Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 10.07.05

[David Shove (shove001]

           P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    10.07.05

1. Peacehouse vets  10.07 10am
2. Ffunch lunch     10.07 11:30am
3. Counter recruit  10.07 12noon
4. Sullivan/health  10.07 1:30pm Mankato MN
5. Mourn the war    10.07 4pm
6. Palestine vigil  10.07 4:15pm
7. Car/veg oil      10.07-09
8. Labor cartooning 10.07 5pm
9. Ward2 candidates 10.07 5:30pm
10. Stringfellow    10.07 7pm
11. Winona LaDuke   10.07 7pm Almelund MN
12. Ed Murrow/film  10.07 7:30pm

13. Ramzy Baroud  - America or the empire: Bush's final choice
14. Robert Pollin - Is the dollar still falling?
15. PC Roberts    - Blundering into Syria?
16. M Junaid Alam - Jackboots at George Mason
17. WH Auden      - September 1, 1939 (poem)

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

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Peacehouse vets 10.07 10am

October 7 - Meeting: Peacehouse Veterans for Peace chapter #127.
10-11:30am
Peacehouse, 510 E Franklin, Minneapolis


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

From: David Shove <shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu>
Subject: Ffunch lunch 10.07 11:30am

Meet the FFUNCH BUNCH!
11:30am-1pm
First Friday Lunch (FFUNCH) for Greens/progressives.

Informal political talk and hanging out.

Day By Day Cafe 477 W 7th Av St Paul.
Meet in the private room (holds 12+).

Day By Day is non-smoking; has soups, salads, sandwiches, and dangerous
apple pie; is close to downtown St Paul & on major bus lines


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

From: sarah standefer <scsrn [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Counter recruit 10.07 12noon

Counter Recruitment Demonstration
 Our Children Are Not Cannon Fodder
Fridays   NOON-1
Recruiting Office at the U of M
At Washington and Oak St.  next to Chipolte
for info call Barb Mishler 612-871-7871


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

From: Kip Sullivan <kiprs [at] usinternet.com>
Subject: Kip Sullivan/health 10.07 1:30pm Mankato MN

The Health Care Mess: How We Got Into It and How We'll Get Out Of It*

The MSU Rehabilitation Counseling Club is pleased to sponsor
Kip Sullivan on Health Care Reform
Friday, October 7, 1:30-3:30pm
Ostrander Auditorium, MSU Centennial Student Union

Mr. Sullivan will compare managed care (the HMO approach), high deductible
policies (such as policies with health savings accounts), and single payer
- universal coverage health care:

  a.. How did each of these proposals arise?
  b.. Why did advocates think that each was a good idea?
  c.. Why does only single payer - universal coverage have the potential
to reduce costs without compromising quality or access to health care?

Members of the MSU campus community and the greater Southern Minnesota
community are cordially invited to listen, learn, ask questions, and
engage in discussion on our current health care system and how the health
care system could and should be reformed for the better.

About the Speaker: Kip Sullivan is a Rochester native and one of
Minnesota's leading advocates for universal health care.  He has spent the
past two decades researching the U.S. health care system.  Mr. Sullivan
earned the JD degree from Harvard Law School.  He has written nearly 100
articles on health policy; many of which have been published in national
newspapers, magazines, and journals such as the Los Angeles Times, The
Nation, The New England Journal of Medicine, the New York Times, the
Minneapolis Star Tribune, and others. Mr. Sullivan is a member of the
Steering Committee of the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition
(MUHCC)....

*This is the title of Mr. Sullivan's new book on the topic of health care
reform which is in press and will be available in December, 2005.

Individuals with disabilities can request accommodation with the MSU
Office of Disability Services at (507) 389-2825 or julie.snow [at] mnsu.edu.


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

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Mourn the war 10.07 4pm

Friday, 10/7.  Street theater: mourn the war.  Meet at 4pm at Peavey Plaza,
on the side closest to the Hennepin Mall, Minneapolis,  and please wear
black.  Questions? megbabylon [at] hotmail.com (EVENT POSTPONED)


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

From: peace 2u <tkanous [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Palestine vigil 10.07 4:15pm

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.


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

From: eco-action <lowfueldotorg [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Car/veg oil 10.07-09

Convert Your Car to Run on Vegetable Oil
October 7 - October 9, 2005

The Church of Deep Ecology will host an opportunity to learn about
alternatively fueled vehicles and convert a car to run on waste vegetable
oil.

The workshop begins with Friday evening's free presentation, "Intro to
Alternatively Fueled Vehicles," and continues through Sunday with actual
hands-on participation in the Diesel Engine Conversion Workshop. During
the weekend, we will convert a used car using many salvaged parts. When
completed, the vehicle will be a rolling educational tool used to teach
about transportation and the environment.

Craig Howard of Fatmobile SVO Systems will lead the conversion workshop.

