All the workers you've exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You've looted the earth and lived it up. But all you'll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse. In fact, what you've done is condemn and murder perfectly good persons, who stand there and take it.
James 5, The Message
In a key passage, the encyclical says: "The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from 'influences' of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise."This is not especially new; popes have been issuing similar encyclicals on economics for a hundred years. Of course, they are always careful to spend a great deal of effort to distance themselves from socialists, which is as cute as that little hat on the pope's head, but whatever gets the job done.Then in an unequivocal critique of unbridled markets, the pope writes that "grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution."
What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable. If someone I respect tells me I must take a closer look at the films of Abbas Kiarostami, I will take that seriously. If someone says the kung-fu movies of the 1970s, which I used for our old Dog of the Week segments, deserve serious consideration, I will listen. I will try to do what Pauline Kael said she did: Take everything you are, and all the films you've seen, into the theater. See the film, and decide if anything has changed. The older you are and the more films you've seen, the more you take into the theater. When I had been a film critic for ten minutes, I treated Doris Day as a target for cheap shots. I have learned enough to say today that the woman was rarely gifted.
Indeed, rumors have been circulating that a deal may be in the works for Zelaya to return to power if he gives up his calls for constitutional reform.The coup leaders have no international support, but they could still succeed by running out the clock – Zelaya has less than six months left in his term. Will the Obama administration support sanctions against the coup government in order to prevent this? The neighbouring governments of Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador have already fired a warning shot by announcing a 48-hour cut-off of trade.
By contrast, one reason for Clinton's reluctance to call the coup a coup is because the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits funds going to governments where the head of state has been deposed by a military coup.
Unconditional is also a key word here: the Obama administration may want to extract concessions from Zelaya as part of a deal for his return to office. But this is not how democracy works. If Zelaya wants to negotiate a settlement with his political opponents after he returns, that is another story. But nobody has the right to extract political concession from him in exile, over the barrel of a gun.
In the Honduran coup, the Obama administration claims that it tried to discourage the Honduran military from taking this action. It would be interesting to know what these discussions were like. Did administration officials say, "You know that we will have to say that we are against such a move if you do it, because everyone else will?" Or was it more like, "Don't do it, because we will do everything in our power to reverse any such coup"? The administration's actions since the coup indicate something more like the former, if not worse.There are always pretty good reasons to suspect U.S. complicity in any coup in Latin America; we have a long history of such things (even preceding the Cold War) and, in Honduras particularly, the military has been heavily subsidized for years by Washington. It is difficult to believe--though theoretically not impossible--that it would have taken such a drastic action without first getting American approval. Because of this, the administration won't be able to credibly claim ambivalence; it will have to come out against the coup to avoid looking guilty.
From the byline alone, you know this is going to be good: Elizabeth Malkin, in Mexico City, with reporting by Simon Romero from Caracas. Which makes perfect sense since, as we all know, Mexico City and Caracas are the two major cities in Honduras. (Too bad they had no reporter in Bangkok. I hope the Pulitzer committee doesn't notice.)The driving point behind the coup appears to have been a non-binding straw poll set for Sunday gauging public support for convening a new constitutional convention. Some people have itchy trigger fingers.
There's a worthwhile question over whether a professional athletes' union should be considered a part of "labor." The answer, I think, is a qualified yes. There's no question pro athletes make exponentially more than their value to society, and management has used this to great effect in turning public opinion in its favor while no one takes a second glance at what the owners are making. However, one can see from the reaction to Fehr's career that the Divine Right of Bosses is still in effect regardless of how much money labor's piece of the pie represents.There are jobs that demand of the person filling them that they be able to forgo popularity to do them well. No one likes public defenders. No one likes tax auditors. And no one likes the men who have chosen to represent baseball players as if they were a group of laborers in an industry long dominated by a paternalistic management and covered by an unquestioning press largely bought and paid for by the same.
