Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 09.05.05

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R     09.05.05

                          IMPEACH BUSH NOW

1. Katrina bus back         9.05 4pm

2. Dickinson/Wilde/AM950    9.06 8am
3. Tactics vs developers    9.06 9am
4. Superior hiking          9.06 10am Duluth
5. Dickinson/KFAI/volunteer 9.06 11am
6. Katrina relief           9.06 6pm
7. Dickinson/salon          9.06 6:30pm
8. Mpls ward 8 forum        9.06 6:30pm
9. Health care reform       9.06 7pm
10. Haiti/Moyers            9.06 8pm

11. PC Roberts      - Impeach Bush now, before more die
12. Eli Stephens    - An administration without shame. Resign. Now.
13. Peter Linebaugh - Loo! Loo! Lulu! Loot!
14. PC Roberts      - The vicious downward cycle of the American economy
15. David Vest      - The battle of New Orleans
16. Mark Chmiel     - Blessed are the rich... new American beatitudes
17. Henry Vaughan   - The morning watch (poem)

--------1 of 17--------

Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 08:05:24 EDT
From: Krisrose02 [at] aol.com
Subject: Katrina bus back 9.05 4pm

The Green Parties of New Jersey and Wisconsin have signed on to our
efforts, we are providing direct relief and in contact with Louisiana
Greens who are letting us know where the need is most immediate and what
the need is so we can get in there directly with help!

The first bus went down Saturday night filled with supplies and is coming
back up today at 4pm.  Landing at the Edina Realty parking lot, across
France Ave. from the big green water tower at Southdale.  Please consider
being there to welcome evacuees who are going to be placed in temporary
housing here in Minnesota.  If you can bring a stuffed animal to welcome a
child that would be wonderful.

Kristen Olson GPSP/4th CD GPMN CC GPUS delegate


--------2 of 17--------

From: Mary Petrie
Subject: Dickinson/Wilde/AM950 9.06 8am

Elizabeth Dickinson on Wendy Wilde

Talk Radio Discovers Elizabeth

Pour yourself a strong cup of coffee, set that radio dial and settle in
for a treat: Elizabeth will be on the Wendy Wilde show tomorrow, from 8-9
am. Better yet, put down the coffee and pick up the phone. Call in and
give our candidate a question she can run with. I'd love to see Elizabeth
impress thousands with her smart responses to queries about economic
sustainability, the Xcel Franchise renegotiation, big box business in
small neighborhoods and the status of community councils. No need for all
of us who call in to say we're supporters (although it's nice if a few
do); just keep the lines humming with our green and progressive topics!

To listen, tune in at 8:00 am, tomorrow, Tuesday, September 6. Wendy's
show is on AirAmerica, 950 AM on your dial. To call with a question or a
show of support -- 952-946-6205.

Tell your friends to tune in, too! If you know people still on that fence
(hmmm. . . who do I vote for?) have those folks listen! This will be a
great chance for new people to get a sense of who Elizabeth is and what
kind of leadership she'll provide.

Mary Petrie, Campaign Manager Elizabeth Dickinson for Mayor


--------3 of 17--------

From: Michael Kuchta <advocate [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Tactics vs developers 9.06 9am

Workshop of Community Benefits Agreements

Learn tactics to make sure that developers arenšt the only ones who have a
say in projects that involve public subsidies.

Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, and John Goldstein,
past president of the Milwaukee Labor Council, share strategies and
experiences for community groups, taxpayers, neighborhood businesses,
labor unions, environmentalists, citizen activists, planners, nonprofit
organizations, elected officials and residents.

Tuesday Sept 6, 9-11am. Registration begins at 8:30
StPaul Labor Center, 411 Main St.
Free
Sponsored by Saint Paul Trades and Labor Assembly


--------4 of 17-------

From: GibbsJudy [at] aol.com
Subject: Superior hiking 9.06 10am Duluth

Volunteers needed!

The Superior Hiking Trail Association is seeking more volunteers to help
build 40 miles of trail through the City fo Duluth. No experience is
necessary and tools are provided. To pre-register or for more information,
contact gibbsjudy [at] aol.com or call 218-391-0886.

Next volunteer work dates: September 6, 7, 8 from 10-3 pm. Meet north of
the intersection of Haines Road (40th Ave W) and skyline parkway.....we
will be working west of this intersection. Bring plenty of water and a
lunch, dress for the weather.

Judy Gibbs 5875 North Shore Drive Duluth, MN 55804 218-728-9827
218-391-0886 (mobile)


--------5 of 17--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Dickinson/KFAI/volunteer 9.06 11am

Help Make a Great Woman St Paul Mayor

Note from Lydia Howell: Green Party Mayor candidate, Elizabeth Dickinson
has a wonderful record of community service from working on opposing the
public subsidy of a stadium for billionaire Pohlad, to the MN AiDS
Project; her ideas for local govt include: economc development focus on
LOCAL, SMALL BUSINESSES (NOT big box/Corporate Welfare), really ADDRESSING
HOMESSLESSNESS and police accountability, more Green spaces and better
energy policies.

Hear an interview with Elizabeth Dickinson and also Farheen Hakeem, runing
for GP Mayor in Minneapolis, tune in Tues, Sept 6 at 11am on "Catalyst",
KFAI Radio, 90.3fm Mpls 106.7fm St Paul, archived for 2 weeks at
www.kfai.org Lydia Howell

A Turning Point. . .

Greetings, Friends!

The Elizabeth Dickinson Mayoral Campaign is at a significant turning
point: we are headed into the week before the primary with incredible
public support, a steady stream of money, and an amazing momentum building
around this historic campaign.

