Joseph Dietzgen's “Brain Work” Republished

Out of print since I did an edition in 1984, Joseph Dietzgen's pioneering introduction to dialectics, THE NATURE OF HUMAN BRAIN WORK has just been re-issued. PM Press did a fine job of it and this new edition contains an essay that I wrote explaining Dietzgen's libertarian philosophy. BRAINWORK is one of the finest introduction to dialectics I have ever read and should be in every socialist and anarchist library. It is available for $20 US from PM Press. See https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=167

Will the BP Oil Spill Be the Spark?

Here’s what we should all be concerned about at the moment related to disasters (though this is human-made) and the government's response. It’s no longer a question of corporations vs government...although it hasn’t been for a very long time. Corporations have captured government — with the BP disaster being the latest poster child to make the point. Why government is “bad” to many teabaggers and others has to do with the fact it no longer represents the majority of its citizens. The majority are being those of us without money and power. It’s not about race or gender or religion. There are unquestionably legitimate race, gender and religious issues that exist to disempower people and communities. At the same time, race, gender and religion have been and are used to divide the majority in our country who are poor and working people from each other -- from forming social movements for real change.

Future Hope column, May 23, 2010
Will the BP Oil Spill Be the Spark?
By Ted Glick
http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/blog/?p=3225

The Biology of Oil and the Sociology of Democracy

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Biology-of-Oil-and-the-by-Greg-Coleridge-100518-531.html

A few weeks ago I met Riki Ott at the Move to Amend/Campaign to Legalize Democracy national gathering in Denver. We were among two dozen people who came together to begin to develop plans to end corporate rule and abolish corporate personhood.

Ott is a marine biologist and toxicologist from Alaska who became socially and politically active following the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster which spilled millions of gallons of oil in Prince William Sound. Ott documented the environmental disaster of the spill and its impact on people and communities. She began speaking out. She wrote books. She was widely interviewed. She was involved in litigation.

When the BP Gulf Coast disaster hit, Ott was once again in the news. Her presence at our weekend retreat was interrupted by radio and TV interviews, including one on CNN where she mentioned that the oil we saw on the surface was like a tip of an iceberg. Oil forms a huge cloud or plume when spilled in water well beneath the surface. This cloud or plume extinguishes all oxygen, suffocating all plant and animal life in its path.

In other words, the biology of oil when in water is much like the sociology of democracy when drowned out by money and corporate rights.

There are many elements of our democracy that on the surface are easy to see: political campaigns, voting, issue forums, letter writing, phone calling, meeting with legislators, testifying before public officials, developing and publicizing voting records, organizing citizen initiatives, among others. These elements are often extraordinarily difficult for ordinary citizens to navigate to create a positive impact.


But what we see on the surface of our so-called democracy is only a small part of the truth. Below the surface are huge destructive forces that infects everything on the surface, suffocating the voice and breath of people without money or corporate status -- making true self-governance virtually impossible.

The plume of unchecked private money and corporate constitutional rights giving corporations the "right" to influence issue campaigns and political elections are toxic to democracy. The amount of oil spilled in the Gulf will have some proportion no doubt to the amount of lobbying and campaign donations/investments dumped by BP and other involved corporations into political campaigns to ensure that their "rights" to make future profits are protected, just as in the past they were used to escape regulation, restriction, oversight and enforcement.

Oil and democracy don't mix.

Neither do banks and democracy.

The current Senate banking bill doesn't punish those responsible for the Great Recession/financial crisis. Nor does it rectify the problems associated with unregulated financial markets. A few suggestions to address the issue are at
http://createrealdemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/05/reforming-reform.html

Nineteen of the 22 members of the Senate Banking Committee in 2009 received political donations/investments from Wall Street corporations. Senators up for reelection this year are receiving at least $180,000. Wall Street financial corporations gave/invested nearly $15 million to Obama's election campaign, a record amount. Goldman Sachs alone gave/invested $1 million.

If the Senate banking bill passes as is, the investments will provide favorable returns to financial corporations and their shielded and well-compensated CEOs.

