Limbo Lower Now

The article Guantanamo suicide attempt confirmed reports on a man held at Guantanamo who tried to kill himself with his own fingernail. Guards stepped in and "saved" him.

This speaks volumes. How depraved must conditions be to drive someone to such lengths? How low must humanity sink?

Humane Inhumanity

Dark humor and irony abound in today's L.A. Times article, A fence without offense. It deals with the difficulty of building a border fence that doesn't offend the sensibilities of our rabid racists and imperialists. "They want to make it seem like you could shake hands through the fence," said Peter Andreas.

The fence must be formidable but not lethal; visually imposing but not ugly; durable but environmentally friendly; and economically built but not flimsy.

This is the U.S. today, where people can be concerned about an eco-friendly torture device. They can want to intimidate workers into taking lower wages, but not have to face the reality of it when looking out their backyards. The ruling class needs to divide people in a violent manner, but there is a benefit to pretending that the violence isn't there. "Other countries are a lot more into intimidation," he said. "This is the only humane border fence being constructed."

There is nothing humane in oppressing another people. That doesn't mean that industries cannot be built around trying to convince people otherwise.

It's All Your Fault

The L.A. Times has a cover article devoted to explaining how we will be responsible if the economy tanks. Consumers' free-spending ways face obstacles breaks down some of the numbers that have been crunching working people while speculating wildly about where the economy is going, mostly trying to say that things should be fine.

The real zinger is at the end of the article:

"Predicting a recession is pretty simple. Since consumer spending is 70% of the economy, if we become cautious and close our wallets, then we go into a recession,"

So, economic crises are not the stuff of speculation and over-production. The housing market bubble, which was fueled not simply by sub-prime mortgages but by high-end residential investments, won't have anything to do with it. The higher prices people are paying for food because that industry has found an opportunity to gouge working people with the excuse of ethanol won't be at fault. It will be because silly people get nervous and spend their money on food ...

Wal-Mart said its customers were spending more on lower-margin items such as food and less on clothes and other higher-margin goods.

Don't worry, Congress is already hard at work trying to make sure that hedge fund managers don't get hurt by our fickle buying habits.

Terrorist Attack in the Heartland

Two weeks ago, terrorists struck New York City. No one was too surprised, as it is New York City, after all. But yesterday terrorists struck Minneapolis, collapsing a major bridge that's responsible for 200,000 cars a day. At this point, only 9 people have died, and there is no clear number on the injuries.

But these aren't the terrorists that the media keeps warning us about. These are not the terrorists who come from a foreign country or "foreign" religion to wage war against a nation which has devastates their economy and people daily. These are the terrorists that sit on city and county governing bodies, deciding to cut funding to basic infrastructure and deny necessary maintenance. These are the terrorists who make the conscious decisions to undermine public health and safety by closing down hospitals. These are the terrorists that, despite record profits and booming economies, see the need to keep the corporations in power even more firmly entrenched in power down to every last penny.

Reports by the Minnesota Department of Transportation in 2001 indicated problems with the bridge, particularly with steel joints because of "unanticipated out of plane distortion" of girders. The report also noted a lack of redundancy in the main truss system, indicating that a single point of failure could collapse the bridge. A 2005 report recommended replacement of the bridge, though the decision was made to avoid that option.

Even if this collapsed bridge on the I-35W turns out to be a fluke, it remains emblematic of the collapsing infrastructure all around us. The ruling class is carrying out a war, and they don't care who the casualties are.

Some Comparison, Please

The tainted food supply coming from China has been mounting into bigger and bigger news. It is a serious problem that looks like it has spread well beyond the pet food supply. When the news reports on this issue, though, they use a lot of borderline bigoted statements that aren't backed up by good comparative data.

NPR was reporting numbers of food-related deaths each year in China. How does the U.S. compare? E. coli has been in the media as of late, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. And even when these numbers are provided, are they reported deaths or estimated deaths based on some organization's calculations?

The radio also made much of the unreliability of food suppliers in China. They spoke of cultural and business problems, implying that the Chinese just haven't come around to a "proper" attitude yet. But lets get some numbers. What agencies are there in China? What are their guidelines and enforcement powers? And, most importantly, how does food safety regulation compare to the U.S.? This one is particularly important, because over the last decade or more the FDA has moved to a "self-monitoring" model where companies are expected to inspect themselves. The FDA inspectors then come in and just look at the data the company has already assembled. The FDA does not have the power to recall certain food items, but must "shame" the company into doing it voluntarily.

There is little reason to doubt that food safety is not up to acceptable standards in China, but it would be important to point out how inadequate they are here, as well. The complaint about the fraud and incentive for corruption in China's food industry needs to be compared and contrasted against the same situation here. Serious economic analysis is missing, and not expected soon.

Fundamental Assumption

Yet another article about public transportation this weekend helped point out a fundamental flaw in the way of this much needed resource. High-speed rail system may be derailed contains the following line:

Critics see the high-speed train as a potential boondoggle that would be a drain on the state treasury and a loser that would never pay for itself.

