Philosophy of the Smarty Pants

“The Ten Assumptions of Science,” by Glenn Borchardt, 2004

This slim volume of scientific philosophy also applies outside of science.  It is a through-going intellectual broadside against idealism and anti-materialism, in favor of materialism.  The author takes on aspects of Einstein while making fun of monkeys typing novels, un-noisy falling trees, time travel, the ‘end of history,’ creationism and the big bang.  Borchardt’s own name for these dueling dualisms are ‘determinism’ and ‘indeterminism,’ which amount to the same concepts, or, in his exact method, ‘similar’ concepts.

The U.S. is not friendly to philosophy – unless it is some version of pragmatism, which barely qualifies as an ethos.  Borchardt understands that basic hypotheses – let’s say ‘infinity’ - cannot actually be tested.  Ultimately, they are based on assumptions that underlie research, providing direction or context in regard to that research.  Borchardt does not choose his assumptions out of the blue, but based on generally accurate orientations that match the accumulating facts, as he and science understand them.    For instance, many scientists assume the ‘big bang’ is true, even though it has not been proved.  Yet, according to Borchardt, it makes sense to them because they believe in certain untested quasi-religious assumptions about time and matter.  Those are their assumptions.

Borchardt is a dialectician, and certainly a materialist, at least in the realm of science and extending into the ideas of human society.  He does not use the moniker ‘dialectical materialist’ however. These are his 10 assumptions and their dialectical opposites; thesis and anti-thesis, neatly arranged:

1.         Materialism                                         -1.        Immaterialism

2.         Causality                                             -2.        Acausality

3.         Uncertainty                                         -3.        Certainty

4.         Inseparability                                      -4.        Separability

5.         Conservation                                       -5.        Creation

6.         Complementarity                                -6.        Noncomplementarity

7.         Irreversibility                                       -7.        Reversibility

8.         Infinity                                                -8.        Finity

9.         Relativism                                           -9.        Absolutism

10.       Interconnection                                  -10.       Disconnection

As you can see, this lineup shows one of these columns to be at a disadvantage as far as science is concerned, though perhaps not at the religious charter school, the home-schooler near you or CNN.  As the decades go by, and more and more scientific information becomes available through research, idealist/indeterminist ideas become more and more questionable and pushed to the ostensible margins.  Time is on the side of materialism, evidently, unless it is destroyed.  However, Borchardt points out that idealism still exists among the ranks of scientists themselves, which should be no surprise, given the society we live in. 

Marxists are scientists too, and so closely follow developments in the arena of science. (See review of “Ubiquity” below, for more on scientific philosophy.)  This book will only bolster Marxist concepts – including those of constant change, spiral history, and the impulse to organization, not just disorder.  Borchardt cites Engels only once, quoting him in support of the concept of ‘matter being unthinkable without motion’ (from “Dialectics of Nature), which is part of Borchardt’s concept of inseparability. 

Borchardt is not alone in believing that assumptions underlie science.  His essay starts off with a riff on R.G. Collinwood, an idealist who also understood that scientific assumptions – metaphysics - were at the heart of much research and conclusions.   He quotes extensively from David Bohm, a philosopher-physician who shares Borchart’s views.  His overall view challenges mechanistic science of the Newtownian variety and ‘systems analysis’ of a more recent variety with an approach that universalizes an ‘environment’ that embraces all things.  I am going to sample each assumption, but reading the whole book gives you a fair view of the latest advanced scientific outlook.  Don’t expect the Cliff Notes version to fully make sense to you.

1. Materialism.  The external world is not dependent on a solipsistic observer.  Ludwig Feurbach observed that ‘faiths of all kinds were derived from the material existence of the people who held them.’  Without material reality, there is no science or actual knowing.  This seems to be pretty basic, from Democritus to today.
2. Causality.   Any effect has numerous material causes.  Since nothing is purely static, nothing is ‘uncaused.’  The motion of the earth around the sun, for instance, involves an infinite number of gravitational fields, among other forces.  Try to count them.
3. Uncertainty.  Heisenberg’s 1927 uncertainty principal was a groundbreaking development, which rejected ultimate knowledge.  Bohm himself thinks the search for Einstein’s ‘god particle’ or ultimate law fruitless.  As Borchardt puts it, we can only know more about more, but never all about all.  “Chance’ – the favorite myth of indeterminists – is just another name for ignorance.
4. Inseparability.  “Without Separability, souls, ghosts and gods would find no home in the universe.”  Matter and motion are one, as pointed out by Spinoza, Hobbes and Engels.  Matter never stops moving and motion is matter in action.  There is no such thing as absolute zero – in fact it has never been discovered.  The third law of thermodynamics precludes it.  Energy can never be without matter, as it is just a characteristic of matter.  I.E. ghosts don’t exist, nor does ‘space-time’ in the conventional sense, as space is really matter and time is a form of motion.
5. Conservation.  Matter and the motion of matter can not be created or destroyed.  The Greek Aniximander and the Roman Lucretius pointed this out hundreds of years ago.  This is also the first law of thermodynamics.  Explain that to the ‘creationists’ of humans or the universe.  The universe will never disappear.
6. Complementarity.  Matter is subject to both convergence and divergence.  Borchardt takes on the second law of thermodynamics, which predicts ultimate entropy.  He argues that there are also complementary forces in the universe that ‘organize’ matter and motion, hence the second law is incomplete without its anti-thesis.  Everything does not head towards ruin, otherwise the universe would not have existed as long as it has.  He calls this the “SLT-Order paradox.”  “Negentropy” is the word for this opposing force.  Borchardt insists that the environment to every ‘system’ actually influences that system, hence ultimate entropy is impossible. 
7. Irreversibility.  Time travel is impossible.  Nothing happens the same way twice.  All experience burdens the future, and cannot be erased.  Time moves in one direction, not backward, not sideways, not cyclically, nor does it end.  Pretty basic also.  The second law of thermodynamics actually supports this assumption. 
8. Infinity.  The universe is both macroscopically and microscopically infinite.  There is no edge to the universe, nor are there ‘basic’ particles.  The ‘edge’ of the universe is only that area we cannot see.  Ignorance again, like the role of God.   As science has found out, the atom and then the electron have been broken down into even smaller particles - 3 types of electrons and also quarks.  There is no reason to believe there are not smaller ones.  As Borchart says, “Timid minds will seek shelter from the godless specter of infinity.  As always, it will be to no avail.” 
9. Relativism.  As opposed to Absolutism.  The Greek sophists were the first relativists.  They poked holes in every logical ‘law.’  Sophism is now an insult, usually hurled by apologists for conventionality.  For instance, analogy and disparity are useful in categorizing things. However, nothing is actually ‘identical’ to something else.  As Borchardt puts it, ‘in nature there are no absolute equalities and no absolute inequalities.’  Plato was wrong, as are the long line of idealists after him.
10. Interconnection.  Here is where we get spacey.  The world is both continuous and discontinuous, yet every single part of the universe is connected, as there are no isolated systems.  Empty space doesn’t exist – it is an idea - as is solid matter.  Only matter in motion exists - everywhere - almost as a kind of ether.  Om.

