| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"skye" |
| Date: |
18 May 2004 01:18:02 PM |
| Object: |
Naomi Klein: Children of Bush's America |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1218981,00.html
Comment
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Children of Bush's America
The torturers of Abu Ghraib were McWorkers who ended up in Iraq
because they could no longer find decent jobs at home
Naomi Klein
Tuesday May 18, 2004
The Guardian (London)
In 1968, the legendary US labour organiser Cesar Chavez went on a
25-day hunger strike. While depriving himself of food, he condemned
abusive conditions suffered by farm workers. The slogan of his
historic union drive was: " Si se puede! " Yes, we can!
Last week, George Bush went on a four-day bus ride. While stopping for
multiple pancake breakfasts, he praised tax cuts and condemned
everyone who says American workers need protection in the global
economy. His battle cry for laissez-faire economics? "Yes, America
can."
The echo was probably intentional. Bush is so desperate for the
Hispanic vote that he has taken to shouting " Vamos a ganar! We're
going to win!" during stump speeches in Ohio.
But the main purpose of the "Yes, American can" bus tour, of course,
was to shift the attention of US voters away from the Iraq prison
scandal towards the recovering job market. According to a US labour
department report, 288,000 jobs were created in April. Bush's campaign
has seized on these numbers to further cast John Kerry as the dour New
England pessimist, always droning on with bad news. Bush, on the other
hand, is the bouncy Texan optimist, always flashing an easy smile and
a thumbs-up. "The president has to make sure that we're optimistic and
confident in order for jobs to be created," he told a crowd in
Dubuque, Iowa.
Some jobs, however, are more responsive than others to the power of
positive presidential thinking. More than 82% of the jobs created in
April were in service industries, including restaurants and retail.
The biggest new employers were temp agencies. Over the past year,
272,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost. No wonder the president's
economic report in February floated the idea of reclassifying
fast-food restaurants as factories. "When a fast-food restaurant sells
a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it
combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" the report asks.
But not all of the job growth in the US has come from burger-flipping
and temping. With more than 2 million Americans behind bars, the
number of prison guards has exploded - from 270,317 in 2000 to 476,000
in 2002.
Watching Bush give the thumbs up in the face of so much economic
misery put me in mind of a certain widely circulated photograph taken
in Iraq. There are Specialist Charles Graner and Private Lynndie
England, the happy couple, standing above a pile of tortured Iraqi
inmates, grinning and giving the double thumbs up. Everything is fine,
their eyes seem to be saying, just don't look down.
There's something else connecting the sorry state of the US job market
and the images coming out of Abu Ghraib. The young soldiers taking the
fall for the prison abuse scandal are the McWorkers, prison guards and
laid-off factory workers of Bush's so-called economic recovery. The
resumis of the soldiers facing abuse charges come straight out of the
April US labour department report.
There's spc Sabrina Harman, of Lorton, Virginia, assistant manager of
her local Papa John's Pizza. There's spc Graner, a prison guard back
home in Pennsylvania. There's Sergeant Ivan Frederick, another prison
guard, this time from rural Virginia.
Before he joined what Van Jones, a prisoners' rights lawyer, calls
"America's gulag economy", Frederick had a decent job at the Bausch
and Lomb factory in Mountain Lake, Maryland. But according to the New
York Times, that factory shut down and moved to Mexico - one of the
nearly 900,000 jobs that the Economic Policy Institute estimates have
been lost since the North American Free Trade Agreement came into
force in 1994, the vast majority in manufacturing.
Free trade has turned the US labour market into an hourglass: plenty
of jobs at the bottom, a fair bit at the top, but very little in the
middle. At the same time, getting from the bottom to the top has
become increasingly difficult, with tuition fees at state colleges up
by more than 50% since 1990.
And that's where the US military comes in: the army has positioned
itself as the bridge across America's growing class chasm: money for
tuition in exchange for military service. Call it the Nafta draft.
It worked for Lynndie England, the most infamous of the Abu Ghraib
accused. She joined the military police to pay for college. Her
colleague Sabrina Harman joined up for the same reason.
Of course, the poverty of the soldiers involved in prison torture
makes them neither more guilty, nor less. But the more we learn about
them, the clearer it becomes that the lack of good jobs and social
equality in the US is precisely what brought them to Iraq in the first
place. Despite his attempts to use the economy to distract attention
from Iraq, and his efforts to isolate the soldiers as un-American
deviants, these are the children George Bush left behind, fleeing
dead-end McJobs, abusive prisons, unaffordable education and closed
factories.
And they are his children in another way too: it's in the ubiquitous
thumbs-up sign that they flash, seemingly oblivious to the disaster at
their feet. This is the quintessential George Bush pose. Convinced
that US voters want a positive president, the Bush team has learned to
use optimism as an offensive weapon: no matter how devastating the
crisis, no matter how many lives have been destroyed, they have
insistently given the world the thumbs up.
Donald Rumsfeld? "Doing a superb job," according to the
optimist-in-chief. The mission in Iraq? "We're making progress, you
bet," Bush told reporters one year after his disastrous "mission
accomplished" speech. And the US job market, which has driven so many
into poverty? "Yes, America can!"
We don't yet know who taught these young soldiers how to torture their
prisoners. But we do know who taught them how to stay happy-go-lucky
in the face of tremendous suffering. That lesson came straight from
the top.
Guardian Unlimited ) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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fwd//Starman
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| User: "Captain Compassion" |
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| Title: Re: Naomi Klein: Children of Bush's America |
18 May 2004 02:03:53 PM |
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On 18 May 2004 11:18:02 -0700, (skye) wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1218981,00.html
Comment
_________________________________________________________________
Children of Bush's America
The torturers of Abu Ghraib were McWorkers who ended up in Iraq
because they could no longer find decent jobs at home
The "torturers" were US Army and National Guard. I got the pictures to
prove it.
<SNIP RESt OF LIES>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Long term commitment in relationships is only necessary because it takes
so damn long to raise children. Marriage may well be some kind of trick
to keep the males around beyond sexual satiation." -- Captain Compassion
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
"Madmen reason rightly from the wrong premisis" -- Locke
You can never redistribute wealth only poverty. Because of the natural
inequities of man and the nature of wealth it is impossible for all men
to be rich. It is possible for all men to be poor. Just ask any Socialist
they can tell you how. -- Captain Compassion
Joseph R. Darancette
res0mp8t@NOSPAMverizon.net
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