a friday post

hahaha...yes.

For Labor Solidarity with the NYU Student Occupiers

February 25, 2009 By Daniel Gross

(from ZNet...)

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The almost two-day student occupation at New York University around demands of transparency and accountability has ended but the dialogue set in motion by the action is just beginning. Also just beginning is the University's punitive measures against participants in the occupation - measures clearly designed to have a chilling effect on future dissent.

Eighteen students have reportedly been suspended and face expulsion. To maximize hardship, NYU and its President John Sexton have gone so far as to evict several students from university housing. It's also believed that NYU is working closely with the New York City Police Department toward bringing criminal charges against some students.

The reprisals being undertaken by NYU executives are eerily reminiscent of those carried out in the breaking of the union of graduate student employees a few years ago. I'm reminded of President Sexton's stomach-churning ultimatum to the striking graduate workers: cross the picket line or be blacklisted from your paid teaching post and lose the health benefits that go along with it.

As the students of the Take Back NYU! coalition contend with the disproportionate punishment being meted out by the University, I hope that working people and their labor organizations conclude that the students are deserving of firm solidarity. While many in the labor movement are broadly supportive of student activism, there are some who are privately dismissive of student efforts as inward-looking or irrelevant.

But the historic and present-day record is replete with examples of students powerfully struggling for their own autonomy at school while working side-by-side with class-based social movements beyond campus; May 1968 in France and Greece today are two oft-cited examples.

The case for worker solidarity with the NYU activists is especially strong given the explicit pro-worker, pro-union orientation of four of the student demands:

1) Full compensation for all employees affected by the occupation.

2) Respect for the right of student workers to collectively bargain; an especially poignant demand in light of the recent dismantling of the graduate employees union at NYU.

3) A fair labor contract for NYU employees at home and abroad; a thoughtful demand given the certainty of migrant worker exploitation as NYU establishes its Abu Dhabi campus.

4) A reassessment of the recent lifting of the campus ban on Coca-Cola products after the company successfully spun its way out of accountability for anti-union violence in Colombia.

The students also demonstrated respect for the working class in the dignified way they conducted their protest. NYU sought to pit its hard-working rank and file security guards against the student occupiers. But the students refused to take the bait and maintained their focus and indignation on the University's senior leadership where it belonged.

Certainly a conversation is and will continue to take place in movement circles regarding the strategic and logistical preparation of the NYU occupation. But the students' commitment and most importantly their willingness to use direct action in support of just demands is deserving of much praise. Indeed, the U.S. student and workers' movement as a whole is engaged in a learning and re-learning process as escalatory tactics like occupations and general strikes become more and more viable amid economic crisis.

Corporate-imposed economic pain, including millions of lost jobs and lost homes, has created a tremendous opportunity for aggressive organizing around transformative demands. The NYU occupation has inspired dialogue on the important question of student voice within the University. It has also undoubtedly inspired workers and students alike to consider the path of direct action, just as the occupations at the New School and the Republic Window and Door factory did.

Take Back NYU! and its allies are now engaged in the hard work of both growing their coalition and defending the students being targeted by the Administration. They're going to need some serious and lasting support to move their work forward.

I hope we in the workers' movement acknowledge the decisively pro-labor orientation of the NYU occupation with real and forceful solidarity. Please log on to www.takebacknyu.com to join the solidarity effort and encourage unions, community groups, and houses of worship to come aboard as well. Together, we can build towards occupations where workers and students simultaneously withdraw their cooperation from the universities until democracy prevails.

Daniel Gross is the director of Brandworkers International and an organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World on its Starbucks campaign. He is co-author with Staughton Lynd of the recently released "Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law" (PM Press). He can be reached through http://www.Brandworkers.org.

some mornings you wake up......

....and it can be astonishing how you change personally.

