Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 01.19.06

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R     01.19.06

1. Eagan peace vigil  1.19 4:30pm
2. Small is beautiful 1.19 5pm
3. HealthCare/color   1.19 6:30pm
4. UN/state-building  1.19 7pm
5. Peace standards    1.19 7pm

6. Medicare Part D    1.20 10:30am
7. Counter recruit    1.20 12noon
8. Palestine vigil    1.20 4:15pm
9. TC Media Alliance  1.20 5pm
10. Ganges River/film 1.20 7:15pm

11. NLG            - Sue Bush for spying
12. David Cromwell - Burning the planet for profit
13. Patrick Martin - Bush spying provokes lawsuits, calls for impeachment
14. Milo Clark     - Excess upon excess
15. ed             - Crapitalism

--------1 of 15--------

From: Greg and Sue Skog <skograce [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Eagan peace vigil 1.19 4:30pm

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


--------2 of 15--------

From: Jesse Mortenson <jmortenson [at] Macalester.edu>
Subject: Small is beautiful 1.19 5pm

1.19 5pm
Cahoots coffeehouse
Selby 1/2 block east of Snelling in StPaul

Limit bigboxes, chain stores, TIF, corporate welfare, billboards; promote
small business and co-ops, local production & self-sufficiency.
http://www.gpsp.org/goodbusiness


--------3 of 15--------

From: DoriJJ [at] aol.com
Subject: HealthCare/color 1.19 6:30pm

Health Care Crisis In Communities of Color
An NAACP-Urban League Forum
Co-sponsored by Hallie Q. Brown Community  Center

6:30-8:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 19
Martin Luther King-Hallie Q. Brown  Center
Iglehart and Kent St.

Under our Troubled Health Care System, African-American Minnesotans:
 * Die Sooner - 9 out of 1,000 a year (compared to 7 out of 1,000 whites
 * Are uninsured twice as often (1 out of 5, against 1 out of 10 whites)
Health care inequalities kill 80,000 Black Americans a year. Can our
community get the medical care we need?

...YES, says health policy analyst Kip Sullivan, author of The Health Care
Mess: How We Got into It and How We'll Get Out of It.

Sullivan will educate and empower the community to promise "Medicare for
all."

Plus a businessman's view from musician Papa John Kolstad

Sullivan and Kolstad are on the steering committee of the Minnesota
Universal Health Care Coalition:  Physicians for a National Health
Program, League of Women Voters, MN Assoc. of Professional Employees,
Minnesota Nurses' Association, National Association of Social Workers-MN,
Minnesota Farmers Union, Gray Panthers, Green Party, Numerous Minnesota
Business Owners, Service Employees International Union #113, Int'l
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers #110, Minnesota Senior Federation, MN
COACT.

For more information:  Call 649-0520 or 647-1940.


--------4 of 15--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: UN/state-building 1.19 7pm

January 19 - Third Thursday Global Issues Forum: Should the UN Try to
Build States?.  7-9pm.

Failed states and states in danger of failure exist in various parts of
the world.  What does this imply for the regions in which those states
exist? What dangers and opportunities do they present? Whose
responsibility should it be to restore some semblance of order in failed
states in the absence of a functioning and legitimate government? Is that
an appropriate function for the United Nations? And can the UN, with its
newly established Peacebuilding Commission, actually do the job? If so,
what would be a reasonable state-building mandate and at what point should
the UN terminate its mission?

Presenter:  MICHAEL BARNETT.  Holder of the Harold Stassen hair of
International Relations at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs,
Professor Barnett previously taught at the University of Wisconsin,
Macalester College, Wellesley College and the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem.  His academic foci are international organization, humanitarian
action, the United Nations and Middle Eastern politics. He is the author
or co-author of six books and of articles in numerous prestigious journals
and is the winner of two major prizes for his scholarship. He is a past
Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the US
Mission to the UN and a present Board member of the Academic Council on
the United Nations System.

Location: Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, 511 Groveland Avenue,
Minneapolis (at Lyndale & Hennepin) - Free parking in church parking lot


---------5 of 15--------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Peace standards 1.19 7pm

Thursday, 1/19, 7 to 8:30 pm, St. Anthony Park Neighbors for Peace
mobilization meeting for Peace First! standards for precinct caucuses, St.
Anthony Park Library community room, corner Como Ave and Carter Ave, St.
Paul. t.wulling [at] earthlink.net


--------6 of 15--------

From: joel michael albers <joel [at] uhcan-mn.org>
Subject: Medicare Part D 1.20 10:30am

Minnesota seniors, pharmacists declare, "drug companies got the donut, we
got the hole".

