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Daily Archives: April 12th, 2009

Capitalism is Organized Crime

CAPITALISM IS ORGANIZED CRIME

A Conference taking place on
Sunday, April 19 in Washington, D.C.

The “Capitalism is Organized Crime” conference will take place on Sunday, April 19 from 12:00 noon to 5:00 pm at the Festival Center, located at 1640 Columbia Rd. NW, between 16th and 17th Sts. (Green line metro to Columbia Heights), in Washington, D.C.

The conference will link the struggles of those fighting for social and economic justice at home with those fighting against U.S. imperialism and for national liberation around the world, and will address the need for a society organized to meet the needs of the majority rather than to maximize the profit of a few.

FEATURED SPEAKERS at the April 19th Conference will include:
* Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney and co-founder, Partnership for Civil Justice
* Hodari Abdul-Ali, Chair of the Social Justice Task Force for MANA, the Muslim Alliance in North America
* Prof. Zachary Wolfe, George Washington University, chair of the Amicus Curiae Committee of the National Lawyers Guild
* Representative, Friends of the Congo
* Frances Villar, Senator and Senate Parliamentarian of Bronx Community College Student Government, Vice Chair for Legislative Affairs for University Student Senate of City University of New York (CUNY)
* Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition
* James Circello, Iraq war veteran and co-coordinator of the Veterans and Service Members Task Force of the ANSWER Coalition
* Eugene Puryear, Howard University student, PSL 2008 Vice-Presidential Candidate
* Crystal Kim, PSL 2008 Candidate for D.C. Council At-Large

SCHEDULE for the day

11:00 am: Doors open for registration

12:00 noon – 2:00 pm: Panel I
Capitalism is Organized Crime

2:30 – 4:00 pm: Panel II
The Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism and for National Liberation

4:30 – 5:15 pm: Panel III
Is Socialism Possible in the United States?

To PRE-REGISTER for the April 19th Conference, click here:

http://www.pslweb.org/registerDCconference

$20 donation requested. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Childcare available. Please call to reserve.

The April 19th “Capitalism is Organized Crime” Conference is hosted by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).

For more information, click here:

http://www.pslweb.org/dcconference

Email: dc@socialismandliberation.org
Phone: 202-543-4900

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

The Rouge Forum – Update 9th April 2009

The Rouge Forum – Update 9th April 2009

 

A Message from Rich Gibson

 

Dear Friends:


For those teaching or learning about the current depression, here are some more good sources:

* Lewis Corey’s outstanding 1934 book, Decline of American Capitalism, is online free at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/corey/1934/decline/index.html
   

* How Goldman Sachs was at the Center of the Oil Trading Fiasco that Bankrupted SemGroup: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0413/096-sachs-semgroup-goldman-goose-oil.html
        

* The auto crisis, likely leading to the bankruptcy of GM (and the end of retiree health benefits, etc.) but this is also an indicator of the power of finance capital over industrial capital and the shift to the corporate state as US society decays: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/business/31assess.html?_r=1&hp
        

* Stiglitz on State Capitalism as Robbing Workers: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
        

* Updated interview with John Bellamy Foster: http://democracyandclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2009/03/interview-with-john-bellamy-foster-of.html
        

* Bello’s Primer on the Meltdown: http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/bello031008.html
        

* The Economist on the Huge Fraud Beneath the Fiscal Crisis: Missing the Deeper Fraud; Exploited Labor:
http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=15090
        

*Five Million Jobs Lost So Far This Depression: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/business/economy/04jobs.html

Current Developments:

 

* Centinela CalfiorniaTeachers Wildcat Strike:  http://www.dailybreeze.com/latestnews/ci_12034343    

* Al Sharpton and the Ruling Class: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/04/pols_press_part.php
        

* Labor Bosses Forge Unity Committee:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040703222.html The plum here is the dues from 3.5 million education workers, members of the National Education Association who will quickly learn that they are funding yet another layer of enemies.

Criticism of “Progressive” Warmongers:

 

The term “progressive” may have no meaning anymore. If it is Move.on, that means slavish support for the demagogue, Obama. If it is United For Peace and Justice, it means the same thing in shifty terms.  

UFPJ’s recent Wall Street demos,

deliberately set up to counter demands from rank and filers to demonstrate on the anniversary of the war, failed completely. This is nothing to gloat about even though we said, years ago, that following UFPJ would do just this. Still, it is tragic.       

 

Less than 10,000 people demonstrated, down from the one million who hit the streets six years ago. But numbers are not everything. UFPJ trumped that by teaching people nothing at all important about why things are as they are, what to do in order to develop grand strategy (peace, justice, equality, freedom, etc.) or strategy (how to understand specific local circumstances and to seek out choke points where people can use powerful direct action moves) and tactics (particular actions that link these three elements).  

Why would that be? Because UFPJ is run by remnants of the Communist Party USA, people who have never sought to build a mass class conscious movement and who have always fought those who try. The current Rouge Forum News has a very fine article by Tom Suber about the wreckage that UFPJ leadership is creating. http://blogs.ubc.ca/ross/2009/04/rouge-forum-news-issue-13/

Let us be clear. The core issue of our time is accelerating color coded inequality met by the potential of organized mass class conscious resistance. Neither the CP nor UFPJ want any part of that.  

Here is a sampling of UFPJ’s failures:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/04/content_11129335.htm
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jPati7jbLo532dVb5D55XbX9T3bgD97B8IUG0
http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKN0335443120090403

The task at hand is ours. The $10.9 trillion dollars the corporate state just printed for the banks and insurance companies is going to come from the lives and labor of someone. Either it will come from the ruin of hundreds of thousand of poor and working people, or, if we fight back, it can come from the rich. Let them suffer and pay, as they should. The degree of the pain will be determined by the levels of our real resistance in schools, in communities, at work places, and in the military. When they say Cut Back; We should say Fight Back.

This is a critique from Antiwar.com: Progressive Warmongers:

We note with sadness the death of a friend, Janet Jagan:

http://www.rougeforumconference.org/

Rich Gibson

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk