Earlier in the career of Muse I mentioned that I detected something because of the imagery used in the official video "Time Is Running Out." Some wished to relegate the video to just the personal relationship of a couple, I think it goes quite beyond this, and I think i the context of this new album my instincts were correct:
"We are Arab students at the Israeli universities writing to you in support of the proposed academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions. We believe that the boycott is timely and hopefully will help in upholding moral values of fairness, justice and equality which have been sorely missed in our region.
While the reason for the boycott is rightly what has been going on in the 1967 occupied territories, we propose another angle which affirms the need for boycott, namely our daily experience as Arabs in Israeli institutions. We are the lucky ones who have been able to pursue our studies in institutions of Higher Education, to which we arrived against great odds. Only very few among our generation have been qualified to attend universities due to the State's discriminatory policies. Our schools mostly lack the basic facilities needed for education, and the curriculum is structured to serve the State's goal in socializing the pupils for self-estrangement. It contains very little, if any at all, on our history and culture. Additionally, it aims to erase our historical memory and promote the official policy line of divide and rule. In short, it is modeled on curriculum's that dark regimes, like Apartheid South Africa, have used to indoctrinate rather than educate. We arrive to universities with this "educational" baggage.
The idea that Israeli universities adhere to the values of free academic institutions, where academic freedom, objectivity and meritocracy prevail is widely accepted in the West. From our experience we attest – and indeed prove beyond doubt - that this is not the case. In recent years Israeli universities have changed the criteria of acceptance to various faculties in order - as a certain president of an Israeli university put it - to prevent large number of undesirable [i.e. Arab] students from attending prestigious faculties such as Medicine and Natural Sciences. Moreover, lecturers who presented findings which are at odd with the official ideology – such as Ilan Pappe and Neve Gordon – are bullied and harassed or forced to resign. Meanwhile raw racist statements by many lecturers are considered by the administrations of the universities as benign or even objective statements. For example, recently Dr. Dan Scheuftan stated in one of his lectures: "The Arabs are the biggest failure in the history of the human race... there's nothing under the sun that's more screwed up than the Palestinians"; "Throughout the Arab world, people fire guns at weddings in order to prove that they have at least one thing that's hard and in working order that can shoot."
It goes without saying that none of these lecturers has ever been disciplined. Moreover, foreign students are warned by the security authorities of Haifa University not to visit Arab villages or towns.
Although some Israeli universities – such as the University of Haifa – pride themselves on promoting "co-existence", yet nothing is further from the truth than this. We are prevented from forming our [i.e. Arab] students' union, and racial discrimination against us – under the pretext of not serving in the army – is widely practiced in the granting of scholarships, as well as in the provision of housing at the universities' residential halls. This is particularly grave as the universities are located in Jewish towns, and Arab students face many obstacles and hardships in finding appropriate housing due to prevailing prejudices and anti-Arab sentiments in Israeli society.
Yet, the restrictions imposed on our freedom of expression are more stifling. We are not allowed to express our collective sentiments or ideas publicly. It is quite often that our public gatherings are not only violently interrupted by extreme right-wing Jewish students, but also in various occasions the universities called on the police to intervene. In several occasions, as during our peaceful demonstration in Haifa University against the War on Gaza, the police sent in large number of its special units which are infamous for their brutality (pictures and videos attached). Needless to say that they do the job they are trained for. Moreover, the universities collaborate with the internal security services (the feared Shin Bet) and provide it with names of the activists among the students who are regularly summoned, investigated and threatened.
In the end, we are hopeful that you will take a decision which reaffirms the true meaning of human values, and provide a proof that racism, religious tribalism, obfuscation and disregard for human dignity are no longer tolerated."
Sincerely yours,
Abnaa el-Balad- The Student Movement
Iqraa Student Association- Islamic Movement
National Democratic Assembly (NDA)- The Student Movement
WALL STREET BANKS GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE FOR H1N1 SHOTS
CLASS WARFARE - A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
"With millions who need the the H1N1 vaccine unable to get it, major financial firms in New York, among them Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, have received larger distributions of the inoculation than many hospitals.
As of late October, Citigroup had been given 1,200 doses, more than half of its request, and Goldman Sachs had received 200 doses of the 5,400 it requested, about 4 percent.
By contrast, a major New York City hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has been given only 200 of 27,400 doses, less than 1 percent of what it asked for its doctors, nurses, and staff, who will be responsible for caring for the sick in the event of a major outbreak.
Nationwide, hospitals, clinics, and pediatricians have received only a small fraction of what they need, a result of the failure of major pharmaceutical corporations to produce an adequate supply as promised.
Just over 35 million doses of the vaccine are now available, but there are nearly 160 million Americans defined as "high risk" who should be inoculated. According to a survey by the Harvard School of Public Health, only about one third of those who have tried to get the vaccine have been able to do so.
All over the country, the dearth of the vaccine has resulted in long lines at hospitals and clinics, school closures, and a rising number of deaths. H1N1 has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 in the US and 5,000 globally.
The distribution to Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and 13 other New York City-based organizations—including JP Morgan Chase, Time Warner, and the Federal Reserve Board of New York—was ordered by local health officials and approved by the Obama administration's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Spokesmen for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs claim that the vaccines have only been administered to employees in high-risk categories, including pregnant women. "Like other responsible employers, [Goldman Sachs] has requested vaccine and will supply it only to employees who qualify," a company representative said.
These assurances mean little. Having been given the vaccine dosages, the banks distribute them without supervision. More to the point, why should wealthy executives and traders—even those with compromised immune systems—be given precedence over health care workers, children, and pregnant women in the public at large? Why can't the bankers and traders at the Wall Street firms go wait in line like everyone else?
