9/11 And All That
September 12th, 2010
I have been engaged in a long and virulent debate today regarding the 9/11 events. We know somebody was involved with it, Osama and his crew have claimed credit for it, or at least that is what the US and British Governments claim, but there are many around the world that think it was a domestic operation. A literature has grown up around this just like the debate around the Kennedy assassination. I am agnostic on. I have read more about the Kennedy assassination than the 9/11 events, but to tell the truth as I see it, when this sort of controversy arises over a subject like this there is no end to the debate.
Let us say that there is a dangerous current of authoritarianism in the USA today. It is especially virulent because of the recession. Political operatives are attempting to poison the atmosphere to bring about a right wing reaction to the Obama administration and end the Democrats control of Congress. The so called middle class, or as I call them the working class are upset about the loss of wealth, the loss of the value of their homes, and the lack of job security. The corporate elites are using the right wing to blame immigrants for the lack of jobs, when they know perfectly well that many well paying jobs have been shipped overseas and replaced with low wage service jobs.
To be more precise, cheap labor in China combined with Chinese government investment in infrastructure and policies to encourage foreign investment in local manufacturing and US government policies that encourage businesses to seek this cheap labor where ever it can be found, has led to a loss of manufacturing jobs in the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
Free Market Capitalist explanation for jobs going overseas.
http://mises.org/daily/1385
AFL-CIO explanation for job losses.
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/publications/magazine/0903_amjobs.cfm
The free market gets a big hand from government policy. What if we include the needs of the people and create a united Government-Industry-Labor economic model?
Say we followed the German model?
http://column.global-labour-university.org/2010/08/german-economic-model-emerges.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/germany-economic-recovery-recession-lessons_n_692534.html
Germany is basing its economy on exports and suppressing domestic consumption. That was what the Chinese did. The main difference has been that the Germans maintain a high standard of living for their workers and the Chinese are building their economy on the backs of their workers. Is the German model sustainable? It seems to be causing problems within the EU. Germany does not want to bail out the economies that have suffered and seems to be retrenching now. This lack of a good neighbor policy may come to haunt Germany in the near future and as labor unrest grows across Europe Germany may not be immune.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/07/europe-facing-a-season-of_n_707861.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE68616K20100908
The problem is that Governments all over the world seem to buy into the corporate control of their economies and even in countries with so called socialist governments there is no resistance on a state level. That means its up to the working people to resist. In places like Greece and France we see massive protests but they are muted especially in Greece by the fact that socialist governments have influence over the unions. That leaves the brunt of the protests in the hands of the youth who are often as not Anarchists. Unions may still control the majority of the protesting workers, but the unemployed youth have no such constraints.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/business/global/12youth.html
Does that mean the hope for social change is again in the hands of the youth? To an extent that is true. They make up the majority of the military, they are the ones suffering highest unemployment and they are the ones who take to the streets more than anyone else. But this is not the 1960's and any revolt in our time has the history of the last 250 years of revolutions behind it. We have to make sure we are not fooled again and that means no compromise with capitalism. We need to go all the way to workers and community control of the entire economy and social infrastructure. We must not merely take over the governments but dissolve them into a giant commune of the people.
http://bigotblog.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/will-capitalism-end-the-post-capitahttp://another-green-world.blogspot.com/2009/03/crash-post-capitalist-to-z.htmllist-world/
http://www.bkconnection.com/static/The_Post-Corporate_World_EXCERPT.pdf
How this occurs may be the result of an increasing wave of strikes, as governments fail to provide services and corporations cut back on benefits in the first world met by an increased level of expectation in the third world and a realization that capitalism isn't all it is cracked up to be in the second world. But ultimately there has to be a refusal to accept the status quo as presented by the opinion manufacturing media that is tasked to present the official viewpoint to the mass of the people. There have been recent examples such as in Argentina when the government and economy collapsed in 2001.
http://rwor.org/a/v24/1151-1160/1152/argentina.htm
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-argentine-autonomist-movement-and-the-elections-by-graciela-monteagudo
http://www.bluegreenearth.us/archive/article/2004/monteagudo-1-2004.html
http://www.solidaridadesrebeldes.kolgados.com.ar/spip.php?article56
But that is not the solution. Individual countries may have social movements that try to mitigate the effects of capitalism but until we are ready to get rid of it once and for all we are going to be stuck with half measures and revolts that ultimately compromise with the forces of capital.
If socialism and communism are in our future it is because they are the next logical step in social development. This has been the critique of capital for over 150 years now at least since the revolts of 1848 and the coalescing of the forces of of the people in the Communist Manifesto and the forming of the 1st International. Since the unfortunate split between the Bakuninist Anarchists and the Marxist Socialists, the path to communism has been seen differently. The anarchist faction calling for the immediate end to the state and capital through a general strike or armed insurrection, Marxists calling for the gradual withering away of the state after the seizure of state power either by the election of a socialist party or by an armed insurrection.
We have seen the results of Marxist Insurrections. So far they have led to dictatorships of bureaucratic classes backed by secret police. There had been some advances of the workers but these amounted to the same or less than what occurred in the capitalist states. We need a world revolution that is the will of the working people taking control of their workplaces in conjunction with their communities. This means that the level of awareness is universal. We are living in the information age, or should it be called the disinformation age. Production has been mastered more or less. It is now a battle for the hearts and minds of the worlds peoples and the problem is we are buried in data but with very little of it clearly marking out a path in this information jungle.
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/farewell.pdf
http://www.metafuture.org/Articles/deconstructing-information-era.htm
http://www.hermes-press.com/disinfo.htm
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/789/
I have deliberately chosen articles from the early days of this era when people were still able to comprehend the transition. We are almost incapable of that now. Look at that MIT panel, it looks at the modern retreat from reason. I say that part of the problem is the acceleration of information that has created a new class society of the informed, the semi-informed and the misinformed. This is a continuum that has a reverse side to it, the brainwashed, the semi-brainwashed and the unbrainwashed.
http://www.bloggermoms.com/arjuna-and-the-fish-eye-the-fallacy-of-being-over-informed-hyper-busy-and-multi-tasking/
This is from a random search for an answer and it comes from someone who is just out there in the blogisphere. We need to focus on what is important. What is important now is to take the steps required to transform the world into one we desire.
So we need to thing about Food and taking care of the needs of the planet.
http://www.foodfirst.org/
We need to think about how we want to structure the world.
http://www.undueinfluence.com/restructuring.htm
http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/correa_we_are_leaving_the_night_of_neoliberalism_behind_01368.html
http://www.anarchistplanner.org/blog/entries/fnl-07.html
http://libcom.org/forums/history-culture/johann-mosts-vision-anarchist-society-07062010
I am done for today. I have been thinking about how to effect change. How does a disabled person siting in his apartment in Southern California bring about the transformation? Alone I cannot do much. But together we can do it all. I may not be able to do much more than cheer lead and critique at this point, but I won't stop until I am dead or I find a better way.
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