| Progressive Calendar 01.11.06 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001 tc.umn.edu)
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| Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 05:40:16 -0800 (PST) | |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 01.11.06 1. Citywide internet 1.10 1pm 2. Immigration forum 1.10 3pm 3. Land trust 1.10 5pm 4. Animal advocates 1.10 5pm 5. WalMart sucks II 1.10 6:30pm 6. Peace church 1.10 6:30pm 7. GLBT novel 1.10 7pm 8. War/churches 1.11 8am 9. Federal reserve 1.11 6pm 10. Anti-torture 1.11 7pm 11. Plan Iraq rally 1.11 7pm 12. No Anoka stadium 1.11 7pm 13. AI StPaul 1.11 7:30pm 14. Organic farm/film 1.11 7:30pm 15. Saree Makdisi - The whitewashing of Ariel Sharon 16. David Baldwin - The Green moment 17. Robert Jensen - Amendment I: freedom of assembly 18. Philip Watts - Bush advisor: Bush has right to crush kids testicles 19. Ian James - Harry Belafonte calls Bush "terrorist," praises Chavez 20. Nick Turse - Rollback to 1214 AD --------1 of 20-------- From: Jocelyn [mailto:jocelynsue [at] msn.com] Subject: Citywide internet 1.10 1pm St Paul Crime Prevention Coordinators and others interested in discussing the Digital Divide: You may have seen the article in today's Pioneer Press stating the Woodbury would not be offering their residents free or low cost internet access at this time, and that Minneapolis is on its way to providing it. It also mentions that St Paul staff have formed a committee to study this option. This is a reminder that we will be meeting at Old Man River Café on the corner of Smith Ave & Annapolis on January 10th from 1-3pm to start the discussion on the importance of wi-fi and affordable high-speed internet access for all residents. It is especially important as a means for providing safer neighborhoods. We are in a good position to advocate for this option so let's discuss what it could mean for St. Paul. Jocelyn van Toor West Side Safe Neighborhood Council 651.298.9727 www.westsidesafe.org <http://www.westsidesafe.org/> --------2 of 20-------- From: Elizabeth Dickinson <eadickinson [at] mindspring.com> Subject: Immigration forum 1.10 3pm The American Immigration Lawyers Association MN/Dakotas Chapter, Centro Campesino, Centro Legal, Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, Jewish Community Action, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights and American Immigration Law Foundation present: A Forum on Comprehensive Immigration Reform Only one day before the House adopted a Budget Bill without the Senate Judiciary Committee's provisions for more H-1B and Employment-based visas, the House passed H.R. 4437, the most restrictive immigration bill in decades. This bill strips immigrants of judicial review and due process while criminalizing unlawful presence and humanitarian acts by U.S. citizens toward undocumented immigrants! It's time to stop unjust immigration bills! Please attend this public forum to express our community's unified support for realistic, fair and comprehensive immigration reform of our broken immigration system All of our congressional delegates to Congress have been invited to join the discussion. January 10 3-5 pm at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota Ramsey Action Program Building 450 North Syndicate, Room #201 St. Paul, MN 55104 RSVP to Darlene at 612-492-7519 or ddehmer [at] fredlaw.com --------3 of 20-------- From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com> Subject: Land trust 1.10 5pm City of Lakes Land Trust January 10, 5pm Meeting at Minnehaha United Methodist Agenda for January 10 Our turnout for the December 8 Station Area Planning meeting was about 25 people from the area. We need to increase that number to 35-40 if we can. Thanks to everyone who had a friend or who came themselves. Our January 10 meeting will address two issues: 1. The City of Lakes Land Trust will present its options to us concerning maintaining affordability in ownership settings, 2. We will set up telephone trees and contact guidelines for the upcoming January 26 Station Area Planning meeting. Here are some talking points for the January 26 meeting. Currently this area near the VA contains the largest amount of undeveloped land near the light rail line in NENA. Zoning should encourage the siting of affordable rental and ownership units along the corridor in this area. Greater density allows for green space within a project area. Families with incomes between $25,000 and $60,000 represent the dominant income groups in the neighborhoods. Affordable senior and family housing is in short supply at affordable prices. Almost without exception three or four bedroom homes in good condition sell for more than $205,000 with a majority over $225,000. The light rail line is metropolitan wide resource at this time. Diversity has come and will continue to come to NENA with over 20% of the area population identifying themselves as something other than of European background. --------4 of 20------- From: Gil Schwartz <gil [at] ca4a.org> Subject: Animal advocates 1.10 5pm Gilbert Schwartz Campaign Coordinator Compassionate Action for Animals 300 Washington Ave SE, Rm. 126 Minneapolis, MN 55455 www.ExploreVeg.org Office: 612-626-5785 Cell: 612-296-9020 gil [at] ca4a.org Join the local animal advocacy group, Compassionate Action for Animals, for great vegan/vegetarian eats at Galactic Pizza next Tuesday, January 10! Galactic Pizza will be donating fifteen percent of its profits to CAA every second Tuesday evening of the month. The restaurant offers an amazing array of vegan pizza toppings including gooey soy cheese, mock duck, and organic veggies. This will be a great time to meet local vegetarians, eat delicious food, and support the cause. Please contact us at info [at] ExploreVeg.org <mailto:info [at] exploreveg.org> or check out www.ExploreVeg.org