Ive learned a few things along this journey called life. Following are in no order the 31 thoughts about life after three decades breath.

#1 Consistency matters.

Today, we have access to more information than we can handle. On one hand, this luxury can provide convenience. However, it can also send us into paralyzation.Since we can learn how to do pretty much anything with a click of a blue link, we get overwhelmed. The result is that we end up doing nothing.

This cuts us off from the lifeblood of incremental progress consistency. With so much info at our disposal, its creepily easy to consume without action.

Consistency matters, we need to act like it.

#2 Happiness isnt a place we arrive.

The pursuit of happiness seems to be a chase run by many. But lets pretend for second that we get there then what?

We set up outposts that temporarily serve as happiness destinations the new car, the promotion, the house, the fancy but the novelty of these collections or achievements soon wear off.Unless intervened, this cycle will run its course till our last breath. Im not one to tell you how to live, but for me, I have to believe there is another way.

I think happiness is cultivated daily by the way we think and act instead of something we arrive at via accolades and achievements.

#3 We are all artists.

Growing up as kids, we all made stuff.But as we entered the walls of academia and soon thereafter sampled wage slavery, our spirit to create things slowly disappeared like the receding ocean tide.

Our crayons get replaced with scantrons. Our imaginations are dulled with deadlines. Our aims become linear.The book we dream of writing never gets written. The car never gets restored. The garden never gets tended.

You walk by an art boutique and always think, I believe my work can be in there, but you instead youre suffocated by the life others have defined for you keeping you from working on your stuff.

Were all artists whether you get paid for your art is another story.

#4 The ability to focus on demanding tasks is priceless.

Our ability to focus on important tasks is becoming more valuable and more rare at the same time. A lot of my work on this blog is aimed at this very concept.

Over the last few years, Ive had to teach myself how to focus as a writer. However, the principles of focus expand beyond the medium of writing. In any vocation, your ability to focus is appreciating in value. Learn how to do it and youll not only be more valuable but youll get your work done in less time too.

Sounds like a win-win right?

#5 You cultivate passion.

Following your passion assumes it already exists it doesnt.

#6 Everyone doesnt have to like you.

This is far easier said than done (at least for me). But, this doesnt mean you make enemies intentionally. Just be unapologetically you and youll have enough of them.

#7 Sometimes you gotta walk through the storm.

While in Miami Beach, I walked out from the gym to a sudden thunderstorm. On my way there, it wasnt raining. When I got out the neighborhood was flooded the water was up to my knees.At first, I had a mild panic come over me. I thought what about my Nike fly knits or iphone?

I wasnt going to take an Uber to go 0.8 miles.

So, after looking straight into the flood zone in pouring rain acting like I could outrun or outwit the storm, I decided to walk nearly a mile in knee-high water (my fly knits are fine and my phone still works).

Sometimes, you gotta walk through the storm in life. Inconvenient? Yes. Uncomfortable? Probably? Life-threatening? Rarely.

#8 Doing hard things is good for us.

The hack nation has claimed its real estate in our lives today. Im all for doing less for the same result. However, this doesnt mean that we dont challenge ourselves with difficult tasks, projects or dreams.

Do you tell stories about the times you accomplished things that didnt require you to stretch or persevere?

Probably not.

Everyone should attempt to get a boat over a mountain at least once in their lifetime.

#9 We all worship something.

The only malleability is found in the choice of what we worship.

#10 Time management is a joke.

Managing time implies we control it. But you and I both know thats impossible. Whether were tirelessly working to finish the project or were binging on Bloodline over the weekend, time takes its course.

We can only manage energy.

#11 Staying in the game is undervalued.

Because life is a test of endurance. There will be times when the academic advice or kosher recommendations will not provide enough horsepower to keep your head above water.During these times do what you must in order to stay in the game. Its something like a lion who is surrounded by a pack of hyenas.

The lion is going to do what it needs to do to survive.

#12 Youre one fifthof the equation.

If youve read any type of self-edification book, blog or resource, youve heard this saying:

You become the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with.

Theres some validity in the statement to be sure. However, you cant forget that youre one fifthof that equation.Part of being able to surround yourself with people that add value to your life is your capacity to add to theirs.

Reading books is the most practical way to invest in yourself so that you can at the very least bring a substantive conversation to the table.

#13 You (and me) dont have to be Instagram famous to have influence.

I really like Instagram (and Facebook and Twitter for that matter) but I find myself getting caught up in the wrong metrics at times. Follower count, retweets and likes cloud my vision and I get off track. I lose sight of the influence I can or could have and worry over metrics that I have little control over.

Its a constant fight for me: Keeping my energy channeled towards creating my best work to influence the people right in front of me instead of looking past them and concerning myself with potential influence.

The irony is that when Im focused on the right stuff, my influence goes deeper. When I get caught up with the wrong metric my influence seems to be shallow, fabricated, and non-penetrating.

Maybe you can relate?

The reality is that you and I both have influence and our lives matter right where we lie. In fact, we probably have more influence on others than we think. Always remember that.

#14 Getting comfortable in the waiting room makes our lives easier.

You can do everything right to get to the doctors office on time, but if they ask you to wait you have no choice but to do that wait.

Life wears a similar coat.

Sometimes well do everything right and yet, our desired timing and reality dont match. The default response is akin to a child who is toldno.But this invisible skill, the ability to wait patiently is painfully overlooked.

If you find a way to wait, the doctor will eventually see you.

#15 Goals are overrated.

Behaviors and systems are way better.

#16 You arent the logo.

Advertisements have come a long way. We often dont even notice that we are being exposed to them. The swoosh on your shoes. The apple on your laptop. The letters on your sweatshirt.

After a while, the family of logos you support becomes your communitya place where you identify. For some, the logos become their identity.

The reality is that you dont need shoes with a swoosh to be a better basketball player. You dont need a recycled shopping bag to buy healthier groceries. You dont need the little red badge on your jeans to dress well.

But what if you had a life of no logos?

Youd have to brand yourself from scratch. Write your own story per se.

Logos arent malicious. But they can invade your well-being and consume the real estate that is yours brand YOU. Youre great how you are, even without the logos.

#17 Value experiences over stuff.

The value of an experience transcends a momentary shot of satisfaction thatstuffcan provide.

For my 32ndbirthday, Charlie (my wife) planned a dinner at The Bazaar a tapas style restaurant located in the SLS Hotel in Miami Beach, FL.

The meal was incredible.But the story and experience is something well never forget.

The place is admittedly a little bougie, so we got dressed up. After we got suited and booted, we took an Uber to the restaurant.The driver had some trouble finding the place and ended up dropping us off at the back of the restaurant. Meaning we had to walk about 100 yards to get to the front. This normally wouldnt have been a big deal. However, on the night of January the 28th, 2017, it was a slight hiccup.

Within 20 seconds of getting out of the car, a downpour of rain blasted us so hard that by the time we ran up to the entrance, we looked like drowned rats.Completely soaked, we walked up to the front desk while the whole place gazed at us with empathy.

The night didnt start off the way we had planned but it ended up being a great night. And, we have story that well never forget.

Experiences carry their value long after they are over.

#18 Embedding intermittent recovery is crucial.

Athletes do this well.

Everyone else seems to be searching for the magic pill that allows them to run through walls 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Building rest into your plan on a daily, weekly and monthly basis allows you to do better work more consistently.

Rest is the ironic ingredient to doing more.

#19 Habits make your life.

I like what Gretchen Rubin says:

What you do everyday is more important than what you do once in a while.

#20 Walking is good.

Long walks are painfully undervalued. Friedrich Nietzsche has an opinion about walking that I agree with:

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

#21 Health needs to be a part of the success equation.

Over the next 10 to 20 years were going to see the largest shift in knowledge and responsibility. The baby boomers will be passing the baton to the millennials.Our health is the vehicle that will allow us to take this journey. Without it, we show up emotionally flatlined.

I dont know about you, but I dont want the next generation of leaders to be operating in a constant state of brain fog and fatigue.

Without your health everything else suffers. This is more than six pack abs this is the quality of your career, relationships, spirituality and everyone else around.

Were depending on you to be healthy we expect you to thrive so you can put your best foot forward and contribute in a way that matters to you.

#22 Be mindful of your settlements.

A settlement is a resolution between disputing parties about a legal case that is agreed upon typically before court action begins.

In other words, you settled for less because you didnt think you could win the case.

We do this in life too.

We have friction between where we are now and where we would like to be. When it feels to difficult or overwhelming, we settle for the easier route.The dangerous part about this situation is that it happens internally. Usually, only you know if youve settled or not. So you can pretend, and nobody will ever know.

In what areas have you settled, but deep down know you shouldnt have done so? The good news is that unlike a legal cases, you can go back and undo your settlements with your personal aims.

#23 Doing less allows you to do more.

Instead of going wide, aim to go deep. This can be applied in your work, art, relationships and edification.

#24 Behavior and environment design offers an advantage.

Distraction isnt the problem.

Originally posted here:

31 Life Lessons After 30 Years - The Good Men Project (blog)

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What Chaos? The Trump Steam Roller has it Under Control AmmoLand Shooting Sports News The "wage slavery" movement was based on the Josie Wales: The prosecutor and the so called Judge need their asses kicked. Paul Anderson Ed.D.: For the serious competition shooter: I would recommend that you contact both: Hart and Shillen barrel ...

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What Chaos? The Trump Steam Roller has it Under Control - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

This commentary was issued by the Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians (CPFC) on February 13. It was originally published on the website of the Ontario-based Magkaisa Centre and on the website of the Philippine Women Centre of BC (which is a member organization of the CPFC).

We are in a crucial moment in history, and to understand how we can advance our organizing efforts as progressive Filipino Canadians, there is a need for a proper analysis of current social, economic, and political developments around the world. Much is happening in the global picture that impacts our national work within Canada, and it is within the global context that we must place our particular realities and immediate struggles. In 2016, we saw the horrendous record-breaking climb of greenhouse gas emission levels, the displacement and deaths of countless war refugees, and the rabid rise of anti-intellectualism, state impunity, fascism, and fascist tendencies. But we have also witnessed the many forms of people's resistance being waged throughout the world.

In Canada, the Liberal governments promises are crumbling, thus exposing the neoliberal agenda that had been brewing and implemented all along. The implications of fascist America is glaring, with Islamophobic attacks, spurts of neo-Nazi propaganda, and hate crimes surfacing all over Canada. From where we stand, our work in community organizing and building revolutionary consciousness and practice to fight the direct impacts of all these attacks is more necessary than ever.

Since the Liberal Government took power over a year ago, they have made promises to counter Conservative right-wing policies and legislation under the guise of working with communities to consult on issues: from missing and murdered indigenous women, the environment, to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). Yet their action and policies prove contrary to these humanitarian consultative initiatives, with the approval of pipelines and the hollow lip service and token treatment of the struggles of First Nations and Indigenous communities. Recommendations to the TFWP are steering towards the further privatization of the agricultural and healthcare sectors. For the working class in Canada, this means the continued exploitation of our labour locked to wage slavery, and further insecurity and instability for local and transnational workers alike.

While the election of Trump represents the rise of fascism in the U.S., the overwhelming majority of the white working class chose to abandon the racialized facets of the working class in order to support a racist, homophobic, patriarchal, xenophobic, and Islamophobic presidential candidate in exchange for empty promises of jobs and industry. On the other hand, the ongoing resistance of the Sioux Nation, and by extension all indigenous people on Turtle Island, in halting the construction of the North Dakota Access Pipeline, and the great show of support and solidarity during the Womens March to Washington all over the world are living proof that resistance is not futile. With the reversal of the halting order and the reckless gutting of democratic institutions, we need to remain vigilant and refuse the clawbacks of our hard-won victories.

The death of past revolutionary leaders, most notably Fidel Castro, signifies the passing of a generation of revolutionaries but also signals the ever-growing need to continue developing the next line of revolutionary leaders to help build the path towards socialism. Defining our task at hand and moving forward requires placing ourselves within this context. The current rise to power of far-right regimes around the world, vis--vis sparse but significant victories in the efforts of the Left to decolonize and overturn the viciousness of the profit motive, comes at a time when every opportunity to carry on the revolutionary struggle must be propelled to full potential.

The socio-economic and political accomplishments of the Cuban people under the leadership of the Communist Party are nothing short of remarkable. Despite its lack of resources and the U.S. embargo, the Cuban people were successful in establishing a healthcare system that is truly universal. It has also trained tens of thousands of doctors, and maintains some of the most advanced dermatology departments in the world. Furthermore, Cuba was also able to establish highly effective educational and youth programs, with illiteracy being nearly eradicated and national boxing and performing arts programs that produced world-class athletes and artists. The deployment of Cuban military personnel and medical professionals to Palestine and South Africa to aid in anti-apartheid efforts, as well as Castros open support for the Black Panthers and revolutionary struggles across Latin America, are a testament of the Partys commitment to genuine internationalist solidarity. In fact, it is clear that this commitment continues on with the recent deployment of Cuban-trained doctors to aid in the indigenous resistance at Standing Rock. Cuba's contributions in upholding the ideals of communism and building socialism continue to inspire revolutionary cultures across the globe to resist and combat imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, and all forms of oppression in the name of achieving a classless and truly liberated society.

