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Spring Book Notes
A Handful of Good Reads
By Paige James

 

Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the
Scenes of a New China
By Rachel DeWoskin
2005, W.W. Norton & Company, New York
304 pages, $24.95

I actually did read this delightful and fascinating book. Written by a poet who spent five years in Beijing in the mid-to-late 90s, it weaves the story of DeWoskin’s time as a star in the wildly popular Chinese soap opera of the title with her observations of political and cultural changes there. It’s intelligent, beautifully written, funny, sobering, and acutely perceptive. Or as The New Yorker’s “Briefly Noted” book column (April 18) put it: “DeWoskin’s cleverly layered account thus charts parallel culture clashes, one that she experiences as a Western woman in modern China and the other, a TV-ready version of the first, tailored to Chinese expectations. The daughter of a Sinologist, DeWoskin has considerable cultural and linguistic resources, allowing such insights as an implicit comparison between Jexi [the sexually liberated American girl DeWoskin played in the soap] and the wilder entries in Biographies of Model Women, a two-thousand-year old text of the Han Dynasty.”

 

Resurrecting Empire:
Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East
By Rashid Khalidi
2004, Beacon Press, Boston
223 pages, $23.00

Professor Khalidi, widely considered the finest scholar of Arab Studies anywhere, currently holds the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies and is director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. Many Chicagoans know and love him from his former residence at U of C and millions of Americans have benefited from his analyses of Middle East history and politics on such radio and TV shows as All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Nightline. This, the sixth of Khalidi’s books—written after the start of the Iraq war—examines the record of Western involvement in the Middle East and analyzes the probable outcome of the most recent U.S. incursions there, making clear how current U.S. policies ignore the lessons of history and seem bound to continue conflict, occupation, and colonial rule. A version of one of the chapters of this very valuable book— already hailed as “extraordinary,” “impressive,” and “sophisticated and persuasive”—appeared in HJ 48 (Summer 03).

 

Total Insecurity:
The Myth of American Omnipotence
By Carol Brightman
2004, Verso, New York
268 pages, $25.00

“A call to arms to the new generation to stand up to this Trojan Horse called the War on Terrorism,” this book investigates the U.S. compulsion for unilateral power, focusing on the latest imperial adventure of Bush and other corporate politicians in D.C. as they attempt to turn Iraq into a cash cow. Brightman shows how the U.S. obsession with security after 9/11 has prompted a permanent war economy, one long planned by neo-con strategists. Weaving personal and historical reflections of the dissent of the 1960s and 70s, Brightman compares these to protests today. While admitting that much of our description is stolen from the book jacket, we hasten to add that we’ve read other books by Brightman, covering subjects as diverse as Mary McCarthy, Cuba, and the Grateful Dead and can attest that she’s a brilliant thinker and terrific writer.

 

Out of the Sea and Into the Fire:
Latin American-U.S. Immigration in the Global Age
By Kari Lydersen
2005, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine
276 pages, $16.95

Yes, this is the same Kari Lydersen who edits our People’s Grapevine section each issue. She also reports for the Washington Post’s midwest bureau and is an instructor with the Urban Youth International Journalism Program, working with youth who live in public housing or attend alternative high schools. This collection of writings, from interviews she conducted between 2000 and 2004 and scenes she witnessed during many trips to Latin America, the border, and different parts of the U.S. is, as Nation contributer Scott Sherman says, “Solid reporting from the Spanish-speaking world, delivered with grace, intelligence and a vigorous point of view.” Lyderson tells the stories of Latin American immigrants in the age of globalization, with “writing that conjures up sensuous images of Latin American culture juxtaposed against the violent, polluted and desperate realities of a world in which profit has become the overriding motive in human interactions.” [Sasha Abramsky, author of Hard Time Blues].

 

The Indian Agent
By Dan O’Brien
2004, The Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut
281 pages, $21.95

Dan O’Brien is an award-winning novelist and short story writer and has also written several books of nonfiction on subjects including falconry (he’s an expert) and raising buffalo on his ranch in the Black Hills of South Dakota. For years Wild Idea Buffalo has supplied the kitchen of the Heartland Café. The Indian Agent is the “riveting” sequel to O’Brien’s earlier historical novel, The Contract Surgeon (“a thinking man’s western”), which told the story of the U.S. Army surgeon who became a close friend of Crazy Horse. The sequel follows the life of surgeon McGillycuddy as he goes on to become the youngest agent in history for the Red Cloud Agency, later renamed the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It’s full of the dynamic history of the Plains and tells the true story of one of the most painful periods of the West, the conversion of that land from one of free nomadic people to one of settled commerce, achieved at horrific cost.

