Posts filed under 'DISPARATE WORLDS'
August 10th, 2007
By: Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth To Power
A review of Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future From Four Impending Catastrophes, By Michael J. Panzner
Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences. –Robert Louis Stevenson–
A few days ago a friend called me just after hearing Michael Panzner on the Thom Hartmann show on Air America. My friend wanted me to read Panzer’s book, Financial Armageddon and see what I thought. Apparently, Panzer’s radio interview remarks were filled with passion and a sense of urgency, and upon reading the book, I experienced the same intensity in the author’s writing which pleasantly surprised me. Here was a financial guru with 25 years’ experience in the stock, bond, and currency markets and a faculty member of the New York Institute of Finance, who unlike Ben Bernanke and the silver-lining pundits of the financial pages, was not telling us that everything is going to be fine or that things will “bounce back in 2010″.
Anyone familiar with my writings knows that I have never claimed to be a fiduciary wizard, but in recent years I have written more on topics related to economics than at any time in my life. I do not believe that all social issues can be resolved if only we change how money works in the United States or the world, but I am profoundly aware of the role of economic issues-perhaps more than militarism, healthcare, education, politics, or any other institution, in the dead-ahead demise of empire. I also notice that few in the left-liberal end of the political spectrum have a firm grasp on economic issues which I suspect comes from a fundamental polarization between activism and financial intelligence-a reality which motivated me a few years ago to write an article entitled “Activists And Accountants: Absolute Allies.”
Michael Panzner is definitely not from the left end of the political spectrum, which makes the contents of Financial Armageddon all the more fascinating and momentous. I came away from the book with both remarkable reinforcement of my position that the United States has entered economic collapse, but also perplexed regarding the myriad blind spots that the author seemed to have regarding the causes of the current economic meltdown. I am not aware of how Panzner may have altered his views since the publication of his book earlier this year, but at the time of writing, Panzner did not mention or was not aware of a number of glaring realities regarding the gluttonous greed-fest that has characterized the United States since the end of World War II. I will address those inconsistencies first, then highlight the places where I think Financial Armageddon is absolutely on-target.
What is most disturbing to me about the book is what appears to be a total lack of perception regarding the role of fraud, theft, and malicious intent in the American and global financial train wreck which has been exacerbating over recent decades. Panzner seems to conclude that all of this is just one huge accident attributable to incompetence or the American consumer being lulled by creature comforts. The book begins with a chapter on debt-personal and governmental-a factor so pivotal in economic catastrophe, but little attention is given to the intentional engineering, for example, of consumer debt by centralized financial systems and how monstrously profitable it is.
In the recent documentary “Maxed Out“, Harvard law professor and author of several books on consumer debt, Elizabeth Warren, states that the middle class is near extinction not only because of a lack of financial information, but specifically because debt is, in her words, “obscenely profitable” for lenders. Panzner says little about this in the book, but he does say that “Ever-growing investment returns, an endless housing boom, and the Federal Reserve had conditioned Americans to believe that, inevitable good fortune would eventually bail them out-should it even prove necessary.” (4) The current debt nightmare, however, is not merely about “conditioning” but is, in my opinion, based on hard evidence, calculated and contrived. Both “Maxed Out” and “In Debt We Trust” make this exceedingly clear. Furthermore, in examining the history of the financial train wreck now in the making, one must grasp the history of America’s aristocracy, not only in the days of the Robber Barons, but within the past thirty years. Catherine Austin Fitts’ website subtitled, “The Aristocracy Of Stock Profits” provides an excellent historical account of this.
Nowhere in the book does Panzner mention the $1.3 trillion missing from the Pentagon or the $59 billion missing from the Department Of Housing And Urban Development and a plethora of other instances where money is “missing” as documented, again, by Catherine Austin Fitts. Nowhere does he address the issue of fraudulent inducement, also noted by Fitts in her audio CD on the housing bubble, which simply means, enticing people to borrow when it is obvious that it will be impossible or near impossible for them to repay.
It is crucial to understand that the current economic meltdown is a transfer of wealth from the middle and lower classes to the ruling elite. Wealth transfers do not just happen, nor are they the products of incompetency. They are intentional and well-planned. Central to wealth transfer is corruption at the highest levels of the economic and political systems. In hindsight, we look back upon the Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980s, at that time, the largest theft in the history of the world, yet today, our minds cannot begin to wrap around the wealth that has been stolen from the American people, making the S&L scam look like piggy bank pilfering–and to my knowledge, Catherine Austin Fitts at her Solari and Dunwalke sites, is the only person to have documented this so impeccably.
In fact, I recently received an email notice from Fitts stating:
Recently, we have seen numerous press accounts of bank and hedge fund losses from sub-prime mortgages. Remarkably, these reports imply that the losses are the result of a market downturn or contracting credit cycle. But there has been no mention of the extraordinary profits that were generated or who reaped them. There is no mention of who is poised to make a fortune on the bubble collapse. Even the most sophisticated commentators of our day are describing this financial coup d’etat as the unintentional consequence of “market forces.”
Coup d’ etat? How’s that for blowing the “incompetency theory” out of the water? Panzner alludes to corruption in his book but overall tends to place it in the future. Locating it in the context of a chaotic society during and after collapse, he says that “Corruption will likely become endemic…”, but, I protest, corruption is now and has been and is the principal reason for our financial predicament. In fact, in the opening of the chapter “The Retirement System”, he states that it is the leaders of the public and private sectors who put off an accurate assessment of what the future held, “even though they knew a day of reckoning would come.” (15) Yes, they knew a day of reckoning would come, and their intention was to feed as voraciously as they could off their current situations and be long gone before the reckoning. Just as the culprits of the Savings and Loan caper profited on the way up, they also profited on the way down, as will a few predators in the current subprime catastrophe.
In fact, an article this week in Forbes Magazine, “Profiting From The Meltdown” opens with: “A consortium of the nation’s leading investment banks have quietly created an index that is not only protecting them against the recent market meltdown but also promising to make them bundles of money in the process.”
Panzner does not mention the role of the Federal Reserve in engineering Financial Armageddon and the fact that it is neither “federal” nor has any kind of reserve. No expose of the Fed’s money policy, fractional reserve banking, or printing money out of thin air backed by nothing is offered. Nor does he illumine the reader about the Fed’s ultimate ulterior game plan. It appears that he is unaware of the global ruling elite, sometimes are referred to as the New World Order, who have engineered Financial Armageddon and will be safely ensconsed in their solar-powered bunkers, calculating their profits while surrounded with an abundance of food, water, and private security forces when all hell breaks loose.
