I created a fake town – and I am so happy there – Life in Boson, Massachusetts

When I am dreaming up the latest news I am bouncing in my seat as I type.  Clickety clack on the keyboard to the left as my visions become words in my head and then words on the computer screen.  A town comes to life – and so much happens in Boson, Massachusetts.

I was posting on Reddit when I typed in something to do with ‘Boston’ the town I live in.  I saw a subreddit labelled’r/ThingsToDoInBoston’ and next on the pull down list ‘r/ThingsToDoInBoson.’  I laughed.  My immediate conjecture was that someone wanted to create a posting and discussion thread called a ‘subreddit’ dedicated to ‘Things to Do In Boston’ but missed the letter ‘t’ when typing.  I forget how to delete a subreddit, or even if one can delete a subreddit on Reddit.  So the thread was abandoned.  No one had posted.  I assumed that the creator and moderator of the subreddit did not check in on the thread, and did not care what was posted on his mistakenly entitled subreddit.

I have a problem of being banned from subreddits on Reditt, or having posts removed, or being accused of ‘spamming’ because I post a link to my blog or Youtube videos a number of times on different threads.  So… I like to find subreddits that I can post on.   In the past I have posted photos on ‘dead’ subreddits that no one seems to look at and the photos were featured on an aggregate subreddit that shows photos from around Reddit.  So, my photo can be seen by more people.

So I was delighted to find an abandoned orphan subreddit.  Boson you say.  Great.  Having been banned from Twitter for making fun of Massachusetts Senator E. Warren, and banned when I post on Craigslist Politics or Rants and Raves, or restricted on Boston Indiemedia, or told to remove posts by political associates, called a Russian ‘bot, there is a side of me that simply wants to fade into satire.  I began to post articles and re-writes on r/ThingsToDoInBoson.

(French Satirist Rabelais Illustration below)

I have thought that people like Rabelais, and Jonathan Swift, or even George Orwell, wrote parody and satire and speculative fiction about ‘other places and other times’ because they were not free to simply come out and tell the truth in public and in writing and in publication.  So Swift makes up faraway lands with little people to criticize the king of his own country.  Orwell made up an imaginary place and make-believe political system with exaggerated features of his own time and vision for the future.  So I could join the club from my kitchen computer and comment on the world while I cook pasta and meat sauce at my elbow.

(Jonathan Swift used satire to comment on his society)

 

After some happy days of posting whatever I wanted about the town of Boson, which does not exist, it occurred to me that the whole thing could be erased and deleted when the actual editor ‘moderator’ took a look and did not like what he, or she, saw.  Since I was posting so many altered articles and photos I wanted to preserve my phony alternate Boston.

I created a new subreddit on Reddit called ‘r/BosonMassachusetts.’  I was the editor.  Things would not disappear unless the Reditt boss administrators decided to remove me.  Why would they?  Boson does not exist, and nothing that happens there is real.

I also set up a blog on Google’s free blog site ‘Blogger.’  I transferred all of my posts from the r/ThingsToDoInBoson to the Boson,Massachusetts blog, and the Reddit r/BosonMassachusetts subreddit.  I had dozens and dozens of entries.

I re-wrote a political commentary article I wrote about walking through the city of Boston after I got in trouble with political associates for my views.  My retreat into parody was complete.  I thought of an article I had written in the past saying that I had no interest in writing fiction.  Over the years I have written a lot of fiction short stories and two roughly shaped novellas.  But, why hide behind fiction I argued.  Simply write about what is going on as it is going on.

But times change, and I was retreating into fiction and parody,  and satire.  I when I worked as a teacher I often felt like I was speaking in riddles.  I did not want to lie to students, but I was prevented from telling certain truths by my bosses.

So here I was with writing at home and on the internet and — I must speak in riddles again.  But there is a certain freedom in fantasy and parody.  A fool can say anything, even the truth, is the first sentence of this blog.  I have no fear of playing the fool, but, I don’t always like not being able to tell the truth.

Shouldn’t accurate information lead to incisive interventions in reality?

But sometimes analogy and imitation and parody reveal the essence of a human situation.

……………….

