Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 09.16.05

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R     09.16.05

1. Counter recruit      9.16 11am
2. Palestine vigil      9.16 4:15pm
3. Women at the table   9.16 5pm
4. Artists/single payer 9.16 6pm
5. Mexico ed film       9.16 6:30pm
6. Vietnamese fest      9.16 6:30pm
7. Greens/Almanac       9.16 7pm
8. Arise benefit/music  9.16 8pm
9. Winter Soldier/film  9.16 7:15pm
10. Mizna open mic      9.16 7:30pm
11. NOW/Katrina         9.16 8:30pm
12. Dickinson/AM830     9.17 1am (late Friday night)

13. Betsy Barnum    - Green Party definitely having an impact
14. Jeffrey StClair - Flirtations with disaster; Brown out
15. Brian J Foley   - Looting by any other name: the profit-driven war
16. Kevin Zeese     - The war comes home to roost: Katrina and Iraq
17. Jason Leopold   - Corpse-abusing co gets FEMA contract: FuneralGate
18. John Nichols    - McMurtry: 'We can't make it here anymore' (song)
19. ed              - Omelets (poem)

--------1 of 19--------

From: sarah standefer <scsrn [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Counter recruit 9.16 11am

"Our Children Are Not Cannon Fodder"
CounterRecruitment Demonstration
Fridays   11-12 noon
Recruitment Office in Stadium Village at the U of M.
1/2 block east of Oak St on Washington Ave.
for info call Barbara Mishler 612-871-7871


--------2 of 19--------

From: peace 2u <tkanous [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Palestine vigil 9.16 4:14pm

Every Friday
Vigil to End the Occupation of Palestine
4:15-5:15pm
Summit & Snelling, St. Paul

There are now millions of Palestinians who are refugees due to Israel's
refusal to recognize their right under international law to return to
their own homes since 1948.


--------3 of 19--------

From: mary rivard <treebirdrivard [at] yahoo.com>
From: cassandramonson <cassandramonson [at] mn.rr.com>
Subject: Women at the table 9.16 5pm

Women's Caucus for Art presents:
A PLACE AT THE TABLE
an exhibition of chairscapes

Opening Reception Friday September 16 from 5-9pm
    ~ children's art activity
    ~ poetry reading
    ~ drumming
    ~ opening comments 7:30-8:00

A Place at the Table is a collaborative and diverse sculptural exhibition
of chairscapes by members of the Women's Caucus for Art. The exhibition
examines the beauty and variety of seating "at the table" and the
symbolism and consequence of having "a place" at the table in many
contexts - including the personal, political, cultural, social, and
spiritual realms.

I have been working on this project for the last year with forty women. I
would love for you to come see our chairscapes. There will be events and
workshops throughout the two months the exhibit is up - for more
information please visit the website. Hopefully I'll see you this Friday.
I hope all things are good and well in your respective worlds. --Cassandra

www.wcaartmn.org

show runs: September 12 - November 12
United Theological Seminary
3000 5th St NW, New Brighton 55112
35w north to 694 west to Silver Lake Rd West to 5th St NW
www.unitedseminary-mn.org

Cassandra Monson cassandramonson [at] mn.rr.com 612.961.2152


--------4 of 19---------

From: Joel Albers <joel [at] uhcan-mn.org>
Subject: Artists/single payer 9.16 6pm

As part of our indy media campaign for single-payer reform in MN you are
invited to an impromptu mtg w/ Neil Cunningham, creator of our 2 minute
video promo on our home page www.uhcan-mn.org , and he and Angie are
helping us w/ other artistic endeavors.

We will brainstorm on creating various media for getting the word out to
the public on why single-payer reform is the gold standard (lest Minnesota
become the Land of 10,000 insurance policies).

So if you are any kind of Artiste,or want to try out your creative mind or
hand, join us at the coffee shop

Meeting Friday, Sept 16, 6pm at Mapps Cafe on West Bank of U of MN,
address 1810 Riverside Ave, near Cedar-Riverside.

joel and neil Qs call 612-384-0973


--------5 of 19--------

From: Mary Turck <mturck [at] americas.org>
Subject: Mexico ed film 9.16 6:30pm

Friday, September 16, 6:30pm.  Granito de Arena FREE. Resource Center of
the Americas, 3019 Minnehaha Av Minneapolis 55406 FFI: 612-276-0788.

Award-winning Seattle filmmaker, Jill Freidberg (This is What Democracy
Looks Like, 2000), spent two years in southern Mexico documenting the
efforts of over 100,000 teachers, parents, and students fighting to defend
the country's public education system. Freidberg combines footage of
strikes and direct actions with 25 years worth of never-before-seen
archival images to deliver a compelling, and sometimes unsettling, story
of resistance, repression, commitment, and solidarity.  Interviews with
internationally-recognized figures, such as Eduardo Galeano and Maude
Barlow, place the Mexican teachers' struggle in a global context, clearly
spelling out the relationship between economic globalization and the
worldwide public education crisis.  See the film, meet the filmmaker!


--------6 of 19--------

From: Anne Carroll <carrfran [at] qwest.net>
Subject: Vietnamese fest 9.16 6:30pm
VCM moon Festival FRI EVE 9/16

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL

The Vietnamese Community of Minnesota (VCM) and other organizations in the
Twin Cities will be celebrating the Moon Festival on September 16th, 2005.
This year's event will be held at Central High School located at 275
Lexington Parkway North, St. Paul, MN 55104.  The program will start at
6:30pm and end at approximately 9pm.