Indeed, the momentum and general enthusiasm has outstripped our volunteer
resources.  Unless we receive an influx of dedicated workers, willing to
donate either a couple of hours daily - or to take on leadership roles -
we will be unable to fully utilize the goodwill and rich opportunities
that are coming our way!

We need you!

Can you help us?  Return this email message to

                manager [at] elizabethdickinson.org

and check the jobs you can do.  Please include your phone number, name,
and email address. [Do NOT return to the forwarder, Lydia Howell]

We have the great good fortune of having so much potential that we're
currently unable to maximize the opportunities in front of us.  But if
we're to be one of the top two vote-getters on September 13, maximize we
must.  We are so close to putting a Green candidate - a woman committed to
peace, social justice, and sustainability - on the ballot in St. Paul.
Help make this happen.

To our friends and supporters in Minneapolis and throughout the great
state of Minnesota, we need you.  Please consider taking a day or two off
from work to change the shape of our capitol city.

Thank you!

________We need 10 people dropping literature at doorsteps, every single
day!  I can do this at least three days.

________We need four people volunteering at the phone bank, every single
day!  I can do this at least three days.

________On September 13, we need 10 people who can drive voters to the
poll.  I can do this.

________On September 13, we need 100+ people to 'close' the polls, which
means standing by as polls are closed down, to insure that votes are
fairly registered.

________On September 13, we need 50 'poll watchers,' who can monitor
procedures in the high-turnout polling places.

________On September 11-13, we need 10 people calling a select group of
voters to remind them to go to the polls and vote for Elizabeth Dickinson.

________On September 13, we need up to 10 people to donate and bring in
food and beverages for all the workers driving, dropping literature, and
phone calling that day

________On September 12 and 13, we need 50 people dropping GOTV
literature throughout St Paul.

Finally, please consider sending a Rosie the Riveter postcard to ten of
your friends.

We have several hefty boxes of Rosie the Riveter postcards, waiting.

True to the grassroots spirit of this campaign, we are asking every
Elizabeth Dickinson supporter to pick up 10 of these postcards, mail them
to ten friends and ask those friends to vote for Elizabeth and mail or
hand- deliver cards to ten others.

The postcards are available at 1619 Hague Avenue, a front porch that is
unlocked during regular daylight hours.  No need to call or announce
yourself, generally, but if you're thinking of sneaking in around 3 am, a
heads up might be in order:  call Margie at 651-642-9755.  If you're on
Snelling Avenue, Margie's home is just east; her house is halfway up the
first block off Snelling.

Please, take ten Rosies and send them to ten friends.

Time is precious.  Please sign up for volunteer jobs and take your Rosie
postcards, today.

Make a difference.
Thank you,

Mary Petrie Campaign Manager, Elizabeth Dickinson for Mayor 651-226-3527 C
651-7741502 H


--------6 of 17--------

From: Krisrose02 [at] aol.com
Subject: Katrina relief 9.06 6pm

The Katrina relief efforts are really going well.

The Green Parties of New Jersey and Wisconsin have signed on to our
efforts, we are providing direct relief and in contact with Louisiana
Greens who are letting us know where the need is most immediate and what
the need is so we can get in there directly with help!

There is a volunteer coordinating meeting at the Coffee Grounds in
Roseville on Tuesday from 6-7:30pm.  This is at the corner of Hamline and
Hoyt.  Please consider being there to offer help.

Fundraising concert is Wednesday night -- please see our webpage for
details and a breaking news report from a Green on the ground in
Louisiana.  www.mncahs.org

Kristen Olson GPSP/4th CD GPMN CC GPUS delegate


--------7 of 17--------

From: ed
Subject: Dickinson/salon 9.06 6:30pm

Tuesday September 6
Elizabeth Dickinson, Green Party candidate for mayor
Salon at Mad Hatter's Tea House
6:30-8:30pm
943 West 7th Street, St Paul
Contact Patty Guerrero at (651) 227-3228, (651) 227-2511, or
pattypax[at]earthlink.net for more information.


--------8 of 17--------

From: David Brauer <mplslist [at] tcq.net>
Subject: Mpls ward 8 forum 9.06 6:30pm

A reminder for 8th Ward residents and others who might care --

You may still be trying to figure out whom to vote for among the 10 (!)
candidates in the 8th Ward City Council primary Sept. 13.

To help you decide, the ward's two community papers, Southside Pride and the
Southwest Journal, are co-sponsoring an 8th Ward Candidate Fair &
Discussion:

Tuesday Sept 6
6:30-9pm.
Martin Luther King Park Center, 41st & Nicollet.

We've tried to make this a flexible event because we know everyone has
crazy busy schedules. That's why we've split the "candidate fair" (where
you can buttonhole candidates one-on-one) into early and late sessions:
6:30-7pm and 8:30-9pm.

At 7pm, we'll do candidate intros - 2 minutes each. At around 7:30, we'll
begin a freewheeling discussion - using your questions, we'll let
candidates respond without rigid time limits; we hope there will be
cross-talk among candidates, critiquing others' points, for example. David
Brauer, the Journal's editor who got his experience herding cats as a
neighborhood board president, will attempt to moderate the discussion with
a firm hand.

We hope everyone who's interested can make it. If you want to know more,
or volunteer to gather questions and do other small tasks, please email
David at dbrauer [at] swjournal.com.


