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April 2005, Volume 12 Nr. 8, Issue 143

Is The Democratic Party Breeding Busheviks?

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski
  

In July, 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded.  Throughout the years, the IWW, the Wobblies have continued the struggle for working class solidarity.  During the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, Wobblies fought hard and won the right to organize, strike and collectively bargain.  Out of the struggle came Social Security and the shorter work week.  The Wobbly motto, "One Big Union" is as relevant today as it was in 1905.  From this era (1930) comes the famous poster entitled, "Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?"  Revolt was in the air and the corporate-state was looking for ways to ease, or at least discredit, the discontent.  The idea behind the "washroom" poster was the suggestion that workers become disgruntled when the paper towels just were not soft enough.  This corporate attempt to trivialize the important labor issues of the time, while branding labor and union activists as red agitators, is a classic ploy in use today.  Attacking the messenger instead of their message.  Produced by the ScotTissue Towel company, the "washroom" poster was a commercial advertisement for its paper products.  The ad (original appearing at the end of this essay) boasted that big corporations purchasing ScotTissue Towel products with their cloth-like softness could prevent employees from becoming Bolsheviks.  Corporate ass wipes do have a tendency to create disgruntled employees.  Soft paper towels presumably keep employees content enough so that they do not agitate for workers rights, especially the right to organize.  The latter impassioned the Wobblies to act.

The ScotTissue Towel advertising campaign misses the important points as to what makes a "disgruntled employee."  It suggests that a mundane worker inconvenience leads to  labor opposition and union activism.  It was not coarse paper towels, but, the need for an eight-hour work day, a forty hour work week, paid vacations, safer working conditions, the right to organize, and collectively bargain that impassioned the Wobblies to act.  

The IWW celebrates its 100th anniversary in July, 2005.  This issue is dedicated to the IWW which survives today with the best of its ideals intact.  May the One Big Union continue to thrive amidst the most anti-worker administration in United States working class history.  

Bushevik Rewrite

The following paragraph is a rewrite of the text on the 1930's ScotTissue Towel poster.  It is a parody directed toward the Democratic Party, the enablers of George W. Bush and the members of his Christo-fascist death cult.

Is the Democratic Party breeding Busheviks?  

Workers lose respect for politicians that fail to provide decent protection  in their work environment and a government that fails to provide a livable wage and protect the Constitution.  

Workers and others of conscience resent sending their children to fight and die in illegal wars for the profit of the wealthy owning class.  Try making ends meet seven days per week, working at two or three jobs, in harsh working conditions while loved ones are sent to war, leaving those behind struggling to pay the bills without healthcare and maybe you, too, would grumble.

A livable wage, universal health insurance, quality education, taking care of veterans and no more wars of choice nor for profit are just a few of the not so small but very important worker rights, that would help build confidence and trust in the Democratic Party that professes to be of, for and by the working class.

That's why you will find Progressives and union activists fighting for livable wage contracts and universal health care.  That's why articles of impeachment having been drawn up against George W. Bush for his crimes against humanity await a courageous introduction in the House of Representatives.

The Democratic Party contains many tepid progressives, made of  "spineless fiber"...an amazing amalgam of co-opted politicians who long ago abandoned their base.  Democrats are soft and pliant, Bush-lite,  desirous of appeasing their fascist neo-con brethren.  They continue supporting yet another illegal war, so strong in that support that their ethics and morality crumbles. . .even as they profess the moral high ground.

And they spend more on war, again -- because standing for their twisted "patriotic" principles makes their hands bloody -- instead of ending the war and washing them clean.

Write for your free set of bloody hands.  Join the Democratic Party, politicians who abrogate their responsibilities as they continue giving George W. Bush the unconstitutional power to make war, destroy cities,  kill darker skinned people, and make torture an instrument of foreign policy.  

The Democratic Party -- really bloody hands!  Just like the Republican Party.

Democrats - Opposition voices AWOL

March 16, 2005 was the second anniversary of activist Rachel Corrie's assassination in Ramallah, Palestine.  She was run over by an Israeli  bulldozer specially built by Caterpillar in the United States to demolish homes.  On that day, the United States Congress voted on House Resolution (HR) 1268 for yet another authorization to continue funding the illegal and unjustified war on Iraq.  The final vote to continue funding a war based upon lies was 388 yea, 43 nay, and 3 not voting.  Another 81.4 billion dollars will be sent into the quagmire that the military-industrial-complex chose to create in Iraq.  162 Democrats joined Republicans in continuing the slaughter and the crimes.  This is the fifth emergency spending plan that George W. Bush has sent to Congress since September 11, 2001.  This is the fifth time that the Democrats have capitulated to the Busheviks.  The Democrats and their party are breeding Busheviks.  They have met the enemies of peace and justice and found themselves.  

