Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[No Robots]

Mainly just annoying and pushy. They had one charismatic guy who, after he got thrown out of the NDP, went on to become a well-known business and tech writer. The technical grounds for throwing him out of the Alberta NDP was that, as an adherent to the Fourth International, he was de facto a member of another political party, which is contrary to the NDP constitution. Tapscott got to the deciding meeting late (or was misinformed about its start time). The council had already passed the motion that the Fourth International was another party. The next motion was to expel him. He got up and said that his whole defence was that the Fourth International was not another party. The chair ruled him out of order on that point, and the vote to expel passed.

I get the value of preaching world revolution, but the only practical socialism today is national socialism, ie. socialism that recognizes the nation state as the fundamental political unit. The idealism becomes a real nuisance when it turns against the existing structures in parties, with the Trot attacks on AOC being a case in point.

 

[No Robots]

There is an amusing movie with Jay Baruchel about a high-school Trotskyite, The Trotsky.

 

[lpetrich]

AOC: “What Latin America Wants Is Sovereignty” in Jacobin magazine

... and one Brazilian movement’s “awe-inspiring” melding of committed radicalism and hard-headed pragmatism. “The absolute rejection of cynicism,” Ocasio-Cortez says, “was astounding.”

Something that other left-wingers could learn from.

Earlier this year, when [Brazilian] President Lula came to Washington, I had the benefit of sitting down with him, and I asked him what he thinks is needed right now from the progressives. He said, quite directly, that in Latin America progressives regularly gather, but US progressives are nowhere to be seen. He doesn’t know where we are. I took that as a challenge, and that’s one of the main things that precipitated our visit to Brazil, Chile, and Colombia.

President Lula may not know where to look.

Then

The US far right and fascist movements have been working extremely hard to export many of their tactics and goals throughout Latin America. We’ve seen it in Brazil, famously, with Bolsonaro and the January 8 attack on their capital. But in Chile, this is also very prevalent. One of the ways we are seeing this is a desire to erase history.

There’s an enormous movement to try to erase what happened with the coup overthrowing Salvador Allende’s government — to portray coup as almost sympathetic, as though this was a government that had it coming — which is why our call for the United States to declassify many of the documents regarding its involvement in the coup are so important. For the United States to be able to declassify this information, to say that there was external involvement, that this is something that happened and was incredibly unjust — it can’t be understated how important that would be for the Chilean people as well as the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people impacted by having a family member lost or missing or tortured during the Pinochet regime. [Editor’s note: The United States declassified some of these documents late last month.]

noting
U.S. declassifies historic Nixon intelligence reports on 1973 Chile coup

The records show the Nixon Administration's view — and possible support — of events in Santiago de Chile that led to the downfall of the democratically elected government of Socialist President Salvador Allende for a brutal dictatorship.

noting
U.S. Government Declassifies the President’s Daily Briefs Related to Chile from September 8, 1973 and September 11, 1973 - U.S. Embassy in Chile

"Yes, I have introduced legislation to declassify records regarding US involvement in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia." -- though I haven't found anything in congress.gov

 

[lpetrich]

More:

Something I appreciated far more in visiting there is how much the history of Colombia is never told, and how that prevents people in the United States from supporting just policies. For example, when you hear “Colombia,” if anything comes to mind, it is narcos and guerillas and different paramilitaries and warfare. It’s a caricature without an understanding of the root of this conflict.

The issues in Colombia, I believe, are fundamentally about the legitimacy of governments. You have a government that historically was dominated by elite interests that then stated they were going to be a democracy in the mid-1900s and ostensibly converted to that democracy — except every time a liberal or left party member began to ascend, they were assassinated. You basically have a one-party right-wing state, and it leads many people to say, well, clearly this is not a legitimate government, and if we want the poor, if we want working-class people to have any shot at life, we’re going to engage in revolution, and in violent revolution at that.

That’s the seeds of what we have in Colombia, which historically has right-wing government and left-wing militias because there’s no democratic space for an actual two-party system.

Then mentioning drug trafficking and illegal mining.

The election of Gustavo Petro as the first leftist president in the history of Colombia is incredibly important. It is the first time that Colombians have had any shred of evidence that democracy can yield diverse political results. His election is less connected to him as a figure, and more that someone on the left can be elected president without being assassinated. It provides hope for some semblance of peace and nonviolence in this country.

