognized Indian think tanks, around 63 are engaged in security research and foreign policy matters, which are heavily funded by global weapons industry. India’s retired spies, police officers, military personnel, diplomats, and journalists are hired by these national security and foreign policy research institutes which get enormous funds from the global weapons industry.

These institutions in fact have a hidden agenda. Behind the veil, they work as the public relations arm of weapon industry. With the help of their media and intelligence wings, they create fake terror stories and exaggerated crime waves the areas of tribal, Dalit, and minority areas in order to get public acceptance for weapon contracts.

By creating conflicts in this India, Brahmin spin masters get huge commissions from the sale of weapons to government forces. To these corrupt bureaucrats, India’s ‘national interest‘ simply means ‘their self interest’. Their lobbying power bring more wealth to their families via lucrative jobs, citizenship in rich countries, and educational opportunities abroad.

India is one of the world’s largest weapons importers. Between 2000 and 2007, India was ranked the world’s second largest arms importer, accounting for 7.

Over 1,130 companies in 98 countries manufacture arms, ammunition, and components. 9

The Defense Offset Facilitation Agency estimated that India will spend $100 billion importing weapons in the next five years. At least 38 court cases relating to arms agreements are still pending against bureaucrats and military officers. Hindu fascist forces currently enjoy the upper hand in the media, civil service, judiciary, defense, and education of Indian society.

Sooner or later, the 25,000-strong democratic institutions in India will collapse, and the country will be transformed into a limited democracy under the rule of a security regime like Turkey or Israel. The Hindutvas’ security-centric nationalism was never capable of bringing peace and protection to ordinary citizens.

According to Global Peace Index, India is currently ranked near the bottom (122 with 2.422 score). Interestingly, India’s top weapons supplier, Israel, is among the world’s worst performers when it comes to peace ranking (141). It remains a simple fact that peace cannot be attained by a sophisticated security apparatus.

Furthermore, India topped Asian Risk Prospects 2009 with the highest political and social risk, scoring 6.87, mainly because of internal and external instability (PERC).

Suicides of Farmers and the Collapse of the Agricultural Sector

In the last two years, more than 218,000 people across India committed suicide, mainly due to poverty, family feuds, strained relationships with loved ones, dowry harassment, and health problems. In research by the Indian National Crime Records Bureau, there were 118,112 and 100,000+ suicides in 2005 and 2006 respectively. Aside from farmers, women also have a high suicide rate.

Most of those who committed suicide were farmers, and the victims took their lives either by hanging or ingesting poison. Since 1998, about 25,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide because they could not repay their debts. These debts, however, have largely accumulated because these farmers were severely overcharged by moneylenders, who demand up to 3

7

7

Unemployment

Retail trade employs

Call centers and other outsourced businesses such as software coding, medical transcription, and back-office tasks employ more than 1.6 million people in India, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Heart disease is projected to account for 3

Internal Migration and Influx to the Cities

There are 5 million living on the streets of Mumbai every night, covered only in newspaper

says Dr. Werner Fornos, president of the Global Population Education think tank and the former head of the Population Institute in Washington, D.C.

India is spending more than $400 million (£200m) to polish Delhi’s image as a first-rate capital, a difficult task for a city that seems to exist between the First and Third worlds. A third of the capital’s 14 million-plus people live in teeming slums. According to crime statistics, in 2006, Delhi continued to be the undisputed crime capital of the country, a position it held for the previous 5 years in a row. 35 mega-cities in India collectively reported a total of 3,26,363 crimes in 2006, an increase of 3.

For the third year in a row, Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore together accounted for more than one-third of all crimes reported in Indian cities of over 1 million population.

India, a Closed Country

India’s share of the world tourism map has hovered between .3

Indian immigration policies do not welcome tourists. On VISA requirement and T&T index scales for how hard it is to visit a country, India ranked 106 while Malaysia ranked 15. VOA facilities are not available to anyone. The easiest entry to India is typically limited to countries with considerable Hindu populations like Mauritius or Nepal.

The Hindu elite leaders of the country are always more concerned about India’s physical boundaries and its holy cows rather than the life of its poor, 8

Indian Embassies are rated as the worst on Earth. They are notorious for red tape and “corruption- friendly service,” a complaint repeatedly made even by Non Resident Indians themselves. 9

Global Warming Effects on India

Water tables are dropping in those regions where farmers are lucky enough to have wells, and rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable. Economic losses due to global warming in India are projected at between 9-2

The frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal will increase. Cases of malaria will increase to the point where it will become endemic in many more states. There will be a 2

India got the most foreign aid for natural disaster relief in two decades, obtaining 43 such loans totaling $8.257 billion from World Bank alone, beating even Bangladesh, and now has the 2nd highest World Bank loan figure in the world.

Transportation

Despite the much-touted economic boom, only .

China has built over 34,000 km of expressways compared to less than 8,000 km in India.

According to Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM), nearly 42 million man-hours are lost every month by the delays from 7 million-odd working population of Delhi and NRC who take the public transport to travel to work because of traffic congestion during the peak morning and evening hours.

Road Safety

India accounts for about 1

An estimated 1,275,000 persons are badly hurt on the road every year. The Government of India’s Planning Commission has estimated there are 15 hospitalized injuries and 70 minor injuries for every road death.

According to NATPAC, the number of accidents per 1,000 vehicles in India is as high as 35, while the figure ranges from 4 to 10 in developed countries. An estimated 270 people die each day from road accidents, and specialists predict that will increase by roughly

According to World Bank forecasts, India’s road death rate will continue to rise until 2042 if no remedial action is taken. In contrast, the number of road accidents in China dropped by an annual average 10.

Doing Business in India

It takes 50 days to register a property in India compared to less than 30 days in China and less than 10 in the United States and Thailand. The average cost of a business start-up is over 6

India has the highest cost of electricity among major industrialized and emerging economies ($.8 per kwh for industry as against $.1 kwh in China), or in other words, a quarter of the gross electricity output, the result being the highest transmission and distribution losses in the world.

Transport costs are very high in India. They account for 2

Foreign Remittance from Non Resident Indians

In 2006, India received $27 million in remittances national overseas workers, the highest amount globally. Around $20 billion of this came from the Gulf expatriate workforce. Together, GCC countries are the largest trading partner of India, and home to 5 million members of India’s overseas workforce.

Nearly three million people in Africa are of Indian ancestry. The top three countries with the largest populations of Indians in that region are South Africa, Mauritius, and the Reunion Islands. Indians also have a sizable presence in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania in the East Africa and Nigeria in West Africa.

Foreigners Living in India

Historically, about 7

Under the current scenario, potential migrants or ‘invaders’ to India include a few ‘hired or weird’ Pakistani bombers, villagers from around India’s border with Bangladesh, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, and prostitutes from Nepal. The 92 year old Indian painter Maqbool Fida Hussain lives in Dubai after receiving death threats from Hindu militants.

According to Hindu extremists, Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin has passed all the tests for Indian citizenship. On the other hand, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, the Christian widow of Rajiv Gandhi, is still considered to be a foreigner, while Pakistan-born Hindu Lal Krishna Advani is ‘legally and morally fit’ to become India’s next Prime Minister.

Leave India!

Sixty years ago Indians asked the British to get out of India. Now they are doing it themselves. To live with dignity and enjoy relative freedom, one has to leave India! With this massive exodus, what will be left behind will be a violently charged and polarized society.

The Hindutvadis’ Fake National Pride in India

A 2006 opinion poll by Outlook-AC Nielsen indicated that 4

Even Parliament members of the Hindutva party are involved in human trafficking from India. Recently, police arrested Babubhai Katara, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, who was part of such a racket. He received $20,000 per person to move his victims to the US.

When Indians are fleeing India to anywhere else in the world just to find a job, how can these Hindutva idiots claim any “National Pride of India”?

India is the World Bank’s largest borrower. In June 2007, it provided $3.7 billion in new loans to India. According to figures provided by Britain’s aid agency, the total aid to India from all sources is only $1.50 a head, compared with an average of $17 per head for low-income countries [Financial Times]. Due to the fake ‘Shining India’ propaganda launched by Hindutva idiots, foreign donors are reluctant to help the poor people in this country.

Gridlocked in corruption, greed, inhumanity, and absolute inequality of class, caste, wealth, and religion: this is the real India. Hindutva idiots, your false pride and antics embarrass us.

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India: What Is To Be Done?

A decent Indian Hindu asks me:

Lindsay, criticisms aside, what can be done to change the country?

I have given up on Indian institutions to make anything better at all. I have thrown my lot in with the Maoists as they seem to be the only people who have what it takes to really deal with the problems of India.

I think that Indian people are very selfish. They really don’t want to solve the problems of their country.

  1. 5
  2. Shit runs through the streets of the cities like open sewers when it rains.
  3. 600 million Indians shit outdoors every single day.
  4. The garbage and pollution is sickening. I hear about folks who travel between the US and India regularly, and every time they come back from India, they are sick. They go India, they get sick. India is literally making people sick.
  5. Indian slums are an outrage. Substandard housing, no clean or running water, no sewage. Ridiculous.
  6. The feudal culture of the countryside must be broken. All civilized nations have undergone a land reform. It never got done in India due to the power of the feudal lords. Land reform is mandatory.
  7. Education reform is necessary. There are too few schools and way too many kids drop out very young to go to work.
  8. Child labor and even slavery is rampant in India. It’s absolutely sickening.

This are the immediate problems that need to be addressed in India. Very basic things. First things first, ok? All the skyscrapers can’t mask this horror.

I do not think that privileged Indians want to fix these problems though. They figure it does not effect them.

We get Indian nationalists here every day screaming abuse and threats at me, but unlike them, I really do want what is best for the vast majority of Indian people. This desire means that I have a very deep love for the Indian people in terms of my hopes and desires for them.

I think most Indian nationalists do not want what is best for India. In that sense, I question how much they really love their land and their people, no?

Propaganda About Cuba’s Medical Missions

Here.

According to the article, ordinary Cubans are suffering as the regime sends doctors abroad on medical missions, apparently mostly to make money for the state. I think it was a good idea to send the doctors abroad, as it’s making good money for the regime and helping a lot of people in the 3rd World.

