Buying slave labor is like buying a slave

The moral implications of cheap crap at Walmart are many and disturbing.

The historic crime represented by the fraud we refer to as "free trade" is slowly revealing itself and the picture is not a pretty one. As if we humans had not made enough of a hell of the paradise we have been given here on Earth for our short and wonderful lives, we chose in the last 30 years or so to return to law of the jungle and deregulate, privatize, exploit, leverage, arbitrage, fold, spindle, mutilate and otherwise manipulate anything that was there for the manipulating that would cherry up the bottom line of some company, somewhere, no matter the cost or the consequences to others. This is crystallized most powerfully in the malignant and perverse free trade discourse brought to us courtesy of the Masters of the Universe and their Chicago School, neocon, supply-side, tax-cutting, deregulating, monetarist minions. The broad principle that corporate hegemons throughout the world, but principally in the USA and Europe, bribed their captive governments to adopt was the "free movement of labor, goods, and capital across borders." This was sold as some sort of enlightened, humanistic, forward-looking way to put international capitalism on steroids and max out the benefits of capitalism for all -- especially the poor of the Earth.. And the biggest selling point of all was the benevolent, progressive, and decent character of the Our Brave Corporate State and the Rugged Individualists who command it. Lots of our pampered and overpaid public servants, elected and unelected, went along with a straight face, and a few got impressive amounts of chump change for doing so. And as we all know now, it has not quite worked out so well for everyone but the corporations.

We have been educated, propagandized, intimidated, pressured, call it what you will, into accepting as facts of life things like the explosion of public and private debt, the institutionalization of the destabilizing boom-bubble-bust cycle in all the sectors of the world economy, the shuttering of American factories and the evaporation of the American manufacturing and skills base, the shrinking American middle class, the evisceration of labor unions, the starvation of state and local budgets, outsourcing of work, job exporting, cross-border employment migrations, the degradation of the public infrastructure, the accelerated despoliation of the commons, the most extreme and sudden concentration of wealth ever in American history, the almost complete deregulation of big business and the hegemony of the corporate class above the law and the broad masses who constitute the population of the planet. And more. And this has happened in a relatively short time.

Corporations are increasingly free to move anywhere around the world to evade taxes, which has impoverished governments everywhere. And to move wealth, and the multiplier effects that go with wealth, hither and yon as the fancy moves them, without regard to the destabilizing effect this has on societies.

Corporations are increasingly free to move around the world to evade environmental regulations, which amounts to a license to pollute and waste resources all over the planet.

Corporations are increasingly free to put prospective host governments in competition with each other to offer the least meaningful and least intrusive legal regulation in terms of workplace safety, union organizing, child labor, sexual exploitation, and any other humane framework of imposition of the public authority onto the private. This degrades all humanity, enables organized crime, and cultivates legitimate public rage and radicalization.

But all these things, toxic as they are, are not the truly hypnotic attraction of free trade to the Masters of the Universe. The real incitement to move factories and jobs around the world is low wages and the possibility of creating a vicious cycle of low-wage competition that will over time drastically reduce wages worldwide and ultimately gut anything like Social Democracy and reduce the global working population to a debilitated, helpless serf status. Something like the return of feudal privilege is what the Masters of the Universe are after. Desperate,hopeless people who know they are trapped in the "race to the bottom" make compliant, cheap, grateful employees who do not make trouble. And that is truly what this free trade disgrace is about.

If ever a tail wagged a dog, this is it.

One very famous and revealing outrage about free trade involves Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff and the garment companies of the Mariana Islands [CNMI]. According to Democratic Underground of April 5, 2005:

So how did this play out in the Mariana Islands? After years of reports of corruption and abuse, an undercover Interior Dept investigation brought 400 reports from CNMI workers to the halls of Congress. Among the “free market” practices of the Mariana Islands was the ability to label garments “Made in the USA” and ship them to the US, duty free, while dispensing with all US immigration, minimum wage and labor standards. Unscrupulous manufacturers brought Chinese workers into the CNMI and kept them under harrowing conditions. The Chinese workers were lured into signing contracts that promised them work, housing and health care in the US, many paid $5,000 - $7,000 fees for the privilege. The contracts also stated they would be deported if they complained of working conditions, practiced their religions, engaged in political activity, became pregnant or even got married. Underage girls in nude clubs, forced prostitution and coerced abortions were routine. Even after a 3 year investigation, Tom Delay continued to hail the “free market” of the CNMI and said “the United States should establish an identical “guest worker” program ‘where particular companies can bring Mexican workers in.’ The Mexicans would be paid ‘at whatever wage the market will bear.’”

