Analysis » peoplesworld

Getting off capitalism’s treadmill

Sam Webb — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:44:00 -0500

Which is a better metaphor to describe the lives of U.S. working people under capitalism: an escalator or a treadmill?

At one time one could argue with some evidence that an ascending escalator was an apt description. Between 1945 and 1975, U.S. capitalism went through an exceptional - not normal - phase of development.

Employment, wages and benefits steadily climbed upward for substantial sections of the working class in tandem with economic growth rates and profits. It seemed as if capitalism's negative features - boom and bust, harsh exploitation, instability, class polarization, mass impoverishment, etc. - had permanently given way to steady growth and broadly shared prosperity. The American Dream for the first time seemed to be within everybody's reach.

But much to the surprise of many this "Golden Age" of capitalism didn't last. By the mid-1970s stagflation, rising unemployment and declining wages took hold and the preceding period of capitalist development became the stuff of nostalgia. Over the next three decades the circumstances for working people continued to deteriorate, thanks to neoliberal globalization, the takeover of the economy by nonproductive financial capital, and a right-wing-led ruling class offensive.

The "up" escalator began to morph into a fast moving treadmill for countless numbers of working people. And with the Great Recession of 2008 the metamorphosis was complete as working people in their vast majority not only found themselves on a treadmill, but also were unable to keep pace, with many falling far behind.

Meanwhile, the 1 percent not only made their way through the Great Recession, but also enriched themselves many times over.

What is the upshot of all this?

We are in a new era of capitalist development. The class struggle has intensified and widened.

Needed are new mass and militant forms of struggle (like the mass struggles in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Wall Street's Zuccotti Park) and new demands (massive public works jobs program with affirmative action, democratic takeover of the financial sector, etc.) that correspond to the scope of the crisis and the changing consciousness of the multiracial working class.

Old forms of struggle that didn't prioritize mass mobilization, and the old demands that were shaped by the immediate post-World-War-II capitalist economy, no longer fill the bill.

Of crucial importance in this new era is unity along racial and gender lines, which means a consistent and sustained struggle against racial and gender discrimination.

Finally, the road to slowing down and eventually stepping off the treadmill of capitalism in its new phase goes through the 2012 elections. More specifically, the decisive defeat of the right that dominates the Republican Party is imperative.

Its defeat will open a new terrain of struggle on which the working class in all its diversity and its many allies can project and win solutions to the new problems that this era of capitalist development presents.

Photo: Farhad sh // CC 2.0

Behind the scenes: the secret NATO report on Afghanistan

Thomas Riggins — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:01:00 -0500

"State of the Taliban 2012," the secret report commissioned by the U.S. and NATO, was never supposed to see the light of day. Unfortunately for those on the right who want to prolong the war in Afghanistan it was leaked to the press and the New York Times has published many of its observations and conclusions.

The report was based on information taken from 4,000 prisoners, Taliban and others, that have fallen into the hands of U.S. forces. To the surprise of the U.S., the prisoners are rather upbeat about the progress of the war and think they are actually winning it. The report says that while the U.S. thinks it is winning and is about to start winding down its own participation, the interviews of the captives shows "a Taliban insurgency that is far from vanquished or demoralized." The same issue of the Times reported the optimistic statement of Defense Secretary Panetta that the U.S. would set 2013, not 2014, as the date for ending U.S. combat in Afghanistan. This was later corrected by the ground commanders in Afghanistan - 2014 is the date - and we may still remain after that date for a long, long time.

They wish.

The report says the prisoners think that in areas where the U.S. forces withdraw and turn over control to the Afghan Army, that army begins to cooperate with the Taliban- as do the local Afghan government officials. "Many Afghans are already bracing themselves for an eventual return of the Taliban." The report also says that while the Afghan government says it will carry on the war after the US withdraws "many of its personnel have secretly reached out to insurgents, seeking long-term options in the event of a possible Taliban victory." Well of course, all options should be kept on the table.

The report gives the impression that the war is lost, and that the government can't deal with this reality. Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings a U.S.-NATO spokesperson said, "This document aggregates the comments of Taliban detainees in a captive environment without considering the validity of or motivation behind their reflections. Any conclusions drawn from this would be questionable at best."

Wait a minute. We captured these people and interrogated them to get information about the enemy. We don't like the information we get, so then say that due to a "captive environment," the conclusions are "questionable." But all interrogations of prisoners take place in a "captive environment" and are therefore "questionable." So why bother? It appears that if the government likes the information it gets it's credible, otherwise it's "questionable."

This is completely intellectually dishonest and we should not believe a word we are told by the military, unless we have independent third-person verification.

What could be more comical than NATO spokespersons attempting to refute their own report once it became public. The State Department has also gotten into the act. The report mentions that the Taliban has strained relations with their "Pakistani patrons." But Pakistan is supposed to be a U.S. "ally." How foolish does the U.S. look when the money it lavishes on the Pakistanis is redirected to the Taliban and used to kill U.S. troops? How can you even dream of winning a war when you are all tied up in these contradictory circumstances? The State Department realizes how bad this looks and also played down the significance of the NATO report, saying it was "in no way designed to impact our ongoing efforts to be back on track with Pakistan." Were we ever "on track" with Pakistan, or just being used by the Pakistanis after they realized we didn't know what we were doing in Afghanistan? The U.S. government knows all this anyway and is still trying to sort out its relations with Pakistan in the hopes (probably vain hopes) that the Pakistanis will alter their behavior.

For example, the Pakistani government, according to the report, "is thoroughly aware of Taliban activities and the whereabouts of all senior Taliban personnel." And "there is a widespread assumption that Pakistan will never allow the Taliban the chance to become independent of ISI [the CIA/FBI of Pakistan - the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate] control." Yes, lets get back on track: the U.S. is at "war" with the Taliban, the Taliban is controlled by Pakistan. Therefore... draw your own conclusions.

An important conclusion of the report, that NATO and the U.S. really don't want people to know about, is the following: "Taliban commanders, along with rank and file members, increasingly believe that their control of Afghanistan is inevitable. Though the Taliban suffered severely in 2011, its strength, motivation, funding and tactical proficiency remains intact."

Where does the funding come from? It comes from us! Money from the U.S. to Pakistan goes to the Taliban. Trucks and weapons we give to the Afghan Army are sold off at bargain basement rates, or "donated," to the Taliban by corrupt elements in the Karzai government. The Taliban's strength is intact - we are withdrawing. Their motivation is intact - we just want to get out as soon as possible (sooner). Their tactical proficiency is intact; we are turning operations over to the Afghan Army, many of whose troops would rather shoot us than the Taliban. Is it really too hard to see how all this is going to end? Oh, I forgot to add that besides the ISI, the report says, the Afghan intelligence agency also supplies the Taliban with information about where American troops are located so that they can be attacked.

So there you have it. We are spending $2 billion a week to support the war against the Taliban, and both our "ally" Pakistan and the Afghan government we set up and are "defending" are on the side of the Taliban. General Petraeus retired just in time. If he runs the CIA as well he did the war in Afghanistan, the decline of U.S. imperialism will be well underway.

Birth control is not attack on religion

PW Editorial Board — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:41:00 -0500

The Obama administration made the right move when it mandated that all employers be required to offer free family planning services to women through their insurance plans.

Because religious-based employers are included, it amounts to an infringement on the separation of church and state, claim top Catholic officials and religious conservatives. In the hyperbole of the presidential election, Republicans claim it's a war on religion.

They are wrong.

These rules do not apply to churches, or any religious group serving and employing primarily its own members. The rules only apply to religious-run organizations that serve and employ people of different faiths or of no faith, such as colleges and other large institutions.

The real question is: Are religious-run organizations allowed to impose their beliefs on their workers, regardless of those workers' own religious (or non-religious) beliefs? That seem to be what the critics are arguing for.

Why should a secretary, working at a Catholic college, be denied the same right to free contraceptives as her counterpart at a secular institution? If a religious organization has enough money to run a mega-institution, should it be allowed to invalidate the rights of its workers? Common sense says no.

Take this to its logical extreme. What if the Mormon Church, before it was forced to change its racist policies (by federal mandate, by the way), opened a hospital and was allowed, because of its religious beliefs, to enact a policy of not hiring Black workers?

This isn't a case of the federal government encroaching religious rights; it is an example of the federal government allowing people to make their own choices on family planning. Mitt Romney and other Republicans must want the government to collude with religious groups and control individual freedom! Especially if that individual is a woman, of course. That's the real target of this campaign: women.

It also seems contradictory when religious-run institutions accept government funding, but reject the government's authority to enforce laws equally. Plus, one would think the critics, who also happen to be foes of abortion, would want health insurance that covers birth control. Birth control reduces abortions!

Despite pious pronouncements, the flock, at least on the issue of contraception, aren't following the earthly shepherds.

A recent poll shows that 55 percent of Americans support requiring employers to provide contraception; there is less support - 49 percent - for the religious institution mandate. Yet, among Catholics, 58 percent support for the employer mandate and 52 percent support the inclusion of religious institutions in the mandate.

Some who are in President Obama's corner fear a blowback, yet in taking a principled stance on birth control, the administration stands with the millions of Americans who want to see religious freedom, common sense decisions, and equality under the law.