Don Fehr took on this task and did it very well for a quarter-century. He did it as his peers in the NFL, NBA, and NHL all lost major labor battles and saw their unions weakened, or in the NFL's case completely broken and turned into a house union. The relative popularity of Fehr and his NFL counterpart, the late Gene Upshaw, ran in inverse proportion to how good each man was at his job of representing the athletes in their charge. Since 1983, when Fehr took over following the brief, unlamented stint of Ken Moffatt, the MLBPA has established itself as the most powerful players' association in sports, and one of the few successful unions in American labor. They won three grievances over collusion at a time when free agency was still in relative infancy. They beat management in the courts when necessary. Under Fehr's watch, we're into the longest stretch of labor peace since the players were serfs.
2. I'm amused by all the attention this is getting from some of the best U.S. liberal bluggers, such as Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings. Even when they're at their best, American liberals essentially follow in lockstep the agenda of the governing classes. Would they care anywhere near as much if Iran weren't an Official Enemy? Obviously not. Thus even when "opposing" William Kristol, they're ratifying the right's power by giving them the ability to decide what gets talked about.Quite. There are any number of rigged elections going on around the world at any given time; it's blindingly obvious that the only reason this one is getting the celebrity treatment from the American media is that the Iranian regime is not a US client state. I can hardly remember a similar reaction to the street demonstrations after the 2006 elections in Mexico. In fact, those protesters were dismissed the same way our right-wing Serious media handles demonstrators in the United States; i.e. as unemployed leeches who should get a real job and let the ruling class worry about ruling. Now suddenly conservatives are holding "tea parties" and cheering on foreign demonstrators as gallant and courageous. The world is turned inside out.
In these presidential elections, Iranians have a 'candidate of change' (yes, literally the same slogan) in the person of Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Now, this is very interesting, since Mir-Hossein Mousavi, currently a member of the 'reformist' camp, was the prime minister (when the post existed) from 1981 to 1989. Back then he was a member of the 'left wing' due to his advocacy for a state-run economy. Nowadays, he has changed indeed and supports all manner of privatization (as do all 'reformers').Mossavi has been widely touted in the Western media, which views Iranian politics--like American politics--solely through the lens of liberalizing the socially-repressive theocracy, ignoring the fact that poor people tend to be concerned initially with not starving, with clothing options coming second. Most were led to believe that Mossavi would be ride in easily in another color-coded revolution (this one green). So they were stunned when voting results claimed to show Ahmadinejad winning in a landslide.
Mousavi's premiership coincided with the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), during which his economic management carried the country through very rough times. Among other innovations, he introduced the coupon system that made sure everybody received the minimum ration of needed nutrients during those hard times.
Perhaps from the start Mousavi was destined to fail as he hoped to combine the articulate energies of the liberal upper class with the business interests of the bazaar merchants. The Facebook campaigns and text-messaging were perfectly irrelevant for the rural and working classes who struggle to make a day's ends meet, much less have the time to review the week's blogs in an internet cafe. Although Mousavi tried to appeal to such classes by addressing the problems of inflation and poverty, they voted otherwise.As if on cue, here's a New Yorker correspondent claiming to know the electon was stolen because everyone she knows with Blackberries in the Grand Hyatt ballroom voted for Mousavi.
"In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," Obama said in a keynote speech to the Muslim world in Cairo.
Yes but WHY DO THEY HATE AMERICA BLARGITY BLARGH!!!!!It was the first time a serving US president had publicly admitted American involvement in the coup.
The US Central Intelligence Agency, with British backing, masterminded the coup after Mossadegh nationalised the oil industry, run until then by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
For many Iranians, the coup demonstrated duplicity by the United States, which presented itself as a defender of freedom but did not hesitate to use underhand methods to get rid of a democratically elected government to suit its own economic and strategic interests.
Washington went on to become the major backer of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979.
It goes like this: nerds spend their formative years being turned into surly loners by the taunts and abuse of their intellectual inferiors. Since they've essentially been rejected by society, they reject society right back, embracing a political philosophy which raises "the individual" (read: them) above all else. Nobody ever cared about them, after all, so why should they care about anyone else? The nerd may grow beyond this feeling in adulthood, but the sense of being outside society is likely to linger.Then, once these newly minted teenage libertarians get older and discover the wonderful world of Technology, they start believing that the path to Utopia will come not from humanity learning to live together but through a genius scientist who will invent the cyborg body allowing us to live forever. Therefore, it's imperative that this potential genius not be encumbered by concerns about who's starving where.
