Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 05.16.07

[David Shove (shove001]

            P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    05.16.07

1. Conason/US fascism 5.17 11am
2. NWN4P New Hope     5.17 4:30pm
3. Eagan peace vigil  5.17 4:30pm
4. Northtown vigil    5.17 5pm
5. Venezuela/Martin   5.17 6:30pm
6. Mumia/film         5.17 6:30pm
7. Amnesty Intl       5.17 7:15pm

8. Consensus/change   5.18 5pm
9. Sudan              5.18 7:30pm
10. Mizna/midEast art 5.18 7:30pm

11. Mickey S Huff - Preaching hate: farewell, Falwell...
12. Betsey Piette - Support Mumia 'Don't let them kill an innocent man'
13. Dean Baker    - Loser Liberalism versus Power Populism
14. Glen Ford     - Dismantling the corporate agenda
15. Mark Morford  - Oh right, we're still at war
16. ER Bills      - A wealth of murderous stupidity

--------1 of 16--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Conason/US fascism 5.17 11am

Tune into Write On! Radio this Thursday, May 17th from 11:00 am to noon,
on KFAI Fresh Air Radio, 90.3 FM Minneapolis and 106.7 FM St. Paul , and
live on the web at www.kfai.org.

Are big business and rightist government moving us toward fascism?
Author Joe Conason, political columnist for the New York Observer
addresses this question in his new political analysis, It Can Happen
Here:Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush.


--------2 of 16--------

From: Carole Rydberg <carydberg [at] comcast.net>
Subject: NWN4P New Hope 5.17 4:30pm

NWN4P-New Hope demonstration every Thursday 4:30 to 6 PM at the corner of
Winnetka and 42nd.  You may park near Walgreens or in the larger lot near
McDonalds; we will be on all four corners.  Bring your own or use our
signs.


--------3 of 16--------

From: Greg and Sue Skog <skograce [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Eagan peace vigil 5.17 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.


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

From: EKalamboki [at] aol.com
Subject: Northtown vigil 5.17 5pm

NORTHTOWN Peace Vigil every Thursday 5-6pm, at the intersection of Co. Hwy
10 and University Ave NE (SE corner across from Denny's), in Blaine.

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

For more information people can contact Evangelos Kalambokidis by phone or
email: (763)574-9615, ekalamboki [at] aol.com.


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

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Venezuela/Martin 5.17 6:30pm

Jorge Martin Speaking Tour Date in Minneapolis
Thursday, May 17, 2007
6:30-8:30pm
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church 2730 E. 31st St. (Upstairs in library.)

Jorge Martín, born in Barcelona, Catalonia, has been involved in the
international solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution from the very
beginning. He was a founding member of the international Hands Off
Venezuela campaign, of which he is now the international secretary. He has
written extensively on the Bolivarian revolution and has traveled around
the world speaking in its defense. He has visited Venezuela often,
participating in meetings and forums and holding discussions with
revolutionary activists. He has been actively involved in the movement of
occupied factories in Venezuela.

For more background please read Jorge Martin's recent articles:
http://www.marxist.com/chavez-trotskyist-president120107.htm
http://www.marxist.com/political-instrument-revolution-socialism201206.htm
In French
http://www.lariposte.com/Chavez-annonce-la-creation-du-Parti-Socialiste-667.html
http://www.marxist.com/venezuelan-presidential-elections011106.htm
Video http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/venezuelan_election_jorge_martin.htm
Audio http://www.ourmedia.org/node/189938
http://www.marxist.com/us-military-exercises-caribbean300306.htm
This event is sponsored by: Hands Off Venezuela, MN Cuba Committee,
Workers International League

Hands Off Venezuela P.O. Box 1331 St. Paul, MN 55104 Visit our websites
at: www.ushov.org www.handsoffvenezuela.org


--------6 of 16--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Mumia/film 5.17 6:30pm

THURSDAY, MAY 17, 6:30pm;FILM: MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: A Case For Reasonable
Doubt" JACK PINE COMMUNITY CENTER, 2815 EAST LAKE ST. south Minneapolis

Pennsylvania death row prisoner and dissident journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal's
case exemplifies not only everything that's wrong with capitol punishment
but, much of what's rotten in the American judicial system. An all-white
jury and judge - who told the prosecutor he would help "fry that nigger" -
convicted Jaml for the murder of a police officer. Physical evidence (such
as 'disappeared' ballistics) violently coerced witnesses recanting
testimony, and many of the other standard 'irregularities' seen in
exonerated death penalty prisoners' cases, prove his innocence.

