I Believe In Coyotes

An interesting article on why we believe things that are questionable or even untrue.

The Believing Brain

War Is Here, Too

Jose Guerena survived two tours in Iraq, only to be shot over 20 times in his own home. By the police.

Gin and Tacos has a take on this, and the larger issue of police militarization.

"You Have A Social Disease"

(I'm posting this from a secret remote location using an ancient browser, so sorry for the typos and formatting gaffes.)


I received the following junk e-mail at work. I have altered it, slightly *ahem*, for effect. See if you can spot the change...

Sarah Palin Movie Titles

[via Balloon juice]

So Much Awesome In One Place

Huh Huh, I Said, "Penal"

The state of my state's penal system is horrendous. The SCOTUS, 5-4, upheld a ruling that, shockingly, California can't house prisoners in unconstitutional conditions. As is typical for the Right, they want to imprison people in hoards, but won't pay for it.

You Got Your Non-Violence. Now What?

From The Economist:

"FOR many years now, we've heard American commentators bemoan the violence of the Palestinian national movement. If only Palestinians had learned the lessons of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we hear, they'd have had their state long ago. Surely no Israeli government would have violently suppressed a non-violent Palestinian movement of national liberation seeking only the universally recognised right of self-determination."

They're More Honest Than We Are About Themselves

I post this not to endorse the content, but to illustrate that the discussion of Israeli policy in Israel is much more honest and balanced than here, at least in major media outlets. I won't venture a guess as to why, but based on recent events, as well as history, I think Americans might benefit from admitting that they are relatively ill-informed about the real issues and facts concerning the Palestinians.

Israeli policy will end up isolating it to the point of sanctions - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Unintended Consequences

This horror story ought to give anyone with a brain and a conscience pause. But, those who really need to think about this tend to have neither.

Star Wars Version Of The OBL Killing

[via LG&M]

Who doesn't love a good Star Warsification of current events?


Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says - Galactic Empire Times

I Feel Your Pain, Or Not

Interesting article on empathy.

I think a lot of what religion teaches us can be tied to developing and exercising empathy (do unto others, we're all God's children that kind of stuff).  That's why I get so frustrated with the "us and them" mentality of so many religious people that I am exposed to (I'm not making a comment on all religious people, I couldn't fairly do that).

[via One Good Move]

Crtitcizing Chomsky

I'm a fan of Chomsky's work. Therefore, I find it important to read fair-minded criticism of him. This is a good example.

What The War On Drugs Is Really About

Too busy to add anything to this, but there really isn't much else I could say anyway.

Mandate Schmandate

[via LG&M]

Hypocrisy, internal inconsistency, and a little bit of plain old stupid. Mix with shameless dishonesty, and you have your modern G.O.P. It's only wrong if you're not a Republican, remember that.

Chomsky On Labor

[Original here]

Short version:  You're getting screwed, systematically and intentionally, and Obama ain't gonna save you. And by "you," I mean 99.8% of you, including everyone reading this.

The International Assault on Labor

Wednesday 4 May 2011

by: Noam Chomsky, Truthout

May Day march in Lansing, Michigan on May 1, 2011, organized by the Lansing Workers' Center and the NorthStar Center. (Photo: Peace Education Center)

In most of the world, May Day is an international workers' holiday, bound up with the bitter 19th-century struggle of American workers for an eight-hour day. The May Day just past leads to somber reflection.

A decade ago, a useful word was coined in honor of May Day by radical Italian labor activists: "precarity." It referred at first to the increasingly precarious existence of working people "at the margins" – women, youth, migrants. Then it expanded to apply to the growing "precariat" of the core labor force, the "precarious proletariat" suffering from the programs of deunionization, flexibilization and deregulation that are part of the assault on labor throughout the world.

By that time, even in Europe there was mounting concern about what labor historian Ronaldo Munck, citing Ulrich Beck, calls the "Brazilianization of the West â?[ the spread of temporary and insecure employment, discontinuity and loose informality into Western societies that have hitherto been the bastions of full employment."

