Stephen's blog

How I became homeless: an open letter from Elena Odnovarchenko to President Medvedev

2012-01-28T03:40:00.000-08:00

Note. This is an open letter addressed to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev by Elena Odnovarchenko, an artist and sculptor who became homeless as a result of the abuses of local government officials. -- Stephen

Dear Mr. President

Since my letter had no effect on you, I decided to appeal to the public. I’d like to remind you about my horrible story, which deserves your attention because it concerns the entire state system of which you are head.

At the beginning of 2011 I should have received an apartment of adequate quality under the federal program for resettlement from run-down accommodation. I remind you that the building containing my old apartment, where my family was living on the basis of a public rental contract, had been declared “unfit for habitation” as early as 2007.

I won’t describe again the awful conditions in the place where we lived. When we realized that we couldn’t stand such conditions any more, we took with us some necessary things and temporarily moved to another region.

In 2010 the local authorities at last started to build a new building in which we could have an apartment. That was a really happy time, which unfortunately didn’t last very long. While I was staying in another town, I kept in touch with the local authorities about the progress of construction. They had always told me that I would have to pay extra in order to get an apartment. I was warned that if I refused I would get a smaller apartment than I was supposed to or even no apartment at all. Anticipating events, I will say that the local authorities carried out their threats. They justified their actions by reference to certain regulations that say that a person must pay extra. But I wasn’t provided with the documents concerned. I had to consider the issue from a legal point of view for myself. And I found out that demands for any extra payment are illegal. That is why I refused to pay extra. In February 2011 I asked your help, hoping that you would sort out this creepy situation.

But what happened next?

The letter that I addressed to you was redirected to the local authorities. Instead of sorting out the "misunderstanding" and giving me an apartment, the local authorities literally started to go crazy. First, they responded by letter, accusing me of not being a good householder. For example, I "did not pay for public utilities” (even though I paid for them in full). In fact, the law allows a person not to pay rent for such a house if he or she is living somewhere else, so I was paying more than legally required. Especially shocking in its cynicism was the accusation that I had violated the rights of my neighbors by not heating the apartment (since I wasn’t living there). It was supposedly disrupting the thermal circuit and damaging the house -- which had been declared unfit for habitation! I was literally accused of not living in my apartment.

Is our country a maximum security prison where everyone must stay within a specified zone???

Then at the beginning of May 2011 I got another letter from local officials, informing me that the new building had not been commissioned. However, people had already been settled in apartments in the new building in April. There was even an official article in the newspaper about it. But I was not notified in any way. Was this letter an attempt to mislead me? It really looks like that because at the end of May, instead of a notification about resettlement, I received a judicial notification that the local authorities had evicted us to “nowhere” (making us homeless) on the basis of "resettlement to other accommodation"! The petition to evict us had already been filed in March and been considered by the court in my absence.

Mr. President, I wrote to you in February and told you that my family has no alternative accommodation. The local authorities received the same letter.

How should we describe the petition of the local authorities to evict us? Banal revenge, or what?

By the way, in Western countries criminal charges are usually brought against people who take others to court on fraudulent grounds. I don’t even mention moral satisfaction. The local authorities are dropping the case against me, three months after I hired a lawyer.

But the greatest shock came when my petition to provide us with the promised apartment was granted by the court. From the court ruling I learned that no apartment had been allocated to us in the new building. I also learned that the old building where I used to live had already been demolished together with my belongings!

Dear Mr. President, put yourself in my place. Can you imagine the shock I felt? All the belongings that we have acquired over the years are now destroyed!

For me as an artist and sculptor, it was a double tragedy. The whole of my life work was lost in a single moment! Even then we did not get an apartment, because there is none. The court even rejected my claim for financial compensation in lieu of an apartment.

Never before in present-day Russia, so far as I know, have the authorities destroyed buildings containing the private belongings of residents without notifying them in advance. It is a violation not only of the human right to sanctity of the home but also of property rights, subverting the constitutional foundations of the state.

I really have no confidence in the objectivity of the investigation being conducted by the local procuracy. They will just treat it as a case of ordinary theft and close their eyes to everything. What is there to talk about when they write as follows? “Allocation of the apartments in the new building was based on family composition and also on the opinions expressed by tenants at meetings and in direct conversation with each tenant.” Not a word about the law! So, it seems, they allocate apartments not in accordance with law but on the basis of "opinions." And this was in an official communication of the procuracy. Can we really expect an objective investigation by such people?

Dear Mr. President, I do not ask you for an apartment or for compensation. Not because I don’t need them, but because it would be too fantastic. As a voter and a citizen, I ask you to bring an action against the local officials concerned. I know that this will happen only if you take a personal interest in the matter. Take note that we have here a singular criminal offence!

Mr. President, I’m sure you realize that my story reveals the attitude of the local authorities not to me personally, but to the authority of the law and to you as the president. You cannot just do nothing!

I’ll be glad to get your response!

Elena Odnovarchenko

Thoughts on Pearl Harbor Day

2011-12-07T14:02:00.000-08:00

Today is the anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which brought the United States into the Second World War. By all means, let us remember the victims of the Japanese militarist regime and the bloody struggle that finally led to its defeat. But let us also place it in historical context and bear in mind not only the distinctive peculiarities of imperial Japan, but also everything that it had in common with the other great powers of modern times, including the United States.

In terms of the sheer scale of human suffering involved, Pearl Harbor was a minor episode by comparison with what happened to the peoples of Japanese-occupied Asia -- China, Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc. At the time of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese aggression against China had already been underway for a decade, while Japan's colonial occupation of Korea and Taiwan was already almost half a century old. The Western powers had few qualms concerning these earlier phases of Japanese imperialism. In fact, in the early part of the twentieth century British ruling class observers had expressed great admiration for Japan's colonial exploits (in tsarist Russia they shared a common enemy).

