The Righteous Wrath of the People
As the situation in Libya rapidly deteriorates we are on the verge of witnessing the first of the populist rebellions in the Arab world rapidly metamorphose into a revolution. In fact, the activist said they want to henceforth be called “revolutionaries” not demonstrators.” However I use “revolution” in the narrowest sense of the term: to totally overthrow a system of power and authority and replace it with another. Yet in its more expansive meaning Revolution implies a great leap forward in the socio/economic relations of a nation, progress; the creation of a new order which dramatically elevates the standard of living and quality of life for the masses.
By this definition we cannot say for sure that what we are witnessing unfold in Libya thus far is a revolutionary change that will bring true progress to the people of that country. As the former Regis Professor of History at Oxford, Dr. Hugh Trevor-Roper, has reminded us: one barbarian succeeding another barbarian does not make history. In other words, there must be some movement in the ideas that shape our society to signify progressive development. Likewise, in the case of revolutions, there must be a dramatic move forward in relations between those who held power and created the conditions that led to the revolution, and those who were the victims that rose up in revolt. In the contemporary Muslim world it is hard to know what will replace the despotisms that are being overthrown by the confused headless host we call “the people.” What is certain is that things are quickly coming to a head in Libya, as both sides are taking up arms.
There are reports from reliable sources that certain dissident elements in the army have opened their arsenals and are arming the rebels. Other military men are deserting their posts or refusing to follow orders – such as the two Air Force pilots who defected with their planes to Malta rather than bomb their fellow citizens. Libyan diplomats abroad are defecting from the murderous Quadaffi regime and joining the rebellion. Clearly the process of revolution has begun. However it takes more than guns to make a revolution; once must have a revolutionary ideology that defines radical goals. Thus far I see no evidence of this. Beyond toppling Quadaffi, the goals of the enraged but leaderless masses are a grand mystery.
Mummar Quadaffi – the military autocrat who has ruled Libya with an iron fist during its entire period of independence from France – which spans over forty years now, has vowed not to budge from his position as President of the nation. Dressed in weird garb and looking every bit the space cadet that he is, Quadaffi called the protestors “dope addicts,” “American agents,” “and “traitors” and called upon his supporters to attack them in their houses! Quadaffi has also vowed to martyr himself – which means he plans go out in a hail of gunfire – rather than leave Libya and retreat into exile! From the present stage of the burgeoning crisis it looks like something akin to a civil war is rapidly approaching.
Given the violent morass that Libyan society has become, with all authority breaking down, the guys with the guns are emerging as the deciders of the future. This may yet turn out to be a situation where the autocrat you know is preferable to the theocrat you don’t know. This has been the basis of US support for these despotisms throughout the region, and it has served American interests well….until now! This is because such arrangements never served the interests of the people in these countries…only a select elite, who were corrupted by the nature of the deal. America entered into a Faustian bargain with these murderous blaggards and thieves and now there’s the Devil to pay.
Pan-Arabist Mad Man Mummar Quadaffi
The Masquerade is Over: But he doesn’t get it!
Of course, when this policy of uncritically supporting tyrants in the Arab world was formulated, the communist were the enemy of choice. The US even supported Muslim fundamentalist, because they were virulently anti-communist. That’s why the US government declared the Afghan Mujahidin – who became the “Taliban” – “freedom Fighters” and the CIA ended up training Osama bin Laden in terrorist tactics to fight the Russian communist. Since the fall of communism the American elite quickly found another enemy, the Islamic Jihadists, which American policy largely created.
Not simply by their clandestine training and arming of Muslim forces to fight the Russian atheists in Afghanistan, but by the decision to garrison American troops in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden, a man worth hundreds of millions who walked away from a life of luxury to fight for Al Islam, was enraged by the presence of swine eating infidels on sacred Muslim soil where the Khabba, Islam’s holiest shrine, is entombed. This is when Osama declared the Saudi Royal family to be apostates and declared Jihad against them and their allies. As the foremost supporters and protectors of this moribund medieval regime we were first on his hit list! The manifestation of his wrath was rained upon us on 9/11. And thanks to the Republican blunders posing as tough guys “Osama been forgotten” is still running around in the mountains
However in the eyes of the Jihadists all of the regimes in the Islamic world who are not living under Sharia law are apostates! Yet the only nation in the world that is living under Sharia, Iran, is also unacceptable to Al Qaeda because they are Shiites rather than Sunnis! This kind of thinking is a measure of the madness we face in trying to evaluate the situation in the Middle East. That Quadaffi is a mad man is apparent to anyone who does not suffer with madness themselves; yet he has maintained stability in a nation crisscrossed with clan loyalties and potential religious conflicts based on esoteric theological disputes that date back to the glory days of the Islamic Caliphate in the middle ages.