Democrats have made a habit of professing being tough on national defense, as if bombing, maiming and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians makes us any safer.  Dead people don't have friendly opinions and their surviving family members and friends hate you for it.  The insistence on supporting our troops by continued funding of illegal operations in Iraq is an oxymoron.  The Democrats, enablers of murder are murderers themselves.  Given a chose between voting for more death and destruction, and, being branded as not supporting the troops the Democrats choose war.  They fail to see that bringing the troops home now is the best form of supporting them.

The Democratic Party members of the so-called "Progressive Coalition" in the House of Representatives who voted in favor of HR1268 include: Peter DeFazio (OR), Jesse Jackson,  Jr (IL), Hilda Solis (CA), Xavier Becera (CA), Corrin Brown (FL), Sherrod Brown (FL), Julia Carson (IN), John Conyers (MI), Rosa DeLauro (CT), Lane Evans (IL), Eni Faleomavaega (American Samoa), Chaka Fatah (PA), Luis Guitterez (IL), Stephanie Tubbs Jones (OH), Nancy Kaptur (OH), Tom Lantos (CA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), John Oliver (MA), Ed Pastor (AZ), Nancy Pelosi (CA), Bobby Rush (IL), Bennie Thompson (MS), Tom Udall (NM), Diane Watson (CA), Mel Watt (CA), Henry Waxman (CA).  No wonder Busheviks continue their crimes with impunity.  Time and time again the Democrats make it so.  Like adult children of alcoholics who enable the alcoholic family member, the Democrats enable and perpetuate the Bushevik  pathology.  

Torturers are OK

The Democrats professing their opposition to torture have voted for the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General.  Mr. Gonzales is the architect of the plan that put torture in place here in the land of free where the Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment.  These are the same Democrats that gave the go-ahead for the Iraq war (circa 2003), and, who recently voted with the Busheviks to change the bankruptcy laws so that socialist bailouts and welfare exists only for the corporate rich.  The poor no longer qualify for similar bankruptcy protection.  While the rich reorganize, eliminate jobs and abscond with workers pensions, the workers, newly indebted for life, are unable to pay their rent, go without food, medical insurance, and  education.  

It is the Democrats who are the bankrupt party.  On March 19, 2005, tens of thousands around the world protested the second anniversary of the 2003 military invasion and occupation of Iraq.  Not one leading politician from the Democratic Party participated in the anti-war protests.  Not one major Democratic politician made a speech at  any of the more than 800 rallies across the United States. The events were organized by a nationwide coalition representing an array of grassroots community peace and social justice groups.  How telling that no well-known Democratic Party politician participated.  While the Republican Party is the party of the neo-cons, the Democratic Party is the party of the willingly neo-conned.  Mark Twain sums it up nicely:

Look at the tyranny of party--at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty--a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes--and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master.

 "The Character of Man," Mark Twain's Autobiography

Mark Twain's commentary could have been written today specifically with the present U.S. regime in mind, though it is doubtful that the president would ever be reading Mark Twain.  

Democrats and Republicans Busheviks Both

The Busheviks continue tightening the screws against Cuba.  Compliant Democratic Party neo-con fellow-travelers with their, "Yes, massa!" mind-set rubber stamp the four-decades old failed policy of trying to isolate Cuba.  The most recent example is the attempt at having a resolution passed at the United National Human Rights Commission condemning human rights violations in Cuba.  One need only begin at the US prison facilities in the occupied Cuban territory of Guantanamo Bay to find human rights violations.  The world sees the super-power in its glass house throwing stones. The empire may have superior firepower, but, like its emperor, stands naked exposed to world scrutiny.  The world beyond the US public, especially in the so-called "Third World" recognizes the double standard.  Our torture is justified.  Any other torture is a human rights violation.  Our torture is policy.  Any other torture is  condemned as unacceptable.  Our tens-of-thousands of nuclear weapons are acceptable.  Any one else's nuclear weapons are a threat to humanity.  Our weapons of mass destruction are a necessary deterrent.  Other nation's nuclear weapons are a threat to world peace.  Our weapons of mass destruction are acceptable.  Any other weapons of mass destruction are not.

