Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Putting power back in its place

Labor has been on the back foot for decades now. I am old enough to remember the Reagan turn – even the Carter and Nixon administrations, frankly. The serious move towards neoliberal economics got rolling under Carter, who was fond of deregulation and austerity. He also started a steady increase in military spending towards the end of his term – a trend that Reagan accelerated in the years that followed.

Those were not good years for workers. Firing the PATCO air traffic controllers was just a start. The union movement in the United States continued to lose ground throughout the 1980s and 1990s, when Clinton took the baton from Reagan/Bush and more fully implemented the vision of corporatism and a general attack on the rights of working people. There were a few glimmers of light in the darkness – the UPS strike in 1997, the anti globalization movement around the same time. But Thatcher’s contention that there was no alternative to capitalism continued to prevail. Until it didn’t.

Learning from teachers

We are now in the midst of a resurgence of labor organizing the likes of which we haven’t seen for decades. You could see evidence of it in some of the activism rooted in Occupy Wall Street, as well as the movement around Bernie Sanders’ campaigns. But what’s happening today is the product of a lot of hard work on the part of organizers across the country. One of the first and most dramatic examples of this was the start of the teacher’s strikes in 2018.

Now, I don’t think there are many professions in the United States that are more roundly abused than teachers. In most public school districts, they are given inadequate resources, paid poorly, and expected to compensate for all of society’s failings. When teachers rose up in 2018, including in districts that were not unionized, it put the neoliberals on notice. Even now, with the pitched attack against teaching children about race, sexual orientation, or anything salient in American history, teachers are still successfully challenging their bosses. There’s a lesson in that for all of us.

New economy, new tactics

Like many people, I first heard about Christian Smalls during the first months of COVID, when Amazon fired him for demanding that they take action to protect their workers. Over the almost two years that followed, he and his colleagues organized independently of any major unions and won. What they’ve done should serve as a blueprint for organizers across the country. That behemoth of a company drastically underestimated Smalls and his co-workers – not surprising. One of the oldest stories in the world.

Then there are the Starbucks workers. I heard some of these young people interviewed on Michael Moore’s Rumble podcast, and I was impressed not only with their energy and enthusiasm but by their deep understanding of the power relationship between workers and owners. This is more than inspiring, though. This movement is a promising sign of things to come, driven by a generation that has seen a lot of financial hardship over the last two decades.

Shake them upside-down

So what can we do? Support labor organizing in your area and nationwide, in whatever way you can. Push for a more favorable legal and regulatory environment in which people can exercise their fundamental rights as workers. And, last but not least, compel a reluctant Democratic party to change the tax laws so that billionaires cannot even exist. Call it the “shake them upside-down” law.

Finally … something to feel good about. Let’s build on it.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Fallout from the “Strategic Partnership”

Back in September, months before this Ukraine catastrophe got underway, the White House released a Joint Statement on the US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership. I don’t recall hearing about this in the news media at the time. This past week, Noam Chomsky raised it in an interview with Jeremy Scahill for the Intercept – that’s why I know about it. The administration wasn’t trying to hide the ball on this. That we’re committing ourselves to an alliance with Ukraine is such a mundane fact at this point, it basically just fades into the background.

As we wade deeper into this Russia/Ukraine morass, we need to better understand the implications of this policy. There is no question but that Russia is responsible for the current conflict – their decision to invade is dead wrong and a serious crime against peace in general and Ukraine in particular. Nevertheless, the current discourse on American corporate media portrays Russia as a nation uniquely bent on fulfilling imperial ambitions. But Russia is not alone in this regard.

Reviving the New American Century

The American-led military alliance in Europe already includes a brace of former Soviet republics and vassal states. Now, partly in response to Russia’s invasion, more nominally neutral states are lining up to join NATO. With regard to Ukraine, here’s some relevant language from that September joint statement:

The United States supports Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.

Chomsky likens this to Mexico joining a military alliance with China. His point is that, while Mexico and Ukraine are sovereign nations with the right to determine their future, they are, in fact, not free to pursue this kind of relationship. That is the cost of being the neighbor of a major power. If we were truly concerned with the well-being of the Ukrainian people, we would have helped them work out a modus vivendi with Russia, since that is the geographic – geopolitical reality they live with.

