Kaitlyn Hunt

An outcry has occurred over the arrest of an 18 year old woman Kaitlyn Hunt for having a “consensual”, same-sex relationship with another student. People have been outraged at this arrest because they were in a same-sex relationship. Many have claimed this was an attack on the LGBT community, as though she was arrested for being homosexual. This is not the case, she was not arrested under some kind of anti-homosexual law, she was arrested for “sexual battery on a person 12-16 years old.”

The two began a relationship when the older woman was 17 “and the girl she was dating was about three years younger. According to an account posted to Facebook by Kaitlyn’s mother“. Which means during that time the relationship crossed into the realm of illegality. This illegality is what caused her to be arrested at the request of the parents. This arrest would still have taken place if it was a heterosexual relationship. According to the article the charges were placed by the younger girl’s parents when the older woman turned 18.

This would not be happening if the same situation occurred with other relationships:

Older male, younger female: The male would be prosecuted with very little criticism.

Older female, younger male: There would be arguments that it’s not the same thing as the other way around making a double-standard, but she would be prosecuted all the same.

2 male homosexual relationship: I think there wouldn’t be much outrage., it would be seen as a clear-cut case of taking advantage of a younger person. (Whether this is true or not is another matter.)

The question that should be asked here, what can be criticized is the age of consent. Is the age of consent law fair? Is it a true reflection of our values in society? The problem here is the age of consent law, not homosexual rights, because the age of consent equally applies to heterosexual people. I believe there should be some alterations to the age of consent law, that is what should be discussed here, not perceived discrimination based on sexual orientation.

What is happening here is the zealotry of those involved in identity politics. They are too wrapped up in their identity to see the conditions that are going on around them as they affect other people too. This law also applies to heterosexual couples. This why we as Marxists reject identity politics and achieve revolution as a whole for all of humanity rather than creating groups based on one issue.

There are real acts of discrimination carried out against LGBT people, however this is not one of them.

Source Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/05/18/2033281/florida-teen-expelled-charged-with-felony-over-lesbian-relationship/?mobile=nc

Reblogged from The Weekly Bolshevik:

“The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things.”

Thus Marx summarized the phenomenon he dubbed Alienation, that is, the state of social, mental and productive disharmony that exists when the basic social expression of humans, as well as the only concrete link humans have to their reality, their labor, is utilized with instruments which the worker does not own, produced to a design which he did not formulate, and given up to a proprietor whose exchange—the wage—does not satisfy, and indeed whose proportional value to that of the worker’s labor, from-which he is estranged, is but a fraction.

Read more… 2,911 more words

Part 1: John Paul Cupp

First it asserts that the DPRK government supported John Paul Cupp the 22 year old son of a fundamentalist Christian preacher from Indiana. They say he received a message of support from the DPRK as follows.

“Upon the authorization of the Central Committee” it read, Pyongyang “extends militant greetings to you who extend warm support and solidarity to the Songun policy of our respected Marshal Kim Jong Il, treasure sword of our nation.”

The “formation of the Songun Politics Study Group USA has been reported to our Central Committee and, through it, to the Workers Party of Korea….Now your organization has been introduced to the entire Korean nation in the south and the north We are very pleased to have a revolutionary organization and comrades like you in the land of the United States, the bulwark of imperialism and determined to further the relationship with you in depth,”

After searching the archive I have found on that day specified an announcement of the Institute of Songun politics and of the letter sent to him. The letter states that they know of his group being formed and that it has been reported. It doesn’t show that they even know him, it shows they want to start working with the group.

After that they say North Korea didn’t tell anyone that John Paul Cupp had no address because he was homeless and living in a tent under a highway in Portland, Oregon. I don’t know of what relevance this is.

It’s interesting how they word statement that the letter was sent:

Rodong Sinmun, the official voice of the ruling Korean Worker’s Party (KWP), reported the news on September 11, the two year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

What is the relevance of mentioning that the date is two years exactly after the 9/11 attacks? None, it’s a dishonest attempt to associate Cupp and North Korea with 9/11. They’re deliberately trying to juxtapose the images of 9/11 with the DRPK, who had nothing to do with it. This is trying to paint an image of horrors in the readers minds. Its frankly pathetic and further demonstrates their hollow propaganda nature.

It continues:

By the time Cupp vowed his loyalty to Pyongyang and was made Chairman of the newly created Songun Politics Study Group USA, his evolving political ideology embraced white supremacy, pro Islamic Jihadists, virulent anti-Semitism, and launching domestic terrorism to achieve the armed overthrow of the U.S. Government.

Yes when he “vowed his loyalty to Pyongyang” he was Chairman, but he was not yet a White supremacist and all these other accusations. He began getting involved with them and in combination with illness lead to his abandoning the organization. He left the DPRK group because of his racist and often contradictory views. The PRK then began rejecting him and the beliefs he holds. Cupp actually claims the DRPK backed him on supporting anti-Semitism for 6 years, which is untrue. The DPRK opposes racism including anti-Semitism. Cupp provides no proof that the DPRK is in complete contradiction of their long held positions. His position towards the DPRK today is actually questionable.