Photo: Women's eNews

Media and power

Tim Pelzer — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:24:00 -0500

Book Review

The Political Economy of Media and Power

Editor: Jeffery Klaehn

Peter Lang Publishing, 2010, paperback, 376 pages, $38.95

Canadian sociologist Jeffery Klaehn has put together a penetrating collection of essays dealing with the political economy of the mass media spanning a broad range of topics. Although the British, Canadian and American writers are University Professors or PHD students, the essays are written in clear, simple, accessible prose.

Richard Lance Keeble in "Hacks and Spooks" writes about the close ties between British and American intelligence agencies and the mass media. The media has always closely cooperated with intelligence agencies in both countries, sharing the same political outlook and goals. The CIA, M15 and M16 have used the mass media to plant stories.

For instance, from 1948-77 M16 operated the information Research Department Office (IRD) where it ran dozens of Fleet Street journalists and news agencies across the globe. The IRD, set up by the Labor government in 1948, spread " white" (true), "grey" (partially true) and "black" (false) propaganda about the former socialist countries of central Europe as well as "planting smears, lies, false rumors and forged official reports about the Soviet threat in the media", writes Keeble.

The propaganda group successfully distorted anti-colonial struggles in countries such as Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus and covered up British atrocities. The CIA, M15 and MI6 also recruited journalists to spy for them in foreign countries, using their ability freely to enter enemy countries and reach top officials.

At home, the IRD conducted "psychological operations" against peace and progressive movements in the UK. M15 attempted several times to undermine Labor Party governments during the 1960s and 70s by leaking false information on top officials to sympathetic Fleet Street newspapers, Keeble reveals.

More recently, M16 used its press contacts to spread false information about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to frighten the public into supporting a western attack against Iraq.

One BBC correspondent justified the media's uncritical acceptance of disinformation by stating, "if M15 and M16 sometimes peddle disinformation, many viewers and readers may not very much care as 'we're all on the same side.' "

The CIA ran its own propaganda unit modeled on the IRD during the 1960s called the Forum World Features to feed false information to the public. The Senate's Church Committee and the House of Representative's Pike Committee revealed in the 1970s that the CIA had invested large resources in propaganda operations. For instance, the CIA had a secret agreement with the New York Times to employ at least 10 agents as reporters or clerks in foreign bureaus. Feminist writer Gloria Steinem was revealed to be an agent. "The Pike Committee found that 29 per cent of the CIA's covert operations was directed at 'media and propaganda,' meaning that in 1978 the agency had spent in this area as much as the combined budgets of the world's biggest news agencies (AP, Reuters and UPI) put together", Keeble writes.

The CIA planted a false story through Readers Digest in 1982 that the Turkish assassin who tried to kill Pope John Paul II was a KGB agent.

In the "The Faculty Filter", Robert Jensen writes that after 24 years Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's magnum opus "Manufacturing Consent" is more relevant than ever.

Chomsky and Herman developed the propaganda model to show that the media's positions on key issues will always reflect the thinking of the political and economic elite. US Journalism schools, which are tied the corporate media, do not teach the propaganda model because there are two basic types of faculty members: professionals who see the world in the same way as the corporate media; professors who are critical but lack the "moral capacity to step outside the privileges that come with their university positions" and are unwilling to risk confrontations with the media industry, writes Jensen.

James Winter in "Reporting on the Pharmaceutical Industry" documents how the industry markets dangerous drugs that kill and maim thousands, ghost write flawed scientific studies for medical researchers who are paid for their signature, invents non- existent diseases to create a market for their products and bribes doctors to sell their products, among other things.

The mass media, which loves to report on medical discoveries, cite corporate medical studies that only list the positive benefits of drugs and not possible side effects, providing free advertising. The corporate media also creates hysteria about non-existent health conditions, such as the swine flu pandemic in 2009 that never happened, so that governments will buy vaccines that enrich companies and shareholders.

Winter also suggests that the Canadian media has been critical of the Canadian public healthcare system and promote private participation because certain businessmen such as Paul Desmarais Sr., part owner of the Southam newspaper chain and other media, is also owner of powerful insurance companies that would benefit from privatization.

In "Appearance, Intimacy Exhibition, Hypersexualization and Pornography", Richard Poulin and Melanie Claude write how the media is sexualizing young girls and teenagers through fashion, magazines, TV, the internet and the overall pornographying of culture. Corporations use sexualized images of young people to sell products. Young people are confronted with sexual images in video games, magazines, films and TV shows.

This early sexualization has led to the "emergence of a hyper sexualized society ... where the female body is fragmented and objectified, and where the value of women is reduced to their physical attributes and their ability to please and seduce", write Poulin and Claude.

The capitalist mass media, which has treated young women as commodities, normalize and promote pornography and prostitution. "Women's liberation, a crucial conquest of the feminist movement, has been transformed by the no-liberal market into submissiveness to male pleasures."

Klaehn's "The Political Economy of Media and Power" is a thought provoking work that sheds light on the dark corners of capitalism and its media infrastructure. These above mentioned essays are just a small sampling of what awaits the reader in Klaehn's fascinating book.

Ron Paul, "progressive"?

Bruce Bostick — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:25:00 -0500

Ron Paul, especially in comparison to his fellow Republicans, does seem a likeable fellow. His position on ending our nation's wars and interventions is on target. However, it is ridiculous that some otherwise positive, well-meaning folks have become so infatuated with Paul that they call him "progressive." It brings to mind an old saying about freedom that goes: "Freedom means different things to different folks. Freedom for the fox means freedom to eat the hen, but freedom for the hen means freedom from the fox!"

Look a bit closer at just whose liberty and freedom Paul is most interested in protecting. In this time of increased rights for corporations and fetuses, and decreased ones for regular working folks, freedom does not have a neutral meaning.

Massive struggles have developed here in Ohio and across the nation, as obscenely rich corporate interests launched attacks on working people's collective bargaining rights, Social Security and Medicare, women's health care, pensions, gay people's rights, and other areas. Where has the "progressive" Ron Paul come down on these important struggles? Consistently he comes down on the side of corporations and their "rights," and solidly against the rights of embattled ordinary working people.

In Ohio, millions had to mobilize to beat back the attack by Gov. John Kasich and the GOP seeking to bust public employee unions with Senate Bill 5. In Wisconsin, Indiana, and elsewhere anti-union "right to work" (for less) bills are being pushed though. Paul issued a statement "cheering passage" of the Indiana law. Even worse, he calls for a national Right to Work Law and has a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Work Committee!

Paul has no concern that in states with right to work laws, workers make $5,333 less. Paul stands against workers' rights and unions in every form and stands up for the "right" of corporations to rule "freely" over "their" workforce.

Paul has sponsored legislation (HR 2030) to cut Social Security benefits, privatize and destroy it. His concern certainly couldn't be with our nation's seniors. Social Security is our nation's most successful program, pulling aging Americans out of poverty. Last May on Fox News he stated, "Social Security and Medicare are both unconstitutional" He compared these important life-saving programs to "slavery."

Not only does he support the current ultra-right drive for fetal "personhood," he sponsored HR 2597 (Sanctity of Life Act of 2007), which would have made that the law of the land. He is for ending occupational safety and health laws, child labor laws, minimum wage laws and unemployment compensation. While touting "liberty." Paul was an original sponsor of the divisive Marriage Protection Act of 2004, which attacked rights of gay Americans.

Some argue that Paul is really a "true conservative," sincere and consistent in his views, and for this he should he praised and supported.

Think about this: Paul has stood up strongly against the rights of African Americans and other minorities. He put into the Congressional Record in 2004 a statement that the "Civil Rights Act increased racial tensions and decreased individual liberty." That was the same year he was the ONLY vote against a congressional resolution supporting the Civil Rights Act on its 40^th anniversary. Last year he told "Meet the Press" he "would have voted against the Civil Rights Act," but went on to clarify that it was "because of the property rights element."

He sponsored legislation (HR 3863) to exempt religious schools from anti-discrimination laws, and HR 5909, which would specifically end civil rights enforcement in our nation. See a pattern here? Paul really does carry this "true conservative" stuff to its logical conclusion.

In 2007, on "Meet the Press," Paul said, "Lincoln was wrong to go to war," going on to say that the government should have "bought all the slaves and set them free." Paul belongs to the Mines Institute, a pro-Confederate organization. Beyond the basic historic fact that Lincoln did not "go to war" and it was the Confederates who fired on Fort Sumter, Paul seems willing to bend the rules on bailouts, if only for slaveholders!

On every question Ron Paul has been consistent, standing up for the rights of corporations and the wealthy to be free from government regulations. It is these very regulations that are the people's rights, won through difficult, bloody struggles to be free from corporate rule.

Paul and other immensely wealthy conservatives, like the billionaire Koch Brothers, have been very successful at selling the idea that the government is always wrong, that if we just get the government out of the way, everything will be great.

But it was only thorough government action, brought about by ordinary people fighting for their rights that we have been able to wrench gains from the corporations. Only people exercising democratic control of their own government have been able to guarantee people's right to vote, civil rights, the right to organize free from company intimidation, rights of people to live where they choose, Social Security, Medicare and so much more. This is what we call democracy. Corporations don't practice that.

