Bosses Beware!

I was in for a surprise when I read the comments in Yahoo about the Indian worker who killed the CEO who fired him. The majority, while deploring the killing, understood that corporate greed caused the situation. What's more quite a few cheered and thought it a good idea.

Only a handful of commentators came down on the bosses side, often intersperced with racist remarks – the usual suspects, in other words.

This tells me there is a lot of pent-up anger at the bullies and greed-creeps these days. SEE:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080923/world/india_italy_labour_crime_murder

No Blank Check Bailout of Wall St. Financial Corporations

Call, write, vigil, demonstrate this week

- Feel free to use AFSC national toll-free # to contact your congressperson and Senators Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich: 1-800-473-6711.
Call today!
- TrueMajority will have a new website up later today permitting citizens to self-organize local actions at congressional offices, Federal Reserve banks, or other key locations. Organize an event in your own community or join one already planned.

Congress as soon as Friday will likely vote on a massive taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. The Bush administration wants “clean” legislation with few if any strings or conditions — just a $700 BILLION blank check...at least...and a massive transfer of power and authority from the legislative to executive branch. This is a historic moment to ACT!

SAY NO TO A BLANK CHECK CORPORATE BAILOUT!

Groups across the country are demanding that any package to help Wall Street must:
Help Main Street
Help those who have had their homes foreclosed
Provide a stimulus package to taxpayers who will be paying off this massive additional debt for decades
Ensure that bankers and banking institutions are held accountable for their past financial decisions
Stipulate that no CEO of Wall Street corporations to be bailed out receives “Golden Parachutes,” pay raises or bonuses. CEO pay should be capped, if not reduced.
Guarantee that power and authority not be transferred from the legislative to executive branch. Given Wall Street’s financial meltdown and lack of recent Congressional oversight, needed now is greater public control of financial affairs.
Establish that any firm to be bailed out can’t lobby politicians or make political campaign contributions/investments
Include that future profits gained from bailed out companies be returned to the government.
Audit the Federal Reserve Bank, a private corporation, which hasn’t had its books examined.

Below is an excellent letter written by Marian Lupo from Columbus.

NOTE: For those in the Akron area:
Vigil: No Blank Check Corporate Bailout of Wall Street
Thursday, September 25, Noon
1655 W. Market St., Akron
(UFCW building which contains office of US Rep. Betty Sutton)

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To: Representative Kucinich, Member, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, By Fax: 202-225-5745; 216-228-6465

Please exercise your power and influence to address the below.

To: Senators Dodd, Schumer, Shelby and Representatives Frank and Boehner.
By fax: 202-224-1083; 202-228-3027; 202-224-3416; 202-225-0182; 202-225-0704
Date: Sunday, September 21, 2008

I am writing today to you as a United States citizen regarding a matter of urgent concern. Although I do not reside in your district, I believe my letter captures the sentiments of millions of Americans who cannot write to you.

I strongly oppose bailing out the speculative, greedy, and irresponsible investment banking firms. My neighbors have lost their homes, and no one bailed them out.

I want you to audit the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a private corporation, and which has never produced their financials for audit by Congress.

I also want you to revoke the legislation, passed under President Wilson, which created the Federal Reserve Bank. Congress needs to resume their Constitutional responsibilities for the U.S. currency.

Further, I want Paulson investigated – as well as the investment bankers who, in my opinion, are at a minimum criminally negligent.

My neighborhood averages 3 to 7 foreclosures a week. These are working people. Homes are vacant and not cared for now, because the banks are negligent. The banks do not even bother to mow the lawns, and they are bankrupting the city budget for code enforcement. My whole neighborhood has declined, and now children are getting into trouble because these houses present attractive nuisances.

It is a disgrace what the banks have done to the U.S. people. There is a sign down the street from me that advertises a very nice home for $13,500.

As a taxpayer, I am willing to pay to help everyone stay in their home – but not to salvage institutions that have destroyed my neighborhood and are destroying my country, or in any way whatsoever to compensate the people whose greed led to this debacle: they should be in prison.

Thank You,

Marian Lupo

Against The Oligarchy In Bolivia - For Popular Power

SOLIDARITY WITH THE BOLIVIAN PEOPLE! ---- THE FUTURE OF LATIN AMERICA IS BEING PLAYED OUT IN BOLIVIA! ---- The current events in Bolivia leave the organized anarchists of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (Brazil) with a sense of alarm. The problem is not the defence of a government with a nationalist profile and indigenous roots. It is the unconditional defence of the popular struggle of Latin American people. We have had and continue to keep organic contacts with Bolivian comrades since 2003, that is before the people's victory in the "Gas War", before the fall of Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, before the fall of the president who succeeded him, Carlos Mesa, and long before the MAS' election victory.