One cannot adequately comprehend the perfect economic storm that is brewing worldwide without understanding the role of the Fed as one of the pivotal entities necessary for the construction of what financial analyst, Bill Bonner, calls the “Empire of Debt.” Curiously, Panzner does not address the reality of empire nor its historical ascension to global economic superintendent a la the Federal Reserve.
Mike Whitney states in his most recent article “Stock Market Meltdown” that:
Economic policy is not ‘accidental.’ The Fed’s policies were designed to create a crisis, and that crisis was intended to coincide with the activation of a nationwide police state…. The Federal Reserve is a central player in a carefully considered plan to shift the nation’s wealth from one class to another. And they have succeeded. Nearly 4 million American jobs have been sent overseas, the country has increased the national debt by $3 trillion dollars, and foreign investors own $4.5 trillion in US dollar-backed assets. While the Fed has been carrying out its economic strategy; the Bush administration has deployed the military around the world to conduct a global resource war. These are two wheels on the same axel. The goal is to maintain control of the global economic system by seizing the remaining energy resources in Eurasia and the Middle East and by integrating potential rivals into the American-led economic model under the direction of the Central Bank. All of the leading candidates-Democrat and Republican—belong to secretive organizations which ascribe to the same basic principles of global rule (new world order) and permanent US hegemony. There’s no quantifiable difference between any of them.
Whitney, of course, is talking about organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group. It is within these entities that the ruling elite have been planted and cultivated.
Additionally, Financial Armageddon does not mention energy depletion or climate change as precipitous factors converging with global economic meltdown, exacerbating it and creating what I have frequently referred to as the Terminal Triangle as we “cook on the road to collapse”. These are factors that will only intensify the grim post-collapse world that Panzner does acknowledge later in the book. However, to fail to mention the current and future juxtaposition of these three for the first time in human history is a glaring omission.
To his credit, however, Panzner does steer his writing into future scenarios which sound remarkably like those posited by Dmitry Orlov in his series on collapse entitled “Post-Soviet Lessons For A Post-American Century.” Echoing James Howard Kunstler’s adage that “suburbs are the slums of the future”, he states that “In the wake of the early 21st-century housing boom, the migratory landing points may well be the millions of condominiums and boarded-up new homes left empty or mired in foreclosure in what were once the hottest real estate markets.” (107) Reminiscent of Orlov he writes:
Meanwhile, newfound transparency in the wake of the unfolding financial crisis will expose a scale of fraud, corruption, and self-dealing that many will find almost impossible to comprehend. Day in and day out, reports will surface about hidden losses, false accounting, inflated appraisals, sizable off-balance-sheet obligations, valuation discrepancies, unregulated offshore entities, phantom, profits, insider trading, and businesses bled dry to enrich a few individuals at the expense of employees, investors, bankers, and bondholders.(116)
Sorry to say, but all of this sound a whole lot like the current moment, and certainly everything enumerated here will only worsen, and Panzner admits as much in the final chapters as he presents a world of chaos, lawlessness, hunger, thirst, homelessness, inveterate wandering, and people with nothing to lose doing whatever it takes, in order to survive.
I was getting worried early-on in the book that the author would not mention martial law and “vast detention camps”, but he does when explaining the extent of lawlessness, troublemakers, and immigrants “who will increasingly be seen as an unacceptable threat to national security.” (127) Additionally, “Americans will be confronted by an unfamiliar and frightening array of legal, financial, and security restrictions, including lockdowns, curfews, internments, capital and exchange controls, and even [oh yes especially] martial law.” (185) It will be a world where the dark and seamy side of life are apt to be predominant with addictions, vices, and suicide prevailing everywhere. There will be much thievery, scamming, and violent crime and as Panzner says, “People who underestimate the severity of the dangers ahead and fail to take the necessary steps at the outset risk being left penniless.” (142)
When all is said and done, Financial Armageddon offers some sound advice and strategies, which some readers may be aware of, for navigating the crumbling empire . The author insists that having access to information, especially alternative news, will be crucial. Not knowing or predicting how long the internet will exist or remain uncontrolled, he strongly recommends that people familiarize themselves now with alternative news sites and continue to do so as long as they can. In addition, he emphasizes hyperinflation and the risks it will entail in terms of using cash. Precious metals will be a strong hedge, and barter will become a basic, commonplace form of exchange. Practical knowledge of fundamental skills, healing with herbs and other alternative remedies, and personal disaster planning will be essential-as will be the ability to navigate a rotting infrastructure which, and I’m sure Panzner would concur, that in August, 2007, we are just beginning to witness the tragic consequences of.
Panzer also adds the spiritual factor in the equation:
Coping when many people are trapped beneath the rubble of an irresponsible or impetuous past will call for considerable courage, stamina, and resolve, which must come from within. Constant turmoil and heightened uncertainty about the future will require ‘what if?’ thinking and the ability to anticipate situations that used to be rare or non-existent. (143-144)
In addition, Panzner states unequivocally that:
For most Americans, the period ahead will be a time to scrimp and scrape and shy away from a natural sense of optimism that says tomorrow will be better than today. Instead of looking for handouts and loans, people will increasingly have to draw upon their own creative inner spirit to satisfy whatever needs they might have and uncover alternatives to spending money, without necessarily expending a great deal of valuable time and energy in the process. (179)
Gee, do I hear Panzner saying what I have been saying for years– that we must “kill hope and enliven options?” Yes, indeed I do, and I also hear in his chapter on Relationships, that brains, wit, physical fitness, and the best laid plans of mice and men without human connection and skills that enable people to sustain it, will come to nought.
I look forward to Panzner’s next book and trust that it will hit harder than Financial Armageddon. Nevertheless, I enthusiastically recommend this book as well as the Financial Armageddon website.
In summary, the joyride is over, and if you are reading these words, you are probably one of the few people in America or in the world who really understands what that means.
August 9th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
I don’t know whether you have run across FreeDocumentaries.org in your web travels, but it is a boon to those of us who are into political films by independent producers. The good folks at Free Documentaries believe that information is critical to true democracy, and I strongly agree.
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No matter your political or social interest, you can find something of value at FreeDocumentaries.org. They have the following documentary categories:
- Media
- War
- 9/11 and London Bombing
- Domestic
- Election Fraud
- Environmental
- Israel-Palestine
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- George Bush
- Latin America
- Globalization
- Politician
- Religious
- Activist
- Africa
- Societal
- Human Rights
- Health
- Animal Abuse
Some of the links are to trailers, and some to full length streaming videos. My only recommendation would be that they indicate with the video excerpt whether the link is to a trailer or a full length film.
So stop by FreeDocumentaries.org. If you are impressed, please support their efforts by donating or helping to spread the word.