Paul has been good at fighting for corporate rights. Our fight is for the people. That's the one that's progressive!

Super solidarity over Super Bowl weekend

Arlene Holt Baker — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:53:00 -0500

Over the weekend, all eyes were on the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, where tens of thousands traveled to see the event and hundreds of thousands more watched it on television. But while the spotlight was on the game, workers across the city took to the streets to protest the outrages happening to working people.

In one such event, we rallied at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis, where hardworking hotel housekeepers are fighting to keep their jobs and boost their poverty-level pay at a hotel where rates can be more than $1,000 a night for a Super Bowl week room. Twenty longtime hotel workers may be out of jobs in a few days when the hotel ends a subcontract with Hospitality Staffing Solutions.

The hotel workers are not in this fight alone. In the midst of what is undoubtedly the busiest few days for football players, DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), and NFL players joined Hyatt housekeepers at the rally to demand Hyatt end its abuse of subcontracted workers and hire outsourced workers directly. Smith said NFL players would continue a year-old boycott of Hyatt over its treatment of workers and told the crowd:

I love people who stand together to fight for what's right.

Just blocks from the Super Bowl, these football players, together with construction workers, office staff and steelworkers, stood side by side with hotel housekeepers, joined in common cause by the struggles that unite all working people-all of the 99 percent in this country who are fighting against corporate greed and challenging politicians who seek to take away our rights as citizens of this great country

Days ago, some of those politicians right here in Indiana pushed through the state legislature legislation that is a massive assault on the wages of the state's working people. The "right to work" for less bill was hustled through the legislative process in a series of dirty tricks in outright contempt for democracy.

What's happening in Indiana is just one part of the massive assault on working families across the country. Yet over the past year, we saw again and again the strength of collective action, of public protest in state after state as the rights of workers came under attack. We re-learned that we are not alone, and we have seen that when we stand together with those who share our values, victory is ours.

Hours after Gov. Mitch Daniels ® signed Indiana's contemptuous bill, tens of thousands of Hoosier workers came together in solidarity to march from the statehouse to Super Bowl village. Construction workers and teachers, grocery clerks and truck drivers chanted "Remember November," vowing to take back the state door by door, neighborhood by neighborhood.

This year, as in Indiana, we will stand together for jobs and for economic freedom across the nation. We'll congregate in the public square. And on Election Day, we'll march to the ballot box to cast our votes for economic, social and political justice.

Arlene Holt Baker is AFL-CIO Executive Vice President.

Reposted from the AFL-CIO NOW blog.

Photo: At the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis. UNITEHERE

Israel’s war on democracy (and why Americans should care)

Conn Hallinan — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:19:00 -0500

From its birth more than 60 years ago, Israel has always presented itself as "an oasis of democracy in a sea of despotism," an outpost of pluralism surrounded by tyranny. While that equality never fully applied to the country's Arab citizens, Israel was, for the most part an open society. But today political rights are under siege by right-wing legislators, militant settlers, and a growing religious divide in the Israeli army, all of which threaten to silence internal opposition to the policies of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Since that may include a war with Iran-and the probable involvement of the U.S. in such a conflict-the move to stifle dissent should be a major concern for Americans.

The U.S. media has reported on growing tensions between Israeli women and the ultra-orthodox Haredim over the latter's demand for sexual segregation of schools, public transport, and public life. But while orthodox Jews spitting on eight-year old girls for being "immodestly dressed" has garnered the headlines, the most serious threats to democratic rights have gone largely unreported, including a host of proposed or enacted laws. Some of these include:

*A law that allows Jewish communities to bar Arab families from living among them. Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population.

*A law that makes it illegal to advocate an academic, cultural or economic boycott of Israel, including settler communities.

*A law that would limit the power of the Supreme Court.

*A law that bars any state institutions, including schools and theaters-from commemorating the "Nakba," or "catastrophe," the term Palestinians use to describe the loss of their lands in the 1948 war that established Israel.

*A law that prohibits Palestinians from living with their Israeli spouses within Israel proper and denies them citizenship.

*A law that drops Arabic as an official language.

*A law that requires anyone obtaining a driver's license to swear loyalty to the state.

*A law that would limit the number of petitions non-governmental organizations, including peace and human rights groups, could file before the Supreme Court.

*A law that forces human rights and peace groups to limit the money they can receive from abroad, and forces them to go through burdensome registration requirements.

Tzipi Livni, former foreign secretary and head of the Kadima Party, told the Knesset that Arab states were "trying to become a democracy, while we-with these bills-are headed toward dictatorship."

Most of these laws are being pushed by Israel's rightwing Likud and Yisreal Beiteinu parties, but the proposal to drop Arabic comes from the Kadima Party. Ram-rodding many of these laws are Lukid's so-called "fantastic four": Danny Danon, Yariv Levin, Tzipi Hotovely, and Ofir Akunis.

"We are in the process of reducing freedom of speech and the freedom of association, and we are infringing on the right to equality, especially vis-à-vis the Israeli Arab," Mordechai Kremnitizer, a professor of law and vice-president of the Israel Democracy Institute told the Financial Times. "We are also weakening all the elements in society that have the function of criticizing the governments, including the courts.

Israeli society is filled with sharp divisions on everything from war with Iran to growing economic inequality. Israel has the highest poverty rate out of the 32-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and ranks twenty-fifth in health care investment. The poverty rate for Israeli Arabs is between 50 and 55 percent.

Starting in the 1980s, Israel began dismantling its social safety net, a trend that Netanyahu sharply accelerated when he served as finance minister in 2003. While slashing money for housing, education, and transport, he cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.

Most of all, however, Israeli governments poured the nation's wealth into colonizing the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, where, according to Shir Hever of the Alternative Information Center based in Jerusalem, Israel has spent about $100 billion. A vast network of bypass roads, security zones, and walled settlements siphoned off money that could have gone for housing, education and transportation in Israel. Special tax rebates and rent subsidies for settlers added to that bill. Some 15 percent of the Israeli housing budget is used to support four percent of its population in the Occupied Territories. Add to that the 20 percent the military budget sucks up, and it seems increasingly clear that the settlement endeavor is no longer sustainable.

Wealth disparity-a handful of families control 30 percent of Israel's GDP-was partly behind last summer's social explosion that at one point put some 450,000 people into the streets of Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem demanding reductions in rent and food prices. But so far, organizers of those massive demonstrations have avoided making the link between growing income inequality and Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories. Many of these new laws are aimed at organizations that have been trying to do precisely that.

There are other divisions as well. Israelis are split down the middle over whether to attack Iran-43 percent yes, 41 percent no-but 64 percent support the creation of a Middle East nuclear free zone, and 65 percent feel that neither Israel nor Iran should have nuclear weapons. Those are not exactly the home front sentiments that a government wants when it is contemplating going to war.

Besides the avalanche of right-wing legislation coming out of the Knesset, Israel is increasingly at war with itself over the role of religion in daily life, a conflict that is playing out in one of Israel's core institutions, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Two years ago, soldiers of the Kfir Brigade, a unit deployed in the West Bank, unveiled banners declaring they would refuse orders to remove settlers. By international law, all settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal, but Israel claims that only unregistered "outposts" are against the law and subject to removal. The soldiers held signs that read, "We will not expel Jews." Six of them were arrested and spent 30 days in the stockade.

The soldiers were graduates of army-sponsored "hesder yeshivas" that allow orthodox soldiers to divide their time between active service and Torah study. Settler rabbis rallied around the six and even provided money for some of the soldiers' families.

Writing in the progressive Jewish weekly, the Forward, Columnist J.J. Goldberg says that a "secret report" in 2008 warned that such "yeshiva graduates comprise 30 percent of the junior officer corps and rising. In a decade they will be the military's senior commanders. If a peace agreement is not reached in 15 years or so, Israel may no long have an army willing to carry out its side."

A majority of Israelis support some kind of compromise to achieve a settlement with the Palestinians, but in the most recent set of talks, the Netanyahu government made it clear that Israel will not surrender any settlements, any part of Jerusalem, or the Jordan Valley. In essence, Palestinians would be forced to live in isolated enclaves surrounded by networks of restricted roads and over 120 settlements. The Netanyahu proposal not only violates numerous United Nations resolutions and international law, no Palestinian government that accepted such an offer would survive for long.

But Israelis who protest an offer that is widely seen as little more than a way to kill the possibility of serious negotiations may find themselves treated in much the same way as Israel has dealt with its Arab citizens.

Those who agitate against the current government may find themselves hit with the new libel law that no longer requires plaintiffs to prove they were damaged and increases awards six-fold. Bloggers, who lack institutional support, are particularly fearful of the new law. Organizations critical of the government that try to raise money from sources outside the country could face huge fines.

According to Hagai El-Ad, director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, there is growing resistance within Israel to the attempt to silence critics, as well as pressure from abroad, including the American Jewish community. Even a pro-Netanyahu hawk like the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman warns "the very democratic character of the state is being eroded." That resistance has delayed some of the more odious proposals, but the "fantastic four" and their allies are pushing hard to get them on the books.