I placed Boson directly to the south of Boston, Massachusetts.  I picture Boson as being on the southern shore of the mouth of the Neponset River.  Quincy gets pushed down as Boson squeezes in between the river and the town of Milton, and Quincy, and the East Blue Hills Reservation to the west.  There is no East Blue Hills Reservation, but a lot of stories come out of those woods and hills.

I live a half mile from the Neponset River and have spent most of my life a few miles from that river.

Just about every morning I get up and read the news and then think of placing the events in Boson, Massachusetts.  Almost all of the big things that happen in the US happen in Boson, too.  I make them happen.

Over the past fifteen years or so I have been able to read a lot of news stories from around the world.  I have been a newspaper and magazine reader for most of my life, but the access to material greatly expanded with the internet postings of almost every newspaper in the world.  I once treasured a visit to Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, because I could step into the Out of Tow News kiosk in the middle of the square and see newspapers and magazines from around the world at a time when they were harder to get.  No more.  I can get more news in my kitchen as I make coffee in my pajamas for a much lower price.

Having so many news sources to read I have noticed over the years how writers simply copy other people’s info and regurgitate it with a spin, or no spin at all.  The UK Daily Mail had a writer who said his job was to read other media and re-write it for the Daily Mail.  Having seen a number of articles like that, I believed him.  Somehow the Daily Mail went to court and won a judgement that said they did not read and summarize.  But, they did.

My parody is basically the same thing.  I read other people’s news articles and spin my own take.  I go to the satirical site The Onion and take their photos or recast their stories.  The Onion has some very low level anti-Trump articles that look like someone took less than sixty seconds to write the piece.  On the other side the right leaning Babylon Bee has satire that is anti-Liberal.  I take some of their photos and repurpose them; a lot of their piece are simpleton name calling of Democrat Radical Liberals as “Marxists” and “Far Leftists” in a very low effort way.  Honestly, I think my satire is more sophisticated.  People read my stories and think they are real.  I make fun of their belief and they actually think the article supports their position.  The best kind of satire.  I think.

I have been posting and writing articles and creating graphics for just about a year.  A steady trickle of people read the r/BosonMassachusetts subreddit and a steady trickle visit the Blogger site ‘Boson, Massachusetts.’   I post on various subreddits to get new viewers for a story.  Sometimes a story takes off and thousands read the article.

In August 2019 I read a story from Australia of a man who was spear fishing and shot a spear through his cheek.  He was a Christian pastor who thanked God for sparing him from death.  Why didn’t God stop him from being speared in the first place, one might ask.  Anyway, I re-wrote the story and place the events in Boson Harbor.  I used all of the graphic photos of the man with the pointed spear through his cheek.   I posted the story in various places and found an audience somewhere.  Just about two thousand people read the story on Blogger.   Most who commented seemed to think it was a true story about a real place called Boson, Massachusetts.

When I did an internet search of the word ‘Boson’ I found almost nothing.  The top results were for the term from molecular science ‘Higgs Boson’ a type of particle named after two scientists.

I used the term to create the founder of Boson, Higginson Boson an English colonist from 1630.

Another very popular post was about the ‘junk art’ modern sculptures at U Mass Boson.

People assumed it was U Mass Boston and passionately denounced the horrible sculptures I reported had been removed by a recycle truck.

(Sunflowers for Vincent) 

There was an anti-human professor somewhere who I placed at U Mass Boson who really didn’t need any parody, since she seemed like self parody making the obvious eco-radical call for the reduction of the human population (excluding herself, of course.)

I stole an idea from the right leaning Babylon Bee about Barnes and Noble banning sales of the Bible.  I copied their graphic early in the morning.

I changed the text of why they were banned from some wishy washy right wing complaint.  The post became very popular with almost 3,000 views around the world.  Somehow the post was being viewed in Russia on certain days.  But, when I went back to the Babylon Bee website later in the day the post had been changed and Barnes and Nobel removed and replaced with ‘Jen and Eric’s’ bookstore.  Generic bookstore was the graphic.  They must have gotten complaints from Barnes and Noble.

Perhaps my leaving in the reference to Barnes and Noble increased my viewership.

