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February 22, 2013
In This Issue
Full Employment
Wal-Mart Shoppers Broke
Bump Up Minimum Wage
DC Climate Rally Debates
Fletcher on Unions
Hayden Memo to PDA
Basque Elections
Music: Kris Kristofferson
Books: CIA and Iran
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Rick Wolff on Bill Moyers This Weekend

Taming Capitalism Run Wild on Moyers & Company
Taming Capitalism Run Wild on Moyers & Company

 



Sunday, Feb 24, 2013  
2:00 - 4:30 pm

Henry Winston Unity Hall
235 West 23rd Street New York, NY


The Majority Voted  
Against Racism  
Unity is the Mandate  
WE'RE NOT GOING BACK! 

Celebration of African American Culture & Struggle

Performances by: The People's Chorus Amiri & Amina Baraka Kahlil AlMustafa

Featured Speakers:
Pearl Granat, SEIU 1199 Vice President,
Maria Ramos, Labor Activist,
Chris Owens, Bkln. Reform Democrat

Keynote Address:
Jarvis Tyner, Communist Party USA

Wine & Cheese Reception Following Program
 

New 'Online University of the Left' Now at 2800+ Friends. 16,000 Vistors and reaching 100,000+ More...Check It Out and Be Amazed!


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Tina at AFL-CIO
 Dialogue & Initiative 2012



The new annual edition of our journal of discussion and analysis is now out. More than 130 pages, it includes 13 articles related to the Occupy! movement, as well as seven others vital to study in this election year. Cost is $10 plus shipping. Or get one by becoming a sustainer. Click the title to buy it directly.
New Issue of Mobilizer

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Blog of the Week: 

Sharable 


Greek Workers Seize Factory, Start Coop


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.
'They're Bankrupting Us!': And Twenty Other Myths about Unions
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New Book by Bill Fletcher, Jr. 

By Randy Shannon, CCDS

 

 

 "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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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...
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Sex and the Automobile in the Jazz Age

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By Peter Ling in History Today: 'Brothels on wheels' thundered the moralists but Peter Ling argues the advent of mass motoring in the 1920s was only one of the changes in social and group relationships that made easier the pursuit of carnal desire.

 
A Memoir of the 1960s by Paul Krehbiel

Autumn Leaf Press, $25.64

Shades of Justice:  Bringing Down a President and Ending a War
Shades of Justice Video: Bringing Down a President, Ending a War

Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary

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By Giuseppe Fiori
Verso, 30 pages
Gay, Straight and the Reason Why



The Science of Sexual Orientation


By Simon LeVay
Oxford University Press
$27.95



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

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Edited by Jenna Allard, Carl Davidson and Julie Matthaei

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Introducing the 'Frankfurt School'

Voices from the Underground Press of the 1960s, Part 2
  • Foreword by Susan Brownmiller
  • Preface by Ken Wachsberger
$37.50 + $6 shipping

Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement




By Don Hamerquist
An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
  
GOP to Workers:
You're on Easy Street, Cutback!     
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 defend voter rights, plan for 2014 races now, 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...
By Ashley Lutz
BusinessInsider.com

Feb. 19, 2013 - Wal-Mart's leaked emails could be just the beginning of bad news for the retail industry.

The emails, leaked by Bloomberg, revealed that Walmart executives were freaking out because people weren't shopping as much.

But there's a fundamental problem that seems to be spreading throughout the discount industry as a whole: customers are broke.

Thanks to the recent payroll tax hike, the poorest are running out of money entirely, reports Renee Dudley at Bloomberg.

"It's not Wal-Mart specific," David Strasser, an analyst for Janney Montgomery Scott LLC told Dudley. "Anyone with any low-end exposure is going to feel this. That customer runs out of money every day as it is. Now they're really going to run out of money."

Family Dollar, Target, and grocery stores are experiencing a similar problem, Strasser told Bloomberg.

When the payroll-tax break expired at the end of last year, Americans started paying 2 percentage points more in Social Security taxes on their first $113,700 in wages, Dudley reported. That's $60 a month for someone making $40,000 a year.

Walmart shoppers are the "barometer of the U.S. consumer," Brian Sozzi, chief equities analyst at NBG Productions, told us. If the world's largest retail is struggling, other businesses definitely are.

"There's no reason to be optimistic," Sozzi told us.

