By Michael Parenti

After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history.

The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.

In the centre of Congress Hall where American Laws are made you will find Fasci (the symbol of Fascism).

Plutocracy vs. Democracy

Let us consider democracy first. In the United States we hear that capitalism is wedded to democracy, hence the phrase, “capitalist democracies.” In fact, throughout our history there has been a largely antagonistic relationship between democracy and capital concentration. Some eighty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy.

The Constitution itself was fashioned by affluent gentlemen who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to repeatedly warn of the baneful and dangerous leveling effects of democracy. The document they cobbled together was far from democratic, being shackled with checks, vetoes, and requirements for artificial super majorities, a system designed to blunt the impact of popular demands.

In the early days of the Republic the rich and well-born imposed property qualifications for voting and officeholding. They opposed the direct election of candidates (note, their Electoral College is still with us). And for decades they resisted extending the franchise to less favored groups such as propertyless working men, immigrants, racial minorities, and women.

Today conservative forces continue to reject more equitable electoral features such as proportional representation, instant runoff, and publicly funded campaigns. They continue to create barriers to voting, be it through overly severe registration requirements, voter roll purges, inadequate polling accommodations, and electronic voting machines that consistently “malfunction” to the benefit of the more conservative candidates.

At times ruling interests have suppressed radical publications and public protests, resorting to police raids, arrests, and jailings-applied most recently with full force against demonstrators in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 2008 Republican National Convention.

The conservative plutocracy also seeks to rollback democracy’s social gains, such as public education, affordable housing, health care, collective bargaining, a living wage, safe work conditions, a non-toxic sustainable environment; the right to privacy, the separation of church and state, freedom from compulsory pregnancy, and the right to marry any consenting adult of one’s own choosing.

About a century ago, US labor leader Eugene Victor Debs was thrown into jail during a strike. Sitting in his cell he could not escape the conclusion that in disputes between two private interests, capital and labor, the state was not a neutral arbiter. The force of the state–with its police, militia, courts, and laws-was unequivocally on the side of the company bosses. From this, Debs concluded that capitalism was not just an economic system but an entire social order, one that rigged the rules of democracy to favor the moneybags.

Capitalist rulers continue to pose as the progenitors of democracy even as they subvert it, not only at home but throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Any nation that is not “investor friendly,” that attempts to use its land, labor, capital, natural resources, and markets in a self-developing manner, outside the dominion of transnational corporate hegemony, runs the risk of being demonized and targeted as “a threat to U.S. national security.”

Democracy becomes a problem for corporate America not when it fails to work but when it works too well, helping the populace move toward a more equitable and livable social order, narrowing the gap, however modestly, between the superrich and the rest of us. So democracy must be diluted and subverted, smothered with disinformation, media puffery, and mountains of campaign costs; with rigged electoral contests and partially disfranchised publics, bringing faux victories to more or less politically safe major-party candidates.

Capitalism vs. Prosperity

The corporate capitalists no more encourage prosperity than do they propagate democracy. Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is neither prosperous nor particularly democratic. One need only think of capitalist Nigeria, capitalist Indonesia, capitalist Thailand, capitalist Haiti, capitalist Colombia, capitalist Pakistan, capitalist South Africa, capitalist Latvia, and various other members of the Free World–more accurately, the Free Market World.

A prosperous, politically literate populace with high expectations about its standard of living and a keen sense of entitlement, pushing for continually better social conditions, is not the plutocracy’s notion of an ideal workforce and a properly pliant polity. Corporate investors prefer poor populations. The poorer you are, the harder you will work-for less. The poorer you are, the less equipped you are to defend yourself against the abuses of wealth.

In the corporate world of “free-trade,” the number of billionaires is increasing faster than ever while the number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world’s population. Poverty spreads as wealth accumulates.

Consider the United States. In the last eight years alone, while vast fortunes accrued at record rates, an additional six million Americans sank below the poverty level; median family income declined by over $2,000; consumer debt more than doubled; over seven million Americans lost their health insurance, and more than four million lost their pensions; meanwhile homelessness increased and housing foreclosures reached pandemic levels.

It is only in countries where capitalism has been reined in to some degree by social democracy that the populace has been able to secure a measure of prosperity; northern European nations such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark come to mind. But even in these social democracies popular gains are always at risk of being rolled back.

It is ironic to credit capitalism with the genius of economic prosperity when most attempts at material betterment have been vehemently and sometimes violently resisted by the capitalist class. The history of labor struggle provides endless illustration of this.

To the extent that life is bearable under the present U.S. economic order, it is because millions of people have waged bitter class struggles to advance their living standards and their rights as citizens, bringing some measure of humanity to an otherwise heartless politico-economic order.