--------9 of 17--------

From: joel m. albers <joel [at] uhcan-mn.org>
Subject: Health care reform 9.06 7pm

Health Care Reform Action Meeting UHCAN-MN
Meeting Tuesday Sept 6, 7pm
Walker Church, 3104 16th Ave S, Mpls,(near Lake str. & Bloomington)
Items:

1. Reportbacks;
tabling at state fair
update on our HC Film
other

2. Sue Eichstadt, mother and labor unionist walking across MN for
single-payer HC reform, starts Oct 29

3. Citizen Hearing/Listening session. Working w/ DFL-Progressive Caucus,
MUHCC, Greater MN HC Coalition, other groups on Listening Sessions or
Citizen Hearings on SP to legislators, etc. Usually, members of Congress
(led by the majority party in control) call hearings, decide what they
want to hear, and invite the speakers. We the people of the community can
decide that the members of Congress should listen to us rather than to the
lobbyists on the issue of health care for all. We pick the speakers. We
open it up to everyone.

4. Developing Systematic Media Campaign:
both indy, and holding corporate media accountable

For Further Information: contact:  612-384-0973, joel [at] uhcan-mn.org,
www.uhcan-mn.org

The Universal Health Care Action Network - Minnesota (UHCAN-MN) is a
network of organizations and individuals dedicated to fundamental
health care reform in Minnesota and the United States.


--------10 of 17--------

From: Richard L. Dechert <ldechert [at] webtv.net>
Subject: Haiti/Moyers 9.06 8pm

[Wide Angle]: Unfinished Country

This 60-min. PBS program on the upcoming Haitian "elections," with Bill
Moyers as host and post-documentary interviewer, will air per the
following schedule on the analog and digital feeds of tpt-2 and tpt-17:

tpt-2: 9/6, 8pm and 9/7, 2:00am; 9/12, 12 Midnight.
tpt-17: 9/7, 9pm

For the most up-to-date schedule information, call (651) 229-1330 9am-5pm
Monday-Friday, or select the voice-mail listings at other times. With the
devolving events of "Hurricane Bush," there may be schedule changes. They
are also available, but not as easily updated, at http://www.tpt.org.

[Wide Angle] programs aren't in video or DVD, but each Moyers interview is
in streaming video and full transcript, along with a rich array of
background information on the initial 45-50 min. documentary part of each
program, at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/.

This is the fourth season for this powerful series, which focuses
exclusively on international issues and serves as a summer "bridge" for
the fall-to-spring schedules of Frontline and Frontline/World. It's
co-produced and presented by WNET-New York that for years presented nearly
all of Bill's PBS programs and housed his production company. That has
included NOW with him and NOW with David Brancaccio.


--------11 of 17--------

Failure on Every Front
Impeach Bush Now, Before More Die
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch
September 3 / 4, 2005

The raison d'etre of the Bush administration is war in the Middle East in
order to protect America from terrorism and to insure America's oil
supply. On both counts the Bush administration has failed
catastrophically.

Bush's single-minded focus on the "war against terrorism" has compounded a
natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American
history. The US has lost its largest and most strategic port, thousands of
lives, and 80% of one of America's most historic cities is under water.

If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest
terrorist success in history.

Prior to 911, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that New
Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Congress authorized the
Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) in order to protect
the strategic port, the refineries, and the large population.

However, after 2003 the flow of funds to SELA were diverted to the war in
Iraq. During 2004 and 2005 the New Orleans Times-Picayune published nine
articles citing New Orleans' loss of hurricane protection to the war in
Iraq.

Every expert and newspapers as distant as Texas saw the New Orleans
catastrophe coming. But President Bush and his insane government preferred
war in Iraq to protecting Americans at home.

Bush's war left the Corps of Engineers only 20% of the funding to protect
New Orleans from flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. On June 18, 2004, the
Corps' project manager, Al Naomi, told the Times-Picayune: "the levees are
sinking. If we don't get the money to raise them, we can't stay ahead of
the settlement."

Despite the dire warnings delivered by the 2004 hurricane season, the Bush
administration made deep budget cuts for flood control and hurricane
funding for New Orleans. The US Senate, alarmed at the Bush
administration's insanity, was planning to restore the funding for 2006.
But now it is too late. Many multiples of the funding that would have
saved the city now have to be spent to rescue it.

Not content with leaving New Orleans unprotected, it took the Bush
administration five days to get the remnants of the National Guard not
serving in Iraq, along with desperately needed food and water, to
devastated New Orleans. This is the slowest emergency response by the US
government in modern times. By the time the Bush administration could
organize any resources for New Orleans, many more people had died and the
city was in total chaos.

Despite the most dismal performance on record, Bush's Homeland Security
Secretary, Michael Chertoff, said on Thursday that the Bush administration
has done a "magnificent job."

The on-the-scene mayor of New Orleans sees it differently: "They're
feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are
dying."

"They're thinking small man, and this is a major, major deal."

It is a major deal, one that will affect Americans far beyond New Orleans.
According to reports, 25% of our oil and gasoline comes through the New
Orleans port and refineries, all out of commission. Needed goods cannot be
imported, and exports will plummet, worsening an already disastrous
deficit in the balance of trade.

The increased cost of gasoline will soak up consumers' disposable incomes,
with dire effects on consumer spending. US economic growth will be
siphoned off into higher energy costs. American lives far from New Orleans
will be adversely affected.

The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most
incompetent government in American history and perhaps in all history.
Americans are rapidly learning that they were deceived by the superpower
hubris. The powerful US military cannot successfully occupy Baghdad or
control the road to the airport - and this against an insurgency based in
only 20% of the Iraqi population. Bush's pointless war has left Washington
so pressed for money that the federal government abandoned New Orleans to
catastrophe.

The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has
squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run through
hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America's reputation
and its allies. With barbaric torture and destruction of our civil
liberty, he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and morality.
And now Bush has lost America's largest port and 25 percent of its oil
supply. Why? Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of
crazy neoconservatives who have sacrificed America's interests to their
insane agenda.

The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans,
Democrat and Republican alike. Now they must he held accountable. Bush and
his neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be
prosecuted.