Aware that the spectacle of flu vaccine hoarding by the same big Wall Street firms that received hundreds of billions in taxpayer bailout money could trigger a public backlash, the Obama administration has shifted to damage control.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the CDC, wrote a letter to health officers warning them that policies "that appear to direct the vaccine to people outside the identified priority groups have the potential to undermine the credibility of the program."
The Obama administration and public health officials in New York have alternately claimed the decision to put the big banks at the front of the line was a mistake, and defended the policy as "a great avenue for vaccinating people at risk," as Jessica Scaperotti of New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene put it.
Such protestations are absurd. From both a medical and organizational standpoint, hospitals, elementary schools and nursing homes are much better candidates for the distribution of immunizations.
This is confirmed by the CDC's own list of at-risk populations, which includes children and health care workers, teenagers, people caring for infants under the age of six months, pregnant women, and those with respiratory health problems. These categories hardly call to mind the well-heeled executives and traders at Wall Street banks.
What underlays the decision to distribute immunizations to major private entities ahead of hospitals and schools is neither a mistake nor an objective assessment of the medical value of such distributions.
The episode demonstrates the supremacy of America's financial elite, which increasingly dictates every policy decision and every facet of social life, and more and more takes on the trappings of an aristocracy. Any government response to a disaster of nature, disease, or, soon enough, social revolt, will take as its first order of business the preservation of this narrow layer.
The inescapable essence of the matter is this: it is taken for granted in government that the lives and health of the rich are worth more than those of the working class. The vaccine distribution to Goldman Sachs and Citigroup was not "caught" precisely because the banks' privileged position is assumed.
Yet the arrogance and presumptuousness of the financial aristocracy is itself becoming an explosive factor in the political life of the nation.
This has been reflected in the public reaction to the revelations about the vaccine distribution to Wall Street, and the phony denunciations by the likes of Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, who has been for many years among the most favored recipients of the finance industry's campaign contributions.
The allocation of scarce vaccines to the big banks is in fact entirely in keeping with the Obama administration's response to the economic crisis. The US government has given over trillions to the banking industry to help it profit from the financial collapse of its own making. Meanwhile, the Obama administration refuses any jobs program that would counter mass unemployment, as the official jobless rate surges over 10 percent. [ALL FACTS CONSIDERED, 17%]
The revelation that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and others have cornered for themselves a share of the vaccine supply is yet another example of destructive impact of the capitalist market on public health.
Last spring, the Obama administration turned over the production of the vaccine to a handful of large pharmaceutical firms. Because the industry finds vaccines unprofitable, it relies on outdated production methods. This explains the shortage of the vaccine.
But even were there an adequate supply, it would have to be distributed through an American public health system that has been the victim of decades of cuts and layoffs—a trend accelerated in the current economic crisis. The situation is such that President Obama declared a national emergency on October 23, relaxing rules so special distribution centers might be put in place."
So, not only will the jobs not come back, but the ones that remain will see severe reduction in wages. This is all part of an economic plan to enrich the few while the rest languish. No substantive change.
"The recession has been seized upon to effect an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the working class to the financial elite, in part to fund trillions of dollars in bailouts for the world's bankers."
"The International Labour Organization (ILO) warned Tuesday that global growth in workers' real wages, which fell sharply in 2008, will decline even more in 2009, despite what is being touted by governments around the world as an economic recovery.
Announcing its "Global Wage Report: 2009 Update," the United Nations-affiliated agency said "the picture on wages is likely to get worse in 2009." Its report notes that in half of the 35 countries for which data is available, real monthly wages fell in the first quarter of 2009 compared to their 2008 average, in many case due to reductions in work hours.
An ILO press release states: "In a sample of 53 countries for which data are available, growth in real average wages in the median country had declined from 4.3 percent in 2007 to 1.4 percent in 2008." The press release goes on to note that among the ten G-20 leading economies for which figures are available, "growth in real average wages in the median country had declined from 1.0 percent in 2007 to -0.2 percent in 2008." In these countries, in other words, real wages actually fell in 2008.
The report further points out that the deterioration in wages since the eruption of the financial crisis follows a decade of wage stagnation internationally.
The decline in workers' earnings is particularly sharp in the United States. Average weekly earnings of production workers rose by only 0.7 percent in September, as the average number of weekly hours worked fell to a record low of 33 hours. This represents the lowest annualized weekly earnings growth since such data began to be tracked in 1964—nearly half a century ago.
Since hitting a recent peak in December 2008, real average weekly earnings have fallen by 1.9 percent, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The ILO evaded making any analysis of the roots of the wages decline in the breakdown of world capitalism and the class policies adopted by the world's ruling elites and their governments in response to the crisis.
The recession has been seized upon to effect an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the working class to the financial elite, in part to fund trillions of dollars in bailouts for the world's bankers. At the same time, mass unemployment is being encouraged by governments, including the Obama administration in the US, to blackmail workers into accepting lower wages, shorter hours and speedup.
Even as the ILO issued its report on wages, the White House stepped up its efforts to reassure Wall Street that it will propose no significant government outlays to create jobs and will instead turn to mapping out a campaign of fiscal austerity to rein in soaring budget deficits by slashing social programs.
With the US Labor Department widely expected to report an official jobless rate for October of 10 percent or more when it releases it employment data on Friday, the administration is publicly foreswearing any programs to directly employ jobless workers and insisting that no measures be taken to address the jobs crisis that impinge on the capitalist market and the profit interests of big business.
