Peace and Justice Post

The hysteria over the recent royal wedding should remind us that the British monarchy never seem to have done anything productive in the first place.

Sherry Wolf, Socialist Worker, May 2, 2011

THE WINDSORS run quite a racket. In exchange for cultivating an extravagant life of piffle, they manage to grab a king’s ransom of $300 million a year (£180 million) out of Britain’s public coffers–enough to make even Tony Soprano blush.

We in the U.S., descendants of rebels who declared a revolution against the British crown, are taught to believe that Britain’s monarchy today is about honoring tradition. The royals are supposedly powerless celebrities, sort of like the Kardashians or Paris Hilton with better manners.

But the royal family, known as the House of Windsor since 1917 when they de-Germanized their name, may no longer possess any seats in the House of Lords (since 1999), but they do retain certain powers. They can still legally choose the prime minister, dismiss ministers and governments, dissolve Parliament, refuse to agree to legislation passed by Parliament, dismiss the governments of the Commonwealth (more on this below), pardon convicted criminals, declare a state of emergency, issue proclamations, command the army and raise a personal militia.

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Vikas Shah Interviews Noam Chomsky

Looking at the UK, US & Europe, to what extent are our societies free and democratic?

These Societies are quite free by historical standards. They are democratic in the sense that they have formal elections that aren’t stolen, and so on. They’re undemocratic to the extent that forces other than popular will have an overwhelming effect on who can participate in electoral outcomes. The United States is the most extreme in this respect. Right now in the United States, elections are essentially bought. You can’t run an election unless you have a huge amount of capital — which means overwhelmingly, although not one hundred percent, that capital was sought from strong corporate backing. For example, in the 2008 election– what carried Obama across the finish line first at the end was a very substantial amount of support from financial institutions which are now the core of the economy. The coming elections are supposed to be a two-billion-dollar election, and there’s only one place to go for that kind of money.

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Revoulutionary Flowerpot Society, April 3o, 2011

Translation of a joint statement issued by a group of workers’ rights groups in Iran. Read the original, in Persian here.

[Poster to the right, about workers’ action planned in Wisconsin in support of international solidarity, and immigrant and workers rights.]

May 1st, International Workers’ Day, is the global day of unity and protest by workers against the tyranny and inequality of capitalist system. This day is a reminder of the global struggles by workers for achieving their human rights. Iranian workers celebrate this day alongside workers of the world, and, in protest against their inhumane living conditions, they get together on this day every year and by any means at hand they raise their voices in order to achieve their legitimate rights.

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Michael S. Rozeff, LewRockwell.com, May 1, 2011

The peoples of the world once looked up to America and Americans. They held them in high respect and esteem. They respected their ideals. They respected their know-how and products.

Now, by its foreign policies of empire and their domestic counterparts, the U.S. government is destroying the dignity of America and Americans. Our morality is falling along with our productivity. Today, there is less and less of which Americans can be proud and there is more and more of which to be ashamed.

America can go in one of two ways. It can continue on the path of empire, in which case it continues downhill and impedes the world’s progress; or it can renounce empire, in which case it restores the dignity of Americans and imparts new opportunities to the peoples of the world.

America can lead the world down, in which case it becomes a backwater; or it can lead the world up, in which case Americans establish a moral center for freedom that radiates light to the world and opens up new paths for freedom everywhere.

To move America and the world into a more hopeful future in both word and deed, American leadership should make a 180 degree turn. It should renounce empire.

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CAIRO – More than two months since former president Hosni Mubarak was forced from office after 30 years in power, local political figures and analysts warn of “counterrevolutionary elements” still working behind the scenes to thwart Egypt’s ongoing transition to democracy.

A protester holds up his palm during a protest for labour rights on Labour Day or May Day, in Cairo May 1, 2011. The palm reads, “social justice”. (REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany) “These elements have consistently worked to reverse the gains made by the Jan. 25 Revolution by sowing fear, chaos and fitna (discord) between different segments of society,” Essam al-Arian, spokesman for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement, told IPS.

In the first days of the 18-day uprising, the embattled Mubarak regime used its expansive state media machine to spread false news reports of murder and mayhem in hopes of terrorising the public and discrediting the revolution. It went so far at one point as to release convicted criminals from prison.

Mubarak, who relinquished executive power to Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in February, is now under house arrest, while his ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) has since been dissolved. Nevertheless, many political observers point to “remnants of the former regime” still actively working to maintain the Mubarka-era status quo.

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by Badri Raina, May 1, 2011

May Day is here again,

and Capital is on the wane.

Capitalist treason

flounders in the face of reason.

Our faith in struggle must never end;

our task to build

a new world

for every woman, man, and child

must never lend

the least legitimacy

to crude cunning or chicanery.

Shoulder to the wheel,

we must never fail to share and feel

the pain of oppression;

our job is not done

till we arm justice enough to deal

Capital a mortal body blow,

the sickle must continue

to chop the weeded garden,

and the hoe

must dig till the seed of common love

we sow,

covering the earth from delhi to timbucktoo.

Phase one of the Arab spring is over. Phase two – the attempt to crush or contain genuine popular movements – has begun

Tariq Ali, The Guardian, April 29, 2011

The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world – the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states – was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism. This was followed after the second world war by a complex process of imperial transition to the United States. The result was a radical anticolonial Arab nationalism and Zionist expansionism within the wider framework of the cold war.

When the cold war ended Washington took charge of the region, initially through local potentates then through military bases and direct occupation. Democracy never entered the frame, enabling the Israelis to boast that they alone were an oasis of light in the heart of Arab darkness. How has all this been affected by the Arab intifada that began four months ago?

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May Day turns 125 years old this year. Elizabeth Schulte tells the story of the fight for the eight-hour day–and of the Haymarket Martyrs who gave their lives for it.

 Socialist Worker, April 30, 2011

ON MAY 1, 1886–125 years ago this month–hundreds of thousands of workers were taking the streets of cities around the U.S. to demand an eight-hour day.

The epicenter of this great labor struggle was Chicago, where the eight-hour movement inspired defiant protests and strikes–and inspired fear and repression from bosses and their loyal servants in law enforcement.

Two days after the massive May 1 actions, Chicago police fired on a protest of workers at a South Side factory, killing four people. A protest demonstration was called the next day for Haymarket, just west of downtown. The rally was peaceful, but as it was nearing a close, police waded into the crowd. At this point, a bomb was thrown into the ranks of police–and this became the excuse for a deadly rampage by the authorities.

Eight working-class radicals were arrested and charged with conspiring to commit the bombing–even though most weren’t even at Haymarket when the explosion occurred.

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By Ray NcGovern, Counterpunch.org, April 29 – May 1, 2011

The news that President Barack Obama has picked Gen. David Petraeus to be CIA director raises troubling questions, including whether the commander most associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will tolerate objective analysis of those two conflicts.

What if CIA analysts assess the prospects of success in those two wars as dismal and conclude that the troop “surges” pushed so publicly by Petraeus wasted both the lives of American troops and many billions of taxpayer dollars? Will CIA Director Petraeus welcome such critical analysis or punish it?

The Petraeus appointment also suggests that the President places little value on getting the straight scoop on these key war-related issues. If he did want the kind of intelligence analysis that, at times, could challenge the military, why is he giving the CIA job to a general with a huge incentive to gild the lily regarding the “progress” made under his command?

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