Tag Archives: Obama

“Community and resistance—or imperial barbarism”

Below is note from Rich Gibson (San Diego State University) on the anniversary of the US war in Afghanistan.

Dear Friends,

Today is the 8th Anniversary of the US assault on Afghanistan, a full invasion, war, in response to a crime.

In my section A section of the New York Times (CA) , there is no mention of that.

Since then, $12.9 trillion was given to the banks. The wars will cost around $3 trillion if they project into next year, as they will.

The government became a full blown corporate state, an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich. Schools merged with the effort, becoming full-blown missions for capitalism. Those educators who collaborated became, knowingly or not, its missionaries.

The American public, having agreed to shop during Bush’s wars, can no longer shop. The US economy, 2/3 rooted in consumerism, cannot consume, nor produce, and the banks will not loan to the unemployed. Spectacles continue, more and faster. Baseball! Football! Porn!!

The demagogue, Obama and his friend, Arne Duncan, now throw the Bush agenda for education into hyperspeed: Regimented curricula promoting witless nationalism, anti working class high stakes exams, militarization, layoffs and cutbacks, some privatization, and, with perfect logic, merit pay.

The union leadership of every major union cooperated at every turn, played a significant role in electing Obama, in harmony with their Quisling roles of the past. They are the nearest and most vulnerable of workers’ enemies. Harsh measures for them.

Professional organizations accepted the division of academic labor they represent; remained largely impotent. Historians talked to historians, wrote a few petitions, rarely crossed the hall to deal with the sociologists. Some took up petitions, begging.

The rich grew much richer as barbarism rose. The poor became much poorer. Segmented by race, class, gender, split against each other by reactionary unions, now we see impoverished people battling for scraps.

The education agenda is a war agenda. The core issue of our time is the reality of the promise of endless war and booming inequality met by the potential of mass, activist, class conscious resistance, connecting reason to real power.

The youth at the occupation of UCSC point the way. Having a good school within this capitalist society is like having a reading room in a prison. Not acceptable.

The choice is clear enough. Community and resistance—or Imperial Barbarism.

Up the rebels!

Good luck to us, every one.

r

Pilger: How We are Prepared for Another War of Aggression

In a piece titled “The Lying Game: How We are Prepared for Prepared for Another War of Aggression,” journalist John Pilger compares the current drum-beating for war against Iran, based on a fake “nuclear threat”, with the manufacture of a sense of false crisis that led to invasion of Iraq and the deaths of 1.3 million people.

Obama is giving us what he promised: war in Afghanistan. The expansion strategy and the public’s distaste for ware are nearly mirror images of the run-up to Bush’s fiasco in Iraq.

Obama’s “showdown” with Iran has another agenda. On both sides of the Atlantic the media have been tasked with preparing the public for endless war. The US/Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal says 500,000 troops will be required in Afghanistan over five years, according to America’s NBC. The goal is control of the “strategic prize” of the gas and oilfields of the Caspian Sea, central Asia, the Gulf and Iran – in other words, Eurasia. But the war is opposed by 69 per cent of the British public, 57 per cent of the US public and almost every other human being. Convincing “us” that Iran is the new demon will not be easy. McChrystal’s spurious claim that Iran “is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups” is as desperate as Brown’s pathetic echo of “a line in the sand”.

During the Bush years, according to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a military coup took place in the US, and the Pentagon is now ascendant in every area of American foreign policy. A measure of its control is the number of wars of aggression being waged simultaneously and the adoption of a “first-strike” doctrine that has lowered the threshold on nuclear weapons, together with the blurring of the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons.

All this mocks Obama’s media rhetoric about “a world without nuclear weapons”. In fact, he is the Pentagon’s most important acquisition. His acquiescence with its demand that he keep on Bush’s secretary of “defence” and arch war-maker, Robert Gates, is unique in US history. He has proved his worth with escalated wars from south Asia to the Horn of Africa. Like Bush’s America, Obama’s America is run by some very dangerous people. We have a right to be warned. When will those paid to keep the record straight do their job?

John Pilger: Obama is a corporate marketing creation

John Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker. He has twice won Britain’s Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US.

Rouge Forum Update: The Gathering Storms

Dear Friends,

This will be the last update until after Labor Day. This one should hold up for readers until then.

Action Oriented Links:
Please note and try to attend the Freedom in Education Meeting in Fresno this weekend.

Call for Papers, the Rouge Forum News Number 15.

The Rouge Forum Immortalized at Wikipedia.