August 3rd, 2007
BY Joel S. Hirschhorn author of Delusional Democracy and Friends of the Article V Convention
The incredible collapse of the Minneapolis bridge will send a message to the nation that has been repeatedly sent for decades, but that our political system has refused to effectively respond to. America’s physical, engineered infrastructure has been in desperate need for massive spending to repair and replace, but the multi-trillion-dollar cost has been rejected by local, state and federal politicians.
First, understand that I have a professional background in this area. My career started as a metallurgist, than I obtained a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and became a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where I taught about mechanical metallurgy and failure analysis, and in my consulting practice regularly worked on explaining actual failures of products and systems.
Many academic and professional groups have for many years produced countless reports on mounting unpaid public costs for updating our crucial physical infrastructure, including bridges, but going way beyond those to, for example, roads, water and sewer systems, tunnels and much more. Make no mistake: The deeply researched and totally supported case for a massive national infrastructure spending program could not have been clearer. But spending on infrastructure is not sexy and politicians at ALL levels of government have found countless excuses for not facing the totality of the problem. Instead, public spending is dribbled out, dealing with the most urgent problems or, worse yet, the ones that are the most visible to the public. But unaddressed are massive numbers of problems, such as the Minneapolis bridge and thousands more bridges, that our bureaucratic system has learned to game, postpone, rationalize and, therefore, put the public safety at considerable risk.
As a metallurgist I can pretty much assure you that if there is a technically honest and complete investigation, the ultimate explanation of the Minneapolis bridge failure will be related to fatigue cracking in the metal structure. Already, news reports have revealed some prior observation of a fatigue problem with the bridge and that the bridge had a relatively low rating of four out of a possible nine, showing that it was structurally deficient. The game played by virtually all government agencies is to find excuses for delaying the most costly repair or replacement of bridges and other parts of our physical infrastructure. As just another example, in most older urban areas there are constant repairs of busted underground water pipes. What is really needed, but avoided, is a total replacement of very old underground pipe systems - in many places 100 or more years old!
Government inspection programs have been terribly compromised over many years. The incredible political pressures to minimize spending on infrastructure have filtered down to the people, procedures and technologies used to examine bridges and other things. When it comes to bridges it is also important to admit that many aspects of our automobile addiction have raised risks, including enormously greater numbers of vehicles creating heavy traffic during much of the day in urban regions. Add to this the massive increase in vehicle weight resulting from the incredible increase in monster SUVs, as well as huge increases in large truck traffic.
The Minneapolis bridge collapse happened during evening rush hour because that was a period of maximum stress, and that would be the trigger for expanding existing fatigue cracks. Once fatigue cracks get to critical sizes they grow and propagate very rapidly, producing powerful loads and stresses on remaining steel components and creating what appears to be a virtually instantaneous bridge collapse.
The remaining public policy question is clear: Will the nation spend what is necessary? Seven other major bridge collapses in the last 40 years have not done the trick. Inadequate bridge inspection has been a frequent documented problem, as well as some design defects. Many people have already died from bridge failures. But still the nation’s elected officials have not bitten the bullet and agreed to spend trillions of dollars over several decades to bring America’s physical infrastructure up to the most modern standards.
Think about all this the next time you go over a bridge.
[The author can be reached through Delusional Democracy.]
July 29th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
Our old friend Mikhail Gorbachev is accusing BushCo of creating chaos to extend an empire. The question is whose empire and to what end? The empire that BushCo and the neo-cons are pushing is an empire of corporate and economic hegemony - only protected and advanced by the military power of the United States.
More…
The headlines today trumpet a $20 billion arms package to Saudi Arabia (and NY Times, 7/28/07). There are even more billions in deals for other Gulf States and Israel. The weapons packages include the so-called “smart bombs” and other high tech weaponry. It should come as no surprise that some see the U.S. as a provocateur to an arms race from which it (or at least the arms industry) benefits hugely. Of course, it also legitimates increasing spending and escalation of the U.S. “defense” budget as well.
Business as usual.
The arms deal runs side by side with the accusation that Saudi Arabia is economically contributing to the Sunni fighters in Iraq, and doing nothing to stop Saudi fighters from joining the Iraq fray. Nor is the corporate media so “rude” as to note that the majority of the 9/11/01 suicide group were from Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has a long term vested interest in supporting the House of Saud, and no interest runs deeper than that with the House of Bush.
While it has faded from the news, there was the incentive money that Britain paid to Prince Bandar Bin Sultan for the BAE arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Yes, Prince Bandar, also sometimes referred to as “Bandar Bush,” whose facilitation fee of $2 billion was traced back to the U.S. banks. Of course there are no hard feelings over such dealings - nor limitations on the financial activities of Bandar Bush.
Other Articles on the BAE Deal
US to probe BAE over corruption. BBC, 6/26/07.
The Bandar cover-up: who knew what, and when?. David Leigh & Rob Evans. Guardian, 6/09/07.
BAE accused of secretly paying £1bn to Saudi prince. David Leigh & Rob Evans. Guardian, 6/07/07.
July 12th, 2007
By: Phil Rockstroh
At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted, due to the fact, he didn’t deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as “the mission” doesn’t drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves.
How did we come to be a nation of vampires who live by sustaining ourselves on the blood of others? Is our mode of collective being so toxic in the United States that a writer must bandy about metaphors culled from Gothic horror fiction to describe it?
I’m afraid it’s come to that: We are a people who psyches have grown monstrously distorted from an addiction to imperial power and personal entitlement. (Imagery of Smurfs and Teletubbies won’t rise to the analogy, albeit as terrifying as those demons of hell-bound cuteness are.)
The corporate culture of exploitation has begot a hellscape of narcissists. It is an authoritarian culture riddled in kitsch and cruelty, in nationalistic hagiography and displaced rage — all the distortions of national character inherent to privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters.
A narcissist’s actions are monstrous because his only love is the image of himself wielding control and power. (Does this remind you of anyone, perhaps someone who struts about in a flightsuit — someone prone to proclaiming himself “the decider” — someone who grows intoxicated to the point becoming insensate from a whiff of his own pheromones as he swoons in macho-narcissistic self-worship?)
And what about the everyday monsters, those who feel nothing — not outrage, not remorse, nor sorrow — by the conscience-devoid attempt made by our vampiric leaders to sustain “our way of life” on Iraqi blood? Are you not a monster as well when you feel nothing before immense human suffering? If you are impervious to, grown inured of, or have chosen to remain ignorant of the agony of the Iraqi people, then you might as well join the ranks of the undead — because the distant landscape of corpses in Iraq and Afghanistan matches your internal deathscape.
