Day: February 27, 2013 - The Greanville Post

February 25, 2013 |

“Isn’t it awfully good to have a penis,” Eric Idle mused in the greatest 35-second song ever written [3] and I believe he’s telling the truth: having a stiffy is probably spiffy. Erections are such hopeful things, like carrying a little optimist around in your pocket, one imagines.

The penis provides lots of pleasure and keeps the human race going in its capacity as a reproductive organ. There’s all kinds of interesting facts and facets to the human penis and there are some in the animal world that could easily have been designed by Dali. Now’s your chance to get to know them a little better.

1. Spiny Norman no more.

Evolution has discarded many parts of the human penis, including … its spines?

Penile spines are little tiny ridges made of a hard tissue called keratin, and line the outside of the penis. They look (I think) a bit like those punk-inspired accessories [4] that are so popular these days. Lots of animals, including the chimpanzees, still have penis spikes. Christine Dell-Amore of National Geographic News [5] writes that the human genome project gave us the information that the ancestor we share with the chimps also had the spines.

But that was so six million years ago. The code for the “penile spine enhancer” was deleted from the human androgen receptor gene, says Nature [6] (androgens are male sex hormones) and Dell-Amore reports that it happened “before our common ancestor split into modern humans and Neanderthals about 700,000 years ago.” Quite a few deletions were discovered — 510, if you please — and gave us other spiffy changes like having bigger brains and not having whiskers.

It’s not yet certain just what the spines are for, though there are theories, Jen Quaraishi reports in Mother Jones [7] like a correlation between spines and greater promiscuity, also that they make for faster copulation time. If you want to see what they look like, here’s a picture of a cat penis on a blog called Sand Walk. [8]

2. How the human lost his bone, er, baculum.

Another thing the human penis lost along the way — gosh, is it forgetful or what? — was its baculum, or penis bone. Some animals have what’s called an os penis, one containing a bone which keeps them rigid long enough to deliver sperm into the female’s reproductive tract. Most primates have one, but human males rely solely on blood pressure or hemodynamics for rigidity. Lauren Reid of Science Alert [9] writes that the baculum is usually stored in the animal’s abdomen until needed, when abdominal muscles push it out. One of its good qualities is speed: it’s more reliable than waiting for blood flow to work and allows for quick copulation.

In The Selfish Gene, [10] evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins describes the os penis as clearly being an easier way to maintain an erection. He theorizes that the reason we lost such a helpful trait is that hemodynamics allow females to better gauge male sexual health when choosing a partner. From diabetes to depression, there are numerous health factors that can cause erectile trouble and “females could glean all kinds of clues about a male’s health and the robustness of his ability to cope with stress, from the tone and bearing of his penis,” clues a bone would obfuscate because “anybody can grow a bone in the penis; you don’t have to be particularly healthy or tough.”

Another charming tidbit from Reid: “There is also a female version of the baculum in some species which has a rather lovely name – the “baubellum [11],” or “os clitoris.”

3. The adventurous penises of the argonauts.

So the human penis is strong, but not strong enough to run away and mate on its own, leaving the rest of the guy to relax and watch TV.

One animal that does have that ability is the argonaut octopus. Stefan Anitei writes on Softpedia [12] that in octopi, the third right arm of the male is the penis, which is detachable and is called the hectocotylus. The hectocotylus deposits sperm packets called spermatophores into the gills’ cavity of the female and will regenerate a new third arm next season.

Some human males will be jealous of the fact that the male argonaut doesn’t ever have to bother with any intimacy hooey. Some other octopi will at least get close — they recognize their partners by smell and touch. But the argonaut’s hectocotylus wanders off on its own when the spermatophores are formed and goes into the “mantle cavity to fecundate the eggs.”

Wow, just imagine how much more the argonaut can get done in a day! He can go to the bank, the post office and the liquor store all while helping perpetuate the species.

4. While you were sleeping.

The human penis may not be that much of a multitasker, but it does get some exercise while the rest of the body is busy with something else: sleeping.

One of the 8 Things You Didn’t Know About Your Penis [13] pointed out by Martin Downs on WebMD is that to keep it healthy you’ve got to use it, i.e., get erections. But if something is going on in your waking life that’s preventing that from happening, your penis has your back: it works out while you snooze. Doesn’t matter what they’re dreaming about; most men have 3-5 erections a night.

The technical name for these nightly weiner workouts is NPT — nocturnal penile tumescence — and they are one of the things a doctor might check if you’re concerned about erectile dysfunction [14]. Men who don’t get erections during waking hours will still get NPT; if they don’t, there may be a physical problem.