Deadline For Nominations to the Rouge Forum Steering Committee is September 1.

We recognize with sadness: the doors at Room 101, an incisive radio program on KZUM hosted by Michael Baker, are closed. Mr Baker’s long run on the radio included interviews with key radical and progressive voices in education from Noam Chomsky to RIch Gibson and liberals as well. Congratulations to Michael Baker on a great run. Two, three, many Room 101s!

There are, at the beginning of the school year, 4,516 on our email list. Wish it was more? Send it along. Invite a friend.

Endless War:
Obamagogue Spins War News With the Best of Them.

Holy Cow! The Afghans are Not Helping

Double Holy Cow! The CIA Threatens and Beats People!

“General Pickett, send more men.” “But, General Lee, I have no more men.”

Warlord Dostum Joins Karzai

Council on Foreign Relations: Afghanistan is NOT a War of Necessity and Oh Yes it Is, It’s The Pipelines, Stupid

William Calley: Sorry About That

Mercs Outnumber US Troops in Afghanistan

Aghanistan’s Rigged Election

Brother Can You Spare A Dime?
Unemployment Uber Alles

California Unemployment Hits Post WW2 High

Detroit Unemployment at 28.9%

Nope, But if You Are A Banker, Here is $12.9 Trillion, No Strings, No Kidding. It is Yours. Woo hoo.
Video–Where is that Tarp? What Tarp? What Me Worry? “I have to tell you honestly, I am shocked to find out that nobody at the Federal Reserve, including the Inspector General, is keeping track of [the unaccounted for trillions].”

The Stim is Definitely Working? Forbes

The Education Agenda is a War Agenda:
Ohanian on Duncan’s Merit Pay Schemes

The Education Stimulus is a Merit Pay Stimulus

Ravitch on Obama’s Awful Education Plan

The State As an Executive Committee and Armed Weapon of the (Corrupt) Rich:
Holy Double Dog Cow: Hillbillary’s and Obamagogues Pals are Crooks

Notorious Friends of Hillbillary

John Pilger on Brand Obama

Yes, We Told Them So: The Demoagogue
It is probably not all that helpful to announce that we told you so, but….Yup, we told many people so.

The core issue of our time is the rapid rise of color-coded inequality and the emergence of world war met by the potential of a mass, class-conscious resistance.

These are not “public” schools we see. They are capitalist schools in a society where capitalism trumped whatever vestiges of democracy existed a decade ago. They are segregated schools. That’s not merely the result of bad people doing bad things, exploiting others (though they surely are bad people) but also the consequence of a social system dependant on exploitation—meaning inequality.

The education agenda is a war agenda. It is a capitalism in crisis agenda, a Regimented National Curriculum agenda, mostly to promote nationalism.

Such a curriculum necessarily sets up anti-working class and racist high-stakes tests. Both teacher unions, the NEA and AFT, helped design both the national curriculum and the high-takes exams. They are in no position to stop the next step. The professional organization, from NCTE to AHA to NCSS and all in between, proved more than impotent, they too collaborated.

Those tests necessarily and logically lead to merit pay which already exists in the deep divide in, say, Detroit and suburb pay and benefits.

Militarization of schooling is part of the war agenda.

To some degree, privatization and charters are part of the war agenda. Privatization serves some sectors of elites, and others not. Why fully abandon a huge, tax supported, funnel for war, ignorance, and inequality; missions for capitalism and their unwitting, ever so nice, missionaries.

Restoring hope is part of the agenda, but it is false hope. The future is war, inequality, unemployment, horrible options for youth and it will not change without a mass social movement for equality.

All of these interconnected attacks on life and reason have already happened, all over the western world.

Merely opposing any one of these factors, like merit pay, but not the rest just reinforces the entire project. As we see, NEA now dishonestly speaks out about merit pay, but NEA backed the regimented curricula and high stakes exams, sharply attacked people like Susan Ohanian who spoke against them, and dumped the students who suffered most from them.

Too late for NEA which is merely trying to keep the rubes sending dues money, but there is now nothing much NEA can do. Only direct action strikes, boycotts, etc., can halt the drive to the factors described above.

NEA has done nothing at all to prepare for that, and is not likely to do so. The union leaders are completely corrupt and their structures don’t unite people. They divide people: city from suburb, students from teachers, teachers from other public workers and private employees—as easily seen in the California Teachers Association’s effort to pass off a tax on poor and working people just months ago, a project that cost dues-payers millions of dollars and failed miserably, convincing the public, again, that educators want to pick their pockets.

