Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Health Care Reform

I’m late in posting this but it is so compelling that, really, it’s better late than not at all.  On October 7, 2009, Keith Olberman devoted his hour-long show on MSNBC to a special comment on health care reform in the United States.  Really, I think it is more than a statement about health care legislation.  It is a passionate and obviously deeply felt commentary about fundamental human values and how we embody them – or fail to embody them – in government policy.  Today the National Academy of Science announced that it has finally, for the first time since the 1950’s, revised its criteria for determining who is “living in poverty” and as a result has determined that 15.8% or almost 1 in 6 Americans are living in poverty.  The news should only amplify Olberman’s denunciation of those who profit from human misery.

more about “Keith Olbermann’s Full-Hour Special C…“, posted with vodpod

Filed under: Economic crisis, Must read

Is this only about health care reform?

More than any other issue, the fight for health care reform has become the touchstone of progressive versus reactionary politics in the United States.  Those who favor reform have a variety of opinions about the best way to carry it out – ranging from those who want no more than a tweak of our current system that benefits profiteering insurance companies and health care corporations, to those (like me) who advocate for a single-payer national health service.  Not only do we disagree among ourselves about health care reform, but we reflect a wide range of opinions on a host of other issues as well.

The most vocal opponents of health care reform don’t have this problem.  They are increasingly in lock-step with each other and with the corporate-funded right wing ideologues that set the tone for their “debates” with public officials.  And they are united not only in opposition to universal access to health care, but they also share a vicious contempt for everyone who doesn’t think, look, talk and act like them.  This vocal fringe looks more and more like a nascent fascist movement when you consider that not only is it thoroughly reactionary and militantly disruptive, but also that it totally fronts for the interests of Big Business while maintaining a pseudo-populist rhetoric that makes it sound like just the opposite.

Consider these two examples.  In the first, a wheelchair-bound woman is booed and heckled while trying to make a comment about how lack of access to health insurance is affecting her life and the lives of her family members, including the possibility that they will lose their home to foreclosure.

In the second, right here in Connecticut, Bishop Emilio Alverez of Stamford poses a question in Spanish to Congressperson Jim Himes (who speaks Spanish fluently).  The anti-health care crowd goes wild – screaming at, insulting and trying to shout down the bishop . . . finally breaking out in chants of  “English! English! English” to try to drown him out or force him to sit down.

Filed under: Economic crisis, Fighting oppression, Must read

Hartford IMC reports on racial profiling in West Hartford

This is a must-read. Too many of us living in “liberal” suburbs think this only happens in blue collar communities or urban areas. I’ll say no more – the first hand experience of the writer speaks for itself.

http://hartfordimc.org/2009/08/26/a-lesson-in-privilege-from-the-whpd/

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Must read

Anti-war movement should stop making easy choices, start making right ones

The already weakened anti-war movement in the U.S. has reacted with confusion to some recent developments in the U.S. war on the peoples of the Middle East.  In case there was any doubt, though, recent events show that the movement cannot view the situation in the various countries of the region independently of each other.

Moreover, it’s high time that some movement leaders stopped making the easy choices and started making the right choices.  The easy – but false – victory for Obama’s fake “withdrawal” of U.S. troops from Iraq, egging on the drumbeats for a U.S. war against Iran, sitting silently while U.S. and NATO forces become mired in a hopeless occupation of Afghanistan . . . these all reflect a movement leadership that is more concerned with currying favor in Washington than in stopping the ruthless and bloody U.S. war machine.

The following analysis from Workers World doesn’t offer easy solutions or paint regional complexities in black-and-white.  It tells the truth about the real issue: the U.S. role in the region.  And it concludes by calling on activists and organizations to stay focused on the task in front of us, which is not to decide who should rule in Iran but to force our government to take its boot off the neck of the people of the Middle East.