What will it take for Americans to reestablish accountability in their
government? Bush has got away with lies and an illegal war of aggression,
with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the
horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers, and now with the
destruction of New Orleans.

What disaster will next spring from Bush's incompetence?

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has
contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate
economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of
California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts [at] yahoo.com


--------12 of 17--------

An Administration Without Shame
Resign. Now.
By ELI STEPHENS
CounterPunch
September 5, 2005

The New Orleans Times-Picayune published an open letter to George Bush
today, castigating him for the mishandling of the response to the crisis
in New Orleans, and calling on him to fire FEMA head Michael Brown. What
follows is my letter to the editor in response to that open letter:

To the Editor,

Your open letter to the President makes a strong statement about the
outrage being visited upon the city of New Orleans by the Federal
Government, but in simply calling for George Bush to fire Michael Brown
and other officials at FEMA, it doesn't go nearly far enough.

It was George Bush who, after the hurricane had already smashed into the
Gulf Coast on Monday and hundreds lay dead in Mississippi and Louisiana,
delivered an 85-paragraph speech on Medicare and managed to devote just
two paragraphs of that speech to Katrina. Instead of spending his time
planning for disaster relief before the storm hit, he was out giving
political speeches, and graciously informing the citizens of New Orleans
that he would pray for you. Astonishingly, he even disclosed in that
speech that he had just spoken with Michael Chertoff, head of the
Department of Homeland Security...about immigration!

It was George Bush who, on Tuesday, after the levees had breached and New
Orleans was being submerged, found time to travel to San Diego and deliver
a 91-paragraph speech, yet another political exercise making a
preposterous analogy between the so-called war on terror and the World War
II fight against Japan. He managed this time, after the hurricane had hit
(!) while 90% of New Orleans was already under water, to squeeze in a
grand total of two paragraphs about Katrina. At that very time, another
President, the President of Cuba, was sufficiently aware of the disaster
in the Gulf that he had contacted the U.S. State Department and offered to
send on a moment's notice 1100 fully self-sufficient doctors, carrying not
only medicines but even their own food and water. Our President...spent
time playing with his spiffy new guitar with a Presidential seal.

The next day, one day after that generous and potentially life saving
offer from Fidel Castro, on a day when those Cuban doctors could have
already been in place saving lives, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
was still on vacation in New York, spending several thousand dollars on
shoes. To this day, although there are still people dying in the streets
(and even in the understaffed temporary hospital set up at the airport) of
New Orleans, Rice has still not responded to that offer.

As for Dick Cheney, he's still on vacation, having done (if that is
possible) even less than George Bush.

And, I'm sure I don't need to point out to you, it was not only Bush and
Rice, but Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the key people in this
administration, who were responsible for the lies which justified the
invasion of Iraq, not to mention the decision to do so, a decision which
has not only cost the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands
of Americans, but also nearly $300 billion. As the Times-Picayune well
knows, some of that money should have been used to shore up the levees in
New Orleans, but was denied because of the urgent need to fight an
unjustified, illegal war. And, as you also well know, it was that decision
which resulted in thousands of Louisiana and Mississippi National
Guardsmen being halfway around the world fighting that war, instead of at
home ready to deal with the effects of crises at home like they signed up
to do. And not only were a signficant portion of the Guard not available
in a timely manner, but there aren't as many of them in the first place as
there should be either, because that same war has discouraged more people
from joining the Guard.

FEMA has certainly proven completely incompetent in managing the response
to this disaster. But who appointed the incompetent, completely
unqualified Michael Brown to his position as head of FEMA? George Bush, of
course, doing what he always does - rewarding a political ally (the
college roommate of his 2000 campaign manager, and no doubt a major
contributor as well), rather than seeking the best qualified person for
the job.

There is only one solution to the nightmare enveloping our country, and it
doesn't start with FEMA. It starts with the Administration which appointed
the head of FEMA, which starved New Orleans of the money it needed to
reinforce its levees long before Katrina hit, which sent vitally needed
National Guard to Iraq where they could be of no help when Katrina hit,
and which exhibited callous, criminal indifference to the plight of New
Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast before it finally sprang, or rather
crept, into action.

George Bush and his entire Administration -- Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Condoleezza Rice, Michael Chertoff, Michael Brown, and everyone else who
bares responsibility for that criminal behavior -- should resign. Today.
In countless other countries around the world, any decent official
responsible for such a disaster would have fallen on their sword -
figuratively, and even literally in a few cases. We don't need them to go
that far, although later, charging them as accessories to the murder of
hundreds or thousands of residents of New Orleans would not be
inappropriate. But at this time, their responsibility is far too deep, and
far too obvious, to call for the usual round of Congressional hearings and
mild recriminations. They must resign. Now.

Eli Stephens maintains the LeftI blogspot. He can be reached at:
http://lefti.blogspot.com/


--------13 of 17--------

Once Looting was the Pay of Imperial Soldiers
Loo! Loo! Lulu! Loot!
By PETER LINEBAUGH
CounterPunch
September 5, 2005

The New York Times on Saturday may write that Bush made "his first
on-the-ground look at the desperation that has gripped the region for the
last five days" but they also say he made his tour in a helicopter. He was
frightened, and never actually got down to earth except when he left at
the airport tarmac if you want to call that "earth". At one time it was
part of one of the planet's greatest alluvial systems. Bush with his beady
bee-bee eyes had himself a look-see out the window which they call an
"on-the-ground look".

In Zora Neale Hurston's great flood novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God,
the people become a chorus to the events of the mighty. "It was the time
for sitting on porches beside the road. The sun and the bossman were gone,
so the skins felt powerful and human. They passed nations through their
mouths. They sat in judgment." This helps explain why Bush could not visit
the Convention Center or the Superdome. Tens of thousands sit in judgment.