The Wal-Mart emails "could indicate a broader issue," Dudley reported.

"Maybe the payroll tax is a bigger deal than any of us thought," Brian Yarbrough, an analyst at Edward Jones, told Bloomberg.


By Carl Bloice

BlackCommentator.com

On February 6, the New York Times reported, "The Chinese government issued a long-awaited plan on Tuesday to narrow the gulf between rich and poor, offering broad vows to lift the incomes of workers and farmers and choke off corrupt wealth but few specific goals to rein in the nation's wide inequality." On the same day, the Financial Times reported on the front page of its print edition, "China has unveiled a plan to narrow the gap between the country's rich and poor, aiming to lift 80 million people out of poverty by 2015. The government has pledged to increase minimum wages to 40 per cent of average salaries, boost spending on education and public housing, and force state - owned companies to give more of their revenues to the public."

The New York Times story didn't mention the minimum wage.

Wonder what goes on here?

The Times's account said by the Chinese government's measure of income inequality, China's is "slightly higher than levels of inequality in the United States, where income disparity now stands as one of the highest among advanced industrial nations."

A fly on the wall near the New York paper's editorial desk could perhaps discern why the proposed 40 percent minimum wage increase was left out of the story. It's not that it's unimportant. There are millions upon millions of low wage workers in China and their lives would be greatly enhanced if they were paid a little more.

The Chinese action is in keeping with steps being taken in a number of countries where despite economic advances, inequality continues to grow, and where policy makers have decided that one way (not the only way) to even things out a bit is to legislate a rise in the minimum wage.

On February 7, Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, told a mine industry collective bargaining conference, "You must continue to fight for decent pay. But at the same time I want to appeal to you to join the fight to beat poverty through decent pay for all workers. Low pay is not helpful to an economy. As the research on food requirements shows, workers who are paid starvation wages do not buy. And if millions of workers have no purchasing power, then production suffers. If production suffers, then jobs are not created. So we have to use our collective strength as a Federation to persuade our government that a radical shift in wage policy is needed. We have an excellent example to draw on in the form of Brazil, where radical increases in minimum wages have resulted in job creation."

"This country is now scarred by staggering inequality," Nation magazine editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, wrote almost a year ago. "In 2010, the last year figures were available, the wealthiest 1 percent captured a staggering 93 percent of the income growth, while most Americans fell behind. One way to address that kind of inequality is to bring down the top - through progressive tax reform and curbing the perverse compensation schemes of CEOs and big bankers. Another is to bring up the floor, by empowering workers to gain a fair share of the rising productivity and profits they help to produce. One step in doing that is to raise the floor under the most vulnerable workers."

In his February 13 State of the Union address, President Barak Obama said, "We know our economy is stronger when we reward an honest day's work with honest wages. But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we've put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That's wrong. That's why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, nineteen states have chosen to bump theirs even higher."

"Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour."

It would have been better had Obama stuck by his original proposal of a $9.50 minimum wage, made when he was still running for President. Or, better still, as Ralph Nader has proposed, a $10 figure that would have been just as easy to sell to the public and no more likely to draw the ire of the Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association. Furthermore, economist Jeanette Wicks-Lim makes a good case in the magazine Dollars and Sense that the minimum wage could be increased 70 percent to $12.30/hour, with no adverse effects, and benefiting millions of workers and their communities.

We will be hearing omens of dire consequences if the minimum wage is increased. There will be assertions that businesses will be jeopardized, that entrepreneurship will be hampered, that jobs will be lost. There will even be assertions by some that minority youth job prospects will be curtailed, made by people who have suddenly been gripped by passion for their welfare - this by some of the same people who once tried to sell the ridiculous notion that African Americans have no stake in Social Security. (I always said to them: if I'd tried selling that idea to my grandmother she'd have sent me into the yard to get a switch. Try telling the black and brown kids at Burger King that a rise in the minimum wage won't improve their lives and that of their communities and you would probably get a similar reaction.)

As the New York Times noted this week, women represent more than half the estimated 18 million people receiving something at or near the minimum wage and Hispanics make up 25 percent....(Click title for more)

By Susie Cagle

Grist Magazine

Feb. 19, 2013 - In front of the White House early Sunday afternoon, Feb, 17, a young man deftly scaled a small leafless tree, to the shock and dismay of the older activists around him. One police officer suggested that he come down, which he eventually did - only to be yelled at by a woman who said he'd damaged not only the tree but the entire climate movement.

