alanjjohnstone
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An interesting article on the change of attitudes among liberal Zionists now calling for a one-state solution is now being seen as calling for the destruction of Israel.
“That advocacy, if actualized, would ultimately destroy Israel.” – US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman,
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/peter-beinart-crisis-liberal-zionism-200808113107258.html
So we now have Zionists guilty according to those who consider questioning the existence of the Israel as a Jewish state to be anti-semitic
An article reminding us that a land claim is also about water rights.
“Though the Navajo Nation overlaps several major water basins — including the Upper and Lower Basins of the Colorado River and the Rio Grande Basin — regulatory constraints mean the Nation’s primary water sources are the San Juan and Little Colorado River tributaries of the mighty Colorado River. For various reasons, including the sheer size of the reservation coupled with limited infrastructure, the water derived from these sources fail to stretch far enough to meet the demands of the Nation’s residents.”
Not sure why i re-post his article links but i do think as a theorist he has a receptive audience among American progressives and perhaps we can better understand why
https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/why-capitalism-is-in-constant-conflict-with-democracy/
This essay has many good observations about both political and economic democracy
“Capitalism’s political problem arose from its intrinsically undemocratic juxtaposition of an employer minority and an employee majority. The contradictions of that structure clashed with universal suffrage. Endless political maneuvers around hegemonic blocs with alternative sections of the employees allowed capitalism to survive. However, eventually those contradictions would exceed the capacity of hegemonic maneuvers to contain and control them. A pandemic combined with a major economic crash may provoke and enable progressives to make the break, change U.S. politics, and realize the long-overdue social changes.”
I was aware of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
The Civilized Tribes competed as successful farmers and were seen as a threat to local whites, one reason why they were deported west on the ‘trail of tears’ from their land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears
They also developed their own written language for printing.
But there were not one rule fits all.
The Seminole tribe of Florida consisted of runaway slaves intermarried with the Creek.
https://www.thoughtco.com/black-seminoles-4154463
And there were cases of a few freemen ex-slaves owing slaves, so as you say…a very murky business.
In 1830 about 13.7 percent (319,599) of the black population was free. Of these, 3,776 free Negroes owned 12,907 slaves, out of a total of 2,009,043 slaves owned in the entire United States, so the numbers of slaves owned by black people over all was quite small by comparison with the number owned by white people.
42 percent owned just one slave and it is assumed that it was probably to own a family member to protect that person, as did many of the other black slave owners who owned only slightly more slaves.
But not always. In North Carolina, “Without doubt, there were those who possessed slaves for the purpose of advancing their [own] well-being … these Negro slaveholders were more interested in making their farms or carpenter-shops ‘pay’ than they were in treating their slaves humanely.”
In other words, most black slave owners probably owned family members to protect them, but others turned to slavery to exploit the labor of other black people for profit.
https://www.africanamerica.org/topic/did-black-people-own-slaves
We shouldn’t forget that it was the Scottish aristocracy which was largely responsible for the Highland Clearances sending them to toil in Canada mostly with ramifications for today with large parts of Scotland remaining de-populated and present SNP government policy to encourage re-settlement.
And the export of British orphan children to the Australia and Canada all the way up to the mid 20th C was also a form of indentured slavery.
2nd part of the essay on Irish slaves
The escaped slave Frederick Douglass was shocked by the conditions he encountered during visits to Ireland in the mid-1840s.
“I see much here,” he wrote in March of 1846, “to remind me of my former condition, and I confess I should be ashamed to lift up my voice against American slavery, but that I know the cause of humanity is one the world over.”
He wrote movingly of finding it painful to walk Dublin’s streets, then “almost literally alive with beggars, displaying the greatest wretchedness – mere stumps of men, without feet, without legs, without hands, without arms…pressing their way through the muddy streets…casting sad looks to the right and left, in the hope of catching the eye of a passing stranger.”