for more info. After 5pm on Tuesday, January 10 (and every second Tuesday thereafter) Galactic Pizza, 2917 Lyndale Ave S. in Uptown, Minneapolis --------5 of 20------- From: Patty Guerrero <pattypax [at] earthlink.net> Subject: WalMart sucks II 1.10 6:30pm The Salon this week, Jan. 10, we will show the second part of the film: Wal-Mart: the high cost of low price by Robert Greenwald. Hope to see you. Salons are held (unless otherwise noted in advance): Tuesdays, 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Mad Hatter's Tea House, 943 W 7th, St Paul, MN Salons are free but donations encouraged for program and treats. Call 651-227-3228 or 651-227-2511 for information. See our web pages at http://justcomm.org/pax-salon --------6 of 20-------- From: humanrts [at] umn.edu Subject: Peace church 1.10 6:30pm January 10 - Every Church a Peace Church Program Presentation. 6:30pm. Every Church a Peace Church will present on the ECAPC program. Potluck at 6:30. All welcome. FFI Basilica Christian Life office 612-317-3419 Location: Basilica of St. Mary School Great Hall, Minneapolis --------7 of 20-------- From: humanrts [at] umn.edu Subject: GLBT novel 1.10 7pm January 10 - Alan Spears Forums: Down For Whatever: True Love and the Crash of Family, Community, Ethnicity, and Class. 7pm. Described as a cross between Sex and the City and Queer as Folk, novelist Frederick Smith's Down for Whatever weaves together the lives of a group of African American and Latino guy-loving men. Underlying the story is a smart explanation of the socioeconomic and class issues facing gay and bi men of color and how they play out in dating, friendship and family dynamics. Smith sheds light on why standard terms used in the media dealing with sexual orientation just don't work for many African American and Latino men. He explores the myth that African American and Latino communities are more homophobic and less accepting than other communities. Perhaps the media hype about these men being on the down low is too simplistic. Their lives are much more interesting, lively and complex. It's more like being down for whatever. For more information, call the MAP AIDSLine: 612-373-2437; 612-373-2465 (TTY) OR 1-800-248-2437; 1-888-820-2437 (TTY) Location: Minnesota AIDS Project, 1400 Park Avenue S., Minneapolis, MN 55404 ---------8 of 20-------- From: humanrts [at] umn.edu Subject: War/churches 1.11 8am January 11 - Do Wars rely on Christian Churches for their support?. 8am with Al Bostelmann. FFI Eleanor Yackel ejyackel [at] aol.com Location: St. Martin s Table, People of Faith Peacemakers --------9 of 20------- From: Amy Mino [mailto:amy [at] minofamily.net] Subject: Federal reserve 1.11 6pm January LWVSP Meet-up & Soup Supper TOPIC: What is the Federal Reserve?" Featuring Jacqueline G. King, Community Affairs Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Wednesday, January 11 - from 6 pm to 7:30 pm Mississippi Market Community Room on Selby & Dale, St. Paul SPONSORED BY: League of Women Voters of Saint Paul. Contact Amy Mino (651-430-2701) Learning about and understanding the intricacies of the Federal Reserve Bank and how it affects us locally is the topic of the first LWVSP Member Meet-up of 2006. Come join us to hear Jacqueline King, Community Affairs Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and enjoy a light soup supper to warm up the winter's night. Please RSVP to reserve your bowl of soup! By email: amy [at] minofamily.net By phone: 651-430-2701 --------10 of 20------- From: Dave Bicking <dave [at] colorstudy.com> Subject: Anti-torture 1.11 7pm This Wednesday 1/11, and every Wednesday, meeting of the anti- torture group, T3: Tackling Torture at the Top (a sub-group of WAMM). Note new location: Center School, 2421 Bloomington Ave. S., Mpls. We have also added a new feature: we will have an "educate ourselves" session before each meeting, starting at 6:30, for anyone who is interested in learning more about the issues we are working on. We will share info and stay current about torture in the news. --------11 of 20-------- From: Iraq Peace Action Coalition <iraqpeaceactioncoalition [at] yahoo.com> Subject: Plan Iraq rally 1.11 7pm January 11 meeting to plan for March 18 protest We invite you and/or a representative from your organization to a meeting to begin organizing for a large anti-war protest in the Twin Cities on Saturday March 18. The weekend of March 18-19 will mark the third year of the U.S. war in Iraq. The meeting will be held: Wednesday, January 11, 7pm Mayday Books 301 Cedar Ave. South Minneapolis Massive protests are expected the weekend of March 18-19 in cities across the U.S., and around the world. All of the major anti-war coalitions in the U.S. (United for Peace and Justice, ANSWER Coalition, Troops Out Now Coalition), are projecting activities for those days. Themes being projected include demanding an end to the war in Iraq and to bring the troops home now. Public opinion is clearly shifting against the war. Over the last few weeks we have even heard administartion officials talking about "withdrawal plans." This talk is happening because of the growing opposition. The weekend of March 18-19 will be another opportunity to mobilize the largest possible expressions of anti-war sentiment. The January 11th meeting will begin the process of organizing for a local protest on March 18 against the war. --------12 of 20-------- From: Ron Holch <rrholch [at] attg.net> Subject: No Anoka stadium 1.11 7pm Taxpayers Against an Anoka County Vikings Stadium Wednesday January 11, at 7:00 PM Centennial High School Red Building - Room 104 4704 North Road Circle Pines, MN The red building is on the east end of the high school complex, and is set back furthest from North Road. The largest parking lots are near this building. No matter where you live in Minnesota, If you haven't already done