The primary difference in Mumia's case is that he's a political prisoner -
due to his journalism.  As a teenager writing for the Philadelphia Black
Panther Party newspaper, then as a radio journalist, he dogged the Philly
police and the ex-chief Mayor Frank Rizzo, exposing brutality and
corruption.  At a press conference after police shotof an unarmed Black
man, Rizzo told Jamal, "Someday you're going to pay for what you're
writing and saying." FBI surveillance and dozens of arrests without
charges, began when he was 14 and continued until the 1982 frame-up.

Mumia Abu-Jamal has spent 25 years in solitary confinement, writing four
books and recording hundreds of radio commentaries. He's won the PEN
award, been made an honorary citizen of Paris and sparked an international
movement in his defense. Philadelphia's African-American community called
"the Voice of the Voiceless" , which he remains.

a fedearl appeal hearing will be heard in Philadelphia on thursday May
17th with support events organized aorund the country. In Minneapolis,
tHURSDAY, MAY 17, 6:30pm;FILM: MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: A Case For Reasonable
Doubt" JACK PINE COMMUNITY CENTER, 2815 EAST LAKE ST. south Minneapolis

http://www.mumia.org/freedom.now/


--------7 of 16--------

From: Gabe Ormsby <gabeo [at] bitstream.net>
Subject: Amnesty Intl 5.17 7:15pm

AIUSA Group 315 (Wayzata area) meets Thursday, May 17th, at 7:15 p.m. St.
Luke Presbyterian Church, 3121 Groveland School Road, Wayzata (near the
intersection of Rt. 101 and Minnetonka Blvd). For further information,
contact Richard Bopp at Richard_C_Bopp [at] NatureWorksLLC.com.


--------8 of 16--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Consensus/change 5.18 5pm

FRI.MAY 18:5:00 - 8:00 P.M. Two authors read from their new books; Mirja
P. Hanson reads from "Clues to Achieving Consensus" and Diane Robinson
Kerr reads from "Mending the Circle: A Practical Guide to Achieving
Change." Hosted by Yvonne Cheek of Millenium Consulting and Mike Kirkwood
of Brown & Kirkwood Sales Mgmt Consulting. 5510 Edgewater Blvd.  Mpls.
RSVP to Yvonne [at] yvonnecheek.net or call 612-377-7676.


--------9 of 16--------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Sudan 5.18 7:30pm

Friday, 5/18, 7:30 pm, one of Sudan's "lost boys" Valentino Achak Deng,
subject of Dave Egger's fictionalized biography "What is the What,"  speaks
at Lyndale United Church of Christ, 31st and Aldrich S, Mpls.  Tickets $5
from Magers and Quinn booksellers at 3038 Hennepin.
davidu [at] magersandquinn.com (Correction: Eggers will not speak.)


--------10 of 16--------

From: Mizna  <mizna-announce [at] mizna.org>
Subject: Mizna/midEast art 5.18 7:30pm

Mizna presents:
Latitudes
A showcase of art from our community

Mizna is proud to host Latitudes, an exhibition of art by the recipients
of our first ever granting program. The program was designed to facilitate
and support original artistic work created by community members who
identify as Arab, Muslim, Berber, or Iranian.

California Building Gallery
2205 California Street NE
Minneapolis
May 18-26, Fridays and Saturdays
7:30 pm
$5.00

May 18-19 (Art a Whirl weekend) - 7:30 pm
Heba Amin Installation and Gallery Talk
Ismail Khalidi Foot, a performance of a work in progress
Jen March Inherited Journey, visual art and reading
Jila Nikpay Film, Labyrinth and santour performance


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

Preaching Hate
Farewell, Falwell ...
By MICKEY S. HUFF
CounterPunch
May 16, 2007

It's always a tragedy in the human experience when one passes on to
whereever one goes when one dies. We often look back upon people's lives
and see what we have learned from someone, what they contributed to
society over a lifetime. We tend to focus on the positive. But, it's also
good to look at how one's words and deeds impacted others, not only for
better, but also sometimes for worse. In terms of a greater sense of
humanity and toleration for all our different ways of living in concert
with each other on Earth (shall we say, more Jesus-like"), some folks are
just more divisive and hurtful in sheer societal terms. Let's remember who
the Fundamentalist, Christian, Televangelical, Moral Majority rockstar
Jerry Falwell really was over the past several decades by examining some
of his own thoughts and words. May we learn to transcend such divisive,
disdainful discourse.

