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Artwork by the late Brian Mor O’Baoighill, created for the long planned celebrations of Maggie Thatcher’s demise in NYC. More here

#thatcher #irish #diaspora

theamericanbear

omegagreen

I will not pause to play the grief game, the one in which we’re meant as lefties to show compassion for the passing of a fellow human as if their actions had no part in the accounting. If there is true evil in the world, Margaret Thatcher was evil, and I cannot and will not mourn her passing. Instead I will promise not to forget.

I will not forget Polmaise, where I as a young student stood in solidarity with the striking miners of 1984. I will not and cannot ever forget the brutality of the police (and army soldiers in police uniforms) that Margaret Thatcher used to repress peaceful protests and “break the unions” – in the process killing two Orgreave miners, David Jones and Joe Green, during a baton charge from horseback.

I will not forget The Belgrano, which was outside the Exclusion Zone and headed away from the Falkland Islands when Thatcher ordered it sunk as a lesson pour les autres and to sink a Peruvian peace proposal she had received 14 hours earlier. It was a simple war crime in which 323 people died and by rights she should have swung from a gallows for it. The British right, led by the Murdoch press, were exultant of course.

I will not forget the Beanfield, twenty-eight years ago this coming June. Again, Thatcher used the policy as her boot-boys to suppress free speech and free association – this time with the only reason that beating up hippies was popular with her far right wing. Young people were beaten with truncheons, their vehicles smashed with sledgehammers. A pregnant friend of mine was dragged through the broken window of her van by her hair. little known outside the UK, the Beanfield assault was one of Thatcher’s worst, most cynical,crimes. Although courts later found the police guilty of of wrongful arrest, assault and criminal damage, she herself never saw trial.

I will not forget the Poll Tax, a charge that Thatcher decided to test out on the Scottish people first, inflagrant disregard for the Act Of Union. The Poll Tax was an attempt to transfer taxation based on property values to a tax on every adult in a household regardless of income and was a blatant attempt to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. The average family in a tenement would pay considerably more while the rich in their mansions would pay less. Massive peaceful protests soon turned into riots, again spurred on by police brutality against protesters. The protests were Thatcher’s downfall, spurring a leadership fight within the Conservative party which she lost to a man who ran away from the circus to become an accountant.

I will not forget her legacy of conservative warmongering and austerity for the poor but more riches for the rich.

Literally billions of pounds were transferred from wages to companies – to be used not for investment but for a consumption boom, fed by dividend payments, of the richest members of society.

It was all done as part of a vile experiment conducted on the British economy, involving privatisation, deregulation, trade union legislation and tight monetary policy. It was Margaret Thatcher’s Frankenstein’s Monster. To put it bluntly, their tools were anti-trade union legislation and mass unemployment.

If you’d like a reason closer to home, my American readers, then remember that Karl Rove deliberately based George W. Bush’s second term domestic policy on Thatcher’s reign, with senior advisers being quite open about the parallel.

After revolutionising America’s foreign policy, the Bush administration now intends to give domestic policy the same overhaul. They have a mission: radical welfare state reform. And they have a name for it: Thatcherism.

Ever since being returned with a 3.5 million-vote majority, Bush’s aides have been deciding how best to use the momentum. A president with more votes than any other in history has a duty to use such authority in a second term. There is also a feeling of discovery. The victory was on a record turnout: the American public is far more conservative than even Rove’s figures projected. After defeating liberalism, he needs a creed to bury it.

After a long ideological search, Rove has chosen Britain in the 1980s. Then Margaret Thatcher took on a left-wing consensus, and embarked on an epoch-defining war which the President now aspires to wage in the US.

Scotland on Sunday attended a rare White House briefing on this agenda, rich in language Bush is unlikely to repeat to Tony Blair. The White House’s stated mission is “to make this young century a conservative century” by example. Aides from the Thatcher government are being courted by Bush speechwriters. Rove, himself, has been pouring over her speeches and has distilled Thatcherism in a new label: ‘ownership society’.

To Bush, this is the theme for a huge project: privatising the welfare state which Franklin D Roosevelt designed in the Depression of the 1930s.

The U.S. right is still intent upon that mission.

No, I will not forget and I cannot forgive.

Update: Ugh, here’s Obama on the wicked bitch who’s dead: “With the passing of Baroness Margaret Thatcher, the world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend.”

Chained CPI, folks. Just sayin’.

