http://www.firstpost.com/blogs/the-curious-case-of-moily-essar-hindalco-and-mahan-coal-block-1404631.html The curious case of Moily, Essar, Hindalco and Mahan coal block Jay Mazoomdaar On February 12, Essar Energy claimed on its website that it had secured Stage II forest clearance for the Mahan coal block and would sign a lease agreement with Madhya Pradesh before commencing mining operations. This was nine days before the […]
Blog
-
Feb 24: Scandal of Europe’s 11m empty homes
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-empty-properties-enough-house-homeless-continent-twice/print Scandal of Europe’s 11m empty homes Rupert Neate More than 11m homes lie empty across Europe – enough to house all of the continent’s homeless twice over – according to figures collated by the Guardian from across the EU. In Spain more than 3.4m homes lie vacant, in excess of 2m homes are empty […]
-
House of Cards exposes dictatorship of the 1%
SPOILER ALERT: Light spoilers for House of Cards, Season 1 and 2
For all of the scandal and sensationalism, House of Cards makes one point incredibly clear: Working people have no voice in the United States government.
The wildly successful Netflix original series, which began in 2013, struck a nerve with a broad audience of people disillusioned with the broken promises of the Obama administration and the suffocating dominance of giant banks and corporations in their lives. Netflix released the second season in its entirety for online streaming on February 14, and a staggering 16% of Netflix’s 29.4 million subscribers streamed at least an hour of the show in the first day.
House of Cards follows the cutthroat rise-to-the-top of South Carolina congressman Frank Underwood [Kevin Spacey], who is appointed Vice President of the U.S. at the end of season one. After getting within a heartbeat of the presidency without a single vote cast in his name, Underwood and his wife, Claire [Robin Wright] take no prisoners as they try to bring down the newly elected President Garrett Walker from within. In season two, they plot to assume the country’s highest office without the hassle of an election. As Underwood quips to the audience in one of the periodic breaks in the show’s action, “Democracy is so overrated.”
Political drama exposes government of the rich, by the banks and for the corporations
There is an easy answer for why House of Cards is so popular with viewers. Each episode is ripped straight from the headlines, offering viewers a fictional but very realistic understanding of the way the U.S. government works. Underwood and President Walker are not Tea Party Republicans. They’re Democrats, based loosely on Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, but it does not stop them from collaborating intimately with billionaires and major corporate lobbyists to pass legislation that harms working people. It does not stop them from using a massive NSA-style surveillance program to jail and literally kill journalists and dissenters. True to life, these fictional Democrat politicians took massive campaign donations from labor unions during the election, but it doesn’t stop them from breaking a national teachers strike over a privatized education bill early in season one.
In other words, this is a show about the age of Obama, firmly in-touch with the betrayals of the Democratic Party and the patently undemocratic nature of the U.S. government. You get the impression that all of the characters in the show are real and only the names are different. At times it is as absurd and self-indulgent as a tabloid cover, but after eight years of Bush and five years of Obama, does anyone really think the U.S. government is above that?
House of Cards makes clear that Congress is not there to represent the people and pass legislation. The examples it uses hit close to home. A bill regulating environmental pollution gets canned by the political maneuverings of Remy Danton, a brutally efficient lobbyist for a massive natural gas corporation called SandCorp. No doubt activists in the anti-fracking and climate change movements can relate. A government shutdown allows the President, the Democrats and the Republicans to gut Social Security by elevating the retirement age, not unlike the chained-CPI cuts to Social Security proposed by President Obama last year. Funding for critical infrastructure projects like bridges – in other words, jobs for unemployed workers – gets regularly denied based on the whims and profit margins of billionaires.
