Another Prague Spring?

THE GUARDIAN

Tens of thousands of Czechs have staged one of the country's biggest protests since the fall of communism, marching in Prague against spending cuts, tax rises and corruption, and calling for the end of a centre-right government already close to collapse.

Police estimated between 80,000 and 90,000 workers, students and pensioners marched through the capital on Saturday to rally in Wenceslas Square. Chanting and whistling, the crowd held banners reading "Away with the government" and "Stop thieves".

Does this sound familiar, or what?

"This government is devastating state structures and is demeaning the unprotected with its asocial reforms," Jaroslav Zavadil, the head of the Confederation of Trade Unions, told the crowd.

Could this mean another Prague Spring?

AUSTERITY KILLS

Russia Today

A 77-year-old Greek man has committed suicide in central Athens by the nation’s parliament, shooting himself with a handgun in apparent financial desperation.

Eyewitness reports say that the man shouted “So I won’t leave debts for my children” before turning the gun on himself.

Also this is telling us something. And it can happen here, too. When will people wake up!

Prior to the downturn Greece had the lowest suicide rate in Europe at 2.8 for every 100,000 inhabitants. However, this figure has now almost doubled, with police reporting over 600 suicide cases in 2010 and 2011 respectively. Attempted suicides are also on the up.

The Haves need to get a grip

Four on line stories, one from the Daily Mail, one from a California radio station, and two from Guardian, reinforce the class divisions. This is just a sample.

In sunny California, paying for access with celebrity royals as citizens protest cuts. Most people will ignore the struggles, compartmentalize them as they prefer the diversion of polo and Pimm's; even if they don't (or cannot afford) to participate, they'll live it vicariously by reading about it.

Daily Mail:

The billion pound brand of William and Kate Inc
Next month’s US trip has already made millions for charity. The royal couple's potential earning power for Britain is immense, says Gordon Rayner

KALW News:

16 arrested in Downtown Oakland “anti-austerity” protest

Crazy insanity of consumerism and crazy desperation to survive and obtain the good life: About 15 years ago my partner and I went to Las Vegas and had lunch at the Debby Reynolds casino and hotel (now defunct). There was a museum attached and I swear we saw the Monroe dress among the "antiquities."

Guardian:

Migrants run Mexican gauntlet to make leap of faith to US

And placed just under this story is

Marilyn Monroe dress sells for $4.6m

IT'S BECOME A GLOBAL REVOLUTION: "EGYPT SUPPORTS WISCONSIN WORKERS"

Via Mother Jones.

TUNISIA: A MOTHER SPEAKS OUT

"The government drove him to do what he did; they never gave him a chance. We are poor and they thought we had no power," his mother said. "My son is lost, but look what is happening, how many people are now getting involved." [...]

"I am proud of what he did. I would like to go up to Tunis and take a look at these demonstrations. It is good to know that my son had played a part in changing things."

Slave labor conditions in Holland

Eastern European workers - mainly Roma - are to The Netherlands what Hispanic or Asian laborers are in the United States: targets of exploitation and inhumane working conditions. The annual asparagus harvest in Holland has prompted the authorities to raid a farm.

The owner of an asparagus farm in the province of Brabant is being investigated by the Social Intelligence and Investigation Service (SIOD) to see if criminal charges can be brought against her after 50 East European workers were discovered to be living in "near-slavery" conditions.

The SIOD - a body of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment charged with criminal investigations - had been given the go-ahead to raid the farm on Friday because the sleeping quarters were in breach of fire regulations. It was then that the extent of the conditions came to light.

The 50 farmhands, many of them Romanian, were not allowed to leave the premises and were sleeping in a filthy room without a window. The workers were being paid less than the agreed wage.

The farm owner has already been fined five times by the labour inspectorate since 2005 for employing illegal immigrants, paying under the minimum wage and failure to report an on-site accident. The fines amounted to more than 500,000 euros.

OBAMA'S BETRAYAL OF THE WORKING CLASS

'The crisis in which we find ourselves is not a crisis of the capitalist class, much less a crisis of the capitalist mode of production. Nor is it even a crisis of neoliberalism. It's a crisis of the working class, plain and simple.

As Rahm Emanuel said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," and, sure enough, the Barack H. Obama administration is doing all it can to make it easy for the capitalist class to make the best of the opportunities presented by this crisis and to further cut back the wages and benefits of workers in the primary labor market.'


