For a Democratic Secular Palestine

The other day I viewed a video of a demonstration of about ten to fifteen young people at a supermarket in Philadelphia. The demonstration supported a boycott of the Sabra and Tribe brands of hummus. Apparently, the owners of Sabra and Tribe are ardent supporters of the state of Israel and the demonstrators asked that shoppers refrain from contributing to “Israeli apartheid.” The demonstration was well organized with a choreographed dance routine, as well as a well-rehearsed chant supporting the boycott. The overall impression I had of the demonstration was that it was a cheerleading chorus promoting a boycott of Sabra and Tribe.

In order to look at this demonstration objectively, I believe we need to step back and look at several issues. Clearly, the government of Israel is guilty of horrendous genocidal crimes against Palestinians who have lived in the Middle East for thousands of years. However, Israel is a relatively small nation with a population of about 7.3 million. There is no way that Israel could maintain the massive armed forces it has without a tremendous amount of support. The lion’s share of that support does not come from Sabra and Tribe, but from the government of the United States which today is headed by President Barrack Obama. Billions of dollars flows to Israel every year from the US government, as well as enormous amounts of military hardware. Billions more dollars go to the government of Egypt which has joined Israel in maintaining the criminal embargo of the Gaza Strip.

The largest corporations in the United States are united in their support of the Israeli regime. Despite what some right-wing ideologues might argue, the overwhelming majority of the owners of US corporations are Christians and not Jews.

So, I have to ask the question. If the US government is giving vital aid to Israel, and that aid is being used to suppress the rights of Palestinians, then why are people demonstrating against the Sabra and Tribe brands of hummus? Another question I have has to do with the fact that this is an election year. Virtually all candidates in the Democratic and Republican Parties are supporters of the state of Israel, and are also asking for support in the elections. So, why are people demonstrating against Sabra and Tribe, and not holding all US government officials accountable for their criminal support for the state of Israel?

Anti-Semitism

One of the reprehensible acts of the Israeli government is that it accuses its opponents of anti-Semitism. Anyone who has a dictionary can look up the word Semite. The dictionary makes it clear that this word doesn’t just refer to Jews, but also to Arabs. Palestinians are an Arabic people and no country in the world today discriminates against a Semitic people more harshly that the state of Israel.

However, anti-Semitism against Jewish people does have a long and horrendous history. I happen to be Jewish. My grandfather’s family left Czarist Russia because of the anti-Semitic atmosphere in that country. While my grandfather moved to the United States, his sister moved to Germany.

At that time, the Weimar Republic of Germany was one of the most liberal governments in the world and Jewish people appeared to be fully integrated into that country. When an economic crisis hit Germany, German capitalists gave tremendous amounts of money to fascists headed by Adolph Hitler. The fascists attacked demonstrations of workers who protested for better conditions. These Nazis admitted that they could have easily been crushed in their early years because they were a tiny minority.

The German Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party did not take the fascists seriously and refused to form a voting block which could have prevented a fascist takeover. As a result, the Nazis sent all dissidents to the concentration camps and had a policy of murdering all Jews, Gypsies, gays, and anyone else who didn’t measure up to their fascist standards. One of the people who might have been murdered was the sister of my grandfather.

David S. Wyman wrote a book about an aspect of this history titled The Abandonment of the Jews – America and the Holocaust. Wyman documented how the administration of Franklyn Roosevelt had a conscious policy of barring Jews from entering the United States who were attempting to escape the Nazi holocaust. Wyman estimates that the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews could have been saved if Roosevelt gave them asylum in this country.

We can skip ahead to the year 2004. I was working at a factory in Philadelphia and attended a demonstration in Washington protesting the war against Iraq. I mentioned this to my co-workers and there was one co-worker who didn’t like my anti-war views. He also openly said that he didn’t like the fact that I am Jewish. This co-worker went on a campaign of harassment against me which culminated in the slashing of two of the tires on my car.

I had a meeting with the management of the factory and informed them of what was happening. I argued that I had a right to work at the plant free of the harassment I had been exposed to. Management had another meeting with me where they said they agreed that I had a right to work at the plant and also said they disciplined the co-worker who had been harassing me. After three months there was a round of layoffs in the plant. I was the first one to be laid off in spite of the fact that there were several co-workers who had less seniority. So, while the management said I had a right to work at the plant, they actively proceeded to make sure that I would no longer be employed by that company.

