OBAMA, MARX, SANTORUM (?)

Stuff that caught my attention this week but I never got round to writing up. This week: Barack 'the great liberal hope' Obama screws Haiti's poor, a new book on Marx tells us why the old man was right and a anti-gay Republican presidential hopeful is lampooned on the internet. He says its 'revolting' but everyone else thinks its funny.





Do you reckon liberals everywhere are embarrassed about the uncritical and hysterical claims they made about Barack Obama representing 'real change'? Certainly some of those silly Labourites on The Standard seem to have gone rather quiet about him. It seems being a befuddled social democrat means never having to face up to reality.

The latest embarrassment for Obama fans is that Wikileaks cables have revealed that the Obama administration pressured Haiti not to raise its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour, or five dollars a day.

Two years ago, Haiti unanimously passed a law raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. It wasn't much but it was better than the previous 24 cents an hour.

This increase outraged American clothing giants like Levi's and Haines who said that they would only pay an additional seven-cent-an-hour increase to their Haitian slave workers to sew together their over-priced clothes.

As the Columbian Journalism Review comments, 'The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).

Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales last year. Its CEO Richard Noll is on a $10 million salary package.


A book that might be worth reading is Terry Eagleton's Why Marx Was Right.

Eagleton has written this book, he says, at a time when "the system has ceased to be as natural as the air we breathe, and can be seen instead as the historically rather recent phenomenon it is"

Eagleton refutes the usual prejudices of liberals and right wingers alike - Marx led to Stalin, its alleged economic determinism, its so-called utopianism, etc,etc

The book has received mixed reviews overseas although I notice that many of the more critical reviews have come from people not sympathetic to the Marxist tradition in the first place.


Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum (he has no chance) has angered many Americans with his, among other things, strident anti-gay statements. He says that homosexuality will 'undermine the fabric' of American society and he wants to outlaw same-sex civil unions.

He is now the target of an internet campaign, Just google 'Rick Santorum' and see what you get or click this (don't click it if you think you might be offended).

Santorum, who has been lampooned by Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, says 'the Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate.'

Most of us think its rather amusing...