Socialism. What It Is and Why We Need It

The word "Socialism" has returned to the mainstream of American political debate. But there are widespread misconceptions about what Socialism is and what it isn't. Republicans fret that the U.S. is fast becoming a Socialist country with government spending on bank bailouts and Barack Obama's proposed health care reform. But the genuine tradition of "Socialism from Below" means more than state intervention in the economy.

Socialism is really about the struggle to oppose discrimination and oppression in all its forms and to put the needs of working people before corporate greed and profits. It's about creating a world free from the chaos of economic crises and the rule of a few elites over the vast majority. A world were the amount of freedom you enjoy is not tied directly to the size of your wallet.

Come to a meeting sponsored by the International Socialist Organization to discuss the idea of socialism and socialist strategies for changing the world.

Speaker: Ashley Smith. Contributor and member of the Editor Board of the International Socialist Review. Regional organizer for the International Socialist Organization.

Thursday, September. 10 @ 7pm in Laffayette 311 on UVM Campus
For More Info, Co-Sponsoring or Child-Care Contact: bjsilver@uvm.edu

Violent Geography: Christian Parenti

On April 8th to a packed room of nearly 200 at the University of Vermont, acclaimed writer for the Nation, Christian Parenti came to give a talk on imperialism and it’s effects on ‘failed states’ and how it causes states to fail, as part of the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series.
As he says, what he means by ‘failed and weak states’ is the, “fragmentation of society, neighborhood versus neighborhood. Large parts of the global south are in a state of disintegration. Bare institutions of the modern state are failing. Ruled by the gun and the bribe. The right wing invokes this as the front line of the war on terror. The backwards idea that the ‘coming anarchy’ requires more colonialism, more humanitarian intervention. Not less.”
Parenti outlined the principal four back-story causes that leads to this shattering of society. The legacies of colonialism, Cold War era military intervention, imposing of the neoliberal political economy and the eventually corruption of the local elites into full-blown dictators.
What occurs next in this climate of imperialistic economic mismanagement is what you can see today in places like Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. The criminalization of the economy to narcotics and bribes and the rise of extreme ethnic and religious conflict.
Into how this all plays out, Parenti referred to a Rosa Luxemburg quote from 1916 who was intern referring to a Frederick Engels quote, “’Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does ‘regression into barbarism’ mean? This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences.’”
In closing Christian Parenti said, “It’s not that the world is impoverished, it’s just that the people in the world are impoverished. There is a tremendous amount of wealth in the world that can be redeployed to meet people’s needs. We have to have economic plans not moral outrages.”

