A Lot of Provincial Capitals Have Fallen in All but Name
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AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
“I’ve Been Living In Afghanistan In An Era When Cities Are Falling, And Cities Falling Have Become Normalized In A Way That It Wasn’t When I First Moved There” “A Lot Of Provincial Capitals Have Fallen In All But Name”
June 28, 2017 Socialist Worker; Eric Ruder Interviews May Jeong. Jeong is a Kabul- based magazine writer and a visiting scholar at the New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. [Excerpt] I’ve been living in Kabul since January 2013. When I first moved there, people were talking about district centers potentially falling, and the implication was that this would be an apocalyptic event.
And then district centers did start falling in 2014.
I remember that one district center in Zabul fell, and the government responded by relocating the district center and saying it never fell. There are a lot of workarounds like that.
Of course, the conflict between Taliban and Afghan forces is really a proxy struggle because they are both being funded by other countries. The U.S. is behind Afghan government forces, and Pakistan supports the Taliban, but then there are other elements as well. For example, Russia is also arming the Taliban because it wants the Taliban to serve as a bulwark against ISIS. Iran is involved as well.
In 2015, Kunduz, which is the provincial capital of Kunduz province, fell to the Taliban, and Afghan forces retreated.
In 2016 and 2017, a lot of provincial capitals have fallen in all but name. Today we don’t hear about spectacular attacks as we did in Kunduz because that was such an emblematic moment. Since then, the government has implemented a lot of stopgap measures.
A lot of Americans and Canadians have been deployed to defend Kandahar, for example, but the only reason the city hasn’t fallen is because the police chief, Abdul Raziq, runs the urban capital as if it’s a police state. It’s very safe, as long as you don’t come from the wrong tribe or find yourself in the wrong district.
In the neighboring province of Helmand, for example, the capital city of Lashkargah is really under siege. Of the 13 districts in Helmand, a majority of them have now fallen to the Taliban.
There are American soldiers and Special Forces who are commuting from Bagram Air Base about 400 miles away by helicopter every day, fighting on the front lines and then returning home because they don’t even have a base there.
The same thing is happening in Uruzgan, which is north of Helmand--where in many of the outlying districts people run out of food or medical supplies, and they have to negotiate their way through areas that are contested.
If an area is securely with the government or with the Taliban, life is easier, but it’s the contested territories that are problematic. And those contested territories are drawing closer to the urban centers, which is why we’re hearing about them.
So I’ve been living in Afghanistan in an era when cities are falling, and cities falling have become normalized in a way that it wasn’t when I first moved there. Veteran Given Hero’s Welcome Back To Afghanistan
6.20.17 The Onion
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN—
Waving flags and breaking into cheers the moment they spotted the veteran, dozens of joyous citizens gave Marine Pfc. Victor Rosas, 23, a hero’s welcome back to Afghanistan, sources reported Tuesday.
“I’ve been counting down the hours until Victor came back, and here he is at last!” said local food vendor Anwar Ahmadzai, one of the many familiar faces the young soldier had not seen for the 14 months he was overseas in the U.S.
“There were some people who worried we might not ever see him again, but I never doubted this day would come, not for one minute. Now he just needs some time to relax and start settling back into his old life.”
Wiping a tear from his eye, Ahmadzai added that he hoped Rosas would stay much longer than he did last time.
SOMALIA WAR REPORTS
5 Killed, 12 Hurt In Al-Shabab Attack On Somali Military Base
June 17, 2017 Mohamed Olad, VOA News At least five people were killed and 12 others wounded Saturday in heavy fighting between Somali National Army soldiers and al-Shabab militants in the Bakol region of southwestern Somalia, officials said.
Somali army officials told VOA that the militants had attacked a government military base in el-Lahelay village, about 20 kilometers west of Hudur, the provincial capital of the region.
The militants used machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to assault the base from different directions at midday Saturday, engaging in a fierce gunbattle with Somali troops for about an hour, officials said.
On the condition of anonymity, witnesses told a VOA reporter in the region that they saw the bodies of at least five combatants, some from each side. No civilian casualties were reported.
POLICE WAR REPORTS
Seattle Cops Butcher Pregnant Mother Of Four Who Called Them For Help: “She Called You, And You Went To Her House And Killed Her”
Charleena Lyles. The Guardian
June 22, 2017 by Amad Ross, Socialist Worker
Two Seattle police officers shot and killed a pregnant 30-year-old mother of four, Charleena Lyles, on June 18, in the front room of her apartment, while three of her children waited in an adjacent room. According to police, the officers arrived after a call from Lyles reporting a burglary. Seattle Detective Mark Jamieson told the Seattle Times that the officers received a warning that Lyles was an officer hazard when they responded to the call, suggesting that Lyles had a previous unfavorable encounter with police.
This hazard warning is the reason why two officers were dispatched, rather than one.
In a dash-cam audio recording released by the police, the two officers can be heard discussing an encounter with Lyles prior to the shooting. On June 5, two weeks before her murder, Lyles called police for similar reasons.
“She let them in,” says one of the officers, describing the incident while sitting in the parking lot of Lyles’ apartment complex, “and then she started talking all crazy...she had a pair of scissors.” Eventually, the officers were able to convince Lyles to drop the scissors, leading to a peaceful resolution.