The program includes a spectacular dragon dance performance, skillful
martial arts demonstrations, cultural dances, a fashion show, lantern
give-away, the ceremonial lantern parade and refreshments.  This event is
Free and Open to all persons so please join us in celebrating and
welcoming Fall 2005! Attached is the flyer.

Moon Festival 2005
6:30-9pm
Central High School
275 Lexington Parkway North
StPaul (Corner of Lexington Parkway & Marshall Avenue)

Please contact Ms. Elisa Le at 612-501-9172 for more information or go to
our website at http://www.vietnam-minnesota.org/.  This event is supported
by the DREGAN Project, a collaboration of the Asian American community,
BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota, and Minnesota Partnership for Action
Against Tobacco (MPAAT).


--------7 of 19--------

From: Elizabeth Dickinson <eadickinson [at] mindspring.com>
Subject: Greens/Almanac 9.16 7pm

Farheen Hakeem and I have been invited to be on Almanac live this Friday
night at 7pm.  Please tune in!

Although we were both eliminated from the general election, Farheen got 14%
of the vote in Minneapolis (which is only 300 fewer votes than I got in St.
Paul with a nearly 20% showing)---

Elizabeth Dickinson St. Paul Green Party Candidate
http://www.elizabethdickinson.org

---
From: Diane J. Peterson <birch7 [at] comcast.net>

The number to call on Friday night with your comments to reinforce how
popular Green leaders are in Minnesota to the managers of TV's "Almanac"
news program is

651-229-1430

This is the number the station puts on the screen.  If you are a
dues-paying member of public television, mention that fact along with your
comment.  If the station received numerous demands from MEMBERS for
increased Green Party appearances on the show, they might be wise enough
to satisfy the market demand.  Or, they may be impervious to member
demands, as a staffer at Minnesota Purchased Radio assured me when I
inquired whether MPR would report on something that many members demanded
to be covered.


--------8 of 19--------

From: Arise! <arise [at] arisebookstore.org>
Subject: Arise benefit/music 9.16 8pm

Arise bookstore Benefit Show at 7th Street Entry
Friday September 16

Ganglion
The Black Thorns
Knife World
Woodcat
Raw Beast

Doors open at 8pm show starts at 9pm 21+.


--------9 of 19--------

From: R. Terence Lamb <rtlamb [at] usfamily.net>
Subject: Winter Soldier/film 9.16 7:15pm

The 1971 film "Winter Soldier", in which Vietnam veterans testify to
atrocities committed in the war, opens Friday at 7:15pm at the Bell
Auditorium on the U of M Minneapolis campus and will be shown daily
through Thursday.  The relevance of this documentary comes from
descriptions of abuse that could have been ripped from contemporary
headlines.

Listen, for instance, to the former Army interrogator as he describes
using "clubs, rifle butts, pistols, knives" in Vietnam to extract
information - "always monitored by superiors or military police," he says
- and recounts his superiors' overriding directive: "Don't get caught."

According to the August 9 New York Times article "Film Echoes the Present
In Atrocities of the Past," the antiwar documentary "Winter Soldier" has
been handled for decades as if it could explode like a live hand grenade
at any moment.  Its distributors say that the war in Iraq has made the
Vietnam-era film as powerful as when it was new, and its filmmakers are
calling it eerily prescient of national embarrassments like the torture at
Abu Ghraib.

Seldom has a film seen by so few caused so much consternation for so many
years.  When it was made at a three-day gathering of Vietnam veterans
telling of the atrocities they had seen and committed, major news
organizatons sent reporters but published and broadcast next to nothing of
what they filed.  Though the film was shown at the Cannes and Berlin film
festivals, at theaters in France and England, and on German television,
US. television networks would not touch it.  The film never found a
distributor, and it disappeared for decades after playing a week at a
single New York theater.

The filmmakers say they hope that "Winter Soldier" will be seen the way it
was originally intended: "The whole society needs to hear about that part
of us, because that's part of us, too. The whole society includes those
people who are having to kill and be killed, and maim and be maimed."


--------10 of 19--------

From: lynette <lynette [at] prettyhorses.net>
Subject: Mizna open mic 9.16 7:30pm

Friday, September 16

Mideast in the Midwest, featuring Arab, Muslim, West Asian and North
African artists, writers, dancers and performers. Mizna Open Mic. 7:30pm
at Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis.


--------11 of 19--------

From: Sue Ann <mart1408 [at] umn.edu>
Richard L. Dechert
Subject: NOW/Katrina 9.16 8:30pm

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The acclaimed weekly newsmagazine NOW
on PBS will devote all if its programs in September to covering
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.  The coverage, which (began Friday
9/2, 8:30pm, tpt-2; repeating Sunday 9/4, 5:30pm, tpt-17)  with a report
on why New Orleans was virtually defenseless against Hurricane Katrina,
will include a special one-hour broadcast on September 16, entitled
"Katrina: The Response."

