The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Brian K. Noe

The Master Class Has Always Declared The Wars

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“Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives.”

The Words That Sent Debs To Prison (Full Text) – 16 June 1918, Canton Ohio

This Is No Time For Austerity

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Yesterday 350 prominent economists issued a statement urging our lawmakers and the Obama Administration to focus on jobs and economic growth, not the budget deficit. I suspect that their plea will be largely ignored, unless we, the people, take responsibility for our own future and rise up in opposition to austerity.

Here is part of what the economists wrote.

The U.S. economy, once in free-fall toward a new depression, has begun to recover. But we are still mired in a prolonged slump marked by mass unemployment, rising poverty, and declining wages. And the fragile recovery is threatened by obsessive concern with cutting deficits that has infected both parties.

As even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recognizes, it is long term unemployment, not excessive deficits or debt, that is now inflicting the greatest human toll and economic damage. Polls show that voters agree joblessness and a bad economy are much higher priorities than deficits.

Yet too many in Washington are fixated on cutting public spending to balance the budget, not on how to put people back to work and get our economy going. There is no theory of economics that explains how we can deflate our way to recovery. Businesses are not basing investment decisions on how much Congress cuts the debt in 2023. As Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and Greece have shown, inflicting austerity on a weak economy leads to deeper recession, rising unemployment and increasing misery.

Indeed, reports this morning indicate that a second recession has already hit the Eurozone.

Please share this information widely. I’ll continue to post more on what we’re facing (and how to resist) in the coming days and weeks. Please comment or email with your own ideas and links to share as well.

Read the Economists’ Full Statement: Jobs and Growth, Not Austerity – Campaign for America’s Future.

P.S. The image above depicts firefighters in protest over budget cuts at Thessalonika, Greece on September 8th, 2012.

In November, We Remember

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Red November, Back November
Haymarket Martyrs Monumentby Ralph Chaplin

Red November, black November,
Bleak November, black and red.
Hallowed month of labor’s martyrs,
Labor’s heroes, labor’s dead.

Labor’s wrath and hope and sorrow,
Red the promise, black the threat,
Who are we not to remember?
Who are we to dare forget?

Black and red the colors blended,
Black and red the pledge we made,
Red until the fight is ended,
Black until the debt is paid.

In memory of the Haymarket Martyrs, who were executed by the State of Illinois in November of 1887.

sunday night

· ·

i look up to the heavens sunday night
if there’s a star up there to wish on
i don’t see it

if there’s a prayer
or an incantation
i don’t
know it

if there’s a reason
to believe

in anything

i suppose i believe
in leaving
well enough alone

i solemnly swear
or affirm

i swear

it’s not the tragedies that
kill us

it’s the paper
cuts

Come Home America

· ·

“From secrecy and deception in high places, come home America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home America. From the entrenchment of special privilege and tax favoritism, from the waste of idle hands to the joy of useful labor, from the prejudice based upon race and sex, from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick, come home America. Come home to affirmation that we have a dream, come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward, come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world, and let us be joyful in the hoped homecoming for this land is your land, this land is my land…this land was made for you and me.”

George S. McGovern

Acceptance Speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 14, 1972

Why I’ll Vote Green in 2012

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Having vowed that I would not vote for President Obama again after he went back on his word and signed the NDAA, I have been a man without a party for much of the year. I’ve examined all of the candidates who are on the ballot here in Illinois (and several who are not). After months of thoughtful and prayerful consideration, I’ll be voting for the Green Party ticket of Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala on November 6th.

Here’s why.

The Greens’ platform, which focuses on democracy, social justice and sustainability, reflects my deepest values and concerns. It does that better than any other party on the ballot in Illinois. Also, the Greens have a record, both in the United States and worldwide, of putting these values into action when elected. I agree with what they propose, and I trust them to hold with it once in office.

The Greens are here to stay. The Republicans and Democrats do their best to keep a lock on ballot access throughout the United States. As a result, it is difficult for other parties (whether on the left or the right) to maintain a national presence over time. The U.S. Greens have continued to grow since first winning local races in Wisconsin back in 1986. They have contested the Presidency since 1996, and as a voluntary confederacy of state parties, they continue to build from the ground up. It seems to me that this is the only way to effectively challenge the powers that be over the long term.