Nate Thayer the author of the article is claiming Pyongyang supported someone they didn’t. He left when his views conflicted with the Juche-Son’gon idea. Thayer is essentially twisting the truth.

Cupp remained head of the U.S. Songun Study Group for the next seven years during which he travelled to Pyongyang as an official guest of the North Korean government. Simultaneously, he forged alliances with other American White Power extremist groups who shared his fidelity to Pyongyang, created other political front groups espousing armed revolution to create a racially pure state, and joined with apocalyptic fringe religious sects espousing suicide bombers as a tactic for achieving religious and political goals.

This is a half truth, what he was doing was trying to build and anti-imperialist block that opposed the imperialist actions of the US government. Is it questionable to do this with White Power groups and others? Absolutely, it was this along with other actions that lead to the DPRK denouncing him, and lead to his quitting the organization.

In December 2009, Cupp penned a piece in which he wrote “White Power, when correctly defined, ultimately wants both separation from and death to America. Indeed, ‘White Power, Death to America!’ … the best models existing today, and worthy of careful study, admiration, and solidarity by our people are those of North Korea and the Iraqi Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party.”

This post does exist and can be found in FreeMedia’s archive. What we have here is a massive contradiction, a White Power group in unity with the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. This makes no sense whatsoever. This is why he is no longer in power in the organization. This kind of insanity and contradiction I’ve seen before. I’ve seen this kind of thing in Marxists before. A few individuals call themselves Jeffersonian-Marxists. This also makes no sense, one was a slave owner who didn’t want non-White land owning men being able to vote. In further writings he claims these beliefs are compatible, which they are not. People are not immune from saying insane things. I could out to countless insane things NKNews.org has said with absolutely nothing to back it up.

All NKNews and the author have is take someone who is longer of the ideology and claim that the DPRK supported it. Meanwhile the US the home White Power movements actually in the US government, funds radical Islam fundamentalist groups.

One need only look as a far as Steve Smith, White Supremacist, Elected To Republican Party Committee In Pennsylvania County.

Part 2: What we have already said (taken form the Juche-Songon society)

Possibly the most controversial character of the group, the stories of Sutter’s activities according to the NKNews article are largely true. The Juche community has already dealt with this individual and several others over these accusations. It would be best for me to allow them to speak in their own words.

Over the past several years, the Juche movement in North America has been hampered in its’ development because of the study group’s former chairman John Paul Cupp’s deviationism from Kim Il Sungist Thought and his flirtations with anti-communist philosophies such as white nationalism which led him to bring many dangerous and suspect people into the group; two of these individuals were Joshua Caleb Sutter and James Porrazzo. This very same James Porrazzo has been slandering us and our current chairman Jason Adam Tonis heavily over the Internet recently, telling people that he is a “globalist agent” and “pig”….Porrazzo’s only evidence being that his name appears on a website as a leader of a group called the Manchukuo Temporary Government. Our chairman replies : “I was indeed a member of that organisation a few years ago, being a 22 year old kid I can make some pretty stupid decisions, but once I discovered the truth of socialism I no longer support such reactionary doctrines as Manchukuo – I have asked the Manchukuo people to please remove my name from their website but they keep stalling, this information is known to Alejandro Cao de Benos who knew of this before appointing me Official Delegate of the KFA in the USA. Porrazzo never once asked me for an explanation of that, which I would have gladly given him, but instead just began slandering me”…….but there is an ulterior motive to his slanders, Porrazzo is trying to cover up his connections with an accused FBI informant and snitch, Joshua Caleb Sutter. It can not be a coincidence that Porrazzo, formerly very friendly to me only became my enemy once I demanded to know what his ties with Sutter actually were……….Who is Joshua Sutter ?Joshua Caleb Sutter is the son of David Sutter, a well known neo-Confederate and racist politician, a figure in the League of the South and a manager of the Southern Patriot shop, Joshua was himself a rising star in the white racist group Aryan Nations until his arrest in 2002 for purchasing an illegal gun from an FBI agent……a crime for which Sutter spent two years in prison for.
http://www.rickross.com/reference/hate_groups/hategroups351.html
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/winter/theyre-back?page=0,1

After Sutter’s release from prison in late 2004, he was accused by several other Aryan Nations figures of having switched sides and now being a government agent, several figures were sent to prison on charges they claim were traps and set-ups by Sutter :
http://www.newnation.co/forums/archive/index.php/t-22110.html

Sutter, at least outwardly, continued to advocate white supremacy and relocated to Lexington, SC. His status within Aryan Nations began to grow murky though…
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2005/fall/heritage-for-sale

Around this time a new communist group calling itself the Rural People’s Party was formed in Lexington…….
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume11/RPP.htm

