June 13, 2009 archive

Original article, an open letter, via socialistworker.org.uk:

Here’s the letter, and some thoughts after:

Gordon Brown’s government is in meltdown after the MPs’ expenses scandal and the disastrous Labour vote in last week’s elections.

Labour trailed in behind the Tories and UKIP, with just 15 percent of the overall vote.

This is a shocking result for a party in power, but one that is wholly understandable. Labour’s vote has haemorrhaged during its time in office.

The party has abandoned ordinary people and gone on the offensive against them.

It has handed over billions to the rich and the bankers, yet we are expected to put up with cuts in pensions, services, pay and jobs.

All of this has opened the door to the right.

The Tories, the fascist British National Party and UKIP didn’t do well in last week’s elections because millions of people suddenly decided to vote for them.

They made gains because Labour’s vote collapsed.

We have to come together to fight the Nazis, and to stop the government and the bosses making us pay for the crisis.

But we need something more too.

None of the mainstream parties reflect the views of millions of people in Britain. Most people want to see higher spending on health and education, an end to privatisation, a better deal for pensioners and an end to war.

But who speaks for them in parliament?

There is a desperate need for an alternative. The absence of a credible left group to vote for means that people remain without a choice when it comes to elections.

Many people wonder why the left can’t unite together to provide a stronger, more credible alternative to the pro-war and neoliberal policies of the major parties.

There is real potential for a united left group to make a real impact-not just by winning votes but also in helping to pull people together to build resistance on the ground.

We need to fight to make that potential a reality.

Note:  © Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

 

Bradley Graham has a lengthy article, nearly 8,000 words, on the “Decline and Fall” of Donald Rumsfeld in Friday’s Washington Post. The article is adapted from his forthcoming book, By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld.

A few anecdotes leap out that I found telling. Such as, Rumsfeld was afraid of Condoleezza Rice and sent people in his stead to inform her of decisions he made that he knew she would not like rather than in person to avoid her ire.  

Today Malcolm would be reviled even more than back in the day, even more, because he was change, the real deal.  He ought to be in the history books because his is a distinct American lesson.

‘Course we don’t teach about race in America in our schools and we sure don’t talk about it in our mainstream culture, so it’ll be a while before the rest of the country ever catches up to Malcolm.

His life embodied change.   He believed strongly in each phase of his remarkable life, his father taught him about black pride before the term ever came to be, and this in the Jim Crow south, and Malcolm just learned, he trusted each step in the way that he knew what was going on, he lived each phase of his life fully and completely the good and the bad.

Chief Leonard Crow Dog:


My Relatives,

Long, long time I come here – and during those trials. Now I’m 68 years old, can hardly walk, can hardly sing. Oh before I go, I want Leonard to be free.