RED EYE 7/06/11

Spain: rising youth ditch old leaders

NYT, 6/7 — …The recession that has ravaged Spain, along with much of Southern Europe, has had an especially hard impact on the young, with unemployment rates soaring to more than 40 percent for 20-to-24-year-olds…Many of them see limited hope of improvement unless they reshuffle the political deck and demand a new approach.

Historically, Spaniards have taken to the streets with some regularity...But the events, are usually organized by political parties and unions, organizations that the young have largely ignored. Many of the new protesters say they are disgusted with the unions that do little to represent their interests and with both of Spain’s main parties, which they view as corrupt and unresponsive.

Egyptians seek a revolt; no plan

NYT, 6/10 — Cairo — Egypt’s economy, whose inequities and lack of opportunities helped topple a government, has now ground to a virtual halt, further wounded by the revolution itself.

The 18-day revolt stopped new foreign investment and decimated the pivotal tourist industry….How Egypt can fix its broken economy…could also influence the outcome of the revolts across the Arab region, where economic troubles are stirring fears of…backlash against what had appeared to be a turn toward Western-style market reforms.... “People in the neighborhood are talking about going back to the streets for another revolution — a hunger revolution.”

U.S. medic experiment copied Nazis

GW, 6/17 — …It was 1946 and orphans in Guatemala City, along with prisoners, soldiers and prostitutes, had been selected for a medical experiment that would torment many, and remain secret, for more than six decades.

The U.S., worried about GIs returning home with sexual diseases, infected around 1,500 Guatemalans with syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid to test an early antibiotic, penicillin. 

….The U.S. government admitted to the experiment in October….Susan Reverby, a professor at Wellesley College in the U.S., uncovered the experiment while researching the Tuskegee syphilis study in which hundreds of African-American men were left untreated for 40 years from the 1930s.

The Guatemalan study went further by deliberately infecting its subjects…It echoed Nazi crimes exposed…at the Nuremberg trials…Families of the three survivors identified so far by Guatemala…chronicled lives blighted by illness, neglect and unanswered questions.

… “Some of this has been passed on to me, my siblings and our children.” Children can inherit congenital syphilis….Only a few of the original 1,500 may still be alive but there could be dozens if not hundreds of infected children and grandchildren…

Capitalism pushes prostitution

GW, 6/7 — …At what age can sexuality be commodified?....What really makes children grow up “too soon,” may have nothing to do with sex and everything to do with poverty. Watching the incredibly revealing BBC1 documentary Poor Kids this week, to see children…talking about parental debt and how things can never change, shows us some kids do learn the facts of life too young because of deprivation….

….What is needed then is not some weird repression of sexuality, but [a repression] of a rapacious capitalism that commodifies every desire and yes, will sell…children. No re[port] that tells politicians this is ever acted on.

Medicaid patients get less or zero

NYT, 6/16 — Children with Medicaid are far more likely than those with private insurance to be turned away by medical specialists or be made to wait more than a month for an appointment, even for serious medical problems, a new study finds.

….The study used a “secret shopper” technique in which researchers posed as the parent of a sick or injured child and called…to schedule an appointment…[They] described problems that were urgent…like diabetes, seizures, uncontrolled asthma, a broken bone or severe depression…

Sixty-six percent of those who mentioned Medicaid-CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) were denied appointment, compared with 11% who said they had private insurance, according to…The New England Journal of Medicine.

In 89 clinics that accepted both kinds of patients, the waiting time for callers who said they had Medicaid was an average of 22 days longer….A physician not connected with the study…said: “It’s interesting to think you even need a study to prove that. It’s pretty much common knowledge.”….Many doctors said they could not keep their practices going if they accepted too many Medicaid patients.

And specialists affiliated with academic medical centers said they were willing to treat Medicaid patients but were under pressure from the medical centers to bring in more money by seeing more people with private insurance….Another study uncovered patients’ difficulties in obtaining psychiatric care….“The disparity held across every specialty that was tested,” Dr. Rhodes said. “This is systemic.”…. “People say: ‘Sure, I take insurance. Oh, I don’t take Medicaid.”…

No hiring: Automation ups profits

NYT, 6/10 — Companies that are looking for a good deal aren’t seeing one in new workers….Equipment is getting cheaper…. “I want to have as few people touching our products as possible,” said Dan Mishek, managing director of Vista Technologies… “Everything should be as automated as it can be. We just can’t afford to compete with countries like China on labor…expenses.”….Two years into the recovery, hiring is still painfully slow. The economy is producing as much as it was before the downturn, but with seven million fewer jobs….

On big issue, public opinion ignored

NYT, 6/4 — Singapore — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates pledged Saturday that the United States would sustain its military presence…in Asia….He acknowledged…that “fighting two protracted and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has strained the U.S. military ground forces, and worn out the patience…of…the public [in the U.S.] for similar intervention in the future.”

Even so, he said, “We…will continue to play an indispensable role in…the region.”

…Mr. Gates said that the Defense Department would find money for “air superiority and mobility, long-range strike, nuclear deterrence,…and intelligence, surveillance and reconnnasissance.”

They told workers ‘back Dems’

LAT, 5/27 — Washington — This is a maddening time for anyone concerned about the lives of [the] working class…The frustration and anger that suffused AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s declaration last week that labour would distance itself from the Democratic Party was both clear and widely noted….Trumka said that Republicans were wielding a “wrecking ball” against the rights and interests of work[ers]…But Democrats, he added, were “simply standing aside” as the Republicans moved in for the kill.

