Monthly Archives: June 2020

This week the leaders of India and Australia reaffirmed their mutual interest in closer diplomatic and economic ties.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison during their long-delayed Thursday virtual summit:

India is committed to expanding its relations with Australia on a wider and faster pace. This is important not only for our two countries, but also for the Indo-Pacific region and the world.

But I will not say that I am satisfied with this pace. When a leader like you is leading our friend country, then the criteria for the pace of development in our relations should also be ambitious.

Australia should be ambitious for its friendship with India. We have a long-term interest in India developing as another prosperous, harmonious democracy.

Standing in the way of that is Indias chaotic web of labour laws. There are hundreds at both national and state levels. Theyve long been a disincentive to trade and investment because of the compliance challenges for law-abiding foreign businesses.

Yet those same laws are so loosely enforced domestically that dodgy and unlawful working conditions are rife.

Indeed of Indias workforce of 500 million, it is estimated about 450 million are in the informal sector, with no minimum pay rates, let alone other benefits.

So there are good reasons for Australia to support India reducing its sheer number of labour laws. But there are also good reasons to encourage it to enforce the commitments required of both nations under international labour conventions.

In the shadows of the agenda to accelerate trade and investment is the risk of pushing more Indian workers into slave conditions.

In truth, no one knows the exact size of Indias informal sector. Statistics are unreliable for work defined as disorganised.

As in other countries, Indias COVID-19 response has hit these workers in lowly paid, insecure manual labour hardest. This was amplified by the severity and swiftness of measures.

Modis March 24 orders for a complete lockdown were issued at 8:58pm, and took effect at midnight.

Shops, markets, factories and construction sites were shut down. All public transport services were stopped. Indias population of more than 1.3 billion people was told to stay home.

But hundred of thousands had to get home first.

India has an estimated 139 million internal migrant workers. They come from poor regions all across India to find work in the wealthiest cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Surat. Typical jobs are in building and manufacturing, where the average daily pay rate is about US$4.60.

With no work, no money, in fear of having no food and of catching the coronavirus, migrant workers have for weeks queued at train and bus stations for restricted services to get home.

Tens of thousands opted to walk home.

A survey of about 3,200 of these walkers in early April found nearly a third were in debt, usually to money lenders from their communities.

Bhagwan Das, who walked for three days to get back to his village after losing his job as a construction worker in Delhi, told his story to the Thomson Reuters Foundation

Unable to maintain repayments on the 60,000 rupee (US$787) loan he took out in 2017 for his daughters wedding, Das had no choice but to offer his sons labour to service the rising debt.

The Global Slavery Index 2018 estimates about 8 million Indians are in some form of modern slavery in situations were they are forced to work under threat; are owned or controlled by another; are dehumanised or treated as a commodity; and are not free to leave.

Globally there is an estimated 40 million modern slaves. About 25 million are in forced labour. This may be through use or threats of violence, physical or emotional restraints, or bonded labour also known as debt bondage, forcing people to work to pay off a debt.

Read more: Human trafficking and slavery still happen in Australia. This comic explains how

Debt bondage is the most prevalent form of forced labour. In India, a 2016 investigation in the southern state of Tamil Nadu (Indias largest producer of cotton yarn) found 351 of 743 spinning mills used so-called Sumangali schemes to lure young women with the promise of lump sums for use as a dowry.

In practice this lump sum is made up of withheld wages, and used as a means to bind workers to the mill. Girls only receive the lump sum if they fulfil their three to five years contract period, under exploitative and unhealthy conditions. Girls who fail to do so, and many do because of health problems, abuse and exhaustion, most often do not receive the withheld wages.

This despite bonded labour being outlawed since 1976, and dowries since 1961.

So clearly law enforcement in India needs work. As things stand, however, the push is on to do even less. Half a dozen of Indias 28 states have already signalled their desire to suspend labour laws.

The northern state of Uttar Pradesh, for example, summarily suspended most laws including its minimum wage act. It reportedly plans to maintain most suspensions for three years.

As Radhicka Kapoor, of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, has put it, these policies are creating an enabling environment for exploitation.

The International Labour Organisation, which sets international labour standards, has written to Modi asking him to ensure India upholds its international commitments.

Read more: Modern Slavery Bill a step in the right direction now businesses must comply

Both India and Australia are signatories to the International Labour Organsiations Declaration on the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which states these rights are universal and apply to all people in all states - regardless of the level of economic development.

Ensuring they apply to all of Australias supply chains is crucial for the Morrison government to continue to be a world leader in eradicating modern slavery as Home Affairs Minister Jason Woods declared just three days before the Modi-Morrison meeting.

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Fast moves in India-Australia relations risk pushing millions more into modern slavery - The Conversation AU

Ahmaud Arberys lynching raises the specter of slavery like the hoisting of a rebel flag.

This crimes imagery the white men racing, the rifles brandishing, the black man fleeing looks ripped from Birth of a Nation. Georgia, where Arbery was killed, still houses Stone Mountain, the worlds largest Confederate monument. It rivals Mount Rushmore in size.