That program, which will be taped at WLPB, the PBS station in Baton
Rouge, will gather an audience of citizens, experts and officials to
concentrate on the rapid response failure and the challenges ahead.  The
town-hall meeting will be moderated by NOW's host David Brancaccio. "In
the 24-hour coverage of events on the ground, our goal is to provide our
audience with an alternative," says Brancaccio.  "We're going to be
looking analytically at the tough issues: the shortcomings in the
emergency response; how our public policy fell short; and the ethical
questions raised from the looting and disorder that have followed this
disaster.  We want to know what the people and the experts closest to
this tragedy can tell us about what happened and why.". . .

Web Site: http://www.pbs.org/now.


--------12 of 19--------

From: Andy Hamerlinck <iamandy [at] riseup.net>
Subject: Dickinson/AM830 9.17 1am (late Friday night)

Elizabeth will also have an interview published in the Pioneer Press
today, and will be on WCCO radio (830 AM) for a late night from 1 a.m. to
I believe 2:30. She's got some other media that I'm forgetting as well.


--------13 of 19--------

Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 09:34:03 -0500
From: Betsy Barnum <betsy [at] greatriv.org>
Subject: Green Party definitely having an impact

The media attention that Farheen and Elizabaeth are getting, even though
they are both no longer contenders in this year's mayoral races, is
testimony to the huge impact the GP is having on Twin Cities politics.
When do media ever pay any attention to candidates once they are out of
the race?

Even though voters missed their chance this year to elect real,
down-to-earth, smart women, with a deep commitment to the common good, to
the mayor's office in both cities, the impact of Farheen's and Elizabeth's
candidacies has only begun to be felt, and I mean that not only because
I'm sure both of them will run again in the future.

The hegemony of DFL and machine politics in the Twin Cities has been
challenged and eroded. Increasing numbers of citizens of both cities are
not willing to live in one-party towns anymore. They're becoming less
afraid to vote for a real alternative. There's absolutely no doubt that
these two women have showed the public what the Green Party is about
during this year's campaign, and the public has paid attention.

Succeeding as a third party in our system is extremely difficult, as we
all know. But the evidence of this year's campaign season is that the hard
work we've all been doing is paying off. The intrepid candidates who have
carried the GP banner over the past 10 years, and all who worked for their
campaigns, deserve credit for doing some very heavy lifting - and
especially those who did get elected to office and have been representing
us and showing the GP in action.  All the work of building locals,
fighting for party status, showing up at parades and events, begging for a
few crumbs of media coverage - all this has been part of laying the
groundwork for what we are now seeing.

It's a long haul, folks, and we've been taking it step by step, which is
the only way. To use another metaphor, we pried the door open when Annie,
Dean and Natalie were elected. This year with 5 of our 6 city council
candidates going on to the general election, as well as our park board and
estimate and taxation board candidates, and our two fantastic mayor
candidates continuing to be interviewed by the media even though they did
not make it through the primary, that door is now firmly wedged open and
the folks in the rooms of power are seeing lots of Green when they look at
who's standing there.

I'm proud as can be to be Green right now, and deeply proud of the courage
and effort of Elizabeth and Farheen in offering a real choice to voters in
our two cities. They didn't win--but they didn't lose, and that's evident
from the significant vote totals they got and in the ongoing interest in
them by the media. One more HUGE step in the long haul, and some audible
creaking as that door pushes open wider than ever.

I believe this election will be remembered as a historic one in Twin
Cities politics. --Betsy Barnum [GP MN chair]

---
From: Eric Oines <erkoines [at] hotmail.com>

I think it's also a huge testament that 7 out of 11 endorsed 3rd party
candidates between the two cities advanced through the primary.


--------14 of 19--------

Flirtations with Disaster
Brown Out
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch
September 15, 2005

For those of you waiting on the emergence of Karl Rove's New Orleans
strategy, it already came and went: Blame it on Brownie.

Admittedly, this bit of misdirection doesn't qualify as vintage Rove. But
then Rove may have personal reasons for keeping the deepening New Orleans
scandal on the front pages. At least it takes the heat off of his own
travails, as Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald prepares to lay out his
case before the federal grand jury in Arlington.

So Mike Brown, the fabulously inept director of FEMA, now joins Paul
O'Neill and Richard Clarke as another flattened piece of Bush
administration roadkill.

Of course, Brown is a convenient and deserving patsy.

Prior to joining the Bush team, the high point of Brown's career had been
his tenure as executive director of the International Arabian Horse
Association. Like his patron George Bush, Brown proved to be an inept
businessman. In a few brief years, Brown had wrecked the once venerable
organization, bankrupted its accounts and opened it to flood of lawsuits.
One former member of the group called Brown's management of the
organization "an unmitigated, total fucking disaster."

Brown himself became a target of lawsuits. He passed the hat to collect
cash for a legal defense fund to fend off angry litigants. Soon he raised
$50,000. Then he was fired. Brown pocketed the money and never looked
back.

The International Arabian Horse Association was Mike Brown's Harken Oil.
Although the board canned Brown, it was too late for the horse people. The
horse group has never recovered. Indeed, it has dissolved as an
organization. But Brown went on greater things, like helping to supervise
the drowning of America's greatest city.

A quick scan of Mike Brown's resume gives the impression that he was at
least marginally qualified for the FEMA position. After all, he claimed to
have been the director of emergency management operations for Edmonds,
Oklahoma, population 68,000.

But this brawny assignment turns out to have been a feat of resume
inflation. According to the former mayor of Edmonds, "Mike was more of an
intern. He didn't have anyone reporting to him."