About the 9/11 attacks:

"I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists
and the gays and the lesbians, who are actively trying to make that an
alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way - all of them
who try to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say,
'You helped this happen.'"

About thinking critically:

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions"

About gays and sexual preference:

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment
for the society that tolerates homosexuals"

About his peers:

"Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan in America"

About public education:

"Textbooks are Soviet propaganda" and "I hope I live to see the day when,
as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The
churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running
them. What a happy day that will be!"

About civil liberties protections for all Americans:

"The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews"

About Jesus and Bin Laden:

"I had a student ask me, 'Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin
Laden' Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then
he must be executed."

About women and equality:

"It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last
dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered
men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed
national spiritual awakening."

About the ERA and women again:

"I listen to feminists and all these radical gals...These women just need
a man in the house. That"s all they need. Most of the feminists need a man
to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew
it and they"re mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They"re sexist. They
hate men; that"s their problem."

About theocracy and his own distorted history of founding motives:

"There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have
raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the
churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First
Amendment to the Constitution.

About the Jews:

"The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually
blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior."

About Islam:

"I think Muhammad was a terrorist. I read enough by both Muslims and
non-Muslims, [to decide] that he was a violent man, a man of war."

About grown men and prostitutes:

Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are
married to them."

About the good fight against Satan and Liberals:

"We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism ... we
are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our
nation today ... our battle is with Satan himself."

About loving thy neighbor:

"...You"ve got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops and I am
for the President"chase them all over the world, if it takes ten years,
blow them all away in the name of the Lord."

Farewell, Falwell. Any society that cherishes human compassion and
decency, empathy and nonviolence, and freedom of thought and religion in
any true sense will hardly miss ya.

Amen.

Mickey S. Huff is adjunct faculty in History and Critical Thinking and
former co-director of www.retropoll.org in Berkeley, CA. Email:
mythinfo [at] mac.com


--------12 of 16--------

Building support for Mumia
'Don't let them kill an innocent man'
By Betsey Piette
Philadelphia
Published May 13, 2007 11:27 PM

Hot off the presses and flying off the shelves! With the bold banner
headline "Don't let them kill an innocent man," a new four-page
newsletter, designed to raise awareness about Mumia Abu-Jamal's
25-year-long struggle to win freedom from Pennsylvania's death row, is
being enthusiastically received all over Philadelphia.

"I never had people take papers like this before," sister Pam Africa from
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal told Workers
World. "You go into a place and put down a stack of papers. Before you get
home, people are calling asking for more!"

Africa reported that the newsletter is particularly popular at the North
Philadelphia office of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, where
they were excited to see that it includes an article on UNIA founder
Marcus Garvey focused around the struggle for immigrant rights. The
Honorable Marcus Garvey was an immigrant worker from Jamaica who was
deported in 1927.

"The newsletter provides facts about Mumia's case, but it also covers a
lot more issues including the war, police brutality, the elections, and it
has articles in Spanish". Africa noted: "It makes the point that all these
struggles are really one. People especially liked the "Peoples' Ballot"
mail-in coupon where they could check off "I vote for a NEW TRIAL for
Mumia Abu-Jamal".

"When I went to visit Mumia at SCI-Green I handed them out to family
members of other death row prisoners on the bus who all wanted more copies
to take back home."

Thanks to the volunteer efforts of just a few individuals, over 15,000
copies of the newsletter were given out in New York City and Philadelphia
in less than a week. Now calls are coming in from other cities asking for
the papers.