The state-corporate war against unions has recently extended to the public sector, with legislation to ban collective bargaining and other elementary rights. Even in pro-labor Massachusetts, the House of Representatives voted right before May Day to sharply restrict the rights of police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees to bargain over health care – essential matters in the U.S., with its dysfunctional and highly inefficient privatized health-care system.

The rest of the world may associate May 1 to the struggle of American workers for basic rights but in the U.S. that solidarity is suppressed in favor of a jingoist holiday. May 1 is "Loyalty Day," designated by Congress in 1958 for "the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom."

President Eisenhower proclaimed further that Loyalty Day is also Law Day, reaffirmed annually by displaying the flag and dedication to "Justice for All," "Foundations of Freedom" and "Struggle for Justice."

The U.S. calendar has a Labor Day, in September, celebrating the return to work after a vacation that is far briefer than in other industrial countries.

The ferocity of the assault against labor by the U.S. business class is illustrated by Washington's failure, for 60 years, to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association. Legal analyst Steve Charnovitz calls it "the untouchable treaty in American politics" and observes that there has never even been any debate about the matter.

Washington's dismissal of some conventions supported by the International Labor Organization contrasts sharply with its dedication to enforcement of monopoly-pricing rights for corporations, disguised under the mantle of "free trade" in one of the contemporary Orwellisms.

In 2004, the ILO reported that "economic and social insecurities were multiplying with globalization and the policies associated with it, as the global economic system has become more volatile and workers were increasingly shouldering the burden of risk, for instance, though pension and health care reforms."

This was what economists call the period of the Great Moderation, hailed as "one of the great transformations of modern history," led by the U.S. and based on "liberation of markets" and particularly "deregulation of financial markets."

This paean to the American way of free markets was delivered by Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker in January 2007, just months before the system crashed – and with it the entire edifice of the economic theology on which it was based – bringing the world economy to near disaster.

The crash left the U.S. with levels of real unemployment comparable to the Great Depression, and in many ways worse, because under the current policies of the masters those jobs are not coming back, as they did through massive government stimulus during World War II and the following decades of the "golden age" of state capitalism.

During the Great Moderation, American workers had become accustomed to a precarious existence. The rise of an American precariat was proudly hailed as a primary factor in the Great Moderation that brought slower economic growth, virtual stagnation of real income for the majority of the population, and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice for a tiny sector, a fraction of 1 percent, mostly CEOs, hedge fund managers and the like.

The high priest of this magnificent economy was Alan Greenspan, described by the business press as "saintly" for his brilliant stewardship. Glorying in his achievements, he testified before Congress that they relied in part on "atypical restraint on compensation increases (which) appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity."

The disaster of the Great Moderation was salvaged by heroic government efforts to reward the perpetrators. Neil Barofsky, stepping down on March 30 as special inspector general of the bailout program, wrote a revelatory New York Times Op-Ed about how the bailout worked.

In theory, the legislative act that authorized the bailout was a bargain: The financial institutions would be saved by the taxpayer, and the victims of their misdeeds would be somewhat compensated by measures to protect home values and preserve homeownership.

Part of the bargain was kept: The financial institutions were rewarded lavishly for causing the crisis, and forgiven for outright crimes. But the rest of the program floundered.

As Barofsky writes: "foreclosures continue to mount, with 8 million to 13 million filings forecast over the program's lifetime" while "the biggest banks are 20 percent larger than they were before the crisis and control a larger part of our economy than ever. They reasonably assume that the government will rescue them again, if necessary. Indeed, credit rating agencies incorporate future government bailouts into their assessments of the largest banks, exaggerating market distortions that provide them with an unfair advantage over smaller institutions, which continue to struggle." In short, President Obama's programs were "a giveaway to Wall Street executives" and a blow in the solar plexus to their defenseless victims.