Minneapolis On Friday, January 20, at 10:30 AM, Schneider Drug Store, the
Gray Panthers, and the Minnesota Universal Health Care Action Network will
hold a press conference to address the "public health emergency" declared
in Minnesota and several other states resulting from people with
disabilities and seniors not receiving their medications following the
recent implementation of Medicare Part D. This puts at risk the life,
safety, and health of the 700 known cases of Minnesotans not receiving
medications. And its mind-numding complexity for both patients and
pharmacists will continue to disrupt continuity of patient care until
policy changes are made.

The Press Conference will be held Friday, January 20, 2006 at 10:30AM at
Schneider Drug Store, 3400 University Ave, (Minneapolis, in Prospect Park
near I 280) 612-379-7232.  Testimonies will include a pharmacist, a
senior, a person with disabilities, and health policy analysis.

Congress needs to immediately:

1.Eliminate the donut hole in the Medicare prescription drug plan.

2.Allow Medicare to use its full purchasing power, based on one public
drug formulary, to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies to
secure a fair price for prescriptions.

3.  Keep Medicare public. Expand and improve, rather than dismantle and
privatize it.

"By contracting out to a multitude of complex and onerous private sector
insurers, the Medicare Part D system is clearly failing seniors and people
with disabilities, and its enormous administrative burden on patients and
pharmacists drives a wedge between the pharmacist-patient relationship and
continuity of patient care," said Tom SenGupta,, pharmacist and owner of
Schneider Drug. "It's time to hold our elected leaders and the corporate
health industry accountable."

Joel Albers Minnesota Universal Health Care Action Network 612-384-0973
joel [at] uhcan-mn.org www.uhcan-mn.org Health Care Economics Researcher,
Clinical Pharmacist

For more information: Joel Albers 612-384-0973 Tom Sengupta 612-379-7232


--------7 of 15--------

From: sarah standefer <scsrn [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Counter recruit 1.20 12noon

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


--------8 of 15--------

From: peace 2u <tkanous [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Palestine vigil 1.20 4:15pm

Every Friday
Vigil to End the Occupation of Palestine

4:15-5:15pm
Summit & Snelling, St. Paul

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


--------9 of 15--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: TC Media Alliance 1.20 5pm

Some of you know that I recently joined the board of a newly-formed
organization called the Twin Cities Media Alliance (TCMA). The vision of
this group is to create a participatory democracy in which citizens from
all segments of society -- and especially those who have been
traditionally denied access -- are able to use the media as a tool to
share information, hold the powerful accountable, build community, and
work together for the common good.

How do we do this? Well, we're creating a community newswire and
syndication service (check it out at www.tcdailyplanet.net
<http://www.tcdailyplanet.net>), training citizen journalists, and
partnering with neighborhood and community media serving diverse Twin
Cities communities, to begin with. But we're still very much in the
incipient phases of this project, and need all the support and input we
can get.

To that end, please join us for a TGIF/BYOB Friday, January 20 from 5 to 7
p.m. at the offices of the Twin Cities Daily Planet and Triangle Park
Creative, 2600 E. Franklin (the Wells Fargo Bank Building.) And please
invite anyone who might be interested. We'll have a brief show and tell
about what's new with the Alliance, and progress on the Daily Planet.

Hope to see you there and then,
Shannon Gibney
Executive Director, Ananya Dance Theatre
www.ananyadancetheatre.org <http://www.ananyadancetheatre.org>
President, Twin Cities Black Journalists (TCBJ)
www.nabj.org <http://www.nabj.org>


--------10 of 15--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Ganges River/film 1.20 7:15pm

January 20 - Film: Ganges River To Heaven.  Time: 7:15/9:15pm nightly;
5:15 pm also Sat. & Sun..

*Director Gayle Ferraro present opening night with a special panel
conversation with Nina Utne of Utne Reader and Kate Cummings, Director of
the Fairview Hospice program*

In the city of Varanasi, ministering to the dead is a way of life.
Situated on the banks of the holy Ganges River, the ancient city is not
only a place of pilgrimage but an auspicious place to die. Each morning
bathers arrive purify their soul on the ghats, the steps leading to the
water's edge. The young and the strong purify themselves in Ganga's
polluted waves. The old and infirm, too weak for rituals, wait for death.

