Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 11.08.05

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    11.08.05

1. Democracy unraveling? 11.09 7pm
2. Rowley/FBI/9-11       11.09 7:10pm

3. CCHC health/laws      11.10 7:45am
4. Salman Rushdie        11.10 12noon
5. Global warming/ethics 11.10 12:15pm
6. Get real/films        11.10 2:30pm
7. Political poets       11.10 4pm
8. Eagan peace vigil     11.10 4:30pm
9. Small is beautiful    11.10 5pm
10. Hitler's army/film   11.10 6pm
11. IsraelPalestine wall 11.10 7pm
12. Farm to fork         11.10 7pm

13. PC Roberts    - What America exports: paper, waste and jobs
14. M Junaid Alam - An interview with Stan Goff
15. Roger Burbach - Bush versus Chavez
16. ed            - Judge Smudge (poem)

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Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:36:15 -0600
From: "Krista Menzel (Merriam Park Neighbors for Peace)" <web [at] mppeace.org>
Subject: Democracy unraveling? 11.09 7pm

Public Insight Forum: Is Our Democracy Unraveling? A Talk with Richard
Harwood, Hosted by Minnesota Public Radio and the Citizens League on
Wednesday, November 9, 7pm at Macalester College, Kagin Commons
Hill Ballroom.

The media and politicians portray the U.S. as a nation divided - into red
and blue, religious and secular, urban and rural. But this conventional
wisdom, which drives today's politics and public life, is dead wrong,
according to Richard Harwood. Click here (or call 651-293-0575 x10) to
register!
<http://citizensleague.net/upcoming/archives/2005/11/public_insight.php>http://citizensleague.net/upcoming/archives/2005/11/public_insight.php


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Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:39:17 -0600
From: hathaway [at] ties2.net
Subject: Rowley/FBI/9-11 11.09 7:10pm

Wednesday, November 9 at Unity Unitarian Church in St. Paul, Colleen
Rowley, FBI Special Agent will give a talk entitled: "Balancing Civil
Liberties with the Need for Effective Investigation."

While serving as chief division counselor for the Minneapolis office of
the FBI, Ms. Rowley garnered considerable media attention in 2002 for
speaking out on what she saw as the Bureau's ineffective investigation of
Zacarias Moussawi, a suspected link to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She
will share with us how she believes we can balance sometimes competing
perspectives of investigation and civil liberties, without jeopardizing
integrity or ethics.

The talk begins at 7:10pm - Contact the Church Office for more
information
Unity Church - Unitarian 732 Holly Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55104
651/228-1456


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From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: CCHC health/laws 11.10 7:45am

November 10 - Who Else has your Doctors Ear?. . .And What are "They"
Whispering in Your Doctor's Ear?.  8:15am-12noon (7:45am - Registration
and Light Breakfast Buffet).  Cost: $60

Laws have been passed that change the way doctors make medical decisions.
Federal and state agencies will pay doctors according to the doctor's
compliance with government-preferred medical treatments. Will these new
laws improve or ration medical care? The initiative is controversial.
Get the facts directly from speakers on different sides of the issue.
Decide for yourself how these new laws will affect patient access to
customized health care services.

SPEAKERS
-BARRY STRAUBE, M.D.,  Acting Chief Medical Officer, Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services,
and Acting Director, Office of Clinical Standards and Quality, Washington, D.C.
-LYNDA BOUDREAU, Deputy Commissioner, Minnesota Department of Health
(speaking on behalf of Governor Tim Pawlenty)
-SIDNEY GOLDSTEIN, M.D.,  Cardiologist, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit,
Michigan
-WILLIAM MCGUIRE, M.D., Chairman & CEO, UnitedHealth Group, Minnetonka,
MN (invited)
-DAVID MCKALIP, M.D.,    Neurosurgeon, St. Petersburg, Florida

Registration Form: http://www.cchconline.org/ebm_2005.php

Radisson Phone: 612-379-8888
Location: Radisson University Hotel, (formerly "Radisson Hotel Metrodome"), 615
Washington Ave SE, Mpls., MN 55414


--------4 of 16--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Salman Rushdie 11.10 12noon

November 10 - Westminster Town Hall Forum: Novelist Salman Rushdie.
12noon.  Cost: Free.

Novelist Salman Rushdie is best known as the author of Midnight's Children
and The Satanic Verses. The latter novel, deemed sacrilegious by Iran's
Ayatollah Khomeni, brought him under a fatwa in 1989. Forced to live in
exile, Rushdie produced some of his most compelling work including The
Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath her Feet.

A recent book, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002,
explores both personal and public reactions to the fatwa. Mr. Rushdie was
born in Bombay and graduated from King's College, Cambridge, in England.
In his writings, Rushdie draws on his unique upbringing and personal
history to comment on modern life.

He has received numerous awards, including the Booker Prize for Midnight's
Children, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, the Writers' Guild Award,
the James Tait Black Prize, the Aristeion Prize for Literature, Britain
and Germany's Author of the Year Prizes, and the French Prix du Meilleur
Livre Etranger. In 2004, Rushdie was elected President of PEN American
Centre, a branch of the world's oldest human rights organization.