I mention these examples to show that anti-Semitism exists and bigoted attitudes against Jews continue to exist in this country. While most people will find these attitudes reprehensible, there is a tiny minority of people who continue to advance the politics of fascism. History has shown that corporations will support fascists in times of economic crisis, when they feel that their investments are threatened. In other words, today we need combat all forms of anti-Semitism because there is no question that the economic crisis will spur fascist organizations to become more aggressive, as they have in the past.

When people who claim to support the rights of Palestinians support a boycott of Jewish owned businesses without demanding that the US government end its ardent support of Israel, we need to ask, what are they doing? Fascists who promote hatred of Jews and Palestinians have no problem with a boycott of Jewish businesses. What these fascists have a problem with would be a genuine international movement in solidarity with the human rights of Palestinians and Jews.

Counterpoising roadmaps for peace in the Middle East

A lot has been said about “the roadmap for peace in the Middle East.” Clearly the US government does have a roadmap for peace in the Middle East and we can see that strategy as it unfolded in Iraq. First, we need to explain that the United States is a nation that has a political economic system based on capitalism. While the US government pretends to support freedom and democracy, in reality the system of capitalism requires that this same US government actively exploit workers and farmers throughout the world, so a tiny minority of the population can live in opulence.

Oil is a commodity that is the lifeblood of capitalism. The entire transportation system relies on vast quantities of oil in order to function. Without oil, transportation comes to a screeching halt and profits for corporations vanish. This is why the extraction of oil from the Middle East and all other locations in the world is a top priority for the owners of capital.

We might consider that the Arabic world accounts for hundreds of millions of people who live in an area from Morocco to Iraq. Seventy million more inhabitants live in Iran. I can recall an insightful statistic which argued that the industrial production in the entire Arabic world is less than the production in the tiny nation of Finland.

Clearly the oil in the Middle East could be used to build and power factories that could produce all the goods and services needed in that region. Instead, the oil is shipped to the United States and other developed countries. Commodities are then manufactured in the developed nations and sold back to the Arabic world at exorbitant prices. This state of affairs maintains a consistent flow of money to the most affluent people in the world, while millions of people in the Arabic countries live in abject poverty. Even in the oil rich nation of Saudi Arabia the infant mortality rate is 11.57 per 1,000 births, which is almost double this same rate in the United States. As late as 2003, infant mortality in Saudi Arabia was 47.94 per 1,000 births.

Clearly, the capitalists in the United States do not want the oil of the Middle East to go towards the development of that region. Pro-capitalist so-called economists talk about “developing nations.” In reality the history of the twentieth century is a history of the largest banks in the world consistently working to make sure that the majority of the world lives in nations that are becoming increasingly underdeveloped.

In order to accomplish their goals, the United States government has had a routine policy of supporting the most brutal dictatorships in the world. One of the many dictatorships the US government supported for thirty years was the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Only when Hussein made agreements with France and invaded Kuwait did Washington cut their ties with him. Clearly, Washington and Hussein were agreed that neither wanted a genuinely independent government in Kuwait. Washington initially went to war against Iraq because they wanted Wall Street to have unobstructed access to the oil in Kuwait.

When William Jefferson Clinton was President, he advanced the war against Iraq with the use of onerous sanctions. These sanctions caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Then President Bush continued the war by taking military control of Bagdad and installing a puppet regime in that country. Reliable estimates have been made that over one million Iraqis have died unnecessarily since the US invasion of Iraq.

Several workers who I’ve talked to expressed the opinion that the second President Bush is, in a word, stupid. However, when we look at the facts, Bush achieved most of his objectives in Iraq. He unleashed massive destruction against Iraq to install a puppet regime in that country. He did this without encountering many anti-war demonstrations in the United States or around the world.

We can clearly say that this was not the case in the movement that protested the US war against Vietnam. In the anti-war movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s entire universities went on strike across the United States protesting the war against Vietnam. Massive anti-war demonstrations were held in Washington and around the world. This sustained anti-war movement effectively forced President Lyndon Johnson to decline a run for reelection. Ultimately this same anti-war movement created an atmosphere where President Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office. The resistance of the Vietnamese people as well as the international anti-war movement forced Washington to effectively admit defeat and withdraw all US armed forces from Vietnam.

Washington’s goals in Palestine are similar to its goals in Iraq. Washington wants a loyal ally in the Middle East and they have that with the government of Israel. The state of Israel was created in 1948, the same year as the creation of the apartheid state of South Africa. Both Israel and apartheid South Africa patterned themselves on the social relations of the United States, which became the world’s super-power after World War II.