In short, our empire’s dependence on the resources (the life’s blood) of others renders us a nation of vampires. Moreover, the corporatist character (our national character) is defined by the vampire’s trait of taking, never giving. Accordingly, what do the big monsters at the top take from us, the little monsters?
To name one: our time, the precious hours of our finite lives. The corporatists are Time Vampires: For a moment, reflect on all the hours of life you’ve wasted away — in office cubicles, in commuter traffic jams, in the addictive pursuit of consumer dreck, or simply numbed-out and exhausted, rendered inert from the incessant, soul-sucking stress of the corporate state.
The corporacracy devours our time and, like the charges of a vampire, has made us dependent and slavish in return. In our bloodless enslavement, we lose the vitality borne of existing within life’s inherent mysteries and grow estranged from the deep resonances of participation mystique.
How does one begin to take back one’s soul from these elitist usurpers? Start with this: The ebullient skepticism engendered from calling out soul-numbing, self-serving authoritarian lies.
In an era as perilous as ours, it’s imperative we act with utmost urgency. Yet, tragically, the exigencies of our age are being played out against a panorama of longer, more stressful work hours, superficially ameliorated by a mass media culture comprised of ceaseless trivia and mindless distraction.
This pathology began years ago when our ancestors offered up their life’s blood to the early corporatists of the Industrial Age. Henry Ford was a gray ghoul who measured out our flesh with his productivity-measuring stopwatch; he was a cunning practitioner of the black art of convincing human beings they’re mere cogs in an inhuman machine. It was only a short trudge from there through history’s slaughterhouse to Adolf Eichmann, insulated within his vampire’s coffin of cold calculations that shielded him from the horrific implications of the system of mechanized extermination he devised.
The corporate vampire’s creed is defined by ruthless efficiency; the fear of a “loss of productivity” is the driving force of the death machine. The system is so ruthless and inhuman that it must conceal its true face, hence the rise of the telegenic undead known as the corporate media. Do not look to them to report the facts of our condition: After all, a mirror can’t reflect the image of a vampire. A vampire is empty to the core; therefore, there is nothing to reflect.
Furthermore, his emptiness is the progenitor of his destructive nature. Rather than face himself, his appetite for death will devour all in its path: rain forests, Arctic glaziers, the people of Iraq, the hours of your life, as well as your inner being.
It is the force that holds Democratic politicians in the thrall of their own fecklessness, because they answer to the same blood-sucking, corporate masters as the rest of us. Quite simply, they’re afraid of their bosses too. The Washington Beltway is a version, in miniature, of the entire soul-dead, American corporacracy. The careerist politicians within the Beltway are afflicted with the same diminution of choice — the same hyper-attenuation of the will to freedom — as the rest of us.
And what remains for us: an existence (or lack thereof) within this hierarchical hellscape of narcissists. What sort of a pathetic mode of being is this, a life shackled to the service of a monstrous system wherein one must evince the obsequies of a vampire’s bloodless lackeys?
To reverse this situation: Now is the time to drag the lies of the corporate state into the sunshine where they will writher to dust. We are not powerless: We live in a world where our collective, hidden intentions are made manifest by our outward actions. This is why Gothic — even b-movie — metaphors are not an overwrought description of our present condition. Ergo, by the vehicle of cultural collaboration, we are a nation of world-destroying, b-movie monsters — we are a hack-scripted, second-billed feature at the drive-in movie of existence — a laughed-off-the-big-screen of the cosmos, box-office poison of a people.
We are soul-sucking creatures of kitsch. Flesh-eating zombies of conformity. Road-rage werewolves. Right-wing, talk show demons whose wrathful voices rage into empty air. Hungry ghosts wandering the aisles of supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurant chains and the food courts of shopping malls. We are: The Fat, Mindless Blobs That Ate the Planet.
To survive, first, we must find the monster within, then drive a stake through its heart.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: .
June 28th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
Well, SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) has dealt yet another “conservative” blow to the nation. This time by essentially overturning Brown vs the Board of Education. Schools are still expected to achieve racial “diversity.” However, accomplishing racial integration is very difficult if it is unconstitutional to use race as a criteria. Justice Roberts argument was:
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” (NY Times, 6/28/07)
University of Alabama Students burn desegregation literature, 1956. - Image courtesy of Library of Congress
Roberts’ statement is a tautological argument that is based on a false premise - that race would not be an issue if we did not attempt struggle against institutionalized racism. His quote is reflective of the bumper sticker political analysis which has become all too familiar. However, the assumption of a color blind society, which is enforcing discrimination through attempts at racial integration, is faulty to the point of criminality.
What the Bush administration, “conservatives,” and now Bush’s Court, are attempting is the elimination of civil rights and affirmative action advancements over the last 50 years. Why? Is it because they do not want a society with increasing levels of equality and participation? Do they want a society of peasants and patricians? Do they oppose a representative democracy, but support a feudal government run by a monied (white) elite?
Roberts’ trite argument plays well to the mythology of race and privilege in the United States. The rhetoric - particularly now - is that everyone in the U.S. is equal, and there is no structured inequality. Race is a non-issue which we dealt with long ago. Race-based policies and considerations are not “fair” to whites, and place whites at a disadvantage. This is sometimes ridiculously referred to as “reverse” discrimination. Of course there is no acknowledgment that without the body of legislation and policy under the umbrella of “affirmative action,” whites could not argue they had been discriminated against. The legislation refers to “race” - not as confined to people of color, but also to whites.
The often posed solution is to use socioeconomic status, rather than race, as a basis for social policy and integration. The argument is that class is the only real divider after all. Unfortunately, that is a false argument.
There is no proxy for race in the United States. Race is its own system of inequality, though it is certainly reinforced by social class. That reinforcement is not accidental - but structured into social policy. Social policy is, after all, a form of social engineering.
The United States started out with the restriction of citizenship to whites. At that time citizenship carried with it the right to own property, to testify in court, to access public education and public services - and eventually - the right to vote. These privileges of citizenship were granted largely on the basis of race - not social class. However, they certainly had (and continue to have) social class implications. These policies gave whites a social class advantage which was passed down from generation to generation. It facilitated an opportunity path for whites that did not exist (or was significantly restricted) for those who were deemed “not white.”
The institutionalization of race, and race separate policies, continued for more than two centuries, and they continue today. Unimaginably, we are still fighting voting rights and gerrymandering based on race in 2007 (among a myriad of other race-based disparate impacts). Are the images of who was left to drown or starve during Hurricane Katrina so easily forgotten? At that time racial disparity stood clearly in front of the eyes of every person who turned on a television. Also remember, that very quickly the interpretation was put forward that this was not about “race,” but social class. The dominant white population is much more comfortable talking about social class (which is largely perceived as an “individual” issue) than about race - where we must examine the costs of racial privilege.