Even then it was clear to the FAG that the political game in Bolivia was a tough one, without legal or institutional limits. The struggle to build Popular Power ("poder popular") has various aspects and at the moment the Evo Morales and Álvaro Garcia Linera government expresses the wishes of the people to win back definitive sovereignty over their ancestral land. Evo does not do just what he wants, and neither does he govern with the bankers, like the ex-factory worker Lula. Today, the country that defeated neo-liberalism dozens of times is facing
its greatest challenge. The various ancestral peoples and nationalities of the old Viceroyalty of Upper Peru, the traditional Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Tupi societies and dozens of other ethnic groups, the living descendants in the melting pot of the cities, the heroic resistance of the miners, the cocaleros, of El Alto, of Cochabamba, the corner-to-corner street fighting in La Paz, all this has defeated the enemy several times. These people have made the organization of the social fabric, the practice of communal justice and grassroots alliances into the bulwark of the defeat of a system of rotten political parties, corrupted by the privatizations of the 1980s; with stones and dynamite they defeated the Army which operated under the control of the trafficker General Hugo Banzer; by promoting cooperative practices, they reject the poisonous presence of the oil transnationals, including the hateful sub-imperialist presence of Brazil.

The struggle is now an intestine one, against the oligarchy of the so-called Half Moon which dominates the departments of Tarija, Beni, Pando and Chuquisaca and is controlled by the large landowners, soya farmers and drug traffickers in Santa Cruz, against the interests of the people. The Morales government is one of the targets, but these people are also aiming at destroying popular organization and the indigenous alternatives, the traditional, community forms of controlling social life, the re-appropriation by the people of the ownership of the subsoil and its natural resources. This struggle for autonomy is nothing more than the political will of an oligarchy allied with the transnationals, an attempt at a coup sponsored by the Department of State, the CIA and the DEA and financed with money stolen from the Bolivian people.

The multitude of men and women who struggle for "autonomy" are mostly the employees, party members and supporters of these oligarchies. The situation of civil, anti-governmental disobedience in Bolivia at the moment is immense. On the left, the social protests are getting stronger and stronger and their demands are forcing Morales to do what a majority of the organized people propose. But on the fight, the oligarchy which also emerged victorious from the revocative referendum of the national and regional governments is devoting every effort to the chaos, the lockout and the economic blockade. They do not want to pay taxes to the government in La Paz, they want to keep for themselves all the wealth of the country, just as the banks suck our GDP and the squalid bureaucracy sucked the lifeblood of the Venezuelan PDVSA before the people gained victory in April 2002. Comrades, today in Bolivia there is a struggle against the oligarchy; it is a struggle which is part of the Latin American peoples' war against the chains of imperialism, masked under the macabre guise of globalization.

We must be clear about something, though. It must be stated that the FAG as an
organization does not support the defence of any Statist or bourgeois government. Our support is as always for the process being carried on by the peoples who wish to defend their Bolivarian, Artigist heritage; it is for the political will of the social institutions and grassroots bodies who arduously combat the growing bureaucracy in Venezuela and the vacillation that is typical of charismatic leaders, but without the organicism and due obedience to the people, as is proper for true socialist militants. Lastly, our struggle is alongside the Ecuadorian CONAIE (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador), the Venezuelan ANMCLA (Associación Nacional Medios Comunitarios, Libres y Alternatives), the heroic COR (Central Obrero Regional) in El Alto and the entire popular movement in Bolivia.

The political impasse of the Morales government will need to be resolved by going beyond the legal possibilities. There is a popular left which lies further to the left of the recalcitrant vice-president Linera and the usual bureaucrats, who oscillate between the Latin American universities and governments with a veneer of nationalism. To the left of the MAS are the ex-guerrillas of the Movimiento Pachakuti, there is the El Alto Coordinación Regional, there are the social institutions such as Community Justice, there is an enormous organized social fabric that has no intention of consigning the country and the ancestral lands to the heirs of Cortés and Pizarro...

