Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 01.14.06

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    01.14.06

1. Women in black      1.14 10am
2. Immigrant bashing   1.14 10am
3. CAMS/military yuk   1.14 10:30am
4. If walls could talk 1.14 12noon
5. Plan MWsocial forum 1.14 1pm
6. Northtown vigil     1.14 1pm
7. Iraq/NO/TC/war      1.14 1pm
8. Sultan/Beirut       1.14 4pm
9. Colombia/labor      1.14 5:30pm
10. Coldwater walk     1.14 7pm
11. OakSt/Bell close?  1.14 7:20pm
12. MN anti-war play   1.14 8:15pm

13. Sensible vigil     1.15 12noon
14. AI                 1.15 3pm
15. Medicare part D    1.15 3pm
16. Remember MLK/film  1.15 4pm
17. KFAI/Indian        1.15 4pm
18. YesMen/vWTO/film   1.15 6:30pm

19. James Petras - The state of the Empire: 2006
20. The Guardian - Richard Dawkins: Beyond belief
21. Paul Street  - Martin Luther King Jr, Democratic Socialist
22. ed           - A bashful lover (poem)

--------1 of 22--------

From: Doris G. Marquit <marqu001 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Women in black 1.14 10am

MN Metro WILPF presents
WOMEN AGAINST VIOLENCE:  THE WORLDWIDE WOMEN IN BLACK MOVEMENT
Saturday, January 14, 10 am - noon
Van Cleve Community Center, 901 15th Ave. SE,   Mpls
Free; refreshments served

Hear how women around the world campaign against violence in their
communities through the international Women in Black movement. Our culture
is steeped in violence,: oppression, and injustice--war, the nuclear arms
buildup, U.S. foreign policy, police brutality, the death penalty,
domestic violence, sexual assault, economic privation , , , ,

Women in Black will be organizing vigils and performances in our area in
2006 to draw public support and encourage action for change. Be part of
it! FFI: 612-825-9419.


--------2 of 22--------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Immigrant bashing 1.14 10am

Saturday, 1/14, 10 to 11:30 am, Resource Center of the Americas coffeehour
"Immigrant-bashing in Minnesota, the Pawlenty report and community
responses," 3019 Minnehaha, Mpls.  www.americas.org


--------3 of 22--------

From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: CAMS/military yuk 1.14 10:30am

Coalition for Alternatives to Military Service (CAMS) Meeting.

Saturday, January 14, 10:30 a.m. Twin Cities Friends Meeting House, 1725
Grand Avenue, St. Paul. A coalition of organizations: Veterans for Peace,
Religious Society of Friends, Every Church a Peace Church, other
faith-based organizations, WAMM, parents, grandparents, educators,
students, anyone concerned. Discuss ways to counter militarism in schools
and find alternatives to military service. FFI: Call WAMM at 612-827-5364.


--------4 of 22-------

From: Foung Heu <fh [at] nyobzoo.tv>
Subject: If walls could talk 1.14 12noon

Open House: If These Walls Could Talk
An exhibit at the Minnesota History Center
Opening Jan. 14

Open House Block Party
Jan 14, 12noon-4pm.

An Open House Block Party will be held at the History Center on opening
day, complete with neighborhood musical groups, street games and local
storytellers.

A playfully interactive exhibit, "Open House: If These Walls Could Talk,"
brings to life the adage "if these walls could talk" by using a single,
existing house - in the "Railroad Island" neighborhood on St. Paul's East
Side - as a window into the daily lives of people of the past.

Stories of families, from the first German immigrants through the
Italians, African-Americans, and Hmong who succeeded them, are told
through rooms representing different eras of the house.

More information at http://www.mnhs.org/exhibits/openhouse/exhibit.htm


--------5 of 22--------

From: Larry Olds <lolds [at] popednews.org>
Subject: Plan MW social forum 1.14 1pm
Join the social forum process in Minnesota on Jan 14

Progressive organizations and activists are invited to join in the social
forum process by participating in meeting January 14, 2006 in the Romero
Room at the Resource Center of the Americas, 3019 Minnehaha Ave So,
Minneapolis at 1 pm.

Planning for a Midwest Social Forum (MWSF) in Milwaukee July 6-9, 2006 and
a United States Social Forum (USSF) in Atlanta in 2007 are underway.  As
members of the MWSF Organizing Committee we invite you to join us for
sharing information about what is being planned so far and to begin to
organize participation from Minnesota at the MWSF in Milwaukee.  Since
several of us will be attending a MWSF organizing meeting in Madison on
Jan 20-21, we are seeking input for that process.  To summarize what we
hope to accomplish by meeting:
    * have a good time meeting and hearing what others are doing
    * stimulate local organizations to get involved and to collaborate in
creating activities for MWSF
    * provide info on MWSF and USSF
    * get input from local people to take to the Madison planning meeting
    * identify others who should be part of the process in Madison
    * raise consciousness about the social forums even if people can't
come to the meeting

A call for getting involved in the MWSF can be found at
<http://www.mwsocialforum.org/get_involved/>http://www.mwsocialforum.org/get_involved/

Information on the USSF can be found at
<http://www.ussocialforum.org/>www.ussocialforum.org

Information about other social forums around the world can be found at
<http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/>http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/

Alyssa Macy, Amalia Anderson, and Larry Olds
Larry Olds 3322 15th Ave S Minneapolis MN 55407 USA 612/722-3442


--------6 of 22--------

From: Lennie <major18 [at] comcast.net>
Subject: Northtown vigil 1.14 1pm

The Mounds View peace vigil group has changed its weekly time and place.
We will now be peace vigiling EVERY SATURDAY from 1-2pm at the at the
southeast corner of the intersection of Co. Hwy 10 and University Ave NE
in Blaine, which is the northwest most corner of the Northtown Mall area.
This is a MUCH better location.