The primary source of labour’s frustration has been consistent inability for the Democrat to strengthen the legislation that once allowed workers to join union without far of employer reprisals. American business has poked so many holes in the 1935 National Labour Relations Act that it now affords workers no protections at all. Beginning with Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, every time the Democrats have held the White House and strong majorities in both houses of Congress, bills that strengthened workers’ rights to unionize have commanded substantial Democratic support — but never quite enough…And during that time, the unionized share of the private-sector workfroce has dwindled from roughly 30 percent to less than 7 percent….Private-sector union may all but disappear within the next 10 years.

Big biz kills defenders of local folk

GW, 6/17 — Ribeiro knew he was in danger of being killed for his struggle against loggers, ranchers and large-scale farmers who were deforesting the Amazon. Six months earlier, at an environmental conference in Manaus, he told the audience: “I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared…I could get a bullet in my head at any moment…As long as I have the strength to walk, I will denounce all of those who damage the forest.”

The life and death of Ribeiro has been compared to that of Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber tapper, union leader and environmentalist, who fought against logging and ranching, winning international attention for his successful campaigns against deforestation. In 1988 he was murdered  by gunmen hired by ranchers. Just two weeks before he was killed, Mendes also spoke hauntingly about the likelihood that he would be murdered for his activism: “The only thing I was it that my death helps to stop the murderers’ impunity.”

Yet impunity in the countryside has become the norm. In the past 20 years, more than 1150 rural activists have been killed. Of these murders, only…15 of the people who hired the gunmen were found guilty….

Anger grows among young Catholics

NYT, 6/15 — Despite recent cases in which Roman Catholic bishops failed to report or suspend priests accused of child sexual abuse, the bishops head into a meeting in Seattle on Wednesday proposing no significant revisions to the abuse prevention policies they passed in 2002 at the height of the scandal.

…New accusations in Philadelphia and Kansas City, MO., have shaken many Catholics…across the country…The incidents have led some Catholics to question…whether there is any accountability for bishops….

“I have never seen the anger as deep and widespread as I have seen and heard and felt it these last three weeks. It’s coming from people that I know of as very conservative, very devout, especially younger people.”

 New FBI rules: a fascist step

NYT, 6/13 — Washington — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

….A former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that.. “Claiming additional authorities to investigate the potential for abuse.”…

Crisis is exposing greed system

NYT, 6/8 — Global Footprint Network, an alliance for scientists, calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future.

…The consumer-driven growth model is broken and we have to move to a more happiness-driven growth model…We will not change systems, thought, without a crisis. But don’t worry, we’re getting there.

Gov’t  ‘lost’ file, framed black rebel

NYT, 6/4 — Elmer G. Pratt, a Black Panther leader who was imprisoned for 27 years for murder and whose marathon fight to prove he had been framed attracted support from civil rights groups and led to the overturning of his conviction, died on Thursday…. Mr. Pratt came to symbolize a politically motivated attack on the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and other radical groups…Information gradually surfaced that the jury had not known about when it reached its verdict.

A juror, Jeanne Rook Hamilton, told the Times: “If we had known...there’s no way Pratt would have been convicted.”

In an interview with The New York Times in 1997, John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, said, “The Geronimo Pratt case is one of the most compelling and painful examples of a political assassination on an African-American activist.”

‘Don’t settle for happiness’

Toni Morrison, NYT 6/12 — I have often wished that Jefferson had not used that phrase “the pursuit of happiness” as the third right — although I understand in the first draft it was “life, liberty and the pursuit of property.” Of course, I would have been one of those properties one had the right to pursue…Still, I would rather he had written “life, liberty and the pursuit of meaningfulness.” ….I urge you, please don’t settle for happiness. It’s not good enough.

Personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice, that’s more than a barren life’ it’s a trivial one…

RED EYE 6/22/11

FBI guy let mob assault crusader

NYT, 5/22 — To the editor:…Some 16 years after the first two buses of Freedom Riders arrived in Alabama, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan…bought suit against the F.B.I. on behalf of…two of the original 13 Freedom Riders. Walter Bergman was severely beaten when a mob of Ku Klux Klansmen attacked the Freedom Riders, first in Anniston, Ala., then again in Birmingham. He suffered a stroke and spent the remaining years of his life partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair.

The case was based on revelations about the role of F.B.I. paid informants in the Klan, one of whom took part in the brutal attack on the Freedom Riders.

In 1983, [a] United States District Court judge issued an eloquent opinion holding the F.B.I. responsible for the attack. The F.B.I. had advance knowledge of the planned attack and allowed it to happen. That part of the story should not be lost to history.

U.S. reveals oil motive in Iraq war

Thom Hartmann blog, 4/23 — …In the run-up to the Iraq war British Prime Minister Tony Blair called theories that the war was motivated by oil interests, “the most absurd.” But according to memos recently released by the UK newspaper the Independent, Blair’s denial is the only thing that’s absurd. The memos show that the British Trade Minister assured BP and other energy firms that they would be given generous shares of Iraq’s vast oil and gas reserves…Sure enough, after the invasion BP got a 20-year contract for oil production in Iraq, the largest ever contract in the history of oil production.

So now that it’s clear the UK went to Iraq for oil are there any doubts that oil baron Dick Cheney did the same thing?

Extra borders for immigrant kids

NYT, 5/21 — …A recently published study of the early development of children born to [undocumented] immigrants in New York City suggests that most…do not end as well.

