August 22, 2014

Poverty Is Not Inevitable: What We Can Do Now to Turn Things Around

Poverty Is Not Inevitable: What We Can Do Now to Turn Things Around

Having poor people in the richest country in the world is a choice. We have the money to solve this. But do we have the will?
by Dean Paton
posted Aug 21, 2014

Inequality and poverty are suddenly hot topics, not only in the United States but also across the globe. Since the early 1980s, there has been a growing underclass in America. At the same time a much smaller class, now called the superrich, built its wealth to levels of opulence not seen since France’s Louis XVI. Despite this, the resulting inequality went mostly unnoticed. When the Great Recession of 2008 hit, and the division between the very wealthy and the rest of us came starkly into focus, various people and groups, including the Occupy movement, began insisting more publicly that we tax wealth. But still, helping the poor has been mostly a discussion on the fringes. At last, the terms of public debate have changed, because inequality and poverty now are debated regularly in the mainstream media and across the political spectrum, not solely by labor, by the left, and by others imagining a new economy.

Inserting such a controversial topic into mainstream discourse is French economist Thomas Piketty. His 700-page tome, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, shocked everyone this year when it made The New York Times bestseller list and bookstores found themselves backordering an economics book for legions of eager readers. Piketty did exhaustive searches of tax records from Great Britain, France, and the United States, going as far back as the late 18th century in France. Using sophisticated computer modeling and analyses, the professor from the Paris School of Economics debunks a long-held assumption—that income from wages will tend to grow at roughly the same rate as wealth—and instead makes a compelling case that, over time, the apparatus of capitalism grows wealth faster than wages. Result: Inequality between the wealthy and everyone else will widen faster and faster; and, without progressive taxation, his data show we’ll return to levels of inequality not seen since America’s Gilded Age.

Piketty, no Marxist, says a solution lies in a “confiscatory” tax on wealth: Tax salaries over $500,000 at 80 percent worldwide, and tax wealth at 15 percent worldwide. Every year.

Unless we can reverse the inequality trends of the past 35 years, Piketty says, the ensuing social chaos will eventually destroy democracy. Unfortunately, not even Piketty sees much chance of all nations on Earth simultaneously enacting his tax plans ...

more here: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/why-poverty-is-not-inevitable

August 22, 2014

Bangladeshi factory owner, out of jail, accused of more worker abuse

Garment workers earning poverty wages go on hunger strike for non-payment, then face retaliation and factory closure

August 21, 2014 4:18PM ET Updated August 22, 2014 8:13AM ET
by E. Tammy Kim

Nearly two years after a preventable fire killed 112 garment workers in Bangladesh, the owner of the Tazreen Fashion factory is out of jail, still in business and accused of cheating and retaliating against 1,600 employees at a separate five-factory complex.

Delwar Hossain spent fewer than six months in pre-trial detention before his release on bail on August 5. He and his wife, Mahmuda Akter, had surrendered to Dhaka authorities in February, having been charged with culpable homicide 13 months after the deadly fire at Tazreen. But until now, the courts have repeatedly denied Hossain’s request to be let out on bail. (Akter must report to the station every week.)
taz
Tuba and Tazreen factory owners Delwar Hossain and his wife, Mahmuda Akter, turn themselves in to a Dhaka court in February 2014. AP

While Hossain was in custody, his wife and close associates continued to operate Tuba Fashions and four other garment factories in a large building in Dhaka’s Badda neighborhood. Garment workers' rights advocates contend that in May he instructed Tuba managers to withhold pay from some 1,600 employees and pressure them to sign a petition supporting his release. At the time, the factory was producing soccer jerseys emblazoned with the FIFA World Cup logo, say labor organizers in close contact with the workers.

By July 9 employees were still owed two months’ compensation, it was alleged. They began to protest in front of the factory, on the streets and outside the offices of the powerful Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), only to be hosed down, teargased and shot at with rubber bullets by the police. One woman reported a miscarriage to Saydia Gulrukh, a labor advocate with the Asia Floor Wage group, which supports a regional, baseline living wage ...

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/8/21/bangladeshi-factoryowneroutofjailaccusedofmoreworkerabuse.html

August 21, 2014

More on Kurdistan -

[I've posted a bit about Kurdistanbut this is a newer article that lies this out a little more. Probably no surprise to many in this group.]

Iraq and the Oil Wars
August 17, 2014

Oil has always been part of U.S. decision-making on Iraq, a key motive for the 2003 invasion and the bloody occupation that followed. Now, as President Obama returns U.S. forces to Iraq, the issue of oil has bubbled back to the surface, as oil analyst Antonia Juhasz explained to Dennis J Bernstein.

By Dennis J Bernstein

President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq gave U.S. and other Western oil companies a major stake in the country’s giant oil fields, a foothold now threatened by the offensive launched by the Islamic State and offering at least a partial explanation for President Barack Obama’s decision to return the U.S. military to the conflict.