Note the story given for the party’s formation , the founder’s story is very akin to Sutter’s. In personal conversations I had with the RPP leader, who utilised the pseudonym Woods, Woods told me that he had been a member of Aryan Nations before his “conversion” to communism and that he feared retribution by Aryan Nations for his defection. What is strange is that if Sutter/Woods had really defected from white supremacy and feared for his life, why was he still living close by to the Aryan Nations headquarters in Lexington ?
Look at these photos posted by the RPP – note the woman’s face http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?f=134&t=48465

Because of the RPP’s supposed adoption of the Juche ideology (see http://ruralpeople.atspace.org/swords_of_the_korean_people.htm) they contacted the then Songun Politics Study Group USA in 2007 and had very cordial relations with them for a time, the woman shown, named Jillian, even became the fiancee of the then chairman John Paul Cupp. In 2008 however Cupp became severely ill for no apparent purpose while at the same time the RPP simply cut off all ties, unprovoked, with us. Cupp believes his illness was caused by being poisoned by Jillian and that the whole RPP action was designed as a government attempt to seize control over the Study Group (with Cupp dead Woods would have become the study group leader) and thus have an inside connection to the DPRK leadership. Woods later boasted to me that Jillian was in fact his own girlfriend and that he had indeed poisoned Cupp – he justified it by saying that Cupp was “insane” and the Study Group “deserved” a better leader. Cupp was indeed mentally ill and a crypto-reactionary to boot and his lack of judgement was in fact the sole cause of his entrapment by Woods/Sutter but nonetheless Sutter showed himself to be supremely opportunistic and shady via his statements to me and also to other comrades whom he tried to enlist in his unsuccessful 2007-8 attempt to take over the group.

On November 18 2008 Woods and Jillian married
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume12/rpp.htm

In early 2009, when I was just becoming a supporter of the DPRK, I contacted the RPP via email because I was impressed that they were an American Juche party, I joined it knowing very little about it and was given the membership code # MZD78. I then quickly became confused because the RPP had nothing but bad to say about the US Songun study group, but they never told me exactly why it was so bad….so I decided to contact them and see for myself. When I first spoke to John Paul Cupp via email and the telephone and told him I was an RPP member, he quickly informed me as to the entire story mentioned above : when I went back to the RPP and asked for more clarification on what Cupp had said, Sutter/Woods became extremely angered and then issued me a death threat. When I told this to Cupp, Cupp issued a counter-threat to Woods telling him that if he attempted to kill me or Cupp, Cupp would expose his true identity as Sutter. Sutter then backed down and did not bother me at all for the last two years.

Since 2009, Sutter has adopted yet another new identity, that of a Hare Krishna priest, he now calls himself on Facebook and other sites as Shree Shree Kalki-Kalika Mandir
note the links below showing Sutter is Shree

http://www.change.org/members/597202
http://te-in.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=187501898359&id=108082218359

Now note the website of Sutter’s new group the New Bihar Mandir “temple” look at this photo http://www.newbiharmandir.org/darshana.html

It is quite apparent the woman shown here is the same woman from the RPP. Also Shree’s wedding date, listed as November 18 2008 on his Facebook profile is the same date the RPP leader gave above. The New Bihar Mandir is said to be headquartered on a commune in Lexington, SC, same location as the RPP.

In February 2011, John Paul Cupp’s mentally ill state and devolution reached a point whereby he totally abandoned Juche and communism, Jason-Adam Tonis was left to take over leadership of the group and try to rebuild it. He decided to lead it in a strictly orthodox Juche-Songun framework, away from racism and all those who supported racist ideas. Jason-Adam Tonis since 2009 had always opposed John Paul Cupp’s white nationalist line but his attempts to lead Cupp back to the orthodox Juche camp always ended in failure due to Cupp’s increasing mental illness.

A few weeks ago, a man using the name Tyler Moses formed a group calling itself the Juche Front (http://juchefront.wordpress.com)- this man was also an Aryan Nations figure (see  http://www.aryan-nation.org/volunteers_needed.html) ……and he claimed also to be a Hare Krishna and member of New Bihar Mandir, as part of our group’s routine background check for applying member candidates, we discovered the identity of New Bihar Mandir’s leader Shree Shree Kalika-Kalki Mandir was actually Sutter. When I brought this to the attention of James Porrazzo, who is also a Hare Krishna and friend of Sutter/Shree Shree, Porrazzo refused to consider the matter and then began the infamous and brigandish slanders against our group and its’ chairperson.

Looking back on it the spirit of criticism, the fault for these matters rests solely upon John Paul Cupp and his adoption of a pro-white nationalist line; had he not done so James Porrazzo and Joshua Sutter would never once have ever been considered for a moment to be validly qualified to be members of this study group, from now on we will pursue a more vigilant anti-racist, anti-white nationalist policy.

North American Juche-Songun Ideas Study Group

Addendum : On the night of December 31, 2011, James Porrazzo telephoned Comrade Jason-Adam Tonis using the number 617-271-1768 and claimed that he was outside Tonis’ fiancee’s residence and he was about to murder her. After a half hour of calling Porrazzo out on his bluff, Porrazzo admitted to Tonis that he was not in fact outside Tonis’ fiancee’s house …Porrazzo then claimed that the true purpose of his call was to attempt to make a “deal” whereby in return for our removing our expose of Porrazzo and Joshua Caleb Sutter, the two men would then take down their slanderous website about this group. The North American Juche-Songun Ideas Study Group has strongly decided on no deal, we will never negotiate with imperialist agent provocateurs ……for Porrazzo’s article was nothing but lies whereas we only wrote truth.