We'll have extra signs.  Communities situated near the Northtown Mall
include: Blaine, Mounds View, New Brighton, Roseville, Shoreview, Arden
Hills, Spring Lake Park, Fridley, and Coon Rapids.

For further information, email major18 [at] comcast.net or call Lennie at
763-717-9168


--------7 of 22--------

From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Iraq/NO/TC/war 1.14 1pm

Martin Luther King program "Iraq, New Orleans and the Twin Cities: the
Struggle Against War and Racism Today."

Saturday, January 14, 1pm. Sabathani Community Center, 310 East 38th
Street South, Old Gym, Second Floor, Minneapolis.

Speakers include Rose Brewer of Black Radical Congress; Alice O. Lynch,
Executive Director of Black, Indian, Hispanic and Asian Women in Action,
national board member of WAND (Women's Action for New Directions) and
Minnesota State Representative Keith Ellison.

Dr. King said in 1967, "many persons have questioned me about the wisdom
of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed
large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you
joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say.
Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear
them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am
nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers
have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their
questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live"

Sponsored by Iraq Peace Action Coalition and WAMM. FFI: Call WAMM at
612-827-5364.


--------8 of 22--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Sultan/Beirut 1.14 4pm

SAT JAN 14, 4pm: AUTHOR TALK & FILM
A BEIRUT HEART, by CATHY SULTAN
with new film about Lebanon

Wisconsin author, peace activist, wife and mother CATHY SULTAN lived in
Beruit, Lebanon during much of that country;s civil war in the 1970s and
early '80s. Her memoir A BEIRUT HEART (published by the new TC press
SCARLETTA BOOKS) is an eyewitness account of daily life in the midst of
terrorism. Married to a Lebanese doctor, Sultan fell in love with her
adopted country and its shining cosmopolitan capital. Like her first book
ISRAELI AND PALESTINIAN VOICES, Sultan sees the humanity of all and the
complex contradictions in Middle East conflicts. Come hear her relate some
of the experiences that inform her book.For more info see.
www.scarlettapress.com

Plus, see the new documentary WE LOVED EACH OTHER SO, one of this year's
best films at MIZNA's 2004 Arab Film Festival for 2005. Like Cathy
Sultan's look from many perspectives during Lebanon's civil war, this
beautiful film has a kalidescope of voices: a cab driver who was in the
Christian militia, a housewife whose apartment building was bombed in a
terrorist attack, a Palestinian who was part of terrorist bombings, a
photographer and others. Dispite differnces of political positon, religion
and status, all are linked by one thing: their love for Lebanese pop
singer FAIRUZ. Her voice haunts the film--a kind of Arabic parallel to
"The Girl From Impanena", the ache of longingexpressed in a synergy of
traditioanl music and jazz. The film bears testament to the power fo art
to unite humanity and is a perfect counterpart to Cathy Sultan's book.

SAT JAN 14, 4pm @ MAY DAY BOOKS
$3 -5 (NO ONE TURNED AWAY)
301 Cedar Ave.S.(basement of HUB Bicycle, door frwy side of bldg)
WEST BANK, MInneapolis (612)333-4719


--------9 of 22--------

From: Merideth Cleary <meriberry15 [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Colombia/labor 1.14 5:30pm

Steelworkers Fight Back - GLOBAL JUSTICE CAMPAIGN....presents the new
documentary , "Partnering for Peace"... a portrayal of testimonies by
Colombian social leaders working for peace in Colombia.  The event is in
honor of Colombian social leader, Aldemar Campos, who was assassinated on
January 14th of last year.  The event is also a send -off for a delegation
of unionists who will travel to Colombia to talk with victems of violence.

January 14 - 5:30-8:30pm
Holy Trinity Church which is located at 2730 E. 31st St. Minneapolis, MN
showing a documentary of testimonies by Colombian indigenous communities,
farmers, afro-Colombians, and Colombian trade unionists.

(The documentary demonstrates the importance and opportunities of
accompanying and partnering (brotherhood and sisterhood) for peace and
social justice in Colombia, currently being carried out by communities and
organizations from the US.  )

contact - Merideth Cleary or Gerardo Cajamarca - 612-623-8003 or
gentelatinauswa [at] yahoo.com

Food and drinks will be served. Donations are welcome.


--------10 of 22--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Coldwater walk 1.14 7pm

January Full Moon Walk
"Heedless of the wind and weather"
First 2006 Full Moon Walk Around the Coldwater Area
Saturday, January 14, 2006
7 pm (gather) walk at 7:15 pm.

Meet at the south end of Minnehaha Park in the pay parking lot off 54th
Street. We will not get into the Coldwater campus because it is only open
to the public Monday-Friday 9 am to 3 pm.

Unfortunately many school children and working people are excluded from
visiting the spring in those restricted hours--a situation worth a comment
on the Final EIS.

For a beautiful winter walk, join us January 14.

Free. Children welcome. Dogs welcome.
DIRECTIONS: Take Hiawatha/Hwy 55, and turn EAST into Minnehaha Park at
54th Street. Follow the park road around to the left and into the pay
parking lot.


--------11 of 22--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: OakSt/Bell close? 1.14 7:20pm

Note from Lydia Howell: This meeting includes a showing of CITIZEN KANE.
Let me encourage progressives to recognize that Oak St & especially the
BELL have screened important films that are NOT screened anywhere else in
the TC.LH

Dear friends of independent film,

There is breaking news that the OAK STREET and BELL AUDITORIUM may be
closing.  I am sending this email to all of you that love foreign, vintage
and independent film to show up at the OAK STREET this Saturday and
support the staff of the MN FILM ARTS to not close these theaters.