The legal fictions of "money is speech" and "corporations are people" cloud our view of how our democracy actually works. What we see on the surface is bad enough. The below the surface plume is death to whatever is left of democracy.

Move to Amend (movetoamend.org) seeks to dissolve the deadly toxins to our democracy by abolishing corporate personhood, ending corporate rule and reversing laws equating money with speech. It brings to the surface what has for too long been ignored.

Call it a clean-up plan for democracy.

Northeast Ohio charter school boards sue White Hat Management firm

Here’s an example of...
- Public tax dollars spent to purchase public assets for private corporations, and
- Those private corporations making decisions outside the reach of public accountability
How does this further democratic self-governance?
House Bill 79 should be scrapped.


10 Northeast Ohio charter school boards sue White Hat Management firm
By Aaron Marshall, The Plain Dealer
May 18, 2010, 12:13AM

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A group of Cleveland and Akron charter schools is in open rebellion against the for-profit management firm that runs the schools.


http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2010/05/for-profit_management_company.html

The Big Anarchist Survey

Calling all anarchos! Do the Big Anarchist Survey. Takes about 15 minutes only and the results will be announced when done. Thank you Miroslav, for sending this. See

http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/

The Vatican's Dark Crows Come Home to Roost

The Vatican's Dark Crows Come Home to Roost by Kevin Annett

Whoever would harm one of these little ones, it would be better if a millstone was tied around his neck and he was cast into the sea.

- Jesus Christ, quoted in Luke

There's a joke circulating in Rome these days, that Pope Benedict is considering having his title changed to "Innocent" in anticipation of his upcoming trial for aiding and abetting child rapists in the Catholic church.

It's no joke, really. When I and a handful of people tried to hold a memorial service for children who died in Catholic Indian schools outside the Vatican this past Easter, we were swarmed by fifteen state police and halted from our witness. The church, and its accomplices in government, know very well that they are on the verge of facing criminal charges that could bring down the church.

That's the optimistic scenario. What's more likely, according to Vatican sources, is that the church will swing a deal and have the Pope retire for "health reasons" and take the fall for what the international media are calling the worst scandal to hit the Vatican since its diplomatic concordat with Adolf Hitler in 1933.

The Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, is not a popular guy, even in Catholic circles. A German, former Hitler Youth member, and arch reactionary who led the church's Inquisition against liberals in Catholic ranks for decades, Ratzinger was fondly known as "Joe the Rat" among his fellow Cardinals. But he has a lot of power, and authored the policy, still in place, that compels clergy to suppress evidence when children are raped by priests: a criminal act which has lawyers for rape victims smacking their lips.

"The man should be on trial" stated one American jurist last month.

"The Pope not only ordered priests to silence rape victims, but he moved rapists around within the church, and he protected them. That much we know. Doing that in one country is one thing, but Ratinzinger ordered it done in other countries, which is known as international obstruction of justice. That's a crime against humanity under international law."

The image of Interpol or local police arresting the Pope when he touches down in other countries is more than compelling, but Vatican lawyers insist that as a "head of state", Ratzinger has diplomatic immunity from any kind of prosecution. The Vatican, it seems, has never heard of the Nuremburg Trials.

"That's not going to stop me from arresting him" declared Paddy Doyle to me last month, at a protest outside the Irish Parliament in Dublin. Doyle is a survivor of church torture who has become an international spokesman for victims.

"I'm going to be there in the front row when the Pope does his mass in London this September. I'll drive my wheelchair right into him and arrest him, and let them try to stop me!" declared Doyle to TV cameras and cheering supporters, prior to his meeting with Irish government officials and demanding legal sanctions against the Catholic church.

People like Paddy Doyle are stepping forward in greater numbers these days, for their time has clearly come. I had the honor of meeting many of them in my recent tour to Europe, where I began to rally them into an international campaign to bring charges against the Roman catholic church in international courts.

The murder and torture of generations of children in church run facilities happened across the world, according to the same type of church-government collusion that characterized Indian residential schools here in Canada. Indeed, in 2004, the Canadian government actually sent officials to Ireland to give politicians there advice about how to contain and co-opt the growing movement of church victims in Ireland.