But not on June 18. After the officers discussed the June 5 incident, they entered Lyles’ apartment, where she told them about an Xbox that had been stolen. At some point, an altercation ensued, as heard in a disclosed audio recording of the incident. Twenty-five seconds later, following the cry of Lyles’ daughter and one officer yelling “Get back!” both officers began shooting.
Charleena Lyles was killed in her own home while three of her children, aged 1, 4 and 11, listened from the other room.
Jamieson says that Lyles was armed with a knife. If this is true, the officers had every opportunity to deal with Lyles peacefully. They knew all about the similar June 5 incident, in which officers said Lyles threatened them in her apartment with scissors, but was talked down without any violence.
According to a statement by police, both officers were equipped with “less than lethal force.”
Even if the officers didn’t have a plan to deal with aggression before entering the apartment, it’s hard to imagine how Lyles represented a threat to the officers. Her sister described Charleena as “tiny,” and her cousin estimated she was “78 pounds wet.”
“What is the reason to use such lethal force?” Lyles’ cousin Erneshia Jack told the Guardian. “There are many ways to subdue someone without shooting them. She’s not big. She’s not intimidating...She called you, and you went to her house and killed her.”
Deadly incidents like these aren’t rare for the Seattle Police Department (SPD). The SPD has been under a Department of Justice (DOJ) consent decree since 2012, following a federal investigation that uncovered a pattern of police abuse and racism.
According to the DOJ website, the investigation found that the SPD has “engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force that violates the Constitution and federal law.”
Since the decree, the SPD has altered its image significantly. It has implemented racial sensitivity and de-escalation training and now operates a program for officer-worn body cameras, earning Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole national attention. But how much has substantively changed remains in question.
Sunday’s slaying recalls the murder of Che Taylor, a man shot and killed by Seattle police officers in February 2016. The 46-year-old Black man was approached in his car by two white plainclothes officers. Dash-cam footage showed the officers brandishing an assault rifle and a shotgun, and telling Taylor to exit his vehicle.
Taylor exited the car and got down on the ground, as the police ordered him to do. Fewer than five seconds later, police opened fire and Che was shot seven times.
Seattle activist and Che’s brother Andrè Taylor has been in contact with the Lyles family since the day of the shooting, attempting to help them through a difficult time that he understands well. Barely a year has passed since the police shot and killed Che, yet Taylor must already mourn another casualty of the SPD.
Che Taylor and Charleena Lyles are only two names of many, but two names which we will not soon forget.
On the night of her killing, protesters gathered outside Lyles’ apartment, chanting, “We want justice!” and holding candles and signs. Michael Taylor, Lyles’s uncle, spoke to them: “This is my family and we’re going to be as one. We’re not going to stop until we get to the bottom of this.”
None of us will.
A rally was called for June 20, and Social Equality Educators, a progressive caucus within the Seattle Education Association, called on its teachers to wear Black Lives Matter shirts to school that day. On June 23, Seattle will march for justice in the name of Charleena Lyles and all other Black women victimized by racist policing.
The SPD has proven to be a bad apple tree, and its roots are rotten. The job falls on us to demand justice for Charleena Lyles and stop the killing at the hands of the police.
L.A. Cops Shooting At Dog Kill Teen
Armando Garcia, 17. June 22, 2017 by Maya Lau, Veronica Rocha and Joseph Serna, Contact Reporters, LA Times
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies mistakenly shot and killed a teenager in Palmdale early Thursday when their bullets bounced off the ground as they opened fire on an aggressive dog, sheriff’s officials said.
The 17-year-old was struck in the chest by at least one “skip” round several yards from the deputies as they fired several shots at a charging pit bull just after 3:40 a.m., officials said. Investigators believe the deputies did not notice the teenager in the darkness, the department said.
Moments earlier, the dog had bitten one of the deputies and the teenager had restrained the animal so that it wouldn’t attack again.
The bitten deputy did not fire but was struck in his right leg by a fragment of a bullet fired by a fellow deputy that bounced off the ground in the shooting.
The teen was identified by family members as Armando Garcia-Muro, who was about to enter his senior year at R. Rex Parris High School in Palmdale. The eldest of four siblings, he loved dogs and aspired to go into construction, said his mother, Roberta Alcantar.
“He would give his life for anybody,” she said. “He was a very loving person.”
In a news conference at the scene hours after the shooting, Capt. Christopher Bergner of the Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau said it appeared that both the teen and the deputy had been struck by rounds that ricocheted off the ground when deputies fired at the charging animal.
“He may have been struck by one of the skip rounds in what we’re calling an extremely, extremely unfortunate incident,” Bergner said. “Our initial impression was (the deputies) didn’t even see the individual coming around from the side of the building.”
Five deputies were present at the time of the shooting but only two fired, discharging six to eight rounds, Bergner said.
Authorities said deputies had gone to an apartment complex in the 38500 block of 10th Street East around 3:40 a.m. in response to a call about a loud party. As they arrived, a pit bull charged at them and bit one of the deputies in the left knee, Bergner said.