While right wingers in the US argue that the US shouldn’t support the popular movement sweeping the Arab world because they have been faithful US puppets to US interests, they offer no policy options to counter the policies of the Obama Administration. This is because their cupboard is bare; they don’t have any alternative options. They fact is that the US is a helpless giant, a colossus with feet of clay, when faced with the present popular democratic upheavals in the Mid-East. We are already bogged down in quagmires in two Muslim countries which we are trying our best to extricate ourselves from with some semblance of military honor. So it is apparent to this writer that any thought of military intervention to suppress the popular uprisings is an insane and self destructive fantasy.
However the mindless cheerleading on the left, where the argument is that President Obama should inject the power and prestige of the US into this internal crisis of the Arab world, standing firmly on the side of the raging mobs, may also prove to be a castle built on shifting sands. The assumptions upon which this course of action is justified are as intellectually shaky as the mindless ranting on the right. With a Psychotic megalomaniac like Quadaffi anything can happen. For instance, he is quite capable of blowing up the oil pipe lines, which would drive oil prices through the roof and spark an economic crisis throughout the world. Alas, preventing this from happening has been the principal objective of American policy in the region. It is the source of all our sins against the Arabs…which are myriad and now have come back to plague us.
Portrait Of A Madman!
He has vowed to turn the streets red with blood!!
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Playthell George Benjamin
Harlem, New York
February 23, 2011
Madison Is Our Cairo!
Posted in Guest Commentators with tags Cairo Egypt, Governer Walker and Public Unions, Madison Wisconsin on February 24, 2011 by playthellBy: Dr, Peter Rachcliff
The People Take their Struggle to the Streets
With the Koch Brothers footing his campaign – and whose subservience to them has been verified by a reporter posing as one of the brothers who phoned the Governor in the heat of battle for an update on their master plan to crush public unions, recorded the phone call, then put it on the internet – Scott Walker assumed the governorship of Wisconsin on January 7, 2011. Predictably Walker’s first action as Governor was obeisance to the corporate class that that put him in office: he gave $140 million in tax breaks to businesses, including Wal-Mart, and then screamed “budget crisis!”
This move allowed him to introduce his “Budget Repair Bill,” which would require state workers to pay $5,000 – $7,000 a year towards their health insurance benefits and pensions. Uninformed public sector-bashing Walker supporters see this as an overdue come-down in public sector workers’ unfair advantages. But the scope of Walker’s bill is much broader than public sector wages, benefits and unions.
It is a salvo in the broader Republican war against working people and all unions, proposing radical positions in the Right’s plan to create a permanent under-class of non-unionized workers: 1) reduce public employee collective bargaining strictly to wages; 2) prohibit all public employee strikes (the National Guard is on stand-by in Madison); 3) eliminate automatic deductions for union dues; 4) limit collective bargaining contracts to one year; and finally, 5) require union members to vote each year to “re-certify” bargaining units. Of course, the bill also proposes cuts in public education and public services. And right behind Walker’s “Budget Repair Bill” is an additional bill to make Wisconsin a “Right-to-Work” state, which would severely limit the powers of private sector unions. The one-two punch.
Giddy with the alignment of Republicans behind him in the House and Senate, Walker called a special session to demand immediate passage of his “Budget Repair Bill.” Simultaneously, he sent a letter to every state worker warning that there would be no extensions of current contracts beyond March 13 – a decree which would eliminate collective bargaining. He declared all of this non-negotiable. Walker has gotten a lot more than he refused to bargain for from the good people of Wisconsin. Resistance started with students at the University of Wisconsin who asserted their right to affordable public education. On Valentine’s Day, a thousand students marched to the Capitol and delivered cards reading: “Have a Heart. Don’t Tear UW Apart!”
Private sector and public sector union activists met in a forum the next day, committed to standing together, and called for public protests. By mid-Valentine’s Week, tens of thousands of teachers and other public employees called in sick and headed to the Capitol, joined by thousands of high school and university students. Even public employees who had been spared the changes of the proposed bill, such as fire fighters and police, joined the demonstrations. The ranks of protestors swelled from 20,000 on Wednesday to 35,000 on Thursday and an estimated 50,000 on Friday. Signs expressed their anger — “Kill the Bill!” – and also reflected their awareness of international citizens’ frustration with the “austerity” measures preached by the hoarding guardians of global capital: “I Went to Iraq and Came Back to Egypt,” “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “Let’s Negotiate Like They Do in Egypt.”
In a rare display of legislative backbone, fourteen Democratic state legislators went AWOL and have been hiding out of reach of Wisconsin state police, denying the legislature the quorum it needs to conduct business. On the day Walker expected to be signing his bill, with 50,000 campers in the Capitol rotunda, the legislature announced its adjournment. Inspired surely by the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people standing up for regime change in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and elsewhere, Wisconsinites had shut their government down.
America needs to remember who public sector workers are. Public sector workers are not on the dole: they are the worker bees of this Democracy, of the agencies which provide crucial services (roads, parks, schools, law enforcement, etc.). In 1935, during the Great Depression, when the U.S. Congress passed the Wagner Act (also known as the National Labor Relations Act), which guaranteed workers the right to unionize, three categories of workers were kept outside the law’s reach: farm workers, domestic workers, and public employees at all levels of government. While millions of private sector workers would organize for increased wages and benefits over the next two decades, positioning themselves to benefit from the economic growth of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, public sector employees fell behind.