The Collapse of Pretext

On March 20, Operation Iraqi Freedom will enter into it’s sixth year. It’s effects have caused yet unknown short and long-term harm to the world at large with especial significance to the Nation of Iraq.
The Department of Defense is honored as the single largest polluter on the planet, creating more hazardous waste in Iraq alone than the top five US chemical companies combined. World opinion of the US is at it’s lowest point in history with ¾ of the world’s population overtly in disfavor of American foreign policy, according to the BBC. A New York Times article from last year put the total expected cost of the war to the taxpayer at over $1.2 Trillion. 18 allied nations who were active in Iraq have since dropped out and of the current 166,000 troops active in the War only 10,500 are non-American. In fact the second largest military presence in the War after American troops are American mercenary contractors like Blackwater.
As of March 10, 3984 American combat personnel have died in Iraq and another 29,320 have been wounded according to official Pentagon reports. For the actual Iraqis, the actual figure of deaths and wounds may never be known. But the most recent estimate from September of 2007 done by the London based Opinion Research Business put the estimated Iraqi causalities at 1,220,580 (+/- 2.5%).
But lets bring it back for a moment and try to find some higher vantage point.
Following the cause and effect progression backwards we know that before any outcome can happen there most be an action to cause it, the Iraq invasion. But what causes the action? Nothing comes from nowhere just because. There is a reason a motive a logic to give meaning and purpose to the action. It is the all important ‘why’ of the thing. And it is the original, premeditated ‘why’ that we most examine for it leads to all other future ‘whys’. And those said secondary ‘whys’ are in truth nothing more than after-the-effect excuses.
Before all the retroactive pretext, before all the talk by the puppet pundits on the “success” of the surge (or purge), or before that on kicking out Al Qaeda, or even before that on how if the U.S. withdrew now Iraq would descend into chaos. There were the Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Do you remember five years ago, most of the mass media refuse to, but it really wasn’t that long ago. Much of us were in high school or middle school or the like and we may have noticed something strange in the air.
The first official mention of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction came from President Bush’s speech to the United Nations Security Council on September 12, 2002. Immediately afterwards, with the loyal intensity of a shepard’s sheep dog, every politician with aspirations to succeed joined into the consensus. Joe Liberman, Hillary Clinton, a totally bipartism effort to convince the American people of the “truth”. Iraq was a threat and must be squashed.
And we ate it up, don’t deny it we all did, me to. But it wasn’t totally our faults you know, the timing was perfect. The first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we were on edge, they merely used that edge. We would have invaded heaven and hell itself if told they were planning a terrorist attack against us.
And then again it’s unlike we were hearing any dissenting opinion from our propaganda. The universality of every news source getting behind their President (including the New York Times) cannot be underestimated. The excepted message was singular, absolutistic and coming at us from all sides.
Hell, if every source of info from our teachers to the news to our leaders to the internet was telling us with conviction in their eyes that we all should become circus clowns, I swear to you that their wouldn’t be one man, woman or child out their not juggling in flamboyant pants.
What is interesting is the speed at which this WMD argument was quickly dropped. Before the war we saw Colin Powell’s photshoped slides at the UN and the pundit arguments on our national security. But after the “boots were on the ground” and we were actually involved in the war every newspaperman wanted, the WMDs seemed to fade away.
If you look at a graph of the number of times the terms “Weapons of Mass Destruction” was seen in news articles you’ll see it peaked in September of 2002 and had already descended to less than half that level by August of 2003. By the Spring of 2005 the numbers had dropped below September 11 levels. Interestingly enough, the number of times the word “Al Qaeda” used in conjunction with “Iraq” has not once wavered since 2002 even though this supposive connection between the two has never been proven.
So what’s the truth. Aristotle once argued that there is a universal objective reality separate from all subjective opinion and perception and it should be our job to attempt to understand it.
The multinational Iraq Survey Group released in September of 2004, a year after George Bush first went to the UN, the Duelfer Report. In it it detailed in absolute fact that Saddam Hussein had ceased all nuclear and other WMD programs in 1991 due to UN sanctions. He did seem to intend to restart these programs once the sanctions were lifted but only in an offensive attack against Iran. He had zero inclination to attack the United States or any of it’s allies and was of no threat to us.
The defining reasoning that the Iraq War is based on is a lie and by extension the war in general is a lie.

But that can’t be, nothing happens for no reason at all. But if the reason we were given is a lie there should there be a truthful reason we were not given. But what is this reason?
In September of 2002, at the same time President Bush went to the UN with his intention to attack Iraq, to justify it he released his National Security Strategy which has since been come to be called the “Bush Doctrine” in remembrance of the equally infamous Monroe Doctrine. It sates, quote, “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”
The point is plane. By the authority of providence, in the post Cold War/9-11 world, the US is the singular dominant power politically as well as economically. Subsequent sections of this document go on to say that the US reserves full right to engage in preemptive war, without any need for legal permission, against any nation that may or may try to threaten this hegemony.
But what this has to do with Iraq? We’ve already stated that Saddam Hussein had no long-range plan to threaten the US. The answers are several.
The most obvious is oil. With the conquering of Iraq, either directly or through one of it’s closets allies, the United States has some control over five of the top six oil producing countries. With the remainder, Iran, currently situated between two US territories, Iraq and Afghanistan, and should thus be considered the next logical target.
The most encompassing answer may be less obvious and may border on conspiracy theory but does have some historical barring.
During the Cold War the US engaged in an offensive/defensive strategy called “containment” against the USSR. They built up military bases in key areas around the Soviet Union in West Germany, Turkey, Greenland, Japan, Finland and Israel in attempt to geographically encircle the threat. It worked pretty well for the most part.
Today the USSR is gone and Russia as of little threat, but a new player has emerged as the key opponent to the US for the next century. China.
Everyday there are more stories of the unbeatable Chinese economy with it’s unbelievable huge military to back it up (100 million strong by the more recent NATO estimates). The likeliness of China surpassing us in all fields has become near inedible in direct defiance of the Bush Doctrine.
In response the US government’s foreign policy has been reconstituted to curb this threat by brining back the old Cold War strategy of containment. Throughout Central and Southeast Asia new military bases are springing up. Indonesia, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and, of course, Afghanistan and Iraq.
What’s more with the addition of these military facilities and their location relative to the top oil producing countries means the US can effectively put a road block to China’s oil supply in a pinch or in general.
Domination is the name of the game. Political Science majors take note.