For Ahmauds killers, his life was worth less than whatever they assumed he stole. For Ahmauds killers, protecting neighborhood property was paramount. In the months leading up to Arberys death, Greg McMichael, who along his son was arrested and charged in Arberys death, offered help to the local police to keep anyone out of a community construction site near where the events unfolded. He said residents should call him if they spotted anyone suspicious. We know many casually visited this property black people, white people, men, women, and children. But it was a black person whom the McMichaels are accused of hunting down and killing.

Its a familiar pattern. In the shocking video of George Floyds death, the nation watched a white police officer kill a black man for allegedly spending a counterfeit $20 bill at a grocery store. Its reminiscent of Mike Brown, who was killed over cigarillos, or Breonna Taylor, who was killed over nonexistent drugs, or Shelly Frey, who was killed over Walmart shoplifting, or William Chapman, who was killed over Walmart shoplifting, or Eric Garner, who was killed over loose cigarettes, or Shantel Davis, who was killed over a stolen Toyota, or Jessica Williams, who was killed over a stolen Honda, or Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed over someone else stealing a gun weeks before he went out for a run on February 23.

In the gun barrels of vigilante citizens, under the knees of police officers, and now in the hasty reopening of states, we have received an answer to what has been one of the essential questions of the coronavirus era: What is the value of a human life?

Some politicians have said its priceless. Other public policy experts argued its in the tens of millions. Whatever the going rate is supposed to be, its clear its less for black people. This deficit was anticipated by the Black Lives Matter movement, which years ago articulated the markdown on black lives and now seems prophetic amid news of senseless death and disease disproportionately affecting black people.

Americas racial hierarchy stratifies such that black lives regularly rank below the value of their white counterparts, under that of private property and, as witnessed in the mad dash to reopen stores, beneath that of corporate profits.

This devaluing of black people and the sacrificing of them to make money goes back to slavery. At the countrys founding, the Constitution enumerated black life as three-fifths of a white life, and the discount did not end there. Crossing over a bridge built by inequities like Jim Crow, separate but equal, and mass incarceration, America continues to operate under the antebellum accounting that appraises black folks as worth less. Today, whether weighed against the worth of stolen goods from a neighbors house or compared to new revenue from reopening retailers, profit margins outweigh black peoples mortality.

American real estate culture has long treated black people as a dangerous contagion.

Historically, white homeowners react to black passersby the way Sen. Richard Burr allegedly reacts to coronavirus briefings by selling. Through the 1970s, real estate agents paid black people to stroll down the sidewalks in white neighborhoods to panic owners. Spooked, white homeowners parted with their property for fear of plummeting prices.

Today, appraisers still mark down home values in black areas, and too many black residents continue to correlate with lower demand. Many white homeowners view black bodies as a threat to their property even without a crime being committed. That notion, combined with stereotypes about innate black criminality, can form a deadly cocktail for a black man like Arbery jogging through the wrong neighborhood.

Far from fringe, Georgias governor bragged about conducting racist patrols in his own community. In a 2018 election ad, Brian Kemp cocks his shotgun, hops into his Ford F-350, slams his door, and drawls, Ive got a big truck, just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take them home myself. The ad could seem to serve as a dry run for two years later, when the McMichaels grabbed their guns, hopped in their truck, and went to round up their own criminal in the southeastern region of the state.

Kemp was also one of the last governors to close his state and the first to reopen it during the pandemic for the sake of preserving the economy. Vice President Mike Pence praised the move. Last month, in a press conference with restaurateurs, Pence commended Georgia for being a freedom fighter on the front lines of reopening the economy. Waffle House CEO Walt Ehmer beamed, noting the company had recovered 70 percent of its revenue since the state opened.

Across the country, 80 percent of black workers do not have the ability to work from home. Theyve borne the brunt of this essential work.

Thus, while delaying closing and then fast-tracking reopening has been fantastic for short-term profits and the illusion of economic rebound, reopening has loomed ominously for many black essential workers.

Public health experts have noted an uptick in cases and hospitalizations since the reopening in the state. Last month, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 80 percent of Georgias hospitalizations were black people. The study cited concerns about infections contracted during the unique occupational hazards black folks face.

For black people, I have to say that message is one that [for] our ancestors, thats been the story of America for us, former Demos president Heather McGhee said in a recent interview, explaining how many business leaders have eagerly pushed their minority workforces back into the Covid-19 economy. Where does this belief [come from], particularly among people who have a lot of money, that other peoples lives are easy fodder to make more money? That does come back to the ideology of racial slavery. It does.

President of the Appeal Josie Duffy Rice also shared this concern after conservative politicians urged the rapid reopening of the country, tweeting today has made it very clear how many people would have absolutely justified slavery because the economy.

The point is simple. Many of todays top executives and politicians manage the economy as the intellectual progeny of yesterdays slave owners. The demographics of corporate power reflect this fact. According to a 2015 Demos report, 91 percent of American CEOs are white. Meanwhile, across the economy, Black and Latino workers are less likely to work in professional, management, and related occupations the highest paid occupational category in the labor force.