The teenager restrained the animal and brought it to the rear of the complex, which was around a corner, Bergner said.
Meanwhile, the deputies retreated from the home to call for backup and medical units, who arrived and checked on the bitten deputy’s injuries.
At some point, the pit bull broke free and charged at the deputies again.
Bergner said the dog was a full-grown male that weighed 60 to 65 pounds and was 5 to 7 feet away from the deputies when they opened fire. The dog was struck and retreated to a carport area at the rear of the complex, the Sheriff’s Department said. Deputies decided to try to corral the dog to prevent anyone else from being attacked, but as they approached the carport they noticed the boy on the ground wounded.
Deputies provided medical aid before paramedics arrived and took him to Antelope Valley Hospital, where he died.
Garcia-Muro’s aunt, Amber Alcantar, said deputies told her the teen was shot while trying to stop the dog from attacking deputies a second time. She said she heard a knock on her door in the early morning. It was Garcia-Muro’s friend, who was frantically looking for the boy’s mother.
The youngster was holding a pair of bloodied shoes. They were Garcia-Muro’s, Alcantar said.
“Obviously something was wrong,” she said. She and Garcia-Muro’s mother went to two hospitals in search of him, but couldn’t find him and eventually returned home.
The dog’s owner, who lives at the apartment complex where the shooting occurred, declined to give her name because she had “too many things going on with the law right now.”
She said the dog is a 3-year-old blue-nosed pit bull. Her home is used as a local hangout by some of the neighborhood kids, she said.
“They are all my friends,” the woman said. “They are good kids. They come over and they listen to music.”
The neighborhood children were hanging out and listening to music like they ordinarily do, she said Thursday. Her dog was off its leash, but was well-mannered, she said.
She was skeptical of the deputies’ claims that her dog attacked them.
“That’s not my dog. That’s not his personality,” she said.
The deputy who was bitten and later struck by a bullet fragment was treated at a local hospital and released, Bergner said. The dog was shot and survived but will be euthanized.
Under the department’s use-of-force policy, deputies are allowed to fire at animals if they “reasonably believe” that they’re about to be killed or be seriously injured by the animal.
Bergner said any time a deputy fires a duty weapon, he or she is put on temporary desk duty while the incident is investigated.
The Los Angeles district attorney’s office has previously determined that officers are justified when firing at dogs that pose an immediate threat, even if the officers’ bullets end up injuring someone else at the scene. In 2014, a deputy fired a shotgun at a dog biting his leg and mistakenly wounded a resident who was struck in the leg by pellets that rebounded off the ground. Prosecutors wrote in a memo that the man’s injures were an “accidental” result of the deputy’s “lawful discharge of his shotgun” and did not constitute a crime.
A similar result came in 2009 when local prosecutors reviewed a shooting in which a man claimed to have been shot when a probation officer opened fire at a charging pit bull. The district attorney’s office concluded it was unclear if the man’s injury was caused by a bullet, but that the officer was justified and that any injury was “accidental and unavoidable given the circumstances.”
All police shootings, even ones that could be deemed “justified,” come with risks, said Sam Walker, a nationally recognized expert on policing.
“If you miss a person, who knows where that bullet goes,” said Walker, a retired criminal justice professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “That’s the reason most departments ban warning shots or shots at moving vehicles. You don’t know where the bullet is gonna go.”
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True Pig Rosen Stomps Handcuffed Man’s Head “Against The Concrete Pavement” “Several Of His Supervisors Determined That Rosen Acted Within Department Policy” Nothing New: “Rosen Reportedly Drew His Gun On An Unarmed Man And Kicked Him In The Midsection During An October 2015 Incident”
The Pig Rosen Really Looks Like One
The Pig Rosen caught kicking Anderson. ibtimes.co.uk
June 23, 2017 By Andrew Emett, NationofChange
After reviewing the video of an Ohio police officer stomping on the head of a handcuffed man lying on the ground, Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs recommended a 24-hour suspension for Officer Zachary Rosen due to his blatant use of excessive force.
Despite the fact that Rosen kicked a detained suspect who was not resisting, several of his supervisors determined that Rosen acted within department policy.
On April 8, a bystander recorded a cellphone video of Demarko Anderson, 26, lying on his stomach in a residential driveway while Officer Darren Stephens cuffed his hands behind his back. Without provocation, Officer Rosen suddenly ran towards Anderson and stomped his head against the concrete pavement. “Oh my God!” Anderson exclaimed immediately after being kicked. “Are you serious? I’ve got cuffs on, sir.”
Instead of explaining his actions to Anderson, Rosen later told investigators that he had stomped on the suspect’s left shoulder to prevent him from escaping.
Rosen neglected to mention kicking Anderson’s head against the pavement for no justifiable reason.
According to the police report, officers responded to a call concerning a man with a gun when Officer Stephens confronted Anderson. In an attempt to flee, Anderson allegedly elbowed Stephens in the face before the officer detained him in the driveway. Anderson was later charged with improperly discharging a gun into a residence, carrying a concealed weapon, obstructing official business, and aggravated menacing.