"You Canadians are very good at excusing yourselves for your mass murder of Indians. Clearly our government has a lot to learn from you, and as a result, it's been very successful at avoiding prosecution for how it helped the church kidnap and exploit little children" described Mary McKinney, a human rights activist, to me during my sojourn in Dublin.

For generations, Catholic orphanages in Ireland, England and other nations ran sweat shops where children as young as four worked as slave labor producing rosary beads and other religious artifacts: just like in Canadian Indian residential schools. And the death rate in these facilities was remarkably constant, hovering between one third and one half of all the little inmates.

"The church must pay back what they stole from these children and their forced labor. They must point out where the dead are buried, too" declared Sean Hennessey, an Irish lawyer for victims, last year.

"What the church made off these children exceeds a billion dollars, just in our country alone. We demand real reparations, and jail terms for the church officers, not merely token

gestures."

How to make the Vatican accountable under the law is another matter. As in Canada, the church has so far evaded any criminal charges for the death and torture of children under its care.

And yet this issue will not go away, any more than a government and church-appointed "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" (TRC) in Canada will shove under the rug a century of crimes in Indian residential schools. For the scale of the crime is enormous.

According to Ojibway Chief Louis Daniels in Winnipeg, who will be protesting outside the first official TRC forum in that city on June 15, the time for lies is over.

"I was tortured in a United Church residential school and saw my friends murdered there, and now I'm supposed to not name the names of their murderers in front of the TRC. And I can't sue the church, or bring charges against it. It all proves that we'll never get justice in the white man's system. We need the UN or someone to come in here and charge Canada with genocide. Just like what happened in other countries."

Chief Daniels will be part of a delegation of native elders who will travel with me back to Europe in September to link with other survivors of church crimes in Ireland, England, Germany and Italy. And he'll stand outside the Vatican with me to help exorcise a spirit of lies and murder from the oldest institution in history.

Says Chief Daniels,

"The church is a wolf in sheep's clothing. But we're all waking up to that now. Their time is over."

Reforming The Reform

Reform the Senate Banking Bill
Call Sherrod Brown 216-522-7272
Call George Voinovich 216-522-7095

The US Senate is currently debating “reforming” the banking industry. Banking corporations are flooding Capital Hill with lobbyists and political campaign “contributions” (more like investments). Despite the bill’s length (more than 1500 pages), there are plenty of areas that are missing.

Proposed Amendments (from those most to least discussed by the public over the last year)
- Cap pay and benefits of bank CEOs
- Create a real Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Break up the Banks – Senator Sherrod Brown is co-sponsor of the SAFE Banking Act which he is trying to add to the bill.
- Return banks to being “boring” -- providing loans to consumers and businesses.
- Conduct a full audit of the Federal Reserve
- Ban speculative investments (credit default sways, collatoralized debt obligations, et.)
- Create a modern equivalent of the Glass-Steagall Act — which created a firewall between commercial and investment banks. Glass Steagal was passed in 1933 and repealed in 1999.
- Eliminate deriviatives or at least impose heavy regulations and and full transparency on their issuance
- Reduce or eliminate the Federal Reserve’s financial regulatory powers (given that it’s to a great extent a private entity)
- Criminally prosecute those responsible for the financial crisis
- Prohibit financial institutions that receive public funding from engaging in political activities (campaign contributions, lobbying).
- Prohibit banks from creating money out of thin air. It’s time to end the privatization/corporatization of money — and begin to have money issued by the government for infrastructure repair (per the proposed American Monetary Institute)
- Move the Federal Reserve under the authority of the Treasury Department (per the proposed American Monetary Institute)
- Increase the “reserve requirements” of banks (per the proposed American Monetary Institute)

Background

Great information on Audit the Fed at
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/

Brown-Kaufman Amendment: The State Of Play
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-johnson/brown-kaufman-amendment-t_b_566024.html

Senate Financial Bill Misguided, Some Academics Say
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and SEWELL CHAN
Published: May 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/business/economy/03crisis.html

Progressive Breakfast: Bank Lobby Waiting In The Backroom
By Bill Scher
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010051804/progressive-breakfast-bank-lobby-waiting-backroom

Senators Opposing Breaking up the Banks Get Way More Money from Financial Industry
http://www.anewwayforward.org/blogs/2010/05/06/senators-opposing-breaking-up-the-banks-get-way-more-money-from-financial-industry/

Breaking Up the Banks - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/breaking-up-the-banks/?hp

Rahm Working With Fed To Beat Back Audit
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/rahm-working-with-fed-to_n_561505.html


State Banks – Should Ohio Have its Own?