BEFORE 9am this morning I had: - done the dishes, - shoveled the front walk, the back garage 'area', and paths for the mailman between the neighbor's houses, - cleaned the cat litter boxes, yes two (moe poo's like a dog), - started laundry, and made a pot of coffee.

this is not some rare occurence. this is how i "rock/roll/run" now. it wasn't that long ago that i'd maybe have crawled out of bed to grab some water to quench an insatiable thirst and plop my ass on the couch to watch some shitty TV for the better part of the day.

some friends of mine have attributed my overall 'mellowing out' to the semi-recent formal acquisition of a 'life partner' (in the often brilliant words of the 'bob' flemming). i dont think its that necessarily, or at least in whole.
I's jest bee gittin' ohlder. interests and concerns are ever-evolving as well.

enough rambling and introspection for now....we got a butt-load of snow last night. (according to the National Weather Service, a 'butt-load' is approx. 4 - 6")

anybody got a half-link for an 1/8" chain? its the last piece i need to finish Kelly's bike.

also, if your interested in the Ruby programming language this is a really good introduction and youll only need 20 minutes. ( another recent development, i've been 'working on work' stuff at home now on my free time...wtf?)

toodles

hahaha

From HTATBL comes a pretty funny 'piece'

word is another cyclist is hit in the twin cities
http://www.ibikempls.com/2009/02/rider-down-again.html

goddamnit

the breakfast club

but not at a HS, and without Judd Nelson etc

if anybody still reads this after over 2 months of no action, and is interested in meeting on say, sunday mornings for chow, let me know.

afterwards we can go for a bike ride if you're so inclined...it'd be a nice time to go. all the pagans (and their recockulous vehicles) are in their temples howling at the moon, and everyone else is hopefully still asleep.

and in keeping with tradition, a little piece from the fine people at CP http://counterpunch.org/

on the lighter side :

Chevron in the White House

December 06, 2008 By Amy Goodman
Source: t r u t h d i g

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President-elect Barack Obama introduced his principal national-security Cabinet selections to the world Monday and left no doubt that he intends to start his administration on a war footing. Perhaps the least well known among them is retired Marine Gen. James Jones, Obama's pick for national security adviser. The position is crucial—think of the power that Henry Kissinger wielded in Richard Nixon's White House. A look into who James Jones is sheds a little light on the Obama campaign's promise of "Change We Can Believe In."

Jones is the former supreme allied commander of NATO. He is president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy. The institute has been criticized by environmental groups for, among other things, calling for the immediate expansion of domestic oil and gas production and issuing reports that challenged the use of the Clean Air Act to combat global warming.

Recently retired from the military, Jones has parlayed his 40-year military career into several corporate directorships. Among them is Cross Match Technologies, which makes biometric identification equipment. More germane to Jones' forthcoming role in Obama's inner circle, though, might be Jones' seat as a director of Boeing, a weapons manufacturer, and as a director of Chevron, an oil giant.

Chevron has already sent one of its directors to the White House: Condoleezza Rice. As a member of that California-based oil giant's board, she actually had a Chevron oil tanker named after her, the Condoleezza Rice. The tanker's name was changed, after some embarrassment, when Rice joined the Bush administration as national security adviser. So now Chevron has a new person at the highest level of the executive branch. With Robert Gates also keeping his job as secretary of defense, maybe Obama should change his slogan to "Continuity We Can Believe In."

But what of a Chevron director high up in the West Wing? Obama's attacks on John McCain during the campaign included a daily refrain about the massive profits of ExxonMobil, as if that was the only oil company out there. Chevron, too, has posted mammoth profits. Chevron was also a defendant in a federal court case in San Francisco related to the murder, 10 years ago, of two unarmed, peaceful activists in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. On May 28, 1998, three Chevron helicopters ferried Nigerian military and police to the remote section of the Delta known as Ilajeland, where protesters had occupied a Chevron offshore drilling platform to protest Chevron's role in the destruction of the local environment. The troops opened fired on the protesters. Two were killed, others were injured. (Rice was in charge of the Chevron board's public policy committee when it fought off shareholder resolutions demanding that Chevron improve its human rights and environmental record in Nigeria.)