Borchardt’s book actually makes great sense and is somewhat simple to read, once you understand he is not straying from the material reality we know.  It challenges certain ideas that float in the bourgeois air we breathe, and now you know why they are fraudulent.  

And I bought it at Mayday Books,  on the recommendation of John.

Red Frog

May 21, 2013

Smokin' Another Spike Lee Joint

“Red Hook Summer,” Film by Spike Lee, 2012

Spike Lee is one of those directors who’s movies always have something to offer, even if the film itself is not very strong.  That is the sign of a good director.  “Red Hook Summer” is his latest film, mostly ignored by critics.  Lee told Quentin Tarantino recently that ‘slavery was not a spaghetti western’ and that is one of the great things about Lee.  Black people are not fucking clichés.  “Django,” Tarantino’s latest, runs like a fantasy comedy/melodrama.  There is so much falsity about the whole thing, you can’t help but laugh – and then get bored.  After all, it is 2.5 long hours of predictable shooting and fake blood.  Like “Tremé,” the series filmed in New Orleans after Katrina (“Tremé” is reviewed below), Lee doesn’t people his movies with black gangsters, black buffoons or many stereotypes.  Now, I do have a weakness for Madea – one of my all time favorite funny women.  (As in, “Who you callin’ a buffoon?  YOU a buffoon!  Or did you call me a baboon? You racist son of a bitch!  I should slap your lips off.”)  But the middle-class black people in the rest of the Tyler Perry cohort should go back to Cosbyville.  Perhaps Medea could send them there…

‘Red Hook Summer’ concerns a 13-year-old Atlanta boy coming to visit his grandfather in Red Hook, New York for summer vacation.  It could have been only a gauzy coming-of-age story, set in storied Nu Yawk, but instead confronts two kinds of black.  “Old-time” religious black and ‘mohawk’ middle-class youth black, wielding his iPad camera like a junior Spike.  Grandpa is a Jesus nut and never shuts up about it.  This harangue becomes claustrophobic at some point during the film even for most viewers, perhaps just the way “Flik” feels it.  Flik’s a vegan, an atheist and won’t have anything to do with Grandpa Rouse’s lunacies.  Rouse locks the vegan food that his mother sent in a cupboard, and makes him eat eggs and ham.  Yeah.  So Flik steals chips and soda from the basement of “Little Heaven” to survive, the church where Rouse is the Bishop.  Rouse makes him work around the church, hand out leaflets for church meetings and generally tries to intimidate him into religion.  Flik wants to go home and his mother tells him to just try to survive.  Your sympathies as a viewer are with the young boy Flik, though some may be with Rouse.  If so, Spike has a surprise for you.

TV comedian Kamau Bell appeared this winter at the Cedar in Minneapolis, and, among his mostly ethnic and liberal humor, made fun of atheists as being somewhere on the level of Ben Affleck. (For my take on Affleck, see review of “Argo,” below.)  Actual black radicals in the ‘60s and ‘70s were wary of the church and the pastors, as they knew they were the conservative part of the black population.  MLK, the best of the preachers, was not for ‘black power’ and supported ‘turning the other cheek’ – an event Malcolm X derided.  Many black radicals in that time became Marxists, including the Black Panther Party, Amiri Baraka, many in SNCC, Robert Williams and Detroit’s various Leagues of Revolutionary Black Workers, among others.  We won't get started on African Marxists.  Nearly all Marxists are atheists.  So evidently you can be black and an atheist too.  Not by Kamau Bell!  Well, Kamau Bell is no radical, so no surprise here.  He’s a good left-Democrat and has a show on the FX network and you don’t. 

Atheists actually can suffer capital punishment in 7 countries in the world, all Muslim ones.  6 states in the U.S. have laws prohibiting atheists from public office and juries. Atheists are more hated than gay people, at least according to U.S. surveys.  This and more is all in a 2012 report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU).  So not exactly “Ben Affleck” status.  After all, Michelle Obama gave him an Oscar.   

Kamau Bell grew up in a conventional culture that is saturated with the church, and his attitude is somewhat understandable.  He’s blazingly pro-gay and some black churches are not – so he should wonder about that.  Marx called religion the ‘opiate of the people’ and nowhere is this appellation more appropriate than the black (and Latino) church.  The black church has also been a progressive institution, unavoidably I’d say, and only up to a point.  In white churches, on the other hand, so many are sunk in the ‘prosperity gospel’ or blandness that they mostly appeal to well-off whites – or those hoping to be so. (See review of “God and Wal-Mart,” reviewed below.) 

Well, for my money, Spike Lee has turned on that crazy black religiosity in this film.  The boy befriends a pretty local girl, daughter of one of the church members, and they spend the summer hanging out, even though they are different.  Her mother tells Rouse, over Rouse’s grousing, that Flik is ‘the nicest boy” her Chazz has ever met.  Flik makes an amateur bunch of shots of his experiences that summer on his iPad, and gives it to Chazz when they part.  In return, Chazz gives all she’s got – a cross necklace. 

Music is the soul of Little Heaven and the organist plays like he’s Booker T, while the Bishop preaches. The organist is Jonathan Batiste, New Orleans and now Harlem musician and educator. The little, broke congregation dances and sings, and yeah, its like a nightclub for people who don’t go to nightclubs.  Good shit.  Way better than white church music, as we all know.  Gospel was part of the birth of the blues and rock and roll, and for that we can be thankful. 

Lee gets in his digs at white homeowners and gentrifiers, the wish for making it big in the stock market, the ignoring of black poverty and the forgotten Red Hook projects.  The drunk church deacon downstairs knows the limitations of the Lord.  Lee’s political ideas are there.  And then some.  It turns out a ‘little Catholic’ bleeds into this film.  While preaching one Sunday, Bishop Rouse is confronted by a young man who accuses him of molestation years ago.  It is clear that the man is telling the truth, even to the Bishop’s friends and deacons in the church.  The Bishop forlornly admits it to Flik, while being filmed on the iPad, describing the sexual events while he worked at a church in Atlanta.  That church told him to leave when they discovered the abuse.  After this, Flik returns to Atlanta, where Flik’s mother, who is also Rouse’s estranged daughter, live.  And Rouse has to join him, as he is run out of Little Heaven.  So the point Lee is trying to make here, I think, is that people who are a bit too ‘emotionally’ over the top in their love of Jesus may be hiding something that you don’t want to know about.  Yeah, Jesus is failed by another of his fans. 

The film ends with the gauzy pastiche of the iPad patchwork shot by Flik all summer – the black and Puerto Rican people of this immortal neighborhood on Brooklyn, Long Island.  “On the Waterfront” was set in Red Hook, and so was “A View From the Bridge,” by Arthur Miller and “Memos from Purgatory” by Harlan Ellison.

While 'Red Hook Summer' doesn't hold together very well, Lee takes a stab at black religion and survives.  Perhaps Kamau Bell too should realize being black doesn’t mean being religiously conservative.  Although that might not get the laughs on FX.