In Accounting for Slavery, University of California Berkeley historian Caitlin Rosenthal traces how plantation economics influence modern management. It was remarkably easy for slaveholders to overlook the human costs of their profits, and it can be similarly convenient for modern managers (and consumers) to forget the conditions under which goods are made, she wrote.

The United States did not truly end slavery until the year before the birth of Donald Trump as late as the 1940s. According to the reporting of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Douglas Blackmon, in the American South, enslaved black people worked in forced-labor camps. Many were chained. They toiled under the lash. Overseers worked them to death on farms, on railroads, and in coal mines. The revenue generated fueled the fortunes of titans like Coca-Cola, the Woodruff family, and Wachovia Bank. The same disregard for black lives that grew these major corporate giants back then is being summoned for the sustenance of todays restaurants, warehouses, and retailers.

In his book Democracy in Black, Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. describes how Americans pedestrians and politicians alike discount black peoples lives the way grocers do expiring meat. No matter our stated principles, or how much progress we think weve made, white people are valued more than others in this country, and that fact continues to shape the life chances of millions of Americans, Glaude wrote, adding, Every day, black people confront the damning reality that we are less valued.

We know how much less.

Calculating their smaller life insurance payouts, deflated wage rates, marked-down housing values, diminutive public education expenditures, and several other empirical measures, Duke University economist William Darity estimates black lives are worth less than one-third of white lives.

The discount rate on black humanity has been enormous, he writes. A variety of metrics indicate that, even after the end of Jim Crow, black lives are routinely assigned a worth approximately 30 percent that of white lives.

Now, refracted through the urgent lens of the coronavirus, we are witnessing the logical ends of political rhetoric, swirling for years, which has not merely measured black life as a fraction of other lives but assessed it as a negative value.

Trump calls Mexicans murderers and rapists before implementing draconian immigration policies against them. One is a precursor to the other. The devaluing of black life is a precursor to the policies that put black folks in harms way during the pandemic.

This idea is visible in popular stereotypes: Black people dont pay taxes; they mooch on welfare. Black people dont add to universities; they take affirmative action slots. Black people dont add to productivity; they take good jobs. Black people dont improve neighborhoods; they invite crime and lower property values. Black people dont protest; they loot. This last trope was espoused by the president of the United States last week.

Following demonstrations for George Floyd, Trump threatened to use the military against thug protesters, tweeting that when the looting starts, the shooting starts. The irony is painfully self-evident. Trump threatened to kill protesters for damaging property during a protest honoring George Floyd, who was killed for allegedly stealing property: a pack of cigarettes.

Later, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) rebuffed Trump on CNN after he tried to water down the threat. When you start taking lives because of a property crime, you take us back to a place in our history that gave rise to all of this, Clyburn insisted.

We all know what happened to people of color when they were accused of property crimes, he said. Thats whats going on here.

This notion that black lives are liabilities, not assets, remains pervasive in American political life. It is uniquely dangerous. When a human life is reduced to a loss of or a threat to property, it is not viewed as a life at all, but rather a wasteful expense that needs to be cut.

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Americas slave mentality killed Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd - Vox.com

Published: 6/5/2020 10:00:22 PM

Modified: 6/5/2020 10:00:10 PM

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said a riot is the language of the unheard. While not condoning violence, much less encouraging it, I am compelled to observe that the sometimes-violent methods recently adopted by protestors seeking redress of long-festering social issues is, sadly, understandable. When a match is tossed into a pile of dry brush, the result is as predictable as it is tragic.

The unrest seen in many parts of our nation this past week following yet another egregious policing overreach that caused the death of a fellow citizen, a black American, is not, in my view, an overreaction.

This unrest rises from a deep foundation: more than four centuries of exclusion, injustice, emotional abuse, lack of basic human decency, and yes violence systematically perpetrated by our establishment institutions and, via our votes, by ourselves upon our fellow American citizens of differing genetic lineage.

Violence begets violence; mistreatment begets mistrust. Slavery. The lack of any meaningful economic justice post-slavery. Lynching. Jim Crow. The unrealized promise of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Separate but equal. Systemic racism. Mass incarceration. Wage inequality. Opportunity inequity. Rising from all of these, black Americans to this day have a palpable fear of being found suspect based only on the color of their skin, a fear I can never know.

Whatever the recent violence, it falls far short of the cumulative scale of these past sins, sins so long unaddressed as to embed them in the American soul. We reap what we sow, and weve been sowing a crop of racism in this nation for a very long time.

Therefore, the noteworthy news is not the violence but rather, in the face of the past, the praiseworthy restraint exhibited by the vast majority of protestors.

MARK KIRK

Unity

Rising to meat demand (May 24) is another Valley News article fostering animal cruelty. The demand for animal flesh, secretions and dead embryos is a false demand there are no nutritional needs to eat animals and therefore no ethical reasons exist to force-breed and kill animals for consumption. And Vermont Packinghouses claim of humane slaughter is a joke. Unnecessary killing is not humane.

Animal-free diets are not fads; they are the only ones humans can afford if we want a future. Popular Mechanics reported that plant-based diets are healthiest for humans, the planet and animals. The World Health Organization categorizes processed meat as a carcinogen. A number of studies have suggested that dairy products are a risk factor for prostate cancer. These science-based truths are what our family, including the dogs, live by without problems.

