Tuesday, April 15, 2014


The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   


Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

 

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

 

 

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.

*******

Leslie Cunningham :
Fifty years ago and counting


For a white kid graduating from high school in 1963 and already involved in civil rights, seeing Dr. King at the Washington Monument highlighted a momentous year.

leslie 1 small
Members of civil rights group HSBE (High School Students for Better Education) register as federal lobbyists. Leslie Lincoln (now Cunningham) is second from left. According to Les, “most of the black students were left out of the picture.” Photo from the Washington Post.
By Leslie Cunningham | The Rag Blog | April 3, 2014
“We missed you at the 50th reunion.”
It was a phone call out of the blue, from a totally unfamiliar area code and number. A raucous voice started singing a song in Arabic that I had learned in 1957. “Who is this?” I yelled. “Who could know that song?”
A laugh. “It’s Janet. Janet Frank.” I hadn’t talked to her in 50 years. We caught up a little. A terrific musician in high school, she still plays cello in the National Symphony Orchestra. Wow! All I could offer was a history of government jobs from which I am now retired.

I had thought about going to the reunion of the Woodrow Wilson High School Class of 1963. I looked it up, but there wasn’t anyone on the planning committee I remembered. It was being held at a country club in Chevy Chase, Maryland. What was up with that? I located one of my favorite classmates, but she wasn’t going. I searched for some others. When I googled Buddy Timberg, I got his obituary.
Maybe I should have gone. But in the middle of 1963 my high school graduation seemed rather insignificant.
All of 1963 was a momentous year, filled with promise and horror and portents of things to come.
All of 1963 was a momentous year, filled with promise and horror and portents of things to come. Mostly it was the civil rights movement: Bull Connor’s fire hoses and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”; the assassination of Medgar Evers in Mississippi; the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; the murder of four little black girls in a church bombing fueled by racism and hate. Then, closing out the year, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
My friends and I were like other white kids who had been startled and inspired by the lunch counter sit-ins in 1960 and the Freedom Rides in 1961. We marched on picket lines in front of a car dealership that refused to hire black salespeople. We “tested” restaurants in Virginia — going in first with a multi-racial group, then with an all-white group, to see who would get service. I don’t remember who organized this effort or how I found out about it. I think we reported our results to the NAACP.
And I don’t know who organized the group I joined called “High School Students for Better Education.” Or who got the Washington Post to give us a room to meet in. Or who got us permission to visit various high schools. But I got really active. Public schools in Washington, D.C., were de jure integrated by then, but still de facto segregated. Many high schools were all black; one (mine) was virtually all white.
We toured high schools, looking at the conditions of the buildings, the ventilation systems, the food in the cafeterias, the furniture, the textbooks. I remember staring at a heating outlet with the date “1888” on the metal fixture. Big surprise — the all-white and racially mixed schools were in better shape than the all-black schools. We looked up statistics and found that the per-pupil expenditure was lowest for the all-black schools.
We had to register as lobbyists with the federal government in order to present our case to Congress. “Home Rule” had not come to D.C. — there was no democratically elected local government. This was a civil rights issue in and of itself. The Constitution gives Congress total jurisdiction over the District, and when I was in high school the District of Columbia Committees of the Senate and the House served as city council and school board. We believed that Congress was not allowing D.C. to govern itself because the population of D.C. was majority African-American.
So a number of us spoke earnestly at committee hearings, met by inattention, impatience, and boredom from old white men. It seemed to us as if they were mostly segregationist southern Democrats. We got a few figurative pats on the heads and thanks for being so civic minded — and were sent on our way. The only concrete outcome I remember was Senator Hubert Humphrey waving a tattered textbook on the floor of the U.S. Senate, leading to a small increase in appropriations so that the black schools could get some new books and not rely on hand-me-downs from schools like mine.
After graduating from Woodrow Wilson High in June 1963, I heard the exciting news that all these people were coming to D.C. for a civil rights rally, and Martin Luther King was going to be there, and some of my favorite folk singers. There was no way I was going to miss it. My mother tried to dissuade me, citing the heat and my recent wisdom tooth surgery (she didn’t say she was afraid of riots, and nothing like that had even occurred to me). But my parents had approved of what I had been doing, and I was with a group of friends, so they did not forbid me from going.
On August 28 it was an easy outing — we just took the D-3 bus to Federal Triangle, walked a few steps, and there we were, emerging into an amazing sea of people on the Washington Mall. It was the first time I had ever been to a large march or rally for any kind of “cause.”
I have read that white folks made up only 20% of the people at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But as my friends and I joined the huge mass of humanity on the Mall, I don’t remember having any consciousness of being in a small minority. I don’t remember any of the pre-march media propaganda about riots in the streets. As relatively privileged young white people, we expected (if we gave it any thought) to be welcomed, and that is the way it turned out.
With photos of the march so ubiquitous, you’ve maybe laughed at all the white dress shirts, the suits and ties, the skirts and dresses.
2013 was the 50th anniversary — and with photos of the march so ubiquitous, you’ve maybe laughed at all the white dress shirts, the suits and ties, the skirts and dresses. Did the organizers enforce that — wanting the march to look respectable? Maybe — but at that time this was the way most people dressed for an occasion, and girls still couldn’t wear pants to school. My recollection is that I myself wore a dress that day.
I was, of course, unaware of any of the internal politics of the March. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of Racial Equality had wanted direct action with civil disobedience at the Justice Department. That plan was shot down by the more conservative, older march organizers. Martin Luther King was disappointed that civil disobedience was taken out of the plans.
