Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 08.22.05

[David Shove (shove001]

            P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    08.22.05

1. SEIU/hospital           8.22 all day Shakopee
2. Al McFarlane/KFAI       8.22 11am
3. P-9 strike/film         8.22 6pm
4. Living wage             8.22 7pm
5. Eminent domain          8.22 7pm

6. Dickinson/Farheen/KFAI  8.23 11am
7. Boycott WalMart/rally   8.23 3:30pm
8. Loose talk salon        8.23 6:30pm
9. Assassination/Wellstone 8.23 8pm

10. Joshua Frank  - The Democrats' environmental record: failing nature
11. Robert Jensen - America's good Germans? A mercenary society
12. Joshua Frank  - If he only had a heart: Bush's emotional incapacities
13. ed            - Proctological search of WalMart (poem)

--------1 of 13--------

From: Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council <kyle [at] mplscluc.com>
Subject: SEIU/hospital 8.22 all day Shakopee

Workers at St. Francis Hospital in Shakopee need your support

Approximately 250 hospital workers at St. Francis Regional Medical Center
organized a union a year ago with SEIU Local #113. Now, after spending
almost a year negotiating, management is not offering metro parity for
wages for service workers, even though they do recognize metro parity for
other workers in the hospital. Allina is the largest health care system in
the Twin Cities, and it's time for a show of union solidarity. As the most
profitable hospital in the Allina chain and one of the top 100 Hospitals
in the Nation, St. Francis is not treating its workers fairly. And it's
time for union brothers and sisters to say "That's not right." Join us for
an informational picket next Monday!

SEIU Local 113 Informational Picket
St. Francis Regional Medical Center in Shakopee
1455 St. Francis Ave.
Monday August 22
6am-6pm
(Rally and send-off for negotiators at 8:00 - 9:00 am)

In addition, workers at Owatonna Hospital (903 S. Oak Ave, Owatonna, MN)
are also organizing an informational picket the same day, from 10am to
2pm, for their first contract as well, and if this is more convenient for
you, that's great!

Any questions? Call Rainbow Hirsh at 651-402-1851
For union news and information, go to www.minneapolisunions.org


-------2 of 13--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Al McFarlane/KFAI 8.22 11am


Tune in every Monday [at] 11am on KFAI for this public forum on issues in the
African-American community. KFAI 90.3 fm MPls 106.7 fm St Paul all shows
archived for 2 weeks after broadcast at www.kfai.org (You can get email
updates about future fourms from Laurette in the reply to).

This week's show will be held at Sabathani Community Center, 310 East 38th
Street Minneapolis Monday August 22nd from 11-1pm. The candidate
screenings continue as the local election excitement heats up. The 2nd and
7th wards are up for the challenge this time (see election schedule
attached). We will also have a discussion on Business and Economic
Development with panelists including Jonathan Palmer of the Empowerment
Zone, Ezell Jones of the MN Black Chamber of Commerce, and Bobby Jo
Champion of the Minority Contractors Association.

Listen to KMOJ 89.9 tomorrow morning (Sat. 8/20) b/w 9-11am for a
rebroadcast of last week's show:
St. Paul School Board Candidate Screening


--------3 of 13--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: P-9 Hormel strike/film 8.22 6pm

ANNIVERSARY OF HORMEL STRIKE TO BE MARKED

To mark the 20th anniversary of the Hormel strike of 1985-1986, the St.
Paul Labor Speakers Club, in collaboration with the Meeting the Challenge
Labor Education Committee, the Steelworkers' Associate Member Fightback
'05, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, the Union of Radical
Writers and Workers, the Macalester College History Department, the North
Star Anarchist Collective, and the Twin Cities chapter of the Industrial
Workers of the World, will sponsor an evening of celebration, reflection,
and analysis -- Monday evening, August 22, at the St. Paul Labor Center,
411 Mahoney (aka Main) Street.

Activities will begin at 6pm with refreshments, music, and video, followed
by a program at 7pm.  There will also be several visual displays of
photographs, posters, flyers, and newspaper clippings.  Invited speakers
include veterans of the strike, the Austin United Support Group, and the
Twin Cities Local P-9 Support Committee.  We will also hear from today's
activists in local packinghouses, the Centro Campesino, the mechanics'
struggle at Northwest Airlines, and immigrant workers' rights, among
others.  There is no admittance charge and everyone is welcome.

The Hormel strike of 1985-1986 is not only one of the most important labor
conflicts in Minnesota history, but it was one of the key national
struggles of the 1980s (from PATCO in 1981 to Pittston in 1989), a decade
which marked the emergence of a determined anti-labaor climate in the
United States, from the halls of Congress and the White House to corporate
boardrooms and the workplace.  Hormel workers sought to resist this shift
in climate and policy, insisting that workers employed at a profitable
company should not be expected to give concessions and givebacks on wages,
benefits, and workrules.  Their struggle inspired hundreds of thousands of
workers to visit Austin, walk their picket lines, contribute to their
support, and boycott Hormel products.  In 1991, their struggle was
represented in a documentary film, "American Dream," which won the Academy
Award.  Future labor historians and labor activists will look back to the
Hormel strike as a critical chapter in the movement's overall history.