Anti-war movement debates Iran, the Middle East and U.S. wars

By John Catalinotto

Published Jul 20, 2009 9:30 PM

The conflict in Iran that opened up with the June presidential elections there has had an impact on the progressive and anti-imperialist movement worldwide, including in the United States. Misunderstanding the events has created some confusion in anti-war ranks. This is especially dangerous after Vice President Joe Biden on July 5 gave a virtual green light to an Israeli attack on Iran. The anti-war movement must stay alert to protest any move in that direction.

When very large crowds of people took to the streets in Tehran on June 15 to protest the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it appeared that this was an authentic popular movement, even if its strongest base was in the more affluent parts of the city.

Young people and women apparently were playing a large role in the protests. Some of the demands were for women’s rights and other democratic rights that were constrained by the religious political leadership of Iran’s revolution. It was easy for Western secular progressives to identify with the protests.

But some big questions remained.

If the protests were progressive, why did all the imperialist politicians in Europe and the United States and their corporate media take the sides of the opposition? This is especially strange since the key players in the opposition, the candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, were themselves identified with the regime in the past. At the time, U.S. sources even charged Mousavi with responsibility for overseeing the 1983 blast in Lebanon that killed over 200 U.S. Marines, since he was Iran’s premier then.

Rafsanjani, who is one of the richest people in Iran, is associated with increased privatization of industry and banking and with opening friendlier relations with U.S. imperialism. This would necessarily include cutting back on support for the Hamas and Hezbollah liberation movements and perhaps for Syria, and increasing cooperation with the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. How would privatization and cooperation with the U.S. increase democratic rights inside Iran?

A serious consideration of these questions must include an examination of U.S. imperialism’s goals regarding the entire Middle East and Central Asia. The George W. Bush administration used the 9/11 attack as a pretext to justify U.S. military aggression in the entire region—although the real goal was to conquer its world-important energy resources. A look at the news in the second week of July shows that this basic strategy remains in place.

U.S. troops still in Iraq

Some deceptive headlines gave the false impression that U.S. troops essentially withdrew from Iraq on June 30. Yet 134,000 troops remain in the country. They pulled out of 142 posts that were inside Iraqi cities, turning these posts over to Iraqi troops, but remain in 320 other posts around Iraq.

In some cases, rather than moving, the U.S. and Iraqi forces simply redefined the city boundaries, leaving the troops where they were. Such was the case with the U.S. Army’s Forward Operating Base Falcon, which used to be located inside Baghdad. Now, with a new boundary drawn, the 3,000 U.S. troops there are “outside” the city limits.

U.S. troops and higher paid mercenaries are expanding and improving their rural bases and even building new ones. Even if the Obama administration sticks to the announced timetable, at least 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq until at least the end of 2011. A war-spending bill the Democrat-controlled Congress just passed pours another $100 billion into the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. (Information from the website of Iraq expert Dahr Jamail—dahrjamailiraq.com)

Washington escalates war on Afghanistan and Pakistan

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, U.S. troop levels have already grown to 57,000 and are set to rise to 68,000 during the year. According to McClatchy News Service, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said July 13 “that when he gives his assessment to the Obama administration next month of what is needed to defeat the Taliban, he won’t be deterred by administration statements that he cannot have more U.S. troops.”

Britain, too, has escalated its presence in Afghanistan, with the result that 15 British troops died in the two weeks ending July 13. The Afghan occupation is nominally under NATO command. European leaders have ignored popular anti-war sentiment to send troops to the Afghan front, basing their appeal on President Obama’s reviving U.S. popularity in Europe after Bush brought its ratings to an all-time low.

Support for the war is waning quickly as the casualties mount, in Britain as well as in the rest of Europe and Canada.

Even the New York Times has had to admit that the increased troop strength and military activity in Afghanistan, with an increase in civilian casualties, is helping recruiting by the Taliban and other resistance forces. (July 3)

Along with Afghanistan is increased U.S. intervention in Pakistan. Both drones and planes are sent to bomb and rocket alleged “insurgent” targets, while the Pentagon pushes the Pakistani regime to send its army into border areas. Both activities have increased civilian deaths and created millions of refugees inside Pakistan. They have also increased recruiting by opposition forces, some allied with the Afghan resistance.