"But you're not letting us talk," he told her. "It's just all about you."

"What's going to happen when everyone marches and then everyone goes home? There needs to be something more than that," the tree-climber, Max, of Washington, D.C., told me afterward.

This little altercation defined a tension I saw throughout the Forward on Climate rally Sunday: Climate change reformists and climate change radicals allied tentatively, uncomfortably, against a crazy warming world. When one calls for the largest climate rally in U.S. history, one cannot really control who shows up and what their protest tactics and goals might be. Reform, or revolt? Coax, or prod? Organic, pesticide-free carrot or sustainably harvested, renewable stick?



"The concept that Obama is our friend and he's going to help us is ridiculous. He is the enemy, by all accounts," said Max's friend Josh. (Both men declined to give their last names.)

"We shouldn't be approaching him and saying, 'We support you in your change.' We should be approaching him and saying, 'You fucking start this change or we're going to do it ourselves,'" said Max. "We're going to take over and cross this fence and walk over to that White House."

The logo of the Forward on Climate event itself, a play on Obama's own campaign logo, defined the thrust of the day. The star on Sunday was not actually the reviled Keystone XL pipeline but the absent president, and the carefully permitted and monitored rally did not have the character of a protest movement. "The march today looked like the movement that elected President Obama," 350.org's Jamie Henn wrote on Sunday. Many of the marchers would doubtless agree - but at least some would resent the comparison.

It's notable that this rally was well separated from the 48 planned arrests that took place on Wednesday, the first action of civil disobedience that the Sierra Club had ever endorsed in its 120-year history. That was the radical act to Sunday's reformist one. (A sidenote: For all my snarking about celebrities, they are super great for civil disobedience - since getting arrested is less likely to limit their employability!)

"We're all just being really quiet, and timid. Our marching definitely says something, but I wish that we could be louder," said Michael Vee from Massachusetts. "There's power in the people, but ultimately it's up to what [Obama] does. So there is this kind of disconnect insofar as how much we're actually going to be able to do."

"We need to use any nonviolent means necessary," said Rebuild the Dream's Van Jones. I asked him what he saw as the role of Sunday's event.

"What can a rally do? I don't know, what did the March on Washington do? People say, what can civil disobedience do? I don't know, what did the Freedom Riders do? What did the sit-in movement in the '60s do? People say, well what can students calling for divestment do? I don't know, ask Nelson Mandela, because that's what broke the back of apartheid. I don't know what these things can do in particular but I know that in general these are the tactics that people have used around the world for hundreds of years and have made more history doing that, often, than the things that are considered normal politics, like running people you like for office and hoping they do a good job."

A mass rally like Sunday's has the potential to move the political center - to make climate activism and marching on the White House truly mainstream. But it also has the potential to undercut itself....(Click title for more)
'20 Myths' on Unions: Bill Fletcher Jr on Real News
Twenty Myths About Unions
Twenty Myths About Unions



By Tom Hayden

TomHayden.com

Feb 13, 2013 - Progressive Democrats need a five-year perspective to span an agenda for the Obama era, and because that is the likely time needed to get five rational votes on the Supreme Court.

Progressive Democrats for America (PDA), the organization and all who identify with it, should define itself as clearly as possible, for example, as building the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. That is different from being the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. It is also different from being a progressive forum, unless the forum is conceived as a conference and/or exchange only. Another vision might be that PDA is an advocacy and political arm of social movements. Maybe these possible identities can be blended; I am not the expert. But an organization's effectiveness mostly depends on setting goals based on its true resource capacity. In a highly decentralized progressive culture, an organization can actually lose effectiveness if it becomes a debating society for every disaffected bearer of radical tidings.

Decide whether PDA wants to be an element, perhaps a radical element, of the rank-and-file movement that has elected Obama twice and will be central to pressuring for any progressive outcomes during the next five years. Or does PDA see itself as separate and somehow outside that rank-and-file movement? Note that I said "rank-and-file movement," not any one organizational form that Obama people create.

The rank-and-file movement includes such mass organizations as the AFL-CIO, Immigrant Rights coalitions, NAACP, feminist groups, LGBT, DC-based Environmentalists, Brady/Giffords-type Gun Control, etc.