Another complicating factor is Kurdistan’s control of some giant oil fields and its push for independence. As oil industry analyst and investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz says: “Western oil companies and the Obama administration will not permit ISIL to control Kurdistan and are willing to engage militarily to achieve this goal.”

Juhasz has written extensively on the oil industry and the multiple wars in Iraq, including two books, The Bush Agenda and The Tyranny of Oil. Juhasz spoke with Dennis J Bernstein in a recent Flashpoints interview about the situation unfolding in Iraq.

DB: Why are the Kurds and Kurdistan of great interest to the U.S.? What does that relationship look like? What is pushing the U.S.?

AJ: We are clearly engaged in a military action for oil. But the Obama administration is not the Bush administration. It is clear to me that if the only thing at stake in Kurdistan right now was protecting oil interests, we would not be engaging militarily. If the Bush administration were in power now, we would be. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was about many things, but one of the most dominant was oil and the desire to get western oil corporations on the ground in Iraq. That goal was achieved by the Bush administration. Today we have Exxon producing from some of the largest oil fields in the world. Other western companies like BP and Shell – all of the major western companies – are operating in Iraq and doing quite well.

From the very beginning of the invasion, however, there was a strong issue in the area of Iraq known as Kurdistan that wanted independence from the rest of Iraq, with the Kurds trying to garner western favor to achieve that goal. One of the things the Kurds have to their benefit is they have a tremendous amount of oil ...

Much more here: http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/17/iraq-and-the-oil-wars/

August 20, 2014

Progressive tax reforms approved in El Salvador

August 13, 2014.

On July 31, El Salvador’s National Legislative Assembly passed a package of tax reforms aimed at shifting the fiscal burden from the nation’s poor majority to the wealthy elite and easing the country’s dependence on international loans to finance important social investment. The bill was approved despite a fierce campaign against it in the nation’s conservative media.

The measures were drafted by the current leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) administration, and passed with the votes of legislators of the FMLN and the conservative Grand National Alliance (GANA) party. The package includes a tax on non-productive properties valued at over $350,000; a minimum 1% tax on companies’ net assets; a tax on financial transactions over $750, with exemptions for remittances sent from families living abroad, cash withdrawals, credit card payments, social security, salary or loan payments; and the elimination of the exemption of newspaper owners from income tax payment ...

More here: http://www.cispes.org/blog/progressive-tax-reforms-approved-el-salvador/

August 20, 2014

Women-Led Resistance against False Development in Guatemala

Written by Deepa Panchang and Jessica Hsu
Wednesday, 20 August 2014 17:58

An Interview with Aura Lolita Chavez Ixcaquic, Maya K’iche from the Mayan Women’s Movement, Guatemala

As a member of the Mayan Women’s Movement which is a part of the Council of K’iche People, we have joined forces to generate action from the people, the community. We are in the midst of change where we are defining our needs, what actions we need to take, what power we have, what our way of looking at the world is. And to say no to corporations, while saying yes to life.

I am from the Western region of Guatemala, called Iximuleu in Mayan, in the department called K’iche. I am the spokesperson [of the Mayan Women’s Movement] and was elected at an assembly process where 87 communities and six rural and urban areas were involved. I have a mandate from the people, and explain the feelings of the women, the men, and the children. We must unmask false development and challenge the world powers involved, even though they might be Guatemala’s millionaires or the army. I have done so in political councils and they don’t like that. I have 21 charges against me where I am accused of just about everything: being noisy, conflictive, and much more. The latest is that I am a threat to national security, a terrorist of sorts. I was [recently] sent a report saying that I’m under an injunction from Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. They want to take away my protective measures [IACHR Precautionary Measures] and send me to jail.

We have had huge mobilizations and have made decisions to not allow mining here. The companies are upset and they have done all kinds of things. But, still to this day they have not entered. We have stopped mining and hydroelectric licenses.

They want to exterminate us, but they will not be able to achieve it. We have a lot of energy, a lot of strength ...

More here: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/5006-guatemala-women-led-resistance-against-false-development-in-guatemala

August 20, 2014

Who is an “Outside Agitator”?

Who is an “Outside Agitator”?

by Richard Seymour
The media bashing of “outside agitators” in Ferguson plays into the hands of the Right.

In Ferguson, Missouri, there are “outside agitators.” On this, the reactionaries and liberals agree.

Of course, there are all sorts of racialized rumors flying around in the guise of reporting about what is taking place in Ferguson. We are well used to this — we remember Hurricane Katrina. There will be time to properly sift through and catalog all that. For now, I simply want to ask a quick question: what is an “outside agitator?”

The metaphor of exteriority, of being outside, has two important connotations. First, one is transgressing the spatial ordering of the state. States constitute social spaces like districts, wards, and counties — a process that is historically far from racially innocent in the US.