Even though the children have citizenship and live in an immigrant-friendly city,… many are still hobbled by serious developmental and educational deficits resulting from their parents’ lives in the shadows....According to the study….Hirokazu Yoshikawa, a Harvard education professor,….found that by the time the children…reached age two, they showed significantly lower levels of language and cognitive development than the children of “legal” immigrants and native-born parents….

…An estimated 91 percent — four million children — are American citizens…The researchers found that poor immigrants cannot afford learning materials or stimulating programs in child care centers. Fear of deportation…often prevents those parents from seeking help from the government agencies that provide child care subsidies or food stamps….

The psychological stress suffered by immigrants — many of whom work long hours for low wages and live in crowded, poorly maintained apartments — can be transmitted to young children, the study says.

“Greater hardship among parents, both economic and psychological,” Professor Yoshikawa wrote, “can harm children’s learning by lowering parents’ active engagements with their children, the quantity or quality of their language or their warmth and responsiveness.”

Hushing up bad sides of U.S. wars

Otherwords.org 5/17 — …Times have changed, with decisions on war quickly becoming back-page stuff. Our wars were scarcely discussed during the last congressional election campaign. How come?

A top reason for that inattention is our reliance on mercenaries. We don’t use many actual troops anymore, thus precluding the need for a hated military draft. Private companies do much of the messy work, to the point where there is roughly one mercenary contractor in the war zone for every soldier. Afghans drive the trucks, Bangladeshis clean the latrines, Indians do the cooking, and former GIs do the security. No one knows just how many there are or how many get killed. They stay out of the limelight

Robots also simplify war. Drones have no loved ones back home to raise a ruckus when they crash….Further tamping is carried out by the press itself…The suffering of local citizens and atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers are played down, while heroism and camaraderie among the troops are played up. Duty and honor lead the story, while official callousness and bungling usually fail to make it into print….

Meanwhile…it takes about $1 million to support one GI in Afghanistan for a year.

U.S. oil biz helps ‘worst’ nations

NYT, 5/31 — Officially and unofficially, Americans do business with one of the undisputed human rights global bad boys, Equatorial Guinea, Africa’s fourth biggest oil exporter. Its widely criticized record on basic freedoms has offered little barrier to broad engagement…

American oil companies have billions of dollars invested here….Freedom House, the watchdog group, has ranked Equatorial Guinea among the nine most repressive “worst of the worst” nations in the world…. “They don’t even hide the torture instruments.” ….Despite the government’s oil wealth, little has trickled down to the impoverished population. The interest of the Americans here is money.” ….77 percent of the population lives below the poverty line….Infant mortality has actually increased since the discovery of oil here in the 1990s, the World Bank said.

U.S. WW2 role ‘sideshow’ to USSR

NYT, 5/29 — Americans who learn about the war in Europe from a book like Stephen Ambrose’s “Band of Brothers” (1992), for instance, could be forgiven for thinking of the defeat of Germany as the work of doughty G.I.’s. Yet in “No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945” (2007), the British historian Norman Davies begins from the premise that “the war effort of the Western powers” as “something of a sideshow.” American lost 143,000 soldiers in the fight against Germany, Davies points out, while the Soviet Union lost 11 million.

U.S. reveals oil motive in Iraq war

Thom Hartmann blog, 4/23 — …In the run-up to the Iraq war British Prime Ministers Tony Blair called theories that the war was motivated by oil interests, “the most absurd.” But according to memos recently released by the UK newspaper the Independent, Blair’s denial is the only thing that’s absurd. The memos show that the British Trade Minister assured BP and other energy firms that they would eb given generous shares of Iraq’s vast oil and gas reserves…Sure enough, after the invasion BP got a 20 year contract for oil production in Iraq, the largest ever ocntract in the history of oil production.

So now that it’s clear the UK went to Iraq for oil are there any doubts that oil baron Dick Cheney did the same thing?

Human rights ‘rules’ waved for oil

NYT, 5/21 — On the same day President Obama pressed again for peace in the Middle East, the Associated Press reminded us that the United States…[is] flooding the region with the instruments of war, reporting that the nation is “quietly expanding defense ties on a vast scale” with Saudi Arabia.

How vast? The part that has been highly publicized is the new $60 billion arms sale made to the Saudis because of the ongoing threat of Iran. The deal sends Saudi Arabia 84 new F-15s and upgrades to 70F-15s. It also sends them 180 Apache, Black Hawk, and Little Bird helicopters….The U.S. assistant secretary of state… said the sales were part of “deepening our security relationship with a key partner with whom we’ve enjoyed a solid security relationship for nearly 70 years.”

…The AP also reported on an obscure project that would fall under the U.S. Central Command. The force would have up to 35,000 members “to protect the kingdom’s oil riches and future nuclear sites.”

…But no official of the Pentagon, the State Department, or the Saudi embassy would go on the record to discuss the program.

…Saudi Arabia is well-known for the elites who still continue to suppress women…Among the policy criteria that arms transfers are supposed to be assessed on, is whether that country is protecting human rights, but State Department officials admitted to the GAO “that they do not document these assessments.”…Saudi Arabia…has the largest oil production capacity in the world.

Coal biz funds a major textbook

NYT, 5/13 — Children’s books and other educational materials produced by the publisher Scholastic reach about 90 percent of the nation’s classrooms. With this enormous access to what amounts to a captive audience of children, the company has a special obligation to adhere to high educational standards.

It fell short of that when it produced a fourth-grade lesson packet called “The United States of Energy,” a treatise on coal that was paid by the American Coal Foundation…the lessons talked about the benefits of coal…and the power plants fueled by it — and omitted mention of things like toxic waste, mountain-top removal and greenhouse gases.