I have not listed the "peace movement" or "the Left" as core pillars of the rank-and-file. On the existing spectrum, these forces are underfunded, fragmented and tend to be ideologically skeptical toward Obama, the Democratic Party and electoral politics.

There has been a large peace movement, however, which grew outside the institutional channels against the Iraq War. While it was a pillar for the growth of PDA - and the Dean campaign and MoveOn - it has declined significantly in the past decade, though a model remains intact, one that PDA might want to sustain. Unlike the AFL-CIO or NAACP-type models, this was a distributed grass-roots network supporting the legislative objective of annual votes on funding cuts for Iraq and Afghanistan. Led on the inside by Reps Barbara Lee and/or Jim McGovern, sometimes by John Conyers or Dennis Kucinich, and lately by Jeff Merkeley, this network approach created both pressure and cover for the Obama administration's withdrawals. In the background, of course, was the most critical factor of all, the existence of a "peace bloc" of voters who signaled their rising opposition to Iraq and Afghanistan in regularly measured surveys, to which politicians and their consultants paid attention.

The goal of ending US combat in these two wars was achieved, and PDA can be proud of having played a role. If public opinion had favored the wars, the US combat and occupations would have been continued.

Questions remain, however, about the model's sustainability during the next five years, when the American casualties and costs of military occupation, and the public visibility of the US military profile, are sharply declining. The best opportunity may be for PDA to build opposition to the drone wars, the "Long War" policy, and the renewal of an imperial presidency may be by proposing a civilian and congressional voice in the war-making decisions now enclosed in an imperial presidency.

Unfortunately for the PDA electoral and congressional strategy, there has not been a single Congressional hearing on these issues during the past decade, not unless one includes the forum by Kucinich and Conyers as Kucinich was departing office. Nor has there been much interest in legislative strategies from the activists taking direct action on the ground. But the time is ripe. One sign of change is the January 13 op-ed on drones by Rep. Keith Ellison in the Washington Post. PDA might help rebuild the "peace bloc" by encouraging a focus on ending drone strikes and offering reforms to the 1973 War Powers Act.

The latent threat to this "turn toward peace" is the ever-present possibility of a war involving Israel and Iran, the broader Middle East, or in response to a "new 9/11" which could set our politics back another decade. In addition to whatever international solidarity work is going on (peace blocs in NATO countries, for example) PDA might play a useful role by engaging local Jewish federations and community groups in strategies to avoid of war with Iran and advance a Palestinian state through United Nations diplomacy.

Then there is the broader popular Left, from which many of us come, and we know there is always a hidden potential for thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people to suddenly be mobilized into action when a particular crisis provokes them. We can only hope and push for another surge from these forces, such as with Occupy Wall Street or the 350.org movement.

We can and should belong to both camps. PDA, for example, is suited to promote or back Wall Street reform measures or anti-fracking legislation. PDA can encourage occasional campaigns by these outside forces such as the way CED helped to shut down Rancho Seco through a popular referendum back in the day. I have no simple answer, but PDA must find a way to locate itself in this Left spectrum where it will be most effective.

The most successful example of the hybrid (inside-outside) approach was the "healthcare, not warfare" campaign of the past several years, which involved a meaningful organizational alliance with National Nurses United (NNU), hundreds of "brown bag" vigils, organizer training in DC, and support for progressive candidates.

Whether the momentum on "Health Care/Not Warfare" can be sustained at the same level now that Obamacare has been upheld and the wars are winding down is a very important question. But the model is promising in other areas. It already has morphed into PDA support for the so-called Robin Hood Tax, a useful wedge into the political debates over Wall Street and the budget.

Further, local PDA networks might support "educate, not incarcerate" coalitions to shift funds away from repressive law-and-order programs to education, a debate that PDA thus far has not entered.

Another possibility for PDA is to take the lead in politically and legislatively demanding green jobs, energy efficiency, and alternatives to the climate crisis....(Click title for more)
February 18, 2013 - Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Oskar Matute (pictured above) was elected to the Basque parliament in the election of October 21, 2012, as a candidate for Euskal Herria Bildu (EH Bildu, Basque Country Reunification). He was previously a member of parliament from 2002-2009 with Ezker Batua-Berdeak, a united-left grouping. His is spokesperson for Alternativa, one of the founding members of the EH Bildu coalition, which has achieved spectacular electoral results since its legalisation in May 2011. EH Bildu won 25% of the popular vote in the October 2012 Basque election -- capturing 21 out of 75 seats.