Please ask yourself these questions;  Do you want movies to play at the
these venues or at the International Film Fest? Or would rather let film
projection slide to just the LANDMARKS, the Multiplexes or to the personal
cinemas of everyones home theater? Depending how you answer this question
may decide if you can come to this meeting pasted below. Think about it
and forward it on. --Mark Wojahn filmmaker

The Minnesota Film Arts staff has called a member meeting for paying
members of MFA and the public Twin Cities film-going community to discuss
the future of Minnesota Film Arts.  Please note that the staff has called
the meeting as a staff, not as official representatives of the
organization.  The staff would like to briefly address all patrons
present, and they have invited the Board of Directors of Minnesota Film
Arts, who can speak for the organization itself.

The meeting will take place at 7:20 pm on Saturday, January 14th at Oak
Street Cinema and will precede the scheduled screening of Citizen Kane.
All are welcome to attend up to capacity (305).

Oak Street Cinema is located at 309 Oak Street SE near the East Bank of
the U of M campus. Further information is available at www.mnfilmarts.org


--------12 of 22--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: MN anti-war play 1.14 8:15pm

LETTERS TO, LETTERS FROM. .. LETTERS NEVER WRITTEN examines war
experiences of Minnesota Vets, written by FRANCES FORD, TC actress,
playwright & director

On January 14th, 2006 at 8:15 p.m., LETTERS TO, LETTERS FROM. . .
LETTERS NEVER WRITTEN will be performed at Cahoots Cafe, 1562 Selby near
the corner of Snelling Avenue in Saint Paul.

This theatre piece, drawn from journals, family letters and memories of
Minnesota veterans, was created  by actor/writer Frances Ford and sheds
light on the effects of  military service on soldiers and  on their
families.   LETTERS is an extemely effective examination of the effects
on the very young people that are asked to serve in our wars and as such
is designed to be heard and discussed by those of draft age.

Seven professional actors will appear in this entertaining evening.  The
discussion afterward will be led by  Chante Wolf, a member of Minnesota
Veterans for Peace.

The performance starts at 8:15pm, but seating is limited so please plan to
come early.

For information call Frances Ford, THE WAR PLAYS PROJECT at 651-793-6437.


--------13 of 22--------

From: skarx001 <skarx001 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Sensible vigil 1.15 12noon

The sensible people for peace hold weekly peace vigils at the intersection
of Snelling and Summit in StPaul, Sunday between noon and 1pm. (This is
across from the Mac campus.) We provide signs protesting current gov.
foreign and domestic policy. We would appreciate others joining our
vigil/protest.


--------14 of 22--------

From: Gabe Ormsby <gabeo [at] bitstream.net>
Subject: AI 1.15 3pm

Join Group 37 for our regular meeting on Sunday, January 15, 3-5pm.

This month, we will have a presentation from Hale Sargent, whose recent
master's thesis focussed on the experiences of people who have been
granted political asylum in the U.S. on the basis of their sexual
orientation. Hale will share the results and the background of this
research. The presentation will begin at 3:00.

At 4:00, we will hear updates from our sub-groups about specific human
rights cases and projects, share actions alerts, and build the worldwide
human rights movement.

All are welcome at the meeting, and refreshments will be provided.

Location: Center for Victims of Torture, 717 E. River Rd. SE, Minneapolis
(corner of E. River Rd. and Oak St.). Park on street or in the small lot
behind the center (the center is a house set back on a large lawn).

A map and directions are available on-line:
http://www.twincitiesamnesty.org/meetings.html.


--------15 of 22--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Medicare part D 1.15 3pm

"The Truth About Medicare Part D"
IMPACT Open Community Forum
Sunday January 15
3-5pm
May Day Books
301 Cedar Avenue, Mpls.
(Lower-level next to Midwest Mountaineering on the West Bank)

Free forum - donations requested
Refreshments provided

The war at home: On December 8, 2003 President Bush signed the Medicare
prescription drug deal into law. Using a massive campaign of deception,
the President and Congressional leaders have mounted the largest attack on
Medicare in its 40 year history. Under the guise of providing prescription
drug help to Medicare recipients (seniors and people w/ disabilities, i.e.
our parents and grandparents), their new law dismantles Medicare and gives
billions of taxpayer dollars to private HMO and pharmaceutical
corporations. Meager and incomprehensible market coverage for seniors
without price limits (effective January 1, 2006), amounts to handing a
blank check to these oligopolies.

[What they, and all the other corporations and billionaires deserve, is
our contempt, and nothing but. Boot them out of power, and never let
them back. -ed]

Program:
Music: Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us Around
Background by Joel Albers: History, Economics, Politics of the Corporate
 Takeover of Medicare
Q & A, discussion, brainstorming, networking,
organizing and action planning

Sponsored by: IMPACT (Ideas to Mobilize People Against Corporate Tyranny)
Co-Sponsored by: MN Universal Health Care Action Network
(www.uhcan-mn.org),Twin Cities Gray Panthers, Schneider Drug, Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

Contact: Joel Albers 612-384-0973

IMPACT is a grassroots group dedicated to raising awareness about the
impact of corporations on our society, promoting sustainable lifestyles
and mobilizing ourselves and our communities to take cooperative action.
We believe another world is possible, a world where people are more valued
than profits.


--------16 of 22--------

From: stpaulunions.org <llwright [at] stpaulunions.org>
Subject: Remembering MLK/film 1.15 4pm

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King: "At the River I Stand"
A documentary of his last days

Spring 1968, marked the dramatic climax of the Civil Rights movement when
Martin Luther King traveled to Memphis to support striking sanitation
workers. The award-winning documentary film "At the River I Stand" (58
minutes) skillfully reconstructs the two eventful months which transformed
a local labor dispute into a national conflagration. The film recaptures
the driving sense of foreboding as Dr. King delivered his final "I have
been to the mountain-top" speech.

The next day, April 4. 1968, he was assassinated.

"An excellent film on the movement which drew Martin Luther King to
Memphis and his death. It reveals how the black and labor movements both
win by struggling together!" --Julian Bond, Chair, NAACP

Sunday - January 15, - 4pm.
St Paul Labor Center
411 William Mahoney Street in St. Paul
Refreshments will be provided.