Kaiser Permanente, the largest health care management company in the U.S., has a 36-page ebooklet about the advantages of plant diets. Humana, the third-largest insurance company, trains doctors in plant-based health. The U.N. urges everyone to eat plant-based diets as the surest and least destructive way to slow global warming and to end hunger and starvation because 80% of farmland grows monocrops for farmed animals, croplands that in the U.S. alone could feed 800 million people. Worldwide, farmlands could produce ample food to feed all humanity healthful plant-based meals, and reduce the greenhouse gases from the farmed animal industry that drive global warming, and dramatically reduce the poisoning of the land, water and life with runoff from farming animals fed antibiotics and ground up garbage. And it would end the slaughter of 3 trillion animals annually for human food.

Why does the Valley News promote animal-based foods and print articles about slaughterhouses, for example, as if they are necessary? Why take the corporate oppressors side with language like stunning unruly animals instead of writing animals struggling for their lives? To not tell the whole story with compassion is lazy reporting.

MARGARET D. HURLEY

Claremont

My name is Keith Stern and I am announcing my campaign for a Windsor County Senate seat.

Some of you may recognize me as a candidate for governor two years ago. My platform has not changed. I want to see a more responsible budget, end Act 46, and make sure Act 250 goes back to its original goal and not become an excessively restrictive hurdle to responsible development. Above anything, the federal and state constitutions must be followed to avoid an abusive government.

Humorist Dave Barry once said that Democrats are good people with good intentions but are incompetent. They would stop to help someone change a tire and end up setting the car on fire. They have good intentions but they fail to understand how to accomplish their goals, so they end up hurting us with ineffective and restrictive laws. We can see this every day with struggling businesses, low wages and an overall cost of living that exceeds our wages. Affordable housing is a major issue here because of excessive regulations for building, high property taxes, and lack of landlord protection against destructive, disruptive and deadbeat tenants. Ultimately, it isnt the landlords who bear the cost, it is the tenants. I will work to fix these issues to create more affordable housing. At the same time, I will introduce an effective tenant protection bill as well.

The cost of health insurance is very high in comparison to other states, again due to overregulation. I will introduce a bill that will lower health care and health insurance costs.

I hope you visit my Facebook page, Keith Stern for Windsor County, and see how a vote for me will be a vote for lowering taxes, a better, more cost-effective education system, and a stronger economy.

KEITH STERN

North Springfield

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Forum, June 6: America is reaping what it has sown - Valley News

Protesting in New York (Pic: Gabriele Holtermann-Gorden//PA Images)

Sparked by the police murder of George Floyd, mass protests have been sweeping across the US with an intensity not seen since the 1960s.

In over 150 cities, African Americans and their allies have flooded the streets, braving the Covid-19 pandemic, defying police violence, challenging centuries of racial and class inequalities and demanding liberty and justice for all.

Day after day they have confronted a corrupt, racist power structure based on violent repression.

Richard Greeman, a Marxist writer and activist best known for his work on Victor Serge, gives his analysis of the momentous US events

Breaches in the systems defences

After ten consecutive days in the streets, this outpouring of popular indignation against systematic, historic injustice, has opened a number of breaches in the defensive wall of the system.

The legal authorities in the state of Minnesota, where George Floyd was murdered, have been force to arrest and indict as accomplices the three other policemen who aided and abetted the killer, against whom the charges were raised from third to second degree murder.

A split has opened at the summit of power, where the Secretary of Defense and numerous Pentagon officials have broken with their Commander in Chief, Donald Trump, who has attempted to mobilise the U.S. Army against the protesters.

This historic uprising is an outpouring of accumulated black anger over decades of unpunished police murders of unarmed African-Americans. It articulates the accumulated grief of families and communities.

It reflects the sheer outrage over impunity for killer cops in both the North and the South. It reflects anger at capitalist Americas betrayal of Martin Luther Kings dream of non-violent revolution.

It shows the horror at the return to the era of public lynchings cheered on by the president of the US. It impatiently demands that America at long last live up to its proclaimed democratic ideals, here and now.

In the words of one African-American protester, William Achukwu, 28, of San Francisco, Our Declaration of Independence says life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Right now we are only dealing with the life part here.

"This is a first step. But liberty is what a lot of people out here are marching for."

Violence and non-violence

It came as no surprise that local and state officials across the US reacted to largely peaceful, spontaneous mass protests against police brutality and racism by unleashing a maelstrom of militarised police violence.

For a generation, the Federal government has been quietly gifting huge stocks of surplus military equipment, including tanks, to local police forces and sheriffs' offices. Police are eager to play with lethal new toys designed for counter-insurgency in places like Afghanistan.

Under both Democrats (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) and Republicans (George Bush, Donald Trump) the federal state has been arming law enforcement in preparation for a preventive counter-revolution. This is precisely what President Trump is calling for today.

He demands full dominance by means of military crackdowns, mass arrests and long prison sentences in the name of law and order.

Thanks to the determination of these masses of militant, but largely non-violent protesters, the military is divided and Trump has not had his way.