Last Thursday, the head of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, gave a speech in which she touted the administration's proposed health care overhaul as a major step in cutting costs for business and the government. On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press" program, said, "The president's very committed to bringing down these deficits."
The director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, on Tuesday delivered a speech at New York University entitled "Rescue, Recovery and Reining in the Deficit." Orszag painted a dire picture of prolonged mass unemployment and lower wages for years and even decades to come.
His response was to pledge that the next federal budget, to be presented in February of 2010, will outline spending cuts in social programs designed to cut in half the projected federal deficit by the end of Obama's first term—January of 2013. "And as the economy recovers," he said, "we must pull together—as a nation—and make the tough decisions to put our country back on a solid fiscal foundation."
Orszag - screw with a smile, Obama style
Orszag hailed Obama's health care plan as a major step in reducing budget deficits and the national debt. He called rising health care costs "the biggest threat to our long-term fiscal future," passing over in silence the fiscal impact of the bank bailouts and soaring spending for the military and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reiterated Obama's pledge that any health care bill signed into law "will not add to the deficit over the next decade and will reduce deficits thereafter."
He touted the administration's drive to enact "pay-as-you-go" legislation that would require any additional federal spending or reduction in revenues from tax cuts to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere in the budget.
However, he made clear that these measures are mere down payments on the sweeping austerity measures required to bring projected deficits—estimated to total $9 trillion over the next decade—to "sustainable" levels. "That is why," he said, "the president and his economic team are busy working on a range of options as we prepare for the fiscal year 2011 budget to be released in February."
Even as he pledged to enact deep cuts in social programs, Orszag acknowledged that the impact of the current economic crisis on the generation now entering the labor market will be severe and long-lasting. He noted that "the children of workers who were once laid off have lower average wages as adults—even decades later than those whose parents never experienced such setbacks."
He pointed to a recent study which found that "graduating during a period of high unemployment leads to depressed initial wages—roughly 6 percent on average for every one percentage point increase in unemployment." He continued: "This negative wage effect declines only slowly over time: to 5 percent after five years, 4 percent after 10 years, and 3 percent even 15 years after graduation."
Stressing that the percentage wage declines are for each percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, he noted that when most of today's seniors entered New York University the jobless rate was about 5 percentage points lower than it is today. "You can do the math," he quipped.
The math yields a reduction in wages of 30 percent now and 15 percent even 15 years down the road.
That the Obama administration has no intention of enacting policies to counteract this trend was underscored on Monday at a meeting in Washington of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Obama set the tone for the meeting, telling the board that "the government is going to have to get serious about reducing our debt levels" and calling for an "export-driven" revival of manufacturing.
Obama reiterated his position that government policies must be subordinated to the profit interests of private corporations. "We are not going to be able through government spending to replace business investment," he said. "The most important thing we can do is create an environment in which business investment is triggered," he added.
The board, which is dominated by corporate executives, agreed wholeheartedly, stressing the need to increase US exports as a percentage of the gross domestic product.
How is this to be accomplished? Precisely by permanently reducing the wages of American workers and increasing labor productivity. In other words, by driving up the rate of exploitation of the working class to levels not seen since the 1930s.
The basic "recovery" strategy of the American corporate elite and the Obama administration is to make the United States a cheap labor center for exports to the world market, bringing the wages and conditions of American workers more in line with those of super-exploited workers in China, India and other "developing" countries.
It is no accident that the chairman of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board is Paul Volcker. He is an old hand at waging class war against the American working class.
Volcker - recycled enemy of the people
Appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, Volcker tackled double-digit inflation by raising interest rates to more than 20 percent, deliberately precipitating a deep recession. Plant closures and mass layoffs, combined with government-backed union-busting and the betrayal of strike struggles by the trade union bureaucracy, were employed to impose sweeping wage concessions on the working class.
As Fed chairman under Ronald Reagan, Volcker oversaw the systematic dismantling of regulations on the banks and corporations and a vast growth of social inequality. This process has continued under Democratic as well as Republican administrations, and is being intensified under Obama."
If people think they are going to stop this current onslaught against humanity by just sitting back and waiting they are sorely mistaken. There has to be a time when you crawl out of the blogsphere and enter the mainline of reality.
Having let things go so far the people are going to have to hit the ground running in order to take the country. For change, true change to occur there is going to have to be a face-off, otherwise your going to get more of the same, because those in power are trying to resurrect a system in the image of the few.
So why not take a trip back to see, at least in part what needs to take place, Steal This Movie -
The Daily Show delivers the goods in regard to Palestinian rights, Jon goes where few men have gone before. I gotta tell you folks, Jon delivers more real news than any in our main stream media, and does so on a comedy show. Even though he voices his equivocations (quite groundless) he has the courage of a lion. So the story is out, and the time clock is ticking to the end of a brutal occupation - may it fall like other colonial enterprises swiftly. Thanks Jon!
BILLIONAIRES PLUNDER TOWNS AND ILLEGALLY CALL IN TROOPS
Conservative peer Lord Griffiths said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding staff. Photograph: Rex Features
[DID WE NOT JUST FINISH A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO LISTENING TO LLOYD BLANKFEIN, CEO OF GOLDMAN SACHS WHO SAID THE JOBS ARE NOT COMING BACK AFTER SAYING HE MADE 3.2 BILLION IN PROFITS THE LAST QUARTER AND MASSIVE BONUSES FOR HIS CRONIES?]