Craig Howard has been working with Diesel engines for more than 5 years.
He has converted 5 vehicles to run on vegetable oil. Through his research,
he has developed several modifications that make vegetable oil a viable
transportation option in northern climates.

Why buy kits online to convert your car for $700 - $800 when you can
gather all of the parts needed to convert your car for less than $300?

Everyone will walk away from the workshop with the knowledge needed to
find and assemble the components, find and filter the oil, actually do the
installation and save themselves hundreds of dollars in the process. When
you are done, you can show your friends, and together you can kick your
oil addiction.

Workshop Schedule to Include:
"An Introduction to Alternatively Fueled Vehicles"
Parts and Tools - What you need and where to get them cheap
Actual installation of the vegetable oil system
Building a Prefilter - How to turn garbage into fuel
Oil Procurement - Where to get good quality oil for free
Troubleshooting - What to do when things go wrong

Tuition is $125.00
Space is limited to the first 10 people.
If you are interested in this opportunity, send a check or money order,
along with all of your contact info, to:
Church of Deep Ecology PO Box 16075 St. Paul, MN 55116

For more info:
http://www.churchofdeepecology.org/diesel2oil.htm
or Email: events [at] churchofdeepecology.org

In order to provide each student with a complete and fulfilling experience
we have decided to limit the participants to 10.


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

From: Erik Forman <eforman [at] macalester.edu>
Subject: Labor cartooning 10.07 5pm

The Unfinished History of Labor Cartooning
a slide presentation by Mike Konopacki of Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

5pm Friday
October 7
ART 113 (presentation room in Art Building)
Macalester College, St. Paul

Mike Konopacki of Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons will present a slide show
consisting of 72 examples of American labor cartoons from 1754 to the
present. Beginning with Benjamin Franklin's "Don't Tread On Me" snake, the
show continues through the rich tradition of IWW cartoons. The show also
includes cartoons from the labor and left press of the 1910s to the
present, including Art Young, Robert Minor, William Gropper, Bill Mauldin
and contemporary artists. Mike is a major contributor to the
recenty-released "Wobblies!" graphic-novel history of the Industrial
Workers of the World.

He has co-published five collections of labor cartoons, Bye! American,
THEM, MAD in USA, Working Class Hero; and the latest, Two Headed Space
Alien Shrinks Labor Movement. With Alec Dubro, Mike has written and drawn
comic books and comics on the World Bank, welfare reform and union
organizing. Mike is now illustrating a graphic history of Chapter 12 of
Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, to be called The
Empire and the People. The book is due out in early 2007.


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

From: Mark Hanson <mchanson36 [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Ward 2 candidates 10.07 5:30pm

Friday, October 7
Brian Coyle Center
420 15th Ave S

5:30 - 6:00 p.m.: Voter registration
6:00 - 7:00 p.m.: Ward Two Candidates Forum
7:00 - 8:00 p.m.: Park Board Candidates Forum

The event is sponsored by Arc Hennepin-Carver, Pillsbury United
Communities, the Confederation of Somali Community Minnesota, the
Somali Action Alliance, the Riverside Plaza Tenants Association, the
YWCA of Minneapolis, the Minneapolis CAN Network, the Minnesota
Council of Nonprofits and the Metropolitan Alliance of Community
Centers.


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

From: Steve Clemens <steveclemens [at] msn.com>
Subject: Stringfellow 10.07 7pm

Public sessions of Word and World, a traveling seminary for street
activists: Friday and Saturday evenings, 10/7,8 at 7pm at Holy Trinity
Lutheran Church, 2730 E. 31st St., Minneapolis.

Topics are "Reading America Biblically: The Stringfellownian Task" and
"The Powers, Vocation and Labor", both focusing on the life and work of
Episcopal theologian, ethicist, and activist William Stringfellow.

Who is William Stringfellow? Theological critic of Imperial America;
reviver of biblical theology and ethics with reference to the
"principalities and powers;" participant in post-WWII ecumenism, helping
shape the worldwide student Christian movement; 1956 Harvard Law School
graduate who took up street law in New York's East Harlem; civil rights
activist helping goad white mainstream Christianity into the black freedom
struggle of the sixties; early critic of the Vietnam war visiting there in
1966; notorious interlocutor with Karl Barth in his 1962 visit to the
States; friend, counsel, and biographer of Bishop James Pike; federal
indictee charged with harboring Daniel Berrigan while underground in
August of 1970; correspondent of Jacques Ellul; subject of FBI
surveillance; advisor and canonical defender of the Episcopal women
priests irregularly ordained in 1974; caller for the impeachment of
Richard Nixon (well before Watergate); reformer and environmental activist
in the small town politics of Block Island;  connoisseur of the circus;
host and cook extraordinaire; "monastic"  contemplative and island
recluse; author of sixteen books...parable of the Word of God.

For more information, contact Steve Clemens, Community of St. Martin.
(612)  724-3255 or steveclemens [at] msn.com.