Free and open to the public - for more information (651) 222 3787 (X16)
Sponsored by: Saint Paul Area Trades and Labor Assembly, Labor Speakers
Club and The Communiversity of Minnesota


--------17 of 22--------

From: Chris Spotted Eagle <chris [at] spottedeagle.org>
Subject: KFAI/Indian 1.15 4pm

KFAI's Indian Uprising for January 15th, 2006

Guest - JOHN LAFORGE, EDITOR, PATHFINDER, a quarterly newsletter of
Nukewatch, a project of The Progressive Foundation, a nonprofit
organization.  Pathfinder provides news and information on nuclear
weapons, power, waste and nonviolent resistance.

The collapse of a private nuclear waste dumping proposal appears likely,
as several big utilities have begun opting out of the combined-waste
scheme.

The plan would send 44,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste (used
uranium fuel) across the country to Utah and leave it in large casks above
ground on the tiny Goshute [Indian] reservation in Skull Valley -- 50
miles west of Salt Lake City. Worked up over ten years, the "Private Fuel
Storage" (PFS) scheme is an attempt to relieve reactor operators (some of
the biggest electric utilities in the country) of liability for their
timelessly deadly waste.

Because of the Department of Energyšs failure to open a government dump at
Yucca Mountain, Nevada, PFS was ginned up by a consortium of eight nuclear
power companies. The dump would also free-up space at reactor sites where
waste storage capacity is limited.

The proposed Skull Valley dump site has been vigorously opposed by
traditional Goshute Tribal members, indigenous and environmental groups,
Utah Governors Mile Leavitt (Ret.) and Jon Huntsman, as well as the
statešs congressional delegation, led by senior senator Orrin Hatch. Gov.
Leavitt promised in 2001 to ask the state legislature for $1 million
annually to fight the consortium.

John LaForge is a board member of the Progressive Foundation.  He is also
a public speaker and provides nonviolence training.  Nukewatch, PO Box
649, Luck, WI 54853, 715-472-4185, Nukewatch [at] lakeland.ws and
www.nukewatch.com.

* * * *
Indian Uprising is a one-half hour Public & Cultural Affairs radio program
for, by, and about Indigenous people & all their relations, broadcast each
Sunday at 4:00 p.m. over KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis and 106.7 FM St. Paul.
Current programs are archived online after broadcast at www.kfai.org, for
two weeks.  Click Program Archives and scroll to Indian Uprising.


--------18 of 22-------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: YesMen/vWTO/film 1.15 6:30pm

Sunday, 1/15, 6:30 pm, free film "The Yes Men" about prankster activists
who gain worldwide notoriety for impersonating the W.T.O., Twin Cities
Friends Meeting, 1725 Grand Ave, St. Paul.


--------19 of 22--------

The state of the Empire: 2006
by James Petras
Rebelion - Jan 5, 2006
http://www.rebelion.org/autores.php?id=11

The most difficult prediction for the year 2006 is the direction and
trajectory of the US economy. In 2005 the US economy defied all the known
tenets of economic theory: In the face of record high trade deficits,
monstrous budget deficits, a failed war and major political scandals
involving presidential aides, the dollar strengthened against the Euro and
the Yen, the economy grew at 3.4% and all the major investment houses had
record profits. It seems the US economy defied the laws of gravity,
floating above the political turmoil and structural vulnerabilities. But
the point of 'prophesy' is not to specify the day and hour of sharp
decline and recession but to identify the deep structural vulnerabilities
and the possible trigger events, which could detonate a crisis.

The US economy will continue to diverge in a double sense. The financial
sector will expand overseas, especially the major investment houses like
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank while the manufacturing sector led by
the 'Big Three' automobile sector will decline even further, with a good
chance that General Motors will go into bankruptcy. The US multi-nationals
will expand on a world scale, buying into major banks and industries,
especially in China, extending the economic reach of the empire, while the
domestic economy will suffer as the housing and real estate speculative
bubble collapses, high energy prices undermine export competitiveness,
resulting in sharp decline in consumer spending. The US empire will
increasingly become identified with its economic giants as its failed wars
will lead to a withdrawal of combat troops and a reliance on airpower,
sepoy military forces, economic sanctions and accommodating to social
liberal regimes.

The domestic social crisis will deepen as overseas profit opportunities
expand. In 2006, over 90% of US workers will be paying for their costly
individual health and pension plans or, if they cannot pay, they will lose
coverage. Precarious work contracts are the norm for all but a small
sector of public employees. Real inflation (including increased health,
education, energy and pension costs) will rise to about two times the
consumer price index and contribute to the further decline in actual
living standards.  The bursting of the housing bubble will reduce the
"paper value" of homeowners by half and force many who are heavily
indebted into bankruptcy. Nevertheless, as happened in recent decades
(after the Savings and Loan, Dotcom, Enron and other speculative
failures), while millions of small speculators and investors in real
estate will lose billions of dollars, their discontent will not find any
political expression. The greater the inequalities in income, property and
wealth between the financial and imperial economic elites, on the one
hand, and the domestic wage and salaried classes, on the other, the lower
the level of organized political and social opposition. In 2006 the US
will become the developed country with the greatest inequalities, with the
most sustained decline in living standards and the nation least able to
organize a defense of social rights - let alone an alternative - against
the empire-centered model of capitalist accumulation. In a word, the
domestic crisis of living standards will finance further economic empire
building rather than challenge it.

US global expansion is sustainable because of fundamental changes taking
place in India, China, Indo-China and the oil kingdoms of the Middle East.
These countries have lowered many barriers to foreign investment, joint
ventures and even majority ownership of high growth industries, banks and
energy sources. US, European and Japanese MNCs and banks will accelerate
their entry beyond initial beachheads and move across all sectors of the
economy, with greater depth: 2006 will mark China's transition from
"national capitalist" to a model of imperial and national led capitalist
growth.

