Of the news that has been good about the global economy in recent years, the reports least emphasized are those pointing to a revival of growth in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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The opinions, views, thoughts, and ramblings of editors of PoliticalAffairs.net – and other stuff worth reading or viewing.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Fidel Castro That I Know
His fondness for words. His power of seduction. He hunts for a problem wherever it is. The impelling force of inspiration is befits his style. The breadth of his tastes is very well reflected in his books.
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read more | digg story
Monday, February 18, 2008
Remembering the Rev. James Orange
Today the Washington Post carried an obituary of civil rights leader and labor activist Rev. James Orange. In it the Post cited an interview article on Orange for the People's Weekly World by that paper's late labor editor Fred Gaboury. Check out the Washington Post article here and read Gaboury's piece here.
New Chinese Labor Laws' Positive Impact
Of all news organizations, Newsweek's recently published interview with Auret van Heerden, president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Fair Labor Association, takes an interesting peek at labor conditions in China since the implementation of that country's new labor laws.
Read the interview here...
Read the interview here...
3rd & 4th Stage Cancers Can Be Prevented With Good Insurance Coverage; Elimination of Racism in Health Delivery
by Phil E. Benjamin
NO HEALTH INSURANCE; LATE CANCER DIAGNOSES AND EARLIER DEATHS; RACISM ALSO PLAYS A ROLE; MEDICAID NO BETTER
NO HEALTH INSURANCE; LATE CANCER DIAGNOSES AND EARLIER DEATHS; RACISM ALSO PLAYS A ROLE; MEDICAID NO BETTER
The American Cancer Society has released a study, via the British Medical Journal, Lancet that confirms the suspicions of many policy analysts. If you don't have health insurance you are more likely to be diagnoses with cancer in their 3 and 4th stages; and not in the 1st and 2nd stages when medical interventions can save lives.
Breast, lung, colon cancers and melanoma cancers were cited by the ACS as cancer conditions that are treatable with early diagnosis.
In addition, the ACS study found that when comparing Black to white patients, Black patients received late diagnoses. Hispanics were also, almost, as at risk as Black patients.
The study looked at data from late 1990s to present.
Also, in addition to the uninsured, Medicaid patients fared as poorly as the uninsured in terms of early diagnosis.
In other words, its not enough to give every one insurance, the insurance cannot be the minimum federal/state insurance of Medicaid.
Releasing this study, now, in the middle of a heated election campaign is perfect timing. That the ACS chose to release the study via a British medical journal might be indicative of the fears they may have of the insurance carriers.
Certainly, all candidates running for the White House and Congress should be forced to respond to these implications, i.e., racism in the system; 50 million people without any health insurance; and finally, that Medicaid, an important federal/state system of health care needs a radical revamping.
Killing Spree: Male Rage and Hypermasculinity
by Joel Wendland
Mass shootings that appear to be at epidemic proportions these days derive from the social and cultural problems of male rage and hyprmasculinity, according to UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner in an interview with ScienceDaily.com. Images that glorify male violence are perpetuated in news media, TV shows, popular movies, and new media like the Internet, says Kellner.
Mass killings such as the campus shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University or the recent mall shooting in Nebraska are not isolated or individual problems, he argues. They cannot be separated from "the broader context of American culture and society and finds that in each case, the male perpetrators suffered from problems of socialization, alienation and the search for identity in a culture that holds up guns and militarism as potent symbols of masculinity."
As such Kellner recommends a comprehensive public policy reform to help solve the problem: stricter gun control policy, better mental health care on campuses and in communities, better security and safety in workplaces and on campuses, and the projection of positive and constructive images of masculinity not infused with glorifications of violence.
Kellner believes, according to the article, that "the male perpetrators [of mass killings] suffered from problems of socialization, alienation and the search for identity in a culture that holds up guns and militarism as potent symbols of masculinity."
