TBF
TBF's JournalLeft Forum Registration (NYC - May 29)
PRE-CONFERENCE REGISTRATION CLOSES ON THE 27th of MAY, 2015
A unique phenomenon in the U.S. and the world, Left Forum convenes the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current predicaments, and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world. The conference is held each year in New York City.
More here: http://www.leftforum.org/
Bernie & Guns ~
It's very interesting to me that Bernie is not big on gun control, and likely reflects living in a rural state where hunting is a popular past time. I would like to see a little more control (perhaps stronger background checks in order to identify the types of people who might attack a school for example), but this is not a deal-breaker issue for me. And it quite possibly gives Bernie some room with moderates who may initially scare at the word "socialism" but then look deeper and realize he just wants to repair the very broken safety net in this country.
What do you all think regarding this issue?
Happy Birthday to a fellow Prussian ~
Synopsis
Born in Prussia on May 5, 1818, Karl Marx began exploring sociopolitical theories at university among the Young Hegelians. He became a journalist, and his socialist writings would get him expelled from Germany and France. In 1848, he published The Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels and was exiled to London, where he wrote the first volume of Das Kapital and lived the remainder of his life ...
More here - http://www.biography.com/people/karl-marx-9401219
:large
So grateful for this group -
between here, Socialist Progressives, and Sports I don't even have time to look at much of GD anymore. This is a good day.
American Dream? Or Mirage?
American Dream? Or Mirage?
The New York Times Sunday Review
May 1, 2015
ECONOMIC inequality in the United States is at its highest level since the 1930s, yet most Americans remain relatively unconcerned with the issue. Why?
One theory is that Americans accept such inequality because they overestimate the reality of the “American dream” — the idea that any American, with enough resolve and determination, can climb the economic ladder, regardless of where he starts in life. The American dream implies that the greatest economic rewards rightly go to society’s most hard-working and deserving members.
Recently, studies by two independent research teams (each led by an author of this article) found that Americans across the economic spectrum did indeed severely misjudge the amount of upward mobility in society. The data also confirmed the psychological utility of this mistake: Overestimating upward mobility was self-serving for rich and poor people alike. For those who saw themselves as rich and successful, it helped justify their wealth. For the poor, it provided hope for a brighter economic future.
In studies by one author of this article, Shai Davidai, and the Cornell psychologist Thomas Gilovich, published earlier this year in Perspectives on Psychological Science, more than 3,000 respondents viewed a graph of the five income quintiles in American society and were asked to estimate the likelihood that a randomly selected person born to the bottom quintile would move to each of the other income quintiles in his lifetime. These estimates were compared with actual mobility trends documented by the Pew Research Center. Participants in the survey overshot the likelihood of rising from the poorest quintile to one of the three top quintiles by nearly 15 percentage points ...
More here ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/opinion/sunday/american-dream-or-mirage.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region
The Baltimore Rebellion
The Baltimore RebellionApril 29, 2015
IT TURNED out to be Baltimore.
Ever since the African American residents of Ferguson, Missouri, took to the streets for weeks and months of defiance, the question hasn't been whether their resistance would spread, but when it would, and where it would appear.
Ferguson cast a spotlight on the epidemic of racist police violence, committed with impunity, that plagues communities across the country. But the response from government officials in charge of keeping people safe--particularly from the women and men who are supposed to "serve and protect"--has been, at best, all talk and no action.
At worst, the response from the political and media elite has been scapegoating and demonization of the very people suffering the brunt of the abuse and violence ...
Much more here: http://socialistworker.org/2015/04/29/the-baltimore-rebellion
MAY 1st - Shut it Down for Freddie Grey!
Just received via email from IAC Solidarity Center:
To: TBF
From: Baltimore People's Power Assembly <actioncenter@solid...
Subject: Natl Day of Action: SHUT IT DOWN FOR FREDDIE GREY ON MAY DAY - FRI, MAY 1!
Date: Apr 29, 2015 4:57 PM
AN URGENT CALL FROM BALTIMORE
Issued by the BALTIMORE PEOPLES POWER ASSEMBLY
National call to mobilize in cities across the U.S. and around the world for:
BLACK LIVES MATTER MAY DAY, FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2015
Every eight hours a police or vigilante murder occurs in the U.S against a person of color especially the youth!
We demand:
SHUT IT DOWN FOR FREDDIE GREY ON MAY DAY - FRIDAY, MAY 1ST!
TURN UP & STAND WITH THE PEOPLE OF BALTIMORE!
AMNESTY FOR ALL ARRESTED PROTESTERS!
JAIL KILLER COPS NOW! END RACIST POLICE VIOLENCE NOW!
#BLACKLIVESMATTER #BROWNLIVESMATTER
JUSTICE FOR FREDDIE GREY & ALL FAMILIES IMPACTED BY POLICE TERROR AROUND THE COUNTRY!