And I saw it on Netflix

Red Frog

May 14, 2013

Really Primitive Accumulation

“From Solidarity to Sellout – the Transition to Capitalism in Poland,” by Tadeusz Kowalik, 2013.

This book is an in-depth account of the transition to capitalism in Poland, especially the period 1988-1991, and should stand as a classic in its genre.  Kowalik covers in detail the theoretical and programmatic disagreements among the various thinkers and formations over that period, including Solidarnosc, the ostensibly Communist Polish United Workers Party (‘PZPR’), the IMF, various foreign ‘advisors’ and the multiple shades in between.  Kowalik himself is not a communist in the PZPR anymore, having been expelled in 1968.  Instead he is a social-democrat and a fan of Keynes and Stiglitz.  He was and still is interested in turning Poland into something like Sweden, Austria or even Germany – a ‘social’ market economy.  As part of this view, Kowalik praises China and Vietnam for their slow approach to privatization and a market economy.  As he puts it, "What kind of capitalism is viable from a social point of view?"  The value of this book is that it calmly depicts how a proletarian state can be overturned, and describes the players that did it.

It is certainly significant that the Polish worker’s state could ultimately be overthrown without violence, which only goes to show that the state was based on the working-class – and when that class withdrew its allegiance, the state collapsed.  Similar things happened in the USSR and across central Europe.   It is similar to a decertification vote in a union.

Instead, the astounding thing in Poland is that, like Russia under Yeltsin, what won out was capitalist ‘shock treatment,’ otherwise known as the Balcerowicz Plan.  Balcerowicz was the prime minister in the new non-communist reform government dominated by Solidarnosc.  Ideologically, this meant adhering to the most extreme form of Friedmanite, Hayek-leaning, Reagan/Thatcher IMF capitalism.  This came about after somewhat murky, contradictory and extensive discussions in the early 1989 “Round Table” between nearly all parties, including the labor leaders around Solidarnosc like Michnik and Kuron and the PZPR.  Later, following the June 1989 election of the first non-Communist-led government since socialization in 1945, ‘shock treatment’ was officially endorsed, with participation of the PZPR.  Kowalik does not discuss entities like the nationalists or the Catholic Church, which had never been in favor of any kind of socialism or class struggle anyway. In an interesting aside, this Catholic Church is still trying to regain Polish properties it lost more than 200 years ago.

This account does not describe anyone who was for preserving the bureaucratic system in place prior to the Solidarnosc-led Gdansk strikes in 1980-81.  Even Wojciech Jaruzelski eventually resigned.  Nor does it describe anyone from a Marxist perspective who wanted the working-class to take more direct control of the economy and state, and create a truly cooperative commonwealth.  Here is the only reference I found, as Kowalik describes Gomulka’s youthful ideas: “In the early 1960s he (Gomulka) criticized really existing socialism from the position of orthodox Marxism, with a pro-worker and anti-bureaucratic orientation.  In the West such views were often classified as Trotskyite. In Poland, however, this term has negative connotations.” We might ask, ‘which’ Poland?  (By the way, “Trotskyite” is an insulting turn of phrase, used by both Stalinists and the bourgeois press.)

Instead, after Jaruzelski’s martial law in 1981, all enthusiasm for versions of military socialism evaporated among the opposition, and eventually among the bureaucracy.  This is the same role the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia had in that country.  Prior to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Army, the overwhelming majority of the Czecho-Slovak population wanted ‘socialism with a human face.’  Instead they got tanks.  As Kowalik explains it, in Poland martial law cut off Solidarnosc’s leaders from the ranks, creating an isolated and rightward-moving group of intellectuals, heading quickly towards extreme counter-revolution.

Kowalik spends a lot of time on various theories of ownership – as they are basic to the nature of an economy.  While the promoters of shock capitalism in Poland believed that state ownership was inherently inefficient – Kowalik praises various forms of cooperatives, ESOPs, kibbutz, Yugoslavian forms, employee councils, worker self-management and joint worker/owner management, as well as the sometimes beneficial advantages of state ownership.  As he points out, 85 of the top 500 corporations in the world identified by Fortune magazine (no friend of social control) were state-owned.  Capitalist fundamentalism’s hostility to state ownership certainly has played a role in the destruction of Iraq, the current civil war in Syria and the invasion of Libya by NATO.  It is also a basis for the continuing hostility to China. And so too in Poland, this ‘harmless’ theoretical point formed the basis for a huge decimation of working class wages, jobs, conditions, as well as bankruptcy and poverty for many farmers and some small businessman.

According to Kowalik, surveys from 2000 indicated that most people thought they lived better under the worker's state.  The majority of people now oppose the the policies of the Polish elite, according to him.  Part of the reason may be how capitalism was reintroduced.  "Shock therapy’ provided by the IMF and its Polish allies aimed at immediate privatization.  The shock and subsequent full capitalist rule increased unemployment to 19% from almost zero, eliminating 5 million workplaces. It stayed formally at 16% until entry into the EU, and is still among the highest in the EU, much of it falling on youth and college graduates.  Industrial output dropped by 30% in the first months.  Farm income fell by half.  State farms were sold off and the farm workers consigned to destitution even today, while large estates came into private hands. Wages fell from 46.2% of income to 29.9% of the population's compensation.  Inflation was 5 times that predicted after prices were 'freed.'  Imports and the penetration of foreign capital is higher in Poland than anywhere else in the EU.  Womens' wage inequality is the highest among the new members of the EU.  The 'gini' coefficient measuring general social inequality is also highest in the EU. The changes resulted in lowered life spans, increased class stratification, larger foreign debt and engendered massive emigration into the rest of the EU, flooding Germany and England with young Polish speakers.  Just as imperial penetration of the Mexican economy and economic oppression in Mexico send Mexicans north across the U.S. border.  The 'reform' slighted labor laws, increasing accidents, and fatally weakened the union movement.  The same union movement that started and legitimized this process in the first place.

None of the rosy public predictions of the ‘reformers’ came true.  This crude destruction of the economy provided the necessary ‘capital accumulation’ for a new ownership class and middle class in Poland – about 1 million people, according to Kowalik.  (The population of Poland is a bit over 38 million today.)  Theft of social property was the source of their riches, money and assets now flowing upward.  Truly primitive accumulation. 

That the IMF basically had its way with Polish sovereignty is most stunning.  The fact that foreign advisers like Jeffrey Sachs, George Soros, Edward Lippman and Stanislaw Gomulka became the gurus for budding Polish capitalists, and that foreign advisers were allowed to even directly control economic events in Poland is somewhat amazing.  The gigantic worker-led strikes of 1980-1981, instead of producing a “Self-Governing Republic” as Solidarnosc and KOR wanted at the time, ended up in another regime of the rich and the powerful.   Worker self-management had become ‘too socialist’ for Solidarnosc by 1988.