Pols can’t be stopped from lying

Walterbrosch@gmail.com, 5/13 — “There’s probably some law that prevents politicians from lying.”

“Even for being a journalist, you’re rather dense,” The FCC says it’s OK to like.”

“The Federal Communications Commission gives its approval?” I asked skeptically.

“The FCC says that radio and TV stations can’t refuse to run political ads even if the station managements knows that ads are outright lies. Law says if a station takes even on ad from one candidate, for federal office, it has to take all ads form all candidates for that office, even if the ad is highly offensive.”

Arab spring includes leftward move

NYT, 5/28 — …In Egypt….old leftist political parties are re-emerging as though they have been frozen in time for the 30 years of the Mubarak police state. [They] demand that the government again expand its role in the economy to help the poor, even at the price of discouraging foreign investors.

…In Tunisia, too, old leftist parties are trying to come back, and parts of the country’s strong labor movement are stepping up their demands or returning to radical roots.

Surprise! Rich kids in good schools

NYT, 5/30 — to the editor:…extremely wealthy people send their children to: schools with small classes (not necessarily small schools), a good ratio of adults — teachers and support staff — to students, intensive remediation for those who need it, and enrichment of all kinds, including the arts, sports, technology, clubs and trips.

There’s no mystery about quality education. Wealthy people know exactly what it consists of and make sure their children get it. We need …all the other children in American, and elsewhere, [to] get it as well.

How dr. king tied ‘freedom’ to pols

5/20, NYT — Fifty years ago today, I arrived in Montgomery, Ala….I was among 22 Freedom Riders on [one] bus. We well knew the dangers we faced in Alabama: other riders had already been attacked…And indeed, when we stepped of the bus…three of my friends, William Barbee, John Lewis and Jim Zwerg, were beaten unconscious. I suffered three cracked ribs.

The next evening, the Freedom Riders and 1,500 other people gathered at the First Baptist Church…in downtown Montgomery. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference offered us words of encouragement and support…

As the sun set, a mob…began hurling rocks and bricks through the stained-glass windows, and tear gas drifted through the sanctuary….Dr. King tried to reach Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to request federal protection….There was little we could do but wait and pray. We sat in the church and sang freedom songs and hymns….Reports had come in over the phone that a group of black men, led by armed cab drivers, were mobilizing…to attack the mob and rescue the people trapped in the church. some of them, no doubt, had relatives and friends in the church. 

Black cab drivers were an important part of the local civil rights movement…But they were more than just drivers: they saw themselves as part of a security force as they moved passengers around the segregated city.

Some of them men were war veterans; some were experienced hunters, and were probably more experienced with weapons than their white antagonists. Had these men attacked the mob surrounding the church, the story of the Freedom Rides would have had a much different ending.

Eventually Dr. King announced that he had a special mission for which he need volunteers. The main qualification, Dr. King said, was a commitment to nonviolence…Dr. King’s mission, then, was to persuade the cab drivers to abandon their rescue attempt, lay down their weapons and go home. His small group…walked out the doors, as if they were marching….I was sure I would never see them again. And yet…after an hour passed…they all reappeared, unharmed. Dr. King had convinced the cab drivers to abandon their mission….Early next morning…after hours of pressure from Mr. Kennedy on the Alabam governor…we were able to leave the church unharmed. Dr. King…kept the Freedom Rides on its nonviolent course.

(Editor’s note: These facts come from an article praising Dr. King.)

System forces doc to act badly

NYT, 5/28 — To the editor: one of the reasons that Medicare spends so much on unnecessary procedures is that there is no incentive for patients no to demand them and for providers not to order them. Patients ask for unnecessary tests and intervention all the time, and doctors are loath to say no. After all, if I say no, the patient will go elsewhere. This is a direct consequence of the notion that health care is a consumer product….I wish I could practice evidence-based medicine. I cannot. My practice would dwindle away.

RED EYE 5/25/11

Digitization can help fascists swoop

GW, 5/20 — Britain’s largest police force is using software that can map nearly every move suspects and their associates make in the digital world, prompting an outcry from civil liberties groups.

The Metropolitan police has bought Geotime, a security programme used by the U.S. military, which shows an individual’s movements and communications with other people….against the Metropolitan police, said: “This latest tool could be used in a wholly invasive way and…impede the activities of a democratic protesters.”

Big army needed for U.S. Big Biz

Creators.com: Robert Scheer — …Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal headlined “Big U.S. Firms Shift Hiring Abroad.”

…Tax breaks…leaving some corporations…to pay no taxes at all, were supposed to lead to job creation, but just the opposite has occurred. As the WSJ put it, the multinational companies “cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million.

….When those corporations run into trouble overseas because of financial hustles or hostile locals and need the diplomatic and military might of the U.S. government to protect their interests abroad, it is again the U.S. taxpayer who must pay to maintain this new world order.

…More than half of all discretionary spending…is accounted for by defense spending.

That defense spending to support a massive network of military bases and deployed weapons and troops is key to establishing an order in which the interests of American corporations are attended to.

Blackwater founder hired to protect UAE

AM NY, 5/16 — The crown prince of Abu Dhabi has hired the founder of private security firm Blackwater Worldwide to set up an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the United Arab Emirates…The unit being formed by Erik Prince’s new company, Reflex Responses, reportedly would receive $529 million to thwart internal revolt and conduct special operations.