Since Underwood is the Majority Whip in the House of Representatives for season one and the President of the Senate in season two, we get to see politicians from both parties working hand-in-glove with the corporate interests that put them in power. Rather than representing their constituents, politicians represent the capitalists who live in their state or district. When corporate interests do conflict, we get the resulting disagreements between the Democrats and Republicans. They never actually disagree on the fundamentals. Debates are limited to which section of the capitalist class is helped or hurt by legislation, and the wealthiest monopolies usually win out. Workers and union members who show up at the Capitol to lobby their representatives are dodged and lied to, like we see in season one with Pennsylvania congressman Peter Russo. House of Cards forces the audience to question the effectiveness of lobbying as a strategy for social change.
People thinking that the U.S. government is even slightly democratic would do well to reflect on the show too. Occasionally President Walker and his staff talk about public opinion, but it’s always in the context of how the administration can cover up some scandal or peddle some rotten policy proposal, like privatizing education or cutting Social Security. The actual felt needs of working people never factor into the President’s political calculus for even a minute. All of this from a president that has multibillionaire and monopoly giant Raymond Tusk on speed dial throughout the show.
Season Two highlights state repression of journalists and dissent
One of the most sinister subplots in House of Cards involves government repression of journalists and dissenters. From the NSA to the Oval Office, government agents monitor the phone calls and e-mails of anyone who disagrees with their policies. In season two, Underwood’s chief of staff orchestrates the jailing of a journalist on the cusp of exposing Underwood’s role in two murders. When a Secret Service agent involved in the plot protests, saying that the journalist committed no crime, Underwood’s aide Doug Stamper responds, “But he wants to, and you will help him [commit a crime].” Using a hacker-turned-informant, they give the journalist the tools to hack a phone database and bust him immediately, charging him with cyber-terrorism and forcing him to take a plea deal involving prison time.
It is the stuff conspiracy theories are made of, until you realize that this government repression happens all the time in the U.S. Collaborating with President Obama and the Justice Department, Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel set up and charged three organizers of the massive protest against NATO in 2011 with terrorism. A little over two weeks ago, a jury found the NATO 3 not guilty of terrorism because the undercover police agents had instigated the whole plot themselves. The NATO 3 still face serious prison time on lesser charges, because of the political nature of their prosecution.
Similarly, 23 anti-war activists and organizers of the 2008 protest at the Republican National Convention were raided by the FBI in 2010 after the state placed an informant in their midst. At the time of writing, the Justice Department has still not dropped the investigation of the Anti-War 23.
US threats towards China: A real-life House of Cards
Some of the most interesting moments in season two are the interplay between Beijing and Washington, whether its extradition deals involving a corrupt Chinese businessman or negotiated withdrawal of warships from the Sea of Japan. Through a trade war that erupts over Chinese investment in a domestic infrastructure project, House of Cards makes clear that the long-term policy orientation of the U.S. government is towards a war with China. In this way, the show disturbingly parallels President Obama’s military ‘pivot towards Asia’ and renewed anti-China rhetoric from right-wing Japanese President Shinzō Abe.
However, unlike much of the China-bashing in recent films and TV shows, House of Cards offers genuine points of contrast between the People’s Republic of China and the capitalist regime in the United States. For corruption and money laundering, Underwood and multibillionaire Raymond Tusk face 50-50 odds for conviction, prison sentences in a comfortable federal penitentiary and a possible presidential pardon up their sleeves. For the same scheme, Chinese businessman Xander Feng has the death penalty waiting for him back in Beijing, according to one of the show’s characters. Both countries have billionaires, but while the U.S. government protects them from prosecution, the Chinese government regularly imprisons and seizes the wealth of multimillionaires and billionaires. In the last eight years, the Chinese government executed 14 billionaires for corruption, money-laundering and theft. House of Cards gains a lot of credibility by showing the favored class treatment that billionaires get from the U.S. government and contrasting it with China.
For all of the realism of House of Cards, there is one disappointing omission: the continued occupation of Afghanistan and the U.S.’s imperialist war projects in other countries. The show makes a few references to drone strikes, but it loses some credibility by not exploring the U.S. government’s pro-war agenda or its attempts to destabilize foreign governments. As the U.S.’s role in financially backing the far right-wing protests in Venezuela and Ukraine, along with the two and a half year rebellion in Syria, comes to light, House of Cards will need to introduce these elements in the announced third season to maintain the show’s believability.