I did not know that John Lewis of SNCC had the more radical parts of his speech censored. He was going to criticize the Kennedy administration — but not much of that was to be allowed. I did not know that Bayard Rustin was suppressed from public presence because he was homosexual AND socialist. I did not know how frustrated many of the marchers and organizers were by how much white liberal influence there was on the march (why was it Joan Baez who led the crowd in singing “We Shall Overcome”?). I was just there, in my youthful, well-meaning naïveté, thoroughly in awe of the whole event.
They had a great sound system! There I was, way back next to the Washington Monument, and the podium was at the Lincoln Memorial. I couldn’t hear everything perfectly, but, with the technology of 50 years ago, I could hear better than at most big events I’ve been to more recently. Though the truth is I don’t remember much about the speeches or even the music.
leslie 2
“Strong women, tough demands,” remembers Leslie. 1963 photo from The New York Times.
Mahalia Jackson, Marian Anderson — their marvelous voices flowed out over the whole length of the Mall. I vaguely remember Peter, Paul, and Mary. I don’t remember Bob Dylan at all. I now know that the first speaker was A. Philip Randolph, but I’d never heard of him at that time. My high school U.S. history class hadn’t told me that he was an African-American labor union leader who had threatened a March on Washington in 1941 to end discriminatory hiring in the growing war industries.
So I didn’t pay much attention. Mostly I just marveled at the crowd (it seemed much larger to me than 250,000, which is the number I’ve heard ever since). I looked with curiosity at the individuals close to me, and read the signs — “Jobs and Freedom NOW!” is the main one I remembered. Looking at the old photos today, I am reminded of how many of the slogans were economic demands — higher minimum wages, full employment, an end to bias on the job.
His voice boomed out over the mass of people, his rhetoric had us riveted.
Then there was Martin Luther King, Jr. When he began to speak, it seemed to me that the whole crowd got quiet. His voice boomed out over the mass of people, his rhetoric had us riveted. I had the feeling, this speech is going to be remembered and repeated; I’m listening to something historic. The visions that remain with me from his speech? Little black children and little white children together in a circle, holding hands; justice, a growing whirlwind, rolling inexorably down a mountain just as it rolled down the whole length of the Mall.
I know, today we roll our eyes at the portrayal of Dr. King as just the man with the dream. U.S. mainstream culture wants to stop the African-American struggle at that point in history; wants us to call the event the “Great Civil Rights March on Washington,” not by its real name, the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”; wants us to think that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 meant final victory against racial discrimination in the U.S.
But in 1963 I was 18 and that’s the point in my life I was at and that’s the point in history we were at. Dr. King’s emotion and passion and power, his invocation of U.S. history and the “promissory note” that the U.S. had reneged on with its citizens of color, his personal conversation with the African-Americans in his audience acknowledging their sacrifices, their suffering, their survival of police violence and imprisonment; all this made an impression that stays with me more vividly than much that has happened to me in the half century since then.
I think the main thing I took from it at the time was seeing all those people, all those BLACK people, all those men and especially women, young and old, whose event this was. Seeing their seriousness and power and determination. They were the instigators, they were the organizers, they were the leaders of their own struggle.
Still feeling the glow and promise of this great event, I went off to college, thinking, ‘I’ll do something productive in life.’
Still feeling the glow and promise of this great event, I went off to college, thinking, “I’ll do something productive in life; I’ll be a journalist, or an economist, or…” But college seemed almost an anachronism. It was all girls, and almost all white. We STILL couldn’t wear pants to class, or even to dinner in the dorm.
The “real” world kept happening. On September 15 came the death of the four children in Birmingham in the 16th St Baptist Church bombing. I don’t remember being as emotionally affected as one would think I would have been. Because I was white, it was so far removed from my world — even though I had the civil rights movement experience — and I was having a whole lot of fun in college. But the Kennedy assassination seemed to put everything over the top. The U.S. had truly changed.
Yes, I remember where I was when President Kennedy was shot. We filled the living room of our college dorm, glued to the TV, not believing what we were seeing, hoping, hoping that he would make it and then being devastated when the TV announced, “The President is dead.”
This was in Massachusetts, and the school canceled classes. For three days all the radio stations played was dirge music. We were mostly white and mostly fairly affluent and too young to remember the terror of World War II except through what our parents told us. Assassinations did not happen in the U.S. any more. Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were of a different planet, too long ago to even imagine.
Was this the “defining moment” of 1963? The final shock, yes. But I hate overwrought phrases, just as I would hesitate to call any of the events of 1963 “life-changing” experiences for me. Though when you’re 18, still pretty ignorant but developing and maturing fast, a lot of what happens has a big impact, and 1963 was certainly an impactful year.
Now it’s 2014 and the 50th anniversaries just keep on coming. Lyndon B. Johnson’s announcement of the War on Poverty. The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Soon, a “Civil Rights Summit” hosted by the LBJ Library at the University of Texas, honoring (a little ahead of time) President Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act in July 1964. Each time, I find myself drawn into the past; but I also think, what should I be doing in the present?
The roads we follow are many and twisted and unique. Accidents of time and geography affect what highlights of history we experience; class and race and culture and upbringing influence how we experience these events. Sometimes the effects are obvious, but sometimes quite perverse. How can we know why?
I, like many others both well-known and obscure, have found myself revisiting my life and trying to figure out how I got to be who I am. Like some, I’ve felt compelled to write about it — for myself, and maybe my kids. If it’s of interest to anyone else, if it helps anyone else figure out what should be their own path forward, then I’ll feel my effort was doubly worthwhile
[Austin resident Leslie Cunningham is a grandmother, a socialist, and a member of the Retiree Organizing Committee of the Texas State Employees Union.]