US States Consider Starting Their Own Banks
http://www.truthout.org/us-states-consider-starting-their-own-banks59084

Public Banking
http://publicbanking.wordpress.com/

Contact your State Reps and Senators — ask if they support Ohio creating its own State bank? We’ll discuss this issue at our next meeting on Wednesday, May 12.

Greek Worker Struggle - Anarchist Statement

Greece is a test case for the social dismantling that awaits us all. This policy is being enacted by all the institutional parties, by every government and by all of globalised capitalism's institutions. There is only one way to hold back this policy of barbaric capitalism: popular direct action, to widen the strike movement and increase the number of demonstrations all across Europe. ---- SOLIDARITY WITH THE GREEK WORKERS' STRUGGLE! The Greek working class is angry, and with good reason, with the attempt to load responsibility for the bankruptcy of the Greek State onto their shoulders. We maintain instead that it is the international financial institutions and the European Union who are responsible. The financial institutions have plunged the world, and Greece in particular, into an economic and social crisis of historical proportions, forcing countries into debt, and now these same institutions are complaining that certain States risk not being able to repay their debts.

We denounce this hypocrisy and say that even if Greece - and all the other countries - can repay the debt, they should not do so: it is up to those responsible for the crisis - the financial institutions, not the - to pay for the damage caused by this crisis. The Greek workers are right to refuse to pay back their country's debt. We refuse to pay for their crisis!

Instead, let us shift the capitalists into the firing line: Greek capital generates some of the biggest profit margins in Europe due to its investments in the poorer Balkan countries, the absence of social protections, collective guarantees and a minimum wage for Greek workers, not to mention the country's gigantic black economy in labour and an even greater exploitation of immigrant work. Greek capital is also very lightly taxed, due to the weakness of the State (with regard to the rich) and major corruption which permits fraud and tax evasion on a massive scale. So it is equally up to Greek capitalists to pay for this crisis.

We also denounce the attitude of the European Union. The EU was presented to us as a supposed guarantee of peace and solidarity between the peoples, but now it is showing its true face - that of acting as an unconditional prop for neoliberalism, in a complete denial of the notion of democracy. As soon as an economy becomes mired in difficulties, all pretence of solidarity evaporates. So we see Greece being scolded and accused of laxity, with insulting language bordering on racism. The "Europe which protects us" that liberals and social-democrats extolled at the time of the scandalous forced adoption of the Lisbon Treaty (particularly in France and Ireland) now seems a long way away.

As far as actual protection goes, the EU and the financial institutions have combined their efforts to frog-march Greece towards the forced dismantling of public services, through austerity plans that recall the "Stuctural Adjustment Plans" of the IMF: the non-replacement of staff, wage freezes, privatisations and VAT increases. Today the EU is demanding that the retirement age be moved back to 67, not only in Greece but also in other countries, and is also threatening to dismantle the social welfare system. In this way they are opening new markets for investors, while guaranteeing the assets of rich investors, to the detriment of the basic interests of the working class. It is a Europe of the ruling class, and one which we must all work together to oppose.

This is why we call for participation throughout Europe in solidarity initiatives with the Greek working class and with future victims of the onslaught of the banks.

Against the values of greed and rapacity that the European Union is based on, let us respond with class solidarity! Greece is a test case for the social dismantling that awaits us all. This policy is being enacted by all the institutional parties, from out-and-out bourgeois to liberals and social democrats, by every government and by all of globalised capitalism's institutions. There is only one way to hold back this policy of barbaric capitalism: popular direct action, to widen the strike movement and increase the number of demonstrations all across Europe.
Solidarity with the Greek workers' struggle!