#thatcher #1980s

notarsed

#derry #thatcher #ireland #dead

boomvagynamite

#thatcher #dead #jelly and ice cream for ALL

thepeoplesrecord

550 barrels of crude oil leak into Tyler County creeks February 27, 2013

Tyler County Emergency Management Coordinator Dale Freeman says 20,000 gallons of oil have spilled into Otter Creek off County Road 2590. Tyler County officials were alerted to the spill Saturday by residents who noticed the oil in Otter creek; the oil company did not report the leak themselves, but instead tried to cover it up & downplay the significance.

Otter Creek feeds Russell Creek and Russell feeds the Neches River.

The pipeline is owned by Sunoco Logistics and the company says the leak has been patched up and oil is no longer flowing through the pipeline.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality are helping with the clean up. Crews have been ordered to work around the clock until it is complete.

Source

This is consistent with environmental activists deep concerns that all pipelines leak - which is why we cannot allow Obama to approve Transcanada’s plan to build one of the largest hazards to American health in our history, with no benefit to the people who will become very sick for Transcanada’s profits. And that’s the power of ‘free market’ solutions for you; you get oil-tea.

omegagreen

Sigh. Go, Texas.

#texas #oil #environment #epa

thepeoplesrecord

We live in a world capable, in principle, of providing a diverse and healthy diet for all, and yet one quarter of its people suffer from frequent hunger and ill health generated by a diet that is poor in quantity or quality or both. Another quarter of the world’s population eats too much food, food that is often heavy with calories and low on nutrients (colloquially called ‘junk food’). This quarter of the world’s population risks diabetes and all of the other chronic illnesses generated by obesity. In Mexico, for example, 14 per cent of the population have diabetes, and in India, 11 per cent of city-dwellers over 15. In the US it has been estimated that one-third of the children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes—a truly sad prospect, given that most of this is entirely preventable. Study after study in recent years has come to the conclusion that the single most important factor in human health is diet, and diet is something we can shape.

Cheap food is important to capitalism because it allows wages to be lower (and thus profits to be higher) and yet leave workers with more disposable income available to buy other commodities. For these and other reasons, early in the history of capitalism, the food system became tied to colonialism, where various forms of forced or semi-forced labour were common. After the civil war ended slavery in the US, the domestically-produced food system came to rest primarily on the family farm. But after the Second World War the increasing mechanization and chemicalisation of agriculture favoured larger farms. In the early 1970s the US Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz got Congress to pass a programme of subsidies that rewarded high yields. As a result, the larger the farm and the higher the yield, the larger became the subsidy. Nearly all the subsidies went to large farms, and for a few basic crops: tobacco, cotton, corn, wheat, and eventually soy. Moreover the large farms that could benefit the most from mechanization and chemicalisation became increasingly subservient to the gigantic corporations that supplied the inputs and bought the outputs of these factory farms. This situation remains essentially unchanged today. In 2005 alone the US government spent over $20 billion in agricultural subsidies (46 per cent of this went for corn production, 23 per cent for cotton, 10 per cent for wheat, and 6 per cent for soybeans). The largest 10 per cent of the farms got 72 per cent of the subsidies and 60 per cent of all farms got no subsidy at all. For the most part, fruit and vegetable crops received no subsidies, and the same could be said for most small and medium sized farms. In short, the subsidy program rewards the large yields that result from very large, highly industrialized farms. Today, while there are still many family farms in the US, the older mixed family farm that utilized manure from its animals to fertilize the land, and practised crop rotation and other techniques to control pests, has been largely wiped out. The giant capitalist farm of today is dependent on cheap oil and government subsidies. David Pimentel, professor of ecology at Cornell University and a globally recognized expert on food systems and energy, has argued that if the entire world adopted the American food system, all known sources of fossil fuel would be exhausted in seven years. At the same time, utilizing such huge amounts of petroleum-based chemicals (fertilizers and pesticides) would not only contribute enormously to global warming, but also would make our toxic environment even more toxic. In this short essay most of my examples come from the US, because, as the most hegemonic capitalist power in the world, it has done the most to shape the global food system. But I don’t want to give the impression that there is one tightly integrated capitalist world food system. Even in the US, capitalism has not entirely subsumed the whole food system, and while there are few places in the world untouched by capitalism, its degree of hegemony may vary a great deal. Still, up to the present, capitalism has been the single strongest force shaping the global food system, and much of that shaping power has flowed outward from the US.

It is scandalous that in the academic world many professors of economics still teach the doctrine of consumer sovereignty when it is so clear that on the contrary, corporations are the far greater sovereign force.