I know that Cuba gets a good deal out of the doctors who they send to Venezuela, but I am not sure if they charge or not to send doctors to other countries besides Venezuela. I don’t think that the regime should send doctors to 3rd World countries for free, other than in a crisis situation.

Charity begins at home. The nation is short of cash in a lot of ways, and it shows. Downtown Havana needs renovation, and a lot of the buildings may simply need to be torn down. Quite a few are in danger of collapsing. The sewage system in Havana needs repairs. There is a chronic housing shortage. The nation is often short of electricity in a place where an air conditioner could really come in handy. The hospitals and clinics tend to be short of supplies. Given all of that, why not make money off the doctors? Why give them away for free?

The article says that ordinary Cubans are suffering, but there is nothing to that. Cuba has one of the best doctor-patient ratios on Earth. Before the medical missions, if anything, the island was overdoctored and doctors didn’t have enough to do. That’s not a good use of all of that skill and education.

James Petras, “US Working and Middle Class: Solidarity or Competition in the Face of Crisis?”

Another excellent article by Petras. He discusses the obvious, why working class and middle class Americans consistently support the policies of the rich.

US Working and Middle Class: Solidarity or Competition in the Face of Crisis?

James Petras

“I don’t think you realize how hard it is for the oppressed to become united. Their misery unites them (…) But otherwise their misery is liable to cut them off from one another, for they are forced to snatch the wretched crumbs from each other’s mouth”. – Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays Vol. 9 (Pantheon Books, New York, 1972) p. 379

Introduction

There are two incontestable facts about the United States: the economy and the working class are experiencing a prolonged economic crisis which has lasted over three years and shows no signs of ending; there has been no major revolt, mass national resistance or even large scale protests of any consequence. Few writers have attempted to address this seeming paradox and those who do, have provided partial answers which in fact raise more questions than they answer.

Lines of Inquiry

Essentially most writers emphasize one of the two sides of the “paradox”. The ‘crises’ analysts focus on the extent, duration and enduring nature of the economic breakdown, outlining its harsh impact on the working and middle class in terms of losses of employment, benefits, wages, mortgages etc. Others, mostly left progressive, emphasize the local protests, critical responses registered in opinion polls, occasional complaints of trade union bureaucrats and the hopes and intimations of academics and pundits that a ‘revolt’ is on its way some time in the near future.

Among the minority of less sanguine critical analysts, there is despair, or at least a more pessimist view of the ‘paradox’. They point to several deep-seated psychological, organizational and political obstacles which prevent any revolt or mass unrest from taking hold among the United States’ public.

On the whole these critics see the working and middle class as ‘victims’ of the system, acted upon by false leaders, media manipulation, corporate capitalism and the two party system which prevent them from pursuing their class interests.

In this essay, I will pursue an alternative line of analysis which will argue that the “external enemies” blocking working and middle class resistance are aided and abetted by the behavior and perceived interest within the classes. In pursuit of this line of inquiry, I will argue that both the nature and scope of ‘the crises’ has been misunderstood in its impact on the working and middle class and as a consequence the degree of internal contradictions within those classes has not been adequately understood.

Key Concepts: Clarifying ‘Crises’ and its Impact

Economic crises, even severe, prolonged ones, such as is affecting the US today, do not have a uniform impact on all sectors of the working and middle class. The uneven impact has segmented the working and middle class, between those who are adversely affected and those not, or who in certain circumstances have benefited. This segmentation is one key factor accounting for the lack of class solidarity and has resulted in ‘contradictions’ within and between the working and middle class.

Secondly the uneven development of social organization – especially trade unionization – between public and private sector workers, has led to the former securing and retaining greater social benefits and increases and wages, while the former has lost ground. The public sector workers draw on public financing to fund their ‘corporate interests’ while private sector workers are forced to pay increased taxes, because of regressive fiscal legislation.

The result is an apparent or real conflict of interest between well-organized public workers organized around a narrow set of (self) interests and the mass of unorganized private sector workers who, unable to increase their wages via class struggle, side with “fiscal conservatives” (funded by big business) to demand cutbacks from public sector workers.

Political partisanship, especially among middle and working class Democrats, undercuts class solidarity and weakens unified social resistance. This is evident in relation to issues of war and peace, the economic crises and cutbacks in social programs.

When the Democrats hold office, as they do today ad the wars and war spending multiply, the bulk of the peace movement has disappeared, labor protests against budget cutbacks focus on Republican governors, not Democrats, even as the working and middle class (including public sector employees) are adversely affected.

The millionaire top trade union officials (average annual salary over $300,000 plus perks) further the division by prioritizing the security of their position via million dollar contributions to the Democrats, thus buying insurance on income flows from dues payments. Security of officialdom via alignment with Party legislators and governors, mayors and executive leaders contributes to a further division within the working class between ‘secure functionaries’ and their followers on the one hand, and the rest of the middle and working class.

Operating with these key concepts we will now turn to describing the ‘objective conditions of crises’, a critical survey of some explanations for the ‘paradox’, and follow with a detailed examination of the ‘internal contradictions’ and conclude by outlining some points of departure for resolving the paradox.

Economic Crisis is Real, Deep and Sustained

The symptoms and structures of a deep economic crisis are readily visible to any but the most obtuse government apologist or prestigious economist: un- and under-employment has reached between 18 to 20 percent. One out of three US families are directly affected by loss of employment. One out of ten American family homeowners are either behind in the mortgage payments or face foreclosure. Over half of the current unemployed (9.1 percent) have been out of work at least six months.

Massive cutbacks in public expenditures and investments have led to the end of health, educational and welfare programs for tens of millions of low income families, children, the disabled, the elderly pensioners. Private firms have eliminated or reduced payments for health insurance, leaving over 50 million working Americans without health insurance and another 30 million with inadequate medical coverage. Tax exemptions, reduced and regressive taxation have increased tax payments by wage and salaried workers, reducing their net income.

Increases in pension and health payments forced on middle and working class employees have further reduced net income. Increased spending for at least four wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya) preparation for a fifth (Iran) and support for the world’s most militarist state (Israel) and a greatly expanded and costly domestic police state apparatus (Homeland Security alone costs $180 billion) has greatly deteriorated environmental, workplace and leisure space living standards.

Corporate political power and absolute tyrannical control over the workplace has increased fear, insecurity and virtual terror among employees facing increased speed-ups and arbitrary elimination of any say in health and workplace safety, work schedules, over and under time workloads. Low pay service jobs proliferate, high pay jobs are outsourced out of the country; manufacturing plants are relocated abroad; lower paid immigrant professionals and laborers are imported increasing pressure on US workers to compete for lower pay and lesser benefits.

The ‘economic crises’ is embedded in the deep structure of US capitalism and is not a ‘cyclical phenomenon’ subject to a dynamic recovery, restoring lost jobs, homes, living standards and working conditions.

Middle and Working Class Responses to the Economic Crises

The profound, deep seated and pervasive economic crises has not elicited any commensurate revolts, rebellion or even sustained national protest movement. At best local protests by specific segments of the working and middle class have sought to defend narrow organizational and economic interests. The public employees in Wisconsin’s protest movement were as exceptional in its militancy as it was isolated and limited in its overall national impact.

As California Republican and New York Democratic governors eliminate tens of billions of dollars in wages, pension and health benefits for hundreds of thousands of unionized public employees, union officials squawk impotently on the sidelines, incapable of mounting any serious protests let alone popular movements.

Though public opinion polls register high levels of individual concern about the economic crises and dissatisfaction with both political parties the response to the crises has not led to practical activity, nor has any mass ‘movement’’ emerged – it remains private inconsequential discontent.

As much as millions of middle and working classes are deeply preoccupied with the ongoing economic crises there are no significant social or political repercussions past, present or in the foreseeable future.

All the inflated hopes and ‘ominous prognostications’ by liberals and leftists, socialists and progressives, who wrote and predicted a coming ‘revolt of the masses’ have been flat wrong. The crisis continues and the highly dissatisfied middle and working class remain privately suffering, muttering their grievances in isolation, unwilling to engage in any mass collective action.

Even as the mass media, even as the internet, Facebook and Tweeter, present millions demonstrating and striking and even toppling oppressive regimes in the Middle East and North Africa; even as news reports filter out of repeated general strikes and mass occupations of public plazas by employees and workers and unemployed in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and France, the United States workers stand numb, indifferent and impotent to ‘learn the lessons’ and ‘take collective action’ even where the issues of employment and cutbacks are similar.

Explanations for Social Immobility in the Face of the Economic Crises

There is no lack of ‘recognition’ that ‘something is wrong’ in these United States. There is no lack of pundits attempting to grapple with the paradox of economic crises and social immobility.

Several explanatory forays are floating through the media and the internet. Some writers resort to psychological explanations of social passivity pointing to widespread ‘fear’ of employer retaliation, state repression, or a sense of ‘futility’ in the face of political party indifference and hostility. The psychological arguments have some merit as they point to some of the immediate causes of non-involvement but fail to explain what causes ‘fear’ and futility.

In response many critical progressive cite the absence or weakness of social organizations in particular they point to the decline of trade union organizations, leaving 93 percent of the private sector unorganized and the state sector unionized workers with limited bargaining powers. While these critics are right to emphasize the unwillingness of millionaire trade union officials to break new political ground and initiate new organizing efforts, one needs to explain why the unorganized middle and working class have not themselves launched any new initiatives?

Union officials have a long history of “give backs” going back at least two decades and yet those who are directly adversely affected and those who have lost their jobs have not organized an alternative network of solidarity.

Political analysts emphasize the oligarchic and restrictive nature of the electoral system as pre-empting the emergence of new political initiatives. The multi-million dollar cost of running for office, the near monopoly dominance of the mass media by the corporate two-party elite and the legal obstacle to securing a place on the ballot, discourage disenchanted voters from supporting new political party initiatives.

But the deeper question is why mass movements, outside of the party-electoral framework, have not emerged that might eventually challenge the political oligarchy, the corporate monopoly of media and change the legal constraints on effective entry into the electoral arena. Why do mass movements emerge in other even more repressive countries, facing similar constraints on legal access and confronted by entrenched oligarchies?

If similar ‘external constraints’ as those found in the US led to divergent behavioral responses, it raises the question of whether the differences within the middle and working class can be the source of passivity and immobility?