Why should Americans care? Because if Netanyahu silences his domestic opponents, he will have carte blanche to do as he pleases. And if Tel Aviv attacks Iran, it will be very difficult for the U.S. to keep clear of it. For starters, the IDF will be firing U.S.-made cruise missiles, flying American-made F-15s, and dropping "made in the USA" bunker busters. With the exception of the monarchs from the Gulf states, no one in the Middle East-or most of the world-is going to give Washington a pass on this one.

Does America need another war? If it doesn't protest the assault on democracy in Israel, it may get one, whether it likes it or not.

This article originally appeared in Dispatches from the Edge.

Scott Walker's tangled web

Joseph Zimmermann — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:09:00 -0500

Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker has hardly been in office a year and already his reckless brand of ultra-right politics and casual relationship to the truth have made him the most divisive politician Wisconsin has produced since Joe McCarthy.

Walker entered the national spotlight when he declared war on public workers, stripping them of their collective bargaining rights and reducing their paychecks through increasing pension and insurance contributions. In his home state, Walker is gaining a reputation for assembling the motliest crew in modern memory to place their greasy hands on the levers of power, as the Wisconsin media reports one scandal after another.

Long before the movement to recall Walker from office officially began in November, Walker had already stubbed his toe on questionable appointments. These included the appointment of Brian Deschane to one of the top administrative posts of the government agency charged with oversight of Wisconsin's 300,000 licensed professionals. This appointment struck many as curious since Mr. Deschane had no management experience of any kind, and at 27 already had two DUI convictions under his belt. In addition some felt it odd that the son of the lobbyist for the Homebuliders Association would be assigned to an agency responsible for the licensing of Wisconsin's Realtors, Land Surveyors, Engineers and others in similar fields.

The Governor's solution was to move Mr. Deschane to the Department of Commerce and give him a $20,000 a year raise. When additional uproar ensued, Mr. Dechane was moved back to his original post, but resigned soon after. As it turned out, things would deteriorate so dramatically in such a short period of time that this incident from April of 2011 would later be looked back upon as the 'good ol' days' of the Administration.

Prosecutors have now brought a total of fifteen felony and three misdemeanor charges against six of Walker's closest aides and associates. Others have been granted immunity to aide in the probing of the Walker swamp of political and personal corruption.

The list of Walker crony misdeeds is extensive, but let's start at the top with Tim Russell, a former Deputy Chief of Staff to Walker and a one-time GOP nominee for State Assembly. Russell's employment record includes being dismissed from the quasi-public Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority for 'gross misconduct'.

Walker however thought Russell was just the man to administer a fund meant to aide the children of Wisconsin military veterans killed in combat. Prior to Walker's personal involvement, the funds were administered by a local American Legion post in what prosecutors termed an "exemplary" manner. Walker however thought it would be better managed if placed in the hands of a non-profit set up by Russell and a collection of Walker-connected political hacks. Once in his charge however, rather than help the sons and daughters of Wisconsin's fallen, Russell and company instead swiped $60,000 and took a trip to both the Hawaiian and Caribbean islands. It wasn't all sun, rum and fun for Russell however, some of the money went to fund trips to Atlanta to meet with GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain and to defray the high costs of operating the website, 'scottwalker.org'.

The website 'scottwalker.org' was operated by Brian Pierick. Pierick held a post at the Wisconsin State Department of Public Instruction where he dealt with a program meant to assist in the education of homeless kids. But his computer and cell phone were found to be littered with child pornography. Pierick is now facing charges of felony child enticement for exposing himself to a local youth and attempting to lure him into a van.

Another former Walker Deputy Chief of Staff, Kelly Rindfleisch, has been charged with four felonies for sending more than 1,000 fundraising and campaign related emails while clocked in as a taxpayer-paid employee. And Darlene Wink, Walker's former Director of Constituent Services, was apparently a little more interested in serving the Walker campaign on public time than serving the constituents and has been charged with two misdemeanors.

Walker's aides had hoped to conduct their schemes in the shadows via a secret email account set up by them to avoid the disinfecting sunlight of Wisconsin open records laws. These emails were sent back and forth from laptops open and in use a mere 25 feet from Walker's own desk. Prosecutors are now sorting through the morass of these communications.

The bitter irony of Scott Walker assailing insurance and pensions for public employees as the root of all of Wisconsin's fiscal problems while simultaneous stocking government positions with a rogues gallery of political reprobates has not been lost on anyone. But in Wisconsin, no one is laughing.

Photo: Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm gives a news conference, Jan. 5. Two people, including a former close aide to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker when he served as Milwaukee County executive, were arrested on felony theft charges as part of an ongoing criminal investigation of people who served in the county during Walker's tenure. Carrie Antlfinger/AP

Movies you might have missed: "Thieves' Highway"

Joseph Zimmermann — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:05:00 -0500

Movie Review

Thieves' Highway

Director: Jules Dassin

Writers: A.I. Bezzerides (screenplay), A.I. Bezzerides (novel)

Cast: Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese and Lee J. Cobb

1949, 94 minutes, NR. Available on DVD as part of the Criterion collection.

Film Noir is a French term for movies that nonetheless find their roots in the German expressionist cinema of the Weimar Republic, and is most associated with the film world of post-war America in the late 1940s. Film noirs were characterized by their shadowy photography along with high and low camera shots and canted angles that left the audience off balance and peering into an underworld.

Noirs also focused on themes of corruption, alienation and characters in desperate situations, often caused by uncontrollable random events and the fickle finger of fate. In this world without heroes, explosive and sudden violence was common and the flaws of each character were laid bare.

Many noirs did not intentionally set out to create a film that belonged to a particular genre but rather were simply reflecting the pessimistic mood of the moment. Post-war America is often thought of in the context of a booming consumer-driven era of convenience and a refuge of smooth suburban similarity.

In reality, the years that immediately followed the Second World War were marked by housing shortages, inflation, unemployment and other hardships faced by returning veterans. Many of these veterans suffered from heir own untreated physical and psychological fractures as well.

Noir stories of the time frequently dealt with crime capers gone wrong, scams, frauds and femme fatales that led weak men to their doom. One noir however that dealt with explicitly working-class issues was Thieves' Highway (1949) starring Richard Conte in perhaps his finest role.

The film concerns the character Nick Garcos, played by Conte, who seeks to avenge the injured pride as well as the physical infirmity of his father. Upon returning home to California from a long sea voyage, ship's mechanic Nick bursts into the family home laden with gifts that reflect his trips to far away locales. The joy is soon reduced to sorrow when he discovers that his immigrant father has been confined to a wheelchair, following a crippling accident involving trucking produce to market.

We quickly discover that the true culprits of his fathers misfortune are the unscrupulous operators who control the produce markets and not only stoop to a seemingly limitless supply of cons and crooked deals to leave the growers and sellers with empty pockets but are willing to resort to outright violence as well.

Although he knows little of how the business works, Nick is determined to recoup his father's financial losses. He gets lucky when he finds a U.S. Army surplus 6x6 truck to transport his goods and a supply of apples that ripened early thanks to a prime orchard location. Nick knows these apples will command high prices if they arrive to the market on time and he begins a perilous non-stop journey to reach the buyers in San Francisco. He barely arrives before the crooked operators commence their schemes to defraud him.

Lee J. Cobb is brilliant as the swaggering, cigar chomping con man Mike Figlia who dominates the marketplace. He knows a dozen ways to cheat a seller and a million reasons why the profits are rightly his and nobody else's. Figlia cuts a broad swath through the market, alternately cajoling buyers and barking orders at his hapless underlings. Nick, though a tenderfoot, is no easy mark for this slippery villain and at one point during a test of wills and wits icily informs Figlia "your end of nothing is nothing."

One of the things that makes Thieves' Highway unique is the subtle subtext of America's ethnic immigrants versus the Mayflower lineage WASPS of so-called respectable society. Nick's fiancée Polly belongs to the latter, but upon his arrival at the market he crosses paths with the comely and exotic Rica, played by Valentina Cortesa.

Rica has in fact been sent by the evil Figlia on assignment to manipulate Nick but when she learns of his life-and-death struggles her affections become genuine. It isn't long however when the immigrant Rica learns that she is in competition with the porcelain-skinned Polly and at one point she forces Nick to confront the differences. In comparing herself to the blonde Polly she tugs at her own kinky locks and says, "I never had pigtails."

Like any proper noir Thieves' Highway is filled with misfit characters, crackling dialogue, and gritty locations where neon lights are reflected in wet asphalt. Thieves' Highway is a prime example of a cinematic art form finding a home among American backdrops and stories of struggle.

Interestingly, both the director Jules Dassin and actor Morris Carnovsky, who plays Conte's father in the movie, were blacklisted not long after the film's release.

Komen vs. Planned Parenthood: another attack on women

PW Editorial Board — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:09:00 -0500

Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading provider of health services to women, has been a pet target of the Republicans and their far-right extremist pals.

Now, the nation's most prominent breast cancer advocacy group, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation - known for its pink ribbon symbol - has announced it is cutting off its funding of Planned Parenthood for the breast health services it provides.

Planned Parenthood provides nearly 750,000 breast exams each year.