Zombies!

The day may never come. But if it does I am so ready.
Zombie Apocalypse.
I know you. Whenever you enter a new room or building you begin to gauge it’s defensibility. Are the windows shatter proof? Can you blockade the entrances? If so, then with what? And are the walls sound proof, because I know you don’t want to listen to the moan of the undead for days on end. Hard to sleep.
I’m sure you have picked out all you choice items of need. Your perfect weapon (mine: a spear or some manner of trident), your zombie comic destruction method of choice (mine: grain harvester), your perfect defensive position on campus (mine: Converse or Williams seem to fit the bill. Davis Center is a death trap. It’ll take a small army to cover all the entry points), your perfect escape route. You’ve thought of everything.
You know to avoid getting possible infectious Zombie gore on your threads. Chainsaws aren’t as useful as you’d think. Always avoid malls and dead ends.
And I bet you’ve spent many hours lying awake weighing the prospects of walking dead versus the dreaded running dead. Movies like the remake of Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later and I Am Legend have no doubt seriously messed with your plans.
And let’s face it, your excited for the challenge. Excited for the destructive possibilities setting up anti-qhoul barricades across thoroughfares, fortify homes and business against to wave after wave of hyper rabies infected cannibals from hell. Don’t worry, your not alone.
Online the growing awareness is spreading. Websites, blogs, Facebook groups are forming at record speed. Grassroots defense leagues and citizenry think tanks are popping up everywhere. Despite popular culture’s frequent attempts to blow the whistle on this maggoty problem in movies, graphic novels and non-graphic novels, those talking heads on the Potomac, who go on and on about “national security” and such Kentucky Fried Bullshit, have done nothing to meet the threat.
But whatever happens, we’re ready.

If Only

The worst part of growing up is the realization that all your more sugar induced childhood dreams are totally unattainable in this physical universe.
It started off with the basics. The Millennium Falcon, a staple of childhood fantasies. Who among us from the ages of 4 to 19, wouldn’t want basically a space-flying Winnebago that can make .5 past light speed. Then things got grandeur. Every new bit of Sci-Fi/Fantasy entertainment brought a new plethora of dreams and wants. You didn’t care that you weren’t being original with you imagination, you just wanted one of those.
Wolverine’s very handy (haha pun) claws. Pok’e’balls so you can trap innocent and freakishly destructive creatures into tiny, little, spherical cages. The Power Rangers megasaure to stomp about the sandbox with. Maybe not a time-machine though. Going back in time in the Delorian could be fun or even educational. But in general the prospect of time travel seems more hassle then it worth. The risk of becoming your own grandfather is just too great.
But then there’s lasers! From death rays to Death Stars to laser pointers there usefulness never ends. “So your going to fail me professor. Well would you like to argue with my orbiting Hyper Mega Death Cannon of Death! Bruhahaha!”
Oddly most of my dreams at the time would eventually descend into some manner of maniacal madness. Armies of minion cloans, minion robots, minion aliens, or just plain normal minions in stylish minion uniform onesies. If I was given the Ring of Power you better believe I would use that in my rise to dominance, not to mention all manner of invisible hijinks.
There are rational set backs of course. The prospects of world domination at the head of a giant robot army could be enticing. But even at 8 I could see the holes in such plans. What happens after your coup, you got to set up a stable bureaucracy, sign decrees then busy yourself with keeping insurrections down. Too much headache for someone whose chief interest at the time involves an anthill and a tube of milk based glue.
Maybe you wanted the ability to say something and something cool would happen. Like “Kamaya-Maya” or “Shazam” or “Care Bear Stare”. How often have you really hated someone and just wanted to shout “Avada Kedavra” and watch some problems disappear while far more spring up in one motion.
Some abilities would even come in handy in everyday situations. Like mind reading. Cheating in class would never be easier, just pick and choose the answer from your fellow test takers minds. Or hovering. Not that lame, hey I got wings type flying that never seemed all that plausible, I mean legitimate bobbing about like gravity is some prank and the rest of us haven’t caught the joke yet, hovering. Your trying to pick up some cute boy/girl/robot, but wait, some A+ class college athlete is moving in and there is no hope for you to compete with that. But wait, you can hover, and all the rules change.
In the end all of this daydreaming never really came to much. Most of them were infantile, immature and generally idiotic. But at least they helped kill time during Mrs. Pomegranate (that was seriously her name) dull classes. That and doodling. You got to love doodling.