In the far-Right’s attempts to concoct a ‘white slaves’ myth to counter the surging global protests against racism Douglass pinpointed the dynamic precisely when he observed that:
“a large class of writers…are influenced by no higher motive than that of covering up our national sins; and thus many have harped upon the wrongs of Irishmen, while in truth they care no more about Irishmen, or the wrongs of Irishmen, than they care about the whipped, gagged, and thumb-screwed slave. They would as willingly sell on the auction-block an Irishman, if it were popular to do so, as an African”.
I wasn’t aware of this Biden quote which illustrates the US-Israeli alliance
“It is the best $3 billion investment we make,” Biden said in 1986 in reference to the annual largesse in military assistance, implying it was worthier of funding than any other federal funding. “Were there not an Israel,” he continued, “the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”
https://truthout.org/articles/dnc-platform-condemns-bds-but-not-israels-occupation-of-palestine/
There has been a constant argument that intensive industrialised factory farming of livestock has been identified as high risk for zoonoses diseases
There has been ample early warning.
Rather than following the current model of food production, a socialist society would be a more diversified approach. lessening the chances of pathogens jumping species.
We had slavery in Scotland in the mines until 1799
https://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2012/10/when-miners-were-chattel-slaves-and-not.html
In the 17th and 18th centuries, coal miners in Scotland, and their families, were bound to the colliery in which they worked and the service of its owner. This bondage was set into law by an Act of Parliament in 1606, which ordained that “no person should fee, hire or conduce and salters, colliers or coal bearers without a written authority from the master whom they had last served”. The cruel edict reduced the Scottish collier to the position of a serf or a slave. By that Act, workmen in mines, whether miners, pickmen, winding-men, firemen, or in any other service of the mine, were prohibited from leaving that service either in hope of greater gain or of greater ease, or for any other reason, without the consent of the coal-owner, or of the Sheriff of the County; and any one receiving a runaway into his service and refusing to return him within twenty-four hours was to be fined one hundred pounds Scots. A collier lacking such written authority could be “reclaimed” by his former master “within a year and a day”. If the new master did not surrender the collier, he could be fined and the collier who deserted was considered to be a thief and punished accordingly. The Act also gave the coal owners and masters the powers to to apprehend “vagabonds and sturdy beggars” and put them to work in the mines. A further Act of 1641 extended those enslaved to include other workers in the mines and forced the colliers to work six days a week. The Habeas Corpus Act of Scotland, in 1701, which declared that “the imprisonment of persons without expressing the reasons thereof, and delaying to put them to trial is contrary to law”; and that “no person shall hereafter be imprisoned for custody in order to take his trial for any crime or offence without a warrant or writ expressing the particular cause for which he is imprisoned” specifically stated “that this present Act is in no way to be extended to colliers and salters.”
So much for Braveheart’s “FREEEEDOMMMMMM”
A bit of trivia, Robert Burns, once applied for an overseers job in one of the West Indian sugar plantations. He fully understood the role describing it as ‘a poor Negro driver’
But he got himself published and so he didn’t pursue that career . Ironic when you think he wrote
‘The Slaves Lament’
It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral,
For the lands of Virginia, – ginia, O:
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more;
And alas! I am weary, weary O:
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more;
And alas! I am weary, weary O.All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost,
Like the lands of Virginia, – ginia, O:
There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow,
And alas! I am weary, weary O:
There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow,
And alas! I am weary, weary O:The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear,
In the lands of Virginia, – ginia, O;
And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear,
And alas! I am weary, weary O:
And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear,
And alas! I am weary, weary O:We should be making the focus of some of our problem in relating modern wage-slavery with the older forms, our lack of genuine freedom and liberty.
The vote lesser evil video, narrated by Chomsky
https://www.dw.com/en/local-slaughterhouses-struggle-to-keep-ethical-farming-alive/a-54381190
Williams slaughters local livestock in his small abattoir next to the farmland in Machynlleth’s bucolic Dyfi Valley where he keeps his own cows and sheep. All the livestock he slaughters is grass-fed on farms within a 20-mile radius, most fewer than 10 miles away.