Throughout Philadelphia wherever papers have been dropped off, at
laundromats, barber shops, delis, beauty parlors, pizza or Chinese
take-out shops, the response has been the same. One west Philly pizza shop
owner told a volunteer, "You know the cops won't like this, but you can
leave a big stack right here on the counter."

At a nearby beauty salon on 52nd Street, customers got out of their chairs
to get papers, excited to hear that Abu-Jamal's case was finally going to
be heard in the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, but angry that the
state has never released him from death row.

Further down the street at the corner of Baltimore and 52nd, one man told
of growing up listening to Abu-Jamal's radio commentaries. He'd already
given away his first copy of the newsletter to his father so he took
another, and then took a stack that he started handing out on the spot.

When an elderly African-American man with limited vision received the
paper and learned what it was about he asked the volunteer to repeat the
details of Abu-Jamal's upcoming hearing on May 17 at 9 am at the federal
courthouse at 6th and Market Streets several times so he could remember
it. "I'll be there!" he promised.

At Market and 11th Streets in Center City, one man out shopping with his
children took a paper and commented that he wished he could still hear
Abu-Jamal's radio commentaries. He was thrilled to learn that they are
available on line through www.prisonradio.org.

With less than two weeks before Abu-Jamal's critical hearing on four
appeals of his 1982 conviction, getting out information on his case and
letting people know about the May 17 hearings is the number-one priority.
The Fraternal Order of Police has been on a neo-fascistic rampage trying
to silence support for Abu-Jamal as the court date draws closer. Just like
Bush administration cover-ups around the war in Iraq, the FOP is trying to
stop the truth about Abu-Jamal from getting out.

When the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reviews the case it will decide
whether Mumia Abu-Jamal gets a new trial, life in prison without parole,
or execution. The whole world is watching how the Third Circuit will rule.

We must let them know where we stand: Only Mumia's release or a new trial
is acceptable! Go to www.millions4mumia.org to download the "Don't Let
Them Kill an Innocent Man" newspaper, the May 17 leaflet and poster. To
buy New York bus tickets to go to Philadelphia on May 17, call
212-633-6646.

Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww [at] workers.org


--------13 of 16--------

Loser Liberalism Versus Power Populism
by Dean Baker
Published on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

The Democrats like to portray themselves as the party of humble masses.
This is in contrast to the Republicans, who President Bush once jokingly
described as the party of the "haves and have mores".

But there are two very distinct ways in which Democrats see themselves as
helping out the middle class and poor. On the one hand, much of the
Democratic Party leadership portrays the government as sort of a
collective charity. These Democrats draw a picture that has the market
determining societies' winners and losers. But, because they are nice
people, they think it's appropriate to tax the winners to help out the
losers. This distinguishes them from the Republicans, who want to tell the
losers to get lost. This philosophy can be thought of as "loser
liberalism," since it holds that the government must tax back some of the
winners' money to help out those who did not do very well on their own.

This view can be contrasted with "power populism," which doesn't accept
the basic government/market distinction that loser liberalism treats as
its starting point. The power populists see government policy as
determining who wins and loses in the market place. For example, it is
government policy that makes it easy to import cars and clothes, thereby
putting auto workers and apparel workers in direct competition with
low-paid workers in the developing world. This trade policy makes
manufacturing workers losers.

On the other hand, government policy also makes it difficult for foreign
doctors and lawyers to work in the United States, unlike foreign
dishwashers and custodians. Since the government protects doctors and
lawyers and other highly paid professionals from foreign competition, it
ensures that these people will be among the winners in the global economy.

Government policy also dictates that patent monopolies will be the primary
method for financing drug research and copyright monopolies will be the
main method for promoting software development, thereby enabling companies
like Merck and Pfizer and individuals like Bill Gates to get very rich.
There are other, more efficient mechanisms for financing research of
developing drugs and software that would not create the same winners or
lead to as much inequality, but the rich and powerful use their power to
keep these alternatives from ever being publicly debated.

Loser liberalism is by far the predominant strain within the Democratic
Party for the simple reason that these are the folks with the money. And
money not only buys campaign ads, but it is the basis for being taken
seriously by the media. The media feels completely justified in ignoring
the positions of the presidential candidates who haven't raised the tens
of millions that they have decided is necessary to win the nomination.
This means candidates that don't promote loser liberalism are simply
excluded from the outset.