To add insult to difficulty, “Without regular erections, penile tissue can become less elastic and shrink, making the penis 1-2 centimeters shorter,” Downs writes.

Jeez, way to kick a guy when he’s down. It’s just like when the bank charges you a fee…because you don’t have enough money in your account. Either way you’re unfairly shortchanged.

5. What a drag.

If you want to help your penis help you, there’s something you might want to do: quit smoking.

Web M.D. Jeanie Lerche Davis reports [15] that a study of Chinese men found, among other things, that “Men who currently — and formerly — smoked were about 30% more likely to suffer from impotence.” Smoking and erectile dysfunction are both connected (individually) with plaque that builds up in the arteries: it restricts blood flow and potentially causes ED, among other problems. The habit could also be making your erections smaller.

Men’s Health reports in 8 Strategies for Stronger Erections [16] that “In addition to damaging blood vessels, smoking may cause damage to penile tissue itself, making it less elastic and preventing it from stretching,” says urologist Irwin Goldstein.

So where there’s smoke…there may not as much fire as you’d like.

6. Those amazing animals.

The variation nature has gone to the trouble of putting into the penises of the world is dizzying. And sometimes dwarfing.

Elephants are big (you learn something new every time we talk, don’t you?) and their penises are proportionately enormous to the point where if you click the link to this piece by science writer Ed Yong, [17] you’ll see how you could almost mistake this elephant’s schlong for a skinny leg. Yong says the elephant also swatted flies and scratched his belly with it. Elephant penises are referred to as “prehensile,” although it doesn’t say in the piece that he picked up anything with it…except, we suspect, a lucky lady elephant.

Here on National Geographic [18], Yong also shares the weirdness that is the alligator penis. This member is eternally erect, “ghostly white,” doesn’t inflate at all, which makes it highly unusual, is filled with layer upon layer of collagen (even where blood would normally flow) and, as Yong notes, must have scared the bejesus out of this researcher when one appeared to rise from this dead reptile.

Then there’s the cute little echidna, a prehistoric, egg-laying hedgehog-like mammal whose penis has four heads. Click on the second picture [19] and see how happy he looks (even though his name is Grumpy).

Lucy Cooke writes in Natinoal Geographic that, “The reason why the echidna’s penis has four heads is still up for grabs. The female echidna has two love canals and Stewart [Nicol, echidna researcher] believes that the penis works like a double double-barreled shotgun, firing out of the two heads on one side, and then again quite quickly on the other. Given the fact Mr. Echidna has no idea which side his lady’s egg will be released this might increase his chances of fertilization.”

And may be one reason why a species who walked with dinosaurs is still here to charm us with his ornate love machine.

7. Getting a big head.

So the elephant’s penis is big, but the human male’s is huge among primates. Correcting for overall body size, it’s twice as big as the chimp’s, which may be why they’re always screaming.

How do I know? The wonderful Jesse Bering said so and he studied ape social cognition. Jesse Bering also knows why the human penis evolved to be the shape it is, hence his book Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? And Other Reflections on Being Human [20]. This essay in Scientific American [21] is nearly verbatim from his book, which you must buy to be both entertained and the life and soul of cocktail parties from now til the end of the world.

At any rate, the strong, straight shaft, large glans or head and coronal ridge look the way they do for a reason, and the reason is probably semen delivery and displacement — delivery of one’s own and displacement of another male’s.

First let’s talk about length. Bering tells us that evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup and coauthor Rebecca Burch wrote a 2004 paper conjecturing that the lengths the penis can reach and the force of human ejaculate can delivery sperm into the uppermost part of the vagina and that a longer penis would be advantageous not only for reaching the vagina’s deeper recesses but to displace sperm that might have been left by another male. Interesting, especially since magnetic imaging of couples having sex is what tells us how the far the penis can go and how it expands inside the vagina.

But it gets way, way better.

The distinct arrow-like shape of the penis would be good for displacement, Gallup figured, because of the “upsuck,” (not kidding) caused by thrusting. If there was anyone else’s sperm in there, that ridge would effectively scoop it all out. To test this, Gallup and his researchers got some “prosthetic genitals from erotic novelty stores,” including a faux vagina and three faux penises, one with a coronal ridge extending .2 inches from the shaft, one extending out .12 inches and one with no glans at all, which was the control. They made a simulated semen solution of flour and water, put it inside the “vagina,” and the three dummy weiners were then inserted to see how much ersatz sperm they could displace.