The role of the former bureaucracy played true to form.  As already described in the book, “Contradictions of Real Socialism” (reviewed below), Kowalik also gives evidence that the bureaucracy felt it could take over individual ownership and control of various enterprises, thus making the transition to capitalism quite handsomely.  This also played out in the USSR during their period of shock therapy.  It is happening in China and Vietnam right now, but at a slower pace.  In Vietnam, it started with the 1986 ‘Doi Moi’ program for a ‘socialist-oriented market economy’ and in China, the 1978 de-collectivization and opening to foreign capital organized by Deng Xiaoping, later followed by the privatizations of the 1980s.  In Poland, the Polish party nomenklatura had an interest in capitalist restoration because it saw it could be one of the most immediate beneficiaries, both in property and in corruption and bribes. For instance, PZPR minister and privatization head Krzystof Lis supported privatization as the only alternative to state ownership - not even supporting workers' self-management as a slogan.  The PZPR government had already laid a legal basis for transferring state enterprises to private ownership in 1987.  They, like the leaders of Solidarnosc, chose ‘fast’ over slow, and the consequences to the population were far more extreme.  Perhaps “get rich quick’ was their real, hidden slogan.

As you can see, this was not limited to former PZPR. The 'managerial elite' grew not just from the former nomenklatura, but the bourgeois technocratic and managerial class, who have vastly enlarged the government even over the Communist one, packing it with relatives, friends and allies.  Kowalik calls this 'clientelism,' and it still goes on today.

Kowalik has a long detailed section on the failure of the NIF certificate/share program, which gave ‘ownership’ of certain public companies to the Polish population as a whole.  There was much excitement at the time about this 'democratic' experiment in sharing capitalism.  Eventually most shares ended up controlled by foreign hedge funds, which extracted massive management fees and sold-off companies for profit, without regard to anything else.

Foreign firms picked up modern factories for a song.  Kowalik cites the Kwidzyn paper plant, which the International Paper Group called 'fully modern,' and purchased for far below what was put into the plant by prior governments.  The excuse of the Walesa government?  It was 'outmoded' and 'near bankruptcy.'  Other factories were bought and closed, so that foreign firms could compete in Poland without local competition.  A 2000 study by K Posnanski indicate firms were sold for 10% of their real value. The Polish banking sector, by 2003, was 75% controlled by foreign banks.  Some have labeled the Polish economy as a victim of 'neo-colonialism.'  Kowalik points out it is really a sub-contractor economy - sub-contracted to firms from the EU and the US.  However, some Polish experts want to export their model to the rest of the EU, in order to 'de-statize' it!  Their sad example, of course, will only be attractive to the most predatory capitalists.

Kowalik is fond of the phrase ‘really existing socialism’ (as Brezhnev also called it) to describe the deformed Polish workers state.  Kowalik says on page 24 of this book that the revolution in the USSR ‘degenerated.’ Then on page 25 he condemns ‘many socialists, Trotskyites and social-democrats’ for saying that Poland was a form of ‘degenerated socialism.’  Well, we are not here for a contradictory lecture on the definition of socialism, but to understand the facts.  Many supporters of Solidarnosc who initially supported ultra-capitalist methods later changed their minds, but unfortunately after the historical moment was over.  To his credit, Kowalik seems to be one of the few who knew this would end badly, even then.   As the present copper and coal miners in Poland who are resisting further privatization know, this story is not over.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

May 11, 2013

Red Frog

Trapped Alive

Airports:  A Particular Kind of Hell

Whether you are a casual or a frequent traveler, airports, especially U.S. airports, nowadays bring up a certain queasiness.  No, not just the peanuts and ice.  It is a stomach churning experience, from stepping onto the concrete in front of the airport to leaving your exit airport in relief.  

There are the hoards of people with too many bags and too much crap.  Too many rookie travelers with giant bags going somewhere they won’t need all that.  I’ve seen people whose bags weigh so much they cannot lift them into the overhead bins.   People bring bags into the jet-way, only to have them ‘tagged’ for storage under the plane.  But they do it, because it is free and they just can't help themselves.  They cannot part with their stuff, even when leaving home.

The loud bellowing of the business traveler into his cell or blue tooth is constant.  Busy privatising the public space into their very own ‘office.’  Usually single white males, many suited up.  Look around and check how many people are actually reading – on the plane and even waiting.  Very few.  Not even magazines. Instead of reading or talking, there is a constant addictive fumbling with ‘smart’ phones.  Smart phones are making people dumber by the minute, it seems.  Mini DVD players whirr, tinny music plays on iPods; adult travelers play games on game consoles; iPads, tablets and laptops provide constant interaction with the internet.  No one is alone!  You have the Internet! Television shows on a 1 inch screen!  Staring into space and gobbling crappy food – everything but reading.  Are they using an Amazon-controlled Kindle to read a digital book?  Very few. 

Then there is the constant blare of government TV – ah, I mean CNN.  Hysteria about terrorism 24/7.  Hysteria about some crime, 24/7.  Warnings about your bags and other people’s bags you’ve heard a thousand times.  Gate agents that do not explain why planes are late, or give you the lying ‘happy’ news about short delays.  Purposely overbooked flights.  Late arriving assholes.  People who kick the back of your seat, or who allow their kids to do it.  1 out of 10 times you will sit next to someone who can actually carry on a conversation.  It’s a wonder when it happens.

Every bit of food in an airport costs $3 more than it would on the ‘outside.’  The airport is one of the most artificial environments created, and you are trapped there and the vendors know it, you and George Clooney.  The food quality is akin to a downscale mall.  These chain and micro capitalists are only concerned with taking advantage of their enclosed mini-monopoly.  Everything is thrown away as garbage.  Now that you can’t bring drinks through the screening – bingo!  More sales!

Of course, the worst is the screening.  The ‘hands over your heads’ naked scan.  The wanding of your genitals.   Taking off shoes, belts, hats, coats, emptying pockets, apologizing for the metal in your leg.  Agents going through your bags.  Standing in line for a long time watching people with too much stuff put it on moving belts. No one is every turned away.  No ‘terrorists’ are caught.  Little of significance is found.  I have lost an electric drill, some pocket knives, and various un-dangerous liquids to the TSA.  They destroy it or some TSA person has a whole drawer of pocket knives at home.  Everyone is a criminal until proved otherwise.  Who is the target of screening?  Al Qaeda?  No, the general population.  Don’t complain, or they will think you are a terrorist.

Except first class, who now have their own fast lane through screening, just as they own the front of the plane with its big fat seats, free booze and personal shitter.  They have the fast lane on boarding too, and on off-loading.  The class structure is blatant at an airport.  Who are these creepy people?  Usually businessmen with lots of mileage under their belts and dollars in their corporate wallets.  Figures.  Nearly every airline countenances this. 

All of this is in anticipation of the carrot of spending time in the sky, looking at the clouds, lightening or glaciers or the checkerboard of land and maze of mountains, or the twinkling lights of the cities and farms.  Like Alice in Wonderland, into the rabbit hole that is the plane jet-way, and out the other side – arriving in a distant paradise, thousands of miles away, or home.  This is the consolation prize for the airport or airports you just endured.  That is if you are a tourist.  But if you are working, more work awaits, as it never left.  How traveling salesman, town-trotting lawyers or jet-commuters do it, I don’t know.  They have to be especially inured to their surroundings, or in love with money.  Probably the latter.

