Tuesday, September 14, 2004
The Turkish Parliament Debates Outlawing Adultery
Do they really think this could work? Obviously this is a rhetorical question.
Friday, September 10, 2004
The Democrats and Democracy
Here's the despicable story of the Democratic Party's anti-democratic tactics in Oregon. By the way they are using similar tactics in other states. This is why the Property Party with two right wings (Gore Vidal) must not be encouraged.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Pro-Imperialist Stance Rebuffed at AFL-CIO Conference
Radicals pass anti-imperialist resolution at conference.
Grasping At Straws
Matt Rothschild on Kerry and the war.
It amazes me to no end how liberals can so easily be hood-winked. Kerry/Dukakis/Mondale are down in the polls, they look like they will lose, so they play up to the base (populism or anti-war, whatever the flavor of the month is) so they are not totally humiliated in the electoral college. Howard Dean road the anti-war horse so Kerry decided to jump on. Even though he voted for the war and has critiqued Bush from the right on military policy, we need more troops in Iraq and around the world, people who should know better, like Matt Rothschild, can still propagate the idea that Kerry is going to take troops out of Iraq. Bush/Cheney are right, Kerry is incoherent on Iraq!
It amazes me to no end how liberals can so easily be hood-winked. Kerry/Dukakis/Mondale are down in the polls, they look like they will lose, so they play up to the base (populism or anti-war, whatever the flavor of the month is) so they are not totally humiliated in the electoral college. Howard Dean road the anti-war horse so Kerry decided to jump on. Even though he voted for the war and has critiqued Bush from the right on military policy, we need more troops in Iraq and around the world, people who should know better, like Matt Rothschild, can still propagate the idea that Kerry is going to take troops out of Iraq. Bush/Cheney are right, Kerry is incoherent on Iraq!
Rupert Murdoch Ponies Up $50 Million To Dramatize Zinn's People's History
Matt Damon and Ben Afflack have approached Fox to get a People's History to the masses. Looks like a great project.
Electoral Votes
Kerry needs to win 2 of 3 of Florida, Ohio or Missouri. It's not looking good. This site is very good. I know it emphasizes the horse race but it also shows the importance of the electoral college.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
On History and Its Uses
Here's an article on how history is used for partisan purposes. Not a new idea but well argued.
The crimes of history are optional. We mix, match and discard according to taste and convenience. It's useful for Applebaum's Tory backers to remember Stalin's crimes because they can still use them to bash anyone who might want to beef up the National Health system with higher taxes. "Today an extra 1% VAT on my Jag convertible, tomorrow Kolyma!" is a very familiar war cry from these crusaders for human rights. Other massacres are dim stats, to be dredged up when necessary. Take, for example, all the tens of millions of dead in the Japanese occupation of China. They are rarely invoked in the West, because we don't need them. The Japanese are thoroughly spent, neither a threat nor a bad example of anything we worry about at the moment. The Chinese are more of a worry, making the invocation of their dead a dangerous concession. And in the Tory mind, those dead are connected with ignominy: the surrender of Singapore without a fight, the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales...and so it goes, with a huge number of tangential mental associations determining which of the billions of corpses clogging the earth will be dug up and flung at one's opponents at any particular moment.
Thanks to Jeff for the
article.
The crimes of history are optional. We mix, match and discard according to taste and convenience. It's useful for Applebaum's Tory backers to remember Stalin's crimes because they can still use them to bash anyone who might want to beef up the National Health system with higher taxes. "Today an extra 1% VAT on my Jag convertible, tomorrow Kolyma!" is a very familiar war cry from these crusaders for human rights. Other massacres are dim stats, to be dredged up when necessary. Take, for example, all the tens of millions of dead in the Japanese occupation of China. They are rarely invoked in the West, because we don't need them. The Japanese are thoroughly spent, neither a threat nor a bad example of anything we worry about at the moment. The Chinese are more of a worry, making the invocation of their dead a dangerous concession. And in the Tory mind, those dead are connected with ignominy: the surrender of Singapore without a fight, the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales...and so it goes, with a huge number of tangential mental associations determining which of the billions of corpses clogging the earth will be dug up and flung at one's opponents at any particular moment.
Thanks to Jeff for the
article.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
The Creative Class
I've heard a lot about the "creative class" lately (NPR had a story this morning). All our cities need is some gays, some rockers, some coffee shops and some artists and we will all be living the vida loca! There is a shuckster out there by the name of Richard Florida who is one of the primary popularizers of these ideas, and he gets payed a lot of money (the Bader Foundation in Milwaukee just gave him a bunch for speaking here) because lots of city planners and intellectuals love to hear that they are the most productive and important members of social and economic systems. They traffic in it because it's a lot easier to say, look at these new condos and this great new club, see how our city is changing for the better even though populations and wages are declining in central cities in the US. Milwaukee has a lot of this talk lately, downtown is reviving, a new urban space is being created because gays, rockers, and coffee shops are now in the hood.
The problem with this approach can be summed up in one word, JOBS. People moved to Milwaukee for 100 years because we built tractors, brewed beer, designed and manufactured tools and dies for other industries, because we built motorcycles and engines. We made things. Now we don't. And it was not just because we made things in Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Troy, Albany, and other upper Midwest cities that these cities prospered it was because the workers in these industries organized to demand high wages and benefits that created demand thus raising the standard of living for all in our communities.