Imagine going to the office that day. To anyone who thinks science is monotonous, I have two words: puh leeze.

Anyway, Gallup was right. The smoothie removed only 35.3 percent while the two with the wider coronal ridges removed 91 percent and the deeper they were inserted the more effective scoopers they were.

8. Gimmie some skin.

Everyone knows the human penis can be very giving, but who knew that generosity extended to the medical community? Foreskin, the retractable piece of skin that covers the penis (it’s also called the prepuce, a word that also refers to the skin covering the clitoris) has been used in a lab to grow artificial skin cells for burn victims. And if you’ve ever been impressed with a “grower” check out prepuce power:

“A piece of foreskin the size of a postage stamp can produce approximately 4 acres of skin tissue in the laboratory [source: Strange [22]],” writes Molly Edmonds of How Stuff Works [23]. The foreskins of circumcised infants are thought to work well in this way — better than donor skin — because the infant cells are not rejected by the adult body’s immune system. “If they did,” Edmonds writes, “mothers’ bodies would reject fetuses [source: Skloot [24]].” Discovery Channel [25] says that lab-grown skin is less likely to be rejected by a patient and also less likely to cause infection.

Foreskin tissue donated with parental consent to Germany’s “Skin Factory” at the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart is used to grow artificial skin used for consumer product testing that “could someday replace animal testing,” writes Eric Pfieffer of Yahoo News. [26] Pfieffer quotes the German Herald as reporting that the cells are grown “on a layer of collagen and connective tissue.” Eventually they are injected “into a gel that causes them to grow into a sheet that simulates the epidermis. The layers are then fused together, creating a replica of natural human skin.”

Circumcision is definitely a controversial issue, but it’s kind of hard not to be for skin.

9. Something fishy.

To wrap things up, it’s fair to say that doing this story has certainly caused male genitals to be on my mind…but there’s one species of fish that wears his on his head.

The 2cm-long Phallostethus cuulong was discovered in Vietnam in 2009 by Koichi Shibukawa, a researcher from the Nagao Natural Environment Foundation [27] in Tokyo, writes New Scientist’s Michael Marshall [28]. The little fella doesn’t actually have a penis as we understand them, but has a “priapium, which faces backwards and looks like a muscular nozzle. It’s actually a modification of the fish’s pectoral and pelvic fins [29]” and the reproductive organs hang from his chin, a characteristic of all priapiumfish, named for Priapus [30], Greek god of many things including male reproductive power.

The priapiumfish may also be singular in this world of digital sharing in that no one has ever seen them mating. It’s thought, however, that the male keeps the female in place with two appendages, one that looks like a saw (the ctenactinium), the other like a rod, (toxactinium) which he holds on either side of her head while transferring sperm.

The priapium’s anus is on his head, too, in front of his ball chin.

He’s two [31], two [32], two cartoons in one.

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/9-fascinating-things-you-may-not-know-about-penis

Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/liz-langley
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9PiqCeLEmM
[4] http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/diyfashion/5637641/100pcs_9_5mm_silver_metal_bullet_rivet_spikes_stud_punk/indie_supplies/craft_supplies/other
[5] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110309-humans-men-penises-spines-dna-genome-science/
[6] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7337/full/nature09774.html
[7] http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/03/penis-boner-spike-evolution
[8] http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2011/03/penis-spines.html
[9] http://www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20121504-23309.html
[10]http://books.google.com/books?id=EJeHTt8hW7UC&pg=PA307&lpg=PA307&dq=human+penis+bone+evolution&source=bl&ots=YP6c1lpycp&sig=QtuhTtSGIC2IY1Y-ogZ_fM2_jTc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qnYkUaCRAYGe9QTb4oAo&ved=0CFwQ6AEwBzgK%23v=onepage&q=human%2520penis%2520bone%2520evolution&f=false
[11] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1382752?uid=3737536&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=56021990673
[12] http://news.softpedia.com/news/13-Things-You-Did-Not-Know-About-Octopuses-68305.shtml
[13] http://men.webmd.com/guide/8-things-you-did-not-know-about-your-penis
[14] http://www.webmd.com/erectile-dysfunction/tests-for-erection-problems
[15] http://www.webmd.com/erectile-dysfunction/news/20030307/smoking-can-lead-to-erectile-dysfunction
[16] http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/sexual_health/Avoid_Penis_Shrinkers.php
[17] http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/07/south-african-wildlife-wait-thats-not-a-trunk/
[18] http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/13/the-alligator-has-a-permanently-erect-bungee-penis/
[19] http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/03/the-tasmanian-echidnas-four-headed-penis/
[20] http://www.amazon.com/Why-Penis-Shaped-Like-That/dp/0374532923
[21] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=secrets-of-the-phallus
[22] http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/lab-grown-skin3.htm
[23] http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/lab-grown-skin2.htm
[24] http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2001-12/immortal-skin
[25] http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/scientists-grow-new-existing-skin
[26] http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/german-scientists-growing-skin-baby-foreskins-202956126.html
[27] http://www.nagaofoundation.or.jp/index_e.php
[28] http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22023-zoologger-the-fish-with-its-genitals-on-its-head.html
[29] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_anatomy
[30] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapus
[31] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGL_paCfLUQ
[32] http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0006978/
[33] http://www.alternet.org/tags/sex-0
[34] http://www.alternet.org/tags/sexuality
[35] http://www.alternet.org/tags/penis
[36] http://www.alternet.org/tags/men
[37] http://www.alternet.org/tags/evolution
[38] http://www.alternet.org/tags/women-0
[39] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