Despite the overwhelmingly dismal human and environmental catastrophes caused by neoliberal global capitalism and imperialist war and plunder, now is the most hopeful and opportune moment to engage in the various struggles our societies are faced with today. People are growing more critical and are seeking sustainable and long-lasting alternatives to the unconscionable and unjustifiable mass destruction of entire ecological systems and the violent and deadly repression of millions of people borne out of the current world order. Now is the time to build the future, not to be swayed by the moment. Now is the time to create a lasting legacy and put an end to the domination and destructiveness of the capitalist system.

To challenge apathy and erroneous ideas regarding social activism and political organization, we must acknowledge the strength and the victories of the Cuban people, of the indigenous resistance on Turtle Island, of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Palestine solidarity movement, and all progressive struggles past and presently being fought for in Canada and throughout the world. As history has shown, the masses lead the indispensable role of bringing about social transformation and revolutionary change. In the spirit of resistance and peoples solidarity, we the Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians will continue to espouse revolutionary culture and practice to help build and strengthen the socialist movement in Canada.

Expose and oppose the neoliberal agenda of global capitalism! Down with imperialist war and plunder! Onwards with the struggle for socialism! Long-live international solidarity!

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Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians against fascism: continuing the culture of resistance - Straight.com

Trumps America, wrote a leading African American journalist, Charles Blow in the New York Times, January 30, is not America: not todays or tomorrows, but yesterdays.

Trumps America is brutal, perverse, regressive, insular and afraid. There is no hope in it; there is no light in it. It is a vast expanse of darkness and desolation.

There is a lot of disgust toward Trump and his white nationalist strategist Steve Bannon, former executive chairman of Breitbart News, a leading promoter of conspiracy theories and white supremacists.

However, those liberals attempting to label Trump a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin are seeking the easy way out, rather than address their own failures or the decline of unions and working-class political influence.

The fact is the Republican Party is now under Trumps control. The official leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, are on board with Trumps America.

They agree that wielding power, especially white power, is how to Make America Great Again. African Americans, Mexicans and Muslims especially, Trump says, make America weak. Many white working people accept this myth.

During the struggle against the white supremacist Apartheid regime in South Africa, the leading anti-apartheid force, the African National Congress (ANC), coined the phrase: make the country ungovernable. The ANC rejected apartheid rule as illegitimate, since it excluded the clear majority of the population from basic rights.

That strategy inside and outside the country worked. Especially with the rise of Black South African workers organising and a powerful mass democratic movement, Apartheids central ally, Washington and especially then-president Ronald Reagan, could not prevent the Black majority from winning political rights.

Fighting back

Since Trumps Electoral College victory, there have been unprecedented protests by a wide cross-section of the country. They include the largest marches ever in Washington, DC and other cities. More than 3 million people marched under the banner National March for Womens Lives.

Native Americans have led the anti-pipeline protests at Standing Rock Reservation, immigration rights activists are defending the undocumented and the Movement for Black Lives (a broad coalition of more than 50 groups, including Black Lives Matter, formed last year) is stepping up resistance to police violence.

Trump is the bombastic figurehead for the ruling super-rich. However, if his bizarre behaviour, inflammatory rhetoric and policies begin to hurt their interests because the majority sees Trumps presidency as illegitimate, it could affect domestic stability and international alliances.

A weathervane historically is the Black population. Resistance by African Americans, as slaves and then as second-class citizens, has stimulated others to fight back. The two greatest struggles in US history were the movements for abolition of slavery and to end Jim Crow segregation last century.

The vanguard role of African Americans in these and other struggles has shaped the country.

My African Americans

Trumps view of Blacks fits his vision of how to make America great again, a view in which social progress has made the country a disaster. He refers to his Black supporters as My African Americans, a condescending comment reflecting his view that Blacks are lesser to himself and other whites.

At the same time, he seeks to use more police terror to put down Black resistance to racism. He has already targeted the largely Black south side of Chicago, speaking of sending more federal forces to the city.

Trump met with Black supporters on the first day of Black History Month. He praised the greatness of African American anti-slavery fighter Frederick Douglass, referring to the 19th century freedom fighter as someone who has done amazing things and is being recognised more and more, I notice as though he were still alive.

He holds the same view of all non-whites. For the first time since Reagan, there is not a single Latino in his cabinet, even though they are the largest minority in the country.

A statement by the White House on National Holocaust Day failed to mention that Jews were targeted by Hitler for extermination. His spokesman said it was by design because other groups were also murdered by the Nazis. But it reflects the anti-Semitism of the alt-right white supremacists.

Racism is about power, as Malcolm X and many radical Black nationalists and militants explained in the 1960s. The Trump administrations agenda is about returning to a pre-civil rights era.

Blacks women especially will likely be in the vanguard of the new resistance. Black women voted most strongly against Trump, gave the largest No vote to Trump, initiated the Movement for Black Lives and were key leaders of the January 21 March for Womens Lives.

Racist history

The historical context is important to grasp why African Americans have historically played a vanguard role in struggles to better society.

After the American War of Independence, a clause in the constitution gave Southern slave states extra votes in the Electoral College by increasing their voting power by adding slaves to the total (three fifths per person). This helped keep the slave states, who feared domination by Northern states, in the union.

Once slavery was abolished, its original purpose should have made it obsolete. But the rulers saw value in preventing citizens from directly electing the president, the most powerful branch of the state.

After the Civil War the issue was: should the freed slaves get the vote? Radical Republicans supported it, but Democrats, including in the North, were against full equality.

For his part, Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery but sought to appease slave holders with compensation.

It took a long time for presidents to open the door of the White House to African Americans. President Teddy Roosevelt (1901-09) was the first president to invite an African American to a White House dinner Booker T. Washington in 1901, shortly after his inauguration. The outcry led him never to do that again.

Franklin D Roosevelt (1933-45) never invited an African American to the White House for meetings or official events. FDRs base included the racist southern DixieCrats; it is noteworthy that his New Deal policies effectively left many African Americans out as he refused to challenge racist laws.

After the 1936 Berlin Olympics, white US athletes were invited to see and meet Roosevelt. No such invitation was made to the African American athletes, such as Jesse Owens who had won four gold medals. Owens commented: The president didn't even send me a telegram.

Roosevelt also refused to support an anti-lynching bill for the same reason.

Immigration and African Americans

African Americans are, for the most part, not descendants of immigrants. That phrase that the US is a nation of immigrants misses the reality of deep institutional racism and white supremacy.

Barack Obama was an unexpected break from this racist past. Even whites who voted for him hoped that the issue of race and racism would be consigned to historys dust bin. Instead, racism increased in the Obama era. Obamas actual policies were mainstream Democratic and Republican. He did little for African Americans directly.

However, with the rise of Obama, hardcore white supremacists saw the US as a white country undermined by the other. Obamas colour-blind approach to racism did not mollify them.

For a brief period of 10 to 15 years after the end of the Civil War in 1865 (known as the Reconstruction), former slaves won some real freedom and could vote. Many were elected to office.

But a violent counterrevolution arose to end these rights (a period during which the Klu Klux Klan rose as a white supremacist terrorist group). Slavery as a system never returned as it was less efficient and profitable than wage slavery.

Blacks were not paid equal wages. Many white workers falsely believed their situation was better thanks to the super-exploitation of African-American labour.

It took 100 years for Blacks to win back the vote in the post-slavery South. Now, more than 50 years after the vote was won, it is being suppressed again and civil rights are under attack.

Resistance is key

The mass protests show that African Americans, many women and others know that the electoral system is not the solution to institutional discrimination. Trump and his white nationalist advisers seek to use executive orders, the Congress and Supreme Court to impose a new presidential dictatorship, but the public is not ready to give in.

A majority oppose racist and anti-immigrant policies, but sentiment alone cannot stop the right. The ruling class knows that its control of the state depends on public acceptance of the system.

Unjust laws and orders by Trump and his backers must be met by civil disobedience the active, public, conspicuous breech of the law to bring about a change in law or public policy. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s deliberately broke segregation laws to force federal action and fundamental change.

The authoritarian president will always blame those he fears as the enemy. He hits the fake media first, then all critics. The battle to defeat Trumps regime will require the same determination as that of earlier generations.

The goal of opponents should be to make the Trump presidency ungovernable. In such a struggle, revolutionary change is possible.

[Malik Miah is an editor of Against the Current. A longer version will appear in the March/April edition of ATC.]

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To make Trump's America ungovernable, African American struggles are key - Green Left Weekly

I hope to explain what libertarian capitalism is, and what anarcho-capitalism is. Government has two main aspects extent and purpose. Extent how much violence-power it wields can be gauged by how much a government taxes, spends, incarcerates, and so on. Anarchists, by definition, reject all government violence-power in principle, preferring voluntary cooperation.

Anarchists believe that all the good things that government currently produces, such as courts, police, roads, and education, can be done better and more morally by voluntary society the market. Anarcho-capitalists believe that private property (by entitlement, not decree) is generally the best way to solve the scarcity problem peacefully. This belief makes us capitalist. We favor out-competing government, not violent revolution, and work on projects such as private education (online learning) private money (crypto currency,) private courts, and private police firms. (Would citizens of Ferguson choose a belligerent all-white police patrol in a freed market with competing companies?)

Libertarian capitalists want an economy based on free markets and private property. Free markets, to us, mean no government intervention whatsoever no subsidies, cartelizing regulations, or licensure. We make a clear distinction between market capitalists and crony capitalists. Like our libertarian socialist cohorts, we strongly oppose corporatism, which is collusion between government and favored crony firms. If government is involved, it is not libertarian capitalism.

Anarcho-capitalists are the radicals we want no compulsory government whatsoever. More centrist libertarian capitalists are called minarchists since they want a minimal State limited to courts, police, and national defense. Redistribution and social engineering are not valid functions of government.

Libertarians see mainstream media as offering a false dichotomy between statist socialism and statist capitalism. Free market solutions are off their radar. To mainstream media, a treaty creating a trade cartel is a free trade agreement! Similarly, we are offered the choice between nationalized medicine and fascist medicine, with no mention of the free market alternative. Libertarians want people to consider voluntary alternatives to the government gun.

Some libertarian capitalist positions:

1) Anti-war and anti-imperialist. We oppose military intervention in foreign countries. Minarchists want a defense-only military, or no standing army at all. Anarcho-capitalists would rely for defense on insurance firms, guerrilla warfare, militias, and the lack of incentive to attack peaceful trading partners. Free markets create an automatic constituency for peace.

2) We are against neo-liberalism and other efforts of governments to control, regulate, or capture international trade. Trade should be voluntary, not enforced by governments. We oppose the corporatocracy; States should not be loan sharks to developing nations.

3) We are against corporatism. We think large corporations would mostly disappear in a freed market, lacking the government subsidies that give them advantages and create barriers for competition.

4) Employment is incidental to capitalism. It is fine so long as it is voluntary. We look forward to a time when everyone is an individual entrepreneur, cooperating with other producers as equal traders. (Here we disagree with libertarian socialists. We think employment is okay but sub-optimal; they think it is evil wage slavery.)

5) Anarcho-capitalists want voluntary society to prevail, and take over all (legitimate) functions that the state now does. Anarcho-socialists, our counterparts, concur.

Libertarianism, in essence, is about moving humanity away from the coercive rule of authorities, and toward a society where all activities are voluntary. Libertarian capitalists predict that, in a stateless society, many/most people will opt for some type of private property. Libertarian socialists think that many/most people will opt for some type of collective property. In a stateless society these wouldnt conflict; there is ample scope for experimentation in freedom.

Most libertarians hold a non-aggression ethic that one should not initiate force (violence) against others. Libertarians (as such) are not pacifists; we believe in self-defense, but the initiation of force is criminal. Most people agree with this non-aggression presumption in their personal lives, but statists give government a free pass. E.g. People who would never demand money from their neighbor at gunpoint, think nothing of voting for their government to do just that. Government, to statists, is above human morality. Libertarians, in contrast, hold everyone to the same moral standard.

Abel is a libertarian socialist, so he shares my belief in limited government. When he speaks against capitalism, keep in mind that he defines capitalism as only the statist type, corporatism. In past discussions he didnt address libertarian capitalism at all. But listen to him! Libertarian socialists have a very good critique of statist capitalism. Libertarian capitalists agree with his analysis of capitalism perverted by government. We hate Pinochet and fascism, too. The kind of capitalism libertarian capitalists favor is no-government free market capitalism the separation of economics and State.