The New York Times reports: "John D. Raffaelli, a Komen board member and Washington lobbyist, said Wednesday that the decision to cut off money to 17 of the 19 Planned Parenthood affiliates it had supported was made because of the fear that an investigation of Planned Parenthood by Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida, would damage Komen's credibility with donors."

The Komen Foundation's "Million Dollar Council" and "Million Dollar Council Elite" donors include a Who's Who of well known American corporations, including American Airlines, Caterpillar, Ford, Walgreens, 3M, Dell, Purina Cat Chow and New Balance, among others.

Why is Stearns investigating Planned Parenthood? Supposedly to determine whether it has used federal money to fund abortions. In fact, the excuse for the whole Republican/far-right war on Planned Parenthood is that it provides abortion services.

But Planned Parenthood says its nearly 800 health centers around the U.S. focus on prevention: "76 percent of our clients receive services to prevent unintended pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood services help prevent more than 584,000 unintended pregnancies each year."

Only 3 percent of its health services are abortion services, the organization says.

So, one has to ask: is this GOP crusade against Planned Parenthood really about abortion? Is it really "pro-life"? No! It is an attack on women's health overall - and especially lower-income and young women who rely on Planned Parenthood - an attack on their right to make their own health decisions, including about bearing a child.

Therefore it's especially disturbing that the Komen Foundation has bowed to the Republican right in pulling its funding for Planned Parenthood's breast cancer prevention services.

This is not a "women's issue." Last time we checked, women were 50 percent of the population. The other 50 percent, men, have all had a mother and undoubtedly have a sister, a wife, a niece, a daughter, an aunt or other close female relative or friend. So 100 percent of Americans have a stake in women's health and equal access to health care.

And at least 99 percent of Americans have a stake in stopping the Republican/right attack on women.

Contact the Komen Foundation and tell them to reverse their misguided decision.

And remember in November.

Phoro: Planned Parenthood Facebook page.

Romney says he’s “not concerned” about the “very poor”

John Wojcik — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:23:00 -0500

Only hours after winning the Republican primary elections in Florida last night Mitt Romney told reporters, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it."

"You can focus on the rich," he told the reporters, "that's not my focus. You can focus on the very poor, that's not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans.

"We will hear from the Democrat Party, about the plight of the poor," he added.

He expressed his cavalier attitude towards the poor - who, when we count the many millions of working poor, amount to half the country - only hours after his victory speech Tuesday night.

Almost immediately after the Florida polls closed a firestorm erupted over the attack ads and the money behind the Romney victory.

The pro-Mitt Romney SuperPAC waited until the last of the cameras were shut off before filing the required report on its expenditures.

Restore Our Future, as the Romney SuperPAC is called, showed that it took in $17.9 million during the last six months of last year, on top of the $12.2 million it had collected in the first six months of the year, ending up with $23.6 million in the bank.

None of those figures include what it raked in during January 2012. Most of the pro- Romney money, according to the filing, came from top hedge fund managers and private equity firms, among them Bain Capital. That group of donors was responsible for $18 million of the $23 million used in Romney's attack ads.

There were also seven big donors of $1 million apiece. Among them were Paul Singer, long criticized for his secretive hedge fund schemes overseas, and Julian Robertson and Robert Mercer, two other big hedge fund managers.

Also on Romney's $1 million sugar daddy list were the now famous, or infamous, Koch brothers and Miguel Fernandez, head of a private equity firm called MBF Healthcare Partners. Three top executives at Bain Capital gave almost three quarters of a million in personal donations.

Romney insists he has nothing to do with the superPac but commentators noted today that the claim is obviously false since the superPac held back required filings until after the candidate gave his victory speech last night. (It is illegal for superPaCs to coordinate their activity with specific election campaigns.)

Although the results last night showed Romney the clear winner in Florida they show that the out-of-touch Republican Party continues to have potential problems turning out voters.

Exit polls taken by NBC showed that only 40 percent of the registered Republicans in the state turned out to vote and that the total turnout of 1.6 million was also sharply lower than the almost 2 million Republicans who voted in Florida's 2008 GOP primary in which John McCain beat Romney by a margin of 36 percent to 31 percent.

While Romney continued in Florida to offer no concrete plans about how to deal with the economic crisis, Newt Gingrich one upped himself in his continual drive to launch racist attacks against President Obama rather than deal with any issues.

In Gingrich's speech last night he derided President Obama for singing a brief line of a famous Al Green song at a recent event at New York's Apollo Theater (Al Green was in the audience). "He cannot sing his way out of the disaster of his presidency. We don't need an entertainer-in-chief, we need a commander-in-chief," said Gingrich. That racially charged remark followed by only a week the Gingrich characterization of Obama as "the food stamp president."

The blatant corporate takeover of their campaign financing, the appeals to racism and the failure of the GOP candidates to tackle the issues voter really care about (job creation, protecting Social Security, education, for example) have caused even well known, long-time Republicans to think twice about their field of candidates.

Florida's former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist admitted yesterday in a television interview that he may support President Obama and would consider running for office as a Democrat.

Photo: Poll Deputy looks on as a voter checks in to cast her ballot, Jan. 31, at a fire station in Coral Gables, Fla. Wilfredo Lee/AP

Demand Congress cut the military budget

PW Editorial Board — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:24:00 -0500

Congressional Republicans are attempting to undo cuts to the military budget mandated by last fall's across-the-board "sequestration" process. The failure of the debt ceiling debate to produce a deficit-reduction plan triggered, among other things, a required $492 billion in military cuts over the next decade.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., along with Florida Republican Rep. Ander Crenshaw, in December introduced the Down Payment to Protect National Security Act that would require a 10 percent cut in the federal workforce as an alternative to the first year of military cuts.

The California Republican received the largest number of donations from defense contractors in Congress.

Working Assets is circulating a petition to tell Congress not to roll back the cuts in defense spending. The petition can be signed here.

Working Assets says, "It's undeniable that we have a grotesquely bloated military budget. Even with the reductions, the United States will be on track to spend more on defense than the next 10 countries combined."

In addition, Republicans have been howling about proposals for trimming the Pentagon budget put forward by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and President Obama.

However these proposed "cuts" are not cuts at all but rather a slowing in the rate of the Defense Depatrment's budget increase.

"The administration's 10-year plan" writes defenseprof.com, "actually calls for an increase in the national security budget over the next decade - but it would scale back the 18 percent boost previously set for that period."

But don't bother Republican defense hawks with the facts.

Sen.Carl Levin, D-Mich., believes the GOP might buckle under the threat of the cuts. Levin said that the threat of $500 billion in automatic cuts to defense spending will force Republicans to drop their opposition to including tax hikes to finance deficit reduction, writes thehill.com.

The Hill reported: "Levin said the cuts to defense and domestic discretionary spending mandated by last summer's debt-ceiling deal, known as the sequester, must be kept together to have that effect, and voiced opposition to recent efforts by Republicans to undo the process for a year."

Levin had McKeon's bill in mind.

Tell the GOP the cuts in military spending must stay in place! And while you're at it, tell them it's way past time the rich pay their fare share!

Photo: (Creative Commons 2.0

Close to half of all Americans live near poverty

PW Editorial Board — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:22:00 -0500

Living one paycheck away from poverty is a familiar experience for many working-class Americans. However, a new study by the Corporation for Enterprise Development says that close to 43 percent of all of the people living in the U.S., or 127 million people, are living this way.

The study points to the growth of "liquid asset poverty households," ones that "lack the savings or other assets to cover basic expenses for just three months if a layoff or other emergency leads to loss of income."

For these families a medical emergency or the loss of a job is a catastrophe.

That these issues confront a growing share of the population is not new. Indeed, a study by the Census Department in December indicated that close to 100 million people, or a third of the U.S. population, live at or near the poverty line. The data in that report "shows that 51 million Americans live on incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line while 49.1 million are below the poverty line which translates into $24,343 for a family of four."

However the news that the on-the-brink situation extends to close to half the country is dramatic - and important.

Tens of millions of families are working regularly but have little savings and are on the brink of disaster.

With the economy only slightly improving, high unemployment, continuing drops in home property value and rising foreclosures will mean most will live this way.

All the signs point to increased class and democratic struggle. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal sees it: "Again, we seem to see the country bifurcating. There are those households that are doing OK and are continuing to spend through these tough times. Yet, there are a large number of people that have to watch out where every penny of their income is going. This means that the economic recovery will not only remain weak, but it will be fragile and susceptible to unexpected shocks."

The broad working-class public sees it as well. A full 66 percent mark the conflict between the rich 1 percent and the rest of the country as "very strong" according to a new Pew poll. Folks are fed up and with good reason. As Senator Bernie Sanders recently said "How can anyone defend the richest 400 people in this country having more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people?"

The struggle is about jobs and job security and who is paying their fair share.

As the election season heats up these issues will not go away, nor will the ongoing attack on labor. The GOP seems to be making sure of that with Republican state governments continuing to push "right to work" laws in Indiana, Michigan and other states.

While focusing on the economy and the issue of fairness, President Obama's State of the Union speech did not mention his American Jobs Act, a desperately needed piece of legislation if job stability and economic confidence are to be restored.