For more information, contact Peter Rachleff at 651-696-6371 or
rachleff [at] macalester.edu.


--------4 of 13--------

From: Frank J Rog <franknjanet [at] juno.com>
Subject: Living wage 8.22 7pm

A coalition of community, faith and labor organizations, including
Progressive Minnesota, ISAIAH, and the Central Labor Union Council, are
working together to strengthen the living wage provisions in Minneapolis
through a strong and enforceable law.  Two Town Hall Meetings will be held
this week at which the proposed ordinance and the need for it will be
explored, and city officials present will be asked to support it.

The meetings are on Monday, August 22, at St. Bridget's Catholic Church,
3811 Emerson Avenue North, Minneapolis, and Tuesday the 23rd at Augsburg
College's Hoversten Chapel, Riverside Av at 22nd.  Both meetings are
7-8:30 and are open to all.  Come, ask questions and show your support for
a living wage law in Minneapolis.


--------5 of 13--------

From: Amy Ihlan <amyihlan [at] comcast.net>
Subject: Eminent domain  8.22 7pm

You may be interested in this item on Monday night's council agenda
(scheduled for 7pm):

Eminent Domain Presentation by Professor David Schultz
Eminent domain is the power of governments to take private property for
public use.  But the U.S. Supreme Court recently decided economic
development counts as a "public" purpose. Local governments (like the
Roseville City Council) have the power to use eminent domain to seize
homes and businesses and turn them over to private developers -- so long
as the redevelopment will increase the property tax base.

Professor Schultz will present and discuss some possible policies our
council could adopt to prevent the abuse of eminent domain for private
profit, and protect the property rights of homeowners and local
businesses.


--------6 of 13-------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Dickinson/Farheen/KFAI 8.23 11am

Tues Aug 23: Green Mayoral candidates KFAI/aam

Tune in to KFAI's "Catalyst" Tues Aug 23 @11am to hear in-depth interviews
with the two inspiring Green Party women running to become TC Mayors:
FARHEEN HAKEEM running in MINNEAPOLIS and ELIZABETH DICKINSON in ST PAUL.
>From a neighborhood and small business based vision for economic
development to fresh ideas about energy, crime and making city goverment
work for the rest of us!(INSTEAD of primarily Big Developers and
Corporations - as Rybak and Kelly do, and McLauglin and Coleman would, as
well...continuing business as usual!)

You can also hear more from Hakeem and Dickinson Tues Sept 6, 11am, on
"Catalyst"/KFAI in a vigorous round-robin betwen these two powerhouse
visionaries. Host/producer Lydia Howell.

KFAI 90.3 fm Mpls 106.7 fm St Paul All shows archived for 2 weeks at
www.kfai.org (You can also check out the "Catalyst' page at www.kfai.org,
click on program grid, click on my show which takes you to my page:
Independent Media links, TC Events, Arts, & Catalyst program schedule)


--------7 of 13--------

From: Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council <kyle [at] mplscluc.com>
Subject: Boycott WalMart rally 8.23 3:30pm

Child labor violations. Sex discrimination. Low wages. Lousy benefits. All
from Wal-Mart - a company that rakes in $10 billion a year in profits.

Wal-Mart needs a real education in how a rich company should treat its
workers.

And together, we're going to provide it by pledging to buy back-to-school
supplies from other stores this year. Please click on the link below to
send your pledge to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott:

http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/g1zRu1Y1OPtv/

Please join us in St. Paul to help spread the word about Wal-Mart's
practices. After a short rally, we'll be asking other shoppers to take the
"Send Wal-Mart Back to School" pledge.

[Send WalMart up WalMart's butt  - ed]

Send Wal-Mart Back To School Rally and Action
Tuesday August 23, 3:30pm
StPaul Midway Wal-Mart (1450 University Ave W)
Join us! for more information, contact UFCW #789 at
651-451-6240.

There are hundreds of reasons to pledge not to buy back-to-school supplies
at Wal-Mart this year. Here are a few:

As the world's largest retailer, today Wal-Mart is setting the standard
for America's workplaces - and it's a standard of low wages, poor benefits
and worker abuse that working families cannot accept. Together, we have to
stop the Wal-Marting of America's jobs.