Observing the world around them in the mid-nineteenth century, Japan's rulers realized that they faced a simple choice -- to fall victim to the Western colonial powers, like their Chinese neighbors, or to exert the herculean effort needed to learn from them and become like them. Alone among the underdeveloped countries, Japan set its sights upon imitating the existing colonial powers and succeeded in becoming a colonial power itself. Despite a few exotic paraphernalia like emperor worship, imperial Japan modeled itself on its Western colonial precursors. Like them, it took pride in its technological modernity and boasted of its "civilizing mission" to the "backward" peoples of the world.

If Japan learned from its Western teachers, later the Western powers also learned from Japanese "achievements." Wartime Japan had an intensive biological warfare research program -- the infamous Unit 731, which conducted horrendous experiments on prisoners of war (Chinese, Russian, and several other nationalities). After the war, the US military authorities gave all those involved in Unit 731 immunity from prosecution in exchange for access to the results of their experiments -- information that the US used to develop its own biological warfare capability. During the Korean War the US, advised by former members of Unit 731, conducted bacteriological warfare against northeast China. At the time these charges were dismissed as communist propaganda, but the meticulous research of Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman has established beyond reasonable doubt that they were true (The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana UP, 1998).

Another massive atrocity of imperial Japan was the kidnapping and enslavement of Korean and other "comfort women" to serve as prostitutes to Japanese soldiers. See, for example, George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War (W.W. Norton, 1994). Here again we find a certain continuity between the Japanese militarists and their American victors and successors. In Chapter 6 of his book, entitled "The end of a nightmare, the beginning of another," Hicks recounts how the "comfort women" system continued under the US occupation of Japan. The victims now were Japanese women, enlisted from the lower classes by brothel keepers with help from the civil and military authorities to serve American soldiers, thereby "protecting" Japanese women of the upper class. True, in this case it was not necessary to kidnap women on a large scale, though there was some use of force: usually the threat of starvation was a sufficient goad.

Manufacturing the News

2011-11-21T15:20:00.000-08:00

Mark Fishman, associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, investigated routine news production by examining the work practices of reporters and other news workers. His research findings were published by the University of Texas Press in 1980 in a book entitled Manufacturing the News.

At the beginning of his book, Fishman touches on the practical mode of social reproduction by quoting from W. I. Thomas, The Child in America (1928): "Our picture of how the world works is integrally tied to how we work in the world. By acting in accordance with our conception of the way things are, we concertedly make them the way they are, whether we are treating pieces of paper as money, conducting a routine conversation, or electing a president" (p. 3).

The research setting

"At the time of the study (1973-74), the Purissima Record held a virtual monopoly over news consumption in both the city of Purissima (population 75,000) and its metropolitan environs (population 150,000). The paper's daily circulation of 45,000 approximated the number of households in the metropolitan area... Its news department consisted of 57 full-time reporters, editors, and photographers--at least four times the news gathering resources of any other media in the area... The Record, as well as the smaller news organizations, covered the community by following activities in city hall, county government, and the police department. Only the Record extended its coverage beyond these agencies into the court system, educational institutions, suburban governmental units, environmental protection agencies, and the financial, small business, and real estate communities" (pp. 18-19).

The beat

Fishman notes that there are many conceivable ways by which a group of individuals could be organized to report the news--the happenings of the world. But since the 1890s American newspapers have settled on one predominant mode of coverage, known as "the beat." The beat is a journalistic concept grounded in the actual working world of the reporter. The beat provides places to go and people to see (by making "rounds" of the beat) that will provide a stable supply of "news" on specific topics of public importance through written accounts and interviews. The beat is defined territorially as an entity with stable locations, stable actors, and stable actions.

Fishman's investigation into the news gathering practices of the Record revealed that 70% of the reporting staff were assigned to covering beats. The rest of the reporting staff worked on "general assignment" out of the newsroom, where assignments were given by editors, or to specific reporters at their specific request. From neighborhood associations all the way up to federal agencies, the beat reporter encountered an already formed and systematically organized structure of activities and information. "Without exception, only formally constituted organizations and groups were the routine subjects of information gathering on beats" (p. 49). "When it turns out that even rocks, trees, and squirrels are made available to the newspaper through official agencies such as the Forestry Service, it is no exaggeration to say that the world is bureaucratically organized for journalists" (italics in original, p. 51).

Fishman found several analytically separate stages in news production and listed the associated tasks sequentially as: detecting occurrences; interpreting them as meaningful events; and investigating their factual character. He goes on to explain that these tasks are in practice performed for the reporter with little input from him or her, because "the structure of the reporter's news gathering work (the round) is shaped by the bureaucratic organization of the activities within the beat territory. The substance of what reporters gather (bureaucratically packaged activities) is produced within the agencies they cover. Whatever the sphere of human activity or natural occurrences, as long as it is systematically covered through the beat, the news worker sees it from a round and knows it through officials and authorities, their files, and their meetings. Quite literally, the domain of coverage is produced for the news worker in formally organized settings by clerks, forest rangers, police officers, stockbrokers, councilmen, morticians, and judges--all certified status incumbents in structural positions of knowledge" (p. 52). "For reporters, the most creditable information or the hardest data are accounts that come from the most competent news sources, who are bureaucrats and officials recognized as having jurisdiction over the events in question" (p. 94).

Bureaucratic idealizations

So we see that the methods (work practices) by which journalists detect events and determine facts are integrally tied to bureaucratic idealizations of the world. Such practices lead reporters to present an ideological view of the existing social and political order, because news work is predicated on the assumption that bureaucracies function "properly" (for example, that officially declared goals, criteria, and guidelines are those actually followed).

