Classism

The fight for the $15 an hour wage is alive and strong in Washington State, for faculty, AKA, professors at the college level. Think hard how the majority of faculty teaching young and old in Washington state, known for Bezos of Amazon, Gates of Microsoft, and Big Planes Brought to you by Intelligence Monitoring Boeing, are precarious, working semester-to-semester and quarter-to-quarter and subject to the whine or whim of disgruntled, uninformed and poorly formed students. One bad evaluation, or one helicopter parent against the teacher’s politics, and, bam, bye-bye $3100 a class.

Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door.
— Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

It’s very reassuring that more people are slowly learning how our monetary system really works: if you want to fix something, you need to know a bit about it. The indefatigable Ellen Brown has been hugely helpful in this regard with her regular well-informed and easy-to-read articles that relentlessly confront the myths of capitalist monetary theory.

Blaming the 1% for diminished prosperity avoids the real reasons for designed poverty. In round terms, the seven billion souls that populate this planet translate into seventy million to be part of the 1%. Well, that amount is still a very large number to blame for the systemic transfer of riches into the hands of the few. A far more relevant approach is to examine the .001% or around seven million that fall into the mover or shakers of asset and possessions.

Interesting! National Adjunct Walkout Day. Sad and the same old. Same-same-same controlled opposition. Look at the tepidness of the movement, below – walking out and teaching in, at lunchtime –

Can such a simple and small action as raising taxes on the extremely wealthy be revolutionary? It seems that these days it can be.
Before chucking it all and moving somewhere off the grid where the oligarchs will never find us, there is one question which should be asked of every American politician seeking office this election cycle.
“Are you in favor of increasing taxes on millionaires? Yes or no.”
For decades corporate shills have terrorized American politicians by, among other things, forcing them to sign pledges not to raise taxes.

Wealth is on a skyward sprint—to meaninglessness. How good was Sartre with a buck? We’ll soon find out as the entirety of the planet’s wealth is headed for the very deep pocket of the top 0.000000000142857143%. (Odds of winning? 1 in 7 billion.) In short, we’re converging on the Omega Man Wealth Syndrome where one tight bastard will own everything.

Before engaging an enemy, it pays to acknowledge both of them.

That [spirit is what the ruling elite] had to roll back, and that they did quite successfully. That rollback was completed by the implosion of the Soviet Union. They sat down and said, ‘Great, now we can do whatever we want.’ [emphasis added]
— Tariq Ali1

I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin…
— Malcolm X, One Month Before His Murder

The Greek government is currently locked in a life and death struggle with the elite which dominate the banks and political decision-making centers of the European Union. What are at stake are the livelihoods of 11 million Greek workers, employees and small business people and the viability of the European Union. If the ruling Syriza government capitulates to the demands of the EU bankers and agrees to continue the austerity programs, Greece will be condemned to decades of regression, destitution, and colonial rule.