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The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   


Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

 

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

 

 

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.

*******

Jack A. Smith :
What really happened in Ukraine?


Nothing quite like this move on the geopolitical chessboard has happened since the U.S. became the world’s single superpower over two decades ago.

child with truck ukraine
A child drags a toy truck past pro-Russian soldiers at a Ukrainian military base in Crimea. PA photo. Image from thejournal.ie.
By Jack A. Smith | The Rag Blog | April 3, 2014
“The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then.”
– Henry Kissinger, Washington Post, March 6, 2014
“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
– Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (1998)
Russia has taught the United States a stern and embarrassing lesson in Ukraine as a riposte to Washington-backed regime change in Kiev, the capital. “So far,” Moscow in effect warned a thoroughly shocked Washington, “but no further.” President Vladimir Putin then annexed Crimea.
Nothing quite like this move on the geopolitical chessboard has happened since the U.S. became the world’s single superpower over two decades ago.

The objective of the Obama Administration’s support for a coup to remove an essentially neutral Ukrainian government (though neighborly toward Russia) was to install a regime leaning toward — and economically dependent upon — the United States and the European Union. The purpose is to compromise Russia’s revival as a regional power critical of U.S. policies.
The neutrality of the Kiev government, if not close ties, is exceptionally important to Moscow for its own long-term regional goals, and it will work toward repairing relations in time. Considerable support for Russia remains in the country.
Washington was obviously disoriented by Russia’s unexpected move in Ukraine, and perhaps even more so when Putin shrugged off President Obama’s subsequent threats. But for all the anti-Russia rhetoric, sanctions, and other punishments emanating from the U.S. and EU, the danger of an armed clash or greatly heightened East-West tensions is relatively remote at the moment, but if the confrontations continue there may be more serious problems ahead.
On March 21, Putin said “he wanted to halt the cycle of tit-for-tat retribution between Moscow and Washington,” according to The New York Times. But it is too early for the self-righteous Obama Administration and Congress to simmer down. Russia in effect challenged the global superpower — an act of supreme lèse-majesté — and this requires considerable posturing, tough rhetoric, and a dose of pain from an offended Washington.
From Moscow’s point of view,  the U.S. and UE made a deep penetration into Russia’s long recognized sphere of influence.
From Moscow’s point of view, however, the U.S. and UE made a deep penetration into Russia’s long recognized sphere of influence and Putin had to respond with some degree of equivalence. He easily found it in Crimea.
The U.S. and EU so far have imposed relatively mild sanctions on Russia though warning they would be significantly intensified should Moscow engage in other military moves in Ukraine, which President Putin earlier ruled out. On March 24, the Group of Eight wealthy countries announced it would not invite Russia to future meetings, as least temporarily, and also decided not to attend the scheduled upcoming G8 meeting in the Olympic city of Sochi but will gather at the “G7” in Brussels next June. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia wasn’t disturbed by the development.
Incongruously, the act that provoked the Crimean referendum — the U.S.-backed right wing coup against the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovich — received far less attention from the American media and hardly any outrage from Washington and most European capitals, even over the fact that organized fascist elements joined the protests leading to the so-called “revolution.”
Washington intrigued to bring about a coup against Yanukovich as punishment for his recent decision to rely on Russian aid and not that offered by the European Union (which was backed by the U.S.) to help bail Ukraine out of a severe economic crisis.
The Ukraine government had been in discussions with the EU to produce a tentative proposal last year. It was short of the country’s needs but better than nothing, even though it also demanded economic, social, and infrastructural “reforms” to get the funding. Last fall, Moscow then offered Ukraine an exceptionally generous aid package — a better deal for the government and the working class than the pending proposition from the austerity-minded EU and the conservative International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The entire situation could possibly have been avoided. According to journalist, author and Russia expert Stephen Cohen, interviewed on Democracy Now! January 30:
The European Union in November told the government of Ukraine, “If you want to sign an economic relationship with us, you cannot sign one with Russia.” Why not? Putin has said, “Why don’t the three of us have an arrangement? We’ll help Ukraine. The West will help Ukraine.”
The EU and U.S. refused. Our guess is that they wanted to control Ukraine for themselves, not least because it was the most important Soviet republic after Russia itself — a blow to Moscow — as well as a military threat.
Why a coup over this? The White House has long sought to separate Kiev from Moscow since the implosion of the Soviet Union in order to eventually move American power and NATO bases directly up to Ukraine’s Russian border. Washington has been engaged for about two decades in seeking to transform Ukraine into a pro-Western state situated within Washington’s sphere of influence and leadership.
The U.S. thought it achieved its objective when it helped engineer Ukraine’s so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ in 2004, but this victory was short-lived.
The U.S. thought it achieved its objective when it helped engineer Ukraine’s so-called “Orange Revolution” in 2004, but this victory was short-lived — the victim of infighting and treachery in a basically oligarch-controlled democratic political system that of course still exists. Yanucovich’s election in 2010 was a major turning of the page, and it now seems to be turning back.
One proof of Washington’s role in regime change materialized when a secretly taped telephone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and Geoffrey Platt, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, appeared on YouTube February 6. The call was made weeks earlier. They were so sure of a coup several weeks ahead that they were discussing who would be the U.S. candidate to replace Yanukovich when the day came. There were three possible “moderate Democratic” pro-U.S. choices.
Nuland pushed for Arseniy Yatseniuk, leader of the right-wing opposition Fatherland party, and Platt agreed. Yatseniuk, a 39-year-old banker, lawyer and politician, was named Prime Minister February 27, five days after Yanukovich was ejected. Nuland’s by now infamous “Fuck the E.U.” comment on the tape reflected Washington’s displeasure that the European Union was not moving fast enough to take full advantage of the crisis.
Neoconservative Nuland is evidently managing the current aspect of the State Department’s Ukraine project. In a mid-December speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, a group dedicated to promoting U.S.-European political and business values in the old homeland — i.e., it’s anti-Russian — Nuland revealed that the American government spent at least $5 billion over the years to turn Ukraine toward Washington.
Dozens of U.S.-affiliated NGO’s and government agencies have been engaged in “democracy building” projects in Ukraine over the years, including the United States Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, International Republican Institute, the Open Society Foundations, Freedom House, and The National Democratic Institute.
The Obama Administration clearly knew of the important contribution toward regime change made by fascist and neo-Nazi forces.
The Obama Administration clearly knew of the important contribution toward regime change made by fascist and neo-Nazi forces involved in the three months of demonstrations against the government following Russia’s aid offer. Nuland and her entourage even attended a mass demonstration, giving out pastries and urging people to keep up the good work. Several top American politicians also dropped by to show support and to appear important. Some — such as Sen. John McCain — allowed themselves to be photographed with fascist leaders.