A few more interesting facts regarding James Porrazzo………

James is engaged to Miss Emily Putney and currently appears to be living in Miss Putney’s residence in Massachusets , leeching off her income. Miss Putney, on her Facebook page seen here (http://www.facebook.com/emily.putney), was born on February 11, 1990, while we do not know the exact age of Porrazzo, he is known to have been a leader of the American Front since the early 1990s..(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Front)……which would make him about twice his fiancee’s age…………

Despite her youth, Miss Emily Putney is not inexperienced though when it comes to having troubles with the law….in 2009 she and her then boyfriend verbally attacked an elderly Jew in a supermarket, a crime for which Putney received probation for.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20090903%2FNEWS%2F909030345
http://www.mass.gov/ago/news-and-updates/press-releases/2011/judgment-against-man-in-anti-semitic-attack.html

James Porrazzo and Emily Putney both claim today that they are not anti-Semitic but only anti-Zionist…..if this is true how will they explain this event occurring only a couple of short years ago ?

The North American Juche-Songun Ideas Study Group repeats and reaffirms our warning to all comrades and friends of the DPRK and Juche to avoid James Porrazzo and his New Resistance group.

Part 3: Hypocrisy Exposed

Returning to my own words there are some more issues with this article I’d like to deal with. For starters there is a tremendous amount of hypocrisy in this article and the whole claim about those who support the DPRK. Sure, Thayer has managed to find a few kooks who have supported the DPRK. Some people who were White supremacists. But what does that even mean? The DPRK does not support them, North Korea has always taken a stance against racism, particularly White supremacy given that they are a Korean nation.

This is hypocritical given the fact that the United States of America is one of the most racist nations on Earth. In fact capitalism itself is the favourite ideology of racists because it plays right into their false sense of superiority, their hyper individuality that supports their belief in supposed inferiority of other races. There’s no surprise the ultimate ideology of inequality (and the justification thereof) is held so tightly by racists.

A person only has to watch the American news to find weekly racist comments and actions by Republican Party members. In fact their “White America” mentality was instrumental in their losing the last two federal elections. The demographics of America have changed, it is no longer a White vote dominated country. These people even have their own 24-hour propaganda outlet which spews racism and racist war justifications called FOX News. (Which by the way are the biggest supporters of South Korea). Time and time again the public has become aware of White supremacists who are actually in the Republican party.

Right wing ideology is the cornerstone of racist thinking. The Left believes that all people are equal and actually lives up to that mentality, socialism and communism are the ideas that everyone is equal. This is what right wingers cry about, everyone being treated equal. This shows the ideological weakness of anti-DPRK crowd. They can show their true colours by crying and bemoaning the ideal of equality while at the same time hypocritically and falsely accusing the DPRK of not carrying it out. It’s a common stance of right wingers and anti-Communists, just completely contradict yourself and rely on the ignorant hatred of the NKNews audience not to notice it.

The claim here is that the DPRK supports White supremacy when they themselves are not White. The illogical nature of this is astounding, and is frankly to be expected from the anti-North Korean crowd who frequently invent entirely childishly outrageous stories. This is to expected form NKNews.org which is one, if not the most, disreputable so-called news sources that have been caught lying more than once.

Further hypocrisy is the complaint of doomsday cults, or cults in general. There are plenty of cults in the US, in fact the US has a very high concentration of cults and a very powerful long history of it. Most of these organizations were centered around right wing leaning ideology. It’s not very relevant what their ideology was, but the fact they were American. This is a largely American phenomenon. These are a small sample of the cults that have existed, the vast overwhelming majority have existed outside the DPRK community. Some of these cults have had connections, albeit small ones, to the Republican Party. Let us take this even further to the South Korean nation itself. What about the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his cult? After all the man claimed to be the messiah, he literally claimed to be of divine blood. He was touted and supported by the South Korean and US governments as a tool in the Cold War. The only problem the US ever had with him was not paying enough taxes, meaning the US didn’t get their slice of the cult profits. In fact major US Republican Party supporters Jerry Falwell and Joseph Lowery spoke in defense of him. The US Republican Party supporters literally defended the cult. Let’s take this even further into the mainstream of Republican life. Watch the documentary “Jesus Camp” where children were given a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush and were praying to it. This cry of cults is nothing more than selective and hypocritical.

As per usual Thayer and NKNews fail to provide any sources for what it is the claim. Not a single link to anything they claim and a lack of sources to back up what they say. In honesty much of what is said about the actions of certain individuals is true, but the nature of their relationships to the pro-DPRK community is what is lied about. Sure, they give you an audio recording of a speech, but place it in the article itself so that you don’t click away and look at anything else. Sources are something the anti-DPRK and anti-Communist crowd like to leave out.