Rushdie's newest novel, Shalimar the Clown, is scheduled for release this
fall. Mr. Rushdie's writings and work are testimony to the power of the
artist in society.

Teachers are invited to bring their classes to the forum. So that we may
accommodate you, please confirm the number of students you will be
bringing by calling 612.332.3421. Location: Westminster Presbyterian
Church, Nicollet Mall at 12th Street, Minneapolis


--------5 of 16--------

From: Consortium <lawvalue [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Global warming/ethics 11.10 12:15pm

The Lunch Series on the Societal Implications of the Life Sciences will
present Donald Brown, Esq. (Pennsylvania Consortium for Interdisciplinary
Environmental Policy) on Thursday, November 10, from 12:15-1:30pm in the
Theater at the St. Paul Student Center.

Mr. Brown will lecture on "An Ethical Framework for Analyzing Global
Warming."  Continuing education credit is offered (see below).  The series
is cosponsored by the University of Minnesota's Consortium on Law and
Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences
(www.lifesci.consortium.umn.edu) and Joint Degree Program in Law, Health &
the Life Sciences (www.jointdegree.umn.edu).

Abstract: The problem of human-induced climate change raises profound
ethical questions because climate change policy will determine which
plants, animals, and ecosystems will survive and whether nations will
support a just international order.  Yet, there is a curious lack of
ethical reflection on a host of important questions raised by climate
change despite a growing scientific and economic literature on this
problem.  After identifying the major ethical questions raised by climate
change policy making, Mr. Brown will explain why express ethical
reflection on climate change policy options urgently needs to be
integrated into the scientific and economic matters that are currently
framing climate change debate.  Mr. Brown will also examine whether
current approaches to climate change policy are ethically justified.
This presentation will conclude with some specific suggestions about how
to move forward on increasing public awareness about the ethical
dimensions of climate change issues.

Mr. Brown is currently Director of the Pennsylvania Consortium for
Interdisciplinary Environmental Policy, and Senior Counsel for Sustainable
Development for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Before holding these positions Mr. Brown was Project Manager for United
Nations Organizations, United States Environmental Protection Agency,
Office of International Environmental Policy. His most recent book is
entitled: American Heat: Ethical Problems with the United States Response
to Global Warming.

The event is free and open to the public. Reservations are strongly
encouraged. Lunches are provided to those who RSVP by November 3, 2005 to
lawvalue [at] umn.edu or 612-625-0055 (please indicate if vegetarian/vegan).
Registration is required if you wish to receive continuing education
credits (CLE or general CEU). Those without reservations are welcome to
attend, but should bring a lunch. St. Paul Student Center parking is
available in the Gortner Ramp on Gortner Avenue, across Buford Avenue from
the Student Center. Maps may be found at
http://onestop.umn.edu/Maps/index.html.

This lecture is intended for students, faculty, researchers, scientists,
policymakers, and interested members of the community.  Following this
lecture, participants should be able to:

 * Discuss ethical questions raised by climate change policy.
 * Explain how these questions have been addressed in existing policy and
literature.
 * Propose and analyze legal and policy responses to new climate change
findings.

The program provides 1 contact hour of general University of Minnesota
continuing education (.1 CEU).  Continuing legal education credit (CLE)
for attorneys will be requested (1 hour).

This lecture is the second lecture in the 2005-06 Lunch Series.  This
year's Lunch Series focuses on "Energy and the Environment: Science,
Ethics & Policy."  For more information on upcoming events, visit
http://www.lifesci.consortium.umn.edu/news_and_events/#events.


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From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Get real/films 11.10 2:30pm

Get Real!: City Pages Documentary Film Festival
Landmark's Lagoon Cinema, on Lagoon Ave. off Hennepin Ave.S, uptown
Minneapolis
www.citypages.com/getreal

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10
2:30pm: Minnesota Stories (FREE admission)

(Afternoon happy hour at Bryant Lake Bowl!  Enjoy reduced rates on
cocktails, wine, beer and select appetizers following the afternoon
screening.)

5:30pm: Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography
Revel in this 1993 love letter to the glory of cinematorgraphy through 100
films made BEFORE DVDs: from CITIZEN KANE to DAYS OF HEAVEN, CASSABLANC
and THE CONFORMIST, this is movie lover's dream come true.

7:30pm: After Innocence
Hollywood movies that look at innocent prisoners exonerated and freed from
Death Row END their films where this one BEGINS: what happens after
release from decades in prison for a crime you didn't committ? How do you
start over? This film looks at the lives of 7 exonerated men---and one of
them will be at the screening to answwer questions. If you care about
American justice, don't miss this film!

(Closing night party to follow the screening of After Innocence at The
Independent in Calhoun Square.  Free appetizers, drinks and mingling with
one very special guest and festival staff).