A campaign to reintroduce this and other pieces of jobs legislation would be an important part of making sure the struggle for jobs remains the centerpiece of the election struggle. What could be fairer than the right to have a shot at economic stability and a meaningful future of work?

Photo: peoplesworld.org

Obama's State of the Union: combative and centrist

PW Editorial Board — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:18:00 -0500

President Barack Obama delivered a well-calibrated State of the Union speech last week that was combative in parts, forward looking as a whole, and carefully designed to influence the broad swath of independent voters who consider themselves in the center of the American political spectrum.

Judging by polls after the speech that showed higher approval ratings, he hit his mark.

Obama outlined policies that centered on growing the economy in the near and longer-term: He called for rebuilding the manufacturing base, an end to subsidies for big oil companies and a broad approach to energy that includes new ecologically sound technologies, fairness in taxation, a modernized education system, help for the victims in the housing crisis, immigration reform, and cuts in military spending.

Given the low level of confidence the American people hold in banks, financial institutions and Wall Street, the president announced creation of a special Department of Justice unit to investigate financial crimes.

These are all pieces of a program that the president says can and must be won if the economy is to recover from crisis and move forward. He called it a blueprint for "An America Built to Last."

In some cases, the president's proposals are spot on. Investing in clean energy and education, getting rid of Bush-era tax giveaways to the ultra-wealthy, passing the DREAM Act, providing more help for homeowners holding underwater mortgages and rebuilding the manufacturing base of the nation can help create jobs. The proposals made by the president can help alleviate the daily insecurities of millions - insecurities that result from capitalism's economic crisis.

It is important to recognize, however, that the president's proposals are just minimum proposals, and that much more will be needed to truly tackle the unemployment and poverty crisis.

Plus, at a time when the racial edge of income inequality is most severe, special steps must be taken to close income, education and health gaps caused by racism.

In some cases, the president's speech contained proposals that the labor and people's movements may find problematic.

The "all of the above" approach he said was needed for energy development is not without its negatives.

For example, fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, which is the removal of natural gas by breaking underground shale, is a controversial policy, to say the least. Toxic chemicals used in the process have been found in underground wells and drinking water. There is even evidence that fracking causes earthquakes.

A foreign policy that includes new military bases in the Pacific or threats and sanctions against Iran could set in motion new dangers of war and violence or loss of life and money that threaten the interests of the American people and the world. NATO intervention in Libya, for example, was more of a disaster for both the people of Libya and the stability of the world than the "official line" is willing to admit.

There were many applause lines in the speech. One such section was the president's case for comprehensive immigration reform and passing the DREAM Act. Standing up for immigrant young people at a time when they are being vilified and criminalized is praiseworthy. It breaks down barriers and helps influence in a better direction those who may be under the sway of anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The president excels at threading the political needle and taking combative, principled stances on issues considered left-of-center. Unfortunately, however, in his speech, as he has at other times, he tossed right-wing compromises into the mix that were not just wrong, but unnecessary, even from a "pragmatic" point of view.

By way of example, he coupled his proposal for higher taxes on billionaires and millionaires and eliminating the Bush tax cuts for that group with calls for "reform" of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Progressives know all too well what too many of our politicians mean when they say these programs need to be "reformed" or "strengthened." We don't believe that the president needs to hold out the prospect of cuts in Social Security to sweeten the idea of the rich paying their fair share in taxes. Poll after poll shows that the people already have the president's back on taxes and that they oppose any cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

Unfortunately, the State of the Union speech makes too many such trade offs. Again, if the argument is that such tradeoffs are needed to win the support of the broad center, we say, "look at all the polls."

The majority of Americans, Republicans included, want no cuts in Social Security or Medicare.

The majority of Americans, Republicans included, are furious at the profiteering Wall Street banks.

The majority of Americans, Republicans included, want the rich to pay their fair share in taxes.

With the rampant far-right obstructionism, the continual barrage of political attacks and the racism directed at him and the labor and people's movements, it takes more than opinion polls to influence politics and events. It takes mass action and unity at the grassroots.

President Obama deserves credit for delivering a State of the Union message that clearly shows he hears the concerns of the people of the United States.

We must not forget in this election year that in contrast there are the Republicans. Their single-minded goal is the defeat of that president.

Photo: President Barack Obama greets soldiers following his remarks at Buckley Air Force Base in Denver, Colo., Jan. 26, as part of his post-State of the Union tour. (White House/Pete Souza)

Egypt's new labor movement comes of age

Ben Moxham — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:54:00 -0500

On the desert-battered outskirts of Cairo, in a kitsch marble convention centre, the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) has just announced to Egypt and the world that it has come of age. EFITU was born in the inspiration and chaos of Tahrir square, exactly 12 months to the day. Since then they have been organising, organising and organising. Today was a chance to show the results and I was blown away.

The federation claims to have organised a phenomenal 2 million workers into 200 unions in barely a year. Of course, many of the new independent unions have their roots in the underground workers' struggles throughout the past decade. And without clear ways to keep membership records, the total figure may be in doubt, but as an accurate figure emerges it will still be the single most impressive organising effort I've ever come across (And this is just one of the two new independent federations: the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress (EDLC) claims to have signed up 214 unions with a seven figure combined membership also).

Legitimacy means everything to this nascent movement. So long denied a voice in the workplace and a voice in society, they are determined to be democratic and everywhere. "We bid farewell to land-lord run unions" of Mubarak, said Kamal Abou Aita, the acting President of EFITU.

And they did so in meticulous-style: each of the 264 delegates would vote, one-by-one, walking up onto the congress stage, showing their ID, filing out their ballot and putting it in a large glass box for the entire hall to see. "How powerful is that?" I thought after the first few votes. "How long will this take?" I thought after three hours and only 140 delegates in. More hours passed and I realised that these guys have pyramid-building patience and that I'd nodded off and drooled a bit.

But by then the party had set in. Us international guests filed some dead air time by firing off our best platitudes from the podium. I took the liberty to pass on your solidarity, and then joined in a few chants that I didn't understand. By the time I left the congress in the wee hours the votes for the finance committee were only just rolling in.

What about the role of women in this new Egyptian union movement I hear you ask? Sure they were at the forefront of the revolution but early photos I saw of this new union movement showed a room full of men, straining the definition of middle-aged.

But today's congress showed progress and promise. "It fills us with pride that the youth represent the vast majority of our union organisation, and that women play a pivotal role in our union," said Abou Aita. And I could see that he wasn't wrong. Further, it was these delegates that moved an amendment to EFITU's constitution to put in place a 25 per cent quota for women. No mean feat in this part of the world.

But the journey for women's empowerment in Egypt will be a long one. Take this sobering passage from the ILO's latest global employment trends report on Egypt, Libya and Tunisa (page 75):

The unemployment rate for young people in the region was 27.1 per cent in 2011, the rate for women stood at 19.0 per cent and young women faced an unemployment rate of 41.0 per cent.

Even where they have a job, "female workers and those in the private sector work in slave-like conditions", concluded Kamal Abbass, the acting leader of the EDLC, after describing the extreme overtime, poverty wages and high levels of harassment they face. With British business sourcing from these export zones of "slave-like conditions", we need to play our role.

The new unions are still very much workplace based, yet to make connections with those in the same sector, or region, but the links are emerging. But workshop sessions throughout the week are pulling together key workers in the same sector, their respective global sectoral union federations helping with the speed-merger-dating.

And bizarrely, it got exciting: "We have formed 23 committees! And I'm on the fishing committee!", yelled out one speaker to thunderous applause and more infectious chants that I didn't understand. I wished I was on the fishing committee.

These workers are from workplaces across Egypt. I spoke with welders, justice ministry workers, bus drivers, teachers, farmers, postal workers, and nurses. Abou Aita also spoke proudly of the vulnerable - "peasants, casual workers, informal economy workers and street vendors" - swelling their ranks.

What impressed me greatly is that these folks aren't waiting for some legislative silver bullet to deliver a union movement to them. They are going out there and making it under laws that haven't changed since Hosni Mubarak owned the country.

And it's tough. Most of them don't have offices, and are barred from opening bank accounts. All of them face workplaces where the official stooge unions of the old regime are still collecting compulsory dues against the wishes of the workforce. To join a real union in Egypt you have to pay double.

Further, the new government may be dominated by Islamic parties that swept the recent elections, and a new law on trade union freedoms is yet to be enacted. But these won't stop this chanting hall of workers whose time has come. They've already sunk their roots too deep.

Reposted from Stronger Unions, a news and comment blog about the British trade union movement, managed by the UK Trades Union Council . Ben Moxham is a policy officer with the TUC's European Union and International Relations Department. Photo: Egyptian telecommunications workers block off Ramses Street in Cairo during last year's uprising, Feb. 9, 2011. Jano Charbel // CC 2.0

Cuba sets socialist example on LGBT rights

Mike Lado — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:15:00 -0500

For years Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul Castro and niece of Fidel Castro, has combated ignorance and discrimination towards gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Cubans. She is considered by many in the international LGBT rights movement to be the founder of the modern Cuban gay rights movement. She is the foremost straight ally of LGBT Cubans.