The Doom of the Democrats

The core of the Democratic Party from the time unmemorable of FDR, is labor. The Unions. The wise elders behind the New Deal put the Democrats where they are today. And like every younger generation, the current Democratic leadership has forgotten everything their forbearers tried to teach them.
As one union man once said (a couple days ago actually), “It’s not that we’ve left the Democrats, the Democrats have left us.” What was once viewed as the Party for the little man against the bosses is now viewed as the slave of Silicon Valley interests, realtors who have planed out the forceful gentrification of New Orleans, corporations and the globalization for the sake of globalization forces like the World Trade Organization, that have led to millions of folks losing their livelihoods.
No longer do you hear pundits squawk about the outsourcing of jobs, the stratification of the rich against poor, the annihilation of welfare or even the war. Now all they squawk about is, well, nothing really. Obsessed with infantile ‘cultural’ issues, the so called ‘left-wing’ party’s primary strategy has become playing topical catch-up after the un-silent majorities’ crusades, instead of crafting issues for their own. They have become reactionaries to the reactionaries.
As the Democrats bend over backwards to appease right-wing fence sitters and independents, becoming ever more centrist in mind that now they’ve officially qualified for lukewarm status, the true left is fleeing in droves.
The scenario has been played out over and over in so many different places and times that it is practically a rule of nature. I’ll use Germany in the 20s and 30s as a rather rough template of what’s already happened and what’s going to happen:
The far left was big and growing bigger. The mainstream Social-Democratic party was winning votes but only under the platform that any change had to be gradual and within the bounds of the status quo for sake of realism (remember the ’06 elections). The far left grew impatient then distressed then disenfranchised then angry. They went off on their own to try and run things their own way. The Social-Democrats became terrified and the far right became entrenched The Social-Democrats sided with the far right to put down the far left in the name of order. After that bloodshed was done, the far right then killed off all the Social-Democrats and declared it the beginning of a thousand year regime, or ‘Reich’.
Are the Democrats going to win the presidential elections? Sure. But only because they’re not Republicans. The Republicans may be viewed as corrupt and elitist, but the Democrats are viewed as incompetent and elitist. The number of people fleeing the GOP is much larger then those coming to the Dems. When the Democrat President comes to power it will not take long before people realize it’s just more business as usual, more corruption, more imperialism, less jobs, and they’re going to be very very pissed off.