Originally posted here:

Point/Counterpoint: On Liberal Capitalism - The Free Weekly

It never ceases to amazethat even students who use our school library on an everyday basis, when asked for their thoughts about slavery, immediately mention the South and the Civil War. Those who are not bIack see no connection between their present and our past. If they mention the North at all, it is as the destination point for escape from the South via the Underground Railroad. They cite Harriet Tubmanor the place from which former slaves waged mighty abolitionist battles, like those spearheaded byFrederick Douglass (dont get me started on current White House occupants ignorance on Douglass). A few mention ancestors who fought in the Civil Warfor the Union. This lopsided view of American history colors current day discussions of race and racism with too much finger-pointing only at the South and white southerners. It is rare to hear discourse on northern culpability. This oversight encourages a disassociation with white privilege benefits reaped by northerners who can say, but but my family came here after slavery was over, or my ancestors didnt own slaves.

Racism is not regional and the enslavement legacy inherited from the time of the founding of our country affectsall of us in the U.S., no matter our color, location,or date of immigration.

Last summer my husband and I paid a visit to Shelter Island, New York, and the dear friend we were visiting, who knows our deep interest in all things relating to black history, took us for a short drive to visit Sylvester Manor. The site is the subject of The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island,by Mac Griswold. It was a very emotional experience for me, especially seeing the large rock in the slave burial groundtopped with pebbles, placed there by people who have come to that spot to honor the spirits of the dead.

When you hear Long Island mentioned, its doubtful you associate it with slavery and the triangle trade.Yetthis is a major part of our history.

Mac Griswold's The Manor is the biography of a uniquely American place that has endured through wars great and small, through fortunes won and lost, through histories bright and sinisterand of the family that has lived there since its founding as a Colonial New England slave plantation three and a half centuries ago. In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon a stately yellow house and a garden guarded by looming boxwoods. She instantly knew that boxwoods that largetwelve feet tall, fifteen feet widehad to be hundreds of years old. So, as it happened, was the house: Sylvester Manor had been held in the same family for eleven generations. Formerly encompassing all of Shelter Island, New York, a pearl of 8,000 acres caught between the North and South Forks of Long Island, the manor had dwindled to 243 acres. Still, its hidden vault proved to be full of revelations and treasures, including the 1666 charter for the land, and correspondence from Thomas Jefferson. Most notable was the short and steep flight of steps the family had called the "slave staircase," which would provide clues to the extensive but little-known story of Northern slavery. Alongside a team of archaeologists, Griswold began a dig that would uncover a landscape bursting with stories. Based on years of archival and field research, as well as voyages to Africa, the West Indies, and Europe, The Manor is at once an investigation into forgotten lives and a sweeping drama that captures our history in all its richness and suffering. It is a monumental achievement.

New York University is now the home of an extensive Sylvester Manor archive, and the grounds and graves are a site of archaeological research.

There are thought to be up to 200 graves on the grounds, the final resting place of Manhansett Indians, enslaved Africans, and European indentured servants, who helped to supply food, timber, and materials to the West Indies including supplies for the Sylvester family sugar plantations in Barbados as part of the colonial triangle trade, in which slaves were bought on the African Gold Coast with New England rum and then traded in the West Indies for sugar or molasses, which was brought back to New England to be manufactured into rum.

An article entitledThe House that Slavery Builtexplains how anestate near the Hamptons used to be one of the largest slave-owning plantations in the North.

Northern plantations differed from those in the South in treatment of the African-born slave population. Slaves didn't live in quarters, as in the South, but in the houses of their captors, meaning that normal privacy and family life didn't exist, Griswold said. Also, as they weren't part of an immense agricultural system growing staple crops such as cotton, rice, and indigo, many were highly skilled and were hired out to other whites at slack times on their own plantations, which we can really think of as large family farms. They worked alongside their owners and with indentured servants and wage laborers, but of course the pay-out for those other workers in eventual freedom or in wages didn't exist for slaves, or for their children, for many generations.

The Manhassets, who were native to the region, were also enslaved, but more informally, Griswold said. Their wages were paid in alcohol (rum from Barbados) and goods such as kettles and blankets. Although a law was passed in 1676 in New York forbidding the enslavement of Indians, Indian slaves were often handed down as property in family wills. Others were indentured servants, like Isaac Pharaoh, a Montaukett Indian whose indenture papers Griswold found in the vault at the manor house. Esther Pharoah, Isaac's mother, signs her son away, Griswold tells me, of his own free will at the age of 5 years.

A boulder carved in 1884 marks the cemetery where Isaac Pharaoh, Julia Johnson, and some 200 others lie. The people laid to rest there were part of a society that rejected them as full human beings, Griswold writes. But as they lie here, unmarked, they are also vividly present. The Manor is a step toward restoring these once-forgotten souls to a place in our shared history.

Sylvester Manor was not the only enslavement site on Long Island, as detailed in Confronting Slavery at Long Islands Oldest Estates.

New York Citys slave market was second in size only to Charlestons. Even after the Revolution, New York was the most significant slaveholding state north of the Mason-Dixon line. In 1790, nearly 40 percent of households in the area immediately around New York City owned slaves a greater percentage than in any Southern state as a whole, according to one study.

In contrast to the image of large gangs working in cotton fields before retiring to a row of cabins, slaveholdings in New York State were small, with the enslaved often living singly or in small groups, working alongside and sleeping in the same houses as their owners. Privacy was scant, and in contrast to any notion of a less severe Northern slavery, the historical record is full of accounts of harsh punishments for misbehavior. Slavery in the North was different, but I dont think it was any easier, Mr. McGill said. The enslaved were a lot more scrutinized in those places, a lot more restricted. That would have been very tough to endure.

Slavery in Southampton, the oldest English settlement in New York, dates almost to its founding in the 1640s. A slave and Indian uprising burned many buildings in the 1650s. Census records show that by 1686, roughly 10 percent of the villages nearly 800 inhabitants were slaves, many of whom helped work the rich agricultural land. But this is not a part of its history that the town, better known for its spectacular beach and staggeringly expensive real estate, has been eager to embrace. I think for a while a lot of people didnt know or didnt want to acknowledge there were slaves out here, said Brenda Simmons, executive director of the Southampton African-American Museum, which plans to open in an old barbershop the villages first designated African-American landmark on North Sea Road. Mr. McGills visit, she said, will help confirm the truth of the matter.

In the past Ive written about the enslaved Africans who built Wall Street in New York City, and about the African Burial Ground. Heading further upstate New York to Albany, we find enslavement history from the time it was settled.

Albany's long, neglected history of slavery

Here is a statistic that might shock you. In 1790, there were 217 households in Albany County that owned five or more slaves of African descent, a portion of the county's 3,722 slaves, the most of any county among New York state's 21,193 slaves counted in that year's census.

History textbooks and conventional wisdom tend to relegate slavery as an issue of the Southern states, a shameful narrative bracketed by President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the grim toll of the Civil War.

But new research at the State Museum and an exhibit at Fort Crailo, a state historic site in Rensselaer, titled "A Dishonorable Trade: Human Trafficking in the Dutch Atlantic World," is bringing slavery out of the shadows and directly onto the front stoops of Albany across three centuries.

I have both enslaved people and slave owners in my family tree. Though Ive had success tracing my enslaved ancestors in the South,it was only in more recent years I uncovered both a slave owner,Jacobus Bradt, from Schenectady, New York, who owned sevenslaves in the 1790 census in my tree, and an extended family legacy of enslavement in Chester County, Pennsylvania. It was during the time of my genealogical research that I discovered a website that I have returned to frequently and often link to in response to those who still only look southward. Douglas Harper has compiled an extensive body of data on his website Slavery in the North. There is so much on his site I hardly know where to begin to quote from it. Heres a segment of Profits from Slavery.

On the eve of the Revolution, the slave trade formed the very basis of the economic life of New England. It wove itself into the entire regional economy of New England. The Massachusetts slave trade gave work to coopers, tanners, sailmakers, and ropemakers. Countless agents, insurers, lawyers, clerks, and scriveners handled the paperwork for slave merchants. Upper New England loggers, Grand Banks fishermen, and livestock farmers provided the raw materials shipped to the West Indies on that leg of the slave trade. Colonial newspapers drew much of their income from advertisements of slaves for sale or hire. New England-made rum, trinkets, and bar iron were exchanged for slaves. When the British in 1763 proposed a tax on sugar and molasses, Massachusetts merchants pointed out that these were staples of the slave trade, and the loss of that would throw 5,000 seamen out of work in the colony and idle almost 700 ships. The connection between molasses and the slave trade was rum. Millions of gallons of cheap rum, manufactured in New England, went to Africa and bought black people. Tiny Rhode Island had more than 30 distilleries, 22 of them in Newport. In Massachusetts, 63 distilleries produced 2.7 million gallons of rum in 1774. Some was for local use: rum was ubiquitous in lumber camps and on fishing ships. But primarily rum was linked with the Negro trade, and immense quantities of the raw liquor were sent to Africa and exchanged for slaves. So important was rum on the Guinea Coast that by 1723 it had surpassed French and Holland brandy, English gin, trinkets and dry goods as a medium of barter. Slaves costing the equivalent of 4 or 5 in rum or bar iron in West Africa were sold in the West Indies in 1746 for 30 to 80. New England thrift made the rum cheaply -- production cost was as low as 5 pence a gallon -- and the same spirit of Yankee thrift discovered that the slave ships were most economical with only 3 feet 3 inches of vertical space to a deck and 13 inches of surface area per slave, the human cargo laid in carefully like spoons in a silverware case.

A list of the leading slave merchants is almost identical with a list of the region's prominent families: the Fanueils, Royalls, and Cabots of Massachusetts; the Wantons, Browns, and Champlins of Rhode Island; the Whipples of New Hampshire; the Eastons of Connecticut; Willing & Morris of Philadelphia. To this day, it's difficult to find an old North institution of any antiquity that isn't tainted by slavery. Ezra Stiles imported slaves while president of Yale. Six slave merchants served as mayor of Philadelphia. Even a liberal bastion like Brown University has the shameful blot on its escutcheon. It is named for the Brown brothers, Nicholas, John, Joseph, and Moses, manufacturers and traders who shipped salt, lumber, meat -- and slaves. And like many business families of the time, the Browns had indirect connections to slavery via rum distilling. John Brown, who paid half the cost of the college's first library, became the first Rhode Islander prosecuted under the federal Slave Trade Act of 1794 and had to forfeit his slave ship. Historical evidence also indicates that slaves were used at the family's candle factory in Providence, its ironworks in Scituate, and to build Brown's University Hall.

One of those leading families andtheir wealth from slaving is documented in Traces of the Trade. I recommend it as a must see for anyone who has an interest in this history.

In Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, one family's painful but persistent confrontation with the continuing legacy of the slave trade becomes America's. Katrina Browne uncovers her New England family's deep involvement in the Triangle Trade and, in so doing, reveals the pivotal role slavery played in the growth of the whole American economy. This courageous documentary asks every American what we can and should do to repair the unacknowledged damage of our troubled past.

Katrina Browne was shocked to discover that her Rhode Island forebears had been the largest slave-trading dynasty in American history. For two hundred years, the DeWolfs were distinguished public servants, respected merchants and prominent Episcopal clerics, yet their privilege was founded on a sordid secret. Once she started digging, Browne found the evidence everywhere, in ledgers, ships logs, letters, even a family nursery rhyme. Between 1769 and 1820, DeWolf ships carried rum from Bristol, Rhode Island to West Africa where it was traded for over 10,000 enslaved Africans. They transported this human cargo across the Middle Passage to slave markets from Havana to Charleston and beyond, as well as to the family's sugar plantations in Cuba. The ships returned from the Caribbean with sugar and molasses to be turned into rum at the family distilleries, starting the cycle again.

This film explains how the New England slave trade supported not just its merchants but banks, insurers, shipbuilders, outfitters and provisioners, rich and poor. Ordinary citizens bought shares in slave ships. Northern textile mills spun cotton picked by slaves, fueling the Industrial Revolution, and creating the economy that attracted generations of immigrants. It was no secret; John Quincy Adams, sixth president, noted dryly that independence had been built on the sugar and molasses produced with slave labor. Traces of the Trade decisively refutes the widely-accepted myth that only the South profited from America's "peculiar institution."

The website for the film includes a wealth of instructional materials. One I use frequently is Myths About Slavery. Heres thePDF:

Contrary to popular belief:

A companion to the film is the book by one of the descendants who went on the journey titledInheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History, by Thomas Norman DeWolf.

In 2001, at forty-seven, Thomas DeWolf was astounded to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in American history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans to the Americas. His infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, Rhode Island, curried favor with President Thomas Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed. When James DeWolf died in 1837, he was the second-richest man in America. When Katrina Browne, Thomas DeWolfs cousin, learned about their familys history, she resolved to confront it head-on, producing and directing a documentary feature film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. The film is an official selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Inheriting the Trade is Tom DeWolfs powerful and disarmingly honest memoir of the journey in which ten family members retraced the steps of their ancestors and uncovered the hidden history of New England and the other northern states.Their journey through the notorious Triangle Trade-from New England to West Africa to Cuba-proved life-altering, forcing DeWolf to face the horrors of slavery directly for the first time. It also inspired him to contend with the complicated legacy that continues to affect black and white Americans, Africans, and Cubans today.

