Would this be a good time to point out the inherent problems with the lax gun laws of Arizona? I think so. I can't wait to learn his permit status, if any and how many gunzzzzz he had accumulated.
This creep could easily be the poster child for NRA gun nuts - the individuals who are obsessed with firearms, obsessed with finding someone to shoot, obsessed with threats lurking around every corner about to getcha (because you're so appealing/good looking/rich/ important/ sexy - if only in your own mind). That would be as distinct from the sane individuals who don't feel a need or desire to go armed everywhere, who aren't afraid of imminent home invasion, who don't wet themselves over improbable heroic fantasies involving their fetish objects, and who practice sound, sane gun safety for normal firearm activities like skeet shooting or hunting where a firearm is a tool in an activity, but not an essential fetish prop to a person's core identity.
J. T. Ready, who mostly personifies the National Rifle Association demographic of an old looking (he's white overweight angry guy with right to extreme right wing leanings, killed himself and four other people in Arizona. Ready was a speaker at Tea Party events, where he was embraced. Ready had also attempted to be part of Occupy events, where his participation was rejected because of his hateful and extremist views.
While many on the right have tried publicly to distance themselves from the anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and racist views of the white supremacists, the reality is that the right has courted and embraced them. They have been part of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, where all four of the then running GOP presidential candidates spoke. Right wing bloggers are featured and presented with awards, including Pamela Geller who shares a number of views that she holds in common with right wing extremist mass murderer Anders Breivik in Norway, demonizing anyone who isn't white, and exclusively culturally western European. The right wing is concerned about keeping domination in the U.S. for white European-descended people, and desire to keep black, brown, and presumably Asian people in a subordinate relationship.
Ready was running for Sheriff, but he appears to be doing so - so far as I could tell - without an official endorsement. Popular Democrat Clarence Dupnik, who gained national attention as the sheriff who took Jared Loughner into custody in 2011 is running for his party, and as of last week, Terry Frederick was the candidate was running for the Republicans, and Mark Napier was running for the Tea Party Patrios in Pima. Ready identified that he was running as a Democrat, but it doesn't appear that the Democrats were willing to have him either - they directed the good citizens of Pima not to sign any petitions on behalf of Ready.
The conspiracy theory driven right wing-nut tin-foil-hat-brigade is positing all sorts of silliness, including that the murder suicide was really a cartel murder, and that Ready was a secret federal informant. These people are nuts, just plain wackadoodle nut jobs, who believe any garbage, the more stupid the more it appeals to them. It's not a reach to imagine them all huddled around playing a game of 'telephone' making up details and passing them back and forth between themselves as they fondle their arms full of firearms with frissons of gun fetish thrills and the adrenaline rush of fear - and loving it!
Here are just a few of the extensive Youtube video collection about the now-late TJ Ready. He and his colleagues are far more damning than I could be about them. For those of you who don't readily recognize him in some of these clips, recalled right wing majority leader Russell Pearce was a close buddy of Pearce, including having converted him to Mormonism, and then catapulted Ready right to an important status position in the church. For those not familiar with the acronym, ADL is the Anti-Defamation League.
I could point out these guys are ignorant extremist red-necked- red-state racist, bigoted assholes, but that would be redundant.
If this piques your curiosity, wikipedia has an entry on him. This is from that entry:
He also served as president of the Mesa Community College Republican Party Club and as a precinct committeeman for the Maricopa County Republicans. In 2006, he sought a seat on the city counsel for Mesa, Arizona. He put forth as his motto that "The Purity of the Aryan Race is the most precious resource Nature has to offer All of Humankind."[2]
As the Brits would say, Ready seems to have fancied himself a superior human being. I don't see that in any aspect of him. I would worry that might offend his surviving family and friends, but he appears to have shot them all.