Imagine that: this report to Congress occurred during the Bush administration. How bad must it have been to embarrass Bush?

This is one instance that we know about. It is typical. It is the tip of the iceberg. Unquestionably, it is still happening, all over the world, every day, worse than ever. And all because some greedy corporate zombies bought enough influence to stand above any oversight, law, regulation or scruple between a respectable profit and one dollar more. As long as we practice free trade, we are stuck with it. Sweatshops for prosperity. Brothels for democracy. Rape, pillage and plunder as national policy and an expression of what we stand for. Do we really think this is not going to blow back on us? Do we really think we are getting rich this way? Do we really think we do not have blood on our hands over this? Do the mercenary hoodlums at Blackwater in Iraq or the vicious pimps and overseers in the sweatshops really represent what we must tolerate in order to have our precious video games, SUVs, and MacMansions, or is it just easier to not argue about it? Is this really how we want to live? Are we proud of this? Is this the best we can do?

On all the planet, there is no more dangerous and destructive force -- none -- than the depraved indifference to ordinary standards of human decency displayed by the international corporate hegemon and codified in the degenerate, twisted and fascistic abortion known as "free trade."

A heavy and serious moral burden rests with the decent people of the world to use the force of law and government to stop this, peacefully and civilily.

It is said that the Dutch bought the island of Manhattan from the Canarsee Delaware Indians for a handful of pretty beads. Free trade is a similar swindle. The cheap and shiny crap from Walmart may well, in the long run, prove very expensive indeed.

This is not what the American Revolution was about. And one way or another, the moral arc of the Universe will respond.

The end of politics as spectacle

For fifty years or more, American politics has been largely a spectator sport -- not merely in the sense that the hoopla and the horserace aspect are wonderful fodder for armchair warriors, but in the larger, more insidious sense that important policy choices and foreign adventures have seemed to be largely consequence free for Americans. So much of the costs of our Empire and its mistakes have been borne by Vietnamese, Iraqis, Saudi dissidents, and so forth. Only in a very small way have our policies seemed to blow back on our fat and happy ways here at home. That is of course an illusion, but an important one for the maintenance of our political economy. The limits we have reached on our economic and military power mean that illusion may no longer be tenable. And if it ends, our politics and our lives will have wrenching and far-reaching adjustments to make.

Dick Cheney, a joke in search of a punchline.

Good old Dick Cheney just can't keep away from the TV cameras with his cheery, friendly, positive take on the world around us. Whether it is war, torture, terrorism or shooting his friend in the face, there is no subject so grisly and depressing that Gladhand Slim can't turn it into a sunny affirmation of everything sweet and lovely in life. Why does he do it? Of course, there really is an upside: he is building himself up to a point where, sooner or later, he is gonna have to become a laughingstock. And when he does, he will be one of the biggest laughingstocks in the history of the world.

I am old enough to remember the Watergate hearings. Now there was a gang of vicious, humorless, constipated old gasbags who made sure to keep everyone in the country impressed with how scary and smart they were...and it worked for a while. But at a certain point, for whatever reasons, people started laughing at them, and that was the beginning of the end. They lost all their power and looked pathetic. Many went to jail. And it really was made possible by laughter. Al Haig and J. Edgar Hoover, too, had their balloons deflated by jokes. And the same will happen to Cheney.

Try it. The next time he is on TV, snarling and spitting his demented, twisted vision of an America free of the Bill of Rights and any restraints on the cruelty of the King, ask yourself who could best play him in a comedy film. John Candy? Jack Black? The guy who played the skipper on 'Gilligan's Island?'

See? Don't you feel better?

And Again

As I write this the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is closed on an emergency basis due to a suspension cable snapping. The bridge was built in the 1930s as a WPA project and was recently repaired, so there is considerable concern that this may presage a tremendous problem with the structural safety of the bridge.

There is something sad about this, and a little unfamiliar. There was a time when an incident like this would not have provoked responses like "Can we afford to fix it?" or "Do we have the skills and knowledge to fix it?" or even "Can we we get someone to do a good job?" We have learned both to take our infrastructure for granted, and to have very little confidence in the plant itself and the ability of our people to maintain and grow it.