Inheriting the Trade reveals that the Norths involvement in slavery was as common as the Souths. Not only were black people enslaved in the North for over two hundred years, but the vast majority of all slave trading in America was done by northerners. Remarkably, half of all North American voyages involved in the slave trade originated in Rhode Island, and all the northern states benefited. With searing candor, DeWolf tackles both the internal and external challenges of his journey-writing frankly about feelings of shame, white male privilege, the complicity of churches, Americas historic amnesia regarding slavery-and our nations desperate need for healing. An urgent call for meaningful and honest dialogue, Inheriting the Trade illuminates a path toward a more hopeful future and provides a persuasive argument that the legacy of slavery isnt merely a southern issue but an enduring American one.

Sojourner Truth is quoted as having said Truth is powerful and it prevails.

Some of those truths may make us uncomfortable. From my perspective, it is better to march forward with the truth, comfortable or not, than to be drowned and silenced in a swamp of lies and alternative facts.

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Uncomfortable truths: The role of slavery and the slave trade in building northern wealth - Daily Kos

Rebecca Gayle Howell, a senior editor at the Oxford American magazine, has written a novel that strips the Southern working class' condition of its veneer, exposing a future economic and environmental catastrophe.

Set in a locale that puts the "dust" in industrial decay, Howell's broken passages recall the detailed descriptions of exhaustion and famine offered by the disenfranchised Depression-era voices in Studs Terkel's "Hard Times." That is to say, this book has happened before and believably could happen again. Before you conclude that "American Purgatory" only appeals to the most cynical of readers, though, know that the book is also a mosaic of subtle, extreme and ultimately, beautiful poetic language.

Composed of fragmentary poems, "American Purgatory" is structured as allegory, a vehicle for the lives of members of the local proletariat: Slade, the stoic preacher man; Little, the antisocial visionary; and "the Kid," a disfigured field worker. Through the eyes of an unnamed narrator, the reader observes these three enigmas in end-of-time, after-work activities like minnow fishing, hunting practice and trying to locate drinkable water. The working conditions are poor at best they include picking valuable cotton under crop dusters in an atmosphere "like breathing gasoline."

"American Purgatory" presents a nightmarish vision born of water deprivation and fatigue. To grasp the book as dystopian, though, oversimplifies the current state of the worldwide working class. In an interview with "32 Poems" magazine, Howell says, "I don't think it's foolish to think about work. I think we are in real need of a conversation big enough to include globalized war capitalism, exploitation, labor and the possibility of neighborliness. It's a necessary conversation, as necessary as our conversation about the global control of women or the brutalities of American racism." Howell's fabulist brushstrokes cover all of these heavy topics. Abusive relationships, thirst beyond hunger and the unfair vetting for the hardest of wage slavery plague these lives, as if they were a single square inch of Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights."

I wish it meant something. I wish a moon could pull

so strong dirt would gush a well. I'd get my silver bucket.

I'd open my mouth. The fire it's a game; one guy sets it

from boredom and from boredom the other puts it out.

Personal bewilderment, more so than dialogue, enables the poetic narrative driving the story; bird formations are isosceles triangles, cotton field workers appear to be angels and the sky mimics an abacus tallying sins. The Bible weighs heavily on the book's symbolism, as do magic and superstition; snakes are the summation of evil in this world, and water is its salvation in an aurora borealis or ouroboros kind of way. The narrator's elliptical interior monologues are mesmerizing meditations on natural life and existential terror and the expression of "neighborliness" shared between the narrator's retinue ranks among the most lucid since that in fellow Kentuckian Maurice Manning's "A Companion for Owls":

PLEASURE DON'T QUIT

Please that old song screams, and begs me,

Don't go. I hear it in my head in a time

as this, when I am alone, and how Don't go

has all my days been my low-ditch song's refrain,

and how I have not known who it was a going,

and how, turns out, it was me. Touch is water,

when it's kind, a cool pool I can drink and sink

down into, resurrect out, rise up, rise up.

But a heat vision won't make it so.

The books and paintings I've compared to "American Purgatory" were authored by men, but Howell's poems find power in the feminine; queen ants, a pregnant dog and the narrator all share a common bond in warding off an authoritarian offense. Linguistically, death from childbirth is placed next to the burden of a hard labor, and a vision of water in a cistern is interwoven with "this is how my water breaks." As was the case for Shakespeare's heroines, or C.D. Wright's, everyday vulnerability is a prick in the side, and those who stop to muse are met with ironic overtures. For them, to dream is to encounter the brave new world, and an old one, too.

Howell, also the author of "Render/An Apocalypse" and a translation of Amal al-Jubouri's "Hagar Before the Occupation/Hagar After the Occupation," will read excerpts from "American Purgatory" in a book launch at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 20, at The Joint, where she'll be joined by banjoist and fellow Kentucky native Brett Ratliff. Admission is free. "American Purgatory," published by Eyewear Publishing, an independent British micropress, and distributed by Small Press Distribution in Berkeley, Calif., was the winner of the 2016 Sexton Prize for poetry.

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Believing is seeing - Arkansas Times

To The Editor:

February is known as the month of the presidents. Three presidents of note were born in February: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.

We want to eulogize and salute two of them: Washington and Lincoln. Reagan, having served in the 1980s, is still fresh and alive in our minds. However, all three are memorable in their deeds and worthy of note!

Washington was the first and without doubt the best president ever. He was the epitome of leadership and statesmanship. With his acumen and ability he was able to hold together the Colonies, wage war against a strong and more powerful enemy, and due to his courage, fortitude and cunning, was able to fight, persevere and ensure victory and freedom for the colonies!

He was respected and beloved both in his public and private life. Like most of his noble and well educated contemporaries, he had been schooled in the Bible and in Roman History. Like most of his contempories he believed that Democracy as a form of government is born out of expediency and can lead to chaos.

To him a Constitutional Republic was the purest and best form of government. The elite among the citizenry are supposed to emerge and take their place as leaders. The leaders must possess unusual qualities: love of country, love of the people, and the ability and desire to do things for the benefit of all. Washington possessed these qualities in ample measue.

Turmoil propelled the second greatest president, Lincoln, to the forefront.

The middle 1800s were times of expansion, migration and also the beginning of a social consciousness. Our country was becoming divided into two sections: the North, industrial and free; the South agrarian and relying on slavery. With the westward movement, new problems arose.

New states were going to be admitted to the Union. Would they be free or slave states? Clearly we were headed for trouble. The people of most states did not want slavery. Mr. Lincoln made a good argument for the Union: A house divided against itself cannot stand. When he was elected, the Southerners Saw the writing on the wall and they seceded from the Union.

The Civil War ensued. Lincoln was assured his place in the line of great presidents because in the hour of need and turmoil he did not falter, waiver or prevaricated.

He proceeded to wage war to keep our country united. In the process he was also responsible for the freeing of slaves.

These three presidents will be remembered forever. Washington forged the Republic. Lincoln saved it. Reagan reenergized it.

Rocco Calabrese

Watertown

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Month of the Presidents - PrimePublishers.com

He arrived at the party wearing a blazer over a black T-shirt. He sported one of those fancy, new-age haircuts and wore jeans that revealed nearly half his legs. I instantly knew what I was looking at, a campus archetype more than an individual: The ripped-jeans revolutionary.

His name was Sam, andas I soon discovered, Sam was a Communist a Maoist, he quickly added, presumably worried that I might mistake him for one of those sellout Trotskyists. At 18 years of age, studying English at Stanford University, Sam wanted to assure me that he was on the Right Side of History.

I had encountered leftists like Sam before there are usually one or two in every large humanities class so I knew how to proceed. Let him talkand keep a running mental tab of his most hilarious quotes.

You cant deny the industrial achievements of the USSR, he remarked. Or better, name-dropping three philosophers in one sentence: Zizek, though he understood Hegel much better than he understood Lacan, makes a good point. There was the curious: Doesnt Judaism make so much more sense without God? And my personal favorite: Do you really think our wage-slavery is any better?

Ah yes, I had forgotten: Who are we to judge the Soviet gulag system?

One is tempted to shake such people, like an old television that has stopped working. It might bring him to his senses. But there is no need. Does this teenager really have a thoughtful objection to Zizeks reading of Lacan? Does he have the requisite knowledge to assure me, as he did, that everything would have been fine if Lenin had lived a little longer? Of course not. He probably just gets a thrill from the shocked looks he generates upon informing his peers that Bernie would have won if he wasnt so moderate.

Roll your eyes and move on.

Across the table from me in class, a different type of campus leftist rears hishead. Again. In fact, Luke constantly injects his politics into class. Luke is a Clintonite, shot all the way through. He started volunteering for Democratic candidates in New York City at the age of twelve. He even got paid to consult for the Clinton campaign this time around. What they could possibly need from this 19-year-old consultant, I havent a clue.

I dont think people realized how good of a candidate Hillary was, he remarked to me a few days ago. Gee, I wonder how they missed that about her, I thought. But unlike the ripped-jeans revolutionary, the bloodless Clintonites flaws do not usually emerge unless they are drawn out. For his Achilles heel is that he has no vision unless you consider center-left, incrementalist technocracy a vision.

Luke opposes the $15 minimum wage, finding Hillarys suggestion of $12.50 to be a more reasonable compromise. He wants commonsense regulation of Wall Street but thinks that Bernie Sanderss antagonism is unhelpful to the cause. He called his congressman to register his opposition to Betsy DeVos but has no suggestions of his own for improving education other than we need to invest more in our children.

The campus Clintonite is hyperpolitically activebut has no idea what he wants from politics. Why is this? The moment of clarity came when we spoke about Aristotle. Why would you read him? Luke chortled, His science has been totally disproven.

Putting aside the fact that I do not read Aristotle for an actionable understanding of physics, I probe deeper and discover that Luke does not believe there is anything to be gained from reading the Ethics, or Politics either.

Rather than give a one-sentence summation of Aristotles contributions, I try out an appeal to authority and explain that Aristotelian thought has heavily influenced many major traditions, citing St. Thomas Aquinas and Maimonides. Realizing that my interlocutor remains unimpressed, I go more modern, and note that both Marx and Burke profited from Aristotles teachings.

But this only reinforces the Clintonites beliefs. So why waste time on a guy from thousands of years ago when I can just read Marx, or someone even more modern?

Do you not see the value in reading what people whove come before us thought? I respond.

He doesnt. They barely knew anything back then. Even I know more about how the world works than Aristotle, he protests.

Then it hits me. The Clintonite has no vision because he cannot escape the present.

This is what Irving Kristol was getting at when he asked, Who, for example, reads Harold Laski today? Because the present is always becoming more beneficent than the past, the non-revolutionary Left inevitably finds past thinkers even its own progressive champions such as Laski inadequate, retrograde, or boring. It finds nothing of value when it looks back into the past and soon stops looking at all.

These two campus leftists are worth examining for the factions they represent. The edgy, ripped-jeans revolutionary might go on to comfortably rage against the machine in the pages of Jacobin, or perhaps hell give in to his parents and attend law school. The intellectually impoverished Clintonite is destined to work on Capitol Hill and continue striving. Having forgotten on principle not only Laski but also Aristotle and all the rest, he will search in vain for the right combination of modest policy proposals to capture voters hearts. Should he gain the power he so desperately seeks, he will not have the faintest idea what to do with it.

Elliot Kaufman is a junior at Stanford University.

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The Two Types of Campus Leftists - National Review

PEOPLE MAKE deals all the time--in markets, in politicians' offices, in alleyways. Our president established himself in the business world as the master of the deal, and now he's bringing those skills to the White House to "re-deal" the United States back to greatness.

Making deals, and the whole gamut of business and trade that goes with it, is just part of life. Commercial activity is an essential component of all human culture, and the business mindset an inherent aspect of human nature.

Or so the story goes.

The cheerleaders of the free market have come up with a story about the past that makes capitalism seem natural--the culmination of a long evolution of this innate deal-making instinct, growing in complexity until, with the rise of international trade and the Industrial Revolution, it finally took its rightful place as "the way we do things."

Trade has gone on for millennia, according to this narrative, and with it, that most important of human processes: profit. Ancient and feudal societies didn't understand that profit and the all-important accomplice of deal-making, free trade, had to be the unhindered center of the system, so they eventually failed, giving way to capitalism.

And there's the other part of this tall tale: Only with the rise of business, profit and free trade do we have democracy, freedom and human rights. After all, didn't the great revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, establishing democratic republics in England, the U.S. and France, coincide with the spread of global capitalism? Isn't there an essential connection between the art of the deal and the project of human freedom?

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LET'S SUSPEND this story for a moment, and look back at the past without green-tinted glasses. Instead, we'll take the Marxist view of history. Frederick Engels laid out Marx's historical materialist approach succinctly:

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes is dependent on what is produced, how it is produced and how the products are exchanged.

For Marxists, history changes on the basis of the way humans transform their world to meet their needs, how they turn natural objects into human products and then distribute those products through exchange--not on the basis of some innate instinct to barter or profit.

