Marxism International

Chinese vterans of the “struggle against American aggression” in Korea relate tales of their adventures after returning home

Yesterday’s six-party agreement culminating in the announcement that North Korea was giving up its nuclear weapons program represented a triumph of Chinese diplomacy over American intransigence.   Under its provisions, which remain to be finalized in another round of talks in November, North Korea is “assured” (if that is the right word) that it will not be attacked by the Unites States, that its national sovereignty will be respected by the five negotiating parties (in addition to the US and China are Japan, South Korea and Russia), and that Pyongang will receive substantial economic assistance in the future, including a light-water reactor for domestic energy needs.

China is for the moment satisfied, though Beijing must entertain serious doubts concerning the durability of such an agreement.   Nations make and break such pacts with impunity, or selectively observe those articles which bestow an advantage while undermining or ignoring those which do not.   In the short term at least, China has gained enormous prestige by protecting an important ally while forcing the Americans into a clear if orderly retreat.    At the same time, she is aware that the Bush administration has no real intention of keeping any agreement that strengthens either North Korea or Chinese interests on the Korean peninsula.   Yesterday’s announcement represents a tactical retreat on the part of Washington to buy time while it is busy elsewhere.   Bush, aware at last that American power is fatigued and overextended by its numerous and self-inflected misadventures, is seeking a respite, not a fundamental change in the status quo.   

The China/North Korea relationship, forged in revolution and war, troubled for a time by the Sino/Soviet split of the 1960s and reaffirmed and strengthened by the dissolution of Pyongang’s Soviet ally, looks more durable than ever.   It is an irony of the post-Cold War world that American hubris as “the world’s sole superpower” has seen its badly calculated policies strengthen the bonds between its adversaries.   The ties between Beijing and Pyongang will for a long time to come serve to vitiate American interests in east Asia and probably elsewhere.

                                           Democratic Korea & Peoples’ China see off US “imperialists & their lackeys”

…They’ll Get It Anyway                

The German elections are over and, if such rituals counted for anything, the Left clearly would have won.    True, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SDP) were not first past the post.   That distinction belongs to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its leader Angela Merkel.    She is already coming to regret it.  

Instead, it was practically speaking a dead tie; 35 point something to 34 point something, less than 9 tenths of one percent separating the two.   For Ms Merkel, who had been widely advertised as becoming Germany’s next chancellor with anything from 42 to 47 per cent of the vote, the election is a humiliating defeat.   She will have a rough time of it merely holding on to the leadership of the CDU,  never mind becoming Germany’s first woman leader.   Despite her show of bravado on Sunday evening, her reform program of flat taxes, reduced social spending, and the vitiation of Germany’s “social market” has been rebuked by the country’s voters. 

For the rest, there is the Left Party, the odd marriage between the remnants of the East German Communists and dissidents within the ruling Social Democrats.   Led by Oskar LaFontaine (from the West) and Gregor Gysi (his eastern counterpart), they were the most vociferous opponents of reform.   They ended up with about 9 per cent, nearly 1 point ahead of the ruling Greens.   This gives the Left an overall total of 51 per cent.

The pro-reform Right, by contrast, polled less than 46 per cent (the difference being made up by smaller and regional parties who will have failed the 5 per cent test for getting into the Bundestag (Germany’s parliament).    The results were the worst for the CDU since the early 1980s.   The one bright spot for the right was the vigorous results enjoyed by the liberal Free Democrats, who polled nearly eleven per cent.   It may do them little good in the end.

What happens now?   Since neither of the two major parties have anywhere near the majority needed to form a government (Mr Schroeder has declared unequivocally he will not share power with the Lefts), the prospect of a Grand Coaltion looms large.   Such a creature may limp along for awhile but, in all likelihood, new elections will be held sooner rather than later.  

For those who rule Germany and their counterparts throughout the realm of western capitalism, there is no alternative to the reforms urged by the Right.   Unemployment in Germany stands at nearly 12 per cent.   That figure is replicated throughout the continent.    Economies remain stagnant.   Europe in fact looks to become a backwater to the rising Asian economies of China and India, and to the still-dominant economic power of the United States.   European capitalists will not change the way they do business.   A definitive program of social annihilation is the only feasible alternative.   And they will see to it that people “vote until they get it right”.