It’s also obvious that they’ve dishonestly cherry picked. They don’t mention all the other people who support the DPRK and don’t hold any of these positions. The majority of whom are Atheists. They don’t mention the hypocrisy of their claims. They don’t mention how none of this exists in the support for the DPRK in other countries. They take the American problem and lay it at the feet of the DPRK. This is horribly dishonest and is a further blow to their already non-existent credibility.

Finally let us remind ourselves of what is being done here. The accusation is obvious: if you support the DPRK and you live in the West, you must be racist or crazy. Which is a nice way of NKNews.org seemingly libeling anyone who presents information they deliberately leave out. If say you’re like me and have proven in the past they’ve lied.

Sources:

http://www.nknews.org/2013/05/06/white-power-and-apocalyptic-cults-pro-dprk-americans-revealed/

http://juchesongun.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/48/ (link now active and replaced with the following)

http://web.archive.org/web/20120401142232/http://juchesongun.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/48/

http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/author/john-paul-cupp/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/01/white-nationalist-elected-to-gop_n_1563020.html

http://www.rickross.com/reference/hate_groups/hategroups351.html

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/winter/theyre-back?page=0,1

http://www.newnation.co/forums/archive/index.php/t-22110.html

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2005/fall/heritage-for-sale

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume11/RPP.htm

http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?f=134&t=48465

http://ruralpeople.atspace.org/swords_of_the_korean_people.htm

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume12/rpp.htm

http://www.change.org/members/597202

http://te-in.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=187501898359&id=108082218359

http://www.newbiharmandir.org/darshana.html

http://www.aryan-nation.org/volunteers_needed.html

http://www.facebook.com/emily.putney

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20090903%2FNEWS%2F909030345

http://www.mass.gov/ago/news-and-updates/press-releases/2011/judgment-against-man-in-anti-semitic-attack.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Myung_Moon

Reblogged from Red Youth NYC:

By Caleb T. Maupin

The media in the United States is private property. FOX news is owned by Australian Billionaire Rupert Murdoch. MSNBC is owned by General Electric, a huge corporation that makes billions annually in military contracts and has brutally suppressed unions. The capitalist media largely reinforces and preaches ideas that serve the interests of those who own it, the wealthy capitalist class.

Read more… 1,542 more words

Now, textbooks economists says that in a competitive market, each worker gets paid his or her “marginal product” – the amount that the worker adds to total production. But what’s the marginal product of a corporate executive, or a hedge fund manager, or for that matter a corporate lawyer? Nobody really knows. And if you look at how incomes for people in this class are actually determined, you find processes that arguably bear very little relationship to their economic contribution.

At this point someone is likely to say, “But what about Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg? Didn’t they get rich by creating products of value?” And the answer is yes-but very few of the top 1 percent, or even the top 0.01 percent, made their money that way. For the most part, we’re looking at executives at firms that they didn’t themselves create. They may own a lot of stock options in their companies, but they received those assets as a part of their pay package, not by founding the business. And who decides what goes into their pay packages? Well, CEOs famously have their pay set by compensation committees appointed by … the same CEOs they’re judging.

First notice how Krugman acknowledges class within the firm itself. Many will outright deny this and claim that there are just different positions of differing functions and importance. Second, I believe that Krugman is acknowledging that there are groups of positions within a firm that are given preferential treatment and an inequitable remuneration for the functions performed. He’s stating that the productive value of the CEOs and corporate this-and-that is questionable in comparison to how much they receive in compensation.

Am I seeing what I think I am seeing? I think I’m seeing Krugman (in a way) admit there is exploitation in capitalism. It seems to me he’s pointing out how the most venerated of positions within a company are given more in compensation than they are actually contributing to the production process. It almost seems as though he’s admitting that the workers in the company, be they physical or mental labour, are being exploited!

* * *
Quote Source:
Paul Krugman. 2013, 2012. End This Recession Now! W.W.Norton, New York. 78-79 (emphasis mine)

Paul Krugman On Twitter
https://twitter.com/NYTimeskrugman

Reblogged from The Crimes of Colonialism:

• 
• 

My writing is generally centered around economic and military Imperialism and it's excesses. So, understandably, given the misunderstandings and ignorance abound about anti-Imperialism and criticism of the United States, you may be surprised to know that I consider the struggle against Imperialism waged in the Third-world a woman's struggle just as much as it is an anti-Imperialist one. That, to divorce the struggle against Imperialism as capitalism's current manifestation in this era from the women's question, is to negate the ABC's of Leftist thoughtform.

Read more… 1,614 more words

Take this for example, Bank of America has now been ordered to pay $36.8 million to military service members who had their homes unlawfully closed upon (oops, sorry I mean “improperly foreclosed on”) while they were overseas in active duty. It’s actually illegal to do so. Foreclosing on a service member who is on active duty overseas violates the Servicemembers act. Currently the Justice Department is still reviewing foreclosures from all five banks involved.