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From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Political poets 11.10 4pm

Jayne CORTEZ & Mark NOWAK Reading
Thursday, November 10
4-6pm
Nolte Center for Continuing Education, Room 120, 125, University of
Minnesota
Contact: Institute for Advanced Study 612-626-5054 ias [at] umn.edu

"Performing Poetry's Public Obligations": A Reading with Jayne Cortez (New
York) and Mark Nowak (College of St. Catherine)

The event will be moderated by Maria Damon (Department of English,
University of Minnesota) and Gabrielle Civil (College of St. Catherine).

JAYNE CORTEZ is the author of ten books of poems and has performed her
poetry with music on nine recordings. Her voice is celebrated for its
political, surrealistic, dynamic, innovations in lyricism and visceral
sound. Jayne Cortez will perform along with her band, the Firespitters.
Jayne Cortez's web site is: http://www.jaynecortez.com

MARK NOWAK is author of Revenants, Shut Up Shut Down (afterword by Amiri
Baraka), and co-editor (with Diane Glancy) of Visit Teepee Town: Native
Writings after the Detours, all from Coffee House Press.  He is the editor
of the journal Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics and founder of the Union of
Radical Workers and Writers. His verse play "Capitalization" (about
Reagan's firing of striking PATCO workers) won a development grant from
the Stage Left Theatre in Chicago, where it premiered in 2004. Mark
Nowak's web site is: http://www.urww.org/MarkNowak


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From: Greg and Sue Skog <skograce [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Eagan peace vigil 11.10 4:30pm

CANDLELIGHT PEACE VIGIL EVERY THURSDAY from 4:30-5:30pm on the Northwest
corner of Pilot Knob Road and Yankee Doodle Road in Eagan. We have signs
and candles. Say "NO to war!" The weekly vigil is sponsored by: Friends
south of the river speaking out against war.


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From: Jesse Mortenson <jmortenson [at] Macalester.edu>
Subject: Small is beautiful 11.10 5pm

11.10 5pm
Cahoots coffeehouse
Selby 1/2 block east of Snelling in StPaul

Limit bigboxes, chain stores, TIF, corporate welfare, billboards; promote
small business and co-ops, local production & self-sufficiency.


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From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Hitler's army/film 11.10 6pm

November 10 - Film: The Refusal: Franz Jaggerstatter s Journey as WWII CO.
6pm.  Cost: Suggested donation: $5.

Pax Christi Annual meeting.

Supper at 6pm; film 6:45, followed by discussion.

Franz Jaggerstatter refused to serve in Hitler's army in WWII.  He
received no support from the Catholic Church, his bishop told him it was
his duty to serve.

FFI Florence Steichen 651-696-1642 steichenfm [at] usfamily.net Location: St.
Martin s Table, 2001 Riverside Ave (near Cedar and West Bank UofM


--------11 of 16--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Israel/Palestine wall 11.10 7pm

November 10 - Israeli/Palestinian Separation Wall Discussion. 7-9pm
St Joan of Arc, 4537 3rd Ave S, Minneapolis

Abu Ahmed, Palestinian, and Jonathan Pollak, Israeli, will speak on
Nonviolent Resistance to Israel s Separation Wall.  They are leaders of
the movement to protest Israel s separation wall.

Sponsored by Middle East Peace Now and Pax Christi Twin Cities Area and
ISM- Twin Cities Jews for an End to the Occupation.  FFI Florence Steichen
651-696-1642 steichenfm [at] usfamily.net.


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From: tom <tom [at] dunnwald.com>
Subject: Farm to fork 11.10 7pm

FARM to FORK - WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW CAN HURT YOU:

The "real" State of Livestock Production in the Era of Confined Feedlots
Please join EastSide Coop & Clean Water Fund in welcoming:

 Kendall Thu, University of Illinois
 Karen Hudson, GRACE    http://www.themeatrix.com/
 Diane & Marlene Halvorson, AWI  Animal Welfare Institute
 Tom Taylor, EastSide Cooperative Grocery
 Uwe Koester, MidWest Food Connection

for a survey of current practices in Livestock Production - how it's done
- how it can be done; the role of consumerism, and what you can do.

Be informed.  Get your questions answered.
7pm Thursday November 10
Mill City Cafe in the California Building . . . Beverage and Bar service
California Building is at 22d Avenue N.E. & California Street
2 Blocks W of University or 2 Blocks E of Marshall,  3 blocks S of Lowry.

Suggested donation $8 - proceeds to Clean Water Fund Rural Communities
work. Questions? Call 623-3666

[Big Livestock has degrees from Fork U - ed]


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What America Exports: Paper, Waste and Jobs
Still No Jobs
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch
November 8, 2005

The October payroll jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows
employment growth for the month essentially at a standstill.
The economy created only 46,000 private sector jobs. The bulk of
those - 33,000 - were in construction.

The domestic service sector of the economy, which has been the source of
net new jobs in the 21st century, experienced no job growth in October.

In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to generate net new jobs in
middle and upper middle class professions. This is a serious economic,
social and political problem that receives no attention.

There is a great deal of meltdown inside the US economy.  Manufacturing is
hollowed out. The decline in manufacturing means decline in the
engineering and other professions that serve it.  Knowledge jobs are also
being lost to offshore outsourcing and to H-1b, L-1, and other work visas.
In October, there were 81,301 corporate layoffs.

