03/10/2013 archive

June 11, 1912

Charleston Gazette

Interview with Mother Jones

I am simply a social revolutionist. I believe in collective ownership of the means of wealth. At this time the natural commodities of this country are cornered in the hands of a few. The man who owns the means of wealth gets the major profit, and the worker, who produces the wealth from the means in the hands of the capitalist, takes what he can get. Sooner or later, and perhaps sooner than we think, evolution and revolution will have accomplished the overturning of the system under which we now live, and the worker will have gained his own.

This change will come as the result of education. My life work has been to try to educate the worker to a sense of the wrongs he has had to suffer, and does suffer-and to stir up the oppressed to a point of getting off their knees and demanding that which I believe to be rightfully theirs. When force is used to hinder the worker in his efforts to obtain the thing which are his he has the right to meet force with force. He has the right to strike for what is his due, and he has no right to be satisfied with less. The people want to do right , but they have been hoodwinked for ages. They are now awakening, and the day of their enfranchisement is near at hand.

Reprinted in the March 1913 issue of the International Socialist Review. (pdf!)

Mother Jones gave this interview shortly after her arrival in Charleston. She came by train from Butte, Montana where she had been working with the copper miners of the Western Federation of Miners. Now, she was in West Virginia to assist the the striking miners of the United Mine Workers of America. The miners of Paint Creek were striking for renewal of their contract. The operators were refusing to sign a new contract preferring instead to bust the Union. At issue were all of the usual grievances: dangerous conditions, short weights, payment in company scrip, poor housing, low wages, blacklisting, poor medical care, and never-ending debt. But above all, the miners hated the brutal company-guard system.

To break the strike, the operators had contracted with the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency which supplied them with three hundred gun-thugs who began a campaign of terror against the miners and their families. Even before Mother Jones arrived, there had been clashes with the company guards, and loss of life on both sides. The guards had more weapons, including machine guns, but the miners had more men, seven thousand by some accounts.

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

By MICHAEL MOSS, The New York Times

Published: February 20, 2013

The snack that Dunn was proposing to sell: carrots. Plain, fresh carrots. No added sugar. No creamy sauce or dips. No salt. Just baby carrots, washed, bagged, then sold into the deadly dull produce aisle.

“We act like a snack, not a vegetable,” he told the investors. “We exploit the rules of junk food to fuel the baby-carrot conversation. We are pro-junk-food behavior but anti-junk-food establishment.”

The investors were thinking only about sales. They had already bought one of the two biggest farm producers of baby carrots in the country, and they’d hired Dunn to run the whole operation. Now, after his pitch, they were relieved. Dunn had figured out that using the industry’s own marketing ploys would work better than anything else. He drew from the bag of tricks that he mastered in his 20 years at Coca-Cola, where he learned one of the most critical rules in processed food: The selling of food matters as much as the food itself.

Later, describing his new line of work, Dunn told me he was doing penance for his Coca-Cola years. “I’m paying my karmic debt,” he said.

Rand Paul’s filibuster comes to an end in the traditional way that all filibusters must.

STEWART: Those other senators are recent additions to the Senate, so I don’t mind them jumping into Paul’s filibuster, but you don’t get to jump in on the concern the executive branch might be trampling the Constitution train. If I remember correctly during the Bush torture, suspended habeas corpus, see if you can get the Attorney General to sign off wireless wiretapping while he’s in a coma years, I believe your response to that was… yeah.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

March 10 is the 69th day of the year (70th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 296 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1959, Tibetans band together in revolt, surrounding the summer palace of the Dalai Lama in defiance of Chinese occupation forces.

China’s occupation of Tibet began nearly a decade before, in October 1950, when troops from its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded the country, barely one year after the Communists gained full control of mainland China. The Tibetan government gave into Chinese pressure the following year, signing a treaty that ensured the power of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the country’s spiritual leader, over Tibet’s domestic affairs. Resistance to the Chinese occupation built steadily over the next several years, including a revolt in several areas of eastern Tibet in 1956. By December 1958, rebellion was simmering in Lhasa, the capital, and the PLA command threatened to bomb the city if order was not maintained.