so please write your representatives and tell them we do not need to waste more money on a special session to decide on stadium giveaways to Billionaires. Please continue to tell them we want a vote as required by state law for any tax increase to pay for a stadium. Write your local paper too. AGENDA ITEMS INCLUDE: Updates on City resolutions to support Referendums Website Survey of Legislators Petition Promotion Fund Raising Ideas No Stadium Tax Coalition Update Any Questions, comments contact me at: Ron Holch rrholch [at] attg.net <mailto:rrholch [at] attg.net> --------13 of 20-------- From: Gabe Ormsby <gabeo [at] bitstream.net> Subject: AI StPaul 1.11 7:30pm Amnesty International AIUSA Group 640 (Saint Paul) meets Wednesday, January 11th, at 7:30 p.m. Mad Hatter Teahouse, 943 West 7th Street, Saint Paul. http://www.aistpaul.org --------14 of 20-------- From: Organic Consumers Association <listadmin [at] ORGANICCONSUMERS.ORG> Subject: Orbanic farm/film 1.11 7:30pm Organic Consumers Association and Harmony Valley Farm invite you and your guest to a Free Preview Screening of THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN An epic American tale of life, love, death and sweet potatoes. Wednesday January 11th 7:30pm Landmark Lagoon Cinema 1320 Lagoon Ave Minneapolis, MN 55408 Admission is free, and there will be a Q&A session with Organic Farmers immediately following the film. This is a great opportunity to see this powerful documentary for free and to connect with local organic farmers. For more information about the screening please contact Annake at 608-483-2143 at Harmony Valley Farm. Winner of 15 U.S. Film Festival Awards! The true story of John Peterson, third generation Northern Illinois farmer. Using 50 years of richly textured footage, filmmaker Taggart Siegel weaves together Farmer John’s haunting and humorous hero’s journey of struggle, hippie days, vicious rumors and violence, the farming crisis of the 80s, death and resurrection. Through melding farming with free expression, Farmer John’s powerful story of transformation heralds a renewal of local agriculture in America. Visit www.therealdirt.net If you can’t make this preview screening, come out to the official premiere on Friday January 20th at the Regal, Brooklyn Center. “Unbelievably special … a real and gripping story with insight and humor.” Al Gore "A most compelling character ... Suffused with a soulful optimism as vast as the fruited plains." Variety [farmerjohn.jpg] NOTE! LIMITED SEATING! ARRIVE EARLY! FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED! SCREENINGS ARE INTENTIONALLY OVER-TICKETED TO ASSURE A FULL HOUSE! ---------15 of 20--------- The whitewashing of Ariel Sharon By Saree Makdisi The Electronic Intifada - 8 January 2006 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4387.shtml THE 'MAN OF COURAGE AND PEACE' STORY IGNORES HIS BLOODY AND RUTHLESS PAST AS ARIEL SHARON'S career comes to an end, the whitewashing is already underway. Literally overnight he was being hailed as "a man of courage and peace" who had generated "hopes for a far-reaching accord" with an electoral campaign promising "to end conflict with the Palestinians." But even if end-of-career assessments often stretch the truth, and even if far too many people fall for the old saw about the gruff old warrior miraculously turning into a man of peace, the reality is that miracles don't happen, and only rarely have words and realities been separated by such a yawning abyss. From the beginning to the end of his career, Sharon was a man of ruthless and often gratuitous violence. The waypoints of his career are all drenched in blood, from the massacre he directed at the village of Qibya in 1953, in which his men destroyed whole houses with their occupants - men, women and children - still inside, to the ruinous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in which his army laid siege to Beirut, cut off water, electricity and food supplies and subjected the city's hapless residents to weeks of indiscriminate bombardment by land, sea and air. As a purely gratuitous bonus, Sharon and his army later facilitated the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and in all about 20,000 people - almost all innocent civilians - were killed during his Lebanon adventure. Sharon's approach to peacemaking in recent years wasn't very different from his approach to war. Extrajudicial assassinations, mass home demolitions, the construction of hideous barriers and walls, population transfers and illegal annexations - these were his stock in trade as "a man of courage and peace." Some may take comfort in the myth that Sharon was transformed into a peacemaker, but in fact he never deviated from his own 1998 call to "run and grab as many hilltops" in the occupied territories as possible. His plan for peace with the Palestinians involved grabbing large portions of the West Bank, ultimately annexing them to Israel, and turning over the shattered, encircled, isolated, disconnected and barren fragments of territory left behind to what only a fool would call a Palestinian state. Sharon's "painful sacrifices" for peace may have involved Israel keeping less, rather than more, of the territory that it captured violently and has clung to illegally for four decades, but few seem to have noticed that it's not really a sacrifice to return something that wasn't yours to begin with. His much-ballyhooed withdrawal from Gaza left 1.4 million Palestinians in what is essentially the world's largest prison, cut off from the rest of the world and as subject to Israeli power as before. It also terminated the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict by condemning Palestinians to whiling away their lives in a series of disconnected Bantustans, ghettos, reservations and strategic hamlets, entirely at the mercy of Israel. That's not