Bureaucratic case histories (an accumulation of "accounts of the accounts which agents produce and through which they produce the meaning of the world"*), when treated by reporters as plain fact, help the bureaucratic agency make the reality it wants and needs to make in order to justify itself. Not only does routine news provide ideological accounts (constructs of constructs) of real people and real happenings; it ends up by legitimating institutions of social control by disseminating institutional rationales to the public as though they were facts.

It is not so much that the media persuade news consumers that all is well with the present social and political order. Rather, news consumers are led to see the world outside their first-hand experience through the eyes of the existing authority structure. Alternative ways of knowing the world are simply not made available. One result is a sharp disconnect in people's perception of social reality between the restricted sphere within which personal experience provides a counterweight or corrective to the official frame of vision and the wider sphere within which the absence of personal experience leaves the individual wholly dependent on official accounts. The disconnect is experienced most clearly on those rare occasions when official news reports deal with events in which we were personally involved, enabling us to compare official with personal accounts.

Ultimately, routine news places bounds on political consciousness. The public is led to assume that the world outside their direct purview is the proper sphere for official (bureaucratic) control, that everything falls within the jurisdiction of some official agency, that policy makers do indeed make the important decisions while administrators merely implement those decisions, and that with the exception of a few corrupt or incompetent officials governmental institutions function in accordance with rational legal standards.

"In the natural course of events"

Fishman's research suggests that reporters do not really do much "from scratch" when producing routine news stories. The detection, interpretation, investigation, and even much of the formulation of the written story have already been done for them by police officers, city clerks, insurance adjusters, morticians, etc. The work that remains to be done by the journalist amounts to little more than compilation.

Naturally, the work of these "outsiders" is on their agencies' dime. Imagine the labor costs that a news organization would have to bear if it did not have such bureaucracies to rely on for this essential work! In effect, an enormous network of governmental agencies, corporate bureaucracies, and community organizations underwrite the cost of news production. The modern news organization is utterly dependent on this invisible subsidy. Even if a news organization were able to afford the cost of a more independent investigation of events, it would be to a large extent hamstrung by institutional barriers erected to impede unofficial communication (the penalties that both governmental and private employers impose to deter potential whistle-blowers, the threat of libel suits, commercial secrecy, etc.).

Many media critiques, from Sinclair Lewis' The Brass Check (1919) to Robert W. McChesney's Political Economy of Media (2008), have focused on the distortion of news, especially in selection and emphasis, exerted by advertisers. Fishman shows that even with no direct interference from private enterprise the news production process shapes the news in support of the status quo "in the natural course of events." Conspiracy in the narrow sense may not play a significant role, but the broader structures of domination are at least as effective in producing the same outcome. To paraphrase a REM song:

You've got your feet on the ground,
But it's your head that leads you around.

Essay written mainly by Joe R. Hopkins, edited with additional observations by Stephen D. Shenfield

* H. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967).

Arguing about sexual insults

2011-10-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

Recently I had two separate but quite similar e-mail exchanges with male fellow socialists about the use of sexual insults. It is not my intention to point my finger at the individuals concerned, so I won't use real names or give other information that might help identify them.

First case. Looking through the minutes of a meeting, I read Tom complaining that Jim had been insulting him. Specifically, Jim had been calling Tom a cunt. Jim responded to Tom's complaint as follows: "You are a cunt!"

As I pointed out to Jim, those who study these arcane matters agree that calling a man a cunt is much more insulting than calling him a prick. The insult therefore expresses not just a general contempt for the genitals of both sexes, but an especially intense contempt for female genitals and by implication for women as such.

Jim replied that his insult was not sexist as it had been aimed at a man not a woman. (There were women present, however.) He agreed that it would be wrong to call a woman a cunt. Besides, he and Tom were now friends again. He also observed that this bit should not have been included in the minutes.

Second case. X, a male participant in an e-mail discussion group, circulated a long diatribe against a former comrade, Y, also male, in the course of which he called Y a slut. I objected to this use of "slut" as an insult, because the word in its original meaning expresses contempt for a woman who has sexual relations with multiple partners. Such contempt is again reserved for women, as shown by the fact that there is no equivalent insult for a man who behaves similarly.

X replied that the sense in which he had used the word "slut" bore no relation to the meaning I attributed to the word.

For the sake of fairness, I note that in both cases the response to my criticism was polite. Neither Jim nor X disputed that sexism was something to avoid. However, I saw no sign that either of them had grasped the point I was trying to make. As that point is surely not so very difficult to grasp, I suspect that they were trying NOT to understand. Or is that paranoid?

Blowing leaves

2011-10-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

At this season of the year, when the leaves fall from the trees, it is possible to observe in leafy suburban areas one of the more curious customs of this society -- leaf blowing.

In ones or small groups, men wander the streets with specially manufactured leaf-blowing machines strapped to their backs. (There seems to be some taboo against women engaging in this custom.) When switched on, these machines blow gusts of air through an attached tube. The operator guides the tube to blow leaves, as well as dust and other debris, off the ground in certain areas (the so-called "clear areas") until they settle in certain other areas (the "target areas").

People who are unfamiliar with the leaf-blowing custom often wonder how the location and boundaries of these clear and target areas are determined. My investigation has revealed that "clear areas" consist of yards, drives, and stretches of sidewalk adjacent to buildings whose owners, residents or users have agreed to pay the leaf blowers or their employers to clear away leaves. Conversely, "target areas" are adjacent to buildings whose owners, residents or users have refused to pay for said service, despite repeated opportunities to do so.

Why, however, is leaf clearing regarded as a valuable service? Why is reluctance to clear leaves regarded as a sin to be punished? After all, leaves are often beautiful. Dry they make a pleasant crunchy sound when trodden underfoot. They protect and enrich the soil as compost. One might therefore have expected people to pay to have leaves moved onto rather than away from their property. So far I have failed to clarify this mystery.