According to the Reuters article:

Each of 316 service members will receive at least $116,785, plus compensation and with interest, for any home equity lost.

These members of the military, I believe, were blatantly ripped off by mortgage companies. I could not think of a more lowlife thing to do to someone overseas. (In my opinion) literally stealing someone’s home while they are away. Upwards of 5,000 members had their homes confiscated according to regulators in 2011.

The truly ironic part is that the home was stolen by the very people the soldier was off fighting for. Members of the military need to keep this incident in mind when they decide whether or not to sign up for another tour of duty. There have been countless incidents of soldiers being refused body armour, dying from faulty electrical work in showers, to ignoring their incredibly high suicide rate, to outright cutting their benefits for having made sacrifices.

The ruling class cares nothing for those they send to their deaths. They care nothing for you as a member of the military. The only solution is to outright refuse enlisting and refuse a possible draft. The Russians too faced the same choice. Become mutilated or dead for the benefit of the Czar, or refuse service and join the Bolsheviks.

There is a reason way the following lines are in the Internationale:

“The soldiers too will take strike action, they’ll break ranks and fight no more…”

* * *
Sources:
Military members to get $39 mln in home foreclosure settlement
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/04/foreclosure-military-idUSL2N0CR25E20130404

Soldiers in Iraq still buying their own body armor
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-03-26-body-armor_x.htm

Pentagon: 16 soldiers died from electric shock
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-07-25-iraq-contractors_N.htm

Suicide Rate Among Vets and Active Duty Military Jumps – Now 22 A Day
http://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2013/02/05/22-the-number-of-veterans-who-now-commit-suicide-every-day/

Bush cuts to veterans services
http://www.awolbush.com/

What is Happening In Cyprus subscriber asked for a quick rundown of what is happening in Cyprus right now. So here is a blog post I found showing the events that have unfolded.

THE EUROZONE’S finance ministers are to hold a make-or-break summit in Brussels this evening where they will decide whether Cyprus gets a €10 billion bailout – or whether the country is shoved out of the Euro.

It’s been a long-building saga in Cyprus, which has been in line for an EU bailout for a long time now – but has still struggled to finalise a bailout that would allow its banks to be recapitalised and continue in operation….

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It’s this second one that is being tackled with the new policy. The government of Maduro is aiming to “overcome the parallel market”. The policy is to control what foreign money is purchased in the country. It’s called the Complimentary System of Foreign Currency Acquirement (Sicad). This new system will operate alongside the Foreign Exchange Administration Commission (Cadivi) system which obtains dollars at the official exchange rate.

Finance Minister Jorge Giodorani said the Sicad will operate like a ‘”bidding” system for private companies who need to import. A Superior Organ for the Optimisation of the Exchange System will decide which companies are authorized to buy dollars and announce how much money is available.’ Working in conjunction with the Central Bank all companies will submit receipts showing the cost of machinery and materials they wish to purchase. They will make the request through regular private financial institutions and then it gets filed off to the Central Bank.

The Central Bank would then provide the funds to the overseas providers directly meaning the companies who have been authorized to receive foreign dollars will never actually hold them.

So what is the purpose of this? It prevents corporations from buying foreign dollars with the purpose of betting against the economy, that it will destabilize. it also forces companies to only be able to obtain the dollars for production, eliminating the possibility of buying dollars for non-productive purposes. This prevents the bourgeois from making money simply by owning money. To obtain these dollars you have to be entering into production that generates value.

No longer can the rich simply use owning money as a means of generating profits. They have to actually contribute something to the economy in order to get it. Of course there are other ways of doing the same thing. This is just one less avenue they have to achieve it.

Source: http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8288

Many times in the past a new economist has come along and questioned whether or not the profit motive was the best way to deal with a particular issue that was facing a difficulty. This kind of semi-criticism has taken the form of regulation, just making sure the situation doesn’t get too bad. The underlying problem of the profit motive remains to do the damage that it does. At no point is the profit motive actually challenged. Often some have advised taking an entire industry right out of the hands of the bourgeois in order to halt disastrous consequences that have harmed millions of people. For example the production of drinking water is a state function in the First World. Places where this is not the case there is a great deal water borne diseases. These conditions kill untold numbers of people around the world. The state must either take it out of the hands of private business, or merely take control because it is simply not being done.

When it comes to the topic of recession it appears they make the same mistake. They don’t learn from the mistakes of the past to predict or solve the problems. Marx has clearly laid out the reasons for recession, yet they have gone ignored. If all these decades later it is still being asked why the Great Depression happened, don’t you think it’s time to start looking outside mainstream bourgeois economic thought? I would think that if all the orthodox methods failed, it would be time to look outside the orthodox methods.

Yet here we are right now facing a second dip in the recession not all that different from what caused the first one. The recovery from 2008 has not taken place anywhere near what should have happened by this time. We still see stagnated wages, weak (if at all) job recovery, new investment is desperately lacking. Meanwhile the capitalist class is reporting greater and greater profits. The stock market and other such institutions are doing even greater than they were before the recession. There has been a return to profitability but to primarily non-reproducible investment. Secondary financial market transactions make up a good amount of the increased profits. They’re just the reselling of assets that have already been produced. No new production is being undertaken.