Steve Clemens 2912 East 24th Street Minneapolis, MN 55406-1322 (612)
724-3255 steveclemens [at] msn.com


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

From: Jacquelyn Zita <zitax001 [at] umn.edu>
FROM:  Women's Environmental Institute
Subject: Winona LaDuke 10.07 7pm Almelund MN

Winona LaDuke presentation "PROTECTING A MINNESOTA WAY OF LIFE" in
Almelund, Minnesota 10.7, Almelund Township Hall, 7:00-8:30 p.m.

Friday, October 7: Winona LaDuke, founding director of the White Earth
Land Recovery Project and Honor the Earth and former Green Party Vice
Presidential candidate, will present a lecture and video on "Manoomin, A
Minnesota Way of Life," the story of ancestral wild rice and her important
work to preserve and protect this ancestral rice as an important cultural
heritage and economic resource for Indigenous people.  Winona will also
talk about current educational and legislative efforts to ban genetic
manipulation of this unique Minnesota resource. Almelund, Minnesota is on
Highway 95 between North Branch and Taylors Falls.

This event is free and open to the public.  Refreshments will be served.
For more information, call the Women's Environmental Institute at Amador
Hill at 651-583-0705.  Sponsored by the Women's Environmental Institute
at Amador Hill, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Environmental
Justice Advocates of Minnesota, Sustainable Resources Center, Many Voices
Bookstore in Lindström, Mn.


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

From: Blythe Staley <blythe.staley [at] walkerart.org>
Subject: Ed Murrow/film 10.07 7:30pm

All screenings are $8 ($6 Walker members) and take place at the Walker
Cinema, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis.  For tickets or more
information, call 612.375.7600 or visit walkerart.org

Good Night. And, Good Luck.
Directed by George Clooney
Introduced by actor David Strathairn
Followed by a post-screening discussion and an online forum at
walkerart.org
Friday, October 7, 7:30 pm

This beautifully shot black-and-white film chronicles the conflict between
television newsman Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy and the
House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. Murrow (Strathairn)
tenaciously defies corporate pressures to broadcast McCarthy's lies and
scaremongering tactics. Strikingly salient in light of perceived
partisanship in the media today, this film is a powerful examination of
the encroachment of government on civil liberties.


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

America or the Empire
Bush's Final Choice
By RAMZY BAROUD
CounterPunch
October 5, 2005

Deep down, U.S. President George W. Bush should grasp the seriousness of
his debacle. If true, then he must also appreciate the time element in
averting the worse-case scenario, which he, along with an increasingly
alienated number of ideologues are imposing on their country.

Iraq is a multifaceted disaster, and its calamitous effects are hurting
America on many levels. The number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq is
creeping up to the 2,000 mark. The figure of those wounded and maimed --
some permanently disabled -- is several folds higher.

This war is too costly. Hundreds of millions of dollars are diverted from
the U.S. budget everyday to feed the war machine; good news for the
Pentagon and the military establishment maybe, but not so good for the
majority of Americans, especially the poorest among them.

The U.S. Army is stretched too thin, bogged down in a war gone awry. Many
National Guard units, whose sole mission is to tend to the nation's needs
in times of crisis, were deployed to Iraq. The consequences of such
indiscretions were exhibited in the Katrina disaster to a humiliating
degree.

Public opinion has been illustrative of Bush's heedless foreign-policy
conduct. A recent CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll found that 67 percent of
Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq.
The majority of Americans, according to the poll, want to see serious cuts
in military spending and a diversion of resources to help in the
post-Katrina rebuilding efforts.

But that is simply not feasible. The security in Iraq is deteriorating,
and the insurgency is gaining momentum. All attempts to diminish the
authenticity or magnitude of the resistance have failed. What's going on
in Iraq is not the work of a few infiltrators, nor can it be narrowly
defined according to ethnic classification or the character of one or a
cluster of individuals.

If the war was a faltering empire's attempt to thrust itself in a highly
strategic geopolitical location and thus gain control over precious energy
sources, then it was a strategic blunder. It is threatening the stability
of an entire region and also exposing the inadequacies of U.S. military
capabilities.
If U.S. military strategists -- especially those close to the president --
possess the courage to extract lessons from history and recognize the
complexity of the political reality in Iraq, they would undoubtedly
conclude that the war in Iraq is simply unwinnable.

Knowing that the U.S. cannot prevail in the war, the Bush administration
is focusing on winning time by diverting attention from Iraq with smoke
screens. There was the "bringing democracy" to the Arab world charade,
with its last episode being the elections mockery in Egypt. And before
that was the frenzy over the Islamic madrassas and how they gives birth to
"little terrorists" -- to use the outlandish term of one CNN journalist,
and so forth.

But every smoke screen has eventually dispersed to reveal the same tragic
reality that the White House is laboriously trying to conceal: Bush's war
has no future strategy and no quantifiable objective. Once these two
elements are removed, all that is left behind is war for the sake of war,
a perpetual, endless military strife devoid of meaning except that cruelly
inferred by an extremist zealot or a conceited ideologue. Evidently, the
Bush constituency thrives on both.