A leaflet was put up in a Massachusetts town that said “Islam is Right About Women.”  A woman called police and the local media did verbal summersaults to avoid adressing what the leaflet said while condemning the leaflet for opposing Islam.  So I created a similar leaflet to put up around Boson that said ‘Islam Is Right About Gays.’ 

People thought the leaflet was real and responded as they saw fit.  I got the most views for an article, about 2,750 or more.

The Koran commands people to take any men who engage in homosexual activity and throw them from the roof of the tallest building in town.  Islamophiles in the West have no counter argument to that Islamic commandment.  But since they defend Islam and Gay Rights simultaniously they can only respond by labelling any examination of Islamic beliefs as ‘racist’ and not the business of any person who is not Islamic.   Others basically assert that just because 60% to 70% of people who follow Islam are extreme Right Wing fanatics that one should not blame the 5% of Muslims who are ‘moderate’ and only think Gays should be jailed.  Ok, point taken.

So my parody and satire hit a target.   Some people label me an opponent of the Islamic ‘race’ and it’s belief system.  So be it.

I also have my own radical Leftist newspaper – the Boson Workers.  I publish what I want and many read the articles without checking the source and finding that the publication does not exist.  Or, does it.

With so many posts, sometimes three articles a day, I have many pages of news on Boson.  I looked up a website that prints out color copies of blogs and internet postings and the first half of my Boson Blog would cost almost $300 to print  on paper.  I’m tempted, but online seems free.

I created a few videos of a model train version of Boson Massachusetts.  I used someone else’s visual and a different person’s music provided by Youtube.   Perhaps one day I’ll have a bash and buy a set of O Scale Lionel trains to set up my own model City of Boson.

There is so much freedom there.  (Restrictions Apply)

‘White Fragility’ is an exhausting, dull, racially obsessed book that only serves to deepen divisions – by Guy Birchall – 23 July 2020

 

 

Robin DiAngelo’s bestseller just proves that the woke intersectional left is equally unhealthily obsessed with race as the alt-right white nationalists they claim to despise.

‘White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism’ has recently ensconced itself in the global zeitgeist. Despite being written in 2018, its popularity has soared this year in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and global Black Lives Matter protests-cum-riots. It is currently on both the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists, no doubt making its author, Robin DiAngelo, a very wealthy woman.

I didn’t want to read this book; Scandinavian detective novels are more my bag to be honest, but given the prominence of it, I thought it best to see what all the fuss was about. Thus I subjected myself to thisexhausting, boring read, so you don’t have to put yourself through it – or further line the pockets of Professor DiAngelo. 

The book’s argument is simple: if you are white, you are a racist. There is no way out of this fact as DiAngelo says that white people denying they are racist is simply further proof that they are racist. This, she argues, is the eponymous ‘white fragility’ which is a product of white people growing up in a society which is steeped in ‘white supremacy’.

You may well have thought that white supremacy was confined to meetings of skinheads with swastika tattoos and rallies full of hooded lunatics setting fire to crosses. However, DiAngelo argues that Western society is built on white supremacy and as a result it pervades everything. Again, denying that our society is inherently racist only serves to compound and protect that white supremacy on which it is built. 

Even if people of colour gain positions of power in society, such as Barack Obama, Colin Powell, or Clarence Thomas, this does nothing to make the system less racist as they “support the status quo.” DiAngelo’s claims are completely unfalsifiable and effectively make racism in the West something akin to ‘The Force’ in Star Wars. 

Perplexingly, along with being unfalsifiable, they are also contradictory. For example, DiAngelo argues that white people don’t see themselves in racial terms, while simultaneously arguing that their actions preserve “white solidarity.” How can a group that doesn’t see themselves as a group express solidarity? It is also argued that white people should both not avoid talking about race and not expect black people to “educate” them about it. This again makes no sense. 

However, while white people can never not be racist – DiAngelo herself says she is still racist – they can do “work” to make themselves more aware. Coincidentally, this “work” happens to be DiAngelo, who along with being a professor in “multicultural education” specialising in “whiteness studies” is also a diversity “facilitator.” This means that for a fee of between $30,000-$40,000 she will lecture you for around 90 minutes, at the end of which, if you listen very closely, you will still be racist, but more aware of it. That doesn’t exactly seem like money well spent. 