What would be helpful is to wonder about the analytical and critical mistake that led to all that support for Obama, a demagogue. Several things led to that.

A misunderstanding of capitalist democracy which is now sheer capitalism and little democracy. There was no significant difference between the Bush/Obama/McCain or even Clinton policies. Obama has betrayed, if we take his consistency as a betrayal, nearly all of his liberal supporters who, for what have to be psychological reasons, still support his personification of the reign of capital which has, among other things, failed in every important arena of human life.
A misunderstanding of the gravity of the current situation vis a vis the war of empires. The US is in rapid decline in relationship to Russia China and even Europe and Japan—economically and militarily, and the US has lost any ability to promote itself as a moral nation, internally and externally. This puts extraordinary pressure on elites who need soldiers, Boeing workers, prison guards, and teachers too.
A misreading of the real internal crisis inside the US; the rapid rise of segregation and inequality—which has not, yet, led to civil rebellions. But everything is in place to lay the ground for those uprisings, except a left which can make sense of why things are as they are, and what to do. Lost wars. Collapsed economies. Immoral leaders caught with dozens of hands in a thousand cookie jars, war without reason pulling 1.5 million people into direct action—and the wreckage of their lives. All that should, and more, should mean massive resistance. But that has not happened? Why not? No draft. No left. Spectacles. Divide and Rule. Carrot and stick. The education system. The same ways tyrants always ruled.
The continuing appeal of racism and nationalism.
Acceptance of the division of labor inside academia which means, for example, historians talk to historians and write books while literacy people talk to literacy people and write books, and few academics seriously organize anything at all, as the state of the campuses (and open willingness of the overwhelming majority of faculty to abandon their academic freedom in favor of standards) now. This also means historians, as in AHA, don’t pay much attention to teaching while too many education personnel don’t know much history.
A general public so mindless about history and social processes that it can rightly be called hysterical, potentially dangerous. Steeped in spectacles and consumerism for more than a decade, so vacant about their location in the world that Chalmers Johnson says they cannot connect cause and effect (as with the endless wars, but in regard to schooling as well). Fickle to the core, they howled for Bush, abandoned him when things went wrong, then another bunch howled for Obama, and now we see a new crowd howling about health care–all leaping for thousands of forms of selfishness that keeps the the war of all on all that is the system of capital alive and well.

Not recognizing the historical moment, rejecting the real whole of the situation, capitalism in decay everywhere, shatters analytical and strategic capability, meaning many people cannot tell left from right, muddle along looking for someone else to save us when no one but the collective Us is going to save us.

This, written months before the election and originally published in Workplace, online, is now floating around the net.

Those who are not angry and screeding a bit these days may not be witnessing the ravages of war, hunger, unemployment, and unreason itself.

Yup. We told them so. Big deal. Those who have not made a big mistake in life can be absolved. We are all lambs among wolves. But we do not have to be lambs among wolves if we recognize, and act on, the role of class consciousness.

good luck to us, every one.

Congratulations to Sharon, Amber and the gang at a wonderful new school. Thanks to Adam, Wayne, Gina, (Good health to Bob), Donna, Erin, Taylor, Jody, That Great Family, Irene and Tom, Della, Emily W, Sherry, Marc, Mary and Paul, Joe L, The Susans (always), Lucita, Marisol, Vincente, Arturo, Allen, Greg, Carrie, Harv, Norm, Frank, Teeyah, Glenn R, Dave (happy wedding), and Candace.

What they don’t want you to know about Canadian health care

As with most public policy issues, the American public is being fed a steady stream of untruths as part of the current debate over Obama’s health care initiatives. I’ve never understood the willingness of many Americans to take at face value the claims of politicians (and the mainstream media) who are so clearly controlled by corporate interests, but …

One of the main whipping boys in the current debate on health care policy in the United States is Canada’s health care system. US politicians and the media paint a picture of Canada’s “socialized” health care as bleak, gray queues of people lined up for months awaiting appointments with physicians not of their own choosing, for procedures that are inaccessible.

After living and working in Canada for six years there is no doubt in my mind that a single-payer health care system is better for individuals and society.

My family has had quick access to primary care physicians and specialists, short wait times in several visits to emergency rooms, and no co-pays. We have had family members and friends receive fast and high quality treatments for serious diseases over long periods of time, with no medical bills.

The Canadian system is not perfect, but unlike the U.S., where tens of millions of people have no or limited access to medical care (while the rich have unlimited access), the Canadian system values equal access to medical treatment for everyone.

