On “Once again: Obama and the jobs crisis”
After voting for third party candidates in 2000 and 2004, I was dumb enough to vote for Obama last year. Mr. Martin’s article hits the nail squarely on its head. While I never even hoped he would be the socialist the right-wing loonies warned about, I sure expected better than the blatant corporate stooge he turned out to be (my goodness, he doesn’t even try to cover it up!). Obama temporarily holds the jobless, homeless, healthcareless, retirementless masses at bay while Wall Street finishes looting the country.
David
Ohio, USA
24 November 2009
***
I think Patrick Martin has it completely wrong in his attacks on Mr. Obama. In just a few years we’ll have completed our Freedom Missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and most likely Pakistan, and we’ll bring all these happy soldiers home. Once home, they’ll immediately begin union work on our new green infrastructure and erect so many solar panels, wind turbines, high-speed magnetic trains, and green homes as to turn our economy once more into the prize of the world. Energy, being “too cheap to meter” and pollution being a thing of the past, our schools will fill with healthy young minds eager to soak up all the free education we can provide for them. No need will go unmet. No deed will go unrewarded. The Dow will be 25,000 and everyone will have enough money to retire.
Please Patrick, put down your dusty history books and quit harping on about the death and expense of these wars and the antiquated lessons of the past. Don’t you believe in change? Don’t you believe in change you can believe in? Quit being such a negative realist. You’re really not helping.
PK
24 November 2009
On “Civil liberties attorney Lynne Stewart ordered to prison”
I was appalled by the rotten and vindictive jailing of Lynn Stewart, who I think is the foremost lawyer for poor and oppressed people in the US. She is obviously a scapegoat for a new witch-hunt targeting leftists and activists who are engaged in trying to liberate the downtrodden and unemployed. Her case underlines that the so-called “war against terror” is actually a war against dissent and against any attempt to overthrow the capitalist system. It—and its companion case, the illegal break-in of the Madison apartment in Queens—shows how vile is the Obama administration in its supposed “liberal” posture. The obvious purpose of the Obama regime is to crush opposition to the capitalists and to attack countries in the Middle East in order to weaken Arab revolutionary hopes and the growing power of Russia. This deep reaction towards the underclass is consonant with the policy started by Reagan and continued by every President since then. It is even part of a longer-term policy of crushing popular revolt started in the 1920s here during the Palmer Raids, which was a homegrown crackdown on the revolutionary hopes engendered by the October Revolution in Russia. I don’t think that this goal of the US ruling class has altered since that time, and the aim of every administration (including Roosevelt’s) since then has been to crush incipient working class militancy under a regime of lies, police terror and media manipulation. The tremendous military buildup following WWII was caused by Soviet conquests in Eastern Europe and the peasant “revolution” of Mao in China. The staged (by US intelligence agencies and the Pentagon) “terror attack” on 9/11 was designed to destroy key sections of civil rights guaranteed by the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and to launch endless war overseas to prop up a failing state capitalist economy. The victims are always the same—the poor and oppressed at home and abroad for the enrichment of a revolting class of super-parasites worldwide. That’s why we need to be ever-vigilant in explaining to people how and why these crimes against the people are being perpetrated and carried out and also how we might better unite and fight back against these outrages. I must commend SEP very highly in the tremendous job you have already done in this regard—keep up the great job!
Steve H
Massachusetts, USA
22 November 2009
On “US workplace injuries underreported, study shows”
This isn’t news, and has been the standard for low-wage workers in the US since the 1980s. Between deregulation and our welfare “reform” (which essentially created a massive bottom-wage temp help/replacement workforce), American workers are a dime a dozen. If one gets damaged, put him on “indefinite layoff,” and you can get a replacement worker by tomorrow morning. Beyond that, all you have to do is tend the paperwork, keeping accident and injury reports below the allotted level.
DHF
Wisconsin, USA
22 November 2009
On the WSWS Mobile version
I am very happy to be informed that there is yet another opportunity and advancement of technology to reach everyone regarding these important issues on the website, as it is very important that everyone know the truth. In my opinion, the information should reach as many individuals as possible about the outcomes of this society and where it is headed. We must all be prepared to know the solutions to the coming months so that society is not plunged into barbarism.
Dolores MAustralia
23 November 2009
On “Where the Wild Things Are—a thoughtful, sensitive look at childhood”
I saw this film with my six-year-old boy. We’d read the book and loved it. I was worried going into it about how such a short (though powerful) book could be expanded to 100 minutes. The writers did a beautiful job, and I was repeatedly amazed by the perceptive, sensitive, and unflinching treatment they gave the story.
There were some intense parts—as there are intense scenes in life; the passage where Max and his mother fight, Max bites his mother after screaming “You’re unacceptable!” brought tears to me, having experienced similar exchanges with my son in his moments of anger or frustration. My son was paying very close attention—not afraid, but engrossed, as he was during the entirety of the film.
After the show, we met another mother in the restroom who asked if the film wasn’t a bit “D-A-R-K”? We talked a fair bit about it—to us it did seem dark, but the kids were all fine—not realizing the bigger implications of loss or change. To them right now it’s a story about being a kid, and it presents, finally, an actual kid who feels the repercussions of his behavior and the ideas of wildness and taming.
This film is wonderful, and appropriate for all ages.
Christie S
Oregon, USA
24 November 2009