Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Any trade agreement negotiated by Wall Street bribed politicians is going to be bad for the working class

Don't get sucked into discussions about whether or not trade deals like the TTP and TTIP are good for workers; they are both bad for workers.

If there was any benefit to workers in any of the countries participating in these trade deals, workers would have a say in the decision-making process and have seats at the negotiating tables.

And the workers sitting at the negotiating tables would have real working class outlooks intent on looking after the interests of the entire working classes not just individual sectors that would benefit.

In fact, workers have no voice in the decision-making process so why would any worker even contemplate anything other than active, militant and united opposition to the TPP or TTIP?

Another fact: We are living in an era when capitalism has tuned into a brutal, murderous, bestial system governed only by the ruthless greed of the multi-national and trans-national corporations and financiers with Wall Street dictating everything these governments do--- the Wall Street monopolists are in complete control, not only of the U.S. government but many of these other governments being manipulated, if not directly by Wall Street, then by Wall Street's junior partners who often think they can replace Wall Street as the top dog.

Sheer greed, the drive for maximum corporate profits, determines everything these capitalist governments do--- including working out these "trade agreements" in the name of "free" and even "fair" trade.

But, why would any thinking worker who understands that it is the stealing of the wealth they produce, think that Wall Street or its junior partners--- be they Bay Street or the Square Mile or Frankfurt or Otemachi  or Shanghai or Sydney--- are any of these monstrous monopolies capable of making decisions of any kind of benefit to the working class and working people? No.

The greedy drive of these Wall Street monopolies for maximum profits determines everything they do. They will continue to exploit Labor and rape Mother Nature with no concern for the well-being of either.

The time has come not to just regulate Wall Street and its junior partners; but, to take political and economic power away from them because our very lives, livelihoods, well-being and survival depends on us doing this.

Our ideas of what constitutes decent work and decent livelihoods and how society should be organized and for what purpose--- the common good, not maximum profits--- is in complete contradiction and in opposition to what Wall Street and its junior partners have in mind.

Every single struggle--- be it for the most basic reform or for peace, social and economic justice, needs to be waged in a way that will result in building a massive anti-monopoly coalition of "we the people" challenging Wall Street for political and economic power.

In order to accomplish this we need:

* An anti-imperialist movement.

* Movements undertaking all kinds of reforms intended to help working people live through this mess of never-ending economic crisis made worse by war after war.

* A working class based progressive people's party with a legislative agenda corresponding to what "we the people" require instead of what Wall Street requires to exploit labor and rape Mother Nature.

Here in the United States working people need to get on the anti-capitalist road to socialism just like the rest of the people in the world.

As working people, we can expect the Obama negotiated TPP and TTIP to be as beneficial to us as Obamacare; and any promise to make these trade deals good for working people to be as realistic as getting a free community college degree in line with Obama's hypocrisy between words and deeds.