Although several supervisors concluded that Rosen did not violate department policy in his use of force, Deputy Chief Thomas Quinlan reviewed the video and reported, “Officer Rosen’s intent notwithstanding, he did actually strike Mr. Anderson in the face while handcuffed. I do not find Officer Rosen’s use of force reasonable, meaning it was not proper, appropriate, rational and ordinary or usual in the circumstances.”
On June 14, Chief Jacobs sent a memo to Public Safety Director Ned Pettus, recommending a 24-hour suspension for Rosen due to his actions.
On Wednesday, Jacobs’ memo was released to the public.
“While the Chief of Police has made a recommendation for discipline in the use of force case involving Officer Rosen, the Director of Public Safety will make the final decision under the current FOP contract,” stated Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther. “I have every expectation the Public Safety Director will discipline Officer Rosen in a manner that holds him accountable for his actions, and I expect the final decision to be made as quickly as possible.”
“Twenty-four hours is an absolute joke,” Amber Evans, organizer for the People’s Justice Project, told The Columbus Dispatch in a recent interview.
“I think it’s a major slap in the face for the black community, and for the mothers that have lost their family members to police violence, and for the young man who was kicked in his head by Rosen.”
Joining the department in December 2010, Rosen reportedly drew his gun on an unarmed man and kicked him in the midsection during an October 2015 incident. In June 2016, Rosen and another officer had been working undercover when they fatally shot 23-year-old Henry Green.
Currently, no criminal charges have been filed against Rosen. MILITARY NEWS
Syrian Soldiers Appear To Corroborate Officer’s Comments That Abuse Is Widespread And Defections Are Common In The Regime’s Volunteer Force: “The Corps’ Equipment Is A Failure, There Is No Equipment, Just Automatic Rifles And Nothing Else” “The Humiliation The Fifth Corps Fighters Receive From The Russians, By Shooting Over Their Heads Or Between Their Feet”
Jun 29th, 2017 by All4Syria
Loyalist pages quoted messages from a Syrian military officer appealing to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which spoke about the insults which regime soldiers are subjected to from the Russian army, also revealing the truth regarding defections within the military and the “friendly fire” which had killed its most skilled officers.
The loyalist “Masyaf al-Ghab Now” page quoted the Fifth Corps officer’s message directed to Assad in which he spoke about the poor treatment which members of his outfit were subjected to by the Russian army and its officers, describing the Corps as the worst formation fighting in Syria.
The officer, who the page did not name, opened the letter saying: “The Republican Guard, despite the low salary, has had the dignity and prestige of the fighter remain intact. I want to talk about the worst fighting formation currently in Syria, and that is the Fifth Corps, because I was an officer in the Corps…. I have been fighting in it since it was formed …. starting with the battle to liberate Palmyra to Hama, Halfaya and now east Salamiyah.” The officer revealed in his letter that horrible things and failed plans had plagued the Corps, “whether with the equipment, command, or lies … ending with death and wounded.”
The officer addressed the practices of the Russian officers and how they insulted members of the regime forces and humiliated them with the monthly salary they gave them, saying: “The Russian officer who is coming to us from Russia, if he wants to tell you, ‘Good morning,’ he would start with the sentence, ‘We’re giving you $200 or $300.’”
He added: “Yesterday in one of the meetings, the chief of staff was talking and I told him we wanted bulldozers to make sandbanks. He told me that his hand was already in his pocket and said, ‘Why should I bring you bulldozers? You’re Syrian and you should bring the bulldozers… We are paying you $300 a month.”
He also spoke about the humiliation the Fifth Corps fighters receive from the Russians, by shooting over their heads or between their feet and insulting them in a language they do not understand, according to the text of the message.
The officer said in his message: “Every military plan had to motivate people under the lie that warplanes would scorch the earth or there would be artillery and mortar cover. We didn’t see any of that. If there were mortar or tank shell strikes, it was on us and not the enemy.”
The officer said two of the “strongest” regime officers were killed by “friendly fire”, saying: “Two of the strongest officers were martyred in the Corps by friendly fire, tank fire, First Lt. Osama al-Mustafa [was killed] by friendly fire in Palmyra, and Captain Hussein in a similar incident in Hama.”
The officer addressed the failure of the Fifth Corps and its lack of sufficient equipment, saying: “Neither artillery, tanks or mortars nor even ambulances, which are the simplest possible demand we could make for the Corps operations, are there. The Corps’ equipment is a failure, there is no equipment, just automatic rifles and nothing else.”
The officer added that the “martyrs and wounded” in the Corps did not receive benefits and compensation, and added that three batches of fighters had been changed because every time a new batch of volunteers or reservists arrived, they fled from the Corps because “they brought us to die.”
The officer closed his message by describing the formation as a “farce,” asking about the point of a failing regiment bleeding regime officers at the cheapest prices, saying: “The Fifth Corps … is a corps of questions without answers … a corps of failed operations.”
A number of those who have dealt with it confirmed what the officer said in his message, including members of the Fifth Corps. One of them, commenting on the message, said: “What this officer is saying is 100 percent true. I’m a lieutenant in the Corps and have been abused a million times. They made us hate this thing called a country.
“Please, Mr. President, if you’re really listening, listen to us.” Another view differed, saying: “As if the situation in the Syrian army is so wonderful. The worst treatment is from officers of your country, not a foreign officer.”
The Fifth Corps was formed at the start of this year and came with the backing of the regime ally Russia to limit Iran’s influence and contain it.
FORWARD OBSERVATIONS
“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.
“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
“We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.”
Frederick Douglass, 1852
There is no democracy without socialism and no socialism without democracy. -- Rosa Luxemburg Police Firing Rubber Bullets
Photo by Mike Hastie
From: Mike Hastie To: Military Resistance Newsletter Sent: June 27, 2017 Subject: Police Firing Rubber Bullets
This is what I was seeing when the police were firing rubber bullets at the protesters. The police are the good guys and the protesters are the bad guys. This is a very simple formula to follow as the Police State tightens the handcuffs on dissent in America.
As I hung out with the Trump supporters that day to get some of their perspective, and madness, I continue to educate myself. Several of the Trump supporters had large signs that Read: “Blue Lives Matter.” This is obviously in reference to the police officers who protect their cause. It is a very simple message, but it works for them.
The number one perception I had of the Trump people was, and I know all of you know this: They absolutely do not have any knowledge of what their government does behind closed doors. They are all in a black out!
The other thing is the Trump supporters cannot understand why the Left refers to them as fascists and racists. Since some of the people who were supporting them were Black and Hispanic, that did not make any sense to them. I do have to mention that I could have counted those minorities on one hand who were supporting Trump. There is obviously nothing new here to report, as we all know the drill of shaping public opinion.
Mike Hastie Photo and caption from the portfolio of Mike Hastie, US Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71. (For more of his outstanding work, contact [email protected])
One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.
Mike Hastie U.S. Army Medic Vietnam 1970-71 December 13, 2004
“The Capitalist Production Process Is Therefore A Process Which Absorbs Unpaid Labour, Which Makes Of The Means Of Production Means For The Absorption Of Unpaid Labour” “The Necessary Labour Time Materialised In A Pair Of Trousers Is Equal Let Us Say To Twelve Hours, While The Wage Received By The Journeyman Is Equal To Six Hours” “The Service Which The Journeyman Employed By A Master Tailor Provides For This Capitalist Does Not Consist In The Transformation Of Cloth Into Trousers” “The Service With Which He Provides The Capitalist Consists Therefore In The Fact That He Works Six Hours For Nothing”
From Karl Marx, Theories Of Surplus Value; International Publishers; New York, 1952
In order that it may produce a commodity, labour must be useful labour; it must produce a use value, be manifested in a use value.
And consequently only labour which manifests itself in commodities, that is, in use values, is labour with which capital is exchanged.
This is a self-evident premise. But it is not this concrete character of labour, its use value as such — that it is for example the labour of a blacksmith or a cobbler, spinning weaving, etc. — that constitutes its specific use value for capital and hence stamps it as productive labour in the system of capitalist production.
What constitutes its specific use value for capital is not its definite useful character, any more than it is the particular useful properties of the product in which it is materialised; but its character as the creative element of exchange value, that it is abstract labour; and not indeed that it represents simply a definite quantity of this general labour, but a greater quantity than is contained in its price, that is, in the value of the labour power.
The capitalist production process is therefore also not merely the production of commodities. It is a process which absorbs unpaid labour, which makes of the means of production means for the absorption of unpaid labour.
It follows from what has been said that the designation of labour as productive has absolutely nothing to do with the definite content of the labour, with its special usefulness, or with the particular use value in which it manifests itself.
The same kind of labour maybe productive or unproductive.
For example, Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost, was an unproductive worker.
On the other hand, the writer who turns out factory-made stuff for his publisher is a productive worker. Milton produced Paradise Lost for the same reason that a silk worm produces silk. It was an activity of his nature.
Later he sold the product for £5.
But the literary proletarian of Leipzig who fabricates books (for example, Compendia of Economics) under the direction of his publisher is a productive worker, for his production is subordinated to capital in advance and takes place only because it increases that capital.
A singer who sells her song on her own is an unproductive worker. But the same singer, commissioned by an entrepreneur to sing in order to make money for him, is a productive worker.
For she produces capital.
Here there are various questions to be settled.
Whether I buy a pair of trousers or whether I buy the cloth and get a journeyman tailor to come to my house to make up this cloth into trousers for me, and pay him for his service (that is, his tailoring labour), is a matter of absolute indifference to me, in so far as what I am interested in is the pair of trousers.
If I buy the trousers from the capitalist tailor (“merchant tailor”) instead of taking the latter course, I do that because the latter course is more expensive; and the trousers cost less labour, and are cheaper in consequence, if the capitalist tailor produces them than if I have them produced in the latter way.
But in both cases I transform the money with which I buy the trousers not into capital but into trousers; and in both cases what I am doing is using the money as mere means of circulation, that is to say, transforming it into this particular use value.
Here therefore the money is not functioning as capital, although in one case it is exchanged for a commodity, and in the other it buys labour itself as a commodity.
It functions only as money, and more precisely, as means of circulation.
On the other hand the journeyman tailor (who works for me at home) is not a productive worker, although his labour provides me with the product, the trousers, and him with the price of his labour, the money.
