Archive for September, 2009
Labor History: Down The Memory Hole
I find it personally maddening the degree to which right-wingers have pushed their narrative on not just “people,” but the working class and the left.
Specifically, I am constantly butting my head up against the ideology of apathy. I’m not talking about people’s lack of resistance — there’s actually a ton going on right now. What I’m talking about is the internalized oppression of the working class, particularly among radicals. This frequently takes the form of “Americans are too comfortable to resist” or “Americans don’t like radicalism” or some other vague, unverifiable claim that ultimately only serves the agenda of capital and the far right.
Baucus Bill Sticks To Pharma Deal That Supposedly Wasn’t Struck
The bill unveiled by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has been blasted as a major giveaway to insurance companies. But the even bigger winners are the drug makers.
That’s because the Baucus bill matches up, nearly to the letter, with the secret deal that he, the White House and Big Pharma struck over the summer — a deal the various parties roundly denied had been struck when it went public.
Life Span Of African-Americans In New Orleans Rivals North Korea’s
The average life span for African-Americans living in New Orleans is nearly as low as average life expectancy in North Korea, according to A Portrait Of Louisiana, a new report from The American Human Development Project which examines life in the state four years after Hurricane Katrina.
Can Angelides Panel Bring Justice to Wall Street?
As he ushered in a new era in Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s theme song was “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but people tend to forget that along with sunny optimism FDR delivered a strong dose of justice. He left that job to Ferdinand Pecora, a fierce New York prosecutor whom Roosevelt urged to investigate Wall Street’s perniciousness. Pecora delivered big time. He humiliated and forced the resignation of Charles Mitchell, the head of National City Bank (later Citibank), and oversaw a 12,000-page probe into the causes of the Great Depression that gave birth to a new regulatory framework, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (Pecora was later one of the first commissioners). Other Wall Streeters were prosecuted, convicted, and jailed.
The theme song to our current era might be, more appropriately, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
75 Years Since the San Francisco General Strike
On May 9, 1934, San Francisco longshoremen went out on strike against West Coast ship owners, igniting a movement of 35,000 maritime workers of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) that shut down 2,000 miles of Pacific coastline from Bellingham, Washington, to San Diego, California.
Driven by the determination and militancy of the rank and file, this 83-day struggle defied the employers’ Industrial Association of San Francisco, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s federal mediators, the conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) union leadership, and culminated in the San Francisco general strike.
What is the AFL-CIO?
At its convention this week, the AFL-CIO chose a new president to replace the retiring John Sweeney, who had headed the organization for 14 years. One measure of the decrepitude of the trade union federation is the fact that the leadership change barely registered on the public consciousness, least of all among workers, including the small minority who are AFL-CIO members.
Making The Most of Missile Silos – Turn Them Into Homes (Video)
Preparing for eminent nuclear fallout with Russia, the US government spent hundreds of millions of dollars building extensive underground missile bases during the 1950s and early 60s. Farmers’ fields became clandestine landscape for weapons capable of waging war on the other side of the world. By 1965, these bases were decommissioned, abandoned and left to rust. Buried silo labyrinths can be found all over – California, New Mexico, New York: most are flooded and completely inaccessible.
We drove 4 hours into Washington State in search of one that we had heard was still usable and found 1 mile of underground tunnels, domes and silos.
After a tour we went to Kansas to meet Ed, missile silo real estate agent, drum circle enthusiast and 2012 doomsdayer. He showed us his converted silo home and took us to see another property he just sold for a cool 400K. We put our boots on…
Masonic Symbols Decoded (Photo Gallery)
1. The Freemasons’ square-and-compasses symbol adorns a wall in Washington, D.C.’s Masonic House of the Temple–the scene of strange rituals in Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol.
The square-and-compasses symbol has its roots, as modern Freemasonry may have, in the craft of stonemasonry. Most of the trade’s tools are represented somewhere in the symbols of the Freemasons, the world’s largest international secret society, founded in 17th-or-18th century Britain.