What is happening here is that the typical Keynesian recovery process is not actually taking place. New investment in production that requires hiring workers and selling goods in not happening. The end of previous recessions was signalled by a return to production and accumulation of new profits. This is what the Keynesian model tells us must be done to save the economy. While it has worked in the past it is not working now. In this situation we see that banks are not loaning out the money they could be. Large corporate firms are flushed with cash that their shareholders are begging them to invest. The reason why it’s not being carried out is because they don’t see it as being profitable.

This is a flaw in the thinking and theory of Keynesian economics: Keynes said that the state should create new money and have the state spend it on infrastructure projects putting people to work, putting money into their pockets thus stimulating demand. Despite the intention this doesn’t guarantee that it will make investment by capitalists in production profitable. They don’t go into business just because they have money they want to invest. The do it because they see profitability. If they don’t see the possibility of receiving profits from investment, they are not going to bother investing.

A disturbing trend has been developing since the end of last year. Mergers and acquisitions have dramatically increased, which should be a cause of concern for anyone interested in the economy. It is a continuation of the problem of the capitalist class refusing to begin new production. Instead of investing in new production, capitalists have begun buying out their competitors instead. Profits have been raised by cutting costs, not increasing sales. As the demand has dropped/stagnated across the board companies find themselves in a desperate situation to stay in solvency. Now they can’t sell, because the profitability is not there. All businesses are suffering, some worse than others. When two of them see the end as close, they may chose to merge into one saving as much of both companies as possible. They reduce the size of the two companies to one company making two failing enterprises into a single surviving one. In doing so they have concentrated their resources and obtained a larger share of the market through reduced competition. This can also happen when one company purchases another that is failing, producing the same result. Neither of these tactics will repair the economic situation we have.

To demonstrate the extent of the M&As (mergers and acquisitions) here is just a sample of what has taken place recently from the fiscal times.

“Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD), in hopes of getting those regulators to sign off on its own marriage to Grupo Modelo of Mexico, announced plans to sell to Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ) the rights to Corona beer and other brands in the United States: a $4.75 billion transaction that may (the parties hope) make it possible to pull off the larger $20.1 billion deal.

Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) plans to acquire AssuraMed for $2.07 billion in hopes of making bigger inroads into the home care market expected to grow because of the country’s demographic changes.

Then there was the elephant: Warren Buffett’s announcement that his Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) holding company (along with buyout firm 3G Holdings) will pay $23 billion to purchase H.J. Heinz (NYSE: HNZ) – yup, the ketchup guys.

That $40 billion-plus worth of deals took place on just a single day on Wall Street. Add in the recent $24.4 billion buyout offer for Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) by founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake (and leaving out the total value of the AB InBev/Grupo Modelo deal), and you’re looking at more than $65 billion of merger and acquisition activity in only a month. Plus, Liberty Global (NASDAQ: LBTYA) plans to snap up Virgin Media, the British cable business, for $16 billion. Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) will spend $18.1 billion to buy General Electric’s (NYSE: GE)share of broadcaster NBCUniversal. Throw in the December announcement of a merger between NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX) and Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), a deal valued at $8 billion. And those are just the transactions that grab headlines.”

Source

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2013/02/15/From-Buffett-to-Budweiser-3-Reasons-Merger-Mania-Is-Back.aspx#iHo17TPFVtU07m6V.99

These are not small M&As, these are major financial transactions that are taking place. It is not a few isolated incidents. The article goes on to describe how around $1 trillion worth of these M&As took place in the 4th quarter of 2012, which went relatively unnoticed by the financial community and media. This is obviously a major trend that is taking place.

Since this is very real and such a big deal we have to ask why this is happening. Companies are profiting from these M&As as a substitute for increased profits from sales. The profits are coming from cost cutting in operation. Companies are choosing to eliminate certain aspects of their operations. Some have downsized entire departments in favour of a more efficient process; or simply because of reduced demand for products. Others have closed stores that are struggling to meet the monthly bills or are just not as profitable as the company would like them to be. Some are going for cheaper packaging or demanding various cuts to the manufacturing process. Often times there are outright reductions in pay for workers, even layoffs. This of course leads to further antagonism between the workers and capitalist.

The bottom line is that this is not a recovery strategy for the economy. There is no new production beginning stimulating employment and worker spending. Profits are increasing by means that which go against the recovery process. The true irony is that this literally makes things worse. With these cuts in large companies there are even more unemployed workers that leads to an even greater reduction in demand for products and services, which in turn causes more unemployment. We’re looking at a self-perpetuating worsening economy. (Interestingly we can see a contradiction as well. What is saving the capitalist is also killing the economy and thus in turn killing himself.)