 

[lpetrich]

That is why when we see Republicans attack Colombia and try to withdraw aid or block a US ambassador, it is so dangerous because it begins to reinforce this slide back into illegitimacy for Colombia.

In effect, believing that the only legitimate regime is a far-right one that toadies up to US big businesses. One has to ask what such people would have thought if they had been living in the British North American Colonies in the early 1770's. Would they have taking in the side of the British leadership no matter what?

Then getting into the politics and economics of fossil fuels. Much of their fossil-fuel extraction is intended for export, to earn money from oil-thirsty nations. "On the other side, as you mentioned, Ecuador, Colombia, and many others are having great strides in their climate movements and protecting the Amazon."

Also, "For example, guerrilla factions that ostensibly have left or revolutionary roots are often responsible for illegal mining and the killing of indigenous peoples in order to sustain a financial base for them to continue their activities." She is commendably critical. It's good that someone can have a moral center and also be critical; being critical does not mean that one has to be aware of the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The interviewer said "The United States cannot just be like, okay, everything’s green now and you’re stuck where you are economically — have fun." and AOC responded "Absolutely. Especially when you look at the United States, at COP 26 and 27, exhibiting extraordinary resistance to helping developing countries transition — because it is the most advanced economies in the world that are responsible for the most emissions."

The sort of thing that makes many Third Worlders feel very sore. "Do as I say, not as I do."

 

[lpetrich]

Then talking about the activists she met in Brazil, the Landless and Homeless Workers Movements (MST, MTST).

I found the way they balance all of these things — a kind of radicalism in direct action and a pragmatism in their electoral program — to be awe-inspiring. The absolute rejection of cynicism was astounding.

We struggle with that in the United States. There’s this binary: you’re either a true revolutionary and you believe in direct action and autonomy and the electoral system is a sham — and that creates this cynical vortex, and it keeps you small — or it’s this electoralism, where more radical movements and radical action are dismissed as naïve. And it’s very difficult to coalition-build on those two.

 

[lpetrich]

Then,

It is important for us to lift the hood on the root causes of migration, and the climate crisis is absolutely one of them.

When we see these images on television, there really is so much implicit racism. We see these shots to make it look as though there’s hordes of people coming up on our border, and there’s never any exploration about where they’re coming from.

...
There are Haitians, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, but the bulk of migrants have been coming from Venezuela. The right wing is doing its thing saying, oh, this country is socialist, this country is authoritarian, and all these people are fleeing this regime, virtually everyone here is a political refugee.

It's curious that right-wingers haven't been welcoming them like how they welcomed Cuban refugees.

There are two main factors I would argue are driving migration out of Venezuela. The first is the economic situation in Venezuela. The second is US intervention and sanctions, which have contributed to destabilizing the situation.

I’ll start with the sanctions piece first. In 2017, Florida senator Marco Rubio — who is extremely politically motivated when it comes to US policy in Latin America, around supporting right-wing movements — advocated dramatically expanded sanctions towards Venezuela. Prior to that, we had much narrower sanctions that were targeted towards Venezuelan elites that were making unjust movements in the country. And so Rubio proposes sanctions that dramatically expand the scale in a way that destabilizes the Venezuelan economy and impacts poor, working-class, and middle-class Venezuelans.

AOC likes sanctions directed against ruling elites and their favorites, like the Magnitsky Act, directed at Vladimir Putin and his oligarch friends.

 

[lpetrich]

In addition to that, you have that fact I just mentioned, that Venezuela is a petrostate. There are booms and busts, as with any industry. And when the price of oil goes down, this is a state where 94 to 96 percent of its economy is dependent on oil and begins to suffer dramatically.

The resource curse.

They have dealt with decades and decades of US interventionism, which has created an enormous amount of skepticism whenever the United States is involved, but they also do not seek dependency on China or any other global power. What they want, and what much of Latin America I think has wanted since colonization, is sovereignty and independence.

Then

We are in a race against the clock when it comes to the climate crisis, and the more we can build that global consensus, the more we can achieve our goals. And that includes with China, by the way. Once you label another country, let alone a superpower, as an adversary, that brings a lot of different implications. In this multipolar world, I think it’s really important to understand everyone’s different incentives. There may be many who disagree — surely there are a lot — but I think this is a situation that should not be escalated.

