Ha Ha Ha?

What Can You Say About Bill Maher?

Millionaire comics are a dime a half-dozen at least.  Just look on TV.  Bill Maher is one of them, in spite of his independent streak and being on cable. He was heroically fired from a major network for saying it took guts to fly a plane into the World Trade Center.  Then he made a film making fun of religion (“Religulous”).  So he was never very ingratiated into the politics of the power elite.  That has changed.

What ya smokin' now Bill?

Now, whether smoking too much weed or trying to beat Rachel Maddow at the Trump hysteria / Russia game, he’s become a somewhat sad figure.  His self-reverential shtick is familiar, as it’s usually all about him and his Trump angst.  He only occasionally throws out some off-line opinions to his mostly Democratic Party audience.  This week’s program (Friday, May 18*) was peopled by creepy, suspicious types.  He started out with an ex-FBI agent, Clint Watts, discussing his new book on social media’s influence in politics.  As if the FBI did not engage in social media and media manipulations itself.  So perhaps they are losing now?  His talking-head ‘panel’ consisted of a former CIA agent and Republican, Evan McMullin; Dan Savage, a gay Democrat; and the dreadful opinion editor of the New York Times, hard-core Zionist and former Wall Street Journal reporter Bari Weiss.

Maher’s ‘special guest’ was a neo-liberal woman formerly from Zambia, Dambisa Moyo, who had just written a book on the degeneration of ‘democracy.’ She recommended paying politicians as is done in the private sector, but for their improvements to the country.  As if CEO’s actually get paid for performance.  She pretended there were not enough lawyers in Congress, when they are the majority in the Senate (60%) and 37% in the House.  She advocated knowledge tests in order to vote.  She said that the U.S. is the ‘vanguard of liberal democracy,' the kind of tripe that always gets plaudits from her new benefactors.

Past Maher shows have included generals, Trumps promoters, vicious Republican performance artists like Ann Coulter and a stable of approved editorial figures of the mostly moderate Democrat or Republican stripe.  He used to have Sander’s supporters on, but has run from any left-wingers for a long time now.  For instance, trying to get Tom Morello to agree with him about Hillary Clinton was just too much for Bill.

The panel was united in non-stop talk about Trump’s personal foibles, ignoring any detail of the crimes he and his party are committing every day.  The worst moment was when pro-Israeli NYT editor Weiss claimed that Hamas or the Palestinians trickily staged their protests to coincide with the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem - just to make Ivanka look bad.  Everyone made easy on her bloody Trump-lite comments, including for the most part Maher.  “When is there not a riot in that region of the world?” archly asked Moyo.  McMullin made a noise that perhaps the choice of the date was Trump’s, not Hamas, but he approved moving the embassy at some point anyway.  Savage did not challenge Weiss frontally, but he did agree with McMullin on the timing. They all agreed not to negotiate with Hamas.  The 70^th commemoration of Naqba was never mentioned, nor the mass shooting of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza itself.  Weiss was most distressed that 'conservatives' had taken the Israel issue for themselves, taking it from the liberals.  Amazing.

The timing is really Trump’s – he was too stupid to realize that opening an embassy at this particular moment was ‘impolitic,’ as they say.  And so the isolated ruling class in the U.S. again ignores the thrice invaded open air prison that is Gaza, which originated from an episode of ethnic cleansing 70 years ago.

On this program, Savage was the best of this sad bunch, scandalizing the stiffies by making the point that legal prostitution is the best solution to people who cannot get ‘laid.’  This in a discussion of a topic Bill seems to have just discovered, ‘incels.’  Savage himself is not yet integrated enough into the ‘line’ of the Democratic elite or the U.S. ruling class, so he ended up being a bit of a dissident on this program.  The ex-CIA agent promoted the new head of the CIA, Gina Haspel.  Moyo finally challenged him.  Savage pointed out that the Nazis used the some of the same tactics of 'enhanced interrogation' at Dachau.