The history of New Orleans is a history of class war; and class war brings
out the actualities in the potential of communism: the thirsty do not ask
permission to take a drink, nor the hungry food. Is it the new society? Of
course not. But it could be; this is self-activity. The ruling class does
all it can to prevent it from happening.

But what about the "looting"? Yes, precisely. Massive media and
ideological and legal resources are concentrated on the point, the fears
of the ruling class, its guilty self-knowledge for all the commodity
capital flowing down the river from the granary of the Midwest, from the
one-time factories of the Great Lakes. All down the river and out to sea,
past the dockers, the Black Indians, past the slaves and cotton pickers,
the prisoners at Angola, the Cajuns, the maroons, and creole, and back
again, now as surplus value, as finance capital.

The"loot"? Etymologically, it's a Hindu word with a Sanskrit root, and it
signified what was taken from an enemy in war, such as the clothing
('clobber') of the dead. Rudyard Kipling knew all about it, singing to his
comrades, the soldiers of imperial India.

 If you've ever stole a pheasant-egg be'ind the keeper's back,
 If you've ever snigged the washin' from the line,
 If you've ever crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack,
 You will understand this little song o'mine.
 But the service rules are 'ard, an' from such we are debarred,
 For the same with English morals does not suit.
 Why they call a man a robber if 'e stuffs 'is marchin' clobber
 With the -
 Loo! Loo! Lulu! Lulu! Loo! Loo! Loot! Loot! Loot!
 Ow, the loot!
 Bloomin' loot!
 That's the thing to make the boys git up an' shoot!
 It's the same with dogs an' men,
 If you'd make 'em come again
 Clap 'em forward with a Loo! Loo! Lulu! Loot!
 Whoopee! Tear 'im puppy! Loo! Loo! Lulu! Loot! Loot! Loot!

Yes, at one time loot was the soldier's pay, it was part of the wage deal.
A generation ago a huge amount of international scholarship was devoted to
this process, how criminalization is essential to a) the formation of the
wage, and b) the creation of a terrorized, divided proletariat. "English
morals" boiled down to little food and worse commons all under the gallows
tree. Nowadays loot is nothing less than the surplus value of the
capitalist class in a deadly class war, fearful for its surplus in
whatever form, commodity, money, production, real estate, futures, assets,
development.

In New Orleans when they asked for bread they were given a stone. It's an
old story. Lafcadio Hearn was a great nineteenth century creolist,
journalist, story-teller, student of Japan, and inhabitant of New Orleans
where he was assistant editor for the Item, a readable journal of reform.
"Were there Communists in Antiquity?" was the question for its readers on
August 23, 1878, only a few years following the Paris Commune. Evidently a
correspondent of a rival paper in endeavoring to prove the nuisance of
"tramps" in antiquity, made a complete mess of both Greek and Latin
philology, and Lafcadio Hearn patiently set them right before moving on to
answer the question of the day.

Yes, he concluded, there were communists. "The rich were killed or exiled;
their lands and goods shared among the poor. At Megara every wealthy man
in the city was exiled - a punishment which antique society rendered
almost equal to death - and their goods confiscated. At Samos two hundred
wealthy citizens were killed, four hundred exiled, and their wealth
distributed among the poor. At Syracuse the same thing occurred. So also
at Messina."  This is the justice that Bush could not risk by standing on
the ground.  Lafcadio Hearn, a man who could pass within the races,
continued his account of classical communism and its grim lesson for his
era, as he thought.

"At Miletus, the children of the rich men, who had fled the city, were
taken by the rioters and trampled to death by trained oxen. Subsequently
the rich party, prevailing after a savage context, revenged itself by
seizing the children of the poor, plastering their bodies with pitch, and
burning them alive. Yet in those days the hatred of the poor classes
against the rich was hardly greater than it is today. At that era the war
between the rich and poor invariably terminated in a loss of liberty for
the former. The efforts of communism had only a temporary success, and
their ultimate result was the establishment of a despotism at once
merciless and all-powerful. A violent outbreak of communism in this
republic might lead to a change in government which would leave the
riotous classes everything to regret."

Is it not the case that in our era the situation is the reverse of that
described in antiquity by Lafcadio Hearn? Our tyrants are despotic
privatizers; popular commoning must follow them. True, ours are not the
riotous classes yet. Nor have we trained oxen to trample the rich. After
the Superdome none can now say that the rich have not plastered our bodies
with pitch. We have seen the tyrants tremble, the public relations
stutter, the leader of the House expresses urbanocide, and the leader of
their class peers out the window jaw twitching in premonition of the Loo!
Loo! Lulu! Loot! "Just send cash," he says.

Peter Linebaugh teaches history at the University of Toledo. He is the
author of two of CounterPunch's favorite books, The London Hanged and
(with Marcus Rediker) The Many-Headed Hydra: the Hidden History of the
Revolutionary Atlantic. His essay on the history of May Day is included in
Serpents in the Garden. He can be reached at: plineba [at] yahoo.com


--------14 of 17--------

The Vicious Downward Cycle of the American Economy
Resurrecting Karl Marx
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch
September 5, 2005

Libertarians and free trade economists don't realize it, but they are
pulling Marx out of his grave.

Free traders are resurrecting class war, not because they are Marxists but
because they confuse free trade with global labor arbitrage. Free traders
turn cold shoulders to US job losses from offshore outsourcing, because
they mistake the losses for the beneficial workings of comparative
advantage. Committed to a 200 year old theory that they no longer
understand, free traders are cheering on the destruction of middle class
jobs and the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that make large
income disparities politically acceptable.