The Possible Reciprocal Effects of the Federal Reserve’s Monetary Policy

In response to fears about an economic slowdown, on January 30, 2008 the Federal Reserve Bank announced it would again lower it’s targeted federal funds interest rate to 3%.
Though 3% is in no way the lowest interest rates have been in recent memory (this honor going to June of 2003 when rates were a mere 1%) the uniqueness of this decision stems from the speed at which interest rates have been repeatedly cut. Only eight days earlier the Fed had lowered interest rates from 4.25% to 3.5%. In the last six months alone the Fed has announced interest rate cuts five separate times, falling from 5.25% to it’s present 3%.
As the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve Banks actions have many important repercussions over the financial market directly and the economy as a whole more indirectly. These effects and subsequent counter-effects and counter-effects for the previous counter-effects can reverberate in and out, back and forth through every facet of the economy for many quarters, and must therefore be considered with the utmost seriousness.
By consistency lowering targeted interest rates the Fed is engaging in an expansionary monetary policy. This is carried out by firstly the Fed newly printed using raw dollars to buy up bonds on the open market thus pumping these dollars into the market and increasing the money supply. This mechanism works to lower interest rates since interest rates and money supply are inversely related. A relationship due to the fact that with a larger supply of money, banks theoretically have a larger stock of capital to loan out money. If this money stock is more than the demand for lending, interest rates, acting as the price for loanable funds, will fall.
At the same time, and in the same context, the Fed is lowering the federal funds rate, the rate that banks charge each other for overnight borrowing, and the discount rate, which is the rate the Fed charges banks to borrow from it. Accordingly the banks pass on the cost changes in these rates by adjusting their lending and borrow rates. This should again aid the economy by facilitating more lending by banks into the market, and via the expected multiplier effect, further increase the money supply.
In total in the three weeks between January 14 and February 4, 2008 the estimated money supply, or M1, rose by $36 billion. With these actions, the Fed now unleashes a slew of intentional and unintentional echo like effects.
In the short run, with an excess supply of money, we can expect regular citizens to increase their consumption in all goods, since with more money in their pockets they will be inclined to spend more of it. Yet if the increase in consumption, or aggregate demand, is not able to keep up with the increase of the quantity of money, or aggregate supply, then we can expect a rise in average prices, or relative fall in worth of our currency to occur. Inflation. When there is too many dollars, like any other good, worth of that good will decrease.
Admittedly, the Fed actions cannot be considered the sole source of any inflationary pressure. It may have many causes that can often be highly esoteric yet pervasive. As John Mayard Keynes once said, the process of inflation, “engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” Yet there is nothing more direct in cause and effect terms over inflation then total money supply, which the central bank has presumably total control over.
Since 1991, percent increase in the Consumer Price Index (I.E. inflation) has stayed relatively stable at in and around 3%. For 2007 the inflation rate suddenly jumped to 4.1% from 2.5% the year previously. Prices for many other essential goods increased even faster that year. The price of food rose 4.9%, the largest since 1990. And a fact that should require no figure to remind us, energy costs rose a significant 17.4% in one year.
For everyday citizens this can be devastating. One of the many apologist arguments for inflation is that nominal wages are suppose to keep up with any increase in prices. Sadly this assumption has not proven out empirically. Between 1964 and 2004 real average wages for Americans have in truth decreased by 8.3% after inflation.
As an additional side effect to any increase in the money supply, we can expect a depreciation of the Dollar’s exchange rate for the exact same reason that it will cause inflation. More of one commodity will decrease it’s value relative to other commodities. Additionally foreign investors will see the falling American interest rates and will expect a falling returns of sale to any savings investment that they may or might have in the American financial market. Both of these factors will lead to a drop in demand for U.S. Dollars and a fall in it’s price in exchange terms accordingly.
The U.S. dollar has been in a state of steady depreciation against all other major currencies (with the exception of the Japanese Yen) for the last few years. Between February of 2003 and the February of 2008 the Dollar has lost value against the Euro by 39 cents with 15 of those cents being lost in the last year alone. More closer to home, from January of 2003 to January of 2008 the U.S. Dollar has lost 53 cents against the Canadian Dollar.
Though we can assume that due to the lengths of these periods this trend is not directly the fault of any single Federal Reserve policy, it’s recent moves will no doubt aide to expedite any existing process as recent spikes in the exchange markets have shown.
There may be a silver lining to any depreciation in the U.S. dollar though. As a currency depreciates, goods and services from that country become a bargain on world trade markets. To cash in on those savings, foreign merchants will buy from that country, increasing that country’s exports. On the domestic end of the deal, foreign products will become more expensive for local buyers leading us to decrease the amount we currently import. The net effect will lead to an increase in the trade balance of payments.
This is good news, the United States has maintained for the last two decades a noticeable trade deficit. But this export/import gap has been seen to narrow in 2007 by $46.9 Billion from the year previously thanks presumably to increased exports and decreased imports.
Additionally this pressure should aid in stemming any further Dollar depreciation. As demand for our products, and thus our currency, increases, so does the price for those products and the value of the currency that the products are marked in. The exchange rate for the dollar should stop depreciating, possible even appreciate a little bit and obtain a new stabilized equilibrium.
The irony is that increasing exports can also be inflationary in itself, since foreign importers buy our exports with their own currency, this leads to more foreign currency in the hands of private citizens. This private foreign currency eventually has to be exchanged with banks, central and otherwise, for domestic Dollars. When this exchange takes place it pumps more Dollars into the market and thereby causing some inflation. In the long run each factor and counter-factor should counterbalance each other till all dynamics stabilize at a new market equilibrium. The United States economy is so huge and unimaginable complex that any rough shock that the Federal Reserve can create for good or ill will be easily be absorbed by one market component or another, given enough time. The issue at present is how long “in the long run” means, how long before our economy reaches again some point of constancy, and whether or not that point of constancy, that point of stability, that point of equilibrium will necessarily be to our every day general advantage, or are we going to be net worse off in the end.