From this program ‘the Resistance’ to Trump consists of a united front of Republicans, 'ex'-FBI and 'ex'-CIA members, Zionist NYT editors, millionaire comics and neo-liberal black women.  Trump is a criminal but this array is a fake unauthentic Resistance®, the business-as-usual crowd.  A wing of capital stands behind this ‘resistance.’  Maher himself has yearned for ‘business-as-usual’ quite openly.  

Another wing of capital has other ideas.

Note:  Glenn Greenwald took Bari Weiss apart in an Intercept essay in August 2017.  Nothing has changed.

More postings related to this issue or these people:  “Stolichnaya…,” "Religulous," "The Holocaust Industry," "The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution," etc.  Use blog search box, upper left.

Red Frog

May 20, 2018

Land of Ire

IRELAND – What's Up?

ABORTION VOTE

Will be covering Ireland and will report issues of political and cultural interest.  The greatest right now is the vote on abortion on May 25, 2018.  Given Ireland voted for civil unions as the first country in the world to do so, its right-wing Catholic heritage is eroding.  The scandals around dead orphans packed into graves at Catholic orphanages didn’t help.  The Irish, like the rest of Europe, now say they might be ‘religious’ but no longer attend church in the numbers they once did.  I expect mass demonstrations in Dublin around the vote on the 25^th.

England's Colony Rises

EASTER RISING

Dublin was the scene of the Easter Rising in 1916, part of the revolutionary waves that moved through the world during WWI.  There is a tour of Dublin based on that insurrection.   Jim Juice will get a nod too and any such Viking relics that are interesting.
 
THE SOUTH

Other than the scenery, there are bits of more recent history in the south of Ireland.  Besides the beer, music, windswept, wet and cool land.   A British poorhouse for the Irish.  Ruined cottages, abandoned during the famine.  The location where Michael Collins was assassinated.  The ancestral home of Daniel O’Connell.  And …

THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN

Reading a book about the Irish revolutionary and Union Civil War general Thomas Meagher, who was part of the “Young Ireland” movement in 1848 during the ‘great hunger.’  He was arrested by the English for his role in that struggle, and was sent to a penal colony in Tasmania.  Then he ended up in the U.S. where he led the union Irish Brigade in some key battles of the U.S. Civil War.  Slavery and the oppression of the Irish seemed similar struggles to Meagher.  To be reviewed fully.

Red Frog
May 17, 2018

Author Interviews Herself

Arundhati Roy – At the Fitzgerald Theater and on “The Thread,” Minnesota Public Radio

Arundhati Roy, Indian fiction writer and political essayist, came to the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA to promote her new work of fiction “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.”  (reviewed below) Unfortunately the book was barely mentioned.

Born in Small Village in Kerala to Single Mom

Hosting the event was Kerri Miller, who joined Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) in 2004 after a stint at KARE 11 local news as a reporter.  Miller was unable to rise to the occasion to adequately interview Roy, whose politics are head and shoulders above what Miller was used to.  A good number of times Roy had to say ‘no’ to some misdirected question by Miller.  As the interview progressed, Miller was left almost silent as Roy understood she had to fill in the time.  I doubt Miller has read any of Roy’s political books, which might have helped. The program is to be broadcast on MPR later.

Roy is a radical intellectual, something Miller’s well-modulated and conventional approach cannot handle.  There were no questions about the occupation of Kashmir, which is at the heart of the new book. Or a question about why ‘the market,’ as Roy calls it, and Hindu supremacists, have both united in India. Nor a question about caste, which plays a role in the violence against women occurring in India, a topic Roy brought up. Miller was instead obsessed with asking about Roy’s first novel, “The God of Small Things,” which won the Booker prize years ago and about Roy’s personal fierceness or other perceptions of her.  Roy at one point had to say ‘it’s not about me.’  