A few writers, principally on the Left, cite the divorce or distance between intellectuals/academics and the downwardly mobile middle and working class. In the United States there are few intellectuals – politically engaged writers and political lecturers.

What passes for the educated classes, are full-time professional academics who differ little in their social and everyday life, regardless of their stated ideological philosophies. The vast majority of leftist academics conceive of their ‘activism’ as reading papers to each other at ‘left’ or ‘social forums’, which differ little in format and consequences from mainstream professional meetings.

Even those left academics who take a political role, it is mostly in relation with the multi-millionaire senior trade union officials and their loyalist apparatus. As a result the progressive academics have ended up with little entrée into the vast majority of workers who are outside of the trade unions and those dissident union factions challenging the trade union – Democratic Party – corporate nexus.

An Alternate Explanation for the ‘Paradox’

One of the key problems inhibiting an understanding of the paradox is the treatment of the key concept – “crises”. Many writers conceive of the ‘crises’ in a ‘holistic’ way, presuming what is ‘general’ or ‘systemic’ has a homogenous effect on the middle and working class. In fact the vast majority, say three-quarters have not been seriously impacted by the “crises”.

Assuming that the unemployed and under-employed comprise about twenty percent and adding those who have suffered serious downward mobility, we still have at least 70 percent whose main preoccupation is to retain their ‘privileged’ position and to disengage from those who have fallen out of their class-social orbit.

In the US, more than any other country, the sharp internal differences, between employed and un-underemployed, has led to ‘competition’ not solidarity. In most countries of the world ‘unemployed’ and underemployed workers can expect backing, active support from unionized workers; in the US once middle class employees and workers lose their job and cannot pay dues they are dropped.

Even in terms of social, family and neighborhood life, they are seen as a ‘cost’, a potential drain on the resources of those who are employed. The employed see the unemployed and poorly paid as a welfare cost , hence an added tax burden instead of as an ally in a struggle to make the corporate elite pay higher taxes and reduce war spending. Among employed workers higher taxes, means capital flight; lesser military expenditures mean few war industry jobs.

Segmentation within the middle and working class operates at many levels. The most striking is between the pay scale of top union officials which runs over $300,000 plus perks and the unemployed/underemployed living on less than $30,000. These economic differences are played out politically and socially. The trade union apparatus buys ‘job security’ by contributing tens of millions to mostly Democrats, to ensure that unions retain their formal legality and collective bargaining rights.

In other words the ‘organized’ unions, all of 1

Middle and working class are differentially, impacted by the crises: those with jobs and ties to the Democratic Party place their partisan loyalties above any notion of class solidarity. Job holders don’t support the jobless – they see them as competitors over a shrinking income pie.

If we examine these two groups in detail we find that the poorly paid and un and underemployed tend to be young people under 30 years, blacks, Hispanics and single parents; the better paid employed middle and working class tend to be older, white educated and of Anglo-Jewish background. The generational, racial, ethnic divisions play a far bigger role in the US than anywhere else, because of the obliteration of class identity and outlooks, which has diluted any notion of class solidarity.

The segmentation of the middle and working class is deepened in the US because those with stable employment in many cases benefit from the adverse consequences affecting downwardly mobile (unemployed) employees and workers.

Mortgage foreclosures affect over 10 million American families unable to meet their payments. Banks eager to recover some part of their loan, offer to sell houses at sharply reduced prices. Employed middle and working class home buyers are elated to purchase homes, even as their class members are evicted to the street or trailer camp. There is no movement to block or protest evictions from neighbors, workmates and/or relatives; instead discreet inquiries are made about the auction date.

Better paid workers look to secure cheaper consumer goods in super-stores that employ minimum wage workers. The ‘interests’ of workers are defined by immediate individual-consumer interests not in terms of the improvement of strategic interests resulting from the potential social and political power of an organized class.

Employed middle and working class homeowners see themselves as ‘tax payers’ allied with corporate and real estate moguls fighting to lower taxes by cutting welfare and social services for the low paid working class and unemployed. The growth of upper and middle/working class tax revolts against the welfare state is in effect a war of one segment of the class against another. Clearly one segment fights to grab the crumbs from the mouth of another segment.

Even among the organized working class, there is segmentation. Pockets of better paid unionized public sector workers secured pay raises and pension and health plans via collective struggle, ignoring the interests, demands and needs of the sea of non-unionized workers, who were in the process of downward mobility while paying higher taxes. Hence their socio-economic differences were politicized and exploited by the Right – and the public-private sectors of the middle and working class competed over the crumbs of a shrinking budget.

As public facilities for health and education declined, the middle and working class divided between those who turned to private clinics and schools and those who remained dependent on public facilities, based on state expenditures. Those segments tied to the ‘private’ rejected taxes to fund the ‘public’; undercutting any class solidarity to improve the financing and quality of public health and education.

Conclusion

It is clear that the crisis of capitalism has evoked contradictory responses among different segments of the middle and working class based on its differential impact. Pre-existing non-class identities, internal economic division between leaders and followers and generational divisions and party partisan loyalties have undermined class solidarity and led to inconsequential complaints and diffuse hostility.

Competition- not solidarity- within and among the middle and working class is the reason for the profound immobility of Americans in the face of a prolonged and deepening economic crises.

That is now and in the past. Are there any prospects for a different future? Is there any possibility for uniting middle and working class segments in any sustained struggle? Are there alternative roads to class solidarity and popular mobilizations?

The most promising direction is to start at the local and regional level and involve local community organizations and dissident rank and file trade unions and progressive professionals (lawyer, doctors, etc.) in struggles, which resonate with the most adversely affected groups facing unemployment, foreclosures, no health plans, etc.

All polls show a deep divergence between the vast majority of Americans and the political elite of both parties on issues of bank bailouts, tax exemptions for the rich, “reforms” (privatizations and cut backs), Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Divergences exist over the loss of life and expenditures in America’s multiple and longest wars (Afghanistan).

Referendums proposing (1) to end the cap on social security taxes for the rich would end the so-called “social security crises”. (2) A sales tax on financial transactions would fund the Medicare deficit. Public investments in our deteriorating infrastructure based on the transfer of war funds ($790 billion) would create jobs, increase demand in the domestic economy and augment the productivity and competitiveness of the US economy.

Support for public health is an issue that unites most segments of the middle and working class, unionized health workers and community organizations in a potential confrontation with Big Pharma and the private corporate health industries.

A higher minimum wage – starting at $12 an hour – could mobilize most middle and working class segments, and initiatives at the local level could bring in the immigrant and domestic low paid workers.

The interview data demonstrate that most Americans have apparently ‘contradictory’ attitudes: supporting progressive and regressive policies. For example many support Medicare and ‘small government’; federal job creation and deficit reduction; import tariffs and cheap consumer imports.

An comprehensive activist political educational program, that demonstrates that progressive social reforms are feasible and fundable, based on a sustained fiscal struggle against corporate and financial capital, can be converted into organization and direct action. We start with an objective reality, demonstrating that the sustained crisis of capitalism does not and cannot deliver the most elementary demands: jobs, housing, security, peace and growth.

That is a big advantage over the advocates of the system who argue for prolonged and deeper regressive measures for the foreseeable future.

Secondly, we start with the advantage of knowing that the country has the potential wealth, skills and resources to overcome the crises. Thirdly, we can argue from relatively successful popular programs which have vast support – social security, Medicare, Medicaid – as ‘examples’ to extend and deepen social coverage.

For most Americans, the fight today, to the extent that it exists is defensive – efforts to preserve the last vestiges of independent organization, to defend social security, health programs, affordable public education, pensions. The corporate offensive is increasingly ‘homogenizing’ the organized middle and working class with the lowest paid unorganized segments. There are fewer ‘privileged workers’ even as they are still in self-denial.

The near extinction of private sector unionism and the moribund millionaire leadership provides an opportunity to start anew with a horizontal leadership, accountable to the membership and integrated with community based co-op, ecologist, immigrant, consumer based organizations. What is absolutely clear is that ‘crises’ alone will not result in any mass upheaval; nor do ‘enlightened’ progressive academics holed up in their micro-world offer any leadership.

The road forward starts with local leaders emerging from local coalitions, building organizations on the bases of independent political and social initiatives which resonate with their neighbors, fellow workers and the organized and unorganized downwardly mobile Americans. I see no easy or quick solutions to the ‘paradox’ but I do see the objective conditions, for building a movement. I hear a multitude of angry and discordant voices. Above all, I hope the oppressed will stop “snatching the crumbs from each other.”

Poverty in Cuba and the US

Tulio is profoundly upset at the notion that Cubans might be better off than Americans. In fact, the very notion makes him want to pull his hair out.

If that’s the case than that would mean Cuba has a lower poverty rate than the US, but nobody in their right mind would say we are worse off than them.

It depends on what you want. In the US, many have no medical insurance, so they cannot afford any medical care at all. If you live below the poverty line in the US, you can’t even afford to rent an apartment! You could pay for the apartment, but then you might only have $200 left over for the rest of the month. How can you possibly live on $200/month? Forget it. A lot of Americans can’t even afford utilities, even if they have an apartment. If you are a single person living below the poverty level, I don’t see how you could afford utilities and an apartment. Even if you could pay for utilities and an apartment, how could you afford food? I just don’t see it.

In Cuba, everyone can afford a place to live. Rent is set at 1

The problem with Communism is that while at best they did wipe out poverty, they were only able to be provide a low standard of living for their people.

So you are really arguing against apples and oranges here. Cuba, the USSR and the East Bloc made it top priority to wipe out poverty. Everyone agrees that they were successful at this. However, at least the USSR and the East Bloc failed at economic growth to the extent that the West surpassed them. This was an embarrassment, especially for the East Bloc when Western Europe started beating them badly in economic growth. This was the main reason that Communism collapsed in the East Bloc.

People wanted the higher economic growth that they saw in the socialist but social democratic West of Europe. This was really a competition between two different forms of socialism, and it’s clear that social democracy beat Communism. By the way, Western Europe still had significant poverty while the East Bloc wiped it out.

Moral to the story is that there is more to life than just wiping out poverty. Even if you wipe out poverty, if you can’t keep up with competing systems, people will tire of a mere poverty-less state and will wish that they had a state with higher economic growth.