Wal-Mart has racked up huge fines for child labor law violations. The rich
company reportedly makes children younger than 18 work through their meal
breaks, work very late and even work during school hours. Several states
have found Wal-Mart workers younger than 18 are operating dangerous
equipment, like chainsaws, and working in such dangerous areas as around
trash compactors. (The New York Times, 1/13/04; The Associated Press,
2/18/05; The Hartford Courant, 6/18/05)

Wal-Mart pays poverty-level wages and fails to provide affordable company
health insurance to more than 600,000 employees. That means Wal-Mart
workers and their families have a hard time paying the bills and getting
the health care they need - and Wal-Mart is at or close to the top of
state lists of employers whose workers are forced to rely on
taxpayer-funded health insurance programs like Medicaid. (Wal-Mart annual
reports; Business Week, 10/2/03; state reports)  Pledge not to buy
back-to-school supplies at Wal-Mart this year. Click on the link below:

http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/g1zRu1Y1OPtv/

Need more reasons to buy school supplies elsewhere this year?
Try these:

Wal-Mart has a shameful record of paying women less than men. Wal-Mart
pays women workers nearly $5,000 less yearly than men. Some 1.6 million
women are eligible to join a class-action lawsuit charging Wal-Mart with
discrimination. (Richard Drogin, Ph.D., 2/03; Los Angeles Times, 12/30/04)

By demanding impossibly low prices, Wal-Mart forces its suppliers to
produce goods in low-wage countries that don't protect workers. A worker
in a Honduran clothing factory whose main customer is Wal-Mart, for
example, sews sleeves onto 1,200 shirts a day for only $35 a week. (Los
Angeles Times, 11/24/03)

Wal-Mart can afford to do better. Wal-Mart--America's largest private
employer--raked in $10 billion in profits last year. CEO Lee Scott landed
almost $23 million in total compensation last year alone. Wal-Mart has no
excuse for its behavior. Let's educate Wal-Mart. Click on the link below
to send Scott your pledge not to buy back-to-school supplies at Wal-Mart
this year:

http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/g1zRu1Y1OPtv/

P.S. Please forward this e-mail to friends and family members and urge
them to join you in pledging not to buy back-to-school supplies at
Wal-Mart this year.

For more information on the fight against Wal-Mart, go to
www.wakeupwalmart.com .

Tell your friends about the many reasons not to do back-to-school shopping
at Wal-Mart. Invite them to join the campaign by visiting:

http://www.unionvoice.org/join-forward.html?domain=minneapolisunions&r=3dzRu1Y16c5l

If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for
Minneapolis Unions E-Activist List at:
http://www.unionvoice.org/minneapolisunions/join.html?r=3dzRu1Y16c5lE


--------8 of 13-------

From: patty guerrero <pattypax [at] earthlink.net>
Subject: Loose talk salon 8.23 6:30pm

The Salon for this Tuesday, August 23 will be Open Discussion.  Come to
share your thoughts about yourself or what is happening in the world.

Salons are held (unless otherwise noted in advance):
Tuesdays, 6:30 to 8:30 pm.
Mad Hatter's Tea House,
943 W 7th, St Paul, MN

Free but donations encouraged for program and treats.
Call 651-227-3228 or 651-227-2511 for information.


--------9 of 13--------

From: leslie reindl <alteravista [at] earthlink.net>
Subject: Assassination/Wellstone 8.23 8pm

Tues Aug 23, 8 pm, MTN cable channel 16 Minneapolis:  "American
Assassination:  The Strange Death of Paul Wellstone," review of his new
book by Dr. James Fetzer, University of Minnesota, Duluth, given at
Borders Books in April.  Not to be missed!


--------10 of 13--------

The Democrats' Environmental Record
Failing Nature
By JOSHUA FRANK
CounterPunch
August 20 / 21, 2005

George W. Bush's environmental record can be summed up in one simple word:
devastating.

Not only has President Bush gutted numerous environmental laws --
including the Clean Air and Water Acts -- he has also set a new precedent
by disregarding the world's top scientists and the Pentagon, whose
concerns about the rate of global warming grow graver by the day.

As Mark Townsend and Paul Harris reported for the UK Observer in February
2004, "[The Pentagon report] predicts that abrupt climate change could
bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear
threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water, and energy supplies.
The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the
few experts privy to its contents."

Bush's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even admits that climate
change is being exacerbated by American's consumptive culture. "What has
changed in the last few hundred years is the additional release of carbon
dioxide by human activities," the EPA admits. "Fossil fuels burned to run
cars and trucks, heat homes and businesses, and power factories are
responsible for about 98% of US carbon dioxide emissions, 24% of methane
emissions, and 18% of nitrous oxide emissions. Increased agriculture,
deforestation, landfills, industrial production, and mining also
contribute a significant share of emissions. In 1997, the United States
emitted about one-fifth of total global greenhouse gases."