This is practically the same think that Snoble, the MTA's chief, said just last week; that these services are not able to pay for themselves, and thus a fee increase is necessary.

The a priori assumption of the newspapers and politicians in this country is that a public service must pay for itself. Every last single thing must be held to the profit model, else it be purged and beaten into shape until a profit can be made. Here, when mass transit and the environment should be at the forefront of the discussion in this country, humanity must be made to suffer to maintain profits.

The fundamental contradiction and hypocrisy here, of course, is that if politicians held everything to this ideal, then there'd be no reason for people to pay taxes. These ideals are only held up when they serve the goal of cutting or not providing public services. A human-centric system would take a (temporary) hit to build essential infrastructure.

Yes, Virginia, America is Racist

"My first thought when I heard initial reports was 'Oh my God, I hope it's not a black person." These are the words of a prominent black author and activist, discussing his first reaction to the shootings in Virginia early this week. The article, When ethnicity brings an unwelcome focus, discusses why Koreans and Korean-Americans have come out in vigils and with statements atoning for the actions of Seung-hui Cho.

The article continues on to offer quotes from several other minorities, including a Latino and a Muslim. (They also quote a racist from a local right-wing, AM radio station ... this is the L.A. Times.) Here is another apt quote from a psychologist, "When you've got a white guy going crazy, [his ethnicity] doesn't stand out because most mass killings are done by whites."

Of course, the one word the L.A. Times is unable to say is "racist". Fact is, America is racist – why else would ethnic minorities have these kinds of initial gut reactions? These are the reflexes of people who have grown up in a society that discriminates against them systematically. Instead, the newspaper adopts a line that the "typecasting of minorities" is somehow a part of human nature and unavoidable.

Destroying Our Myths

Within the past week or so I had seen advertisements around for a new series about Robin Hood. My initial thought was positive, since Robin Hood is one of those figures with a lot to teach us, especially in a time when the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor. But, as revealed in Robin Hood takes different paths in Sherwood Forest, that absolute opposite is happening.

There are two separate rapings of the Robin Hood story coming soon. One for TV depicts Robin Hood as a pacifist who only robs from the sheriff of Nottingham ... and not from the myriad other parasites who put the sheriff into office to prop up their exploitation of the poor. The writer for this series actually said, "I don't think it's interesting or sympathetic anymore to have your supposedly heroic characters robbing people just because they're rich." Well, if you are talking to Hollywood executives, you are probably correct.

The seconds script, slated as a film staring Russell Crowe in the part of the sheriff, attempts to depict the sheriff is a "working-class cop". Historically, sheriffs were overseers for the serf system, working for the local lords to make sure that serfs kept at their work and didn't steal from the lord.

This certainly isn't the first time this folk hero has been maligned or distorted, but it is interesting that we see two such stories hitting the media plate at the same time. This degenerate society of ours, with the huge chasm between rich and poor growing constantly, has nothing to offer those at the bottom but a "rotten apple" theory of corruption or a request to sympathize with their torturers. Robin Hood is a story that poor folk have been telling for centuries because it speaks to them. The message of robbing back from the rich (what they robbed from us) is apparently a little to apt these days, so the story must be corrupted.

Sick Society Turns to Black Market

Cancer drug on black market comes as no surprise. Several months ago, reports came out about a drug being wildly successful at destroying cancer tumors. The drug is dichloroacetate, or DCA; but, there's a minor problem – or at least, a minor problem for a capitalist health care system – the patent has long since expired on this drug. This means that no current drug company can make super-profits off of it, as they are accustomed to.

Drug trials need to be done on this drug. I believe that Canadian researchers who discovered this are looking to do trials with public funding, but the process shouldn't be as long and drawn out as it necessarily will be under our current system. Many terminally ill cancer patients, aware of the study and their dire situation, have started acquiring the drug from the black market. A humane society would handle this better. With people taking this on their own, without supervision, it will be difficult for scientists to figure out what other possible effects the drug may have. We can only hope that the drug makes like better for those forced to turned to the black market.

An Important Source

Sometimes the short articles say the most, as with Pentagon can keep funding Scout event in today's paper. A federal appellate court has ruled that it isn't a violation of the separation of church and state for the military to help fund the annual Boy Scout Jamboree, held at a military base in Virginia.

Funding has been going on for 35 years now, and it is clearly a violation of church-state separation. But the important thing is the main issue for the military: the Boy Scouts are a "useful recruiting and training tool." The BSA has long been a bastion of blind patriotism and religion. You aren't technically allowed to be a member unless you are religious; atheists need not apply.

It would be nice to see a real separation of church and state, but that's only possible in a democracy. Cases like this, while sad in that they show how far we are from a more humane society, also bare wide open the real nature of this system in a straightforward way. It also shows how intimately connected religion and the state are.