The purpose of these lectures is not only to make whites aware that they are inherently racist, but also to build up their “racial stamina.” You see, racial stamina is the way to combat white fragility and, from the sounds of it, building up this stamina is a deeply unpleasant process. The book is littered with anecdotes from these lectures and seminars, all of which appear to end with someone either in tears or storming out in a rage. Although this is obviously no indication of the lectures themselves being bad or insulting, just indicative of white fragility.

The crying is a particular problem for Professor DiAngelo, particularly white women crying in front of black people. Indeed, she considers this so much of a problem that there is an entire chapter of the book titled ‘White Women’s Tears’. Her reasoning behind this is that there is a history of black men being tortured and murdered because of white women’s distress. As a white woman herself, she writes, “our tears trigger the terrorism of this history,” before citing the case of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after allegedly flirting with a white woman.   

This example is a perfect illustration of how DiAngelo’s warped view of the world manages to simultaneously be insulting to both white and black people. She argues not only that black men will immediately think of lynching when they see a white woman cry, but also that if they comfort the woman they are doing so not out of sympathy or concern, but because they have been conditioned by sexism and the patriarchy.

Her argument constantly seems to rob people of colour of their own agency, while impugning the motive of racism into any action by a white person. If a white person is nice to a black person, it is racist. If they are nasty to a black person, that is also racist. Saying that you were taught to treat everyone equally is not only racist but also ignorant as it shows you are unaware of your socialised racism. 

To illustrate this socialised racism, the book is peppered with anecdotes designed to show that all white people are racist, but really just display DiAngelo’s own prejudices. She argues that white people come away from the story of Jackie Robinson believing he was the first black baseball player good enough to play with whites rather than the first who was allowed to. But no one with even a passing interest in the sport believes that he was simply the first black man capable of competing with whites, making her argument a total fallacy. 

Elsewhere she says that white people use coded language such as “sketchy,” “urban,” or “bad neighbourhood” when what they really mean is a lot of black people live there. To demonstrate this, DiAngelo writes about a conversation she was having with a white friend who was telling her about a white couple she knew that had moved to New Orleans for $25,000. Her friend then told her that the couple had also bought a gun, at which point DiAngelo says, “I immediately knew they had bought a home in a black neighbourhood.” DiAngelo will presumably assert that all white people would make that assumption, but she cannot be sure of that. This statement is indicative her own prejudices, not a universal one.

DiAngelo’s argument is a perfect circular one, you are racist because you are white, only white people can be racist, so being racist makes you white. It is then impossible to argue against because denial is simply further proof of your racism. You can’t even argue that you just treat people as individuals because that ignores their experience as a member of a group in an inescapable intersectional power structure. Ironically, she shares the exact same view of race as the white nationalists she presumably despises. 

The best example of the unfalsifiability of her argument comes when DiAngelo lists a series of phrases used by white people to claim they are not racist. This includes phrases like: “I know people of colour,” “I marched in the sixties,” “the real oppression is class,” “you don’t know me,” but the most telling one of all is, “I disagree.” 

In Robin DiAngelo’s view, disagreeing with her is just proof that you are a racist. There is no room for nuance or debate, no shades of grey – to Professor DiAngelo the world is, in every sense of the phrase, black and white.

Guy Birchall, British journalist covering current affairs, politics and free speech issues. Recently published in The Sun and Spiked Online. Follow him on Twitter @guybirchall

Maine Navy Shipbuilder files complaint over labor union ‘threatening’ anti-scab poetry during strike – By DAVID SHARP (AP) 10 July 2020

Maine: Navy shipbuilder Bath Iron Works on Friday, 10 July 2020, filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing its largest union of threatening workers who cross the picket line during an ongoing strike by quoting an anti-scab poem by Jack London.

The company accused leaders of Machinists’ Local S6 of threatening so-called scabs with fines and loss of benefits — and hinting at violence through the poem.

