Blog of the Week:
Wales Cooperative Center 
Mondragon-style Coops in Wales
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By Randy Shannon, CCDS
choice "Everyone has the right to work, to free of employment, to
just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against
unemployment."
- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948
I. Introduction
The "Great Recession" that began in 2007 has caused the greatest
percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is
the end of an era of unrestrained 'neo-liberal' capitalism that became
public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new
level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that
targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II. |
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Order Our
Full Employment Booklets
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Capitalism may well collapse under its own excesses, but what would one
propose to replace it? Margaret Thatcher's mantra was TINA...There Is No
Alternative. David Schweickart's vision of "Economic Democracy"
proposes a serious alternative. Even more fundamentally, it opens the
door to thinking about alternatives. His may or may not turn out to be
the definitive "successor system," but he is a leader in breaking out of
the box. |
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Solidarity Economy:
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California Red:
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An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 The Debt Debate
Puts the Joke on Us...
We're the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism...Do you have friends who should see this? Pass it on...Do you have a blog of your own? Others you love to read every day? Well, this is a place where you can share access to them with the rest of your comrades. Just pick your greatest hits for the week and send them to us at carld717@gmail.com! Most of all, it's urgent that you oppose austerity, make solidarity and end the wars! We're doing more than ever, and have big plans. So pay your dues, make a donation and become a sustainer. Do it Now! Check the link at the bottom... |
In the Debt Ceiling Machinations
Democracy is Also Up for Grabs
By Carl Bloice BlackCommentator.com It is tempting to describe last week's Congressional battle over the budget as a spectacle with lots of theatrics reflecting little more that jockeying for political position. That would be a mistake. It was much more than that. It involved weighty substance bearing on the future economic well-being of millions of people, particularly working people. Perhaps even more importantly, the future of democracy was also at stake. And still is. Someone on television said last week that the bill bearing the name of House Speaker John Boehner "gave" President Obama an increase in the debt ceiling. Actually, it was neither the House Republicans' to give; nor was it Obama's to receive. The ceiling has been lifted 77 times since 1917 and it was never a gift to anybody; it has been a normal process of government. Never before has the process been a successful tool for crude extortion. If the people who set the Tea Party in motion and sustain it want a mandatory "balanced budget" there is a democratic way of going about getting one; introduce specific legislation. They wouldn't take that route. Theirs is an awful idea, it would unlikely ever become law, and more people are coming to realize that what's being proposed is just another slimy maneuver to go after - amongst other things - Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid....
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War, Debt and the President
By Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
August 2, 2011 - President Barack Obama touted his debt ceiling deal Tuesday, saying, "We can't balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession." Yet that is what he and his coterie of Wall Street advisers have done.
In the affairs of nations, Alexander Hamilton wrote in January 1790, "loans in times of public danger, especially from foreign war, are found an indispensable resource." It was his first report as secretary of the treasury to the new Congress of the United States. The country had borrowed to fight the Revolutionary War, and Hamilton proposed a system of public debt to pay those loans.
The history of the U.S. national debt is inexorably tied to its many wars. The resolution this week of the so-called debt ceiling crisis is no different. Not only did a compliant Congress agree to fund President George W. Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with emergency appropriations; it did so with borrowed money, raising the debt ceiling 10 times since 2001 without quibbling.
So how did the Pentagon fare in the current budget battle? It looks like it did fine. Not to be confused with the soldiers and veterans who have fought these wars.
"This year is the 50th anniversary of [Dwight] Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech," William Hartung of the Center for International Policy told me while the Senate assembled to vote on the debt ceiling bill. Speaking of the late general turned Republican U.S. president, Hartung said: "He talked about the need for a balanced economy, for a healthy population. Essentially, he's to the left of Barack Obama on these issues." ...
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Blacks and Obama: Deep Loyalties, Harsh Realities
 By Sharon Kyle
LA Progressive
Columnist Kevin Alexander Gray of The Progressive asks, "The dilemma of black politics is whether it is about changing the system or running it. Is it about ending the empire and elitism or running the empire and somehow becoming part of the elite? And what will people sacrifice for the latter?"
Answers to these questions take us to the heart of the quandary blacks face when questioning the Obama Administration's policies. African-Americans voted overwhelmingly to elect Barack Obama in 2008. His victory was felt by and extended to all African-Americans. Barack Obama's victory gave a different kind of hope to African-Americans, a group that has contributed mightily to America's success, but that has historically gotten the short end of every stick.