I would not have thought this guy had anything whatsoever to do with a college edumacation; maybe he just presided over the college Republicans, but wasn't actually a student himself. We're talking Arizona after all. Republicans, Tea Partiers, Neo-Nazis; gun nuts all, they deserve each other, but the rest of us don't.
Right Wing Authoritarianism has three component attitudes and behaviors. They are submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. We've certainly seen them go heavy on the aggression.
Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms.[3]
We have recently seen a glaring example of Right Wing Authoritarianism in hate mongering North Carolina Baptist pastor Sean Harris in the following audio clip where he argues for both the most harsh and injurious violence against children over their innate sexuality, and for the strictest possible conformity, even when it is a denial of fact:
And then we have another of the non-apology apologies (like Rush Limbaugh's apology where he asserts he did nothing wrong, and clearly isn't sorry).
But this IS really what these people promote: hitting, homophobia, and intimidation. They preach the most abusive tyranny of children who do not conform; what they are not preaching is love. What they are not preaching is dignity and safety for everyone. What they are not preaching is FREEDOM.
The extremes to which the authoritarian aggression extends includes spanking infants with flexible metal plumbing pipe. The intent is not merely firm and moderate negative reinforcement; the discipline is intended to completely and utterly break a child's will, to completely and totally dominate their personality and character, to stomp them into terrified compliance without a will of their own. CNN has covered this kind of religious abuse, so has ABC. Some kids have died, and their parents have gone to prison. Many other kids report both physical injuries and sever psychological trauma as a result of this kind of authoritarian aggression. The Southern Medical Journal in July 2008 published this :
Southern Medical Journal:
July 2008 - Volume 101 - Issue 7 - pp 707-710
doi: 10.1097/SMJ.0b013e3181794793
Original Article
Is Religiosity Associated with Corporal Punishment or Child Abuse?
Socolar, Rebecca MD, MPH; Cabinum-Foeller, Elaine MD; Sinal, Sara H. MD
Abstract
There is limited empiric literature available regarding religion and corporal punishment and physical child abuse. The available empiric literature deals primarily with Christian denominations. Conservative Protestants, particularly those who believe in Biblical literalism or inerrancy, spank and/or physically abuse their children more than other Christian denominations. However, church attendance and religiosity do appear to protect against family violence.
Key Points
* Empiric literature suggests that conservative Protestants spank and physically abuse their children more than other Christian groups.
* There is little empiric literature on corporal punishment/physical abuse for non-Christian religious groups.
* Adults who report experiencing religious authority abuse as children often experience depression and consider suicide as adults.
* Empiric studies suggest that religiosity and church attendance are protective against family violence.
An article in September 2010 in Science Daily documented precisely the kind of harm that results, up to and including suicide in later life. This kind of abuse physically changes brain development according to the article. I have written before about the differences between the deformed and distorted amygdalas associated with conservative political leanings in comparison to moderates and liberals. This is further documentation about what constitutes fear response, and how that differs based on the amygdala. By disorder, we are not talking minor anxiousness, but rather something far more debilitating.
ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2010) — Grabbing a child firmly by the
arm, yelling and repeatedly punishing him or her may not be without long-terms
risks, according to researchers from the Université de Montréal. They are
studying how this harsh parenting can impair the emotional development of a
child, possibly leading to anxiety disorders such as social phobia, separation anxiety
and panic attacks.
"Several studies have shown that coercive parenting practices are linked to
anxiety," says Françoise Maheu a professor at the Université de Montréal's
Department of Psychiatry and lead investigator of the study.
"We know that common practices such as spanking or excessive punishment do not
instill a strong discipline. Quite the opposite, they have a lasting
psychological impact on children."
Showing the physiological effect
Maheu and her team are investigating specifically how the anatomy or
physiology of the brain is affected by this parenting. They are in the process
of recruiting 120 youths aged 12 to 17 years. These youths will be split into
four groups according to two variables: their current anxiety symptoms and their
parent's current harsh parenting practices. While doing behavioural tests, the
children will be subjected to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),
where their brain activity (cerebral activity) will be measured. Maheu will then
be able to correlate brain activity with fear and anxiety.
"My hypothesis is that two specialized structures, the amygdala and the
anterior congulate cortex, which form the neural fear circuit, play a role in
mediating the anxiety associated with harsh parenting. We are investigating
these structures because they are strongly associated with the processing of
threat cues" says Maheu.
"Investigating the links among harsh parenting, fear circuitry and anxiety in
youths will provide key insights on the developmental neurobiology of harsh
parenting and anxiety," adds Maheu. "Understanding this while individuals are
young is crucial as it could lead to early interventions that would effectively
interrupt a development trajectory early in its course, before anxiety becomes
chronic."
More about anxiety disorders
According to research findings, anxiety disorders may result from a
combination of biochemical imbalances, genetic factors and stress. School,
moving, illness, poverty, and peer pressures can all contribute to the
development of an anxiety disorder. If symptoms are not recognized and treated
these disorders may lead to alcoholism, difficulties maintaining relationships,
depression and in certain cases, suicide.
This study is being funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and
the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec.
An anxiety DISORDER, referenced above, is very different from normal levels of anxiety or nervousness. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, reported from repeated military deployments is an example of an anxiety disorder. Inflicting this kind of aggression on a child is abusive when it does this kind of psychological damage.
I would direct our readers for a good overview / summary to the wikipedia entry on sexual orientation change efforts. While I could provide an extensive list of authoritive academic research that shows what the harm is, and how it occurs, in essence, the mental health field has taken the position that non-violent sexual orientation denial is damaging; when it includes physical violence, it is far more drastically damaging. This is outlined below: Sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) are methods that aim to eliminate a same-sex sexual orientation.[1] They may include behavioral techniques, cognitive behavioral techniques (such as reparative therapy), psychoanalytic techniques, medical approaches, and religious and spiritual approaches.[2] In some parts of the world efforts to change a person's sexual orientation may include acts of sexual violence (corrective rape) in which the purported motivation is to force the victim to change their orientation.
The longstanding consensus of the behavioral and social sciences and the health and mental health professions is that homosexuality per se is a normal and positive variation of human sexual orientation.[1] The research consistently failed to provide any empirical or scientific basis for regarding homosexuality as a disorder or abnormality.[3][4] There is a population that undergoes sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) and tends to have strongly conservative religious views that lead them to seek to change their sexual orientation.[2] There are no studies of adequate scientific rigor to conclude that recent sexual orientation change efforts have been effective.
... no major mental health professional organization has sanctioned efforts to change sexual orientation and virtually all of them have adopted policy statements cautioning the profession and the public about treatments that purport to change sexual orientation.[5][6][7] The Royal College of Psychiatrists shares the concern of both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association that positions espoused by bodies like the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) in the United States are not supported by science and that so-called treatments of homosexuality as recommended by NARTH create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.[6][8]
SOCE has been controversial due to tensions between the values held by some faith-based organizations, on the one hand, and those held by lesbian, gay and bisexual rights organizations and professional and scientific organizations, on the other. Some individuals and groups have promoted the idea of homosexuality as symptomatic of developmental defects or spiritual and moral failings and have argued that SOCE, including psychotherapy and religious efforts, could alter homosexual feelings and behaviors.[1] Such efforts have serious potential to harm people because they present the view that the sexual orientation of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth is a mental illness or disorder, and they often frame the inability to change one’s sexual orientation as a personal and moral failure.[9] Many of these individuals and groups appeared to be embedded within the larger context of conservative religious political movements that have supported the stigmatization of homosexuality on political or religious grounds.[1] Co-founder and other former Exodus International leaders issued a public and formal apology for their work as ex-gay leaders and the harm they caused to those they tried to help.[10] I think perhaps it is time to add a fourth characteristic to the definition of right wing authoritarianism - dishonest denial when confronted with their hateful authoritarian aggression.
