Day: October 26, 2008

Marx Was Right!

Just wanted to let others know that there are other theories out there.

It was only yesterday that “free market” ideologues were dancing on Karl Marx’s grave with scornful shouts that “greed is good” and “TINA” — “there is no alternative” to capitalism. These fat men guffawed contemptuously at Marx’s warning that capitalism is built on wage exploitation, that workers never earn enough to buy back what they produce, creating “overproduction” and periodic crises — some deep and long — that can only be solved by socialism.

These ideologues cling to delusions that capitalism is the “best of all possible worlds,” blindness expressed as recently as two weeks ago by John McCain when he asserted that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong.”

But just the other day, economist David Macke surveyed the financial collapse spreading like a thermonuclear chain reaction. Asked what was needed to stop the destruction he replied, “At the end of the day, if you socialize enough of the financial system, it has to work.” Suddenly “socialism” is needed to stave off catastrophe! And who is Macke? An economist for JPMorgan Chase, one of the world’s biggest transnational banks.

But Macke’s “socialism” bears no resemblance to Marx’s version, in which working people own the means of production, including banks, and operate them in working people’s interests. Macke would “socialize” bad debt, forcing working people to bear the burden of rescuing Wall Street. Profits would continue to flow into the coffers of the rich. Left behind would be millions who have lost their homes, their jobs and health care as well as their 401(k) retirement accounts.

We should demand that any bailout work for us.

A coalition led by leaders of major unions has laid out just that approach in “A Call for Common Sense.” Use the federal government’s bank equity, paid for with our tax dollars, to force Morgan Chase, CitiGroup, etc., to agree to a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Require the banks to invest in a “green” jobs program to jumpstart the economy and retool our nation’s factories, farms and infrastructure to sharply reduce greenhouse gases. Make the banks invest in rebuilding the Gulf Coast, especially New Orleans. Such a program is not socialism, but it is a step toward socialism’s democratic principle, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.”

Reprinted from the People’s Weekly World Newspaper.

Just thought I would give another perspective to the crisis that is engulfing the world as we speak.

Rising Tensions In The McCain Camp

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign’s already-tense internal dynamics.

Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain’s camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain’s decline.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.

“These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves,” a McCain insider said, referring to McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin’s campaign. Palin’s partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin’s avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News’ Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.

Palin has in fact performed fairly well in the moments thought to be key for a vice presidential nominee: She made a good impression in her surprise rollout in Ohio and her speech to the Republican National Convention went better than the campaign could have imagined. She turned in an adequate performance at a debate against the Democratic Party’s foremost debater.

But other elements of her image-making went catastrophically awry. Her dodging of the press and her nervous reliance on tight scripts in her first interview, with ABC News, became a national joke — driven home to devastating effect by “Saturday Night Live” comic Tina Fey. The Couric interview — her only unstaged appearance for a week — was “water torture,” as one internal ally put it.

Nothing Like The Obvious

SEX IS GREAT for the body and mind, say experts.

And they contend that a healthy sex life improves people’s feelings about themselves.

Little wonder, then, that researchers link sex to a reduction of stress and anxiety.

Dr Debra Herbenick, an oft-quoted expert from the Kinsey Institute of Indiana University, whose groundbreaking research on human sexuality is known among academics, psychologists, physicians, scientists, insists that sexual activity is good for the body and the mind. Indeed, she is a highly vocal advocate of the benefits of sex and, interestingly enough, argues that the rewards of sex can be enjoyed even without a partner.

“The health benefits,” she said recently, “can be the result of partner sex or masturbation. All that is required is that a person feels good about it.”

A scientific study conducted at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Edinburgh Scotland, concluded that people who had sex four times a week felt that they were seven to 12 years younger than people who have less sex.

At Rutgers University in New Jersey, Dr Beverly Whipple, a research scientist, found that sexual activity in general, and orgasms in particular, heighten people’s ability to endure pain. Scientists contend that sexual activity can reduce migraine headaches, chronic back pain and even bring relief from such things as premenstrual symptoms, cramps among them.

“Sexual excitement and orgasm, for both women and men, increase their threshold for pain. They are both less sensitive to pain and less likely to experience it,” Herbenick writes.

That’s not all. A study conducted in 2005 by Dr Patricia Barthalow Koch, a sex researcher from Pennsylvania State University, found that women who believed they were less attractive now than say a decade before had less and less enjoyable sex than women who still felt attractive.

Vitural Divorce Leads To Virtual Murder

Damn…the world is going to hell quicker than I had thought.

A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband’s digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.

The woman, who is jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game “Maple Story” to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May, a police official in northern Sapporo said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

She has not yet been formally charged, but if convicted could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine up to $5,000.

Players in “Maple Story” raise and manipulate digital images called “avatars” that represent themselves, while engaging in relationships, social activities and fighting against monsters and other obstacles.

The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married, and killed the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his beloved online avatar was dead.

The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said.

Boomers Choose Suicide

The U.S. suicide rate is up for the first time in a decade, and it’s rising most among middle-aged white men and women, a new study finds.

The researchers don’t know why, but say we need to find out more so new prevention plans can be put in place.

Suicide claimed 32,637 lives in 2005, a rate of 11 per 100,000 people. The study, released this week, featured an analysis of data from 1999 to 2005.

The rate increased 0.7 percent per year during that period. But when you break it down, the rate rose 2.7 percent annually among middle-aged white men and 3.9 percent among middle-aged white women. By contrast, suicide in blacks decreased significantly and remained stable among Asians and Native Americans, the researchers said.

Speculation for why the increase is occurring has ranged from increased drug use among Baby Boomers, who are known to be unhappy compared to other generations, to abuse of prescription drugs to changes among women in the use of hormone replacement therapy coincident with a 2002 report that found it potentially harmful. But the researchers say it is not clear if any of these factors are to blame.

Among white men and women, suicide has historically been less common in middle age. But by 2005, the 45-49 age group, for both sexes, had a higher rate than those age 40 and those age 70-74.

“Historically, suicide prevention programs have focused on groups considered to be at highest risk — teens and young adults of both genders as well as elderly white men, Baker said. “This research tells us we need to refocus our resources to develop prevention programs for men and women in their middle years.”

Suicide by hanging or suffocation increased 6.3 percent a year among men and 2.3 percent among women. Hanging/suffocation accounted for 22 percent of all suicides by 2005, surpassing poisoning at 18 percent. Firearms represent the main method — about double the rate of any other — but have been on the decline.

Hispanics Gaining

Hispanics now account for more than half the U.S. population growth this decade, indicating a powerful new sign of their demographic clout, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report released Thursday.

The Hispanic population also expanded dramatically in the 1990s, but in that decade its growth accounted for less than 40 percent of the nation’s total population increase.

Hispanics now represent 50.5 percent of the U.S. population growth since 2000, although they were only 15 percent of the population in 2007.

The Pew report also highlights a significant new driver of the population increases for the nation’s largest minority: Unlike the 1990s when immigration was the major factor in Hispanic population growth, births in the U.S. are mostly responsible for the increases this decade.

Jeffery Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, said Census data shows the Hispanic population has increased 10.2 million, from 35.3 million in 2000 to 45.5 million by July 2007.

A natural demographic increase — births minus deaths — is responsible for 6 million of the new Hispanic residents this decade. International migration — which among Hispanics has been calculated in the past to be two-thirds undocumented — accounts for 4.2 million of the increase, Passel said.

The Census Bureau’s figures do not distinguish whether immigrants are legal or illegal.