The United States went to war for about 100 years to effectively steal the land from the native inhabitants of North America. The government then banished Native Americans to reservations. After the Civil War and the defeat of radical reconstruction, the federal government allowed Jim Crow to be the law in the former confederate states. These Jim Crow laws took away all the rights African Americans had gained with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. One of the results of this state of affairs was the lynchings of thousands of African Americans, while government officials did almost nothing to stop those who were responsible for mass murder.

Israel and South Africa patterned their legal systems on this historical example of the United States. In both nations the governments stole the land from the original inhabitants, and moved them to areas resembling the Native American reservations in the United States. In South Africa they called these areas “Bantustans.” The Israeli government created similar areas and called them the “West Bank” and “Gaza Strip.” Israel and South Africa both created colonial settler states where the legal system systematically discriminated against the indigenous population. In Israel they call this state of affairs a “democracy.”

Clearly the governments of the United States and Israel do want peace in the Middle East. They want the kind of peace where the indigenous people of that region will accept conditions of poverty and repression without complaint. The only reason why the US government ever says anything against Israel is to placate Arab governments and to diffuse the growing international sentiment against Israeli repression. In fact, the reason for the brutal repression of Palestinians is to defend US capitalist interests in the region. This brutal repression mirrors Washington’s brutally repressive policies against the people living in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Just as the US government enforced onerous sanctions against Iraq, today Israel is enforcing onerous sanctions against Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Just as in Iraq, the Israeli government is hoping that they can minimize international opposition.

There is a roadmap for a genuine peace in the Middle East. This roadmap follows the basic political history that caused the removal of the apartheid regime of South Africa. Under the leadership of the African National Congress, the Freedom Charter was adopted demanding full rights for everyone who lived in South Africa. South African organizations opposed to apartheid supported a complete economic boycott of that nation. Demonstrations were held throughout the world demanding an end to apartheid. Universities in the US divested from South Africa. This movement became so powerful that the elder President George Bush was forced to support the economic boycott of South Africa. Even the most right wing fascist groups in South Africa have bowed to the new government headed by the African National Congress.

This international movement succeeded in removing the apartheid government from power. This kind of movement has the potential of removing the Israeli government from power and establishing a democratic secular Palestine.

The Palestine Liberation Organization initially supported the demand for a democratic secular Palestine. However, this demand was given up for the idea of a two state solution. The two-state solution was never a realistic solution for Palestinians. Palestinians living in Israel continue to be treated as second-class citizens. The Israeli government has effectively shut the door on a two state solution and has done everything in their power to make sure that this strategy will not work.

Clearly advancing the strategy for a democratic secular Palestine will not be easy. However, this is a strategy that has proven in action to be successful. I believe that the primary focus for activists who live in the US, who are in solidarity with the Palestinian people, is to focus on ending US government support to Israel. Without the tremendous amount of aid Israel receives from the US, the Israeli government and all the repression that goes with it will not be able to continue.

Abortion a Woman's Right

Should Women Have the Right to Control Their Bodies?

Every month for the past year I’ve been volunteering to escort women who choose to have an abortion at a health clinic in Philadelphia. I do this because these women face a gauntlet of protesters who’s goal is to prevent any woman from having an abortion. These protesters, who are armed with their prayer beads, shout out that women who attempt to get an abortion will, “regret this decision for the rest of your lives.” They shout at the men who accompany these women with the words, “be a man and raise your child.” They hold up tiny figurines of fetuses and shout out, “don’t kill your baby.” All the while they join in a chorus of prayers which start with the words “holy mother Mary.”

These protesters have another goal. They would like to go back to the days when abortion was illegal. During that time women routinely filled emergency rooms because they had been mutilated by back alley abortionists. Hundreds of women died from these illegal procedures and thousands suffered from the effects of mutilations because abortion was illegal. In John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules he gave a list of all the means women used to have abortions. Women who survived these procedures might suffer for the rest of their lives because they had been denied safe legal abortions. A grandmother of an escort at the clinic died because of a back alley abortion. She had nine children and did not want another.

A few years ago I listened to a Catholic nun who was opposed to abortion. This nun made a decision never to have sexual relations. She argued that women who are not nuns should only have sexual relations when they are planning to have children. Ultimately, this is the position of all those organizations that oppose a woman’s right to control her body. If this position were acknowledged, very few individuals would oppose abortion.