It is possible that the quantity of labour which the journeyman performs is greater than that contained in the price he receives from me. And this is even probable, since the price of his labour is determined by the price which the productive tailors receive.
But it is a matter of absolute indifference to me.
Whether, once the price is fixed, he works eight or ten hours, is of no interest at all to me. What I am concerned with is the use value, the trousers; and naturally, whatever way I buy them, I am interested in paying as little as possible for them — but in one case neither more nor less than in the other — or in paying for them only their normal price.
This is an outlay for my consumption; there is no increase, but a diminution of my money.
It is absolutely not a means to enrichment, any more than any other kind of outlay for my personal consumption is a means to enrichment.
A disciple of Paul de Kock may tell me that without buying the trousers, as without buying bread, I cannot live and therefore also cannot enrich myself; that the trousers are therefore an indirect means or at least a condition for my enrichment.
In the same way the circulation of my blood and my breathing would be conditions for my enrichment.
But neither the circulation of my blood nor my breathing, in and by themselves, make me any the richer; on the contrary, both of them presuppose a costly assimilation of food, without which no poor devil could exist.
Consequently, the mere direct exchange of money for labour does not transform the money into capital and the labour into productive labour.
What is it then that gives this exchange its special character?
Wherein is it different from the exchange of money for productive labour?
On the one hand, in that the money is spent as money, as the independent form of exchange value, which is to be transformed into a use value, a means of subsistence, an object of personal consumption.
The money therefore does not become capital, but on the contrary, it loses its existence as exchange value in order to be dissipated and consumed as use value.
On the other hand, the labour interests me only as use value, as service, through which cloth is transformed into trousers; as the service which its concrete useful character provides.
In contrast to this, the service which the same journeyman employed by a master tailor provides for this capitalist does not consist in the transformation of cloth into trousers, but in the fact that the necessary labour time materialised in a pair of trousers is equal let us say to twelve hours, while the wage received by the journeyman is equal to six hours.
The service with which he provides the capitalist consists therefore in the fact that he works six hours for nothing.
That this takes place in the form of tailoring trousers only conceals the real relationship. As soon as he is able to, the capitalist tailor therefore tries to transform the trousers again into money, that is to say, into a form in which the concrete character of tailoring labour has completely disappeared, and in which the service performed expresses itself in the fact that instead of six hours of labour time, expressed in a definite sum of money, there is now twelve hours of labour time, expressed in double that sum of money.
I buy the tailoring labour for the service it provides me with as tailoring labour, to satisfy my need for clothing, and therefore to serve one of my needs.
The capitalist tailor buys the labour as a means to making two thalers [a unit of German money] out of one.
I buy it because it produces a definite use value, provides me with a definite service.
He buys it, because it produces more exchange value than it costs, as a mere means to exchanging less labour for more labour.
Where the direct exchange of money for labour takes place without the latter producing capital — that is, when it is not productive labour — it is bought as service; which in general is nothing but an expression for the particular use value which the labour, like any other commodity, provides.
It is however a specific term for the particular use value of labour which provides this service in the form not of a thing but of an activity — which however in no way distinguishes it from a machine, for example a clock.
Do ut facias, facio ut facias, facio ut des, do ut des (I give that you may make, I make that you may make, I make that you may give, I give that you may give) are here forms that can be used completely indifferently of the same relationship; while in capitalist production the do ut facias expresses a quite specific relation between the objective value which is given and the living activity which is accepted.
For this reason, because the specific relation between labour and capital is in no way involved in these purchases of services, being either completely obliterated or altogether absent, they are naturally the favourite form used by Say, Bastiat and their consorts to express the relation between capital and labour.
The question how the value of these services is regulated and how this value is itself determined by the laws of wages is not relevant to the examination of the relation we are considering, and belongs to the treatment of wages.
It has been seen that the mere exchange of money for labour does not transform the latter into productive labour, and on the other hand that the content of this labour makes no difference at all.
The worker himself can buy labour, that is, commodities supplied in the form of services, and the expenditure of his wages on such services is an expenditure which is absolutely no different from the expenditure of his wages on any other kind of commodities. The services which he buys may be more or less necessary, for example the service of a doctor or of a parson, just as he may buy bread or schnapps.
As buyer — that is, representative of money confronting commodities — the worker is absolutely in the same category as the capitalist where the latter appears only as buyer, that is to say, where there is no more in the transaction than the conversion of money into the form of a commodity.
How the price of these services is determined and what relation it has to wages proper, how far it is regulated by the laws of the latter and how far it is not, must be considered in a treatment of wages, and are not relevant to our present enquiry.
If thus the mere exchange of money for labour does not transform the latter into productive labour, or what is the same thing, does not transform the former into capital, so also the content, the concrete character, the particular usefulness of the labour, makes absolutely no difference — as we have seen above, the same labour of the same Journeyman tailor is in one case productive, in the other not.
ANNIVERSARIES
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! Mutiny On The Amistad: July 2, 1839 “53 Slaves Recently Abducted From Africa, Revolted”
Peace History June 26-July 2 By Carl Bunin [Excerpt] Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
(July 2, 1839)
Amistad Mutiny: slave rebellion that took place on the slave ship Amistad near the coast of Cuba and had important political and legal repercussions in the American Abolitionist movement.