By Pepe Escobar | Cross-posted from Asia Times

Academy voters simply could not resist a plot loosely based in facts in which a patriotic and resourceful Hollywood saves the CIA. And with a certified Hollywood ending as a bonus. Thus, predictably, this was Hollywood awarding an Oscar to itself, to hyper-nationalism, to American heroes and of course to good (Americans) over evil (Iranians).

Zero Dark Oscar, Asia Times Online, February 22, 2013). But for now, in terms of poetic justice, nothing makes more sense than Best Picture going to the Ben Affleck-directed (and Clooney co-produced) Argo.

Those 6,000-plus Academy voters simply could not resist a plot loosely based in facts in which a patriotic and resourceful Hollywood saves the CIA. And with a certified Hollywood ending as a bonus. Thus, predictably, this was Hollywood awarding an Oscar to itself, to hyper-nationalism, to American heroes and of course to good (Americans) over evil (Iranians).

And how poetically towering this justice becomes when a movie about a fake movie that fooled revolutionary Iranians during the 444-day hostage crisis is crowned Best Picture just two days before the US and other members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, go back to the table to discuss whether Iran is now fooling them — and going for a nuclear weapon.

Argo strives to prove the point that Iran hates the American Satan but Iranians love Hollywood. Over three decades later, Iranians are not so gullible; they are even going to shoot their counter-Argo. And the absolute majority of the population — even under harsh US and European Union sanctions — supports a civilian nuclear program. In parallel, it will be fun to watch how Argo plays from Karachi to Caracas.

Back in Hollywood, as Orson Welles taught us all, it’s all fake. Even former president Jimmy Carter admitted on CNN that the Argo plot itself was Canadian — mostly concocted by then ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor. Everybody knows this in Canada. But obviously not in the US.

Ask Christoph Shultz

What really matters at the Oscars is the red carpet — with its immortal inbuilt phrase “What are you wearing.” In a festival of wardrobe malfunctions worthy of an FBI investigation, at least there was Charlize Theron in Dior, Naomi Watts in Armani Prive and Anne Hathaway in Prada to soothe weary eyes. This is what will be doing the rounds digitally all over the planet — as most of the winners are already forgotten by now.

There were no surprises. If Daniel Day-Lewis playing the American God, aka Lincoln, didn’t get his (third) Oscar, that would be blamed on a Chinese cyber attack. Actually, there was a surprise; Hollywood’s Zeus, Steven Spielberg, was spurned to the benefit of Life of Pi director Ang Lee. Cynics immediately volunteered this has a lot to do with Hollywood’s pivoting towards the lucrative Asian market.

Quentin Tarantino said this was the year of the writers at the Oscars. It was certainly his year. It makes total sense that his revenge classic Django Unchained won for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (the Viennese master, Christoph Waltz).

For Tarantino, only a humongous body count can lead us to Justice. One may occasionally be fed up with his perennial over-the-top antics. But the fact is that his prescription for America — when evil stares into your face you go out all guns blazing — is believable because his characters are so splendidly written. No wonder the gun lobby and assorted National Rifle Association fanatics are using Django as prime PR among African Americans. Were they to follow Django (“the D is silent”) to the letter, post-apocalyptic US would probably look like this Django Uncrossed spoof.