It was easy for Bush to back out of the Kyoto Protocol when Al Gore and
Bill Clinton undermined the agreement in the late 1990s. "Signing the
Protocol, while an important step forward, imposes no obligations on the
United States. The Protocol becomes binding only with the advice and
consent of the US Senate," Gore said at the time. "As we have said before,
we will not submit the Protocol for ratification without the meaningful
participation of key developing countries in efforts to address climate
change." Sadly, Gore stood by his promise.

Although Kyoto was a gigantic step forward in addressing global warming,
the Democratic Party collectively opposed the watered down version of the
Protocol. They did so to avoid alienating their labor base, who worried
that new environmental laws would shift jobs to developing nations with
weaker environmental regulations. Hence Kyoto's derailment and the
Democrats failed challenge to Bush's misdeeds.

                      Grim Appointments

Around the same time that Bush crushed Kyoto, he nominated Gale Norton to
be his Secretary of the Interior, a position which oversees approximately
one-fifth of all US land. "As Colorado's attorney general in the mid '90s,
she chalked up a scandalous record: looking the other way in the face of
damaging pollution, dragging her feet on prosecuting big business, even
challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to override
state law," James Ridgeway wrote for The Village Voice in February 2001.
"When a gold mine spilled cyanide into a local river, killing all aquatic
life along a 17-mile stretch, Norton declined to press criminal charges
and stalled so badly the feds stepped in. In another spectacular case, she
testified against her own citizens, siding with a big corporation that
fouled the air.

"Norton was trained for the role as interior secretary in the
saber-rattling libertarian wing of the Republican Party. She climbed the
ladder from former interior chief James Watts' Mountain States Legal
Foundation through the Hoover Institution to the Reagan administration.
Back in Colorado, she immersed herself in pure libertarian politics at the
Political Economy Research Center. Along the way, she became ensconced in
the property rights network, from the Sagebrush Rebellion of the Reagan
era to today's militant Wise Use Movement and the rock-ribbed Defenders of
Property Rights."

And yet the majority of Senate Democrats, including Tom Daschle of South
Dakota, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, and California's Dianne Feinstein,
supported Norton's grim appointment despite their power to obstruct her
confirmation.

                           Dirty Energy

With that kind of opposition, it is little wonder why Bush had no qualms
about moving forward with his dirty energy plan, which became known as the
"Energy Policy Act of 2003." Bush's bill called for a slash in renewable
energy funding and an increase in fossil fuel consumption. The bill,
authored by Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, met with a reported
39 oil lobbyists and executives to draft the legislation.

Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer rights watchdog group Public
Citizen, wrote of Enron's corrupt involvement in the writing of the bill:

"[Enron] was one of the most aggressive proponents of natural gas and
electricity deregulation and was the most influential player in developing
Bush's energy policy. Sorting out this tangled web of political influence,
greed, deceit, and corporate hubris will take hundreds of lawyers, dozens
of congressional committee hearings, and multiple investigations by law
enforcement agencies ... Vice President Dick Cheney met privately with Lay
to discuss the formulation of the administration's energy plan, from which
Lay stood to benefit enormously. The Bush administration has refused to
release the records of the meeting and other deliberations of its energy
task force, even in the face of congressional demands."

Over 30 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted in favor of Bush's
legislation, while eight others decided not cast a vote on the measure,
which ultimately passed effortlessly through the House. The Senate
Democrats stepped up their opposition, halting the bill. Ultimately, they
came back with a horrid version of their own, which 36 Democrats,
including ranking leaders such as Senator Tom Daschle, Iowa Senator Tom
Harkin, and John Edwards of North Carolina, voted for.

Offering few variations from the Task Force's original draft, the
Democratic version set aside almost $2 billion for big coal companies and
$1 billion in tax breaks for nuclear power expansion in addition to over
$5 billion in hand-outs and tax cuts for the oil industry.

The bill also earmarked over $20 billion for the building of an oil
pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48 states. And as Ted Virdone and Jyo
Bhatt reported for the Socialist Alternative during the bill's development
in 2002:

"The pipeline will be privately owned and operated, so although the costs
would be socialized, the profits are privatized. The bill also eliminates
many vehicle safety regulations.

Democrats say that the Senate bill is environmentally friendly because it
requires new cars to get 35 miles per gallon by 2013, and it requires that
renewable energy comprise 10% of all retail electricity by 2020 ... The
technology already exists for all passenger vehicles to achieve that gas
mileage, but the auto industry has refused to utilize that technology for
new SUVs and trucks, and Congress has passed moratoriums on new fuel
efficiency research."

The Heritage Foundation, a neoconservative-laden right-wing think tank
based in Washington, DC, boasted of the Democrats' rewrite: "[The] bill
includes provisions that strengthen the nation's electricity system and,
at the margins, narrows the gap between supply and demand. There are no:
Mandatory renewable portfolio standards; Climate change initiatives;
Statutory increases in corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards;
and Mandatory regional transmission organizations (RTOs)."