One of those shot was Larry Bowoto, who, along with the family members of those killed, filed suit in California against Chevron for its role in the attack. Just after Jones was named Obama's national security adviser Monday, a jury acquitted Chevron. Bowoto told me: "I was disappointed in the judgment by the jury. I believe personally the struggle continues. I believe the attorney representing us will not stay put. He will take the initiative in going to the court of appeals." I met Bowoto in 1998, just months after he was shot. He showed me his bullet wounds when I interviewed him in the Niger Delta. I also met Omoyele Sowore, who has since come to the U.S. and started the news Web site SaharaReporters.com.

Sowore has followed the case closely. Though disappointed, he said: "We have achieved one major victory: Chevron's underbelly was exposed in this town. ... Also there is Nigeria: Protesters won't give up. ... This will not discourage anybody who wants to make sure Chevron gives up violence as a way of doing business. American citizens are increasingly protective of their economy. ... Chevron played into fears of ... the jurors, saying these are people [the Nigerian protesters] who made oil prices go through the roof. This was a pyrrhic victory for Chevron. If I was in their shoes, I wouldn't be popping champagne."

Nigerians know well the power of the military-industrial complex in their own country. While Obama was swept into office promising change, his choice of Marine Gen. James Jones as national security adviser probably has U.S. corporate titans breathing easy, leaving the poor of the Niger Delta with the acrid air and oil-slicked water that lie behind Chevron's profits.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She has been awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the "Alternative Nobel" prize, and will receive the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.

word

The Financial Crisis of 2008

Interviewed by Simone Bruno

October 13, 2008 By Noam Chomsky


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I would like to talk about the current crisis. How is it that so many people could see it coming, but the people in charge of governments and economies didn't, or didn't prepare?

The basis for the crisis is predictable and it was in fact predicted. It is built into financial liberalization that there will be frequent and deep crises. In fact, since financial liberalization was instituted about thirty five years ago, there has been a trend of increasing regularity of crises and deeper crises, and the reasons are intrinsic and understood. They have to do fundamentally with well understood inefficiencies of markets. So, for example, if you and I make a transaction, say you sell me a car, we may make a good bargain for ourselves, but we don't take into account the effect on others. If I buy a car from you it increases the use of gas, it increases pollution, it increases congestion, and so on. But we don't count those effects. These are what are called by economists externalities, and are not counted into market calculations.

These externalities can be quite huge. In the case of financial institutions, they are particularly large. The task of a financial institution is to take risks. Now if it is a well managed financial institution, say Goldman Sachs, it will take into account risks to itself, but the crucial phrase here is to itself. It does not take into account systemic risks, risks to the whole system if Goldman Sachs takes a substantial loss. And what that means is that risks are underpriced. There are more risks taken than should be taken in an efficiently working system that was accounting for all the implications. More, this mispricing is simply built into the market system and the liberalization of finance.

The consequences of underpricing risks are that risks become more frequent, and, when there are failures the costs are higher than taken into account. Crises become more frequent and also rise in scale as the scope and range of financial transactions increases. Of course, all this is increased still further by the fanaticism of the market fundamentalists who dismantled the regulatory apparatus and permitted the creation of exotic and opaque financial instruments. It is a kind of irrational fundamentalism because it is clear that weakening regulatory mechanisms in a market system has a built-in risk of disastrous crisis. These are senseless acts except in that they are in the short-term interest of the masters of the economy and of the society. The financial corporations can and did make tremendous short term profits from pursuing extremely risky actions, including especially deregulation, which harm the general economy, but don't harm them, at least in the short term that guides planning.