Tristan Parish and Rachel Evans spoke to Oskar Matute about EH Bildu and the Basque battle for independence, dignity and socialism.

* * *

How did EH Bildu form and why did it achieve such good results?

Bildu was an accumulation of forces of the left. Some of us, such as myself, came from the United Left [Izquierda Unida (IU) - a left political party of various left groups], while others were movement activists; a third grouping included the older radical left, including, for example, the Revolutionary Communists. We were interested in multidimensional socialism, more internationalist, feminist and ecologist.

EH Bildu formed through many meetings of the Basque nationalist left from early 2011, where we carried out a collective diagnosis of the crisis of the Basque left, of the harassment of the left by the government and of the necessity of combining forces to break the cycle of illegalisation and violence.

This wasn't just in relation to the violence of the ETA [Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Basque Homeland and Freedom] but of the state. [ETA waged an armed struggle in Basque Country for sovereignty until it declared a unilateral and indefinite ceasefire in October 2011.]

The only way to overcome the crisis of the left, which we were also living through in Basque Country, was to create a unity capable of being a tool at the service of the masses, in a direct relationship with their struggles.

At municipal elections in May 2011 we had spectacular results. Bildu became the first political force in Gibuzkoa and took the San Sebastian council. It became the second force in all of the Basque Country and Navarre with 100 local councils. In November 2011 at the general election, Bildu won a majority of the region's federal deputies, six from Basque Country and one from Navarra. In this region we received a larger portion on the vote than any other party, including the ruling right-wing Partido Popular (Popular Party, PP), which won an absolute majority at a federal level.

The fruit of these results is the larger alliance, EH Bildu.

In the regional elections in October 2012, EH Bildu won 21 seats, becoming the second political force in Basque Country [the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) won 27] and a space of power for the left. EH Bildu is the only representative of the left in the current Basque parliament.

There are two documents which explain the unifying principles of EH Bildu. One comes from January 2011 and the Bildu alliance and one from September 2012 and EH Bildu coalition. They can be found on the Alternativa web page [http://Alternativa.net/es].

In Alternativa, there is great decisiveness and a certainty that we are not looking to reform capitalism, not looking to improve capitalism, we are looking to develop a social and economic alternative to capitalism.

Tell us more about the fight for independence in Basque Country and ETA?

The existence of the armed activity of ETA was compatible with their political strategy. Talking about other experiences, the armed strategy of the ETA has been, for a long time, an obstacle to develop the relations between different forces of the left in the Basque Country because of the degree of rejection, or uneasiness, with violence. Once we had a better political tool for achieving independence and socialism ETA decided to leave armed activity absolutely and permanently. This, we think, is a source of strength for EH Bildu because it has taken us out of the political context where the left has been divided.

On the other hand the Basque people understand that Bildu has been fundamental in advancing the disappearance of violence. EH Bildu has a lot of support because -- though it might be exaggerated to say it -- EH Bildu has been instrumental in doing away with violence. It's true that institutional violence still exists by the state. The Spanish state considers us, if not enemies in a military sense, at least a serious political threat.

Did the armed strategy help or hinder the Basque struggle?

It's a controversial analysis but I come from antiimilitarist experiences and so, a long time ago, I decided that armed struggle was not the most effective strategy against a state, because of the inequality of military capacity. There are those who think that ETA kept alive the combativity of the resistance.

I believe a lot more in the possibilities of the current moment. An ongoing part of our work is the de-legitimisation of the Spanish state for its undemocratic relationship with Basque Country. Working from a non-violent stance permits us to join with ever more people and groups. This is a perspective of my own and that of Alternativa, but not necessarily of all EH Bildu. I think that non-violence is a better tool for delegitimising the state, whereas while violence existed, thanks to the mass media, this message was much harder to get across to the Basque population.

Why does the Basque Country only have its current level of autonomy, where you have a Basque parliament, but tied to the central Spanish government?

