As mentioned here earlier in the week, the US now seeks international acceptance for the results of the Honduran election under the coup regime, after having run out the clock on Zelaya. The pretense for such acceptance is the temporary departure of Robert Micheletti as President.

Labels: American Empire, Honduras, Neoliberalism

Yesterday, after protests in Los Angeles where the police used pepper spray and tasers upon angry students, the Regents of the University of California ordered a 32% increase in fees over the next year. Undergraduate tuition will rise from $7,788 to $10,002 a year. Here is one account of the protests from one of the participants:

i went to the strike at berkeley Wednesday, then bused to ucla for the night and next day.
the whole campus was a police state about 100 cops there clenching their batons and tasers the whole time.
student protests were peaceful the whole time

i was tased, pepper sprayed, and arrested all on different occasions for interrupting their pig line and facing the uc regent in the face and calling out the filthy racist thief-- tried to spit in his face. a bunch of us chased after the uc regents and other corrupt officials to their cars and tried to block them from leaving, until they separated us with the threat of tear gas. i was among MANY others tased and pepper sprayed, in fact, a woman next to me passed out because she was sprayed directly in her face! the spray reached my arms (have burns) and lightly on my eyes and throat and are red and harsh.
however, there was apparently one other arrest since the time they got me.

got charged for resistance cause i was the only one who got past their line taking the regent to his van cause im tiny and prob didnt see me (hella stealth action) then went right up to the uc regents face. i kicked a pig in the face when they picked me up from behind and SLAMMED ME ON THE FLOOR. it was a natural reaction, i couldnt see cause they shoved my face in the dirt and i panicked because i thought they were gonna tase me again. two officers picked me up by the feet and upper body then cuffed me and dragged me to the building where the regents were.

Protests also took place on campus at UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz. Meanwhile, students have barricaded themeselves inside Wheeler Hall today at UC Berkeley. From the standpoint of the political and economic establishment, the protests must be suppressed with a firm hand, because, if the students, faculty and staff of the UC system succeed in extracting concessions, they may spread to many other disaffected people.

Nothing must be allowed to shatter the consensus in support of neoliberal policies that require us to subsidize the bailout of transnational financial institutions through the imposition of austerity. Students involved in these actions are being charged with misdemeanors, and, in some instances, possibly even felonies, as there are reports that some of the students already arrested in relation to the Wheeler Hall one have been charged with burglary. Criminal charges are being brought for the purpose of creating grounds for the administration to expel the students. But what sort of educational institution seeks to admit the brightest, the most motivated and the most politically engaged so that it can thereafter proceed to expel them?

Labels: Activism, Bay Area, California, Education, Neoliberalism

From BeyondChron:

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) held a boisterous picket line in San Francisco [on Monday night], but their chants targeted a surprising adversary: labor leaders and their political allies. While California Democratic Party Chair John Burton (labor’s greatest California ally), State Senator Mark Leno and leaders of UNITE HERE, the Sailors, Plumbers, Building Trades, and Police and Fire unions, were inside the Plumbers Union Hall honoring the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), SEIU was outside denouncing NUHW – and by implication its supporters – as corrupt. Last week, SEIU informed Burton that it would end its $1 million annual donation to the state Party unless he withdrew his support for NUHW, which he refused to do.

SEIU’s threat to labor hero Burton, and its reported statement to the United Teachers of Los Angeles (sponsor of tonight’s NUHW fundraiser) that it would seek to organize charter school teachers in retaliation for UTLA’s pro-NUHW stance, reflects a union increasingly at odds with the labor movement. In July, 25 international union leaders condemned SEIU’s raids on UNITE HERE, and new AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has since vowed to defend UNITE HERE against SEIU attacks. SEIU is now isolated, viewing fellow unions and pro-labor politicians as adversaries, and its scorched earth campaign against its former California health care leadership is coming at a steepening internal and political cost.

Things got worse last night:

One night after withdrawing its support for the California Democratic Party and picketing progressive politicians and labor leaders in San Francisco, SEIU threw eggs at those attending an event honoring NUHW in Los Angeles. Among those hit were the Vice President of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, the union whose support for NUHW led SEIU to threaten to organize teachers in charter schools (not that SEIU has any staff available to implement such a threat).

SEIU is seeking to impose its model of business unionism upon American workers by any means necessary. At a time when organized labor should be coming together to resist the global neoliberal onslaught, SEIU has chosen to go in a different direction. One gets the impression that Andy Stern welcomes the remorseless restructuring of the economy because he believes that SEIU is best positioned to organize increased numbers of low paid service workers.

Labels: Neoliberalism, SEIU, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Unions

The end game: US recognition of the results of an upcoming "election" in Honduras conducted under martial law. Readers of this blog anticipated it within weeks after the coup. In effect, we now have the Obama Doctrine in Central and South America. The US will respect the democratic process only so long as the victors do not challenge the control over their countries exercised by the US through local oligarchies. After the electoral sham of Afghanistan, I guess we shouldn't be surprised. By comparison, Ahmadijedad is looking like more and more like a respectable, democratically elected figure every day. Meanwhile, resistance on the ground is ongoing.