A Self-devouring Beast

The capitalist state has two roles long recognized by political thinkers. First, like any state it must provide services that cannot be reliably developed through private means, such as public safety and orderly traffic. Second, the capitalist state protects the haves from the have-nots, securing the process of capital accumulation to benefit the moneyed interests, while heavily circumscribing the demands of the working populace, as Debs observed from his jail cell.

There is a third function of the capitalist state seldom mentioned. It consists of preventing the capitalist system from devouring itself. Consider the core contradiction Karl Marx pointed to: the tendency toward overproduction and market crisis. An economy dedicated to speedups and wage cuts, to making workers produce more and more for less and less, is always in danger of a crash. To maximize profits, wages must be kept down. But someone has to buy the goods and services being produced. For that, wages must be kept up. There is a chronic tendency-as we are seeing today-toward overproduction of private sector goods and services and underconsumption of necessities by the working populace.

In addition, there is the frequently overlooked self-destruction created by the moneyed players themselves. If left completely unsupervised, the more active command component of the financial system begins to devour less organized sources of wealth.

Instead of trying to make money by the arduous task of producing and marketing goods and services, the marauders tap directly into the money streams of the economy itself. During the 1990s we witnessed the collapse of an entire economy in Argentina when unchecked free marketeers stripped enterprises, pocketed vast sums, and left the country’s productive capacity in shambles. The Argentine state, gorged on a heavy diet of free-market ideology, faltered in its function of saving capitalism from the capitalists.

Some years later, in the United States, came the multi-billion- dollar plunder perpetrated by corporate conspirators at Enron, WorldCom, Harkin, Adelphia, and a dozen other major companies. Inside players like Ken Lay turned successful corporate enterprises into sheer wreckage, wiping out the jobs and life savings of thousands of employees in order to pocket billions.

These thieves were caught and convicted. Does that not show capitalism’s self-correcting capacity? Not really. The prosecution of such malfeasance- in any case coming too late-was a product of democracy’s accountability and transparency, not capitalism’s. Of itself the free market is an amoral system, with no strictures save “caveat emptor.”

In the meltdown of 2008-09 the mounting financial surplus created a problem for the moneyed class: there were not enough opportunities to invest. With more money than they knew what to do with, big investors poured immense sums into nonexistent housing markets and other dodgy ventures, a legerdemain of hedge funds, derivatives, high leveraging, credit default swaps, predatory lending, and whatever else.

Among the victims were other capitalists, small investors, and the many workers who lost billions of dollars in savings and pensions. Perhaps the premiere brigand was Bernard Madoff. Described as “a longstanding leader in the financial services industry,” Madoff ran a fraudulent fund that raked in $50 billion from wealthy investors, paying them back “with money that wasn’t there,” as he himself put it. The plutocracy devours its own children.

In the midst of the meltdown, at an October 2008 congressional hearing, former chair of the Federal Reserve and orthodox free-market devotee Alan Greenspan confessed that he had been mistaken to expect moneyed interests–groaning under an immense accumulation of capital that needs to be invested somewhere–to suddenly exercise self-restraint.

The classic laissez-faire theory is even more preposterous than Greenspan made it. In fact, the theory claims that everyone should pursue their own selfish interests without restraint. This unbridled competition supposedly will produce maximum benefits for all because the free market is governed by a miraculously benign “invisible hand” that optimizes collective outputs. (“Greed is good.”)

Is the crisis of 2008-09 caused by a chronic tendency toward overproduction and hyper-financial accumulation, as Marx would have it? Or is it the outcome of the personal avarice of people like Bernard Madoff? In other words, is the problem systemic or individual? In fact, the two are not mutually exclusive. Capitalism breeds the venal perpetrators, and rewards the most unscrupulous among them. The crimes and crises are not irrational departures from a rational system, but the converse: they are the rational outcomes of a basically irrational and amoral system.

Worse still, the ensuing multi-billion dollar government bailouts are themselves being turned into an opportunity for pillage. Not only does the state fail to regulate, it becomes itself a source of plunder, pulling vast sums from the federal money machine, leaving the taxpayers to bleed.

Those who scold us for “running to the government for a handout” are themselves running to the government for a handout. Corporate America has always enjoyed grants-in-aid, loan guarantees, and other state and federal subventions. But the 2008-09 “rescue operation” offered a record feed at the public trough. More than $350 billion was dished out by a right-wing lame-duck Secretary of the Treasury to the biggest banks and financial houses without oversight–not to mention the more than $4 trillion that has come from the Federal Reserve. Most of the banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon, stated that they had no intention of letting anyone know where the money was going.

The big bankers used some of the bailout, we do know, to buy up smaller banks and prop up banks overseas. CEOs and other top banking executives are spending bailout funds on fabulous bonuses and lavish corporate spa retreats. Meanwhile, big bailout beneficiaries like Citigroup and Bank of America laid off tens of thousands of employees, inviting the question: why were they given all that money in the first place?