We have this video of Pastor Harris when he received attention for his preaching. He tried to pretend that the way in which he was speaking was humor -- you know, like Ruch Limbaugh claimed his attack on Ms. Fluke were humor instead of admitting they were a very real attack. These men appear to mean what they say; it is not humor. They are advocating and approving, encouraging and endorsing the conduct of those who are violent to same-sex oriented human beings.
We have Pastor Harris claiming he didn't really mean actually hitting kids or intimidating them, that this was humor. We have Bradlee Dean claiming he doesn't hate gays or condone violence when he praises the execution of gays in more primitive Muslim fundamentalist societies, and advocates for criminalizing same sex relationships, including imprisoning people, or holding up in an approving way the statements of people advocating castration for homosexuality. Bradlee Dean has gone through many forms of denials not unlike the video of Harris above where he has tried to deny his hateful admonitions. He tries to fost hatred by disseminating as often as possible lies about the life, and health of same-sex oriented people, including asserting the base accusation they are all pedophiles in order to incite fear and hatred of them. We have the denials of possibly gay Marcus Bachmann and his wife Congresswoman Michele Bachmann that their clinic does not offer Christian psychological counseling to 'pray away the gay', despite so far two incidents of undercover recordings of such therapy by their therapists in their clinic --- and Marcus Bachmann PERSONALLY trying to collect on a fee for one such therapy session.
Congresswoman Bachmann wants to allow bullying in schools for sexual orientation, because she believes it is part of religious freedom to do so --- but denies adamantly she is anti-gay. Although to be fair, she has such a reputation for dishonesty and inaccuracy, for her that's just normal same old same old, on pretty much every topic.
Consistently, when confronted with the hatefulness and harmfullness of their words and their beliefs, these so-called principled conservatives who profess a religious based morality resort to LYING.
They lie about what they said and meant, when clearly to anyone who sees the video or hears their recorded words they meant every word, when clearly they have professed hatred and advocated harmful physical and psychological aggression on adults and children.
These people are monsters, and they are moral cowards who lack the courage of their convictions. More to the point, it is these terrible right wing extremists who should BE convicted for the damage that they do to others in denying them or attempting to deny them one of the most fundamental of freedoms, under the cover of religious freedom -- the freedom of identity and integrity. These right wing fanatics would happily deny you and I and everyone else the freedom to think independently, the freedom of individual will and conscience, the freedom to be and act as who we really are. They would only allow us to follow their hateful, harmful, ignorant conformity through parental coercion, societal coercion, and government coercion -- if we let them. Don't let them.
Thank you Jon Stewart for shining your sharp light on the right wing bullshit, the ass-holier than thou attitude. George Bush and Dick Cheney do NOT deserve the credit for getting bin laden. Their stupid insistence on the use of torture despite the advice of the overwhelming majority of experts in interrogation made that clear; they obstructed their own efforts through vicious ignorance.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made us less safe, in terms of getting bin Laden, in terms of intelligence gathering generally, and in terms of wasting the nation's good will with the world. Their efforts so much further antagonized Islamic extremists that they are themselves in part responsible for the intensity of our wars, for the extreme opposition and hatred towards the U.S. It is at their feet for doing the same things that made Nazis war criminals.
The reality is, the right HATES it that President Obama, WITHOUT USING TORTURE, gained the intel to get Osama bin Laden. They hate every success, they try to obstruct every action to improve and change, in order to try to cause him to fail ---- even when it hurts other Republicans, even when it is detrimental to the nation as a whole. THAT is unpatriotic, however much they try to obscure that disloyalty to the nation and our history.
WHY is the right - the right wing media, the right wing blogosphere, and of course, right wing political figures - so chronically factually inaccurate? Don't they realize that most of us live in the world of objective, factual reality where people fact check their assumptions? Because, when they simply spout crap so very often where the evidence is clear they are wrong, apparently maliciously wrong, it erodes their credibility (except with the right wing fantasy crowd of extremists).
