No doubt we all remember the weeks of turmoil in Madison, Wisconsin, when the governor, Scott Walker, tried to take away the bargaining rights of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public sector workers, ostensibly to save money for the state.
Finally, Scott Walker admits what we all knew already: taking away bargaining rights doesn’t save the State of Wisconsin one penny.
This was a clear attempt to strip away the hard-won rights of workers by a Republican party under the control of big business.
What other possible reason could they have for attempting to suppress working people in this way?
Walker makes a feeble attempt to defend his actions, following the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s hearing, in a video released on YouTube. He tries to argue that collective bargaining is not a worker’s right, just like the landed gentry and mill owners of 19th century Britain did, when eighteen hours was a normal working day and a pittance was the reward.
Anyone wishing to hear the further rantings of this apprentice megalomaniac can find it at the link below. That he is allowed to use the emblem of the Oversight Committee as a frontispiece for this video says much about the impartiality (or lack of) of the committee’s chairman, Darrell Issa, a Republican from California. (Note the tweets in support of Walker’s video, both of them originating from Issa’s office).[1]
Some of you out there in the blogosphere may possibly remember a certain country just to the west of Iran, called Iraq. It was in the news quite a lot, until about a year or so back, because the Americans and British were busy bringing democracy to the place.
Job done, the lads came home and left the Iraqis to enjoy their newly bestowed democratic freedom. All, that is, bar fifty thousand American troops, left behind to assist in teaching the manner of democracy.
Unfortunately, the Iraqi people are an ungrateful lot. They’ve not been quick to thank the Americans (or the British) for all the hard work that was done on their behalf. In fact, only this week – the anniversary of the old dictator’s capture – tens of thousands of Iraqis poured onto the streets, calling April 9th – the day US troops occupied Baghdad – the ‘Black Day’.
Here’s an excerpt from one of the region’s main blogs, Gorilla’s Guides:
There were demonstrations in several cities in Iraq marking the 2003-U.S. invasion and occupation of the country.
But the event, which toppled a dictatorial regime, had no words of praise as tens of thousands of Iraqis went to the streets lashing out at their U.S. occupiers and the factional leaders they brought with them.
These factional leaders currently administer the country, but their rule is reported to be as bad as that of the [dictator] Saddam Hussein, and for many Iraqis even worse.
The slogans, placards and pictures raised during the demonstrations carried grievances from which millions of Iraqis suffered under Saddam Hussein.
There were bereaved women, clad in black, asking for information about their husbands or sons, who disappeared and they still have no word about their whereabouts.
Thousands of women carried photos of their beloved ones who they said were languishing in Iraqi jails without trial and in detention centers they cannot reach and visit.
There were placards with anti-government slogans, demanding the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to issue credible information about the secret jails where his security forces torture his opponents.
Most heart-breaking was the sight of hundreds of women in down town Baghdad who carried pictures of husbands, sons and beloved ones they said had disappeared in the years since the 2003-U.S. invasion.[1]
Now, that doesn’t sound to me like democracy.
America has an agreement with the Iraqi ‘government’ to remove all US troops by the end of this year. You’d think this would satisfy those Iraqis who fail to appreciate their liberation by the US/British.
Unfortunately, word is out that that a secret deal is being cut between ‘prime minister’ Maliki and the US government, allowing the US to keep troops in the country longer – probably till 2016, or maybe even 2020. Or, longer?[2]
After all, they have spent lots of dollars building those big American bases[3], and it seems a shame to let them rot away, unused.
One Iraqi not amused by this news is the cleric, Muqtada al Sadr. He’s the guy who commands the Mahdi Army, who definitely weren’t keen on democracy American-style, and caused lots of problems during the liberation.
Image courtesy: Christian Science Monitor
Here, we see them tramping all over a mock-up US flag, last week, during the demonstrations.
Here’s another excerpt from Gorilla’s Guides:
A new slogan has appeared in the past week on walls in eastern Baghdad and some southern Iraqi towns. Scrawled in paint, it is a simple and, to many Iraqis, chilling promise: “The Mahdi Army is returning.”
On the buildings that line the streets and alleyways of neighbourhoods in the Shiite strongholds of north-eastern Baghdad, similarly foreboding messages admonish men against shaving their beards and women against forsaking the abaya for western clothing. Iraq’s security forces quickly whitewash over the warnings, only for them to reappear elsewhere.
They appear to be a calling card of the Mahdi Army which, at the height of its influence in Baghdad after the US-led invasion of 2003, prohibited Iraqis from watching football on television on the grounds that sport was against the teachings of Islam. It also operated death squads and fought US troops and Sunni militants with equal ferocity.
The feared Shiite militia was disbanded in 2008, but the prospect of its return has never been far from the minds of Iraqis. That possibility inched closer to reality when the Sadrist movement, which encompasses the Mahdi Army, won a prominent role in the government in last year’s elections.
It is not only graffiti that has heralded a revival of the Madhi Army. Muqtada al Sadr, the cleric who leads the Sadrist movement, has openly threatened to deploy it.