Mr Schroeder, if he remains Chancellor — an all but unthinkable prospect before Sunday evening — will continue to talk against reform while moving closer towards it.   The CDU, with or without Angela Merkel, will position itself somewhat more to the left, embracing in the end a syrupy version of reform more like that of the SDP.   The minor parties of both left and right will issue urgent communiques to little or no avail.   The Greens will probably end up with some portfolio in the new government; craven opportunism has become their signature under Joschka Fischer.    They already back some limited version of reform, but will probably balk at its more extreme proposals like the flat tax.

All this rigamarole has greatly upset the capitalist class in and out of Europe, which had been counting on a convincing Merkel win in order to re-vitalize reform throughout the West.     The morning after has seen an evisceration of her campaign and its main actors, especially that of Mr Paul Kirchhof, the finance advisor whose outspoken radicalism is widely cited as a reason for the paltry electoral results.   In the end, most if not all of his prescriptions will be filled and administered to the ailing economy.   If they fail to shake Germany out of its economic ennui, the nation’s capitalist democracy will be at an impasse.   

What then?    The past quarter-century has witnessed a Great Retreat of the Social Market everywhere in Europe (as well as in the USA, where a nascent version was beginning to take uncertain root following the upheavals of the 1960s).    The neo-liberalism which is replacing it is in ever deeper crisis.    Yes, reform will eventually be shoved down the throats of the German people, as it has been and will continue to be throughout the West.   But, will even this be enough to solve capitalism’s innate and growing crisis?

If not,  more radical solutions may be in order. 

For three weekends this month, the estimable Independent Film Channel focuses on “Spaghetti Westerns”, those 60s-era horse operas famed for their extreme violence, moral ambiguities, Spanish locations, thunderous musical scores and, above all, Lefty Italian directors with the Christian name of Sergio.   Films like For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone’s sequel to his Fistful of Dollars, which made Clint Eastwood a star), Sergio Sollima’s The Big Gundown,  The Great Silence, Sergio Corbucci’s classic drama of revenge and redemption, and the indefatigable The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, Leone’s grand finale in the Eastwood trilogy, are all being featured.

Shown, too, is a remarkable documentary Spaghetti West, which chronicles the work of writers like Franco Solinas, the devout Communist who wrote the screenplay for Gundown and the estimable A Bullet for the General, director Damiano Damiani’s anti-imperialist allegory of the Mexican Revolution.   (Some may recall Solinas’ [uncredited] work on the much-maligned gem The Assassination of Leon Trotsky).   Reds, in fact, were all over this genre, which produced hundreds of similar films (running the usual gamut of the good, the bad and the indifferent), and which revived for a time audiences’ love affair with the Western.   Ennio Morricone, who wrote the music for the Eastwood trilogy and for countless other “spaghettis” as well as for other films, notably Henri Verneuil’s Guns for San Sabastian and the perfectly awful The Green Berets, John Wayne’s version of our Vietnam nightmare, and the actor Gian Maria Volonte, among many many others, were members of the Italian Communist party, an affiliation claimed at one time or another by most of their countrymen who were prominent in the arts of that period.   (Morricone is still at work and is currently scoring the forthcoming epic Leningrad)

It was a remarkable if short-lived genre, combining what John Ford called “the most American of all art forms” with an often none-too-subtle critique of what America was doing in the world.  In Vietnam.  In Latin America.   Everywhere.    The wealthy cattle baron, the avaricious banker, the powerful and corrupt versus the poor but virtuous lent itself to this morality tale of American perfidy.   Most of these films were not, even loosely speaking, “Marxist”; the heroes tended to be violent loners instead of the aroused masses of Marx or Lenin, but the message resonated in a world that was in thrall to the struggles of Vietnamese peasants, Chinese revolutionaries and French students.

Nor was the Spaghetti Western a great art form, either cinematically or in terms of influencing what came after; its sequel was a rapid degeneration in both Italian and American theatrical hands of a historic genre pioneered by the likes of William S Hart and Ford himself.   

No, the Western, wheezing briefly back to life in the 1960s (American films like Hombre — itself directed by a former Communist — were an exception to the general rule of decline interrupted briefly by the “Italian West”) was already heading toward the Last Roundup, done in perhaps by history itself.    The lone hero on horseback, prevailing against frightful odds to defeat a powerful and ruthless enemy, seemed increasingly out of place in a setting no longer recognizable in the mass civilization of the modern world.  

He survives, perversely, largely in the imaginations of those whose values contravenes his in every conceivable way; in those who promote the George Bushes and the Ronald Reagans and the John McCains in an age longing for honest but resourceful heroes.   But, increasingly and with diminishing hope, finding none.