(Read “A Traveler’s Tale” a commentary on travel, below.)

Red Frog

May 8, 2013

Infotainment at CNN Missed This One

“The Terror Factory – Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism” by Trevor Aaronson, 2013

According to Trevor Aaronson, in the years since 9/11, the FBI has apprehended a total of less than 5 actual terrorists, while claiming more than 500.  Most of those 500 were either Level 2 violations of immigration laws or lying to authorities, or in the Level 1 area, stings, entrapments and the work of agent provocateurs.  After the FBI recognized that Al Qaeda could not organize another formal strike from overseas, but would rely on propagandizing ‘lone wolves” – so-called isolated Islamic ‘jihadis’ already living in the U.S. – the FBI changed their tactics.  Like the drug sting business, they decided to use stings to catch these potential terrorists before they supposedly even did anything.  The FBI now employs 15,000 informers, nearly all in Muslim communities, to ferret out and ‘trap’ these aspiring ‘jihadis.’  This is the most unprecedented number of government informants in U.S. history, surpassing even J Edgar Hoover, surveillance of various communist organizations and Contelpro.  The FBI now has a budget of $3 billion to do this, more than that spent on any other area the FBI covers, like crime, financial crime or the Mob, etc.  The ‘terror factory’ is the FBI, according to Aaronson. 

Which brings us to a key question.  Why wasn’t Tamerlan Tsarnaev lured into one of these plots?  The FBI claims there are too many suspects to trail, but this book clearly shows the FBI works full-time, with massive resources, on pretty sad human material, scraping the barrel so to speak, to create ‘terror’ plots that they could then bust.  You’d think with a real ‘lone wolf’ lumpen like Tsarnaev they would have had no problem.  After all, he was already under surveillance.  He would have been an ideal target for a sting.  This is the question the FBI should answer.

The Boston Marathon bombing was the second successful terror attack since 9/11 by alleged ‘Islamists,’ though there have been others by American rightist terrorists.  This book was published on 1/15/2013.  The Boston Marathon bombing was on 4/15/2013.  Is there some connection?  Aaronson has been on Amy Goodman since this bombing, and made the point that chasing the wrong people might have distracted the FBI from paying attention to Tsarnaev.  But perhaps Aaronson should ask the first question. 

After getting hard Justice Department data from Eric Holder, who released it to prove the FBI could handle trials for Guantanamo, Aaronson goes into plot after plot in detail – the Liberty City 7, the Lackawanna 6, the Fort Dix 5, the Newburgh 4 and many individual ‘terror plots.’  He shows them to be full of blustery, poor, emotionally disturbed or just plain normal targets who could not have bombed anything without help from the FBI.  The FBI would provide money, weapons, fake bombs, cars, apartments, maps, you name it – to lead some poor sucker to his doom.  Some times only words were used against innocent suspects, or tricks or misdirection, or old behavior that meant nothing.  And the media – which is really an arm of the state at this point – swallowed every FBI story whole.

Aaronson, like many others, draws a clear link between Bush and Obama security policies in the ‘war on terror.’ These policies fit hand in glove – and sometimes Obama’s are worse.  While getting Muslim votes in the U.S. the Democratic Party hierarchy treats Muslim communities as if they were full of potential terrorists.  In fact, the suffocating surveillance in these communities has decreased honest information flowing to the FBI, because there are so many informers attempting to trip people up into some kind of connection with ‘terrorism.’  People in these communities avoiding talking to the FBI as they would avoid having a conversation with a gang banger.  Hence real information dries up.  Yet the ‘state’ – no matter what president is in power – goes on with its agenda.  In this case, however, there is no distance between the President and the state.

Aaronson points out the changed role of the FBI since 9/11, from fighting ‘crime’ and being oblivious about Islamic terrorism, to becoming an ‘anti-terror’ force full of anti-Islamic bigots and methods.  FBI profiling essentially says anyone watching a jihadist video, reading Al Qaeda's "Inspire" magazine, frequenting a mosque, or who spouts off, is a dangerous threat.  He details the FBI’s use of criminals and liars who work for large payouts - $100,000 is not uncommon - in order to trap disturbed or poor patsies into jail terms of 15 to 40 years.  Or their use of blackmail or deportation pressure against Muslims in order to get them to become informers on people in their own mosque or community.  Aaronson also comments on the numerous ‘taping’ failures the FBI is subject too.  They always seem to have tapes for dialog that is or ‘might be’ incriminating, but frequently forget or damage or lose or do not tape other meetings where what is said might not be legal on their part, or indicate entrapment. 

Juries have not seen through FBI entrapment tactics yet.  Just as Americans, who have rarely been exposed to danger, cheerfully sat in their houses while the police asked the whole city of Boston to stay indoors. (See commentary below, “Tale of Two Slaughters”)  Many U.S. citizens are by nature naïve and unable to grasp that their government might not be on the up and up.  Aaronson has written this book to explain to more people what is happening behind the scenes of some of the latest hysteria on CNN.    

As Aaronson points out, “…the organization responsible for more terrorist plots over the last decade ... is the FBI.”

(Another book on this subject, “Islamophobia – The Politics of Empire,” is reviewed below.  There are also several commentaries on the FBI below.)

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

May 3, 2013

Happy May Day!

Workers of the World March Today, 2013

The majority of people in the world now are in the working class. We are the majority.  The majority should call the shots, if this is a democratic world - which it is not.  Workers marched in more than 90 countries across the globe today - Lebanon, South Korea, Bulgaria, Georgia, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Venezuela were all 'in the house."

May 1 dawned first in Asia this morning with hundreds of thousands of protesting workers literally shutting down the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. They condemned the government for hiking fuel prices and eroding recent meager increases in the minimum wage.

In Manilla, the capital of the Philippines, meanwhile, thousands of exploited 'precariat' contract workers marched through the streets demanding the right to unionize.

In Cambodia, 5,000 garment workers marched for better conditions, higher wages and unions.

In Bangladesh, tens of thousands shut down parts of Dhaka over the criminal policies of the garment manufacturers and their government, asking for death to the landlord of the building which collapsed.  

In Istanbul, Turkey, police locked down the center of the city to keep out thousands of May Day protesters. The history of police violence against workers did nothing to deter the demonstrators, still mindful of the 1977 protests when police shot dozens of Istanbul workers to death during May Day demonstrations. "There are scuffles everywhere in the streets leading up to central Istanbul," said Hashim Jahelbarra, in his post on the Al Jazeera website.

The Iraqi Communist Party marched in huge May Day protests in Baghdad.

Meanwhile millions in Europe joined the global actions.

According to the U.S. Communist Party, more than 1.5 million turned out at 16 demonstrations and rallies in Moscow and around Russia.  Of course, some of the demonstrations were by Putin's own party and Russian far-rightists, but then you can't expect the CP to explain that.

In Greece, the country ground to a halt as almost everyone joined in a 24-hour general strike against austerity. Trains and ferries were stalled at their moorings as seamen walked off the job.
"Our message today is very clear. Enough with these policies which hurt people and make the poor poorer," said Ilios Iliopoulos, general secretary of Greece's public sector unions.