"We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all," says one Goldman Sachs adviser. But tell that to the people of Samson, Ala. "Editor's Note: The shocking transfer of public wealth to Wall Street's pockets is illustrated vividly in Mark Ames' article below, which covers some very disturbing recent events in Alabama, where billionaires and banks are squeezing the locals so hard that they're literally going bankrupt just for flushing their toilets, where violence and the threat of violence are reaching a boiling point and where even the Posse Comitatus Act is under threat. "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all," said one Goldman Sachs vice-chairman recently. Well, here's a tale of the kind of inequality the finance industry expects citizens to tolerate.
One of this year's more disturbing stories that were ignored was the illegal Army occupation of Samson, Alab., in March following a shooting spree that raged across two towns by a disgruntled worker, leaving 11 people dead.
Michael McLendon
As I wrote at the time, Michael McLendon, 27, went on a killing rampage following years of relentless corporate exploitation and harassment against him, his mother (whom he mercy-killed), and the entire rural Alabama region, which suffered like so many parts of rural America at the hands of billionaire goons like chicken oligarch Bo Pilgrim of Pilgrim's Pride notoriety.
One of the creepiest details to emerge in the shooting rampage were reports that troops from nearby Fort Rucker were brought into Samson and other surrounding areas to patrol the streets. This is a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, every freedom-loving American's worst nightmare.
And now, finally, the Army officially agrees that its occupation of the Alabama streets was illegal, according to an internal report theAssociated Press got a hold of, following a Freedom of Information Act filing:
An Army investigation found that soldiers should not have been sent to man traffic stops in a small Alabama town after 11 people were killed in March during a shooting spree.
An Army report released to the Associated Press on Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request said the decision to dispatch military police to Samson from nearby Fort Rucker broke the law. But an Army spokesman said no charges have been filed following the Aug. 10 report.
The report from the Department of Army Inspector General found the use of military personnel in Samson violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits federal troops from performing law-enforcement actions. The names of those involved were redacted from the report.
According to the report, the officer's "intent was to be a good Army neighbor and help local civilian authorities facing a difficult, unique tragedy affecting the local community. There were no apparent adverse collateral effects to the support provided."
Indeed. For a lot of Americans, the sight of troops occupying their towns is their worst nightmare come true -- part of the reason that America came into existence was to create a country where this sort of thing would never happen, even if the Army's sole intent was to be a good neighbor and help old ladies cross the streets.
Strangely enough, there was almost no media coverage of the occupation -- you had to rely on various right-wing outlets like CNSNews.com, whose article I blogged at the time, or the left-wing Democratic Underground.
But what even the right-wing anti-government people won't report is the true reason why the Army was called out in the first place, something that goes right back to the cause of the shooting rampage: billionaire exploitation of the local Alabamans, not just by the chicken oligarch, but from higher up the predator food chain -- Wall Street banking behemoth JP Morgan Chase.
You see, thanks to a combination of corporate-tax holidays (which reduce local revenues), billionaire greed like the sort that bankrupted Pilgrim's Pride, and Wall Street investment-banking scams on places like Alabama that result in corrupted local officials and bankrupted municipalities, counties and states -- now, there's no money left to fund local police forces, as the U.S. Army report reveals:
The soldiers arrived in the hours after the shootings, which stretched the town's tiny police force and county officers to the limit with several different crime scenes. The report said troops were dispatched after the Geneva County Sheriff's Office and Samson Police requested assistance from Fort Rucker to relieve law enforcement at traffic checkpoints around the crime-scene area.
As I wrote earlier this year, Pilgrim's Pride hooked up with Wall Street to leverage itself into bankruptcy while enriching the executives' family and a handful of insiders at the expense of tens of thousands of Americans workers:
In 2006, Pilgrim's Pride, then the second-largest chicken processor in the world, made a huge gamble that will seem familiar to anyone who's been following the financial crash: the company borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars, leveraging itself well beyond its means, in order to acquire a rival company and become the nation's No. 1 chicken processor, slaughtering 45 million chickens per week.
That might have given the executives a nice, big hard-on, but it also meant they would have to come up with more money to pay for all that debt. So the company did do what every post-Reagan company has done and gotten away with: it made the workforce pay for the executives' bonuses.
That meant squeezing lower-middle-class workers for more work for less pay, or in Pilgrim's case, more work for no pay: In August 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Pilgrim's Pride accusing it of grossly undercompensating its employees. That same year, 10,000 Pilgrim's Pride employees launched a class-action lawsuit demanding compensation for their work.
The damage extended well beyond Pilgrim's Pride's plants. With bankruptcy came huge unpaid local tax bills, leading to further layoffs and reduced services for the already-beleaguered locals:
Suwannee County could be out about $2 million if Pilgrim's Pride doesn't pay its property-tax bill, according to property appraiser Lamar Jenkins.
The biggest taxpayer in the county filed for bankruptcy protection Dec. 1. Now it's not clear when -- or if -- the bill will be paid.
"It's certainly going to put a hurt on the budget of the county," Jenkins told the [Suwanee] Democrat by phone Thursday. Jenkins said the unpaid bill represents 7.4 percent of the money local schools get from property taxes; 5.3 percent of county funds from that source; and 8 percent of the money the Suwannee River Water Management District receives from local property-tax revenues.
A spokesman for Pilgrim's did not respond to a request for comment.
Bo Pilgrim, the head of Pilgrim's Pride, once told his Texas church that he was worth over $1 billion before the market crash, and he's still worth hundreds of millions. His rapacity was boundless, and in the end it was the undoing of Pilgrim's Pride -- not the Pilgrim family, mind you, which is still filthy disgusting rich, but the company is through.
Last month, 64 percent of Pilgrim's Pride was sold to JBS, a Brazilian beef giant, making it the largest meat company in the world, topping America's Tyson. The American cattle industry tried to block the deal, which it says could result in the destruction of the American beef industry, but the Justice Department already approved JBS' takeover.