 “pki” early poster from a communist-affiliated university club   Today is the 40th anniversary of one of the most infamous episodes in the history of United States Foreign Policy.   On September 30, 1965, the Indonesian military, acting in criminal concert with western embassies and intelligence services, set in motion a plan that would result in the outright murder of nearly 1 million of the nation’s most progressive citizens.   Gathered around the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) were nearly twenty million trade unionists, teachers, members of womens and peasant organizations and the very future of progressive Indonesia.   Theirs was a powerful movment, but one whose leadership had badly misread the political situation there, seeking alliances with “progressive” nationalists while remaining largely unarmed.   It was to cost them and their country dearly and precipitate the 33 year reign of General Suharto.   Justice still eludes the survivors of that terrible time; textbooks in Indonesia do not even mention it.  And attempts by survivors to bring the guilty to book have so far failed.

Over the coming weeks, I will include some first person accounts of the alleged Communist “coup” attempt and its calamitous aftermath.   A number of survivors who are still in the country (a few even are domiciled in their original villages or nearby) have agreed (tentatively) to write brief resumes of their experiences.   It has taken a good deal of persuasion on the part of myself and others to do so, but their story needs to be told.   And to be heard.

The Financial Times is reporting tonight that Japanese Prime Minister Junichero Koizumi has won a “landslide victory” over dissidents in his own Liberal Democratic Party in today’s parliamentary elections.   He has also dispatched the opposition Democrats, clearing the way for a thorough revamping of how Japan does business.

In so doing, he has successfully aped the winning strategies employed by a number of Washington’s allies, like Alberto Fujimori of Peru and Nepal’s King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah and others who, when the going got rough asked and received America’s go-ahead to do things their way.

Of course, Japan had to observe the perfunctory niceties of an election, but it amounts to the same thing.   Whereas Mr Fujimori (now in disgraceful exile in Japan) and King Gyanendra (whose rule does not look long for this world) had to fill the streets with tanks, Prime Minister Koizumi had to lay out a lot of cold cash.   Still, it’s chump change when you look at what investors stand to gain by the now all-but-certain 3 TRILLION DOLLAR privatization of Japan’s postal system.   It will release hundreds of billions of dollars from savings and insurance bonds into the private sector and will temporarily at least provide some relief to Japan’s cash-starved economy.

It is unlikely to be forgotten by the LDP old-timers how Koizumi sold them short to grab this prize.  He sent out a legion of young, brash and ruthless “assassins” to run against dissenters and nay-sayers and ran most of them into the ground.   Japanese politics has been turned upside-down.   Washington is delighted.   But, deep and cavernous divisions have been opened on the home front.

The tactic of the self-coup, initially successful, looks to be around for awhile.   In Germany, Angela Merkel looks poised to win the German elections on the 18th, though with less than the majority needed to push their radical “reforms” (read: further impoverishment of the working class, tax cuts for the rich, “taming” of the unions, etc).  In fact, she will probably have to form a Grand Alliance with the currently ruling Social Democrats.    The current Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, has flubbed his own version of the self-coup (dissolving parliament like the others while similarly arguing that it is the incompetents around him and not his policies that have brought things up short).  The hapless Mr Schroeder is on the eve of being kicked out of office to make way for Ms Merkel, though in all likelihood his party will govern alongside hers.

Fast forward two or three years down the road.   Merkel’s government is rapidly failing on all fronts.  Obstreperous members of her own party and those of her governing coaltion have stymied her attempts at privatization, social annihilation and the turning of the German economy into a Malaysia-like sweatshop of the investors’ dream.   What to do?   Dissolve parliament while convincing the voters that hers is the only way forward.  In the meantime, draft a number of young, attractive and ruthless candidates to overthrow recalcitrant old-guarders in her own coaltion (while picturing herself as the heroic but besieged “reformer”, and so on and so forth.

The luxurious option of replacing one’s opponents from one’s own political stable can only be exercised for so long and only so often.   As Mr Fujimori discovered (and as King Gyanendra is now learning the hard way), fundamental problems require fundamental solutions which go far beyond changing one’s entourage at Court.   The economies of Japan and Germany, like the insurrections in Peru and Nepal (and elsewhere) remain the intransigent features of societies in crises.   

Enervating exercises of political musical chairs played out before an increasingly sceptical and impoverished public can only work for so long.    But, the run can be long, perhaps longer than the current rulers of Germany and Japan need envisage.

We’ll see. 