The government does not keep records of the US jobs lost to offshore
outsourcing and to work visas for foreigners. With so few jobs available
in the educated professions, the future of US universities would seem to
be bleak.

In December 2003, Congress directed the US Department of Commerce to
complete a study within six months of the impact of jobs outsourcing on
knowledge-based industries. The report due in June of 2004 was not
released until September of this year in response to a Freedom of
Information action and only after the report was gutted by political
appointees and reduced to 12 pages of PR quoting reports by organizations
and individuals that have been funded by multinationals that benefit from
shifting American jobs overseas.

Powerful lobbies that benefit from low cost foreign labor have invested
heavily in public relations campaigns to create the impression that
American jobs have to be outsourced and foreign workers brought into the
US because there are shortages of US engineers, scientists, nurses and
school teachers. It is amazing that the occupations in which shortages are
alleged to exist are the very occupations in which qualified Americans
cannot find jobs.

Many economists mistakenly claim that offshore outsourcing and work visas
for foreigners benefit Americans by lowering costs. But no country
benefits from the loss of high productivity, high value-added occupations.
The US runs trade deficits in manufactured goods and advanced technology
products. Last year the US trade deficit in advanced technology products
was $36,857,000,000. As of August of this year, the US trade deficit in
advanced technology products is running 26% higher than in 2004.

America's volume exports are paper, waste paper, agricultural products and
chemicals.

The October 28 issue of Manufacturing & Technology News reports that
Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Ford, Kimberly Clark, Caterpillar,
Goodyear, General Motors, USG, Honeywell, Alcoa and Kodak combined
exported 269,600 containers of goods in 2004. Wal-Mart alone imported
576,000 containers of goods.

The US allegedly is a superpower with a highly developed economy.  China
is a newly developing country not far from third world status.  You might
think that China would be running huge trade deficits with the US as China
imports the goods and services necessary to continue its economic
development and to serve consumer wants. The trade statistics, however,
tell a different story. Last year the US imported $196,682,000,000 in
goods and services from China and exported a mere $34,744,100,000 to
China. The American "superpower's" trade deficit with China came to
$161,938,000,000. To put this figure in perspective, America's trade
deficit with China is 28% higher than American's total oil import bill.

Everyone talks about energy independence as if our future depends on it.
Simultaneously, we are told that globalization is good for us in every
other respect. But why is energy independence any better than
manufacturing independence, or engineering independence, or innovation
independence? US imports of industrial supplies, capital goods, automotive
vehicles, and consumer goods all exceed US oil imports.

In recent years, offshore outsourcing has caused the US trade deficit to
explode. Offshore outsourcing means that the production of goods and
services for the US market is shifted from America to foreign countries.
This turns goods formerly produced in the US into imports. Between 1997
and 2004 the US trade deficit increased six fold. Since 1997 the
cumulative US trade deficit (including $700 billion estimate for 2005) is
$3.5 trillion. The outsourcing of America's economy is a far greater
threat to Americans than terrorists.

During the 1980s economists spoke in doom and gloom terms about the
"Reagan deficits." The cumulative US trade deficit for the entire decade
of the 1980s totaled $846 billion. The US trade deficit for 2005 alone is
83 percent of the cumulative deficit of the Reagan 1980s. Yet, we hear
very little doom and gloom. Economists now declare the trade deficit to be
good for us. They mistakenly describe the trade deficit as a mere
reflection of the beneficial workings of free trade. Economists have
become mouthpieces for the corporate interests who benefit by deserting
their American work force and replacing them with foreigners.

This process of substituting foreign workers for American workers cannot
go on for too long before the US consumer market dies from lack of income
and purchasing power. US policymakers have no clue.

Market Watch (Nov. 4) reports that "wage growth is a chief concern of the
Federal Reserve, which fears that wage pressures could imbed an
inflationary psychology in the economy." This is amazing. US wages are not
keeping up with inflation. Real wages are falling, and the Federal Reserve
is worried about wage pressures!

The Bush administration is squandering our few remaining resources
fighting an insurgency in Iraq that the Bush administration created by
invading Iraq. Meanwhile, globalization separates Americans from the
production of the goods and services that they consume. Americans are
expected to buy the products without having the incomes associated with
their production. If the war in Iraq lasts another ten years, as the Bush
administration keeps telling us, the US will find itself without the
industrial capacity or borrowing power to continue with the conflict.

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


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An Interview with Stan Goff
A Special Forces Officer Turned Anti-War Socialist
By M. JUNAID ALAM
CounterPunch
November 7, 2005

Stan Goff is a former US Special Forces Master Sergeant with three decades
of military experience, now heavily involved in anti-war work with
Military Families Speak Out and the Bring Them Home Now campaign. He is
also the author of two books, Full Spectrum Disorder, an analysis of the
US military action, and Hideous Dream, a memoir based on his military
experience.