In an address read out to thousands of his loyalists in Baghdad on Saturday, Mr al Sadr said he would revoke the orders freezing Mahdi Army activity and instruct the militia to resume military resistance against US troops if they remain in Iraq after the end of this year.
Under an agreement between Baghdad and Washington, all US military personnel are due to leave by the start of 2012, but US defence chiefs have hinted that they would like a sizeable force to remain beyond that point to prevent a security vacuum.[4]
There are those ‘conspiracy-theorists’ who have said the US had no intention of ever leaving Iraq. The vast sums spent on constructing massive military bases and ’embassies’ throughout the country were an assurance of US permanency.
They also suggested that Maliki and his gang were an American puppet government, empowered to do US bidding; one demand being to pave the way for a continued US presence.
Of course, conspiracy-theorists spring up everywhere these days with the most absurd ideas. I’m just glad, where Iraq was concerned, that I wasn’t one of them.
No, I wasn’t……I wasn’t! Well, okay, perhaps I was.
But, maybe, it won’t be long before Iraq is once again center-stage on our TV screens. I hope not, because it will mean more of its people are needlessly dying in the furtherance of ‘Western democracy’.
Question: What happens to a country when the education system is left to rot for a few decades?
Answer: The population grows ever more ignorant of matters it should really be cognizant of.
Take America’s so-called ‘national debt’, as an example.
For years, both Democrats and Republicans have played politics with the education of America’s children. In 2006, George W Bush proposed cutting spending on education by $3 billion, to help fund his two major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Remember his underfunded and mismanaged ‘No Child Left Behind’ program, that left more children behind than it helped?
Keeping people in ignorance, as any third world dictator will tell you, makes them much more malleable to manipulation.
Then comes said manipulation: “America is heavily in debt and we cannot leave these levels of debt for our grandchildren. Only we (the Republicans) are sufficiently responsible to force the government to take serious action to lower the debt.”
Most Americans today have no idea what the national debt is, and relate to it in much the same way they relate to their own household debt, which is exactly what the Republicans want them to do.
As a consequence, when Americans are asked whether politicians should vote to raise the debt ceiling – an essential task, without which the economy would collapse (a matter Republican’s are not heard hollering from the rooftops) – the result is:
46% are opposed to raising the debt ceiling.
Only 16% are in favor.
When respondents were told that failing to raise the debt ceiling will cause America to default on its debt repayments, and advised of the consequences of that default:
62% were opposed to raising the debt ceiling – a rise of 16%.
32% were in favor.
Even when informed of the dire consequences of not raising the debt ceiling, almost two-thirds were still doggedly demanding it should not be raised. This is a spectacularly transparent example of the effects of propaganda on the poorly educated.
For those still in any doubt of a) the effects of not raising the debt ceiling, and b) the manipulation by Republicans (to their own political advantage) of the term, ‘national debt’, listen carefully to what Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has to say in this interview on MSNBC last night.[1]
In case anyone was left in any doubt after listening to Robert Greenstein, who is likely one of the most expert people in America on budgetary policy, the national debt is nothing like a maxed out credit card. There is, however, one similarity: if Tea Party Republicans succeed in their threats to filibuster the bill to raise the debt ceiling, and it isn’t passed, America’s credit rating will plunge throughout the world. Future American borrowing (which every nation needs to do) will cost much more. Just as credit card interest rates are hiked for bad payers, so will America’s be hiked.
This means a plunging economy, many lost jobs, and an almost certain return to recession, or more likely, economic depression.
Why would Republicans want to bring that about? The only possible answer is to gain political power. Yet again, politicians are playing fast and loose with the lives of those they’re elected to serve.
Republican politicians got themselves elected last November on a ticket of fiscal responsibility. Since then, they’ve dragged the US government through a mire of budget-cutting bills and debates. All of which, they say, is in the interests of ‘cutting the debt’ for the future of America.
To achieve this end, one of the measures Republicans intend to implement is cutting Social Security, but you’ve just heard Robert Greenstein say that Social Security is running a surplus each year. $4 trillion dollars of the ‘national debt’ is money purloined from the Social Security trust fund by previous administrations – in the case of George W Bush, to fund the Iraq war.
A not insignificant proportion of the so-called ‘national debt’ is nothing more than one US government department owing another US government department. Hardly a matter over which America’s grandchildren will lose sleep.
No sensible person would deny it is a good thing to reduce debt. America needs to do so. Cutting spending is one way, but it always, always, falls more heavily on those already struggling to make ends meet.
A better way is to increase national income, or the amount the US government receives. A fair system of taxation, with everybody paying according to their means and the wealthiest paying the most, is a more sensible approach to cutting national debt. It’s the one Republicans and some Democrats) are most obstinately against.
I wonder why?
To even suggest not raising the debt ceiling in this country is to propose plunging this nation into economic chaos. No responsible politician, who truly wanted to serve his/her country, would entertain the notion.
That some do is, at best, grossly irresponsible, and, at worst, verging on traitorous.
Gutter-politics
That one sure went well
Playing politics with people