She doesn't like the idea of a cold war with China. I think that some cold warriors have been itchy for another enemy to fight. For the last 30 years or thereabouts, the Islamic world has seemed like such an enemy. Now such people are craving a cold war with China.

A decade ago, right-wing Rep. Michele Bachmann was pretty much calling China an exemplary capitalist country: Michele Bachmann: Look To China On Social Program Cuts | HuffPost Latest News

Bachmann said that Lyndon Johnson's Great Society has "not worked, and it's put us into the modern welfare state...If you look at China, they don't have food stamps."

She continued, "They save for their own retirement security, they don't have AFDC (Aid to Families With Dependent Children), they don't have the modern welfare state, and China's growing...and so what I would do is look at the programs that LBJ gave us, with the Great Society, and they'd be gone."

 

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on X: "Thank you all ..." / X

Thank you all for the sweet birthday messages.

Today I wish for the peace, safety, and dignity of all human life.

Stay safe, be kind, and love one another. A better world is possible.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

She doesn't like the idea of a cold war with China. I think that some cold warriors have been itchy for another enemy to fight. For the last 30 years or thereabouts, the Islamic world has seemed like such an enemy. Now such people are craving a cold war with China.

To choose not to participate in a war is to surrender.

Thus we have a cold war with China and a mostly-cold war with Islam. They chose the wars, we didn't.

 

[lpetrich]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on X: "There is power in a union. Congratulations @sagaftra!" / X - 9:34 AM · Nov 9, 2023

SAG-AFTRA leaders defend AI terms in strike agreement - Los Angeles Times

On Monday, the guild released an 18-page document summarizing the tentative deal, which states that studios must obtain permission from actors in order to create a “digital replica” of them for a project and then compensate the performer appropriately whenever it’s used.

In cases where a performer’s employer seeks to create a digital replica of the actor’s voice or likeness with the intent of using the copy in their place, the employer must first obtain “clear and conspicuous” consent from the performer.

The employer must pay the performer for the number of days they would have been required to perform scenes featuring their digital likeness. And if a digital replica of a background actor is used to portray a principal character, the background actor must be compensated for the days they would have worked in person (plus residuals).

But some actors — including SAG-AFTRA national board member Shaan Sharma — are fearful that companies could refuse to hire performers who won’t consent to digital replication.

 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike
July 14 – November 9, 2023
(3 months and 26 days, or 118 days)

Writers’ strike update: what to know about the WGA’s tentative deal - Vox

The exact language of the contract is yet to be released. But from the WGA summary, it appears the union was successful in its effort. The MOA includes increases to minimum wage and compensation, increased pension and health fund rates, improvements to terms for length of employment and size of writing teams (which had been shrinking drastically in recent years), and better residuals (which are like royalties), including foreign streaming residuals.

The MOA also lays out terms for artificial intelligence, with an agreement that doesn’t prevent writers or productions from making use of generative AI but prohibits using software to reduce or eliminate writers and their pay. “A writer can choose to use AI when performing writing services, if the company consents and provided that the writer follows applicable company policies, but the company can’t require the writer to use AI software (e.g., ChatGPT) when performing writing services,” the MOA states.

Additionally, “the WGA reserves the right to assert that exploitation of writers’ material to train AI is prohibited by MBA or other law” — a major issue given many authors’ recent discovery that their work is being used to train AI owned by Meta and other companies.

 2023 Writers Guild of America strike
May 2 – September 27, 2023
(4 months and 25 days, or 148 days)

UAW reaches deal with GM, ends coordinated strikes against Detroit automakers | Reuters

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union reached a tentative agreement with General Motors (GM.N) on Monday, signaling an end to walkouts that have cost the No. 1 Detroit automaker more than $400 million a week.

The union has also reached agreements with Ford Motor (F.N) and Chrysler-owner Stellantis (STLAM.MI) over the last few days, in what is seen as significant victories for auto laborers after years of stagnant wages and painful concessions made by the union following the 2008 financial crisis.

 2023 United Auto Workers strike
September 15 – October 30, 2023
(1 month, 2 weeks and 1 day)

I'm mentioning these strikes here because AOC has supported all three of them. Some of the online left have called her a strikebreaking traitor for supporting a deal to avert a railroad-worker strike a year ago, but she herself said about that deal that she was following what the union leadership wanted.