The Academy may in fact have redeemed itself a bit for its love story with the CIA when Best Screenplay went to Tarantino instead of Tony Kushner for the totemic Lincoln. Arguably Kushner — and Spielberg — built their anti-slavery epic without so much as a glance towards Frederick Douglass or W E B DuBois’s Black Reconstruction in America — where it’s clear that “it was the fugitive slaves who forced the slaveholders to face the alternative of surrendering to the North or surrendering to the Negro.”

Without at least 200,000 black people in the Army and another 200,000 working in supporting roles, the North would have lost the war. Or, at best, the white supremacist South would have remained as it was — slavery and all. None of this is addressed in Lincoln.

What Django‘s two Oscars prove once again is that Hollywood is a sucker for revenge. Even when it comes in the form of a warped, cripto-psychedelic spaghetti-western that would make John Ford puke. Well, it’s still a Wild West. Wilder than Jack Nicholson’s wildest dreams.

Tarantino may now be the best-qualified screenwriter to decode Barack Obama, the new Lincoln. What about a gourmet western showing the passage from GWOT (global war on terror) to invisible, shadow war, while internally the new Lincoln goes for gun control mixed with drone surveillance.

What about Christoph Waltz playing the devious John Brennan — a confidante to then CIA director George Tenet fully updated on “the intelligence and facts being fixed around the policy” to justify the war on Iraq, and later setting the parameters on torture and seeking Justice Department approval for it.

Picture a scene with Waltz, with his trademark delivery, testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee — as Brennan did early this month — that “the regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang remain bent on pursuing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile delivery systems.”

Argo is for pussies. The time has come for Obomber Unchained.

February 27, 2013

The real Kabuki Theater is beautiful. What happens in Washington is disgusting.

By michael payne

The American people are watching this charade going on in the nation’s capitol and are shaking their heads in utter amazement at what they see. This is like some kind of nightmarish presentation that continues on with no seeming end. If this theater production were being presented on Broadway, the actors would be jeered, pelted with eggs and tomatoes, and booed off the stage.

While this country remains under economic siege and is bleeding profusely from many self-inflicted wounds, those who were given the responsibility to find the ways to stop this hemorrhaging have now proven that they are not up to the task. This country and its society are staggering under the weight of endless wars, joblessness, corporate greed and corruption, and mounting violence. The people cry out for help but none is forthcoming.

While a typical Kabuki presentation is generally well choreographed with impeccable acting, what is going on in Washington with this Congress and the Obama administration is anything but that; it has turned into an ugly standoff between two sets of bad actors, opposing political entities that are locked into their own ideologies with no common ground or any ability to begin to compromise in any way.

This dark specter of sequestration, as has been pointed out by numerous respected economists and academics such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, is something that could easily be prevented; it is no more than a fabricated emergency, one that involves governmental incompetence of the highest degree. The real danger lies in the fact that this sequester has the potential to severely damage this economy at the very time that it is struggling to recover. Those in the know say that austerity is not the way to go and that the time-tested method of infusion of government funds to stimulate the economy is what is badly needed at this crucial time.

But the most troubling part of this entire bizarre process is the fact that so many of these pathetic politicians are perfecting willing to take this nation to the brink of disaster and to allow this country to absorb yet more blows to its economic foundations. That’s not just being disloyal to this country; it’s committing political treason.

The position of the Republicans could not be more clear; they are totally committed to the advancement of the interests of Corporate America and the wealthiest Americans who they serve; in doing so they have not the slightest feeling of shame or guilt as they answer only to their masters who use the power of their money and influence to control this government. Their actions represent the height of irresponsibility; their actions and behavior are reprehensible and they are beyond recovery or rehabilitation.

But what of the performance of Mr. Obama who likes to view himself as a president who stands up for their interests and welfare of the people of America no matter how difficult that might be. Once again, he seems to be headed in the direction of last minute appeasement and capitulation to the GOP and its axis of political hacks, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor who seem to hold some kind of spell over him.

Here we have a president who, in his foreign polity, remains very aggressive and on the offensive by launching deadly drones into the air space and across the borders of nations with which we are not at war. But on the domestic front, this same president is continually on the defensive as he is seemingly incapable of launching a counterattack to the Republican’s crazed obsession with a program of misguided austerity that will further cripple this already weak and declining economy.

What’s going on with this impending sequester can be likened to a poker game, one in which the stakes are very high. The Republicans are past masters at the art of bluffing even when they know they don’t have the winning hand. Conversely Mr. Obama is not a very good poker player and he has been known to throw in a winning hand because of his fear that his opponents may have an ace up their sleeve.