Is Cuba better than the US, as tulio painfully suggest? Obviously, this notion is very painful for tulio to consider. Well, Cuba has wiped out homelessness and everyone has health care. Is anyone hungry in the US? If so, Cuba has us beat there too?

On the other hand, there is more to life than just food, shelter and health care. People want stuff. The US GDP per capita is 4.7 X the Cuban GDP. Cars are not common in Cuba and blackouts occur regularly. There are lots of problems with the system. We Americans have much more luxuries. I have a nice apartment, a computer, wide screen TV, a car and air conditioning that works. I doubt if I would have that in Cuba.

So your question does not really have an answer, whether Cuba or the US is better than the other. It depends on what you value in life. Depending on what you think is important, one or the other is better than the other one.

Texas: A State Destroyed by Rick Perry

Rick Perry is the quintessential Republican looney-tune nutcase, 2011 style. He’s intensely religious, after all, he’s been put here by God Himself. He even states, comically, that he is implementing God’s will by serving as governor.

And he’s single-handedly destroyed the state of Texas. As goes Texas, so goes the nation. Look in the mirror, America. Texas is the future.

Granted, Texas was pretty near ruined when George Bush got through with it, but it seemed there was no where to go but up. Then along came Rick Perry.

Perry’s Texas has the greatest percentage of minimum wage in the US. That is the future of America under Republican rule – a nation of minimum wage workers. Republicans have been waging war on workers, wages and unions from the time they were formed as a party. There was a respite for a bit, but now they are back in style.

In fact, the best way to describe the Republican Party is “low-wage conservatism.” This philosophy is very popular in the South, which has been trashed by low wages, anti-worker and anti-union attitudes and lax regulation and environmental laws. The South is the future, splayed over the entire land. Welcome to Shithole America.

Rick Perry’s Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured Americans as any other state. Repubicans are all about making sure that you are uninsured. That’s their policy – under Republican rule, the uninsured always grow. They cut back on state funding for low income folks, and as a business friendly party, they encourage businesses to get rid of medical coverage for their workers.

The Republicans believe that you, not your employer, should pay for your own health insurance. That’s what George  Bush’s ownership society crap was all about. You get to go out and buy your own insurance, and then you get to “own” it, see? You get to buy your own insurance instead of Medicare, then you get to “own” your private old age insurance, see? Isn’t ownership fun?

Under Rick Perry, the budget deficit blew out of control due to his endless tax cuts. Texas now has one of the worst deficits of any state. Under Republican rule, deficits everywhere will explode due to irresponsible tax cutting.

Under Rick Perry, the Texan dipshits threatened to secede from the union if the government didn’t stop trying to give them health care. Yeah, you heard me right. The government tried to give the people health care, and it pissed Rick off so much that he threatened to secede. What a dumbass!

Under Rick Perry, Texas has the 3rd highest poverty rate in the nation. Under Republican rule, look for the poverty rate to explode. Rightwing rulers almost always send the poverty rate through the roof, at Republican Presidents are no exception. Poverty always rises under a Republican President. Poverty doubled under Pinochet. It’s what they do.

Texas is still an extremely rightwing state. Despite being wrecked by Republican governor after Republican governor, Texans keep coming back for more. Some folks just can’t get enough abuse.

Ian Welsh, “The Depression and the Future”

From Ian Welsh’s glorious blog:

Ok, everyone’s talking about the oncoming recession. What it is is the second downleg of the depression we’ve been in since the financial crisis.

All of this has been baked in since 2009. Since January 2009, when Barack Obama announced his stimulus, which was not just too small, but put together so badly that it was evident it would not kick the economy out of the doldrums.

The stimulus would be seen to fail (it doesn’t matter how many jobs it “saved” what matters if it created a good economy.) Meanwhile Obama made it clear he had no intention of restructuring the economy, shutting down any of the major banks or of disrupting the paper for oil securitization game.

So, anyway, what’s happened since 2009 was baked into the cake. What is happening is what anyone halfway competent should have expected to happen and that includes the massive wave of austerity in the developed world, the high commodity prices, and the continued liquidation of public assets to feed private greed.

If anything it’s slightly worse than I expected. I would have hoped that some nation other than Iceland would prove to have enough guts to tell the vultures to fuck themselves, but apparently we’re all eunuchs or morons these days, and the Greeks still aren’t rioting amongst the mansions of the rich, I notice. So who cares what they think, anyway?

I suppose it’s tiresome to keep saying “I told you so”. Certainly I’m tired of it, but the point is that this could all be predicted, was all predicted (well, not all, I didn’t get the revolutions in Arab countries, though I know someone who did and the clues were there.)

Assume that what is happening is, essentially, what your lords and masters are at least ok with having happen. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be happening. This isn’t a case of incompetence, they didn’t even try to make this stuff not happen.

The future you’ve got coming from you is a future of unconventional oil extraction: aka fracking. The play is to get back to cheapish oil and make that run for as long as it can. That is what WILL happen. That is baked into the cake. The only economy these people want to run is an petro economy.

They will do whatever it takes to run one and continue to use their position in control of legacy capital to extract rent and tax the future. There will be more controls on so-called intellectual property (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one). There will be more security theater. There will be more austerity, which means taking public assets and turning them into what appear to be revenue producing private assets.

This will go on until the last drop of cheapish conventional oil has been pumped and the last suburb built. Americans, and apparently the developed world, will do whatever is required to see this happen. They will kill whoever they have to kill. That’s what the developed world is, now. This is only compounded by stupidity like Germany going off nuclear without a clear plan of how to replace the energy. Remember, boys and girls, yes, there is blood mixed in with that oil. A lot of it.

This the future, the next goodish economy will come from unconventional extraction. Not sure how long that will last. It will come at great environmental and health costs, but Americans will give up anything to keep the petro-economy going, so, so be it.

What’s this gonna mean for you? The good jobs are going to keep getting scarcer, and if you aren’t willing to do evil (work for any insurance company, anything defense related, most good paying education jobs, most good paying healthcare jobs, virtually all financial industry jobs, etc…) then they will essentially non-existent.

Real wages after real inflation will continue to trundle down. Even inflation adjusted wages as measured by the BLS may show declines. Employment WILL NOT recover in your lifetime if you are over 40. That doesn’t mean there won’t be ups and down, but it won’t have a long sustained up. Financial markets will continue to be a rigged game, and if you want to play, realize you need to play as if the game is rigged, not as if you’re in a free market.

Unless you can pay premium, the quality of everything you buy will continue to go downhill. Want a good burger? Closing in on $8. Want a shitty fastfood burger?  $2 or less. Public transportation will get worse, more libraries will close. The cops will make less calls and be less helpful. The schools will be worse in most places and keep getting worse. Eventually Medicare will be slashed to the bone, and so will SS. Not necessarily destroyed, but so weakened they might as well be.

It’s gonna be a long 20 to 30 years folks. Does this have to be the future? In theory, no. In practice, well, yes, apparently it does.

I keep running Ian Welsh’s pieces because he is one of the finest writers currently writing. He needs to be on TV, in the newspapers or in the newsmagazines, but no wait. That will never happen. They are all owned by the rich. I have decided that I am going to limit my intake of the newspapers of the rich, the newsmagazines of the rich, the radio stations of the rich and the TV stations of the rich.

The rich are my deadly enemies. It’s a war to the death – us and them. I will fight them to the death and then I will dance on their graves forever and a day.

I really don’t understand the rich. They want to rip up the safety net? Got it, they don’t need it.

Destroy public education? Sure, their kids all go to private schools.

Close the libraries? I don’t get it. The rich don’t go to libraries?

Close all the parks? I don’t get it. The rich don’t go to parks? They have private parks and country clubs to go to?

Shut down the state and national parks and national forests? I don’t get it. The rich don’t go on vacation? They don’t go to national forests, national parks, or state parks? Someone clue me in here.

Shut down public transit? Sure, the rich don’t use it.

Destroy all funding for infrastructure? I don’t get it. The rich don’t drive on highways? They don’t drive over bridges?

The model here is Latin America. Latin America, a continent that has been wrecked by the rich from Day One. All of Latin America’s problems are due to rich rule. The public schools are wrecked – the rich won’t pay for them. The highways and infrastructure are a joke. I never understood this until I heard that the Latin American rich simply buy 4-wheel drives to drive over their shit roads. They would rather do this than pay for a road.

Libraries in ruins? No problem, the Latin American rich don’t care about libraries. So where do they get their books?

Medical care in ruins? Who cares, the Latin American rich go to private clinics.

Parks decrepit, falling apart, or closed? In Latin America, this is the case. National parks are horribly underfunded, decrepit or closed. I guess the rich just don’t care?

Even housing standards. After the glorious Pinochet (Tulio’s hero) came into Chile and afterwards, the housing standards put in by Allende were rolled back. That more buildings did not fall down in the Chilean earthquake is largely due to the housing standards that were put in by Allende.

After Pinochet, new governments rolled back these standards or mostly just looked the other way while typical Latin American capitalist criminals violated building codes. As a result, many more buildings were damaged in the earthquake than would have been otherwise. This I don’t get at all. The Latin American rich are such skinflints that they would rather skirt a building code to save a few bucks, and then risk having the building fall down or getting hurt or killed? All the personal risk is worth it to save a buck or two? What scumbags!

The Latin American rich don’t believe in hooking up their countries with electricity. Much of the country lacks power, but they don’t care. They all have generators!

Horrible pollution runs in the public water supply, but they don’t give a fuck. A cholera epidemic rages through Peru, but the rich don’t care. Why not? They all drink bottled water?

The part about the cops I get. Here in California, even the police are cutting back. They often won’t even come out. This is the case in Latin America. In Peru, the cops are so poorly paid that they often stage holdups on the road to get money. I don’t get this. Don’t the Latin American rich worry about crime. I have heard that many of them hire private bodyguards. They’d rather hire private bodyguards than pay for cops?

The Latin American rich won’t even pay for a decent military. During the Civil War in Peru, the soldiers didn’t even have proper boots or uniforms. The rich could not be bothered to pay for them. Now that’s a callous ruling class! So cheap that they won’t even fund the army that keeps them in power. “Oh well,” they figure, “The revolution will always be defeated somehow. We won’t need to pay for an army.”

Time to Take Back “Nigger”

Repost from the old site.

