| Progressive Calendar 05.01.09 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001 tc.umn.edu)
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| Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 02:10:47 -0700 (PDT) | |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 05.01.09 1. No Iran war/Leg 5.01 8:30am 2. Mind freedom/Leg 5.01 10am 3. FFUNCH is BAACK! 5.01 11:30am 4. Immigrant rights 5.01 4pm 5. Eviction vigil 5.01 4pm 6. Edgertonites 5.01 6:30pm 7. Coke/Mexico/play 5.01 8pm 8. Moyers/torture 5.01 9pm 9. John Pilger - Obama's 100 days: The mad men did well --------1 of 9-------- From: Women Against Military Madness <wamm [at] mtn.org> Subject: No Iran war/Leg 5.01 8:30am Senate Finance Committee Hearing: Tell Minnesota State Senators NO to Senate File 131 "Divestment from Iran" (War Propaganda) Bill Friday, May 1, 8:30 a.m. Minnesota State Capitol, Room 318 (Chair: Senator Cohen), 75 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, St. Paul. Neo-conservative hawks and well-funded, right-wing lobby groups want to revive the Bush-era agenda of aggression toward the Middle East. A tiny elite that championed the U.S. war on Iraq is leading a new, well-orchestrated campaign to persuade state and local governments to "divest" their holdings in foreign companies and U.S. overseas subsidiaries doing business in Iran. And, like the run-up to the U.S. war on Iraq, the campaign has attracted bipartisan support. State lobbying disclosure reports reveal that lobbyists have spent a great deal of money in Minnesota pushing this bill with Minnesota legislators. There are false claims that Iran is a nuclear threat, much as false claims were made about Iraq. Say No to Senate File 131 (House File 111) "Divestment from Iran" bill. Come early with a sign (not allowed inside the hearing itself) and/or sit in the audience. Endorsed by: WAMM. FFI: Call 612-827-5364. If you have not yet called the members of the Senate Finance Committee to encourage them to vote NO on Senate File 131 "Divestment from Iran" bill, please do so today! Senators' offices may tell you that they only listen to their own constituents' tell them (politely) that because the Minnesota legislature decided to broaden its scope to include foreign policy, you feel you have a right to be heard by all who represent Minnesota. Names and contact information of committee members can be found at http://www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/committees/committee_bio.php?cmte_id=1007&ls=86 . --------2 of 9-------- From: Louise Bouta <wellmindmn [at] q.com> Subject: Mind freedom/Leg 5.01 10am We are having a rally at the State Capitol on Friday morning, May 1st from 10:00 to 2:00 p.m. Press Conference at 11:00. David Oaks, founder and Director of Mind Freedom International, Eugene, Oregon is coming and is arranging it. This is to focus on Ray Sandford, resident of Coumbia Heights, who is taken from his home every few weeks to receive shock treatment at Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids. He has received about 40 shocks so far. Also Al Galves from Las Cruces, New Mexico. a psychologist, is coming. David Oaks has asked who wants to speak. If you want to speak, please let me know. They/we plan a workshop at some as yet undetermined place on Saturday. On Sunday, they will be in the May Day Parade. If you want to know when/where the workshop will be, please answer this email. Also if you will be on the list of speakers. Thanks, Louise Bouta Well Mind Association of Minnesota 6500 Woodlake Drive # 201 Richfield, MN 55423 Phone 612-823-8249 wellmindmn [at] q.com www.wellmindminnesota.org --------3 of 9-------- From: David Shove <shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu> Subject: FFUNCH is BAACK! 5.01 11:30am Meet the FFUNCH BUNCH! 11:30am-1pm First Friday Lunch (FFUNCH) for progressives. Informal political talk and hanging out. Day By Day Cafe 477 W 7th Av St Paul. Meet on the far south side. Day By Day has soups, salads, sandwiches, and dangerous apple pie; is close to downtown St Paul & on major bus lines ffunch ffunch ffunch ffunch --------4 of 9-------- From: Women Against Military Madness <wamm [at] mtn.org> Subject: Immigrant rights 5.01 4pm Protest for Immigrant Rights Friday, May 1, 4:00 p.m. (March) 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. (Festival) Gather at Lake Street and 13th Avenue, Minneapolis. March for immigrant rights, followed by a festival at Nicollet Avenue and 29th Street, Minneapolis. "Stop the raids and deportations! Legalization for all now! Pass employee free choice act! Drivers licenses for all!" Sponsored by: the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition. WAMM is a member of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition. FFI: Call 612 389 9174 or email tcmay1solidarity [at] gmail.com. --------5 of 9-------- From: Women Against Military Madness <wamm [at] mtn.org> Subject: Eviction vigil 5.01 4pm "Dispossession is a Crime from Minneapolis to Palestine" Vigil Friday, May 1, 4:00 p.m. (Ongoing) Corner of Clinton Avenue and Lake Street, Minneapolis. Join others in a weekly vigil at the home of a Minneapolis resident whose home has been foreclosed after 26 years of residency. Stop the eviction of this home's resident. Sponsored by: the Minnesota Coalition for a People's Bailout. WAMM is a member of the Minnesota Coalition for a People's Bailout. FFI and Updates: Call 612-822-8020 or visit www.mn-peoples-bailout.org. --------6 of 9-------- From: jwilson [at] enp-news.org Subject: Edgertonites 5.01 6:30pm Edgertonite National Party meeting Friday, 1 May 2009 - 6:30 PM Spyhouse coffee shop, 2451 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis, MN This is largely a pro forma meeting; anyone seeking a break from the immigration festivites at 28th and Nicollet from 5 to 8 PM the same day is welcome to stop by, however. More information: http://www.enp-news.org John Charles Wilson --------7 of 9-------- From: Alberto Justiniano <al [at] teatrodelpueblo.org> Subject: Coke/Mexico/play 5.01 8pm Please consider celebrating *Cinco de Mayo* by coming to Teatro del Pueblo's presentation of *The Real