Mariela Castro is director for the National Center for Sex Education where she leads the fight for appropriate sexual health care and human rights for sexual minorities.

Conditions in Cuba have improved remarkably for gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals in recent years. Today LGBT Cubans can be seen in public together, have access to social services and discrimination-free employment, march in government-sponsored pride parades, and partake in public social events.

Things weren't always so open. In the early years after the Cuban revolution, LGBT people in Cuban society were horribly stigmatized and not given recognition by the government. But in 2008 changes started to occur. Transgender individuals were given the right to change their legal gender free of charge through surgery provided by Cuba's free universal health care system. In 2010 Fidel Castro even apologized to the LGBT community, saying that discrimination was wrong and the past discrimination against them was unfortunate.

Mariela Castro has introduced a civil union bill into the Cuban National Assembly several times. Although it did not pass initially, the bill is being reintroduced this year and is in the legal research phase, meaning the Assembly is assessing its legal impacts. The bill would also prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity both in the Communist Party of Cuba and in public life.

To say how great something like this is would be an understatement. Cuba is advancing a broad-based human rights agenda for LGBT people ahead of the United States, which continues to have a muddied and mixed track record at best on LGBT issues.

The time has come for the United States to end the embargo and perhaps take a lesson from the book of Cuban human rights in regard to LGBT issues. In the United States it's illegal to have a sex change and to be recognized as the opposite gender in three states: Tennessee, Ohio and Idaho. And there are still sodomy laws here in the United States despite the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision that decriminalized same-sex relationships.

That isn't to say that Cuba doesn't have more progress to make in overcoming stereotypes about "masculinity" and "femininity," and prejudice and discrimination against those who defy the stereotypes. But thankfully the National Center for Sex Education and Mariela Castro are empowering the Cuban population through education to eradicate these stereotypes and advance equality.

If her bill passes in Cuba, the island nation will be not only a leader in tolerance and human rights for LGBT people but also set an example for both the developing world and other socialist countries that LGBT rights are compatible with a socialist agenda. Who knows the broader impact of this legislation? Maybe China or Vietnam will feel compelled to follow their Cuban comrades and enact pro-LGBT legislation as well. There surely is a Chinese version of Mariela Castro.

In the People's Republic of China, a sexologist named Li Yinhe, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has reportedly introduced bills to allow same-sex marriage. As a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference she has spoken in defense of the Chinese LGBT community and that is where she has introduced her bills as well.

Although China is not on the same level as Cuba in LGBT rights, things seem to be improving. In the late 2000s the Chinese government opened the first state-sponsored LGBT health and community centers where members of the LGBT community could meet and receive sex education advice and basic health services. Polls among the average Chinese population indicate that the current general perception of LGBT people continues to improve.

In Vietnam the atmosphere regarding LGBT people appears to be improving too. Many young people are reported to be understanding of and sympathetic to the problems of the LGBT community. Health care for LGBT people is free especially for those who have HIV or are in need of testing. This is done irrespective of sexual orientation or gender identity.

So the situation for LGBT people in socialist countries seems to be rapidly looking up. Cuba is on the verge of equality. China and Vietnam are moving forward by making access to health care and social services for LGBT people easier to obtain. These countries could take the next step forward by outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Gay people like me are everywhere. We come in all shapes and sizes, colors and voices. We're diverse and we would like you to welcome us with open arms. These socialist countries are making steps towards that. The U.S. has made gains, but we have a ways to go.

Photo: Mariela Castro answers questions during a news conference in Havana, May 10, 2008, at the launch of a campaign to defend the rights of gay and lesbian minorities in Cuba. Javier Galeano/AP

Mitt Romney running a seminar on inequality

Sam Pizzigati — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:13:00 -0500

BOSTON - Should we all start praying for Mitt Romney? The GOP presidential hopeful from Bain Capital has become a walking, talking object lesson on how our plutocracy works - and why we desperately need to end it.

Egalitarians seem to be doing a lot of praying since Saturday's GOP primary in South Carolina. If you listen closely, you can almost hear their prayer: Please, Lord, let Mitt Romney win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Why this swelling of affection for one of the richest Americans ever to run for the White House? Over recent weeks, Romney has put a long-overdue "human face" on American plutocracy at its job-destroying, tax-avoiding worst. No wonder one of his Republican primary foes labeled his actions "vulture capitalism. "

Thanks to Romney, millions of people now understand how private equity kingpins funnel fortunes, to themselves, out of middle class misfortune. Millions more, thanks to Mitt's on-the-stump candor, have a window into the world of people so rich that $370,000 - Mitt's income from speaking fees last year - rates as "not very much."

Every day seems to bring another "teachable moment" on plutocracy from the Romney campaign: The intricacies of the "carried interest" loophole one moment, the allure of Cayman Islands offshore tax haven the next.

All of this came before Mitt released his tax returns. That release only redoubled the scrutiny. Mitt has, to be sure, already spilled his basic tax return beans. His overall federal income tax rate last year, Romney has shared, hovered around only 15 percent. (As Warren Buffett would say, that's less than the rate his secretary pays.)

Mitt's campaign as a teachable moment machine has one other fantastic advantage: Matt had a wealthy father. Even better, Mitt's wealthy father, American Motors CEO George Romney, released 12 years of his tax returns when he ran for the 1968 GOP presidential nomination.

These papa Romney tax returns offer a window of their own - into just how amazingly rich people-friendly America's current tax code has become.

From 1955 through 1966, George Romney reported income of $2.97 million, about $22 million in today's dollars, and paid 36.9 percent of that in federal income tax.

George in his heyday rated as one of America's highest income-earners. In 1960, his rewards from American Motors helped bring his total personal income to $661,423, equivalent to a bit over $5 million today. The IRS only counted 533 taxpayers who made between $500,000 and $750,000 in 1960 - and only 508 taxpayers in the entire country who made more than $750,000.

How did George Romney's tax rate compare to the tax rate of his fellow rich? George actually paid a smaller share of his income to Uncle Sam than his peers, mainly because he donated almost a quarter of his income to charity and church.

America's 1960 rich in George's $500,000-to-$750,000 cohort - a range that would equal from $3.8 million to $5.7 million today - paid an average 45.3 percent of their incomes in federal taxes, after exploiting every tax loophole they could find.

The true millionaires of 1960 - the 306 taxpayers who reported at least $1 million in income, the equivalent of $7.6 million today - paid taxes at a slightly higher rate, 45.8 percent. These millionaires averaged, in today's dollars, about a little over $15 million each in income.

How does that $15 million average for America's richest in 1960 compare to the income of America's richest today? The 1960 rich, even after adjusting for inflation, only made a tiny fraction of the incomes our rich today pull down. America's top 25 hedge fund managers http://www.peoplesworld.org/a-modest-essay-on-extraordinary-paychecks/ averaged $882.8 million-each - in 2010.

Their tax rate? We don't know that for sure. But hedge fund managers exploit the same "carried interest" loophole that has proved so lucrative to private equity power suits like Mitt Romney.

The top 25 hedge fund manager federal income tax rate most likely floats between 15 percent-Mitt's rate-and 18.1 percent, the average federal income tax rate on America's 400 richest taxpayers in 2008, the most recent year with IRS data available.

So let's review the bidding here. Today's top hedge fund managers make 59 times more income than the richest Americans in 1960, after taking inflation into account. Yet the richest Americans of 1960 paid three times more of their income in federal income taxes than today's top hedge fund managers pay.

Statistics as revealing as these are haven't yet filtered into America's political consciousness. But just wait. If Mitt Romney gets the Republican nod, the wonderfully illuminating national seminar on inequality that his campaign has become will be running, glory be, straight into November.

Photo: Detail of the front page of the estimated 2011 IRS 1040 tax form for Mitt Romney & his wife Ann. Yes, he's really rich. His returns, released under political pressure Jan. 24, represent an extraordinary financial accounting of one of the wealthiest U.S. presidential candidates in generations, with his annual income topping $20 million. (AP Photo/Romney Campaign)

Documentary shows a "different" side of Fidel

Tim Pelzer — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:30:00 -0500

Movie Review
Looking for Fidel
Directed by Oliver Stone
2011, 60 minutes, Not Rated

In Looking for Fidel, award winning director Oliver Stone interviews Fidel Castro on a wide range of issues. While the discussion took place in Havana in 2003, before Castro stepped down as president for health reasons, the documentary is still informative and thought provoking.

Castro garnered lot of respect for being one of the principal founders of the first socialist state in the Caribbean, 94 miles off the shore of Florida. However, he also has his detractors, who view him as an authoritarian leader who tolerated no dissident. Stone begins by grilling Castro on the treatment of dissidents. In 2003 the Cuban government arrested, tried and imprisoned 75 anti-government activists. Castro indicates that he does not have any problems with criticism of the Cuban government. He says, though, that these activists are not prisoners of conscience but rather "mercenaries" financially supported by U.S. government agencies such as the US Agency for International Development to work for regime change. He says the Cuban government does not have a policy of harassing government critics.