Secretary of State John Kerry was a frequent visitor to Kiev during the months of anti-government protests, dashing here and there and making pompous pronouncements on behalf of President Obama. Vice President Joe Biden also showed up, no doubt thinking about how the trip will improve his hopeless chances to become the next Democratic presidential nominee. The Nuland tape has her telling Platt she was sending Biden to Kiev to say “ata-boy” to America’s candidate in the Ukraine election.
The White House was mum about the role of the extreme right wing in the protests since it served U.S. interests. The Oval Office also didn’t say a peep about the provisional government’s decision — for the first time in Europe since the Nazi era — to name several fascist leaders to high level positions. It will be of intense interest if these same ultra-right groups are again elevated to significant office in the permanent government to be elected May 25.
The fascist groups, mainly Svoboda and the Right Sector, have grown very fast in the last several years. Svoboda won only a couple of seats in the 2006 parliamentary elections, but in 2012 it obtained 37 seats out of 450.
President Obama and leaders of the European Union were blindsided by the Crimea affair. They refuse to accept the astonishingly popular vote, alleging the secession was illegal and that the vote was meaningless because the rest of the country must also vote in such a situation. Considerable hypocrisy pervades the current U.S./EU hand-wringing about territorial integrity, given their own recent conduct, such as:
The province of Kosovo broke away from the Serbian component of Yugoslavia in 1999 with help from a devastating three-month U.S.-NATO bombing campaign that caused heavy damage and many lives in Belgrade, the capital. There was no vote at all for secession by the residents of Kosovo province or throughout Serbia.
Washington and the UN then recognized Kosovo’s separation and helped support the territory until it became an independent state. EU entities encouraged and backed this move as they did earlier “assisted” secessions from socialist Yugoslavia. Kosovo now houses Camp Bondsteel, a large U.S./NATO base. In recent years the U.S. has supported the separation of South Sudan from Sudan, Eritrea from Ethiopia, and East Timor from Indonesia.
Regarding the need for an entire country to vote, Canada’s separatist Parti Québécois has participated in different (failed) legal referenda on national sovereignty for the province of Quebec without the rest of the country voting. There are other examples, of course.
The struggle that took place in Ukraine from November until now is extremely complex and in this article we shall look back in history — back to the origins and travail of Crimea, back to Washington’s expensive two-decade effort to lure Ukraine into America’s sphere of influence and to bring it into NATO as well.
First, a word about Ukraine: It is the largest country situated entirely in Europe. If it were a U.S. state it would be third in size at 233,032 sq. mi. The population was 44.3 million, until the 2.2 million people of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation. (This includes Sevastopol city, within Crimea but under the jurisdiction of the national capital Kiev, not Crimea’s capital of Simferopol.)
Residents of Crimea who wish to retain their Ukrainian citizenship were given 30 days to make their application. Ukraine is an urban, industrialized country that excels in agriculture and is a major exporter of grain and corn. U.S. business interests, primarily Big Agriculture, are deeply invested in the country.
Moscow is far weaker than the U.S but holds some powerful pieces in this geopolitical chess match.
Moscow is far weaker than the U.S but holds some powerful pieces in this geopolitical chess match:
• Russian public opinion strongly supports President Putin and his handling of the Ukraine crisis. Putin’s popularity is usually about 60% but it has jumped to 75.7%, since January 1, the highest in five years, according to the VCIOM All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center. RT reports a second poll March 14-15 that showed 91.4% of Russian citizens approve of Crimea becoming a part of the Russian Federation. Only 5% said they were opposed.
In the U.S., CBS reported March 25 that a new poll found “61% of Americans do not think the U.S. has a responsibility to do something about the situation between Russia and Ukraine, nearly twice as many as the 32% who think it does…and specifically 65% do not think the U.S. should provide military aid and equipment to Ukraine in response to Russia’s actions, while only 26% think the U.S. should.”
A few days earlier, a Pew Research poll shows that 56% of Americans oppose becoming “too involved in the Ukraine situation.” Those favoring “a firm stand against Russian actions” amounted to 29%. The “don‘t knows” were 15%. Only 8% of the people thought the U.S. should “consider military options.”
What is remarkable here is that most Americans get their information about international affairs from a mass media and government that is one-sided and often deceptive — and still they strongly opposed going to war against Syria a few months ago and now want to keep out of Ukraine. This is quite a change from the public support for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, subversion and near war against Iran, and potential wars or regime-change in Venezuela, Bolivia, and North Korea. The people are weary of war.
• Sanctions aren’t a big worry for Moscow at this point. Russia supplies 30% of the EU’s essential natural gas supply and much oil as well. Russia’s energy sector produces over half of government revenues — and for the next several years at least Europe is in no position to allow sanctions to disrupt this centerpiece of Russia’s economy. Obama is a master at applying sanctions — a virtual qualification for the presidency — but they will cause nothing like the pain being applied to Iran.
In this connection it must be noted that Russia is cooperating with U.S. sanctions against Iran but if Washington and the EU were to significantly increase sanctions or demands on Russia, Moscow could retaliate, in the words of The New York Times March 22, by reviving “plans for a barter deal with the Iranians that would enable them to sell more oil, undercutting the pressure exerted on Iran by Western sanctions.”
The Financial Times reported March 25 that in addition Russia could decide to sell Iran the long-range S-300 air defense missile system analysts say “can be a game changer because it would reduce Israel’s ability to attack Iran.”
On March 20 Standard & Poor downgraded Russia’s credit rating from stable to negative, a move that may have been more political than financial. Europe is obviously reluctant to impose strong sanctions and Obama is restrained by objections from U.S. finance and corporate interests that profit from doing business with Russia.
So far a number of ranking Russians are being inconvenienced by individual sanctions, travel bans and asset freezes, and Visa/MasterCard owners are out of luck — but the economy, which wasn’t in such good shape to begin with, seems to be remaining stable.
A March 21 report in Politico by Oliver Bullough suggests U.S. sanctions may actually be helping Putin’s several-year campaign to pressure Russian capitalists to deposit their money in Russian, not foreign, banks, where they often hide their assets to cheat tax collection at home. The Russian leader hopes that sanctions and the threat of having their assets frozen will bring more money back to Moscow. Putin has greatly weakened the power of the oligarchs since taking office. Having more of their money in Russian banks empowers state control.
• As a member of the UN Security Council Moscow has an important say (and a veto) in global matters, including those pertaining to Syria, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela — all countries the U.S. seeks to punish or overthrow.
• Russia has many nuclear weapons and adequate delivery systems. After falling apart during the 1990s following the implosion of the USSR, Russia’s armed forces and weapons are now considered sufficient for most challenges. Given this and the Crimean episode, it is now quite doubtful a sober White House will order NATO bases built in Ukraine in the foreseeable future.
Halting NATO’s continual advance toward Russia is an existential matter for Moscow.
Halting NATO’s continual advance toward Russia is an existential matter for Moscow. Interim Prime Minister Yatseniuk sought to assure Russia by stating, “association with NATO is not on the agenda.” But Moscow wasn’t born yesterday, and knows today’s agenda could change tomorrow.
As the Soviet Union was beginning to come apart in 1990, Washington promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev — in return for the reunification of Germany — that it would not seek to recruit NATO membership from the impending dissolution of the Warsaw Pact or from the various ex-republics. The U.S. broke that promise right after the USSR imploded 23 years ago.