During Roy’s long responses, she said many valuable things that go against conventional wisdom in the U.S.  She pointed out that fiction is the most holistic artistic method of describing the world, as it weaves together separate issues and silos.  Because of that, reading fiction demands that the reader not be a passive receptor but an active ‘contemplator.’  In this context she said that feminism or any other partial approach or issue is not sufficient to deal with current reality.  She decried the artificial separation between art and politics imposed by modern bourgeois literature standards.  This includes the supposed opposition of so-called ‘fact’ and so-called ‘fiction.’ She joked that some people think her scenes of poor outcasts living in cemeteries were ‘magical realism.’ Yet people in India do live in cemeteries.

Roy chided some Indian liberals for calling for the oppressed Adivasi people of the Indian forests to become pacifists in the face of violent Indian government repression over corporate mining.  She used a line from her book ‘Walking With the Comrades,” (reviewed below) to ask, “Should they go on hunger strikes when they are already starving?”  For anyone who is familiar with her work, this might bring up her long introduction to Ambedkar’s “Annihilation of Caste” where she took Gandhi to task.  Gandhi supported the caste system.  But ah, another question left unasked, another sacred cow left alone.

Roy has a quick wit and handles words like a poet.  She thinks in many languages, as she has been immersed in India's profusion of languages.  She described the present situation in India as ‘micro-fascism.’  The demonetarization policy of the Modi government devastated workers and small businessmen.  It took small money bills out of circulation in a situation where the majority exist in a cash economy.  Roy thinks that the elite promotion of practices for the Hindu masses like oppressing Muslims or women is a placebo for their own oppression.  Many rapes are linked to caste, as upper-caste / class men think they have every right to beat and rape girls and women.  What she found most disturbing was the mass of men and women that would come out in demonstrations in support of the rapists.  Roy addressed so-called ‘development’ and ‘modernization.’  She saw these as merely words for destructive market-rule, which she pointed out should be obvious ‘even to those in the most contorted yoga position.’

I think the reason that Miller is unable to actually interview someone like Roy is because of the ideas of the literary mafia in the U.S.  Politics and class are not their forte.  This mafia is headquartered in New York. Its local Minnesota arms are the Star Tribune newspaper, the Loft literary center and MPR’s Talking Volumes/ The Thread radio program.  They urge readers to cherish memoirs, especially dysfunctional ones.  Or read and write stories of families, emotions and personalities exclusively.  They focus on the life of the middle-class and individualism. They go into raptures over words and phrases alone, while greater meanings and stories go out the window.  They advocate a separation of politics and art and ignore working-class life.  People like Jonathan Franzen, Augusten Burroughs and D.F. Wallace are exemplars of these styles.  None of this is done in Roy’s fiction, as she understands that the personal cannot be separated from its social and economic context.

A few questions from the Indian audience members reflected their frustration with current Indian political conditions.  Roy had no answer as to how to end fundamentalist Hinduism or caste or class oppression.  She is an honest observer and even activist with excellent instincts, but is not allied to any political tendency.

Prior reviews on books by Roy, below:  Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Walking with the Comrades, Field Notes on Democracy, the introduction to Annihilation of Caste and  Capitalism, a Ghost Story.  Also commentary: "Turning Off NPR."  Use blog search box, upper left.

Most of these books are available at May Day.

Fitzgerald Theater

Red Frog / May 12, 2018

Capital is Vulnerable to Labor

“On New Terrain – How Capital is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War,” by Kim Moody, 2017

What is interesting about the flood of books from leftists is how they continue to analyze the actual conditions of society right now, not nostalgia from 150 or 100 or 80 or 50 years ago.  This is the heart of the Marxist method and necessary if the labor left is to make ANY headway.  Moody is an editor for Labor Notes and now a professor in England.  This book takes a look at changes in the U.S. in the geographic, economic, class and political terrain since neo-liberal capitalist methods were implemented in the late 1970s under Carter.  Some of his insights are actually new or more detailed, which makes this a useful book.