Some Black folks been busy lately trying to bury the word nigger once and for all – recent months have seen symbolic funerals and burials of the n-word by mainstream Black organizations. This movement probably stems from the OJ Simpson trial in the mid-1990’s, when n-word was substituted for nigger.

Nowadays, nigger is as taboo as can be.

Can you say, “That racist jerk called a Black man, ‘Nigger!’?”

Nope.

Can we use the word nigger to describe the word widely used amongst Blacks themselves?

Nope.

One may not use the word nigger under any circumstances.

This is strange.

First, it implies that nigger is either an obscenity or like one’s private parts, ok to be spoken or revealed in privacy but certainly not in public. But nigger is neither obscenity in word nor flesh.

Second, banning the word nigger implies that it is so horrible, and that Blacks are so sensitive, that even the sight or sound of the word will drive these oversensitive Black souls either to tears or to rage. Now, Blacks have never struck me as a cringing, hypersensitive race of inhibited crybabies.

The Black man can take an insult. Why not – we kept him in a cage for centuries, only let him out to be policed like an animal in an open air zoo for another 100 years, finally liberated him via bullets and water hoses 40 years ago, and oppression and discrimination yet linger.

Through it all, the Black man has stood up and taken it like a man. By implying that Black men can’t bear to see the word nigger without dissolving into wimpy tearfulness, we insult their masculinity and fortitudinous nature.

Now that we have settled the absurdity of killing, let alone burying, a word, let us see how we may resurrect the comatose patient.

Who should be allowed to use the word?

Obviously, Blacks will keep on using the word themselves, as is their right. Further, Blacks can decide how, where and why they use the word, if at all. It’s only fair to give Blacks ownership over this word, which is really their word.

Blacks are perfectly correct that Whites should not use this word, and don’t give us that phony, “Well, Blacks use it, so why can’t we?” nonsense.

Semantics is a subfield of Linguistics. In Semantics, we say that words mean whatever people who use them say they mean. End of story. Nigger has one set of meanings when Blacks use it and another set when Whites use it. That’s not Black hypocrisy; it’s the way humans use language. Should racists be granted the right to use the word? No, they use it as a weapon to attack others.

I would like to request that we resurrect the word for journalistic and historical writing integrity. If a non-Black calls Blacks niggers, let’s write out the word. Forget this weasel-word n-word. We should have the right to say, “In the South 50 years ago, most Whites referred to Blacks as niggers.”

What are we accomplishing by refusing the write the evil word? Are we preventing its spread in society, sort of like a disease control agency? Let’s let non-racist creative writers, journalists, social scientists, historians feel free to use the word, sparingly, like seasoning on food, as needed. How about one more case? Why can’t we put the word nigger in the mouths of racists? Why can’t we refer to David “Send the niggers back to Africa” Duke? Or Newt “Cut the niggers off welfare” Gingrich? Or Philippe “I like to measure nigger penises” Rushton?

Let’s boil down some of these racist arguments just a bit and give them some nigger-seasoning.

Why do the same racists who love to rant about supposed Black genetic stupidity love to rave on about Black basketball skills? What’s the real message here? How about, “Niggers sure are good at basketball! They better be, cuz they sure ain’t got no brains!”

What’s the real message of the scientific racism that says that Blacks are genetically stupid, that this stupidity is irremediable by any environmental means, and that attacks any signs of Black intellectual progress (Like, for instance, this vile and wicked blog, recently referred in an New York Times piece by Amy Harmon as a “popular science blog”)? Isn’t it really, “God-damn, niggers are dumb!”

Why don’t we call the Murrays, Rushtons and Lynns the “Niggers sure are stupid!” academics? After all, that’s what they are selling, right?

Have you noticed that endless obsession that the media has with Zimbabwe? Zimbabwe – formerly Rhodesia – used to be run by virulently racist White criminals who were then evicted by a Black liberation movement.

Zimbabwe did all right for quite some time – in fact, throughout the 1980’s, it was regarded as a model of democracy, good governance, and multiracial harmony, and it weathered the African famines of the 1980’s quite well – until it started seizing the land of White farmers in the 1990’s. And why did it seize the land of the White farmers?

Because land reform was a necessity, but Britain had quit funding the “willing buyer, willing seller” fake land reform that never really worked well anyway since so few White farmers were willing to sell land. 5,000 White farmers, a tiny percentage of the population, had almost all the good land, all stolen at gunpoint from Blacks decades earlier.

Meanwhile, Blacks had the worst land and only tiny plots of it anyway, such that they barely had rocks to eat.

They were overcrowded onto this crappy land, so it naturally started to erode. The racist Whites then derided the Blacks for “poor nigger farming methods.” The racists then blamed the livestock of the Blacks for the erosion, and stole 1 million head of “the niggers‘ (ill-disciplined) cattle”. The real cause of the land erosion was the racist feudal farming system.

After the willing seller, willing buyer game ended, it was replaced by a project whereby Zimbabwe tried to come up with money to buy out willing Whites. But an economic crisis occurred (caused by an IMF structural adjustment and the free marketization of the economy) during the 1990’s, and Zimbabwe lacked the cash to purchase White farms.

Whites weren’t selling anyway, and the Brits were backing them to the hilt. Angry Blacks who had fought in the liberation war began clamoring for the land to which they were entitled.

Mugabe, suffering a crisis of legitimacy at the time, gave into them. Hence, the “land invasions” began. The media rails about how “all of the land went to Mugabe’s cronies” – the message here: “Niggers are lying, cheating thieves”.

To some extent, this is true (that land went to cronies). Initially, the land reform was decentralized and handed over to local party officials, which was actually a good idea. Unfortunately, the local officials promptly turned it into a spoils system, just like the corrupt cronyism we see in every African country!

For some reason, the cronyism of Mugabe’s party was worse than that of the rest of Africa, which is ignored by the imperialist media. The important point here is that Mugabe was not really involved in this corruption. After a while of this, Mugabe got a hold of the process, and now most of the land is just going to poor Black farmers.

The next part of the media lie is that since all the land went to Mugabe’s buddies, the poor Black farmers crowded into the cities, where Mugabe promptly took them on in a fake urban renewal campaign called “Drive Out Trash,” which was really just a campaign to destroy the homes of his political opponents and render them homeless.

First of all, most of the land is now going to small Black farmers, so there is no need for landless Black farmers to crowd into the cities. This is why small rural farmers are one of Mugabe’s main support bases, the other being the Shona tribe, the largest tribe in the country.

Second of all, the unfortunately named “Drive Out Trash” campaign was really just an urban renewal campaign where horrible Black slums were destroyed to make way for 120,000 much better government housing units. The urban renewal campaign is going on right now and much nicer government homes are replacing squalid hovels. The urban renewal has been hampered by sanctions, though.

True, the land reform has been chaotic, as land reforms often are in the beginning, especially when too much land reform is done too quickly. The old system has been crushed, and the new one often has not yet gotten going yet. The result is sometimes one or more years of famine harvests. But all this BS could have been prevented if Britain and the White farmers had gone along with a sane land reform program in the beginning.

At the same time, after Zimbabwe had been devastated by a decade of IMF-led imperialist looting combined with terrible droughts of the 1990’s, Mugabe logically told the IMF to go to Hell and refused to pay off his debts.

With the land invasions and the IMF nose-thumbing, all Hell broke loose in US and UK imperialist circles, especially in the former colonist, Britain, where the press went nuts and has never recovered. Devastating sanctions were quickly slammed on Zimbabwe. Foreign investment plummeted by 9

Even UNICEF is in on the brutal punishment – whereas in other African lands, AIDS sufferers get $74 per sufferer per year, Zimbabwe only gets $4 per sufferer per year from UNICEF. Then Mugabe, as AIDS devastated the land – the “dumb, murderous nigger Mugabe” – morphs into “genocidal nigger Communist Mugabe”. Really it’s just an AIDS epidemic devastating the country, as it is wrecking surrounding nations.

The land invasions were a predictable mess, and a few Whites were killed. These deaths have been insanely blown out of proportion by a leering media. In Britain, the media fairly screams “White genocide!” You can imagine the clamor on White Nationalist sites. In truth, a whole nine White farmers have been killed over an eight-year period. The death of one White farmer yields vastly more breathless Western prose than the deaths of 30 Zimbabwean Blacks might.

Another media obsession is “Mugabe the dictator.” Mugabe is authoritarian, but as such folks go, he is pretty lightweight. The opposition leaders regularly give interviews in which they call for armed struggle against Mugabe’s regime or invasion by imperialist countries. It is amazing how this “evil dictator” allows those who call for his very head to speak out and run free.

The West has funded the opposition, which has little support, for years now. The opposition is totally tied to imperialism and pushes an extreme free market program that is not only the last thing that Zimbabwe needs right now but is the very thing that caused so many problems for the nation in the 1990’s.

The opposition has led a number of violent campaigns, and some of their leadership has been arrested and beaten. The Western media has gone nuts over these minor transgressions.

The opposition has also historically allied at various with the White farmers in Zimbabwe, White apartheid supporters in South Africa, and the vicious, apartheid-supported RENAMO guerrillas in Mozambique. Obviously, they are rejected by the vast majority of Zimbabweans.

The main opposition party was clearly involved in a coup attempt that tried to kill Mugabe in alliance with UK imperialism, but a court of the Mugabe “dictatorship” somehow refused to convict the plotters.

Truth is that the opposition is essentially run and funded by UK and US imperialism. Zimbabwe sees the UK and US as enemy nations, and in fact they are. As such, I would argue that the opposition are in effect traitors and spies for openly working the enemies of the nation. Mugabe is too kind. I am amazed he even lets the opposition walk around free at all. Mugabe the “dictator” has held several elections, which are now monitored by international monitors, and monitors have upheld all of the results. At the same time, opposition protests caused the “dictator” Mugabe to cancel several proposed Constitutional amendments.

The sanctions are the cause of almost all of the economic decline and ruin that the country has suffered since 1999. There is no a priori reason to suggest that Zimbabwe should be the most devastated country in Africa. The nasty racist suggestion is: “Niggers can’t run a country.”

In particular, the suggestion is worse: “Niggers are so stupid and childlike that they are incapable of running a country and quickly destroy any country given to them. Look at Zimbabwe. It was doing great when the nigger children had White grown-ups to take care of them. Then they threw Whitey out and tried to run it by themselves, and look what happened.”

The sneaky riff: “Niggers destroy any country they run. The only way that nigger countries can succeed is if the niggers are colonized by superior Whites.” The particularly nasty aspect of this vicious line is that it both supports White colonialism and White apartheid at the same time.

Another line is taken by many “race realists” such as the noxious crowd over at GNXP.

It is interesting that these “race realists” are almost always from the more “superior” races and rarely from the more “inferior” races.

Anyway, these folks take the objectively racist line that the chaos in Zimbabwe is because…”niggers are too stupid to run a country!” IQ scores in Africa are then used to prove that idiocy is what is killing Zimbabwean Blacks.

It is true that, as James Watson noted, IQ scores in Africa are markedly low. These IQ scores are valid. However, IQ scores in Zimbabwe are about 67, which is precisely the African average.

The other African nations, despite their low IQ’s, seem to muddle along, and at least are not experiencing Zimbabwean disaster. Minus crippling sanctions, Zimbabwe would be expected to muddle along about as well as any African nation.

Another problem is that much of the chaos in Zimbabwe is being caused by one of the worst AIDS problems on Earth. This is conflated by imperialism’s media to mean “socialist Mugabe is slaughtering his people.” Truth is it’s mostly AIDS that is killing them, not Mugabe, and there is not much Mugabe can do about AIDS anyway.

Blacks did not destroy Zimbabwe – sanctions did. Zimbabwe was doing fine on its own for 19 years until it started grabbing the White farms. De facto White Supremacist countries like the US and UK then went nuts, slammed devastating sanctions on Zimbabwe, and it’s been screaming in the ruins ever since.

Viewed in this light, cheat sheet version of the destruction of Zimbabwe ends up as a (deliberate or not) White racist plot-scam to make Blacks look like genocidal incompetent children that need White adults to take care of them. I do not think imperialism intended the message to come out that way, but that’s how it came across.

Even worse, the line is: “Look! Niggers are so stupid and incompetent they can’t even grow food!” Black people grow food all over Africa and have been growing food for centuries. They don’t necessarily grown enough of it to feed their countries, but they do ok.

Africans are resourceful and hardy folks; humans have been there for 120,000 years, and they haven’t gone extinct yet. Fire and tools came out of Africa, and 73,000 years ago, when a volcano killed almost all humans on Earth, only a small band of 600 or so survived and kept the human race going.

Guess where the holdouts were? Africa, near Mount Kilimanjaro. Afterward, these Africans underwent extreme evolutionary changes called the Great Leap Forward, probably invented art and language, and exploded out of Africa to colonize the entire planet.

Yet these same folks are so stupid they can’t even grow food! Come on. There is yet one more snarky and wicked riff running through this whole imperialist aggression. It’s a lesson to the niggers in South Africa. It says, “Listen up, South African niggers! Look at Zimbabwe! This is what will happen to you if you try to do a land reform with those White farmers in your country! We will destroy you just like we did Zimbabwe! Don’t even think about it, niggers!”

Now, South Africa, which we will deal with below, desperately needs a land reform. 50,000 White farmers occupy 8

In the end, there is no reason why Zimbabwe should not at least be able to do just as well as the rest of the Africa. Zimbabwe is a disaster not because it is run by Blacks but because economic warfare has been declared on it.

Now let’s look at South Africa. Yes, the crime rate is very high. But it is in general much higher than the rest of Black Africa. Now why is that?

The racist line is: “Niggers are animals and criminals. They murder, rape and steal anything in their path, and their innate criminality destroys any country. They especially like to prey on White people because they are so hateful and racist towards Whites. And they love to rape White women because their own nigger women are so damn ugly. Look at South Africa, and peer into the heart of the nigger criminal beast.”

But South Africa is anomalous. Decades of criminal White apartheid against Blacks built up mountains of hate and resentment amongst impoverished Blacks who seethed with rage as the Whites lived in luxury while Blacks wallowed in miserable slums.

The insane gap between the rich and the poor in South Africa and the Black face of the poor combined with the White face of the rich insures racial-based redistributionist crime, often violent crime, for the foreseeable future. Barring South Africa’s unusual circumstances, we should not expect its crime rate to be much worse than the rest of Black Africa’s.

Once again, the nasty subtext: “Niggers need apartheid. The nigger can’t make it on his own. He’s an animal and he needs the White man’s paternalistic boot on his neck in order to survive and not destroy himself and his land.” As in Zimbabwe, it’s yet another argument to bring back settler-colonial apartheid and White rule.

Let’s take a look at another “race realist” obsession: Haiti. Haiti is said to be “the only Black country in the Americas,” and it is rightly described as a devastated place. The subtext: “There is only one nigger country in the Americas, and they have of course destroyed it.” But this is not the case. First of all, most of the Caribbean islands are primarily Black or mulatto, including Cuba. A number of these islands are still colonies, but others are not. And while Dominica, Jamaica, and Grenada have plenty of problems, they are not Haiti by a long shot.

The reasons Haiti is a wreck is due to its ultra-reactionary mulatto ruling class that has confiscated almost all of the wealth of the land since independence, in cooperation with frankly White racist White countries like France, the US, and Canada.

The elite have the army and cops, and they have been slaughtering the people to keep their feudal stranglehold over the place for 100 years now. France is still furious about independence in 1804, when Black slaves, under Desallines, rose up and killed all 25,000 White French slavers and their families on the islands. To this day, 200 years later, White racist France demands reparations for this admittedly bloody episode.

Unfortunately, as so often happens, the revolution was quickly usurped by a bunch of fake revolutionaries, who ended up turning it on its head and putting a version of the old system back in.

There were a group of light-skinned Blacks who were often freed slaves and had allied with the White slaveowners. These Blacks quickly wormed their way into power, installed feudal brutality over the wretched masses, and it’s been that way ever since. One more stolen revolution. Now this Haitian ruling class, in collaboration with imperialism, continues to keep Haiti under the boot.

Aristide was elected with 9

He tried to raise the abysmal minimum wage, gave a million kids a lunch a day (probably their only meal) and built more schools in eight years than had been built in the previous 200. The people experienced real, tangible gains under Aristide, the best they had seen in two centuries.

For these crimes, imperialism (the US, France, and Canada) destroyed Aristide and forced him to leave with a gun at his head. The imperialist operation may as well have been called Operation Enduring Sweatshop.

The only solution for Haiti is armed revolution. The army of the ruling class needs to be overthrown. Then the ruling class themselves need to be informed of the new program and encouraged to go along.

Those that do not need to be arrested, and then either thrown in prison or re-education camps, kicked out of the country, or as a last resort for some of the most bloodthirsty and criminal Duvalierists and Tonton Macoutes, shot. Their hands are dripping with blood anyway, so it’s not like innocent people would be persecuted or killed.

A dictatorship of the proletariat may be necessary for a while, or at least a democracy with a well-armed revolutionary army, police and citizenry. This is one thing Hugo Chavez has right – arm the people and revolutionize the military.

Until that happens, Haiti will continue to be Hell on Earth.

When racists use arguments like these against Blacks and Black nations, they are not really talking of Blacks or Black countries. We give them too much credit when we say they are talking about Black people or nations – they are not – they are talking about niggers and nigger countries. Let’s shove the n-word in their mouth, leave it there for all to see, force them to eat it, and make them tell us what it tastes like.

Admittedly, we are taking some risks with this approach, namely the risk of legitimizing the term nigger. But most sane people already understand the difference between Blacks’ use of the word and Whites’ use of it. I don’t see why we can’t extend things a bit.

Note: Inspiration for this post came in part from a Michael Eric Dyson show on the radio. Dyson is a brilliant and gifted Black academic (though a bit too lenient on rap culture). Check out this great book, will get your brain moving! A bit hard to read, but a lot of my readers can handle him, I think. Awesome stuff. I wish all these racist and White nationalist idiots who rant on about how stupid Black people are could read this most challenging Black scholar.

Thanks also to the outrageous Black blog Look at This Nigger for additional humor and inspiration along the same theme.

References

Elich, Gregory. Zimbabwe and Pan-African Liberation. Elich, Gregory. The Battle over Zimbabwe’s Future. Elich, Gregory. Zimbabwe’s Fight for Justice. Gowans, Stephen. Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and the “Politics of Naming”. Gowans, Stephen. Zimbabwe’s Lonely Fight for Justice.

Do Capitalists Support Pubic Health and Education?

Repost from the old site. In a response to my post, The Paradox of Capitalist Regulation, brilliant British commenter huy suggests that capitalists nowadays are enlightened enough to see that public health and education are needed for the workforce. I argue otherwise below. Huy:

I would say that history has taught capitalism that free education and law and order run by the state is essential for capitalism to work, as without those things capitalism fails.It looks like capitalism is learning across the globe that free and equal health provided by the state is also essential for capitalism to run (from a free market economic point of view). Socialism wants national health and education for the benefit of the people, while capitalism wants national health and education for the benefit of the market and growth of the economy, An economy with higher-skilled, more versatile workers who are in good health is a more productive one. I consider myself vey leftwing and technocratic, and I’m deeply in favour of the free market, but only if the state provides good free education and health for all, minimum wage, poverty benefits, unemployment benefits and the chance for adults to get apprenticeships and qualifications for free when ever they need to or want to (within reason) so as to allow the lower-skilled workers to keep up with the fast pace of the free market and all the job cuts and creations that come with it. The free market is humanity’s best hope for destroying poverty, but only if it is galvanized by the state properly, whereby social mobility and equal opportunity and social justice and lack of social deprivation is followed through. This makes both moral and economic sense.