The outcome should surprise only those who insist on hopeless naivete about the design and implementation of policy, particularly when economic power is highly concentrated and state capitalism has entered into a new stage of "creative destruction," to borrow Joseph Schumpeter's famous phrase, but with a twist: creative in ways to enrich and empower the rich and powerful, while the rest are free to survive as they may, while celebrating Loyalty and Law Day.

© 2011 Noam Chomsky

The International Assault on Labor

Wednesday 4 May 2011

by: Noam Chomsky, Truthout

May Day march in Lansing, Michigan on May 1, 2011, organized by the Lansing Workers' Center and the NorthStar Center. (Photo: Peace Education Center)

In most of the world, May Day is an international workers' holiday, bound up with the bitter 19th-century struggle of American workers for an eight-hour day. The May Day just past leads to somber reflection.

A decade ago, a useful word was coined in honor of May Day by radical Italian labor activists: "precarity." It referred at first to the increasingly precarious existence of working people "at the margins" – women, youth, migrants. Then it expanded to apply to the growing "precariat" of the core labor force, the "precarious proletariat" suffering from the programs of deunionization, flexibilization and deregulation that are part of the assault on labor throughout the world.

By that time, even in Europe there was mounting concern about what labor historian Ronaldo Munck, citing Ulrich Beck, calls the "Brazilianization of the West â?[ the spread of temporary and insecure employment, discontinuity and loose informality into Western societies that have hitherto been the bastions of full employment."

The state-corporate war against unions has recently extended to the public sector, with legislation to ban collective bargaining and other elementary rights. Even in pro-labor Massachusetts, the House of Representatives voted right before May Day to sharply restrict the rights of police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees to bargain over health care – essential matters in the U.S., with its dysfunctional and highly inefficient privatized health-care system.

The rest of the world may associate May 1 to the struggle of American workers for basic rights but in the U.S. that solidarity is suppressed in favor of a jingoist holiday. May 1 is "Loyalty Day," designated by Congress in 1958 for "the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom."

President Eisenhower proclaimed further that Loyalty Day is also Law Day, reaffirmed annually by displaying the flag and dedication to "Justice for All," "Foundations of Freedom" and "Struggle for Justice."

The U.S. calendar has a Labor Day, in September, celebrating the return to work after a vacation that is far briefer than in other industrial countries.

The ferocity of the assault against labor by the U.S. business class is illustrated by Washington's failure, for 60 years, to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association. Legal analyst Steve Charnovitz calls it "the untouchable treaty in American politics" and observes that there has never even been any debate about the matter.

Washington's dismissal of some conventions supported by the International Labor Organization contrasts sharply with its dedication to enforcement of monopoly-pricing rights for corporations, disguised under the mantle of "free trade" in one of the contemporary Orwellisms.

In 2004, the ILO reported that "economic and social insecurities were multiplying with globalization and the policies associated with it, as the global economic system has become more volatile and workers were increasingly shouldering the burden of risk, for instance, though pension and health care reforms."

This was what economists call the period of the Great Moderation, hailed as "one of the great transformations of modern history," led by the U.S. and based on "liberation of markets" and particularly "deregulation of financial markets."

This paean to the American way of free markets was delivered by Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker in January 2007, just months before the system crashed – and with it the entire edifice of the economic theology on which it was based – bringing the world economy to near disaster.

The crash left the U.S. with levels of real unemployment comparable to the Great Depression, and in many ways worse, because under the current policies of the masters those jobs are not coming back, as they did through massive government stimulus during World War II and the following decades of the "golden age" of state capitalism.

During the Great Moderation, American workers had become accustomed to a precarious existence. The rise of an American precariat was proudly hailed as a primary factor in the Great Moderation that brought slower economic growth, virtual stagnation of real income for the majority of the population, and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice for a tiny sector, a fraction of 1 percent, mostly CEOs, hedge fund managers and the like.