Lhasa Rebellion

On 1 March 1959, an unusual invitation to attend a theatrical performance at the Chinese military headquarters outside Lhasa was extended to the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama, at the time studying for his lharampa geshe degree, initially postponed the meeting, but the date was eventually set for 10 March. On 9 March, the head of the Dalai Lama’s bodyguard was visited by Chinese army officers. The officers insisted that the Dalai Lama would not be accompanied by his traditional armed escort to the performance, and that no public ceremony for the Dalai Lama’s procession from the palace to the camp should take place, counter to tradition.

According to historian Tsering Shakya, the Chinese government was pressuring the Dalai Lama to attend the People’s Congress in April 1959, in order to repair China’s image with relation to ethnic minorities after the Khampa’s rebellion. On 7 February 1959, a significant day on the Tibetan calendar, the Dalai Lama attended a religious dance, after which the acting representative in Tibet, Tan Guansan, offered the Dalai Lama a chance to see a performance from a dance troupe native to Lhasa at the Norbulingka to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s completion of his lharampa geshe degree. According to the Dalai Lama’s memoirs, the Dalai Lama agreed, but said that the Norbulingka did not have the facilities, and suggested the new auditorium in the PLA headquarters in Lhasa as a more appropriate venue. Neither the Kashag nor the Dalai Lama’s bodyguards were informed of the Dalai Lama’s plans until Chinese officials briefed them on 9 March, one day before the performance was scheduled, and insisted that they would handle the Dalai Lama’s security. Some members of the Kashag were alarmed that were not also invited to lead a customary armed procession, recalling a prophecy that told that the Dalai Lama should not exit his palace.

According to historian Tsering Shakya, some Tibetan government officials feared that plans were being laid for a Chinese abduction of the Dalai Lama, and spread word to that effect amongst the inhabitants of Lhasa. On 10 March, several thousand Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama’s palace to prevent him from leaving or being removed. The huge crowd had gathered in response to a rumor that the Chinese communists were planning to arrest the Dalai Lama when he went to a cultural performance at the PLA’s headquarters. This marked the beginning of the uprising in Lhasa, though Chinese forces had skirmished with guerrillas outside the city in December of the previous year. Although CCP offcials insisted that the “reactionary upper stratum” in Lhasa was responsible for the rumor, there is no way to identify the precise source. At first, the violence was directed at Tibetan officials perceived not to have protected the Dalai Lama or to be pro-Chinese; attacks on Hans started later. One of the first casualties of mob was a senior lama, Pagbalha Soinam Gyamco, who worked with the PRC as a member of the Preparatory Committee of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, who was killed and his body dragged by a horse in front of the crowd for two kilometres.

On 12 March, protesters appeared in the streets of Lhasa declaring Tibet’s independence. Barricades went up on the streets of Lhasa, and Chinese and Tibetan rebel forces began to fortify positions within and around Lhasa in preparation for conflict. A petition of support for the armed rebels outside the city was taken up, and an appeal for assistance was made to the Indian consul. Chinese and Tibetan troops continued moving into position over the next several days, with Chinese artillery pieces being deployed within range of the Dalai Lama’s summer palace, the Norbulingka. On 15 March, preparations for the Dalai Lama’s evacuation from the city were set in motion, with Tibetan troops being employed to secure an escape route from Lhasa. On 17 March, two artillery shells landed near the Dalai Lama’s palace, triggering his flight into exile. On 19 March the Chinese started to shell the Norbulingka, prompting the full force of the Uprising. According to the freetibet website, on 21 March 800 shells rained down on the palace, including the shelling of the Norbulingka and Lhasa’s major monasteries, slaughtering thousands of Tibetan men, women and children. Combat lasted only about two days, with Tibetan rebel forces being badly outnumbered and poorly armed.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Joining Chris will be: Deepak Bhargava, executive director, Center for Community Change; M. Victoria Murillo, professor of political science and international affairs at Columbia University; Michael Shifter, president of Inter-American Dialogue; Alejandro Velasco, professor at New York University; Michael Moynihan (@mcmoynihan), cultural news editor for Newsweek and The Daily Beast; Sujatha Fernandes, associate professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York; Greg Grandin, professor of history at New York University; Former Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney (@bobney); Raj Date, former deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and Alexis Goldstein (@alexisgoldstein), Occupy Wall Street activist.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: This Sunday’s guest former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, co-author of the new book, “Immigration Wars,” goes one-on-one with George Stephanopoulos and in this week’s Sunday Spotlight, filmmaker R.J. Cutler discusses his latest documentary, “The World According to Dick Cheney.”