He seems to have a predisposition for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. And if he bends and breaks at the last moment and comes up with more concessions involving this sequester the losers in this game will be the people of this nation. He has had the Republican sociopaths up against the ropes but he apparently can’t deliver the knockout blow. This is the man who handily won the election and had the majority of the American people solidly behind him. But you would never know it by his failure to take charge of this terrible dilemma that now faces this nation.

One thing that continues to be a troubling point with the American people is the fact that this president keeps putting the issue of Social Security cuts back on the table. His latest move has been to offer up a “Chained CPI” that would, in effect, cancel out $130 billion of future benefits that seniors will need to keep up with inflation.

The large majority of Americans are fully aware that Social Security, which is self-funded and self-sustaining, has nothing to do with the national deficit and should have no part in this discussion. But this conflicted president continues to ignore their concerns and keeps offering it up as a concession to Republican demands. This is an absolute craven betrayal of the American people who should, by now, realize that this is a man that can no longer be trusted.

The general belief among many Americans is that President Obama’s performance in this presentation has been and continues to be extremely disappointing; that he is just not up to the task, not up to the challenge and that he is in over his head as the appears to be falling into another Republican trap. Clever and astute in the art of politics do not fit this president; naïve and susceptible to manipulation certainly do. At least that’s what, on the surface, seems to be the case.

However, there may be much more involved here than we think; that there is something much more troubling going on. It’s true that most of Americans continue to consider this a battle between Republicans and Democrats, but there is a growing number of observers in this country who see this seeming charade not so much as a massive confrontation between these two adversaries but, rather, as some sort of shrewd behind-the-scenes collusive deal; some kind of ploy that hides what’s really happening. Could something like that actually be in process, is that what these two parties are doing in concert? Whatever is going on, if the past is any indication of what the future holds, we can be sure that it will bring more pain and misery on the people of this country.

This Kabuki Theater of the bizarre and absurd presents a stark picture of political deceit and manipulation of the highest order. And as this dark theatrical presentation enters its final act over the next days, weeks and months it most certainly will be recorded in history as a most pitiful, pathetic performance by those who have been entrusted with governing this nation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Payne is an independent progressive activist. His writings deal with social, economic, political and foreign policy issues. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois and a U.S. Army veteran. His primary objective is to inform readers of the fact that this nation’s agenda of perpetual war is leading it down a path to financial ruin; and that the proliferation of unjustified wars and a military empire must be ended. Secondly that we must find the ways to expel Corporate America from our government and political system before it destroys our democracy.

by MICHAEL D. YATES

Radical political movements always employ slogans that encapsulate in a few powerful words the aspirations of those fighting for a new world. The French revolutionaries fought under the banner, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” words that still resonate with radicals. The first words of the U.S. Constitution—“We the People”—have quickened the hearts of generations of populist activists. Emiliano Zapata’s soldiers longed for “Tierra y Libertad,”and the peasant armies of Mao Tse Tung went to war for “Land to the Tiller.”

Every slogan has a context, circumstances that give rise to the words and make them effective. For example, when the Chinese communists were waging their long struggle against the army of Chiang Kai-shek, they relied upon mass support from peasants, who formed the base of the Red Army. China was still a largely feudal society, and peasants were brutally exploited by rich landlords. Those who worked the land wanted it, and the communists promised to give it to them. “Land to the Tillers” expressed this desire and the Party’s commitment to it. Even today, after decades of capitalist restoration, China’s rural people still have land rights won in revolutionary struggle.

The catchphrases of political upheaval are always somewhat vague. In China, there were the farmers who tilled the soil and the landlords who owned it. However, both classes included people of varying economic means. There were small, medium, and large landholders. Not all peasants lived in squalor and destitution. Yet, all landlords tended to be lumped together, and all of their land was fair game for expropriation.

The imprecise nature of political slogans is a virtue. Actual political programs do not derive from words alone but from the balance of class forces that exist at a particular point in time. What slogans do is clarify the most basic political cleavages; they help people develop the mindset most suited to active participation in whatever struggles are at hand. In China, “land to the tiller” said that those who worked the land should possess it; those who owned but did not till, should not. That some both owned and tilled did not and should not have mattered. Such complexities would have to be dealt with later, when a new constellation of class forces had come into being.