Clearly, IMO, these are not just problems of culture, i.e. problems of male rage promoted by destructive "Rambo" images in popular culture. This is a problem of capitalism. Capitalism, especially under ultra-right dominance, which promotes war and imperialism as positive masculine occupations, has failed to provide a society in which personal fulfillment, community construction, and satisfactory methods of self-identification are readily available.
Grinding economic insecurity (not to mention poverty) and lack of access to more fulfilling occupations (in some communities intensified by racism and national oppression) are the modern characteristics of contemporary capitalism. To this is added the ultra right's rejection of any rational notion that these kinds of issues are anything but personal problems.
In a culture infused with violent masculinity, of course, men and boys who believe that gun culture is the best mode of self-expression are going to lash out.
For women, the counterpart is a similar sort of violence turned inward. Mental health issues from drug addiction to eating disorders that afflict women pervade American society more than ever.
Mass shootings that appear to be at epidemic proportions these days derive from the social and cultural problems of male rage and hyprmasculinity, according to UCLA Professor Douglas Kellner in an interview with ScienceDaily.com. Images that glorify male violence are perpetuated in news media, TV shows, popular movies, and new media like the Internet, says Kellner.
Mass killings such as the campus shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University or the recent mall shooting in Nebraska are not isolated or individual problems, he argues. They cannot be separated from "the broader context of American culture and society and finds that in each case, the male perpetrators suffered from problems of socialization, alienation and the search for identity in a culture that holds up guns and militarism as potent symbols of masculinity."
As such Kellner recommends a comprehensive public policy reform to help solve the problem: stricter gun control policy, better mental health care on campuses and in communities, better security and safety in workplaces and on campuses, and the projection of positive and constructive images of masculinity not infused with glorifications of violence.
Kellner believes, according to the article, that "the male perpetrators [of mass killings] suffered from problems of socialization, alienation and the search for identity in a culture that holds up guns and militarism as potent symbols of masculinity."
Clearly, IMO, these are not just problems of culture, i.e. problems of male rage promoted by destructive "Rambo" images in popular culture. This is a problem of capitalism. Capitalism, especially under ultra-right dominance, which promotes war and imperialism as positive masculine occupations, has failed to provide a society in which personal fulfillment, community construction, and satisfactory methods of self-identification are readily available.
Grinding economic insecurity (not to mention poverty) and lack of access to more fulfilling occupations (in some communities intensified by racism and national oppression) are the modern characteristics of contemporary capitalism. To this is added the ultra right's rejection of any rational notion that these kinds of issues are anything but personal problems.
In a culture infused with violent masculinity, of course, men and boys who believe that gun culture is the best mode of self-expression are going to lash out.
For women, the counterpart is a similar sort of violence turned inward. Mental health issues from drug addiction to eating disorders that afflict women pervade American society more than ever.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Reading Lenin 4
READING LENIN: Materialism and Empirio-criticism [ 4 ]
Thomas Riggins
Using our editor's blog to further Marxist education seems like a good idea. So here is a famous work of Lenin's that outlines what Marxist philosophy is all about. It's 100 years old this year and we might ask ourselves what is still valid in this classic. Have new philosophic developments in the last 100 years made this work outmoded? I'm going to post some reflections on the book section by section and anyone who wants to read along and comment is welcome to do so. I hope to post weekly updates and Sunday seems the best day to do this as it is a free day for me.
Chapter One Section Two "The Discovery of the World Elements"
What are the "world elements" that Mach has supposedly discovered? In his "Mechanics" (1883) he wrote, "All natural science can only picture and represent complexes of those ELEMENTS which we ordinarily call SENSATIONS."
Lenin says Mach is confused, because in "The Analysis of Sensations" he says, "A colour is a physical object when we consider its dependence, for instance, upon the source of illumination (other colours, temperatures, spaces and so forth). When we, however, consider its DEPENDENCE upon the RETINA ... it is a PSYCHOLOGICAL object, a SENSATION."
Here it seems physical and psychological objects are dissimilar. Lenin calls Mach's view an "incoherent jumble." It seems that Mach wants it both ways, but by having two sorts of objects, physical and a sensation, Mach has slipped into MATERIALISM despite his claim that there are only sensations and their complexes.