Perhaps because of this, unlike most progressives, the vast majority of African-Americans are deeply loyal to this President. It's as if he symbolizes the realization of a dream and the return-on-investment of their ancestors. Whether the black community knowingly or deliberately seeks to end an empire or run an empire is not known. But what is apparent is that blacks in America are suffering more than most during this economic crisis but they are the least likely to complain about President Obama's policies....
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Film Review: The Beginning of the Great Revival
by Kasama correspondent in south China
You can tell me a movie is engaging the audience in China when people quit answering their cell phones. On the afternoon I saw The Beginning of the Great Revival, this point occurred as the rebellious students of the May 4th Movement poured into Tiananmen Square to denounce the Versailles treaty that ended WWI. Like many points in the movie it was well crafted and powerfully evocative.
A young woman silently confronts a line of soldiers by holding a banner written in her own blood. Students appeal to soldiers guarding government ministers and win them over as they pour into the compound and roughly confront those in authority and then set fire to the building. Finally, the government brutally strikes back.
The middle aged woman next to me, who has already taken two calls and was on the phone when this scene began, had stopped talking; the phone still in her hand as tears streamed down her face. I am not sure what this scene meant to her but to me in brought alive the memory of all the times the radical youth of China have flung themselves at the authority of the state and yes that means the Red Guard of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and yes that means the students and workers that poured into Tiananmen Square on May 4th, 1989.
Of course reviewing a movie in a language I am still learning (and far from proficient in) is its own unique challenge. Still the outline of history is well known and the film follows the big events from the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 until the founding convention of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
The young Mao gets a large role in the movie and like other current depictions in movies here, he is played with a serene, yet still commanding presence that has everyone always stopping to listen to him whenever he speaks. This exaggerates his own importance at this stage of history but there is also a recent emphasis on showing something of his personal life apart from political pronouncements. In this movie this is done through scenes of the relationship with the woman who would become his first wife.
On the larger scale the Bolshevik Revolution is shown and Lenin is depicted addressing first congress of the Communist International.
This may not be the first portrayal of Lenin in a major motion picture since the fall of the Soviet Union but is no doubt the most enthusiastic. Within China the movie supports Mike ely's comments about the danger of misinterpreting the small size of the Communist Party in 1921. It may have only had 57 members then but many of these comrades were already playing leading roles in not only the mass student movement but also the beginning of the labor movement. The potential of this small circle was well recognized by the communist International and there are great scenes of the two Comintern agents shaking the police agents following them to find the location of the congress....
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Jobs and GOP 'Dialectics':
Turning Things Into Their Opposites
 By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue
People sometimes either groan or laugh when they hear the term 'dialectics,' a word which some people use to bamboozle others into thinking they know something when they don't.
But here's a great 'laughing out loud' example inspired by a few lines for Mike Hall's current post on the AFL-CIO blog today, Aug. 2:
"The 4,000 furloughed Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) workers and 90,000 workers on airport construction projects stalled by the Republican shutdown of the FAA are worrying about how they will pay their bills in the coming weeks.
"But the only worry House Republicans have is how they are going to spend their six-week summer vacation. House Republicans leaders adjourned the House last night until Sept. 7 without taking action on reauthorizing an FAA bill so the agency-shutdown since July 22-could reopen and construction funds move down the pipeline again."
So here's a great example of Republican 'dialectics', their 'Jobs Plan' of turning real jobs into their opposites, non-jobs. It's easy to laugh at, if it didn't mean so much suffering for so many working-class families. I suppose we could say there's a 'unity of opposite' there, too.
One thing that burns me up more than GOP nonsense, though, are many of the mainstream media pundits who don't have any idea on how to ask a decent follow-up question. When our right wing lawmakers (and their White House allies) go on at length about cutting this and slashing that, taking money from low-income and middle-income workers and giving it to the super-rich, there always comes a point where they assert, 'and this will create jobs!.'
Back in my youth I taught logic for a year at the University of Nebraska. Full disclosure here: I actually appreciate real dialectics, and other rules of argument. But one point I often made to my students: An assertion is not an argument.
Now why can't our media pundits say, 'Wait a minute here, Congressman (or other policy wonk). You're cutting both spending and jobs, reducing overall demand. Then you assert this creates jobs? Can you tell us exactly how that works? Especially when it's mainly demand that creates jobs? An assertion is not an argument."