The US will continue to substitute an air war for a ground war in Iraq:
For every 10,000 troops withdrawn, there will be hundreds of added air
attacks. The US policy toward Iraq is a classic case of "rule or ruin" of
Biblical proportions. Since the US or its puppet regimes cannot rule,
Washington's policy is to regress the country into an "Afghanistan" of
warring clerical and ethnic warlords and tribal chieftains based on
mini-fiefdoms. The debate over a new war against Iran is still not
resolved because of the deep divisions in Washington, Israeli military
threats and the Federal spy trial of 2 leaders of the major pro-Israel
lobby (AIPAC - American Israel Public Affairs Committee). Washington can
be expected to push for Security Council economic sanctions, which will
likely fail because of a China/Russia veto. Subsequently it is likely,
especially if Netanyahu is elected Prime Minister, that Israel will attack
Iranian experimental nuclear energy sites, with the complicity of their
partners in the White House and Congress. Israeli aggression will likely
unleash a series of proxy wars in Lebanon, Iraq (including "Kurdish" Iraq)
and beyond, leading to an escalation of US casualties and weakening
Washington's client regimes (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt etc) Petrol
prices will skyrocket beyond the $100 dollar a barrel if the Straits of
Hormuz are blocked by the Iranians. If the Israeli attack leads to a
subsequent world economic recession, the economic shock may neutralize the
influence of Zionists in policy circles in Europe and perhaps, even in the
United States.

While there are many contingencies leading to a world economic recession
and an anti-Israeli backlash, it is prudent to ponder the worst. While
Israeli military extremism can undermine any reduction in the US military
forces in the Middle East, the weakening of the pro-Israeli lobbies could
allow Washington to rely on its support of a proxy Iraqi and Kurdish
military and police force.

It is highly unlikely that the US-trained Iraqi military and police will
hold up against the insurgents and mass opposition. Very probably the
military will fragment and disintegrate and the pro-US political officials
will flee the devastated and pillaged country, emptying the treasury on
their way back to the US and Europe. A likely outcome will be a
heterogeneous clerical-nationalist regime on a wartime footing faced with
an Israeli-backed Kurdish ministate intent on secession and ethnic
cleansing of non-Kurds.

In Washington, Congress and both political parties will be further
discredited as Jack Abramoff, a self-confessed lobbyist-swindler will
implicate dozens of Congress members, party leaders and government
officials in an enormous bribery scandal. The trial and prosecution of
Congressional leaders, especially Republican heads of Congress, may
prevent any new regressive and repressive legislation from being enacted,
but may spur the President to engage in an overseas military adventure
(bombing Iran) to paper over the crisis.

On the other hand, another failed military intervention by the White House
in the context of a discredited Congress led by felonious Party leaders
could ignite a grass roots movement for impeachment.

A weakened US military, the decline of orthodox neo-liberal clients, and
failed diplomatic initiatives in regional forums, is forcing the US toward
"accommodating" center-left politicians in Latin America.  Washington's
greater flexibility will find expression in the continuing good working
relations with the Presidents of Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and probably
Bolivia. The State Department's hostility toward Venezuela's President
Chavez will be tempered by its loss of internal levers of power, and the
close working relations between the US and Venezuelan oil companies. The
US will likely not intervene in the elections in Colombia, Chile, Mexico
or Brazil, because each of the major candidates are well within the US
neo-liberal orbit.

The improbable outcome in Peru, where a 'nationalist' former military
officer close to Chavez is a major contender, will likely result in heavy
backing for the conservative candidate. Washington will probably engage in
some rear-guard 'dirty tricks' in the Venezuelan Presidential elections,
knowing in advance that Chavez is likely to win by a substantial majority.

In other words, Washington will lose its automatic voting majority in
Latin America and be forced to shelve some of its most blatant attempts to
impose economic dominion. Nevertheless none of its strategic military
bases, extensive financial and resource holdings and lucrative debt
payments will be threatened by the election of 'center-left' Presidents.
The major caveat to this potential 'co-habitation' outcome is a successful
popular uprising if the center-left fails: In that case Washington will
likely intervene with local proxies, detonating regional opposition.

In summary, 2006 will certainly be an extremely volatile and uncertain
year for the Empire. The military defeats, internal crises, a big decline
in the dollar and a general weakening of domestic economic fundamentals
are juxtaposed to growing overseas economic expansion, high rates of
financial profits, extremely weak internal opposition and accommodating
elites in Asia and South America. The greatest threat to empire building
is not domestic nor in the competitive marketplace but in the pending war
against Iran - either a US or Israeli attack could set in motion a series
of severe economic political and military shocks which would radically
change all previous predictions and outcomes regarding the state of the
Empire for 2006.

The second big shock in the making is the growing popular revolt against
the monstrous inequalities and horrendous working conditions imposed by
the Chinese ruling class in alliance with foreign capital. A further shock
could emerge beyond 2006 if and when the current commodity boom collapses
and undermines the export strategy of the center-left regimes in Latin and
Central America. In that context it is likely that there will be a new
wave of extra-parliamentary, anti-imperialist movements that could send
tremors throughout the Empire.

[American Dream, anyone? -ed]


-------20 of 22--------

RICHARD DAWKINS: BEYOND BELIEF
The Guardian (London) - January 10, 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk

The renowned evolutionary biologist tells John Crace why he finds the
resurgence of religion so annoying

Men are supposed to mellow in their mid-60s. Richard Dawkins appears to be
going the other way. Never one to tolerate fools at the best of times,
he's become noticeably less patient as the years roll by. "It does appear
that I've become rather more grumpy," he says, without appearing that
bothered one way or another. And despite a contented home life with his
third wife, the actor Lalla Ward, there's a great deal to be grumpy about.

Back in 1976, as a 30-something research fellow recently returned to
Oxford after the obligatory two-year stint in the US at the University of
California at Berkeley, Dawkins secured his reputation with The Selfish
Gene as a cutting-edge thinker and a man blessed with the common touch.
Long before popularising science became a career route for academics,
Dawkins managed to advance the scientific understanding of the
evolutionary process, while making that knowledge accessible to the
general reader.