This is the viewpoint of natural science and materialism: "matter acting upon our sense-organs produces sensation." The empirio-crticists seem either unaware of their problem here, or just confused. Lenin quotes one of the most important followers of Mach and Avenarius, Joseph Petzoldt [ Ludwig Wittgenstein's teacher ] who wrote that "In the statement that 'sensations are the elements of the world' one must guard against taking the term 'sensation' as denoting something only subjective and therefore ethereal, transforming the ordinary picture of the world into an illusion."
This is really muddled and Lenin says he can't help "harping" about it. He tells the empirio-criticists that they must give up their world elements and "simply say that colour is the result of the action of a physical object on the retina, which is the same as saying that sensation is a result of the action of matter on our sense organs."
Lenin points out that in fact, as Mach and Avenarius grew older they began to modify their beliefs and materialist elements, as it were, forced themselves upon them. Here is the strong Machian position from "Analysis of Sensations"-- " It is not bodies that produce sensations, but complexes of elements (complexes of sensations) that make up bodies."
But this view is somewhat modified. Avenarius, according to his disciple Rudolf Willy, ended up also accepting some form of "naive realism"-- i.e., the stance of regular people that there are real existing thing outside our minds. And his biographer, Oskar Ewald, conceded that he ended with a contradictory system with "idealist" and "realist" positions. [NOTE: Academic philosophy generally prefers the word "realist". Lenin uses "materialist" in deference to Marx and Engels and because he thinks it is more honest.]
Back to Bogdanov Bashing: Bogdanov says he is not a Machian. He only took one thing from Mach. Yes, but what he took, Lenin says "is the BASIC ERROR of Machism." And what is this basic error, the source of Bogdanov's "philosophical misadventures"? It is that "the external world, matter" is thought to be "identical with sensations."
Not only does he assert this, but he reproduces the equivocations and confusions of Avenarius et al when he writes in "Empirio-monism" that "insofar as the data of experience appear IN DEPENDENCE UPON THE STATE OF A PARTICULAR NERVOUS SYSTEM, they form the PSYCHICAL WORLD of that particular person; insofar as the data of experience are taken OUTSIDE OF SUCH A DEPENDENCE, we have before us the PHYSICAL WORLD."
I would like to insert here a note on the use of the term "metaphysics." In the period under discussion this was a term of abuse. Marxists referred to two groups as "metaphysicians"-- the idealists and the mechanical [i.e., non-dialectical] materialists. Dialectical Materialism (Diamat) was a "science." On the other hand idealists and agnostics (those neutral on the realism antirealism issue) called all the materialists "metaphysicians" for, as Lenin puts it, "it seems to them that to recognise the existence of an external world independent of the human mind is to transcend the bounds of experience." Lenin will deal with this later in his book,
For the present I think the main point of this section was to show that "What appeared to Bogdanov to be truth is, as a matter of fact, confusion, a wavering between materialism and idealism." This due to the fact that "the amendment made by Mach and Avenarius to their original idealism amounts to making partial concessions to materialism."
Next week we will deal with Section Three of Chapter One: "The Principal Co-ordination and 'Naive Realism."
[Check out Reading Lenin, Part 3 here]
Thomas Riggins
Using our editor's blog to further Marxist education seems like a good idea. So here is a famous work of Lenin's that outlines what Marxist philosophy is all about. It's 100 years old this year and we might ask ourselves what is still valid in this classic. Have new philosophic developments in the last 100 years made this work outmoded? I'm going to post some reflections on the book section by section and anyone who wants to read along and comment is welcome to do so. I hope to post weekly updates and Sunday seems the best day to do this as it is a free day for me.
Chapter One Section Two "The Discovery of the World Elements"
What are the "world elements" that Mach has supposedly discovered? In his "Mechanics" (1883) he wrote, "All natural science can only picture and represent complexes of those ELEMENTS which we ordinarily call SENSATIONS."
Lenin says Mach is confused, because in "The Analysis of Sensations" he says, "A colour is a physical object when we consider its dependence, for instance, upon the source of illumination (other colours, temperatures, spaces and so forth). When we, however, consider its DEPENDENCE upon the RETINA ... it is a PSYCHOLOGICAL object, a SENSATION."
Here it seems physical and psychological objects are dissimilar. Lenin calls Mach's view an "incoherent jumble." It seems that Mach wants it both ways, but by having two sorts of objects, physical and a sensation, Mach has slipped into MATERIALISM despite his claim that there are only sensations and their complexes.
This is the viewpoint of natural science and materialism: "matter acting upon our sense-organs produces sensation." The empirio-crticists seem either unaware of their problem here, or just confused. Lenin quotes one of the most important followers of Mach and Avenarius, Joseph Petzoldt [ Ludwig Wittgenstein's teacher ] who wrote that "In the statement that 'sensations are the elements of the world' one must guard against taking the term 'sensation' as denoting something only subjective and therefore ethereal, transforming the ordinary picture of the world into an illusion."
This is really muddled and Lenin says he can't help "harping" about it. He tells the empirio-criticists that they must give up their world elements and "simply say that colour is the result of the action of a physical object on the retina, which is the same as saying that sensation is a result of the action of matter on our sense organs."
Lenin points out that in fact, as Mach and Avenarius grew older they began to modify their beliefs and materialist elements, as it were, forced themselves upon them. Here is the strong Machian position from "Analysis of Sensations"-- " It is not bodies that produce sensations, but complexes of elements (complexes of sensations) that make up bodies."
But this view is somewhat modified. Avenarius, according to his disciple Rudolf Willy, ended up also accepting some form of "naive realism"-- i.e., the stance of regular people that there are real existing thing outside our minds. And his biographer, Oskar Ewald, conceded that he ended with a contradictory system with "idealist" and "realist" positions. [NOTE: Academic philosophy generally prefers the word "realist". Lenin uses "materialist" in deference to Marx and Engels and because he thinks it is more honest.]
Back to Bogdanov Bashing: Bogdanov says he is not a Machian. He only took one thing from Mach. Yes, but what he took, Lenin says "is the BASIC ERROR of Machism." And what is this basic error, the source of Bogdanov's "philosophical misadventures"? It is that "the external world, matter" is thought to be "identical with sensations."
Not only does he assert this, but he reproduces the equivocations and confusions of Avenarius et al when he writes in "Empirio-monism" that "insofar as the data of experience appear IN DEPENDENCE UPON THE STATE OF A PARTICULAR NERVOUS SYSTEM, they form the PSYCHICAL WORLD of that particular person; insofar as the data of experience are taken OUTSIDE OF SUCH A DEPENDENCE, we have before us the PHYSICAL WORLD."
I would like to insert here a note on the use of the term "metaphysics." In the period under discussion this was a term of abuse. Marxists referred to two groups as "metaphysicians"-- the idealists and the mechanical [i.e., non-dialectical] materialists. Dialectical Materialism (Diamat) was a "science." On the other hand idealists and agnostics (those neutral on the realism antirealism issue) called all the materialists "metaphysicians" for, as Lenin puts it, "it seems to them that to recognise the existence of an external world independent of the human mind is to transcend the bounds of experience." Lenin will deal with this later in his book,
For the present I think the main point of this section was to show that "What appeared to Bogdanov to be truth is, as a matter of fact, confusion, a wavering between materialism and idealism." This due to the fact that "the amendment made by Mach and Avenarius to their original idealism amounts to making partial concessions to materialism."
Next week we will deal with Section Three of Chapter One: "The Principal Co-ordination and 'Naive Realism."
[Check out Reading Lenin, Part 3 here]
Puerto Rican Gov. Anibal Acevedo-Vila Endorses Obama
According to a recent press statement from Acevedo-Vila's office:
Today I announce my endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States. Not only is he the right leader for Puerto Ricans, but he is the right leader for the Hispanic community and the right leader to unite all Americans. He has the determination to make our collective future great.[...]