I respond: If you look at the 3rd World, the capitalist classes there do not want public education and they certainly do not want state health care. Even here in the US, the capitalist class has waged all-out war on public education and national health care through the Republican Party, although the Democratic Party also now seems to oppose national health care. In parts of the world where national health care has been put in, the capitalists and their rightwing parties quickly wage ideological warfare to get rid of it. Europe is an unusual case, probably due to circumstances discussed in my earlier post, For Justice, A River of Blood. Europe was a very rightwing place in the 1930’s. WW2 completely destroyed most of the European Right, defeated all rightwing governments, killed, wounded or imprisoned many of the rightwingers themselves, destroyed or made illegal their organizations and dissolved much of their wealth and power, and more importantly, humiliated them and completely discredited rightwing ideology. As a consequence, the Right was in disarray for decades after WW2 in Europe, and they have not yet regained their power. After the war, there was a Cold War threat from the USSR and from Left groups all over the rest of Europe. In order to co-opt the Soviet model and the West European Left, the ruling classes in Europe cut deals with workers, consumers and society in which a Social Contract was erected in the form of a socialism called variously the social market or social democracy. Due to the decimation and discrediting of the European Right, even European elites and media bought into social democratic ideology. Hence we see in France large Leftwing papers like Liberation, huge Euro-Communist parties getting 10-3 Elites in Scandinavia formed collegial relations with Communist and Leftist states and Leftist guerrillas on the basis that they were all socialists. For instance, Scandinavian governments had friendly relations with Sandinista Nicaragua, Cuba and Vietnam, along with the FMLN and FARC guerrillas in El Salvador and Colombia. Scandinavian governments gave generous aid to the Third World, often in pro-people forms with no capitalist or reactionary strings attached. This had the effect of taking the wind out of the sails of West European Communists. In a relatively just social democratic society, most saw little need for revolution. In Europe, even the capitalists have gone along with national health care, although in the UK they have been whittling away at it since Thatcher. European executives love their free national health care and paid six week vacations. However, in much of the rest of the world, capitalists have rolled back national health and education. In China, national health care is apparently gone as a right. In Russia, too, it scarcely exists anymore, while education has been decimated along with educated persons and professions. In some East European states like Bulgaria, health care has been devastated. The first thing the hero of both US parties, Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro, did when the Sandinistas were voted out was to get rid of free public education and free national health care. In Canada right now, the rightwing party and the business class have declared war on the national health care system (an ongoing project for a good 15 years or so now), but it is popular, so they have to tread lightly. If the business classes in the US supported public education and national health care, we would not have a decades-long war against both of them waged by the party of business, the Republican Party, and supported by the business class in its entirety. It is true that some more enlightened US capitalists (especially big businesses) do support public education and even national health care, but they are an exception. In this sense, the US small business class is even more reactionary than US big businesses. The US small business class supported Ross Perot and Ron Paul and are often far to the Right of the corporate guys. This rightwing populism can and does lead to fascism. Small business and the petit bourgeois were the army behind fascism in Nazi Germany and have led many far-right movements in the US too. The petit bourgeois resents the plutocratic elites for screwing them, but on the other hand also resents the working classes for being unionized and making good money via union wages. They feel oppressed by both groups. Also, many petit bourgeois did not go to college, so they resent those white collar workers (seen as intellectuals and professionals) who got degrees and the resulting higher-paying jobs. The petit bourgeois work in offices, banks and stores as clerks, tellers, low-ranking managers, etc. This class sector is often equated with something like the lower middle class. They often have no class consciousness at all, which is why they are often fodder for the Far Right. What you are advocating above, huy, is not the free market at all, since the free market advocates getting rid of most to all government spending and regulation. Instead, you are advocating for socialism in one of its many forms. This form being the social market or social democracy. I am a strong supporter of social democracy along the lines of the European model. The social market is a regulated capitalism with many government programs as a safety net and considerable government involvement in and even ownership of parts of the economy. In Sweden, 9 Government involvement in the economy takes the form of industry guidance as a corporatist element. Ownership of aspects of the economy takes the form of ownership of large industries like aircraft and ship building, national airlines, vehicle manufacturing, national rail, etc. It’s worked quite well. Keep in mind that capitalists are loath to invest in industries like ship building in which it may take 100 years to make your first profit. These industries need to be state-run for a long time. Further, passenger rail is almost never profitable for the private sector, so they just don’t run passenger trains. Since it operates at a loss as its nature, it must be run by the state. This is what is so sick about the endless demands on Amtrak to make a profit – it is almost impossible for Amtrak to make a profit, because large passenger rail networks almost never do. In order to profit, they would have to charge so much money that they would hardly get any passengers. In the same way, city buses never run at a profit either, hence we never see the private sector running passenger buses inside cities. Do you see any private rail lines running passenger rail in any areas of the US? Of course not. Why? Because it’s not profitable. Passenger rail must be run by the state for it to exist at all. Demands for Amtrak to run a profit are perverse, dishonest and wrong. How many Americans think Amtrak needs to run a profit? Of those with an opinion, possibly most. This is what rightwing propaganda will do to you.

Bug Chasers, Gift Givers and Conversion Parties

Too weird. Includes the classic, 5 Great Reasons to Get HIV. 1. No more isolation. Since HIV beats loneliness any day. You’re never alone when you have HIV. You always have that friendly virus to keep you company. 2. A different perspective. What’s life without that. 3. A sense of relief. Whew! Glad that’s over. Now that I’m POZ, I can move on to more important things, like that MBA. 4. A sense of intimacy. Just you and your virus, all alone, tonight. Turn the lights down low… 5. The challenges faced by serodiscordant couples. Um, whatever.