The worldwide Occupy movement that erupted in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park in September 2011 took as its watchwords, “We are the 99 %.” These words resonated with large masses of people as few others have in a long while. To understand why, it’s important to look at the context that generated the slogan.

“We are the 99%” derived its power from the devastation experienced by so many people during the Great Recession that erupted in December of 2007. The roots of this economic crisis go back to the mid-1970s, when an employer-led attack upon the working class began in response to lower corporate profit margins, the result of the declining global economic dominance of the United States. U.S. businesses faced strong economic competitors in Japan and Europe; the costs of the War in Vietnam were generating inflation and higher wages; and the brisk demand for U.S. capital goods diminished as the rest of the world completed post-Second World War reconstruction.

A weakened and class-collaborationist labor movement accommodated a rapid victory by capital, in what we typically call neoliberalism: a political project that included the deregulation of finance, privatization of public services, elimination and curtailment of social welfare programs, open attacks on unions, and routine violations of labor laws. These left working people with lower wages, less generous benefits, and growing insecurity.

The deregulation of capital markets gave rise to a host of new financial instruments, which grew by leaps and bounds as cash-strapped workers began to go into debt by borrowing against their houses and maxing out their credit cards. All of this generated growing income and wealth inequality; raised the financial sector to the commanding heights of the economy; and made production more vulnerable to financial crisis. The Great Recession was the product of the interaction of these three factors, and it generated a scale of worldwide misery not seen since the 1930s. While the downturn officially ended in June 2009, much of the working class is still mired in debt, employed in low wage/ no benefit jobs, either unemployed or fearful of job loss, and not very hopeful about the future.

While there were periodic protests against neoliberalism, it was not until the Great Recession that these broke out into mass struggle. This first emerged in the Arab Spring, but it soon spread to the entire world, from Spain to China and from Canada to Chile. In the United States, the Wisconsin Uprising of early 2011, led by public employees, inspired workers across the country, demonstrating that when pushed hard enough, in the right circumstances the working class would revolt and do things no one had imagined possible. Then, within a year of this, OWS erupted. Young people, led mainly by anarchists, took over Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan and waged protests against one of the greatest symbol of the 1%—Wall Street. When the police began to suppress the dissent, thousands of Occupy supporters descended upon the center of finance. Soon amazing displays of cooperative action and self-education deepened the struggle.

As the OWS phenomenon spread to cities and towns in the United States and then the world, the objects of the protestors’ scorn and anger increased geometrically—all those who oppressed the 99%: police, bankers, landlords, employers, universities, politicians, the media, and the military. In response, the powers that be began a coordinated campaign to slander and suppress what had the potential to disrupt both production and commerce. Ultimately, OWS encampments were closed, mainly by police force, but OWS-inspired struggles live on, and the memory of what happened is very much alive.

Critics of OWS and “We are the 99%” say that the slogan is inaccurate. I disagree. It is true that there are well-to-do people in the 99%, and there are many in the 1% who are not that rich. The cutoff yearly household income for the 1% varies, ranging from $380,000 using the Census definition of income to nearly double that using that of the Federal Reserve, which includes capital gains. In some parts of the country, $380,000 would qualify a household as rich, while in others it would not. The flip side of this is that there are many people in the 99% who are not poor. There is a big difference between an income of $279,000 (just below the Census 1% cutoff) and $20,000, the cutoff for the poorest 20 percent of households.

We could argue as well that using income to divide the 99% and the 1% is inaccurate because what matters most is wealth. Ownership of stocks, bonds, real estate, unincorporated businesses, and the like is much more skewed than income, and it is at the top of the wealth distribution that economic and political power reside. The richest 1% of households now own an astonishing 42.4 percent of net financial assets (these exclude homes and mortgage debt).

But these arguments about the accuracy of the slogan miss the point. “We are the 99%” suggests an “us versus them” politics that foreshadows the class perspective so badly needed in the United States. Those who feel unfairly maligned because, although their incomes are high, they are not rich are free to ally themselves with their poorer brethren. And those who are objectively poor are done no harm by being lumped together with those whose incomes are higher. What the slogan does is help nurture a worldview that understands that not only is inequality out of control but that the position of the 1% comes at the expense of the rest of us. To invert and paraphrase the words of Bartolomeo Vanzetti, “their triumph is our agony.” We can build upon this to create a politics that transcends the populism that passes for radicalism in the United States.

The issue here is not the literal meaning of the “1%,” but power. Whether we speak of income or wealth, power resides in the households of the 1%. They own our workplaces and control our labor. They construct nearly every aspect of society—government, media, schools, culture—to maintain and increase their dominance over us. What the slogan, “We are the 99%,” has done is bring power into the open and help change the political landscape.