                           The Strip Club

Like his predecessors Bill Clinton and Al Gore, President Bush saw nothing
wrong with the disastrous practice of hilltop strip mining (mountain-top
removal) and overturned a federal ruling that had banned the practice
during the Clinton years, despite the dismay of Al Gore. The push to lift
the ban came from the stubborn Steven Griles, a scion of the mining
industry and Interior Secretary Gale Norton's top advisor in Washington.
Democrats again offered little in the way of opposition, as they have
historically backed the disastrous mining practice.

On May 13, 2002, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition issued a plea for
opposition to the strip mine ruling. "In mountaintop removal coal
companies blast off the tops of mountains to mine thin seams of coal.
Rubble from the former mountaintops is pushed into 'valley fills,' burying
streams in nearby valleys under hundreds of millions of tons of mining
waste. In West Virginia alone, over 1,000 miles of streams have been
obliterated by valley fills."

Then in another bold move, the Bush administration pandered to corporate
timber barons and authored a new anti-forest plan -- ironically entitled
the "Healthy Forests Initiative" -- which mirrored Clinton's
chainsaw-happy Salvage Rider Act of 1995. Democratic senators, including
Oregon's Ron Wyden and California's Dianne Feinstein, eventually rewrote
Bush's legislation. It was little surprise that Wyden supported the
corporate timber bill, for no other senator receives more loot from the
timber industry than Oregon's Wyden.

                     Logging without Laws

The Clinton administration's Salvage Rider, known to radical
environmentalists as the "Logging without Laws" rider, was perhaps the
most gruesome legislation ever enacted under the pretext of preserving
ecosystem health. Like the Bush-Wyden-Feinstein forest initiative,
Clinton's act was choc full of deception and special interest pandering.
"When [the Salvage Rider] bill was given to me, I was told that the timber
industry was circulating this language among the Northwest Congressional
delegation and others to try to get it attached as a rider to the fiscal
year Interior Spending Bill," environmental lawyer Kevin Kirchner says.
"There is no question that representatives of the timber industry had a
role in promoting this rider. That is no secret."

In fact, Mark Rey, a former lobbyist for the timber industry and head of
the United States Forest Service under Bush, authored the "Healthy Forest"
plan and Clinton's salvage bill while working as an aide for Republican
Senator Larry Craig of Idaho. "Like Bush's so-called 'Healthy Forest
Initiative,' the Salvage Rider temporarily exempted salvage timber sales
on federal forest lands from environmental and wildlife laws,
administrative appeals, and judicial review," contends the Wilderness
Society.

"The Salvage Rider directed the Forest Service to cut old-growth timber in
the Pacific Northwest that the agency had proposed for sale but
subsequently withdrew due to environmental concerns, endangered species
listings, and court rulings. Bush's initiative also aims to increase
logging of old-growth trees in the Pacific Northwest."

Clinton during the time could have exercised presidential authority to
force the relevant agencies to abandon all timber contracts that stemmed
from the Salvage Rider. But he never flexed his muscle and instead sat by
as the forests were subjected to gruesome annihilation.

Thousands of acres of healthy forestland across the West were rampaged.
Washington's Colville National Forest saw the clear cutting of over 4,000
acres. Thousands more in Montana's Yaak River Basin, hundreds of acres of
pristine forest land in Idaho, while the endangered Mexican Spotted Owl
habitat in Arizona fell victim to corporate interests. Old growth trees in
Washington's majestic Olympic Peninsula -- home to wild Steelhead,
endangered Sockeye salmon, and threatened Marbled Murrelet -- were chopped
with unremitting provocation by the US Forest Service. And the assault on
nature continued with Clinton's blessing.

Just before Bush announced his version of Clinton's salvage law,
Democratic Senator Tom Daschle beat him to the punch, slipping his own
crass language into a defense appropriations bill in the summer of 2002.
Daschle's legal jargon, backed by the Sierra Club and the Wilderness
Society, allowed unharnessed logging on American Indian land in his home
state of South Dakota. These very holy lands, which the Sioux call Paha
Sapa, were once a visionary refuge for Lakota elders, including Crazy
Horse and Black Elk.

As journalist Jeffrey St. Clair wrote, "[The plan will allow] timber
companies to begin logging in the Beaver Park roadless area and in the
Norbeck Wildlife Preserve. These two areas harbor some of the last
remaining stands of old-growth forest in the Black Hills. All of these
timber sales will be shielded from environmental lawsuits, even from
organizations that objected to the deal ... The logging plan was
consecrated in the name of fire prevention. The goal of the bill, Daschle
said, 'is to reduce the risk of forest fire by getting [logging] crews on
the ground as quickly as possible to start thinning.' It's long been the
self-serving contention of the timber lobby that the only way to prevent
forest fires is to log them first."