Below, in an extensive interview, Goff discusses the current configuration
of the American political landscape in light of all the scandals exploding
around the administration, and what the Left can do to take advantage of
them. He also talks about the politics of the anti-war movement, why
liberals refuse to endorse immediate withdrawal, and on a personal note,
how is own son came to sign up for the military. Finally, Goff offers his
thoughts on the Venezuelan revolution, its achievements, and its
implications for neo-leftist ideas that declaimed against the state as a
site for social change after the USSR's demise.

Alam: A political sandstorm is brewing for the Bush administration on so
many fronts: Iraq, Plamegate, Katrina, gas prices, the Delay indictment
and the judicial debacle. Broadly speaking, do you think the left will be
able to capitalize on Republican weakness, or does the centrism of the
Democrats stand in the way of significant gains?

Goff: The crisis of the Bush administration has just been further deepened
by the mass protests and political cold shoulder he got when we visited
Latin America to flog the FTAA. Hugo Chavez declared that the agreement
would be buried in Mar de Plata, Argentina. And huge, militant street
actions ripped the costumes off the perception management act.

A Zogby poll now shows that the majority of military personnel in the US
armed forces disapprove of their commander in chief's performance. The CIA
gulag is being exposed. More Abu Ghraib photos will soon be released, just
as Janis Karpinski's expose is released. While we don't hear about it here
any longer, the incident in Afghanistan where Special Forces troops burned
the bodies of dead Muslims remains a source of seething fury in the
region. A little-reported Shia rebellion is gaining strength in Basra,
while Sistani talks about the new government demanding American
withdrawal. And Karen Hughes, Bush's PR flak, recently had her head
publicly handed to her when she tried to lecture Indonesians on democracy
as she tried the kind of historical mythologizing that she gets away with
in the US.

The crisis here is one of legitimacy. There is no immediate threat to the
general stability of US imperial power. There is a threat, however, to the
Republican Party that is being borne into the party by a fairly reckless
lame-duck government, and the latent threats to imperial power are growing
everywhere.

If the US left doesn't encumber itself with unrealistic expectations,
there is ample room to make some headway in the next period. But we have
to understand which points we push on will give way and which won't.

Standing on the sidelines during the Republican terramoto to show how
above bourgeois politics we are strikes me as pretty foolish and
self-indulgent. We definitely have to unite with this gathering storm
surge of resistance to the seated government, even when it does provide
some short-term opportunities for the Democratic Party.

Internationally, this crisis of legitimacy is not perceived as a
Republican issue, but a US issue. Most of the rest of the world has some
real sense of what US policy internationally translates into for them, and
the distinction between Republicans and Democrats is fairly meaningless
except to a few pet NGOs. I think these perceptions abroad are more
accurate than our perceptions here.

The left in the US is clearly out of the left-sectarian sandbox right now
with regard to the war against Iraq. At least the majority in the US now
believes it was a bad idea - for a whole host of reasons - and that it's
time to get out. So mass organizing has created a huge new discursive
space here for the left, and we need to ensure we don't blow it by using
shotgun propaganda - that is, approaching every sector in the movement and
every audience with the same message, couched in the same terms.

It always amazes me that the same people who can explain something as
nuanced and philosophically complex as commodity fetishism can fail to
appreciate the formidable epistemological barriers that prevent most other
people from understanding the same things. But if we learn to do public
pedagogy effectively, beginning with the reduction of these barriers
through popular education and the development of different approaches for
different sectors, there is a huge potential to consolidate the left
itself, and to win over key new layers of the mass movement to at least an
anti-imperial consciousness.

This is a crucial step along the path to refounding a US left that has the
power to go beyond the demonstration dynamic and actually begin to put
down local roots in communities where they can develop some institutional
infrastructure. This seems like an organizational development imperative.

But the left also has the responsibility to weaken the obstacles to
progress toward refoundation of a vital left in the US, and my own feeling
is that this involves the eventual euthanasia of the Democratic Party even
though I don't think we should underplay the risks of this for polemical
advantage. It is very risky, and so we need to calculate those risks, then
move forward.

The key is to expose and isolate the opportunistic leadership of that
party without attacking its rank and file. Calling people stupid for
voting Democrat is a fine cathartic outburst, but it doesn't seem like a
very good strategy for wining over the next layer of people to an
anti-imperialist consciousness.

We are already dong a fairly good job of exposing the Democratic Party on
the war against Iraq right now, or rather, the Democratic Party is dong a
fine job of exposing itself. But there are two points of vulnerability
that haven't been taken up as aggressively as they should be and that is
making the connections between the social conditions of oppressed
nationalities in the US and the Palestinians.

Many people want to make a preposterous case that the Republican neocons
are in the pay of Israel and that the US is somehow subordinate to Israel.
This is not only idiotic, it is often anti-Semitic world Jewish conspiracy
stuff. The problem is that people in the US are spectacularly ignorant
about Palestine and the state of Israel. The more dominant belief is that
Israel is an island of white civilization in a sea of Arab deviance, of
course, and an alarming number of Republican partisans have convinced
themselves that the Israeli state is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy
in the end times. The political reality is that the Republicans have
seized on Zionism so aggressively to undermine the Democratic Party, whose
Zionism is almost legendary.

