Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Science of Coercion
The science of coercion is based on fear. Make a credible threat to the powerless, and compliance will likely follow. That’s what happened to deported parents under Zero Tolerance aimed at immigrants.
Lied to and threatened by ICE agents, it’s not hard to see how these parents lost their 431 children at the border. Having fled violence in their home countries — much of it caused by US policy and acts — seeking asylum is often their last chance to safely raise their kids. Now, that chance has been denied.
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Trade Wars
I still remember the monotonous monologues of US presidential candidate Trump in the summer of 2016. His mindless derision of China, for some unknown reason, played particularly well with his White Nationalist base of moronic supporters.
Now, halfway through his first term, Trump's trade-wars with Canada, Mexico, Europe and China threaten to plunge the United States further into recession. Combined with the tax cuts to the wealthy, the American economy could resemble that of Moldova.
As noted in this article, tariffs and sanctions are going to hurt everyone. As U.S. Senator Corker (Republican from Tennessee) said, "You have a terrible policy that sends farmers to the poorhouse, and then you put them on welfare...It's hard to believe that there isn't an outright revolt right now in Congress."
As the world's second largest economy, attacking China isn't like bullying Honduras.
Now, halfway through his first term, Trump's trade-wars with Canada, Mexico, Europe and China threaten to plunge the United States further into recession. Combined with the tax cuts to the wealthy, the American economy could resemble that of Moldova.
As noted in this article, tariffs and sanctions are going to hurt everyone. As U.S. Senator Corker (Republican from Tennessee) said, "You have a terrible policy that sends farmers to the poorhouse, and then you put them on welfare...It's hard to believe that there isn't an outright revolt right now in Congress."
As the world's second largest economy, attacking China isn't like bullying Honduras.
Thursday, July 26, 2018
A Fascist Judiciary
As chronicled in a recent article on the National Lawyers Guild blog, the half-century takeover of the federal judiciary by organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce — with support from fascist foundations like Koch — has presented a golden opportunity for the present US president to establish a fascist judiciary that will last decades. As Trump makes what is expected to be nearly 300 appointments to the federal bench during his first term, corporations can ruthlessly rule all aspects of American life with impunity.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
State Violence and Capitalist Media
In Not a Twitter Revolution: Anti-neoliberal and Antiracist Resistance in the Ferguson Movement, Cristina Mislan and Amalia Dache-Gerbino examine how community activists overcame mainstream media’s criminalization of protestors and social media dominance to present a nuanced story about police brutality as “a product of an institutionally racist economic state system.” As the authors note,
By placing social media in context with interviews, this study challenges previous scholarly works that celebrate social media as pillars of social movements. We reposition St. Louis activists (not Twitter discourse) as the central voices of the movement and argue that “leadership and organizing cannot be simply tweeted into existence.”
Sunday, July 22, 2018
Kill the Rich
As an aristocracy with democratic trappings, the United States managed to function relatively well since the New Deal. With the Bush/Obama/Trump tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, however, dysfunctional barely describes the present and future situation in which deteriorating basic infrastructure and social safety nets come to resemble conditions in Eastern Europe.
While the $10 trillion dollar loss to the U.S. Treasury proceeds to condemn the elderly and the poor to misery, its infusion into the private equity of the ultra-rich creates a Trump-Towerian effect where the aristocracy can literally look out over the landscape of destruction their greed has created. As the Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos remarked in Mexico,
We are coming after the rich of this country, we are going to kick them out, and if they have committed crimes, well, we will put them in prison… because this is the time that has come. We say that coexisting with them is not possible, because their existence means our disappearance.
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Changed Circumstances
In 1996, following on the heels of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building by Christian Patriot white supremacists, the FBI under the Clinton administration arrested eight Christian Patriots in Seattle, who were later convicted on firearms and explosives charges. In 2018, the FBI is targeting human rights activists, while the Trump administration actively courts white supremacists.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Against Freedom
The American story is one of a people against freedom. Due to their psychological limitations imposed by Christianity and capitalism, they could not allow the indigenous peoples, fish and wildlife to roam freely. They had to either imprison or kill everything that was free.
To illustrate this fact, simultaneous with the conflicts between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, i.e. Battle of the Little Bighorn, was the destruction of bison to deprive Indians of their primary protein source. In Montana, there were 13 million bison in 1870; by 1884, the slaughter authorized by Congress reduced bison in the entire United States to 325.
Coming to grips with this ugly reality requires an open mind, free from the disingenuous mythology.
To illustrate this fact, simultaneous with the conflicts between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, i.e. Battle of the Little Bighorn, was the destruction of bison to deprive Indians of their primary protein source. In Montana, there were 13 million bison in 1870; by 1884, the slaughter authorized by Congress reduced bison in the entire United States to 325.
Coming to grips with this ugly reality requires an open mind, free from the disingenuous mythology.
Saturday, July 14, 2018
N30 to J20
Much has changed since N30, when the Chiapas Insurrection came to America. The Battle in Seattle set the tone for nearly two decades of civil protest in the war between markets and networks. With the institutionalization of fascism during the intervening years, however, the tone has changed. J20 was not the black flag over Seattle; it was the rejection of the administration of hate.