 

Teaching Toward Freedom:
Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom
By William Ayers
2004, Beacon Press, Boston
168 pages, $23.00

Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at UIC, Ayers’s prolific writings about all aspects of teaching and our nation’s schools have for two decades been considered required reading for educators, and students of education, and beyond that have a wide audience of parents and others who care deeply about teaching, education, and democracy. In this book he draws on his own experiences as well as on popular culture, film, poetry, and novels in a discussion of how educators teach and why, emphasizing his belief that “teaching, at its best, is a enterprise that helps human beings reach the full measure of their humanity”—especially if “we allow students to become visible, vocal authors of their own texts and creators of their own lives...demonstrating that they are valued, that their humanity is honored and that their growth, enlightenment, and liberation are the paramount concern. We take the side of the student.”

 

danger on peaks
poems by Gary Snyder
2004, Shoemaker Hoard, Washington, D.C.
112 pages, $22.00

He has been hailed as “an elder statesman of the natural world and tribal unions of poetry,” and for myself and many of us at HJ, Snyder has been a kind of absentee mentor, providing—through his volumes of poetry, interviews, and essays—wonderful ideas about Zen, ecology, Asian language and literature, local politics, bioregionalism, tools and the natural world. This is Snyder’s
first collection of new poems in twenty years and “contains work in a surprising variety of styles, creating an arc-shaped trail from [his] earliest climbs to what the poet calls ‘poems of intimate, immediate life, gossip, and insight’ (some of the poet’s most personal work ever).” Here’s a short one:

A Dent in a Bucket
Hammering a dent out of a bucket
A woodpecker
Answers from the woods

Chants of a Lifetime:
Selected Poetry of Lincoln Bergman, 1953 – 2003
By Lincoln Bergman
2003, Regent Press, Oakland, California
324 pages, $20.00

Lincoln Bergman began life as a “red diaper baby,” and has been a student, poet, and radical activist. He’s got the longest resume I’ve ever read, including work on a cattle ranch, as a lab assistant, print and radio journalist, teacher in the people’s Republic of China, foreign correspondent in Cuba, union proofreader, medical editor, and science curriculum specialist. His path has crossed that of my husband’s and several of our friends from the 60s; everyone swears he is one of the most wonderful guys in the world, and I can believe it after reading his six pages of acknowledgements, which feature long, loving homages to each of the many folks he thanks. Not surprisingly, the subject matter of these many poems is extremely broad-ranging and the styles various. Here’s a stanza from “Heavier Than Mount Tia,” dedicated to Fred Hampton: “You jive ass fools/Who practice genocide/Shall surely die/Us brothers and sisters/Shall survive/And dig it/No matter who you kill/The revolution stays alive.”

 

Wealthfare:
Social security is not the real crisis
Take the Rich Off Welfare
by Mark Zepezauer
2004, South End Press
184 pages
Reviewed by Tracy McLellan

The heart of this book, a 2004 update originally published in 1996, is in its opening pages, where Zepezauer presents the formulas upon which his rich analysis devolves. His method of presenting complicated quantitative and proportional economic equations exposes a leviathan of graft and corruption, and makes plain its meaning: that the rich are clobbering anyone who’s not. He documents growing economic disparities that haven’t been as severe since 1929, and puts lie to the stereotype of welfare recipients being societal parasites.

A critical ingredient in Zepezauer’s method is comparing income and Social Security (“payroll”) taxes for rich and poor, and the concomitant government services they enjoy. The rich pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than do the poor. Capital gains taxes have shrunk drastically in the last half-century. Dividend and investment income is not taxed, and many very wealthy corporations pay no taxes at all. Adding injury to injury, corporations are disproportionately the beneficiary of what Zepezauer says are the five basic types of wealthfare: tax breaks, subsidies, firesales, cost overruns, and lax enforcement of white collar crime.