Another Battle of Ayacucho, another 1809 Uprising

In 1809, the courage of the young Bolivians refused to recognize the demands of Charlotte Joaquina of Spain to govern the Viceroyalties. This decision marked the direction of the liberation of America in the heart of the Continent. The realistic response soon arrived when the governor of Potosí, loyal to the colonialists, occupied the rebel towns militarily. In 1824 in the Battle of Ayacucho, the reaction was defeated both politically and militarily. But political independence did not guarantee the liberation of the peoples or bring Popular Power, Self-Management and Political Federalism. Almost 190 years later, the same struggle is with us again. The right is fighting against the advancement of popular power, the transformation of the National State into a public space under the people's direct control, the dismantlement of the bourgeois apparatus of social regulation. Today it is Bolivia's turn; in 2002 it was Venezuela's; three times over the past 11 years the people of Ecuador have rid themselves of a president; in December 2001 the Argentines defeated neo-liberalism and its plan to dismantle social life. Today the war of the Latin American peoples is marching towards their liberation in the Battle of the Bolivian Half Moon.

Defeat the oligarchy!
Defeat the CIA, the DEA and the US Department of State!
May the Bolivian people go beyond the limits of national government and advance
along the road to Popular Power!
Because neo-liberalism and imperialism are the same filth!
Because Popular Power in Latin America will be built with struggle!
All solidarity to the Bolivian people!
The future of our brother country will be Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Tupi and
popular or there will be no future!
Latin America will never surrender!
Popular Power, Social Self-Management and Political Federalism!


Porto Alegre, 13 September 2008

Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG) – Fórum do Anarquismo Organizado (FAO) – in strategic alliance with the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU)


Translation by FdCA-International Relations Office

http://www.vermelhoenegro.org/fag

Constitution Day

Today, September 17, is Constitution Day. It was on this day in 1787 that the United States Constitution was signed.

The Constitution has been celebrate throughout our nation’s history in our schools, civil associations, religious institutions, and media as a profoundly democratic document. Afterall, it’s about We the People. What could be more democratic than that? Right?

Elements of the Constitution are inclusive. Many are not.

Several articles previously posted here have delved into this issue. In commemoration of this day, several are linked below.

A critical understanding of the Constitution is essential in any quest for true self-governance, justice, and peace. Social change movements in other countries in other places and/or in other times have not only worked for a change of faces (via elections) and a change of laws, but also a change of defining rules (i.e. removing undemocratic impediments in national Constitutions).

This last point is often overlooked here since it is assumed and culturally reinforced that the US Constitution promotes equality, justice and fairness — and contains provisions to easily alter it in places needing revision.
Analyzing the US Constitution is an essential step to understanding and eliminating impediments to real self-governance.

Below are three articles examining the undemocratic provisions of the US Constitution and suggestions for change. It’s followed by an article describing Ecuador’s proposed constitution granting inalienable rights to nature.

A U.S. Constitution with DEMOCRACY IN MIND
Second of two articles on the U.S. Constitution Spring, 2007
By What Authority, published by the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy [POCLAD]
http://www.poclad.org/deminsurgency/DemocracyInMind.pdf

The U.S. Constitution: Pull the Curtain
First of two articles on the U.S. Constitution Winter 2007
By What Authority, published by the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD)
http://www.poclad.org/deminsurgency/PullTheCurtain.pdf

The Case Against Judicial Review
by David Cobb
From “By What Authority,” a publication of the Program on Corporations, Law and
Democracy (POCLAD), Vol. 9, No. 2 • Fall, 2007.
http://www.poclad.org/deminsurgency/JudicialReview.pdf

Published on Thursday, September 4, 2008 by The Christian Science Monitor
Ecuador Constitution Would Grant Inalienable Rights To Nature
by Eoin O'Carroll
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/04-7