“Ode To A Scab by Jack London

After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab as long as there is a pool of water deep enough to drown his body in, or a rope long enough to hang his carcass with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab hasn’t.

Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas Iscariot sold his savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British Army. The modern strikebreaker sells his birthright, his country, his wife, his children, and his fellow men for an unfulfilled promise from his employer, trust, or corporation.”

 

“We are extremely disappointed that union leaders would

make false and threatening statements to the very employees they are supposed to represent,” said BIW President Dirk Lesko. “We take these issues very seriously and will co
ntinue to ensure our employees’ rights are protected.”

Union leaders in a statement warned that anyone who chooses to cross the picket line will be fined after the strike is over. Jack London’s poem had this to say about scabs: “No man has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with.”
Jay Wadleigh, a district business representative for the Machinists, said the quote came from a Jack London poem, “Ode to a Scab.”
“Maybe they should study poetry a little more,” Wadleigh said of the shipyard’s managers.
Wadleigh insisted that production workers who cross the picket line are no longer eligible for union benefits, and may face fines, as well. The number of striking workers who’ve chosen to return to their jobs is small — roughly a dozen, he said.

About 4,300 Local S6 workers went on strike June 22 after overwhelmingly rejecting the company’s proposal in dispute that’s primarily centered on subcontractors, work rules and seniority while wages and benefits are a secondary concern.

The company’s final offer that was rejected called for a three-year contract with pay raises of 3% in each year.

Bath Iron Works is one of the Navy’s largest shipbuilders and a major employer in Maine, with 6,800 workers. The General Dynamics subsidiary builds Navy destroyers, the workhorse of the fleet.

The strike, with workers losing company-funded insurance during a pandemic, threatens to put the shipyard further behind schedule in delivering the destroyers to the Navy at a time of growing competition from China and Russia.

The strike began at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, June 22, as some 4,300 members of Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America/International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Local S6 went on strike at the Bath Iron Works (BIW) shipyard here, where workers produce Arleigh Burke- and Zumwalt-class destroyers for the U.S. Navy. BIW is owned General Dynamics, which is one of the largest military contractors in the world, maker of the M1 main battle tank, and which year-in and year-out rakes in $3 billion annual profits on $30 billion in sales with its lucrative cost-plus contracts.

Amid record unemployment, a global pandemic and mounting pressure from the military as BIW’s order backlog grows longer, the shipyard workers have shown they are ready and willing to fight. When a worker at the plant tested positive for COVID-19, word spread like wildfire, and on March 24 more than 3,000 called out sick. What’s at stake in this strike is the survival of the union, as IAM international president Robert Martinez, Jr. stressed in a press release: “The company is engaged in flat-out union-busting, and is exploiting the current pandemic to attempt to outsource work from its dedicated employees.”

Now the battle has been joined, and it will take real class struggle to bust the union-busters. The last strike at the shipyards, in 2000, went on for 55 days, which worries BIW and GD corporate officers and the naval brass. The shipbuilders are in a strong position to win this fight if they hang tough, “come hell or high water” or anti-strike orders from the Pentagon or the White House. Looking to the bosses’ National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is a loser, but a victory here could set the stage for a wave of labor struggles nationwide. The BIW workers’ strike must be taken up by the entire labor movement – Victory to IAM Local S6!

At issue in the strike are demands by the company to rip up seniority protections and to increase subcontracting, as well as jacking up workers’ contributions to health insurance. The shipyard is running six months behind schedule, according to the Defense One news site, with a backlog of eleven ships due to delays stemming from mismanagement exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Meanwhile, the military and business press are full of hand-wringing articles. “It is critical for our Navy that we get ships, we get them on the schedule we contract for them, and that we have high confidence in our shipbuilders to deliver,” complained the assistant secretary of the Navy, James Guerts. In a letter to the Maine Congressional delegation, BIW boss Dirk Lesko cited Vice Adm. William Galinis, the new chief of the Naval Sea System Command, to the effect that “other shipyards with which the Navy does business, our competitors, regularly use subcontractors to address shortfalls in skilled labor to overcome schedule challenges.”