The infrastructure nationally has been neglected; we have spent our money on other things. But we have build lots of bridges in other counties since the Bay Bridge was built. We have spent a great deal of treasure, blood, energy and intellect to ensure the economic and political well-being of other countries. We don't even notice our self-neglect anymore. It just seems someone long ago wrote in stone that America must always place the needs of other countries over those of America and Americans. It is as if that is our job. Today a total of 8 American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan; what is that, a detail? How many bridges could we have built with what we did not need to spend in Afghanistan?

We cannot be good to anyone else until we are good to ourselves first. And it is too easy to make mistakes -- lethal and shameful mistakes -- in someone else's country.

We are skipping around in the world on borrowed money, at this point. The day will come, and sooner rather than later, when that money runs out.

It is time to come home and stay home. America and the world need a vacation from each other.

Things that should be lavishly (and in some cases prohibitavely) taxed

Things that should be lavishly (and in some cases prohibitively) taxed


new single-family housing construction (especially condominiums)
salt, refined white sugar, high fructose corn syrup
tobacco and alcohol
gasoline for private transportation
imported energy
imports of finished goods
exports of raw materials
all incomes over $300,000 per year
Any obscene corporate profits
foreign ownership of American real estate, assets, stocks, bonds, or debt
exporting, outsourcing, offshoring of any American jobs, financial assets, factories, or funds
the hiring of any foreign workers, legal or illegal (lower rate for legal)
agribusinesses that farm over 5,000 acres
plastic
landfills
disposable food containers and plate ware.

Things that should be free

things that should be free

a base level of housing
a base level of health care
a base level of nutrition
a base level of education
running for public office
land and taxes for clean factory start ups, labor intensive manufacturing, and all recycling
land and taxes for all export industries, particularly high value-added manufacturing
public transportation

A KUMBAYA MOMENT

There is a place in this world for a little kumbaya.

"To truly listen is to transform."
----J. Krishnamurti

What can we lonely, separated, isolated individuals do about all the needless, endless, senseless suffering in our world?

In our contemporary civilization we all spend a large proportion of our lives walking around in the intersection between our own individual private Hell and the great big complicated plastic public Hell we have made of the world . As a species, we use our precious time, energy and talent to bang away violently and noisily at obstacles, ourselves, and each other, in a vain effort to evade and deny what our lives truly, urgently demand of us. As individuals we grope blindly and lamely in the dark, this way and that, hoping to find ourselves here, then there, finally settling for simple, comfortable habits, willing to tolerate the brutality, the cruelty, the tragedy that our confusion enables, just so long as we are left alone spinning on our wheels. And all the while the beauty and magic of the world, which wants to find us and be one with us forever, slips through our fingers like sand, grain by grain, each grain a private tragedy and an incalculable loss for all humanity. Pain that should never be provokes tears that are never shed. Bewildered and bitter, we come to think we love the heavy chains of indifference and despair we forge for ourselves; and our society praises and rewards this indifference and despair. And yet, the beauty of life never stops offering itself to us, patiently pleading to be let in, to heal and delight and redeem us in spite of ourselves. And we say no. Why must this be? And what can be done about it?

It all comes from one overarching thing -- our individual unwillingness, inability, and fear to truly listen and to truly consider what the world, our lives, ourselves, and others are, and what they are trying to tell us. We pretend to hear what ourselves, or others, or the world, are trying to say while, in fact, we ignore, dismiss, deny or resist what they are. We fear the act of listening because of what we have to hear about ourselves before we can hear anything else. We fear the content of listening because of what we might have to face about the world.

Listening is not only powerful because of the impact it has on the object of the listening. To truly listen does not require an object. In fact, one cannot listen to a person, a piece of music, a dog barking, without orienting oneself to the world in such perfect attenuation such that the world, the Universe, God, call it what you will, is listening to you and what you are in perfect tandem with your listening to the person, the music, the dog. The act of listening is so important that the object is almost incidental. And yet, when you truly listen, the object of your listening is overwhelmed with a feeling of fulfillment and peace.