In order to fully appreciate this issue I believe we need to go back and look at the reasons why we are faced with this atmosphere today. Throughout most of human history women had real political power. Men were the hunters and women did everything else. This meant that women were the first farmers, construction workers, scientists, doctors, and ship builders. Because women were so influential in society they had real political power. Lewis Henry Morgan lived among the Iroquois and noticed that the women were organized into the Clan Mothers. No one could become a leader of the Iroquois without the approval of the Clan Mothers.

Throughout most of human history the idea of fatherhood did not exist. The uncle was the man who raised children. At this time, the idea of mine and yours was unknown and an entire clan took on many of the aspects of raising children. This state of affairs made things a lot easier for women because they did not need to be the only ones who cared for the children they gave birth to. Because everything was shared by all, when there were sufficient quantities of food, everyone understood that the necessities of life would be provided to all.

This all changed when men began to trade cattle for wives. It was only at this time that women began to be confined to domestic chores and were forced to take on the primary role of raising their children. This state of affairs found an extreme expression in China where the feet of women were bound and broken so they would not be able to leave the home.

Today, we think of this practice as barbaric. However, the Phillip Morris corporation advanced an advertizing campaign to promote their Virginia Slims cigarettes. Their main theme was “You’ve come a long way baby.” In other words, today corporations find it perfectly acceptable to promote a product to women that will cause lung cancer.

In this atmosphere, corporations view women as vessels that produce children. In most instances, women, not society as a whole, are the ones expected to raise children. Women’s bodies are routinely displayed to sell a wide variety of commodities. The idea that women should have rights that are equal to the rights of men is an idea that shakes the foundations of the capitalist system. While some women have managed to become professionals, government officials, or corporate officers, women are paid on the average about 80% of the salaries of men.

In the early 1970’s the Supreme Court ruled in Roe vs. Wade that abortion was legal in the United States. The court was clearly influenced by the woman’s movement which had been actively demanding this right for several years. We might also consider that the woman’s movement had been influenced by the civil rights and anti-war movements of that time.

Since the Roe vs. Wade decision, the government has worked consistently to compromise women’s right to abortion. In eighty percent of the counties in this country, there are no centers where women can have an abortion. Most hospitals do not provide abortions. We might note that hospitals could have a significant revenue from abortions since this is one of the most used medical procedures in this country. In fact, on the rare occasions where there are complications from abortions, it would be safer having these procedures in hospitals where any problems can be dealt with.

In order to pass his new so-called health care plan, President Obama used the issue of abortion as a sacrificial lamb. Now, women who want their health insurance coverage to include abortion will need to have a separate plan. This seemingly insane state of affairs came about so the government will not be accused of funding abortions in any way.

All these facts point to the reality that the most powerful people who oppose abortions are not the protesters who come to health clinics with their prayer beads. The government, at all levels, as well as corporate America, has worked to compromise a woman’s right to control her body.

If women do not have the right to control their bodies, we might ask the question, What rights do they have? When abortion was illegal, intelligent women risked their lives, rather than be forced to give birth to a baby they clearly did not want. Then and now, there are orphanages filled with children who are not wanted. These children are desperate to live in an environment where they would be nurtured and cared for. This state of affairs exists, not because of uncaring mothers, but because in the capitalist system profits are more important than human life.

In Cuba abortion is a woman’s right, and the government works to ensure that children are cared for. Cuba has more doctors and teachers per capita than any other nation in the world. The infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than in the US, and the percentage of people who have HIV/AIDS is one-sixth the percentage in the US. Health care is not a commodity but a right for all. I met a Cuban worker who had four children. He was proud of the fact that all of his children will have a lifetime right to both health care and education. While Cuba has enormous problems, the Cuban government’s commitment to the defense of woman’s rights sets it apart from the consistent policies in this country that are hostile to woman’s rights. This state of affairs came about because Cuba had a revolution that overturned capitalist relations.

It is clear that the only way women will continue to have the right to control their bodies is if people stand up to defend this right, and work to roll back all the efforts aimed at compromising a woman’s right to abortion. Without this right, there is no women’s liberation. Without the liberation of women, humanity is not capable of moving forward.

Crossing Over

Crossing Over

A film directed by Wayne Kramer starring Harrison Ford

A review

Last evening I viewed Crossing Over, a 2009 film that gives a series of glimpses into the lives of people who live in the United States, but are not legal citizens. Today there are eleven million people living in the United States who were born in other countries and do not have documentation required by the government. Although this film is a work of fiction, all the events are based on the real life experiences of immigrants in this country.

One Mexican woman in the film was caught up in an INS raid and deported. Her son was left in this country without a mother. In order to provide for her family this woman needed to return to the United States and died in the desert in her attempt to re-enter. In the year 2009, 417 people died a similar death attempting to enter this country.