Public employees realized the value of organization, and their membership in unions increased tenfold between 1955 and 1975. At key points in this period, public sector workers brought their lower-wage status to public attention, despite actually lacking the legal right to do so. In Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, municipal sanitation workers earning poverty wages struck. They provoked a civil rights upheaval which brought the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to Memphis — where he was assassinated!
In 1970, tens of thousands of postal workers, some living on food stamps, struck in New York State. Their actions inspired other postal workers to strike across the country, which forced the government to reorganize the U.S. Postal Service and increase wages, recognize postal workers’ unions, allow them to bargain contracts, and institute grievance procedures and seniority systems for promotions. Public sector workers’ pressure on big city and state governments for new labor laws, recognition, and collective bargaining rights was increasingly successful. Federal employees, the outer, less-mobilized tier of public sector workers, also gained new status and rights thanks to the activism of their state and municipal counterparts.
By the late 1970s, though, the “social contract” between employers, labor, and the government was breaking. “Stagflation,” fiscal crises, and deindustrialization undercut first the manufacturing workers who made up the base of the labor movement in the private sector, and then ate at the gains of public sector workers. When Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 federally-employed air traffic controllers in 1981 for striking without the right to do so, he sent a signal that times had changed for all workers. Soon, deregulation, privatization, globalization, and contracting-out threatened the economic security of workers in both the private and public sectors.
This new political economy, called “neo-liberalism” because of its credo of the supremacy of the market, replaced the demand-driven Keynesian approach which had been foundational to the political economic policies from the New Deal onward. Employers increasingly turned their focus to cutting costs (energy, materials, taxes and overhead, and, especially, labor), while government, the public sector itself, became the target of media punditry and right-wing political hostility. Private sector workers faced permanent replacement if they dared to strike; strike activity declined.
In reports on “large” (more than 1,000 participants) strikes, the U.S. Department of Labor noted a drop from 300-400 strikes per year in the early 1970s to 25-35 per year in the 1990s; the current figure is less than 10 per year. Private sector employers increasingly have blocked union organizing efforts. The percentage of the U.S. unionized workforce shrank from over 30% in the 1950s to about 10% today. The public employees and their supporters defying Governor Walker by sitting in the Capitol rotunda in Madison are crucial to our understanding of the stakes for workers in this moment and for the future. Public workers’ rate of unionization – 36% — is much higher than their private sector counterparts’ – about 7%. Public workers today make up more than half the ranks of organized labor.
Media and political advocates of neo-liberalism have encouraged more and more of the general public to think of ourselves as the “employers” of public employees rather than the recipients of the services they provide. Public workers’ compensation is derided as a drain on citizen’s taxes. Public employee unions’ bargaining strategies of deferring wages for improved benefits allows demagogues to paint these workers as the recipients of “Cadillac benefits.” As under- and unemployment grind so many in the general population down, with the attendant real fears of losing homes and dignity, the seemingly stable jobs in the public sector, with myths of inflated wages and benefits spun endlessly through the 24-hour news cycle, grate and gall.
Unions are “the anti-theft device for working people” as the saying goes – and bashing them has been central to the right-wing neo-liberal agenda in the U.S. since Reagan and PATCO. In Madison, the grassroots campaign to “Kill the Bill” is showing the world the ready alliance of all working people (95% of us) with unions, community-based organizations, faith groups and students. The Wisconsin conflict is being closely watched in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Indiana, where emboldened governors have introduced bills which would undercut public employees’ rights as well as their wages and benefits. Social networking sites reveal that people all over the world are watching Madison. One report on Monday, February 21, notes that supporters in 12 countries and 38 states have purchased more than 300 pizzas from Ian’s on State Street, to be delivered to Madison demonstrators.
Whether in Cairo Or Madison
The throngs in Tahrir Square stayed and swelled until Mubarak left the country and Suleiman stepped back from the podium. Egyptian people know they have just begun their pursuit of regime change and democratic process. In fact, it is the union movement in Egypt which now joins with the youth to propose the structure of long-term change. Yesterday, a Cairo demonstrator displayed his sign for all on Face Book and Twitter to see: “Cairo and Madison: One World. One Pain.” Through ingenuity and vision, the truth is coming out of Libya, despite a complete information blackout.
The right-wing spin on Madison as hippies trashing the Capitol is refuted hourly by images of the volunteer crews of teachers gathering recyclables and the widely-circulated Madison Police Department’s thank you to the citizens for decorum in pursuit of their right to protest. These new alliances made in the streets and rotundas are unions – spontaneous versions of the structured unions which gather workers’ concerns and advocate for them so workers can do their jobs safely and sustainably. From Madison to Cairo and beyond, as dis-organization organizes, working people are feeling their common cause and asserting their majority rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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Dr. Peter Rachleff
Professor of Labor History
McAlister College, St. Paul Minnesota
February 24, 2011