A product of Clinton and Daschle's cunning style, Bush's own forest plan
-- supported by the overwhelming majority of Democrats in the Senate --
authorized the use of over $760 million in hopes of preventing wild fires.
The legislation, renamed the "Healthy Forests Restoration Act,"
accomplishes no such thing, of course. Instead, the bill sanctions the
pillage of over 2.5 million acres of Federal forest land by 2012,
including the single largest US Forest Service timber sale in modern
history, where 30 square miles of Federal lands in Oregon, named the
"Biscuit Fire Recovery Project," could be logged, despite over 23,000
public statements denouncing the proposal.

With only thirteen casting a "no" vote on the grisly legislation,
Democrats folded big time, backing the bill they should have been working
tooth-and-nail to defeat. Incidentally, John Kerry forgot to show up for
work that day and never voted.

Although the Democrats caved to Bush's demands, some environmentalists
claim that Clinton's policies have been more detrimental to US forests
than Bush's. Of course you'll never hear this from any mainstream
environmental group. As veteran forest activist Michael Donnelly of Salem,
Oregon, wrote in CounterPunch in December 2003:

"Perhaps the greatest irony is that the forests have fared far better
under Bush than they did under his Democrat predecessor. Under Clinton's
[Salvage Rider] plan, some 1.1 billion board feet of Ancient Forest stumps
were authorized annually. Much to the industry's chagrin, under Bush,
around 200 million per year has been cut. Already, that means that 2.7
billion board feet LESS has been cut under Bush than would have been under
a Gore administration with the Big Greens' usual silence regarding
Democrat stump-creation."

And if Bush were to continue at this rate for a total of eight years, then
the "total cut of Ancient Forests will be 1.6 billion board feet, exactly
what was cut in just one year under Clinton's 1995 'Salvage Rider,"
Donnelly contends.

Bush followed his forest follies by pushing his Clear Skies initiative,
which calls for a reduction in the limit of harsh chemicals industrial
polluters are permitted to emit. Although this plan hasn't been written
into legislation, Bush currently aims to cut the US's "carbon intensity"
by measuring the harsh pollutants with an economic model, rather than a
scientific analysis. "The President is giving Congress an opportunity to
deal with a key environmental and public health challenge -- but only if
the legislation it enacts is significantly stronger than the President's
proposal," explains Joseph Goffman, a senior attorney for Environmental
Defense. "The Environmental Protection Agency's own air quality modeling
and economic analyses show that deeper pollution reductions than called
for under CSI are cost-effective and absolutely necessary to protect
public health and the environment. CSI calls for reductions in sulfur
dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NO), and mercury, but none in carbon
dioxide pollution."

The Republicans' proposed 2005 budget -- which has the support of many
Senate Democrats -- calls for almost $2 billion in cuts for environmental
protection, including $500 million in cuts from the states' Clean Water
Fund. And on July 13, 2004, the Bush administration moved to roll back a
road-less logging rule that was enacted in the waning days of the
Clinton/Gore era. Clinton's nature-friendly move was a token gesture to
the environmental community, which protected 58.5 million acres of
wilderness area from new road development.

However, Clinton's effort was simply an election year stunt aimed at
courting the green vote that was fleeing into Ralph Nader's camp at a
substantial rate in 2000. But astute environmental activists knew the
clever protection wouldn't last for long. Any protection initiated by
executive order can be dismantled the same way. So when Bush's
announcement to kill Clinton's decree came a day after he called for a
possible postponement of the 2004 election in case of a terror attack, it
was no big surprise. The decision will open these areas to road
development, and eventually mass logging and oil procurement, if state
governors fail to petition the initiatives. Time will tell whether
Democratic governors will stand up for the rights of our national forests
and federal wilderness areas. But don't count on it. Their record isn't
much better than their wretched opposition. In some aspects the Democrats
may be marginally better than the Republicans. At least they believe in
evolution and most likely don't get their science lessons from the Old
Testament.

A slight variation in beliefs won't win elections, however; it's policy on
the ground that matters. And the Democrats have not offered a substantial
alternative to the Republican agenda regarding the environment.

(This is an excerpt from Joshua Frank's brand new book Left Out! How
Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, which has just been released by
Common Courage Press.) Josh can be reached at: Joshua [at] BrickBurner.org.

[ED OPINION:

Here we have a national Dem party almost as corrupt aS the national
Republican party. Its bad record is as long and almost as shameful. It
leaves us open to almost as many evils as does the RP.

Yet every four years the national Dems bamboozle millions of progressives
into voting for Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and, in 2008, Hillary, thus
selling out their values and their souls and all hope of significant
change.

It makes "progressives" feel good for a few months, before the Dem loses
and/or rolls over and/or the election is stolen again.