A young girl probably from Africa was sent to a detention center after her mother passed away. She was held in this center for immigrant children indefinitely.

An Australian woman was coerced into having sex with an immigration official in order to obtain a green card.

A girl who might have been a fourteen year old high school student from the Middle East gave a report in her class about September 11. While she was opposed to the September 11 bombings, she argued that these bombings were caused by people who responded to the repressive conditions in Palestine and Iraq. The principal of her school informed the FBI about this student’s report. A judge signed a warrant to search this student’s home. The FBI then ordered this student to be deported along with her mother. Never was there any allegation that any laws had been broken.

This year the administration of President Barack Obama has a goal of deporting more immigrants than ever before in history. With 393,000 deportations the Obama administration has already reached its goal.

There was another 2008 film titled Under the Same Moon which had a similar theme as Crossing Over. This was the story of nine-year old Carlos who traveled from Mexico to Los Angeles, California, so he could live with his mother. There was one scene in this film that I found particularly striking. The scene was of two Los Angeles police officers attempting to arrest young Carlos for sleeping on a park bench.

Seeing that scene, I thought of Martin Luther King’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail. At the time several people criticized King for violating the law in his protests against the system of Jim Crow segregation. They argued that King should be “patient” and that things would change eventually. King gave the following reason for why he was not going to be patient. He wrote about the time his daughter asked him if she could play in a local amusement park called Fun Town. King then went on to write about how he and his daughter felt about the fact that she was not allowed to play in Fun Town because she was Black. This was one of King’s reasons for why he was not patient and chose to break the law in the struggle to abolish Jim Crow.

I would say that there must also be at least 11 million people that are impatient about change that needs to take place with respect to the immigrant laws in this country. They would like children like young Carlos to be able to play in the parks of this country, just as Martin Luther King wanted his daughter to have the right to play in Fun Town.

Before I viewed the film Crossing Over I saw an interview with Angela Davis on the news show Democracy Now. Davis is promoting a new edition of Frederick Douglass’ autobiography.

Anyone who is familiar with the life of Frederick Douglass knows that he did not always abide by the laws of this country. Douglass was born Frederick Bailey, and violated the law at the age twelve when he learned to read. At that time it was illegal for slaves to learn to read. At the age of 19 he broke the law again and escaped slavery. He changed his name to Frederick Douglass to avoid the slave catchers who would have sent him back to slavery. When he wrote his autobiography, Douglass needed to leave the United States and moved to Britain because his autobiography was clear evidence that he was an escaped slave who was living in violation of the law. Douglass only returned to the US when his supporters purchased his freedom from a slave owner.

Angela Davis had her own problems with the law. California Governor and future President Ronald Regan openly supported firing Davis from her job as college professor because of her political views. At that time, Davis and the Los Angeles police department felt she needed to be defended from the numerous threats to her life. One of Davis’s weapons was used in a crime and Angela Davis was placed on the most wanted list of criminals by the FBI. She was incarcerated for sixteen months before she was found not guilty of any crime.

During this interview Davis stated that today there are more African Americans in prison, parole, or probation than there were slaves before the Civil War. In fact, if we read the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which abolishes slavery in this country, we will find an exception. According to the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery is acceptable in cases of penal servitude.

Today Davis advocates for the abolition of the prison system. She argues that the prison system is not about supporting the interests of workers, but is used to stifle descent in this country. We might also argue that the immigration laws that deny working people from other counties Constitutional rights in the United States are also used to stifle descent. In both instances the law is used to prevent the lowest paid workers from attaining legal rights that could be used to allow them to struggle for better conditions.

Every year on the fourth of July there is a national holiday celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While the signers of the Declaration did not support giving rights to slaves, women, Native Americans, or men who did not own land, they did support immigration. One of the reasons given for the revolution in the Thirteen Colonies in this Declaration was that the King of England restricted immigration. This is what the Declaration of Independence said about one problem which provoked revolution:

“He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners. . .”

In the following passages of the Declaration of Independence we get a better idea of what the revolutionaries who created the United States had in mind:

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, That all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such principles. . .”

“Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their Future Security.”

When we look at the reality of the life of Frederick Douglass, the theft of land from Native Americans, the gross disparities in income from rich to poor, from Black to white, from women to men, as well as the treatment of immigrant workers, as well as the growing unemployment we are exposed to, the above words have a bit of relevancy. These words were not just relevant in 1776 but also can be used today.