Israel stifles criticism by Jews

GW: Gary Younge — Finally, there is the insidious role Israel has attempted to play as ideological gatekeeper for acceptable political behavior among Jews. The attempt to tarnish any criticism of Israel, regardless of its merits, as unjust is untenable; to castigate them as un-Jewish is deplorable. “What saddens me today is that any Jew who speaks out with an independent voice, especially with the conduct of the state of Israel, is regarded as a self-hating Jew”…

Multinationals wink at exploitation

GW 5/6 — In China last May, seven young Chinese workers producing Apple iPads for consumers across the globe took their own lives….One year on, an investigation by two NGOs reveals that many workers making iPhones and iPads for world markets are exploited and living a dismal life.

…Interviews with mainly migrant employees and managers have laid bare a world of work that would be considered shocking in the west.

While Apple says it expects high standards from suppliers, its own audit reports suggest that fewer than one in three supplier factories are obeying the rules on working hours. The audits also show that 30% broke rules on wages and benefits, while 24% were in breach of strict rules on involuntary labor.

Schools breaking immigration law

NYT, 5/7 — Federal officials [said]…it was against the law for education officials to seek information that might reveal the immigration status of children applying for enrollment.

Civil liberties advocates and others have complained in recent months that many school districts are seeking children’s immigration papers as a prerequisite for enrollment…. “We have become aware of student enrollment practices that may chill or discourage the participation, or lead to the exclusion, of students based on their or their parents’ or guardians’ actual or perceived…immigration status.”

Top muckraker finally backed red

NYT, 5/15 ­­–– Lincoln Steffens isn’t much remembered today, though Peter Hartshorn’s absorbing biography, “I Have Seen the Future,” makes it clear why he should be…Steffens wanted to go beyounf the simple idea “that political evils were due to bad men of sort and curable by the substitution of good men.” Working constantly, traveling ceaselessly, he visited one city after another, trying to decipher how the whole system worked –– why it was corrupt, as well as how….Steffens was dismayed by how little permanent good muckraking seemed to achieve, by how quickly reformers were swept out of office and reforms neglected once the latest scandal was past…

Steffens was captivated by Lenin, whom he interviewed briefly during the revolution. He became one of the first of that little band of Western intellectuals who fell head over heels for the Soviet Union. Unlike most of them, he did not deny the stories of atrocities leaking out of the workers’ paradise…He simply believed them necessary to bring about the great changes to come. He never wavered from his famous first impression of the U.S.S.R., “I have seen the future, and it works.”…that “the notion of liverty…is false, a hangover from our Western tyranny.”

All talk, no act on immigration

NYT, 5/11 –– President Obama went to the border in El Paso on Tuesday and delivered a speech on immigration reform. He didn’t present a bill or issue any executive orders or set deadlines for action. Aides say his goal was to “create and pathway” and “a sense of urgency” to “move forward.”

…For all his talk of supporting the hopes of the undocumented, his administration has been doubling down the failed strategy of mass expulsion. It is pressing state and local police to join in an ill-conceived program called Secure Communities, which sends arrested people’s fingerprints through federal immigration databases, turning all local officers and jails into arms of the Department of Homeland Security….The Homeland Security Department’s own data show that…of those deported under the program have no criminal records or committed only minor crimes. 

Capitalism reverting to slavery?

NYT, 5/13 –– The television advertisements the welder saw in Hanoi were alluring, almost too good to be true. A company partly owned by the government [of Vietnam] was offering jobs in the United States that paid $15 an hours, plus overtimes, far more than the man, Chin Ba Ngo, could make in Vietnam.

When he met with the agents for the company, they asked for a $10,000 fee to put him in touch with an American company seeking laborers. He mortgaged his house and borrowed heavily from family owners to come up with the money.

The fellow workers have contended –– and the companies have denied –– that they were brought here under false pretenses, treated porrly in near isolation and then cast out abruptly long before they expect to finish the work that would have helped them repay their debts.

…Not only did they pay thousands of dollars in fees to Vietnamese companies, but they were charged high priced by their American employers for run-down housing, transportation to work and other expenses.

The workers say the American company…also took their passports and kept them isolated, telling them the police would arrest and deport them if they left the building where they lived.

The workers owed thousands of dollars they could not repay.

Women workers ‘bought and sold’

GW, 5/6 –– A cleaner sums up her life to the French journalist Florence Aubenas, who went undercover to explore the “unmaking of the French working class” and the recession: “The harder he makes us work, the shitter we feel. The shitter we feel, the more we let ourselves get ground down.” The result, the Night Cleaner, has been a bestseller in France and is now being published in Britain, an appropriate memorial for 1 May, International Workers’ Day…

…In The Night Cleaner…the [women] are cajoled, ticked off, hectored, humiliated and bullied by a sequence of advisors, trainers, bosses and team leaders. In all these work relationships they cease to be people, simply units of labor to be bought and sold; it’s a cruel depersonalization…which no undercover journalist can fully convey after experiencing it for only a few months….Women have borne the brunt of flexible labour markets….

Religion falling in U.S. and Europe

GW, 5/20 –– Approximately 660,000 American now joint the ranks of the non-religious every year, and somewhere between 12% and 21% of American are not atheist or agnostic in orientation…Europe’s… rates of unbelief are higher/ The percentage of non-religious Americans has grown from 8% back in 1990, up to above 17% today.

Profiteers don’t help world’s poor

GW, 5/20 –– A U.N. conference on the poorest countries adopted an action plan last week stressing the importance of foreign investment and the private section in lifting millions from poverty….