Worker discontent with Iron Works management has run rampant in recent years. The last contract offered up a variety of concessions in the hope of making the company more “efficient” as it vied for a Coast Guard bid. “I was one of the few on the Negotiating Committee that opposed it at the time,” current local president Chris Weirs told an Internationalist reporter, “but we took a five-year wage freeze so they could make a bid on those [Heritage-class] patrol cutters.” Of course, when the company lost the bid, the concessions weren’t returned.

In January 2020, state legislators started threatening to rescind a $45 million tax credit provided to the company on condition that it continue to provide good-paying jobs, citing plans to hire out-of-state contractors and to subcontract low-wage workers, as well as a decline in the average pay at the site as proof that BIW wasn’t living up to its end of the bargain. This further riled S6 members. But it was the company’s brutal indifference to the lives and health of its employees during the coronavirus pandemic that really stirred a hornet’s nest in the ranks.

Local S6 is going up against General Dynamics, one of the world’s largest, and always profitable, war contractors. (William Hall / Maine Business News)

In the March 24 walkout, the union called on the company to shut down for two weeks to clean and disinfect the facility, with full pay for employees. Management refused. After much legal wrangling involving state officials and the intervention of the U.S. Navy, the shipyards were declared “essential.” Initially, BIW refused to provide PPE (personal protective equipment) and insisted that workers provide their own masks. Many workers voted with their feet, and absenteeism was rampant until the company issued a “back-to-work” ultimatum in May. As we go to press, there are reports that four additional employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

As local union president Weirs told News Center Maine on April 10, “Our membership right now collectively is so turned over as far as hatred for Bath Iron Works and how they’re being treated, echoes of the word ‘strike’ are being heard through the shipyard.” Two months later, in a mail ballot, 87% of participating members voted against the proposed contract agreement and to go on strike.

In the last two weeks of the contract, IAM members showed their anger at the company by creating a raucous din, “every hour on the hour, for a minute,” a picketer said. “We would down hammer and bang on sheet metal, you could hear it across the river in Woolwich, it was so loud.” “It’s just a perfect storm,” added another picketer, “How much can you take? No raises for five years, then the disease, now this insulting contract. We decided we were going to hold the line here, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many ships are in the water.”

The Bath Iron Works strike is no local matter. Across the country and around the world, the bosses and their politicians have insisted that the working class and poor shoulder the burden of the ravages caused by the coronavirus pandemic. From employees of logistics giants Amazon and UPS to packinghouse workers and nursing home staffs, companies have made it clear that death and disease are no big whoop compared to the horror of flagging profits. As the United States reports over 2.5 million COVID-19 cases and over 126,000 deaths from the virus, the capitalist bosses have been on the offensive in a mad rush to reopen the economy.

As Donald Trump used the Defense Production Act to order pork and beef processing plants reopened despite huge numbers of COVID-19 infections, the Pentagon leaned on Mexico to reopen the maquiladora (free trade zone) factories along the U.S.-Mexico border, where superexploited workers labor for the U.S. market. Among the corporate giants calling for the factories to reopen was GD. From Bath, Maine to Matamoros, Mexico, the name of the game is profits, profits, profits, and workers lives be damned. On June 8, courageous labor lawyer Susana Prieto Terrazas, who has led a fight to shut down and clean up the maquiladoras, was arrested on trumped-up charges. Local S6 should join in demanding: Freedom now for Susana Prieto!

Despite expressions of support from other labor unions, such as the Teamsters and the Maine Nurses Association, it is crucial to see clearly that this class battle will not be won by playing by the bosses’ rules. The original directives from the union instructed picketers not to engage with scabs nor to block entrances to the struck facility. Now appeals are being made for federal mediation. What is needed instead is to mobilize and organize the power of the working class to shut down Bath Iron Works!

A class-struggle leadership of the labor movement would meet the threat of union-busting subcontracting by fighting to bring all these workers into the IAM, and for union control of hiring – organize the unorganized – for a union hiring hall. In the face of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, workers should form all-worker elected safety committees, independent of management, with the power to shut down production. Faced with rising health care premiums and increases in co-pays, a combative union movement would fight for socialized health care, free for all. And instead of appeals to the NLRB, build mass picket lines that no one crosses!