Even a pompous president with a divine mission must recognize a disaster
when he sees one. It is improbable that Bush actually believes his own
rhetoric of a world full of promise, which he supposedly molded, whether
in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon or Gaza.

Americans are distancing themselves from the conflict and the
administration's inflated projections. Despite the duplicity and outright
ignorance of the media, an estimated 300,000 antiwar protesters descended
on Washington D.C. on Sept. 24, demanding an immediate end to the war in
Iraq. They included representatives of 250 American families who lost
loved ones in Iraq. Also coming in droves were hundreds of war veterans,
many of whom became disabled in Iraq. They all came seeking answers,
disclosure and an end to the incessant war madness that has engulfed their
nation.

But Bush is unlikely to yield. He too has a crowd for which he cares
deeply, convoluted interest groups that are a bizarre mix of business
elites and corporate contractors, religious fanatics and top military
brass.

Bush's immediate constituency is unified in its war agenda, each group for
its own reasons. An immediate withdrawal from Iraq is an ideological
defeat; an irreplaceable financial loss for some; an end, if temporarily,
to unwarranted military interventionism and the injurious diminishment to
America's political hegemony. Considering that occupying and controlling
Iraq was the pinnacle of the Bush war advocates' infamous manifesto on how
to "secure the realms" of an increasingly challenged empire, a withdrawal
from Iraq would certainly be the end of that dream.

Yet staying in Iraq in a futile "hunt" for "terrorists" with an augmenting
insurgency that is steadily engulfing the whole country is nothing like
the envisaged "cakewalk" fantasy that also foresaw Iraqis showering the
liberators with flowers and candy. Iraq has grown to become the empire's
most dreadful nightmare.

This self-inflicted predicament presents Bush and his administration with
two arduous options: to disown their commitment to the empire and to exit
Iraq immediately, saving some face and an opportunity -- if only a meager
one -- to manage the crisis they've helped create with the hope of
reconciling with the majority of the American people, or to weather the
Iraqi storm, hoping for a miracle before their ship is completely sunk.

The hundreds of thousands of Americans who marched on Washington in
protest of Bush and his costly wars -- in fact the majority of the
American people -- have made their voices loud and clear. Will Bush and
his self-righteous ideologues listen, just for once?

Ramzy Baroud, a veteran Arab American journalist, teaches mass
communication at Australia's Curtin University of Technology, Malaysia
Campus. His forthcoming book, "Writings on the Second Palestinian
Uprising," is being published by Pluto Press, London.


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

The Latest Twists in Global Neoliberalism
Is the Dollar Still Falling?
By ROBERT POLLIN
CounterPunch
October 6, 2005

In his classic work, The General Theory, published in the depths of the
1930s Depression, John Maynard Keynes famously observed that "Speculators
may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the
position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of
speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a
by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be
ill-done."

Keynes's Depression-forged insights have been routinely reaffirmed over
the subsequent 70 years of global capitalist history, not least during the
current movements of decline, revival, and renewed drop in the value of
the dollar in global currency markets. And as Keynes emphasized, the main
issue here is not merely the behavior of financial markets, which never
has been more rational or socially redeeming than Las Vegas or Monte Carlo
(as was obvious during the Wall Street bubble years under Clinton). The
real issue is rather how the behavior of financial markets define the
limits of acceptable economic policies about things that matter well
beyond the confines of the casino, like unemployment, the distribution of
income, and the economic possibilities for our children.

In a piece last April in CounterPunch, I wrote that "Between January 2002
and December 2004, the dollar fell by 34 percent relative to the euro, and
22 percent relative to the Japanese yen. The prospect is for the dollar to
keep declining at least through 2005." I was accurate then in describing
what the prospect had been at that moment. But in fact, between April and
August, events have rendered that prospect increasingly uncertain. Between
May 1 and July 1 of this year, the dollar rose by 7.7 percent against the
euro and by 6.3 percent against the yen. Then, between July 4 and August
15, the dollar fell back by 3.7 percent against the euro and 2.1 percent
against the yen, before rising again to roughly their July levels by
October 1.

One of the main points of my April piece was to explore the factors that
would work against the continued dollar decline that proceeded through
2002-2004, and would, more generally, produce a more uncertain future
path for the dollar than was being widely asserted at the time. The first
and most straightforward factor that I had mentioned was that U.S.
policymakers themselves would not passively allow a dollar collapse. I
said then that the key policy tool for the U.S. to support the dollar
against the darkening opinion of global currency speculators was to raise
interest rates - i.e. sweetening the interest rate returns for global bond
purchasers if they keep holding their wealth in U.S. dollar bonds. Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has done just that in the ensuing months,
having pushed up the Fed's main monetary policy rate (the federal funds
rate) from 2.75 to 3.75 percent just since April, and with promises of
more increases to come.