But the civil society forum at the conference said the plan’s approach was a repackaging of economic liberalization. “Our experience is of companies that have unsustainably exploited minerals fish and forest, land grabs that have stolen the resources and livelihoods of local people, biofuel plantations that have destroyed forest and agricultural lands, food dumping that has destroyed farmers’ livelihoods and projects that leave local people with no water and a polluted environment.

Some nations look up to teachers

NYT, 5/1 –– Nationwide, 46 percent of U.S. teachers quit before their fifth year…The effect within schools – especially those in urban communities where turnover is highest – is devastating… Can we d better? Can we generate….a talented teaching force? A study compared the treatment of teachers here and in the three countries that perform best on standardized tests: Finland, Singapore and South Korea.

…First, the governments in these countries recruit top graduates to the profession. (We don’t). In Finland and Singapore they pay for training. (We don’t). In terms of purchasing power, South Korea pays teacher on average 20 percent of what we do.

And most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvements are needs, the school receives support and development, not punishment. Accordingly, turnover in these countries is startlingly low: In South Korea, it’s 1 percent per year. In Finland, it’s 2 percent. In Singapore, 3 percent.

…For those who say, “How do we pay for this?” –– how are we paying for three concurrent wars? …Or the bailout of the savings and loans in 1898 and that of the investment banks in 2008?..We found a way.

Liberal anti-fascists aid capitalism

GW, 5/20 –– It is hard not to be very uneasy. Every month, there is another milestone passed in the ever-onward march of Europe’s populist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, nativist right….The trouble is that the Dnish People’s part is not alone. There are the True Finns in Finland, the Hugarian Jobbik party, the Dutch Part for Freedom, the Italian Northern League, the Austrain Freedom Party, the Sweden Democrats and the National Front in France, led by the politically astute Marine Le Pen. All are on the rise, and it’s not easy to see what might slow their progress.

There were not many ideas on offer at the Progressive Governance conference in Oslo at the end of last week…The Spanish socialists spoke for the consensus, saying that the left must make the case that immigration is a force for good – it makes Europe richer….

The trouble is that the longer the left’s response is confused, the more the populist right has begun to make anti-immigrant attitudes culturally acceptable. Unless a quick response can be found to the economic dislocation, uncertain job prospects and sense that Europeans states cannot offer their populations security, that is feeding the current mood, noxious attitudes will start to become culturally and politically entrenched…

To stop this movement become a stampede, the European left…must argue passionately for a good capitalism that will drive growth, employment and living standards….It must…make citizens believe that globalization is not a terrifying threat; it need not be a charter for bankers making dynastic fortunes for doing national valuable…Get the economics and fairness right and much of the so-called threat will fall away.

Catholic bishops buy a whitewash

NYT, 5/18 –– A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.

Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests…landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ‘70s.

Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found….The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by…the church…and by Pope Benedict XVI…

In one of the most counterintutitive findings, the report says that fewer than 5 percent of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia…urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.

“Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests,” the report says.

That finding is likely to prove controversial, in part because the report employs a definition of “prepubescent” children as those ages 10 and under. Using this cut-off, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests’ victims were prepubescent….The Manual of Mental Disorders classifies of prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent.

RED EYE 5/11/11

Key to survival is cooperation

NYT, 4/10 — Martin A. Nowak, the director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard, has devoted a brilliant career to showing that Darwin, and particularly his followers, batted only two for three. Random mutation and natural selection have indeed been powerful motors for change in the natural world — the struggle for existence pitting the fit against the fitter in a hullabaloo of rivalry. But most of the great innovations of life on earth, Nowak argues, from genes to cells to societies, have been due to a third motor, and “master architect, of evolution: cooperation.

...In Nowak’s view, figuring out how cooperation comes about and breaks down, as well as actively pursuing the “struggle for existence,” is the key to our survival as a species.

Fix pie-chart, get bosses’ dough

GW, 4/8 — ...A longtime professor of accounting at Baruch college — and a critic of misleading accounting practices — used to tell a joke about a chief executive interviewing prospective auditors and asking, “What is two plus two?”The winner... responded, “What number were you looking for?”

Why rulers grant small reforms

GW, 4/15 — …In the relationship between rulers and ruled in Britain in the 19th and into the 20th centuries…the ruling elite in Britain bought its discontented masses with just enough reform to avoid revolution… “Reform that you may preserve.”

More temp-work is biz strategy

NYT, 4/20 — …Temporary employment [is] always a boom industry in Europe….The loosening of Germany’s traditionally rigid labor market has been crucial in preventing at least some companies from shipping production abroad.

At the heart of the debate is the question of whether a temporary low-wage job is better than no job at all.

The rise of temporary labor has contributed to a plunge in German joblessness. The unemployment rate has fallen to just above 7 percent, or 3.2 million people, from nearly 12 percent in 2005, or almost 5 million people.

Temporary employment agencies have soaked up a large proportion of those jobless people….Labor representatives, however, said that companies were using temporary workers to replace permanent employees and were systematically paying them less than permanent workers doing the same job….IG Metall…union plans to make temporary work an issue in nationwide contract talks next year.

Proof of British savagery in Africa

GW, 4/15 — The full extent of British brutality during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya 50 years ago has begun to emerge through government reports documenting “systematic” torture, starvation and even the burning alive of detainees.

Boxes of previously undisclosed documents…have been unearthed….They record the methods employed to defeat the rebellion and government awareness of abuses....The Foreign Office insists that…constitutional precedents…block the survivors’ quest for compensation.

