On “The Nation magazine and the campaign to reelect Obama”
What also perhaps should be mentioned about the tax-exempt and “non-profit” Center for Community Change whose executive director endorsed the 2012 Dem presidential candidate is that in 2012 the Center for Community Change was given a $750,000 “charitable grant” by the Democratic Party-oriented Ford Foundation (on whose board of trustees a Goldman Sachs managing director currently sits and on which Democratic Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick used to sit). See the following link:
http://www.fordfoundation.org/grants/grantdetails?grantid=117317
Protestfolk
22 October 2012
***
I’m bored with the New York Times’ crossword puzzle. Let’s see if I can duplicate the logic of the editors of The Nation.
If some criminal “failed” to see why he should not be murdering that poor family down the street, wouldn’t that be just the greatest “disappointment”?
Wouldn’t the disappointment be greater still, if the criminal also failed actually to stop murdering them?
But (disappointingly) he’s the lesser of two evils now running for the town sheriff. Despite our disappointment, we—rich and poor alike—should all “put aside our differences” and vote for him! And then, once he’s in office, and then ... well, we’re quite sure he won’t murder anybody else (gulp), or us, once he finally hears how earnestly we wish he would stop committing his crimes.
Yes, according to The Nation, there is honor among thieves. Or, if there isn’t, at least it shouldn’t affect us. We’re not poor, after all.
There, I think I’ve got it ...
CH
Houston, Texas
22 October 2012
On “President Zuma calls on trade unions, state forces to end South Africa’s strike wave”
Elsewhere are reports that on Friday, Zwelinzima Vavi and his entourage were stoned by some miners at AngloGold Ashanti’s Vaal Reefs Moab Khotsong mine. While the WSWS may long have predicted such a turn of events, the pseudo-left has used it to make good on its reputation for opportunism.
Quoting Madoda Sambatha, a NUM functionary, the news24 site reports, “this woman from the Socialist Democratic Movement had already addressed those workers, and said they must not listen to the general secretary of Cosatu.” The labour bureaucrats were attacked when they insisted on speaking to workers.
This is the second time in a week that I have had news of the SDM, a section of the Committee for a Workers’ International. These are pretenders who see no contradiction between calling themselves Trotskyist and fighting for the legalisation of prostitution!
The WSWS should urgently organise some countervailing effort to reach the striking miners. Otherwise the pseudo-Trotskyists in the SDM will lead them into a massacre orders of magnitude greater than Marikana.
Thabo
20 October 2012
On “35 years since he assassination of Tom Henehan (1951-1977)”
“…his death would be of interest only to other commies.”
Assassin’s rounds find too many revolutionaries:
the ones with the most promise,
electrifying youth
and hard-handed miners.
Left bleeding out
they’re meant to fade away,
but we remember labor’s martyrs
and bear their images on shields,
burned into collective memories,
carried on our shoulders to the Workers’ Paradise.
Vance O
California, USA
19 October 2012
On “Adam Rapp’s Through the Yellow Hour: Doom and gloom pervades....”
After reading this review, I can recommend a powerful one-act play by Harold Pinter, called Party Time. It conveys the feeling of living within a privileged enclave that is unaware (except for a few individuals, who are endangered because of their awareness) that they are living in a totalitarian society.
Kamilla V
British Columbia, Canada
20 October 2012