The Past Is Past

Moody tracks the shift in a factual style, upending old clichés or ideas about U.S. proletarian reality, some of which are familiar to anyone who studies this issue.  But his updates actually clarify the situation.  I’ll bullet point them:

1.          1.  Moody’s most contentious point is that only 25% of the jobs lost in the U.S. over the past  40 years are due to ‘outsourcing’ work to Mexico, China, Bangladesh, India, etc. This is not the position of most analyses of job losses in the U.S.

         2.  The culprits for the other 75% are not imperialist globalism or even domestic ‘outsourcing’ but two things that any worker will find familiar – speed-up and over-work, which lead to higher productivity or profits. Or better technology and machinery, which lead to higher productivity or profits.  Both led to the rest of the job losses over the last 40 years according to Moody.

3.         The weakness in this argument is that Moody does not understand the anti-union and cheap labor economic role of the geographic U.S. south.  A case of 'combined and uneven' development. It has absorbed factories and jobs from the U.S. north, as well as imported factories from overseas.  The case of car and machinery production is the most obvious.  If Moody included the ‘South” as a separate ‘nation’ in his statistics, it would move the 25% number significantly upwards.

         4.   Moody understands Marx’s theory of the background effects of the ‘falling rate of profit,’ agreeing with Michael Roberts and others. (See review of the The Long Depression, below.)  Neo-liberalism has essentially turbo-charged profiteering since 1977.  That was the point. This vulnerability discovered by Marx basically says that upgrading production methods with more machinery or computers or buildings (fixed capital) will ultimately stall out in another profit crisis as other firms do the same thing.  Since only labor creates surplus value, profits will drop as less human labor is used.  This will make corporations again come for workers blood and increase class conflict.

5.          Capital has created smaller, more efficient plants, dispersing workers.  Moody uses the example of steel-making mini-mills.  But it has also concentrated workers in large industrial parks and areas in urban cities. This is a big vulnerability for capital.  Moody uses the example of the Chicago area, where tens of thousands of truckers and warehouse workers handle the majority of shipping in the country.  This mass of workers doing similar jobs in industrial parks is an example of new concentrations of labor. (BTW, I pointed this out in the 1980s in a Global Class War bulletin.)

6.          The lie that this is a ‘post- industrial’ society is just that, an obvious dodge.  The working class, according to Moody's look at U.S. government statistics, is still the clear majority - industrial, transport, service and white collar.  One flaw in his analysis will actually increase the numbers. Moody considers teachers and nurses to be ‘proletarianizing professionals’ (i.e. middle class).  I would consider them already members of the upper levels of the white-collar or ‘pink’ collar working class.   Teachers and nurses might replace the older 'aristocracy of labor' that was the province of the 'trades,' but that still puts them in the working class.  This would also increase the numbers of workers he cites.

7.          Another vulnerability for capital is ‘just-in-time’ production methods.  These have resulted in fewer vendors, very little inventory in stock or warehouse and thin supply chains that stretch across the country and world, even from the ports.  This leaves capital more vulnerable to industrial action.  He calls this new terrain part of the ‘logistics’ revolution in production.

8.          A third vulnerability is that the big cities concentrate millions of low-paid workers, who are unemployed, work part time or work several jobs or fill in full-time on others.   A partial ‘reserve army of labor.’ Now they are mostly African-American or Latino or immigrants, but in greater numbers than in the past.  These are ethnic and color castes of the population that capital has super-oppressed since the beginning of the country. As a result they have no love for the bosses.

9.          Capital, as Marx pointed out, tends to monopoly or oligopoly.  Presently in the U.S. through constant mergers and acquisitions, a few big firms control nearly every sector, some hiding behind many brands or names.  This means that companies are connecting many more workers together, which can lead to the success of strike action or any kind of rebellion against the remaining companies.  The decline of the corporate conglomerate also has concentrated companies in single, more vulnerable industries, not across industries.  These are part of a 4^th vulnerability for capital.