Filmed in a hospice for the dying the film follows four families' struggle
to grant a loved one's final wish to go to heaven. The documentary
investigates the inextricable bond between a river and its people with
unparalleled intimacy and depth. From the ghat workers gathering wood for
the next cremation, to the chemists gathering water samples for
contamination testing, each perspective sheds new light on an evolving
society and its unwavering veneration of the Ganges.

Bio for filmmaker Gayle Ferraro: Gayle Ferraro, founder of Aerial
Productions, has sought to bring personal accounts of extraordinary
stories to the film circuit. Anonymously Yours, Ferraro's second film, was
completed in 2002. Her first film, Sixteen Decisions, which focuses on
impoverished Bangladeshi women endeavoring to overcome poverty through
microentrerprise, was released in 2000 and her third film Ganges: River to
Heaven was finished in the winter of 2003.

Ferraro received a master's degree in public administration from Harvard
University and mass communication from Boston University, and studied
international human rights law at Oxford University.

The Bell Auditorium is the nation s only dedicated year-round non-fiction
film screen and is located at 10 Church Street SE in Minneapolis inside
the Bell Museum of Natural History.

More information can be found at www.mnfilmarts.org/bell or by calling
612.331.7563.  More information on the film can be found at
www.gangesrivertoheaven.com Location: Bell Auditorium, Bell Museum,
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities East Bank


--------11 of 15--------

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD SUPPORTS SUIT AGAINST PRESIDENT BUSH TO HALT
ILLEGAL ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE 
January 17, 2006 

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) will be providing legal counsel to the
Center for Constitutional Rights and its attorneys in a suit to enjoin
President Bush from engaging in illegal electronic surveillance without
court orders.  Michael Avery, President of the NLG, will be handling the
case on behalf of the Guild and working with lawyers from the Center
itself.  Avery is a constitutional law professor at Suffolk Law School in
Boston.  

NLG President Michael Avery stated, ³Congress has explicitly provided that
the only legal way to conduct electronic surveillance in national security
cases is with a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court or through ordinary criminal channels with a warrant from a United
States District Court.  The only exceptions to this requirement do not
apply to the surveillance the president has authorized.  Congress has made
the surveillance that the president is conducting a criminal offense, a
felony punishable by a five-year prison term.² 

The Executive Director of the Guild, Heidi Boghosian, noted, ³The Center
for Constitutional Rights has played an essential role in providing legal
assistance for victims of the president¹s abuses of power, such as the
prisoners at Guantanamo and others.  The Guild is proud to provide our
lawyers to the Center to help them halt the illegal electronic
surveillance that is making it difficult for them to carry on their
important work.² 

Founded in 1937 as the first racially integrated national bar association,
the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human
rights bar organization in the United States, with more than 200
chapters.  

Contact: Michael Avery, President, 617-335-5023
Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, 212-679-5100, ext. 11


--------12 of 15--------

Burning The Planet For Profit
By David Cromwell
ZNet Commentary
January 18, 2006
https://www.zmag.org/sustainers/forums

After 4.6 billion years of planetary history, we may become the first
species to monitor its own extinction. In impressive detail, humankind is
amassing evidence of devastating changes in the atmosphere, oceans, ice
cover, land and biodiversity.

And yet mass media, politics, the education system and other realms of
public inquiry demonstrate a stunning capacity to focus on what does not
really matter. Meanwhile, the truly vital issues receive scant attention
to the point of invisibility: namely, the parlous prospects for humanity's
survival and the root causes underlying the global environmental threat.

Current patterns of 'development' and consumerism, fuelled annually by
billions of advertising dollars, are unsustainable. But huge corporations
and powerful investors have governments and societal institutions in a
stranglehold, delivering policies that demand endless 'growth' on a finite
planet.

                       The Corporate Killers

Take the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the most influential
business pressure group in the UK. Friends of the Earth (FoE) notes that
the core objective of the CBI, and other "corporate lobby groups who
favour short-term profit over sustainable development", is to promote
endless opportunities for business 'growth', and to do so by bending the
ear of the UK government. (Friends of the Earth, 'Hidden Voices: The CBI,
corporate lobbying and sustainability', June 2005)

FoE reported: "many companies are using their influence over Government to
promote public policies that are bad for communities and the environment."
As years of New Labour in power have shown: "the Government seems to
readily accept the CBI arguments at face value." A major consequence is
that the government "is failing to reach its targets to reduce greenhouse
gases because it is promoting policies that encourage more pollution, such
as significantly expanding airports following intense lobbying by big
business lobby groups."

