Well, obviously if I take a couple months off from blogging the world goes straight to hell. I won’t make that mistake again.
So let me resume with a nice cheap shot. As of now, and for the last week or so, if you go to Google and enter the search term failure, the top result is the official White House biography of George W. Bush.
The Register has a story about how Tommy Hook, a Los Alamos Laboratory employee, was beaten up on Saturday night, apparently in an attempt to keep him quiet about alleged financial irregularities he uncovered at the facility.
Nothing was take from his car, and his wallet was not stolen. His lawyer Robert Rothstein of New Mexico law firm Rothstein, Donatelli, Hughes, Dahlstrom, Schoenburg & Bienvenu, argues that with no other obvious motive, it looks like the attack is related to his whistle-blowing.“It is clear to us that this was a message,” Susan Hook told AP.
Hook also has a lawsuit pending against the laboratory, in which he accuses managers of the facility of making his life, and that of another whistle-blower, Chuck Monato, so unpleasant that they would quit their jobs.
Fun quote from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his Presidential papers (November 8, 1954):
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
So many examples of right-wing Christian hypocrisy lately! If all the satirists went on strike we would hardly notice.
Spokane Mayor Jim West, an outspoken anti-gay Republican, turns out to be gay. West, who has pushed anti-gay legislation and a bill to outlaw sex among teenagers, apparently was cruising the Internet for teenage guys from his office. “‘I didn’t masturbate in my office,’ he insists with Clintonian specificity.” While not happy to be outed, West is dwelling on the fact that he’s gay, hoping to divert attention from the fact that he’s accused of being a serial pedophile.
Meanwhile, in Missouri, the Governor Matt Blunt has signed legislation enacting Medicaid cuts that will eliminate health insurance coverage for about 100,000 parents, people with disabilities and elderly people. Faced with the criticism that the cuts are simply morally wrong, the governor (a devout Christian) brazens it out and insists that cutting health care for the poor is morally correct because raising taxes is wrong. Indeed, Jessica Robinson, the governor’s press secretary, has argued that the cuts are actually good for the poor, by providing an incentive for them to get job training. As Dave Barry might say, I am not making this up.
South Carolina Rep. John Graham Altman has killed a bill which would protect the victims of domestic abuse against their batterers by making domestic abuse a felony. Battering the wife remains a misdemeanor in South Carolina, an offense just as serious as…jaywalking.
Not so for cockfighting, which Altman voted to make a felony.
Terri Schiavo died today, and right-wingers who never met her are making a great show of mourning her passing. George W. Bush noted that “The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak,” which is a bit ironic given his proposed Medicaid cuts and support for bankruptcy restrictions, to name just a couple of recent examples of his preference for the strong. The President, who has twice started wars of aggression, further called on Americans to “build a culture of life.”
Since the flags continue to fly at half-staff in memory of Ronald Reagan, it’s worth showing you this piece by Isaac Asimov on the subject of the Reagan Doctrine. Asimov dissects Reagan’s infamous comment, regarding the Soviet Union, that “No one who disbelieves in God and in an afterlife can possibly be trusted.”
If this is true (and it must be if the president says so), then people are just naturally dishonest and crooked and downright rotten. In order to keep them from lying and cheating every time they open their mouths, they must be bribed or scared out of doing so….It’s a little depressing, if you come to think of it. By the Reagan Doctrine, there is no such thing as a person who keeps his word just because he has a sense of honor. No one tells the truth just because he thinks that it is the decent thing to do. No one is kind because he feels sympathy for others, or treats others decently because he likes the kind of world in which decency exists.
Reagan’s supporters did not think it strange then, and do not think it strange now, that a habitual liar would lecture us on whom we should trust.
International Workers Day, or May Day, is a day of celebration, remembrance and solidarity. On the first of May, workers throughout the world demonstrate for better working conditions, socio-economic equality, universal healthcare and education, and the right to unionize and strike. But, to best understand why workers in America should celebrate May Day, we need to know its history.
The 19th century witnessed some of the worst acts of barbarity in the workplace. Women, children and immigrants were used as a source of cheap and obedient labor, working conditions were outrageous, unions were small and brutally repressed, and workers spent 10, 12 or 14 hours a day making profit for the bosses. It was capitalism at its best.
In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) passed a resolution demanding the eight-hour workday, starting from and after May 1, 1886. The resolution called for a general strike; by April 1886, over 250,000 Americans had heeded the call. The eight-hour movement was growing rapidly and radically, especially in Chicago.
