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WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY
OR UNCLE SAM?
The answer
at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's
power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow
annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would
sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags
the tail.Fifty
years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs
out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the
heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg
in the East Village.Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii
died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher
Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered
them up.CounterPunch
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From San Diego Up
to Maine, In Every Mine and Mill
By RON JACOBS
I finished reading Sharon Smith's latest
book, Subterranean
Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States,
on May Day 2006. Rather appropriate, I thought as I turned the
last page of text, especially since this working class holiday
began in the United States during one of its headier periods
of working class solidarity and rebellion. Even more appropriate
when one considers the resurgence of May Day protests in the
US this year thanks to the movement to make undocumented workers
legal.
Smith's book is exactly what
its title suggests. This is the story of class struggle in the
United States--a story told from the perspective of a radical
leftist. Consequently, it's a history most folks who went to
school in the US do not know. Why? Because the powers that
run this country don't want them to. Smith has done an outstanding
job telling it. Well-researched and well-told, Subterranean
Fire informs the reader with lively writing and unembellished
facts of oppression, exploitation and the fight against such
phenomenon.
Ms. Smith begins the book by
detailing the history of US labor prior to the War Between the
States. At that time, the US economy was primarily agrarian
in nature and depended on the enslavement of Africans and their
descendants for its strength. Subterranean Fire not only
acknowledges this, but discusses the essential role that slavery
played in the creation of the US economy. Like others before
her, Smith analyzes the international slave trade, the economics
of Southern plantation growers, its repercussions for white-skinned
workers, and the economic aspects of the US Civil War.
Furthermore,Smith keeps the
reality that racial discrimination has played in the history
of US labor throughout the book. Whether it was the use of
African-Americans as scabs or the constant tactic of divide-and-conquer
based on skin color by business or the refusal of the unions
to allow black members, the role that the uniquely US racial
situation plays in keeping the working class in constant uncertainty
is detailed here. In addition, this history proves via its descriptions
of various strikes and radical unions (most notably the IWW)
that when workers ignore the prejudices of society and unite
across racial and ethnic boundaries, they are more likely to
win. The current struggle for immigrant rights in the US could
learn from this lesson, especially among those US workers that
believe it is the immigrant that drives their wages downward,
not the corporation.
Today's news constantly runs
stories about workers taking concessions and massive company
layoffs. Smith's analysis holds that this is directly related
to the conscious retreat from class-based struggle and the purge
of leftists from US unions after World War Two. It is this historical
fact that is also responsible for the continually falling numbers
of union members throughout the United States. This model of
unionism, known as economism by various leftists, helped prevent
the development not only of a labor party in the United States,
but also of politically oriented unionism. Instead of demanding
that the government represent the majority of Americans--that
is, the workers of the country--unions and their members got
involved in providing pensions and health care to their members.
In other industrialized countries where the labor movement is
represented in the legislature by various labor and leftist
parties, such issues are the duty of government. Of course,
in today's neoliberal/neoconservative world, workers in those
countries are finding their health care and pensions under threat
from governments taken over by big business. The recent against
the so-called Kleenex law highlighted this fact quite vividly.
Speaking of worker's parties,
the spectre of the various anarchist, socialist and communist
groupings looms in the background of Smith's text. She details
the twists and turns of the Socialist Party, USA and the US Communist
Party (CPUSA). It is her conclusion that the two organizations
failed the workers of the country. The Socialists did this by
acceding the leadership to the party's right wing, while the
CPUSA stumbled in the wake of its Popular Front politics before
and during the Second World War--politics that were determined
by the Stalinist regime in Moscow more than by the situation
in the workplace and on the ground in the United States. The
anarchists failed, writes Smith, because of their determination
not to be vanguardist. It was the latter's organizing and anti-capitalist
politics, however, that insured the worker's movement would maintain
its radical spirit and politics. This, writes Smith, is why
they were targeted for deportation, harassment and elimination
by the State and Big Business.
There are stories in this book
that should be part of every textbook in the United States.
The attacks on the miners in the Appalachians, the Ludlow massacre
of women and children in Colorado, the police and military attacks
on striking textile workers in Gastonia, NC, the remarks of various
capitalists regarding their opinion of those that made them their
riches, the persecution of labor and other radicals throughout
the past 150 years, and the manipulation of the public by the
two-party system--a manipulation that means the worker gets screwed
no matter who he or she votes for. Women on the barricades and
the Wobblies. Likewise, the tales of racial and ethnic prejudices
that caused strikes and solidarity to fall apart should be told.
This latter aspect of US labor history is very important today
as immigrants flex their political muscle in the streets of the
country and the power elites attempt to create and widen divisions
between these immigrants and those US workers that were born
here. If workers don't learn from history and oppose these attempts
to divide us, Subterranean Fire makes it abundantly clear
that all workers will suffer. And only the bosses will win.
When lessons from our history are common knowledge we can move
ahead in a manner that will bring a movement back onto US soil
that protects the lives and rights of the working people in this
country.
Smith's book is the perfect
vehicle for such an endeavor. It is a readable, lively tale
of the worker's movement in the United States. A collection
of statistics and anecdotal stories combined with a critical
analysis, it is at times despairingly downbeat and at other times
exhilaratingly hopeful. Subterranean Fire's a piece of
agitational literature. If there's one message that exists in
its pages, it is this: Don't just read, organize.
CounterPunch
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