The destruction of the stabilizing middle class is occurring
simultaneously with an extraordinary increase in income inequalities. Not
so long ago CEOs were paid 20 times more than the average employee; now
some are paid hundreds of times more. The "gilded age" is returning while
the value of a college degree is declining.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 10-year jobs forecast, the
majority of US jobs that will be created in the coming decade will be in
domestic services that do not require a college education. This is a
strange job outlook for a high tech economy allegedly benefitting from
free trade. Domestic services are nontradable. The US economy has not
created a net new job in tradable goods and services in the 21st century.

Free trade economists have forgotten that not all trade reflects the
beneficial workings of comparative advantage. For comparative advantage to
function, a country's capital must stay at home and be allocated to
activities in which the country has comparative advantage. The other
necessary condition is that countries have different internal cost ratios
of producing different goods.

When the principle of comparative advantage was discovered, capital was
mainly kept at home under the watchful eye of the owners and protected by
the country's laws. Tradable commodities were primarily products
influenced by climate and geography, guaranteeing that the cost of a yard
of wool in terms of a bottle of wine would vary among countries.

Today capital is more mobile than tradable goods. Modern production
functions are based on acquired knowledge and produce identical results
regardless of location. When a US corporation closes a factory in Ohio and
relocates its production for US markets to China, the loss of US jobs is
not the result of a Chinese firm gaining a comparative advantage over the
Ohio one. It is the result of US capital seeking absolute advantage in
lower cost Chinese labor.

Free trade economists have completely forgotten that the flow of resources
to where they have absolute advantage does not result in mutual benefit.
The country that receives the resources gains and the other country loses.

When capital and technology flow from the US to China and India, the
productivity of labor in China and India rises. In the US it falls.

Outsourcing is eliminating entire American occupations in engineering and
information technology. As there are fewer jobs for graduates, engineering
enrollments in the US are declining. Libertarians and free traders are so
emotionally enamored of the market that they have forgotten that markets
can as easily work against a country as for it. In the US, markets are
working to reduce the supply of American engineers as US corporations lay
off their American employees and replace them with cheaper Chinese and
Indians.

Product development, or research and development, follows manufacturing.
As US manufacturing moves offshore, so does R&D.
Innovation follows R&D, with the consequence that US science is also in
relative decline. In brief, the US is developing the labor force
characteristics of a third world country in which jobs are available only
in lower productivity, lower paid "hands on" domestic services.

For engineering and IT jobs that remain in the US, fewer are filled by
Americans. US firms have learned that they can pay foreigners on H-1B and
L-1 work visas lower salaries, force their American employees to train
their foreign replacements, and then discharge their American workers.
Consequently, there is double-digit unemployment among American software
engineers, IT professionals and computer programmers.

As Lou Dobbs exposed recently on CNN, the US Department of Labor is
currently reserving some 52,000 high tech job openings in US firms for
H-1B visa holders. "Bodyshops" use the visas to bring in foreigners who
take Americans' jobs by undercutting their pay.

American firms advertise openings for H-1B visa holders only. No Americans
need apply. Gene Koprowski in TechNewsWorld (August 20) reports that "in
excess of 600,000 new visas have been granted during the last five years.
Thirty-nine percent of H-1B visas were for workers in computer-related
occupations."

In other words, 600,000 Americans lost the occupations in which they have
invested their human capital. You can be assured that these 600,000 did
not move up to better jobs.

As bad as it is for the individuals, it is even more costly for the
country. The outsourcing of jobs and the importation of foreigners on work
visas are emptying the pipeline of qualified Americans and destroying US
technical occupations. It is paradoxical to hear the very executives who
replaced their US employees with foreigners now complain about the
declining interest of Americans in science and engineering. Last July Bill
Gates expressed his worries about the precipitous decline in the number of
students entering computer science. Why is Bill surprised when he helped
to lead the offshore outsourcing movement?

Obviously, it is a vicious cycle. As Americans are discouraged from the
occupations, the corporations lobby for more work visas, which discourages
more Americans.

Seeking to protect their careers from being outsourced, Americans are
turning to domestic services, such as nursing and teaching. However, H-1B
visas threaten these occupations, too. Hospitals struggling with costs and
school systems struggling with budgets are importing lower cost foreigners
to teach American kids and care for American patients.

In Nevada the Clark County School District has imported teachers from the
Philippines. Arizona has imported teachers from New Delhi, India. The New
York Department of Education has brought teachers in from Jamaica.
Cleveland, Ohio, has imported teachers from India. It goes on and on.

Joe Guzzardi has a good article posted on vdare.com about the use of
foreign teachers in US schools. This practice raises many questions: Does
the money saved on teachers' salaries go to administrators as bonuses for
cost-cutting? How can foreigners from outside our culture enculturate
American students? What happens to enrollments in US education and nursing
curriculums as imported foreigners fill available positions? What happens
to the laid off US engineers and technical people who are displaced again,
this time from teaching math and science in our schools?

The pressure on school budgets comes from the lost middle class jobs. As
manufacturing and now white collar work move out of US communities, tax
revenues become more scarce. Administrators seek foreign employees who
will work for less.

Eventually, all Americans will be working for less except the fat cats at
the top, who will earn large bonuses by substituting foreigners for
Americans.

What occupations will be left to native citizens? This question comes to
me from many frustrated parents who are trying to give their children some
career counseling. It is possible for Americans still to earn good incomes
from being dentists and lawyers (if they are in the top 20% of their
class). Next one thinks of skilled trades such as electrician, plumber and
auto mechanic. However, Mexican immigrants are crowding Americans out of
the construction trades and may soon dominate other trades as well.

Opportunity for native born Americans is collapsing. The loss of
opportunity is showing up in declining median household income and rising
poverty rate. On September 1, Edwin Rubenstein reported (vdare.com) that
according to the Census Bureau's August 30 report, "median household
income declined for an unprecedented fifth straight year in 2004." The
main reason for declining household income, says the Economic Policy
Institute, is "ongoing weakness in the job market."