Not only are populist candidates excluded from the debate, but political
positions that are inconsistent with loser liberalism are also largely
excluded from public debate. So, trade policy is consistently portrayed as
a debate between "globalizers" and "free traders" who are being challenged
by "protectionists". In reality, the globalizers are ardent protectionists
who are happy to have highly educated professionals protected from foreign
competition. They also want to increase patent protections on drugs and
copyright protections on software and make poor people in the developing
world pay more money for these products. They are only "free traders" when
it comes to placing less educated workers in the United States in
competition with workers in the developing world.

The loser liberals similarly control the debate in other areas. A modest
tax on stock trades and other financial transactions, like the one that
England has, could easily raise more than $100 billion a year in revenue.
But, the hedge fund crew knows that this would be real money out of their
pockets, so they don't even let the issue get discussed. After all, it's
fine to make a bunch of stupid auto workers lose their jobs  we can always
give them "wage insurance" - but it's another matter altogether to cut
into the income of the hedge fund crew.

The loser liberals also keep single payer health care insurance off the
table, although they might be willing to pay somewhat higher taxes to
allow a few more kids to get health care coverage. The loser liberals
would never allow for a serious discussion of alternatives to
patent-financed research for prescription drugs, no matter how many
Vioxx-type scandals fill the newspapers. After all, we're talking about
the profits for Merck and Pfizer, not pensions for steelworkers.

There is a long list of government policies, many of which are extremely
harmful to the economy and society, that have the effect of redistributing
income upward. Like the Republicans, the loser liberals want to make sure
that these policies never come up for public debate. But, the loser
liberals may be willing to pay taxes on their billions. Perhaps we should
be thankful for small favors, but real change will require overturning the
structures that redistribute income upward, not a modest trickle of tax
revenue that allows some of this money to flow back down.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the
Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (
www\.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, "Beat the Press,"
where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find
it at the American Prospect's web site.

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and
discover new web pages.


--------14 of 16--------

Dismantling the Corporate Agenda
Black Labor and the Big Mission
By GLEN FORD
CounterPunch
May 16, 2007

Never before in U.S. history has an actual decline in the economic
fortunes of workers across the board been so clearly the deliberate,
planned result of public policies. The crisis for working and unemployed
Americans is general and unremitting - a steadily downward path to
absolute insecurity - precisely because those are the conditions sought by
the rich who control the U.S. government. The Corporate Agenda requires,
not just the breaking of unions, but the shattering of morale in society
as a whole, to render the populace timid, tame and grateful for whatever
breaks good luck or corporate favor might bring.

For Black workers, the Bush regime's six-year, blitzkrieg-like offensive
against the last vestiges of the social contract is not a totally
unfamiliar experience - African Americans have never been more than
partially covered by the U.S. social contract, which has at any rate
always been tissue-thin and non-binding on the rich. Today, all pretense
of social reciprocity and fairness is being systematically eliminated as a
matter of boardroom and public policy, a prerequisite of the
corporate-engineered global Race to the Bottom.

In this rapidly darkening environment, the Coalition of Black Trade
Unionists (CBTU) holds its 36th Annual International Convention in
Chicago, May 23 - 28. Last year's convention brought 1,500 delegates to
Orlando, Florida, under the theme, "Continuing the Fight for a New
Economic Order." This years theme is "Lessons Learned, New Vision for the
Future" - but a more accurate sense of the urgency of the moment is
conveyed in conversation with William Lucy, a founder and president of the
CBTU, and Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

Lucy cites as the main enemy the "social, political and economic
philosophy" shared by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National
Association of Manufacturers, the rich, and the administration that
represents their interests. This Corporate Agenda results in the average
CEO earning more money on his first day on the job than the average worker
makes in a year - an agenda backed to the hilt by a government that
strangles the ability of employees and society as a whole from fighting
back against such outrageous economic inequalities.

This same Corporate Agenda has produced stagnant or declining incomes,
double-digit unemployment for Blacks, a crisis in home foreclosures and
bankruptcies, the return of rising crime and poverty rates, and
prohibitive college tuitions.