Listening is the most creative, the most powerful, the most characteristically human thing that we can possibly do. All human fulfillment comes from listening. All violence and suffering comes from the failure to listen. Compassion and love are the children of listening. Anger and destructiveness are what happens when a human soul is starved for listening. How often have you heard an angry person suddenly exclaim "I can't get anyone to listen to me!" There is the heart of the matter revealing itself. That is the truth pleading to be heard and answered. When you see an angry crowd of people seething with hostility and irrationality, that is a balloon begging to be popped by the peaceful sword of listening.

Listening is the guarantor of all happiness, peace, and freedom.

To truly listen is to destroy suffering and violence.

This poem was read to me in a Yoga class by our teacher:

What if you slept,
and what if,
in your sleep, you dreamed?
And what if,
in your dream,
you went to heaven
and there picked
a strange and beautiful flower?
And what if,
when you awoke,
you had the flower in your hand?
What then?

I discovered this on my own. It changed my life.

"Loneliness is life's most awkward and hurtful condition, yet it breeds art and culture, hope and aspiration, and then slays the best and the strongest. Loneliness has destroyed more lives than warfare, and it has filled our jails a thousand times. Loneliness causes pimps, whores, free sex and Jesus. Funny, our greatest geniuses have been the most lonely people, and yet they found a cure for their loneliness in working. Scientists, thinkers and warriors have been driven on by one fuel: loneliness. Funny, there are two causes for loneliness. One cause is greed, and the other causes is love. Greed wants your naked body, and love does too. Love wants the thoughts in your mind, and greed does too. Love and greed are twin brothers. Could love and greed be sweethearts? They sure sleep under the same covers.
" My loneliness is deep and incurable. I ache and hurt inside because we haven't destroyed fascism and slavery yet. I ache and hurt inside because the world needs so much fixing.
"Thank the lord for loneliness."
Woody Guthrie

And here is one of my many favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln:
" Do I not destroy my enemy when I make him my friend?"

BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW, AND KEEP THEM HERE

At this writing, President Obama is in the midst of dramatic meetings foreshadowing major decisions about troop deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. The situation with Iran is also escalating, and the real possibility exists that America alone, Israel alone, or America and Israel together will conduct some sort of military strike to destroy Iran's embryonic nuclear capacity. There is the hope that a wider coalition involving China and/or Russia could be brought into being, but that is still a long shot, at least in the immediate short term.

No one seems to know what the President will decide. He is getting a diverse spectrum of advice from Joe Biden, HIllary Clinton, John Kerry, and the military.

If he wants my advice, here it is:

Get out of both Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Today. Don't spend another thin dime or another drop of blood on either effort. Don't go into Iran. Immediately begin a top-to-bottom review of every single agreement, contract, treaty, and "entangling alliance" with each and every nation on the planet. Other than Marines guarding American Embassies, start with the assumption that the presence of one American soldier, sailor, marine or airman on soil other than American has to be rejustified on some grounds other than mere inertia. If it can be justified on grounds of genuine national interest, let them be there. If it can't be so justified, bring them home in a Chicago minute.

Since the end of World War II, we have all been educated to accept as normal the deployment of American troops, bases, missions, ad infinitum hither and yon. Foreign aid in the hundreds of billions has been lavished upon the world. All the hot spots of the world have become accustomed to high-profile American dignitaries endlessly seeking a dialogue, agreement, common ground. All this has been based upon the supposition that American power and wealth were boundless and endless.

But the farther into the past is the end of WW2, the more diminished the returns and the less sense this makes. The peace and progress of the world cannot depend on the US policing all the possibilities of conflict on Earth forever and ever. It is madness and folly to think it can. We have hundred if not thousands of bases over the globe. We protect lots of friendly regimes. We are holding down a lid on lots of incipient violence. But inevitably there is another side. This looks and feels a lot like an empire; it certainly costs as much as an empire would. We have made friends, we have done a lot of good, and at the same time we have found ourselves involved a lot of conflicts alien to our national interest. We have hollowed out our economy to spare trade competitors the expense of managing their own protection and we are approaching the point where the end of the money is in sight. We have courted resentment, quagmire and penury. Increasingly, this is futile, counterproductive, and self-destructive. This is not good for anyone, in particular us.

What are we doing, in 2009, with our huge complex of bases throughout Europe? South Korea? Japan? Must this really go one for another 60 years? 100? 200? We are borrowing money to keep this going, and we are neglecting our own pressing needs.

Mr. President, if you brought the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow, I would say that is a real good start, but only a start.