Masonic scholars explain that the square reminds Masons to ensure that their actions conform to a “square of virtue,” while the compasses symbolize self-control over their passions.
Food Industry Is Now Calling Junk Food ‘Healthy’ — Why Could That Be?
Jim Hightower, AlterNet: Smart is the new cool thing. There’s a smart car, cities now tout smart growth, and you can buy a smart refrigerator. Now comes another breakthrough: Even your breakfast cereal has gotten smart.
At least that’s what we consumers are being told by a group of major food corporations that are hoping to cash-in on the growing public concern about nutrition. Your concern is their concern, they say, so these eager-to-serve marketers have launched a snappy food labeling campaign to guide your nutritional choices. They’ve designated hundreds of their food products as being not just tasty, zesty and zowie — but also good for you.
You’ll know which ones to reach for on the supermarket shelf because they’ll be labeled with a snappy green checkmark on the front of their packages, along with the phrase, “Smart Choices.”
The industry says that this seal of approval is all about helping today’s…
SurvivaBall For Global Weather Conditions
A little while ago the Yes Men unveiled their creation “SurvivaBall,” a “gated community for one” intended to provide an individual with protection from the global devastation resulting from climate change. The group now has plans for a new series of pranks, including crashing meetings with SurvivaBalls and floating several down the East River.
Making Magic With Music
Aside from being a wandering minstrel, Larkin Grimm also tucks the occupation of shaman into her well-worn cap.
“All great artists are shamans,” says Grimm. “Everyone who is a musician and goes into an altered state of conscience is a shaman, and music puts you in that altered state of conscience.”
This mystical connection between a musician and their audience was one of the many reasons Grimm teamed up with the Ordo Templi Orientis, also known as OTO, to curate the Musicka Mystica Maxima Festival, a new sort of event featuring musicians who all practice magic, kicking off Monday at Santos Party House.
“We have been kicking the idea about for a year,” said Peter Seals, aka Frater Puck of the OTO. “Certain synchronistic occurrences made it seem that now was the time.”
When I first heard about the Musicka Mystica Maxima Festival, it sounded a bit like a Dungeons and Dragons dork fest.…
Osama Bin Laden’s Fall Book Club For Americans
The New York Times reports that Osama Bin Laden has apparently released a new audiotape online, titled “An Address to the American People,” in which he mentions three books which he claims support his anti-American worldview. Bin Laden suggests that Americans pick up copies as soon as possible, and, “After you read the suggested books, you will know the truth, and you will be greatly shocked by the scale of concealment that has been exercised on you.”
The three recommended books are surprisingly mainstream choices. First there’s former president Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Next is The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, written two professors who argue that the pro-Israel lobby in Washington has undue influence and harms both American and Israeli interests. Lastly, there’s Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, a book of questionable veracity in which author John Perkins details his years convincing the governments…
Freemasons: Fact vs. Fiction
The Square and Compasses is one of the most prominent symbols of Freemasonry. Source: MesserWoland (CC)
From TIME:
Search Encyclopaedia Britannica for the word Freemasons and an unusual though not entirely unexpected result pops up: the entry for scapegoats. The secretive organization that once counted George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire among its ranks has been a favorite target for conspiracy theorists since the 17th century, when Masonic lodges first spread across Europe. Now best-selling novelist Dan Brown has taken aim at the group’s cultlike reputation in his latest book, The Lost Symbol — a fact that comes as no surprise to author Jay Kinney. In his own new book, The Masonic Myth, Kinney attempts to dispel some of the persistent rumors about the group by explaining how he became a Freemason himself.
TIME: You joined the Freemasons in 2001. What made you want to get involved?
Kinney: I had been interested since the ’70s,…
Russell Simmons: Twenty-Seven Million Slaves
Human trafficking, otherwise known as child labor, migrant smuggling, sex worker trafficking, debt bondage, or good old fashioned slavery, adds up to one inescapable reality. An estimated 27 million human beings worldwide today are living lives of exploitation and humanity stripped bare beyond the bone of basic human rights. This is a bigger number than at any point in documented history.