Nevertheless, progressive organizers and activists would do well to see what has millions of people across the world tuning into House of Cards. The show is fast-paced, well written and features a masterful cast of interesting (and despicable) characters. But the real draw to House of Cards is how thoroughly it examines the U.S. political system and exposes its pro-corporate, anti-worker nature.
Seasons 1 and 2 of House of Cards are available for instant streaming on Netflix.
-
Fight Back! editor speaks on U.S. ‘pivot to Asia’
Minneapolis, MN – Mick Kelly, anti-war activist and editor of Fight Back! spoke here, Feb. 23, at a forum entitled “Next Target: China?” The event was organized by Mayday Books, a progressive book store.
Kelly told attendees that the rulers of the U.S. are on collision course with China, stating, “The U.S policy of pivoting towards Asia is all about preparing for a war on China. It might come sooner, due to a miscalculation on Washington’s part or it might come later.”
“The U.S. cannot remain a world empire without maintaining its relative hegemony over the Asia-Pacific region. People’s China is in a period of ascendency. China’s economy is different than the capitalist economies of the West. It has expanded each year since 1949 and its growth rates in a relative sense are spectacular. China is playing an expanding role in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” stated Kelly.
Kelly talked about the long history of U.S. aggression and interference in China’s internal affairs. He also condemned U.S. support for Japan’s occupation of the Chinese Diaoyu Islands and provocative U.S. military flights near China’s coast.
-
Independent inquiry into Muzaffarnagar Riots
By Prof Mohan Rao (JNU), Prof Ish Mishra (DU), Ms Pragya Singh (Journalist Outlook), Dr Vikas Bajpai (JNU) Press Statement on the Report Date: December 30, 2013 An inquiry into the communal riots that took place in Muzaffarnagar past September was conducted by a team of independent academics and a journalist from Delhi. The inquiry […]
-
Muzaffarnagar: The continuing violence of a communal-fascist state!
By Democratic Students Union [This is a detailed report from a visit whose preliminary report was published here- Eds] Introduction Death of over 30 infants in the extreme cold of Muzaffarnagar ‘relief camps’ and the overall inhuman conditions in which the evicted people are being forced to thrive there, once again has churned debates in […]
-
तस्वीर के पर्दे में: मुज़फ्फरनगर राहत शिविरों से लौट कर
रियाज़ उल हक़ मलकपुर शिविर, शामली. अपनी बीमार मां और हताश पिता से बीच चार लोगों के परिवार के लिए आटा गूंधते हुए निसा कैमरा देख कर रुकती नहीं. बस मुस्कुरा देती है. पास के खाट पर उसकी मां की सांसें दमे से उखड़ रही हैं और पिता धुआं उगलते चूल्हे में आग जलाने की […]
-
A Photo Essay on Muzaffarnagar
By Pramod Mandade [Parmod was in Muzaffarnagar between Jan 9 and Jan 18, 2014]
-
The evictions at Agarwadi: of unworthy victims and institutional interventions
by Mrittika Desai This is about a section of the people who have built this city with their sweat and blood, those who slog to maintain Mumbai, and in return receive the most severe brutality from the present system. The report is about of sixty families who were evicted from their home, so that the […]
-
FRSO Student Commission: Build struggle in 2014
Members of the Student Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) met to sum up the past year of struggle and discuss strategies for building the student movement in the U.S.
More students, from more areas of the country, were present at this year’s FRSO Student Commission meeting than in years past. It indicates that students are on the move and new communists are arising from the movement and joining the FRSO. From the Southwest, Midwest, South and East Coast, student comrades discussed and debated the issues facing the movements.