More from: Between obesity & hunger: the capitalist food industry

#food #poverty #america #capitalism

thepeoplesrecord

February 23, 2013

Officials in Texas announced on Thursday that State Troopers would no longer be allowed to open fire on suspects from helicopters after the recent killing of two immigrants.

While announcing the new policy, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw insisted that...

omegagreen

Officials in Texas announced on Thursday that State Troopers would no longer be allowed

no longer be allowed

#texas #wtf #racism

sinidentidades-blog

USC Frat Planned a ‘Racist Rager’ But a Mexican-American Student Put Them on Blast

The “racist rager” parties organized across U.S. college campuses shouldn’t come as a surprise anymore.

But a recent “phi-esta” party planned by members of a fraternity at the University of Southern California (USC) caught my eye for two reasons:

1) It was a Mexican-themed event and the USC campus is literally surrounded by Latinos: the communities that surround USC are all predominantly Latino. The most recent Census data also found Latinos make up 47.7% of the population in Los Angeles, with Mexicans making up the majority of the group.

2) A Mexican-American USC student saw a flyer for the party and wrote an op-ed in the school newspaper. She shut the party down, got the frat that was throwing the party to apologize and had the members organizing the event expelled from the fraternity.

According to the op-ed written by Melissa Morales the invitation invited party-goers to “bring their ‘sombreros and accentos to a night of classy fun.’”

Here’s an excerpt from the op-ed written Morales, a junior at USC studying political science.

I love a fiesta and a good margarita as much as the next girl, but not when it is just an excuse to make racist jokes and poke fun at a different culture. There is a big difference between celebrating a culture and mocking it.

A few hours after the event was posted, the description was edited to include “what not to expect”: “border patrol, pickpockets, those kids selling you chicle gum, [and] Montezuma’s Revenge.” Classy, indeed.

Is this what Mexican culture has been reduced to? An entire country, an entire people, an entire tradition is recognized solely by negative stereotypes. Is it not possible to hold a party without the predictably offensive costumes and mocking accents? Will it be less of a good time if guests refrain from obvious racism? I highly doubt it.

It is offensive that race is so easily used as a party theme. This is not the first “fiesta” and I am sure that it will not be the last, but I’m not waiting for the party to be over before I speak up. I’m not waiting for the pictures of drawn-on mustaches, illegal immigrants and gardeners to make the rounds on Facebook. I’m not waiting for my heritage to be ridiculed before I start my protest.

This is my protest. This is me speaking up for what I believe in. This is me taking a stand.

Though I find this event to be utterly disrespectful, I mostly just find it disappointing. I refuse to believe that other students on the USC campus — other members of the Trojan family — can be so ignorant and reckless. We live in Southern California with one of the most ethnically diverse campuses in the country, yet we still face situations like these.

If you read this and think I am overreacting, then I am sorry for you. I am sorry that you do not understand.

The president of Pi Kappa Phi Spencer Weissberg responded with his own op-ed addressed to his “fellow Trojans:

On behalf of the brothers of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, I would like to apologize for the insensitive statements made on the Facebook event description for our “Phiesta.”

We recognize that these statements were offensive and we want to take full accountability for the insensitivity of our actions. The statements made were not only offensive to Latinos and Hispanics, but to everyone in the Trojan Family. The brothers of Pi Kappa Phi recognize that our actions are unbecoming of the values of the Trojan community, and that, furthermore, our actions represent this university, as well as our national fraternity and Greek Life as a whole. We deeply regret having misrepresented our national fraternity and USC in this manner. Additionally, I would like to mention and thank USC Junior Melissa Morales, who, in writing a thoughtful letter to the Daily Trojan that accurately criticized our insensitivity, embodied the Trojan values of sticking to one’s beliefs.

Weissberg went on to say “the individuals who were responsible for the Facebook event and the insensitive statements are being held responsible and will be facing expulsion from the fraternity. It is my hope that these individuals, and all of my brothers, will use this opportunity to grow as human beings.”

Meanwhile, Morales is now getting a lot of criticism from fellow students because she “may have likely ruined an otherwise good time for many people.”

Even though both op-ed’s offered context and explained why these parties are offensive there are dozens of comments on Morales’ opinion piece that argue she should have stayed quiet.

omegagreen

MotherFUCK some white-ass frat boys.

#racism #usc #mexico #latino

theamericanbear

omegagreen

U.S. imperialism never runs out of tricks to play on Haiti. The latest project of the U.S. overseers who overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected government in 2004, is prison-building. The new penitentiaries will be constructed under the auspices of none other than the Narcotics Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy to Haiti. U.S. narcs care so deeply for the Haitian people, they are building them two prisons, one for men and one for women.