Here is Stewart with those too-often absent facts for this.
computer monitor
of social media
with smoking gun?
George Zimmerman's attorney has taken the controversial step of waging his client's defence not only in court but using social media.
That may not entirely work in his favor, and one can only wonder how well he knew his client before undertaking that effort.
Much has been made of the fact that Zimmerman's mother is from Brazil, and by that definition a Latina or Hispanic. Some assert that if Zimmerman self-identifies as Hispanic, it is not possible for him to be racist / bigoted / biased towards black Americans, which is of course bogus reasoning.
Apparently it is even quite within Zimmerman's capacity to be racist towards other Hispanics, which is where his previous social media history comes in to the issue. I wonder if that information will impede the flow of cash from Latino Floridians who might otherwise have been sympathetic? Zimmerman has apparently been using the internet to extract a lot of change from the gun nut chumps on the right... which he conveniently omits mentioning in court where it would be a significant detail.
It clearly was, and presumably is, true that George Zimmerman has no problems with making the most derogatory conclusions about entire groups of people rather than treating them as individuals, including assuming criminality where none may be present. This would seem to go to the heart of the matter of George Zimmerman appearing to make inaccurate and racist assumptions about Trayvon Martin. It continues to amaze me that people can be terribly concerned that George Zimmerman is not being give every possible benefit of the doubt and presumption of innocence, while they fail to give either the benefit of the doubt or innocence to Trayvon Martin for no better reason than he was a black male teen in a hoodie. That is insufficient information about anyone for a presumption of criminal misconduct. It is the assumptions which lead to fear on the part of shooters to justify self defense homicides under the Shoot First laws that is the essence of its fundamental flaw.
George Zimmerman's attorney defends his move to the Web as a counter to fake sites. Cara Moore of NBC station WESH of Orlando, Fla., reports.
By M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com
George Zimmerman, who's charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, was the owner of an old Myspace page featuring slurs against Mexicans, his lawyer has confirmed to the Miami Herald. Posting under the pseudonym "Joe G,"Zimmerman wrote about "mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft a-- wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around" and "gettin knifes pulled on you by every mexican you run into!" Read the full story at The Miami Herald
The discovery adds another social media element to a case that came to national attention largely through Twitter and Facebook. After initially having ordered Zimmerman to scrub his social media history, his lawyer, Mark O'Mara, has embraced a controversial social media strategy to keep the defense side of the case in the spotlight, complete with its own website.
Msnbc.com's Suzanne Choney has examined the ramifications of attorneys using social media to make their cases in public:
The American Bar Association's standards of professional conduct does not deal with social media, a spokesman for the ABA told msnbc.com, but "it's certainly going to be on everyone's radar screen" now.
Stephen A. Saltzburg, a member of the ABA's governing body, the House of Delegates, and former chairman of the ABA's criminal justice section, said "generally speaking, lawyers are not supposed to be making public statements that could compromise a fair trial."
Whether the Zimmerman social media effort will do that would be up to a judge, Saltzburg said.
*********
I appreciate the way in which commentary cartoons can reflect more eloquently than mere words in getting to the essence of issues sometimes. In that context, I found these to be exemplary instances of that clarity and focus.
No doubt this will send the extreme right wing drooling and screaming into the night in abject terror.
From --- appropriately for the author of the novel and subsequent movie, Cujo, and given Mitt's notoriously bad relationship with dogs --- the Daily Beast:
Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!
The iconic writer scolds the superrich (including himself—and Mitt Romney) for not giving back, and warns of a Kingsian apocalyptic scenario if inequality is not addressed in America.