The roundtable debates those topics and all the week’s politics, with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who joined GOP senators dining with President Obama this week; DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.; ABC News’ George Will; Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman; and Bloomberg News White House correspondent Julianna Goldman.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Sschieffer’s guest are New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH); and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post Columnist; Gloria Borger, CNN Senior Political Analyst; David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist; and Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast Editor, The Dish.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: This week on MTP a special discussion of Washington’s partisan war with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), freshman Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, fmr. Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL).

Also another interview with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The second roundtable will discuss women in the American workplace with former White House Press Secretary under President Clinton, Dee Dee Myers; Tennessee Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn; former John McCain 2008 Presidential Campaign Manager Steve Schmidt; and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley sit down with  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in an exclusive interview on gridlock in Congress. In a separate interview she discusses Pres. Barack Obama’s recent meetings with  House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). She will also talk with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Her panel guests are former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, former Speaker of the House and Republican Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich, former Bush and Romney adviser Alex Castellanos and Democratic Strategist Donna Brazile.

Under cover of darkness, Afghan women head to battle

By Mandy Clark, Correspondent, NBC News

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Severely outgunned, the battle was going badly. It seemed like certain defeat. Then, from out of the crowd stepped a young girl of around 14. She grabbed the pole from the fallen flag-bearer, held it up, and called out to her brothers-in-arms to fight to the death.

Though she was shot dead, her rallying cry was seen as the turning point of the 1880 Battle of Maiwand; a triumph for the Afghans, and a devastating loss for British forces during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Her name was Malalai, Afghanistan’s Joan of Arc.

“If you go back into history, before we only had one female soldier named Malalai, but now I have a lot of Malalais in my Special Forces,” said Colonel Jalauddin Yaftaly, who heads the elite units. There are more than 1,000 women in the Afghan Army – and about two dozen have made it into Special Forces.

In this week’s segment of “What We know Now” of MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes“, host Chris Hayes tell is that there has been a dramatic rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since last year, CO2 levels jumped by 2.67 parts per million, the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. Joining Chris to discuss what they have learned this week are Jeff Smith, assistant professor at The New School for Management and Urban Policy, former Missouri State Senator (2006-2009); Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice; Maya Wiley, founder and president of the Center for Social Inclusion; and Dan Baum, author of “Gun Guys: A Road Trip.”

To serve and protect … banks?

by David Dayen, Salon

With mega-banks illegally foreclosing on active duty members, the penalty is jail. But, as always, there’s a catch

Wrapping themselves in the American flag is a popular pastime among our nation’s prominent institutions. But is it secretly possible for them to commit crimes against active duty members, and pay no price? [..]

This has happened at least 700 times to service members on missions overseas since the beginning of the foreclosure crisis in 2008. And it’s actually illegal; it violates the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a statute that carries criminal penalties. The nation’s biggest banks have admitted to the conduct before Congress and in regulatory filings, and they only recently acknowledged that they illegally foreclosed on 10 times as many service members as they previously claimed. Any serious effort to hold banks accountable for routine abuse of homeowners should include prosecutions of this execrable behavior. But the government rolled out settlements years before the true depth of these violations ever began to come to light.

I will let the ever eloquent Charles Pierce of Esquires have, hopefully, the last word on the pimply faces little turd, James O’Keefe:

The week ended with the journamalism moon passing retrograde into the House Of Moron. First, James O’Keefe, the noted guerrilla yacht perv, settled up a “meritless lawsuit” for $100K with an ACORN person he’d ratfcked back in the days when Democrats took him seriously enough to defund organizations for the crime of being ratfcked by a ratfcker. (H/t to the lovely Wonkette for being all over O’Keefe on this one, which is not what it sounds like, dammit.) Also, again, nice job, congressional Democrats for ratfcking yourselves on this.