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February 17, 2012
In This Issue
Full Employment
Greece's Brutality
Debate over Greece
Afghan Lies
Grammys Protest
Oakland Debate
Hedges vs Black Bloc
Film: The Grey
Clint's Superbowl Ad
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Larry O'Donnell: Why Single-Payer Would Cure the Birth Control Mess

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Tina at AFL-CIO
Blog of the Week:



Proletarian Theory
Lost Writings of SDS..

Revolutionary Youth the the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the RYM Documents and other Lost Writings of SDS

Edited by Carl Davidson

 



Changemaker, 273pp, $22.50

For the full contents, click the link and view 'Preview' under the cover graphic.
 New Fall Issue of the CCDS Mobilizer is Out!


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.

Order Our
Full Employment Booklets

Buy Now
Tina at AFL-CIO

...In a new and updated 2nd Edition

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.
Quick Links...
CCDS Discussion
Sex, Race & Class: The Perspective of Winning

Tina at AFL-CIO

Author: Selma James
Foreword by: Marcus Rediker
Introduction by: Nina L�pez
Publisher: PM Press
$20.00
Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary

Tina at AFL-CIO

By Giuseppe Fiori
Verso, 30 pages
The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right



By Arthur Goldwag
Pantheon, 384pp
New Book: Diary of a Heartland Radical

By Harry Targ

Carl Davidson's Latest Book:
New Paths to Socialism



Essays on Mondragon, Marx, Gramsci and the Green and Solidarity Economies
Solidarity Economy:
What It's All About

Tina at AFL-CIO

Edited by Jenna Allard, Carl Davidson and Julie Matthaei

 Buy it here...
An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 
Austerity Crisis Has
Greece in Flames!
Are We Next in Line?
        
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 [email protected]!

Most of all, it's urgent that you oppose austerity, make solidarity with the Occupy! movement 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...
Greece: A Brutal Experiment on People's Lives



By Afrodity Giannakis

GreenLeft Weekly

Feb 12, 2012 - Greek unions launched a two-day general strike on February 10 against new extreme austerity measures the "troika" of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Union is seeking to impose on the southern European nation. The deal will give Greece a new "bail-out" worth 130 billion euros (A$161 billion) in return for fresh spending cuts.

Amid ongoing street protests and building occupations, the Greek cabinet approved the deal on February 10. Six cabinet members resigned in protest. Greek parliament was scheduled to vote on the deal on the evening of February 12.

Below, Afrodity Giannakis writes from Thessaloniki on the impact of the austerity on Greek society. 
 
I work as a permanent English teacher in a Greek village, where I drive every day from my home in Thessaloniki.

A few days ago, I was looking for a magazine in my neighbourhood at about 9am before going to work. I found that all the shops in the block had put up the shutters, except for one closer to my home, which did not have the magazine, anyway.

Shops closing down is a common occurrence in neoliberal capitalist Greece, but the situation has rapidly deteriorated since May 2010. That was the time of the first memorandum, imposed on Greece by the "troika" (the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - IMF) and the Greek Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) government.

Shop owners are forced to close because of the steep plunge in consumption, combined with higher government fees and other expenses.

I drove along the national road to go to work, about 45 kilometres from Thessaloniki. Until recently I worked 80km away from home. Last year I worked 700km away and it is highly uncertain where I will be placed next school year.

Far-away placements have been commonplace for Greek teachers for a long time. What is new is the rising casualisation, intensification of work and overall job insecurity.

Now, it is going to be almost impossible for teachers to make ends meet if they have to move away from home. Having a job at all is also highly uncertain.

The reason is that the troika, in close collaboration with the unelected Greek government imposed by the troika, has decided on more public sector sackings.

Crippling cuts

The plans are part of the second memorandum agreement between the troika and the Greek government.

This memorandum includes cuts of 14.3 billion euros between 2012 and 2015, starting with 3.3 billion euros this year.

With 11 million Greek people, these sums come up to a high amount per head. This is all the more shocking if we consider that a huge proportion of Greek people live in extreme poverty....(Click title for more)
Is Greece a Prelude to Revolution?
A Debate Rages Within the Left



By Savas Michael-Matsas

via MitchCohen.com

The worst fears of the ruling classes of Greece and Europe are becoming true: an uncontrollable social explosion is under way in Greece.

When these lines are written, late in the night on February 12-13, 2012, the violent clashes and street fights between demonstrators and the riot police, in the center of Athens and in other cities all over the country, still continue. The phony "majority" that just voted in Parliament the new package of measures of social cannibalism imposed by the troika of the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF cannot and will not stop the Greek social wild fire to expand in the country and spread beyond Greece, all over Europe and internationally.