Workers in “defense” industries are also in a key position to fight the warmongering policies of the imperialist rulers. A key reason why the Pentagon is hot to get the destroyers being built at BIW into the water is to step up provocative deployments in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats alike blame Beijing for the coronavirus, when the truth is that China, a bureaucratically deformed workers state, was uniquely able with its planned economy to limit the spread of the virus and the numbers of dead, in contrast to the disastrous response in the U.S. Just because naval construction workers build Navy ships doesn’t mean they share the war aims of the profit-driven rulers who don’t give a damn about them or any workers anywhere.

Historically, shipyard workers have played a key political role precisely because they are a stronghold of workers power. In November 1982, when the Ku Klux Klan threatened to march in Washington, D.C., longshore and shipbuilders union leaders and activists from Norfolk, Virginia played a key role in a powerful labor/black mobilization that stopped the fascists cold. And going further back, in November 1918 dockers and shipyard workers in the port of Kiel were the spark that set off the German Revolution that brought the slaughter of World War I to an end.

Today, the power of the unions is hamstrung by a pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy that has chained workers to the bosses’ parties, particularly the Democrats. Yet the Democrats no less than Republicans have pushed policies like outsourcing and subcontracting that have destroyed unions and union gains for the last four decades. Instead of relying on Democratic Party phony “friends of labor” politicians like Joe Biden, who claims to support Local S6 workers, class-conscious workers must call to break with the Democrats and undertake the urgent task of building a revolutionary workers party that champions the cause of all of labor and the oppressed.

Victory to IAM Local S6! Bust the union-busters! ■

https://apnews.com/972fa2c022dea1017a2f7f21fed9e05c

Jupiter, Saturn, The Moon, Mars, Venus, Coffee and Vanilla Creamer – 3:33 am 10 July 2020 Friday Morn

3:33 am Friday morn, 10 July 2020

I opened the front door and stepped onto the front porch while holding the door jam and placing my rollerblade on the deck. Over my shoulder, past the street light, next to the column of the front porch roof I saw a bright ‘star’ in the sky to the southeast.

“Jupiter!” I said aloud. I knew I was right. As I went down the stairs and skated across the sidewalk onto the street I saw Jupiter and another fainter ‘star’ to the left.

“Saturn,” I predicted confidently.

As I skated down the middle of the street I could see the half Moon directly south; to the left of the Moon was a small reddish ‘star.’

“Mars!” I exclaimed. I knew I was right. What other red stars have I seen?

I turned around and skated north on the street to the corner. I looked down the cross street towards the one hundred year old Italianate church tower. Due east I saw a very bright ‘star.’

“Venus,” I thought to myself as I straddled the double yellow line on the street. No cars on the road at 3:33 am or so.

I skated up and down the street under the harsh illumination of the numerous street lights. It is hard to see the naked stars when the city is lighting the streets when it gets dark. To what end? Can’t people learn to see in the dark?

I love skating in the dark of night.

Coffee and vanilla creamer called to me and I went back inside to my kitchen and smelled the coffee.

Through internet verification I found that I was right in the planetary identification of four ‘star’ like objects in the sky.

Thirty years ago I might have been able to verify my identifications with a Farmers Almanac, or some other book of star charts and the night sky for New England. I was interested in astronomy back then. I watched and re-watched Carl Sagan’s television series ‘Cosmos.’ But aside from the Big Dipper and Small Dipper and Orion and his easy to spot belt in the winter sky I hardly ever knew what I was looking at. Perhaps Venus was so bright that I knew the planet for what it was. Sometimes Mars was so red, and so close to the Earth, that it was main stream news. But, otherwise I was left to explore Mars and Venus with H. G. Wells and Jules Verne.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200710100508/https://xenagoguevicene.wordpress.com/2020/07/10/jupiter-saturn-the-moon-mars-venus-coffee-and-vanilla-creamer-333-am-10-july-2020-friday-morn/

Should Slaveholder Presidents Statues Be Removed – Poll Results – 2 July 2020