The top U.S. narcotics agent at the embassy says America’s concern is humanitarian. The men’s prison will replace the penitentiary that was destroyed in the coup sponsored by the United States in 2004 – so it would be fair to say that Washington owes Haiti that prison. The lack of prison space and other public safety infrastructure means Haiti’s incarcerated population – which is somewhere between two and three thousand – is held in some of the worst conditions in the world, and for a very long time. The U.S. embassy says it wants to reduce overcrowding, disease and violence in Haiti’s prisons, to bring them up to international standards.

The United States, itself, has never paid much attention to international standards when it comes to prisons. It locks far more people up for far longer periods of time than any other developed country. On any given day, 50,000 to 80,000 U.S. prison inmates are held in solitary confinement, some of them for decades at a stretch – a form of torture according to most international standards. Violence in U.S. prisons is endemic, especially rape. Through its sheer size, alone – encompassing one out of every four prison inmates on the planet – the U.S. prison Gulag contains the greatest concentrations of prison evils in the world. The U.S. serves as an example of how not to treat prisoners, and how not to treat Black people, who are far more likely to wind up in U.S. prisoners at some point in their lives. But, the United States somehow thinks it has something to teach Black people in Haiti about prisons.

The U.S. claims it wants to move Haitian inmates more quickly through the system. It has not done very well, here at home. On any given day, more than 735,000 inmates crowd local U.S. jails, 60 percent of whom cannot make bail. Most remain economic prisoners for at least 50 days.

Rather than provide the Haitian government with money to construct the two prisons, the U.S. is making all the arrangements, itself, and will spend between $5 million and $10 million. That’s consistent with American and European behavior since the occupation of Haiti: they deny the Haitian government funds for even the most basic functions of the state: law and order. Having overthrown the legitimate government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and virtually outlawed his political party, the occupiers withhold from the government that they installed the means to claim even the most elemental legitimacy. The Americans and their allies’ mission is to maintain Haiti as a failed state, one that can neither protect nor punish those accused of crime, nor pay the judges, police and jailers that are fundamental to any notion of government. Anything resembling the rule of law in Haiti must be seen as a gift of the U.S. embassy – a gift of prisons, from the greatest international lawbreaker of all, the United States.

#imperialism #prison #u.s.a.#haiti #incarceration #justice

thepeoplesrecord

The other Pfc. B. Manning: Hacktivist Jeremy Hammond helped expose the inner workings of the surveillance state February 19, 2013

Activist Jeremy Hammond has been held without bail since his arrest in March. He is accused of hacking into the computers of private intelligence firm Stratfor and giving million of emails to WikiLeaks. He has been called the other Pfc. B. Manning. While Manning revealed government wrongdoing, Hammond is alleged to have leaked information from a private company, helping expose the inner workings of the insidious and pervasive surveillance state.

When he was 22, Hammond was called an “electronic Robin Hood” using hacking as a means of civil disobedience. He attacked a conservative group’s web site and stole user’s credit cards with the idea of making donations to the American Civil Liberties Union. His intention was in the spirit of taking from the rich and giving to poor. He later changed his mind and didn’t use the credit cards.

If he did what he is alleged with Stratfor, it was for the public good. Documents that he is alleged to have obtained and uploaded to WikiLeaks revealed spying on activists and others for corporations and governments. Furthermore, attorney and president Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights Michael Ratner argued that the Stratfor hacking was a clear case of entrapment targeting online activist group Anonymous and Hammond. He explained there was an informant named Sabu and the FBI gave him the computer onto which the documents were uploaded.

Hammond now has been moved to solitary confinement and has been virtually cut off from all interaction with the outside world. On Feb 14, the Jeremy Hammond Support Network posted a message on social media that heavy restrictions were put on him. The Network reported Hammond now is not allowed any commissary visits to buy stamps for letters and food, as he does not get enough to eat. Now visits are limited to his lawyer and telephone contact is restricted to his brother.

His case is another example of the expanding unchecked authoritarian power in the justice system in general. Here Hammond appears to be following similar footsteps as Manning who also was placed into solitary confinement. Nahal Zamani, Advocacy Program Manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights argued how solitary confinement is a form of torture and is “clearly cruel and unusual punishment. Indeed, the use of solitary has been condemned as torture by the international community.”