Tony Juniper, head of FoE in England & Wales, observes that the "CBI
agenda is a simple one - to increase deregulation and reduce business
taxes." There are "serious concerns about how the CBI uses the threat of
potential damage to UK business and job losses to oppose regulations that
would improve workers' rights, benefit the environment and deliver
economic benefits." (FoE, ibid.)

Thus Sir Digby Jones, CBI director-general, criticised even the
government's modest target to reduce carbon dioxide as "risking the
sacrifice of UK jobs on the altar of green credentials." (Andrew Taylor,
'Jobs warning over tough move on emissions', Financial Times, January 20,
2004). Note the standard rhetorical device of expressing concern for
"jobs" when the focus of business worries is, in fact, "profits."

The CBI not only has a discernible influence over state policies, the
government is actually "in thrall to the CBI." FoE explains why:

"There is a clear 'alignment of values' between the CBI and many similar
figures in Government [in] that they broadly agree in minimising
Government intervention in the market (ie neo-liberal economics)."

Moreover, the CBI is able to get "critical comments on Government policy
put out through the media, which obviously attracts Government attention.
This is further entrenched by many business journalists who simply do not
challenge the CBI claims and accept them as representing totally the views
of business." (FoE, ibid.)

As Media Lens has noted before, the corporate media industry is a vital
component of the business world. It is therefore not surprising that
journalists working in the business sections of the media - indeed,
throughout the news media as a whole - promote corporate aims.

                Corporate Defenders of Climate Myths

There are other corporate groups which, like the CBI, are determined to
prioritise short-term greed. One of them is the Cato Institute, a US
"non-profit public policy research foundation" which "seeks to broaden the
parameters of public policy debate" to promote the "traditional American
principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and
peace."

This perspective satisfies the Institute's sponsors who mainly consist of
"entrepreneurs, securities and commodities traders, and corporations such
as oil and gas companies, Federal Express, and Philip Morris that abhor
government regulation." ('"Evidence-based" research? Anti-environmental
organisations and the corporations that fund them', October 19, 2005;
www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=2099)

Among Cato's sponsors are ExxonMobil, Chevron Texaco, Tenneco gas,
pharmaceutical companies Pfizer Inc. and Merck, Microsoft, Proctor &
Gamble, RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company and many others, including those with
business interests here in the UK. Shell Oil Company, a sister company of
Shell in Europe, is a past sponsor of the Cato Institute.

One of the Institute's "adjunct scholars" is Steven Milloy who publishes a
website devoted to exposing "junk science." Milloy has a background in
lobbying for the tobacco industry. John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton,
analysts of the 'spin' industry, have pointed out that "junk science" is
the term that "corporate defenders apply to any research, no matter how
rigorous, that justifies regulations to protect the environment and public
health. The opposing term, 'sound science,' is used in reference to any
research, no matter how flawed, that can be used to challenge, defeat, or
reverse environmental and public health protection." (Corporate Watch,
ibid.)

The Cato Institute has published reports with titles such as 'Climate of
Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global Warming', and 'Meltdown: The
Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and
the Media.' In May 2003, in response to a report by the Worldwatch
Institute which linked climate change and severe weather events, Jerry
Taylor, the Cato Institute's "director of natural resource studies"
retorted:

"It's false. There is absolutely no evidence that extreme weather events
are on the increase. None. The argument that more and more dollar damages
accrue is a reflection of the greater amount of wealth we've created."
(www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=21)

Another major US-based lobby group whose tentacles of influence extend
across the Atlantic is the American Petroleum Institute, a powerful trade
association for the US oil industry - an industry which has sister
companies in many other countries, including the UK.

Among the API's members are Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, BP Amoco
and Shell. Researcher Robert Blackhurst has described how the API has
"sustained a long guerrilla campaign against climate scientists." A memo
leaked to the New York Times in 1998 exposed its strategy of investing
millions to muddy the science on climate change among "congress, the media
and other key audiences." (Blackhurst, 'Clouding the atmosphere', The
Independent, September 19, 2005)

The API recently funded a scientific paper in the journal Climate Research
denying that 20th century temperatures had been unusually high, giving
well-publicised ammunition to climate sceptics. After finding the paper's
methods and assumptions had been flawed, five of the journal's editors
resigned.