peace. As Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull would have recognized at a glance, it's an attempt to pacify an entire people by bludgeoning them into a subhuman irrelevance. Nothing short of actual genocide - for which Sharon's formula was merely a kind of substitute - would persuade the Palestinian people to quietly accept such an arrangement, or negate themselves in some other way. And no matter which Israeli politician now assumes Sharon's bloody mantle, such an approach to peace will always fail. [Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. This article was first published on January 7, 2006 in the Los Angeles Times and is reprinted with the author's permission.] [It is good to see evil men die. -ed] --------16 of 20-------- The Green Moment by David Baldwin December 29, 2005 It has become proverbial, even a cliche, to observe that this nation is now fiercely divided politically. But how far back in history would one have to search to find anything like the partisan battlefield that Americans wake up to every day? The Vietnam era? The Great Depression? Try the decade immediately preceding the Civil War. In that age of political dissolution, both parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, stood helpless before a crisis - slavery - so divisive that the forces it unleashed severely wounded the former organization and smashed the latter one to splinters. That was also the era in which the Republican Party was born. Its vigor and uncompromising stance on the most important issue of the day attracted, among many others, an ambitious ex-congressman named Lincoln. Today the "Party of Lincoln" stands morally bankrupt, its mantra of "compassionate conservatism" swept away with the floods of Louisiana and Mississippi. Its leaders and wise men (including Karl Rove) are under indictment or under a cloud. The President's approval ratings (which soared above 90% in the fall of 2001) have plummeted. Even before any Plamegate indictments, the Vice President, according to an August Harris poll, received a devastating disapproval rating of 65%. The Democrats fare no better in the public mind. Paralyzed by 9/11, disdaining any action that might even vaguely smack of "disloyalty," they languished in the President's shadow for nearly his entire first term. And, as their unwillingness to challenge his first two Supreme Court appointments prove, they can't escape it even now. A near-total vacuum of ideas, of will, of basic integrity has thus enveloped Washington, and politics loves a vacuum no more than Nature does. Can the Greens America's most significant third party and only "peace party" fill this void? Like the newly minted Republicans of the 1850s, do they have the power to gather together the angry and the forsaken into an electorally viable social force? The following facts should give the pundits pause: - Though still very small relative to its two main rivals, the Greens are America's fastest-growing political party. Accurate overall statistics are very difficult to come by. But a website that records Green voter registrations claims that, between 1994 and 2004, such registrations, in the twenty-two states surveyed, increased by nearly 250 percent. - Despite the formidable barriers the system has set up against alternative political movements, the Greens have been making solid progress with crossover voters, winning local races all across the country. - In recent years, two party leaders have made headlines. Matt Gonzalez very nearly won the race for mayor of San Francisco in 2003. In the following year, Jason West, mayor of the upstate New York town of New Paltz, led a powerful assault on his state's ban on marriage licenses for same-sex couples. - Waiting in the wings is a whole new generation of fresh and unconventional leaders, like Farheen Hakeem of Minnesota, a 29-year-old former math teacher endorsed by the Green Party. Ms. Hakeem recently won an impressive 14 percent of the vote in the runoff primary for mayor of Minneapolis despite the fact that her best-known photo shows her speaking into a bullhorn while wearing a hijab (traditional Muslim head scarf) and a black T-shirt with the legend, "This is what a radical Muslim feminist looks like." Logically, the current political situation should favor the Democrats, the so-called opposition party. But as Granny D. recently pointed out, though it is the President who has been savaged by critics for the crisis in New Orleans, Democratic politicians had years to do right by the poor in that city and did not. The problems upon which the media have begun to focus in recent months economic injustice, global warming, governmental corruption and, of course, the war are among the many issues on which the Greens have taken bold and often innovative positions. These same issues are only nominally Democratic concerns, though, for the simple reason that, dazzled by corporate money, the Democratic establishment (except for a few maverick progressives) seems almost totally unconcerned with them. What would bring the Greens, at last, into the mainstream of American politics in 2006? Let's imagine just one possible scenario. An Iraq combat veteran, having turned against the war (somewhat like a more left-wing version of Ohio Democrat Paul Hackett), joins the Green Party and runs for Congress. The mere fact of this candidacy - a war hero campaigning against war and for radical social change - proves newsworthy. With the attention thus generated, he is able to shine a spotlight on the party's vision, values and candidates. Even those voters who disagree with the Greens admire them for their energy, idealism and commitment, qualities they find lacking in the two main parties. Some vote Green in protest; some do so because they admire the party's rejection of corporate contributions; others because a particular