They are objects of ownership, forgotten as children in need of love, nurturing and protection; forgotten as flesh and blood creatures that bruise and bleed and are more than vessels for sex; forgotten as individuals with the desire for purpose and peace and protection from the violence and intimidation they face every day. If they are not a source of revenue for those who own them, they are a useless, expendable tool. The physical pain and the psychological scars that result are indelible. Globally, some 24 percent of victims of…
How the Cold War Was Won … by the French
When a KGB colonel decided to pass on secrets that would devastate the Soviet Union he turned to Paris, a new film reveals
By John Lichfield
James Bond and George Smiley can eat their hearts out. Who really won the Cold War for the democratic world? The French, naturellement. This rather startling claim is made by the publicity for a brooding, brilliant, French spy movie which reaches cinemas next week. Although somewhat far-fetched, the boast that French intelligence “changed the world” does have some basis in fact.
The story of L’Affaire Farewell, how a French mole in the KGB leaked information so devastating that it hastened the implosion of the Soviet Union, is comparatively little known in Britain or even in France.
Due credit is given to the French, the once-reviled “surrender monkeys”, by, of all sources, the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA’s official website still carries a compelling essay, written soon after the…
How the Cold War was won… by the French
When a KGB colonel decided to pass on secrets that would devastate the Soviet Union he turned to Paris, a new film reveals
By John Lichfield
Emir Kusturica, left, plays Serguei Grigoriev, the character based on the Russian mole Colonel Vetrov, while Guillaume Canet, right, is Pierre Froment, his French handler in L’Affaire Farewell
James Bond and George Smiley can eat their hearts out. Who really won the Cold War for the democratic world? The French, naturellement. This rather startling claim is made by the publicity for a brooding, brilliant, French spy movie which reaches cinemas next week. Although somewhat far-fetched, the boast that French intelligence “changed the world” does have some basis in fact.
The story of L’Affaire Farewell, how a French mole in the KGB leaked information so devastating that it hastened the implosion of the Soviet Union, is comparatively little known in Britain or even in France.
Due credit is given to…
Unveiled: The Surprisingly Small Precursor of T. Rex
Tyrannosaurus rex — the most fearsome predator ever to have trod the Earth — had a pint-sized precursor, remarkably similar in appearance but no heavier than a human being, according to a new report from a team of scientists. The creature was what Austin Powers might call T. rex’s Mini-Me.
The new animal, based on a single fossil smuggled out of China and eventually sold to a private collector, has been named raptorex. It lived 125 million years ago in a lake-dotted region of northern China.
Raptorex had a big head, tiny forelimbs, and a body built for sprinting, just like T. rex. But this fossil is of a young adult dinosaur, nearly full-grown, that at maturity would have been only about 9 feet long, compared with about 40 feet for an adult T. rex, according to a paper published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science. It would have…
One Billion Go Hungry
The UN reported that 1 billion people world wide are currently going hungry.
This is the largest number of hungry people ever, up sharply from 2008. There is no food shortage. Natural disasters and local famines account for a tiny minority of the world’s hunger. Indeed, we live at a point in history where the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone, and global caloric production is actually up. The cause of hunger, almost throughout the entire world is not a lack of resources. Hunger and starvation exist because food is distributed for the personal profit of the global elite.
If You Weren’t Scared of Obamacare Yet…
The headline for this on Huffington Post right now is “Beyond Left and Right.”
Forgive me for being a bit simplistic about this, but if Bill O’Reilly is for something, that gives me clue one that I should be against it. I suppose the reason Billo the Clown endorses the bill currently favored by the White House is that is revives the long-standing Republican plan of fining people who can’t afford health insurance. It also provides clear economic incentives for employers to drop their health care plan — unless you think they pay less than $400 a year per employee.
The health care debate has followed the classic pattern of American discourse. A milquetoast bill is proposed. Said bill is attacked by the right with groundless speculation about “death panels” and Obama actually being a citizen of Arrakis or whatever. Democrats scramble to accommodate the paranoid ramblings of proto-fascist elements. A bill which addresses all the most reactionary…