Bye Bye Castro, Hello What?

On February 18, the 81 year old Fidel Castro announced his resignation from the Presidency of Cuba after 49 years of rule that spanned the reign of 10 U.S. Presidents. The man who rose from a lawyer, to a revolutionary guerilla, to absolute ruler, was the thermonuclear epicenter of the hottest days of the Cold War, has retired now due to health reasons.
His legacy will be, well, that’s a really good question.
In January of 1959 he overthrew the military dictatorship of the U.S. backed Generalissimo Batista with the aid of now famous T-Shirt icon “Che” Guevara. He would then nationalize nearly $800 million in U.S. corporations’ property on the island.
A timeline released by the National Security Archives shows the C.I.A. had began planning to overthrow the Castro government of Cuba as early as ten months after the revolution. In April 1961, with the aid of about 1,400 Cuban exiles, they struck at the Bay of Pigs and were quickly pushed back into the sea. The CIA, in a weird irony, honestly expected the Cuban people to welcome a U.S. sponsored invasion, causing them spontaneously rising up against the Castro regime. Roughly the exact opposite occurred.
Not long after the failed invasion Fidel Castro declared himself and his government as “Communist” and allied himself directly with the Soviet Union. The Soviets then station thermonuclear missiles in Cuba, a mere 90 miles from American shores causing the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Crisis would end in a mutual stalemate, but at it’s height Castro personally urged the Kremlin to launch a first strike against an American city. The Kremlin refused.
For the next 46 years, and well past the end of the Cold War, the United States has, and will continue to according to the State Department, maintain an effective trade embargo against the island of Cuba. Most analysts agree that this embargo, and the fear and resource scarcity it spread among the populace, effectively ensured Castro’s monopolization of political power. In him was seen as the protective authority figure in a continuous, undeclared war against the U.S. And so he remained.
The human rights record of the Castro regime ain’t stellar by a long shot. It’s a single party country with a badly distorted freedom of speech and information. Censorship is prevalent. Many anti-government “counter-revolutionaries” have been thrown in prison or killed. Though most of these political deaths only occurred in the first years after the revolution and have subsided since then. It was a dictatorship by all classical definitions.
Yet that’s not the complete story. Cuba has one of the best public health care system in the Western Hemisphere with disease and death rates at least on par with the United States, according to the World Health Organization. Literacy rates among adults is extraordinary high, practically perfect, with a fully funded free education up through and past the university level. It’s a dystopia, but a dystopia with a comfortable standard of living.
So what now.
The reins of his regime will be passed on to Fidel’s younger brother Raul, at least for the time being. But already across the international political spectrum, those pundits characterized by the CNN/Fox News/N.Y. Times types who make their living on telling us what to think have already lay down the approved framework on how these events should be view:
Fidel Castro was a ruthless dictator, a godless Red and the transfer of power to his younger brother is highly undemocratic. What needs to happen next is for Cuba to introduce some western style Representative Republic and allow foreign companies to set up shop on the island. With Free Speech and (a most importantly) Free Market for all.
Everyone seems to think they know what’s best for Cuba, what should happen next. Whether it’s the introduction of some Neoliberal or Neoconservative Democracy or whatever have you. What seems to matter is turning Cuba into a clean slate on which they can impose their Economic-Geopolitical ideals upon.
Nobody seems to be asking the actual Cubans what they want with their country. The 11.4 million Cubans are likely a thousand times more qualified to determine their destiny than all the Harvard educated social and political scientists combined. It’s time that we (and their own government for that matter) should give them a chance to decide.
Whatever the case this is no doubt a significant turning point in world history. And the sooner we pry our eyes away from the latest campaign coverage and notice the rest of the world, the better.