“I house the animals the night before so they’re rested; they’re on clean straw and water and it is short work from field to abattoir,” he says. “Because of the nature of the task, one of the most important things is there must be no cruelty involved whatsoever.”
“Wil has got a field so the animals have no stress,” says Joy Neal, from nearby Glandyfi. “He is kind to the animals and provides good meat for local people and I think he is much appreciated!”
These small businesses aren’t profitable enough to compete with supermarkets, and a growing burden of paperwork and regulation hasn’t helped.
Sustainable Food Trust (SFT) founder Patrick Holden explains, “We’ve destroyed that latticework of localized infrastructure which used to be in place…Abattoirs are particularly critical because you can’t have local and welfare friendly meat of any description unless you have local abattoirs.”
Local operations cannot compete with industrial farming on price. But there are myriad costs that don’t show up on supermarket price tags, both environmental and in terms of local economies that suffer when food production shifts to large, centralized operations.
“Big retailers talk about economies of scale but what this really means is that these large food systems are an extractive industry, they’re mining the social and human capital that used to be a feature of resilient food systems,” Holden says. “It’s a short-term gain and a long-term cost and we’re just beginning to wake up to that now.”
And the factory-farming model isn’t just bad for animal welfare. It relies heavily on antibiotics due to the risk of disease when animals are packed together in large numbers, and huge quantities of grain and protein-rich soya that is grown in agrochemical-dependent monocultures, leading to soil degradation, pollution and biodiversity loss.
“If you look at industrial systems of rearing animals they do contribute to the emergence, spread and amplification of disease,” says Peter Stevenson, of Compassion in World Farming.
Animal farming is responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and cattle raised for meat and dairy accounts for 65% of that. Yet done right, rearing livestock can contribute to healthier soils that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and keep it in the ground. Eating meat less often, and sourcing from ethical produces when we do, can dramatically reduce its environmental impact.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has outlined the steps he wants US companies to take to deal with “untrusted Chinese apps”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53674620The measures go far beyond President Donald Trump’s current push to force the sale of TikTok to an American firm.
Pompeo says apps like TikTok and WeChat pose “significant threats to the personal data of American citizens”.
The scope of those measures has now been extended much wider and includes Chinese technology giants such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, which have a presence in the US.
The case for the lesser evil – Biden
“the new grassroots initiative as a “two-step campaign: First, vote Trump out. Then challenge Biden from day one.”
And how often have we heard that one before…
The U.S. economy expanded at an extraordinary rate for roughly 150 years, a period of “ascendant capitalism” from about the 1820s through the 1970s.
“If you look at the numbers, real wages in the United States, the average amount of goods and services a working man or woman could buy with what they got, went up every decade,” Wolff said. “It’s an amazing story. And it produced in the United States, this euphoria — there is no other way to describe it — this really strange notion that other people don’t have.” It was, specifically, the belief now called “American exceptionalism,” which Wolff described as the conviction “that God likes you and so has put you in this great place where you can start off poor and end up rich. And there was something to it. It wouldn’t have burrowed so deeply in the consciousness of the American if there wasn’t something to it.”
That period, however, is clearly over.
Choctaw Indians used to live across millions of acres in southeastern Mississippi but were forced off the land. Under an 1830 treaty, the Choctaws were to move to Oklahoma. Those who remained in Mississippi, the state’s only federally recognized American Indian tribe, endured segregation, racism and poverty. The reservation spreads out over 35,000 acres (14,164 hectares).
Almost 10% of the tribe’s roughly 11,000 members have tested positive for the virus.
The once-flourishing Choctaw economy is stagnant, as the tribal government put in place tighter restrictions than those imposed by the state.
The tribe has long been a target of hate, members say, and the virus has only made things worse. On social media, people blame Choctaws for high case numbers. Choctaw employees have been harassed at their jobs; others are called names in stores.
“We’ve heard so many bad things about ourselves and our people — the first thing people turn to is blame and hate,” said Marsha Berry, a tribe member who helped form a group that delivers food and other necessities to people self-isolating.
https://apnews.com/c8345dcd874a3136b59a4b619bdd3761
