Blog of the Week:
BeyondChron
San Francisco's Alternative Online Daily |
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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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Quick Links...
CCDS Discussion
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Solidarity Economy:
What It's All About
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Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging
Edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Naber
$45, Syracuse University Press
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Tropic of Chaos
By Christian Parenti 
Nation Books $18.95 at Powell's |
Planet of Slums
by Mike Davis
Verso
Paperback
List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $8.00
Buy Now
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Carl Davidson's Latest Book:
New Paths to Socialism
Essays on Mondragon, Marx, Gramsci and the Green and Solidarity Economies |
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An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 War Crimes Rising,
Jobs Crisis Grows
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... |
WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in US Raid
Handcuffed and Shot in Head, UN Says
This cell phone photo was shot by a resident of Ishaqi on March 15, 2006, of bodies Iraqi police said were of children executed by U.S. troops after a night raid there. Here, the bodies of the five children are wrapped in blankets and laid in a pickup bed to be taken for burial. A State Department cable obtained by WikiLeaks quotes the U.N. investigator of extrajudicial killings as saying an autopsy showed the residents of the house had been handcuffed and shot in the head, including children under the age of 5. McClatchy obtained the photo from a resident when the incident occurred. By Matthew Schofield McClatchy Newspapers A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi. The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks' website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred. But Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger....
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The Human Cost of 'Wars of Choice':
Female Trafficking Soars in Iraq
By Rebecca Murray
InterPress Service
BAGHDAD, Aug 27 (IPS) - Rania was 16 years old when officials raped her during Saddam Hussein's 1991 crackdown in Iraq's Shia south. "My brothers were sentenced to death, and the price to stop this was to offer my body," she says. Cast out for bringing 'shame' to her family, Rania ran away to Baghdad and soon fell into living and working in Baghdad's red light district.
Prostitution and sex trafficking are epidemic in Iraq, where the violence of military occupation and sectarian strife have smashed national institutions, impoverished the population and torn apart families and neighbourhoods. Over 100,000 civilians have been killed and an estimated 4.4 million Iraqis displaced since 2003.
"Wars and conflicts, wherever they are fought, invariably usher in sickeningly high level of violence against women and girls," Amnesty International states.
Rania worked her way up as a sex trafficker's deputy, collecting money from clients. "If I had four girls, and about 200 clients a day - it could be about 50 clients for each one of them," she explains.
Sex costs about 100 dollars a session now, Rania says. Many virgin teenage girls are sold for around 5,000 dollars, and trafficked to popular destinations like northern Iraq, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Non-virgins are about half that price.
Girls who run away to escape domestic violence or forced marriage are the most vulnerable prey for men working for pimps in bus stations and taxi stands. Some girls are also sold into marriages by family relatives, only to be handed over to trafficking rings. ...
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AFL-CIO to Obama: This Is What
a Real Jobs Plan Look Like
 By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Blog
The nation's ailing economy needs a prescription powerful enough to heal the jobs crisis and America's working families need an independent political voice that's not beholden to parties or politicians, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
At a Labor Day press conference this afternoon, Trumka unveiled a six-point "America Wants to Work" jobs and economy initiative "that is serious and reflects the scale of the crisis we face." The plan includes:
--Rebuilding the nation's transportation and energy infrastructure;
--Reviving U.S. manufacturing and ending the exportation of U.S. jobs;
--Putting people to work in local communities;
--Helping states and local governments to prevent layoffs and cuts to public services;
--Extending unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and helping homeowners keep their homes; and
--Reforming Wall Street so it helps Main Street create jobs.
Here's detailed look:....
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Good Dictators and Bad Dictators
 By Reese Erlich
Common Dreams
Perhaps you are confused by U.S. policy towards Middle East dictators. The U.S. supports some, denounces others and launches missiles to overthrow another. Having reported from the region for over 25 years, I can explain what might otherwise seem to be an inconsistent U.S. policy.
There are good dictators and bad dictators. We support the good ones and denounce the bad ones, unless of course, we change our minds.
Take Muammar Qaddafi - please. When he nationalized U.S. and European oil companies in the 1970s, he became a bad dictator. He was such a bad dictator, no one could agree on how to spell his name (Gaddafi? Khadafy?)
Qaddafi was such a bad dictator that the Reagan Administration bombed Tripoli in 1986. But Qaddafi stuck around for another 25 years, proving once again the effectiveness of aerial bombardment in punishing bad dictators.
In 2003 Qaddafi, expecting a U.S. victory in Iraq, stopped planning to build a nuclear weapon and otherwise cooperated with the U.S. and Europeans. While Britain and the U.S. removed sanctions against Libya, Qaddafi blithely continued the brutal repression of his own people.
That was OK, however, because Qaddafi was no longer a bad dictator. He was just naughty.
When a popular uprising against Qaddafi seemed about to lose earlier this year, Qaddafi once again became a very, very bad dictator bent on genocide against his own people. U.S. and European powers began an aerial war but said they wouldn't send ground troops. They sent in CIA operatives instead.