Alternative Libertaire (France)
Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland)
Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (Italy)
Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (Switzerland)
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (South Africa)

6 May 2010

Related Link: http://www.anarkismo.net

End Corporate Rule: Ohio Speaking Tour of David Cobb

End Corporate Rule. Legalize Democracy. Move to Amend.
Ohio Speaking Tour of David Cobb
Executive Committee, Move to Amend (www.movetoamend.org)
Board Member, Program on Corporations Law & Democracy (POCLAD)
2004 Green Party Presidential candidate
June 28 – July 3 2010

Bring David to your community!
Only cost is putting David up for the night (home hospitality welcome) and passing the hat for the movement!
To schedule David for your community, contact Greg Coleridge, gcoleridge@afsc.org, 330-928-2301.

---------

Talk by David Cobb on “Organizing Community to Abolish Corporate Personhood”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tzWKjF3zQc&feature=PlayList&p=CAB46B18AA209A63&playnext_from=PL&index=0

OUR MOVEMENT- BUILDING STRATEGY TO WIN
David Cobb

1) Our political system is so corrupted that most elected officials are already bought and paid for by corporate money. Those that are not beholden to corporate money do not have the support or courage to demand systemic change. Instead, they offer ineffectual and non-threatening “reform” and expect us to be satisfied.

2) Prior successful efforts at systemic change—the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, trade unionists, and civil rights—understood that “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” So they were not timid at demanding what they wanted. They did not allow the power holders to tell them what was reasonable or acceptable.

3) They also knew that real change requires both a broad social movement and an electoral arm. In other words, people raising hell in the streets as well as candidates running for office on the legislative agenda of that social movement.

4) So our strategy is not to ask, “What is the best we can get out of the existing Congress?”

5) Instead, we are making our demand as clear and plain as possible—we want the democratic right and authority to create the world we want and need. And we are inviting YOU to add your voice to ours so that we become a chorus that cannot be ignored!

6) Our first arena of struggle is at the local level-- where we live, work and play. That’s where we have the most power, and the most influence. Our campaign committed to building from the grassroots up.

7) We know that many people most directly affected by corporate abuse—especially low income people and communities of color—will not join a movement that is led by only white people. So our coalition (Move to Amend) has been very conscious and deliberate about ensuring that people from both those communities have been at the table from the beginning, helping to shape and lead the effort.

8) Our commitment is working. The Steering Committee is multi-racial and multi-ethnic, gender balanced, and represents every geographical area of the country. This is in stark contrast to the traditional DC-based non profit groups. We are not just speaking for the grassroots, we are the grassroots. And we are growing!

The Fight of Our Lives: The Populist Battle with Corporate Power/Abolish Corporate Personhood Conference Call

The Fight of Our Lives: The Populist Battle with Corporate Power
"We need a lot more agitation. [T]hat's the only thing that succeeds from a progressive side in changing politics in America."
May 2, 2010 | Bill Moyers Journal / By Bill Moyers and Jim Hightower
The following is a transcript of Bill Moyers' interview with Jim Hightower from the final broadcast of Bill Moyers Journal. It has been edited for length.
http://www.alternet.org/story/146698/bill_moyers_tv_farewell_with_hightower_--_the_fight_of_our_lives%3A_the_populist_battle_with_corporate_power?page=entire

If you want to agitate for real change to fundamentally challenge corporate power and move to amend the constitution to abolish corporate personhood and corporate constitutional rights, join us this Saturday for the...

May 8 Statewide Abolish Corporate Personhood Conference Call
Saturday, May 8
10 am – 11 am
Call in #: 1-218-862-7200
Access Code: 744213

Proposed Agenda
1. Report on national April 30-May 2 Campaign to Legalize Democracy/Move to Amend convention, Denver, CO – Anita Rios from NW Ohio and Greg Coleridge from NE Ohio reporting
2. Report on forums/educational events statewide
3. Name of statewide effort: Ohio Democracy Alliance? Ohio Move to Amend? Others.
4. Website
5. Local/statewide resolutions
6. July 4
7. Voter guides and/or birddogging of federal/state candidates on this issue.