The Spanish state made a transition to democracy in the form of a pact with the military. After dictator Franco died [in November 1975] the democratic transition, so acclaimed in other places, was not so democratic for the Basque people. The transition was carried out in a way that would not make the military officers who had run the dictatorship uncomfortable. Other political parties, including some of the United Left, have changed their position and accept the partition of the Basque County into different territories and with the limited autonomy that has been imposed on us. We maintain the position of the real, revolutionary left, which it that the seven territories that make up the Basque Country, four in the Spanish state and two in France, constitute one independent nation.

The Basque Country is rich and the south of Spain is very poor. If Basque wins independence, will it provide support to poorer parts of Spain?

We've never thought about Basque sovereignty in terms of economic strength or weakness. I don't have the data to talk about other regions, to know if they are poor or if their resources are being misused. EH Bildu has a very clear internationalist position. We want sovereignty for the Basque Country because all people and nations have the right to decide how to relate to other people of the world. We have the will to be a nation. Our citizens believe in a sovereign Basque Country. We're not stuck in history or romantic or racial determinations. We insist on being able to decide what happens to us in our own lands. From this we develop internationalism.

Compared with the rest of Europe, internationalism in Basque Country is not weak. In terms of solidarity with the Zapatistas in Mexico, and the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador - wherever there is an emancipatory project -- we have been present. We never talk about our national project as a way of separating us from those who are poorer. We do want the right to decide with whom to be in solidarity with, and how..

Workers' cooperatives in the Basque Country are very strong, particularly the Mondragon cooperative. How are they related to the left?

The cooperative has a lot of strength because it began in a difficult context, that of the Franco dictatorship. If we are thinking of a perfect model, a socialist model of production "to each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities", as the phrase goes, the cooperative model has produced higher levels of social cohesion than capitalism has managed. Workers are involved in planning. Unemployment in Basque Country is half that compared to the rest of the Spanish state, due to the cooperative model. There is a very direct relationship -- where cooperatives are strong what you will find a majority of Bildu-controlled councils....(Click title for more)


By Holly Gleason

Paste Magazine

Feb 12, 2013 - At 76, Kris Kristofferson is one of Americana's true icons. A witness to old-school hillbilly music, rock's excess, punk's rebellion and modern country, the Rhodes Scholar with an emphasis on William Blake's poetry has figured how to transcend all-and he's created timeless Wurlitzer music.

For all the bare-bones arrangements on Feeling Mortal, Kristofferson's first on his own label, it is that ragged voice like a rusty hinge that sets the tone for these songs about the inevitable tapering of life. For years an object of critical contention, now his voice is evidence to the way life wears away veneer, leaving the raw essence of one's soul.

Kris Kristofferson  -  Feeling Mortal
Kris Kristofferson - Feeling Mortal
The slow shifting-from-side-to-side rhythm of "The One You Chose" is an elegant reality check. Feeling like a slow dance between partners who have weathered the difficulty and found higher ground, they bask in the warmth of Mickey Raphael's harmonica. It is the genuine intimacy of grown-up love; what it lacks in swagger, it trumps with unflinching honesty.

Kristofferson has always reckoned with failure, hungers that can't be cured, drives that aren't always good. The man who wrote, "He's a walking contradiction/Partway truth and partway fiction" in "The Pilgrim" recognizes the inherent conflict in the human condition, making him even braver in the face of the age.

Looking into a mirror, there's no denying time's ravage on the opening title track.
Assessing his reflection, he can only reflect upon where he is. As a steel sobs and mariachi guitar strums time, he arrives at the chorus and adds up his truth: "God Almighty, here I am/ Am I where I ought to be/ I've begun to soon descend, Like the sun into the sea/ And I thank my lucky stars, from here to eternity/ For the artist that you are, and the man you made of me..."

The fragility of life after so many years is captured again in "Castaway," but it's tempered by the lilting chanty-esque "Bread for the Body," which measures worth beyond mere money.

In the end, the Country Music Hall of Famer will not surrender his dignity or fight. "You Don't Tell Me What To Do" is a slow measure of knowing what not to fight for, while choosing self-determination as his template for life. As the harmonica settles in the bare places, the piano rises and electric guitar carves up the melody; this is the dignity of knowing one's place in a very big world. Having led such a big life, Kristofferson serves us a small but welcome comfort in the great unknown.
The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations

by Ervand Abrahamian

2013: The New Press
Hardcover; 304 pp; $26.95

Reviewed by Ron Jacobs
The Rag Blog

Feb 20, 2013 - If there is one nation whose political situation has been omnipresent and important to the history of the past 75 years, it would be Iran. Much to the dismay of those imperial powers that have tried to subdue and manipulate them, Iran's people have refused to go along.