In Spain, where official unemployment stands at 27 percent of the workforce, unions called at least 80 major demonstrations with millions turning out. "Never has there been a May 1 with more reason than this one to take to the streets," declared Candido Mendez, head of the nation's trade union federation.

In Cuba and Nicaragua, tens of thousands marched, many celebrating the life of Hugo Chavez.  

In Chicago, U.S., the home of May Day, only 1,000 marchers showed up, according to Al Jazeera, mostly immigrant rights marchers. So the question is, did the AFL-CIO actually try to organize a May Day march there, as asserted by some?  In the past, the only unions that march in Minneapolis do so, but NOT under the banner of the AFL-CIO, but only as locals.  Which shows you the real backwardness of the U.S. labor movement.  Right now, a few activists in a few locals are our real leaders.

The revolution will not start in the U.S.... but we hope to finish it.

Red Frog
May 1, 2013

What Foodies Don't Know

“Behind the Kitchen Door,” by Saru Jayaraman, Forward by Eric Schlosser, 2013

Jayaraman is another progressive female Indian voice, who took her professional attorney background and used it to help create a workers’ rights organization for restaurant workers, the “Restaurant Opportunities Center.” (“ROC”), firstly in New York.  ROC is now a national organization – sort of a semi-union for restaurant workers.   I think they are involved in the recent walkouts in New York by fast-food workers.  This book tells the story of how they did it, and what they found out in the process.

Jayaraman started out as a typical middle-class foodie who delighted in eating at restaurants, and of course latched onto the organic/local/sustainability/slow food mantra pushed by executive chefs like Alice Waters.  This view is based on how food is prepared in many countries outside the U.S., and opposes the corporate methods of processed and ‘fast’ food.  However, for her there was a basic disconnect between the food going into her stomach and the workers in the establishment she was eating in.  (See the reception of the book, “The Jungle,” which resulted in food safety laws, but not worker safety laws or union - reviewed below.)

Then 9/11 happened.  A union restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, the “Windows on the World,” was destroyed, and some of the early arriving staff died.  Jayaraman was asked to be an organizer for these restaurant workers, who had no jobs anymore.  ROC is now the leading organization for restaurant workers, having created 2 cooperative restaurants in New York and Detroit; started a school for staff to learn how to move up in the restaurant world; pressured high-end and other restaurants to change their practices; done many detailed surveys showing the inequalities and oppression of the 10 million workers employed in this U.S. industry; initiated lawsuits; and is instrumental in opposing the $2.13 U.S. national minimum wage for ‘tipped’ workers right now.  ROC’s painfully gathered research statistics alone are worth the price of the book alone, showing the numbers of restaurant workers, their incomes, their sexual and ethnic make-up, sickness and injury rates.  ROC also has a website that lists restaurants that attempt to treat their workers well.

Anyone who eats in restaurants should read this book.  It is written in kind of a naïve and positive tone, with an analysis that only concentrates on the restaurant industry.  She has a kind of 'kumbaya' attitude, that if workers, good restaurant owners and consumers could all just hold hands and agree, this problem would be solved. ROC does collaborate with organizations that represent workers down the ‘food’ chain, so to speak – slaughterhouse workers and migrant laborers for instance – but that is it.

Jayaraman learned that working conditions are not separate from food, but intimately connected to it. Nearly all restaurant workers do not have sick pay, and most do not have health insurance, so that food-born illnesses come from the restaurant staff because they work while sick, or injured.  Low pay and lack of opportunities creates turnover, which also affects food preparation.  Most restaurant managements don’t care, of course, since saving money is almost the only motivation.  I suspect that some restaurants are organized in such a way that they would go out of business if they provided decent working conditions and decent pay, because they are fundamentally built on cheap wages and poor conditions.  As we used to say in the factory, if you can’t pay us, then you don’t deserve to be in business.  

The U.S. restaurant industry is based on tips, actually.  Almost no other country demands such large tips from customers to float restaurants.  This has allowed a profusion of fast food joints and middle-market places that can get away with paying only minimum wage and less than minimum wage.  Even in high-end restaurants, this affects part of the staffs.  Staff incomes re tips become based on the vagaries of the type of restaurant you work in, the shifts you get, your skin color and ethnic background, your sex, the type of customers you encounter and the quality of your management, or lack thereof.  Various forms of wage and tip theft are practiced, even given all that.Which means restaurant work can be very unstable and precarious. 

Jayraman’s book tells the miserable restaurant working stories of various organizers for ROC in New York, Washington D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles and other cities.  She cites working-class people in LA and Detroit who became restaurant owners and who pay better wages, provide health care or sick days, promote from within without regard to ethnicity or sex, and still try to serve healthful, quality food. 

She pays special attention, as have others like David Roediger, to the very close correlation between skin color or accents and your job at the restaurant.  White people are in the ‘front of the house,” darker people are in the ‘back of the house.” There are exceptions, like Latinos that pass for white or mixed black folks that pass for Latino – but generally restaurants ethnically type-cast every job – waiter, hostess, busser, runner, bartender, barback, cook, sous chef, chef and dishwasher.  The dishwashers in Miami are all Haitians, as you might expect.  They also sexually type-cast every job, for instance limiting female cooks to pastry or salad prep positions, having most waitresses be white women, etc.  Sexual harassment by all-powerful chefs or managers can become the norm in some restaurants. 

Of course, our whole society, even in this supposedly ‘post-racial’ climate, type-casts jobs outside of the restaurant industry.  Who’s driving a cab?  Who puts on roofs?  Who empties the wastebaskets at work?  Who’s a security guard?  Who works at the parking ramp?  Class variation and ethnicity are tightly bound.  

Jayraman’s analysis puts a great emphasis on consumers who pressure restaurants by boycotts and threatened boycotts, which have worked for ROC a number of times.  Given the specific nature of restaurants, this can work on a one on one basis perhaps, but large chains and the hundreds of thousands of establishments cannot all be boycotted.  Which is why social policy has to change.  To do this, the National Restaurant Association, which argues against sick pay, minimum wage increases for tipped workers, health care or any other benefits, would have to be completely defeated on the political terrain.  In so far as the Democratic Party has yet to become very aggressive in almost any pro-labor issue except unemployment extensions and some timid efforts at increasing the minimum wage, what really needs to happen is that unions need to step forward and organize restaurant chains, types of restaurants and geographic restaurant areas.

Jayraman does not talk about unions much, which is suspect. While she might think she competes on the same terrain, ultimately an organization within the restaurant like a union can protect workers better than only outside pressure. It is also doubtful that the character of the U.S. restaurant industry can be changed by paying higher wages, posting jobs internally, ending discrimination based on ethnicity or sex or allowing sick days or health care - since these are some of the very items that have made it what it is today, a profitable behemoth.

(Read prior reviews on this industry, the funny ‘Waiters Rant"; a more general analysis of unstable and low-end employment, “The Precariat,” and the granddaddy of them all, “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, all reviewed below.  “Fast Food Nation,” by Eric Schlosser has not been reviewed.)

