Common Myths

  • Republicans are against unions
    Republicans are not always anti-union, but generally side with big business over the interests of labor. But lost in much of the discussions, is the awareness that big business usually consists of unions of owners. These owners collectively bargain with their employees, either with the employees singly or in groups. Quite often those groups of employees are not based on unions, but instead on bureaucratic determinations made by the corporation. Republicans, and often Democrats, will side with the more powerful union of owners against the employees. Why is there a false understanding of corporations? Because clearly the market supports unions of owners over individual large owners and because of decades of misconceptions often fostered by corporations. Somehow many believe unions of owners are efficient and unions of employees or consumers are inefficient. Of course, democracy, a system based on the equality of humans, can be portrayed as inefficient in the short terms and tyranny of the powerful much more efficient. And that gets to the main distinction in the form of unions of owners versus employees, generally corporations are anti-democratic (power decided by wealth) versus unions of labor or consumers (power decided by people).
  • Republican leaders are against regulations
    Look it up, regulations are essentially laws. What Republicans tend to be against are both laws and regulations that force corporations to favor protecting life over profits. Republicans tend to be strongly for regulations and laws that protect corporation profits and protect corportations being held accountable by a democratic society.
  • Social Security is running out of money
    Repeating a lie doesn't make it so. Williams repeats the myth that Social Security is running out of money despite evidence and protestations to the contrary by Krugman. Unfortunately this myth is designed to allow a wealthy minority to steal the savings of generations of Americans.

Cures for the common myth

  • HeadlineUpdate
    William Klein tears apart the headlines to get to the real story.
  • On the Media
    Show that savages co-opted and self-censored media coverage.
  • RIP - Wall Street Journal
    Until recently, perhaps, the best newspaper in the United States. Murdoch decided to squeeze the life out of this golden goose. Previously had fantastic muckracking pieces. The ruling class preferred WSJ to the whitewashed and watered down mass media.
  • Technorati

    Hidden among the millions of blogs and RSS feeds is the vox populi.

Rapprochement with Cuba, But No Apologies

Lost in all of the positive and negative coverage of the major shift in the US policy towards Cuba is a sense of the history. Like the discussions of foreign policy with Iran where the US supported and led the coup that overthrew their democracy, the amnesia displayed about past treatment and mistreatment of Cuba makes the discussion thin and worrisome. Whether liberal or conservative, pro or con rapprochement, the main issue is whether the current leadership of Cuba will improve or be replaced with more democratic representation. This seeming benivolent view is in distinct opposition to the role of the US in the history of Cuba. 

First, Cuba had an indigenous population that was plundered and slaughtered 500 years ago. Then a colonial regime was set up with the importation of a slave population. As Spain, the colonial power, waned in world power and local force moved toward freedom and independence, the United States came to the rescue. However, that rescue had many strings attached, replacing colonialism with a type of subjugation that was in many ways just as brutal. 

With a patina of democracy and freedom, but fleeting and corrupted with the oversight of the US government and corporations, Cuban revolutionaries led a popular overthrow of the government. Perhaps you can argue that violent actions led to a regime that was not interested in democracy and freedom. But it is disingenuous for the US to complain about this and isolate and punish the Cuban people for it. The US brutalized Cuba and has never apologized for its actions. There was a huge investment in Cuba and considerable wealth developed in Cuba, but with many left behind and with so US interests often trumping Cubans. 

I hope that Cuba does improve with more opportunities and freedom. But I also hope that North Americans learn about their governments' and corporations' inhumane treatment of many of the Cuban people, before it worries about the actions of those who fought back against that inhumane treatment. Now we will hear from US corporations that lost their property and will want compensation. But, I say, we owe Cuba much more in compensation for the wealth we stole and then compounded with an undeserved embargo. If we want a more prosperous and modern Cuba, we should be honest about our past and willing to apologize for it. Only then will we deserve the attention of our concerns about the present treatment of Cubans by their government.

When I visited Cuba, twenty five years ago, I saw the hotels that swarmed with mobsters from the US, rode the train tracks that held the sugar grown under barbaric conditions for the workers, and saw the lingering effects of the US and Spanish exploitation of the island. It is too easy for the talking heads in the US to argue about how best to reform Cuba. Much more difficult is to bring up the difficult history of US history of pre-revolutionary Cuba and make those same pronouncements. When will we ever learn? 

 

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December 18, 2014 | | Comments (0)

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