Other than that, Brown's professional career is vaporous. As a lawyer,
Brown represented a small oil company, a smaller drilling company and a
family-run insurance brokerage. He did a lot of family estate planning
and, yes, was once named "political science teacher of the year at Central
State College." Central State, as in the oil patch of Oklahoma.

Brown got the FEMA post courtesy of his college roommate, Joe Allbaugh.
Allbaugh is one of Bush's longtime political wranglers. Among other feats,
he helped cover up the document trail detailing Bush's desertion from the
National Guard. In return for these services, Allbaugh was rewarded with
the head of FEMA, an agency for which he had descried a profound loathing.

Deploying Gingrichian bombast, Allbaugh denounced FEMA as a "bloated
entitlement program." He quickly set out to dismantle it. The first move,
in the wake of 9/11, was to strip FEMA of its cabinet level status and
subsume it under the auspices of the terror-obsessed Department of
Homeland Security, where the agency was kept on a tight choke-collared
leash by Michael Chertoff, perhaps the least empathetic person in the Bush
cabinet.

In a few short years, Allbaugh had transformed FEMA from a crisis agency
that distributed aid to disaster victims into a corporate welfare service
that hands out big government checks to a coterie contractors with
political ties to the Bush White House.

When his work was done, Allbaugh tapped his old buddy Mike Brown to
supervise the newly dilapidated agency, while he went on to commandeer a
few companies that stood at the front of the FEMA welfare line, their
hands out for the reception of fat reconstruction checks. Allbaugh allied
firms were some of the first to cash in on the corporate looting of New
Orleans.

Of course, Joe Allbaugh is hardly alone in this respect. His predecessor,
James Lee Witt, who headed FEMA under Clinton and is put forth by
Democrats as a model disaster czar, traded in his FEMA credentials for a
high-paying gig with the insurance industry, lobbying congress to help
companies like All State wiggle out of paying off their claims in the wake
of hurricanes and other natural reckonings.

At the urging of the Bush White House, Brown stocked the upper echelons of
FEMA with people a lot like himself. FEMA became a kind of patronage
holding pen for talentless cronies of the Bush gang, a role the monastery
once served for the dimwitted sons of the aristocracy during the Middle
Ages. (Now the limited scions of the wealthy land spots as the figureheads
of FEMA or the Oval Office.)

Take Brown's chief of staff, Patrick Rhode. You might think that because
Brown had no experience managing a disaster relief agency he might tap the
expertise of someone who did. You'd be wrong. A detailed look at Rhode's
resume reveals not the slightest hint of any experience with floodwaters,
hurricanes, earthquakes or tornadoes. His only experience with disasters
had been a stint with the Bush 2000 campaign. Rhode parlayed that
experience into a plum position as a special assistant to the President
and deputy director of National Advance Operations, a position he assumed
in January 2001. Brown plucked him from the White House to join FEMA in
2004.

Brown's number three man was Scott Morris. Before becoming deputy chief of
staff at FEMA, Morris worked as a press officer for the 2004 Bush
campaign. Prior to that, Morris labored for an Austin, Texas company
called Maverick Media, which produced political commercials for the Bush
2000 campaign. Again there's not even trace evidence that Morris has any
experience with natural disasters beyond turning them into photo-ops for
Bush and Cheney.

What's crucial to understand about Bush's FEMA is that it didn't fail at
its task in New Orleans. Under Bush, FEMA was no longer a disaster relief
agency, but a clean up and reconstruction funding agency. With this in
mind, it was only natural that Mike Brown waited to act until all the
damage had been done. His role wasn't to throw life-rafts to people
drowning in shit-saturated water, but to dole out contracts to favored
companies for the rebuilding of the city.

Perhaps Mike Brown's fatal mistake was that he flinched on camera and
dared to show a little sadness and empathy for those who went down in the
flood. That humane slip may have signed his bureaucratic death warrant.

George W. Bush is often praised by the press for his loyalty. One wonders
why. It's obvious that the Bush family code goes precisely the other way.
Bush demands absolute fealty, while he's willing to sacrifice almost
anyone (except his foul-minded mother) to protect his own ass.

As the rubble and rotting corpses of New Orleans are laid at his feet, the
hapless Mike Brown finds himself the latest refugee from the Bush
administration to learn this cruel lesson.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of
Corruption and Greed in the War on Terror. (Common Courage: 2005)


--------15 of 19--------

Looting By Any Other Name
The Profit-Driven War
By BRIAN J. FOLEY
CounterPunch
September 15, 2005

[Text of speech given at the conference, "The Failure of Global Empire and
Birth of Global Community," San Francisco, CA, August 3, 2005]

More than two years later, many people still ask, "Why did the US invade
Iraq?" Some people answer, "For oil." Others say, "To remove a dangerous
dictator," or, "To liberate Iraqis," or, "To spread democracy." There are
other possible answers as well: To project American power in the strategic
and volatile Middle East. To spread democracy. To help Israel. The
question lingers because the initial reasons that our government gave,
that Iraq had WMD and planned to use them against the US, or that Iraq was
allied with Al Qaeda, have been disproved.

Here's another answer to the question: We invaded Iraq to invade Iraq.