The picture is bleakest for African Americans with union jobs. In 2004, 55
percent of the organized workforce that lost their jobs, were Black,
although Blacks made up only 13 percent of unionized workers - a
catastrophe that continues to unfold. Still, Blacks remain the most
stalwart element of organized labor. Labor Department figures show African
Americans are the mostly likely to be union members, at 15.1 percent,
compared to 12.2 percent for whites, 11.2 percent for Asians, and 10.4
percent for Hispanics. But in fact, African Americans are even more
demonstrably pro-union than the membership numbers show. Studies have
consistently shown that the descending order of willingness to join a
union is as follows:

Black women
Black men
Hispanic women
Hispanic men
White women
White men

That's why Blacks are called "joiners," a group to be avoided by
anti-union employers when deciding where to locate plants and offices. And
that's also why African Americans who issue blanket denunciations of
unions as hostile "white" institutions should be reminded that they are
also referring to fellow Blacks, who often make up a disproportionate
share of membership and from whose ranks the most militant change-makers
emerge.

                  Chicago: a Cradle of Black Unionism

It is fitting that Chicago host this year's CBTU convention. In a
remarkable lesson on which group of workers has historically shown true
solidarity, Black Chicago meatpackers, systematically excluded from white
unions, formed their own and signed up many thousands of members.
Ultimately, the Black union effectively absorbed faltering white locals,
creating the conditions for non-racialized collective bargaining. Black
Power and real Union Power emerged in the Windy City.

Black women have been comparatively more central to union organizing than
their white female counterparts, just as Black women played (and continue
to assume) more prominent roles in Black activist and electoral politics
than white women. African American women are the most enthusiastic and
militant "joiners" of all.

If the U.S. labor movement is to make any headway in confronting the
rapacious and hyper-destructive Corporate Agenda, it must transform itself
into a broader social-change and resistance force. Almost alone among
worker confederations on the planet, American unions have generally failed
to challenge corporate domination of the society at large, confining their
demands to shop floor, wage and benefits issues. Raging racism and male
chauvinism further crippled U.S. labor, as it excluded the very groups
with the most stake in waging battle against entrenched power: minorities,
especially Blacks, and women.

CBTU President William Lucy senses that many white males in union
leadership finally understand they have no choice but to demand a new
social contract - one that is far broader and social democratic than the
previous white gentlemen's agreement that is now being ground into dust by
unrestrained capital. Lucy puts forward the following core principles:

Anyone who wants to work should have a job;

Anyone who does work should be able to live in dignity with healthcare and
retirement security for their family;

Every worker should have the opportunity to form a union and bargain
collectively;

All workers should share equitably in the prosperity of a strong American
economy.

These are also fundamental principles of the larger historical Black
Political Consensus.

A Labor Agenda such as this is anathema to the Bush men and the
corporations they serve. They know that none of these goals can be
achieved absent the defeat of their own Corporate Agenda. But capital
meets and deals every day, on Wall Street and stock exchanges and board
rooms around the globe, relentlessly attempting to shape human existence
to its own advantage in transactions that move at the speed of light.
These self-serving oligarchs, however, have a great weakness. They are
numerically few, and rely on the rest of society to form the basis of the
over-privileged lives they lead. When society fights back, the rich are in
trouble.  [Let's bring it on them. Now. -ed]

Glen Ford is executive editor of the Black Agenda Report. He can be
contacted at Glen.Ford (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.


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

Oh Right, We're Still At War
How Horrifying Is It When Bush's Unwinnable Disaster Becomes So Dreary and
Forgettable?
by Mark Morford
Published on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 by The San Francisco Chronicle

I think it was Keith Olbermann who said it first, who said yes wow that
Virginia Tech shooting rampage was horrible and shocking and brutal and oh
my God we lost a lot of really good, honest American kids and Something
Should Be Done.

And maybe let's start with the wide-eyed gun-rights maniacs and the
conservative pseudo-cowboys and those twitchy Second Amendment paranoids
who somehow still think that we all must cling to our nasty little Glocks
- cuz gosh, what might happen if our own government turns on us and nobody
has their little handgun to protect their kids from the tanks and the
missiles and the heat-ray guns? Right.