Years later Gorbachev declared: “They probably rubbed their hands rejoicing at having played a trick on the Russians,” adding this probably is a factor behind Russia’s distrust today.
The anti-Soviet NATO military pact never disbanded and now functions as Washington’s Foreign Legion, fattened by the acquisition of nearly all the former East European members of the Warsaw Pact and three former Soviet republics — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
In 2008, the Bush Administration announced that Ukraine and Georgia were becoming members of NATO. Moscow announced it would not tolerate any such maneuver, and briefly invaded Georgia on the side of separatist South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Washington’s support and intimate involvement in the undemocratic ouster of Yanukovich renewed Moscow’s deep concern about the expansion of NATO to Ukraine, which they would never tolerate any more than the U.S. would Russian troops at the Mexican border.
• Moscow has friends. The 120 member nations of the Non-Aligned Movement have no beef with the Russian Federation. It would hardly be surprising if many of them quietly admired Russia’s chutzpah for standing up to the imperial superpower. A number of other countries are close to Moscow, such as those in Commonwealth of Independent States, Collective Security Treaty Organization or Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The BRICS group of rising economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — is not about to chasten a fellow member of a club that prefers a multilateral world leadership in place of the existing unilateral hegemon. (Incidentally, Harvard history Professor Niall Ferguson wrote this month that the first four BRICS countries will come close within five years to overtaking the four established economic giants: The U.S., UK, Germany, and Japan.)
China is keeping silent about Ukraine because of its non-interference policy, and it is unenthusiastic about successions, being jittery about Tibet, but if the conflict sharply intensifies Beijing will work to ease tensions, probably siding with Russia in extremis.
Putin’s facilitation of Crimea’s desire for independence from Ukraine was not simply Moscow getting back at Washington for the overthrow of Yanukovich or the desire to protect Russian speakers from the fascist elements, although they were factors. It is also a genuine belief held by most Russians that it is time to bring the Crimean people back home. Further, and this cannot be underestimated, it secured Russia’s prized Navy base.
Without firing a shot, Moscow’s response to regime change was so adept it could have been choreographed by the Bolshoi.
Without firing a shot, Moscow’s response to regime change was so adept it could have been choreographed by the Bolshoi. On March 11, the parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea adopted a declaration of independence from Ukraine. Five days later a peaceful democratic and honest referendum was conducted in the region and 96.77% voted to return to Russia (see election sidebar). The next day President Vladimir Putin, with overwhelming backing from the Russian people and parliament, annexed the territory.
Only one-third of the Ukrainian soldiers and their families stationed in Crimea are heeding Kiev’s call to return to Ukraine. The remaining two-thirds have opted to stay in Russian Crimea. We don’t know the reasons.
Crimea had been part of Russia since the late 1700s. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea to neighboring Ukraine in 1954, supposedly to facilitate construction of a huge hydro-electrical project that would supply power to Ukraine and Crimea. Correspondent Jim Miles reported in Foreign Policy Journal this month that Khrushchev “gave the eastern portion and the Crimea to the Ukraine, hoping to water down the still latent Nazism that survived World War II in western Ukraine.” There had been a substantial pro-Nazi movement in the country during the war, part of which fought alongside the Germans and/or against the Russians. Many of Ukraine’s younger fascists today look up to those earlier fighters as heroes.
The people of Crimea, virtually all Russians at the time, were not consulted about the shift and most resented Khrushchev’s decision, though they at least remained in the same Soviet Union, as close to each other as New York to New Jersey. Many longed for Crimea to return to Russia, especially after the union fell apart in 1991.
In 1994 the people of Crimea held their first referendum on separation from Ukraine, and 80% voted for independence but nothing came of it. Twenty years passed before the second referendum, and Crimea returned to Russia.
When Ukraine absorbed Crimea, Russia retained leased rights to the huge strategically important northern Black Sea Fleet base in Crimea, which it has occupied for 221 years. The facility is a geopolitical treasure because it is Russia’s only significant warm water port. Obviously, Moscow was worried that a U.S.-installed regime in Kiev might refuse to renew Russia’s lease. Now this important military facility is safely in Russian hands.
(As an aside, Russia’s main warm water port outside its own territory is in the Mediterranean Sea at Tartus in Syria. From the Russian point of view, both strategic bases have been endangered by U.S. imperialism — one by regime change in Ukraine, one by supporting regime change in Syria.)
Serious opposition was aroused in November when Yanukovich rejected the EU-U.S. bailout measure in favor of the Russian aid package. The trouble was mainly in western Ukraine where many citizens identify with Europe, and less so in east and south Ukraine where there is a large population of ethnic Russians, especially in Crimea.
The demonstrations were not so much arguments about the merits of the offer from the European Union, U.S., and International Monetary Fund versus that from Moscow but whether to move toward Europe or Russia. Moscow offered the near-bankrupt Ukrainian government a huge package of aid, including an offer to buy $15 billion of the country’s bonds and reduce the price of Russian gas imports by a third.
President Obama offered a $1 billion loan guarantee, but it is not clear what is coming from the EU and IMF because the situation is changing. Previous offers were considerably lower than Russia’s, and strings were attached.
Within a week 100,000 protesters converged in Maidan Square in a largely peaceful demonstration.
Within a week 100,000 protesters converged in Maidan Square in a largely peaceful demonstration. There were clashes with police outside the square when breakaway groups smashed their way into Kiev’s city hall, while others tried to crash through police lines to get to the presidential office, resulting in 35 arrests. Hundreds of thousands participated in a protest on December 8.
By now it was becoming evident that the conservative forces in opposition to Yanukovich were losing control of the demonstrations as extreme right-wing organizations began setting up a battlefield in the Maidan. By mid-January Kiev appeared under siege and anti-government demonstrators expanded their protests to several cities in western Ukraine, storming and occupying government offices.
Parliament then passed anti-protest laws, but they were ineffective. Prime Minister Mykola Azarov resigned near the end January. Parliament rescinded the new laws and passed legislation dropping all charges against arrested protesters if they would leave government buildings. In mid-February all 234 arrested demonstrators were released and the office occupations ended.
The real trouble began a couple of days later. Some 25,000 people were in the square when gunfire broke out, killing 11 demonstrators and seven police. Hundreds were wounded. It has not been established how it began. February 20 was the worst day of violence when 88 people were killed. The police were largely blamed although there were reports that provocateurs fired at both sides to create even stronger opposition to the government.
The next day Yanukovich signed a substantial power sharing deal with opposition leaders, but protests, led by the extreme right, continued and government offices were again occupied. On February 22, as protests continued, Yanukovich “fled for his life,” ending up in Russia.
The coup was completed February 23, when Parliament, including Yanucovich’s Party of the Regions, quickly capitulated to reality and oligarch instructions and voted 328-0 to impeach the president. They then elected Obama’s choice, Yatseniuk, interim Prime Minister.
According to Richard Becker’s article “Who’s Who In Ukraine’s New [Semi-Fascist] Government?” in Liberation newspaper March 6:
The new, self-appointed government in Kiev is a coalition between right-wing and outright fascist forces, and the line between the two is often difficult to discern. Moreover, it is the fascist forces, particularly the Svoboda party and the Right Sector, who are in the ascendancy, as evidenced by the fact that they have been given key government positions in charge of the military and other core elements of the state apparatus.
Here is a list of five fascists in the new government and their positions:
  1. Dmytro Yarosh, Right Sector neo-Nazi commander who said “our revival begins with our Maidan,” is now second-in-command of the National Defense and Security Council (covering the military, police, courts, and intelligence apparatus).
  2. Andriy Parubiy, co-founder of the fascist Social National Party, which later changed its name to Svoboda, is the new top commander of the National Defense and Security Council.
  3. Ihor Tenyukh, member of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party, was named Minister of Defense, but resigned March 24 over accusations he mishandled the troop withdrawal from Crimea, a charge he denied.
  4. Oleksandr Sych, member of neo-Nazi Svoboda, is one of three Vice Prime Ministers.
  5. Oleg Makhnitsky, member of neo-Nazi Svoboda, is now Prosecutor-General (Attorney General), and has immediately set out to indict the leaders of Crimea who do not want to live under the new order in Kiev.
Yatseniuk was summoned to Washington and to receive his official elevation from the leader of the free world on March 12. Sitting in the Oval Office chatting with President Obama, he promised he would “never surrender” to Russia. He then paraphrased a famous quote from former President Reagan: “Mr. Putin, tear down this wall, the wall of war, intimidation and military aggression.” Obama and Nuland certainly picked the right man for the job.
Virtually the entire U.S. mass media did not question or critically examine the implications of the White House honoring an unelected prime minister who just replaced a democratically elected prime minister who was overthrown by mass demonstrations that included fascists, some of whom are ending up in the new government. This is an interesting commentary on the condition of American democracy. Ah, the corporate media will reply, “but he was subsequently impeached,” and this makes it all peachy.
The U.S. government dislikes President Putin, especially after Moscow provided the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden sanctuary in Russia.
The U.S. government dislikes President Putin, especially after Moscow provided the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden sanctuary in Russia. The antipathy goes back for over a decade. The New York Times published a front page article February 24, headlined “3 Presidents And A Riddle Named Putin.”
Former presidents and other leading officials are quoted over the years as characterizing him as cold, or autocratic, or uninformed, or a stone killer, or KGB, or a dictator. Hillary Clinton compared President Putin to Hitler last week, a title Washington usually reserves for political leaders it is about to bomb, though this time it probably was just HRC revving up for 2016.
In reality there are three real reasons for America’s antipathy:
  • Russia was a traumatized basket case for a decade after socialism was replaced by robber baron capitalism and forced into an undignified subservience to Washington. Putin took power in 2000 after the abrupt resignation of the by then exceptionally unpopular Boris Yeltsin, who had dissolved the Soviet Union against public opinion. Over the last 14 years as president, premier and president again, Putin’s policies have pulled Russia out of Uncle Sam’s pocket and helped bring the country back to life. James Petras, in a March 11 article, described it this way: “With the advent of President Vladimir Putin and the reconstitution of the Russian state and economy, the U.S. lost a vassal client and source of plundered wealth.”
  • He openly criticizes America’s unjust wars and its attempt to dominate the rest of the world.
  • He had the effrontery to declare in a 2005 State of the Nation speech to the Russian people: “Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century…. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.”
Putin was being honest. The Russian people certainly understood what he meant — even those who opposed communism. But the neoconservatives who dominated the George W. Bush Administration and those of lesser number in the Obama Administration (who happened to be quite active in the Ukraine regime-change operation) remain unforgiving and do their best to demonize the actions and intentions of Russia and its president.
Putin has shortcomings and has made mistakes, of course. He is fairly conservative in general but most pronouncedly in certain social matters that probably coincide with the thinking of a majority of the Russian people. His government’s antagonism toward the LGBT community is about where the U.S. was 30 or 40 years ago and where many Americans still are today. (How many months ago was it when the White House first okayed same sex marriage?) He is also too much a one-man show with an ego as large as Russia.
The principal aspect of Putin’s governance is that he is reviving an independent Russia as a regional power, after a number of post-Soviet years in the doghouse.
But the principal aspect of his governance is that he is reviving an independent Russia as a regional power, after a number of post-Soviet years in the doghouse, and that’s what mainly irks Washington.
The New York Times March 25, noting that the Russian president has been complaining for years “about the West moving unilaterally to reorder the Continental balance of power… [Interpreted U.S.-UE] courting of Ukraine… as a step too far, prompting Mr. Putin to risk sanctions and the worst conflict since the Cold War to make clear that Washington and its friends do not call all of the shots anymore.”
It seems impossible for the White House to see the world the way Putin sees it — through Russian eyes that cannot forget the relatively recent past and are wide open to the geopolitical realities taking place today. The Russian president also might think that Washington’s support for Ukraine regime change was an appalling and mocking “thank you” for recently (1) saving Obama’s face by providing him with an exit from an unpopular decision to bomb Syria, and (2) for Russia’s influence on Iran’s leadership that played some role in the recent rapprochement between Tehran and Washington.
The U.S. news media have been asking what nefarious deed to expect next from Russia, and whether Putin plans to grab more territory. It is risky making predictions but it is this writer’s view that the Russian government is going to watch and wait, with no dramatic actions in the immediate future.
Russia will try hard to win friends, especially with former republics, to bolster its position against further infringements from Washington. Putin has domestic and other matters on his agenda, including a Eurasian Economic Union. He is flying high after Crimea, Sochi Olympics/Paralympics, super high approval ratings and he’d rather not climb down for a while.
The real question is what the U.S. will do next about Russia and about a very troubled Ukraine, given all the other crises on the crowded agenda of American empire. Obama or his successor will eventually try in one way or another to pay Russia back for Crimea, a deed no self-respecting superpower can simply shrug off. Moscow will be prepared.
The problem for Washington may be its latest geopolitical acquisition. The new Ukrainian government to be elected in May will be utterly dependent on the U.S., its principal enabler and protector, lesser so the EU and the IMF. The economy is in a serious crisis. The IMF austerity program could cause great hardship for working people. The oligarchs will remain oligarchs, richer now because of the business and security the U.S. brings with it.
The country is split into antagonistic factions. Potential trouble can be expected between Ukrainian and Russian speakers. Hot heads will want to retaliate for the loss of Crimea. The fascists have come out boldly and assumed considerable responsibility in overthrowing Yanukovich. They expect a big payoff.
Despite all this, the accomplishment-starved Obama Administration evidently thinks the entire adventure is a big success in that it has just pocketed Ukraine and found an issue with which to throttle Russia for years to come. However, this well may end up far more of a headache than Washington ever imagined. Obama and the Europeans would have been much smarter to accept Russia’s offer of three equal parties sharing the cost of bailing out the Ukraine, and le ft well enough alone.
Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.
[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter.]