There were two key parts to The Selfish Gene. The first was Dawkins's
inversion of the process of natural selection. Instead of trotting out the
established view that organisms use genes to self-replicate, Dawkins made
the revolutionary suggestion that genes use organisms to propagate
themselves, an idea that immediately answered many of the difficult
questions of Darwinism, such as the apparent selflessness of some animal
behaviour. The second important theme was the rehabilitation of memes,
self-replicating cultural transmissions - "viruses of the mind" - that are
passed on both vertically and horizontally within families. And it is the
meme, or rather one particular meme, that is the prime cause of Dawkins's
current grumpiness.

According to memetic theory, memes are subject to the same process of
natural selection as genes. And yet one meme, the religious meme,
steadfastly refuses to die. You can see where the religious meme sprung
from: when the world was an inexplicable and scary place, a belief in the
supernatural was both comforting and socially adhesive. But as our
understanding of the world grew, you might have expected the religious
meme to give way to rationalism. Yet the opposite has happened. Despite
overwhelming scientific evidence for the Darwinian explanation of
evolution, religious belief - and fundamentalist religion at that -
remains as ingrained as ever.

Religion offends every bone in Dawkins's rational, atheist body. "You can
see why people may want to believe in something," he acknowledges. "The
idea of an afterlife where you can be reunited with loved ones can be
immensely consoling - though not to me. But to maintain such a belief in
the face of all the evidence to the contrary is truly bewildering." If
individual faith is, for Dawkins, an expression of an ignorance,
collective faith and organised religion embody something much more
pernicious. That is what drove him to make two films for Channel 4, the
first of which was shown last night, and to write his new book, The God
Delusion, to be published in September.

Dawkins describes these projects as "consciousness-raising exercises" but
the films come across as full-frontal assaults. Protestantism,
Catholicism, Judaism and Islam all get both barrels. Powerful and
well-argued, they are; subtle, they ain't. Richard Harries, Bishop of
Oxford, gets a walk-on role as the liberal voice of religion, but mostly
it's the fundamentalists of all faiths who fall under Dawkins's scrutiny.
"They are profoundly wrong," he says, "but in some ways I have more
sympathy with their views than I do with the so-called more liberal wings.
At least the fundamentalists haven't tried to dilute their message. Their
faith is exposed for what it is for all to see."

No such thing

What angers Dawkins most is the way religion gets such an easy ride. "We
treat it with a politically correct reverence that we don't accord to any
other institution," he says. "Even secularists talk about Jewish, Catholic
and Muslim children. There's no such thing. Children aren't born with a
particular religious gene. What they are is children of Jewish, Catholic
and Muslim parents. If you started to talk about monetarist or Marxist
children, everyone would consider you abusive. Yet for religion we make an
exception. We are incapable of distinguishing between race and religion.
There is some statistical correlation between the two, but they are very
different entities and we shouldn't allow them to be confused."

Predictably, Dawkins has no time for faith schools. "Segregation has no
place in the education system," he argues. "Take Northern Ireland. You
could get rid of the climate of hostility within a generation by getting
rid of segregated schooling. Separating Catholics and Protestants has
fomented centuries of hostility." But Dawkins reserves his greatest scorn
for creationists. "How any government could promote the Vardy academies in
the north-east of England is absolutely beyond me. Tony Blair defends them
on grounds of diversity, but it should be unthinkable in the 21st century
to have a school whose head of science believes the world is less than
10,000 years old."

Evolution offers Dawkins all the explanations he needs - "if there are
other worlds elsewhere in the universe, I would conjecture they are
governed by the same laws of natural selection" - but he does acknowledge
there are still large gaps in our knowledge. "Of course, we would love to
know more about the exact moment of Big Bang," he says, "but interposing
an outside intelligence does nothing to add to that knowledge, as we still
know nothing about the creation of that intelligence."

Unfortunately for Dawkins, it is into precisely these gaps that faith and
superstition insinuate themselves, a problem made worse for secularists
when scientists declare a religious affiliation. "I think the figures are
somewhat overstated in this country," he says tersely, "as it's generally
the same three scientists making their voices heard. Most scientists use
the term God in the way that Einstein did, as an expression of reverence
for the deep mysteries of the universe, a sentiment I share.

"In the US, the picture is rather different. Coming out as an atheist can
cost an academic his or her job in some parts of America, and many choose
to keep quiet about their atheism. In a recent survey, 40% of US
scientists said they believed in God; however, when the sample was
narrowed to those in the National Academy [the US equivalent of the Royal
Society] the figure was down to 10%."

He didn't start out as an unbeliever. Dawkins was born into a middle-class
family that went to church each Christmas. At school, Anglicanism, if not
rammed down the throat, was at least a given. "I had my first doubts when
I was nine," he recalls, "when I realised there were lots of different
religions and they couldn't all be right. However I put my misgivings on
hold when I went to Oundle and got confirmed. I only stopped believing
when I was about 15."

Opponents have claimed that Dawkins offers a bleak view of humanity,
something he categorically denies. "The chances of each of us coming into
existence are infinitesimally small," he argues, "and even though we shall
all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our
decades in the sun." But even he expresses regret at our long-term
prospects. "Within 50 million years, it's highly unlikely humans will
still be around and it is sad to think of the loss of all that knowledge
and music."

Greatest skill

Dawkins's greatest skill has been to synthesise other people's material
and come up with different ways of thinking about problems that
revolutionise future research. But to write him off as an ideas man, pure
and simple, is to lose sight of the man. He may not do any white-coat lab
work these days but he can number-crunch with the best of them. In person,
he's friendly rather than approachable, and there's a hint of distance
that suggests someone more at home in front of a computer than with other
people.