Second, is that one’s political being is “outside,” and thus traitorous and disloyal. It is not just that one traveled from one city to another — that’s fine, provided the political agenda one brings is benign for the system — but that one brought ideas that are not only not native to the destination, but actually foreign to the nation, the free world, civilization itself.

Understandably, then, this language is common in situations of high racial tension. The “outside agitator” line reeks of good old boy vigilantism, the commingling of race-baiting and red-baiting that was typical of Southern counterrevolution in the dying days of Jim Crow. Because racial situations unfold in heavily structured political spaces in which the definitions and boundaries of the “local” serve existing forms of dominance ...

More here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/who-is-an-outside-agitator/

Richard Seymour's Blog (Lenin's Tomb): http://www.leninology.co.uk/

August 19, 2014

The second assassination of Mike Brown

The unarmed Black teen killed in Ferguson, Mo., has suffered a political and media smear campaign, reports Elizabeth Schulte--like so many other victims of police.

August 19, 2014

MIKE BROWN was assassinated by a police officer who shot him down in broad daylight on a street in Ferguson, Mo. Then the mass media took aim, and he was assassinated all over again--on a variety of outlets, at every hour of the day or night.

Six days after he shot the 18-year-old African American, police finally released the name of the white police officer who killed Mike Brown: Darren Wilson. But the cops had another announcement to deliver that day: they suspect Brown was involved in what they called a "strong-arm robbery" earlier on the day he was murdered.

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson's announcement included a 19-page police report on the alleged theft of a package of inexpensive cigars--and next to no details about the shooting, in which the unarmed teen was shot down dead in the middle of the street ...

< snip >

Of course, the only possible reason for releasing the video was to paint the victim of a horrific police murder as a criminal--not the college-bound teenager his family had been mourning, but the kind of person who deserves to get gunned down in the street by police.

More here - http://socialistworker.org/2014/08/19/assassinated-a-second-time

August 19, 2014

Myths of capitalism: the myth of scarcity

Myths of capitalism: the myth of scarcity

by: Scott Hiley
August 14 2014

"We have to make the hard choices." "If we raise the minimum wage, unemployment will increase." "If we spend money on social programs, our grandchildren will pay for it." "If we don't decrease benefits, Social Security will become bankrupt."

How often have we seen these ideas, splashed across the editorial pages of newspapers, dribbling from the corporate mouthparts of the pundit class, or floating in the muck of right-wing plans to "reform" us back to the Gilded Age?

All of these ideas offer a "hard choice," an either/or: EITHER we have living wages OR we have jobs; EITHER we foot the bill OR our kids will; EITHER today's senior citizens give up some of what they earned OR tomorrow's seniors will get nothing. In other words, EITHER we hurt the working class OR we hurt the working class.

In philosophy, this kind of argument is called a false binary: a fallacy where someone offers two choices as the only possibilities, deliberately excluding other options.

In the case of these right-wing talking points, the option no one wants to mention is taxing the rich and cutting corporate subsidies to invest in social welfare, good jobs, and education ...

More here: http://www.peoplesworld.org/myths-of-capitalism-the-myth-of-scarcity/

August 18, 2014

When Will They Shoot?

When Will They Shoot?
by Peter Frase (Jacobin ~ 8.17.14)

Lots of people are at risk on the job. But when it comes to cops, they’re mostly a danger to others.

Policing is not the country’s safest job, to be sure. But as the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries shows, it’s far from the most dangerous.

The 2012 data reports that for “police and sheriff’s patrol officers,” the Fatal Injury Rate — that is, the “number of fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers” — was 15.0.

That includes all causes of death — of the 105 dead officers recorded in the 2012 data, only 51 died due to “violence and other injuries by persons or animals.” Nearly as many, 48, died in “transportation incidents,” i.e., crashing their cars.

Here are some occupations with higher fatality rates than being a cop:

Logging workers: 129.9
Fishers and related fishing workers: 120.8
Aircraft pilots and flight engineers: 54.3
Roofers: 42.2

Much more here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/when-will-they-shoot/

August 18, 2014

Protests stifled in 2014

Around the world in tear gas: Protests stifled in 2014
August 14, 2014 1:13PM ET

With social media comparing Ferguson to scenes in Middle East, we present visual typology of year's incidents thus far

As a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, seethes with anger after the murder of an unarmed black teenager over the weekend, images of demonstrations are reminiscent of protest zones across the globe. With security forces lobbing tear gas canisters at people to quell unrest, individuals sometimes simply pick up the devices intended for crowd control and throw them back at the riot police.

The images below show similar circumstances in many different locales where political discourse is expressed in street clashes. From anti-occupation rallies in the West Bank and sectarian protests in Bahrain to anti-government agitation in Ukraine and Venezuela, marchers are often eager to turn law enforcement's own techniques against police.

While such photographs may be familiar in unstable Egypt, perhaps they are more shocking emerging from the Midwest of the U.S. ...

Article w/many images here: http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2014/8/around-the-worldinteargasprotestsof2014.html