Democrats need to wake up and smell the coffee though I doubt they will.  The aroma growing stronger is the stench of complicity.  It includes the pro-war odor of the John Kerry campaign, and, the soon to be Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.  Clinton's position shift on abortion portends further tacking to the political Right.  As another example of Democrats capitulating to the Right consider Martin Frost, former member of Congress from Dallas TX (D), who ran as an opponent against Howard Dean for being the head of the Democratic Party's National Committee.  After Dean won,  Frost became a news reporter for FOX news.  Frost learned well how to play the game after spending thirteen terms as a Democrat in the House of Representatives.  To think that Frost would, had he won, have been responsible for guiding the Democratic Party.  Frost's move to FOX says much about the Democratic Party commitment to its traditional base values.  It says much about the Democratic Party.  

Pollution

The Democratic party is polluted by the Bushevik mindset.  One need look only to Zell Miller to see the extreme example of Democratic Bushevism.  Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is a milder example.  The Democrats remain unaccountable for their lack of opposition.  Marie Cocco writing her January 11, 2005, Newsday column entitled, "Democrats' Fury, and Values, Go Awol", states, 

Enabling the Bush administration's habit of escaping accountability for even the grossest failure isn't smart politics. It's cowardice. If Democrats are to compete on the political turf of values, they'd better find some they stand for.

Democratic Party values are Bushevist values, the values of the ruling elite.  As James Wolcott in an article entitled, "Groundhog surfaces for sunlight" on his website http://jameswolcott.com (archives 03/2205) puts it,

The elites in this country have never had it so good, and as long as they're prospering the distress will be smothered under the surface, kept under a lid.

More sheeple will become Bushevists as a consequence of Democratic Party complicity and its solidarity with the elites of the ruling class.  Wolcott further states, "You can kiss that (American Dream) dream goodbye".  I would add that by their enabling and breeding Bushevists, "Democrats" such as Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, Zel Miller, Hillary Clinton, et al, create the working class nightmare.  The working class has these and many other Democrats to thank for the so-called "free trade agreements" of the 1990s.  We have them to thank for the recent bankruptcy bill that further exacerbates the plight of the unemployed, disabled, and the elderly.  We have them to thank for the tens of millions of graduates indebted with tens of thousands of dollars of college tuition debt working at minimum wage jobs and going backwards.  We have these Busheviks to thank for allowing workers at McDonalds, Wendy's and Burger who slap together hamburgers to be classified as "manufacturers".  And to what purpose?  So that the "manufacturing" sector employment statistics can look much less horrid than they are.  We have these Busheviks to thank for redefining what it means to be a "manager" so that fewer workers qualify for overtime pay.  

God bless the Bushevists.  God bless the Democratic Party, the enablers and breeders of Bushevists.  God bless the Democratic Party Bushevists.  God bless them, as I am certain they believe they are blessed for theirs is the kingdom, the power and the glory.  The scales of social justice, however, have a way of tipping the balance toward a social justice equilibrium.  The people do not remain ignorant and docile forever.  While the Bushevists swim in the opulence and luxury of their deluded God-given class, the flames of hell will consume them.  The fat and pork of the ruling class burns well.  While the barbecue may not be televised, it will take place before their rapture.  Count on it.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few to ride them. -- Thomas Jefferson

Happy birthday to the Industrial Workers of the World, 1905 - 2005.

© 2005 Jozef Hand-Boniakowski

  
Original Text of Scot Towel Bathroom Poster

Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?

Employees lose respect for a company that fails to provide decent facilities for their comfort.

Try wiping you hands six days a week on harsh, cheap paper towels or awkward, unsanitary roller towels __ and maybe you, too, would grumble.

Towel service is just one of those mall, but important courtesies -- such as proper air and lighting -- that help build up the good will of your employees.

That's why you'll find clothlike Scot-Tissue Towels in the washrooms of large well-run organizations such as R.C.A. Victor Co., Inc., National Lead Co. and Campbell Soup Co.

ScotTissue Towels are made of "thirsty fibre"...an amazing cellulose product that drinks up moisture 12 time as fast as ordinary paper towels.  They feel soft and pliant as a linen towel.  Yet they're so strong and tough in texture they won't crumble or go to pieces. . . even when they are wet.

And they cost less, too -- because one is enough to dry the hands -- instead of three or four.

Write for free trial coupon.  Scot Paper Company, Chester, Pennsylvania.

ScotTissue Towels - really dry.  

© Red Scare Products 1-800/258-8579  www.northernsun.com/cgi-bin/ns/4004.html

 
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