In the billionaires' Third World model for America, it makes awful sense that a Brazilian meat company would take control of a bankrupt, corrupt American chicken company. For Wall Street and the billionaires, the more they destroy in America, the richer they get, consequences be damned. And anyway, it's not like Pilgrim's Pride was a model of corporate responsibility while under American ownership; just read some of the comments on this recent Reuters article:
Gilmer, Texas, Sep. 8, 2009 -- working as a supervisor in mt pleasant plant use to be injoyable, but lately they expect you to work 50/70 hours for no extra pay. pilgrims pride does not care about family life just their money. Everyone is afraid to say anything, because upper management may let you go with no warnning because you voiced your opinion
robert, Carrollton, Ga. -- i work carrollton,ga former goldkist plant we were goldkist 1 plant now we fill like we in pure hell working for pilgrim pride these people want you to kiss there ass and work three times hard for same money no rasied in two years old chicken farmer
Doddridge, Ark. -- While I was raising chickens for Pilgrim's Pride, I became friends with many lower management employees of the company. The manner in which they were terminated was just simply unmerciful. While the growers had the brunt of the financial devastation, many that were nearing retirement were left with no prospects of employment in the near future. I know some that have had to uproot their families and settle for a considerable more modest lifestyle with their retirement benefits in doubt after a number of years of employment. It is just a shame that Bo Pilgrim has pocketed the money of many hard working people. I still believe Bo needs to be in the jail cell next to Bernie Madoff.
The comments section is where you'll find the real, unvarnished, ungrammatical rage among America's cheated majority, because for the most part, people are too desperate and afraid to complain in public.
But here's the rub: Selling Pilgrim's Pride to a Brazilian meat monopoly doesn't mean things will get better for Alabamans. Just weeks after the buyout was announced, Pilgrim's Pride closed another plant, this one in northern Alabama. According to the AP:
A chicken-processing plant owned by Pilgrim's Pride Corp. is shutting down this week after almost six decades, putting more than 600 people out of work and creating ripples that will be felt all over town.
The city of almost 20,000 is preparing for the end of a relationship that began in 1952 when James Beasley founded Sweet Sue Poultry, which originally ran the plant. Owners included Beatrice Foods and ConAgra before Pilgrim's Pride purchased the business in 2003.
Which looks a lot like an even more depressing Pilgrim's Pride story from a few months earlier, this from rural Arkansas. The town of Clinton filed a lawsuit in June against Pilgrim's Pride, accusing it of turning the town into a "ghost town":
"With its largest and sole remaining employer, Pilgrim's, now evacuated, the city faces a crisis of revenue, bond payments and economic devastation, and as a result of the Pilgrim's evacuation is threatened with becoming a modern-day ghost town," the lawsuit filed by the city said. "This serious economic situation is, however, a direct consequence of Pilgrim's illegal purpose in shuttering the Clinton plant and operations."
This story is repeated all over the rural South. So guess who put together the deal that bankrupted Pilgrim's Pride? Lehman Bros., the king of bankruptcy.
On the other side of the deal, serving Gold Kist, was Merrill Lynch, which also collapsed last year. But Merrill's banker in the Pilgrim's Pride acquisition is still doing well, thank you very much. In fact, he was recently hired by JPMorgan Chase as vice chairman of mergers and acquisitions.
Which makes perfect sense, because JPMorgan Chase has been laying waste to Alabama on a level that makes Pilgrim's Pride's destruction look downright humanitarian. JP Morgan Chase has plundered so much wealth from one county in Alabama, using a complex derivatives scheme and old-fashioned bribery, that some locals are calling it "Armageddon." According to Bloomberg:
In its 190-year history, Jefferson County, Ala., has endured a cholera epidemic, a pounding in the Civil War, gunslingers, labor riots and terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan. Now this namesake of Thomas Jefferson, anchored by Birmingham, is staring at what one local politician calls financial "Armageddon."
The spectacle -- a tax struck down, about 1,000 county employees furloughed, a politician indicted over $3 billion in sewer debt that may lead to the largest municipal bankruptcy in history -- has elbowed its way up the ladder of county lore.
"People want to kill somebody, but they don't know who to shoot at," says Russell Cunningham, past president of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Jefferson County's debacle is a parable for billions of dollars lost by state and local governments from Florida to California in transactions done behind closed doors. Selling debt without requiring competition made public officials vulnerable to bankers' sales pitches, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for borrowing gone awry.
[T]he county bet on interest-rate swaps, agreements that a representative of New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. told commissioners could reduce their interest costs. Instead, the swaps -- covering more than $5 billion in all -- blew up during the credit crisis after ratings for the county's bond insurers fell.
JPMorgan, through spokeswoman Christine Holevas, declined to comment for this story.
Yeah, why bother commenting to the public when you own the bastards? JPMorgan, which took $25 billion in direct bailout money and tens of billions more in backdoor subsidies and handouts, just posted a massive $3.6 billion quarterly profit, and has set aside at least $11.1 billion for management bonuses. Meanwhile, Alabamans can't afford to flush their toilets.
This is what inequality looks like. From Wall Street, it must look extremely appealing; for the rest of America, it's a nightmare that's only getting worse.
So far, it's clear that Birmingham and the entire Jefferson County are following the wretched script of a typical Third World scenario, where the Wall Street bankers corrupt the politicians and eventually bankrupt the place and then, while the corpse is still warm and the bankruptcy deals are cut, Wall Street makes sure it's first in line to profit off the chaos it created, while its corrupt local shill (in this case Birmingham's mayor) takes the fall for the crime of accepting the JP Morgan bribes … and the locals get screwed worst of all, paying off the bill for years or decades.