The Greens are worldwide. The most serious problems we face in this age are not peculiar to the Unites States. In fact, I believe that our very existence as a species on this planet depends on organizing and working in solidarity internationally. The Greens are well established in Europe and Canada, and are gaining a foothold in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and throughout the Americas. Their call to “think globally and act locally” seems a practical approach to finding and implementing solutions.

My vote for the Greens can make a difference. Michael Harrington once remarked that the Democratic Party is “the left wing of reality” in the United States. Forty years later, one might well say the same thing of the Greens. I have no illusions that Stein will be elected President in 2012, but I do believe that helping the Green Party reach the threshold that offers them likely ballot access in future elections is the one cause where my vote will actually make a difference.

I’ve not yet decided to formally join the Green Party of Illinois. I plan to continue to learn more about their activities and organization over the coming months, as I’m doing with a lot of leftist and left-leaning groups at this point. I’d also like to see where leadership emerges and consensus develops on the left as the global political and economic crisis unfolds.

I know that my decision to cast my vote for the Greens this year will draw some criticism, particularly from my erstwhile colleagues in the Democratic Party, who will say that a vote for anyone other than President Obama is, in effect, a vote for Romney. To them, I simply reply that if Obama can’t win Illinois without my vote, then his candidacy is already doomed.

I also know quite a few Illinois Socialists who are still stinging from the Green Party’s challenge to their ballot petitions this year, and who may be sore at me for giving the Greens my support. Still other friends believe that participating in the electoral process at all only serves to support a decadent system that is at the root of most of our troubles to begin with. All I can say in response is that old habits die hard. I just can’t fathom staying away from the polls, or casting a write-in vote that won’t be counted.

A Fellow Worker that I once knew was fond of musing “If all of the people who say they wish there was a viable alternative would vote for an alternative, it would be viable.” My conscience tells me to put that sentiment into practice this year.

Barry Commoner and the Citizens Party

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Jeff Faux writes at The American Prospect:

“Barry Commoner ran for president in 1980 on the ticket of the now-defunct Citizens Party, an episode few on the left remember and the obituaries dismissed as a quirky personal misadventure. It was more than that. The Citizens Party was an effort to respond to the early signals that the Democratic Party was on the way to becoming morally and intellectually bankrupt. Three decades later, that ugly process is almost complete.”

Read More: Barry Commoner and the Dream of a Liberal Third Party.

Footnote: I’m proud to say that I voted for Commoner that year. It was one of those rare times that I didn’t feel I was voting for the lesser of two evils.

The Second Bill of Rights

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On January 11th of 1944, in his State of the Union Message to Congress, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a “Second Bill of Rights” which would guarantee economic security for all Americans. Sixty-eight years later, we’re still arguing about whether or not people ought by birth to have the right to these basic necessities of life. The right to work at a living wage, the right to education, the right to decent housing, the right to adequate medical care, the right to security in old age – all of these rights that FDR saw as “self-evident” in 1944 have yet to be ensured, and are, in fact, increasingly under attack in our society today.

I wonder what might happen if President Obama were to make these rights the foundation of his bid for re-election. Would the American people rally to such a program? Would we recognize that political rights alone cannot ensure liberty and justice for all? Would we recognize that today our freedom is most threatened, not by the government, but by the tyranny of the marketplace? Would we recognize, at long last, that there is no democracy without economic democracy?

Some, I’m sure, would be quick to shout “Socialist!” Many did during FDR’s day as well. The fact is that we have made little progress toward securing these rights over the course of time. Today we have a President (elected on promises of “hope” and “change”) who has run about as far away from such modest social goals as he can. We have a Congress that has done all that is within its power to block progress and to roll back whatever meager gains have been made. We have one major political party with designs on dismantling Medicare and Social Security, and another that has shown great eagerness to capitulate to such demands. There is little danger that President Obama, or any other candidate with good prospects for his office, would openly embrace such a “radical” platform today.

FDR warned against the dangers of “rightist reaction” to progress under the New Deal. It seems that we have allowed those reactionary forces to become the main stream of American political discourse in this new century.

I commend Roosevelt’s words to your attention and consideration. Hurry the day that at least these fundamental economic rights are assured – not just for all Americans, but for all of humankind.

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people – whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth – is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights – among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however – as our industrial economy expanded – these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

One of the great American industrialists of our day – a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis – recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop – if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920’s – then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.

★ ★ ★

Read the full text of FDR’s 1944 State of the Union Speech from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.