Some Americans go to great lengths to deny the benefits of Canada’s universal health care, readily believing the lies that spew from the politicians and news media that serve the interests of US insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Take my sister, for example. She has never set foot in Canada, yet she argues with me about my own first-hand experiences with Canadian health care telling me that the “socialism” of Canadian medicine does not allow me to choose my own doctor, limits my access to care, and is run by a vast army of government bureaucrats hell bent on stamping out “freedom of choice.” There seems to be no room for the facts in the current debate on health care in the US, nevertheless I’ll offer up a few.

In the 1960s the US chose to provide health care for the elderly (Medicare) and poor (Medicaid), while Canada adopted universal coverage for hospital and physician services. All Canadians have insurance for hospital and physician services with no deductibles or co-pays. And most provinces provide care that goes beyond these areas to include home and long-term care, prescriptions and medical equipment, though there are co-pays for these coverages. Michael M. Rachlis, a Toronto physician and health policy analyst, has compared the results of these choices and identifies a number of lessons the US could learn from Canada on health care.

First, Rachlis notes that a single-payer system would eliminate most of the coverage problems in the US. The US spends 16% of its GDP on heath care compared to 10% in Canada—a difference of $800 billion which is almost entirely devoted to overhead costs instead of patient services. Rachlis points out that “Canadians don’t need thousands actuaries to set premiums or thousands of lawyers to deny care” and that US Medicare has up to 90% lower administrative costs than private health insurers.

Secondly, single-payer systems reduce duplication of administrative costs and allow lower prices to be neogtiated and, as a result of the difference in spending for non-patient care, Canadians actually get more services. Canadians see the doctor more often than Americans and take more drugs. Canadians have more lung transplants and get less heart surgery (but not so much less that they are more likely to die of heart attacks). Canadians live almost three years longer than Americans and their infant mortality is 20 per cent lower than in the US.

The bottom line according to Rachlis is that single-payer plans work because their funding goes to services not to overhead (and profits).

The Canadian system is not perfect, there are waits for elective care, and Rachlis notes that chronic disease management could be much improved. But, according to the Commonwealth Fund of New York has noted these are problems that Canada shares with the US.

The huge influence that drug and insurance companies weld over government is part of the explanation for why there is such resistance to universal health care among policy makers in the US.

But another piece of the puzzle is that most Americans are ignorant of what’s going on north of the border and thus more susceptible to being mislead by interests vested in the status quo. Rachlis points out that,

“The US media, legislators, and even presidents have claimed that our “socialized” system doesn’t let us choose our own doctors. In fact, Canadians have free choice of physicians. It’s Americans these days who are restricted to “in plan” doctors.

To top it all off, a recent study by Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives—Canada’s Quiet Bargain: The benefits from public spending – pdf—indicates that the majority of Canadians enjoy a higher quality of life because public services funded by their taxes come at a solid bargain.

The study concludes that an average middle-income family in Canada would have to spend more than half its pay check to buy health care, education and the other ‘free’ public services now paid for with tax dollars. The study shows middle‐income Canadian families enjoy public services worth about $41,000—or 63% of their income. Even households earning $80,000-$90,000 a year enjoy public services benefits equivalent to about half of their income. Yet another lesson to be learned, if the US was willing to pay attention to what goes on north of the border.

Rouge Forum Update: The good and bad resistance and More!

Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil page is up and updated at www.rougeforum.org.

Remember, nominations for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee can be made to Community Coordinator Adam Renner by August 15.

On the Capitalist Education for War and Inequality Front:

Obama to Schools: Change Tenure Laws or Else: The Ed Stim is Merit Pay

UC System Demands 9% Tuition Hike and 8% Pay Cut While Class Size Booms

CSU Boss Wants 20% Tuition Hike

Substance News carries the wrap up of the National Education Association Rep Assembly

Linda Chavez, a top aide to the American Federation of Teachers’ Albert Shanker, testifies against Sotomayor

On “The Depression can only be a passing fancy” Front:

Paul Craig Roberts: “This should tell even the most dimwitted patriot who “their” government represents.”