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an Amsterdam-based research and
campaign group, notes that "Shell and BP Amoco, both formerly ardent
critics of global warming theory, have shifted their strategies
dramatically." CEO continues:

"These masters of climate greenwash have undergone expensive corporate
makeovers and now present themselves as leaders in reducing CO2 emissions
and supporting renewable energy."
(www.corporateeurope.org/greenhouse/greenwash.html)

Shell and BP Amoco employ a sophisticated public relations approach:

"Expensive TV and newspaper advertisements portraying an
environmentally-friendly image are at the heart of this strategy. In many
cases, small-scale environmental projects which the companies fund are
used to justify the green credentials of the corporation as a whole -
projects which often cost less than the advertisements used to showcase
them to the general public... Both Shell and BP Amoco continue to increase
oil production year after year and have no intention of changing that in
the next decades." (CEO, ibid.)

Corporate news media rarely report the influence of corporate lobby groups
on governments, or expose their expensive PR campaigns, and how
detrimental these business activities are for the climate stability of the
planet.

The news media also take capitalism as a given, much like the laws of
physics. What rare discussion there might be is only permitted to
reinforce the corporate prejudice that the system is irreplaceable.

               The 'Ecowarrior' and the War Criminal

For instance, the Independent newspaper (London) recently granted
extensive space to Sir Jonathan Porritt, formerly a great green hope in
Britain, to promote his new book, 'Capitalism: As If The World Matters'.

He believes that "the emerging solutions [to the climate crisis] have to
be made within the embrace of capitalism." (Porritt, 'How capitalism can
save the world', Independent Extra, 8-page supplement, Independent,
November 4, 2005)

Porritt, Blair's top environmental adviser, fails to see that current
government policies are almost wholly opposed to social justice and
environmental health. Instead, he claims that "almost all key policy
processes continue to move slowly in the right direction" and that "the
benefits of today's globalisation process still outweigh the costs."

For Porritt, once leader of the Green Party in England & Wales, this:
"means working with the grain of markets and free choice, not against it.
It means embracing capitalism as the only overarching system capable of
achieving any kind of reconciliation between ecological sustainability, on
the one hand, and the pursuit of prosperity and personal wellbeing, on the
other." As for current ecological activism: "Unless it throws in its lot
with this kind of progressive political agenda, conventional
environmentalism will continue to decline."

We are to believe that Tony Blair - forever bending to the will of
business and exposed as one of the most cynical and dishonest politicians
in living memory - is at the vanguard of this "progressive political
agenda":

"I admire a lot about him [Blair]. I do, genuinely. I have to keep saying
this because people forget it: on climate change, if he hadn't done what
he has done, we would be looking at a world in which there was no
political leadership on this agenda." (Marie Woolf, 'Jonathon Porritt: The
constant ecowarrior', The Independent, November 6 2005)

The Independent, owned by billionaire Sir Tony O'Reilly, can manage to
provide an eight-page supplement for a former 'ecowarrior' to explain why
environmentalism must throw in its lot with capitalism.

But there are no multi-page supplements to present community initiatives
and grassroot debates around the world on alternatives to the present
disastrous system. We await the day when the Independent, or any other
mainstream newspaper, publishes a major supplement on, for example,
participatory economics, a radical vision detailed by ZNet's Michael
Albert (see Albert, 'Parecon: Life After Capitalism', Verso, London, 2003;
and www.parecon.org).

Tony Blair has put down his corporate cards on the table, declaring
bluntly:

"The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption
substantially because of a long-term environmental problem." (Andrew Balls
and Alan Beattie, 'Insurance for terror risk is "key to Gaza"', Financial
Times, September 16, 2005)

But Ross Gelbspan, author and journalist, points to the essential truth
that economics is subservient to nature, not the other way around:

"...nature's laws are not about supply and demand. Nature's laws are about
limits, thresholds, and surprises. The progress of the Dow does not seem
to influence the increasing rate of melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet;
the collapse of the ecosystems of the North Sea will not be arrested by an
upswing in consumer confidence." (Gelbspan, 'Boiling Point', Perseus
Books, 2004, pp. 128-129)

 David Cromwell is co-editor with David Edwards of Media Lens
(www.medialens.org). Their book, 'Guardians Of Power - The Myth Of The
Liberal Media', has just been published by Pluto Press, London
(www.plutobooks.com).


--------13 of 15--------

Bush administration domestic spying provokes lawsuits, calls for impeachment
By Patrick Martin
18 January 2006
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/bush-j18.shtml

The Bush administration's open defiance of federal law and the US
Constitution, in proclaiming its right to conduct unlimited warrantless
surveillance of telephone and email traffic, has begun to produce a
political reaction within US ruling circles.