HIgher paying jobs are being lost to outsourcing and to work visas. Lower
paying jobs are being lost to Mexicans. With real income falling for five
years (despite an economic recovery), the US poverty rate has climbed from
11.3% in 2000 to 12.7% in 2004, adding 5.4 million more persons to the
poverty roll.

Yet, nothink free trade economists and libertarians - like LBJ who
promised us light at the end of the tunnel in Vietnam and Bush who
promises light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq - still promise that
outsourcing and H-1B visas mean increased wealth for Americans.

Economic science no longer exists in America. Its place has been taken by
emotional commitments to dogmas. Americans and their hopes are daily
paying the price for this great failure of economic thinking.

The August payroll jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics repeats
the consistent pattern of 21st century America - no net job creation in
high productivity sectors. The only jobs created are in nontradable lower
paid domestic services.

Of the 154,000 private nonfarm jobs created in August, 25,000 are in
construction and are filled primarily by legal and illegal Mexican
immigrants; 20,000 are in wholesale and retail trade; 16,000 in
administrative and waste services; 43,000 in education and health
services; 34,000 in leisure and hospitality (primarily waitresses and
bartenders). Manufacturing lost another 14,000 jobs.

Brand name companies that once were symbols of US manufacturing are today
assemblers of foreign made parts. An industry of assemblers has no need
for engineers or scientists. The dismantling of the US economy cannot be
corrected by education and job retraining. The US is on its way to
becoming a third world country.

It is detrimental to the future of freedom that at this time, when our
civil liberties are under attack by the Bush administration and
diminishing economic opportunity is breathing new life into class war,
libertarians and market economists are demonstrating more commitment to
ideology than to the welfare of fellow citizens. By associating freedom
and market solutions with policies that are eroding Americans' prospects,
freedom's defenders are unwittingly stabbing freedom in the back.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has
contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate
economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of
California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts [at] yahoo.com


--------15 of 17--------

It's Looking a Lot Like Fallujah
The Battle of New Orleans
By DAVID VEST
CounterPunch
September 5, 2005

"They've given them permission to go down and shoot us." -- Kanye West

"His opinions in no way represent the views of the network." -- NBC

If New Orleans doesn't radicalize you, what will?

Troops "fresh back from Iraq" are at this moment engaged in "hunting down"
people defined as "looters." An Army Times report described the mission as
a struggle to put down "the insurgency in the city." The only thing to
prevent us from describing the Crescent City as Baghdad-on-the-bayou is
the thought that Fallujah might be a better analogy, given the scale of
destruction.

Breaking metaphorical ranks was a brigadier general's prediction that the
birthplace of jazz is "going to look like Little Somalia." From Metairie
to Mogadishu? Was he preparing the public, and the media, for a Black Hawk
Down?

Imagine the reaction if - rather than ordering the National Guard to
"shoot to kill" the desperate the angry and the unlucky - the mayor of
New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, or the president of the United
States had instead declared that anyone so selfish as to be caught
"protecting private property" during a humanitarian crisis would be shot
on sight.

Would such an order have made it easier to spot the difference between,
say, an oil company manager jacking up the price of gasoline, and a person
toting a television out of a flooded store - with nowhere to take it and
nowhere to plug it in?

Will the National Guard, using skills acquired in Mosul and Tikrit, now be
authorized to "shoot to kill" any price gougers they might encounter? Will
they hunt them down?

A senior National Guard spokesman went on TV this weekend to assure
America, and Larry King, that "this is not martial law." No one corrected
him.

Meanwhile, those not branded as "looters" are known as "refugees," as
though Rwanda or Bangladesh had spilled into Louisiana. After the
Astrodome was designated to receive "refugees" from the Superdome, it took
almost two days for the man in charge of the Houston facility to announce
that his new occupants would be "free to come and go." Imagine the
meetings that were held while this point remained in doubt.

And then, to continue the exercise in phantasmagoria, imagine the
response, were the mayor of Houston to announce that the city would be
pleased to continue to provide services for residents of that city's
wealthy River Oaks neighborhood who took "refugees" into their homes, but
not otherwise. No mercy, no water.

How long, one wonders, before some New Orleans resident inevitably
violates the curfew and goes outdoors in search of food or medicine, only
to be identified as a "looter" and gunned down by those troops "fresh back
from Iraq"? Or has it already happened? And if so, how often?

By what means will the "hunters" discern the difference between the truly
vicious and the merely crazed among their prey? After all, is stealing a
computer, in a flooded city without basic necessities, let alone
electricity, a mark of sanity? Is attempting to commandeer a boat or a
truck, in the midst of a total societal breakdown, really irrational
behavior, let alone criminal?

The Battle of New Orleans now raging will be fought on several fronts.

There will of course be the battle for the streets, to take them back from
the people who were abandoned to die in them. The Secretary of Defense
dropped into New Orleans to defer all questions about the military
operation to "the authorities," after complaining with his trademark
testiness that he couldn't hear anything that was being said, "under these
conditions."

Questions that went unasked included: Will U.S. troops withdraw from New
Orleans before they withdraw from Iraq? Are senior GOP leaders now
privately urging the president to "use" this moment to extricate himself
from that other disaster?

There will also be the battle for the "story," to control the spin on it
all. Kanye West may have "departed from the script," as NBC put it, but
rest assured, the media-wide effort to make Katrina a story about looters
and the protection of private property is merely the opening salvo. To his
immense credit, CNN's Saturday anchor Tony Harris, who is everything Aaron
Brown never was, not only made this point, but hit it hard.