Medical free market is fairy tale

NYT, 4/19 — To the editor: David Brooks writes that Representative Paul D. Ryan “believes that health care costs will not be brought under control until consumers take responsibility for their decisions and providers have market-based incentives to reduce prices.”

I’d like to know exactly how this works. Do we ask for formal quotes for the total costs of surgery for acute appendicitis or for hospitalization for a heart attacks or pneumonia? Do we shop for the cheapest doctor in town to insert stents in our coronary arteries?....How can anyone know, in advance of actually having an illness, what the insurance company will decide to pay, given the vague, confusing language always used to describe benefits? And this is how the average [person] is supposed to reduce medical and insurance costs on his or her own?

Egypt: Army is now the dictator

NYT, 4/12 — …An Egyptian blogger was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for criticizing the military…. “This ruling is a warning to all journalists, bloggers and human rights activists in Egypt that the punishment for criticizing the army is a sentence in a  military prison.”

…His blog…argued that little changed when Mubarak was removed from power. “The revolution until how has succeeded in getting rid of the dictator, but the dictatorship is still there.”…. “Even though the army pretended more than once to have sided with the the revolution, the imprisonment and torture of activists continued exactly in the same way that used to happen before the revolution…”

In the last two months, the military has brought hundreds of civilians before its tribunals, including scores of protestors.

‘Blessings’ of Russian capitalism

GW, 4/15 — The richest slice of Russian society has doubled its wealth in the past 20 years, while almost two-thirds of the population is no better off and the poor are barely half as wealhty as they were when the Soviet Union fell....The huge gap betweenn rich and poor “largely” negates the economics and social achievments of recent years.”

Rich buy judges to try their cases

NYT, 4/18 — ...An ugly, expensive campaign for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court is but the latest example of what is now common in judicial elections: millions of dollars in misleading television ads, subsidized by lobbbies that have cases before the bench.

In 39 states, at least some judges are elected. Voters rarely know much, if anything, about the candidates, making illusory the democratic benefits of such elections....A study of 29 campaigns in the 10 costliest judicial elections states over the last decade revealed the extraordinary comparative power of “super spenders” in court races....The United States Supreme Court...made clear, however, that campaign spending requires disqualification of a judge [in a case] only rarely.

Surprise! Gov’t serves big banks

NYT, 4/19 — ...It sure looks as through the country’s top bank regulator is back to its old tricks.

Though, to be honest, calling the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency a “regulator” is almost laughable...The O.C.C. is a coddlier, a protevtor, an outright enabler of the institutionas it oversees.

Back during the subprime bubble, for instance, it was so eager to please its “clients” — yes, that’s how O.C.C. exectuives used to describe the banks — that it steamrolled anyone who tried to stop lending abuses....You’d think the financial crises would have knocked some sense into the agency...But you would be wrong. Like the banks themselves, the O.C.C. seems to have forgotten that the financial crises ever took place.

It was consistently defended the Too Big to Fail banks.

This one time, voting worked!

NYT, 4/1 — ...They told me if I voted for McCain, we’d be going to war in a thid Muslim country...I voted for McCain and we’re doing it.

Net blitz spurs obesity in children

NYT, 4/21 — Like many marketers, General Mills and other food companies are rewriting the rules for reaching children in the Internet age. these companies, often selling sugar cereals and junk food, are using multimedia games, online quizzes and cellphone apps to build deep ties with young consumers....These tactics..blur the line between advertising and entertainment...Companies like Unilever and Post Foods, let marketers engage children in a way they cannot on television, where rules lmit commercial time....

“Food marketers have tried to each childrne since the age of the carnival barker, but they’ve never been able to bypass parents so successfully.”

Obama doesn’t order deport halts

NYT, 4/21 — Religious and civil rights groups have asked Mr. Obama to expand waiverd that would amke it easier for [undocumented] immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens to fix their legal status without having to leave the United States.

....Some...said the president should halt deportations of immigrants whose children are American citizens. An estimated four million young citizens have at least one parent who is an [undocumented] immigrant.

...Under the Obama administration, immigration authorities have carried out record numbers of deportations, with nearly 400,000 immigrants removed in each of the last two years.

 ...But media don’t fault capitalism

NYT, 4/19 — After accusing [Russian] governemnt officials here of involement in large-scale tax fraud three years ago, Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer for a major international investment fund, was arrested and jailed for nearly a year unitl he died mysteriously in detention.

Mr. Magnistky’s claims have never been fully investigated, and on Monday, a year and a half after his death, his former colleguaes unveiled informaiton that they said showed that the officials he implicated have become astonishingly wealthy.

REDEYE 4/27/11

Multinationals financed Qaddafi

NYT, 3/20 — To the editor: In his March 25 column…to do with Colonel Qaddafi’s staying power…Brooks does not mention the…decisive influence of the American military-industrial complex.

As reported in “Shady Dealings Helped Qaddafi Amass Fortune (front page NYT, March 24), Colonel Qaddafi’s continued domination over Libya has a lot to do with the willingness of multinationals like Boeing, Raytheon, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Caterpillar and Halliburton to contribute to his “kleptocracy” and thereby reap for themselves enormous economic gain.

Ruling-class sociology

LAT, 3/26 — “A zillionaire, an immigrant, and a [jobless] union member” confront a plate of 12 cookies: “the zillionaire takes 11 of the cookies, and says to the other two, ‘That guy is trying to steal your cookie.’”