Race and social class intertwine, they are not the same. While there are more poor who are white than any other racial group, whites are disproportionately under represented in the ranks of the poor. Whites are also dramatically over represented in the ranks of the middle class, and even more so in the upper class. This is largely due to race based policies that subsidized the accumulation of wealth (most significantly with home ownership) for whites, while denying that access to those who were not white.
So what does all of this have to do with the Supreme Court ruling regarding education? Education is strongly related to people’s ability to participate and advance in the social class environment in the US (though this is changing). Without equal access to education the doors of social class mobility once more start to close. Brown vs Board of Education ruled that there was no legality or validity to “separate but equal.” The decision to desegregate public education was not to make a more “diverse” environment, but to equalize the playing field for social class participation.
There has been a terrible transformation in education systems’ arguments about the importance of racial and cultural diversity to education. While those arguments are valid, it is not why we integrated schools. Diversity in education (race, culture, age, class, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc) is tremendously valuable for all kinds of reasons, Brown was not about the value of diversity. It was about addressing institutionalized inequality based on race.
That fundamental inequality based on race has not been resolved. Look at test scores, high school completion rates, college entrance and graduation rates or even the status and reputation of different school districts. All show there are significant racial divides. Racial integration is not a relic of some bygone day. In our schools; in our neighborhoods; in our health and infant mortality; in the work force; race still stands as hugely significant to social and personal outcomes.
Contrary to the rhetorical argument put forward by Roberts, the promoter of discrimination is not efforts to have schools that mirror the racial demographics of their districts and population. The discrimination happens at virtually every level of social interaction and organization. It is reinforced by racial segregation which fosters the mythology of stereotypes, and the reality of disparate economic opportunity. Education (and not simply K-12 education) is an important component of social maintenance and change. Race and social class inequality are principal among the systems being maintained or changed.
The most common example of past in present discrimination is: segregated neighborhoods lead to segregated schools lead to segregated job opportunities. We have done a rather pathetic job of changing housing segregation (both in terms of race and class) which is why integration in education becomes monumentally important.
The 5-4 decision by the Roberts court reversed the decisions of two appellate courts. It has also virtually reversed Brown vs the Board of Education -one of the most important court decisions impacting racial equality in the United States.
One might wonder what happened to both Roberts’ and Alito’s highly touted respect for stare decisis - legal precedent (see end notes). Justice Breyer issued a stinging rebuke which is pertinent and hopefully not prophetic: “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.” In regard to the importance of precedent, he stated: ““It is my firm conviction that no member of the court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision..” This pretty much rules out any confusion over the context and intent of Brown v. Board of Education.
END NOTES
Supreme Court Cases involved: Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association v. Brentwood Academy and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al.
Voting in the majority: Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas.
Voting in the minority: Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens (NY Times
Text of the Court’s opinion - Justice Breyer’s dissent starts on page 109 of the 185 page opinion.
REGARDING stare decisis
From Day 2 of Roberts’ Confirmation Hearing in response to a question regarding Roberts agreed with the importance of stare decisis:
ROBERTS: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would. I would point out that the principle goes back even farther than Cardozo and Frankfurter. Hamilton, in Federalist No. 78, said that, “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the judges, they need to be bound down by rules and precedents.”
So, even that far back, the founders appreciated the role of precedent in promoting evenhandedness, predictability, stability, adherence of integrity in the judicial process.
AND
ROBERTS: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would. I would point out that the principle goes back even farther than Cardozo and Frankfurter. Hamilton, in Federalist No. 78, said that, “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the judges, they need to be bound down by rules and precedents.”
So, even that far back, the founders appreciated the role of precedent in promoting evenhandedness, predictability, stability, adherence of integrity in the judicial process.
AND particularly for the current decision:
ROBERTS: Obviously, Brown v. Board of Education is a leading example, overruling Plessy v. Ferguson, the West Coast hotel case overruling the Lochner-era decisions.
Those were, to a certain extent, jolts to the legal system, and the arguments against them had a lot to do with stability and predictability. But the other arguments that intervening precedents had eroded the authority of those cases, that those precedents that were overruled had proved unworkable, carried the day in those cases.
So it is clear that even at his confirmation hearing Roberts was aimed at “jolting the legal system” in relationship to Brown vs the Board of Education regardless of his support for stare decisis.
And from the Alito confirmation:
ALITO: Well, I think the doctrine of stare decisis is a very important doctrine. It’s a fundamental part of our legal system.
And it’s the principle that courts in general should follow their past precedents. And it’s important for a variety of reasons. It’s important because it limits the power of the judiciary. It’s important because it protects reliance interests. And it’s important because it reflects the view that courts should respect the judgments and the wisdom that are embodied in prior judicial decisions.
It’s not an exorable command, but it is a general presumption that courts are going to follow prior precedents.
Warren Court that Ruled on Brown - Library of Congress
Roberts Court 2006 - Wikipedia
June 15th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
They stand in icy water; in crowded conditions; wet to the skin for 18 hour shifts. They work for one of the largest food processors in the world. They are paid below legal wage, and not paid overtime. Now, 167 of them sit in ICE custody after a raid on the North Portland (Oregon) plant at which they were employed. Some had ICE agents show up at their homes and take them into custody.
The workers (including legal immigrants) were employed at $7.00 an hour (below Oregon’s minimum wage of $7.80). They worked up to 18 hour shifts with no overtime in appalling conditions. Why did the workers stay?
Rodriguez, the former worker, said most employees did not report poor conditions and long shifts to authorities for fear of losing their jobs.
“Most of them didn’t have papers to work, so they had no choice; this is where they could find work,” Rodriguez said. “It made me sad, because these people came here to work. The women had little kids at home to feed.” [Work complaints hang over plant]
Now those children, like the children of the workers arrested at Michael Bianco, Inc - a military contractor being paid with our tax dollars - sit waiting for parents who will never come home.
Meanwhile, half a world away, Chinese authorities free 200 people from slavery in the brick kilns in Xinhua Province, China. The workers, including 29 children, had been held against their will (in some cases for years), without pay, and tortured with hot bricks if they did not work “hard” enough.
Human trafficking, which seems to be an ongoing issue, has again hit the news recently. The U.S. State Department has added more countries to the trafficking list. Some are “enemies,” and some are “allies,” but they include: Iran, Uzbekistan, and North Korea, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Human trafficking is virtually synonymous with slavery - or at the very least extreme exploitation. According to an article by Grant Podelco “U.S. Report Decries ‘Modern-Day Slavery’” at Tolerance Canada:
“According to U.S. government estimates, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year and about 80 percent of them are female. Up to half are minors.”