The high priest of this magnificent economy was Alan Greenspan, described by the business press as "saintly" for his brilliant stewardship. Glorying in his achievements, he testified before Congress that they relied in part on "atypical restraint on compensation increases (which) appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity."

The disaster of the Great Moderation was salvaged by heroic government efforts to reward the perpetrators. Neil Barofsky, stepping down on March 30 as special inspector general of the bailout program, wrote a revelatory New York Times Op-Ed about how the bailout worked.

In theory, the legislative act that authorized the bailout was a bargain: The financial institutions would be saved by the taxpayer, and the victims of their misdeeds would be somewhat compensated by measures to protect home values and preserve homeownership.

Part of the bargain was kept: The financial institutions were rewarded lavishly for causing the crisis, and forgiven for outright crimes. But the rest of the program floundered.

As Barofsky writes: "foreclosures continue to mount, with 8 million to 13 million filings forecast over the program's lifetime" while "the biggest banks are 20 percent larger than they were before the crisis and control a larger part of our economy than ever. They reasonably assume that the government will rescue them again, if necessary. Indeed, credit rating agencies incorporate future government bailouts into their assessments of the largest banks, exaggerating market distortions that provide them with an unfair advantage over smaller institutions, which continue to struggle." In short, President Obama's programs were "a giveaway to Wall Street executives" and a blow in the solar plexus to their defenseless victims.

The outcome should surprise only those who insist on hopeless naivete about the design and implementation of policy, particularly when economic power is highly concentrated and state capitalism has entered into a new stage of "creative destruction," to borrow Joseph Schumpeter's famous phrase, but with a twist: creative in ways to enrich and empower the rich and powerful, while the rest are free to survive as they may, while celebrating Loyalty and Law Day.

© 2011 Noam Chomsky

The International Assault on Labor

Wednesday 4 May 2011

by: Noam Chomsky, Truthout

May Day march in Lansing, Michigan on May 1, 2011, organized by the Lansing Workers' Center and the NorthStar Center. (Photo: Peace Education Center)

In most of the world, May Day is an international workers' holiday, bound up with the bitter 19th-century struggle of American workers for an eight-hour day. The May Day just past leads to somber reflection.

A decade ago, a useful word was coined in honor of May Day by radical Italian labor activists: "precarity." It referred at first to the increasingly precarious existence of working people "at the margins" – women, youth, migrants. Then it expanded to apply to the growing "precariat" of the core labor force, the "precarious proletariat" suffering from the programs of deunionization, flexibilization and deregulation that are part of the assault on labor throughout the world.

By that time, even in Europe there was mounting concern about what labor historian Ronaldo Munck, citing Ulrich Beck, calls the "Brazilianization of the West â?[ the spread of temporary and insecure employment, discontinuity and loose informality into Western societies that have hitherto been the bastions of full employment."

The state-corporate war against unions has recently extended to the public sector, with legislation to ban collective bargaining and other elementary rights. Even in pro-labor Massachusetts, the House of Representatives voted right before May Day to sharply restrict the rights of police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees to bargain over health care – essential matters in the U.S., with its dysfunctional and highly inefficient privatized health-care system.

The rest of the world may associate May 1 to the struggle of American workers for basic rights but in the U.S. that solidarity is suppressed in favor of a jingoist holiday. May 1 is "Loyalty Day," designated by Congress in 1958 for "the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom."

President Eisenhower proclaimed further that Loyalty Day is also Law Day, reaffirmed annually by displaying the flag and dedication to "Justice for All," "Foundations of Freedom" and "Struggle for Justice."

The U.S. calendar has a Labor Day, in September, celebrating the return to work after a vacation that is far briefer than in other industrial countries.

The ferocity of the assault against labor by the U.S. business class is illustrated by Washington's failure, for 60 years, to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association. Legal analyst Steve Charnovitz calls it "the untouchable treaty in American politics" and observes that there has never even been any debate about the matter.