 

[lpetrich]

AOC supports yet another labor action:

Dripped Out Trade Unionists on X: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the picket line with American Airlines flight attendants at LaGuardia (pic link)" / X
then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on X: "American Airlines flight attendants are on the picket line at LGA and across the country demanding a fair contract.
It is unacceptable that some of the same attendants who care for us the skies must resort to sleeping in cars because their pay is so low.
Stand with @APFAunity" / X

 

[lpetrich]

Over the last month or two, ... | Instagram - a great tribute to a recently-deceased grandmother (not sure whether maternal or paternal). Abuela = Spanish for grandmother


US mediators reject attempt by flight attendants to clear the path for a strike at American Airlines | AP News - Updated 5:24 PM PST, November 28, 2023

Flight attendants in North America push for landmark changes in new contracts | Reuters - Dec 21 - "Thousands of cabin crews at carriers in both countries are demanding to be paid for more of their hours at work - a fundamental change from how the industry currently compensates them by paying largely when the aircraft is in motion."

 

[bilby]

a fundamental change from how the industry currently compensates them by paying largely when the aircraft is in motion.

A decent lawyer could get them paid 24/7/365, by pointing out that as Einstein demonstrated that no reference frame is preferred, all aircraft are in constant motion in all but an insignificant handful of frames.

More seriously, I remain astonised that US workers have consistently refrained from rising up in bloody revolution against their oppressors. None of this shit would fly (pun intended) in Europe or Australasia.

 

[lpetrich]

a fundamental change from how the industry currently compensates them by paying largely when the aircraft is in motion.

A decent lawyer could get them paid 24/7/365, by pointing out that as Einstein demonstrated that no reference frame is preferred, all aircraft are in constant motion in all but an insignificant handful of frames.

Motion is almost always referred to one's immediate environment, so that won't do. But one does sometimes have to be careful about what some motion is relative to. Airplane pilots distinguish between airspeed and groundspeed, for instance.

 

[bilby]

a fundamental change from how the industry currently compensates them by paying largely when the aircraft is in motion.

A decent lawyer could get them paid 24/7/365, by pointing out that as Einstein demonstrated that no reference frame is preferred, all aircraft are in constant motion in all but an insignificant handful of frames.

Motion is almost always referred to one's immediate environment, so that won't do. But one does sometimes have to be careful about what some motion is relative to. Airplane pilots distinguish between airspeed and groundspeed, for instance.

Well if cabin crews are only paid when the aircraft is moving relative to the crewmember themselves, that still implies that they should be paid for the vast majority of the time when they're not on board, and for a significant fraction of the time when they are.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

a fundamental change from how the industry currently compensates them by paying largely when the aircraft is in motion.

A decent lawyer could get them paid 24/7/365, by pointing out that as Einstein demonstrated that no reference frame is preferred, all aircraft are in constant motion in all but an insignificant handful of frames.

More seriously, I remain astonised that US workers have consistently refrained from rising up in bloody revolution against their oppressors. None of this shit would fly (pun intended) in Europe or Australasia.

This is union exploitation, not company exploitation. The unions ask for it, the company simply looks at the bottom line.

This is simply another way to skew things towards the senior workers.

 

[lpetrich]

Ryan Grim recently wrote “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.” He has an adapted excerpt from it in AOC Was Offered $100,000 by AIPAC. She Turned Them Down.

When she stunned the political world by upsetting Rep. Joe Crowley on June 26, the assumption was that the big story of the night was the shock defeat of the next Speaker of the House. It soon became clear that Crowley would be the one to become a trivia question, and the real story was the rise of the politician quickly branded AOC.

She did well in interview after interview, until in mid-July, she appeared on PBS program "Firing Line".

In the midst of the primary campaign, she had attracted attention with her full-throated criticism of the Israel Defense Forces, which had fired on Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza, killing many.

Her criticism hadn’t been a commentary on the politics of the region, she said when pressed about it during the interview, but merely a defense of the right to protest without being killed.

“This is a massacre,” she had posted to Twitter in May 2018, as Israeli forces continued to kill protesters in Gaza, with the numbers of dead climbing north of two hundred. “I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such. No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore.”

MH asked AOC about her position on Israel, and she said that she believed in a two-state solution, and that she was addressing this issue as a human-rights activist. MH pressed her on what she means by "the occupation of Palestine", and after trying to get back on the subject of mistreatment of Palestinians, she said "I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue," and that when she was growing up, Middle Eastern politics was not very prominent.