Unlike Manning, who is subject to the military ‘justice’ system, Hammond is in a civilian court, which is supposed to follow the Constitution. What happens though when one is placed into jail outside of the public eye is that prisoners are more and more being stripped of their rights and treated inhumanely. Once they are behind bars, they become incognito, losing connection to the outside world. Inside the cage is a twilight zone where laws and conventions can be bent by those who are powerful, with little oversight or accountability.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of a deeply flawed justice system combined with an increasingly corporatized prison industrial complex. Prisoners are marginalized and many are forgotten. Hammond shared his personal experience as prisoner at the Metropolitan Correctional Center during Hurricane Sandy. He wrote how because of the storm, the Correctional Center lost power. They had no hot water or heat and prisoners were left behind with no phone calls, no visits and no mail. What was revealed was a callous system that abandons the poor, marginalized and disadvantaged. Hammond noted how as was seen in the Katrina disaster of New Orleans, New Yorkers experienced that relief came not from FEMA and government agency but from grassroots community groups such as Occupy Sandy. He ended his letter saying:

“Very frightening to consider what would happen to us prisoners – already disenfranchised, silenced, marginalized and forgotten – in the event of a more devastating natural disaster. There’s a universal consensus here – ‘they’d probably leave us to die.’”

In addition to this, the US legal system is more and more used to target political dissidents, especially information activists. In November 2012, Hammond was denied bail despite his attorney convincingly arguing that he posed no flight risk and assuring that he would not have access to computers. The prosecutor insisted he is a flight risk and Judge Loretta Preska held a very hostile attitude toward Hammond and stated that the reason for bail denial was that Hammond poses “a very substantial danger to the community.” Hammond now faces indictments against him for various computer fraud crimes which could amount to 37 years to life in prison.

Ratner addressed obvious conflict of interests with judge Preska sitting on the case against Hammond. It came to light that Preska’s husband worked for a client of Stratfor, whose emails Hammond allegedly leaked. Ratner spoke of how the mere appearance of a conflict of interest is enough for her to recuse herself, according to judicial rules.

Jeremy Hammond’s case is showing how broken the rule of law has become in our time. Like Manning, Barret Brown and the late Aaron Swartz, this is another case of a high profile activist being severely targeted by having the book thrown at them with generally specious charges. The courts have become part of a rigged system that favors corporations and those politically connected to them. One thing that these activists seem to have in common is that they actually never really hurt anyone and are driven by one of the higher ideals that this country has been founded on -that of a truly informed populace, while those that are politically targeting them regularly harm and exploit innocent people.

Holding those who abuse power accountable is becoming nearly impossible with the current system. More than ever, checks and balance will only come from the people. It was in response to a public uproar that Manning was moved from Quantico where he had been subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment.

This Thursday, February 21, Preska will make a decision on the defense motion to recuse herself from the case against Hammond and supporters plan to pack the courtroom to demand a fair trial. We all have to stay awake and support those who have passed the twilight gate, who are rendered invisible, marginalized from the rest of the population. A broken rule of law can be corrected through the vigilance and conscience of ordinary people; witnessing injustice and challenging it from all sides. We will be watching.

Source

Here’s the Facebook event for the details about Thursday’s rally to support Jeremy Hammond.

#Jeremy Hammond #justice #government

thinkmexican

Monsanto Assault Meets Aztec Resistance

Monsanto has a map for conquering the world and Mexico is in the center of it.

For nearly two decades the transnational corporation that manufactures the pesticides used across the planet has been trying to take over the global seed market with genetically modified (GM) seed. If successful, most of the food we grow and eat would have to be purchased annually as seed from Monsanto. The mutant plants would grow up addicted to Monsanto herbicides. Local varieties would disappear, and in their place standardized, genetically modified food–doused with chemicals–would fill supermarket shelves and corner stores.

More than sixty thousand farmers and supporters from workers’ and environmental organizations marched through Mexico City on Jan. 31 to avoid this fate. It was one of the largest mobilizations to date to reject the Monsanto game plan, and it’s no coincidence that it took place in the heart of the Aztec Empire.

Olegario Carrillo, president of Mexican small farm organization UNORCA, addressed the crowd in the central plaza, “During the last 30 years, successive governments have tried to wipe us out. They’ve promoted measures to take away our lands, our water, our seeds, plant and animal varieties, traditional knowledge, markets. But we refuse to disappear.”

“For peasant farmers, GMOs represent looting and control,” he stated.

With tens of thousands of people shouting “No genetically modified corn in Mexico!” and “Monsanto get out!”, the march showed the muscle of an unusual grassroots movement to protect small farmers and consumers. It also revealed the remarkable success of decades of public education and organizing on an issue that Monsanto and other major biotech firms hoped would slide under the radar of the people most affected by it.

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