Teach Us Please

As we crowd watch all the accepted student tour groups amble by let’s take a minute and remember what makes this school, and all universities for that matter, what they are. The professors.
They are the core foundation of this intuition for higher learner. It is why we came here and are paying thousands of dollars in tuition so we can be here. To learn from them.
That is why it pains me to learn about what a bum rap they are getting here at UVM. While the number of undergraduates continues to skyrocket, along with tuition and tuition revenue (up 48%), the number of newly hired full-time professors has stagnated along with their wages.
Waterman would tell us that money is tight, that they don’t have the funds to give our professors wages to match their worth. But then they go out and increase their own wages (up 207% for administration level staff), raise up a multimillion dollar student center and pay for it all by raising tuition yet again (68% above national average).
If livable wages and top quality professors are the sacrifices we have to make to get the Davis Center and pay for our 21 Vice Presidents’ six figure salaries, then I say we need to get our priorities straight.
They try to tell us that the Davis Center will allow us to be a more competitive against other schools in undergraduate enrollment. But by becoming more competitive in superficial appearances we are really becoming less competitive in substance.
The upper echelons of this university must remember that the purpose of an administrative bureaucracy is to serve the teachers and students, not the other way around.
The University of Vermont should aim to provide the best benefit and wage incentives to bring in, in large numbers, the greatest minds of today to help train the greatest minds of tomorrow. Everything else is less than secondary.