candidate has captured their imaginations. And since the bar of expectation has been set so tantalizingly low, the party's gains, modest by the its rivals' standards the mayoralty of two or three major cities, a substantial presence in a handful of state legislatures, a governorship and that disputed congressional seat stun the political world^ and perhaps force the Democrats to rethink their shameful betrayal of their progressive base. Yet even then, the punditocracy will claim (rightly) that a few victories on Election Day do not a revolution make. Consider the example of Barry Goldwater, however. In 1964, the conservative Republican ran for President and was utterly crushed by Lyndon Johnson and his party along with him. The wise men of the day decided that the liberal consensus represented by Johnson had defeated forever the outmoded politics the Senator supposedly symbolized. Yet Goldwater, it turned out, not Johnson, was the politician of the future. Though it took a decade and a half for the ideological trees planted by the man from Arizona to reach maturity (Ronald Reagan began his career in politics as a Goldwater campaigner), that forest has since towered over our public life for almost a quarter-century. Indeed, the Goldwater Era, as I call it (which outlasted the lifetime of its namesake), has only just now ended, and the storms of recent days, literal and figurative, have finally cleared enough political space to plant a new ideology. Put another way, he proved that a movement, if it has any potential at all, may temporarily achieve only a handful of electoral triumphs or none at all yet eventually prevail in the war of ideas. David Baldwin is a New York-based freelance writer, peace activist and Green Party member. [Now if we can just keep millions of liberals/progressives from doing nothing but a brainless wasted vote for lesser-evil Hillary in 2008. The time is NOW, and the venue is local politics, and in many cases the party will be Green. -ed] --------17 of 20-------- ROBT.JENSEN amendment I: Freedom of Assembly http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2005/122005/1204/2005/14811 Date published: 12/4/2005 AUSTIN, Texas--While the great battles fought over the First Amendment's religion and free-speech/-press clauses are some of the most inspiring stories told 'round the legal campfire, the amendment's assembly and petition clauses are mostly a forgotten footnote. There has been no great legal battle in easy memory over the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." In 1939, the Supreme Court decided a case, Hague v. Congress of Industrial Organizations, that definitively established "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" in public space, and there's been little discussion since. Yet both these First Amendment footnotes offer important lessons about the more subtle - and what today are more crucial - obstacles to meaningful democracy that come with our economic system. The right to petition the government is not really in question in a modern nation-state based on democratic principles. While a king, whose legitimacy was grounded in the concept of divine-right monarchy, might have contested his subjects' rights to press political demands, citizens in a democracy have an inherent right to petition those politicians who are supposed to serve us. But a question nags: Are all petitions received by our leaders given equal weight? Are rich and poor alike going to be heard? The answer is painfully obvious. Two realities distort the right of petition in the real world. First is the reality that political campaigns are exercises in fundraising. For example, 96 percent of House and 91 percent of Senate races in 2004 were won by the candidate who spent the most. Those who provide that funding have an advantage: Money equals access, which means that when the campaign is over, some petitions are more equal than others. Debates about the constitutionality of campaign-finance reform measures that try to deal with the distorting influence of big money are typically framed by the question of whether they limit the freedom of speech of contributors or candidates. But we might start to think of such reforms as protection of the right of petition. Second, those who hire well-connected (and expensive) lobbyists to deliver a petition have an advantage. Recent news has focused on how lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon allegedly defrauded their own clients, but the main problem with the lobbying industry is the routine way it skews the political process toward those who can afford to hire the big guns to influence policy. Money talks - and squelches Should we place stricter limits on paid lobbyists? Some argue it is a restriction on political freedom to limit anyone's right to spend money in attempts to influence public policy. But in a world in which the playing field is so tilted toward the wealthy, can we pretend that traditional libertarian defenses of money-as-speech can adequately address the contemporary political crisis? Moreover, while the right to peaceably assemble is established in law, there remain struggles to ensure that the right to do so isn't undermined by sophisticated police tactics that appear to allow public protests but use pre-emptive arrest, physical barriers, and "free-speech zones" to limit protesters' ability to engage the public. Such heavy-handed operations were effective in Miami during the protests of the 2003 meetings about the Free Trade Area of the Americas and in New York during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Yet the most disturbing threat to freedom of assembly isn't from the ways in which police officers restrict movement in public space, but from the disappearance of public space itself. Our conception of political assembly is rooted in a geography that is