Stone includes interviews with anti-government activists in Havana, two of whom verify Castro's allegation of being paid U.S. agents. One dissident freely admits that he is living on a $50,000 US grant given to him by the New York Parkinson Foundation, an enormous amount in Cuba where salaries average U.S. $30-40 per month today. The wife of one imprisoned activist says she is living on money sent to them every month by a Miami-based newspaper sponsored by the anti-Castro community.

This U.S. financing of dissidents in Cuba is also confirmed by independent organizations such as the U.S.-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

Castro shows Stone pictures of the U.S. ambassador meeting with these dissidents and remarks that he was supplying them with electronic equipment and money. Stone includes news clips of US sponsored terrorist attacks against the island.

Apart from harassing phone calls and graffiti painted on their houses, none of these Cuban dissidents are able to demonstrate that they are being persecuted by the Cuban government, as they allege.

Stone takes Castro to task for the execution of three hijackers that kidnapped a ferry in Havana harbor in 2003 and threatened passengers at knife point if the captain did not take them to U.S. shores. Castro says that the executions were an extreme measure to discourage a wave of kidnappings. The U.S. government will grant residency to any Cuban citizen who reaches the U.S. by any means, including kidnapping planes and boats.

The Cuban leader even takes Stone to a prison to meet a group of 8 men who were caught plotting to kidnap a plane to Miami and were awaiting trial. One prisoner remarks that the U.S. Embassy in Havana grants few visas to Cubans wanting to legally immigrate to the U.S.

Stone asks Castro why he did not step down after being president for 43 years and let younger leaders take over. The Cuban leader answers calmly that he sees himself more as a spiritual leader and that, unlike American presidents, the country's constitution strictly limits his powers. Castro says he is not president of the country but rather President of the Council of Ministers, and he does not even have the power to appoint cabinet ministers, ambassadors or friends to key posts. He says that he believes he can assist his country because of the experience and knowledge he has gained over many years. Castro never angers at Stone's probing questions.

The documentary ends with Castro taking Stone around Havana in his car, discussing among other things several of the 700 CIA attempts to kill Castro. The one that nearly got him was when a U.S. paid mercenary at the Havana Libre hotel nearly dropped cyanide into a chocolate milk shake Castro had ordered. The man lost his nerves at the last moment and the half frozen pill disintegrated in his hand.

Looking for Fidel provides needed balance to the negative media portrayal of the former Cuban president, who is demonized by the mainstream corporate owned media. Stone's documentary is a fascinating watch.

The first casualty of war

Thomas Riggins — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:09:00 -0500

It was really disheartening watching the Republican presidential wannabes debating in Florida last Monday (1-23-12). Three of the four blithely told the American people that there was, with respect to the war in Afghanistan, no substitute for victory and they would not pull out until our ally, the Afghan army, was ready to take on the Taliban and protect the country on its own. Their implication was that Obama would pull out early because he is not up to the task of seeing U.S. through to victory.

It has well been said that truth is the first casualty of war. The American people have been consistently misled about the war in Afghanistan-just as they have been about Iraq (we left behind a "democracy"), Vietnam, and every other war we have waged since the end of World War 2 (not excluding the Cold War).

Let's look at what is going on now in Afghanistan according to recent headlines in the New York Times (1-20-120). This front page headline should tell U.S. what is really going on vis-à-vis building up our "ally" the Afghan army: it reads, "Afghan Soldiers Step Up Killings of Allied Forces." In fact so many U.S./NATO troops are being killed by our Afghan allies that NATO, after declaring this was a small insignificant problem, announced that it would no longer issue the statistics regarding the number of allied troops killed by Afghan soldiers!

Let's take a closer look at this story. The NYT got hold of a classified report by the U.S. side ("the coalition"-i.e., 80,000 U.S. troops and a smattering of others from NATO to create an international flavor) and, in a Wiki Leaks moment, decided to reveal its contents. It says the Afghan forces being trained by the U.S. side are killing more and more of the very coalition troops that are supposed to be training them as our allies. This is a symptom of the "contempt" with which the Americans and Afghans hold each other-"never mind the Taliban."

The increased violence against the U.S. forces by its own puppet army brings into doubt any future role the U.S. may have in the country and any hopes it may have of leaving behind a puppet army that will look out for its interests and be able to stop the Taliban. What is more, "the failure by coalition commanders to address" the violence and the deteriorating situation can only exasperate the problem. The U.S. does not want this to be a problem so it pretends that it is not. How can this work?

The contempt that American troops have towards the Afghan people was demonstrated by the recent videos of U.S. troops urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban soldiers. While this was condemned by U.S. officials, the NYT reports that Facebook and chatrooms maintained by U.S. troops were "full of praise for the desecration". This indicates that whatever the U.S. says officially, the actual environment in which our troops are operating is permeated with racism and even hatred for Afghans-the racism that permeates American society can't be left behind when we go overseas.

With respect to the increase in the killing of U.S. troops and their allies by members of the Afghan army, the Times reports that U.S. and NATO officials publicly downplay its significance by issuing press statements that the killings are "isolated incidents" or done by "disturbed individuals" or "Taliban infiltrators." Not to worry!

However, the secret report made by and for the coalition forces indicates that what our officials tell the press, for domestic consumption, is the opposite of the truth. The NYT quotes the report as follows: "Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between 'allies' in modern military history"). And the official statements "seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest."

Did the secret report teach out military spokespeople anything? Well here is what Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings, U.S. spokesperson, had to say for public consumption, "incidents in the recent past where Afghan soldiers have wounded or killed I.S.A.F. [the American led International Security Assistance Force] members are isolated cases and are not occurring on a routine basis. We train and are partnered with Afghan personnel every day and we are not seeing any issues or concerns with our relationships." Then why order a report and then keep it secret? Personally, I don't believe much from the Pentagon anyway; most everything they and NATO say is just lies to befool the American people-and they are very successful at least with Republican presidential candidates.

What type of "Afghan personnel" do we get to join our puppet army in the first place? This is how an Afghan commander (an Afghan Army Colonel) describes his own troops, according to the NYT, they are "thieves, liars and drug addicts." Not the best raw material to build an army to defend the "democratic gains" of the Afghan people with. These troops also don't like our troops. The colonel added, "The sense of hatred is growing rapidly" because the Americans are "rude, arrogant bullies who use foul language."

The sooner we leave Afghanistan the better. How can we possibly think we can create a strong Afghan force when we don't respect them and they don't respect us? It is just another imperialist dream that ignores the world as it really is and operates on the assumption that the world you want to be in is the real world. It would be a great disaster for the American people, the Afghans, and everyone else for that matter for a Republican to take over the presidency this year and try and pursue the war in Afghanistan to "ultimate victory."

Class war: They started it

Mark Gruenberg — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:10:00 -0500

The Republican presidential hopefuls are traveling through primary and caucus states with sundry campaign themes. But one of them is decrying Democrats - and unions - for engaging in "class war."

They're right that unions are engaged in it. But the Republicans quite conveniently forget that they started the class war - and they've been winning it for years.

Study after study, from both U.S. and international sources, point to the ever-widening gap between the rich and the rest of us. More importantly, that gap has grown since the early 1970s, approximately the time of the first Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies oil embargo, which in itself was a massive transfer of wealth away from the middle class.

Now the top one percent of the country controls more than 40 percent of the nation's wealth. Virtually all of the nation's gross domestic product gains since 1980 have disappeared into the pockets of the top one percent, or even the top 0.1 percent. Median family incomes were flat from 1973-2000 and have been declining since then.

And the policies put into place since 1973 have served to enrich the rich:

Tax rate cuts that reduced the top marginal rate from 91 percent in the Eisenhower era to 39.6 percent today, and 15 percent for capital gains, where the rich get their cash.
Actual tax cuts that funneled the huge majority of their benefits to the top one percent.
Outrageous and unlimited pay and perks for the financial finaglers who drove the economy into the ditch - pay and perks made possible by the 1999 Wall Street securities deregulation law, topped by a drastic decline in enforcement since then.
Systematic destruction of systems, notably labor law protections, that helped workers - the other 99 percent-defend themselves against the depredations of the wealthy.
Policies that encouraged investment in pieces of financial paper. Firms such as Bain Capital shuffled steel companies, airlines, newspapers, and even bakeries around like so much Monopoly money, just to gorge themselves on profits and cash. And then the financiers discarded, via bankruptcy, the actual companies that made things, leaving shells of firms, ghost towns, and millions of workers out of jobs.
Manipulation and purchase, via campaign contributions and, thanks to the Supreme Court, campaign ads of politicians to do their bidding. That applies to both parties.

If all this isn't class war, declared by them - the rich - on us - the rest - then what is it?

And they're winning.

So what can we do?

We can start with taxing the rich at higher rates, as President Obama and organized labor propose. We can demand repeal of laws that let the rich get away with anything, starting by outlawing the fiction that corporations are persons and enjoy the same rights as persons. And we can put teeth into labor law. And then we can rise up and demand an economy that works for us and not for them.

We'll leave the other details of how to do that to drafters from unions and allies. But the point is the rich started the class war on us. It's time for us to dedicate ourselves to winning it - and destroying them and their power.

Photo: Occupy Wall Street, November 11, 2011. May S. Young CC by 2.0