You couldn't predict the exact moment at which there would be a severe crisis, and you couldn't predict the exact scale of the crisis, but that one would come was obvious. In fact, there have been serious and repeated crises during this period of increasing deregulation. It is just that they hadn't yet hit so hard at the center of wealth and power before, but have instead hit mostly the third world. So, again, the crises are predictable and predicted. There was a book, for example, ten years ago, by two very well respected international economists, John Eatwell and Lance Taylor - Global Finance at Risk - in which they ran through the pretty elementary logic of how financial liberalization underprices risk and therefore leads to regular systemic risks and failures, sometimes serious. They also outline ways of dealing with the problem, but those were ignored because decision makers in the corporate and political systems, which are about the same, were making short term gains for themselves.

Take the United States. It is a rich country, but for the majority of the population, a substantial majority, the last thirty years have probably been among the worst in American economic history. There have been no massive crises, large wars, depressions, etc. But, nevertheless, real wages have pretty much stagnated for the majority for thirty years. In the international economy the effect of financial liberalization has been quite harmful. You read in the press that the last thirty years, the thirty years of neoliberalsm, have shown the greatest escape from poverty in world history and tremendous growth and so on, and there is some truth to that, but what is missing is that the escape from poverty and the growth have taken place in countries which ignored the neoliberal rules. Countries that observed the neoliberal rules have suffered severely. So, there was great growth in East Asia, but they ignored the rules. In Latin America where they observed the rules rigorously, it was a disaster.

Joseph Stiglitz recently wrote in an article that the most recent crisis marks the end of neoliberalism and Chavez in a press conference said the crisis could be the end of capitalism. Which one is closer to the truth, do you think?

First, we should be clear about the fact that capitalism can't end because it never started. The system we live in should be called state capitalism, not just capitalism. So, take the United States. The economy relies very heavily on the state sector. There is a lot of agony now about socialization of the economy, but that is a bad joke. The advanced economy, high technology and so forth, has always relied extensively on the dynamic state sector of the economy. That's true of computers, the internet, aircraft, biotechnology, just about everywhere you look. MIT, where I am speaking to you, is a kind of funnel into which the public pours money and out of it comes the technology of the future which will be handed over to private power for profit. So what you have is a system of socialization of cost and risk and privatization of profit. And that's not just in the financial system. It is the whole advanced economy.

So, for the financial system it will probably turn out pretty much as Stiglitz describes. It is the end of a certain era of financial liberalization driven by market fundamentalism. The Wall Street Journal laments that Wall Street as we have known it is gone with the collapse of the investment banks. And there will be some steps toward regulation. So that's true. But the proposals that are being made, which are major and severe, nonetheless do not change the structure of the underlying basic institutions. There is no threat to state capitalism. Its core institutions will remain basically unchanged and even unshaken. They may rearrange themselves in various ways with some conglomerates taking over others and some even being semi-nationalized in a weak sense, without infringing much on private monopolization of decision making. Still, as things stand now, property relations and the distribution of power and wealth won't alter much though the era of neoliberalism operative for roughly thirty five years will surely be modified in a significant fashion.

Incidentally, no one knows how serious this crisis will become. Every day brings new surprises. Some economists are predicting real catastrophe. Others think that it can be patched together with modest disruption and a recession, likely worse in Europe than in the U.S. But no one knows.

Do you think we will see anything like the depression, with people out of working and cuing up in long lines for food. Do you think it is possible we could have that kind of situation in the U.S. and Europe? Would a big war then get economies back on track, or shock therapy or what?

Well, I don't think the situation is anything like the period of the great depression. There are some similarities to that era, yes. The 1920s were also a period of wild speculation and vast expansion of credit and borrowing, creating of tremendous concentration of wealth in a very small sector of the population, destruction of the labor movement. These are all similarities to today. But there are also many differences. There is a much more stable apparatus of control and regulation growing out of the New Deal and though it has been eroded, much of it is still there. And also by now there is an understanding that the kinds of policies that seemed extremely radical in the New Deal period are more or less normal. So, for example, yesterday in the presidential debate, John McCain, the right-wing candidate, proposed New Deal style measures to deal with the housing crisis, borrowed straight from the New Deal Homeowners Refinancing Act, though actually McCain borrowed it from Hilary Clinton who took it from the New Deal. That's the far right. So there is an understanding that the government must take a major role in running the economy and they have experience with doing it for the advanced sectors of the economy for fifty years.