(Page 1 of 3)
Chris Christie may be fat, but he ain’t Santa Claus. In fact, he seems unable to decide if he is New Jersey’s governor or its caporegime, and it may be a comment on the coarsening of American discourse that his brash rudeness is often taken for charm. In February, while discussing New Jersey’s newly amended income-tax law, which allows the rich to pay less (proportionally) than the middle class, Christie was asked about Warren Buffett’s observation that he paid less federal income taxes than his personal secretary, and that wasn’t fair. “He should just write a check and shut up,” Christie responded, with his typical verve. “I’m tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he’s got the ability to write a check—go ahead and write it.”
Heard it all before. At a rally in Florida (to support collective bargaining and to express the socialist view that firing teachers with experience was sort of a bad idea), I pointed out that I was paying taxes of roughly 28 percent on my income. My question was, “How come I’m not paying 50?” The governor of New Jersey did not respond to this radical idea, possibly being too busy at the all-you-can-eat cheese buffet at Applebee’s in Jersey City, but plenty of other people of the Christie persuasion did.
Cut a check and shut up, they said.
If you want to pay more, pay more, they said.
Tired of hearing about it, they said.
Tough shit for you guys, because I’m not tired of talking about it. I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar. It’s true that some rich folks put at least some of their tax savings into charitable contributions. My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts. Warren Buffett does the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.
What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.
Thank you Stephen King for speaking truth to power, head on. Well done, sir! It is worth noting here that Stephen King is very much a self-made man, and was NOT born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Another montage, this time of some of my favorite images of the Nut Gingrich. Nut gets the sack, ending his campaign, and...
and the best for last, our own local talent, STrib Op Ed cartoonist Steve Sack 'gets' the arrogance and ego, the luna(r)cy and condescention of the Nut's failed campaign.
Anyone want to take a side bet that the Nut is holding out endorsign the Mitts Full O'Money until such time as the Mitt gives him a chunk of ca-ching change to offset some of the Nut's fiscally irresponsible campaign debt? Ditto Santorum? BOTH of those candidates are in financial distress, contrary to their claims about being financially responsible, and comments relating to not spending money you don't have. Watch what they do -- all Republicans -- not what they say. That holds for the more extreme Tea Party Republicans.
We now think if May Day as the International workers celebration, but it used to be variously Beltane and Walpurgis Nacht or Valborgsmässoafton. The Brits celebrated RoodMass at midnight on May 1st. While today the protest movements, at least some of them, appear to have been variously rude, or outright violent in some cases.
Either there are some members of the Occupy movement who didn't get the memo about non-violence, or there are possibly agents provocateur in their midst. As we learned from the punking a year ago February of Governor Walker where he thought he was talking to one of the Koch brothers, putting people in place to act badly to discredit movements they don't like is something of which they approve.
I emphatically condemn any and all violence associated with May Day protests Regardless of who does it, for what justification, it is wrong. It appears to be condemned and repudiated by the Occupy Movement, categorically.
International Workers Day is the OTHER celebration. It's celebrated in more than 80 countries world wide, and primarily focuses on labor movements. In the case of the Occupy Movement, they seem to have taken this as their umbrella date to launch the spring 2012 protest cycles.
Like the Occupy Movement which took off world-wide after starting here in the U.S. in New York City, May Day ALSO started in this country, in Chicago, They even have their own Roman Catholic saint for the day.
Rather than try to write a comprehensive summary of International Worker's Day, I'll simply give you the appropriate U.S. section of the wikipeia entry, because this happens to be a very good one. Unfortunately, riots because of extreme repression and exactly the same kind of vast gaps in wealth due to the uber-rich creating an unequal and uneven playing field for competition has been the cause past and present.