And then they say:

-Well, what could and can we do? Our choices are so few! We have to sell
out! Let's face it, the rich have won, and it's only a matter of a short
time and life on earth will become a total hellhole. But don't ask ME to
do anything radical! No, I will compromise with evil every four years, and
in every other election, never voting my progressive values, always in
hindsight realizing I was suckered once more by Dem bamboozlers. No more
dreams! No more ideals! No more progress! Let's us just save our asses for
a few years; do the lesser-evil thing; vote Hillary; vote conservative
Dem; only after the world has collapsed and there is almost nothing left
can the few people left afford to vote progressive.-

If the world ends this way, it will be because the rich have engineered
our minds into grovelling at their feet, imagining we have no power, that
they can and will do anything, and that nothing we can do can stop them.

It is absurd to believe that .01% can enslave 99.99%. But that is what we
are swallowing. This is the biggest coup the .01% has ever pulled off.

Time to say, Up the .01%! Time to vote and act our hearts, dreams,
visions, hopes! If we all do it, we must prevail. If most of us don't, we
will all go down. Life for all species is a fight; time to move forward!]


--------11 of 13--------

America's Good Germans?
A Mercenary Society
By ROBERT JENSEN
CounterPunch
August 17, 2005

The failed war in Iraq -- and its effect on the U.S. military -- has the
potential to spark the U.S. public to fundamentally rethink the role of
force in U.S. foreign policy, and one of the central questions for the
future of the United States is whether this questioning can mature and
deepen.

Can we in the so-called "lone superpower" face that we are now a nation of
mercenaries?

As the bad news from Iraq continues to worsen by the day, it looks as if
the Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard all will miss their annual
recruitment goals. A 2004 study commissioned by the Army found that
recruiting has been undermined by casualties, objections to the war, and
media coverage of such events as the Abu Ghraib scandal.

These statistics signal an important shift, especially when combined with
anecdotal evidence suggesting that it is not just an aversion to physical
risk that is curtailing enlistment but an understanding that this war
isn't worth the risks. At the same time, however, public opinion polls
reveal confusion and contradictory trends as well. Recent polls show that
more than half the public believes the United States can't win the war and
can't establish a stable democracy in Iraq, but surveys also indicate that
many continue to believe that sending the troops was the right thing to
do.

This suggests that a majority of the public can recognize that the United
States has failed in the stated mission but cannot yet see that the stated
mission was a lie. This was never a war about weapons of mass destruction
or stopping terrorism (indeed, the war has created terrorism, on both
sides), nor is it at heart about establishing democracy in Iraq. The U.S.
invasion of Iraq is -- as all U.S. interventions in Middle East have been
-- about extending and deepening U.S. dominance in the region with the
world's most crucial energy resources.

Part of the barrier to a clear understanding of this is the belief that
the United States, by definition, always acts benevolently in the world.
But also standing in the way of an honest analysis is the reality that the
brutal imperialist U.S. policies, while devised by elites, are being
carried out by ordinary Americans. Can we in the United States come to
terms with the fact that we are the "good Germans" of our era, routinely
allowing pseudo-patriotic loyalties to override moral decision-making? Can
we look at ourselves honestly in the mirror when so many of us are
implicated in the imperialist system?

>From the people who make the weapons to the military personnel who use
them -- and all the other people whose livelihoods or networks of friends
and family connect them to the armed forces -- most of the U.S. public has
some relationship to the military. Any talk of closing a military base
sparks almost automatic resistance from neighboring communities that have
become dependent on the base economically. Large segments of the corporate
sector rely on military or military-related contracts, and executives and
employees alike understand what that means for profits and wages.

As U.S. anthropologist Catherine Lutz put it in her book "Homefront", an
insightful study of the effects of the militarization on American life:
"We all inhabit an army camp, mobilized to lend support to the permanent
state of war readiness Are we all military dependents, wearers of civilian
camouflage?"

The problem is not just that the United States now has a mercenary army
but that we are a mercenary society.

The problem is not just that our army fights imperialist wars, but that
virtually all of us are in some way implicated in that imperialist system.

It can be difficult to face the truth about an institution that has so
deeply insinuated itself into our lives. Since the end of World War II,
the U.S. power elite have done a masterful job of transforming the country
into a militarized state with a permanent wartime economy. There has
always been resistance to that project on the margins, but because the
United States is an incredibly affluent nation -- and these policies
promise continued affluence -- there is strong motivation for many to
ignore the consequences of this militarization.

Ironically, it may turn out that the weak link in this system will be not
the civilian mercenaries but the military ones. Historically, colonial
powers have imported mercenary forces to do the dirty work of conquest and
control. In the United States, our own citizens are being forced into that
role. If the armed forces, inability to meet recruitment goals continues,
the effect may not be simply new constraints on the ability of U.S.
leaders to fight additional wars but a more widespread questioning of the
imperial system itself.