While hundreds of billions were being doled out to the very people who had caused the catastrophe, the housing market continued to wilt, credit remained paralyzed, unemployment worsened, and consumer spending sank to record lows.

In sum, free-market corporate capitalism is by its nature a disaster waiting to happen. Its essence is the transformation of living nature into mountains of commodities and commodities into heaps of dead capital. When left entirely to its own devices, capitalism foists its diseconomies and toxicity upon the general public and upon the natural environment- -and eventually begins to devour itself.

The immense inequality in economic power that exists in our capitalist society translates into a formidable inequality of political power, which makes it all the more difficult to impose democratic regulations.

If the paladins of Corporate America want to know what really threatens “our way of life,” it is their way of life, their boundless way of pilfering their own system, destroying the very foundation on which they stand, the very community on which they so lavishly feed.

Michael Parenti’s recent books include: Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader [1] (City Lights); Democracy for the Few [2], 8th ed. (Wadsworth); The Assassination of Julius Caesar [3] (New Press), Superpatriotism [4] (City Lights), The Culture Struggle [5] (Seven Stories Press), and God and His Demons (forthcoming) . For further information, visit his website: www.michaelparenti. o

Tim Wise - Anti-Racist Activist

A friend of mine recently passed on to me this article by Tim Wise, a major anti-racist activist in America. I am not familiar with him but i will soon begin my research on him. This essay breaks down some very interesting elements of the American society and calls into question the hypocritical nature of how many issues in their society are treated depending on who they affect. TimWise.org.

I am not going to proclaim that i agree or disagree with his claims, i am just sharing with you what i came across. Please read and comment, I would love to read your thoughts on his article.

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For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative
action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child
labor, and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’ re
somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired
confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word
answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

By my posting of this is in no means saying Barack Obama is a flawless candidate, but I think he has a lot more upside than the Republican candidates running against him. Please let me know what you guys think by posting in the comments section. I think this article is a perfect catalyst to start a real dialogue about the going-ons of this the presidential election and the general make-up of race relations in America.

By Tim Wise

-SR

Time and dates in Ithiopia

Enkutatash or Ithiopian (Ethiopian) New Year is celebrated on September 11th according to the Western or Gregorian calendar. Ithiopia still follows the Orthodox Julian calendar which consists of 12 months of 30 days and a 13th month, Pagume, of five or six days, depending on whether or not it is a leap year. The Ithiopian calendar is seven years and eight months behind the Gregorian calendar, so September 2001 is Meskerem 1994 in  Ithiopia.

The way Ithiopians measure time is also different from the West. The clock starts at 6am western time and runs until 6pm. Therefore 8o’clock in western time would be 2o’clock Ithiopian time. Because Ithiopia is close to the Equator the sun rises at around 00.30 Ithiopian time and sets at around 12.45 in the evening (6.45 western equivalent) all year round. Ithiopia is 3 hours ahead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).

The years run in a four year cycle bearing the names of the Gospels with the year of John or Yohannes being the leap year.
for full calendar click here

Enkutatash is an important festival in the lives of Ithiopians. After three months of heavy rains the sun comes out creating a beautiful clear fresh atmosphere. The highland fields turn to gold as the Meskal daisies burst into flower. When Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, returned to Ithiopia after her famous visit to King Solomon, her chiefs welcomed her forward by giving her “enku” or jewels. Enkutatash which means “gift of jewels”‘ has been celebrated ever since in spring. Meskerem is seen as a month of transition from the old year to the new. It is a time to express hopes and dreams for the future.

Orthodox Enkutatash Celebrations

The largest religious celebration is in the 14th-century Kostete Yohannes church in the city of Gaynt in the Gondar Region. For 3 days the sounds of psalms, sermons, prayers and hymns can be heard as colourful processions welcome the New Year. There is a large celebration nearer to Addis Abeba, the capital, at the Ragual Church on Entoto mountain.
Enkutatash customs

On New Year’s Eve, torches of dry leaves and wood bundled in the form of tall and thick sticks are also set on fire in front of houses as the young and old sing. Early in the morning everybody goes to Church wearing traditional Ethiopian clothing. After Church there is a family meal of Injera (flat bread) and Wat (stew). The girls go from house to house singing New Year songs for money and the boys sell pictures that they have drawn. In the evening families go to visit their friends and drink tella the traditional Ethiopian beer. While the elders discuss their hopes for the New Year the children go and spend the money they have earned.
In more recent times it has also become usual for well-to-do city dwellers to send each other New Year greetings cards instead of the more traditional bunches of flowers.