10.        Moody is not a syndicalist like some who only advocate labor strikes.  He understands that politics plays a role in labor’s overall power.  As a result, he looks at the changes in the Democratic Party, which have made it a more tightly controlled, powerful ‘conglomerate’ than in the 1970s when McGovern's activists overwhelmed the DP structure.  The present construction of the DP absolutely mitigates against labor or any other movement EVER taking over the party.  This means the destructive lure of the DP as a place were ‘movements go to die’ is weakening – though still operative.  The Republican Party is transparently a party of some big and most small capital, and as such, merely an obvious liar when it comes to fealty to 'the working man.'

11.        Most cities are now one-party states controlled by the Democrats.  Republicans play almost no role.  As a result, the DP hacks are open to an electoral challenge from the left, as the ‘spoiler’ allegation doesn’t work in these locales.  This is another vulnerability to the DP's wing of capital.

12.        Republicans have used state-level and local-level political arenas to shape gerrymandered districts, thus controlling the national agenda. This is why so much money now flows into even city counsel races. Moody sees the states and cities as key areas of left political and social struggle, building  blocks to a national approach.  He ultimately supports a mass-based, activist labor party on a national level which combines separate struggles like BLM, Fight for $15, NoDAPL, MeToo, Dreamers, etc.

13.        Moody carefully looks at Democrats in cities, even the ‘Progressive Caucus’ in New York, and shows how they are basically nearly all tied to the real estate and building industries in those cities.  There is never a ‘public-private’ partnership or development project they don’t like.  Moody looks at how public money flows to the real estate industries through these politicians, not for the housing needs of the mass of proletarians.

The basic thrust of Moody’s book is optimistic, especially the first third.  Because of the recent reorganization of capital, openings are beginning to appear that a labor movement inspired by a ‘militant minority’ could take advantage of.  Public approval of unions has increased, especially among young millennials.

His dissection of the Democratic Party seems familiar, but he goes into a level of detail on its rigid and monied structure that few on the left have done before.  Essentially he is addressing the post-Sanders “Our Revolution” crowd, the DSA and the union bureaucrat / leaders who still think a takeover of the DP in a social-democratic direction is possible. It is not. He says a strategy of attempting to 'split' the Democrats without having something to split 'to' will not work either.  These groups will end up as tolerated ‘pressure’ groups that gain lip-service as their prime reward.  

Moody dates the day that the DP basically rejected union power to 1977, when the majority of a new, young wave of Democratic politicians no longer voted for union proposals.  This has continued to this day, even when in ‘power’ – from Carter to Clinton to Obama – as corporations and the rich gained a stranglehold over the party. 

This abandonment of union or working class demands is no secret, but it never seems to occur to those who insist on revitalizing the graveyard.

Other reviews on labor issues:  Class Against Class; Reviving the Strike; Save Our Unions; Embedded With Organized Labor.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

May 9, 2018

Journalism Nostalgia

“The Post,” directed by Stephen Spielberg, 2017

Ah, the good old days, when bourgeois journalism actually had some bite.  Put the most popular mainstream liberal director together with the vanilla skills of the two top actors in Hollywood, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks - and what do you have?  “The Post” about the publishing of the Pentagon Papers.  This story of the past will mostly resonate with freshman journalism students and Democratic Party loyalists.  What is left unsaid is that present journalism is a disaster, rightist and liberal alike.

Instead of being owned by a tony upper-class family, the Grahams, the Washington Post is now owned by Jeff Bezos, a crass internet multi-billionaire.  And the New York Times?  No longer the respected ruler of U.S. journalism.  Instead it is a paper waiting for someone to do a film on the NYT promotion of another criminal war, the Iraq war.  With the modern Post not far behind.