Consider these stories, told in the book "Generation Kill" about the Iraq
war. One Marine told author Evan Wright that a "bunch of psycho officers
sent us into shit we never should have gone into." Another Marine, upon
his return home, was invited to speak to a wealthy community as a war
hero. He told them: "I am not a hero. Guys like me are just a necessary
part of things. To maintain this way of life in a fine community like
this, you need psychos like us to go and drop a bomb on somebody's house."

How long can an army continue when combat personnel view both officers and
themselves as psychos? What will happen if that Marine's recognition that
imperial wars are fought to protect affluence and privilege at home
spreads on the front lines of those wars?

U.S. political elites have few options. Barring a serious economic
collapse that forces more people into the military to survive, recruitment
will continue to be a problem. Reinstituting a draft is not an option;
there would be a huge political cost if middle- and upper-class Americans
were asked to surrender their children to direct participation in the
military wing of the mercenary machine. The offer of citizenship to
immigrants who are willing to fight can't make up the gap.

Right now there is incredible tension in U.S. culture. Many continue to
hold on tightly to the idea that the service personnel are being killed
and maimed in Iraq for a noble cause, which is hardly surprising;
acknowledging that a loved one was killed in the pursuit not of liberty
and justice, but instead for elite domination, can intensify the already
deep pain of the loss. Others are abandoning illusions and recognizing the
motivations of the powerful. Obituaries of dead soldiers talk of their
"great pride in serving their country, while a collective sense that the
Iraq War is nothing to be proud of deepens every day. No one wants to
demonize the front-line troops -- those with the least power to change
policy -- but the reality of why the U.S. military fights, along with the
brutal way in which the wars are fought, become increasingly hard to
ignore.

Tension can be creative, leading to deeper understanding and progressive
social change. Or it can be exploited to suppress that understanding and
block change. Elites almost always attempt the latter. The choice that the
U.S. public makes is crucial to our future, and the world's.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at
Austin, board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, and the
author of "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity." He
can be reached at rjensen [at] uts.cc.utexas.edu.


--------12 of 13--------

If He Only Had a Heart...
Bush's Emotional Incapacities
By JOSHUA FRANK
CounterPunch
August 18, 2005

President Bush isn't having all that great of a summer. Sure his team
ushered CAFTA through Congress and will most likely get a stamp of
approval for their rankled Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts. But as the
dog days of summer heat up, President Bush is sweating bullets as he lays
low out in Texas.

Why the evacuation from Washington to Crawford? Well, his approval ratings
are fast plummeting. Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist turned
his back on Bush and came out in favor of stem cell research. Members of
President's cartel may be facing federal indictments over the leaking of a
CIA operative. Iraq isn't looking so good, either - soldiers are getting
blown up daily. A few of their bereaved parents are even camping outside
his plush ranch demanding an explanation for their children's deaths.
Indeed there isn't much news the Bush administration can feel good about.

Apparently the President isn't taking all this too well. According to Doug
Thompson of Capital Hill Blue, White House aides "describe a President
whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates
staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends
meetings in the Oval Office with 'get out of here!"

Bush's more than frequent mood swings have been taking their toll on White
House staff who now release "weather reports" which warn of Bush's current
emotional state. "Calm seas' means Bush is calm," writes Thompson, "while
'tornado alert' is a warning that he is pissed at the world."

Bush's emotional instability is only part of his problem says celebrated
novelist E.L. Doctorow, who claims Bush's real issue has to do with his
incapacity to feel. That's why he doesn't care for the dead soldiers of
the grieving parents. That's why he throws tantrums like a beleaguered
adolescent male in Oval Office. Bush doesn't have the mind or the
capability to understand death.

"You see him joking with the press," says Doctorow, "peering under the
table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting
up to the stage ... to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling
and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand
why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written
for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans
who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country."

He's too ethnocentric and masculine to express grief for others. Hence why
he has been the ideal marionette to act out the callous neo-con agenda.
The perfect bobbing head to rally support for the most right wing of
causes. Not only can Bush not think for himself, he does not have the
ability to admit he's ever been wrong. These are not traits of a leader
but of a very troubled soul. So don't expect Bush to ever show empathy for
Cindy Sheehan, or the hundreds of other parents who have lost their sons
and daughters unjustly. Not to mention the tens of thousands of Iraqis who
have been killed in the name of democracy.

Maybe Bush needs a cocktail. Looks like the baby Jesus isn't doing it for
him.

Joshua Frank is the author of the forthcoming book, Left Out! How Liberals
Helped Reelect George W. Bush, to be published by Common Courage Press.
You can pre-order a copy at discounted rate at www.BrickBurner.org. Josh
can be reached at: Joshua [at] BrickBurner.org.


--------13 of 13--------

 Proctological
 search of WalMart's butt shows what
 WalMart is made of.


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   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
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