But hey wait (Olbermann went on to say), then again, in the 10 days prior
to that horrific shooting, didn't we also lose nearly exactly that same
number of young people over in Iraq (well over 30) to even more brutal
idiocy and insanity, to cluster bombs and insurgent shootings and gruesome
death and a hugely inept, warmongering American president who is so
violently unable to see just what kind of bland, lackluster evil he has
wrought upon the planet that he is now on the verge of entering the record
books as the Worst President in History?

And maybe, just maybe, given how we are still losing double-digit numbers
of good, honest American bodies every week in Iraq, just as we have for
the past four solid years, perhaps we should be equally - if not perhaps
quite a bit more - appalled and disgusted and shocked that this "war" is
still raging, nonstop, to the tune of 3,400 dead Americans and tens of
thousands wounded and counting fast?

What, in other words, is wrong with us? Where is our outrage? Where is the
pain and wailing and the candlelight vigils? Why has it become so easy to
let Iraq turn into this numb, forgettable, boring thing, a blip in media,
a sad yawn in your day?

Yes, maybe you heard all that and, like many Americans, reacted by saying,
well yes, Iraq is awful and all, but it's a war, and like it or not, kids
are supposed to die in wars, in unspeakable and unrecorded and unbloggable
ways, it's understandable and acceptable and even (tragically, morbidly)
expected, whereas that's not supposed to happen in a nice upscale college
where most kids can keep their nervous rage in check with iPods and drugs
and beer bongs and lousy recreational sex.

Or perhaps you replied, well, it's easy to ignore Iraq because, unless
you're in the family of a soldier, this might be the most painless,
distant, unfelt war in our short history, so removed and so disconnected
from our everyday lives that it's almost as if it's not happening at all,
just some minor political irritant as opposed to a horrid, gory
embarrassment that's costing us $100,000 per minute, or $275 million per
day - enough money, by the end of it all, to rebuild every school and
every park and every free clinic in America and then go on to house every
homeless person and solve the oil crisis and cure a few diseases and
perform a thousand other social improvements you can't even imagine right
now lest you feel disgusted and sour and sad for the rest of the month.

See, it's all about perspective. And when it comes to Iraq, we aren't
really required to have a great deal of it anymore because, let's be
honest, we're not really at war, are we? War requires a clear enemy,
serious consequences, something powerful and vital must be at stake and
there's nothing at stake in Iraq - except, of course, our own crumbling
identity.

What's more, no one except the most bitter die-hard neocon is actually
claiming that America itself is actually under any sort of attack, and
we're certainly not fighting and dying for anything, not really, unless
you're naive enough to believe in the "march of democracy" thing and if
you do, I have a time-share on some swampland in Florida, cheap.

Maybe it's merely the natural progression, the way it must be. Iraq has
been going on for so long, will be going on for so long, maybe the only
response possible is to become numb to it all, to tune out the dreary
headlines as they trudge on by because every day it's a new bombing, a new
helicopter shot down, five or six or 20 more American bodies ripped and
gored and blown up and to feel every one would be to quickly induce trauma
fatigue.

And then there's the horrible feeling, that deeper understanding that no
one really wants to acknowledge but which everyone knows to be true: The
terrorists have already won. Oh my good Allah, yes they have.

Bush has seen to it that America has become, post-Sept. 11, a reactionary,
rogue, knee-jerk, hateful outpost of isolationism and thuggishness that no
self-respecting developed nation really wants to deal with anymore. Just
like the terrorists wanted. Disrupt America and make us paranoid and
implosive and openly loathed by the few remaining shreds of the Middle
East that didn't mistrust us already? Hey, mission accomplished.

Me, I like to imagine the babies. I like to imagine all the children born
back in 2003 (or 2001, if you count the equally failed Afghan campaign),
the Year of Brutal Idiocy, the Year It All Went Wrong, the Year America
Jumped the Shark.

All these children born at the war's beginning are well over 4 years old
now. They are walking, talking, speaking in complete sentences with more
complexity and coherence than the president himself. And for their entire
lives, America has been at war. They have never known a day where we have
been at peace, where we haven't lived under this bitter cloud of rampant
incompetence, violence, a deep sadness, a sense that something has gone
very, very wrong with the American idea, and no one really has any clue
how to fix it. How will they be affected? What sort of perception of a
broken, lost America will they have drilled into their baffled little
bones?