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog

April 28, 2013

“The Weak Are Meat; the Strong Do Eat.”

“Cloud Atlas” (the book) by David Mitchell, 2004

Texts and film are two different mediums, but they intertwine frequently.  Most good films are based on the work of an author, and then a screenwriter.  While film is a more visual, emotional and auditory medium, it is surprising how few good ones are written directly for the screen – almost like the medium has not fully matured yet.  “The Tree of Life” by Terry Malick is one example. (“Tree of Life” reviewed below.) 

Cloud Atlas, (the movie) is one such film based on a book.  (The film was reviewed below, in “What is Under This Movie’s Hood?”)  The film was far more successful in Russia and China than in the U.S. – perhaps because the immediate Hollywood payoff American audiences look for was not there.  The simpleton lag I call it.  Some foreign film audiences are more trained in something other than cliché.  It was a bit too vague and complex to become a ‘must see’ American film, and got almost no nominations for Oscar - which might be a good thing.

Rarely do people see a film before reading the book, and the experience is actually somewhat dilatory if it happens to you.  Reading a book before seeing the film is the better end of the periscope, as you are aware of the whole story, not the Cliff’s Notes ‘short story’ you are seeing in celluloid.  After all, most films are like short stories – and the longer ones like ‘romans a clef’ – novellas at best.  Anna Karenina?  Les Miserables?  Forget it.  Two different planets.

Reading a book after seeing the film makes the film intrude into the book.  It lessens it.  It flops its images over the ones your mind might have seen.  You seek to find something the film didn’t cover.  And they pop up – but smeared over by the filmic residue.  In this book, the ‘point’ seems to be different than the film.  This book is somewhat more comedic and popular, more cynical and entertaining, not as mysterious or rebellious as is the film.  And that is usually the reverse story bout books and film.  

“Cloud Atlas,” the book, fills in the missing factual spots in the film.  The Island?  Hawaii’s big island itself.  The stowaway came from Polynesian islands to the southwest of New Zealand, the Chathams.  The big composers house was outside of Bruges in Belgium.  City that housed the nuclear plant was north of LA, south of San Francisco.    

The book does allow you to delight in the language, because in a book, there is more of it!  Mitchell’s invented a good dialect for the island folks – the mouthfuls that Tom Hanks mumbled out.  He brings the stilted English verbosity of a ship in the 1800s out of the archives – like Melville’s Typee.  For the less traveled, the English slang and jargon of an old English crank in our time.  Or for the imaginative, the futuristic hybrid language of a South Korean slave/robot ‘fabricant,’ Gagnam style. 

The links are there.   Comets appear on the skin of one character in each story.  The boat that crossed the Pacific in 1830s is sitting restored in a 1970s California harbor.  The female Seoul rebel from 2100 becomes a god figure on the later Hawaiian island.  A comical movie about 2010 old British publisher locked in a nursing home becomes a movie watched in Seoul.  The 1930 composer’s letters appear in 1970s California, as does the person he was writing to.  So does the composer's sextet, in a record store.  The diary of that old pacific journey is found by the composer in 1930. The exciting story of the fight against nuclear power is read in 2004 Britain by the aging publisher after he gets out of the lockup.  Yet all these vague connections still seem artificial and are not convincing in telling us that ‘all things are linked together.”

The vaguely poetic phrase ‘cloud atlas’ reoccurs in several stories.  It is a guide to some kind of 'land of joy' in the sky, or some such thing.  Mitchell:  “Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies.” The Cloud Atlas sextet contains six movements, just like the chapters in the book.  Beginning to end, then end to beginning – a circle – just like the book.  The book is an atlas of these souls, evidently, six of them.

The most important thing, besides the story or the writing, is the ‘point.’  I’m didactic that way.  Errant ‘enjoyment’ and ‘entertainment’ can be gotten in many places.  “Entertain Me Until I Die” should be the slogan of American life.  What is the point of this book?  It was somewhat hard to decipher the film, and the book is no different.  Oddly enough, the film is more radical and less cynical than the book.  So props to the film. In the book, the composer never shoots his older beneficiary and leech.  He just kills himself.  The fabricant rebel in Seoul reveals that the “Union” underground was a set-up by the police, and that she was created to provide a target for the dominant Corpocracy.  (A combination of corporate, copraphage, hypocrisy and necromancy - love that word.)  The islanders never get off the planet, but are instead mostly slaughtered by crueler Hawaiians.  The sailing ship reveals progress – the white man does decide to become an Abolitionist because his life was saved by a ‘black’ Polynesian.  The reporter finally does expose the deadly criminals running two nuclear power plants in California.  And the old English publisher does escape from the nursing home lockup. 

Given its whole trajectory, the book is clearly a post-apocalyptic look at history, ending in violence, isolation and defeat.  Here is how Meronym describes the cause of this apocalypse, or ‘who tripped the Fall,” in pidgin English: 

“…o’ humans, yay, a hunger for more.  “Oh, more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power, yay.  Now the Hole World is big, but it weren’t big ‘nuff for that hunger what made Old Uns rip out the skies and’ boil up the seas an’ poison soils with crazed atoms an’ donkey ‘bout with rotted seeds so new plagues was borned an ’babbits was birthed.  Fin’ly, then quicksharp, states busted into bar’bric tribes an’ the Civ’lize Days ended, ‘cept for a few folds’n’pockets her’n’there, where its last embers glimmer.” 

Or as one Korean rebel describes the dystopian present: 
“The Media is keen to scorn colonies such as theirs, comparing them to tapeworms; accusing them of stealing rainwater from WaterCorp; royalties from VegCorp patent holders; oxygen from AirCorp.”  And more description:  “The lake water stunk of effluent from its salmon net ponds.  Crosswater hills displayed mighty corp logos.  A malachite statute of Prophet Malthus surveyed a dust bowl.”

As the Fabricant rebel tells her interviewer:
"Nea So Copros is poisoning itself to death.  Its soil is polluted, its rivers lifeless, its air toxloaded, its food supplies riddled with rouge genes.  The downstrata cannot buy drugs to counter these privations. Melanoma and malaria belts advance northward at forty kilometers a year.  Those production zones of Africa and Indonesia that supply Consumer Zones are now 60-plus percent uninhabitable.  Corporacracy's legitimacy, its wealth, is drying up." 

It doesn’t take much imagination to know that Mitchell is talking about today.  But his language is deeply sunk in the vocabulary of fiction, as if we lived in a society where self-censorship was necessary in order to slip present truths through the censor’s door.  The British author probably has a cozy place in the countryside with 2 kids and a Volvo.  So there it is.  I rarely say this, but the film is, in regards to its message, better than the book.  Although there would have been no film without the book. So - a worm eating its own tale.

And I bought it at Cheapo Books!