Regressive taxes, those that disproportionately hit the poorest, have seen the sharpest increases over the last quarter-century, notes Zepezauer. The wealthy, who have seen sharp increases in income in that time, pay a vastly smaller percentage of their income in taxes than do those of poorer and more moderate means. In the 1950s corporations paid half of federal revenues. Today they pay just 7.4%. The lost revenue has to be made up with higher taxes for the poor and middle-class, or with cuts in services.
According to Bush and the neo-cons, Social Security is allegedly in “crisis,” even though it has perennially run a large surplus. That surplus is supposed to be kept in trust to pay future beneficiaries. Social Security was originally a set-aside program, but was incorporated into the “unified budget” under Lyndon Johnson. It has thus become in effect just another income tax to be sucked up in wasteful military spending or corporate welfare and fraud, says Zepezauer. The Social Security Trust Fund is owed $1 trillion and interest. The payroll tax has seen sharp increases, beginning with Reagan. At the same time it is capped on incomes over $87,000. Therefore Bill Gates, as wealthy as the 100 million poorest Americans, pays the same Social Security tax as a bus driver making $87,000. If this cap alone were removed, Social Security revenues would increase about $80 billion annually.

According to Zepezauer’s extensive documentation, wealthfare rose from $448 billion a year in 1996 to $815 billion in 2003, an 82% increase. In the same period welfare rose from $130 billion to $193 billion, a 41% increase. Only vast higher costs for Medicaid figured for any increase at all. Zepezauer’s presentation of such illuminating information is simple, straightforward, compelling, and easy to understand.

Wealthfare enjoyed by big business, writes Zepezauer, includes tax avoidance by transnationals, lower taxes on capital gains, accelerated depreciation, insurance loopholes, business meals and entertainment, tax free municipal bonds, and export subsidies. Other corporate goodies include the savings and loan bailout, agribusiness subsidies, media handouts, nuclear subsidies, aviation subsidies, mining subsidies, oil and gas tax breaks, timber subsidies, and others. Among other particularly egregious developments is a $100,000 “accelerated depreciation” for the largest of the gas-guzzling SUVs.

Military waste and fraud is in its own category, and accounts for about a quarter of the wealthfare, says Zepezauer. The Pentagon budget increased $70 billion annually over the two years to 2003, to $393 billion. Supplemental spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan added costs of several hundred billions more. The Pentagon loses outright billions of dollars that it often rectifies by simply making accounting write-offs. Overpaying military contractors through cost overruns and ridiculous prices—a $2,043 nut and a $2,548 pair of duckbill pliers, to name two of numerous outrageous examples—costs scores of billions a year. Weapons contractors are convicted of felonies with regularity.

B-2 bombers, originally estimated to cost $550 million each ended up costing $2.2 billion, literally worth more than their weight in gold. Three unnecessary Seawolf subs were built at $2.4 billion apiece. That project was eventually abandoned to build 30 of the equally redundant Virginia class of submarines, says Zepezauer, at a cost of $73 billion. Dick Cheney, Caspar Weinberger, George Schultz, William Perry, James Baker, and Frank Carlucci are just a smattering of officials who have swung through the revolving door between high government positions and the military contractors with whom they do business.

“In 1994,” writes Zepezauer, “the murderous government of Indonesia got over $125 million in Export-Import loans to buy equipment from Hughs Aircraft. Ex-Im [also] insured a $3 million loan to General Electric to build a factory in Mexico that cost 1,500 jobs in Indiana. The Chinese government used an $18 million loan to modernize a steel plant—even though that company was accused of illegally dumping steel onto U.S. markets below cost.” The government provides $7 billion a year in grants to foreign governments, which often come back to U.S. arms manufacturers in the form of sales.
Middle to lower-middle incomes—the vast majority—bear the brunt of this unfair system because they are neither qualified for the benefits of the poorest, such as Medicaid and food stamps, nor are their incomes large enough to take advantage of the corporate welfare of the rich. The already-rich elite on the other hand, reap criminal—in some cases, literally—windfalls. Other tactics are technically legal, such as what Zepezauer refers to as “the Bermuda Shuffle” in which corporations incorporate in say, the Caymun Islands or Bermuda, by opening a mail drop while still enjoying the superior infrastructure of the United States where they do the bulk of their business.