I will end this review with a quotation by Frederick Douglass:

“The struggle may be a moral one,

or it may be a physical one,

and it may be both moral and physical,

but it must be a struggle.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

It never did and it never will.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to

and you have found out the exact measure

of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them,

and these will continue

till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.”[1]

---

[1]The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume II, P. 104

Capitalism & Hunger

Capitalism and Hunger

Every year the Philadelphia Inquirer has editorials that criticize the fact that tens of millions of people in this country go to bed hungry. This year the Inquirer ran an in depth article by Alfred Lubrano titled Portrait of Hunger. The Inquirer followed this article up with another editorial and argued that, “Far too many kids go to school hungry. For many children, a free meal at school could be their only food of the day.”

These articles and editorials failed to mention the most relevant facts concerning hunger in the United States. The facts are that the food that could be used to feed 34 million hungry people in this country has already been paid for. If this is the case, then why are there hungry people in this country, and why do so-called journalists fail to mention this fact when they write about hunger in this country? In order to answer this question we need to look at the facts.

Supermarkets and restaurants routinely purchase more food than these enterprises need. This means that routinely throwing out huge quantities of food is a routine expense of doing business. Therefore feeding hungry people would not cost any additional money. If you are scratching your head after reading this, there’s more.

Food production in this country is limited in order to keep prices high. Most farmers feel that they need high prices in order to barely meet their expenses. However, the money the farmer receives is only a small percentage of the price the consumer pays at the supermarket for food. If food was produced for human needs and not for profits, the prices for food would plummet and the farmers would live better than they ever lived before.

We can also generalize and say that health care for everyone in this country has also been paid for. The facts are that the United States pays significantly more for health care per person than any other nation in the world. Yet, other countries have nationalized systems where people have a right to health care. Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States but spends a tiny percentage of the money that the US spends on health care per capita. Every Cuban has a lifetime right to health care.

When the newspapers argue that we are in an economic crisis, they never mention that there is no shortage of goods or workers who are willing and able to provide us with everything we need and want. In fact recessions and depressions happen because there are more commodities on the market than there are people willing to purchase those commodities. This means that in the capitalist system overproduction is the root cause of scarcity. This doesn’t mean that people have what we need. In the capitalist system, people can only have what we need when capitalists are maximizing profits.

We might also consider all of the things the government and corporations spend money on while 34 million people live in hunger.

· The city of Philadelphia has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in tax abatements. Most of these abatements enable some of the most affluent people in the region to refrain from paying taxes.

· The Philadelphia city government has given more hundreds of millions of dollars to the affluent in the form of money for sports complexes and the Convention Center.

· More millions are given away to the affluent in Philadelphia and other cities in interest payments on municipal bonds.

· The federal government under democratic and republican administrations has given away hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus money while unemployment has skyrocketed.

· Every year corporations pay out tens of trillions of dollars in advertisements in an effort to show how supposedly wonderful their commodities are.

· Every year more trillions are spent on interest to banks. This money in no way directly contributes to the production or distribution of commodities.

When corporate officers, politicians, journalists, or university professors argue that there is no money to profoundly improve the standard of living for everyone, we can recite the above information. Clearly the resources have been available for quite a long time to eliminate poverty in the world. It is clear that as long as we have governments that support the capitalist system, poverty will reside right next to those who live in opulence. Only a government of working people that believes that human needs are more important than profits can bring reason into politics. As the economic crisis deepens more and more people will be open to this kind of alternative.

Woman & the Transformation of Humanity

Women and the Continuing Transformation of Humanity

We live in an environment

which continually informs us

that there is something

wrong with humanity.

They tell us that there are genuinely

evil people out there

who commit

horrendous crimes.

We see the lists

of these crimes

every day

in the newspapers.

Capitalist governments

argue that we need armies

and police forces

to protect us against these evil people.

They tell us that this is just

“human nature”

and that things

have always been this way.

They tell us that the one

progressive force in society is the family.

If all else fails, we can rely

on the family for support and this is the way it has always been.

What those who have power never tell us is,

What is the real

story of human history?

This poem will attempt to begin to answer that question.

We are the descendants of animals.

Animals who cared for their young,

but, at times,

killed and ate their young.

We are the descendants

of male animals who fought,

and, at times killed one another

in order to have access to females.

This is because males are, at times,

a small minority where groups of animals live.

However, rape never happens

in the animal world.

Humanity changed these relationships.

First there were hoards or clans

where all members of the clan

protected one another.

Sex was not allowed within the clan

and all relations came through the mother.