The new urbanists and Florida's ilk want us to believe that if we spend our monies on sports stadiums, convention centers and high end performing arts centers we will bring in the "right" kind of diverse people and we'll see them in their outdoor cafe's and this will cause a turn around for urban poverty. Well I think they have it exactly backward. If you have decent high paying jobs people will move anywhere. How many thousands recently applied for the longshoremen jobs in California? How many thousands lined up for auto worker jobs because there was a rumor of jobs last year.
I think people like Florida don't really believe their own propaganda or at least the people that pay their bills don't because we knew in Milwaukee that the convention center would be a colossal drain on funds in this city and would only serve a small group of hotel owners, builders, and restauranteers. We also knew the same for the baseball stadium that sits open 2/3rds of the year and wasn't even put downtown because of the suburban constituency that it serves. Cities like Milwaukee now play the role, at least in the central part, as low wage ghettos. Basketball arenas, convention centers, hotels, restaurants, and other entertainment centers dominate some of our most storied cities. Low wage service workers help keep the prices low for these venues. The central city has reversed its historical role from center to periphery. Suburbanites now use the city primarily for a playground that has been made easily accesible by transportation systems that allow easy access in and out of the city.
Milwaukee and other cities like it need high paying jobs. And if coffee shop staff, rock club bouncers and bartenders and gay go-go dancers got paid $46,000 with decent health benefits and a pension I would be cheering right along with Florida. But in the meantime I say lets have socialized medicine, an industrial policy, support for trade unions on a massive scale and local government that helps people train for the skills that will allow them to make a decent living while they work and a long prosperous vacation when they retire.
The problem with this approach can be summed up in one word, JOBS. People moved to Milwaukee for 100 years because we built tractors, brewed beer, designed and manufactured tools and dies for other industries, because we built motorcycles and engines. We made things. Now we don't. And it was not just because we made things in Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Troy, Albany, and other upper Midwest cities that these cities prospered it was because the workers in these industries organized to demand high wages and benefits that created demand thus raising the standard of living for all in our communities.
The new urbanists and Florida's ilk want us to believe that if we spend our monies on sports stadiums, convention centers and high end performing arts centers we will bring in the "right" kind of diverse people and we'll see them in their outdoor cafe's and this will cause a turn around for urban poverty. Well I think they have it exactly backward. If you have decent high paying jobs people will move anywhere. How many thousands recently applied for the longshoremen jobs in California? How many thousands lined up for auto worker jobs because there was a rumor of jobs last year.
I think people like Florida don't really believe their own propaganda or at least the people that pay their bills don't because we knew in Milwaukee that the convention center would be a colossal drain on funds in this city and would only serve a small group of hotel owners, builders, and restauranteers. We also knew the same for the baseball stadium that sits open 2/3rds of the year and wasn't even put downtown because of the suburban constituency that it serves. Cities like Milwaukee now play the role, at least in the central part, as low wage ghettos. Basketball arenas, convention centers, hotels, restaurants, and other entertainment centers dominate some of our most storied cities. Low wage service workers help keep the prices low for these venues. The central city has reversed its historical role from center to periphery. Suburbanites now use the city primarily for a playground that has been made easily accesible by transportation systems that allow easy access in and out of the city.
Milwaukee and other cities like it need high paying jobs. And if coffee shop staff, rock club bouncers and bartenders and gay go-go dancers got paid $46,000 with decent health benefits and a pension I would be cheering right along with Florida. But in the meantime I say lets have socialized medicine, an industrial policy, support for trade unions on a massive scale and local government that helps people train for the skills that will allow them to make a decent living while they work and a long prosperous vacation when they retire.
Conventional Wisdom?
I was watching an interview with one of John Kerry's daughter's (30) the other day, I might add she was far more articulate and good looking than he. She went to Brown and just finished grad school and she was speaking to a crowd at Ann Arbor or Berkley. I have to admit I was somewhat infatuated but the comment that shook me from my lust was her comment that I have heard again and again this election cycle that this IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN A LIFETIME.
I don't think this is a particularly important election.
Both Bush and Kerry agree on the major issues of the day, war and occupation in Iraq and an unending "war on teror" (whatever that means)-they are both for it, health care-Bush wants to leave it alone to the detrimant of us all and Kerry wants to putz around the edges-he vaguely talks about insuring the uninsured (how he will do this with a Republican congress is beyond me, trade/capitalism-they both want to favor US corporations so that the US can sell things at an advantage over others in the world by subsidizing things we make and by keeping regimes in power that keep wages low thus undermining wages at home.
The most important election in our lifetime? I think not.
I don't think this is a particularly important election.
Both Bush and Kerry agree on the major issues of the day, war and occupation in Iraq and an unending "war on teror" (whatever that means)-they are both for it, health care-Bush wants to leave it alone to the detrimant of us all and Kerry wants to putz around the edges-he vaguely talks about insuring the uninsured (how he will do this with a Republican congress is beyond me, trade/capitalism-they both want to favor US corporations so that the US can sell things at an advantage over others in the world by subsidizing things we make and by keeping regimes in power that keep wages low thus undermining wages at home.
The most important election in our lifetime? I think not.
Friday, September 03, 2004
Volunteer for Vietnam? Bad Idea
I certainly do think that from a pratical political point of view Kerry should stress his Vietnam service to contrast it to the chickenhawks who run the show today. But in a sane time this bragging about volunteering for a war that brought the death of 3 million southeast asians from peasant societies would be seen as grotesque to say the least. Here's some perspective on the war in southeast asia.
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
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