Parents believe their children may still be alive, kept in secret prisons, & sustaining torture. The parents’ continuing campaign for the return of their children highlights the issue of disappearance which is a major human rights crime in the US, Mexico, Kashmir, China, Syria, Guatemala, Turkey, Bangladesh, & at least 40 other countries. Most will turn up in mass graves; some remain in prisons.

Our fullest solidarity with the Ayotzinapa parents & our gratitude for their
persistence in bringing this monstrous crime to world attention.

Photo is of the 43 disappeared students.

A Facebook friend sent me that post from a leftist fellow’s wall & asked what I thought of it. The commenter is not among my friends so I feel free to respond publicly. The statement is appalling in its smugness, cynicism & perhaps in its defense of amorality in politics. Whose politics are without ethics & merely based on the practical?

If you’re talking about the presidential candidates or US Congress, that definition fits to a tee. Political principles mean nothing & expedience rules. But if you’re talking about transformational politics, the social movements against war, racism, misogyny, apartheid, & social hatreds of every kind, ethics & morality are essential, of the highest order, & not political impedimenta.

What kind of ethics are required to change the world? Those that insist on the equality of human beings–not just in the abstract but in political organizing; those that place human rights as the guiding principles of political activity; those that will not equivocate or remain silent when human beings are persecuted; those that insist on straightforward, honest dealings with others in the struggles to make this world suitable for human beings to live in.

My observation in several social movements is that people who resort to maneuvering, trickery, backroom bargains, bullying, petty cruelties, eventually end up as bureaucrats or pompous hacks. The regrettable thing is they drive so many committed activists out of politics who want to change the world but refuse to become lowlifes to do that because they know it’s the fast road to political hell.

Those who think high-principled functioning has no place in politics have likely never spent a moment trying to change the world or are themselves amongst the practical fools whose cynicism blinds them to the vision of a world free of human exploitation.

Many rebuke criticisms of Pope Francis by saying he influences 1.2 billion Catholics. That may be true but they are 1.2 billion people who don’t think like serfs anymore, who are accustomed to defying authority (at least behind its back), who often don’t know the catechism of mortal & venial sins & would ignore them if they did.

Tens of thousands of Catholics ignore the ban on birth control & abortion. At least as many ignore the requirement of weekly Mass even though the catechism says it’s a mortal sin that will send them to hell. Most probably have sex outside of marriage & do it for pleasure not for procreation even though the church considers that a mortal sin. One mortal sin is all it takes to fry you for all eternity.

Catholics are not unthinking automatons, obedient to a slavish degree. They are as powerfully affected by the dynamics of democracy as everyone else. It should be said that in the US there is a deep-seated prejudice against Catholicism that considers them bovine when it comes to authority. That prejudice has everything to do with the protestant elite & largely Catholic immigration of the 19th century. Prejudice is in this instance what prejudice always is–the usual stereotypes & horse manure.

The proposed pension cutbacks would affect government workers as well as workers in the chaebol which are business conglomerates unique to South Korea. Chaebol were formed in the 1960s under the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee who was an ally of the US. They are immense monopolies owned, controlled, & managed by family dynasties which are integral to the functioning of the government & to the massive repression of worker’s rights. In most countries the ruling elite hide behind minions who run their corporations but in South Korea oligarchic rule is quite direct. Samsung, Hyundai, & LG Group are among the biggest & most important chaebol.

Chaebol under the military dictatorship were attributed with transforming the South Korean economy from agrarian to industrial & to an export economy–& we can be certain there was plenty of coercion involved. Chaebols in many ways pioneered neoliberal corporate strategies, including sweatshops & export-oriented markets.

Economic indices seem to bear out government claims that South Korea’s standard of living required repressive labor practices but that’s only if sweatshops are considered a measure of economic well-being. In the early 1970s, when clothing retailers started moving operations overseas for cheaper labor, South Korea was the first country they moved to. South Korea now has free trade (i.e., sweatshop) agreements with the US, European Union, Canada, Australia, China.

There have also been repeated farmer protests in South Korea over export of their produce & the flooding of South Korean markets with US agricultural products.

A more telling index of economic well-being for working people is the over a million homeless people just in Seoul & reportedly islands where the disabled, unemployed, & homeless are forced to work as slaves. Another telling index is that South Korean unions, long-compromised with the autocratic regime, feel compelled to mobilize their ranks against the latest assaults on workers’ rights.

Our fullest solidarity with the working people of South Korea. May they kick ass!

(Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA)

We sympathize with Boehner’s drinking problem but do wish he would not habitually come to affairs of state half in the wrapper–especially when he’s adjudicating war appropriations. That crying schtick of his is not endearing but surely related to inebriation. We only wish alcohol explained his reactionary pandering to Tea Party politics.

Political analysts will be parsing & pouring over every detail of the power plays in Congress that drove him to resign. Who gives a rat’s ass!? He claims it was an epiphany moment when the Pope whispered in his ear. His entire wasteful life must have flashed before his eyes & made him awash with remorse. It was such a graceless fall from altar boy to right-wing hack.

Before we get all teary-eyed at his redemption, we should consider, out of all the attacks he engineered on working people, his singular condemning legacy of authoring the passage (along with Ted Kennedy) of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, which was signed into law by George Bush in 2002. NCLB was a weapon of mass destruction lobbed at public education which there is now open rebellion against by teachers, students, & parents across this country. Boehner called it his “proudest achievement.” Of course, neither Kennedy nor he had any commitments to public education since Kennedy was a product of elite private schools & Boehner of Catholic schools. Both chaired annual fundraisers for Catholic schools.

It’s a matter of no concern what Boehner does with the rest of his life. He ought to begin with rehab & proceed from there to a monastery where he can inflict no more harm on the human race.

(Photo by Steve Helber/AP)