Government AG Tries to Censor NY Times

How the mighty have fallen.  The best parts of the film are the brief bits with Daniel Ellsberg and about Vietnam.  Through Ben Bradlee, the Post editor and Ellsberg, the whistle-blower, it reminds the historically clueless that the government lies, commits bloody crimes and then sends working-class kids off to war. Nothing has changed except people’s intentional memories.  War in the U.S. is like Groundhog Day.  Each war is always the first.

The film actually puts Vietnam in the background so that we can see heroic journalism in action and a vacillating rich woman, Katharine Graham, become a real leader.   The war is just their stage.  The Supreme Court, the top of our corrupt two-tier legal system, actually makes a right decision by allowing publication. Today’s Supreme Court?  Not so much.

The film centers on Bradlee’s push to publish the Pentagon papers at the Post.  The papers were an internal academic exercise by the military and government looking into the war that was supposed to be secret.  The papers exposed the deceptions and failures of  the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations in this long-running disaster.

The rush to publish seems to happen just a few days before a federal hearing on the NYT excerpts of the same Pentagon papers.  The NYT actually beat the Post to publication, but this seems to be peripheral in this story, which sidelines the NYT!   The rush also seems to happen towards the end of a 1 week liability period after an initial public offering of Washington Post stock.  The 4 hour mad dash to edit and publish seems odd in this context.  Even the scenes of writers and editors attempting to piece together the documents page by page seem bogus.  It assumes Ellsberg didn’t copy them in order or organize them.  Is the rush some attempt to help the NYT in their lawsuit? Exempt others from scooping the Post?  Or just an example of psychological agitation?  The Post was attempting to end their  ‘local’ status by trying to beat the Times.  A few days of delay does not seem fatal. 

The square-head lawyers hired by the Post to defend them against Nixon mostly oppose the Post and side with the government.  The business people in the IPO oppose Graham, Bradlee and the reporters on publication. The key line in the Nixonian court injunction against the NYT is that ‘the paper and its agents’ shall not publish.  The lawyers insist that Ellsberg is an ‘agent’ but he is not, he is a source. Nor is the Post an ‘agent.’  So their legal arguments for Nixon seem to make no sense either.  Normally you would fire lawyers that are not defending you.

The Real Bradlee and Graham

Of most interest are the personal relationships of Graham and Bradlee with people in the government.  Graham was a big friend of William McNamara, one of the leading architects of the war.  He shows up in the film several times as a personable liar. She also hobnobbed with Lyndon Johnson, the war president.  Bradlee was a personal friend of John Kennedy, another architect of the American war in Vietnam.  They regret that the people they liked were involved in this grave crime.  This shows the rarefied atmosphere at the top of bourgeois journalism, EVEN in those days.  Now the situation is even more pronounced, as leading journalists are many times in the same class as those they cover, and thus sympathetic to them and their aims. A recent study indicated that the majority of reporters at the NYT and the Wall Street Journal are from Harvard or Yale.  Many more are from other Ivy League schools.  These are no longer street-wise reality reporters.

While the NYT recently published Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, they have since then joined in the corporate chorus of hatred for Snowden and Wikileaks.  Perhaps if Snowden had given them secret academic papers on the failed wars in the Middle East, would they have published?  Certainly, Chelsea Manning didn’t get their nod.

The film is worth watching, if only for its nostalgia in a past that is almost gone.

Other reviews on journalism issues below:  Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent,” Mander’s “4 Arguments for the Elimination of Television,” “Southern Cultural Nationalism,” “Empire of Illusion,” “Turning Off NPR,” “The Cultural Apparatus of Monopoly Capital,” and many books on Vietnam. Use blog search box, upper left.