Concerning violence, it was feared at first that the numerous incidences of setting fires, smashing shop fronts, and looting, would in some way spoil the uprising.

It might also be used to provide a pretext for the violent, military suppression of the whole movement, as called for by Trump. He blamed it all on an imaginary terrorist group called ANTIFA (short for anti-fascism, in fact a loose network).

At the same time, reports of gangs of young white racists wearing MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats committing vandalism, of Accellerationists systematically setting fires in black neighbourhoods to provoke revolution, and of violent police provocateurs are not entirely to be discounted.

Such actions play into Trumps hands. But the hundreds of thousands of angry but non-violent protesters, might not have been listened to by the authorities if it had not been for the threat of violence if their voices were ignored.

Instead of burning their own neighbourhoods as has happened in past riots, todays militants are strategically hitting symbols of state repression and capitalism. They are lighting up and destroying police property, trashing the stores of million-dollar corporations, and even pushing against the gates of the White House.

In any case, as far as looting is concerned, as the spokeswomen of BLM argued at George Floyds funeral, white people have been looting Africa and African-Americans for centuries. Payback is long overdue.

Black and white anti-racist convergence

What is remarkable and heartening is the realisation that large numbers of the demonstrators in the crowds proclaiming Black Lives Matter are white people.

Here again, a serious breach has been opened in the wall of systemic, institutionalised racism that has for centuries enabled the US ruling class to divide and conquer the working masses. It has pitted slave labourers and their discriminated descendants against white wage slaves in a competitive race to the bottom.

Today in some places they are uniting in the fight for justice and equality. Equally remarkable is the continuing. leadership role of women, especially African-American women in the founding of both the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the Womens March against Trumps Inauguration.

This convergence of freedom struggles across deeply rooted racial divides promises to open new paths as US social movements emerge from the Covid-19 confinement.

Public officials, like the Mayor of Los Angeles, have been obliged to meet with the protesters and to apologize for previous racist remarks.

Cracks within the regime

After ten days during which the protests have continued to increase numerically and to deepen in radical content, cracks have opened in the defences of the ruling corporate billionaire class and have reached the White House.

ForDonald Trump, the self-deluded, ignorant bully and pathological liar supposedly in charge, has finally been challenged by his own appointed security officials.

It must be said that in Trump, todays billionaire ruling class has the representative it deserves. The Donalds ineptitude, visible to all, is symbolic of its historic incapacity to retain the right to rule.

Trumps flawed, self-centred personality incarnates the narrow class interests of the 0.01 percent who own more than half the wealth of the nation.

His obvious selfishness exemplifies that of the billionaires he represents. Out of his willful ignorance, Trump speaks for a corporate capitalist class indifferent to the global ecological and social consequences of its ruthless drive to accumulate. It is indifferent to truth and justice, indifferent indeed to human life itself.

Trumps clownish misrule has embarrassed the state itself. First came the childish spectacle of the most powerful man in the world hunkering down in his basement bunker and ordering the White House lights turned off.

Then came the order to assault peaceful protesters with chemical weapons so as to clear the way for Trump to walk to the nearby Presidents Churchwhich he never attends and whose pastor he didnt bother to consult. There he had himself photographed brandishing a huge Biblewhich he has most likely never readlike a club.

Trump, whose only earned success in life was his reality TV show The Apprentice, apparently devised this bizarre publicity stunt to rally his political base of right-wing Christians. But it backfired when the Bishop of Washington pointed out that Jesus preached love and peace, not war and vengeance.

The next day, even demagogues like Pat Robinson of the far right Christian Coalition spoke out against him.

Let us pause to note that American Christianity, like every other aspect of American civilization, is a knot of contradictions.

Although the racist, conservative, pro-Israel, Christian right has been the core of Trumps support, liberation theology and the black church have long been the base of the Civil Rights movement for equality.

Indeed, George Floyd the murdered African-American was himself a religiously motivated community peacemaker.

Trumps phoney populist act may have helped catapult him into office in 2016. But as a quotation often ascribed to president Abraham Lincoln says, You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cant fool all of the people all of the time.

Police: the vicious dogs of the bourgeoisie

As Trump huddledlike Hitlerin his underground bunker, he threatened to unleash vicious dogs on demonstrators. Trump has the Doberman mentality of the junk-yard owner from Queens he incarnates.

He is the spiritual descendant of the slave-catcher Simon Legree chasing the escaped slave Eliza with his dogs in Uncle Toms Cabin.

Vicious dogs of the bourgeoisie. Thats what the police are paid to be.

Their canines are the sharp teeth of the American state. Along with the Army, cops are the essence of the actual deep state which Marx defined as special bodies of armed men, courts, prisons etc.

Although subservient to the bourgeois state, this police apparatus, like the Mafia with which it is sometimes entwined, has a corporate identity of its own. It is based on omerta or strict group loyalty.

This unwritten rule is the notorious Blue Wall of Silence which prevents cops who see their brothers committing graft and violent abuses from speaking out.

The blue wall assures police impunity, and it is organised through police unions which, although affiliated with the AFL-CIO, are violently reactionary, anti-labour and pro-Trump.