Leaf moving has very unpleasant effects for the passerby. The dust blown into the air gets in your face and makes you cough and sputter, while the mechanical noise intrudes for a considerable distance, drowning out birdsong and other more pleasurable sounds. It must be incomparably worse for the leaf blowers themselves, whose exposure to the dust and noise is almost continuous and who wear no protective devices. The total waste of labor and energy in this flagrantly irrational activity must be quite significant.

So why do they do it? However harmful and irrational it may be in terms of the social interest, it is a way of making some money for men who would otherwise be unemployed and without means of livelihood. This makes it a rational activity in their eyes. If they can get someone to pay them for doing it, that is sufficient justification and they do not feel the need to inquire further. On the contrary, when I tried to explain to a leaf blower the harm that he was doing, he made motions with his finger that I interpreted as meaning that I was insane.

The plight of public schools in Florida (from Joe Hopkins)

2011-09-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

Joe Hopkins, a correspondent from Florida, has provided the following update on the plight of public schools in that state. SDS

The clock is ticking for Florida public schools

The clock is ticking down on Florida's Liberty County School District. Liberty School District has had their $9 million budget chopped by more than $3 million since the 2007-2008 school year.

The 1300 student liberty district has been labelled "failing" under George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB is the law that requires students to study for standardized tests in Math & Reading which reduces "learning activity" to institutionalized "operational activity"; programmed teaching - the result is that student creativity (real learning activity) is banished to the dustbin. "When learning is carried out at the level of operations, the child follows in the teacher's footsteps, very much like a puppet." [1]

Jack Jennings, former General Counsel for the House Education Committee said this is the worst environment for education funding since Ronald Reagan proposed abolishing the U.S. Department of Education in the 1980s.

Even Arne Duncan, current Education Secretary, says NCLB, which requires all students to pass standardized tests in Reading & Math encourages schools to dumb down their curriculum because it judges them on a rigid pass-fail system.

"Duncan estimates that about 80 per cent of schools - including those that are generally high-performing - are in danger of being labelled failing because of the system's rigidity." [2] Liberty School District is considered a high-quality district of Florida but NCLB seems designed to fail most public schools in the country to open up Public Education to market forces through management or ownership of schools by private, for-profit corporations. In the market, cost of production must be reduced in the extreme to be competitive (A profit must be made to stay in business.) - This leads to a good looking balance sheet . . . . and stupid kids. Pupils and students are transformed into market commodities that perform low-paying low-level chores in the workplace.

The dominant and monied class, with their long established business and political connexions, send their children off to elementary and secondary schools that have a student teacher ratio of 5:1 in their effort to reproduce themselves and maintain the conditions of the status quo.

There is, and has been, a class war going on in the United States since the U.S. Constitution was drafted. It was transported here from England. It's been going on for so long the class war has become concealed behind the veil of normalcy - it's hidden in plain sight. It's just the way things are to the dominated class of workers.

What Is To Be Done?

The corporate class has commandeered the Charter School Project to their advantage. The good idea behind Charter Schools at its inception was to allow concerned groups - teachers, communities, social organizations - to start their own schools with the boost of public funding. This aspect of Charter Schools has for the most part (to the general population) fallen from view and died out because of lack of attention and knowledge.

When groups of interested and dedicated people know something positive is possible that particular "something" becomes site and stake in the struggle. All world history is a chain of social struggles and it behooves us not to allow history to die from lack of participation.

Talk to each other about Charter Schools being in the hands of community organizers, in the hands of teachers themselves - with the added input and participation of the students themselves. Talk about organizing with an emphasis on the struggle against the Goliath and then organize.

Incite insight. It must be done. If we don't do it - who will? Organize - Organize - Organize!

[1] V.V. Repkin, Learning Activity, Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, (M.E. Sharpe, 2003), 18 (V.V. Repkin is Vice President of the International Association for Developmental Teaching).

[2] Bloomberg Businessweek, (July 11-July 17, 2011), 29.

Reflections on the firing of a CEO

2011-09-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

The press has given extensive coverage to the recent firing of Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo. To be precise, not to the firing as such -- a common enough event even for CEOs -- but to Ms. Bartz' open admission, in an e-mail to all Yahoo employees, that "I've just been fired over the phone by Yahoo's chairman of the board." This breach of etiquette earned her a rebuke from Jennifer Chatman, professor of corporate management at the University of California, Berkeley.

Another commentator, Alexander Chancellor (Guardian Weekly, 9.16.11), is more sympathetic. His protest too is not aimed at the firing itself, which for him is clearly no big deal ("I've been fired lots of times"), but at the "insult" of its delivery by phone rather than face to face.

Whether CEOs should be considered members of the working class is a moot point for socialists. Although they are employees and as such can be fired by their employers like any other employees, their high earnings (including business expenses, bonuses and stock options) enable them to accumulate enough wealth to climb out of the working class by reaching the point where they no longer NEED to find employment in order to satisfy their needs. Unless, I suppose, the extravagance of their lifestyle matches their earnings.

I suspect that the emphasis on HOW one is fired is a way of avoiding the main issue. Being fired is bound to feel humiliating, however politely it may be done. Especially for a high-level manager who identifies with the company and is used to being treated as a colleague in an enterprise of which he or she is part. Even if a CEO has saved enough not to have to worry about making ends meet for the rest of his or her life, the experience of being fired is a shock that dispels long-cultivated illusions and suddenly reveals the stark reality of the underlying power relationship. Like all the lesser employees that YOU have fired (on behalf of the boss), you too are no more than a dispensable tool in someone else's hand.