Victoria's Third Annual Anarchist Book Fair. Sept 12-13

I was impressed by last years book fair, and this year I was not disapointed.. There seemed to be at least as many people in attendance as previously, but I was pleased to see a broader cross section of the population than before. Although still largely "Euro" there was a significant contribution fromn First Nations people and I saw some Latino youth and other people of colour were present.The age range seemed broader too, not overwhelmingly young students, not that there would be anything wrong with that, but the movement has to expand into other sectors of the population to become a significant force. A fair number of babies too. Good going! Had a fine time talking and networking with folks from Victoria, Montreal, San Francisco, and Edmonton. The workshops seemed well attended – at least those in the morning-early afternoon. I only got to attend one of these, since I was tabling most of the time. This was about actualizing radical projects and was hosted by the amazing and brilliant surrealist poet, zinster, clown, and performance artist Paula Belina from Montreal. Sadly, I had to leave early, but found her workshop inspiring. The place I was going in such a hurry was the Camas Books Dinner, to help support this anarchist book shop and infocenter. About 70 people sat outside on trestle tables, chatting, listening to a guitar-mandolin-accordian duo by two very talented and beautiful young women. The food was great too, and had amusing names such as "Federated Commune Salad" While sitting there, surrounded by people of all ages and origins, it came to me that a line had been crossed. The scene was much like what I found in European anarchist circles – a sense of community, and though relatively few in number, grown beyond being a tiny, inward-looking sect, into something that has put down roots. Later at Camas Books the Anniversary Show of music and spoken word was held, but I could not stay for long, now feeling the length of the day.

I should point out that the events I describe were not the only ones occurring. A whole week of film, discussions and music preceded the Book Fair. (See www.victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca/ ) I salute the volunteers who put in so much effort and looked rather tired by Sunday afternoon!

Wet Sahara and the Diffusion of Agriculture

More evidence of a wet Sahara and the neolithic civilization that inhabited it.

See:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/14/sahara-cemetery.html

Evidence that agriculture diffused through the Mediterranean, rather than the neolithic population displacing hunters and gatherers.

See

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/science/12visuals.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Why are these discoveries or possible discoveries important? The first is more support for the thesis that the drying up of the Sahara lakes created great devastation among the people living there, forcing the survivors to invade the Nile Valley, conquering its inhabitants and creating the beginnings of a class and state system. The latter for questioning the widely-held belief that agriculture gave rise to conquest of hunter-gatherers and that the new technology spread by a form of imperialism.

Starting to get it

Read today’s New York Times editorial entited Wall Street Casualties.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16tue1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

The last paragraph states:
“Making and enforcing new rules is necessary, but that will not be enough. The nation needs a new perspective on the markets, one that acknowledges the self-destructive bent of unfettered capitalism and its ability, unchecked, to wreak havoc far beyond Wall Street.”

The Times is starting to get it.

A new perspective on “the markets” is a good start, one containing these (and no doubt other) components:
capital being rooted much more to communities
people having a fundamental say in basic political AND economic decisions affecting their lives
financial structures accountable to elected officials and the public
recognition that economics, politics, society, and environment cannot and should not be treated as separate compartments to be thought about and acted upon independently from each other
acknowledgment that “the market” is not some invisible, untouchable, superior God-like force but a human-designed system which can be redesigned, refit, reshaped, remolded and recast to fit the needs of people, local communities, and the planet.

This new perspective must, of course, be followed up with new policies and practices reflecting these new perspectives. A new political movement is essential to make it happen — one focused on political and economic democracy.

Is there room in such a system for transnational, undemocratic, top-down business corporations (including financial corporations) which have been bestowed with constitutional rights to govern? The financial corpses through their First Amendment free speech “rights” made political campaign investments (some call them political “contributions” ) and lobbied public officials to gut financial controls and limits. Privatizing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae years ago proved disastrous. The current financial system is unsustainable.

The Times is right. A new perspective is sorely needed. So are new policies and practices. Leading it all, however, must be people united in a political movement independent of political parties.

The So-Called Tragedy of the Commons

Whenever you bring up the idea that the forests, salmon streams and mineral lands ought to be owned by and serve the community in which they are located, the so-called "tragedy of the commons" is dragged out. One immediately is attempted to ask in rebuttal, how is it that after 5000 years of logging France with its communal forests still has a lumber industry and here in BC using capitalist methods, we managed to eliminate the trees in 100 years? Not to mention the Original People who lived here for 10,000 years who also had communal ownership and left the forests and fish in good condition for the European settler capitalists to destroy. In by Ian Angus you will find a devastating critique of this self-serving corporate myth as well as some unpleasant revelations about its creator, Garret Harding.

See www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/angus250808.html

Challenging Measure T is an Opportunity

In most cases a challenge to a law promoting and protecting democracy is a challenge to democracy itself. That’s not totally the case with the legal challenge to Measure T, the 2006 citizen initiative enacted by voters in Humboldt County, California prohibiting out-of-county corporate political contributions/investments. The law is unique in the United States — asserting that local communities can protect their communities by enacting laws that run counter to the Supreme Court’s determination that corporations are “people” and possess First Amendment free speech rights.