And this, from Counterpunch

We are witnessing one of the fastest betrayals of the Democratic Party base in modern memory, as President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate slither away from a crucial constituency, the labor movement, and from support of labor’s key legislative agenda item: passage of a bill, “The Employee Free Choice Act,” which would restore a measure of fairness to labor relations.

Obama, who once supported the measure, and who campaigned saying he would sign the bill, has stood shamelessly silent as a massive corporate campaign mounted by such lobbying powerhouses as the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation, hiding behind a fake “citizen action” organization called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (sic), has descended on Congress, and especially the Senate, has worked to peel away support for the bill among both Democrats and swing Republicans who had formally backed the measure.

THE MYTH OF GAY AFFLUENCE

Thanks to Toujoursdan for highlighting findings in a report (PDF) about LGBT poverty from the Williams Institute of the UCLA Law School:

After adjusting for a range of family characteristics that help explain poverty, gay and lesbian couple families are significantly more likely to be poor than are heterosexual married couple families.

+ Notably, lesbian couples and their families are much more likely to be poor than heterosexual couples and their families.

+ Children in gay and lesbian couple households have poverty rates twice those of children in heterosexual married couple households.

+ Within the LGB population, several groups are much more likely to be poor than others. African American people in same-sex couples and same-sex couples who live in rural areas are much more likely to be poor than white or urban same-sex couples.

+ While a small percentage of all families receive government cash supports intended for poor and low-income families, we find that gay and lesbian individuals and couples are more likely to receive these supports than are heterosexuals.

Thanks also to Counterlight

I've always felt that "affluent gays" was a big canard, up there with "rich Jews." The rich Palm Springs circuit party crowd is a very visible, but tiny minority of the LGBT population. Most well paid LGBT professionals are in medicine and technology. High tech companies are usually very gay friendly because that's where a lot of their talent comes from. Most other gay men, especially the young, are in famously low wage jobs provided by retail, hospitality, restaurants, and arts and entertainment. And this has always been true.

Lesbians face a double whammy of the wage discrimination against women built into the economy, and homophobic prejudice.

Those who face the worst employment discrimination are transexuals. So many once turned to prostitution because there was no other work. Some businesses and professions are beginning to open up very slowly and reluctantly, but it is still incredibly difficult for them.

Proponents and opponents of Vermont's gay marriage bill have used the economy in their arguments. The Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility have both supported its passage. Governor Jim Douglas and opponents of the bill have scolded Vermont lawmakers for even considering it (read: wasting precious time and money). Dissing LBGTs as non-persons without proper rights - as Douglas has done with a terrific force - and saying the economy should receive priority just doesn't cut it. Loving and caring Vermont LBGT families are having just as hard a time surviving in Vermont as their hetero counterparts. Also, as toujoursdan notes in a comment over at Counterlight, the religious right have used the myth of gay affluence to argue that LGBTs don't need civil rights protections or marriage equality. The opponents - especially the anti-government folks - may attempt to use the UCLA report as ammo against the bill, that Vermont doesn't need that added burden or responsibility to help "them." With blinders on, the opponents fail to realise that, as the report points out, they would be continuing systemic homophobia and class discrimination in our cities and towns, and it's not a good thing to live in state that disregards fundamental human rights of Vermonters to such basic needs as healthcare, housing, education, social security and dignified work.

Very relatedly, connecting equal marriage rights to struggles of all Vermont families, a new advertisement from Vermont Freedom to Marry:



Cross-posted at Antemedius.

WATCH IT, BUD

Lenin's Tomb:--Informal spying on potential employees is understood to happen on a regular basis. I don't want to name any names, but temp agencies have been known to advise candidates to take care as to what information appears on their Facebook pages, Friends Reunited accounts, blogs or other potential sources of information. Employers scrutinise these sites when reviewing candidates details to see if they are about to hand a contract over to a weirdo or some sort of inflexible, awkward miserabilist. Your blog can get you fired, remember. If you are going to have a Bebo or Hi5 page that is accessible to the public, then the best bet is apparently to project the image of a smiley, outgoing, success-driven, active, sporting, party-hard, go-getting sort of narcissistic dimwit: a miniature celebrity, with friends apparently growing out of every crevice. Employers love that shit.

But this is a serious investment both in terms of the upfront costs and the risk of exposing the company to possibly steep fines. Think about how much profit they must have anticipated conserving just by keeping out 'troublemakers'.

STATE OF THE DREAM 2009

Dedrick Muhammad, co-author of the new report “State of the Dream 2009: The Silent Depression,” last Thursday on Democracy Now!:- "I’m glad to see that the government realizes that they have to play a role in stimulating the economy. I hope they see that their role is also to stimulate greater racial equality in this country."