For the vast bulk of the time that humans have existed as a distinct species, there were no classes. Like most of the Indigenous cultures of North America prior to European colonization, work and the products of work were shared in common by small bands of people, which operated democratically.

Starting around 10,000 years or so, settled societies emerged in a number of places on the planet, and class distinctions developed for the first time in human history--with a small minority of people ruling over the majority.

Eventually, complex social systems arose in which a ruling class lived off the labor of the vast majority of the population--who were sometimes owned directly by the ruling class as slaves and sometimes bound to a piece of land as peasants and forced to give up some of what they labored to produce to the elite.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE PROCESS of classes emerging varied in different parts of the world, but human labor and who possessed it produced was the central factor.

Humans have always made tools to help them survive. But at certain points--when humans settled in one place, rather than lived in nomadic bands--the tool-making progressed from basic items used in hunting and gathering to more complex tools, like methods of irrigation to grow cultivated plants, to take one example.

As the tools improved, these groups of people could produce more than was necessary for basic survival--they produced a surplus. Over a long period of time, a small group within these societies came to control that surplus, and that control became the basis of a social distinction and political authority. Next to emerge were centralized states, exercising military and legal authority as a way to protect the wealth of this minority.

The Marxist historian Chris Harman summarized how this dynamic led to another--one more directly involved in the rise of capitalism as a distinct form of class society:

[T]he ruling classes of the new civilizations...demanded distantly obtained products on a scale that could not be satisfied by the old-established customary networks. At the same time, they were rarely prepared to face the hardship and risks involved in procuring such things themselves.

People soon emerged who were--in return for a share of the surplus the ruling class had obtained through exploiting the cultivators. So specialized traders got a "mark-up" by selling to the ruling class goods from a great distance away. Some were individuals from the exploited cultivator class, others from the nomadic peoples living between the centers of civilization. But regardless of their origins, they began to crystallize into a privileged class separate from the old ruling classes.

As this not-yet-ruling class developed its economic strength, there were power struggles with the established elite. Often, the ruling state apparatus was too powerful to be overthrown--in China, for example, the development of capitalism was held back for centuries by this.

In medieval Western Europe, where the various states were more primitive and constantly at war with each other, the merchant class organized itself into a more powerful grouping, with its representatives emerging to vie for political power.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE EMERGENCE of merchant networks went along with what Marx and Engels classified as "the production of commodities"--defined as "that economic phase where articles are produced not only for the use of producers, but also for the purpose of exchange."

Through all previous history, production of what humans needed to survive--whether hunting and gathering in pre-class societies or the predominantly agricultural systems in class societies before capitalism--was mainly organized around meeting the consumption needs of those doing the producing or the minority who ruled over them.

Making things to sell them--which the ideologists of capitalism tell us is instinctive--was the exception. But that changed with capitalism and the emergence of a new ruling class, whether still vying for power or already installed, organized around the exchange of goods.

The most peculiar commodity of all is human labor. On one level, wage laborers--workers who sell their ability to labor for a wage--are free of the compulsion that characterized previous systems like feudalism or slavery. But they aren't free not to work.

And in the process of work, they are robbed. Workers aren't paid on the basis of the full value of what they produce. They are paid enough to keep them coming back to work--usually just enough to meet their daily needs and those of their families.

The difference between this wage and the value that capitalists realize in selling the commodities made by others, but owned by them, is the source of profit--what Marx called surplus value. This, according to Marx, is the basis of the capitalist system: "Only where wage-labor is its basis does commodity production impose itself upon society as a whole; but it is also true that only there does it unfold all its hidden potentialities."

These "hidden potentialities" include the way that workers become dependent on commodity production.

Wage-labor had existed on and off for millennia, but only became established as the norm in Western Europe after centuries of crisis within the feudal system, in the form of war, plagues and famine.

In order to make sure the wage labor system would be the only alternative for the majority in society, the phenomenon of "enclosure"--where, for example, landlords kicked peasants off their traditional lands, forcing workers into the cities to be wage laborers--became synonymous with capitalism's rise.

Over time, food, clothing and housing all became commodities, to be paid for in money. The growing working class competed for jobs, which gave capitalists their most effective tool in controlling wages. Workers who feared being replaced could be forced to work longer hours in degrading conditions just to make starvation wages.

Marx described this as "wage slavery": "The Roman slave was held by chains; the wage-laborer is bound to his owner by invisible threads."

The threads are invisible because workers aren't directly expropriated of a portion of what they produce. By contrast, capitalists pay workers what is supposed to be "a fair pay for a fair day's work"--only workers are paid a fraction of the value they produce, and the capitalists pocket the difference.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PROFITS AREN'T just the source of luxury lifestyles for the capitalists. Unlike feudalism, capitalists reinvest their profits in more machinery, warehouses, raw materials and wages. Newer technology enables workers to make more products faster, and the capitalist can gain even more surplus value, at least at first. Thus, capitalism has expanded at greater and greater speed over time.

To acquire raw materials and markets to sell to, capitalism drove the expansion of the European empires. In the Americas, gold was extracted and land stolen from the Indigenous. Africans were kidnapped and enslaved in order to produce sugar, cotton and other critical commodities. The civilizations of India and China were subjugated as well, to convert them into markets for European goods and sources of cheap labor.

Without the expansion of "free trade" through campaigns of terror, there would have been neither the raw materials nor the international markets to sustain the rapid growth of European capitalism.

This process reached a new level with the introduction of large-scale industrial machinery and the modern factory. But this in turn gave rise to another essential feature of capitalism--recurring economic crises. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels and Marx wrote:

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells...

It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity--the epidemic of overproduction.

Capitalism is capable of producing enough to meet the needs of the entire human population and enable the full development of individual human capabilities. However, since its productive forces are directed toward making profits, the wealth of the few comes before the good of all, even if this means mass suffering.

In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck described a common scene during the Great Depression:

Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people come for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges...A million people hungry, needing the fruit--and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Capitalist crises are the result of material abundance subordinated to the drive for profit. Working-class people are the living source of that profit, yet they can't share in the abundance.

But by organizing together, workers have the power to challenge the system and ultimately to win an alternative society, based on the democratic organization and fair distribution of that material abundance. That is socialism.

Read this article:

Where did capitalism come from? - Socialist Worker Online

THE Australian work-life dream is dead and the latest generation of employees are heading for 30-something burnout by 2020.

They are the dire warnings from two leading social researchers who say we are all working too much.

Gone are the 9-5 days and clocking off on the weekends. For many of us, our working lives blend into the personal.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 47.4% of employees over the age of 15 in Sydney say they work more than 40 hours a week. In Brisbane it's 45.3%, Melbourne 45.5%, Adelaide 39.4%, Perth 46.4%, Darwin 51.8% and in Hobart 37.4%.

Technological advances and the drive to be promoted also mean many of us with connections to work emails aren't clocking off entirely when we go home.

KPMG demographer Bernard Salt said the "universality of technology was leading to real risks of burnout.

"Twenty years ago when you finished work at 5pm on a Friday you wouldn't be expected to be across anything again until 9am on Monday, Mr Salt said.

"Now you never really totally disconnect from work when there is the possibility that you might receive an email you need to check.

"I think there is capacity for burnout to occur among this up and coming generation of workers. If you've only ever known an environment where you need to check emails 365 days a year without a mental break then there is the real possibility you could be exposed to burnout.

Australians working harder and longer and failing to disconnect from technology after work hours is in stark contrast to the situation in France, where employees have the legal right to avoid the boss on the weekend.

A new law dubbed "the right to disconnect came into place from January 1 which afforded employees the right to legally not check emails after work hours. It complements an already standardised 35-hour working week, which has been in place since 2000.

Mr Salt said Australians had a culture of working long and hard and the only way Australians would ever consider implementing laws like France if there was a "trigger.

"It might be the 30-something burnout syndrome of mid-2020s, he said.

"The Australian culture is often of 'she'll be right' until it's not right and something is wrong.

Australian National University researchers last week revealed they had found that anything longer than a 39-hour working week was detrimental to our health.

Lead researcher Huong Dinh from the ANU Research School of Population Health said about two in three Australians in full-time employment worked more than 40 hours a week, with long hours a bigger problem for women who do more unpaid work at home.

"Long work hours erode a person's mental and physical health, because it leaves less time to eat well and look after themselves properly, Dr Dinh said.

Co-researcher Professor Lyndall Strazdins said there was a growing gap between people in full-time jobs working extremely long hours and those in part-time work who wanted more.

"Our research showed 39 hours is the sweet spot for people. It is good for people to be working but any more than that and their health starts to decline, Professor Strazdins said.

Professor Strazdins said there needed to be an upper limit on working hours that were acceptable.

"Working longer hours has evolved into an expectation and it is seen as normal and heroic, she said.

"There is a role for business, for managers and workplaces to change that.

Social researcher Mark McCrindle said the Australian work-life balance dream was dead and that rising house prices and cost of living pressures were resulting in employees working longer and longer hours.

"I think the whole Aussie work-life-family dream is under serious review in this nation, Mr McCrindle said.

"The idea of a 38-hour-work week is dead and in many capital cities most workers are working much more than that often on top of a stressful, long commute.

"In Australia we are working too much.

Mr Salt said people's lifestyle choices - like smashed avocado breakfasts and cafe culture - were also driving the idea of "wage slavery.

"We are working hard but we are also spending hard and it's a question of how sustainable it is over time, he said.

At Google, the culture is one of balance. Their offices are known for being kitted out with gyms, meditation stations, gaming rooms and they let employees choose when they want to come to work.

At some offices, you can even bring your dog to work with you and employees are given access to apps to help them sleep better.

Google Asia Pacific director of people operations Siobhan Lyndon said it was important to continue to question if we had the balance right in Australia when it came to work and home time.

She said Google employees are encouraged to work hard, but with an emphasis on balance.

Employees are encouraged not to check emails outside of working hours, similar to the policy in place in France.

"I think giving permission to employees to not have to respond to work email outside of their normal working hours is a positive thing and something we also encourage at Google. We don't want employees to feel stressed that their work is never finished, Ms Lyndon said.

She said technology shouldn't be seen as a bad thing in terms of our working culture and can actually help employees manage their time better, she said.

"I think technology has the power to further revolutionise the way we work and it's a matter of employers embracing it and allowing employees more freedom to choose where and how they work.

THE 40-PLUS-HOUR WEEK

Sydney: 47.4%

Brisbane: 45.3%

Melbourne: 45.5%

Adelaide: 39.4%

Perth: 46.4%

Darwin: 51.8%

Hobart: 37.4%

Go here to see the original:

Aussies working too hard and we're headed for disaster - Bundaberg News Mail

Gov. Tom Wolf has been urging lawmakers to raise the minimum wage since his campaign days. On Tuesday, he took matters into his own hands.

His 2017-18 executive budget proposal calls for raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $12 an hour.

Advocates say the two-thirds increase would make it easier for families to earn life-sustaining pay.

Critics say it will force business owners to slash staff rosters or raise prices.

I love when my employees are making more money. Theyre more well-off. Theyre happier, said Joe Fasula, owner of Scranton-based Gerritys Supermarkets. But the issue is that any increase in wages has to be offset by prices.

Grocers industry-wide operate on a 1 percent to 2 percent margin, he said, and even a 10 percent payroll increase could wipe that out.

Pennsylvania last raised its minimum wage in 2009, in step with the federal standard.

Tried before

In March, Gov. Wolf urged the legislature to raise it to $10.15, but repeated pleas from his office have failed to gain traction.

In his Tuesday budget proposal, Gov. Wolf estimated raising wages would bolster state revenue by about $95 million.

State Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-121, Wilkes-Barre, said higher wages could give relief to those working full-time plus second and third jobs.

In many cases, companies have been raising wages to attract higher-caliber workers.

Recent employment numbers from the state Department of Labor and Industry show Northeast Pennsylvanias labor force is shrinking, which could push wages higher as companies compete for talent.

Full-time employees at Gerritys start at $9 per hour. Only part-time employees who start with no experience in supermarkets make minimum wage, Mr. Fasula said.

Wage slavery

Families might be able to climb just beyond the federal poverty limit if wages reach $12 an hour, said Alex Lotorto, a union delegate with the Industrial Workers of the World, Northeast Pennsylvania chapter, quoting numbers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Every neighboring state has increased their minimum wage, but Pennsylvania lingers in wage slavery at $7.25 per hour, he said.

Its too early to tell whether the governors proposal is too high or too fast, said Jennifer Kocher, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-34, Centre County.

We are taking all the parts and pieces of the budget and digesting them and (studying) how they fit together what the impact of raising the minimum wage would be on employers, while at the same time, what are the other areas that might be benefiting them, she said.

JEFF HORVATH, staff writer, contributed to this report.