The President of the International Police Union has been filmed wearing a red Make America Great Again hat and shaking hands with Trump at a political rally.

The wall of silence extends up the repressive food chain to prosecutors, district attorneys and even progressive mayors. New Yorks Bill de Blasio defended police driving vehicles into a crowd of demonstrators. He did this even though his own daughter was arrested as a Black Lives Matter demonstrator.

Dei Blasio, like his reactionary predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, knows that his political future is dependent on the good will of the police Union. Even junkyard owners are afraid of their own vicious dogs.

A week later, that sacrosanct bluewWall is beginning to crumble. The Minnesota authorities have been forced to escalate the charges against Derek Chauvin, George Floyds killer, to second degree murderwhy not firstand arrest his three police accomplices. And these ex-police have begun to rat each other out.

Race and class in US history

American society has been riddled with contradictions since its beginnings. These contradictions are still being played out in the streets of over 150 U.S. cities.

The uprisings, interracial from the beginning, express popular frustration with the lack of progress. We have seen centuries of struggle against slavery, a bloody civil war in the 1860s and the second American revolution of Reconstruction.

We had the Civil Rights movement and the urban riots of the 1960s. Yet the lives of the descendants of black slaves are still not safe in the land of liberty.

The American Revolution of the 18th Century professed a universal principle. It put forward, as expressed in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, that All men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.

Yet that promised equality was simultaneously contradicted by the inclusion in the US Constitution of clauses which institutionalised black slavery in the American Republic. It also , assured the permanent predominance in the federal government for the slaveholding Southern states.

The electoral system created by the US Constitution allowed the Southerners to include their slaves as three fifths of a man.

Thus the minority of Southern slave owners could outvote the more populous North and dominate the Union. This hypocritical compromise was the price of national unity in a nation half-free and half-slave.

Accordingly, ten of the first 12 American Presidents were slave owners. More and more such compromises favouring the slave owner interests were introduced as new states were added to the Union.

This rickety, lopsided Federal Union based on Southern domination held until 1860.

However, when Northern moderate Abraham Lincoln took office as President in 1861, most of the slave owning states seceded from the Union. They formed a rebellious Confederacy, launched a war on the United States.

They also sought recognition from Great Britain, the Confederacys main customer for slave-grown cotton.

It is often been argued that the bitterly fought U.S. Civil War, which lasted four years and registered higher casualty rates than even WWI, was not really about slavery. But it was.

To hide this ugly truth, the white Southerners still call it the War Between the States. Yet the war was precipitated by white Abolitionists like John Brown, who aided and provoked slave rebellions.

Moreover, the huge numbers of young farmers and mechanics who volunteered and even re-enlisted to fight for the North knew they were fighting for human freedom. The correspondence with their families and hometown newspapers indicated this.

Indeed, the Civil War, long a bloody stalemate, was won by the North only after Lincoln unleashed the fighting power of the black slaves in the South. Slaves escaped from their plantations and flocked to the Union Armies, depriving the white South of much of its black labour force.

The Union Army fed them, immediately put them to work, and later enrolled them in black regiments who fought bravely and effectively to defeat the slaveocracy. Not about slavery?

Meanwhile, in England anti-slavery textile workers were boycotting the cotton-exporting Confederacy.

Karl Marx, speaking for this movement, stressed the class basis for their idealistic expression of inter-racial solidarity. He proclaimed, Labour in the white skin can never be free as long as labor in the black skin is branded.

African-American workers in the US are no longer branded like their enslaved ancestors. But even today the colour of their skin brands them.

It makes them prey to oppressors, like bosses, landlords, discriminatory banks and the violent racist police.

The working masses who face not only a political crisis but also the crisis of an ongoing pandemic, the crisis of poverty and mass unemployment, and the impending climate crisis.

Like the British workers in Marxs day, todays white demonstrators know in their hearts that they can never be free and never be safe from state violence until Black Lives really do matter.

They know that Black and White Unite and Fight is the only possible way to block authoritarian government, prevent fascism, establish democracy, institute class equality and face the future.

Read the rest here:

Ten days that may have changed the world - Socialist Worker

People Post is a space for opinion pieces, letters to the editor and guest submissions from members of the Long Beach community. The following is an op-ed submitted by L.S. Pearce, a Long Beach based therapist and clinician, with a lifelong passion for supporting human rights, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Long Beach Post.

Editors note: This opinion piece contains language some readers may find objectionable.

I was 12 when the Rodney King riots happened. A group of cops was seen on tape beating a black man senseless, and for maybe the first time white America got to witness for itself the disparity between black and white policing and get a glimpse of the divide that not all men are equal in America.

It was something people of color had been saying for 100 years and no one was listening, or maybe nobody cared. And so when the cops were acquitted, the rage bubbled over. I lived in Long Beach at the time and I could feel the tension in the air; I remember understanding in my adolescent way that something important was happening, something I wanted to be a part of, but knowing I was too young to be out in the streets with the adults.