Riverview Theater

Red Frog

May 5, 2018

Poisoning the Well - Another Day in Paradise

Sulfuric Acid and the Boundary Waters National Canoe Area

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) is Minnesota’s Grand Canyon.  It is the most visited wilderness area in the nation.  A Chilean copper company, Antofagasta and their subsidiary, Twin Metals, wants to put in a copper/nickel mine near it on Birch Lake in northern Minnesota.  The mine would grind up 99.5% of the rock to get .5% of the valuable ores. Read that again. This shows the extent of capitalist desperation at this point in history, given the increasing scarcity of copper and nickel.  This mine will create sulfuric acid, heavy metals like mercury and sulfates in the process, as rock exposed to oxygen creates the acid.  Antofagasta will only store the tailings in natural rock which has all kinds of fissures, so this toxic soup will leak.  Huge amounts of waste rock will be created, as well as the leveling of large areas of forest.  For the proposed mine on Birch Lake, the chemicals will leak and head north into the Boundary Area through the Kawishiwi river, then Canada’s Quetico Park, then into Voyageur National Park.  Any cleanup that costs over a certain amount will be the responsibility of the public.  Every sulfide mine like this in the past has had toxic cleanup problems.  Contamination could last 500 years.

BWCA Canoeing is like bicycling on water

Seems like a no-brainer, right?  Unsurprisingly Democratic governor Dayton is on the fence about the proposed mines (plural), as there is another mine proposed farther south from Birch Lake called “PolyMet.”  Most of the water flowing from that mine will go into the St. Louis River, through an indigenous reservation, then into Lake Superior.  The present Democratic U.S. House representative, Rick Nolan, supports the projects.  Of course the whole criminal Republican Party led by Tom Emmer is in favor, siding with a Chilean corporation against Minnesotans.  70% of Minnesotans and across the country, 98.4% of comments on the Interior Dept./ Bureau of Land Management/ Forest Service website opposed this proposal potentially draining into the Boundary Waters. Only 22% of Minnesotans are in favor. 

The Trump administration’s lackeys in the Interior Department reversed a legal ruling under Obama against the mine, and now have proposed a lower threshold of facts and public input for approval.  There are 9 months left before they have to make a decision.  Again, the U.S. is shown to have a sham democracy, as the capitalists will rape whatever land they can to extract profits, no matter what the public thinks!  As an aside, the whole Minnesota Republican Party and a wing of the Democratic Party supports these mines and also supports getting rid of general sulfide standards throughout the whole state.  The mining industry has wanted this repeal for years.

This issue also concerns the Canadian government, as their waters could potentially be affected.  If the Boundary Waters begins dying, a national park will be slowly destroyed.   More jobs will be lost in tourism, education and clothing businesses associated with the park then created by the mine.  If waters north or south of the park are contaminated, this will impact wildlife, plants, rice harvesting and humans.

Hegman Lake pictographs in BWCA

Amy and Dave Freeman are right now pedaling bicycles from Ely, Minnesota to Washington, D.C. with a signed canoe to lobby Congress about the importance of the Boundary Waters to people across the country.  They stopped in Minneapolis this weekend.  In every town they visited on a prior canoe paddling trip from Ely to Washington D.C. (yes, you read that right…), people had been to the Boundary Waters. This is not a local issue, no more than issues with the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Everglades or the Appalachian Trail are local issues.

Support “Save the Boundary Waters.”  https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/

The real question here is that in the present political situation, where the capitalists have absolutely free reign on the government, will lobbying work?  Will having corporations like Patagonia on your side help?  Or the Big Green organizations?  The odds are not good.  The other travesty of environmental damage, the Enbridge oil pipeline through northern Minnesota, is a bi-partisan project.  The main opposition is coming from 2 Ojibwe tribes and the ‘usual suspects,’ but no one in power.  If this attempt to protect the boundary waters fails, something more radical will have to emerge.

Prior relevant reviews: “The Race for What’s Left,” “Tar Sands,” and ‘Open Veins of Latin America’ and “Collapse.”  Use blog search box, upper left.

Postscript:  The Trump Interior Dept. has just approved the BWCA mine today, Monday May 7.  'Save the Boundary Waters' will or has already filed a lawsuit. 

Red Frog

May 2, 2018