Just this week, it emerged that Goldman Sachs, employer of Brian "Inequality Is Good" Griffiths, bilked the state of New Jersey using a similar scheme involving interest-rate swaps on bonds that don't even exist. According to Bloomberg, New Jersey is considering raising its gasoline tax to pay the $1 million a month they have to pay out to Goldman for the scam -- a regressive tax that once again takes from the struggling middle class and poor, and puts in the pockets of the billionaires.
Meanwhile, over in Jefferson County, Ala., there's so little left to steal from the impoverished locals that Wall Street has been forced to come up with a new, grotesquely evil plan to line their pockets: taxing the local residents for taking a shit:
In August, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., as trustee for owners of about $3 billion in sewer warrants, filed suit in Jefferson County Circuit Court seeking an appointed receiver for the sewer system. The receiver should have authority to raise rates enough to meet the debt service, the bank said in the complaint, which is pending. The sewer system is already charging customers about 300 percent more to drain bathtubs or flush toilets than a dozen years ago.
By one county estimate, average annual bills are now about $750, compared with the national average of $331, according to a 2007 survey by the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Clean Water Agencies, a coalition of utilities.
It's impossible to boost them enough without putting them beyond the means of many residents, County Commissioner Jim Carns says. "We're like a guy making $50,000 a year with a $1 million mortgage."
In Wall Street's eyes, Alabamans really do shit gold.
The thing now will be to convince the locals to use their toilets rather than, say, gas to heat their homes.
As I wrote a few months ago, Jefferson County residents have become so desperate that they're being forced to choose between water and heating, as this article shows:
As nighttime temperatures plunged in Birmingham, Ala., last October, Dora Bonner had a choice: either pay the gas bill so she could heat the home she shares with four grandchildren, or send the Birmingham Water Works a $250 check for her water and sewer bill.
Bonner, who is 73 and lives on Social Security, decided to keep the house from freezing.
"I couldn't afford the water, so they shut it off," she says.
Bonner's sewer bills have risen more than fourfold in the past decade. So have those of others in Jefferson County, which has 659,000 residents and includes Birmingham, the state's largest city.
The logical outcome of the billionaires' plundering of Alabama is the same thing that happens all over the Third World: violence, fear and calling in the troops, the only way to secure the billionaires' dirty profits:
In August and September … Jefferson County residents got a taste of what bankruptcy might look like. As the county began putting about 1,000 workers on leave without pay, one disgruntled employee allegedly e-mailed bomb threats to officials and was promptly arrested, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.
Lines soon formed outside the courthouse as such tasks as renewing driver's licenses slowed.
A kind of legal civil war broke out when three county agencies -- the sheriff's department, an indigent-care hospital and the tax-assessor's office -- sued the county commission to stop the budget cuts on the grounds that they posed a danger to public safety.
Bettye Fine Collins, the commission president, declared the situation, "our Armageddon."
The state's response is right out of the Central America banana republic playbook: When there's no money left for the people, send in the troops.
The cuts in the sheriff's department budget were so severe that he was planning to call in the National Guard to keep order:
The sheriff in Alabama's most populous county may call for the National Guard to help maintain order, a spokesman said Tuesday, as a judge cleared the way for cuts in the sheriff's budget, and lawmakers reached a compromise they hope will end the budget crisis.
In light of all of this, the Army's brief, illegal occupation of a string of towns in Alabama this past spring no longer looks like a freak one-off, but rather a logical progression in the ongoing billionaire plunder of America.
It gives new meaning to what MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan is calling "corporate communism." Not only are banking billionaires on permanent state wealthfare, but even worse, as the wealth available becomes increasingly scarce and there isn't enough left to satisfy the billionaires' grotesque appetites and regular citizens' needs to flush their toilets or heat their homes, we're heading to the point that all Third World countries come to -- calling out the troops to ensure that the peasants pay their tithes to their absentee masters in New York and Connecticut and don't get all uppity like those Europeans.
Now you can see why Alabamans are loading up on so many weapons. That makes sense. Now they need to understand who the real enemy is. Not the make-believe liberal bogeymen of their nightmares. Rather, Alabamans should focus their anger on the real-world billionaires who are making this country a living hell."
AFTER ANNOUNCING HIS SMALL BUSINESS LOAN PLAN, OBAMA COMMENCES TO BEG HIS BANKING MASTERS TO LEND THEM MONEY - I KID YOU NOT (BELOW EMBEDDED) -
Of course, Obama has to say these things even though they will not amount to anything, it is the issue of plausible deniability. The same thing goes for the current bonus czar, they all have to look like they are "doing something," However, when push comes to shove there is no difference between any administration, or the so-called representatives we have in Washington or state side, they serve the same interests - and it is not the people. You think people would become wise to this circus after so many years, but they do not, and it seems like each generation follows the other into the ditch.
"The call for BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – has finally reached Israeli public opinion. The decision of Norway to divest capital from Israeli corporations involved in settlement building made the difference, and provided the first big success to that important campaign.
Moreover, the group of Israelis supporting BDS, under the label "Boycott from Within" is gaining some momentum, thanks, among other, to a public appeal by Naomi Klein to Israeli activists when she came to Tel Aviv to present the Hebrew version of her "Shock Doctrine".