Another criticism of “We are the 99%” argues that it implies a liberal politics of income redistribution and not a critique of capitalism. However, this ignores how OWS took shape. Public spaces were occupied; clashes with police ensued immediately; diverse discussions and debates took place; the movement spread rapidly across the nation and then the world; and millions of people were energized and made to feel part of something of great importance. Open air classrooms scrutinized critical issues. People learned that they could make decisions and effectively organize daily life. Those camped out in Zuccotti secured food and shelter, took care of sanitation, and solved complex problems of logistics every day.

These actions, combined with the anarchist and youthful sensibility and leadership of so much of OWS, gave rise to the posing of fundamental questions. What is democracy? Why don’t we have it? How do we dispense with ubiquitous hierarchies? Why is there so little solidarity, compassion, love? Why aren’t there enough jobs? Why is work so meaningless? Why do we devote so much of our lives to it? Why are we obsessed with making money and consuming things? Why are we destroying the environment that sustains us? Why does our government wage war against ordinary people, the 99%, all over the globe? These questions cannot be answered and the issues they raise resolved by more progressive taxes or a few expanded social welfare programs.

Our collective future is grim. Under our current political economic system, none of our major problems can be solved. Insecurity, inequality, and environmental destruction will get worse unless we take radical actions, repeatedly, for as long as necessary. OWS and “We are the 99%” were, and continue to be, ingenious interventions in what promises to be an era of growing class struggles. Other slogans will supplement “We are the 99%,” but I hope that the idea that “we are the many, they are the few” remains foremost in our minds as we combat our class enemies.

MICHAEL D. YATES is Associate Editor of Monthly review magazine.He is the author of Cheap Motels and Hot Plates: an Economist’s Travelogue and Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy. He is the editor of Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back. Yates can be reached at mikedjyates@msn.com

by Salvatore Babones

One hundred eighty years after abolishing slavery, the United Kingdom is coming clean about fortunes founded on slave ownership and the slave trade.

While it took a bloody civil war to outlaw slavery in the United States, the United Kingdom outlawed slavery 32 years before us, in 1833.

Lest anyone think that Britain had nothing to lose in outlawing slavery, remember that the UK controlled a string of Caribbean islands full of sugar plantations, including Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados. Now, British government funded research is unveiling which of today’s British fortunes are directly tied to slave ownership.

Researchers at University College London (UCL) have published a database of roughly 4000 British slave owners who were compensated by the British government in 1833 for the emancipation of their slaves. Their Legacies of British Slave-ownership project also includes details of 613 companies that benefited from their histories of slave ownership.

The great irony, of course, is that Britain did not compensate the slaves for their slavery. The British government compensated the owners for liberating their human “property.” It’s as if we compensated the Germans and Japan for taking away their conquests in World War II.

The second irony is that Britain is coming clean on the slave foundations of its fortunes before we do. America has no comprehensive database of who owned slaves before 1865. How many of today’s American fortunes have their origins in slave ownership? No one knows.

The academics behind the UCL database have been widely quoted as estimating that some one-fifth of nineteenth century British fortunes were founded directly on slavery. That doesn’t include all those who profited indirectly from the fact that other people owned slaves. Given the scale of the Atlantic slave trade, the true figure is almost certainly higher.

In America, however, we had a whole society based on slavery, directly in the southern states and indirectly in the economic profits that southern slavery brought to the country as a whole. It ended in 1865 without compensation, but the overt abuse and exploitation of African-Americans continued for another hundred years.

Since the 1960s discrimination against African-Americans has gone underground, but it has never gone away, and it exists in all states, north and south. Residential and educational segregation are rampant. We have never come to terms with our legacies of slavery.

If our government won’t fund reparations for the descendants of slaves, it can at least fund research into the beneficiaries of slavery. Let us look into the mirror and see ourselves for who we are. That would be far from a final resolution of our slave heritage, but it would at least be a first step in the right direction.

US Rep. John Conyers has a bill before the House, HR 40, that would “establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans.” He has introduced the same bill at the opening of every Congress since 1989.

No one in Washington takes any notice. Rep. Conyers no longer even mentions the bill on his website. But the most important issue in American politics isn’t going to go away just because we ignore it.

After the UK finally abolished slavery in 1833, it still took us 32 years and a civil war to follow suit. We should be able to catch up a little faster this time.

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