Winter Soldier Burlington

On February 28th in the Davis Center’s Silver Maple Ballroom 300 nearly students, faculty and members of the Burlington community gathered to hear the open testimonials of four Iraq War veterans on their experiences in the war.
“This is not a demonstration, not a debate, not a speakout, this is the reality of war,” table chair Jessica Zamiara said.
The event was co-organized by the newly recognized club, Students Against War and the Burlington chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War whose members gave their testimonies.
The name ‘Winter Soldier’ comes from a Thomas Paine quote, who in the winter of 1776 said, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The interpretation being that the soldier has a responsibility to the truthful service of their country, to quote the Iraq Veterans Against the War website, to, “demonstrate our patriotism by speaking out with honor and integrity instead of blindly following failed policy,” and to spread awareness to that effect.
“I don’t want to do this, but I realize we don’t have a choice, we have a responsibility to speak about we’ve seen and done,” former Army field artillerymen Drew Cameron said.
One by one the veterans recounted their stories.
“The first casualty of the war happened right next to me. He stepped on an unexploded cluster bomb. These were U.S. munitions that were dropped the night before. They are illegal under the Geneva Convention,” former U.S. Marine Matt Howard said.
Accompanied by a slideshow presentation, gradually a picture emerged about the nature of this war from the soldier’s perspective.
“Disposal of [captured enemy] ammunitions were done in close proximity of agricultural fields,” Drew Cameron said.
“We had no armor on our vehicles. We had to scavenge in the North Kuwaiti desert for scrap metal that we could use,” Mat Howard said.
When Matt Howard attempted to give food to begging Iraqi children, according to him, his commanding officer reprimanded him, saying, “’We don’t want to give the Iraqis any misconception of why we’re here.”
Matt Howard went on to mention how after being informed that there was no need for their chemical weapon safety gear, his platoon began to think, “there was something amiss when we are told that they had weapons of mass destructions and at the same time that we were safe from chemical attacks.” Later he said, “Soldiers do not ask to be lied to.”
A former Arabic linguist with Military Intelligence and current worker with the Department of Veterans Affair, Adienne Kinne, gave an inside perspective on the nature of electronic surveillance.
“Terrorist organizations made up less than 10% of our intercepts. We were given verbal waiver to monitor conversations of all NGO and aid workers, American or not. [My superiors] made no distinction between intelligence and propaganda,” Adienne Kinne said.
Under the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution warrantless searches and seizures of American citizens are illegal. Under Title 18, Chapter 121 of the US Code: Section 2712 this protection of privacy up to recently was extended to cover all wire and electronic based communications done by American citizen. Since September 11th and the U.S. Patriot Act, this title has been since amended to allow free wiretapping.
According to a Johns Hopkins study from October of 2006, roughly 600,000 Iraqis had been killed in the war up to that time. The up to date figure is currently unknown. The issues of death and civilian deaths came up. The whole room fell silent.
Matt Howard recounted what he was told before entering the town of Nazaria. “’The people of Nazaria have been told to stay in their houses, so anything that moves, we shoot it.’” After entering Nazeria, Matt Howard went on to say, “I was forced to drive over many human corpses. I witnessed many dead civilians slumped over their steering wheels.”
“Collateral damage was not an issue for us. Rules of engagement were completely dropped,” former Marine infantrymen Jon Turner said while in full dress uniform with his metals displayed, including a Purple Heart.
“My first war crime. The first man I killed,” Jon Turner said, “was innocent, he had no weapons on him, he was walking back to his house. I was later congratulated by members of my platoon and my chain of command.”
Members of that same chain of command would go on to make statements as recounted by Jon Turner, “’First person to kill someone with a knife gets four days leave when we get back.’” And, “’I just killed half the population of Northern Ramadee. F the red tape.’”
St. Michaels College student Hannah DuPart said, “I thought the stories they gave were really disturbing. But also they were really brave for giving them.”
Drew Cameron’s testimony from this hearing will be recorded into the Congressional Archives.
The other three veterans who spoke that night will go on to take their stories to the national Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan hearings in Washington DC from March 13th to 16th, where they will be joining others in presenting verbal, photographic and other evidence on the war. The event is done in the tradition of the similar 1971 Vietnam Winter Soldier hearings in which Vietnam veterans exposed their firsthand, ‘boots on the ground’ knowledge of that war.
These new hearings are being held by members of the growing organization, Iraq Veterans Against the War. According to their website, the organization is calling for a three point program of immediate withdrawal from Iraq, reparations paid to the Iraqi people and full benefits and care for all returning veterans.
Many anti-war and social justice groups from the surrounding UVM and Burlington area were represented at Winter Soldier including, but not limited to, S.L.A.P., the Peace and Justice Center and Veterans for Peace.
“I was surprised by the turnout. It really shows a lot of people care about what is at stake,” UVM freshman Nathan Wigfield said.
The president of the Will Miller Green Mountain Veterans for Peace, Bert Thompson had this to say about Iraq Veterans Against the War, “I am really exhilarated on how they are taking their experiences, what they are living with and will be living with, and making it into something positive. I embrace them.”
“I thought the event was really powerful. I left somewhat emotionally drained, but I feel invigorated and inspired by the courage of the veterans who shared their stories,” UVM sophomore Benjamin Dube said.
Jon Turner said in closing to his testimony, “I can’t take back what I’ve done. I apologies for the lives I’ve destroyed. I apologies for the families I’ve destroyed. The men I’ve killed I don’t even know their names. I don’t think I want to know their names. I was reprogrammed for destruction. I was a monster. And I will never become the monster I once was.”