The opposition leaders, who assassinated their own top general, are now known as heroic freedom fighters. Now that Qaddafi appears to be defeated, western powers have to find a good dictator to take over. That won't be easy because of the feuds existing amongst exiled politicians, tribal leaders and former Qaddafi officials.
Another wonderful example is Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. He accepted billions in U.S. military aid and didn't attack Israel. He conducted fraudulent elections, allowed only government-controlled trade unions, muzzled the press and jailed dissidents, subjecting them to horrific torture.
He was a good dictator.....
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Two 9/11's: One Remembered, One Forgotten
By Harry Targ
Diary of a Heartland Radical
9/11 in Chile
On the bright and sunny morning of September 11, 1973, aircraft bombed targets in Valparaiso, Chile, and moved on to the capital, Santiago. Following a well-orchestrated plan, tanks rolled into the capital city, occupied the central square, and fired on the Presidential palace. Inside that building, President Salvador Allende broadcast a final address to his people and fatally shot himself as soldiers entered his quarters.
Thousands of Allende supporters were rounded up and held in the city's soccer stadium and many, including renowned folk singer Victor Jara, were tortured and killed. For the next fifteen years, Chilean workers were stripped of their right to form unions, political parties and elections were eliminated, and the junta led by General Augusto Pinochet ruled with an iron fist all but ignored outside the country until Chileans began to mobilize to protest his scheme to become President for life.
9/11 in the United States
Of course, 9/11/01 was different. The United States was attacked by foreign terrorists, approximately 3,000 citizens and residents were killed at the World Trade Center, over a rural area in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon. People all over the world expressed their sorrow and sympathy for the victims of the 9/11 attacks as the American people experienced shock and dismay.
But then everything began to change. Within days of the terrorist attacks, members of President Bush's cabinet began to advocate a military assault on Iraq, a longstanding target of the Washington militarists of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Now is the time, they said, to take out Saddam Hussein, seize control of Iraqi oil fields, and reestablish United States control over the largest share of the oil fields of the Persian Gulf region. Cooler heads prevailed for a time, however. We cannot attack Iraq, critics said, because Iraq had nothing to do with the crimes in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington....
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Ecology Protest in China: Dalian Residents
March Against Toxic White Powder 'Snow'
By Gary Pansey & Joe Wu
Epoch Times Staff
Aug 29, 2011 - Residents living near a petrochemical plant in Dalian, China demonstrated on Aug. 27, seeking to ensure their safety after the plant spilled particulates 2 days prior and discharged clouds of thick smoke the day before. The marchers, who cried, "Keep Us Alive," were dispersed by police and the company did not respond to their complaints.
The plant is owned by Petrochina Dalian and this incident is the second protest against chemical pollution this month in the area.
The residents demonstrated in the morning near the petroleum market in Shanzhong Street. Around noon, the authorities dispatched hundreds of policemen and special units to block the street with their police cars so that the demonstration would be interrupted.
 Mrs. Wang, a laid-off worker from Plant 523, described the situation: "On Thursday and Friday some residents protested with a sit-in at the Number 2 & 3 in the petrochemical factory and asked for a resolution of the workers' migration status problems and an accounting of the spill's toxicity. However, the factory treated the protestors with indifference; nobody received them nor were any reasons for the spill disclosed to them. Apparently, the factory did not take the civilians' lives seriously."
Mrs. Wang said that the powder spilled seemed to be poisonous. Afterwards, her skin felt very uncomfortable and itchy all the time. ...
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Book review: 'The Chitlin' Circuit
and the Road to Rock 'n Roll'
By Preston Lauterbach. W.W. Norton &. Co., $26.95
Reviewed by Carlo Wolff
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Aug. 28, 2011 - Memphis journalist Preston Lauterbach has written a fascinating work about the culture that incubated rock 'n' roll in "The Chitlin' Circuit." Not only is his breezy, smart book packed with detail (want to learn what "skinning" means?), it's fun and carries just the right amount of spice. This is colorful history about a black-and-white world that lost its distinctive complexion.
Besides accounts of seminal figures such as small combo pioneer Louis Jordan; Roy Brown, the sensation who hit in 1947 with "Good Rockin' Tonight"; the flamboyant Little Richard, and the hard-working James Brown, Mr. Lauterbach provides insights into the culture that brought these men to prominence. He joins critics such as Peter Guralnick and Philip Booth in crafting vivid portraits of a period marked by a particular vernacular and rhythm that are passing into myth.
The scenes Mr. Lauterbach probes have largely vanished, and integration is partly to blame, he suggests. While he doesn't endorse the segregation that defined the chitlin' circuit, he deplores the identity lost when the circuit, now a mere shadow of its funky and robust self, crumbled in the face of racial and economic change.
Certainly blame urban renewal, a 1960s program that effectively decimated Beale Street, the legendary Memphis "stroll" that nurtured the blend of jazz and blues that defined early rock. "The stroll," a term coined by Chicago bandleader Walter Barnes, is the name for the main artery of chitlin' culture. "Any place with a sizable black population grew a darktown, and each of these black districts centered on a main thoroughfare, a world unto itself," Mr. Lauterbach writes....
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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
Ladder,' drawing on the lessons of the movement in the South in the
1950s and 1960s.
Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS |
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