That was almost 30 years ago, and its true what they say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Were seeing a particular story emerge as the media attempts to control the narrative, the same way they have with BLM, with Occupy, with the WTO. Newscasters keep referring to the protests as violent, which is a dangerous tactic to demonize protesters, in order to legitimize the eventual use of vicious and abhorrent force that the cops and National Guard will visit upon citizens.

Lets get really clear about something: Property damage is not violence. Violence is what you do to another human being, a living thing, not an inanimate object or a bunch of drywall and bricks in the shape of a building.

Violence is kneeling on a mans neck for 9 minutes while he begs for his life until he dies.

Violence is bursting into the wrong apartment in the middle of the night and gunning a sleeping woman down in her bed.

Violence is shooting a young man with a cellphone in his grandmothers backyard, or a little boy playing with a toy gun.

Violence is shooting a man while he livestreams it, and then joking on video that hes going to need a closed casket.

Violence is 400 years of slavery and rape and whippings and public mutilations that were so commonplace and accepted by society that they were the subject of postcard photos, with a hundred white people standing around smiling and taking an ear or toe of the murdered person home as a souvenir.

Violence is a 150 years of Black Codes and lynchings and Jim Crow and a criminal justice system that targets people of color and ruins families and lives.

You cannot do violence to things. Violence is what you do to people. And so far, I have not seen citizens attacking each other; I have seen them attacking the symbols of their own subjugation: police stations, banks, corporations, the media. And when you decry the violence of smashing a window with the sameor moreferocity than youve decried the brutality and murder of your fellow citizens for hundreds of years, you demonstrate to the black community, to your peers, to your family, to God, that you value insured property that isnt even yours more than human life. Personally, I dont give a fuck about a Starbucks. Burn it to the ground in the neighborhood it gentrified.

A few years ago I read about an epidemic of elderly people choosing suicide rather than homelessness when they have to choose between medicine and housing. Unless something major changes financially in my own life within the next 30 years, Ive gotta be honest, suicide is my retirement plan too. Boomers can turn a blind eye as they enter their golden years, but our generation doesnt harbor any illusions about the grim reality and futures we face. We inherited a dying planet and a nation being constantly plundered by politicians and the companies that own them.

Most of the people of my generation will never be able to buy homes or start families, and we will never be able to retire, working to support ourselves until we literally drop dead. Deaths of despairdrug overdose and suiciderun rampant in economically depressed areas; not just urban centers, but rural communities where coal mining or factory jobs have disappeared.

Mental health problems are on the rise even for people doing well by societys standards, with 1 in 6 Americans being prescribed a psychiatric drug. Wages have been stagnant since the 70s, weve been working harder and longer hours for less and less while the CEOs take home ever more astronomical salaries as they bust unions, automate our jobs away or send them overseas.

The fifth of our earnings removed through tax money rarely goes into infrastructure, education, healthcare, taking care of the elderly, homeless, or veterans or building up our communities in any way, but instead to offset an endless parade of tax cuts and bailouts for the rich, to fund the surveillance infrastructure of our own enslavement, and endless wars to dominate and exploit the resources of other nations. Its been getting worse and its only going to keep getting worse for as long as we let it. And if at this point you cant see any of this incredibly large and legible writing on the wall, well, Id have to question your intelligence. And if you can see it but want to continue to champion a dog-eat-dog system of selfishness and murder and environmental degradation and wage-slavery on the hope of that 0.00000001% chance that you will one day join the 1% and get your own turn at the enhanced exploitation of your fellow human beings and the natural world, well, I would certainly have to question your morality and indeed, your humanity.

This system is sick and evil. That is not to say that we as individuals are evil. Nevertheless, we passively participate in evil every day whether we want to or not. We fund the wars, we buy the cellphones containing materials that were mined with child labor and made in sweatshops so terrible that the companies put out suicide nets. We stand by and film the murder of our neighbors by police because we feel powerless to do anything else. But the truth is, there are other ways. Those ways may be uncomfortable to get to, but are we comfortable now?

In reality, nobody with power ever willingly surrenders it; you take it. America was founded on taking what was not given by the British Empire: our independence. Every meager scrap of human rights has had to be fought and scraped and in some cases died for: womens rights, gay rights, labor rights, civil rights, disability rights. And that fighting and scraping and dying has not been pretty; it has not been warm and fuzzy. That is what we are experiencing now: the discomfort of change, of growth. There is enough on this planet for everyone if we distribute it more equitably rather than allowing 1% to hoard almost 50% of the worlds wealth, and it can be had in ways that dont destroy our own habitat. We just have to decide that enough is enough and were willing to fight for it.

So when I hear people complain about the riots or rather, the REVOLT I hear people crying But why would you burn down your own plantation?! White people, rich people, you are on this same sinking ship, you just have better seats. The poor and the people of color will go under first but it wont be long before you too are thrashing about in the icy sea that will snuff out your life.

Just how long do you think your skin color will protect you when you lose your job in a failing economy, and become one of the desperate dispossessed that the police have free rein to brutalize when you do whatever you need to do to feed your family? Just how long do you think money will isolate you from the ravages of a crumbling society on a dying planetexactly how much money will you need to pay your armed guards to save YOU and YOUR RESOURCES instead of saving their own loved ones?