increasingly rare - the town square, the public meeting ground, a collective space in which people gather expecting political engagement. Today the space that is most public is privatized: the shopping mall. If one wanted to distribute a political pamphlet and engage fellow citizens in conversation about the issues of the day, the mall would be the optimal site - a place where people of all ages and classes gather for commercial and social purposes. But while the mall is a very public place in some senses, it is private property and hence not governed by the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to impose on the owners of these public spaces the requirement to honor people's assembly and speech rights there (though they left the door open for states to find such a right in their own constitutions). When our lives in public are increasingly conducted in privatized space, are conventional understandings of "public" and "private" adequate for a democracy? A corporate colossus Both these First Amendment freedoms illustrate the paradox of U.S. politics. On one hand, we have extensive formal guarantees of political freedoms that have been hard-won by dissidents and progressive political movements that pressed the courts and legislatures to expand the scope of freedom. But the concentration of wealth in corporate capitalism means that those formal freedoms - while never irrelevant - are increasingly less important in a world in which money is necessary to amplify our voices in mass media. The distortion of a political process by our economic system is also obvious in the realm of the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment, where we face tough questions about how to counter the increasing concentration of media ownership in a shrinking number of corporations, and whether full First Amendment protection should extend to commercial advertising. If First Amendment debates are to be productive - if they are to be part of a process that helps us re-energize a political system that an increasing number of people feel is irrelevant to their lives - we will have to come to terms with the inherent incompatibility of capitalism and democracy. The former is a wealth-concentrating system that also concentrates political power, while the latter is premised on the assumption of the diffusion of power. To date, the Supreme Court has ignored this simple reality, as has most of U.S. society. Even the self-proclaimed guardian of freedom, the American Civil Liberties Union, has trouble thinking straight about the problems for democracy that capitalism creates. But if the First Amendment is to be part of a real democratic future - one in which ordinary people have a meaningful role in the formation of public policy, not simply a place in the political stadium as spectators - lawmakers and judges will have to come to terms with this basic contradiction. It is unlikely they will confront the issue unless We the People force them to. ROBERT JENSEN is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of "The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity."(City Lights Books 2005) Date published: 12/4/2005 [With luck, the screen door will hit capitalism on its butt on its way out. -ed] --------18 of 20------- Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children By Philip Watts http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11488.htm John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody including by crushing that childıs testicles. 01/08/06 "revcom.us" - John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody including by crushing that childıs testicles. This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel. What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat. It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bushıs legal policies in the 'war on terrorı than John Yoo." This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yooıs theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world. Cassel: If the President deems that heıs got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the personıs child, there is no law that can stop him? Yoo: No treaty. [Unless that child happens to be the future John Yoo -ed] Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo. Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that. The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where in the Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children ? As David Cole puts it, "Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the President the 'Commander-in-Chief,ı no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished." What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of children, since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the Presidentıs right to order the crushing of a childıs testicles? This fascist logic has nothing to do with "getting information" as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world? It is ironic that just prior to arguing the President's legal right to torture children, John Yoo was defensive about the Bush administration policies, based on his legal memoıs, being equated to those during Nazi Germany. Yoo said, "If you are trying to draw a moral equivalence between the Nazis and what the United States is trying to do in defending themselves against Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, I fully reject that. Second, if youıre trying to equate the Bush Administration to Nazi officials who committed atrocities in the holocaust, I completely reject that too - I think to equate Nazi Germany to the Bush Administration is irresponsible." [Well, perhaps Bush is worse. -ed] If open promotion of unmitigated executive power, including the right to order the torture of innocent children, isnıt sufficient basis for drawing such a "moral equivalence," then