So I guess I believe that we should be working three fronts hard.

On a practical level, relating to the Iraq war, we have to up the ante in
terms of war resistance and strengthen our efforts at counter-recruitment.
This materially weakens the war effort, and the US military failure in
Iraq is an advance for the whole world. It also means attacking
Republicans, and uniting with mass disillusion about Republicans.

On an organizational level, it seems we have to consolidate the left wing
of the movement, isolate the reactionaries who are trapped in this
legitimacy crisis, and work a lot harder and smarter to win over new
layers of the antiwar movement and oppressed nationalities to an
anti-imperialist orientation.

Finally, we need to develop durable, local social and political
infrastructure I'm thinking here of three groups I know, the People's
Organization for Progress in Newark, and the whole city block in Chicago
developed around the Puerto Rican Cultural Center - where I recently had
the honor to visit. Black Workers for Justice here in North Carolina has
always looked in this direction, too, with a workers center, clinics, the
World Cultural Center, and so forth.

Alam: Turning to the anti-war movement: Cindy Sheehan has been a
remarkable symbol of the anti-war movement - mother of a soldier lost to
the war, active, principled, and outspoken. However, the anti-war left
still seems trapped in the same kind of circular, sporadic
protest-conference dynamic. What could the hard left do in terms of its
own behavior that could change this circle into an upward spiral of
action?

Goff: Just for myself, I don't see the process as an upward spiral, and
I'm not trying to quibble over metaphors here. I see it as moving into
abandoned spaces. That's why though I believe the demonstrations are
important, the real work to consolidate the advanced activists has to
happen at the local level. I'm thinking here about the ten-point program
of the Black Panther party, and how that was paired with the development
of local social and political infrastructure. Yusuf Nuruddin recently
wrote a good piece on this for Socialism and Democracy.

Symbolic politics has great catalytic value, but a limited life
expectancy.

Locally-rooted, and culturally homogenous organizations with an
anti-imperial consciousness are not only more effective at pursuing
counter-recruitment work and pressuring elected officials on the war, they
are on the front lines against the attack against their own living
standards. Katrina is showing us, if we care to look, an accelerated
version of what may be the most important issue facing Black and Brown
communities in the US, and that is gentrification.

Alam: Liberals who express disillusionment and anger with the war - like
Juan Cole - nevertheless object to immediate US military withdrawal
because they argue it would result in total anarchy and chaos. They also
say the US has certain obligations to Iraqis in light of its policies the
past two years. Are these objections valid, or are they cover for a more
visceral concern about the US losing "credibility" if it leaves?

Goff: They are an expression of white supremacy. I don't think there is
any way to sugarcoat this. The racism of reactionaries has been isolated
to a large degree. We can start a fight over the Minutemen or the
Daughters of the Confederacy and pretty much win the public debate.
Liberal racism is a far more destructive force in this society, largely
because it is still unacknowledged. The argument to stay the course from
liberals is based directly and absolutely on a latter-day version of the
"white man's burden to civilize the darker races."

The political cover is not to protect US credibility. The leadership of
the Democratic Party wants to stay in Iraq for the same reason the
Republicans do. This is, from the point of view of the US state, an
absolutely necessary re-disposition of the post-Cold War American
military. The argument between D's and R's is about how to accomplish it.

The reason we saw next to zero official Democratic Party participation in
September 24th was that the Democratic Party leadership disagrees with us.
They want those permanent bases in Iraq every bit as much as Richard Perle
and Paul Wolfowitz do. There is simply no other way to explain why the
most visible leaders of that party continue to argue for expanding the war
with more troops and garnering more international support for it, when the
polls show this to be an increasingly unpopular position like free trade
agreements, another issue where the public opposes, and both parties
agree. This is a pretty good indicator that transnational capital
operating through the US state regards these positions as non-negotiable.

Alam: Turning personal for a moment: you've been very active in the
anti-war movement as a member of Military Families Speak Out, you spent
about 30 years in the Special Forces before you became a socialist, and
you have a son who served in the military Iraq. The question sort of
presents itself: how did the son of a Master Sergeant-turned-Marxist end
up joining the military?

Goff: My son grew up on a military installation. That was a good life,
from his standpoint. Military installations are socialist societies.
Everything on them is held in common, and almost every facility and
support activity is available universally to all members of the armed
forces. Good schools, health care, housing allowance or free housing,
recreation facilities, and for inter-racial kids like my son, a whole
population of kids like him. Inter-racial marriage is far more common in
the Army than in US society generally. He saw me get a check twice a
month, and I never had to worry about being fired.

His own child had just been born, and he was working at McDonalds. So he
went to what he knew. Fort Bragg is where my kids have their most enduring
sense of place. And Fort Bragg is a nice place. It is well kept, and it is
not cluttered up with commercial billboards. There are all sorts of things
to do - fishing, swimming, craft shops, gyms, theaters, libraries, walking
trails, and so on.