There is going on here than just this contradiction. The government is trying to stimulate spending through quantitative easing but it is clearly not working. Traditionally this Keynesianism has been quite successful. Getting cash out there for people to make purchases and for businesses to get off the ground or finance a new round of production. What is going wrong this time, which is unique from past recessions, is two phenomenon: First, the banks are not lending the money out for various reasons, including fear and greed. Second, many large firms don’t actually need to borrow the money. Mega corporations are flushed with cash right now and have no need to borrow.

Revenue growth by S&P 500 companies (as well as global economic growth) is still hard to come by. Earnings are growing at a faster pace than revenue. The cash they are flushed with is their earnings. This money is just sitting there on their balance sheets not being put to any use or being paid out in dividends. The average dividend yield hasn’t changed, it’s remaining at a solid 2.05%. Of course shareholders are asking questions, there is all this potential just lying around not being put to use. In fact the amount is now greater than it was just before the recession. Back in 2007 it was $564.8b now it’s an overwhelming $920b. This is a drastic increase from before 2008 when the times were much more profitable.

This cash is just laying around in company bank accounts because the capitalists see no profitable investment at this time. As I said previously they’re not going to enter into production if they see no chance for a profitable return. So what we have here is a perfect storm for M&A. Companies are downsizing, cutting costs to maintain profitability because sales have not increased. Meanwhile others are flushed with cash from doing the same and also see no new profitable investment. The money has to go somewhere in order to keep the flow of money going. So why not just buy up your competitor and absorb his operations?

It has definite benefits: your cash can start flowing into a new area gaining new means of production and particular skilled employees. It also reduces competition by reducing the number of competitors in the market leaving the customer with less choice and more likely going to your store. When (at least some of) these customers go to your store you increase your profits through increased sales.

When conditions like these develop it makes M&As pretty much inevitable. There is no possibility for new sales so they resort to instead getting a larger share of the market when possible. It’s one of those incidences of the concentration of capital that bourgeois economists like to pretend don’t happen.

So what is so bad about this you might ask? Well for one thing this creates no new value. Marx said that the only production that creates value is physical commodity production. Things like financial transactions and asset purchasing can generate profits, but they cannot create value. No new production is taking place, increased sales is from obtaining a larger share of the market. Profits have increased only from a decrease in competition. The company absorbing the other now has more sales, but not because there are more sales in the economy (just on its balance sheet). Which all means there is no new physical commodity production taking place.

This brings us to the question as to why not creating new value is a bad thing. To answer this question I’m going to use the Marxian circuit of capital.

M – C …P… C’ – M’

This is the circuit through which money must travel in order to avoid crisis in an economy. It first begins with money (M) being invested into a commodity (C) which is usually a raw material, for our example we’ll use steel. P represents the application of labour to the commodity (the steel). When the worker’s job is finished, the end result is a commodity of a greater value than the lump of steel, represented as (C’). This finished commodity is then sold for a greater sum of money than the raw material was purchased for, represented by (M’).

In Marxist economic theory anytime there is a break down in the circuit of capital the economy goes into a recession, if the break is bad enough. To give an example I’ll use the housing crisis of the Global Collapse of Capitalism. A great deal of mortgages were given out to the public because credit was so cheap at the time and other reasons. (Proponents of subprime lending maintain that the practice extends credit to people who would otherwise not have access to the credit market.) Many people who could never get one before were now faced with the prospect of owning a home through a sub-prime mortgage. Thus as a result all these people went out looking for homes to buy.

A sharp increase in demand took place stimulation new home construction and drove up the costs of existing homes. Housing prices increased exponentially; The total mortgage debt and home prices grew at almost exactly the same rates between 2000 and the end of 2005, 100% and 102% respectively. (As measured by the Case-Shiller Home Price Index.) This caused the prices of homes and the size of mortgages to go well beyond the earnings of workers which did not increase along with them. Meaning workers never actually had enough income to pay the mortgages, leaving many defaults that crash the housing market.

This is where the circuit of capital broke driving the recession. Obviously there was more to the recession than this, but this was the catalyst that set it off. The break down in the circuit of capital went like this:

M – Money spent
C – Raw materials collected
P – Homes physically built
C’ – Value of home greater than raw material
— Break —

The homes were indeed constructed according to the demand for them. The problem was that people couldn’t afford the loans that got taken out in order to purchase them. The M’ was never realized, meaning the profit from the production of homes was never realized. In addition, the banks lost their M’ by not having those loans paid back. The circuit was broken kicking off the recession.

This is just an example of the break down in the circuit. We are facing a break down right now with this massive occurrence of M&As as opposed to renewed production. At the end of the circuit, the M’ is not being reinvested in new commodity creation. Instead its being used to purchase already existing assets, other businesses and whatever it is they hold. No new value is being created.

It is the renewed investment in commodity production that hires people into the factories that gives them wages that can be spent on other goods and services. This tactic of buying up competitors does not accomplish what is necessary to begin the recovery. This process actually makes it worse because it often puts more people out of work through layoffs causing more damage to the circuit.

With less people working there is less money being spent on goods and services. This decreases the demand for them leading to a less profitable environment for reinvestment. If this trend continues long enough we’re going to face a second dip in the recession. One that could potentially be worse than the first.