That's right, it's a circular answer. It might not be the only answer, it
might not be provable, but let's consider it: We invaded Iraq to have a
war. We had a war because there are powerful interests in our country that
are geared toward making money from war. How? Let us count the ways. There
are companies that help break things, by making the tools for violence and
destruction, such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. There are
companies that fix what gets broken, such as Bechtel and Halliburton.
There are companies that protect people as they break things and as they
fix what's broken, such as Blackwater and Vinnell Corp. There are
companies that want our government to smash across borders so they may
bring new products and infrastructure, companies that we will see set up
shop in that country. There are companies that want our government to
smash across other countries' borders so they may suck the resources out
from underneath the people there, such as the big oil companies. There are
companies that like the US to attack other countries so they may have
something entertaining to tell their audiences in the time between
commercials: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN.

This is war profiteering, but with a twist. Historically, war profiteering
amounted to this: when there was a war, people tried to profit from it. A
company making clothes might also start making uniforms and sell them to
the army - and make them as cheaply as possible and sell for the highest
price possible. Now, though, companies are making war for profit. Lockheed
Martin, Northrop Grumman, Vinnell and Blackwater, such companies would not
exist as we know them without war.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is basic corporate law. Corporations
are set up to limit their owners' risk of liability while the owners
maximize profits. The directors and managers who run the company for the
owners have a legal duty to maximize profits. The owners (shareholders)
can sue the directors and managers if these employees don't maximize
profits in any given situation. These companies are not breaking the law
by serving the US military and government. Indeed, they believe they are
helping it. Look at their websites. They flaunt the companies' connections
to the US government. Old Glory and aggressive-looking eagles abound!

Forget "social responsibility," the idea that says a corporate manager may
decide not to maximize profits if doing so would harm other "stakeholders"
of the corporation, that is, individuals other than the company's owners.
Although many people can see how building weapons is detrimental to other
stakeholders (read: everyone on our planet), what manager of a weapons
company would ever decide to stop selling these products?

So, the weapons companies have a legal duty to make as many weapons as
possible and as cheaply as possibly and sell as many of them as possible
at the highest possible price. The only limitation is the market. And
these companies will do whatever they can to capture the market and expand
their markets (just as if they were making and selling diapers or cars).
So they aim to sell as many as they can to the US government. And to
foreign governments as well. If the rules prohibit US companies from
selling weapons to foreign governments, or to particular foreign
governments, these companies will try to have those rules rewritten.

How do companies get the government to buy their weapons? Marketing, for
one. Good old fashioned campaign donations and lobbying, for another. And
newfangled influence, such as getting their people onto the Defense Policy
Board, a group of 30 people who advise the Pentagon. A 2003 study showed
that 9 of the 30 members on the Defense Policy Board were connected to
weapons companies. Then there is the "revolving door," where the companies
hire people from the government, and people from the companies go work for
the government. People like dealing with people they know.

Weapons companies also exert influence via "briefings," "position papers"
and op eds from "policy centers" and "foundations" that include people
connected to these companies (and other companies with an interest in
making war for profit). Some of these think tanks are funded in part by
weapons companies or other companies that profit from war. Some of these
companies even get a tax break for such "charitable contributions." (For
more on this phenomenon, I recommend William D. Hartung's book, How Much
Are You Making on the War, Daddy? (2003) and Jeffrey St. Clair's
forthcoming Grand Theft Pentagon).

But it's not just the government that these companies seek to influence.
They will try to influence the media and the general public, through think
tanks and ad campaigns. They know that if there's a climate of fear, then
the public will be assuaged by the government's buying more weapons.
Various officials will work to prove they're "tough on defense." Officials
who are "weak on defense" will not stay in office long.

The companies also hire lobbying firms. These firms make money from war,
too. In fact, the US government has hired PR firms to help the government
"sell" its wars, such as the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The problem has become worse since the 1990s, when many military duties
were "outsourced" from the government to private companies. Private
companies help build bases, deliver mail, and cook meals. Private
contractors even interrogate prisoners captured on the battlefield. If
there are no troops, no bases, and no prisoners, such companies can't make
money.

Again, this is not a conspiracy theory. It is institutions and people
acting in their interests. We all act in our own interests, one way or
another. To think that these institutions and people would not use all of
the means - none of what I have described, by the way, is necessarily
against the law - available to them to pursue their interests would be
nave. So, this is a serious problem, because it is so embedded in our
economic and political system, our way of life. It's also a problem that
flies under the radar screen of most of the public and even most
activists.

What to do?

- "Return" the war-making powers to Congress. This will help curb these
corporations' influence on the government. This is not a perfect solution,
of course, but Congress is the branch of government that is supposed to
debate the issue of going to war, and Congress is more transparent than
the Executive Branch. Right now the power is concentrated in the
Executive, and the decision to go to war has been streamlined. Corporate
interests can quietly focus their energy there.