On May 3, 1886, following some successes, strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works Factory in Chicago faced police batons and bullets. Four workers were killed and many injured. Immediately afterwards, a local group of anarchists organized an anti-police brutality rally in Haymarket Square. On May 4, thousands came out for the evening rally without incident.
As the last speaker took to the platform the rally had dwindled down to a couple hundred, and nearly 200 police officers moved in to disperse the crowd. In the shuffle, a bomb was thrown among the police, killing one and injuring dozens, resulting in police gunfire, which killed or injured an unknown number of workers.
This event became known as the Haymarket Tragedy (or "Haymarket Riot"), and saw a sharp increase in police repression of anarchists, socialists and unionists.
Eight prominent Chicago anarchists — August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg and Oscar Neebe — were arrested, tried and convicted of conspiracy in the Haymarket bombing by a rigged jury and biased judge, with little evidence and even though only one was actually at the rally (and he was a speaker on the platform).
Parsons, Spies, Fischer and Engel were hanged on November 11, 1887; Louis Lingg committed suicide the day before his execution on November 10, 1887; Illinois Governor Altgeld pardoned Fielden, Schwab and Neebe on June 26, 1893.
In 1889, the founding congress of the Second (Socialist) International met in Paris, France, on the one-hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, and called for a worldwide demonstration for the eight-hour day.
May 1, 1890, saw mass demonstrations throughout Europe and the Americas. Frederick Engels, who attended the first May Day demonstration in London on May 3, wrote: "As I write these lines, the proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces; it is mobilized for the first time as one army, under one flag, and fighting for one immediate aim: an eight-hour working day."
In 1904, the Second (Socialist) International declared May 1 an annual day of demonstration "for the legal establishment of the eight-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat and for universal peace."
Unfortunately, May Day began to lose importance in the United States, its place of origin. In 1894, the U.S. government declared the first Monday in September as Labor Day, with the aim of pulling the labor movement away from the radical nature of May Day. The American Federation of Labor (successor to the FOTLU) was becoming one of the largest unions in America and, by 1905, had gone with the government in supporting Labor Day and disavowing May Day altogether.
To add insult to injury, the American Bar Association declared May 1 a celebration of the principles and practices of capitalist law and order — Law Day. Then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower established Law Day by proclamation in 1958. It’s especially ironic that May 1 would be used to celebrate the power of law, which is exactly what was used to murder Parsons, Spies, Fischer and Engel.
Today, International Workers’ Day is celebrated throughout the world and is recognized as the official workers’ holiday in almost every country, except the United States. Each year, millions of workers demonstrate, wave flags and carry banners, sing and dance, educate, organize and agitate for a better, peaceful tomorrow.
As workers of the world, it is our duty to remember our past and to use that strength to carry our class into the future. As the great socialist and unionist Eugene V. Debs said in 1907, "This is the first and only International Labor Day. It belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the revolution."
This blog has been pretty sparse of late. Let’s see if I can correct that. Some of the stories I’ve run here are still in the news, in one way or another:
The rolling blackouts in California continue to be the source of much legal wrangling, with power companies denying they acted in concert to screw California ratepayers, even though some of the executives responsible have already confessed.
With the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, there is renewed speculation that terror suspects will be tortured by U.S. officials. The United States so far hasn’t bothered to deny it. And don’t look for the Democrats to make an issue of it.
My spouse was recently emailed a copy of an urban myth about how soldiers and sailors love George W. Bush so very much, which is strange considering that Dubya remains AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard.
While ostensibly we refuse to be terrorized, the promotion of fear by the White House continues apace. Get some duct tape. Wait, no, don’t.
On the other hand, there’s relative silence in the media about corporate crime, which must be good news for the Bushies who don’t want you to think too carefully about Halliburton getting a piece of the postwar Iraqi oil business.
Most people in the Middle East think a war on Iraq is part of a crusade against Islam, despite all the Bush propaganda to the contrary.
We keep hearing how Saddam Hussein might use chemical weapons against American invaders, as he did against Iranian invaders, but we never hear that the Iraqis were themselves subjected to chemical attack at the hands of the British.
And old peace song is in my head lately, “The Bankers and the Diplomats”.
Oh, the bankers and the diplomats are going in the army:
Oh, happy day, I'd spend my pay to see them on parade,
Their paunches at attention and their stri-ped pants at ease -
They've gotten patriotic and they're going overseas.
We'll have to do the best we can and bravely carry on,
So we'll just keep the laddies here to manage while they're gone.
I’d love to have a recording of someone singing it.