The mutineers were captured and tried in the United States, and a surprising victory for the country’s antislavery forces resulted in 1841 when the U.S. Supreme Court freed the rebels. A committee formed to defend the slaves later developed into the American Missionary Association (incorporated 1846). On July 2, 1839, the Spanish schooner Amistad was sailing from Havana to Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, when the ship’s unwilling passengers, 53 slaves recently abducted from Africa, revolted.
Led by Joseph Cinqué, they killed the captain and the cook but spared the life of a Spanish navigator, so that he could sail them home to Sierra Leone. The navigator managed instead to sail the Amistad generally northward. Two months later the U.S. Navy seized the ship off Long Island, N.Y., and towed it into New London, Conn. The mutineers were held in a jail in New Haven, Conn., a state in which slavery was legal.
The Spanish embassy’s demand for the return of the Africans to Cuba led to an 1840 trial in a Hartford, Conn., federal court. New England Abolitionist Lewis Tappan stirred public sympathy for the African captives, while the U.S. government took the proslavery side. U.S.
President Martin Van Buren ordered a Navy ship sent to Connecticut to return the Africans to Cuba immediately after the trial. A candidate for reelection that year, he anticipated a ruling against the defendants and hoped to gain proslavery votes by removing the Africans before Abolitionists could appeal to a higher court.
Prosecutors argued that, as slaves, the mutineers were subject to the laws governing conduct between slaves and their masters. But trial testimony determined that while slavery was legal in Cuba, importation of slaves from Africa was not.
Therefore, the judge ruled, rather than being merchandise, the Africans were victims of kidnapping and had the right to escape their captors in any way they could.
When the U.S. government appealed the case before the U.S. Supreme Court the next year, congressman and former president John Quincy Adams argued eloquently for the Amistad rebels. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court, and private and missionary society donations helped the 35 surviving Africans secure passage home. They arrived in Sierra Leone in January 1842, along with five missionaries and teachers who intended to found a Christian mission.
Spain continued to insist that the United States pay indemnification for the Cuban vessel. The U.S. Congress intermittently debated the Amistad case, without resolution, for more than two decades, until the American Civil War began in 1861.
July 3, 1835: Honorable Anniversary; Children Go On Strike For An 11-Hour Workday
Carl Bunin Peace History June 29 - July 5
Progressivehistorians.com:
On July 3, 1835, in Paterson, New Jersey, nearly 2,000 textile workers walked off the job.
The strike was notable for several reasons.
For one thing the strikers weren’t demanding more money, despite the fact that they only made $2 a week (adjusted for inflation, that would be $44 a week today).
Their central demand was an 11-hour day (as opposed to the 13.5-hour days they were currently working), and only 9 hours on Saturday instead of a full day.
That in itself was significant enough. The first strike in American history to limit hours had happened only 7 years earlier, and was also in Paterson, New Jersey. That strike had been crushed after a week when the militia was called in. What made this strike worth remembering was who the strikers were - they were children, aged 10 to 18. Many of them girls.
Before the month was out the parents of Paterson had joined together to form the “Paterson Association for the Protection of the Working Classes of Paterson”. Through the Association a “vigilance committee” was formed to organize support. In 1835 there was no such thing as a labor union. Back then there were only guilds for skilled workers. Nothing like that existed for textile workers, much less for children.
The management flat-out refused to negotiate with the Association, or any worker’s organization. In response, the Association appealed to help from other workers. Women textile workers in other mills around Paterson walked out. Mechanics from Newark set up a committee to raise funds and investigate the working conditions in Paterson. This is what they found:
“(conditions in the Paterson mills) belong rather to the dark ages than to the present times, and would be more congenial to the climate of his majesty the emperor and autocrat of all the Russians, than “this land of the free and home of the brave,” this boasted asylum for the oppressed of all nations.”
After six weeks a deal was struck between the Association and the management. They would split the difference: the children of Paterson would only have to work 12 hours a day during the week, and 9 hours on Saturday; a 69-hour week. The children who continued to hold out for the 11-hour day were fired and blacklisted.
CLASS WAR REPORTS
Jury Refuses To Convict Demonstrators Who Surrounded And Blocked Leading Politicians Car: “This Was About Intimidating People And Criminalising Protest – And Nothing More”
June 30, 2017 by Ian Ó Dálaigh (general secretary of Éirígí, writing in a personal capacity); Redline
On the 15th November 2014, a spontaneous protest took place in Jobstown, Tallaght, an overwhelmingly working class area in south-west Dublin. Labour Party leader Joan Burton, who at the time was also tánaiste (26-county deputy prime minister), was delayed in a car for just over two hours by a sit-down protest.
The protest was directed against the vicious austerity measures of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition. These measures included cuts to social welfare benefits, disability benefits, and pensions and attempts to impose a water tax. As both minister of social protection and tanaiste, Burton played a key role in these attacks.
Nineteen of the protestors (eighteen adults and one teenager), including our own Scott Masterson, were arrested and charged with false imprisonment in the wake of this. The teenager has already been convicted.