I won't speak for him on the question of the war, because I do not have
his permission to do that. But if he never had to go back to Iraq, I doubt
he'd be calling for an appointment with mental health to deal with his
disappointment. He's 22. He likes to fish and dance and play video games
and hang out with his pizos. My kids are aggressively apolitical it's a
separation thing, I suspect.

Alam: One of the often unrecognized consequences of resistance in Iraq is
the US government's inability to direct its full wrath at an enemy much
closer to home: Hugo Chavez. What are your thoughts about Chavez's
progress in cultivating what he calls 21 century socialism?

Goff: How can I not like Hugo Chavez? He was a paratrooper like I was, who
learned to love the people and got political. He represents a nation where
the armed forces fused with the masses to disrupt a US-supported coup
d'etat. He is exploiting his assets and minimizing his liabilities to
stick his finger in the eye of the Imperium.

He has accomplished so much, but there are a couple of things in
particular that resonate with me. He led the process to rewrite a
bourgeois constitution and make it an instrument of popular sovereignty.
Women's equality was written straight into that document, and he destroyed
the most undemocratic political institution in the country, the Senate. I
wish we could do that. But the other thing he did was to organize a
nationwide literacy program around that constitution, making this document
a weapon that was handed to the masses.

Now he is taking on a leadership role in the whole region, where we are
seeing what I call a political version of continental drift. Latin America
is awake again, and it is trying to gain its feet. That process is
strengthened by US overstretch in Iraq. I don't have a crystal ball to see
where all this will go, but I do know that when I visited the very
independista Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago that I mentioned
earlier, they had sent their youth to Venezuela, and his picture was
everywhere. That all seems very positive.

As to how the Venezuelans feel their way into the future, I am neither
informed enough nor close enough to Venezuela to make any kind of
critique. That the Venezuelan state is the instrument for returning power
to the masses is enough to make me smile.

Alam: You've been one of a handful of leftists who has spoken strongly
against the romanticization of Zapatistas and the dismissal of the state
as a means of social change - positions long championed by John Holloway
and Michael Hardt and others post-USSR. Does Venezuela present a
definitive answer to their neo-Marxist/anarchist formulations, or is too
early to tell?

Goff: I don't know if I'd characterize the Zapatistas themselves as
anarchists. I just don't know enough about their internal processes to
make a judgment like that. They are immensely popular, however, with petit
bourgeois radicals in the US, precisely because of the stalinophobic
simplicity of thinking by semi-leftists who are still trapped in a
consumer-capitalist episteme. They want to divorce themselves from the
history of the left because it doesn't square with the good-guy/bad-guy
thinking of metropolitan progressives. They are interested primarily in a
moral evaluation of the 20th Century instead of a critical one.

I find this metropolitan hyper-idealization of the Zapatistas almost
orientalist, a kind of fawning over the charming natives who are seen as
modern-day Robin Hoods. And they hardly ever actually use their guns,
which further endears them to American progressives who vicariously dress
up like revolutionaries in a film script, but who can't seem to handle the
moral ambiguities of any active armed struggle that actually shoots
anyone.

The left has to critique 20th Century state socialism, no doubt. But you
can't enter that process with a moral agenda, or even an ideological one.
That isn't just an issue I have with anarchists, who are stunningly
ahistorical except to pronounce moral judgments on specific events without
the least concern for context. I have the same issue with anyone who
engages in this critique to attempt the apotheosis of his or her favorite
dead communist. Here is a news flash. We are not living in Russia in
either 1917 or 1937. We are not living in China in 1950 and neither are
the Chinese and Russians.

In that process of studying the 20th Century, not only do we have to ask
how the Soviet bloc was defeated or how capitalism is being restored in
China, but how has Cuba managed to preserve so many of its accomplishments
until now and what about Cuba makes its strategies uniquely Cuban.

The Zapatistas seem to have adopted a strategy that focuses on civil
society as a means of influencing the state. That might be anarchist, or
it might be Gramscian, or it might be something else. That doesn't seem to
be the issue, at least to me. The issue to me is what works. Has this
project advanced the interests of the indigenous people involved, or has
it been defeated, or where is it along that continuum?

I won't compare it directly to Venezuela for a number of reasons anyone
could infer with a moment's thought. But I will say that having state
power provides a lot of advantages in advancing the interests of the
masses. If it didn't, the US wouldn't be so hell-bent on contesting it,
either through interference in the elections of other countries, or with
coups like those in Haiti and Venezuela.

Having clear territorial boundaries, access to public revenues, control
over the legal interpretation of what property means, the ability to
openly and legally maintain armed forces, international diplomatic
recognition, trade agreements with other nations these are clear. If
anyone tells me these are not useful in the hands of a popular government
to protect the people from imperialism, then I want him or her to share
what they are smoking.

On the other hand, Venezuela is not just a challenge to anarchist and
liberal orthodoxy, it is a challenge to leftist orthodoxy of the more
adventurist kind that says the only way to state power is through
revolutionary civil war.

I don't think Venezuela is teaching us anything about "models," except
that there are no models. It's teaching us a lot more about the value of
embeddedness for social movements and the need for tactical agility.