International Workers' Day is the commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago, which occurred after an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they dispersed a public assembly during a general strike for the eight-hour workday. In response, the Chicago police fired on the workers killing dozens of demonstrators and several of their own officers.[1][2][3][4] In 1889, the first congress of the Second International, meeting in Paris for the centennial of the French Revolution and the Exposition Universelle, following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne, called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests.[5] May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891.[citation needed]
Subsequently, the May Day Riots of 1894 occurred. In 1904, the International Socialist Conference meeting in Amsterdam called on "all Social Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace." The congress made it "mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on May 1, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers."[6
In many countries, the working classes sought to make May Day an official holiday, and their efforts largely succeeded. May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist and anarchist groups. In some circles, bonfires are lit in commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs, usually at dawn.[7] May Day has been an important official holiday in countries such as the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Cuba and the former Soviet Union. May Day celebrations typically feature elaborate popular and military parades in these countries.
In the United States and Canada, however, the official holiday for workers is Labor Day in September. This day was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, who organized the first parade in New York City. After the Haymarket Massacre, US President Grover Cleveland feared that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 could become an opportunity to commemorate the riots. Thus he moved in 1887 to support the Labor Day that the Knights supported.[8]
In 1955, the Catholic Church dedicated May 1 to "Saint Joseph The Worker". The Catholic Church considers Saint Joseph the patron saint of (among others) workers and craftsmen,[9]. Right-wing governments have traditionally sought to repress the message behind International Workers' Day, with fascist governments in Portugal, Italy, Germany and Spain abolishing the workers' holiday, the official May 1st holiday in the US being Loyalty Day, and the Conservative party in the UK currently attempting to abolish the UK's annual May Day bank holiday.[10]
Continuing from wikipedia, because first the Nazis and then the Communists in Russia hijacked the date for their own political purposes, May Day has never been similarly popular here. However in THIS century, especially in nations which have participated in the Arab Spring movements, May Day has been significantly rehabilitated from those earlier political associations.
In the United States, efforts to officially switch Labor Day to the international date of May 1 have not been successful. In 1921, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, May 1 was promoted as "Americanization Day" by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and other groups as a counter to communists. It became an annual event, sometimes featuring large rallies. In 1949, Americanization Day was renamed to Loyalty Day. In 1958, the U.S. Congress declared Loyalty Day, the U.S. recognition of May 1, a national holiday; that same year, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 Law Day as well.
Some unions and union locals in the United States — especially in urban areas with strong support for organized labor — have attempted to maintain a connection with more left-wing labor traditions through their own unofficial observances on May 1. Some of the largest examples of this occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when thousands of workers marched in May Day parades in New York'sUnion Square. Smaller far left groups have also tried to keep the May Day tradition alive with more radical demonstrations in such cities as New York and Seattle, without major union backing.
In 2006, May 1 was chosen by mostly Latinoimmigrant groups in the United States as the day for the Great American Boycott, a general strike of undocumented immigrant workers and supporters to protest H.R. 4437, immigration reform legislation which they felt was draconian. From April 10 to May 1 of that year, millions of immigrant families in the U.S. called for immigrant rights, workers rights and amnesty for undocumented workers. They were joined by socialist and other leftist organizations on May 1.[13][14] On May 1, 2007, a mostly peaceful demonstration in Los Angeles in support of undocumented immigrant workers ended with a widely televised dispersal by police officers. In March 2008, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union announced that dockworkers will move no cargo at any West Coast ports on May 1, 2008, as a protest against the continuation of the Iraq War and the diversion of resources from domestic needs.[15] For May Day 2010, marches were being planned in many cities uniting immigrant and native workers including New York,[16][17] San Francisco,[18] Boston,[19] Albany [20] Chicago and Los Angeles most of whom protested against the Arizona Senate Bill 1070[21]Members of Occupy Wall Street plan to hold a General Strike in 2012. [22]
And as the news is coming in for the various cities where there are May Day Occupy protests, you can watch the coveragehere.
