Immigration bill dead in Senate

Although the reactionary white supremacists of the Klan, Minutemen, SOS, CBA, NA, etc. are hailing the defeat of the bill as a victory, we on the principled left see it as a victory too. The Times article mentions phone systems crashing from high volumes of racist calls opposing the bill as being "amnesty." Aside from being dead wrong on its face, any way of seeing a bill that clearly was only about enforcement, militarization of the border, extorting money from poor undocumented peoples, and featuring a self-deportation "touch-back" clause as amnesty is ludicrous.

For us no bill is certainly better than draconian measures congress and Bush have been proposing. The downside is the ongoing inhumane ICE raids continuing to disrupt our communities, families, and lives. While we need to continue fighting back against the raids, we also need to restate the only acceptable approach to this imagined crisis manufactured by the racist, isolationist right wing. Real amnesty for all undocumented peoples! Now, no strings, no questions asked.

Bush, with his hideous legacy of a presidency should for the first time in his life do the right thing -- grant amnesty. Eight years of shameless handouts to the rich, the bare racism of Katrina's aftermath, the untold hundreds of thousands dead from his unconscionable invasions and occupations, the inhuman torture in Abu Gharib and Guantanamo, and so on. The very least Bush could do to put a single check-mark in the column of decency of his otherwise vile presidency is grant amnesty.

Immigration bill dead in Senate

Beating Back the Klan

Saturday The Klan, SOS, MMP, F.A.I.R. front group CBA, and other white supremacist groups held a rally and march down Crenshaw Blvd. The theme of their little hate fest was that undocumented workers are somehow lowering standards of living. Ironically, their initial rally was located in front of the Wall-Mart on Crenshaw and MLK. If they wanted the real reason for declining standards of living, they should have looked at the sign behind them. Led by opportunist Ted Hayes, the group of about 60 marched towards Leimert Park with the intention of holding a hate rally and trying to incite brown black division.

Fortunately, neighborhood locals combined with anti-racist activists to thwart their plans. Blocking all access to the Park, those countering the Klan refused to allow a park known for its multi-cultural music and African cultural scene to host a rally of white supremacists. Seeing that opposition to the minuteKlan outnumbered both the supramacists and the riot gear clad police by about 4 to 1, police decided to ask Hayes and his ilk to disperse after several tense hours of standoff.

Beating Back the Klan

Friday Cats

These little kitties were born in March 2007. I didn't get the count of the original litter, but I was happy to see that three lived. The downside is that the feral population is getting too large again.

Technorati Profile

Friday Cats

Iraqi Oil Workers Defy Threats To Win Strike

Iraqi Oil Workers Defy Threats To Win Strike

The Great Oil Robbery

The Great Oil Robbery

Gouged at the gas pumps, by Geoff Bailey - SW #635

The entire article is excellent. The following quote is from the article:

As writer Dave Lindorff put it on CounterPunch: "The oil industry has in practice conspired to limit refining capacity, so that companies can keep pushing up the price of gas artificially--only they've done this without ever having to meet in secret and cut a deal, because they all have complete competitive information on each other's inventories, internal pricing and refinery capacity."'

Essentially, this is an example of a cartel in practice that holds monopolistic control of a market. Bourgoise anti-trust law doesn't apply here since these corporations don't conspire. A de facto cartel is a cartel nonetheless. Lenin's monumental work 'Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism,' is still the best resource for understanding how capital is compelled to monopoly, then cartels and trusts, then imperialism.

Reading Lenin's book then re-reading this Socialist Worker article would provide newer comrades and ISO contacts with a deeper understanding. This article provoked a lot of discussion in our pre-sale meeting for a Los Angeles SW sale. One comrade asked how the Marxist view that capitalism represents an unplanned economy could explain things like cartels. The answer of course is that while individual corporations, or a specific sector of a market engages in planning, that the effects on other parts of the economy or society are not taken into account.