M. Junaid Alam is co-editor of the leftist youth journal Left Hook, where
this first appeared, and a journalism student at Northeastern University.


--------15 of 16--------

The Imperial President and the Bolivarian Democrat
Bush Versus Chavez
By ROGER BURBACH
CounterPunch
November 7, 2005

Bush's woes just keep piling up on him. The summit of hemispheric leaders
he attended in Argentina was a total embarrassment, revealing the emperor
has no clothes. Bush did manage to avoid shaking hands with his main
adversary at the summit, Hugo Chavez. But the president of Venezuela stole
the show, drawing 35,000 to hear him speak at a packed stadium. In Bush's
only comment on the massive demonstrations against his stay in Argentina,
he lamely joked with the country's president, Nestor Kirchner, "It's
particularly not easy to host, perhaps, me."

Declaring "I will of course be polite" in the presence of Chavez, Bush
waited until he flew off to Brazil to levy a savage attack on the leader
of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela: "Ensuring social justice for the
Americas requires choosing between two competing visions," he proclaimed
at a banquet. "One offers a vision of hope. It is founded on
representative government, integration in the world community, and a faith
in the transformative power of freedom in individual livesthe other seeks
to roll back the democratic progress...by playing to fear, pitting
neighbor against neighbor, and blaming others for their own failures to
provide for their people."

This Orwellian declaration upended the realities of Chavez's Venezuela and
Bush's America. Elected to the presidency in 1998, Chavez received 56
percent of the vote, while as the world knows Bush in the 2000 elections
lost the popular vote to his Democratic opponent.

During Chavez' seven years in office, Venezuela has proved to be the most
democratic government in the recent history of the Americas. Eight
elections or referendums have taken place, including the election of a
constituent assembly to draft a new Bolivarian constitution that
established the principles for a participatory democracy. In each instance
of voting, fifty-six to sixty percent of the participants have supported
Chavez or his initiatives, including his reelection as president under the
new constitution in 2000. Bush it should be noted in his reelection in
2004 received only 51% of the votes, the lowest for an incumbent since
Woodrow Wilson in 1916. No international observers have uncovered fraud in
any of the Venezuelan balloting, while in the United States there are
still serious questions about the fairness and integrity of the 2000 and
2004 elections.

The Bush administration's most ignominious assault on the new democratic
spirit in Venezuela occurred with a coup attempt in April 2002. After
meeting with the coup conspirators in Washington for months before hand,
the United States was the first and only government in the hemisphere to
recognize the "golpistas" headed by Pedro Carmona, the president of the
Venezuelan business association. Chavez was restored to power in 48 hours,
thanks to a massive popular demonstration combined with military support,
principally among junior officers and common soldiers.

As in the lead up to the Iraqi war, the US media, including the liberal
press, proved to be a conveyor belt for the Bush line on Chavez. While the
coup was in progress the New York Times editorialized: "Venezuelan
democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." The Times, also
echoing the position of the Venezuelan elites, insisted that Chavez was a
"demagogue."

Demagoguery is apparently a label imposed on any leader who attempts to
mobilize and improve the lot of the popular classes at the expense of the
wealthy. In a country of 25 million, illiteracy has been virtually
eliminated as 1.4 million learned to read and write during the early years
of Chavez' tenure. Three million adult Venezuelans previously outside the
education system due to poverty enrolled in schooling programs.

When Chavez took office 80 percent of the population was largely excluded
from the benefits of an oil rich economy. Few had access to even minimal
health care. Today, thanks in large part to an "oil for doctors" program
that has brought 20,000 Cuban doctors to Venezuela, seventy percent of the
population enjoys access to free health care. Malnutrition and hunger have
been eliminated as three-fifths of the population now receives subsidized
food via cooperatives, special food programs and government distribution
centers.

As to Bush's allegation that Chavez is pitting "neighbor against
neighbor," the President of Venezuela proudly points to his efforts to
foment cooperation in the hemisphere while opposing "the frightening
neo-liberal globalization" embodied in Bush's call for a Free Trade Area
of the Americas. Chavez in August launched PetroCaribe, a program
providing Venezuelan oil to the countries of the Caribbean at a 40 percent
discount with long term loans at 1 percent interest. In opposition to
Bush's neo-liberal agenda, Chavez is calling for the Bolivarian
Alternative for the Americas that would include political as well as
economic integration for South and Latin America.

The ultimate hypocrisy in Bush's proclamation that he stands for improved
international relations while Chavez opposes "freedom in individual lives"
came at Bush's last stop in Panama. There in an effort to rebuff
international criticism of the secret U.S. prison system abroad used to
detain and torture alleged terrorism suspects, Bush stated he would
continue to "aggressively pursue" terror suspects and insisted that "any
activity we conduct" is "lawful." Small wonder Chavez labels the Bush
regime a "terrorist administration" that is a "threat to humanity."

Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas
(CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International Studies,
University of California, Berkeley. He is co- author with Jim Tarbell of
"Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire," He
released late last year "The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global
Justice."

--------16 of 16--------

 Judge Alito, a
 smudge trudging a grudge, is a
 strict destructionist


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