I donıt know what is. What would be irresponsible is to sit by and allow the Bush regime to radically remake society in a fascist way, with repercussions for generations to come. We must act now because the future is in the balance. The world cannot wait. While Bush gives his State of the Union on January 31st, Iıll find myself along with many thousands across the country declaring "Bush Step Down And take your program with you." Philip Watts - pwatts_revolution [at] yahoo.com --------19 of 20-------- Harry Belafonte calls Bush "terrorist," praises Chavez in Venezuela By IAN JAMES The Associated Press http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002728430_webharry08.html CARACAS, Venezuela - The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" on Sunday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including the actor Danny Glover and the Princeton University scholar Cornel West that met the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday. Some in the group attended Chavez's television and radio broadcast Sunday. "No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution," Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast. The 78-year-old Belafonte, famous for his calypso-inspired music, including the "Day-O" song, was a close collaborator of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and is now a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. He also has been outspoken in criticizing the U.S. embargo of Cuba. Chavez said he believes deeply in the struggle for justice by blacks, both in the U.S. and Venezuela. "Although we may not believe it, there continues to be great discrimination here against black people," Chavez said, urging his government to redouble its efforts to prevent discrimination. Belafonte accused U.S. news media of falsely painting Chavez as a "dictator," when in fact, he said, there is democracy and citizens are "optimistic about their future." Dolores Huerta, a pioneer of the United Farm Workers labor union also in the delegation, called the visit a "very deep experience." Chavez accuses Bush of trying to overthrow him, pointing to intelligence documents released by the U.S. indicating that the CIA knew beforehand that dissident officers planned a short-lived 2002 coup. The U.S. denies involvement, but Chavez says Venezuela must be on guard. Belafonte suggested setting up a youth exchange for Venezuelans and Americans. He finished by shouting in Spanish: "Viva la revolucion!" [Amen - ed] --------20 of 20------- Rollback to 1214 AD by Nick Turse January 07, 2006 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=9482 "Are we willing to accept the Bush administration's latest rollback campaign and reset the calendar to 1214?" [Introduction by Tom Engelhardt: What we were dealing with in Washington was a virtual cult of the presidency and that its believers were more fervent than any religious fundamentalists in their focus on the quite un-Christian attribute of total earthly power. Their urge to create a President accountable to no one, overseen by no one, and restricted by no other force in his will to act was amply demonstrated in a simple bill-signing at the White House last Friday. It was then that George Bush inked the Defense Appropriations bill containing Senator John McCain's anti-torture amendment (vigorously opposed by the President and the Vice President), which was meant to close various loopholes in prohibitions on torture. The President, according to Charley Savage of the Boston Globe, issued a "signing statement" - "an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law" - in which he "quietly reserved the right to bypass the [McCain] law under his powers as commander in chief." So much for the ability of Congress to legislate, if the President can simply declare anything it passes whatever he decides it should be. ("A senior administration official, who spoke to a Globe reporter about the statement on condition of anonymity because he is not an official spokesman, said the president intended to reserve the right to use harsher methods in special situations involving national security.") Nick Turse shines a new light on the Bush administration's cult of presidential power by showing just how far back its adherents would roll our constitutional and legal system - back to the Middle Ages and the rule of kings.] What might happen to an "often cruel and treacherous" national leader who "ignored and contravened the traditional" norms at home and waged "expensive wars abroad [that] were unsuccessful"? On June 15, 1215, just such a leader arrived at Runnymede, England and - under pressure from rebellious barons angered by his ruinous foreign wars and the fact that "to finance them he had charged excessively for royal justice, sold church offices, levied heavy aids," and appointed "advisers from outside the baronial ranks" - placed his seal on the Magna Carta. The document, which was finalized on June 19th, primarily guaranteed church rights and baronial privileges, while barring the king from exploiting feudal custom. While it may have been of limited importance to King John or his rebel nobles (as one scholar notes, "It was doomed to failure. Magna Carta lasted less than three months"), the document had a lasting impact on the rest of us, providing the very basis for the Anglo-American legal tradition. Over the years, the Magna Carta came to be interpreted as a document that forbade taxation without representation and guaranteed trial by jury. In the U.S., it is seen as providing a basis for the 5th Amendment to the Bill of Rights that holds: "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." (The Magna Carta states: "No Freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned... but by lawful Judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land.") While many progressive