Surely at some level the CEO must have been fully aware all along that this is so. But it is not legitimate to object to being fired as such, as that would be tantamount to objecting to the employment relationship itself -- that is, to capitalism. It is an essential prerogative of the employer to hire and fire. So anger at the humiliation of being fired is diverted to side issues.

Socialists are opposed on principle to employment ("jobs") as an inherently oppressive and humiliating institution. We do not demand that the government create new jobs, nor do we proclaim that having a job is a right. We demand the right to a livelihood and the opportunity to do useful work for society without having to get a job. That is, without having to put ourselves in a situation that exposes us to the risk of some employer subjecting us to the humiliation of being fired.

Здравствуйте, друзья!

2011-03-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

Я хочу поверить, можно ли писать блог по русски?

Record temperatures and global heating

2010-08-01T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've been looking at media reports of record summer temperatures in various parts of the world. For example, this July has been the warmest in Moscow since records began to be kept 130 years ago, with the thermometer reaching 100 degrees F. for the first time in that city. People in northern India has been suffering badly, especially from the accompanying water shortage.

But much more frightening than what these reports say is what they are careful NOT to say -- about the connection between these record temperatures and the planetary process that they reflect, that is, global heating (a more expressive term than the gentler "global warming"). Reports either fail to mention the broader planetary situation at all, or else they quote some scientist remarking that temperatures in any particular year are not direct evidence of global warming. Quite likely, the scientist goes on to say something more definite about the trend over a run of years, but that part is omitted. So it is still the policy of the media owners to conceal the planetary situation from their audiences, despite the assurances from some of them that their policy has changed.

Eventually more and more people will manage to work out what is happening. Then complacency will give way to hysteria. Quite unwarranted hysteria, of course. Our marvelous civilization will surely survive for a few more years in the Arctic region, where the plutocrats can continue extracting their favorite beverage, OIL, until the temporary survivors, including the plutocrats themselves, finally croak in the methane-saturated atmosphere.

Request for clarification

2010-07-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

From: Planetary Residents Liaison Department, Galactic Central

To: Resident on Planet Sol 849615-3

We are somewhat perturbed by the emotional tenor of your latest communication and concerned for your mental stability. If you feel the need to return temporarily or permanently to your home world, this can be arranged at short notice. A competent successor for your position is available.

We do not question your assessment of the ironically self-styled simian species Homo sapiens as a potential threat to galactic security in view of its rapidly expanding technological capacity in conjunction with chronic social atavism. However, as you know, a quarantine is already in place and we remain unconvinced that further action is required at this time.

The type of "messianic" intervention that you urge is extremely difficult under the planetary conditions that you describe so forcefully. It is also quite demanding in terms of scarce specialized resources. And, of course, success is by no means assured, as earlier attempts demonstrate all too clearly. You are welcome to submit a more specific and thoroughly substantiated proposal.

Under the circumstances, a sanitary operation would seem more expedient and cost-effective. A proposal along these lines will certainly receive favorable consideration.

Reflections on giving blood

2010-07-20T06:08:00.000-07:00

The gift of blood

I lived the early part of my life in Britain, emigrating to the U.S. when I was about 40. While in Britain I regularly donated blood. When I came to the U.S. I continued giving blood, but after two or three donations decided to stop. The experience was no longer a source of satisfaction to me. I’d like to explain why.

In The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy (1970, reissued 1997), Richard Titmuss described the voluntary donation of blood as “institutionalized altruism”: “[It] represents the relationship of giving between human beings in its purest form, because people give without the expectation that they will necessarily be given to in return.”

However, the concept of “altruism” does not quite capture the appeal of giving blood – at least, not for me. The altruist, unlike the egoist, gains satisfaction from giving to others. But the altruist still perceives those “others” as separate from his or her self, and consequently experiences giving as a loss. In these respects, the altruist and the egoist are alike. The only difference between them is that the altruist gains sufficient moral satisfaction from the giving to outweigh the loss, so that on balance the experience is a rewarding one.

For me, the essence of giving blood in the context of the British National Health Service was not altruism but the sense of participating in a community. Members of a community give not to “others” -- perceived as separate from the self – but to the community, perceived as an overarching entity that encompasses both self and others. In that sense, they give to another, broader aspect of the self, and do not experience the giving as a loss. Nor, for that matter, do they experience it as a gain, but rather as a transfer from one aspect of the self to another. Giving to the community is experienced more as egoism (of a special kind) than as altruism.

Whenever I gave blood in Britain, I was brought to sit and rest afterward with other donors in a special area where nurses gave us all biscuits and tea, to replace the lost fluid, and made sure that each of us felt well before leaving. When I gave blood in the U.S. there was none of this. True, we were free to continue lying down for a while after the blood was extracted, but no one asked how we felt or offered us anything to eat and drink. And this was why I stopped giving blood.

Of course, I could easily have solved the practical problem by taking a beverage with me and finding a spot nearby to drink it. However, it was not the practical problem that prompted my decision. Rather, the indifference shown to our welfare as donors brought home to me the fact that here in the U.S., where there is no health service for everyone, I was no longer participating in a community by giving blood. In Britain, I had given my blood without payment in the knowledge that a patient who needed it would likewise receive it without payment. Here, although I was giving my blood for free, the patient would still have to pay for it. That made of me a sucker, seduced into contributing to the profits of some medical business.

From a very informative article by Joel Schwartz [see reference], I learn that it is in fact common practice in the U.S. to offer blood donors fruit juice and cookies. I suppose I was just unlucky in that respect. The author also suggests that the fruit juice and cookies might be regarded as a sort of “payment” given in exchange for the blood.