The popular rally in Syntagma Square Sunday, February 12 was literally gigantic: nearly a million people converged in the Square in front of the Parliament from all the neighborhoods of the Greek capital, in a mass mobilization that superseded in magnitude and fighting spirit every previous one, including the huge rallies during the General Strikes of June and October 2011.

Last week, already two General Strikes had taken place, on February 7 and on February 10-11 but many factors - lack of preparation, bureaucratic opposition to a real mass mobilization, extremely bad weather conditions - although significant, they had nothing in common with what happened on February 12, when the masses flooded the streets in Athens and nearly all other cities giving a nearly insurrectionary character to the mobilization.

The riot police, with a prepared plan, attacked the people in Syntagma from the early moments of the rally, at 5.15 pm. When the well known composer Theodorakis and the hero of the anti-Nazi resistance Manolis Glezos, both nearly 90 years old, advanced to enter the Parliament to make a joint statement of protest, the riot police attacked them and all the demonstrators in the Square with tons of chemicals. From that moment the center of Athens was transformed into a battlefield, while people continued to come en masse from all directions. In front of the Parliament itself, they have resisted and remained until 10.30 pm some contingents from the EEK, ANTARSYA, and the youth of SYRIZA. But all the streets and avenues from Omonia to Syntagma and even around Acropolis were packed by people resisting the savage police brutality until late after midnight.

Barricades were erected in some of the streets. Banks, big shops, cinemas etc., about 40 buildings, were set on fire. The police station in Exarchia was attacked. A hundred citizens from all age groups were injured, some of them seriously and brought to the hospital. Another hundred were arrested, including the demonstrators who had occupied the Town Hall of Athens. The center of Athens looks today like a bombarded city.

It is noteworthy the fact that the Stalinist KKE one more time held its own independent rally in Omonia Square (they claim to have assembled 50 thousand people) but they avoided to join the many hundreds of thousands of people in and around Syntagma Square because of the clashes of the demonstrators with the police, and they remained far way from the battle, finally dispersing peacefully their contingents. According to the Stalinist mantra every violent clash with police forces, and any form of direct action is "a State provocation". (Click title for more...)
Truth, Lies and Afghanistan



How military leaders have let us down


By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS
Beaver County Peace Links
via Armed Forces Journal

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army's Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs - among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders. ...(Click title for more...)

Latin Jazz Musicans Lead Protest at Grammys For Cutting 31 Categories of Music

Latin Jazz Musicians Lead Protest Against Grammys For Cutting 31 Categories From Awards Show
Democracy Now! Report:Latin Jazz Musicians

Radicals Challenge Occupy Oakland's Direction

An Open Letter to the Broader Occupy Community Regarding Occupy Oakland From a Small Group of Oakland Radicals





By OaklandRadicals.Wordpress.com


We are a group of radical Oakland activists who have been involved with Occupy Oakland from the very first days. We were previously unknown to each other and met as a result of our frequent participation in OO events and GAs.  Two of us (a married couple) moved in to the encampment on the second day at Oscar Grant Plaza (OGP) and have attended all daily camp facilitation meetings and most OO events since then. Another has been active in the POC Committee and Children's Village/Children Parents, and Allies Committee. Another was involved within the labor community and in the early days of the Move-In Committee.

In our individualistic culture, it is rare when radical activists are able to pitch a big tent and draw in masses of people to the cause.  The early days of the Occupy movement provided one of those rare opportunities. Occupy was the spark for the emergence of a broad wave of anti-corporate, anti-repression sentiment in our society. We are concerned that the inclusivity that began this movement and contributed to its rapid growth is dying in OO as a result of the dominant insurrectionist tendencies and the "vanguardist" maneuvering and manipulations of some of its proponents. Dramatically shrinking numbers reveal that this ideology and organizing style either misreads the real political situation in Oakland, or else underestimates the importance of consolidating and advancing a broad, united and popular front. We all collectively must take responsibility for this "hardening" and shrinking of the OO ranks, and we must recognize that in trying to re-make OO in an ideologically purist vision, we are destroying our ability to garner the wide base of support and goodwill that will be necessary to successfully resist corporate and state domination.

Occupiers who have begun to question the decision-making processes involved in recent actions like J28 are being asked, in the name of unity, to maintain silence.  We have been told that our concerns will be dealt with, that there's nothing to worry about, and that we shouldn't speak publicly about them. Yet we feel that without transparency and open dialogue, the problems will only get worse. We are speaking to everyone who still believes in Occupy Oakland, but especially to those most active in the GA and various committees who have the ability to help us make the kinds of changes that would reassure the larger Bay Area community that Occupy Oakland is still a wise place to invest its energy.