- 640,000 women
- 400,000 children
- almost a million people a year
- many of these are for the so-called “sex trade”
They too are “illegal immigrants” and their illegal status keeps them captive - as does the undocumented status of the workers as Del Monte or Michael Bianco. No papers, no protection, easily controlled and exploitable. These are not different issues, but part of the same issue.
I just go up the wall every time I hear an employer saying “We have absolutely nothing to gain by hiring illegal immigrants.” Or, I hear “THEY are driving down our economy,” “stealing our social services,” “taking jobs away from Americans,” COSTING us BILLIONS of dollars a year …”
The undocumented worker is much more controllable than a documented or even citizen worker who has the protection of law on their side. The “legal” worker can file an OSHA complaint, or a pay complaint, without fear of losing their family and their home. The legal worker has at least some “legs” to demand the law be followed. The undocumented worker does not. The employer has the only reasons they need to recruit and hire undocumented workers - the bottom line and a compliant workforce.
Let’s look at the Del Monte situation in Portland.
There were 167 workers rounded up. If we take one 18 hour “shift” for 167 workers, getting $7.00 an hour and no overtime, it looks like this:
Undocumented Worker
7.00 * 18 hrs = $126
$126 * 167 employees = $21042.00
Legal Worker
7.80 * 8hrs= $62.40
7.80 * 1.5 (overtime)= $11.70 * 10 hours= $117.00
One worker for a full 18 hour “shift” = $179.40
$179.40 * 167 employees= $29959.80
“Costs” saved in one shift - $8917.80.
Of course, those workers not paid for all of the time they worked, and yes, 18 hour shifts are “illegal.”
This calculation doesn’t even take into consideration the “savings” of not providing safety equipment, pumps needed to keep the water off the floor, etc.
One must address the issue that they are “undocumented.” That may be because they entered the country illegally, or it may be that their documents have lapsed. It may be that they are legally in the country, but their visa only permits them to work for a specific employer - like Del Monte. However, if Del Monte chose not to put those workers with visas to work at Del Monte, then those workers would have to sit and wait - with no pay. Many do not - they work “illegally” some place else.
But why are they here? Is it because it is the “land of opportunity.” For some, this is certainly true. However, one must look at the situation which the U.S. has dramatically participated in from Mexico to the tip of South America - the economic “transformation” of the nations south of the U.S. border. NAFTA alone is estimated to have displaced 40% of the small farmers in Mexico. “Displaced” to where, and to what? For many, it is to abject poverty and they head to where jobs are - regardless of how exploitative - the United States. Or they “earn” their way across the border as drug “mules.” Or children - now mostly grown - come to join family that they have waited more than a decade to join.
The hostility of the current atmosphere is being fanned by politicians, media figures like Lou Dobbs, and by racists with their own agenda. Of course the virulence only aids those companies with undocumented workers. It creates an atmosphere of fear which makes those workers and their families only more vulnerable.
No one calculates how much “consumers” are saving because of the economic processes at play on either side of the border. No one seems to calculate how much profit is made by companies exploiting a vulnerable workforce. Few look at the fact that most of these undocumented workers are paying taxes, and paying into social security and Medicaid - though they will never draw those funds. I find it difficult to imagine that these workers cost “us” more than they contribute - willingly and unwillingly.
Don’t get me wrong. I am adamantly against “illegal” immigration. However, I am against it because of the exploitation. It is the exploitation of these workers that drives down wages and working conditions in the U.S.
While I am against “illegal” immigration, I know full well that it is not an issue that is going to be resolved with 1,000 mile double fences with predator drones, and National Guard troops. Nor will it be solved with the construction of massive prison complexes in the desert. It will not be solved until we address the forces that are pushing folks into migration - poverty and fear for their lives. It will not be solved until “We the people” stand on the side of the people rather than on the side of the corporations.
Some day we will see that the lot of the people of the world is our lot. As the hegemonic forces at play in the world continue their inexorable absorption of power and control over the means to survival, we will see clearly just how linked our lives are. We will see the similarity between the mother from El Salvador working as a housekeeper in some executive’s house, and our scrabbling for enough to keep a roof over our heads and our children fed. Some day we will see that our interests are shared with her and not with a transnational corporation. Until then, most will see the incarceration and expulsion of 167 people as some victory for “Truth, Justice, and American Security.”
Links to Oregonian Articles
Work complaints hang over plant. Huntsberger and Wozniacka. Oregon Live Link
Raids included people’s homes. Bryon Denson. Oregon Live Link.
Raid sends illegal immigrants underground. Esmeralda Bermudez. Oregon Live Link
June 6th, 2007
By Anwaar Hussain of TruthSpring
The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
President Bush is in Europe flaunting, in a hard sell pitch, his brand of democracy to the world at large and to Russia in particular. He is known to have said: “We believe that the voice of the people ought to be determining policy, because we believe in democracy.”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is as fallacious a statement as any that the President of United States has been giving since he took over the reins of his great country. Fallacious too because the American President is selling a product that America does not have.