Labels: Afghanistan, American Empire, Barack Obama, Honduras, Iran, Neoliberalism

The critical aspect of Obama's intention to become a deficit hawk, signalled before he entered the White House, when he emphasized the importance of entitlement reform, is, as recognized by Gaius, the generational restructuring of the federal budget further away from social services and even more weighted towards the military industrial complex, financed by a system of increasingly regressive taxation. Such a restructuring is consistent with what is transpiring in the economy, with massive job losses and small business closures. Both the government and the economy are being reorganized to the benefit of a narrow capital class of large corporate enterprises. If it requires trillions of dollars of unprecented subsidy one year, and deficit reduction the next, so be it. In other words, policies are as changeable as the wind as long as they remain consistent with the ultimate goal, the concentration of power within a small global elite.

Labels: American Empire, Bailout of Finance Capitalists, Barack Obama, Global Recession, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of America

As people who visit this site frequently know, I'm a cinephile as well as a leftist, which is why I periodically review films from an aesthetic, sociological and ideological perspective. I purposefully select provocative movies that prompt us to examine our relationship to the world around us, and the prospects for transforming it. For me, film was the preeminent art form of the 20th Century in this regard, because, in addition to the creativity that the medium affords, it reached a mass audience.

Film, in addition to other forms of artistic expression, such as literature, art and photography, inspires us to simultaneously imagine alternatives even as we confront the cruelties, that we encounter in our everyday lives. All have played prominent roles in the ignition of social unrest that overturned abusive practices, and, in some instances, the elites that engaged in them.

Perhaps, my attitude about this is an urban, metropolitan thing which serves the purpose of giving an ideological veneer to the intimate, voyeuristic pleasures of cinema. I still recall marching in a heavy rain on an April day in San Francisco after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After arriving at Dolores Park in the Mission District, I looked across the street, and observed a young woman reading an alternative newspaper sized program for the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival at the end of the month. Having already ordered tickets for particular screenings myself, I wondered, how many other protesters will find their way over to the Kabuki along with us in a few weeks time? Quite a lot, I concluded. The cross pollination of politics and culture that so defines the Mission, indeed, much of northern California, was crystallized in that moment.

So, with that in mind, you will not be surprised to discover that I allow my young two and a half year old son to watch television and DVDs. Not all the time, mind you, but I'm not a hippie or Waldorf type when it comes to television. It is part of the modern world, and an inescapable part of our culture, although I do draw the line at Disney. All of which is a long way round to acknowledging the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street on Tuesday. In advance of it, a blog entry on the SFGate website prompted a spirited discussion as to whether Sesame Street had become outdated.

Many commented on the aesthetics of the program, complaining, possibly overcome by nostalgia, that it was far better when they were kids, and perhaps, it was. But, for me, this misses the point. I have no memories of earlier programs because I was nearly nine years old when it first aired, and, having already graduated to Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns at the drive-in with my father, never watched it. Of course, I only recently discovered it because of my son, and, in comparison to other programming, it fairs pretty well.

Above everything else, the most important thing about Sesame Street is that it is urban. You wouldn't think that it would be such a big deal, but it is. As with children's books, most programming has an idyllic, utopian dimension contrary to the grittier realities of everyday life. Clifford, in a departure from the books written by Norman Bridewell, is set on an island, the characters of Super WHY live in a village like environment evocative of The Hobbit and the activities of Bob the Builder occur in the mountainous confines of Sunflower Valley. Curious George is an exception, but he lives in the New York City of the Algonquin Round Table. Admittedly, Sid the Science Kid lives in the new suburbia built in the last 10 years, injecting some social realism, especially through his multicultural friends, and, surprise, surprise, it was created by Jim Henson Productions in collaboration with KCET in Los Angeles.

Nature, it seems, or rather our fantastical, romaticized view of it, is more playful, nurturing and reassuring than the man made metropolis. But not according to Sesame Street. Here, people (even if presented as friendly monsters), not anthropomorphized animals, are front and center. Here, the characters find purpose as part of a larger community, one which is richly textured through its racial and economic diversity, and induce our children to do the same. Overall, the neighborhood is clearly working class, one in which the hierarchy of current American society is absent. Interestingly, unlike Super WHY, which urges children to immediately go to the library and look in a book to solve problems, conveniently maintaining a separation between more upper middle class and upper class children and less advantaged ones who live elsewhere, Sesame Street emphasizes the importance of community involvement and folklore.

If someone proposed Sesame Street today, I doubt that it would receive sufficient funding to be produced for television. It celebrates the uniqueness of the African American and Latino social experience, along with the white one, and consciously emphasizes immigration as an essential aspect of our culture. According to the Sesame Street ethos, life is more delightful when we aspire to understand the differences and similarities of those around us, and succeed in doing so. For some adult viewers such as myself, there is, however, something bittersweet about the program's invocation of an urban America that predates gentrification. It reminds me of the midtown Sacramento neighborhood in which I grew up in the mid-1970s. To its credit, Sesame Street remains true to the ideals that inspired its creation.

Labels: American Culture, Bay Area, California

For more information, please consider reading this article by Kelly B. Vlahos.

Labels: "War on Terror", Afghanistan, Iraq War, Occupation of Iraq, US Military