Take the Rich Off Welfare is, among other things, an examination of vast waste, fraud, and corruption in the Pentagon and its budget, a precondition for this type of study. I was disappointed at Zepezauer’s tacit acceptance of the underlying premise of the necessity of a strong military. He doesn’t fully deconstruct the fact that military spending has by the very nature of its size engendered massive corruption for generations, and even when put to the uses for which it was intended, bred war crimes of historically unprecedented proportions. Nor does he examine the fact that the increasingly deadly firepower of modern weaponry has made it too apocalyptic to use. Martin Luther King’s words are more apt today than ever: “Our choice today is nonviolence or nonexistence.”

It is obvious only organized popular resistance and will could counter the trends over the last half-century documented by Zepezauer. Individual protest would be crushed by the nature and magnitude of the rank corruption rampant in our society. Lamentably largely uninformed, the vast victimized majority is unable to promulgate, much less institute, genuine democratic reforms that would be to their advantage and thus, by definition, just. As long as that’s true, the status quo of corporate hegemony will continue to dominate us with its nihilistic values, to the economic advantage of the very few and the disadvantage of the many. This does not happen chaotically of its own accord. Those who manipulate this exploitive and cruel system know precisely what they are doing, to whom, and for whom, they’re doing it.

Tracy McLellan is an activist, a member of Fellowship of Reconcilation, as well as a freelance writer, originally from and newly back to the Chicagoland area, employed by Peace Action. You may contact Tracy at tracymacL@yahoo.com.

American Left History101
Taught by an irreverant activist journalist and his companions from beyond the grave
Murdered by Capitalism
by John Ross
Nation Books, 2004
346 pages
Reviewed by Rus Bradburd

To refer to John Ross as a journalist would be like calling Woody Guthrie a vocalist. Ross has been on the front lines of nearly every progressive American foreign policy movement for the last forty years. His fearless and irreverent approach to United States history and his ear for the musicality of
language make his newest book perhaps his greatest achievement. It should be a required text for anyone interested in our history, especially our progressive past.

Murdered by Capitalism is, however, a long and lively walk from being a textbook. Ross is a fine poet and novelist in addition to being a journalist, and this book is constructed brilliantly. For years, Ross has visited the California grave of Eddie Schnaubelt, who may or may not have been the bomb-thrower at Chicago’s landmark Haymarket Riot of 1886. One fine day while pondering the future of the American Left, Ross spills a little wine on Schnaubelt’s plot. Magically, old Eddie’s voice—and his fascinating story—come to life. He explains the story of the Labor Movement and its impact, from the death of the Haymarket Martyrs to the assassination of William McKinley.

Meanwhile, Ross intersperses his own compelling story: his New York upbringing, his emergence as a beat poet, his historically significant jail term for refusing to fight in Viet Nam, his frontline coverage of the Zapatista Rebellion in Mexico. Along the way he has a footrace with Enrico Fermi, raps to Charlie Mingus’s bop, is chased by an irate Jack Kerouac, smokes up with Paul Bowles, and hangs out with Allen Ginsburg.

Lest Ross get a big ego over his riffing with heroes of the Left, Eddie Schnaubelt taunts him from six-feet-under: Ross’s story is boring and self centered, and besides, Ross’s tale is getting more ink than Eddie! Get on with it, Eddie demands. Finally, Eddie clams up, refusing to co-author the book from the other side.

So Ross heads to suburban Chicago’s Forest Home Cemetery, where Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and William Z. Foster all come to life to chip in their conflicting versions of history. (Ross occasionally plays loosely with the facts—or is it a dead progressive mixing up the truth?) Labor legend Joe Hill belts out a song from beyond the grave and even Sacco and Vanzetti give their testimony.

Finally Ross takes us to Baghdad, where he would seem to have signed his own death warrant by agreeing to be a Human Shield. After decades of marches, police beatings, arrests, rabble-rousing, and documenting the Left’s struggles, Ross is ready to live the final chapter of his book. It ends in frustration when the shields are asked to leave Iraq, and Ross isn’t able to confront Bush’s bombs face to face.

Instead, Ross is left to do what he has always done, and what he does best: rattle our conscience and psyche with his brilliant prose. His writing sings off the page—he’s still a poet at heart—and this is unquestionably the most compelling history book I’ve read. Ross’s self-deprecating humor and sharp wit have few peers. Indeed, his commitment to social justice and living the life of a progressive journalist may be peerless. Ross is a real American Hero and deserves major accolades for this book.

Rus Bradburd coached basketball for many years, and teaches writing at New Mexico State University. John Ross’ online weekly, Blindman’s Bluff, can be read by going to wnu.igc.org.