Granted that we in the Muslim countries have not much idea of the fruits of democracy, having been perpetually ruled by kings, despots, generals, tyrants, autocrats and dictators of all hues. Granted too the fact that no democracy is perfect and at any given time it is either getting better or getting worse, yet the President’s statement is a wholly fallacious one. Fallacious because despite calling itself ‘the champion of democracy’, internally, the U.S. has hardly ever had a direct democracy where American people determine American policy, the true essence of democracy, and externally, it has a long and sordid record of closely coddling mambas like Pol Pots, Marcoses and Zias of the yore. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because corporate corruption of American politicians and government has shredded to bits whatever semblance of democracy America was left with. Fallacious too because instead of having democracy in the decision making institutions of America it is rather the fine art of corporate corruption that now stands democratized and institutionalized with all now having a chance at equal opportunity corruption. All it takes is money. Corporate corruption in America is now at a stage where it has become a bipartisan, open, and legal practice with Americans finally coming to accept it as a status quo, an integral part of a dollar-driven, cheating culture. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because it is now plain for all to see that misrepresentative government and corporatism has oppressed American citizenry to the extent that their democracy has become nothing more than a corporate theocracy, a fascist feudal state in which “the serfs” serve the corporate state as voiceless workers, voracious consumers, submissive citizens and pliant subjects. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because the immoral alliance that he and his predecessors have been having with dictators the world over runs exactly counter to the false pledges of democracy to their subjects. Fallacious too because those who cosset ruling tyrants cannot advocate for themselves the exclusive privilege of bringing democracy to the oppressed. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because despite the fact that for all his internal and foreign misadventures, from social issues to Iraq war, the support of American masses having decidedly moved from a trusting to a distrusting majority, he presses on stubbornly. Fallacious because while clinging doggedly to his disastrous policies, he is known to have called himself ‘the decider’ on more than one occasion. Fallacious too because despite the aforementioned fact, there is not one single institution in that ‘mother of all democracies’ that can help loosen the death like grip of the yellow fangs of his administration from the jugular of its unfortunate victims. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because contrary to its democratic plumage, his own party’s strategy is now out in the open. And that is a Republican Party that permanently runs the United States and a United States that permanently runs the world. Fallacious too because the severely mauled, but still breathing, democratic opposition has so far miserably failed to nip in the bud this wicked vision of a one-party global empire. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because he has had real laws passed at home that have torn bomb-size holes in the Bill of Rights, set into motion an actual shift of American judiciary toward the radical right and has so fused his government with corporations, the military, portions of the media and a hugely expanded secret police apparatus that now it scares the living daylights out of common Americans. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because the world can see his quisling lackeys overseeing his experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq about to roll in dust and his ally in Pakistan looking with stunning disbelief at the shifting sands of national opinion beneath his feet. Fallacious too because had his vision of democracy bore even a scrap of resemblance to the original idea, his friends in these countries would have been elevated to prophet hood by the innocent masses of these countries. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because we the world can see that for us at least, American democracy has boiled down to nothing more than that of a lynch mob who vote on the fate of their victims even as the rope is being readied to carry out the inevitable verdict. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because American democracy is not only not a democracy; it is in fact the exact opposite…a ‘minocracy’. He is trying to sell to the world a system in which if only 60% of the people bother to cast their vote, in a majority system with two parties, 31% of the electorate can impose its will on the remaining 69%; and with three parties competing, 21% of the people could rule a country through an appointed elite. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because American democracy has actually translated itself into vesting the incredible amount of the power of the President of United States into a mediocrity like the incumbent President with disastrous results for America and the world at large. Fallacious because mediocrity has now become the rule and unlimited irresponsibility one of the privileges associated with his kind of totalitarian democracy. Fallacious too because with the justification of a popular mandate, a third-rate politician has been given the licence to squander resources and bringing chaos into the world without the fear of being held accountable for it. The American President is selling a product that America does not have.
Some democracy, America.
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
June 1st, 2007
By: Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power
…that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy. — “The Glass Menagerie”, by Tennessee Williams
William Faulkner famously stated that “good history is not was.” By this Faulkner meant that history is a tapestry of interconnected events whose meaning and significance cannot be appreciated unless past causes, present manifestation, and future consequences are assessed. Robert S. McElvaine, author of The Great Depression, America 1929-1941, provides us with the kind of tapestry to which Faulkner was alluding as McElvaine analyzes the first momentous collapse that the United States ever experienced.
I was recently gifted with this book by a friend who thought that as an historian, I would appreciate it and find it timely, and certainly I do, but due to current events and how rapidly they are unfolding, my comments about it here will not be from an academic perspective. I am much less interested in the quality of history in McElvaine’s book, although I find it first-rate, and more interested in the values the author is emphasizing and that the Great Depression manifested among the masses of American people. You might say that I have been touched by and wish to share the soul of this book, more than its intellect. For that reason, I choose to describe this article as a commentary rather than a review of the book.
One cannot thoroughly appreciate the catastrophic nature of the Great Depression without understanding what preceded it. The decade of the 1920s, not unlike the economic milieu of the 1980s and 90s, was a time of dizzying, unrestrained, and frantic consumption. It was the apotheosis of the “conspicuous consumption” about which Thorsten Veblen wrote in his turn-of-the-century classic The Theory Of The Leisure Class. Threading his tapestry forward, McElvaine writes that, “Put simply, most Americans late in the twentieth century have adopted the consumption ethic that was rising in the 1920s, but was temporarily reversed during the Great Depression.” (xviii) McElvaine, of course, wrote this book in the eighties, but certainly the consumption ethic has not abated but rather intensified since then.
Ironically, one factor that contributed to the onset of the Depression and that eventually pulled the nation out of it was consumption. Franklin Roosevelt’s stellar accomplishment in the engineering of New Deal policies was the emphasis on “purchasing power” for average Americans. McElvaine occasionally draws parallels throughout the book, and also in recent articles, between the twenties and the late-twentieth century, not only with regard to consumption but also to a stock market index that seemed during the 1920s to reach unprecedented heights. Clearly, the consumption on steroids that we have been witnessing the past sixty years in the United States is no longer capable of “curing” an economic depression, but it is certainly capable, along with mountainous debt, of contributing to the occurrence of a Second Great Depression.
Elevated levels of consumption are almost always attended by an increase in “individualism” and a decline in a sense of community. The Great Depression reversed this trend in America dramatically, and for me, that is perhaps the most riveting feature of McElvaine’s book as he writes, “…the most significant fact about the Depression era may well be that it was the only time in the twentieth century during which there was a major break in the modern trends towards social disintegration and egoism.” (xxiii)
From the perspective of today’s world, whenever I reflect on the 1930s, I never cease to be amazed at the spirit of cooperation that blossomed amid the hardship and impoverishment of the times. Of this McElvaine notes: “The economic collapse that started in 1929 obliged people who had begun to accept the new values of unlimited consumption and extreme individualism to take another look at these beliefs in comparison with the more traditional, community-oriented values that had existed in earlier times.” (xxiv) The author also notes that many men who had become unemployed and found themselves spending more time at home also found themselves in the position that women had traditionally experienced–that is, at the bottom of the economic hierarchy. Whereas in the Victorian era, the Horatio Alger-style, self-made man was championed, during the Depression the “self-made man became the self-destroyed man.” (xxiv) In other words, during the Depression, people began to recognize the value and necessity of interdependence which manifested in a preference not for the highly individualistic urban lifestyle, but for rural and small-town life.
I don’t wish to romanticize the Great Depression era as some golden age of cooperation and community, but I do believe there are applicable lessons to be learned from the way in which communities responded to the suffering of their time, particularly as we stand on the shifting sands of a cliff called “collapse.” As I have said many times, collapse is not an event but a process–a process which is not in the future but in which we are deeply engaged at this moment whether we recognize it or not. And imperfect as the spirit of interdependence may have been in the Depression era, it was, as McElvaine emphasizes, “…the time in which the values of compassion, sharing, and social justice became the most dominant that they have ever been in American history.” (7) Conversely, “…more and more people became dependent as the nation industrialized.” (7)
As the friend who gave me this book stated, “This book reveals very poignantly what has been lost in American culture.” He was referring above all to the issue of cooperative values, and values is something historians often avoid addressing in their frantic attempt to remain “objective.” Yet, as McElvaine notes, “Values are the critical base on which any society rests.” (196) Unfortunately, American capitalism itself is a poster-child for the schizophrenia between economics and ethics.