A lot of what you read about this is just mythology. So, for example, you read that that Reagan's passionate belief in the miracle of markets is now under attack, Reagan being assigned the role of High Priest of faith in markets. In fact, Reagan was the most protectionist president in postwar American economic history. He increased protectionist barriers more than his predecessors combined. He called on the Pentagon to develop projects to train backward American managers in advanced Japanese methods of production. He carried out one of the biggest bank bailouts in American history, and formed a government-based conglomerate to try to revitalize the semiconductor industry. In fact, he was a believer in big government, intervening radically in the economy. By "Reagan" I mean his administration; what he believed about all of this, if anything, we don't really know, and it's not very important.

There is a tremendous amount of mythology to be dismantled here, including the talk about the great growth and escape from poverty which, as I said earlier, isn't false, but is missing the fact that it took place overwhelmingly in areas that ignored the neoliberal rules, while the areas that kept to the rules are the ones that suffered. The same holds in the U.S. To the extent that the neoliberal rules were applied, it was quite harmful to the majority of the population. So to talk about these matters, we first have to sweep away a lot of mythology and then, when we look, we see that a state capitalist economy that has, particularly since the Second World War, relied very heavily on the state sector, is now returning to reliance on the state sector to manage the collapsing financial system, its collapse being the predictable result of financial liberalization. The underlying institutional structure itself is being modified, but not in fundamental ways.

There is no indication right now that there will be anything like the crash of 1929.

So you don't think we are going toward a change of the world order?

Oh there are changes in world order, very significant ones and maybe this crisis will contribute to them. But they have been underway for some time. One of the greatest changes in world order you can see right now in Latin America. It is called the backyard of the United States and it's been supposed to be run by the U.S. for a long time. But that is changing. Just a few weeks ago, mid September, there was a very dramatic illustration of this. There was a meeting on September 15 of UNASUR, The Union of South American Republics, so that's all the South American governments meeting, including Colombia, the U.S.'s favorite. It took place in Santiago, Chile, another U.S. favorite. The meeting came out with a very strong declaration supporting Evo Morales in Bolivia and opposing the quasi-secessionist elements in Bolivia that are being supported by the United States.

There is a major struggle going on in Bolivia. The indigenous majority of the population for the first time in 500 years entered the political arena, carried through a very impressive democratic election, and took power. That of course horrified the United States government, which is strongly opposed to popular democracy unless it comes out the right way. And it particularly antagonized the traditional ruling groups, the minority elite which is mostly white and Europeanized, who had always run the country and of course don't want a democratic society in which control of resources and policy generally will be directed by the majority and towards its needs. So the elites are moving toward autonomy and maybe secession, and it is becoming quite violent, with the U.S. of course backing them. But the South American Republics took a strong stand in support of the indigenous-dominated democratic government. The statement was read by President Bachelet of Chile, who is a favorite of the West. Evo Morales responded by thanking the presidents for their support, while correctly pointing out that this was the first time in 500 years that Latin America had taken its fate into its own hands without the interference of Europe and particularly the United States. Well, that is a symbol of a very significant change that is underway, sometimes called the pink tide. It was so important that the U.S. press wouldn't report it. There is a sentence here and there in the press noting that something happened, but they are completely suppressing the content and significance of what happened.

Now that is part of a long term development in which South America is indeed beginning to overcome its tremendous internal problems and also its subordination to the West, for the most part, the United States. South America is also diversifying its relations with the world. Brazil has growing relations with South Africa and India, and particularly China, which is increasingly involved in investments and exchange with Latin American countries. These are extremely important developments and now it is beginning to spread to Central America. Honduras, for example, is the classic banana republic. It was the base camp for Reagan's terror wars perpetrated in the region and has been totally subordinated to the U.S. But Honduras recently joined ALBA, the Venezuelan-based "Bolivarian alternative." It is a small step, but nonetheless very significant.

