Human Rights

Obama's proclamation on the Declaration of Human Rights Day:

"All people should live free from the threat of extrajudicial killing, torture, oppression and discrimination, regardless of gender, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or physical or mental disability,"

Yesterday he ended the war in Iraq by saying We don't invade others for resources, "we do it because it is right."

American exceptionalism has become a key theme in the presidential campaign. Newt has made a movie and written a book about the shining beacon, city on a hill, more perfect union thing and Barack and the others must race to catch up. American hypocrisy, on the other hand, is the long acknowledged but never spoken (not since Carter's Malaise speech) thing and government approval ratings show this pretty clearly. Ron Paul was a courageous defender of foreign policy Reality in the last debate but his economics are in la la land. Some people have even read the history of US intervention in the Philippines.

And Christopher Hitchens, go ahead and rest in peace, we all make mistakes.

Poor Mitt Romney went on about how some of his business ventures failed (making him a better possible President?) and how luck is an important ingredient to success, seeming to counter his devotion to meritocracy. I doubt many conservatives noticed the contradictions. (not really their forte)

Gar Alpowitz had an interesting op-ed piece in the NY Times saying that the cooperative model is already affecting capitalism. Worker owned and managed enterprises are growing at an unprecedented rate and I wonder how this fits in with Hardt and Negri's assertions about the biopolitical subject and democracy coming from a new "commons" of the immaterial economy. I want to believe this is significant but also know emancipation won't come without a real fight over powers hold on resources. Labor and value are still real struggles exported to the periphery and the excluded grow every day.

Here in my little Montana valley, my neighbors are struggling to establish a re-cycling center but the capitalist ideologues in power are suspicious. At the latest hearing, County Commissioner Mat Kannewisher stated:

" the idea of a free market was important to him philosophically." He also noted that recycling was not a right and that the government's job was "not to provide everything we want." These same commissioners also hope to engage the Forest Service in something they call "coordination process" to re-create a timber industry here. It has something to do with county sovereignty and the tenth amendment and probably guns if I know these folks. "It's our forest,..it doesn't belong to the Forest Service. It belongs to us." said Bill Grasser. Ah yes. Us.