Islamic revolutionaries or leftist revolutionaries, military men and civilians, it doesn't matter. The imposition of foreign restrictions and regimes have consistently failed to withstand the desire of the Iranians to be free of foreign domination. Britain, Russia, and the United States; all have tried and all have failed to make Iran do their bidding for more than a generation. None have tried harder than the United States, which took over from Great Britain after World War II.

What ranks as the most flagrant attempt to impose Washington's will on the people of Iran has to be the 1953 coup engineered by Kermit Roosevelt and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This coup, which overthrew the elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, continues to define the relationship between Washington and Tehran. Furthermore, it ranks as one of the twentieth century's top examples of colonialist arrogance underpinned by dismissive racism and outright contempt for the subject people and their will.

Until recently the story of that chapter of history was told in the West by those who traditionally frame history -- the victors. In other words, the history of the 1953 U.S. coup in Iran was told by the CIA and its media supplicants. Like with most other tales told by these elements, the overthrown government was characterized as dictatorial, unpopular, communistic, and even fanatic. Therefore, goes the narrative, the CIA did the Iranian people a favor, just like they did in Guatemala around the same time.

In the year 2000, The New York Times published a series of articles based on classified documents detailing the workings of that coup. After receiving heavily redacted files which were written as a summary of the coup by a CIA operator, the Times re-summarized the material.

Even though a good deal of information was missing, and the Times itself had cheered the coup when it occurred, this series began to provide Western readers with a glimpse at exactly how intimately involved Washington was in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government. Furthermore, the Times report indicated that a primary reason for the coup was control of Iran's fossil fuels, not any threat of communism (as had been previously reported) and not because Mossadegh was a fanatic dictator.

Still, there were several aspects of the story that were missing. Some of these were filled in with the publication of Kermit Roosevelt's self-glorifying history of the coup titled Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran. Most however, were not, largely because Roosevelt remained convinced that the coup he engineered was the right thing to do for Iran and the world at large. Therefore, he ignored remarks and findings that claimed something else.

A new book changes all that. Titled The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations, the book is authored by the Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian. A learned historian, his 2008 book A History of Modern Iran provides a reappraisal of modern Iranian history unfamiliar to most U.S. readers. The Coup does that and more.

Indeed, it takes the familiar history -- a history that is primarily lies -- and debunks almost every bit of it. Mossadegh was not a communist; the Tudeh (Iranian Communist party) did not control the government and did not intend to overthrow Mossadegh; the Islamists under Imam Khatani did get bought off by the CIA; and the coup was not only cheered, but supported by a comprador class of Iranians concerned primarily with their wealth and not with the nation or the Iranian people.

As Abrahamian tells the reader, in the eyes of London and DC, there was no room for genuine negotiations in their dealings with the Mossadegh government. The struggle was about control of Iran's resources and regional geopolitical power. Reading this argument, I was reminded of the lack of compromise from Washington and London prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. If one recalls, no matter what they said publicly, Bush and Blair were not interested in making a deal with Iraq; their governments wanted complete control.

Abrahamian also dispels the myth that the crisis and eventual coup were the fault of the Iranians, a premise put forth by observers as venerated as Daniel Yergin, the author of the classic work on oil politics of the mid-twentieth century, The Prize. Instead, through his reading of recently discovered documents and his own insights, Abrhamian makes it clear the crisis was engineered and brought to its fruition by Washington, DC.

While reading the last section of this book describing the procedure leading up to the actual coup, the reader might well be struck by how little has really changed when it comes to the West's dealings with Iran. In fact, when reading about the British-backed and enforced oil embargo against Iran after the Iranians nationalized the industry, one cannot help but compare that historic attempt to destroy Iran's economy to the current embargo led by Washington.

Abrahamian describes sanctions, ultimatums presented as negotiations, lies about the Iranian leadership, and CIA subterfuge. It is almost like reading today's New York Times and its coverage of U.S.-led operations against the current Iranian government. Not only is this book important because of its presentation of history. It is also important because it might be predicting the future.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Ron Jacobs can be reached at [email protected]. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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