Today, of course, is the fourth anniversary of those airliners flying into the World Trade Center and, subsequently, the Pentagon.   Footage exists of the former but not, really, of the latter.  We do know that those 19 young men had, at one time or another in their nefarious careers, all cashed checks from Uncle Sam.   

Boy, is his face red.   Or, are those his hands?

Today was different, too, thanks to Katrina.    Too much hoopla might remind people that it was Bush and the rest of ’em who guided their airliners into the impoverished neighborhoods of the Gulf region, and, like Mohammed Atta and his disciples, left death and horror and their wake.   At least Mr Atta had the good grace not to invite his friends to make a buck out of cleaning up his handiwork.

No matter.    9/11 is already last season’s hit.   Like J-Lo or the Sopranos or Deadwood, or any one of those numerous deadening and unedifying icons of our modern culture which strive mightily to convince us that we, as a people, aren’t really worth much, and probably deserve what the government and the corporations do to us.   Hell,  to hear some of our leaders tell it, most of us don’t even possess the merit to go on living.

The elites of disintegrating cultures are like that.   Spew, spit, hiss, and then in a panicked frenzy devour your own people.

But, today, at least, they were “post ictal”, as if their ritual orgies of fake outrage, hypocritcal posturing, and platitude-laden speech-making had left them momentarily sated.   And at peace

Who, you ask,  cares?

9/11 is already passe, out-of-date,  obsolete, so yesterday.   It never really belonged to the American people, anyway.   Very little does, nowadays.   Public is a dirty word in Freedom’s Land and Bravery’s Home, something to be scorned, belittled, excoriated, and then, indubitably impoverished and sold off.   “Our” America is one of private wealth and public squalor.   9/11 may belong to the Government, to the State and “Defense” departments, to the national media, to those whose loyalty lies above all else to the realization of the zionist project.  

But it is not the property of the American people.  

And it never will be.

The grief is real enough, I suppose, though who can tell in an age as contrived and as shabby as ours?    A million-plus to the New Yorkers who perished in the conflaguration.   Chump change to the victims of Hurrican Katrina.    “Equality” is one of those public assets sold off when we weren’t looking.   Not that we ever really had it anyway, but we liked to think we did.

Gone now.

Bush, the Pentagon and the Media were robbed this year of the propaganda extravaganza they have come to expect at summers’ end, due to New Orleans.   Katrina is the real face of Government, of the Bushes, and the Giulianis (who took a special delight in the gunning down of unarmed black men by the police) of the thousands of masked, heavily armed thugs in uniform allowing the unfit to suffer horribly and then to die.   In public.  

No, 9/11 rings especially hollow this year.   It’s starting to go the way of the Reichstag Fire, of Gulf of Tonkin, of the Indonesian “Coup”,  and Pan Am Flight 103.  

It’ll be gone for good in a few years.

And good riddance.

Barely a week after Katrina did her worst the demise of New Orleans is now an ascertainable fact.   All but 10,000 or so have now left (the rest are under a mandatory order to get out, and the police were last night given the authority to forcibly evict those who resist).   They will not in all probability be back.   We are witnessing the death of a major American city.  

But not just a city.   Duluth and Bangor would be missed but not quite in the same way.  

There are lots of people mourning, though already “compassion fatigue” is beginning to set in.   (There was less than universal rejoicing this morning after last night’s announcement that 500 “evacuees” would be housed at a navy base here in Rhode Island.)   I’m saddened (if that’s the right word) less by the loss of New Orleans than by the sordid way in which it was put to rest.  

There is something enormously sinister about FEMA.   Something that jibes very nicely with the process of social annihilation that has been boilerplate in the West since about 1975.    Red Cross could not get into the city to distribute life-saving supplies because FEMA said no.   Private citizens or even corporations could not move food or water or clothing into the worst hit areas because FEMA said no.   People attempting to reach loved ones after the hurricane were turned back at the city’s limits by police acting on FEMA’s orders.   Even the Louisana National Guard was told to stand down until Louisiana’s governor surrendered their command to FEMA.

Of course, no one should really be surprised.   FEMA, like ultimately all federal agencies, exist as an instrument of class control.   In a nation where economic health rests securely upon the freedoms to own property and to exploit labor, we should not be squeamish when we witness the machinery to enforce those freedoms up close.   The vast numbers of “evacuees” are overwhelmingly non-white and poor (read: unprofitable and dangerous).    Those who call the shots in our governemtn know that these people — left to their own devices — will not overnight turn into revenue-generating entrepreneurs or educated professionals or consumers driving a growing thriving economy.   