Which leaves us right here, in this murky no-man's-land of vague dis-ease,
this foul, anesthetized place where our brutal-war-that-isn't-really-a-war
has become the norm, a time when it feels like we as a country should be
getting stronger and should be leading the world in everything from
peacekeeping to environmentalism to medicine to technology, and yet we
have this giant, bloodstained monkey on our backs, violent and ugly and
still shockingly strong, and he is laughing, cackling at our feeble
attempts to shake ourselves free, even as he eats at our soul.

Thoughts for the author? E-mail him. Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column
appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section
of the San Francisco Chronicle.
- The San Francisco Chronicle


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

A Wealth of Murderous Stupidity
by E.R. Bills / May 15th, 2007

I read about an interesting study the other day. It said it that
intelligence was not linked to wealth. My response was monosyllabic.

Duhhhh.

According to a recent Ohio State University study published in the journal
Intelligence, there is no connection between brain and earning power.
You'd think this revelation would have been self-evident. Making money
usually requires work. But a large accumulation of monetary or material
wealth requires stinginess, greed and a sense of entitlement more than
hard work or intellectual prowess.

One's propensity for stinginess and greed has to be rooted deeply enough
to override his or her more noble impulses, and one's sense of entitlement
has to be so pronounced that it squelches rationality and stunts
conscience. Once the wings of our better angels have been clipped, we are
free to covet, grub after and hoard the spoils of Capitalism in relative
peace.

It's not very ethical and it's arguably not very smart, but it's the only
game around these days, right?

Wrong.

There are primitive tribes living in the Amazon basin that would probably
fill you full of poison-tipped blow-darts if you told them the world was
round, but they're smart enough not to base success in their societies on
having more than their share, using more than they need or screwing over
the folks in the wigwam next door to get ahead. They haven't been
introduced to the American Way and, obviously, this makes them at least a
little better and smarter than us. Especially since they live in harmony
with their habitat and we're destroying ours (and theirs).

They don't have a written language. They don't know algebra. They don't
live in high-rises, posh lofts or quarter-acre chunks of suburban heaven.
They don't have air conditioning, hot showers or alarm clocks. And they
don't have bank accounts or private property. But they know how to survive
in the natural world and they have sense enough to care whether or not how
they're living impacts their home.

For years we've done our industrialized best to root them out, perhaps
because they are the antithesis of what we've become. We are consumers;
they are conservers. We are wasting, poisoning or destroying every natural
resource we utilize. They live in harmony with their habitat.

With various forms of environmental peril impending with each step of
Western progress, perhaps it's time we looked to them for wisdom.

We're not smarter than them. We've just been exposed to more ideas. We
mistake almost universal technological dependence for progress, rote
sophistication for complexity and reading the New York Times or the Wall
Street Journal at Starbucks (while sipping on a Frappuchino) for
intellectual development.

We consider these primitives brutish, savage and ignorant. But they're not
killing each other over fossil fuels, rotting away from dozens of
stress-related ailments or searching everywhere except inward for truth,
God and the meaning of life.

And speaking of God, I have it on good information that Jesus Christ was a
pretty sharp primitive himself. In fact, one of the only things Christians
get right these days - at least in their portrayal of Christ - is his
material modesty. He'd give away anything he had. He'd share his last
morsel of sustenance rather than hide it from others or hoard it for
himself.

True Christianity is the antithesis of Capitalism. Capitalism is based on
using one's energy, talent or cunning to acquire wealth. This was beneath
Christ. It'd be nice if it were beneath us. Or at least not held up as
what determines our worth.

Saying that the acquisition of wealth requires intelligence is like saying
that murder requires courage. If we can't find a kinder, gentler system of
commerce or economic relations - a system that doesn't reward insatiable
greed, perpetually inflated profit margins, ruthless self-interest and
reckless over-consumption - then we are murderers and cowardly ones at
that. Of primitives, of this planet and of our own natural integrity.

E. Bills is a writer from Ft. Worth, Texas. His work appears regularly in
The Paper of South Texas, Fort Worth Weekly, etc. He can be reached at
accentelect [at] yahoo.com. Read other articles by E.R..


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