Empire & Inequality

Michigan Republicans for Ralph Nader

I happen to be a political independent with a left Marxist background and related fellow-traveler anarchist sympathies. I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but did so in Illinois --- a "safe state" for Democrats then and now. I don't know how I would have voted in say, Florida, where I would have had reason to worry that I would be helping the candidate of the most reactionary of the two dominant business parties by making a protest vote on behalf of the candidate who most closely reflected my values.

I subsequently wrote an article primarily blaming the centrist ineptitude of the Gore Democrats, the racist disenfranchisement of black voters (including many thousands of black felons and ex-felons), and the criminal gangsterism of the Supreme Court, NOT Nader (whose Florida vote count was in fact far beyond Bush II's supposed marging of "victory"), for the horrific 2000 outcome in Florida and hence in the U.S (see “How Dubya Got to be President,” Z Magazine (February 2001): 9-12).

The "Vile Maxim" in Practice: Notes on a Forthcoming "Free Trade" Pact with Australia

Two postings ago, I (quite unoriginally) quoted Adam Smith on the "vile maxim of the masters...all for ourselves and nothing for other people." Here (below) is a lovely story for the Vile Maxim in Practice Archives from yesterday's New York Times.

Long story short: multinational corporate Big Pharma is about to kill two birds with one stone. Bird one is the movement of United States activists, citizens, and (some) legislators to reduce the absurdly high costs of prescription drugs --- an issue of no small significance to U.S. seniors and the millions of Americans who lack health insurance in the "world's richest nation" (the only industrialized state without a national health care plan) --- "by importing less expensive medicines from Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and other nations."

Bird two is certain foreign nations' irritating (for international vile maximusts of pharmaceutical affiliation) policy of using their national health programs to provide their citizens with (imagine) relatively inexpensive drugs.

Pastor Soaries Would Like The Power to Suspend the Election in the Event of Terrorist Attack

Here (below) is an "interesting" story from CNN, not some ultra-left or-right conspiracy wire. I'll leave it to others to comment on how much to make over it. A mildly conspiracy-minded friend of mine out in the sticks is quite agitated over this. I usually tend to see this sort of stuff as part of the policymakers' normal creepy half-assed contingency planning, which always includes all kinds of horrifying crap. Still, it's spooky to see these guys seeking legislation (or whatever) to make it legal for them to suspend the 2004 election in the event of precisely the sort of terror attack that one would naturally expect in the wake of their insane foreign policies.

Cool Calculating Masters: How Wall Street Approaches the Election

It's a presidential election year, so it's time to observe United States lefties engage in their quadrennial ritual of ripping each other apart over the question of how to best respond in the good-conscience name of social justice to the all-too-narrow choices presented by the business-dominated U.S. electoral regime. It's time to watch our connection to common core peace, democracy, and equality agendas fray as the election obsession sucks up scarce progressive resources.

Meanwhile, it's interesting and instructive to observe cool, calculating, and self-interested election angle of great monied interests. Structurally generated super-citizenship has a way of calming its holder's political nerves in "America, the Best Democracy That Money Can Buy."

I Want a New Media Relationship

You know when you reach that point with someone where apologies don’t matter? You need a change of behavior. Actually, more than that, you need a change of relationship.

That’s where the U.S. populace needs to get with “their” media.

Gee, wasn’t it great that certain key “mainstream” (corporate-state) media institutions saw fit to admit to – and even to apologize for – uncritically reporting George W. Bush administration lies about the supposed grave threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s alleged great stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?