"I did used to be addicted to computer programming," he admits. "In the
early days, there was no off-the-shelf software and I wrote everything,
from my own word-processing programmes to more complex programmes
simulating cricket sounds that were necessary for my research. However, I
now view programming as a vice, so I don't allow myself to do it."

This split between the nerd and the populist has been evident all through
his career. The nerd may have been more in evidence early on - not least
when he was doing his doctorate and ignored the advice of his Nobel
prize-winning supervisor, Nikolaas Tinbergen, and opted for a stats fest,
"a classic piece of Popperian science", instead of a fluffier study of
animal behaviour - but it's still around. Though Dawkins has held the
Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford
since 1995 and gets more attention than most other scientists, you sense
there's still a part of him that's not altogether comfortable in the
public gaze.

It seems self-evident that his recent work has become more polemical,
though he becomes strangely reticent when you suggest he's now a political
figure as much as a scientist. "I don't know about that," he says. "I
wouldn't want to make those claims." But then he adds that he wishes more
scientists would stand up to be counted in the public arena.

There are similar competing pulls elsewhere. After declaring himself a
recently converted anti-monarchist and delivering a withering attack on
Prince Charles - "he's clearly soft on religion, just as he is on every
dopey, half-baked failure to think" - he pulls back, saying he has nothing
against Prince Charles as a person and giving the thumbs up to the Queen.

Even so, no one's ever going to die wondering what Dawkins really thinks.
He may agonise over the thinking process and worry about how his ideas are
interpreted, but the real voice always emerges in the end. Perhaps it is
the populariser's dilemma: you get remembered for the soundbite rather
than the complexity.

Put on the spot, Dawkins reveals he believes his lasting contribution to
science is his 1984 book, The Extended Phenotype. Most lay people have
long since forgotten or never heard of the book in which he argued that
genes extend beyond their physical organisms - think beavers' dams and
birds' nests - to ensure their survival.

But phenotypes have to remain on hold for the time being as it's religion
that Dawkins has in his sights for the forseeable future. And what if, by
some mischance, he were to find there is a God when he dies? He looks at
me as if I were mad. "The question is so preposterous that I can hardly
grace it with a hypothetical answer," he says finally. "But, to quote
Bertrand Russell, I suspect I would say, 'There's not enough evidence,
God'."


--------21 of 22--------

Martin Luther King, Jr., Democratic Socialist
By Paul Street
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-01/14street.cfm
ZNet Commentary
January 14, 2006

One of the many disturbing characteristics of dominant American ideology
is the way it deletes radical-democratic beliefs from the official memory
of certain acknowledged great historical personalities.

How many Americans know that the celebrated scientist Albert Einstein
(voted the "Man of the 20th Century" by Time Magazine) was a
self-proclaimed leftist who wrote an essay titled "Why Socialism" for the
first issue of the venerable Marxist journal Monthly Review ?(1)

Probably about as many as who know that Helen Keller (typically recalled
as an example of what people can attain through purely individual
initiative or "self-help") was a radical fan of the Russian Revolution
(2).

Or that Thomas Jefferson despised the developing state capitalism of the
late 18th and early 19th centuries, warning that it was creating a new
absolutism of concentrated power more dangerous than the one Americans
rebelled against in 1776 (3).

We might also consider the all-too deleted radical egalitarianism of an
itinerant Mediterranean-Jewish peasant named Jesus.  Jesus rejected the
dominant classist cultural norms of his time by advocating and practicing
open commensality (the shared taking of food by people of all classes,
races, ethnicities, and genders) and by sharing material and spiritual
gifts across the interrelated hierarchies of social and geographical
place?  As biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan notes, he saw the
"Kingdom of God" as "a community of radical equality*unmediated by
established brokers or fixed locations" (4).

Along the way, Jesus is reputed to have said that it was easier for a
camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
that kingdom.  He condemned the personal accumulation of earthly treasures
and made it clear that God was no respecter of rich persons..  He insisted
that one must serve either God or Mammon and pronounced the poor blessed
and inheritors of the earth (5).

Such radical sentiments are largely absent from the vapid, falsely
comforting, reactionary, and institutionalized twaddle that has so long
passed for "Christianity" in corporate America.

Another example of this radical historical whitewashing is provided by
America's own Martin Luther King, Jr., whose "I Have a Dream" speech is
routinely broadcast and praised across the land on the national holiday
named for him.  In the official, domesticated version of King's life, the
great civil rights leader sought little more than the overthrow of Jim
Crow segregation and voting rights for blacks in the U.S. South.  Beyond
these victories, the "good Negro" that American ideological authorities
wish for King to have been only wanted whites to be nicer to a select few
African-Americans - giving some small number of trusted blacks highly
visible public positions (Secretary of State?), places on the Ten O'Clock
News Team....the right to manage a baseball team and/or an occasional
Academy Award and/or their own television show.

How many Americans know that King was rather unimpressed by his movement's
mid-1960s triumphs over southern racism (and his own 1964 Nobel Prize),
viewing the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts as relatively partial and
merely bourgeois accomplishments that dangerously encouraged mainstream
white America to think that the nation's racial problems "were
automatically solved"?  How many know that King considered these early
victories to have fallen far short of his deeper objective: advancing
social, economic, political, and racial justice across the entire nation
(including its northern, ghetto-scarred cities) and indeed around the
world?

How many Americans know about the King who followed the defeat of open
racism in the South by "turning North" in an effort to take the civil
rights struggle to a radical new level?

It was one thing, this King told his colleagues, for blacks to win the
right to sit at a lunch counter.  It was another thing for black and other
poor people to get the money to buy a lunch.

It was one thing, King argued, to open the doors of opportunity for some
few and relatively privileged African-Americans. It was another thing to
move millions of black and other disadvantaged people out of economic
despair.  It was another and related thing to dismantle slums and overcome
the deep structural and societal barriers to equality that continued after
public bigotry was discredited and after open discrimination was outlawed.