Uncles were the men

who helped to raise the children of the mother.

Although women were always the physically weaker sex,

collectively women were the ones who pioneered the changes

that allowed humanity to do skilled work in a social environment

and advance from the animal world.

The concept of natural death was unknown.

All deaths were attributed to humans or animals from the outside.

Therefore everyone from other clans

were seen as enemies.

This included the fathers of all children.

Eventually fathers would have to

prove themselves to the mother-in-law

in order to marry the daughter.

As time went by this state of affairs became impractical.

People gave worthless gifts

to those from the other clans who accepted those gifts.

Fathers now became outsiders.

During these years men were the hunters

and women did most of the rest of the work.

Women were the first doctors, construction workers,

farmers, ship builders, and scientists.

During these years, women needed to carry heavy loads

of water, construction materials, food, as well as an infant.

This was not seen as drudgery,

but as a deeply appreciated contribution to society.

During these years biological fatherhood was unknown.

People were not interested in who biological fathers were.

Children played sexual games

and adults thought this was natural.

Men lived in the home of the mother’s clan

and if the wife or mother wanted a divorce,

she simply placed the fathers things

outside of her home.

The words mine and yours were not known.

All things were shared by all.

When someone received a gift,

everyone expected to share in the use of that gift.

Food was divided equally amongst all.

The idea of fighting each other

for morsels of food

was seen as something only animals did.

During these years, in many areas of the world,

humanity experienced a relatively care-free existence.

Everyone contributed to the welfare of all,

and individuals didn’t worry about paying bills.

This wasn’t always an easy process.

At times men murdered their children

to avoid conflicts with other clans.

This was better than war.

Then the world changed.

Men began to trade cattle for wives.

The wife and child now belonged to the father.

There was no more reason to murder children.

Uncles lost their right to raise their sister’s children.

Fathers, for the first time in human history,

became the ones who were responsible

for their children.

However, women lost their independence

and became tied to their husbands.

The ancient Greeks had the myth of Orestes where Orestes

murdered his mother and the social relations of the world were transformed.

However, humanity, at this time,

still did not know

that there was such

a thing as biological fatherhood.

Even as late as the Egyptian Empire,

heredity came through the mother.

The queen ruled with her brother,

but had children with her husband, not her brother.

In other words, fatherhood, the family

and even private property are relatively

new inventions in the 150,000 years

of human history.

When Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere,

they came with the ideas of private property and the family.

The Native American could not understand why

European men abused women.

They could not understand what private property was,

or why the European was

so adamant about taking

the land they had lived on for centuries.

Today people who have power continue to

insist that we need to defend the idea of

private property, the family, and the state.

They refuse to even consider the reality of our history.

As the crisis in the world becomes more and more deplorable,

humanity will discover that during most of our history

women were treated with the utmost respect

and private property wasn’t even known to exist.

When humanity makes this discovery,

We will transform the world into a place

Where there is liberty. justice,

and human dignity for all.

Most of the ideas in this poem come from Evelyn Reed’s book: “Woman’s Evolution – from matriarchal clan to patriarchal family.” Published by Pathfinder press

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

A film directed by: Oliver Stone

A review

Recently I saw Oliver Stone’s new film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps which is a sequel to his 1987 film Wall Street. The film was mediocre, at best. However, the real story behind the film is a lot more interesting than the movie.

In Stone’s original Wall Street he at least included a story of union airline workers who were loosing their jobs because of Wall Street’s policies. That movie imagined the impossible dream that corporate officers would actually rescue workers. Ralph Nader also wrote about this dream in his book, Only the Rich Can Save US.

Oliver Stone got the idea for the original Wall Street from Ivan Boesky who made the statement in 1986 that “Greed is healthy.” Stone’s character Gordon Gekko made the famous statement in this film that “Greed is good.” Ivan Boesky spent two years in prison for insider trading. His sentence would have been longer if Boesky had not cooperated with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Boesky gave the SEC the information that needed to indict Drexel Burnham Lambert executive Michael Milken on 98 counts of racketeering charges.

In Stone’s new Wall Street film Gordon Gekko is released from prison, writes a book, and gives lectures where he ridicules the practices of Wall Street. In a speech that Gekko gives early in the movie he says that while he once said that “Greed is good,” now he argues that “Greed is legal.” He argued that because of Wall Street excess, young people have no future and that the people in charge of Wall Street are “Crazy.” This last comment might make someone conclude that the economic crisis we face might be resolved if Wall Street power brokers visited the psychiatrist’s office.