U.S. policies in Palestine

Washington’s policy toward Palestine has been to continue support for the Israeli state, despite Israel’s refusal to even stop new settlements in the occupied West Bank and its brutal blockade of the Gaza territory. It is based on U.S. strategic interests in the region, which involve relying on the Israeli state as a weapon against any liberation movement or sovereign government in the region.

The U.S.-based media attacked the Iranian elections as fraudulent. But remember that in Palestine, Washington and Israel refused to recognize what they knew were honest elections that made Hamas the leading party in 2006. Since then the U.S.-Israeli alliance has used force and withheld aid to try to drive Hamas from office.

Washington hasn’t altered its basic policy of occupation and control since the replacement of the neo-con regime fronted by Bush. So it’s consistent with their past misdeeds that the corporate media and all imperialist politicians—at least in North America and Europe—have targeted the Iranian government over the elections and have praised the opposition demonstrations.

Whatever the motive of the protesters themselves in Tehran, the imperialists’ motive is to eliminate Iranian sovereignty and reverse the 1979 revolution.

N.E.D.-funded group calls anti-Iran protest

A group in the U.S. calling itself United 4 Iran has called for protests on July 25 targeting the Iranian government. It says this is in sympathy with the youth and women involved in opposition demonstrations there. The anti-imperialist Stop War on Iran group, in response, issued a statement exposing the connections of United 4 Iran with funding groups closely associated with U.S. foreign policy—like the National Endowment for Democracy—and argues against any support for these protests.

“U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s new public threat against Iran underlines the dangers of a new war in the Middle East and the desperate need for political clarity within the anti-war movement concerning Iran,” the SWOI statement begins.

“With his July 5 comments on ABC’s This Week, Biden opened the door to a military attack when he said that the U.S. would not stand in the way of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, calling such an attack Israel’s ‘sovereign right.’”

SWOI notes that some anti-war organizations have endorsed the United 4 Iran action, including United for Peace and Justice, and “urges them and other honest anti-war forces to reconsider their endorsement of the anti-Iran actions.”

SWOI urges everyone instead to “come out AGAINST current U.S. wars and the threats of a new war on the following week in a National Day of Coordinated Actions on Saturday, Aug. 1.” To read the full statement and/or to participate, see stopwaroniran.org.

E-mail: jcat@workers.org

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Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Filed under: International solidarity, Must read

Leslie Feinberg: “Making revolution irresistible”

Leslie Feinberg’s statement upon receiving the Lambda Literary Foundation lifetime achievement award on May 28, 2009.

I thank the Lambda Literary Foundation for this award. It’s especially strengthening at a time when I’m so ill. I was moved to learn that Board members hadn’t known I was ill when they made their decision about this award.

I have several associations with the word “pioneer.” The best, the one you clearly intend, is trail blazing. I’m not the first same-sex-loving, gender-variant novelist, hirstorian, journalist, essayist or poet to make art. And for millenia, art rendered on every continent has explored themes that are described in today’s English-language terms as same-sex love, transsexuality, intersexuality and gender variance–in narratives spoken, rhymed, signed, sung, chanted, acted, danced, smelted, sculpted, drawn, painted, carved, etched, cast and written. In the long, long history of our cooperative human past, story tellers/teachers/hirstorians played a social role, passing on communal knowledge harvested by group labor.

[continued at absent cause]

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Must read

Class perspective: Socialism or capitalism?

It’s all about your class perspective.

An editorial in this week’s socialist newspaper Workers World poses the question “Socialism or capitalism?” and points to a recent Rasmussen Reports poll showing that only 53% of Americans believe that capitalism is a better system than socialism. Interestingly, while the poll shows that only 20% of the 1,000 people interviewed preferred socialism, among people under the age of 30, the results were about evenly divided between those that preferred socialism, those that preferred capitalism and those that were undecided.  The WW editorial points to these poll results as an indication that working people are questioning a system that has left millions of us in free fall.