OUR LIBERATION IS THE EARTH'S LIBERATION

GREEN LEFT INFOASIS:- There are plenty of good reasons we should be doing away with capitalism: its brutal class oppression, its undemocraticness, its enrichment of the few at the expense of the many, its constant drive toward war and empire, just to name a few. But one extremely urgent reason, which is related to all those other reasons, is its inherent tendency toward environmental degradation. With animals, plant life, oceans, forests, and the very ecological basis of human survival threatened, we have to act now to reverse the course we're on.

What we need to be doing, as a society, is halting growth, reigning in production and redirecting it toward meeting need and ecological sustainability. But look at our current predicament. The exact opposite is occurring. Politicians and corporate elites are scrambling to find a way to actually stimulate more growth to 'save the economy'. That's the wall we're up against. Capitalism must grow or die. Slowing of growth and slumps make the system unhealthy and could mean a crisis of global proportions like the one we're currently experiencing. Obviously, infinite growth on a planet of finite resources is completely unsustainable.

Through our labor, we interact with and transform nature. But under capitalism, our labor is controlled and directed by a capitalist. The things we produce are the property of the capitalist to be sent to market. The goal of the capitalist is to create profit and every capitalist has to constantly be striving to expand markets and profits. If they cannot or will not, they'll go under and be replaced by a capitalist who will. By eliminating the capitalist and the dictatorship of profit from the equation, it will be possible to take our economic lives into our own hands and re-orient the way we interact with nature. By liberating ourselves from wage slavery, we'll be in a position to also liberate the Earth from the grip of capital.

We desperately have to make need, quality of life, and ecology the priorities of society. But capitalism looks at human labor and nature and sees how much money they can be converted into. It will not guarantee success, but only by doing away with capitalism and moving to a classless economic democracy controlled by the associated producers do we have a chance of dealing with ecological crises in a humane and sustainable way.

GLI is one of my favourites in the blogsphere. It's been on my sidebar nearly as long as I've been blogging. Please do yourself a favour and check it out!

ANOTHER BANK SCAM: PREYING ON THE UNEMPLOYED

GLH reports on how 30 states have signed deals with several major US banks (also being bailed out) to distribute unemployement benefits on debit cards, rather than by check. Fees apply for this "benefit," too. Vermont has not entered any official discussions with banks, but is reviewing unemployment debit card programs. Now's a good time to complain about this scam to the governor and your state legislators.

SHADES OF THE 1930's

“This never happens — to take a company from the inside,” Ms. Mazon said. “But I’m fighting for my family, and we’re not going anywhere.”

This is encouraging. This kind of action can force the incoming administration to take a more radical action than it would like to.

In Factory Sit-In, an Anger Spread Wide

The above headline is from the MSM paper of record, which has not usually been keen on reporting labour issues in a favourable light.

And the workers' action received tacit approval from Obama.

At a news conference Sunday, President-elect Barack Obama said the company should follow through on its commitments to its workers.

“The workers who are asking for the benefits and payments that they have earned,” Mr. Obama said, “I think they’re absolutely right and understand that what’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy.”

Encouraging, mebbe. But I ain't getting my hopes up. CounterPunch Diary has an updated list of "Honeymoans from the Left".

OBAMA: 'CAUSE FOR GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT'

LENIN'S TOMB Obama's two constituencies

Obama's appointments, the only major policy signals he can make at the moment, thus far reflect his commitment to the Wall Street constituency rather than to those worst off in American society. Thus, we have endless Clinton-era appointments, Senator Clinton offered the position of Secretary of State (which reports say she has accepted), Republicans offered top posts (it looks as if Robert Gates has been begged to stay on as Secretary of Defense) and a right-wing scumbag from the Chicago boss politics scene and the Democratic Leadership Council named Rahm Emmanuel made chief-of-staff. Thus far, organised labour hasn't got a look-in as far as appointments are concerned, but representatives of corporate America saturate the economic advisory board. Selecting Clinton as Secretary of State indicates that Obama intends to run a hawkish foreign policy, and it also demonstrates that he genuinely wasn't all that upset about the Clinton team's endless race-baiting and crazed smears in the primary. The vast majority of Obama's voters will already have cause for grave disappointment.

AMERICAN SUMMER 2008

UNEASY TENSIONS IN THE SUMMER OF '08:

FOOD LINES FOR FEEDING A FAMILY

WORK

VACATION