The four of us decided to speak out because we have each been pushed to the margins of OO by ugly, ideological purification behavior that often now takes place at the GAs and in groups like the Move-In Committee, where dissenting voices are booed and jeered and "group speak" and in-group relationships now dominate. Please do not mistake our concerns as yet another attack on anarchism or Black Bloc; it's not about that at all. It's about the exclusionary strategies and tactics that alienate those of us who are interested in a slower, more solid, more inclusive approach of mass movement building.... (Click title for more)
That Window at Starbucks: Hedges vs. Black Bloc



By Bhaskar Sunkara

Dissent Magazine

Feb. 10, 2012 - Chris Hedges has the internet's attention. In an article for Truthdig, he identifies Black Bloc anarchists as "the cancer of the Occupy movement." Their confrontational ways, he argues, fly in the face of nonviolent principles, only further alienate the mainstream, and serve as justification for state repression.

Insurrectionists were angrier than usual. Other radicals joined in too. They accused Hedges of capitulating to the most timid elements in the movement. There were semi-literate blog posts, angry comment threads, and hateful tweets-the web at its finest. But there were also some considered replies. Most significantly, David Graeber responded in an open letter to Hedges.

I will spare readers a significant overview of the debate and keep myself to a short intervention. An intervention I only make because I feel that the debate's crystallization around these two figures is unfortunate. As articulate as Graeber is, the Black Bloc tactic deserves little defense. It offers no way forward for the democratic Left. Neither does Hedges's well-intentioned but inchoate liberalism.

Some background: The son of a Presbyterian minister, after receiving a Master of Divinity from Harvard, Hedges soon found himself in the New York Times's hallowed pages. He didn't play the mainstream journalism game very well. He condemned the Israeli occupation and earned rebuke from his employer for publicly damning the Iraq War....(Click title for more)
Film Review 'The Grey' and the Hearts of Men

By Dan Kaufman
Paste Magazine

What does it mean, on a spiritual and moral level, to be a man? What is our place in nature? When all the chips are down, what do we cling to as the measure of our character and worth as we leave the final mark of our very existence? These are the lofty questions posed by The Grey, the new film by director and co-writer Joe Carnahan, based on a short story called "Ghost Walker" by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers (who also co-wrote the screenplay).

It should be noted that one of the questions not answered by the movie is, "How awesome would it be to have grizzled badasses punch wolves in the face?", as some of the marketing for the film seems to suggest. This is a (purportedly) realistic survival adventure with action elements, devoid of Hollywood sheen and swashbuckle.

Liam Neeson (working with Carnahan again after The A-Team) stars as John Ottway, a melancholy security guard of sorts at an oil rig in Alaska. It's his job to protect the workers from the nasty wolves that periodically get too close to the installation. The film opens with Ottway narrating what is essentially a suicide note to his wife, glimpsed in flashbacks. We don't know what happened to her, or them, but we know it can't be good. He hates his job, and his co-workers-a bunch of rowdy ex-cons and depressives like him. After he somewhat inexplicably aborts the suicide attempt, he and a team from the rig are on a flight back to Anchorage when the plane crashes, stranding him and a handful of survivors in the harsh, wolf-infested wilderness.

The film takes great pains to humanize the characters and to give their final moments all the horror and weight that the end of a human life actually warrants. These aren't the ragdoll throwaway bodies of a shoot-'em-up, as is evidenced within minutes after the plane crash when the survivors gather around one of the group who is bleeding to death, horribly awake and aware. Neeson comforts him and talks him through to the other side as we watch, transfixed.
The Grey Trailer Official 2012 [HD] - Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney
The Grey Trailer Official 2012 [HD] - Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney
As they cross the "grey" of the wilderness fleeing the wolves, the men bicker and bond, forming their own pack-like hierarchy, with Neeson (of course) emerging as the alpha. Each of the men gets at least one or two nice moments to wax philosophical about their lives and their priorities as they come closer and closer to terms with the inevitable.

While the plane crash sequence is certainly harrowing, with some great attention to detail, the wolf encounters tend to undermine the grounded reality built up so carefully by the rest of the film. There are genuine moments of shock and horror, but there's also a fair amount of theatricality, with choruses of hundreds of howls that dramatically stop in an instant, and some unfortunately fake-looking CGI and close-ups of the animals.