I also said that any movement among European policy makers away from the
neoliberal policy agenda that has prevailed for roughly two decades would
spook currency markets and push the euro down against the dollar.
Neoliberalism in Europe, including low government deficits and high
interest rates, have conspired to maintain unemployment in the range of 10
percent for a most of the past 20 years in most European countries.

European elites appear just as committed to neoliberalism today as they
were in April. But the European people have made it clear that they've had
enough. The most vehement expression of this sentiment came when voters in
France and the Netherlands both decisively rejected the European Union
constitution last May. Global currency speculators did not miss this
unequivocal message from the European voters, even while European
politicians expressed disgust over the people's irresponsibility. The EU's
then President Jean-Claude Junker of Luxembourg declared that "This
evening, Europe no longer inspires people to dream."

A third change in the global currency landscape since April was something
I did not discuss in the earlier piece - the decision last July by the
Chinese to allow their currency, the yuan, to adjust slightly upward
relative to the dollar. The Bush administration had been lobbying heavily
for the Chinese to make this move, given that a low-valued yuan helps the
Chinese to keep pushing cheap imports onto the shelves of Wal-Marts and
the rest of the U.S. market. This makes the U.S. trade deficit - our
purchases of imports in excess of our sales of exports - grow
correspondingly. The trade deficit, in turn, along with the federal
government's $400 billion budget deficit, are the primary forces pushing
the dollar onto its downward trajectory in the first place.

U.S. policymakers have long complained that the Chinese haven't truly
embraced the rules of neoliberal global capitalism, giving themselves an
unfair advantage by holding down the value of the yuan. This is entirely
true. For decades now, the Chinese have been ignoring neoliberal precepts
in this and many other ways, through which disdain they have produced
something approximating to the fastest rate of sustained economic growth
in world history. One would think that this new Chinese gesture and to
date nobody, including probably the Chinese themselves, knows whether this
move amounts to more than a token nod in behalf of U.S. sensibilities
will immediately work to nudge the dollar back onto the downward path that
prevailed between 2002 and 2004, at least at first. This is because with
the dollar now being less valuable relative to the yuan, it is
correspondingly also less valuable for everyone else in the world that has
been using dollars to purchase imports from China. However, if a more
expensive yuan does contribute to a smaller U.S. trade deficit, the net
result from the smaller trade deficit could be to push the dollar back up.

Still another possibility is that, with the dollar cheapened relative to
the yuan, the Chinese may then decide to stop purchasing U.S. government
bonds as heavily as they have done the past few years. The purpose of U.S.
bond purchases by the Chinese (along with an even more voracious customer,
the Japanese) was to prevent the dollar from falling too rapidly, which
would thereby render Chinese products more expensive in the U.S. market.
However if the Chinese did decide to cut back on their U.S. bond
purchases, this would produce serious downward pressures on the dollar
against the euro and other currencies, not simply against the yuan. Alan
Greenspan would then likely push U.S. interest rates still higher in
self-defense. The U.S., in short, may not find themselves entirely
enamored with the exchange rate policy they wished for from China.

Such uncertainly is the very stuff on which the global currency casino
thrives. Is the dollar going to keep rising, as it did between April and
July, or return to its downward trajectory of the previous two years? The
dice keep rolling. As Lord Keynes, again, famously remarked, "on such
matters, we simply do not know."

Still, whether or not the dollar continues falling was not the main
question I posed last April. My main concern was rather, would a dollar
decline be good or bad news? Nothing has changed since April to undermine
my basic point then, which is, there is no simple answer to that question,
not least because the question inevitably itself pushes us well beyond the
environs of the financial market casino. We can't consider whether a
dollar decline is good or bad news without asking, "for whom?" Wall
Street? U.S. manufacturers? U.S. workers? French, Dutch or Chinese
capitalists or workers? How about South African workers? The answers don't
break down easily along well-defined political lines.

Thus, under neoliberalism, U.S. workers have been badly hurt by the U.S.
trade deficit and globalization more generally, since it increasingly
places them in competition for jobs with workers elsewhere. U.S. workers
therefore benefit from a weaker dollar, since a weak dollar makes it
easier to sell U.S. products in foreign markets and harder for imports to
compete with U.S.-based manufacturers. But U.S. workers would benefit far
more from an anti-neoliberal commitment to full employment policies in the
U.S., something akin to what the French and Dutch voters appeared to be
effectively endorsing in May. A full employment program in the U.S., as
well as France and the Netherlands, would also benefit workers in other
countries as well, including those in poor countries. If governments in
rich countries were committed to creating jobs for their residents, then
differences over trade policies and exchange rates - the struggle to
'beggar-thy-neighbor,' to create more jobs at home by taking jobs away
from neighboring countries - would diminish to a second-order problem.