The legal challenge by the pro-corporate Pacific Legal Foundation does, in one sense, threaten Humboldt County’s right to decide to prohibit out-of-county corporations from engaging in one form of political activity —namely giving money to political candidates and issue campaigns.

In another sense, the legal challenge presents an enormous opportunity. It’s an opportunity to shed light on questions that the corporate crowd would rather keep shrouded in darkness: “Should business corporations be treated under the law as people?” “Should business corporations possess greater power (since they have unlimited money and an unlimited life-span) than individuals in elections at all levels of government?” “Is democracy furthered by permitting business corporations to donate/invest in elections?” “Wasn’t the Bill of Rights meant to protect the weak individual from the government rather than the powerful business corporation from the people?”

Thus, the legal challenge by Pacific Legal Foundation against Measure T is, in a sense, a tremendous grassroots and legal opportunity:
to educate our fellow breathing persons on the innate power business corporations possess thanks to, in large part, Constitutional bestowed rights.
to organize the legal community to defend Measure T and by doing so help them legally challenge what is currently considered legal — just as in the past prohibition against women voting, slavery, and separate but equal were all considered legal.

Stay tuned.

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

News and Announcements from
Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County

~ National Press Release - Please Forward Widely! ~

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, August 29, 2008
CONTACT: Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, (707) 362-0626

Right Wing Legal Firm Takes on Humboldt County, California Over Local Democracy Law

EUREKA, CA - A groundbreaking law forbidding out-of-county controlled corporations from making political contributions in Humboldt County, CA elections was challenged in federal court this week. The Pacific Legal Foundation, an anti-government legal organization, filed suit on behalf of O & M Industries and Mercer Fraser Corporation over a local corporate reform and election integrity law. The Humboldt County Ordinance to Protect Fair Elections and Local Democracy was passed by citizens' initiative in June 2006 with 55% of the vote.

Known locally as "Measure T," the initiative was run by a broad coalition of community organizations, individuals and local businesses concerned by the growing influence of corporate power in elections. Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, a local grassroots organization, spearheaded the effort by writing the initial legislation and the Humboldt Coalition for Community Rights campaigned for the law.

Upon passage, Measure T received national attention because it includes a direct challenge to "corporate personhood," which is the legal doctrine that allows a corporation to claim constitutional rights such as the First Amendment. Corporations have argued that the First Amendment protects their right to give political contributions.

"Money does not equal speech, and corporations should not be allowed to claim First Amendment rights - 'We the People' have an obligation to challenge unjust doctrines," said Democracy Unlimited Director Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap. "Measure T follows in the footsteps of the suffragists, the abolitionists and the Civil Rights activists who fought against segregation by challenging Supreme Court precedents that held unjust laws to be Constitutional."

“The County’s donation restriction runs the First Amendment through a shredder,” said Pacific Legal Foundation Attorney Damien Schiff in a press release. “The County’s ordinance is an outrageous assault on these free speech rights, because it targets aclass of employers to be shut out of the political process.”

"Not true," said Sopoci-Belknap, "Measure T specifically protects an individual's right to participate in elections. It ensures that owners of corporations will operate as individuals in the political process, just like every other citizen, rather than gaining undue influence through their corporations."

The Pacific Legal Foundation is a Sacramento, California-based legal organization that was established March 5, 1973 to support pro-corporate causes. In recent years, it has taken a lead in pursuing anti-affirmative action policies. It is the key right-wing public interest litigation firm in a network of similar organizations funded to support big business and oppose environmental and health protection policies and government regulation.

Measure T opponents repeatedly threatened to sue to overturn the law if it passed. Billionaire financier Robin Arkley Jr., who is one of California Governor Schwarzenegger's largest contributors, sent a memo to the County Board of Supervisors during the campaign warning them of a lawsuit after the measure qualified, and demanding they remove the measure from the ballot. Arkley's late father Robin Arkley, Sr., served on the Board of Trustees of the Pacific Legal Foundation.

"We are not surprised by this action, but we are certainly disappointed that the Pacific Legal Foundation has so little regard for the will of the people of Humboldt County," said Sopoci-Belknap. "Communities have the right and duty to protect our democracy. Voters enacted Measure T based on a legitimate concern that corporate influence in elections undermines the integrity of the process. Humboldt County has taken a stand for the rights of people and communities over the so-called 'rights' of corporations, and we ask other communities to stand with us."

For more information: http://DUHC.org