No.  These people are potentially centers of resistance to a system that has effectively murdered them.     And the perpetrators know it.   They can’t kill them outright, though natural disasters like Katrina do some of the dirty work.   Little by little, it is not nearly enough.    So, those who have lost everything have to be shifted from pillar to post, here and across the country until they can be safely dispersed and assimilated in communities far from home.   Far from the scene.  

And what do the rest of us do?   We know something has gone terribly awry with our country, but what?   And what to do about it?   Ethan, another union Carpenter, tells me ruefully that “something bad is happening to my country”.   He knows it has something to do with Bush and the Republicans.   He’s starting to feel that way, too, about the Democrats.   He’s talking to others.   So is his wife Katya, a Laborer who works directing traffic at highway construction sites.   And so are their fellow workers and their friends.    All across the country.  

They’re part of the solution.

I’m glad they’re there.

 the sign — and the caller — say “middle class”

Of all the Great Questions posed by the Great Philosophers over the entire panoply of Human Existence, two stand out:

“What, exactly, is a Middle Class?”                 

And: “When Will China Get One”?

Well, in both cases it depends upon who you talk to.    And the facts cited are wildly desparate.   Some say at present China’s middle class is largely a fiction due to the peculiarities of Chinese society and politics.   Others offer the opinion that, yes, some such animal does in fact exist, but most are unsure how large, how powerful or even what the standards of admissions are.

Seriously, though, it’s an important question to a lot of people.   China is by far the world’s fastest growing consumer market (India is too underdeveloped at this point to pose much of a challenge though that could change over the next two decades).   A growing middle class means to them a growing market.    On a whole host of issues , from energy consumption to transportation to health care needs, planners anxiously measure the growing needs of a newly affluent population against the forcasts of energy supplies.   Those who take a jaundiced view of the country’s ruling Communist Party take heart from the shibboleth that a growing middle class will demand more political freedoms that will subsequently (and fatally) undermine the party’s authority.

But, will it?   The trend in developing countries is toward one-party states.   The capitalist West favors those that are pro-market and succumb to the dictates of international capital (also known as “normal societies”).   But, there is a growing consensus that multi-party, capitalist “democracy” serves only the well-off, locally and internationally, in developing countries.   Further, it creates deep divisions within the social order, divisions that can be and are exploited by outside forces for their own ends.    Too, many are noting the social corrosion and paralysis that mark decision-making in the multi-party states.

My bet is that growing affluence will change how China is ruled, but not exactly in ways that will please the West.   Burgeoning nationalism (this has always been present, stoked by memories of China’s treatment at the hands of the Western powers during the colonial era in Asia) will in all likelihood be its most prominent feature.  

But, how far off is the day when China’s middle class will reckon as a force in national politics?

And, anyway, what is “Middle Class” in China?    And how big is it?

The size of the middle class in China has grown to include 11.9 percent of all employees in the country, according to a recent survey.

BNP Paribas, a French bank, defines members of China’s middle class as well-educated professionals with an annual income between 25,000 yuan (US$3,010) to 30,000 yuan (US$3,610), or household income between 75,000 yuan (US$9,040) to 100,000 yuan (US$12,050).

There were, according to a report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), 35.18 million middle class members in China last year, which is about 2.8 per cent of the total population.

According to the World Bank, only when urbanization is over 50 per cent and the service sector accounts for more than 50 per cent of the economy, is it possible for a middle class to become a mainstream, accountable social group.

And, there are skeptics.   He Qunglian, a renowned sociologist and a strident opponent of the Communists, concedes the mythic rise of a nascent Chinese middle class will probably make little difference in the country’s political ecology.

She believes that the Chinese middle class has three characteristics that distinguishes it from other countries.  Yes, as in the West, the wealth of a middle class is related to political power, though its role in decision-making should not be overstated.   However, China’s middle class has no group consciousness and therefore has no independent ideas, and it has no way or ability to express itself in public affairs. This makes the middle class dependent on political power, and it cannot initiate or promote political reforms in the short term.

Other studies confirm that indeed individual wealth is indeed growing in china, some estimates put that population at 200 million with those making an income of $12,000 a year or higher and is to be nearly 500 million by 2010.   Few,  however, are that optimistic.