For blood given in the context of a community, this is an absurd interpretation. Giving blood to the community weakens you, so you then receive sustenance from the community until your strength is restored. In the first instance you give, in the second you receive, but there is no exchange involved whatsoever. You are helping to look after others, but at the same time you are being looked after – as a matter of course, because you are part of the community. After all, if you need sustenance for a reason that has nothing to do with an act of giving on your part, you will still receive it. Giving and receiving arise not in response to one another, but out of participation in the community.

Reference. “Blood and altruism – Richard M. Titmuss’ criticism on the commercialization of blood,” Public Interest, Summer 1999

(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_136/ai_55174702).

In defense of assimilation

2010-07-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

Assimilation has a bad press. Those who worship at the shrine of ethnic "identity" insult the honor of assimilators, calling them Mankurts, self-haters, rootless individuals, etc. -- and no one rises in their defense. And yet millions of people are always in process of assimilating. But they just get on with it, they rarely philosophize about it, at least in public.

The ethnicists claim that they are authentic, their "real selves" while assimilators lie to themselves and others and deny who they "really" are. But why give such great weight to descent in determining identity? And how authentic is it to dig into and try to reanimate a long-buried past? The objective circumstances of our world make us all complex and contradictory; authenticity requires recognition of that complexity, not an exclusive focus on one factor to the neglect of all others.

Akiva Orr (see akiorrbooks.com) argues that religion is the essential core of Jewish identity. If a person of Jewish background has lost faith in God and Torah, he or she will never succeed in reconstructing a coherent "Jewish" identity on a purely secular "ethnic" basis. Such efforts have led to endless confusion and hypocrisy, to the ongoing tragedy of Zionism. Better by far to accept that "the sacred hoop is broken" and take the path of assimilation.

I don't think this applies only to the Jews. For many centuries religion (a slightly different one, to be sure) was the essential core of Russian identity. Now Russians attempt to return to Orthodox Christianity, but not in most cases out of sincere faith in God and Christ, rather as a self-conscious search for ethnic identity. Or they speculate fruitlessly about some "Russian idea" that turns out to be something universal or panhuman, not specifically Russian at all.

The idea of assimilation raises a crucial question that is rarely recognized. Assimilation into what? In the past, the obvious answer was: into the dominant nation of the country where you live. Of course, if they were willing to receive you -- often they were not. To the extent that the dominant nation defined itself by descent, assimilation into it was very difficult and did inevitably entail an element of inauthenticity, because the assimilator was after all of a different descent.

Nowadays there is a better alternative -- assimilation into mankind. Members not only of ethnic minorities but also of ethnic majorities whose traditional identities have been lost, like the Russians, can aspire to such assimilation. It is, of course, assimilation into something that is still in the process of becoming, not something that is already firmly established. As such, the assimilator need not completely renounce his or her former identity but can fuse it into the wider synthesis of the species. That is more authentic as well as more dignified and can be experienced as a gain rather than a loss. (Gershenzon wrote about this.)

Assimilation into mankind, unlike assimilation into a dominant nation, need not rule out taking a special interest in the culture and history of the group from which you are descended. They are also part of mankind, after all. A special interest, not a total mental and emotional immersion that defines our identity. Our identity must center not on being a Jew or Circassian, Russian or Turk or Korean, but on our common human species being. The Mother-Planet, threatened by ecological apocalypse, demands it!

I was asked by someone to write about Circassians in this blog. Now I have done so!

Why doesn't big business support a national health service?

2010-02-26T16:16:00.000-08:00

It is often argued that a "single payer" health insurance system run by the federal government or a national health service would be in the interests of American big business apart from the health insurance companies. The growing burden of healthcare costs on the economy would be brought under control, and companies would no longer have to pay insurance premiums for their employees. Companies in Britain and Canada are quite happy with the national health service in those countries.

So why does big business not promote a real healthcare reform? This is the question asked by Doug Henwood is Issue 120 of his Left Business Observer (a publication that I highly recommend for its astute analysis of American economic and political developments; see http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com).

Apparently some people offer a "web of influence" explanation that focuses on interlocks (overlapping membership) between insurance companies and other companies and on the role of insurance companies as a source of finance for other companies. Henwood presents detailed evidence to show that these are not very significant phenomena.

Basing himself on testimony from researchers who have interviewed top executives on the issue, Henwood states that some (perhaps even many) executives support "single payer" in private but are reluctant to make their views public for two reasons.

First, they worry about the possible reaction of other firms with which they do business. Small companies especially are considered hostile to "single payer." They do not stand to gain in terms of costs because they do not provide health insurance to their employees, while they would have to bear part of the additional tax burden. So they would see such a reform as an attempt to shift costs from big business to small business.

Second, they are afraid of "encouraging would-be expropriators." One informant formulates this fear as follows: "If you can take away someone else's business -- the insurance companies' business -- then you can take away mine." In other words, the politics of capitalist class solidarity trumps the economics of cost reduction.

Henwood adds another consideration: "Employers like workers to feel insecure. Fear of losing health coverage makes workers less willing to strike or resist pay cuts or speedups."

At least in this case, it is misleading to view reform politics solely as an arena of conflict among diverse business interests. It is also an arena of class struggle.

Memory Lane: I discover white racism

2010-02-25T17:51:00.000-08:00

Some time in my early twenties, while I was working in the (British) Government Statistical Service, I went on a bus tour of Italy. At our first meal I happened to sit with a young couple who had immigrated to England from Trinidad. The man's name was Louis; the name of his wife I no longer recall. They were the only nonwhites in the tour group.

At the second meal I happened to sit with some of the other tourists. When I next ran into Louis and his wife, I saw that they were quite upset. "Stephen, why did you abandon us?" they asked. It became clear that they wanted me to stay with them all the time. At first I thought it was ridiculous. Then I realized that if I did not keep them company no one else would and they would feel miserable right through the tour. What sort of a vacation would it be for them? So I did as they asked.