Rolling Stone on Goldman Sachs and the Great American Bubble Machine

Chart on the Waves of California Jobs Lost

Reuters: Foreclosures Hit Record High

The International War of the Rich on the Poor Front:

The Bushamagogue Assassination Schemes

Michael Klare’s Shocker: Iraq as the New Oil Pump

And the Resistance (bad example/good example) Front:

So Long EFCA: Union Bosses Can Deliver—nothing

UK Public Worker Strikes Rise

The many crises grow around us apace. Unemployment and foreclosures mean an eradicated tax base, meaning more demands for cuts on education and services, increased taxation of those who have a little, more PR to crush hope in the sense that nothing can be done, more police activity to raise funds and tamp down resistance, and more spectacles. On the war front, more war—for oil, regional control, that is, profits, using the children of the poor to fight the children of the poor on behalf of the rich in their homelands.

What stops the madness? Understanding that the core issue of our time is the relationship of rising color-coded inequality to the potential of mass class-conscious resistance. That has been the project of the Rouge Forum, connection reason to power, for more than a decade. Please join us and help lead the fight-backs that will come.

Thanks to Bob, Al, Sean, Amber, Tony, Kino, Marisol, the Dean, Candace, Sally, Sheri, Barb and Ken (yes, that is right), Donna, Brian, Adam and Gina, Koli, Jesus, Ashwana, Bill, Joe, Dariah, the Susans, and Ann.

Good luck to us, every one.

Rouge Forum Update: Call for Nominations and More

Dear Friends,

Below is a call for nominations for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee from Community Coordinator Adam Renner–and below that more resources on the system of capital vs education, including analyses of the National Education Association Representative Assembly.

The Rouge Forum a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are concerned with questions like: How can we teach against racism, nationalism and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society? How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals AND teach? Whose interests do schools serve in a society that is ever more unequal? We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring those into practice.

Needless to say, work toward these goals in the spirit of justice, demands organization. The Rouge Forum is now more than 10 years old. Over the first decade of its existence, members have built an international network of around 4500 professors, teachers, students, artists, and other social service workers. We have engaged in actions, put on conferences, written papers, and built the capacity of our community. We have done these things with no attachment to any hierarchy or any official organizing strategies. Wanting to keep the horizontal nature of such a network while also desiring to better coordinate our actions, the RF is currently accepting nominations for the 09-10 Steering Committee.

Members of the Steering Committee will be expected to actively promote the 2010 conference and attend where possible, help develop and actively participate in Regional RF Chapters, attend the Fall Steering Committee retreat, promote the RF at other conferences, seek out like-minded people and organizations to link the RF with, provide essays for the Rouge Forum News where possible, and build the capacity of our community by support of its members.

In particular this steering committee will be crucial toward the formation of Regional Chapters, mentioned in the list above. We would like to see regular meetings of the regional chapters and work toward some type of coordinated action (e.g., a one day freedom school, a teach-in, a one-day retreat for teachers, an evening panel/speaker on a coordinated topic, a protest action, etc. as a lead up to the 2010 conference and as a preview of more focused, coordinated, and regular actions in the future). Perhaps in organizing more locally/regionally, we can spend more time face to face, as well as enacting nation/world – wide coordinated actions.

Please send your nomination to Adam Renner at arenner@bellarmine.edu by August 15, 2009.”

On the Education for Liberation Front:

Two great, censored, photos of Arne Duncan, teaching

Detroit Schools May File Bankruptcy, Could Void Contracts–Using the GM Model
If a bankruptcy judge allows this unprecedented school bankruptcy, it could mean wages slashed in half, pensions and health benefits gutted. If it happens in Detroit, it sets the stage for many others.

Substance News on the Wrap-up of the National Education Association Conference

Vote: Should 11,000 CSU Faculty (all of them signed a loyalty oath) take a 10% Pay Cut? The Union Bosses don’t know. “NOTE: The CFA Board did not take a position on how members should vote.”

The State of US Unionism:

Union Hacks Slug it Out–Solidarity Forever but nothing will stop them from uniting for a free lunch with The Obmagogue

The International Scene:

Mediations, a left journal from South Africa, with many fascinating critiques

Parenti on Obama and the coup in Honduras which sparked a nation-wide school strike

Obamagogue (of the AIG, Madoff, Enron, Martha Stewart, etc, USA) lectures Africans on Corruption

Stiglitz on Auditing the $3 Trillion Wars

Thanks to Amber, Brian, George and Sharon, Susan O and H, Joe, Mark, Jesus, Donna, Candace, Lance, Sheri, Ken, Barb, Matthew, Bill, Jane W and friends, Mike L and A, Perry, Kathryn, TC, Tony H, Hilda, Marisol, Brit, Della, and Bill.

Good luck to us, every one.