Washington's dismissal of some conventions supported by the International Labor Organization contrasts sharply with its dedication to enforcement of monopoly-pricing rights for corporations, disguised under the mantle of "free trade" in one of the contemporary Orwellisms.

In 2004, the ILO reported that "economic and social insecurities were multiplying with globalization and the policies associated with it, as the global economic system has become more volatile and workers were increasingly shouldering the burden of risk, for instance, though pension and health care reforms."

This was what economists call the period of the Great Moderation, hailed as "one of the great transformations of modern history," led by the U.S. and based on "liberation of markets" and particularly "deregulation of financial markets."

This paean to the American way of free markets was delivered by Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker in January 2007, just months before the system crashed – and with it the entire edifice of the economic theology on which it was based – bringing the world economy to near disaster.

The crash left the U.S. with levels of real unemployment comparable to the Great Depression, and in many ways worse, because under the current policies of the masters those jobs are not coming back, as they did through massive government stimulus during World War II and the following decades of the "golden age" of state capitalism.

During the Great Moderation, American workers had become accustomed to a precarious existence. The rise of an American precariat was proudly hailed as a primary factor in the Great Moderation that brought slower economic growth, virtual stagnation of real income for the majority of the population, and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice for a tiny sector, a fraction of 1 percent, mostly CEOs, hedge fund managers and the like.

The high priest of this magnificent economy was Alan Greenspan, described by the business press as "saintly" for his brilliant stewardship. Glorying in his achievements, he testified before Congress that they relied in part on "atypical restraint on compensation increases (which) appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity."

The disaster of the Great Moderation was salvaged by heroic government efforts to reward the perpetrators. Neil Barofsky, stepping down on March 30 as special inspector general of the bailout program, wrote a revelatory New York Times Op-Ed about how the bailout worked.

In theory, the legislative act that authorized the bailout was a bargain: The financial institutions would be saved by the taxpayer, and the victims of their misdeeds would be somewhat compensated by measures to protect home values and preserve homeownership.

Part of the bargain was kept: The financial institutions were rewarded lavishly for causing the crisis, and forgiven for outright crimes. But the rest of the program floundered.

As Barofsky writes: "foreclosures continue to mount, with 8 million to 13 million filings forecast over the program's lifetime" while "the biggest banks are 20 percent larger than they were before the crisis and control a larger part of our economy than ever. They reasonably assume that the government will rescue them again, if necessary. Indeed, credit rating agencies incorporate future government bailouts into their assessments of the largest banks, exaggerating market distortions that provide them with an unfair advantage over smaller institutions, which continue to struggle." In short, President Obama's programs were "a giveaway to Wall Street executives" and a blow in the solar plexus to their defenseless victims.

The outcome should surprise only those who insist on hopeless naivete about the design and implementation of policy, particularly when economic power is highly concentrated and state capitalism has entered into a new stage of "creative destruction," to borrow Joseph Schumpeter's famous phrase, but with a twist: creative in ways to enrich and empower the rich and powerful, while the rest are free to survive as they may, while celebrating Loyalty and Law Day.

© 2011 Noam Chomsky

Winning

Sorry to give in to the Charlie Sheen thing but I had to.

From this site, here's a partial list of what we as a nation have done since 9/11 [emphasis mine]:

USA! USA!

[via Balloon Juice]

After all, what do New Yorkers have to do with bin Laden?

The Decadent Left In Its Enclaves on the Coasts

Excuse Me While I Remember To Be Human [UPDATED TWICE]

UPDATE #2: Again, a better-said way of expressing my concerns here.
UPDATE: Here is what a sober, well-written version of my point looks like.

Ah, facebook. Nothing makes me feel more connected to the human race, and at the same time more saddened by it. There has been a predictable but none-the-less nauseating wank-fest of comments about the killing of Bin Landen. I'm going to try to explain why I'm not jumping for joy.