If I heard it just once on CNN, it would make my day.
My logic course back in 1965 was for incoming freshman. Wouldn't it be great if news anchors could at least reach that level, even if it's too much to expect of Congress and the White House? All the more reason we have to rely on our own labor-oriented blogs and news services. We know how to make use of decent dialectics, and put a spotlight on the foolish versions of our adversaries.
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Exile's Fate: Diaspora or Return to Tibet
By Yoichi Shimatsu
The 4th Media - Beijing
July 19, 2011 - The White House hosted a Dalai Lama who is now in many ways different from global icon of the past. Tenzin Gyatso (birth name of the 14th Dalai Lama) is a retiree and no longer the head of a government in exile. His elected successor as head of Tibetan Central Authority is a research scholar from Harvard Law School. Lobsang Sangay, 43, is a secular prime minister and not a monk, indicating a significant break with the tradition of theocratic rule.
The Dalai Lama's retreat from political leadership reflects the changes sweeping over the Tibetan community, both in exile and in the homeland. A new era is dawning for Tibetans, forcing many Tibetans to wake up from the dreams of the past 60 years of exile.
The Dalai Lama's retirement from politics means that his Gelugpa, or Yellow Hat monks, have lost their dominance over religious affairs and are now merely one of several schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The older schools - the Nyingma, Kagyu and Sakya - are showing greater vitality in terms of recruitment of followers and formation of new temples. These Buddhist schools and the polytheist Bon religion are unlikely to ever again accept Gelugpa dominance.
The coming of age of a could well result in a schism between Yellow Hat factions inside and outside of the Chinese borders. The Gelugpa inside China tend toward religious conservatism and traditionalism, while the exiled monks have been much more exposed to Western lifestyles and liberal values. The China-based Yellow Hat monks are insistent that the next Dalai Lama must be a full-blooded Tibetan born in Tibet.
In response to the nativist demands, the Dalai Lama dropped his suggestions of a foreign-born rebirth and instead made high-profile visits to Tawang, a part of the Tibetan Plateau seized by the British colonialists and incorporated into India as the state of Arunachal Pradesh. The rebirth of a Dalai Lama on that long-contested borderland would reopen the territorial dispute between Lhasa and the former British Raj, in present-day terms, between China and India....
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Sixties-era 'Underground' Newspapers
Live on in New Media Websites and Blogs
 By Debi Martin
debimartin.wordpress.com
Research Question: What does the rise and fall and assimilation into mainstream press of alternative newspapers of in the 1960s tell us about the likely trajectory and diffusive capacity and ultimate legitimate cultural impact of the blogs and websites which have proliferated this decade?
Think: Rolling Stone magazine, regarded as relatively mainstream these days, it started as an alternative publication during the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967. It adapted its editorial mission and business model to survive and thrive.
Method: An Extended Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography to address the research question and lay the groundwork for further study in a larger work that will include a content analysis of and focus on the legacy and lessons learned from the operation of Sixties-era Houston "underground" newspaper Space City News!
My proposal will consist of a substantial extended literature and annotated bibliography that considers sources that compare and connect the cultural shifts, philosophical underpinnings and technical innovations that led to an explosion of alternative newspapers in the Sixties era and paved the way for online forums and blogs, which grew exponentially around and after the turn of the last century. The review will focus on identifying and appraising the most valid sources that locate the nexus where the egalitarian ethos - the DIY mentality and postmodernist sentiment against absolute meanings - of both eras intersect. Moreover, it will aim to address why after so many years of relative neglect, "underground" newspapers have this year become the subject of books by academics, have recently resurrected as online blogs, and whether participants in the new media blogosphere can learn anything about survival from the tale of the rise and fall of the alternative Sixties era press - and perhaps, its rebirth. Wherever possible, it will inform further research approaches on how to frame the contributions if any of Houston's Space City News! ...
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Become a CCDS member today!
 The
time is long past for 'Lone Rangers'. Being a socialist by your self is
no fun and doesn't help much. Join CCDS today--$36 regular, $48
household and $18 youth.
Better yet, beome a sustainer at $20 per month,
and we'll send you a copy of Jack O'Dell's new book, 'Climbing Jacobs
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1950s and 1960s.
Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS |
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