America in the 1920s was capitalism on steroids with the ruling elite gorging on corporate profits, most notably profits from the automobile and related industries. Three presidents in a row, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover had agreed that “the business of America is business”. Yet when the house of cards collapsed in 1929, the working and middle classes, alongside intellectuals who had been criticizing capitalism for some time, awakened to the nightmare that the American dream had become. Not surprisingly, countless working and middle class individuals moved dramatically to the left politically, many embracing socialism and organizing and protesting for economic and social justice. Why else during the McCarthy era was the thirties referred to as the Red Decade? (203)
And of course, gangsters of the Depression era were portrayed in film as Robin Hood’s. The 1960s cinematic portrayal of support for and idealization of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrows was not exaggerated. In my family I grew up on an often-told and re-told tale of my grandmother’s matter-of-fact statement that “if John Dillinger knocks on my door, I’ll give him a hot meal and a place to hide down in the cellar behind the furnace.” The Depression brought people–all kinds of people–together and kept them together.
One of the most powerful and moving pieces of cinema in the thirties was King Vidor’s “Our Daily Bread” in which a young unemployed husband and his wife (John and Mary) living in the city become desperate for income. John appeals to Mary’s rich uncle who gives them several acres of land which they are totally unskilled in farming. But along comes a farmer from a Midwestern state on his way to California with his family who joins them and begins teaching them how to farm. Soon the population of the farm grows and more and more unemployed, wandering individuals wind up on John and Mary’s land looking for not only a new start, but a sense of community with which to launch it. Together, the farm’s residents survive by hunting, growing their own food, and sharing skills. A series of challenges arises, but each time, the community moves through them–except for the most formidable of all, drought. However, near the farm is a reservoir, but the community has no way to access it. Therefore, they must construct a conduit from the reservoir to their crops–a gargantuan project that has them working day and night with picks and shovels routing the water to their land.
For me, the most powerful and moving scene in the film was the long brigade of men digging with their shovels and the coordinated thud of their picks into the earth, toiling around the clock, to bring water to their land. I’ll never forget the sound of those picks reverberating with sweat, determination, and above all, cooperation. They were successful, and their crops flourished, but only because they never gave up on creating a new life, and they never stopped working together to do so.
Today, no movement offers any viable alternatives for political, economic, social, or ecological justice. Few are even cognizant of the severity of the issues at hand, and most are woefully unprepared and uninformed. A frightening and naïve assumption prevails: that the U.S. government will “take care” of its citizens in the throes of natural disasters, pandemics, blackouts, or dirty bomb attacks. These realities could exacerbate one’s angst as one contemplates collapse, but in fact, they might instead motivate us to begin building the lifeboats we must have in order to navigate it. We will not be able to do this until we have experienced a profound transformation of our values–and our sense of community.
Historians generally agree that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Keynesian economics rescued the nation from total catastrophe, but McElvaine points out that “…the changing mix of American values in the Depression–was of even more significance than was Roosevelt himself.”(324) Roosevelt’s agenda would have fallen on deaf and smug ears ten years earlier, and it could not have succeeded without a change in values in the American people that was able to resonate with the values of the New Deal. I hasten to add that I do not believe that it was the New Deal that ultimately pulled the nation out of the Depression, for as I make clear in my book U.S. History Uncensored, it was ultimately World War II and the launching of the military industrial complex that did so and has continued to “prevent” depressions and mask more protracted, less visible economic and social injustice.
“Perhaps the chief impact of the Great Depression,” says McElvaine, “was that it obliged the American people to face up to the necessity of cooperative action because it took away, at least temporarily, the easy assumptions of expansion and mobility that had decisively influenced so much of past American thinking.” (337) Expansion? Mobility? Do these sound like aspects of American life that could be severely curtailed by energy depletion, climate change, or an increasingly worthless U.S. dollar?
Mainstream economists have just begun to use the “R” word in relation to the economy, but anyone who has done even minimal research, with or without a degree in economics, understands that the United States, in fact many nations on earth, are moving rapidly toward a Second Great Depression. It is therefore imperative to understand the causes and effects of the First Great Depression, particularly its impact on the culture and the values of individuals in it.
The author goes on to point out the “feminization” of American society during the Great Depression, noting that “The self-centered, aggressive, competitive ‘male’ ethic of the 1920s was discredited. Men who lost their jobs became dependent in ways that women had been thought to be.” (340) Yet it was not only in loss of jobs that men became more “feminized.”
Whenever any individuals, male or female, join to create community in a spirit of cooperation, they are “feminizing”, for the feminine principle is above all, relational–a concept inherent in the traditions of many indigenous peoples. It is this kind of joining that characterized the Great Depression era and to which we must aspire as we build economic, emotional, and spiritual lifeboats for the daunting journey ahead.
There will be no New Deal, no FDR, no parental federal government to kiss everything and make it better. There will only be ourselves and the others with whom we choose to join and prepare.
May 26th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
The Democrats caved in and supported the supplemental occupation funding demanded by the Bush Cabal. The arguments apparently being that they a) didn’t have the votes to overcome a veto; b) they didn’t want to be blamed for the growing death and chaos; c) the belief this keeps Iraq the Republican’s adventure; d) perhaps - because the PSAs haven’t been signed yet. Regardless, the considerations were political - not moral - not responsive to the mandate that the November elections sent. The arguments now are that they can revisit the funding issue in September - 4 months from now - 122 days from June 1 to September 31. Given a rough average death toll of five US troops and 50 Iraqi civilians, that makes a low estimate of 6710 (610 US troops, 6100 Iraqi civilians) deaths for buckling on the funding.
Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for a failure of will.
Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for vested corporate interests.
Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for a coward’s political strategy.
Damn the Democrats, and damn the Republicans. Their gamesmanship is being paid for in the blood of others. How dare they do this? How dare we let them do this?
This is NOT a war. It is an OCCUPATION. It is a bloody occupation to be sure, but an occupation all the same.
Once more the Bush Folk are talking about regime change - this time to clean the militia influence (Al-Sadar) out of the Iraqi Parliament. How exactly are they planning the removal of a democratically elected block of another government? Who is in charge? Is there even the illusion that the Iraqi government is independent to the U.S.?
Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives (and likely far more) as collateral damage for a political calculus that is doomed to fail no matter what.
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