STAND WITH BALTIMORE ON MAY DAY!
Facebook Event Page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1584670348457501/
Greetings sisters and brothers from the streets of Baltimore:
As we draft this appeal the city of Baltimore is being occupied by a regional mobilization of police and the National Guard. The mass outrage over the slaughter of Freddie Grey has grown from protest to resistance. Baltimore is the "new" Ferguson, and we need the intervention of all who have participated in the Black Lives Matter Movement on a national level and we need it now.
No police have been arrested for the murder of Freddie Grey.
No explanation for his death has been given except to say that it’s a “mystery!”
More than 300 people have been arrested for resistance – while the cops are still free and on paid leave.
We are calling on activists to turn this Friday, May 1st 2015, into BLACK LIVES MATTER MAY DAY.
We realize that May Day is just a few days away. However, if you can organize to take it to the streets, the highways and the bridges in the same way that you did last fall and winter, it would make a world of difference in the struggle for justice at this critical moment.
We applaud the longshore and warehouse workers union (ILWU) Local 10 in Oakland, Calif., as well as the longshore workers in Charleston, South Carolina for plans to shut the docks down on May Day in solidarity with struggle against racist police violence.
We believe that it’s important that the movement rise up again on May Day, International Workers Day. The young Black and Brown people who are being murdered by the police may not look like some dated stereotype of a worker, but they are part of the working class. You should not have to have a job or be in a union to qualify as being in the working class. It’s time to get beyond outmoded notions about who is and who is not in the working class. The truth is that the fastest growing demographic in the working class are unemployed or underemployed people of color, many of them undocumented migrant workers, women, LGBTQ people and those with disabilities. If the Black Lives Matter movement can rise up again this May Day, it might just be the beginning of something bigger; a game change that broadens the movement, as well as the way people think.
On Sat. May 2nd, we call upon all who are able to come to Baltimore. For more information, please go to the Peoples Power Assemblies Facebook page for updates.
Add us to your address book @solidarityweb.com
Toward Cyborg Socialism
by Alyssa Battistoni ~ 4/22/15
The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970. It was also Lenin’s hundredth birthday. The coincidence was not intentional.
In fact, part of the point of Earth Day was to distance the nascent environmentalist movement from New Left critiques of consumer society, suburban development, and nuclear waste. In an attempt to avoid charges of “watermelon” politics — green on the outside, red on the inside — the message of the early environmental movement, as one Greenpeace slogan explicitly stated, was “I’m not a Red, I’m a Green.” As environmentalism went mainstream, green nonprofits grew rich and powerful on corporate donations and adopted conciliatory strategies aimed at greening the world one brand name at a time.
These days, environmentalism can rival the Left’s big-tent eclecticism: rugged wilderness fantasies, New Age mysticism, and middle-class romanticism exist side-by-side with indigenous anti-nuclear protests, campaigns against urban smog, back-to-the-land agrarian nostalgia, and entrepreneurial green tech. But lately, militant environmentalism is staging a comeback — as are state crackdowns. And even the most mainstream varieties of environmentalism are inching leftward. Climate change in particular has radicalizing potential, as more and more people are beginning to question the prevailing economic system’s destructive effect on the environment. But mainstream environmental groups aren’t going to offer a coherent critique of capitalism’s ecological consequences or do the work of theorizing alternatives.
It’s ridiculous that we still bracket climate change and water supplies as specifically “environmental” issues: the questions at hand are ones of political economy and collective action ...
more here ~ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/toward-cyborg-socialism/
Halliburton Boosts Job Cuts After Oil Crash
(Omaha Steve: I don't know if you are keeping track of all these cuts; Schlumberger has been cutting as well. Mostly it's fracking that's getting hit in the US).
Bloomburg Business
4-20-15
Halliburton Co. beat analysts’ estimates and accelerated the pace of job cuts ahead of a planned $34.6 billion takeover of Baker Hughes Inc.
Excluding certain items, the world’s second-biggest provider of oilfield services earned 49 cents a share in the first quarter, topping the 36-cent average of 32 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Shares rose 2.1 percent to close at $47.85 in New York.
Halliburton has now cut over the past two quarters a total of 9,000 workers, or more than 10 percent of its global workforce as the crash in oil prices forced drillers to cut back, according to Christian Garcia, interim chief financial officer. The company, which is selling assets to win approval for the merger, previously expected to cut as much as 8 percent of its workers. It employed about 80,000 at the end of last year.
“We are continuing to take a hard look at our operations,” Garcia told analysts and investors Monday on a conference call. “Additional actions will likely be required in the second quarter.”
More here - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-20/halliburton-profit-falls-as-crude-price-crash-slows-drilling
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