A good example relating to the oil cartel's price gouging is how it raises prices on other items because the increase in transportation costs. Further, consumers have less income to spend on other goods, which in turn can cause a crisis in overproduction, etc.

'Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism' available at your local ISO branch, Haymarket Books, or online at the Marxist Internet Archive.

Gouged at the gas pumps, by Geoff Bailey - SW #635

You start with a spark

And it occurred to me that the future of the working class isn’t going to be decided in the halls of Congress--it’s going to be decided in a Vons parking lot, and I’m going to be standing in that parking lot playing that song.

-- Tom Morello

You start with a spark

Getty

Getty

Venezuela’s President Chavez Tells Pope to Apologize to Indigenous Peoples

Venezuela’s President Chavez Tells Pope to Apologize to Indigenous Peoples

Friday Feline

Friday Feline

When Does Genocide Purify?

When Does Genocide Purify?

Demonstration Against LAPD May Day Brutality

We demonstrated against the LAPD's vicious May Day attacks on families at MacArthur Park on Thursday May 17, 2007. Although the march and rally were organized by the right wing of the immigrant right's movement, there was still an air of radicalization and people still are not satisfied with the all too quick to conciliation tone.

Outrage at LA cops’ May Day assault by Randy Childs is a great summary of the violence the state is willing to use against its citizens when ruling class hegemony is threatened. The new sanctuary movement in SW is a great article on how ordinary people are fighting back against Washington's racist anti-immigrant tide.

Demonstration Against LAPD May Day Brutality

Sweet Friday Felines

The Hermetic Order of the Tapioca Equinox got me back into wanting to do occasional Friday Feline posts again!

Sweet Friday Felines

Tapioca Equinox now has more friends than me

Tapioca Equinox now has more friends than me

Was Wolfowitz mistaken when he told Congress Iraq war would pay for itself, or was it perjury?

Was Wolfowitz mistaken when he told Congress Iraq war would pay for itself, or was it perjury?

May Day March Downtown Los Angeles 2007

Although the police were edgy with us, we didn't have to suffer the brutal LAPD attacks meted out against the peaceful participants in MacArthur Park. More on that soon.

May Day March Downtown Los Angeles 2007

Don Larsen of the Utah County Republican Party calls illegal immigrants "Satan's minions."

The cited article is a good indication of reactionary republican racist thought, but the comments on GNN under the abstract are a fun read.

Don Larsen of the Utah County Republican Party calls illegal immigrants "Satan's minions."

Nativo López on the politicians’ immigration proposals

Nativo López on the politicians’ immigration proposals

LA immigrant march sends a message

I've been forgetting to list articles I write and photo series I post on other sites. I coauthored the above article and Socialist Worker used my photo on the back cover of that issue. April 7 was much bigger than anyone anticipated, which may be a positive sign for what May Day will look like.

The current issue of Socialist Worker has some excellent articles in preparation for May Day.

LA immigrant march sends a message

Error Message (-50) Syncing iPod 5G with iPhoto Solution

I was having this problem and searched on Apple's discussion boards, finding I wasn't alone. The following solved the problem, and is reproduced here since Apple's discussion boards require a login.

The problem was due to escaped unicode characters within the AlbumData.xml file. I first suspected it was the tilde-n combination within many of my photo comments. When using BBEdit to grep them out, I noticed an escape sequence for a unicode character in the search string. Unfortunately, replacing them in the AlbumData.xml file didn't work. On relaunch iPhoto would put the characters back, which meant manually removing a comment sequence from a series of about 120 photos. Finding a script on Apple's site called 'Speak Comments.scpt' and commenting out the lines for speaking the comment (lines 15-18) and adding the following line before them:

set the comment of this_photo to ""

allowed me to remove the problematic comments from just the set of offending photos without having to do them by hand. Upon completion, iTunes recognized iPhoto's libraries and synced them to the 5G iPod without a hitch. Script available from: http://images.apple.com/applescript/iphoto/archive.sit

Error Message (-50) Syncing iPod 5G with iPhoto Solution