Two civil liberties groups filed lawsuits against the Bush administration
Tuesday, seeking a court order to end the domestic spying by the National
Security Agency (NSA). Several senators discussed the possibility of
impeachment on television interview programs Sunday, and former vice
president Al Gore, in a speech Monday, called for the appointment of a
special prosecutor.

The lawsuits were filed in Detroit and New York City, the first by the
American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of plaintiffs who frequently
communicate by phone and email with the Middle East, and the second by the
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), on behalf of attorneys for
prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Both suits charge that the
eavesdropping program is illegal and unconstitutional and seek court
injunctions to bar further spying.

The day the suits were filed, the New York Times followed up its initial
report on NSA spying with a front-page article revealing that the
surveillance had involved far more than monitoring a relative handful of
telephone numbers of suspected terrorists, as the Bush administration has
claimed. The list of phone numbers, email addresses and names sent by the
NSA to the FBI "soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check
out thousands of tips a month." The surveillance effort was so massive and
indiscriminate that even FBI Director Robert Mueller questioned its
legality, the Times said.

The ACLU suit was joined by the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers, Greenpeace and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the
largest US Muslim organization, as well as journalists James Bamford,
Christopher Hitchens and Tara McKelvey, and academics Barnett Rubin of New
York University, and Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution. The group
includes both critics of the Iraq war, like McKelvey of the American
Prospect, and those like Hitchens and Diamond who strongly supported the
US invasion and occupation.

The lead counsel for the ACLU in this suit, Ann Beeson, said, "The
prohibition against government eavesdropping on American citizens is
well-established and crystal clear. President Bush's claim that he is not
bound by the law is simply astounding." ACLU Executive Director Anthony D.
Romero added, "The current surveillance of Americans is a chilling
assertion of presidential power that has not been seen since the days of
Richard Nixon."

In the suit filed in New York, the Center for Constitutional Rights
declared that its own work was directly affected by the spying because CCR
lawyers represented hundreds of Muslim US residents detained after the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as well as many of the Guantánamo
Bay prisoners. Their defense necessarily required extensive telephone
conversations and email exchanges with individuals in the Middle East,
Afghanistan and South Asia, which CCR said were likely monitored by the
NSA.

In a statement released as the suit was filed, CCR Legal Director Bill
Goodman said, "On this, the day following Martin Luther King Day, we are
saddened that the illegal electronic surveillance that once targeted that
great American has again become characteristic of our present government.
As was the case with Dr. King, this illegal activity is cloaked in the
guise of national security. In reality, it reflects an attempt by the Bush
Administration to exercise unchecked power without the inconvenient
interference of the other co-equal branches of government."

The suits were filed after a weekend in which there was, for the first
time in US official circles, open discussion of whether impeachment
proceedings were warranted against Bush. Republican Arlen Specter,
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on the ABC television
program "This Week" that he would go ahead with hearings on the NSA
spying, with the principal witness to be Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, who earlier this month issued an opinion defending the legality
of the program.

If the spy program is in fact illegal, Specter said, "The remedy could be
a variety of things, including impeachment or criminal prosecution." He
hastened to add that he did not believe impeachment was justified or
likely, but nonetheless, he became the first prominent Republican to raise
the possibility.

Former vice president Gore delivered his sharply worded attack on Bush in
a speech in Washington on Martin Luther King Day at Constitution Hall on
the Mall, an appearance which was sponsored, not by the Democratic Party,
but by a coalition of civil liberties and right-wing libertarian groups,
including the National Taxpayers Union, the Free Congress Foundation and
the American Conservative Union. He called for the appointment of a
special prosecutor to investigate whether the White House committed crimes
in authorizing the extensive NSA spying.

While Gore did not use the word impeachment, he gave a scathing
description of the Bush administration's disregard for legal procedure and
the constitutional limitations on executive power. He warned that Bush had
"brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of
the Constitution" through his conduct of the war in Iraq and the
"anti-terror" campaign at home.

Gore condemned the Bush administration's indefinite detention of American
citizens, torture at CIA-run prisons, and massive domestic spying. He
compared these policies to similar attacks on democratic rights during
World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War, noting that "in each of
these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, the country recovered
its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of
excess and regret."

Given the open-ended character of Bush's "war on terror," however, "There
are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing
and that the cycle may not repeat itself." In somewhat roundabout
language, Gore was suggesting that the Bush administration was on the road
to dictatorship.