- Check out the War Resisters League, the world's oldest secular antiwar
group. The WRL is waging a "Stop the Merchants of Death" campaign that is
teaching people about this corporate connection, about "making war for
profit." We must expose what is going on and educate the public about it
how our system is geared toward making war in order to make profit. For
example, the WRL recommends that we join antiwar groups; campaign against
our local "merchant of death"; expose the profiteering on the Defense
Policy Board; demand that our government officials be free of conflicts of
interest; become activist shareholders in weapons companies; take
available legal action against companies that break the law as they profit
from war. The WRL has a speakers' bureau that can provide someone to
address your local school, church, book group, talk group or the like. You
can contact WRL at www.warresisters.org

- Organize politically to increase and improve social welfare programs.
Many people don't speak out because they're afraid of losing their jobs,
which, in our country, is a sort of death: no more job means no more
money, no more health care, no more pension plan. What Lockheed employee,
for example, wants to go to war protest when his boss might end up seeing
her marching and chanting "No Blood for Oil" on TV? Who will email
information about an upcoming antiwar protest, or forward an incisive
article about why the US should not invade, say, Iran or Syria, when their
employer can read the email? If peoples' basic needs are provided for
regardless of their employer, they will become braver citizens.

This concern is especially acute for young people, who have historically
been a font of political activism. Many fear they'll never be able to pay
off their school loans. Why join antiwar groups or go to protests when
potential employers might find out? If young people know they are headed
off to the corporate world, they might decide to make the transition
easier by adopting the attitudes and values of the companies they plan to
serve.

We can also get through to young people by working to reveal that it is
not a great thing to work for weapons companies. Activists made working
for Big Tobacco look unpalatable. We can do the same thing vis a vis
"defense" companies. We can help provide information about alternative
careers that would let people work for social justice, and where people
can speak freely. Let's let young people know they are being duped by
these companies about war - about bravery, glory, fear, the need for war,
and the like.

None of us wants to be duped. But we have been duped. Many Americans
believe that violence is a simple and quick solution to diplomatic and
social problems. You don't have to learn Arabic to bomb Iraq, for example.
But we've seen that bombing doesn't solve much of anything. We must
educate people about the success of diplomacy, peace work, exchanges,
nonviolent movements. Our country's faith in weapons and war is based on
our culture's faith in violence. Our fellow citizens must be encouraged to
drop this faith, to become freethinkers, heretics. And to declare a war on
their own terror, to rigorously question those who warn that our nation is
in enormous danger from various enemies.

We must point out how we're being sold this philosophy of fear.

Brian J. Foley is a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law and State
Chancellor for Florida for the International Association of Educators for
World Peace. He can be reached at brian_j_foley [at] yahoo.com

Further information from the San Francisco conference can be found at
http://www.worldcitizens.org/conferencesummary.html


--------16 of 19--------

The War Comes Home to Roost
Katrina and Iraq
By KEVIN ZEESE
CounterPunch
September 15, 2005

As I watched the scenes on television -- soldiers driving by dead bodies
in the street, wayward people looking like refugees, soldiers pointing
their guns at civilians -- I could not help but think of Baghdad, but it
was New Orleans. The reports of people on the ground were even worse:

"Police drove by, windows rolled up, thumbs up signs. National guard
trucks rolled by, completely empty, soldiers with guns cocked and aimed at
them. Nobody stopped to drop off water. A helicopter dropped a load of
water, but all the bottles exploded on impact due to the height of the
helicopter.

"The first day (Wednesday) 4 people died next to her. The second day
(Thursday) 6 people died next to her. Denise told me the people around her
all thought they had been sent there to die. Again, nobody stopped.

"The only buses that came were full; they dropped off more and more
people, but nobody was being picked up and taken away. They found out that
those being dropped off had been rescued from rooftops and attics; they
got off the buses delirious from lack of water and food, completely
dehydrated."

* * *

"The new arrivals had mostly lost their minds, they had gone crazy. Inside
the convention center, the place was one huge bathroom. In order to
deficate, you had to stand in other people's shit. The floors were black
and slick with shit. Most people stayed outside because the smell was so
bad, but outside wasn't much better: between the heat, the humidity, the
lack of water, the old and very young dying from dehydration... and there
was no place to lay down, not even room on the sidewalk."

* * *

"Yes, there were young men with guns there, but they organized the crowd.
They went to Canal Street and 'looted,' and brought back food and water
for the old people and the babies, because nobody had eaten in days. When
the police rolled down windows and yelled out 'the buses are coming,' the
young men with guns organized the crowd in order: Old people in front,
women and children next, men in the back. Just so that when the buses
came, there would be priorities of who got out first."

* * *

"She saw a young man who had stolen a car speed past, cops in pursuit; he
crashed the car, got out and ran, and the cops shot him in the back, in
front of the whole crowd. She saw many groups of people decide that they
were going to walk across the bridge to the west bank, and those same
groups would return, saying that they were met at the top of the bridge by
armed police ordering them to turn around, that they weren't allowed to
leave."

The story of Denise Moore as reported by Lisa Moore.

The parallels between the Iraq War and the U.S. preparation and response
to Hurricane Katrina demonstrate that Katrina is the Iraq War Come Home to
Roost.

Like Iraq, Katrina demonstrates the limited power of the world's last
remaining superpower. Just as the U.S. is unable to defeat the resistence
in Iraq, we were unable to handle a hurricane on the Gulf Coast. The
death, destruction and devastation of both have been seen by the American
people on their televisions at home. As a result it has become more
difficult to hoodwink the voters - despite their best propagandistic
efforts - the truth came through loud and clear. Despite the hubris of
political leaders, the power of the United States is not absolute. People
are realizing that the priorities of their government need to be
rethought.