But as long as exchange rates and trade policy remain a first-order
problem, the U.S. does face a serious and unavoidable trap, which is the
legitimate source of the hand-wringing about the dollar's decline from
2002 to 2004. Even without the help of the Japanese and Chinese purchasing
U.S. government bonds at their recent heavy rates, the U.S. can probably
counteract the long-term downward pressure on the dollar generated by our
persistent trade and budget deficits. But the Fed will have to keep
raising U.S. interest rates to accomplish this. Persistently rising
interest rates will then push the U.S. toward recession, especially given
that the U.S. housing market bubble is founded on this now cracking
foundation of low interest rates.

The threat of recession therefore hangs heavily over the remainder of the
Bush -2/Greenspan era, with the fundamental problems extending well beyond
simply the ups and downs of the dollar. But this should be no surprise,
given that Bush/Greenspan, just as with Clinton/Greenspan, have never
wavered in behalf of a fundamentally neoliberal agenda. The real issue is
therefore the one that that French and Dutch voters pushed into the faces
of Europe's elites last May: how long will neoliberalism continue to call
the shots, defining the limits of acceptable economic policy?

The answer to that question, ultimately, is about politics and not
economics. Neoliberalism will continue to make the material circumstances
of life worse for the overwhelming majority of people throughout the
world. But the Alan Greenspans of the world also know how to prevent
full-blown economic meltdowns. Opponents of neoliberalism therefore can't
simply wait for Greenspan and company (including his successor, to be
named soon) to slip up and allow a calamity to happen. The historical
transition away from 25 years of neoliberal ascendancy will only come when
the "no" to neoliberalism votes, such as in France and the Netherlands,
can be transformed into positive and successful programs and movements
throughout the world.

Robert Pollin is professor of economic and founding co-director of the
Political Economy Research Institute at the University of
Massachuesetts-Amherst. His groundbreaking book, Contours of Descent: US
Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity, has just be
released in paperback by Verso with a new afterward. He can be reached at:
pollin [at] counterpunch.org.

A recent interview with Pollin can be read at the PERI site.


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

Blundering Into Syria?
The Triumph of Ideology Over Reality
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch
October 6, 2005

Not content with the terrorist-breeding instability he caused by invading
Iraq, President Bush is plotting with Israel to repeat the disaster in
Syria.

The diplomatic editor of the London Telegraph reports (Oct. 5) that the US
is aiming at Syrian "regime change." The British newspaper quotes Israeli
defense minister Shaul Mofaz as saying that a report blaming Syria for the
assassination of a former Lebanese government official will be the
catalyst that starts the ball rolling. Mofaz says the report will be the
pretext for Bush to impose sanctions on Syria, "beginning with economic
sanctions and moving on to others."

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reports (Oct. 3) that the Bush
administration has asked Israel's government to recommend a successor for
Syrian president Bashar al Assad. No doubt, the Bush administration will
describe Israel's selection of Syria's new president as the workings of
democracy.

The Stratfor Intelligence Brief reports (Oct. 5) that Bush's National
Security Council is deciding whether to bomb Syrian villages along what
are thought to be "the infiltration routes used by jihadists" and to have
US special forces conduct operations inside Syrian territory.

Obviously, far from heeding demands from US generals and congressional
members of his own political party for a plan to withdraw from Iraq, Bush
intends to widen the war.

How can Bush, his National Security Council, and Israel be so blind to the
consequences of destabilizing Syria? A CIA report concluded that the US
invasion of Iraq created a training ground for al Qaeda. Doesn't Bush
understand that creating chaos in Syria will have the same result?

The National Security Council needs to quickly consult some real Middle
East experts before Bush's reckless policies in the face of seething
anti-American sentiment cause the overthrow of US puppet rulers in Egypt,
Jordan, and Pakistan, and dethrone the princes ruling the American oil
protectorates in the Middle East.

If the Bush administration cannot defeat insurgency in Iraq, how can it
defeat insurgency in Iraq and Syria? In Iraq, Syria, and Iran? The Bush
administration is fanatical, divorced from reality.

Last week Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security
Agency, said that Bush's invasion of Iraq was "the greatest strategic
disaster in US history." This is quite a distinction for Bush and his
government. Are the morons now going to double the distinction by
attacking Syria and quadruple it by attacking Iran?

Why don't Congress and the American public understand that the US cannot
afford to worsen the disaster in which it finds itself?

Nothing better illustrates the reality-denying capability of the Bush
administration than its secretary of state Condi Rice's speech at
Princeton University on September 30. It is a fantasy speech, devoid of
awareness that "regime change" in Iraq substituted Shi'ite clergy for a
secular ruler. The US secretary of state has no inkling of the conflict
generated between Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurd by the US imposed attempt to
produce and to adopt a constitution?

The Bush administration's Middle East policy is the triumph of ideology
over reality. Something must be done to stop Bush before he mimics in the
MIddle East Hitler's invasion of Russia. The American people cannot afford
the blood and treasure that the fanatical Bush administration is willing
to squander in the Middle East.