The fact that there is an (even small) Israeli voice to support the international BDS campaign makes a lot of difference, and, among others helps to disarm the infamous accusation of Anti-Semitism raised by the Israeli propaganda machine against everyone who dares to criticize the colonial policies of the Jewish State. Moreover, as I will argue towards the end of this article, the Israeli supporters of BDS are in fact expressing the true and long-term interests of the Israeli people. Reading recently two texts of Uri Avnery criticizing BDS convinced me that it was important to clarify how positive that campaign is and why it should be supported by as many Israelis as possible.
I sometimes disagree with Avnery's opinions – though much less than in the past – but I have great respect for the man, the journalist, the activist and the analyst, and since the bankruptcy of Peace Now during the Oslo process, we have been closely active together. I may even say that we became friends. This is why I feel compelled to react to his criticism of the BDS campaign.
In order to present in the most accurate way Uri's position, I will not use paraphrases, but quote what I think are his main arguments:
URI AVNERY SAYS
(…) I HAVE no argument with people who hate Israel. That's entirely their right. I just don't think that we have any common ground for discussion.
I would only like to point out that hatred is a very bad advisor. Hatred leads nowhere, but to more hatred. That, by the way, is a positive lesson we can draw from the South African experience. There they overcame hatred to a remarkable extent, largely thanks to the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" headed by Archbishop Tutu, where people admitted their past offenses.
One thing is certain: hatred does not lead towards peace. Let me be quite explicit about this, because I sense that some people, in their righteous indignation over Israel's occupation, have lost sight of this.
Peace is made between enemies, after war, in which awful things invariably happen. Peace can be made and maintained between peoples who are prepared to live with each other, respect each other, recognize the humanity of each other. They don't have to love each other (…)
I ALSO have no argument with those who want to abolish the State of Israel. It is as much their right to aspire to that as it is my right to want to dismantle, let's say, the USA or France, neither of which has an unblemished past.
Reading some of the messages sent to me and trying to analyze their contents, I get the feeling they are not so much about a boycott on Israel as about the very existence of Israel. Some of the writers obviously believe that the creation of the State of Israel was a terrible mistake to start with, and therefore should be reversed. Turn the wheel of history back some 62 years and start anew.
What really disturbs me about this is that almost nobody in the West comes out and says clearly: Israel must be abolished. Some of the proposals, like those for a "One State" solution, sound like euphemisms. If one believes that the State of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a State of Palestine or a State of Happiness – why not say so openly?
Of course, that does not mean peace. Peace between Israel and Palestine presupposes that Israel is there. Peace between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people presupposes that both peoples have a right to self-determination and agree to the peace. Does anyone really believe that racist monsters like us would agree to give up our state because of a boycott? (…)
THE REAL argument is among those who want to see peace between the two states, Israel and Palestine. The question is: how can it be achieved? This is an honest debate and is generally conducted in a civil manner (…)
The advocates of boycott believe that the main, indeed the only way to induce Israel to give up the occupied territories and agree to peace is to exert pressure from the outside.
I have no quarrel with the idea of outside pressure. The question is: pressure on whom? On the government, the settlers and their supporters? Or on the entire Israeli people?
(…) The struggle is on, it is a hard struggle against determined opposition, and we should do all we can to help Obama's peace policy to prevail. We must do this as Israelis, from inside Israel, and thereby show that this is not a struggle of the US against Israel, but a joint struggle against the Israeli government and the settlers.
It follows that any boycott must serve this purpose: to isolate the settlers and the individuals and institutions which openly support them, but not declare war on Israel and the Israeli people as such. In the 11 years since Gush Shalom declared a boycott of the products of the settlements, this process has been gaining momentum. We must laud the Norwegian decision, this week, to divest from the Israeli Elbit company because of their involvement with the "Separation Fence" that is being built on Palestinian land and whose main purpose is to annex occupied territories to Israel. This is a splendid example: a focused action against a specific target, based on a ruling of the International Court.
(…) I have been asked about the Palestinian reaction to the boycott idea. At present, Palestinians do not boycott even the settlements, indeed it is Palestinian workers who are building almost all the houses there, out of economic necessity. Their feelings can only be guessed. All self-respecting Palestinians would, of course, support any effective measure directed against the occupation. But it would not be honest to dangle before their eyes the false hope that a world-wide boycott would bring Israel to its knees. The truth is that only the close cooperation of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace forces could generate the necessary momentum to end the occupation and achieve peace.
This is especially important because our task in Israel today is not so much to convince the majority of Israelis that peace is good and the price acceptable, but first that peace is possible at all. Most Israelis have lost that hope, and its revival is absolutely vital on the way to peace (…)
WARSCHAWSKI REPLIES
Let's start with what I consider to be a false debate. First: "Hatred is a very bad advisor" writes Uri, and I will be the last to disagree with him. I know also that he will agree with me if I add that, in our political context, hatred is understandable. Second: "Israel is not South Africa". Of course it isn't, and every concrete reality is different from the other. Nevertheless, these two countries have some similarities: both are racist states with (different kinds of) apartheid systems (the literal meaning of apartheid being "structural separation"). Both countries were established as "European states" in a national/ethical environment composed of non-European who were considered a hostile environment, and rightly so.
We do also agree – and this is even more important – that in order to achieve substantial results in our struggle, we need to build a joint dynamic including the Palestinian national resistance, the Israeli anti-occupation forces and the international solidarity movement. Ten years ago, I called it "the winning triangle".
A lot in common indeed until we come to Uri's misrepresentation of his political opponents: "(They) have despaired of the Israelis". If it were so, why do those Israeli BDS campaigners spend so much of their time in building, together with Uri Avnery, an Israeli movement against war, occupation and colonization? The true debate is not between those who aim to "change the Israeli society" and those who don't, but how and for what purpose.