Instead, we focus on our own priorities with respect to Ukraine. We want our new American Century back. And we are willing to fight the Russians to the last Ukrainian in order to achieve that goal.

Good news for some

As the old saying goes, it’s an ill wind indeed that doesn’t blow someone some good. For the weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and fossil fuel companies, the wind is just right. The war in Ukraine may be the best thing that’s happened to them in decades. It has short-circuited any impulse to put some government muscle behind transitioning out of oil and gas. The Biden administration was reluctant to do so in the first place, and now they have the political imperative not to.

Arguably, this is a large part of what the conflict is all about. Best of the Left has had a couple of shows about the origins of the conflict and the interests of fossil fuel multinationals. Ukraine has significant reserves of natural gas. The prospect of western countries developing these reserves and selling them to Russia’s current customers in Europe is likely one of the Putin government’s obsessions, whatever they may say in public. Money to be made, as always.

Then there’s the push to build the infrastructure for liquified natural gas (LNG) in the United States. This means storage facilities, port facilities – a massive construction enterprise that will represent billions in investment in a system that contributes mightily to climate change. The Ukraine war is fueling that effort, as well.

Time is short

I know I’ve written about this conflict a lot recently. And I know there’s a lot else going on in the world. But Ukraine is setting in motion a very destructive cycle in the global economy, and we need to encourage our government to push for a settlement before it’s too late.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Thine is the power and the story

As of this writing, the Saudis and Yemen have pulled together a tentative truce for Ramadan. As Ryan Grim reports in Deconstructed, the podcast by The Intercept, it’s essentially the first one in seven years of brutal war that has left almost 400,000 Yemenis dead. It’s quite possible that, by the time you read this, the Saudis will have resumed their merciless campaign of destruction, but I, for one, hope not.

There is truly nothing so invisible as a war promoted by your own government. In Russia, they need to make it a crime to refer to the war in Ukraine as a “war”. Over here, that’s not necessary. There are other ways to manipulate public opinion in a formal republic; as Orwell wrote, educated, thoughtful people understand that there are some things it simply would not do to say. No need for brute force – just a compliant professional/managerial class eager to get ahead.

Hidden in plain sight

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is being covered like practically no other conflict in my lifetime. That is a good thing. I just wish they would cover all wars, including the ones we start, with the same dedication to detail. I think the principle at work here is largely that of proximity to power. Ukrainians are culturally close to white Americans. Their attacker is an official enemy, a rival power. Those two factors, broadly speaking, drive the coverage.

Yemen is the opposite. The victims are not like “us” (i.e. white, christian, western people). They are being attacked by official allies – Saudi Arabia, UAE – with our help. They are friends with an official enemy (Iran). Those factors keep them off of the front pages. There are many horrific stories that can be told about the Yemen war, and we Americans have heard almost none of them. On the other hand, I have heard wrenching stories of suffering from Ukraine on a daily basis, many of them multiple times. This is not an accident – it is a reflection of power.

The limits of compassion

We are encouraged to empathize with our enemies’ victims. In the case of Afghanistan, the official argument for twenty years of war was partly built on concern for the fate of women and girls. That was during the war. Now that the war is over, however, we apparently couldn’t care less. The country is on the brink of starvation. They have been frozen out of the banking system and have no access to their own reserves. Even international aid organizations cannot operate effectively in Afghanistan under the current sanction regimes.

You will notice, also, that Afghanistan is not in the news all that much. That was the case during most of the 20-year American war. It only hit the headlines when Biden pulled out last year, and now it’s gone again. The news splash was mostly an expression of the war party in America (Republicans and Democrats) who were against withdrawing American troops from the country. Indeed, it was hard to find voices in favor of the withdrawal at the time.

Like a compass needle

I’ve said this about NPR in the past, but it’s basically true of all major media: they know where power resides in this country, and that is their true north star. Their compass needle will always point that way, regardless of the consequences.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.