History of Coca Cola in Mexico*. (A funny comedy about globalization and hypocrisy) May 1,2, 7,8, 9 at 8:00pm; May 3rd 2:00 pm & 7:00 pm and May 10th 2:00 pm Gremlin Theatre 2400 University Ave. West Saint Paul, MN 55114 Group Sales: Call (651) 224-8806 The best deal in town: $15 for adults; $12 students & Seniors (62 and older) Tickets can be purchase by calling 1-800-838-3006 or online _www.brownpapertickets.com/event/61246_ --------8 of 9-------- From: t r u t h o u t <messenger [at] truthout.org> Subject: Moyers/torture 5.01 9pm Bill Moyers Journal | US Torture and Consequences? http://www.truthout.org/042909U Bill Moyers Journal: "New debate has emerged from the release of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel memos approving extreme measures of interrogation under the Bush administration. But, as the president acknowledges 'a dark and painful chapter,' how should he respond to allegations of torture? Bill Moyers sits down with Bruce Fein, former deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and chairman of the American Freedom Agenda, and Mark Danner, who has been reporting on the US treatment and interrogation of detainees for the New York Review of Books." --------9 of 9-------- Obama's 100 Days: The Mad Men Did Well by John Pilger April 29th, 2009 Dissident Voice The BBC's American television soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the "smart" people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold. It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The "Obama brand" has been named Advertising Age's "marketer of the year for 2008," easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama's election campaign as "an institutionalized mass-level automated technological community organizing that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force". Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarized from the Latino union organizer Cesar Chavez - "S, se puede!: or "Yes, we can" - the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush. No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75 million was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush's wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush's warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King's legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous "Change you can believe in," it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. "We will be the most powerful," he often declared. Perhaps the Obama brand's most effective advertising was supplied free of charge by those journalists who, as courtiers of a rapacious system, promote shining knights. They depoliticized him, spinning his platitudinous speeches as "adroit literary creations, rich, like those Doric columns, with allusion " - .. (Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian). The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote: "Many spiritually advanced people I know. . . identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who . . . can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet". In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush's gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not "persons", and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of "defense", Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama. All over the world, America's violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, "the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of 'smart bombs' and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel" and being used to slaughter mostly women and children. In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office. In Afghanistan, the US "strategy" of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the "Taliban") has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely. Obama's policy, one unchanged since the Cold War, is to intimidate Russia and China, now an imperial rival. He is proceeding with Bush's provocation of placing missiles on Russia's western border, justifying it as a counter to Iran, which he accuses, absurdly, of posing "a real threat" to Europe and the US. On 5 April in Prague, he made a speech reported as "anti-nuclear". It was nothing of the kind. Under the Pentagon's Reliable Replacement Warhead program, the US is building new "tactical" nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war. Perhaps the biggest lie - the equivalent of smoking is good for you - is Obama's announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain "for the next 15 to 20 years". On 25 April, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, alluded to this. It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered - especially as the nation's economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Lawrence Summers, Obama's principal economic adviser, is throwing $3 trillion at the same banks that paid him more than $8 million last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in. Much of the American establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America's "grand design," as Henry Kissinger, war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it. In advertising terms, Bush was a "brand collapse" whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous cliches, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall. He is the BBC's man, and CNN's man, and Murdoch's man, and Wall Street's man, and the CIA's man. The Madmen did well. John Pilger is an internationally renowned investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker. His latest film is The War on Democracy. His most recent book is Freedom Next Time (Bantam/Random House, 2006). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - David Shove shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu rhymes with clove Progressive Calendar over 2225 subscribers as of 12.19.02 please send all messages in plain text no attachments vote third party for president for congress now and forever Socialism YES Capitalism NO To GO DIRECTLY to an item, eg --------8 of x-------- do a find on --8
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