A central problem with both of Stone’s films are that he gives the impression that as bad as the system is, the problems of capitalism can be resolved by individuals working within the stock market. An example of this approach is that one of the main characters in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is obsessed with raising money for fusion power. He feels that this obsession will benefit humanity because it would be an alternative energy source.

The facts are that capitalists only invest money in order to generate profits. Any investments in fusion power are only made because there is an expectation that enormous profits would, one day, be generated by this energy source. The idea of making substantial investments merely to benefit humanity, without any thought of profits, is inconceivable to investment companies.

The Real Story

The real story behind this movie, for me, is much more interesting as well as relevant to the world we live in. We can begin this story with the banker Anthony Joseph Drexel who lived from 1826 through 1893. Drexel was the mentor and partner to J. Pierpont Morgan. Their bank is now JP Morgan-Chase which is one of the largest in the world. Drexel also ran an investment company which became Drexel Brunham Lambert. For these reasons Drexel became known as “The man who made Wall Street.”

Anthony Drexel also used three million dollars of his own money to create Drexel University, a school which specializes in engineering. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in Drexel’s day was a manufacturing center and Anthony Drexel created the school so there would be skilled engineers to run the factories he profited from.

In the tribute to Anthony Drexel from Drexel University there is no mention of the conditions workers faced in order to generate the millions of dollars Anthony Drexel used during his life. Mother Jones spoke of these conditions during a textile workers strike in 1903 where 100,000 workers went on strike. About sixteen thousand of those workers were children, many were twelve years old or younger. They demanded a reduction of the workweek from sixty-five hours to fifty-five hours, even if this meant a cut in pay.

Mother Jones led a march of 400 of these child workers to the summer home of Theodore Roosevelt in Long Island about 120 miles from Philadelphia. Mother Jones observed that many of these children had hands or fingers missing from working in the mills. This is what Mother Jones had to say on this march about the conditions child laborers faced:

“In Georgia where children work day and night in the cotton mills they have just passed a bill to protect song-birds. What about the little children from whom all the song is gone?”[1]

Although Anthony Drexel passed away before this strike, the conditions these workers experienced were the same conditions Drexel profited from.

Now we can skip forward to the 1980’s. This was the time when Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky were gouging out enormous profits from high yield, high risk investments known as “Junk Bonds.” These investments looked so good that Milken at one time Milken raised one billion dollars of capitol in a single day. Then he was indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and would eventually spend twenty-two months in a federal penitentiary. Drexel, Burnham, Lambert went bankrupt and its $350 billion in assets vanished.

To the logical mind, these practices might be seen as reprehensible. However, this is not the case in the capitalist system. In fact a new investment strategy called “derivatives” and later “Credit Default Swaps” were not only legal but laws were adopted so that these so-called investments could not be regulated by the government. In other words, while Boesky and Milken went to jail for violating government regulations, hundreds of trillions of dollars of derivatives were sold without any government regulation. In fact the inventors of these derivatives were given Nobel Prizes. Believe it or not, this is a true story.

Derivatives are a complicated bet on the market that few people understand. When working people go to a casino and loose money, we don’t expect that we will be reimbursed for our losses. However, when investment companies loose money on derivatives and other investments, they demand that the government bail them out, in a hurry.

This brings us to the Drexel University Medical School’s graduating class of 2008. Who did Drexel’s administration invite to be the keynote speaker at this gathering? The same Michael Milken who spent 22 months in the federal penitentiary and helped to drive Anthony Drexel’s bank into the ground. Hello! Some medical students from this graduating class protested the fact that Milken would be giving the keynote address. However, as we know, money talks.

You see, when Michael Milken walked out of prison he had about one-billion dollars in his portfolio. Since that time Milken has increased his assets to over two-billion dollars. His new scheme is an old one, but very lucrative. Now Milken is involved in charitable trust funds. People who have vast amounts of money can invest in charitable trust funds and avoid paying vast amounts of money in taxes. All they have to do is give a small percentage of their money to a charity and they can even pay themselves a salary for managing their money. One of Milken’s favorite charities is medical research.

Cuba had a completely different approach to dealing with their economic crisis. They had a political revolution. Corporations did not like the revolutionary Cuban government so they refused to cooperate with it. Cuba then used its political power to nationalize about $800 million in assets owned by US corporations.

Today Cuba has more doctors and teachers per capita than any other nation in the world. For me, this appears to be a logical way of dealing with Wall Street and the economic crisis they have created.

---

[1] Mother Jones Speaks, Edited by Philip S. Foner, P. 102