It was one thing, King felt, to defeat the overt racism of snarling
southerners like Bull Connor; it was another thing to confront the deeper,
more covert institutional racism that lived beneath the less openly
bigoted, smiling face of northern and urban liberalism.

It was one thing. King noted, to defeat the anachronistic caste structure
of the South.  It was another thing to attain substantive social and
economic equality for black and other economically disadvantaged people
across the entire nation (6).

How many Americans know about the King who linked racial and social
inequality at home to (American) imperialism and social disparity abroad,
denouncing what he called "the triple evils that are interrelated":
"racism, economic exploitation, and war"?  "A nation that will keep people
in slavery for 244 years," King told the Southern Christian Leadership
Council (SCLC) in 1967, "will 'thingify' them --- make them things.
Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically.
And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign
investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might
to protect them.  All of these problems are tied together" (7).

How many Americans have been encouraged to know the King who responded to
America's massive assault on Southeast Asia during the 1960s by
pronouncing the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today" (8), adding (in words that George W. Bush ought to give
George W. Bush pause) that America had no business "fighting for the
so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not put even our
own [freedom] house in order?" (9)

In words that holding haunting relevance for George W. Bush's supposedly
divinely mandated war on Iraq, King proclaimed that "God didn't call
American to do what she's doing in the world now.  God didn't call America
to engage in a senseless, unjust war, [such] as the war in Vietnam."

"And we," King added,"are criminals in that war.  We have committed more
war crimes almost than any other nation in the world and we won't stop
because of our piide, our arrogance as a nation" (10).

How many know that King said a nation (the U.S.) "approach[ed] spiritual
death" when it spent billions of dollars feeding its costly, cancerous
military industrial complex" while masses of its children lived in poverty
in its outwardly prosperous cities (11)?

How many know the King who said that Americans should follow Jesus in
being "maladjusted" and "divine[ly] dissatisifed...until the the tragic
walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner
city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the
forces of justice.... until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history
and every family is living in a decent home...[and] men will recognize
that out of one blod God made all men to dwell upon the face of the
earth"?  (12)

How many know the King who told the SCLC that "the movement must address
itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society.
There are forty million poor people," King elaborated for his colleagues.
"And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor
people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are
raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution
of wealth.  When you ask that question you begin to question the
capitalistic economy."

"We are called upon," King told his fellow civil rights activists, ''to
help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace.  But one day," he
argued, "we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs
restructuring.  It means that [radical] questions must be raised.....'Who
owns the oil'...'Who owns the iron ore?'...'Why is it that people have to
pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?' (13)

How many know that King was a democratic socialist who thought that only
"drastic reforms" involving the "radical reconstruction of society itself"
could "save us from social catastrophe" ?  Consistent with Marx and
contrary to bourgeois moralists like Charles Dickens, King argued that
"the roots" of the economic injustice he sought to overcome "are in the
[capitalist] system rather in men or faulty operations" (14)

Interestingly enough, the fourth officially de-radicalized historical
character mentioned in this essay (King) saw through the conservative
historical whitewashing of the third (Jesus). Here's how King described
Jesus at the end of an essay published eight months after the civil rights
leader was assassinated: "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago
said that all men are equal....Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned
no property to endow him with influence.  He had no friends in the courts
of the powerful.  But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor
and the despised."

King concluded this final essay, titled "A Testament of Hope," with a
strikingy radical claim, indicating his strong identification with
society's most disadvantaged and outcast persons.  "Naive and
unsophisticated though we may be," King said, "the poor and despised of
the twentieth century will revolutionize this era.  In our 'arrogance,
lawlessness, and ingratitude,' we will fight for human justice,
brotherhood, secure peace, and abundance for all" (15).

If I hadn't known better the first time I read that phrase, I might have
attributed it to Eugene Debs.

Paul Street (pstreet [at] niu.edu) is currently teaching a course on the
history of the civil rights movement at Northern Illinois University and
is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11
(www.paradigmpublishers, 2004) and Segregated Schools: Educational
Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005).

References

1. Paul Street, "Einstein: Socialist of the Century," In These Times
(February 21, 2000).

2. James Loewn, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History
Text Got Wrong (NY, 1995), pp. 10-12, 22, 222.

3.  Noam Chomsky, Power and Prospects: Reflections on Huiman Nature and
the Social Order (Boston, 1996), pp. 72, 87-89.

4. John Dominic Crossan. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (NY, 1995), p.
101 (quote) and passim.

5.  Mathew 19:20-24, 6:19, 6:24.

6.  Martin Luther King, Jr., " A Testament of Hope," Playboy (January
1969), reproduced in King, The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin
Luther King, Jr (NY, 1986), p. 322; Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We
Go From Here (NY, 1967); David J. Garrow, Bearing the Vross: Martin Luther
King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (NY, 1986), pp.
420-624.

7.  Martin Luther King, Jr., "Where Do We Go From Here?", speech published
as "New Sense of Direction" in Worldviews, 15 (April 1972).

8.  Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Time to Break the Silence," 1967 speech to
Riverside Church published in Freedomways, 7 (Spring 1967).

9.  Martin Luther King, Jr., "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,"
Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 9395-9397.

10.  Martin Luther King, Jr., "The Drum Major Instinct," February 4th 1968
speech, in King, A Testament of Hope, p. 265

11.  King, "A Time to Break the Silence."

12.  Martin Luther King, Jr., "The Power of Nonviolence," Intercollegian
(May 1958); "Where Do We Go From Here?"

13.  King, "Where Do We Go From Here?"

14.  King, "A Testament of Hope;" Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of
Conscience (NY, 1967); Garrow, Bearing the Cross, pp. 591-592; Michael
Eric Dysoan, I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King,
Jr. (NY, 2000), 87-88.

15.  "A Testament of Hope"


--------22 of 22--------

 A bashful lover,
 unannounced, hidden, is that
 uncertain someone.


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