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The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   


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Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

 

 

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.

*******

Harry Targ :
Raise the minimum wage now


Working people are on the move and grassroots groups are demanding a fair minimum wage.

minimum wage cartoon
Political cartoon by Nick Anderson / The Houston Chronicle. Image from Sky Dancing.
By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | April 1, 2014
The experience of increasing poverty, economic marginalization, and the rise of political reaction against workers, unions, women, people of color, the right to vote, and basic dignity for the 99 percent has stimulated mass mobilizations in protest over the last two years.
From Arab Spring, to protests all across the Midwest in defense of worker’s rights, to the Occupy Movement, anti-racist campaigns in Florida and elsewhere against so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, and the Moral Majority mobilizations inspired by fight backs against the suppression of voter rights, working people are on the move.

Inspired by an implicit vision of what a better society would look like, people sometimes engage in politics through campaigns involving particular issues. In Indiana and Georgia groups are demanding that their governors accept Medicaid expansion. In addition activists around the country are making modest but significant demands that the federal government and states increase the minimum wage. Labor, grassroots groups of various kinds, and sectors of the faith community have taken up the call. Even President Obama has urged Congress to pass legislation to raise the minimum wage.
Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman George Miller introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 which has served as an example of what grassroots groups are demanding. The Act calls for a raise in the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2015. It would require wage adjustments each year based on changes in the cost of living. Finally, the law would require a raise in the minimum wage for “tipped workers,” from $2.13 to 70 percent of the minimum wage (theoretically additional wages would come from customer tips).
The defenders of the bill estimate that it would favorably impact 30 million workers: 88 percent adults (above teenage status), 56 percent of women workers, almost half of workers of color, and 17 million minimum wage workers who have children. They claim that the number of U.S. workers depending on low-wage jobs has increased significantly.
Since the recession 58 percent of new jobs have been low-wage and six of 10 top-growth occupations are low-wage.
Since the recession 58 percent of new jobs have been low-wage and six of 10 top-growth occupations are low-wage. Their median age is almost 35 years of age. Two-thirds of them are employed by large chains which are experiencing large rates of profit. (Some of these chains are dependent upon their low wage workers receiving Medicaid and other forms of assistance rather than adequate wages and benefits from their job.)
David Cooper (“Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $10.10 Would Lift Wages for Millions and Provide a Modest Economic Boost,” Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper #371 December 19, 2013) presented a broad array of data on what effects raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by July 2016, would have on each state’s workers.
For example, such a law would directly affect over 1 million of Florida’s 7.7 million workers. This would impact 56 per cent of low wage workers above the age of 30; 46 percent of white workers, 20.1 percent of Blacks, 30.2 percent Hispanic. Twenty-eight percent were parents (11. 3 percent single parents). Forty-five percent of beneficiaries of a raised minimum wage would be workers with some college or bachelors’ degrees.
At the national level, as was suggested above, millions of workers would get higher wages and GDP would grow by about $22 billion, which would create 85,000 new jobs. Cooper concluded about the national impacts: “Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016 would lift the incomes of millions of working families, boosting their spending power at a time when the U.S. economy is in dire need of increased consumer spending.”
Where do we go from here? Raising the minimum wage is a moral imperative.
In a joint statement posted on the Unitarian Universalist web page (July 18, 2013), the Rev. Peter Morales, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), and the Rev. Bill Schulz, president and CEO of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), called for collective action to support legislation to raise minimum wages in the United States. In part they argued that
…while the stock market is closing at unprecedented highs, workers who make minimum wage are not recovering — they’re barely putting food on the table. Millions of low-wage workers in our country work hard day in and day out and still can’t afford life’s basic necessities. They are the restaurant servers feeding us, the people caring for our elderly or sick loved ones, and the workers keeping our buildings clean. They are our brothers, mothers, friends, congregants, and community members — and they are suffering silently, choosing between buying food, getting to work, and paying the rent.
…We believe in models in which employers treat their workers as human beings rather than as just another cost of doing business. We believe in putting purchasing power back into the hands of workers, who will spend those dollars in their local communities. We believe in an economy that is strong because workers have enough to live on and create demand for business. Better wages mean a real recovery: sustainable jobs, thriving families, and flourishing economies.
Legislation that raises the minimum wage is an important part of creating this vision.
This is more than a political issue — it is a moral imperative.
[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. ]

The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   


Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

 

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

 

 

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.

A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. Read on.

*******
spiral

Lamar W. Hankins :
Aslan’s portrayal of Jesus as revolutionary zealot is fanciful history

Mistakes in ‘Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,’ show that Reza Aslan lacks the necessary background to write a historical work about the period and Jesus’s place in it.

jesus art
Jesus drives money changers from the temple. Image from SF Gate.
By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | March 27, 2014
Part one of two.
Just over 78% of adults in the U.S. report that they are Christian, according to the latest Pew Research findings. The thesis of a relatively new book by Reza Aslan should interest them. In Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Aslan portrays Jesus as a revolutionary zealot intent on the overthrow of the Romans in order to drive them from the land of Israel — land promised to the Jews by God.
It is not a new thesis. I remember Christians and others in the 1960s who viewed Jesus as a revolutionary for other reasons — mainly as a figure who wanted to create a society of equality that was closer to communism than to corporate capitalism.