The Grey is an exciting, if uneven, paean to the macho ideal. It metaphorically and literally strips men down to their bones to see what makes them-and us-tick. While Neeson is customarily solid, those looking for the close-combat action figure from Taken or Unknown will need to find their kicks elsewhere.
Clint Eastwood's American Halftime
Halftime in America: OFFICIAL Chrysler Super Bowl 2012 Commercial
Halftime in America: OFFICIAL Chrysler Super Bowl 2012 Commercial
By Amy Davidson
New Yorker Online

Is it halftime in America? And how can we manage the clock? On Sunday, after Madonna sang in the Super Bowl's halftime show, she was upstaged by Clint Eastwood, who entered in the shadows, walking off the field into a tunnel, in an ad that was paid for by Chrysler. The ad was a two-minute movie that started any number of fights. Was it about cars or cities or the seventies; did it glorify the auto bailout or ignore it? The Obama Administration tweeted it happily, but some union supporters didn't like it; Karl Rove, of all people, said, "I was frankly offended"-brave, considering the growl with which Eastwood said, "This country can't be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again, and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines." (There can be power in a mixed metaphor.) Most everyone did agree that the ad was strong, with lines like these:

It's halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they're hurting. And they're all wondering what they're going to do to make a comeback. And we're all scared, because this isn't a game.

The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again...

Detroit's showing us it can be done. And, what's true about them is true about all of us.

Eastwood isn't a Democrat; he may have an affinity for Ron Paul. When he talked about the ad on Monday, it was to a producer for "The O'Reilly Factor," on Fox. ("I just want to say that the spin stops with you guys.") Eastwood said, "l am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message just about job growth and the spirit of America." (Chrysler's C.E.O., who is Italian, said Monday that Eastwood was "expressing his views," and was donating his fee to charity.) He added, "If any Obama or any other politician wants to run with the spirit of that ad, go for it." Still, Mitt Romney opposed the auto bailout; Obama will campaign, in part, on the boast that he saved Detroit, which was enough for Rove and others to call this an ad for the President.

That view underestimates Eastwood's ad, though. Its iconography runs deeper, along a less obvious political course. It's not about Obama or even, mostly, about Detroit, but about time-in the life of a man, as much as a nation. As he speaks, the camera explores the city and the country, and the lines of Eastwood's face:

I've seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn't understand each other. It seems like we've lost our heart at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.

"Division, discord, and blame" is illustrated by scenes of a rally-not in Detroit, but in Madison, Wisconsin. The marchers in question were out trying to preserve collective-bargaining rights for teachers; seeing the ad, some took Eastwood's remark as a rebuke, all the more so since the agency that made it had digitally altered some signs, removing references to unions. In fairness, though, most viewers, not recognizing the protest, wouldn't see any anti-labor slight. What's more telling than what was excised from the signs is the image that the ad makers swapped in instead: an alarm clock.

A ticking clock, in Wisconsin: When and where have we ended up? In a Detroit, apparently, that incorporates many cities, including its own past and present. (Scenes were also filmed in New Orleans, Petaluma, and elsewhere.) One of the ad's tricks is to make an image of a facade with nothing behind it feel inspirational-not a sign of decay, but a classical ruin in a modern city, like the Roman Colosseum. (Madonna, who was simultaneously a Valkyrie, a cheerleader, and the Queen of the Nile, wasn't the only one who telescoped time. She is fifty-three; Eastwood is eighty-one.) "We find a way through tough times, and if we can't find a way, then we'll make one," Eastwood, back in his stadium, says. The ad ends:

Yeah, it's halftime, America. And, our second half is about to begin.

One wonders, hearing that, if halftime means that we are halfway done. If the United States only has two hundred and thirty-six years left, is that a little or a lot for a republic? (And is it enough time to build our moon colony?) Eastwood, whether he meant to or not, is engaging in a kind of blasphemy, but it's a useful heresy.

We've often been asked to think of the time of our country's life as a perpetual dawn-"morning in America," as in Ronald Reagan's ad. (Reagan takes credit, among other things, for sixty-five hundred weddings a day.) Reagan isn't alone: Romney and Obama sometimes seem to be in a competition to describe the brightness of the coming American day. Somewhere along the line, the rising sun Benjamin Franklin said he saw in a chair decoration at the Constitutional Convention has become a sort of supernova. (In Eastwood's ad, in contrast, the sun is all over the sky.) Can a person even suggest that it's not always six in the morning here without being accused of accepting decline? American exceptionalism has somehow come to assume an ability to stop all the clocks.

That's what makes Eastwood's ad so powerful. It doesn't pretend that we're dallying in an endless pre-game show, or that you can always tell the timekeeper to put a few seconds back on. "We're all scared, because this isn't a game"; "we've lost our heart at times": those aren't statements made from a place of weakness. A hint of mortality can be invigorating. The sports setup does not prevent this from being the most grown-up ad of the season, in that it is about growing up, and growing old, and still stronger, even when the picture is of a child looking out of a car window. Also, it is not unpatriotic to recognize that this is so. Nor is it defeatist. Toward the end, Eastwood says,

All that matters now is what's ahead. How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And, how do we win?

On any given Sunday, the saying goes, either team can win. On any given Tuesday, when the polls are open, the same thing is true. That's why they play the games; that's why we vote.


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