The ineptitude of all levels of government in their response to Katrina
closely mirrors the unmitigated disaster of Iraq. In both cases political
leadership ignored the facts. Predictions of the likely natural disaster
in New Orleans were ignored. In Iraq, the President and Congress ignored
the warnings of retired military officers, foreign service officials and
intelligence officials - as well as leaders from around the world - as to
the likely disaster of an Iraq invasion. The president went forward
despite these warnings and the Congress gave its bi-partisan blessing -
and
continues to bless it - with repeated votes supporting and funding the war
and occupation of Iraq.

Today the people of Baghdad and New Orleans share many realities in
common. Both suffer inadequate or polluted drinking water, inconsistent
electricity, insufficient medical care, toxins in their environment and
soldiers patrolling their streets with guns drawn, pointed at civilians.
Civilians in both cities have been described by the same words
"insurgents," "refugees," "criminals." And, in both cases racism is a
factor. Few in America doubt that if those left behind in New Orleans were
wealthy, white Americans that the response of the government would have
been quicker. A large majority of African Americans have reached that
conclusion, even though some European Americans still deny the obvious. In
Iraq, and in the war on terrorism generally, prejudice against Arabs,
Muslims and Persians is evident in the actions of government. In both
cases the body counts of these black and brown people is not even reported
by U.S. authorities.

Indeed, as in Iraq, the U.S. government explicitly says it does not do
body counts. In New Orleans, Cecilia M. Vega of the Chronicle reported on
September 13:

"a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and
photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or
wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their
press credentials and kick them out of the state.

"'No photos. No stories,' said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a
red beret.

"On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush
administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the
effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

"But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being
followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy
that requires media to be 300 meters - more than three football fields in
length - away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If
reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be
reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for
up-close coverage of certain military operations."

In New Orleans and the Gulf states there was an immediate response by the
American people to the images of death and destruction sent to our
television sets has forced the president to admit mistakes. And, has
government officials pointing the finger of blame at each other - when in
fact there is blame to go around at all levels of government.

In Iraq, the reponse of the American public has been slower but building.
Support for the war is dropping steadily. Support for the president's
handling of Iraq is shrinking rapidly while support for the Congress has
also diminished. With massive anti-war rallies planned for September 24
pressure on Iraq will continue to mount. And, with the 2006 Congressional
elections approaching - and a 'throw the bums out' mentality growing among
voters - we may even see the president and congressional leaders admit
they made a mistake in Iraq. More and more anti-war candidates are coming
forward and as they do the incumbents will realize their support for the
Iraq quagmire jeapordizes their political futures - despite their best
efforts to gerrymander their districts into safe spaces for incumbents.

The lesson for the anti-war movement from Katrina is challenge those in
power. If they support the war, no matter what party they are from, they
need to be challenged electorally. If you cannot run, then get involved in
campaigns of anti-war candidates so that those who support this illegal
war will know there will be a price to pay - their political career is at
risk.

Kevin Zeese is director of Democracy Rising and a candidate for the U.S.
Senate in Maryland. You can comment on this column on either
http://www.DemocracyRising.US.

Coming tomorrow: Part II The Lessons of Katrina.


--------17 of 19--------

Corpse-Abusing Company Gets FEMA Contract
FuneralGate
By JASON LEOPOLD
CounterPunch
September 15, 2005

A funeral services company which recently learned that one of its
subsidiaries is negotiating a lucrative contract with the Federal
Emergency Management Agency to remove dead bodies in areas ravaged by
Hurricane Katrina, paid $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit
several years ago alleging the company desecrated thousands of corpses,
and dumped bodies into mass graves.

Moreover, the company paid $200,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that
sought to expose that two members of the Texas funeral commission, the
agency which regulates the funeral industry, were actually employees of
the company they were supposed to monitor--an obvious
conflict-of-interest.
In the civil matter, which took place at two Jewish cemeteries in Florida,
the plaintiff's attorney said that SCI secretly broke into and opened
burial vaults and dumped remains in a wooded area where the remains may
have been consumed by wild animals.

Additionally, SCI buried "remains in locations other than those purchased
by plaintiffs; crushing burial vaults in order to make room for other
vaults; burying remains on top of the other rather than side-by-side;
secretly digging up and removing remains; secretly burying remains
head-to-foot rather than side-by-side; secretly mixing body parts and
remains from different individuals; secretly allowing plots owned by one
part to be occupied by a different person; secretly selling plots in rows
where there were more graves assigned than the rows could accommodate;
secretly allowed graves to encroach on other plots; secretly sold plots so
narrow that the plots could not accommodate standard burial vaults;
secretly participated in the desecration of gravesites and markers and
failed to exercise reasonable care in handling the plaintiff's loved ones
remains."

Kenyon International. a unit of SCI, is presently in charge of the
delicate task of collecting the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dead
bodies in the aftermath of the hurricane. The fact that a subsidiary of
SCI is in talks with the federal government, largely due to its close ties
to the White House, to remove bodies in New Orleans is ghastly.

The whistleblower suit dates back to 1999 and alleges that while he was
governor of Texas, George W. Bush's office interfered with an aggressive
state investigation into the embalming practices by Service Corporation
International, a Houston-based funeral conglomerate headed by Robert
Waltrip-a close friend of the Bush family who also contributed heavily to
then Gov. Bush's gubernatorial campaigns, and donated $100,000 to former
President George Bush's presidential library.