What can be done about a president who is immune to reason? A bill of
impeachment is a good start.

The Bush administration has already done more damage to Americans than the
September 11 attacks. The American people and their congressional
representatives must hold Bush accountable before it is too late. The Bush
administration has no intention of stopping with Iraq. At Princeton, Condi
Rice again declared the administration's intention to use US military
force to transform the societies in the Middle East. "Now is not the time
to falter or fade," declared the US secretary of state.

Such total oblivion to the "greatest strategic disaster in US history" is
far more scary than Muslim terrorists.

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


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

Student Brutalized by Cops and Rightwing Students for Protesting On Campus
Military Recruiting
Jackboots at George Mason
By M. JUNAID ALAM
CounterPunch
October 6, 2005

A Pakistani-American who served four years in the United States Air Force
as munitions personnel was beaten and brutalized by right-wing students
and campus police for staging a peaceful protest at a military recruitment
table last Thursday at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia,.

Tariq Khan, now a junior majoring in sociology, said he was standing in
front of the recruitment table outside the school student center--as he
has often done before - during noontime with a paper sign reading,
"Recruiters lie, don't be deceived," taped to his shirt. A student
approached Khan and initiated a verbal argument, screaming in his face; he
then took the flyer and ripped it up in front of him, Khan says.

The student then left and returned with another student claiming to be a
Marine having recently served in Iraq, and the three continued a verbal
argument that began to escalate, Khan claimed. "I asked the marine, 'So
how many people did you kill?'" Khan said. "And he answered, 'Not
enough.'" The marine student soon ripped Khan's sign off his shirt and
threw it in the trash.

Shortly thereafter, two of Khan's friends came to his defense, and a
college staff member told Khan he had to leave because he had no permit to
table in the area. "I didn't even have a table to begin with, so I didn't
see why I needed a permit for one," Khan said. "Besides, to have a table,
you need to be a campus group, and we didn't have one," he added, pointing
out that the student council denied an anti-war group's right to exist on
campus earlier because it contained several anarchists.

The staff member called campus security, at which point a police officer,
Lt. Reynolds, approached Khan and demanded to see his student ID. Khan
said he told the officer he was not carrying his ID and tried to walk away
when the policeman tried to arrest him and then became violent. "He threw
me into the stage," Khan claimed, referring to a dance area in the student
center left from an event earlier in the day, "and I just sort of raised
my hands to show I'm not violent and tried to get as much attention by
saying, 'I'm being non-violent and I'm being brutalized.'"

Fellow student and friend Amie Wells confirmed Khan's account, saying the
officer "grabbed him, put him in a half-nelson headlock," and then
"slammed him into a metal stage," propped three feet above the floor.
Wells added that the officer then slammed Khan into the ground hard,
resulting in his face hitting the surface.

Describing the atmosphere, Wells said a number of right-wing students were
cheering on police officers who were attacking Khan, exclaiming, "Kick
him!" She claimed most of the crowd appeared to be on the side of the
police. "It was disgusting," she said. Another student who witnessed
events, David Curtis, said some students initially implored the police to
let Khan go, but others soon arrived to support the police, chanting "Kick
his ass!"

According to Khan, Wells, and Curtis, one of the right-wing students who
had earlier harassed Khan joined the cops in forcing him on the ground.
Curtis asked the student what authority he was exercising, and the student
backed off.

However, Curtis says, a university employee who stood about six feet eight
inches and weighed around 300 pounds began helping the cops to further
subdue Khan. "He performed jujitsu moves on me while the cops held me
down, and the cops let him do it," Khan said. "Frankly, the cops were
doing just fine without him, but this huge guy came and put [Khan's] free
arm in a Kamora," Curtis said, referring to a jujitsu maneuver in which
the arm is painfully bent backwards. "You could see on his face that it
was really hurting him," Curtis said of Khan. A police officer claimed the
university employee was an "auxiliary police officer," but Wells, who
works with the man in the computer store, said she had never seen him in
that capacity.

Khan said he was then dragged off by two officers toward a police car but
was reluctant to get in. He says one cop was preparing to spray him with
mace. "He held the can straight at my eyes, about five inches away from my
face," Khan said. "So I started yelling, 'Hey, this cop is trying to mace
me, someone take a picture if you have a camera!"

Wells quickly took out her cell-phone camera and began snapping pictures.
"After I did that, the cop put away his mace can and said, 'Okay, no one's
going to get maced today.' I mean, clearly, he knew he was doing something
wrong," she said.

Khan says Officer Reynolds told him he had to arrest him because, "What
with 9/11 and everything else, we didn't know what you would do." Khan
also says another policeman told him that "You people are the most violent
people in the world." Before being hauled off to the Fairfax County Jail,
Khan was warned by the police who were questioning him that "If you even
look at [cops] the wrong way, they'll hang you up by your feet."