This speech raises serious political issues before American working
people. The police-state measures introduced by the Bush administration,
with the full support of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, have
gone so far that even a leading bourgeois politician - the man who, after
all, received more votes than Bush in the 2000 presidential election - is
compelled to protest.

Gore, however, downplays the extent of the danger and covers up its
origins. The right-wing onslaught against democratic rights and
constitutional norms did not begin with 9/11. It is not an exaggerated
response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, as the
former vice president suggested.

The breakdown of American democracy was already visible in the impeachment
of Clinton, in which a right-wing cabal of lawyers, judges and congressmen
sought to overturn the results of two presidential elections using the
bogus investigation headed by independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

This process came to a head in the 2000 election, stolen by the Republican
Party through the intervention of the US Supreme Court. A bare 5-4
majority of the highest court halted vote-counting in Florida, awarding
the state's electoral votes and the White House to George W. Bush. Al
Gore, although he had won the popular vote by half a million votes
nationwide, and would have won Florida as well had all votes been counted,
bowed to the court's intervention and conceded the election.

At the time, the World Socialist Web Site wrote that the outcome of the
2000 elections would determine whether there existed any significant
constituency in the American ruling elite for the defense of democratic
rights. The capitulation of the Democratic Party to the theft of the 2000
election represented a political watershed. And it was followed by a
similar surrender in 2004, when the Democratic Party decided to run a
pro-war presidential candidate and spurn the antiwar sentiments of a
majority of Democratic voters.

The impeachment of Bush and Cheney would be, of course, thoroughly
justified. There are ample grounds for convicting them of "high crimes and
misdemeanors." They are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in
Iraq, of both Iraqis and Americans, in an illegal war whose purpose was to
seize control of the world's third largest oil reserves.

But the Democratic Party, even if it won control of Congress in the 2006
elections, has no stomach for the type of fight that would be required to
remove Bush from office. This is not merely the product of the personal
cowardice of the Democratic leaders. It is because the Democrats, whatever
their tactical disagreements, are fundamentally in agreement with Bush's
policies. The same Democrats who admit that the war in Iraq was launched
on the basis of lies nonetheless insist that the United States must
maintain its occupation of the oil-rich country.

That is because the Democratic Party upholds the same social interests as
the Republican Party. Both parties represent and defend the American
ruling elite, the top 1 percent which controls the vast bulk of the wealth
of society. The struggle against the Bush administration and its policies
of war, attacks on democratic rights and destruction of jobs and living
standards requires the building of a new, independent political party of
the working class, based on a socialist program.

While it finds virtually no expression in official Washington, there is
growing popular hostility to the Bush administration, as measured by a
poll commissioned by the antiwar group AfterDowningStreet.org, and
conducted by the Zogby International polling organization. The poll
conducted January 9-12 found that a majority of the American people want
Congress to impeach Bush if he ordered wiretapping without a judge's
approval. The margin was 52 percent to 43 percent, with majorities for
impeachment in every region of the country, including the South, and an
astonishing 74 percent of young people, aged 18-29, supporting the
president's removal. Even 23 percent of Republicans favored impeachment.

Zogby, Gallup and other established polls have refused requests to include
an impeachment question in their regular polling for news organizations,
claiming that there was no support for impeachment in Congress and no
significant discussion of it in the media. AfterDowningStreet.org raised
money over the Internet to pay Zogby to conduct the poll, with results
that underscore the enormous gulf between official Washington and the
American public.

As the group noted in the press release, "The strong support for
impeachment found in this poll is especially surprising because the views
of impeachment supporters are entirely absent from the broadcast and print
media, and can only be found on the Internet and in street protests. The
lack of coverage of impeachment support is due in part to the fact that
not a single Democrat in Congress has called for impeachment..."

The furthest the congressional Democrats have gone is to suggest an
inquiry into the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war, leaving
open the possibility of impeachment, and even this step is limited to a
handful. Congressman John Lewis of Georgia has suggested that the Bush
surveillance program may be grounds for impeachment.

A total of seven House Democrats have announced their support for
legislation introduced last month by John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat,
seeking an impeachment inquiry into Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq. HR
635 calls for creating a select committee "to investigate the
administration 's intent to go to war before congressional authorization,
manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing
torture [and] retaliating against critics." The seven co-signers include
four members of the Congressional Black Caucus (Sheila Jackson-Lee, Donald
Payne, Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters), and three liberals from
California (Lois Capps, Zoe Lofgren and Lynn Woolsey). Not a single figure
in the Democratic leadership has signed on.