We can come together, now, while we still have a chance to save ourselves and the whole damn world. Or we can descend over the next two decades into madness and chaos, tearing at ourselves and each other while the world burns around us.

This is nothing new; civilizations have fallen here and there into periods of chaos and destruction throughout time. The only difference is that now we live in a global community and so this time, it will be a global collapse (consider the virus, spreading rapidly around the world and all the shortages and supply chain disruptions it brought, as the dress rehearsal). The only difference is that now the planet is getting hotter and the waters are rising and the land is less farmable and the species we rely on to survive are going extinct.

I am personally very happy and excited that people are rising up and I hope it continues. Because I recognize that Kali is the goddess of both destruction and creation. You cant build a new home until you raze the old one; you cant plant your crops until you till the field. Our society is sick. Burn it all down and lets build something new.

I believe that within the next 30 years, we as individuals will either witness or participate in a fight to the death. Either we will crush this system and crush capitalism, or the system and capitalism will crush us. If we win, we dont know what will happen. Maybe the fault is in our stars and humans are innately terrible and we can never create anything better. We would certainly be stepping into the unknown and that is scary. But if we fail, we do know what will happen: The whole world will perish.

Read more from the original source:

Opinion: Why the rage? Some words about violence and human rights - Long Beach Post

It is no news that COVID-19 has changed the way we live our lives! In these unprecedented times every organisation has had to adapt. The lucky ones are challenged to keep up with increased demand and the less fortunate are managing decreased revenue, or worse, having to close their doors.

Desperate times call for desperate measures has been proven to ring true with governments and organisations under pressure to perform, cut costs and meet demand, but how is this going to impact quality and ethics?

Nationally and internationally, normal ways of working have been adjusted to comply with government guidelines put in place to ensure the safety of their citizens. Social distancing, border closures and halts on production have all had significant impacts for most Australian workers. And we are still not clear about the long-term consequences of this extraordinary event.

Statistically, low-skilled workers are more likely to be exploited, often due to cost reduction strategies implemented for financial gain. For those on minimum wage, the repercussions of the current working climate can be debilitating particularly when it comes to seeking secure income. Thus, the defenseless may face greater risk of succumbing to modern slavery or exploitation.

Modern slavery describes serious exploitation in the workplace, such as human trafficking, slavery, servitude and forced labour, amongst others. Findings from the Global Slavery Index estimate there were approximately 15,000 people living in conditions of modern slavery in Australia in 2016.

Coronavirus has made it clear that the Western world is certainly not immune to exploitation, with countries such as the USA using prison labour to create medical-grade facemasks and hand sanitiser in exchange for less than minimum wage. Opportunities to exploit Australians are heightened during times of crisis where people may:

The desperate times call for desperate measures mindset is not only relevant to the government and large corporations. Struggling Australians are more likely to be exploited while seeking alternative methods of income in times of crisis, where desperation can often be more powerful than the elusive search for fair and just employment. Often it is too late by the time these workers recognise the unstable and risky circumstances they find themselves in. Thus, the cycle of modern slavery continues.

To avoid subjecting vulnerable Australian workers to mistreatment, organisations of all sizes need to ensure there is transparency across every phase of their supply chain. Transparency from suppliers and third-party operators is key in maintaining an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable supply chain strategy.

Businesses must maintain supplier relationships and open communication around the Human Rights risks associated with COVID-19 and its carryover effects. Supplier liaison is essential in ensuring organisations support their vulnerable workers through flexibility to the ever-changing situation. It is

crucial to communicate and reinforce the rights and roles of each operational party that is from the CEO down to the line workers. This includes access to sick and carers leave, the correct protective equipment, the availability of grievance mechanisms and whistleblowing options, and availability of increased cleaning and sanitisation in workplaces.

Support network groups such as employee, investor, civil society, peak bodies, and suppliers provide collaboration opportunities to create solutions-based approaches particularly when adapting to industry changes to safeguard ethical workplaces. This includes educating staff around the current situation and identifying what modern slavery is and how it can happen during the existing pandemic.

Lastly, staying up to date with national and international legislation and resources will support operations and assist practical application of any relevant changes in line with the current trading climate. Practicing human rights, fair trade and fair labour guidelines should be an ongoing part of your business strategy and process. If we can learn anything from COVID-19, it is the importance of ethical and transparent trade.

But little has been done yet to look to the future, i.e. what are we learning? How can we better integrate sustainability into all supply chain processes? How can we use this experience as a catalyst for change? It is imperative that we, as a society, move towards a structure that equally promotes ethical economic, social, and environmental sustainability.

Nicholas Bernhardt is the CEO of Informed 365. With a passion for sustainable workplaces and positive world change, Nicholas started Informed 365 after seeing a disconnect in organisations corporate social responsibility and the tools at their disposal to harness and understand data. Informed 365 is now the leading tech solution for over 3,000 Australian companies legally required to report under the Modern Slavery Act with high-profile clients such as the Property Council of Australia, Wesfarmers Industrial & Safety, Origin, Zoos Victoria, and Michael Hill.

Read more:

How COVID-19 can push modern slavery into the Australian supply chain - Anthill online