and democratic understandings of the document, popular from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, have now been dismissed as misinterpretations, the Magna Carta has one absolutely significant feature. As the website of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) notes, "When King John confirmed Magna Carta with his seal, he was acknowledging the now firmly embedded concept that no man - not even the king - is above the law." Fast forward 561 years. Says NARA, "In 1776, the Founding Fathers searched for a historical precedent for asserting their rightful liberties from King George III and the English Parliament." They found it in the Magna Carta. Fast forward another 230 years. Their war for independence long since over, Britain's former rebel colonies begin the new year of 2006 on a precipice. During the previous 365 days, they saw, among other shocking displays, their Vice President publicly campaign against Senator John McCain's anti-torture amendment and, as such, essentially offer his support for illegal torture. Then, following a failed attempt by the President to quash a New York Times story on the National Security Agency (which the paper had already suppressed for a year), the people also found out that their President had ordered unlawful spying on American citizens. After the latter scandal became public, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (who, in 2002 as White House counsel, penned a memo advising the President on how to circumvent the 1996 War Crimes Act) claimed that George Bush had the right to violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (which makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without prior or retroactive - within 72 hours - court approval) due to his "inherent authority as commander in chief under the Constitution." This, despite the fact that in 2004 Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the court, insisted, "A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." Bush himself then came out swinging, claiming that he had no need for the courts since he acted as his own agency of oversight, and his acts were legal because he "swore to uphold the laws." The President's threatened veto of the McCain anti-torture amendment, the Vice-President's pro-torture campaign, the President's illegal spying, which he proudly claimed he had re-authorized many times over, his attempt to squelch the free press (which Thomas Jefferson once called "the only security of all" and about which he stated, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter"), and his own and the Attorney General's defense of all of the above, are not only the latest examples of the administration's quest to shred the U.S. Constitution and expand already vast presidential powers past anything conceivably envisioned by the founders of the United States, but also a direct attempt to overturn nearly 800 years of Anglo-American legal precedent. In other words, the administration has launched nothing short of a bid to invalidate the guiding precepts of what the U.S. government acknowledges to be the Ur document that inspired and provided precedent for America's founders to issue their Declaration of Independence in 1776: the Magna Carta. In 1957, the American Bar Association erected a monument at Runnymede to "acknowledg[e] the debt American law and constitutionalism" owed to the Magna Carta. Today, the defining tenet of the American legal system is in jeopardy as the Bush administration has attempted to roll back the clock to the 13th century. Such a gambit seeks to do nothing short of shatter and effectively bury the framework for the Anglo-American legal tradition by transforming the chief executive into an unchecked despot and so plunging us into a pre-1215 world. The implications are dire. As Harold Hongju Koh, dean of the Yale Law School, observed, "If the president has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution." During the birth of the United States, John Adams - who also proclaimed that Britain's rule under which "The Law, and the Fact, are both to be decided by the same single Judge" was "directly repugnant to the Great Charter [Magna Carta] itself" - wrote of "a government of laws and not of men." During the Watergate crisis (to hop a couple of centuries) and just after he was fired by a President who wanted to shield his criminal acts by citing the doctrine of executive privilege, Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox warned, "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." Just 33 years later, the question again begs answer - is this to be a nation of laws or of men? Is this to be a nation that recognizes nearly 800 years of Anglo-American legal precedent in which even the nation's chief executive is subject to the rule of law, or one that allows that leader to assume the unchecked rights of a sovereign during the Middle Ages? Are we willing to accept the Bush administration's latest rollback campaign and reset the calendar to 1214? Nick Turse is the Associate Editor and Research Director of TomDispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch. If you have whistles to blow or muck you think Nick should rake, send your insider information to fallenlegionwall [at] yahoo.com [This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.] [Behind Bush is the ruling class. It wants to get democracy and laws and the Constititution and the people off its back. .01 percent imagines it can enslave the 99.99 percent. And it can and will unless we stop them. -ed] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - David Shove shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu rhymes with clove Progressive Calendar over 2225 subscribers as of 12.19.02 please send all messages in plain text no attachments
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