The Real Reason for the Shining Path

Repost from the old site. Rightwing anti-Communists (and for that matter, Centrist and liberal US anti-Communists also) have some very peculiar attitudes about Communism, shaped by the Cold War. Communism, it appears, is some strange, evil and insane system, a crazy, idiotic and totally failed economic and social system that brought nothing but misery, hunger, starvation and poverty to the world, while bringing nothing good. The alternative was capitalism, which would at some point conquer hunger, poverty, starvation and all that. Capitalism is always supposed to conquer these things at some point in the future. Capitalist polemicists usually say, “Just give it some time…” With the neoliberalism that has been pushed since 1980 and has brought nothing but misery and impoverishment to billions and caused many millions of deaths, we have always been told that it would start working pretty soon now…maybe next year…victory is right around the corner. The truth is that after 25 years of neoliberalism, the verdict is in and a long report has documented it quite well. Nearly everywhere it has been tried, neoliberalism has benefited the top 2 Even in the US, from 1980-1992, the top 2 Neoliberalism, nearly everywhere, resulted in lowered economic growth rates, massive debt, plunging wages and living standards for the majority, reductions in access to health and eduction, and reductions in many health and education metrics like infant mortality, life expectancy and the percentage of children in school at various ages. This is because neo-liberalism mandated massive cuts in all social services, especially education and health care. The outcome was foretold. The truth about neoliberalism is that it has always been a scam in which the West, especially Western banks, corporations and investors, ripped off the rest of the World blind and the people were always left holding the bag. Nevertheless, the ripoff artists keep trying to sell their neoliberal snake oil around the world, but more and more nations are no longer buying. Most of the countries of Latin America have tired of the “checks in the mail” neoliberal snipe hunt, and collectively, they are trying, in their own often-limited ways, to dislodge themselves from the grip of the neoliberal plague. Even mainstream economists admit that Latin America (macroeconomically) did not benefit from the neoliberal fad. Recently, Argentina paid off its foreign debt and said no more. In Venezuela, Chavez is trying to forge a completely new path that is, instead of the Communism his detractors libel him with, in truth nothing more than a reformation of capitalism. President Lula in Brazil has been hampered by the death grip of both investor capital and the markets; he has not been able to do much at all. Uruguay has elected a strident Leftist, but it is not known what he can do given his restraints. Chile, after the utter failure of Pinochet’s radical free market economics (something the free market crazies have never owned up to), has elected a socialist and a woman as President, Bachelet. It is not known what she can do in terms of progress, but Chile still has an education and health sector that is in pretty good shape and sports good metrics to show for it. In Ecuador, Rafael Correa is President, and he has formed an alliance with Chavez. It remains to be seen what he can do in terms of progress, as his options, as usual, are limited. In Bolivia, Evo Morales, an Indian, has won a very close election in a country where a small White elite has always run roughshod over the majority Indian population. His options are also limited, but Morales’ rhetoric has at least been almost as radical as Chavez’. A major problem in Bolivia is the mestizos in the East of the country (Santa Cruz Province) who despise the Indians the West as inferior while they sit on top of Bolivia’s rich natural gas deposits. They are making noises about succession, but they will never try it. In Mexico, AMLO (Lopez-Obrador), a Leftist, actually won the election, but due to the usual fraud, the PAN (a rightwing Catholic party that rose out of the religious hot war in Mexico in the 1920’s that left 70,000 dead) now holds the presidency. Felipe Calderon is the PAN President and he won’t do a damned thing to solve the problems that have caused an incredible 1 As an example of such problems, the family of one man, Carlos Slim, the head of the private Mexican phone monopoly, controls 5 There has been some resistance to this semi-feudal order. A very radical movement has tried to overthrow the corrupt and brutal dictatorial government of Oaxaca state. The Zapatistas* are still alive, and recently a Leftist group, the EPL*, has started to blow stuff up again, after disappearing for three years. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega was re-elected, but he appears to have softened his rhetoric to the point where he cannot do much. Still, he has formed an alliance with Chavez. Nicaragua, now the second poorest country in Latin America, lies in corrupt ruins. Support for the considerably neutered Sandinistas is higher than reported in the ruling class media – although Ortega had 3 Under the Sandinistas, Nicaragua went from one of the worst to one of the best in Central America for literacy and health care figures. In 1990, Violeta Chamorro, adored by the whole US political spectrum, including the Cruise Missile liberals of the US Democratic Party, won the election. Right away, she ended free education, requiring students to spend $35 a year on uniforms, a fee that immediately threw large numbers of kids out of school. Most have yet to return. She also got rid of free health care, so most of the population is without health care again. The health and education figures for the nation have shown the expected collapse. It is interesting that Democratic Party liberals are apparently overjoyed about this situation, showing the bankruptcy of their ideology. Most of the rest of the continent is collapsed in the usual ruins. 1 million people die every year from hunger in Latin America, and this has been going on for decades. How come this stuff never makes it to the “Worst Killers in Recent History” contests? The anti-Communist line about Communism divorces it from its concrete realities in the sort of totally rotten social and economic systems that have spawned peasant revolutions for centuries before Karl Marx was even born. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s and the fall of the Warsaw Pact, rightwingers rejoiced. It was the “end of history”, said Francis Fukuyama. The era of peasant revolts was over. Never again would humanity have to worry about any Marxist, Leftist, worker, peasant, or even populist revolution. Capitalism was here to say, in all of its forms, from most enlightened to most hideous, and no one could do a damn thing about it! Well, that is nonsense. Anti-Communists say that revolutions happen for no reason at all, other than the insane desire of Communist madmen to seize power and impose their failed system on an unwilling population. They say that revolutions do not arise from horrible social and economic systems – they arise from sick Marxist pathology. Get rid of Marxism, they say, and capitalism can run wild on humanity again. Perhaps we can even re-instate feudalism and slavery while we are at it. After all, they were both great for business. Amidst the deafening racket of nonsense, a series of economic figures looms up at us like a ghost from the recent Peruvian past. In back of those figures, 15 years later in 1980, like an Inca God rising up from the grave to slay the Spanish invaders 450 years after they waded ashore, is the frightening shadow of the Peruvian Shining Path*, another “totally insane” Marxist group that arose “for no reason whatsoever other than sheer evil”. Yet the figures below show us why a revolution, even one as insane as Sendero Luminoso, was inevitable: From the Peruvian National Planning Institute in Bejar, Peru, in 1965, we learn that the 24,000 families of the White ruling class in Lima had an income of $62,000/yr*. The entire rest of the country had an average family income of $157. The Indians of the Sierra, who even now have a life expectancy of only 45 years, had an average family income of only $10 a year. *All figures in 1965 US dollars. Most people agree that things have only gotten worse in Peru since then. Look at those figures above and tell that that is not kindling and kerosene for bloody revolution. The match was called Sendero, and someone was going to toss a match sooner or later. There were centuries in Peru before 1965, four of them, and they build on our tale. From 1526 (when the Spaniards came to Peru) to 1630, the Indian population declined from 13 million to 600,000 – a loss of 9 For the next three centuries, the Indians were tied to the land like serfs, bonded in debt peonage in a feudal estate society. This continued until well into the 1970’s. The jungle Indians were enslaved and killed for sport starting in the 1800’s and continuing until 50 years or so ago. It is 1980. The bump and lurch of the dialectic, from Hegel to Marx to This is an example, from the city of Cherboksary, Russia, of the most failed economic system ever known to mankind – Communism. The fountains you see are inferior and worthless – totally failed fountains, if you will. The buildings in the background as are complete failures as buildings, since they are dull and boring. Those buildings are called “socialist housing” and everyone in the West agrees that this type of housing does not work. What works much better are the capitalist slums in the pictures to follow. The river is quite clean and this is another example of complete failure. Much better are the black rivers of capitalist slums, stinking with garbage, animal corpses and raw sewage. Why? Because diseases and smells are exciting! Who wants to be bored, anyway? Even the bright greenery in the foreground in a total failure – it’s much better to have live amidst the mounds of garbage you see below. Capitalist slums, with their thrill a minute and constant search for food, are the only way to go. A slum in Brazil. This is the successful system that works. Much better than that failed, dull socialist housing above, no? When are you moving in, reader? Men pick through a garbage dump, probably in Nairobi. Slums in Nairobi make up Slums of Nairobi. This is the only viable system on Earth, capitalism. All of the alternatives, especially Communism, are failed and don’t work. As you can see, this system works great. Communist housing fails because it is dull, boring and lifeless. It is much better to live in lively, exciting surroundings like this Nairobi slum, where I assure you there is never a dull movement. How dare those evil Commies try to move these people into “failed” Soviet-style high-rises! An excellent example of capitalist education from Africa. Capitalism hates education, everywhere and at all times, because the capitalists can’t make any money off of it, and the capitalists all send their kids to fancy private schools, hence they resent paying for a system they do not even use. So capitalism, under neoliberalism, has predictably devastated education systems around the Third World. Who needs to get educated anyway? The problem of the 3rd World is too many kids! Besides, Black people are so dumb that all attempts to educate them are a waste of time, or so The Bell Curve told me. Slums of Brazil. The problem is these Brazilians have too damn many kids! Yet the evidence shows that Brazil’s birthrate is actually below replacement level. Never matter, in that case, the poor should quit having babies altogether! Somehow, Westerners always find a way to blame the victim. Of course, Brazil having the worst rich-poor gap on Earth could not have anything to do with this situation, now would it? By 2020, 4 The charming slums of Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is home to 12 million people – 4 million of them in 800 different favelas, or slums. All of these slums are run by gangs of drug dealers, who engage in continuous battles with each other and the police, that is, when they are not engaging in armed robberies, kidnappings and homicides. Recent articles in the Western press have hailed the dramatic improvements in these slums. As you can see here, they are so much better than they used to be! Residents of a slum in Nairobi trudge through the garbage on their way home. Nairobi has an out of control crime rate, but of course that has nothing to do with the fact that these folks live in slums. It is because the criminals are evil and commit crimes for no reason at all. Furthermore, they are Black, and Black people are genetically natural born criminals. They’re just a race of Bad Seeds, and nothing can be done about them at all. The wonderful slums of Mumbai again! This is the high tech economy that is taking the world by storm, the envy of the planet. Check out that high tech dishwasher this girl is using – I bet it was designed by those IT professionals down in Bangalore! Go, India go! The truth about India is, of course, more tragic than Tom Friedman (see below) can figure out. By 1985, capitalism was killing between between 2.92 and 4 million every year in India, and 1.76 million were being killed in Bangladesh. That is 5.25 million people being killed by capitalism every year in just those two countries alone. But wait a minute! Capitalism doesn’t kill anyone. Stalin and Mao were the worst killers of the 20th century, dontcha know? Since Communism doesn’t work, we have to go with the only alternative, the system that works, capitalism. This photo shows you just how great it works in Mumbai, India. Noam Chomsky reports that, comparing China and India, which had similar developmental figures in 1949, there have been 100 million excess deaths in Indian from 1947-1979. This clearly shows the superiority of Chinese Communism, at least when it comes to saving lives. Note that China’s superior figures even include all of those killed by Maoism, which may number over 20 million people. But Maoism saved far more, and China set a world record with the fastest doubling of life expectancy by any country, going from 32 in 1949 to 65 in 1976, surpassing Joseph Stalin’s record set in 1956. Now in China, gone heavily over to capitalism, millions are dying from lack of health care alone. Getting back to India, recent figures show that there are 4 million excess deaths in India every single year. Gideon Polya calculates that excess infant mortality alone, compared to a model of Sri Lanka, kills 2.7 million Indians per year. Slums of Mumbai. 6 million people – 6 Working backwards and forwards from Chomsky’s figures above of 4 million deaths per year in India from capitalism, which he got from Indian economist Amratya Sen, we can guess that capitalism may have killed 170 million Indians since 1949 as compared to the Chinese model. But wait, aren’t Communists the worst killers of them all? Don’t like the way I do figures? Try these instead then. Capitalism kills 14 million people every single year just by starvation, mostly in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan).

*This blog does not support the project of Sendero Luminoso, as they kill people who are completely innocent. It does support the Zapatistas and the EPL in Mexico.

Turmoil in Belarus

Here. The corporate media doesn’t seem to be telling the truth about this election. First of all, it’s claimed that Lukashenko stole the election. This is dubious; in fact, it’s not true. The observers are claiming that there were irregularities and the elections were not free and fair, and this is probably true. Here is why we should dispute the Western oligarchy’s media report on the elections. Before the elections, polls, including those by Western organizations, showed Lukashenko with 8 The corporate media lie about Belarus. They say it is a failing Communist country. It’s not. Belarus is the only country in the former USSR which has seen it’s GDP grow to beyond it’s level in 1990 when the USSR fell. Yes, that is correct. In all of the former USSR, the former republics have GDP’s that are still below the level of the USSR in 1990. Between the fall of the USSR and now, there’s been nothing but total failure in all of the former republics, Russia included. Belarus was always the place where Communism worked better than anywhere else in the USSR. Belarus, Ukraine and Russia supplied the whole of the USSR – they kept the whole thing going – the rest of the republics were mostly consumers of products originating in those three. People came from all over to live and work in Belarus even during the Soviet era. The economy of Belarus is a mixed economy, though 8 Health care and education are free, rent is affordable, and it’s almost or totally impossible to get evicted from your apartment. If you can’t pay your rent, you just get bills. This is a bit of a problem since even non-working alcoholic bum types all have their own place from which they can’t be thrown out of, but maybe it’s better that than having them homeless. Homelessness is nearly or entirely nonexistent. There are few to no beggars on the streets. The streets are very clean with little litter or garbage. Utilities are affordable for everyone. Output in state industries and even agriculture is good. I don’t know how, but somehow Belarus seems to be making Communism work. Belarus is completely self-sufficient in food and is now even a food exporter. Education is free through the university level. Housing is good, sturdy, nice, well-kept up, and everyone has a place. In contrast to many such societies, the stores are all full of goods. The richest quintile has only 4 times the wealth of the lowest quintile, making Belarus one of the most equal societies on Earth. Oligarchs originally robbed Belarus of much of its wealth as privatization began in 1993. Lukashenko was elected that year, halted the very unpopular privatization and neoliberalization of the economy, confiscated wealth from the oligarch thieves and threw them out of the country. He’s been wildly popular in his country and hated by the West ever since. Belarus has strict immigration controls, so the usual immigrant related crime has not been a problem in the country. Lukashenko is definitely an autocrat. He imprisons the opposition and exercises control over much of the media, though this control and oppression is exaggerated by the West. The corporate media implies that his economy is failing and is only kept afloat by below market gas and oil from Russia. I believe Russia gives such deals to most of its former republics. Anyway, Russian oil and gas is not what’s keeping the economy above water. The opposition had a rally of maybe 40,000 people, the largest ever. They stormed the Parliament building when people were inside and smashed the glass doors and windows of the building. The police were originally unarmed, but after the demonstrators attacked Parliament, they got reinforcements with billy clubs and beat back demonstrators. There were many arrests, and it looks like the opposition is facing some outrageous sentences of up to 15 years. But you have to wonder how the US would react if a mob of 40,000 stormed Congress and smashed down the glass doors with people inside. I’m quite sure that the vast majority of Belorussians support Lukashenko. The opposition is funded from abroad, mostly from pro-capitalist interests in the West. Belorussians like their social economy with its security. All of the opposition, unless I am mistaken, wants to tear down the social economy and replace it with the usual capitalist crap, capitalist crap that Belorussians want no part of. Belorussians prefer security over freedom.

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