Contact the writer:

joconnell@timesshamrock.com

@jon_oc on Twitter

See more here:

Wolf budget proposal calls for $12 minimum wage - Scranton Times-Tribune

An anarchist communist approach of the recent protests in Romania

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread. Anatole France

In the following text we are going to try and express an anarchist communist assessment, in as much a coherent manner as it is possible at the present time, of the recent protests against some of the decisions made by the governing party and the manner in which these were perceived as an atack on the rule of law, the post-state capitalist trajectory of Romania, and on the progress made in the last 27 years.

In a few words, we are of the opinion the we are witnessing to a war for power inside the state between representatives of the political class and the hard-power institutions of the state, and that this event does not provide for an interesting subject for the working class and its self-emancipation. The way we see things the main actors of these protests are on the one side the numerous members of the so-called middle class, president Iohannis, and some of the repressive institutions of the state, such as the secret service, DNA (National Anti-corruption Department), and so on, and on the other side PSD (Social Democratic Party) and the political class as a whole. The reason we say this is a war involving the entire political class, and not just PSD, is that despite the oposition parties stating different for reasons regarding electoral interests, we consider that the struggle is carried in these terms. We consider this to be a struggle between rival factions because the legislative changes made by the ruling party are trying to eliminate some legal instruments that have been used by the aforementioned repressive institutions in order to exert control over the politicians in the last decade, in many cases commiting abuse while acting in this manner.

At the same time we are not denying the fact that among the people protesting in the streets, one can find many working class members, many dispossessed people, and generaly people that cant be counted among the winners of the transition to market capitalism. The reason for this might be the mass-media intoxication and the general pro-capital speech that has dominated the romanian society for the last 27 years. Another factor that can be taken into consideration, and which cannot be ignored, is the total lack of a credible alternative able to support the cause of the working class. Many statements, many actions are definitely inconsistent at this moment, and for this reason we can not express a final approach, capable of taking all factors into consideration.

The middle class; the beautiful young people (this term is used regularly to describe the young middle class people which are presented as taking care of the future of the country and moving the country in a positive, european, western direction; the opposite of this segment is usually made up of poor pensioners, and people on welfare, which are associated en masse with the communist times and make the electoral base of the Social Democratic Party)

The romanian middle class is composed of those parts of the population that have an above average standard of living, that have hope for achieving a standard of living similar to that of their counterparts in the Western world, and that generally subscribe to the whole perception of civilised progress that the western colonial capitalist culture stands for. Although many of them remain wage slaves, some of them have the possibility to acumulate important capital, others not, their class betrayal shows itself in their aspirations to join the ranks of the bourgeoisie, with which they identify themselves.

Their class consciousness resumes to that of soon to be bourgeoisie, or of temporary embarassed bourgeoisie. Another important feature of the romanian middle class is its total contempt for the working class masses and the poor, which they associate with communism (state capitalism), material scarcity, and the reasons for why their path to joining the ranks of the bourgeoisie is so wavy. Inside the ranks of this class, the most active elements are the urban, westernised ones (they desire a country like in the West), which can often be described by their affiliation with both the multinational corporations operating in Romania, and the NGO industrial complex, where they are payed above average.

The Social Democratic Party party of the corrupt

PSD is a political party that is no different in any important fashion from other european parties that lay claims to a social-democratic tradition (a reformist and capitalist tradition, but this is an entirely different discussion). One can hardly say that PSD is a more corrupt party, or that is different in a profund manner from other parties both in the past, or in the present. Because we do not wish to talk of PSD as a neoliberal party (although it definitely is), in the sense that a political party takes more care of the interests of capital, than of those of the workers the opposite of this was bassicaly never true, the pre-neoliberal exceptions in the so called welfare western states having more to do with the historical conditions in which capitalism found itself at the end of WWII) we shall refer to it as a political party whose traditional electoral base was made up of both large parts of the working class, and the most dispossessed sections of the romanian society.

Heir of the National Salvation Front (the descendant of the former single rulling party), like other parties PSD also enabled the primitive accumulation process that started after the former regime was overthrown when the country moved in the direction of a capitalist market economy. During PSD rule many privatisations took place, new markets were created for investments, many lay offs and social spending cuts were made. Looking at things from this angle it is difficult to point to clear differences between PSD and other ruling parties since the 90s, considering this was the main line adopted by all governments, one that was concerned in furthering the interests of capital (and mostly those of the foreign capital) and that totally ignored the growing precariousness of the working class.

There are many reasons for why PSD is so popular amongst the working class people. One of them is, of course, the fact that there is no other practical alternative that could at least offer the ilusion of focussing its speech on the interest of the lower classes, another one might be the good organizational infrastructure that PSD has in the poorest urban and rural areas. That being said, we think that its possible to identify some differences between the parties, even if not very profound ones. This can be revealed best when we take into consideration the public speech of the former technocratic government as opposed to that expressed by PSD (at least the one they had in the electoral campaign).

The technocratic government, which was run by a highly paid european birocrat, opposed the increase in the minimum wage (which was to be increased to around 920 lei, aprox 200 euro net, one of the smallest in Europe) which was decided by the Ponta government (PSD), and also told the romanian working class that it is too expensive and that wages should be around 2 lei per day (50 euro cents) like it is in other underdeveloped or developing countries. However, PSD promised in the previous electoral campaign an increase in wages and pensions, and also the creation of other social programs a very important one would consist in providing one hot meal per day for every pre-college student (Romania having one of the largest child poverty and extreme poverty rates in Europe). Despite these promises, PSD did not adress the many issues important to its electoral base, and sought to gain votes from traditional voters of the right by promising cuts in taxes and contributions, or the altogether elimination of many.

This strategy proved a winning one, in the last elections PSD reaching outside the borders of its traditional base and managing to get votes from the urban, more educated, previously out of reach portions of the population (an important factor contributing to this event might be the threat of scarcity that its starting to make itself felt in parts of the population that previously considered themselves safe from the moods of capitalism). Far from representing a local type of opposition to the neocolonial regime that dominates the population, PSD might be perceived by the foreign institutions that are ruling de facto the country as being less agreable in some moments than say an outspoken right wing (or technocratic) government willing to center its speech on the interests of capital and the class that mostly represents those interests.

Another direction for PSD comprised of making a nationalist, conservative, traditionalist call aimed both at the explicitly reactionary parts of the population, and at a working class that at this moment is far from understanding the different internal divisions and hierarchies that are imposed and reproduced for the benefit of the rulling class. That being said we should not be so surprised at the position taken by PSD on the side of the crypto-fascist Coalition for the Family, and of its president that expressed his support for a conservative notion of the family, one that excludes same sex marriage, and even the possibility of forming legal partnerships between non-hetero adults. In a few words, PSD is a very capital friendly party, has a very strong nationalist and conservative flavour, doesnt question and doesnt try to oppose the foreign institutions and power structures that have turned the country into a neocolonial subject (such as NATO, IMF, EU, the american Embassy regarding the Embassy it is interesting to witness the local political rulers being called for explanations every time a threat to the american interests in the area is perceived; on another note we are eager for the day when the romanian embassy in Washington will ask for explanations from high officials of the american state, in regards to the direction in which the american state is heading; and so on), but at the same time PSD has a discourse that sometimes might be translated into social policies which is not to be found on the side of the outspoken right-wing parties and which sometimes can bring some minimum temporary benefits for the working class (for example, raising the minimum wage).

Anti-corruption, Iohannis, and the rule of law

A main part of the ideology of anti-corruption is Romanias path towards a western type market capitalist economy and the drawbacks that must be fought. What were trying to say by this is that the main accepted discourse starts from the assumption that the best way to achieve the development of the country is by obliterating its industrial infrastructure, cheapening its qualified and educated work force, maintaining the country attractive for foreign investments (keeping some of the lowest wages in Europe), lowering or eliminating taxes on the profits made here and then exported to western countries. What were describing here is the type of colonial capitalism that rules the country. Whereas corruption is seen as a major obstacle for reaching that type of western capitalism, and that country like in the west. Most of the supporters of the ideology of anti-corruption belong to the middle-class, that privileged portion of the population, which considers anti-corruption in a political form as it was constructed under the Bsescu ten year rule of the country as the main source of its well-being.

That same time period, starting with 2004, marks the more recognisable formation of a middle class segment at the same when the foreign investments of multinational corporations were starting to grow. This, however, for the large part of the population meant more poverty and a bigger exodus of the local work force (again in the benefit of western capital, which had a lot to gain from the wave of cheap labour force that became available after the colapse of the former regimes in Eastern Europe). At an ideological level the middle class considers the brutality of the transition period towards a market capitalist type of economy (a period of capitalist primitive accumulation of plain and simple robbery of public wealth which was handed to private owners) of the 90s to be connected with the corruption of the political regimes that ruled the country in that period. Although between 1996 and 2000 PSD was not part of the government, it is still considered as the main responsible for that dark period, and at the same time it is linked with the pre 90s regime and considered an obstacle for capitalist development. The discourse of the middle class tends to delimit itself from PSD and its electoral base which is considered to be ignorant, precarious, exposed to all the wrongdoings of capitalism, hence an enemy of european values (of capitalist values), of the rule of law and of western culture which are all considered the main source responsible for their well being.

By engaging in electoral giveaways, PSD is actually trying to hide its own corruption and contempt for these european values, making itself guilty of attacking the well being of the privileged parts of the population (by preventing the process of capital accumulation through its corruption and incompetence, and by directing funds to social spending instead of investing in the infrastructure needed for the capitalist exploitation).

President Iohannis, on the other hand, is considered the stuff that the highest values of western culture and civilization are made off. German, former mayor of Sibiu, former highschool teacher and tutor par excellence (when he was asked how he managed to raise enough money to buy all his property since he has always worked in the public sector he responded that he offered a lot of tutoring; he also said that other teachers who didnt manage to do so had bad luck), owner of 6 houses, he is seen as the perfect opposite of the PSD president and its electoral base. By contrast, Dragnea, president of PSD, is looked upon as a provincial, balcanic, corrupt, despotic, uncivilised character. Iohannis is the defender of Romanias european path, the guarantor of the rule of law, of anti-corruption, and of the strategical partnership with the american fascist empire. Basically Iohannis is the enemy of all those things that could stand against the process of capitalist accumulation and against imperialist interests. Not even by far are we saying that Dragnea is somewhat of a defender of the workers struggle for emancipation. Dragnea, as well as the entire political class, represents the interests of the bourgeoisie. But in this kind of terms, or in similar ones, do the representatives of the middle class which is protesting these days express themselves.

The working class

Unlike many people which constitute the tiny and mainly irrelevant world of the romanian left, we state that for the working class the anti-corruption fight is not important, at least not in the sense of gaining freedom from capitalist exploitation and the state domination. When under the guise of fighting corruption we are spectators to a struggle for power between different sides of the state, when no matter who wins this battle the interests of capital and the bourgeoisie are the ones important, when we know that in the capitalist mode of production governments are nothing else but committees for managing the affairs of the rulling class, we state that the emancipation of the working class can only come from the working class. The working class needs to develop consciousness of its own condition and then needs to organise both in the workplace, and in its own communities to put an end to the class domination of the bourgeoisie which is long due to leave the stage of history.

The so-called rule of law is nothing but the political expression of the current social order, a order which is built on the suffering, on the tragedies, poverty, exploitation, on the spirit crushing pressure felt daily by millions of people inside the country and by billions of people on a global scale. For the working class capitalism is the most corrupt system for its daily extortion, for the exploitation of labour power, for its wage slavery that makes victims of all the workers. The historical role of the state is that of ensuring the continuation of class society and the reproduction of capitalism, of making sure that one class is able to live off the work of another class, of doing everthing possible to please the rulling elites. In this sense, the political oppression of the state has to leave the stage at the same time as the capitalist exploitation. However, we cannot help but see how in this struggle for power between parts of the political class and the repressive institutions of the state, the privileged portions of the middle class take the side of the latter. The protesters have no restrains in showing their support and choice for a set of completely undemocratic institutions, totally lacking in transparency, which lack any serious accountability, such as DNA (anti-corruption department). Somehow this thing makes us wonder if their contempt for the popular vote that brought the PSD government and for political parties which might be prone to implementing certain populist measures (social spending, wage increase) could not be viewed as an aversion for some deficiencies of bourgeois democracy, things such as the popular vote. Plenty of voices could be heard during the last days calling to take away the right to vote for the poor population that constitutes the majority of the PSD voters. From an ideological perspective we might ask ourselves if behind this statement of the middle class one could not see a historical tendency towards fascism and authoritarianism from this class, a tendency that expresses itself by a profound contempt for people representing a class they see as inferior (the working class and poor people) and to which they always turn their heads whenever they consider their privileges are in danger and they feel the need to strike.

Go here to see the original:

The Rule of Law and The Working Class - Anarkismo.net

Since the first iteration of slavery transformed into its more contemporary formsJim Crow, mass incarceration, redlining, employment and education discriminationthe toxic myth that Black people can bootstrap their way to success and safety in a country that thrives on their subjugation has continued to thrive.

In a new report, Asset Value of Whiteness, Demos andthe Institute on Assets and Social Policy take a deep dive into the intrinsic link between racism and capitalism; specifically, how whiteness infests the so-called American dream and renders it inaccessible to anyone who doesnt meet the pre-selected criteria.