An attorney for Eliza May, a former whistleblower who served as executive
director of the Texas Funeral Services Commission, the state agency that
regulates the funeral business, claimed that she was fired from her state
job because she raised questions about SCI's embalming practices and
sought to expose the company's misdeeds. She filed a whistleblower suit in
1999 alleging "she was the victim of "political" retaliation because she
was threatening the interests of a well-connected political patron of the
governor," reported in an April 21, 2001, story.

May claimed that current White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales was also
complicit in the matter and even helped SCI in a cover-up. Gonzales, who
was also Bush's gubernatorial counsel, reportedly received a memo on April
22, 1996, suggesting possible improprieties by two funeral commissioners
with ties to SCI.

"Bush and his top aides have heatedly denied the charges and suggested the
entire matter was drummed up by Democratic lawyers with political motives,
Newsweek reported.

The memo, written by Marc Allen Connelly, who was general counsel to the
funeral services commission at the time, and sent to Dick McNeil, the
Bush-appointed chairman of the funeral commission, stated that Connelly
"received information" from Texas state officials that two of the funeral
commissioners charged with regulating the state funeral business actually
worked for SCI-the largest funeral firm in the state. Although one of the
commissioners was openly an SCI officer (the one appointed by Bush),
Connelly stated that state banking records he inspected showed that
another of the commissioners," Newsweek reported.

The revelation represented a "a possible statutory conflict." Texas law
prohibited any two commissioners from having ties "directly or indirectly
"to the same funeral company.

In the memo, Connelly told McNeil that he should "immediately inform the
Governor of this apparent conflict and also recommend that the Governor
take action to remove both (the two SCI-related commissioners) from the
commission because both individuals knew or should have known of this
conflict yet failed to notify the governor's office."

McNeil stated in a deposition that after he received the Connelly memo, he
faxed it to Polly Sowell, who then served as Bush's appointments
secretary. "When she was questioned, Sowell was asked what she did with
the memo. "I sent it to the General Counsel's Office," she said. But
Sowell said she did not remember what happened after that and, in his
interview with NEWSWEEK, Gonzales said such a memo was merely one of many
that might have crossed his desk and was otherwise not memorable. In any
case, Bush never acted on the memo's recommendations that the SCI
affiliated commissioners be removed."

Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive memoir, News Junkie, to be
released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit
Leopold's website at www.jasonleopold.com for updates.


--------18 of 19--------

moderator [at] portside.org
Music that Bush clearly doesn't hear
By John Nichols
September 15, 2005, The Capitol Times (Madison, Wi)
http://www.madison.com/toolbox/index.php?action=printme2&ref=tct&storyURL=%2Ftct%2Fopinion%2Fcolumn%2Fnichols%2Findex.php%3Fntid%3D54196

Last spring, in an attempt to make President Bush appear to be more of a
regular guy, the White House released a list of the tunes the commander in
chief was listening to on his iPod.

The list featured mostly country, alt-country and blues artists, including
John Fogerty, John Hiatt, Alan Jackson, George Jones and Stevie Ray
Vaughan.

Perhaps the most interesting name on Bush's listening list was that of
James McMurtry, the brilliant Austin- based songwriter who used his 2004
live album to poke fun at the president's attempts to fake a Texaser-than-
thou accent.

McMurtry responded to the news that Bush's playlist included his song
"Valley Road" by politely suggesting that the president might not be the
most serious listener of his songs, which frequently detail the damage
done to Americans by rampaging corporatists and an uncaring government.

In case there was any doubt about the differences between George W. Bush's
worldview and James McMurtry's, the musician posted a savage critique of
the president and his pals, "We Can't Make It Here," on his Web site
shortly before last year's election. That song, a haunting reflection on
corporate globalization and wars of whim, was the highlight of McMurtry's
set last month when he played at Camp Casey, the protest vigil organized
outside the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch by Cindy Sheehan, whose son
Casey was killed in Iraq.

McMurtry did not write the song to cheer on Sheehan's demand that the
president meet with her, but it sure sounded as if he had when he sang out
its cry for attention to the working poor who have lost their jobs to fair
trade and their children to a war founded on lies.

Written in the voice of a textile worker whose job was lost when a factory
was shuttered and the production sent overseas, McMurtry closes his opus
by asking:

 Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
 Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
 Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
 No I hate the men sent the jobs away
 I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
 All lily white and squeaky clean
 They've never known want, they'll never know need
 Their sh- don't stink and their kids won't bleed
 Their kids won't bleed in the damn little war
 And we can't make it here anymore

 Will work for food
 Will die for oil
 Will kill for power and to us the spoils
 The billionaires get to pay less tax
 The working poor get to fall through the cracks
 Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
 Let 'em eat sh-, whatever it takes
 They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
 If they can't make it here anymore

 And that's how it is
 That's what we got
 If the president wants to admit it or not
 You can read it in the paper
 Read it on the wall
 Hear it on the wind
 If you're listening at all
 Get out of that limo
 Look us in the eye
 Call us on the cell phone
 Tell us all why

George Bush refused to look Cindy Sheehan in the eye. And James McMurtry
won't be singing at the White House anytime soon. But he will be playing
at 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Madison's Cafe Montmartre. Don't miss the man
whose songs speak more truth about America in five minutes than George W.
Bush has in five years.


--------19 of 19--------

 The rich kill millions.
 They say you can't make omelets
 without breaking eggs.


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