--------14 of 15--------

What If I Got It Wrong?
by Milo Clark
Swans Commentary » <../../main.htm>swans.com January 16, 2006

What if all the stuffs I want to believe I know and on which I rely in my
soul of souls are simply wrong? Will I then join the human race and find
acceptance and succor?

Other than occasional aberrations and glitches, history appears to show
that nasties outrank goodies. Shall I invoke Rev. Pat Robertson on this
issue?

Historian John Lukacs, whom I cite frequently, suggests through his many
books that the times since WWII ended in 1945 represent a brief interlude.
That brief interlude colors my perspectives strongly. He also suggests
that it is over already. And that we are returning to a historical norm of
barbarity.

Post-WWII, in the once United States of America, most of Europe, Japan,
and a few other places, most folks found not only a degree of material
prosperity but relative safety and security. From comfortable niches
within safety and security, ignorance of others' traumas came to be bliss.

The Republican Party takes as gospel that unfortunates bring their
troubles on themselves. Therefore, they have done their best, aided by
others who saw political expediency therein, to dismantle the safety nets
assembled during the Great Depression of the 1930s and expanded during the
early years after WWII ended. Under Democrat Bill Clinton and a Republican
dominated Congress, welfare as we knew it was dismantled in 1996. Since
2000, Congress has worked assiduously to scatter the rubble.

To my dismay, elections tend to favor politicians whom I find abominable.
I spent many years in California voting against Reagan while he was
elected again and again to the top of the feeding chain. In 2004, about 59
million folks chose to restore George W. Bush to his seat in the Oval
Office.

Currently, the entire Hawaii Congressional delegation is nominal Democrats
and actual Republicrats. Both Senators are ardent supporters of drilling
in the Alaskan wilderness for about six months additional supply of crude
oil at costs beyond comprehension. All voted for the war in Iraq and
continue to support the additional funds demanded. They persist in
standing down as Bush stands up.

Governments since the beginning of recorded history have tended to be
authoritarian in nature. The brief experiments in beneficent rule or
involvement of people through voting processes, rigged always to some
degree, flourished after WWII, also. While voting is more widespread,
authoritarian governance is little affected thereby. Stacking votes subtly
or blatantly is now broadly assumed.

Nominal democratic structures in government fail utterly to mask the
undemocratic actualities within which virtually all spend their working
lives. Corporations are anti-democratic as well as undemocratic.

Today, those who may appear to counter such trends, Chávez of Venezuela,
for example, do not shirk taking power to hand. The peasants in Bolivia
and Peru, to a degree, have fought back against the more naked of power
and water grabs by their rulers or the corporations, oligarchies and
plutocrats who assume control is still theirs as it has been and likely
will be again.

The once United States of America, an historical aberration in so many
dimensions, creaks at the joints and rushes out to define by force how
others shall create their structures of governance. Exhorting abroad what
is dismantled at home, the current administration speaks with forked
tongue out of many sides of mouth well received by millions in spite of
apparent deviations from actualities.

Relative prosperity is becoming more relative as rich get richer, poor get
poorer and those between stagnate. The government insists that inflation,
for example, is well controlled while individuals experience increasing
prices outside the basket purported to represent actualities.

Lies, whether blatant untruths or partially so, always present to some
degree within matrices and shades of governmental and organizational
philologies, tend further to darken the grays of today's official
verbiage.

Energies have a history of disappearing to reappear in new guises. Fossil
fuels are being used up and fossil fuel use goes exponential again and
again. Efficiencies upon efficiencies on top of efficiencies give us more
bang for every buck or every drop thereby overriding the declines in
reported availabilities of fuels to meet demands.

As is shown in recent events, alarums and excursions about gas prices are
rather well absorbed and quickly abandoned as an issue by most people
affected.

For all the hullabaloo, mine included, alternatives stay firmly locked to
peripheries while excesses are routinely exceeded into norms. Temporary
lapses in SUV and pick-up sales and mega-engined gulpers will, in time,
pass as the big car companies have shown time and again over the last
fifty years. See what is currently being advertised in all media. Simple
actuality seems to be that the more we use, the more there is and will be.
There are and remain no excesses which are not being exceeded.

Leopold Kohr may be wrong to insist that implosion is the predictable
outcome of excesses. I have hung my hat on Kohr's hood for all these
years. So, am I wrong, too?


--------15 of 15--------

 Crapitalism

 Dog and pony corporate crony
 PR phoney media baloney:
 eat my Coney.


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