Senator Obama demonstrates the strongest commitment to Puerto Rico that we have seen in recent times in U.S. politics. Most importantly, he has pledged to me that as President he will work to advance job creation and economic development in Puerto Rico – my highest priorities as Governor.
Senator Obama respects and supports Puerto Ricans' right to an unbiased, transparent self-determination process, which may include a constitutional convention or plebiscite, should Puerto Ricans reevaluate our status with the United States. He rejects the recent assertions made by a controversial Presidential Task Force on Puerto Rico which falsely declared our Commonwealth status as unconstitutional and which would force Puerto Ricans to choose between only statehood and full independence from the United States. Senator Obama believes that our fate as U.S. citizens should remain in our own hands.Puerto Rico holds its primary on June 1, and its 63 delegates will indeed play a role at the Democratic convention.
"Super Delegates" and the Battle Between the Past and the Future, by Norman Markowitz
by Norman Markowitz
So-called "Super Delegates" were added to Democratic conventions long ago as part of the party organization leadership's backlash against reforms which followed the protests against the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention. The idea was to give the leaders and those whom the leaders would appoint a buffer against insurgent candidates supported by mass forces. What is happening today though is an example of how mass forces can change the balance of power, even against institutions and structures designed to stop them.
In Brooklyn, New York, a Congressman and Super Delegate supporting Hillary Clinton is the target of an extensive campaign by his constituents, who voted overwhelmingly in the Democratic primary for Obama. Although the Super Delegates can change whom they support (they are not pledged to anyone by the rules of the convention as are the regular delegate, and they can, if they wish, hypothetically vote for Clinton even if they say they are going to vote for Obama or simply not say whom they will vote for until the vote) the mass movement developing around the Obama campaign is beginning to put more and more pressure on these Delegates, making it difficult for them to vote for Clinton, especially if they are still elected officials and have pro Obama constituencies.
It is interesting that former Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma, who ran on one of the most left oriented platforms in the 1976 Democratic primary contests (the press called him a "populist" and did what they could to ignore him) has endorsed Obama.
So-called "Super Delegates" were added to Democratic conventions long ago as part of the party organization leadership's backlash against reforms which followed the protests against the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention. The idea was to give the leaders and those whom the leaders would appoint a buffer against insurgent candidates supported by mass forces. What is happening today though is an example of how mass forces can change the balance of power, even against institutions and structures designed to stop them.
In Brooklyn, New York, a Congressman and Super Delegate supporting Hillary Clinton is the target of an extensive campaign by his constituents, who voted overwhelmingly in the Democratic primary for Obama. Although the Super Delegates can change whom they support (they are not pledged to anyone by the rules of the convention as are the regular delegate, and they can, if they wish, hypothetically vote for Clinton even if they say they are going to vote for Obama or simply not say whom they will vote for until the vote) the mass movement developing around the Obama campaign is beginning to put more and more pressure on these Delegates, making it difficult for them to vote for Clinton, especially if they are still elected officials and have pro Obama constituencies.
It is interesting that former Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma, who ran on one of the most left oriented platforms in the 1976 Democratic primary contests (the press called him a "populist" and did what they could to ignore him) has endorsed Obama.
Actually, the most famous "uncommitted" Super Delegate is Al Gore. From my readings, he has no love of Bill Clinton. He also has developed enormously since 2000. Although this may very well be wishful thinking, his endorsement might really strengthen the mass movement and give Obama a momentum that would be unbeatable. As someone who went from the old politics of the Democratic Leadership Council and the Clinton administration to a "new politics" which has seen him become a global statesman of environmental movement, it would be fitting for him to help bring a new and necessary political period in U.S. history to fruition.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Obama wins more union backing, pushes massive job creation
Presidential candidate Barack Obama, during a speech to auto workers at the GM plant in Janesville, Wisc., Feb. 13, put forward his support for what amounts to a large chunk of labor’s program to re-vitalize the country.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
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