Reflecting on the situation, I concluded that when black people say that the great majority of white people are racist they are not exaggerating. Of course, the really virulent racists may now be in the minority, but I had gained an inkling of the amount of suffering caused even by the passive racism of those who do no more than ignore and keep their distance from black people.

Later, when Louis and I were walking down a lane in Florence, I was astonished to see Mr. X approach us, a beautiful young woman by his side. Mr. X had been a colleague of mine in the statistical service. He was originally from Martinique. I did not know him well; we had met two or perhaps three times. I recall another (white) colleague remarking that he "had a chip on his shoulder," meaning that he had the irritating habit of complaining about racial discrimination -- which as we all know does not exist, or if it does exist is insignificant, or if it is significant is fast declining. Anyway, Mr. X recognized me too and the four of us stopped to talk.

I introduced Louis. "This is my friend Louis," I told them. Mr. X looked surprised. "This is your friend?!" he asked, as though he couldn't believe that he had heard correctly. Louis and I nodded. Then it was as though a wave of joy suddenly swept over Mr. X. He invited us to a nearby cafe. As we sat there I noticed that he kept gazing at Louis and myself, like a man in the desert who finally reaches an oasis and drinks and drinks and drinks to quench an enormous thirst. And I thought: what a world that such an ordinary thing (or something that SHOULD be a very ordinary thing) should evoke such a disproportionate reaction.

While we were still in Florence, Louis and I went at my suggestion to visit the synagogue there. I showed him round and explained what things were. He had never been in a synagogue before; it was a wondrous experience for him. Then later, when Louis and his wife and I were sitting together as usual at the hotel, his wife started to say something bad about "the Jews." Louis sprung to his feet in agitation and began yelling at her, over and over: "You stupid woman! You stupid woman!" She did not respond but just sat there frozen. After a bit things calmed down (I can't remember exactly how) and we were dancing and joking.

Memory Lane: How I got to kick the ball

2010-02-25T08:51:00.000-08:00

This will be the first in a series of posts in which I recall experiences that helped to shape my outlook.

I think it was at the age of 12 that I developed a hostility to the principle of competition. The context was not economics or politics but sport -- to be precise, football (as I grew up in England, this means soccer). I very much wanted to play football -- or rather, not so much to play football as simply to run around after the ball with the other boys and kick it now and then. Unfortunately I couldn't run fast -- I had a tendency to asthma -- so I hardly ever got the chance to kick the ball, and I felt it was very unfair of the faster boys not to give me more of a chance to kick it.

In the formal games, we all lined up and the team leaders picked those they wanted. I was always one of the last to be selected. True, I wasn't the only one in this position. There were a number of others who were not wanted, but unlike me these others did not seem to mind not being wanted. They didn't even try to run after the ball, but chatted among themselves by the side of the field. They put on superior airs and regarded (or pretended to regard) football as a stupid waste of time.

There were also informal football games during break (recess), but the players did not allow me to take part. One day I defied their prohibition, ran after the ball, and managed to kick it two or three times. This annoyed them, especially as I did not attach myself to either team but just kicked the ball in any direction. Their patience quickly ran out and I was forcibly pushed out of the game. In the course of the struggle my glasses fell off and got broken. I started to cry.

The teacher on duty noticed me crying and came over. He was a decent sort and seemed very concerned. He did not quite understand what had happened and asked me to explain. Instead, I tried to explain, quite truthfully, that there was no need for him to be so concerned. The fact that I was crying did not mean that I was as upset as all that; sometimes you can be much more upset when you are not crying. I was a bit disoriented, but mainly I felt happy that I had kicked the ball.

Movements for democracy and the movement for socialism

2010-02-25T06:24:00.000-08:00

Ideally there should be no conflict between movements to establish, defend and strengthen democratic rights and the movement for socialism. Socialism, understood as common ownership and democratic control of the means of production in the interests of the community, is a natural extension of democracy from the narrow sphere of politics to the whole of social life (and in particular, of course, to the economy). That is why an alternative term for "socialism" is (or used to be) "social democracy." Political democracy is also a prerequisite for the effective spread of socialist ideas and for a peaceful transition to socialism.

In practice, movements for democratic rights often get mixed up with causes that are antithetical not only to socialism but also to democracy itself. This happens in two different ways, depending on the type of regime that is suppressing democracy in a given country.

In countries where the anti-democratic forces rely on the backing of the US and other Western powers -- above all, in Latin America, e.g. Honduras -- the democratic movement is prone to fall hostage to the "struggle against US imperialism" waged by other dictatorial regimes that are at loggerheads with the US and its allies. Hence the warm relations between Chavez' government in Venezuela, which is still basically democratic, and the anti-democratic regimes in Cuba and Iran. Conversely, democratic dissidents under anti-Western regimes (Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, China, etc.) are easily fooled by the hypocritical Western propaganda in favor of democracy and human rights. Thereby people struggling for the same ideals in different places are set against one another and manipulated as pawns in the power game of world politics.

Democratic movements have weak defenses against such manipulation for two reasons. First, people suffering under intense repression understandably feel vulnerable or even helpless and look for help wherever they can find it. They may not be sufficiently suspicious of the motives of those who are so generous -- and selective -- in offering their "support" to struggling democrats. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? And second, they may be poorly equipped intellectually to analyze the motives of foreign "benefactors." The same people who understand the politics of their own country very well and exhibit a healthy cynicism in the domestic context may be terribly naive when it comes to the politics of a foreign country with a system rather different from that with which they are familiar. Or they may simply not care: all they care about is the situation at home and they view the rest of the world solely from that angle.