The political goal of Uri Avnery is "an Israeli-Palestinian peace", i.e. a compromise that should satisfy the majority of the two communities, on a symmetrical basis (in another important article, he called it "truth against truth"). Such symmetry is the result of another important political assumption by Avnery: the conflict in Palestine is a conflict between two national movements with equal legitimacy.
Many supporters of the BDS campaign disagree on both assumptions: our goal is not peace as such, because "peace" in itself doesn't mean anything (almost every war in modern history was initiated under the pretext of achieving peace). Peace is always the reflection of relation of forces when one side cannot impose on the other all that he considers their legitimate rights.
Unlike Uri, our goal is the fulfillment of certain values like: basic individual and collective rights, end of domination and oppression, decolonization, equality, and as-much-justice-as-possible. In that framework, we obviously may support "peace initiatives" that can reduce the level of violence and/or achieve a certain amount of rights. In our strategy, however, this support for peace initiatives is not a goal in itself but merely a means to achieve the above mentioned values and rights.
That difference between "peace" and "justice" is connected to the divergence concerning the second assumption of Uri Avnery, the symmetry between two equally legitimate national movements and aspirations.
For us, Zionism is not a national liberation movement but a colonial movement, and the State of Israel is and has always been a settlers' colonial state. Peace, or better, justice, cannot be achieved without a total decolonization (one can say de-Zionisation) of the Israeli State; it is a precondition for the fulfillment of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians – whether refugees, living under military occupation or second-class citizens of Israel. Whether the final result of that de-colonization will be a "one-state" solution, two democratic states (i.e. not a "Jewish State"), a federation or any other institutional structure is secondary, and will ultimately be decided by the struggle itself and the level of participation of Israelis, if at all.
In that sense, Uri Avnery is wrong when he states that our divergences are about "one state" or "two states". As explained above, the divergence is on rights, decolonization and the principle of full equality. The solution is, in my opinion, irrelevant as long as we are speaking about a solution in which the two peoples are living in freedom (without colonial relationships) and equality.
Another important divergence with Uri Avnery concerns the Israeli psyche and the dialectics between the Palestinian National liberation agenda and the so-called Israeli peace camp. While it is obvious that the Palestinian national movement needs as many Israeli allies as possible to achieve liberation as quick as possible, and with as little suffering as possible for both people, one cannot expect the Palestinian movement to wait until Uri and the other Israeli anti-colonialists will convince the majority of the Israeli public opinion. For two reasons: first, because popular national movements do not wait to fight oppression and colonialism; second, because history has taught us that changes within the colonialist society has always been the result of the liberation struggle, and not the other way around: when the price for occupation has become too high, more and more people understand that it is not worth continuing.
Generally speaking, one can say that the Israeli mind is shaped by two realities, or, more accurately, one reality and one perception of reality. The reality shaping the Israeli psyche is the colonial reality of the Israeli existence, the feeling of being surrounded by a hostile environment which, to say the least, feels threatened by the dynamics of Zionist colonization. The other factor shaping Israeli collective mentality is anti-Semitism (real and construed) strengthen by the experience of the Nazi judeocide.
Like any other people, the Israelis want to be accepted, loved even. They have, however a double difficulty: to pay the needed price for this acceptance, i.e. behaving in a civilized manner, and to trust the Other in his attempt to normalize relations with them.
Yes, a hand extended for co-existence is needed, but together with an iron fist fighting for rights and freedom. The failure of the Oslo process confirms a very old lesson of history: any attempt for reconciliation before the fulfillment of rights strengthens the continuation of the colonial domination relationship. Without a price to be paid, why should the Israelis stop colonization, why should they risk a deep internal crisis?
This is where the BDS campaign is so relevant: it offers an international framework to act in order to help the Palestinian people achieve their legitimate rights, both on the institutional level (states and international institutions) and civil society. On the one hand the international community is addressed, asking it to sanction a State that is systematically violating international law, UN resolutions, the Geneva Conventions and signed agreements; on the other hand, it is asking the international civil society to act, as individuals as well as social movements (trade-unions, parties, local councils, popular associations etc) to boycott goods, official representatives, institutions etc. that represent the colonial State of Israel.
Both tasks (boycott and sanctions) will eventually be a pressure on the Israeli people, pushing them to understand that occupation and colonization have a price, that violating the international rules may, sooner or later, make the State of Israel a pariah-country, not welcomed in the civilized community of nations. Like South Africa in the last decades of apartheid. In that sense, and unlike Uri's claim, BDS is addressed to the Israeli public and, right now, is the only way to provoke a change in its attitude towards occupation/colonization. If one compares it to the anti-apartheid BDS campaign in South Africa that took twenty years to start bearing real fruits, one cannot but be surprised how efficient the anti-Israeli occupation campaign has already been, and even in Israel we already witness its first effects.
The BDS campaign was initiated by a broad coalition of Palestinian political and social movements. No Israeli who claims to support the national rights of the Palestinian people can, decently, turn their back on that campaign: after having claimed for years that "armed struggle is not the way", it is outrageous that this strategy would be disqualified by those Israeli activists. On the contrary, we all must join "Boycott from within," in order to provide an Israeli backup to that Palestinian initiative. It is the minimum we can do, it is the minimum we should do."
Michel Warschawski is a journalist and writer and a founder of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Israel. His books include On the Border (South End Press) and Towards an Open Tomb - the Crisis of Israeli Society (Monthly Review Press).
Michel Warschawski is a journalist and writer and a founder of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Israel. His books include On the Border (South End Press) and Towards an Open Tomb - the Crisis of Israeli Society (Monthly Review Press).