Do you think these trends in South America like ALBA, UNASUR and the major events in Venezuela and Bolivia and the rest might be affected by an economic crisis of the dimension we are facing now?

Well, they will be affected by the crisis, but for the moment they are not as much affected as Europe and the United States. So, if you look at the stock market in Brazil, it collapsed very quickly, but Brazilian banks aren't failing. Similarly, in Asia the stock markets are declining sharply, but the banks are not being taken over by the government as is happening in England and the U.S. and much of Europe. These regions, South America and Asia, have been somewhat insulated from the ravages of the financial markets. What set off the current crisis was the subprime lending for assets built on sand, and these are held, of course in the United States, but apparently about half by European banks. Holding mortgage-based toxic assets has embroiled them in these events very quickly -- and they have housing crises of their own, particularly Britain and Spain. Asia and Latin America were much less exposed, having kept to much more cautious lending strategies, particularly since the neoliberal meltdown of 1997-8. In fact, a main Japanese bank, Mitsubishi UFG, has just bought a substantial part of Morgan Stanley, in the U.S. So it doesn't look, so far, as though Asia or Latin America will be affected nearly as severely as the U.S. and Europe.

Do you think there will be a big difference between Obama or McCain as President for things like the Free Trade Agreement and Plan Colombia, because here in Colombia, where I live, you can feel that the President and the establishment are kind of scared about an election of Obama. I know you feel Obama is like a blank slate, but still, do you feel there is a difference?

That's pretty much the case. Obama has presented himself as pretty much a blank slate. But there is no reason for the Colombian establishment to be scared of his election. Plan Colombia is Clinton's policy and there is every reason to expect that Obama will be another Clinton. He is pretty vague. He keeps appearances mostly empty, on purpose, but insofar as there are policies they look very much like centrist policies, like Clinton's, who fashioned Plan Colombia and militarized the conflict, and so on.

Sometimes I have the feeling that the two terms of Bush were in a context of the changing of the global order, trying to maintain power using force and in contrast Obama could be a way to have a kind and polite face to renegotiate the world order. Do you think this could be true?

Remember that the political spectrum in the United States is quite narrow. The U.S. is a business-run society, somewhat more than Europe. Basically, it is a one-party state, with a business party that has two factions, Democrats and Republicans. The factions are somewhat different, and sometimes the differences are significant. But the spectrum is quite narrow. The Bush administration, however, was way off the end of the spectrum, extreme radical nationalists, extreme believers in state power, in violence overseas, in big government spending, so far off the spectrum that they were harshly criticized right within the mainstream from early on.

Whoever comes into office is likely to move things back more towards the center of the spectrum, Obama probably more so. So I would expect in Obama's case something like a revival of the Clinton years, of course adapted to changing circumstances. In the case of McCain, however, it is quite hard to predict. He is a loose cannon. Nobody knows what he would do...

Yes he seems quite dangerous.

Very dangerous, especially in a country like the U.S. with so much power. This isn't Luxemburg, after all. McCain himself is extremely unpredictable. The vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, comes from a radical extremist background (by world standards), for example creationism - you know, the world was created 10,000 years ago, etc. etc. If someone like that was running for high office in Luxemburg it would be comical. But when it happens in the richest and most powerful country in the world, it is dangerous.

Now that we are at the end of neoliberal globalization, is there a possibility of something really new, a good globalization?

I think the prospects are much better than they have been. Power is still incredibly concentrated, but there are changes with the international economy becoming more diverse and complex. The South is becoming more independent. But if you look at the U.S., even with all the damage Bush has done, it is still the biggest homogeneous economy, with the largest internal market, the strongest and technologically most advanced military force, with annual expenses comparable to the rest of the world combined, and an archipelago of military bases throughout the world. These are sources of continuity even though the neoliberal order is eroding both within the U.S. and Europe and internationally, as there is more and more opposition to it. So there are opportunities for real change, but how far they will go depends on people, what we are willing to undertake.