As a result, even if -- with assistance from foreign anti-democratic forces -- democratic activists succeed in overthrowing one form of oppression, all they will end up with is oppression in a slightly different form. The only way out of the trap is for them to broaden their horizons beyond national and bloc confines and reach out to those "on the other side" who work in a different context and use a different political language but nonetheless share their deepest aspirations.

Haiti "aid": follow-up

2010-02-24T04:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I remarked that I didn't know what the effect of the current food aid to Haiti might be. I am now slightly better informed as a result of watching the Al Jazeera Fault Lines documentary "Haiti: The Politics of Rebuilding" on The Real News network at http://therealnews.com/t2 (a source that I highly recommend).

First, it appears that food is being distributed not only in Port-au-Prince but also in other towns that were NOT affected by the earthquake, and as in the past this must be harming local farmers and therefore increasing malnutrition.

Second, many of the people who earlier left the countryside to swell the shanty towns of the capital (now destroyed) have returned to their home villages. The big question is whether reconstruction efforts will be directed at agriculture so they can stay there or whether they will be forced to return to work in rebuilt factories in Port-au-Prince and once again make apparel and other trash for the US market. The popular organizations are pressing for the first option, while the official reconstruction plan backed by the US, World Bank etc. is geared to the second option, with the number employed in offshore industry envisioned to rise from 25,000 to 150,000.

We also learn that many workers were crushed to death in the earthquake because they were locked inside factories and unable to escape.

An expose of "aid" to Haiti

2010-02-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

I don't know what effect foreign "aid" has had in Haiti in the wake of the recent earthquake, but we are entitled to be highly skeptical in light of the revelations contained in a book that appeared not long before the disaster (on January 22, 2010 to be precise) -- Timothy T. Schwartz, Travesty in Haiti. The subtitle reads: "A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking." And on the back cover we find this summary description: "An anthropologist's personal story of working with foreign aid agencies and discovering that fraud, greed, corruption, apathy, and political agendas permeate the industry." The book is published by the author: no publishing house would touch it.

Timothy Schwartz went to live in a poor fishing hamlet in Haiti to gather material for his Ph.D. thesis, which he hoped would land him a good job with an aid agency. He was also hired to conduct a survey for CARE International. But when he applied for a position with this agency he just couldn't keep his mouth shut about the unwelcome realities he had discovered (though he had resolved to do so). He didn't get the job. Apparently he now works in tourism.

The most important single fact that the author proves beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt is that increases in the flow of food aid have led to INCREASES in malnutrition. This is because most of the food is stolen and enters the market, thereby depressing prices and ruining local farmers. Moreover, the aid agencies know very well that this is the result of their "humanitarian" efforts. Their real function is to dump American and EU food surpluses and expand export markets for American and EU agriculture.

Another striking revelation is an "orphanage" for children who are not only not orphans but whose parents are quite capable of providing for them -- basically an elite boarding school masquerading as an institution for poor orphans in order to defraud naive American donors who are actually poorer than these children's parents!

By turns horrifying and entertaining, this book is a very good read and will even teach you something about Haiti.

The novels of Duong Thu Huong

2010-02-23T13:10:00.000-08:00

I am currently immersed in the novels of the Vietnamese writer Duong Thu Huong that have appeared in English (Beyond Illusions, Memories of a Pure Spring, Paradise of the Blind, Novel Without a Name). Born in 1947, she was one of three survivors of a group of forty Communist Youth League volunteers who sang and danced for the troops at the front in the American war. She was published and honored in Vietnam during the period of liberalization in the late 1980s, but then she was suddenly banned, expelled from the party in 1990, and imprisoned without charge for seven months in 1991.

In 1997 she was interviewed (through a translator) by the writer Robert Stone at the PEN Center in New York. You can find videos of the interview on YouTube. She confirms that she cast the deciding vote for her own expulsion at the meeting of her party organization. She also says that her neighbors are propagandized to regard her as an enemy of the state. Nevertheless, she is left at liberty and has evidently been allowed to make at least one trip abroad -- an ambiguous position that suggests she has protectors as well as opponents in high places.

In her novels as well as in the interview, Duong Thu Huong promotes an ethic of uncompromising integrity that seems inhumanly fanatical as well as unrealistic. Linh, the heroine of Beyond Illusions, recoils in disgust from her devoted journalist husband who has abandoned the revolutionary ideals they once shared in order to gain promotion at work and provide well for her and their child, so that she should eat well during pregnancy, so that the little girl should not "long in vain for a pair of new shoes." Any "normal" person who has made such "compromises" -- no less "necessary" in the West than in the East -- will sympathize with the husband and with the child devastated by her parents' divorce. That at least was my initial reaction. Then I thought: what kind of world would we be living in now if everyone for the last hundred years or so had indulged in such ruthless integrity? We would surely have achieved genuine worldwide democracy and communism long ago and our species would not be facing self-induced extinction. So much for our love for our children! New shoes, yes, but a horrifying future.

Duong Thu Huong is sincere and courageous, but like most dissidents in the "communist" countries she seems naive about the West -- although this is a natural reaction to the simplistic propaganda she has been force-fed throughout her life. She recounts how after "liberation" she went to Saigon and found cafes, bookstores, laughing people. Why did they need "liberating" at such a horrendous price? True, the price paid was excessive, especially considering what they were "liberated" into, but there was plenty of misery under the glittering surface, in the villages and sweatshops. Otherwise why did so many people join the Vietcong?

Apart from their value as literature (no doubt partly lost in translation), Duong Thu Huong's books are a mine of insights into Vietnamese "communist" society, which has never received the academic attention devoted to its Soviet, East European, and Chinese counterparts. To some extent her work compensates for the apparent absence of serious middle-level books on the society and economy. At least I have not yet located such books, but only superficial journalistic accounts and highly specialized (and extremely expensive) studies.