Of course the military occupation of New Orleans has been spun as an
effort to protect the innocent and the defenseless from thuggery, to "get
the city back under control."

Having left the people to die in a hurricane (after recommending Greyhound
and Amtrak to any of the poor and disabled who wished to evacuate along
with the well-to-do), and then having failed to deliver food, water, and
medical care, they now wish to "protect" them.

CNN's Nancy Grace wasted no time in billing the disaster as the world's
biggest "missing persons" story, the Alabama teenager writ large. Why not,
it worked so well in Aruba.

The death of Chief Justice Rehnquist didn't exactly "change the story,"
but you had to wonder whether his timely demise didn't cause champagne to
be uncorked in Karl Rove's office. Rove's role as story manager was
underscored by the fact that he accompanied Bush on his tour of
Mississippi and Louisiana.

Then there is the battle to control the relief effort, with FEMA and the
corporate media aggressively suggesting that people might want to channel
their generosity through the Rev. Pat Robertson's "Operation Blessing."
(What will they be contributing to, an assassination fund?)

Every out-of-work celebrity in America will be trying to elbow their way
past Art Linkletter and Bill Cosby to discuss the tragedy on Larry King
Live. Personally, I'm waiting to see Larry's interview with kanYe West.

The battle to rebuild infrastructure, or to secure contracts as spoils of
war, is already well underway, with Halliburton having already launched a
massive preemptive strike. Imagine a trench - more of a hog trough, really
- stretching from Metairie to Mobile Bay, and running north through the
offices of Bob Riley and Haley Barbour (a more Snopesian figure than even
Trent Lott).

As for the battle to control the political terrain, to "use" the hurricane
and its aftermath, there are many minefields to be crossed. There is talk
of disposing of bodies in a mass grave. Will such an event be televised?
Will the president attend? Perhaps there should be two mass graves: one
for those who perished before his first post-Katrina visit to New Orleans,
and one for those who died subsequently.

In an ideal world, the senator from New York who demands "decisive victory
in the war on terror," and the pro-war/pro-death penalty senator from
Illinois, would have already shared their thoughts on race, reality and
military justice in New Orleans. And while waiting for that to happen, a
group of GOP elder statesmen would have walked over to the White House and
politely asked the current occupant to "get out of the goddamned way," or
words to that effect, and replaced him with someone like Sen. Chuck Hagel.

A principled, antiwar Republican? Could there be a greater nightmare for
Democrats? Not if there were a Robert Kennedy among them, with the guts to
say as Bobby did, "Mr. President, stop this war!"

David Vest writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He and his
band, The Willing Victims, just released a scorching new CD, Way Down
Here. His essay on Tammy Wynette is featured in CounterPunch's new
collection on art, music and sex, Serpents in the Garden.

He can be reached at: davidvest AT springmail DOT com

Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com


--------16 of 17--------

Blessed are the Rich...
Beatitudes for this New American Century
By MARK CHMIEL
CounterPunch
September 5, 2005

Blessed are the theoreticians of "Shock and Awe" and the architects of the
war who were ready to cleanse the Middle East of evil-doers - for they
will call each other the sons of God.

Blessed are the cheerful, congenial, and judiciously flattering
journalists at the height of their careers - for they shall be called upon
repeatedly at the informative White House press conferences.

Blessed are the Halliburtons, Boeings and ESSI - for they shall inherit
what is due them as the conscientious war-profiteers they enthusiastically
are.

Blessed are the ingenious corporate leaders who oversee the global
exporting of our values and culture - for theirs is the Kingdom of Profit,
Power, and Prestige.

Blessed are the Administration officials who play hardball, break the law,
but still somehow achieve their strategic objectives - for they shall
obtain mercy, pardon, and invitations to offer commentary on CNN.

Blessed are those elite Americans who hunger and thirst for luxury and the
ever-increasing freedom to do whatever the hell they want - for they shall
be filled even more than they can possibly imagine.

Blessed are the members of the patriotic Congress and Senate - for, even
though their children will never know the glory of dying for their country
on the battlefields of the Sunni Triangle, those same sons and daughters
will still know the grandeur of graduating from Harvard, Yale, or
Stanford.

Blessed are the pure in ideology - for they shall see our enemies
(Arab-looking, Muslim, conniving and plotting) on every street corner and
do whatever they can to destroy them.

Blessed are the visionaries of the oil companies - for they shall be
supremely comforted by the annual profit report.

Blessed are those media pundits, perspicuous intellectuals, and
ecclesiastical moderates who sing the praises of the nation's leaders -
for they shall be invited to all the best Washington parties.

Blessed are the astute proponents of the emerging just-torture theory -
for they are defending the uniquely divine rights of America.

Blessed are the rich, who experience rapture with each glance at their
portfolios - for this new American century is all for their happiness.

And so blessed are you, Mr. President, and Mr. Vice-President, and Mr.
Secretary, and Mr. And Ms. Everybody Else Who is Along for this Noble Ride
of Plunder, blessed are you when your soldiers' mothers say all manner of
truth about you, and when more and more of the citizens gather to oppose
you, Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward tonight on
FOX News.

Mark Chmiel is author, most recently, of The Book of Mev. He works with
the Center for Theology and Social Analysis (www.ctsastl.org) in Saint
Louis, Missouri. He can be reached at: MarkJChmiel [at] aol.com


--------17 of 17--------

 The morning watch
 -Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)

 O joys!
 Infinite sweetness!
 With what flowers
 And shoots of glory
 My soul breaks and buds!
 All the long hours
 Of night, and rest
 Through the still
 Shroud of sleep, and clouds
 The dew upon my breast;
 O how it bloods,
 And spirits all the earth!
 Hark! In what rings
 And hymning circulations
 The quick world
 Awakes, and sings.


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