It is important to note that the data most often cited (often from the same or similar sources) is frequently contradictory and points to a bewildering array of interpretations and possibilities.   But, it is probably safe to say that a Western-style Chinese “middle class”, promoting the values of the middle income Westerner, will safely remain a fiction for a long time to come.

Making sense of China from the news nowadays is not easy.   Take just three of today’s news items:

Intellectual property rights and power shortages are problems in both Shanghai and Beijing but the outlook for business in both cities remains overwhelmingly positive, says the White Paper 2005 Business in China.    Read more

The private sector in China is now responsible for about three-quarters of economic output and employment, according to a new survey, making the ruling Communist party more dependent than ever on entrepreneurs to sustain the high-speed growth underpinning its rule.   Read more

The Chinese government is teaming up with Nasdaq-listed entertainment company Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. (SNDA) to produce patriotic Internet games, the Financial Times reports on its Web site.   Read more

Reading China today requires a nimble if agnostic mind.    There is an indefatigable optimism which infects those ensconced in the gilded glass cities like Shanghai.    Out in rural China, where most people carry on as they have for forgotten generations and where foreigners and high powered entrepreneurs rarely tread, it is another story.    Too, there is a bewildering galaxy of defined meanings that often obscure the Chinese reality.   “Private” companies turn out to be quite public when layers of supervision and proprietorship are rolled back.   “Morality” becomes a suddenly modern term amid shifting dispensations and political expediencies.  

China is a palimpsest, a persuasively apt erasing and reprinting of untold legends and aspirations on a canvas that, despite everything,  remains intransigently Red

And that’s the problem with China.   Like the four blind men caressing different parts of that elephant, the modern Chinese state defies the easily prescient.

Pass it on.

The horrors visited upon a now rapidly disintegrating Gulf state population continue to get unimaginably worse.   Everyone by now knows that deep within the bowels of this tragedy lies America’s hellish future.   The elderly, the poor, our workers of color, those whose only offense is that of suffering a frightful penury and powerlessness only throws into sharper relief the crimes of those who purport to rule in their name  

The behavior of our national politicians and their local imitators has shocked even the most bucolic observer.   Andersen Cooper of CNN just a few moments ago came close to decisively God-Damning the indifference of Senator Mary Landrieu as she offered yet another of her facile platitudes (she was “praising” the “response” [sic] of the Bush administration of all things).   This while the corpses of her constituents were providing nourishment for New Orlean’s hungry rats.   The city’s mayor, whose infamous decision last evening to abandon the search for the missing in order to protect the property of gouging convenience store owners whose depredations upon communities of color have been on a scale comparable to that of Katrina’s, is now nowhere to be found.    He will no doubt turn up soon, one way or the other.

The national leaders of both parties have been complicitly silent.   The mass deaths of many thousands of the penurious and unemployed is to them a dream come true, a sort of nightmare (for most of us) subsidiary of the Yuppie Capitalism inaugarated with Jimmy Carter and then cruelly perfected under every other Western Head of State since then.   “When are you going to die and get out of the way?”   Richard Lamm, the Democrat governor of Colorado asked the question in 1979 of the nation’s elderly and poor, a rare moment of candor for a politician.   Back then, amid the squeamishness and ennui of Carter’s America, the Governor was forced to quickly apologize.   

Lamm’s modern colleagues wouldn’t have bothered.   To them, there are the people who count and those — the vast majority — who do not.   And those who do not show up sooner or later on our tv screens amid the filth and stench and death of SuperDomes and football stadiums and Abu Ghraibs.   Here and everywhere. 

But, could our modern “prisoners of starvation” after all have the last word?   There is a growing, palpable anger among a people who refuse to cooperate with Bush’s America and just die off quietly.  For the moment, they have nowhere –that is, the Democrats– to turn.   They will mill about angrily for awhile, the most entrerprising among them parlaying the people’s misery into various federal grants and pork projects.   But the mass of people will get nothing.  

But, America now is not the America of 1965 Watts, or Detroit in ’67 or even Rodney King’s Los Angeles circa 1992.   Things have changed and continue to do so.   Victims of corrupted power can only be drilled into a sullen acquiescence for so long.  

I believe that this is, as they say,  “It”.   Or, at least the beginnings of “It”.

Stay tuned.  

In the meantime, my fellow carpenters in Louisianna have set up a relief fund for the destitute and destroyed in their ranks.   If you will, please get in touch with them at Louisianna Carpenters Katrina Relief Fund at 8875 Greenwell Springs Road, Suite A, Baton Rouge Lousianna 70814   In any case, do what you can.