This is a truth that Black and brown people in this country have always known, but one that white people invested in the maintenance of white supremacy have willfully chosen to ignore.

For centuries, white households enjoyed wealth-building opportunities that were systematically denied to people of color. Today our policies continue to impede efforts by African-American and Latino households to obtain equal access to economic security, explains Amy Traub, associate director of policy and research at Demos and co-author of the report.

When research shows that racial privilege now outweighs a fundamental key to economic mobility, like higher education, we must demand our policymakers acknowledge this problem and create policies that address structural inequity, Traub continues.

A few key points from the Asset Value of Whiteness:

Attending college does not close the racial wealth gap. The median white adult who attended college has 7.2 times more wealth than the median Black adult who attended college and 3.9 times more wealth than the median Latino adult who attended college.

Equal achievements in key economic indicators, such as employment and education, do not lead to equal levels of wealth and financial security for households of color, notes Thomas Shapiro, director of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy.

White households have a leg up, while households of color face systematic barriers to growing wealth, reproducing our long-standing racial wealth gap over generations, Shapiro continues.

Without policies that combat ingrained wealth inequalities, the racial wealth gap that we see today will continue to persist.

Link:

Attending College Doesn't Close Racial Wage Gap, Says New Report - Post News Group (blog)

Published 05/02/2017 | 06:00

An interesting life through the eyes of a slave driver

FarmIreland.ie

Books on self-help and business management have always been popular and many of them make useful reading, but one I picked up recently comes from a very different angle.

http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/rural-life/an-interesting-life-through-the-eyes-of-a-slave-driver-35409740.html

http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/article35409739.ece/4e461/AUTOCROP/h342/2017-01-31_bus_28185490_I1.JPG

Books on self-help and business management have always been popular and many of them make useful reading, but one I picked up recently comes from a very different angle.

An interesting life through the eyes of a slave driver

FarmIreland.ie

Books on self-help and business management have always been popular and many of them make useful reading, but one I picked up recently comes from a very different angle.

http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/rural-life/an-interesting-life-through-the-eyes-of-a-slave-driver-35409740.html

http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/article35409739.ece/4e461/AUTOCROP/h342/2017-01-31_bus_28185490_I1.JPG

Given its intriguing title, How To Manage Your Slaves, one feels that had it been published 2,000 years ago, it might well have topped the bestseller charts. I couldn't resist buying it and found the content both amusing and well researched, with lots of interesting historical facts concerning the ownership of slaves.

Now before you explode in anger at my purchasing and enjoying a book with such a politically incorrect title, bear in mind that it was written by Dr Jerry Toner, an Irish professor of classics at Cambridge University, using the voice of Marcus Sidonius Falx, a fictitious Roman of noble birth and a wealthy slave owner, as the narrator.

It is Falx who gives us detailed advice on purchasing slaves, how to encourage them to work harder, how to punish them and, in general, how to ensure we can get the best out of them while taking care they don't murder us in the meantime.

It even touches on the delicate matter of controlling sex among slaves, as well as with their owners, and when to set them free, which was apparently quite a common reward for being a good slave. The content gives us an insight into what life was like when people had a very different mindset to today and should be read in that context.

One wealthy Roman apparently kept a slave solely to note and remember the names of all the people they met and then remind his master of whom they were when required. Now that would have been useful. How many of us encounter embarrassing moments when we cannot recall the name of someone we know well? Politicians and auctioneers take note.

I would imagine also that anyone involved in difficult negotiations with intransigent trade union leaders might yearn for a time when you simply told your slaves what to do and if they refused or made a botch of the task, you could have them whipped or even put to death.

While the narrator is a fictional character, the book contains fascinating historical data as well as some horrific descriptions of the treatment meted out to any slave who attempted to defy his or her owner. But there were also many who gained their freedom and even went on to become wealthy Roman citizens and slave owners in their own right.

How To Manage Your Slaves deals with the period when the Roman Empire was at the height of its powers, but we must also remember that slavery was the norm in Ireland and Britain from long before that time, and continued for many centuries.

In the early fifth century, St Patrick was captured and taken as a slave by Irish raiders while St Brigid was the daughter of Brocca, a Christian Pict and a slave in Ireland. Early Irish law also makes numerous references to slaves and semi-free senclithe, and from the ninth to the 12th century, Dublin in particular was a major slave trading centre.

The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid-1600s, thousands of Irish men and women were sold to Antigua and Montserrat and by then, 70pc of the total population of Montserrat consisted of Irish slaves.

In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2,000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers. Some will argue they were "indentured servants" but, in reality, there was no difference.

The British were not the sole perpetrators of course and on June 20, 1631, the village of Baltimore in Co Cork was attacked by Algerian pirates from the North African Barbary Coast. They killed two villagers and captured almost the whole population of over 100 people, who were put in irons and taken to a life of slavery in North Africa.

It was only by the early 19th century that the ethics and morality of enslaving people was questioned and eventually banned, although it still continues to the present day in a more limited manner and under various guises.

Throughout the 'free' world, there are domestic servants still living in slavery and immigrants kept in awful living conditions. We are told that some are often paid virtually no wages, but are afraid to speak up for fear of being deported.

Send letters to: Farming Independent, Independent House, Talbot street, Dublin 1 or email: farming@independent.ie

Slavery comes in many forms and it is said that the only man who is truly free is the man who has nothing.

Some who own their homes become slaves to maintaining it and keeping up with mortgage payments.

Then there are wage slaves who spend their lives in the pursuit of money for status and to support and educate their families without spending time with their children, later realising it is now too late and life has passed them by.

Others, as they commute to work, might at times gaze in envy at a dropout from mainstream society living a simple life in the countryside. In the past, hermits and religious solitaries shunned wealth and chose poverty.

It is a form of freedom that Jesus, for one, recommended to his followers when he said: "Cast away your earthly goods and follow me."

So what is a slave? Many are slaves to alcohol and drugs, and most of us have become slaves to consumerism.

Just ponder on the aspirations of the average family in the 1950s and what they considered adequate for comfort and compare them to the same family today. It's a sobering thought.

Indo Farming

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An interesting life through the eyes of a slave driver - Irish Independent

If you had to find a single statement that Americans from across the political spectrum can agree on, you might settle on we need good jobs to give people a crucial sense of self-worth. Fight-for-$15 activists assert the right to a higher wage, partly so they can stop taking government handouts like food stamps. Policy commentators, worried that automation could bring a loss of jobs, prescribe everything from subsidized corporate hiring to federal make-work programs. The congressional leaderships pitch for its policies hinges almost entirely on encouraging workand reducing public benefits.

But heres the thing: In historical terms, the pride we take in working for a paycheck is really new. Just 150 years ago, when people talked about the shame of dependency, they were referring to the reality of being forced to hold a job.

* * *

Speaking at the Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee in 1859, Abraham Lincoln described wage labor as an unfortunate necessity only for the penniless beginner in the world:

If any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer, it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune.

In contrast, Lincoln laid out a vision of respectability that required avoiding a job:

In these free States, a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their familieswives, sons, and daughterswork for themselves, on their farms, in their houses and their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hirelings or slaves on the other.

Farmers and craftsmen valued this independence in part because their time was their own, as it had been for skilled workers for generations. Describing nineteenth-century artisans in Birmingham, England, the historian Douglas A. Reid wrote, high piece-rates could provide good wages for skilled men, but they more often elected to take a moderate wage and extensive leisure.

Leisure meant time in the alehouse, time eating, drinking, playing marbles, or watching cockfights. Reid writes that even less-skilled workers and apprentices observed the informal weekly holiday known as Saint Monday if they could afford it, much to the dismay of elites and government officials. One observer in 1864 complained that an enormous amount of time is lost, not only by want of punctuality in coming to work in the morning and beginning again after meals, but still more by the general observance of Saint Monday.

That was the kind of life craftsmen in Lincolns day might have expected for themselves. But, as the sociologists Helga Kristin Hallgrimsdottir and Cecilia Benoit explain, rising industrialization in the late nineteenth century forced many skilled artisans to work for a factory owner rather than for themselves. The Knights of Labor, an early labor union, saw this dependence on an employerregardless of how much or how little was paidas wage slavery, a condition literally comparable to chattel slavery, which the country had only recently abolished. These unionists argued that working for wages was repugnant because capitalists siphoned off part of the wealth produced by the workers and told them when and how to do their jobs.

The only solution, as Knights of Labor founder Uriah Stephens put it in 1881, was the complete emancipation of wealth producers from the thralldom and loss of wage slavery. Workers and their unions interpreted that goal in many different ways over the next several decades, sometimes trying to return production to independent craftsmen, other times creating cooperative worker-owned enterprises, or advocating a socialist revolution.

* * *

Some workers saw more logic than others in harkening back to a pre-industrial independence. For example, to young, working-class white women, heading to a mill town to work for a wage might have sounded better than staying home on the farm. These women organized strikes to get better pay, but, to many of them, wage work itself was more liberating than not.

They knew as farm wives they would have little control over the farms profits and little disposable income, American literature scholar Julie Husband writes, describing mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1840s. These women explicitly rejected the label of white slaves that some political reformers and male unionists applied to them. Millworker Harriet Farley mocked the notion that to put ourselves under the influence and restraints of corporate bodies is contrary to the spirit of our institutions and to the love of independence we ought to cherish.

There is a spirt of independence which is adverse to social life itself, she added. And I would advise all those [who] wish to cherish it to go beyond the Rocky Mountains and hold communion with none but the untamed Indian and the wild beast of the forest.

Even for skilled white male workers, rhetoric identifying wage labor as wage slavery mostly dried up in the final decades of the century, as large-scale industry came to dominate manufacturing. By 1900, Hallgrimsdottir and Benoit write, both the Knights of Labor and the ascendant American Federation of Labor (AFL) generally used the phrase wage slavery to refer only to particularly awful jobs, especially those held by immigrant and black workers.

* * *

While some unionists still held out hope for the abolition of the capitalist system, many turned their practical attention to improving wage work. That required a dramatic shift in focus, as historian Lawrence Glickman explains in his book, A Living Wage. Mid-nineteenth-century skilled white male workers had believed that wage work not only degraded their economic status but undermined the independence that lay at the root of republican manhood and republican citizenship, he writes.

Wages have stagnated, benefits have evaporated, andreturns to capital have swelled.

As wage workers, they needed to regain pride and status. For some white, male unionistsparticularly those in the relatively conservative AFLthere were two intertwined ways to do that. One was winning higher wages and using the money to construct a respectable lifea carpeted parlor, ornaments on the mantle, a wife who could stay home to care for the family. The other lay in contrasting themselves with female, black, and immigrant workers, who, in their view, lacked both the power and the desire to push for better pay. Glickman quotes one labor leader, W.W. Stone, who drew the division like this: The Caucasian must add to his own individual needs the cost of maintaining a wife and family. There is rent to pay, clothing to be provided, books to buy, and, added to all this, the many little wants that arise out of the condition of a Christian civilization. In contrast, he continued, Chinese workers were content with a fractional interest in the body of a female slave.

* * *

Through the early twentieth century, unionistsincluding not just skilled white men, but also workers of other backgrounds, who organized in spite of the barriers erected by some white male union leaderspushed for better jobs. Glickman notes that this required not only strikes and demonstrations but also a new economic vision. In an age of big factories, workers recognized that it was no longer possible to reimburse any one individual for the value they added to a product. At the same time, they rejected the emerging economic consensus that supply and demand in the labor market would produce a correct wage. Instead, they created a new concept: the living wage, amounting to their rightful share in the products of common toil, as AFL President Samuel Gompers called it.

The labor movement achieved a great deal in this era. Working hours lessened, working conditions improved, and wages rose. By the end of the 1940s, historian David L. Stebenne writes, unions and management had essentially reached a truce. Workers repudiated socialism and stopped trying to win a say in how companies were managed. Companies provided pensions and health insurance to many employees and worked to keep employment rates high. For a few decades, things generally went quite well for workers, particularly white, male union members in urban industrial areas.

In recent years, of course, things have changed. A concerted political attack has hobbled unions, while globalization and automation have reshaped the economy. Wages for all but the best-paid workers have stagnated, and employee benefits have evaporated, while returns to capital have swelled.

Economists and policy analysts have a lot of different ideas about how we might respond to the conditions of laborers. Some suggest reinstating the postwar social contract. Others argue that the government should expand programs that subsidize the incomes of low-paid workers into a European-style welfare state, or even provide a universal basic income to everyone.

With that in mind, here are a few lessons we might draw from the history of workers opposition toand then acceptance ofthe wage system:

The biggest lesson, though, might be this one: things change. Whether we like it or not, technological advances and geopolitical shifts will alter the ways we work, probably in radical ways. Our values, and the places we find pride and shame, will change with them. Theres no guarantee about what any of this will look like, partly because it will depend on the choices we make about what were willing to fight for.