This only makes sense, right?  Even if you disagreed with socialist ideas you’d at least be able to comprehend that when the unemployment in your community runs to 20% or 25% with worse to come on the horizon, you might question whether the system that produces such horrors really reflects the best that we can hope for.  Even a devout believer in the wonders of capitalist production (and its cycles of boom and bust) could at least understand that many working people have reason to be skeptical.

Interestingly, some corporate media see just the opposite.  One newspaper’s coverage of reaction to the Rasmussen Report poll characterized Americans as “clueless about capitalism” and suggested that the poll shows that we lack “financial literary.”  I guess this is in contrast to the brilliant financial literacy demonstrated by the analysts at AIG or Bank of America or Citi who didn’t see the global economic crisis even while it was looming in front of them.  Another newspaper editor sees the poll results as a sign of “degeneracy” and claims that it shows that 47% of Americans are  “ignorant of our democratic principles, economics, history and what’s going on in much of the world today.”

Of course these interpretations of the poll are premised on one simple assumption: what’s good for the people who run this country is good for working people too.  Yet we live in a time when we are losing over 600,000 jobs every month and home foreclosures are at a record high.  No doubt if you are one of the very few whose earning power is in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year, you, too, feel the bite of the recession into your bank accounts.  The difference is that the boom and bust of capitalism won’t leave you homeless or unable to take your kid to a doctor.  And whether you live with that fear, the fear that is felt by every working person in a time of severe economic crisis, is determinative of whether you can reasonably and logically conclude that the continuation of the capitalist system is in your interest.

Filed under: Economic crisis, Must read, They're Not Like Us

Economy Still in Freefall

I confess, I don’t understand economics very well.  Like a lot of people, I have been forced to pay attention and try to understand the workings of capitalist economics because of the global economic crisis.  Granted, this has not given me the deep insight and understanding of the direction of the U.S. economy that I would have if I worked at, say, AIG or Shearson Lehman, but I get by.

I have often urged people, in this blog and elsewhere, to pay attention to the corporate-owned media sources that cover the economy, such as MarketWatch and Bloombergs.  That’s where the capitalists and their hired hands tend to tell the truth (as they see it) about what’s going on in the world.

But it’s also nice when you have some sources you can turn to that can not only say what is happening but also can provide some critical insight into why it is happening.  Certainly one of the people to provide true critical insight into the global economic crisis is Fred Goldstein of Workers World, author of the book “Low Wage Capitalism: Colossus With Feet of Clay.” In addition to his book, you can read Fred’s regular contributions and watch podcasts at workers.org. [Note that the middle bar of this blog also runs the RSS feed for workers.org]

Another place to look for more day-to-day reports is the Dollars & Sense blog. In addition to selecting articles of importance from the corporate media, the editors offer a range of articles reflecting a left-liberal to social-democratic analysis.

Recently, with the slight rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (until this week, that is), the mainstream corporate media has begun to talk about “signs of recovery” in the economy. Is this optimism warranted? For a great summary of the vital statistics of the economy right now and evidence that the recession is far from over, I recommend “Economy Still in Freefall,” posted on Dollars & Sense yesterday and written by an economist at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. It’s vital information and easy reading – well, as easy as it can be to see just how bad things really are.

Filed under: Economic crisis, Must read

“Low Wage Capitalism” another must-read

And while we are on the topic of important new books, there’s also “Colossus with Feet of Clay: Low Wage Capitalism” by Fred Goldstein. The subtitle: “What the new globalized, high-tech imperialism means for the class struggle in the U.S.” should tell you right away that this isn’t another academic exercise, and indeed, Fred is a long time fighter in the class struggle. Not convinced? Read this review by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire. Then order the book from Leftbooks.com.

Filed under: Economic crisis, Must read

“Good, and Now Back to Work: Avoiding Both Cynicism and Overconfidence in the Age of Obama”

Thanks to Tim Wise, white anti-racist activist, for one of the best post-election commentaries on what this election was and was not about, what it did and did not accomplish, and how we can move forward without being cynical or naively over-optimistic.

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Must read