Rasta Wanna Be

Greetings in the name of the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, H.I.M King Selassie I, JAH RASTAFARI

It is all so common to see people of all walks of life wearing “Dread Locks”, Red Gold and Green, Smoking Ganja and wearing Bob Marley T-Shirts. This pop culture phenomenon in of itself serves to be a double edged sword. It lends it self to being evidence of the positive vibrations of the Rastafari Movement, yet at the same time serves as a direct force of disinformation of the Rastafari livity. More times than none, the type of person I have just described are whom InI call “Fashion Dreads” or Impostors. Further more it is easy to run into those who call themselves Rasta, but in all actuality they are Rastafari Sympathizers; infatuated with the culture and lifestyle of the Rastafari Breadreen and Sistreeen.
Recently a friend of mine, who I might add is a Gentile, asked me the following question and requested that I blog my thoughts on it.
“In regards to becoming a Rastafari, is it foolish or considered taboo for a white person to convert or join this way of life because of the Pan-Africanism and Afro-centric beliefs and world view.”

Within this question there are actually 3 elements to be discussed.

1. Conversion to Rastafari
2. The principals of Rastafari
3. White Rastafari peoples

Please follow me as I address these three elements.

Conversion to Rastafari

King of Ieration

One does not convert to Rastafari, because Rastafari in its essence is a Livity (way of life) that one is called upon by the Most High to live.
The Irit (Spirit) of Rastafari is with InI from Ireation (Creation) however it often reveals itself stage by stage. Rastafari is a livity (way of life), and as in life, you learn as you live. As you grow, you learn the elements of Life, Love, Justice and the workings of the Iniverse (universe) and your eyes open a little bit wider. It is when one fully opens their eyes and submits to the will and teachings of the Head Creator as manifested in the image of Rastafari, does one become Rastafari in fullness.
To that end “many are called but only the few are chosen”, thus you do not chose to be Rastafari you are created Rastafari

The principals of Rastafari

The Last Supper

There are three main Mansions of Rastafari, the Theocratic Order of Nyabinghi, Boboshanti, and 12 Tribes of Israel. The dress, services, and interactions vary from Mansion to Mansion however all Rastafari maintain the following principals and manifest them in their lives. Any man or woman who claims to be Rastafari and do not submit to these “Kingcipals” are either wolves in sheep’s clothing, ignorant to the way of Rastafari, or are simply just sympathizers of the Movement. For these principals are the defining factors that separates a Ras from a Dread.

1. Rastafari revere H.I.M. Emperor Haile Sellassie I of Ethiopia as King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and the Conquering Lion of Judah. The 225th descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the last to sit upon the Throne of David, God Head, and the Ancient of Days. The same Lion of Judah that the book of Revelations Ch. 5 spoke of. Thus we submit to his will and teachings.
2. The Honourable Marcus Garvey is our Prophet and has his place in the hierarchy of Rastafari
3. InI actively fight against oppression and downpression (hence the word Nyabinghi means “death to all black and white oppressors”)
4. Ethiopia is the Holy Land and is an integral part of the Garden of Eden as recorded in the book of Genesis.
5. “Africa for the Africans, at Home and Abroad”. Rastafari assert that all the African peoples brought to the western hemisphere through the advent of European slave trading, whose progeny still survives, have the inherent rights to demand their repatriation back to the African continent if so desired. Furthermore, all costs and reparations should be contributed by nations that participated in the nefarious practises of African slave trading
6. Adhere to a Rastafari “Ital Livity”, a lifestyle that is organic and sustainable
7. Reasoning and or being Reasonable.

All Rastafari brethren hold sacred these basic I-cepts of the culture, to which we offer Biblical and Historical reference; particularly the recorded history of Ethiopia.

White Rastas, Taboo?

Rastafari knows no boarders; it flows through race, gender, or geography because it is an Ineversal (universal) Irit (spirit).  The mission of Rastafari is to create unity and universal harmony.  In his 1963 Declaration to the League of Nations H.I.M King Selassie I said:

“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained… now everywhere is war.”

In saying all this, Rastafari Idren do not look down upon their brothers and sisters who may be of a Caucasoid, Asian, South East Asian or any other genealogy. I would like to reverse the question now and ask are you willing to humble yourself to accept the principals of an Afro-centric world view.  Would you be willing to submit to the teachings and will of a Black King and God. 

King of Iration

One does not convert to Rastafari, because Rastafari in its essence is a Livity (way of life) that one is called upon by the Most High to live.
The Irit (Spirit) of Rastafari is with InI from Ireation (Creation) however it often reveals itself stage by stage. Rastafariis a livity (way of life), and as in life, you learn as you live. As you grow, you learn the elements of Life, Love, Justice and the workings of the Iniverse (universe) and your eyes open a little bit wider. It is when one fully opens their eyes and submits to the will and teachings of the Head Creator as manifested in the image of Rastafari, does one become Rastafariin fullness.
To that end “many are called but only the few are chosen”, thus you do not chose to be Rastafari you are created Rastafari