The best critique of Aslan’s book — and by any standard, the longest — has been made by Bart Ehrman on his Bart’s Blog, in a series of 13 comments made over a three-week period earlier this year. Ehrman, a New Testament Biblical scholar and the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, blogs five or six times a week to raise money for charitable purposes.
Aslan claims that his book is based on real history, not conjecture.
Aslan claims that his book is based on real history, not conjecture, but Ehrman suggests otherwise. Ehrman finds fault with Aslan’s basic thesis “that Jesus was a politically motivated zealot who believed in the violent overthrow of the Roman empire, or at least believed that the Romans should be driven out of the Promised Land, as did so many others in his time and place.”
Ehrman suggests that the deficiencies in Aslan’s thesis arise from his lack of expertise in “the critical study of the New Testament, the history of early Christianity,” and several related fields encompassing the history of the Roman empire at that time and the study of the historical Jesus. In short, Aslan is not a scholar in any of these subjects and has written a book that requires — to be accurate — deep knowledge of all of them.
No one, and especially not Ehrman, has questioned that Aslan’s book is beautifully written. Aslan is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California–Riverside, a Research Associate at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and a contributing editor for The Daily Beast. He has a Ph.D. in the sociology of religion, but that field does not encompass the areas of scholarship that Ehrman has identified as critical to support any thesis about the nature and character of Jesus.
Both Aslan and Ehrman agree that the Gospels are not reliable historical texts. As Ehrman describes them, they “are meant to be proclamations of the superiority of Jesus as the Son of God. They are not meant to be objective descriptions of political events.” To use them to describe historical events requires that the theological claims of the writings be sorted through with the tools of the historian — the historical criteria that can be used to determine what can plausibly be said to have happened over 2,000 years ago.
Ehrman points to the need to find out from historical sources from first-century Palestine what went on, looking for “independent attestation” of the events described. Other criteria that should be used include the “criterion of embarrassment” (that is, an account embarrassing to the author or the author’s belief or thesis is presumed to be true because the author would have no reason to invent an embarrassing account) and the “criterion of dissimilarity” (for example, if a saying attributed to Jesus is dissimilar to the Jewish traditions of his time and also from the beliefs of early Christians, it is likely to be authentic).
Such criteria help assess what has been made up or added by later storytellers. But Aslan never reveals his criteria to readers; therefore, readers cannot evaluate whether Aslan has arrived at valid conclusions on matters of historical importance.
For Bart Ehrman, a crucial matter — perhaps the crucial matter — is to explain why the Romans crucified Jesus.
For Ehrman, a crucial matter — perhaps the crucial matter — is to explain why the Romans crucified Jesus. If the basis for that “most certain historical datum about Jesus” (that “he was crucified under Pontius Pilate for calling himself the King of the Jews”) does not stand up to scrutiny, Aslan’s thesis is highly suspect. That thesis, as restated by Ehrman, is that “Jesus was killed for making a political claim that amounted to insurgency because he was a politically motivated Jew who believed in insurgency.” For Ehrman, the evidence points in another direction.
Ehrman finds glaring historical errors throughout Aslan’s book, but I will mention only a few. They mostly concern what Ehrman terms the “overarching themes about the political situation in Jerusalem that Jesus found himself in – a central feature of the book.” The false claims are important to Aslan’s view that the political situation explains the life, ministry, and death of Jesus.
One historical error is Aslan’s claim that, in Ehrman’s words, “Legions of Roman troops were stationed throughout Judea.” Aslan seems to see an occupied Judea. But Ehrman says that Jews in those days were not regularly confronted by Roman soldiers. There were soldiers with the governor in Caesarea, but Roman soldiers were not everywhere in Judea.
Aslan also misunderstands Jewish beliefs. Aslan’s claim that “Belief in a divine messiah would have been anathema to everything Judaism represents” is simply not true. Ehrman points to passages in Psalm 2:110, Psalm 45:6-7; and Isaiah 9:6-7 that suggest that “the messiah was to be the descendant of the kings, himself the ‘Son of God.’” The Book of Enoch, which is a sourcebook for ancient Judaism, refers to an understanding among Jews “that the messiah would be the divine Son of Man come from heaven,” in Ehrman’s words.
Aslan also claims that for a 30-year old Jewish man, as Jesus was at the beginning of his ministry, not to have a wife is “almost unthinkable.” But Ehrman finds no historical basis for such a claim, explaining that during Jesus’ time, “men outnumbered women by a good margin, since so many women died in childbirth.” This made it impossible for all Jewish men to marry. Further, apocalyptic Jews (such as Jesus) who believed the end of the world was coming soon intentionally did not marry because of their beliefs.
One topographical/geographical claim by Aslan — that it was a day’s walk from Nazareth to the capital city Sepphoris — is easily refuted by Ehrman, who calculates that it would take perhaps one and a half hours to walk the distance. Other sources indicate that is was about five miles between the two towns.
Aslan seems intent, too, on exaggerating the Roman presence in Jerusalem.
Aslan seems intent, too, on exaggerating the Roman presence in Jerusalem. He claims that Pilate marched “through Jerusalem’s gates trailed by a legion of Roman soldiers carrying standards bearing the Emperor’s image,” but, as Ehrman explains, a primary historian of the time, Josephus, wrote that Pilate’s entry into Jerusalem with soldiers was stealthy, done at night, with soldiers spread around the city, creating an unwelcome surprise for the inhabitants when they awoke the next day.
Aslan also claims that the Romans, in essence, declared war on the Jews, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE. But Ehrman explains that there is no historical evidence for this. The only uprising that concerned the Romans was in Palestine:
The vast majority of Jews did not live in Jerusalem, or in Judea, or even throughout Palestine. Much like today, there were far, far more Jews living outside the national boundaries of Israel than within it. And remarkably, and strikingly, Romans did not punish other Jews outside of Palestine for the uprising within Palestine.
Jews were allowed to continue to worship God as they always had (except, of course, in the Temple, which no longer existed). Jews were not declared the enemies of Rome. Far from it. In most places, Jews had a privileged status in relationship to Romans (they were not required to participate in public sacrifices to the Roman gods, for example). The Jewish uprising in Palestine had nothing to do with that.
Another mistake about Roman Jewish history that Aslan got wrong is a claim that “Rome expelled every surviving Jew from Jerusalem and its surrounding environs [after 70 CE].”
Ehrman explains that Jews were not expelled from the city after 70 CE, but continued to thrive there for more than 60 years. It was another revolt in 132-35 CE that led to Jewish expulsion from Jerusalem, along with the re-naming of the city by the Romans.
Aslan also makes incorrect claims about the religious views of John the Baptist, the execution of “thousands and thousands” of Jews by Pilate, the crucifixion of Jesus in the presence of hundreds of dying criminals, that those crucified were “savagely scourged” as was “the custom for all those sentenced to the cross,” that Jesus’ disciples were all martyred for their belief in the resurrection, that Peter and Paul were similarly martyred by Nero in 66 CE for the same belief, that Christians ceased to convert Jews after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, that there was a great debate at the Council of Nicea about whether Jesus was divine or human, and many other historical claims.
Ehrman explains that no historical records or sources generally accepted as reliable by scholars of the period support any of the above claims. But such representations do spice up Aslan’s claim that the events are based on actual history of the period. However, history is not Aslan’s only weakness. Other mistakes related in his book about the New Testament provide even more evidence that Aslan simply doesn’t have the necessary background to write a historical work about the period and Jesus’s place in it.
In next week’s column, I will finish outlining Bart Ehrman’s critique of Aslan’s book. Those interested in the New Testament and the early history of Christianity will find Ehrman’s blog one of the most fascinating sites on the web. Limited information from the site is free, but to read all of Ehrman’s thoughts on numerous topics related to his 30 years of scholarship in his field, the reader must pay $24.95 a year, all of which goes directly to charity. It is Ehrman’s way of doing good while sharing information based on his research. You can find his website here.
Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.
[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins.]
For a different perspective, see Paul Buhle’s “Reza Aslan’s ‘Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.’” on The Rag Blog.
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