Liberal blog sees creeping fascism

Otherwords.org, 3/18 — …Fascism isn’t dead. Its basic tenet is what Mussolini called “supercapitalism,” a system where governments and corporations work hand-in glove. In Mussolini’s day, that meant governments needed to take over companies. Today, the companies just take over the government.

Old-time fascism called for war and violence to control useful foreign resources and intimidate dissidents at home. Our country has taken up war, partly for that very same purpose….

Besides physically controlling the populace, fascism was prone to letting folks stew in their own economic juice. Unions were destroyed. Workers, despite their increasing poverty, were expected to be loyal to the unified national expansion campaign, as was everybody else. These days, you can hear similar echoes in congressional…debates….Many people accept this inhumane sacrifice because of their nationalist zeal….But it’s disturbing to hear our two political parties speak so often with a single voice on wars, drugs, deficits, homeland security, foreign bases, taxes, and other issues….Most…don’t even know what fascism was about. We rarely hear the term now. Nonetheless, it’s chilling to see some of its tenets quietly creep into contemporary public policy.

Imperialists invaded tribal Africa

NYT, 3/23 — Is the battle for Libya the clash of a brutal dictator against a democratic opposition, or is it fundamentally a tribal civil war?....

Artificial states with boundaries drawn in sharp straight lines by pens of colonial powers have trapped inside their borders tribes and sects who…never volunteered to live together…Libya, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates: The tribes and sects that make up these more artificial states have long been held together by the iron fist of colonial powers, kings [and] military dictators. They have no real “citizens”….

It becomes difficult to discern where the [rebellion] stops and the desire that “my tribe take over from your tribe” begins.

No proof computer can = teacher

NYT, 4/6 — …[An] English student…was asked a question about the meaning of social Darwinism. He pasted the question into Google and read a summary of a Wikipedia entry. He copied the language, spell-checked it and e-mailed it to his teacher….

Expanding ranks of students in kindergarten through grade 12 — more than one million in the United States, by one estimate — [are] taking online courses.

Advocates of such courses say they allow schools to offer…a richer menu of electives and Advanced Placement classes where there are not enough’ students to fill a classroom.

But critics say online education is really driven by a desire to spend less on teachers and buildings, especially as state and local budget crises bring deep cuts to education. They note that there is no sound research showing that online courses….are comparable to face-to-face learning.

Capitalist China lies about history

NYT, 4/4 — [Chinese] officials rejected proposals for a permanent historical exhibition that would have discussed disasters of early Communist rule…Instead, the authorities decided that the exhibition on contemporary China should focus, as did the museum before its extensive makeover, on the party’s triumphs…. “The part [today] wants to determine [what’s] historical truth,” said Yang Jisheng, a historian whose landmark book on the Great Leap Forward  was banned in China. “It worries that if competing versions are allowed, then its legitimacy will be called into question.”

Many countries do not present their history in terms independent historians consider full credible. American museums have been under pressure to account more fully for slavery. American…museums celebrate the westward expansion of the United States but give short shrift to the displacement and killing of Native Indians.

Even so, few countries can compete with China in so completely suppressing the shades of gray…

Rich nations will control Haiti prez

NYT, 4/6 — Martelly, who…won more than two-thirds of the votes cast in the March 20 presidential runoff [has] set about reassuring Haiti and the world that he was the capacity to lead a country still on its knees from the January 2010 earthquake, a cholera epidemic and decades of the worst poverty in the hemisphere….There are reserves of skepticism…among diplomats of some countries contributing to the several billion dollars pledged, but far form fully delivered, to rebuild the country.

Martelly must now “balance the exigencies placed on him by foreign governments and agencies with the needs and aspirations of the Haitian populations.”….He ascended largely on the back of young, desperately poor supporters.

Big-power action spurred by oil

NYT, 3/24 — …The world [power] took three-and-a-half years to respond forcefully to the slaughter in Bosnia, and about three-and-a-half weeks to respond in Libya.

…We’re more likely to intervene where are also oil…interests at stake.

U.S. concern for Libyans is fake

GW, 4/8 — To the editor: about Libya…we could consider the newfound tender concern expressed for precious and vulnerable “civilian casualties”. Anyone who can remember anything at all knows full well that the U.S., in particular, couldn’t care a tinker’s cuss about “civilian casualties”. Just remember the horrible carnage in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan for blatant examples of their callousness in this regard. They didn’t even bother to count the dead, never mind shedding crocodile tears about them.

Women, key in rebellions, now out

GW, 4/8 —…Emerging leaders…have already shown a marked tendency to be male. In Tunisia, only two women serve in the transitional government. In Gypt, a “committee of wise men” was formed. Afer Mubarak was desposed, women’s day was marked by assaults on and arrests of women, some of whom endured virginity tests. There are no women on the committee drafting constitutional change.

“We are furious,” the Egyptian feminist, Nawal El Saaawai, told an interviewer. “we participated in every part of the revolution, and then as soon as it ended we were completely isolated.” She was asked what women in the west could do. “they can support us by fighting their own governments, because your governments are the ones that interfere in our life, by invading and colonisign other countries.”

Issues of class are stirring U.S.

LAT, 3/26 — Collegeville, Minn. — The battle for the Midwest is transforming American politics. Issues of class inequality and union influence, long dormant, have come back to life…Republicans clearly believed unionized public employees were so unpopular that taking them on would play with voters….even union sympathizers were surprised at the degree to which this approached “blew up in their faces” and that “the poll numbers of support for collective bargaining for public-sector workers are stronger than even most labor supporters expected.”