The right, especially the more far right to right wing extremists, favor all kinds of changes to the U.S. education system, from privatization so that our nations education becomes secondary, to corporate profit and finding ways to do favors for those loan companies that profit off of students at higher rates than government loans for college or other secondary education, to enabling the religious right to promote ignorance only failed sex ed and to assaults to teaching factual history, legitimate science and economics, and badly bowdlerized and censored literature. The right also has sought to remove any coursework that doesn't feature exclusively European focused cultural orientation, attempting to remove any and all mention of Hispanics, Asians, Blacks and native Americans from education. The right would also apparently like to keep our population stupid and ill educated along class lines, so as to ensure that more of them would accept conservative positions without critical thinking or a reliance on objective facts and reality - because conservative ideology is frequently at odds with those. A right wing educated population is more likely than a centrist, competitive and comprehensive educated population to be compliant, submissive and conformist to the right wing elite manipulators. They seek to keep people of color and other groups - notably women - poor and under their thumb, and they wouldn't mind keeping a lot of white men poor and stupid, bowing and scraping to wealth either. Gutting a quality public education, at all levels, K-12 through post secondary levels is their ticket to control. The right doesn't do well with a thoughtful, independent and well educated population, so no matter how much it goes against the ideals of our founding fathers, they want to keep people stupid like sheep. Every effort, every educational policy provision is consistent with that analysis.
That is why the 14th Corp-o-rat to break with ALEC is particularly sweet.
Kaplan, a for-profit education, tutoring, and testing empire that is the largest division of the $4 billion Washington Post Company, recently told the Republic Report (RR) that Kaplan's for-profit college division "was a member of ALEC for a one year period, which ended in August 2011." Kaplan's membership in ALEC's Education Task Force is documented in task force agendas and materials obtained by Common Cause and publicly released yesterday. A Kaplan Education Center (Source: Rees Architecture)The Education Task Force is currently co-chaired by Connections Academy, a for-profit education company, owned by Pearson (a British-based company that publishes Prentice Hall and Addison-Wesley textbooks as well as the Financial Times and Penguin Group imprints), that contracts with charter schools, school districts, or governmental entities to provide "online" lessons to students.
As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported, ALEC's education agenda encompasses a 20 year effort to privatize public education through an ever-expanding network of school voucher systems, which divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools to private schools. ALEC bills also divert public funds into private charter schools or for-profit internet schools. ALEC bills also allow schools to loosen standards for teachers and administrators, exclude students with physical disabilities and special educational needs, escape the requirements of collective bargaining agreements, and experiment with other pet causes like merit pay, single-sex education, school uniforms, and political and religious indoctrination of students. Learn more about ALEC's education agenda in The Nation.
As RR reports and Common Cause documents attest, the following for-profit education companies were also members of ALEC's Education Task Force in 2011:
Bridgepoint Education (a for-profit education services holding company which owns for-profit, online and land-based Ashford University and University of the Rockies)
Corinthian Colleges (owns and manages a collection of for-profit career-oriented colleges in the United States and Canada including Everest College and Everest University, Heald College and WyoTech)
National Heritage Academies (a for-profit charter school management organization headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a collection of 67 charter schools in the eight states and a separate network of college preparatory high schools)
I hope Penigma readers will join with us in pressing corporations and legislators to break with ALEC and to repudiate (not refudiate, the ill-educated phrase of the chronically inarticulate Sarah Palin) corruption in government. The World Bank describes corruption as the use of public office for private gain -- that tracks with ALEC legislation written in secret by corporations for their benefit being passed by right wing legislators. The overwhelming majority of ALEC legislators and ALEC legislation is pushed through by Republican corrupt legislators, most of whom have received some form of compensation or benefit, directly or indirectly from ALEC, or ALEC members, including through PAC support and campaign donations.
Despite the parrots in the right wing blogosphere who so willingly repeat endlessly what they are told, the facts are clear, and with the protest efforts they are loud. ALEC acting for special private interest through the use of public office is corrupt, is bad public policy, and should at the very least lose its tax exempt status, and possibly be the subject of a government investigation. Want to bet you won't see one of those from the investigation-mad witch-hunters on the right in Congress? They will happily look the other way; and we know what direction that is.