Commendable honesty.

AOC then retreated from doing interviews. Saikat Chakrabarti: “That was the first time she had a bit of a confidence hit because she didn’t do incredible in an interview. Up until that moment, she was doing incredible at every interview, and that’s a scary thing for someone like her, who really runs on her ability to command the room and [possess] confidence and belief in herself.”

She was attacked from the Left for being too soft on the occupation, from the Right for "attacking Israel", and from all sides for "the cardinal sin of admitting to not knowing about something", as Ryan Grim put it.

 

[lpetrich]

About a week later, she was in Kansas City with Bernie Sanders for a rally on behalf of labor attorney Brent Welder, with the duo hoping to make the case that even in Kansas, Bernie-and-AOC-style populism can flip a swing district. While there, she also got a lesson into how things typically work in national politics. Corbin Trent, her communications director, got a call from a man saying he represented donors to the organization AIPAC, or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

They told him there was $100,000 ready to be handed over to Ocasio-Cortez to “start the conversation” with the organization, with much more than that to come. Chakrabarti and AOC both told me they were shocked at the offer. The campaign was flush with cash and it was rejected out of hand. “I was expecting the corruption to be much more subtle,” Trent told me. “This was basically a bag filled with cash.”

Daniel Marans confirmed my reporting with Chakrabarti and Trent, who offered this reflection: “The implication was that her positions could be repaired with conversations, that her positions where based on a lack of information and lack of proximity to enough of a variety of people,” Trent recalled.

Top Pro-Israel Group Offered Ocasio-Cortez $100,000 Campaign Cash, Per New Book | HuffPost Latest News

AIPAC denied to HuffPost that any of its representatives reached out to Ocasio-Cortez’s team this way.

“This is the first time AIPAC is ever hearing of this story,” said Marshall Wittman, spokesperson for AIPAC. “To the extent it ever happened, it did not involve AIPAC.”

Even if not AIPAC officially, then someone associated with AIPAC.

 

[Derec]

Ryan Grim recently wrote “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.” He has an adapted excerpt from it in AOC Was Offered $100,000 by AIPAC. She Turned Them Down.

What would be the purpose of the offer? To "turn" her?
In any case, I would not trust reporting by The Intercept any more than I would trust Daily Fail.

In the midst of the primary campaign, she had attracted attention with her full-throated criticism of the Israel Defense Forces, which had fired on Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza, killing many.

This is typical of Intercept's dishonest reporting here. IDF did not fire on any "demonstrators". They fired on people whose objective was to break through the fence, and, in words of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, "tear out [Israelis'] hearts from their bodies".

This was the purpose of the so-called "Great March of Return" of 2018/19 and something they again attempted, with more success, on 10/7.

Her criticism hadn’t been a commentary on the politics of the region, she said when pressed about it during the interview, but merely a defense of the right to protest without being killed.

It is also a commentary on her ignorance of the issues. That wasn't a peaceful protest. This BBC documentary goes into the border riots/attacks in more detail. For all its desire to be sympathetic toward Palestinians, the real goals of the "Great March of Return" are very much evident.

“This is a massacre,” she had posted to Twitter in May 2018, as Israeli forces continued to kill protesters in Gaza, with the numbers of dead climbing north of two hundred.

Wrong. What happened on 10/7 was a massacre. What happened in May 2018 is IDF preventing this massacre happening then.

MH asked AOC about her position on Israel, and she said that she believed in a two-state solution, and that she was addressing this issue as a human-rights activist. MH pressed her on what she means by "the occupation of Palestine", and after trying to get back on the subject of mistreatment of Palestinians, she said "I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue," and that when she was growing up, Middle Eastern politics was not very prominent.

So she was only aware of issues that were "prominent" when she was a kid?
Also, her degree is in "Economics and International Relations". I guess she is as ignorant of the latter as she is of the former.

AOC then retreated from doing interviews. Saikat Chakrabarti:

Saikat, the fan of the Nazi collaborator?

She was attacked from the Left for being too soft on the occupation, from the Right for "attacking Israel", and from all sides for "the cardinal sin of admitting to not knowing about something", as Ryan Grim put it.

It's fine to not know something. It's less forgivable when it's part of what you supposedly studied.