Red Frog

April 23, 2013

Industrial Murder

Tale of Two Slaughters

Boston Marathon

The U.S. news has seen wall-to-wall coverage of the brutal bombings at the Boston Marathon, and its aftermath – car chases, dead police and suspects, bombs and finally a collar of one suspect. Two Islamist Chenchen nationalists were involved.  The Chechens have waged a bloody and violent campaign for independence in Asia by killing many innocent Russian civilians –hijacking airliners in 2001, seizing hostages in a Moscow theater in 2002, taking over a grade school in 2004 & being involved in two subway bombings in Moscow in 2010.  Of course, the Russian government has responded with overwhelming military violence as well.  The Islamist leader of the Chenchen rebels, Dokka Umarov, is sometimes called the “Russian Bin Laden.”  This is the gruesome political atmosphere these two punks were weaned on and adopted. Russian civilians know Chechen 'tactics' well.

How they are going to explain how killing ordinary people watching a marathon in Boston, U.S. will help Islam or Chechnya is beyond nearly everyone. Of course, that hasn't stopped fundies before.

What is notable about the events in Boston from a left-wing point of view is the ‘lockdown’ of a whole city by the Governor of Massachusetts, after a request by the police.  The police were only searching a 20 square block area in Newtown, mind you.  Again, hysterical government overreach.  Virtual martial law in a whole city over one 19 year-old kid.  Bostonians might have felt not only danger from the shooters - but danger from the police and national guard if they ventured outside.  Yet the suspect was only discovered when a civilian went OUT of his house and discovered blood on his boat cover, looking inside to see an injured man.

Another issue is that of the ‘first responders.’  The majority of first responders in Boston were not police or fireman but ordinary civilians, just as in Minneapolis when the bridge went down.  Civilians are the first responders.  Cops and firemen are the ‘second’ responders.  The press never recognizes this.  Nor was the initial evidence of the suspects gleaned from security camera video like some cool episode of “Person of Interest” or image on Reddit, but from an eyewitness whose legs were severed, but saw one suspect put the bomb bag down next to him, and looked into his eyes.

Now the FBI says that Miranda is not needed for the younger brother - some kind of 'immediate danger' exception! The FBI had been aware of the older brother for 3-5 years, and has been in 'contact' with him during that whole period.  They were tipped off by Russian intelligence long ago.  So speculation is swirling that this might not just be two vicious religious nationalists going 'off.'  For me, it looks like a self-generated attack.


Robert W Schaefer, former Green Beret, military analyst, said in Salon: 
Laura Miller:  "Nevertheless, it’s very hard to see what the point of an attack like the Boston Marathon bombings would be for the Chechen insurgency.
Robert W Schaefer:  "I agree with you. I think those boys were probably used by somebody. They were probably told they were supporting one cause, and who knows if the people who were using them had anything to do with that cause?" 

Death toll:  5 dead, around 141 injured.

Texas Fertilizer Plant

Now, over in West, Texasthe next day, an enormous explosion killed 15 workers and firefighters, injured 200 and damaged the surrounding neighborhood, including a nursing home and an intermediate school – some 75 buildings. 

Which of these incidents is more severe?  Which is more damaging?  Which does the bourgeois press cover?  Because the Boston bombings were the work of ostensible religious or political terrorists who ‘chose’ to do what they did, while the explosion in West, Texas was an ‘accident’ – somehow we are to believe Boston should be the focus.  Another industrial accident?  Move along folks, nothing new to see here.

It was not an accident. 

AP Reports:  OSHA last inspected this plant in 1985.  OSHA issued a $30 fine (!) for a serious violation for storage of anhydrous ammonia.  OSHA cited the plant for four other serious violations of respiratory protection standards but did not issue fines.

The facility stored anhydrous ammonia, which the company insisted was not “flammable.”

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration fined West Fertilizer/Adair Grain Inc. $10,000 last summer for safety violations that included planning to transport anhydrous ammonia without a security plan.  In a risk-management plan filed with the EPA about a year earlier, the company said it was not handling flammable materials and did not have sprinklers, water-deluge systems, blast walls, fire walls or other safety mechanisms in place at the plant.  However, state officials require all facilities that handle anhydrous ammonia to have sprinklers and other safety measures because it is a flammable substance.  But inspectors would not necessarily check for such mechanisms, and it’s not known whether they did when the West plant was last inspected in 2006.  That inspection followed a complaint about a strong ammonia smell, which the company resolved by obtaining a new permit.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which is ostensibly in charge of investigating industrial accidents based on chemical issues, is so far behind in its work that it has yet to issue findings on explosions from 4 years ago, and many times neglects one ‘accident’ for another.

According to the Guardian, last year, the fertilizer plant stored 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the US Department of Homeland Security, yet did not tell the DHS.  Evidently DHS did not even know the plant existed.  DHS is 7 years behind in 'approving' disaster plans. 

I.E. the Texas and Federal officials in charge of overseeing safety at this plant really did not.  There is no union at the plant of course, so union safety officers could not monitor and flag issues within the plant.  After all, Texas is a ‘right to die’ state.  And the capitalists who own West Fertilizer certainly weren’t going to bite into their profits by treating anhydrous ammonia as explosive.  Instead they lied, and workers died.


Why don’t we see helicopters circling the roofs of the owners of West Fertilizer, while their neighborhood is put on lockdown, and SWAT teams surround their mansions?  Or state and federal officials in charge of chemical safety being dragged out of their offices in handcuffs?  And 24 hour, wall to wall coverage from CNN on the criminals who created far more destruction than Boston?  A Presidential address?  And a great push in Texas for card check and the closed-shop, so that unions can once again return to these Texas backwaters and improve safety.

Don’t hold your breath.  One thing to do is observe Workers Memorial Day on April 28.  Workers Memorial Day originated in Canada in 1984, and in 1991 the Canadian Parliament passed a “National Day of Mourning” for workers injured or killed on the job. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), across the world:

• Each year, more than two million women and men die as a result of work-related accidents and diseases
• Workers suffer approximately 270 million accidents each year, and fall victim to some 160 million incidents of -related illnesses
• Hazardous substances kill 440,000 workers annually – asbestos claims 100,000 lives
• One worker dies every 15 seconds worldwide. 6,000 workers die every day. More people die whilst at work than those fighting wars.
•  

According to the AFL-CIO … “in 2010, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4,690 U.S. workers were killed on the job—an average of 13 workers every day—and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases. Workers suffer an additional 7.6 million to 11.4 million job injuries and illnesses each year.”

So who is the real terrorist?

P.S. - More industrial murder.  April 23rd in Bangladesh, over 1000+ workers were killed and hundreds trapped and injured when a garment factory building collapsed.  That morning, management sent workers to work, even though the building had developed big cracks, and so they went inside. The owner defied the police who had closed the building, and said it was OK.  The Gap & Walmart are opposing building standards in the 'free trade' zone in Dahka.  This disaster came after a modern "Triangle Shirtwaist" factory fire in 2012 burned 112 workers alive at Tarzen Fashion in Bangladesh  There were several smaller fires in a garment plants before that.  So far, 700 have died in these kind of accidents.  The Bangladeshi government is a version of dictatorial Islamic capitalism, but Bangladeshi workers are becoming more militant.  May they overthrow this criminal government.

Red Frog

April 20, 2013