The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Mar., 1927), pp. 243-258

Wisconsin Historical Society

By: Douglas A. Reid

Past & Present, No. 71 (May, 1976), pp. 76-101

Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society

By: Helga Kristin Hallgrimsdottir and Cecilia Benoit

Social Forces, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Mar., 2007), pp. 1393-1411

Oxford University Press

By: Julie Husband

Legacy, Vol. 16, No. 1, Discourses of Women and Class (1999), pp. 11-21

University of Nebraska Press

By: David L. Stebenne

International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 50, Labor under Communist Regimes (Fall, 1996), pp. 140-147

Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.

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Why Do We Take Pride in Working for a Paycheck? - JSTOR Daily

Meg and Patrick live an off-grid life most of us couldnt imagine.

HIPSTERS, drop your turmeric latte and turn down The Smiths, theres a new subculture of nonconformists on the block and youll need more than a bushy beard and a fedora to join in.

Enter the neo peasant.

Theyre fit, theyre frugal, theyre foragers, theyre facing our culture of extreme excess head on and they have very strong stomachs.

Think re-usable toilet paper, road kill for dinner, push bike-powered travel, homeschooling and humanure.

Neo peasants from Daylesford in regional Victoria, Meg Ulman and Patrick Jones, are defining the art of voluntary simplicity and reclaiming the skills, resilience and adaptability everyone is going to need in the future.

You wont find them in a supermarket, owning or driving a car, watching television, using a credit card or working the 9-5.

Their days are filled with foraging, hunting, preserving, brewing, bartering and fermenting to keep food on the table.

A neo-peasant is someone whos involved primarily in the household and community economies and resists wage-slavery, debt, and the heavily-militarised global economy, Mr Jones said.

They do not have to go to work to pay down debt, and therefore have time to organise and be accountable for their own food and energy resources.

Sounds better than your office job, right?

But dont be mistaken, a neo peasant hasnt got time to laze about.

Not many of us had to split wood to stoke our stove or hot wash the family cloth today the old flannel bed sheet Meg and Patrick have cut into squares and stitched to replace toilet paper.

By not buying toilet paper we save over $300 a year, Ms Ulman said.

Weve always been frugal, but its been about a decade since weve really concentrated our efforts to become dedicated non-polluters.

Neo-peasants Meg and Patrick with their children Zephr (left) and Blackwood.Source:Supplied

Its hot, heavy, hard work, but they are nauseated by the prospect of running down to the supermarket and buying a hot chicken for dinner dont worry, Ive asked.

We wouldnt touch a chicken from a supermarket because that hen has more than likely come from a prison-like existence and been tortured in death, Mr Jones said.

The packaged food of supermarkets is mostly laced with refined sugars, harmful additives and carcinogens, and the so-called fresh food is long-termed stored, sprayed with harmful methyl bromide, refrigerants or other nasties and has little nutrition.

Excuse me for a moment while I torch the entire contents of my pantry.

One look at the couples four-year-old, Blackwood, will also have you prizing that lollipop out of your toddlers mouth.

Woody has never touched processed sugar.

A treat for Woody is a mandarin picked off the tree, a handful of ripe berries or a sweet red capsicum, Ms Ulman says.

Patrick processing some road kill.Source:Supplied

We dont shop at supermarkets so there are no shiny packets or chocolate bars to entice him and we dont own a television so there are no ads to seduce him.

Ms Ulman said before they committed to a neo peasantry lifestyle they were riddled with anxiety and helplessness about the state of the world.

Mr Jones goes as far as to say its a move they made before they were forced to simplify with global economic contraction and even collapse.

We live in a culture of extreme excess, built on the myth of permanent growth and endless crude oil, he said.

This oil-induced affluence is fleeting; it cant keep growing because we live on a finite planet and the science fictions of mining other planets for resources is far-fetched and wishful thinking.

So lets look at the average Aussie.

We work all week for multinationals to buy appliances that cost us a lot in electricity to turn on.

Lets not get started on how much waste the average household turns out in comparison to Meg and Patrick theyve even found a way to re-use their own poo.

Humanure is composted and recycled, wastewater is filtered and fed into garden swales, food scraps from our own kitchen and local cafes are fed to our worms, chickens and ducks, Mr Jones says.

We shower once or twice a week.

The water is then piped into our garden.

The family also has two composting toilets, a rainwater washing machine powered by solar and strict rules about internet access for their 14-year-old son Zephyr who happens to live in a tiny house in the backyard that he co-built from recycled materials.

Zephyr helped build his own tiny house in the backyard.Source:Supplied

Four-year-old Woody is happily playing in the backyard after his first haircut.Source:Supplied

The neo peasants have a theory about tiny house living too, you see.

It is an expression of people using technology appropriately, and living within their means, Mr Jones said.

While the real estate market remains a giant Ponzi scheme the tiny house movement will continue to grow.

But if shovelling your own poo, washing your toilet paper or cooking up fresh road kill for dinner (as Meg and Patrick did on their 14-month foraging tour of Australia by bicycle) is too much to swallow; Kirsten Bradley from Milkwood Permaculture has some advice.

Start with changing one thing at a time, Ms Bradley said.

If you eat a lot of bread, learn how to make it.

Then stick with making your own bread until youre ready to add a new habit.

If you create these new habits every 6 months or so then within 5 years youll have made a fundamental change to your family life.

Meg making some Kefir milk.Source:Supplied

The boys standing next to the backyard veggie patch.Source:Supplied

Milkwood offer training courses in home gardening, bee keeping, natural building, permaculture and regenerative agriculture making mini neo peasants out of us all.

Murdoch University School of Arts Associate Professor Dr Carol Warren said there was something of a millenarian movement in the extremity of a neo peasants position on some issues but she conceded the idea we are morally-responsible to live within an ecologically-sustainable footprint was laudable.

The current prominence of food and energy security issues in global policy circles indicates that the neo-peasant focus on basic needs in a context of global environmental decline is a legitimate one, Dr Warren said.

You can follow Meg and Patricks journeys in neo peasantry at http://www.theartistasfamily.blogspot.com.

It's here! What we've all been waiting for, right? It's the definitive guide on how to spot a hipster. No need to stare at passersby any more wondering if they are in fact a hipster or not. Watch this video and you will know immediately. And remember: hipsters are grown, not born. Credit: YouTube/billygoatideas

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Living off the grid: Neo-peasants in Daylesford, Victoria take on ... - NEWS.com.au

Since the first iteration of slavery transformed into its more contemporary formsJim Crow, mass incarceration, redlining, employment and education discriminationthe toxic myth that black people can bootstrap their way to success and safety in a country that thrives on their subjugation has continued to thrive.

In a new report, Asset Value of Whiteness, Demos andthe Institute on Assets and Social Policy take a deep dive into the intrinsic link between racism and capitalism; specifically, how whiteness infests the so-called American dream and renders it inaccessible to anyone who doesnt meet the pre-selected criteria.

This is a truth that black and brown people in this country have always known, but one that white people invested in the maintenance of white supremacy have willfully chosen to ignore.

While Franklin Roosevelts New Deal and Harry Trumans Fair Deal laid the groundwork for a vibrant middle class, these sweeping legislations helped widen the economic gap along the racial fault line. This also holds true for the Servicemens Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill of Rights) of 1944, the affirmative action program created primarily for the benefit of white, male veterans.

These programs and their ramifications have exposed how a flat economic analysis does not get to the core of the racial discrimination and animus running through this country.

For centuries, white households enjoyed wealth-building opportunities that were systematically denied to people of color. Today our policies continue to impede efforts by African-American and Latino households to obtain equal access to economic security, explains Amy Traub, associate director of policy and research at Demos and co-author of the report.

When research shows that racial privilege now outweighs a fundamental key to economic mobility, like higher education, we must demand our policymakers acknowledge this problem and create policies that address structural inequity, Traub continues.

A few key points from the Asset Value of Whiteness:

The median white adult who attended college has 7.2 times more wealth than the median black adult who attended college and 3.9 times more wealth than the median Latino adult who attended college.

The median white single parent has 2.2 times more wealth than the median black two-parent household and 1.9 times more wealth than the median Latino two-parent household.

The median white household that includes a full-time worker has 7.6 times more wealth than the median black household with a full-time worker. The median white household that includes a full-time worker also has 5.4 times more wealth than the median Latino household with a full-time worker.

The average white household spends 1.3 times more than the average black household of the same income group. According to the report:

On average, white households spent $13,700 per quarter, compared to $8,400 for black households. Even after accounting for factors such as family structure, income, occupation, and geography, as well as wealth and homeownership, white households at all income levels continued to spend more than comparable black households, with low-income white households spending $1,200 more per quarter than low-income black households and high-income white households spending $1,400 more than their black counterparts.

Equal achievements in key economic indicators, such as employment and education, do not lead to equal levels of wealth and financial security for households of color, notes Thomas Shapiro, director of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy.

White households have a leg up, while households of color face systematic barriers to growing wealth, reproducing our long-standing racial wealth gap over generations, Shapiro continues. Without policies that combat ingrained wealth inequalities, the racial wealth gap that we see today will continue to persist.

Asset Value of Whiteness is the most recent in a series of studies from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy and Demos analyzing policy solutions to close the racial wealth gap and ensure all Americans have an equal opportunity to participate in our economy.

What is clear is that a rising tide does not lift all boats if some of the boats have holes in them. For people of color, a rising tide can sometimes lead to us drowning that much faster.

Click here to read Asset Value of Whiteness.

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Attending College Doesn't Close the Wage Gap and Other Myths Exposed in New 'Asset Value of Whiteness' Report - The Root

The Governments system of permits for migrant fishing workers is legitimising slavery, a trade union official told a meeting in Liberty Hall, Dublin on Monday. Up to 70 fishermen, mainly Egyptian, heard International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) co-ordinator Ken Fleming demand immediate action to halt abuse and exploitation within the Irish industry.

Egyptian embassy representative Hatem Elsisi also called on the Government to provide a safe and legal system for Egyptian crew to work on Irish vessels.

These are very skilled men, mainly from the Alexandria area, who want to work here but they need a system that protects them and gives them an opportunity to apply for residence which will give them rights, Mr Elsisi said.

Up to 2,000 Egyptians may be working on vessels based at ports north and south of the Border, Mr Elsisi said.

The embassy has received reports of injury and hardship, and was aware of several cases where men who sustained injury could not return home to their families while legal cases were in train.

Instances where many migrant crew were underpaid and overworked were outlined at the meeting, which is the second hosted by the ITF.

Mohamad Abbasy, who took up a berth on a vessel in Union Hall, Co Cork, 18 months ago, said he lost his job last September and his visa was cancelled after he had secured a permit.

This permit system is for slaves, not humans,when you work 150 hours a week and are paid for just 39 hours, he said.

The permit system for migrant workers was initiated by the then minister for marine Simon Coveney last year in the wake of a year-long investigation by the Guardian newspaper on exploitation within the Irish fishing industry.

Industry organisations said they had lobbied for such a system to meet crew shortages within the industry. However, the system had failed, Mr Fleming said. Boat owners have used the scheme to move from paying crews on a share system to paying the minimum wage, with crew working over 100 hours for 350 a week, Mr Fleming said.

The permit system closed in June 2016, but at least 20 permits had since been issued illegally, facilitated by the Department of Justice, Mr Fleming claimed.

Only one of the fishermen at the meeting said he held a permit issued before June last year, while two said they held permits issued in December 2016.

Mr Fleming said he was aware of the risks many of the men took to attend the meeting, and issued an information leaflet in Arabic relating to steps to take if contacted by the Garda National Immigration Bureau.

The ITF plans to highlight the situation at the European Parliament later this month and is holding a meeting with the Workplace Relations Commission chairman.

Last October, the WRC, Garda, Naval Service and State agencies held joint inspections of 41 fishing vessels in Castletownbere, Co Cork, and Howth, Co Dublin. The Garda said a relatively small number of suspected breaches were found, all relating to the work permit scheme, employment law and immigration and tax offences.

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Scheme for fishing crews is 'legitimising slavery' - Irish Times

By Paul Aizley, Las Vegas

Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017 | 2 a.m.

In the article As business owner, labor pick chafed at worker protections (Las Vegas Sun, Jan. 18), Donald Trumps pick for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, asks, How do you pay somebody $15 an hour to scoop ice cream? How good could you be at scooping ice cream?

If Pat scoops ice cream for an hourly wage, Pudzer should take a broader view. Consider why Pat is working: to pay for school, buy a car, pay medical bills or put a few dollars away for retirement. Pats wages should allow Pat to have a life. Can Puzder scoop all the ice cream? What is Puzders time worth? Pat is helping Puzder, and Pat is not a slave. Pat does not have a life if all s/he can do is pay for lifes minimal essentials. That is modern slavery.

What should be obvious to Puzder is that there is more to Pats life than scooping ice scream. With an adequate wage, Pat will be able to pay for more than lifes basic essentials and will not have to rely on help from the government to get by.

We hope for a secretary for labor, not a secretary for the corporation.

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Pudzer isn't looking at the big picture - Las Vegas Sun