Officer Reynolds asked the handcuffed student if he needed medical
attention or desired an attorney, Khan claims, but says he was granted
neither medical attention nor an attorney after expressly asking for both.

Released after two hours, Khan was charged with disorderly conduct and
trespassing on campus--even though Khan is a student and police found his
ID when they searched him.

The student protester says he is planning to sue the school, the police,
and the right-wing students who attacked him. "I went with my wife and my
mother-in law to file a complaint at the police office right afterwards,
and had pictures taken of all my cuts and bruises," he says.

In response to the incident, the university issued a statement to Khan
recognizing that he was staging a peaceful protest and insisting it was
committed to students' rights to free speech on campus; it also said it
will conduct an internal investigation into the conduct of the police
officers and the other students who were involved in Thursday's events.

Khan, however, is not impressed. "They haven't even contacted me yet," he
said. "I'll believe them when I see results."

Asked what motivated him to begin his protest against military recruiters
on a campus where there is no organized anti-war movement, the former Air
Force enlistee said, "For four years, I was making bombs. Then I started
wondering where those bombs were actually going." After reading and
learning about the bombing of Kosovo and ongoing destruction of civilian
facilities in Iraq, he came to his conclusion: "I asked the questions and
I wasn't happy with the answers We were bombing civilian plants."

Speaking at a rally held on October 3 that was attended by 150 to 200
supporters at the university, Khan sounded a defiant note: "I will not be
bullied or intimidated into silence. The university authority's actions me
last Thursday were their way of telling me to shut up. And my answer to
them is, no, I will not shut up. The power-mongers in this country are
using 9/11 and terrorism as an excuse to trample all over our individual
rights. A friend of mine recently said, 'When we've traded in all our
freedom for security, we'll find that the only thing we've secured is our
own incarceration.'"

Photos of Arrest: http://lefthook.org/Ground/Alam100505pictures.html

M. Junaid Alam, 22, is co-editor of the leftist youth journal Left Hook,
(http://www.lefthook.org), where this report first appeared. He is also a
journalism student at Northeastern University and may be reached at
alam [at] lefthook.org.


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

 SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
 W.H. Auden

 I sit in one of the dives
 On Fifty-second Street
 Uncertain and afraid
 As the clever hopes expire
 Of a low dishonest decade:
 Waves of anger and fear
 Circulate over the bright
 And darkened lands of the earth,
 Obsessing our private lives;
 The unmentionable odour of death
 Offends the September night.

 Accurate scholarship can
 Unearth the whole offence
 From Luther until now
 That has driven a culture mad,
 Find what occurred at Linz,
 What huge imago made
 A psychopathic god:
 I and the public know
 What all schoolchildren learn,
 Those to whom evil is done
 Do evil in return.

 Exiled Thucydides knew
 All that a speech can say
 About Democracy,
 And what dictators do,
 The elderly rubbish they talk
 To an apathetic grave;
 Analysed all in his book,
 The enlightenment driven away,
 The habit-forming pain,
 Mismanagement and grief:
 We must suffer them all again.

 Into this neutral air
 Where blind skyscrapers use
 Their full height to proclaim
 The strength of Collective Man,
 Each language pours its vain
 Competitive excuse:
 But who can live for long
 In an euphoric dream;
 Out of the mirror they stare,
 Imperialism's face
 And the international wrong.

 Faces along the bar
 Cling to their average day:
 The lights must never go out,
 The music must always play,
 All the conventions conspire
 To make this fort assume
 The furniture of home;
 Lest we should see where we are,
 Lost in a haunted wood,
 Children afraid of the night
 Who have never been happy or good.

 The windiest militant trash
 Important Persons shout
 Is not so crude as our wish:
 What mad Nijinsky wrote
 About Diaghilev
 Is true of the normal heart;
 For the error bred in the bone
 Of each woman and each man
 Craves what it cannot have,
 Not universal love
 But to be loved alone.

 From the conservative dark
 Into the ethical life
 The dense commuters come,
 Repeating their morning vow;
 'I will be true to the wife,
 I'll concentrate more on my work,'
 And helpless governors wake
 To resume their compulsory game:
 Who can release them now,
 Who can reach the dead,
 Who can speak for the dumb?

 All I have is a voice
 To undo the folded lie,
 The romantic lie in the brain
 Of the sensual man-in-the-street
 And the lie of Authority
 Whose buildings grope the sky:
 There is no such thing as the State
 And no one exists alone;
 Hunger allows no choice
 To the citizen or the police;
 We must love one another or die.

 Defenseless under the night
 Our world in stupor lies;
 Yet, dotted everywhere,
 Ironic points of light
 Flash out wherever the Just
 Exchange their messages:
 May I, composed like them
 Of Eros and of dust,
 Beleaguered by the same
 Negation and despair,
 Show an affirming flame.


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   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
   rhymes with clove         Progressive Calendar
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