The Student Commission leadership opened with a summation of the work over the past year, highlighting the key campaigns that we participated in on a national level. Justice for Trayvon Martin rallies in Florida and across the country, campus protests to stop Obama’s war on Syria and demanding immigrant rights and tuition equity were the major ones. Student leaders also reflected on SDS’ March 2013 National Day of Action for Education Rights.
Michael Sampson from Florida State University Dream Defenders, organized a campus rally on the anniversary of Trayvon’s murder in February 2013. Sampson then helped to lead a midnight march of 300, mostly African American students in Tallahassee, after the Florida courts failed to convict George Zimmerman for murder. Sampson said, “Dream Defenders as an organization was born out of the murder of Trayvon Martin. We led one of the largest marches for Trayvon Martin and staged a month-long occupation of the Florida State Capitol to demand justice for Trayvon Martin. The movement for justice for those that suffer from national oppression and racism will continue to move forward.”
At the start of the school year, SDS participated in the international movement against U.S. drone warfare. Then in September, Obama threatened a new Middle East war against Syria. The Student Commission leadership responded by calling to raise the slogan, “U.S. Hands off Syria!” Student comrades participated in and led anti-intervention rallies in more than a dozen cities and on many campuses.
Campus leaders discussed their local campaigns and found greatly positive outcomes. A SDS leader described the ongoing fight against white supremacists and Nazis meeting in Dickson, Tennessee. He stressed the importance of the fight against national oppression in all its forms, especially in the South.
Comrades at the meeting talked about the January protest in Miami, Florida to close the Guantanamo U.S. torture prison. People’s Opposition to War, Imperialism, and Racism (POWIR) brought together over 100 activists, including dozens from SDS. National groups like Vets for Peace, Code Pink and the Committee to Stop FBI Repression spoke to stop U.S. torture of prisoners.
Other campuses summed up their campaigns to end rape culture. This issue brought new faces to SDS meetings, and built women’s leadership to demand college administrators take action instead of hiding the facts.
Still other campuses discussed their ongoing solidarity work with the labor, immigrant rights and anti-war and oppressed nationality movements. Comrades summed up their relationships with other organizations and sections of the people’s movements as positive and ongoing.
Comrades discussed how to contribute to both the local and national campaigns of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Dream Defenders in Florida and the student and youth immigrant rights movement. This representation from diverse sections of the student movement contributed greatly to the analysis, debates and decisions that arose over the course of the meeting.
Members of the commission pledged to join and build the Students for a Democratic Society call for tuition equity for undocumented students. “We’re excited to work within and outside of SDS to help build the struggle for tuition equity for undocumented students,” said Chrisley Carpio. “We’re sure that this struggle will grow across the country not only for SDS but other groups struggling for education for all.”
The Student Commission debated how students could help lead the struggle for tuition equity along with the other groups working on it. The Student Commission agreed that the struggle for tuition equity can and should occur among many different groups, both multi-national and oppressed nationality student groups working together, with principled unity towards justice and equality.
The Student Commission discussed mass work with a high level political discussion about the nature of organization and fighting back against injustice. They united around the need for Marxism-Leninism as a weapon against oppression. Leaders prepared a discussion on a study that helped to consolidate the cadres to the fundamentals of the Marxist-Leninist ideology.
On the topic, Gregory Lucero from Utah said, “We’ve all made great efforts to study Marxism-Leninism as students. We can learn historical lessons from the struggle and bring them to our fight for justice today.”
In the end, Student Commission cadre pledged a lifelong commitment to the people’s movements and the foundations of Marxism-Leninism. Student Commission Chair Stephanie Taylor said, “We had an in-depth discussion on the process of transformation, in which students fuse with the working class. By joining the working class after college, students demonstrate their revolutionary commitment to fighting for the working class for the rest of their lives. This is an important part of Marxism-Leninism and an important principle of forwarding our revolutionary goals.”
The student leaders summed up the past year of struggle positively, have unity moving forward, and plan to make 2014 one of the strongest years of student struggle in recent history, because we have a world to win.