To term a two-hour delay in a car – while surrounded by police – as false imprisonment was absurd and the charges set a very dangerous precedent. Under this definition, any temporary delay or obstruction at a protest or picket, which for example inconveniences a politician, could be deemed ‘false imprisonment’.
This was about intimidating people and criminalising protest – and nothing more.
During the course of the trial, which commenced on April 24 this year, the state also attempted to further attack the right to free speech and the right to politically organise.
Using the spurious cover of ‘potential jury tampering’, they demanded that the accused should remain silent about the case.
The state sought to ban the accused from speaking publicly about the case during the trial and even to impose a ban on solidarity pickets in front of the Criminal Court of Justice.
They failed on all counts, just as they eventually failed in their attempts to undermine the right to protest by convicting the Jobstown accused.
Scott Masterson’s barrister, in her closing statement to the jury, suggested that Scott should be thanked by the Irish people for his part in the Jobstown protest.
She made the point that the Labour Party are guilty of political treachery, and that people have to right to protest against that treachery – which is exactly what Scott and the other defendants were doing.
The trial ran for just over eight weeks, culminating yesterday (Thursday June 29), when the jury gave a unanimous not guilty verdict for the Jobstown 7.
The Jobstown Not Guilty campaign is now calling for the immediate dropping of all charges against the other eleven accused, as well as the quashing of the conviction of a 17-year-old in relation to the protest.
We in Éirígí fully support this demand. DANGER: CAPITALISTS AT WORK
OCCUPATION PALESTINE
Zionist Occupation Forces Torture Palestinian Teen: “He Was “Diagnosed With Injuries To His Upper Torso, Head, Back, Left Knee And Upper Limbs,” And Was Kept In The Hospital For A Day And A Half To Treat The Injuries”
Jun 13 2017 The Palestine Chronicle
Israeli forces abused and humiliated a 19-year-old Palestinian for hours when he was detained last month during a march in the village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank district of Ramallah, while the youth reported that he had feared for his life and was severely degraded by Israeli forces, according to a report released by Israeli rights group B’Tselem on Monday. Israeli forces detained Baraa Kanan, from the village of Beit Rima, at the same march Israeli forces shot and killed 22-year-old Saba Abu Ubeid and injured at least two others.
Kanan was riding in an ambulance with a relative and fellow demonstrator who had been struck in the head with a stone thrown by another protester during the march when the ambulance was stopped by at least 10 Israeli soldiers.
According to B’Tselem, the soldiers found a slingshot in Kanan’s pocket after searching him, and proceeded to detain him by “bounding his hands behind his pack with plastic cable ties, led him to a spot about 100 meters away near a watchtower, blindfolded him, and put him into a military jeep.”
Some ten minutes later, he was taken out of the jeep and transferred to a room at an unknown location. He was then subjected to beatings and humiliating abuse for seven hours, B’Tselem reported, all while remaining blindfolded.
According to Kanan’s testimony to B’Tselem, during his detention, Israeli forces “hit him in the face and chest, mocked him and spat at him.” He was also made to sit on a chair without a backrest and was not allowed by the soldiers to drop his head, and each time he did out of tiredness, the soldiers screamed at him or kicked his chair.
B’Tselem also reported that when Kanan had asked the soldiers for a drink of water, a soldier shoved a water bottle in his mouth and poured the water until Kanan felt like choking.
When he asked to go to the bathroom, a group of soldiers led him outside to urinate. One of the soldiers then pushed Kanan, forcing him to spray urine on his clothes.
He was then taken back outside, still blindfolded, by a group of soldiers.
“While they led me along, they swore at me and called my mother names,” Kanan recalled to B’Tselem. “One of them tightened the blindfold on my eyes and ordered me to say, ‘I’m friends with the soldiers’. I repeated what he said. Whenever I stopped, he ordered me again to say, ‘I’m friends with the soldiers.’”
“They knocked me down and then picked me up. They beat me and swore at me,” Kanan continued. “They didn’t let up. I was terrified that they were taking me to some lonely spot so that they could murder me and no one would find me.”
Kanan added that soldiers finally stopped, at which point one said to Kanan “You’re a big-time terrorist. I’m going to shoot you.” Kanan said that he heard the soldier load his gun and felt the gun be placed on his head. “I was sure he was going to kill me,” he said.
Kanan said that the soldiers then beat him again, and “covered his legs with earth and then removed it.”
According to B’Tselem, he was also transferred to a tent and made to sit on the floor. The soldiers’ removed his blindfold and “forced him to say ‘Muhammad is pig’ and ‘Muhammad is a dog’, and snipped off bits of his hair with scissors.” ‘ After his release, Kanan’s father took him to the hospital in Salfit, where he was “diagnosed with injuries to his upper torso, head, back, left knee and upper limbs,” and was kept in the hospital for a day and a half to treat the injuries.
According to rights group Yesh Din, of 186 criminal investigations into suspected offenses against Palestinians opened by the Israeli army in 2015, just four resulted in indictments.
To check out what life is like under a murderous military occupation commanded by foreign terrorists, go to: http://www.maannews.net/eng/Default.aspx and http://www.palestinemonitor.org/list.php?id=ej898ra7yff0ukmf16 The occupied nation is Palestine. The foreign terrorists call themselves “Israeli.”
DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK
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