| Progressive Calendar 11.07.09 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001 tc.umn.edu)
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| Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2009 09:06:41 -0800 (PST) | |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 11.07.09 1. Media forum 11.07 9am 2. Greens/McKinney 11.07 10am 3. People's bailout 11.07 11am 4. Northland women 11.07 12noon Eveleth MN 5. CUAPB 11.07 1:30pm 6. Northtown vigil 11.07 2pm 7. AWC potluck 11.07 6pm 8. IWW opening party 11.07 7pm 9. Baraka/Fenney/CTV 11.07 9pm 10. Richard C Cook - America the betrayed 11. PC Roberts - Evil empire, republic of fools 12. ed - Had it bumpersticker/sign 13. ed - Had it button --------1 of 13-------- From: Jeremy Iggers Subject: Media forum 11.07 9am Posted on October 29, 2009 by Jeremy Iggers The Twin Cities Media Alliance will hold its 2009 Fall Media Forum on Saturday November 7, at the Hennepin County Library Central branch, 300 Nicollet Mall, downtown Minneapolis, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The theme for this year's forum is Networking And The New Media Landscape: Reporting News, Building Community, Making Money: "In the new media landscape, information, audiences and resources all travel across networks. This participatory forum offers journalists, bloggers and news consumers the opportunity to make connections and share best practices for news reporting, building audiences and raising revenue". --------2 of 13-------- From: Amber Garlan <agarlan [at] hammclinic.org> Subject: Greens/McKinney 11.07 10am 11/7/09 Green Party Fall Membership meeting Hennepin County Government Center (entrance on 5th Street) 300 S. 6th St. Minneapolis, MN 55487-0999 Our keynote speaker will be Cynthia McKinney! We will have vegan Indian food for $2 for lunch! 10:00 Registration 10:30 Planning for the 2010 elections 11:30 Lunch (vegan Indian food provided for $2 per person) 12:30 Keynote Speech Cynthia McKinney 1:00 Breakout sessions 2:30 Closing remarks (Dave Bicking and Marcus Harcus) -- Contacts: Rhoda Gilman, Spokesperson, (651) 224-6393 Dave Bicking, Spokesperson, (612) 276-1213 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney to speak at statewide meeting Cynthia McKinney will be the keynote speaker on Saturday, November 7, when Minnesota Greens gather at their fall membership meeting. McKinney is a former six-term Congresswoman from Georgia and the Green Party¹s candidate for president in 2008. She has been noted in the past year for her efforts to get medical supplies and other humanitarian aid into Gaza and for being jailed by the Israeli government. The meeting, which will focus on Green Party electoral strategy in 2010, will be held in lower level of the Hennepin County Government Center at 300 So. 6th Street in downtown Minneapolis. McKinney will speak at 12:30. All members and friends of the Green Party are invited. --------3 of 13-------- From: Welfare Rights Committee <welfarerightsmn [at] yahoo.com> Subject: People's bailout 11.07 11am Join us in the Welfare Rights Committee's Celebration Bail out Poor and Working People, NOT the Billionaires! Welfare Rights Committee's Fight for a People's Bailout! Get Ready to Fight for More! Come to our Celebration and Speak Out! Saturday, November 7, 2009 11 am to 1 pm Walker Community Church 3104 - 16th Ave So Minneapolis Join us for a Great Meal! Child Care and Rides provided. What We Demand: We are in the greatest economic crisis since the great depression; we need a bailout for the people, NOT for the rich! - JOBS that pay decent wages! - STOP the 5 year limit on Welfare! - HEALTH CARE for All! - STOP Evictions and Foreclosures! - STOP all Cuts to programs for low-income and working Minnesotans! - TAX the RICH! WE will BEAT BACK the Pawlenty ATTACK! Here is what Governor Pawlenty did to balance the stateâ's budget problems: - HE CUT 35,000 from Health Care! In March 2010, low-income Minnesotans will lose their GAMC (General Assistance Medical Care) - HE CUT JOBS! 11,000 more could lose jobs! - HE Cut Education! - HE Cut Services for working, low income, disabled, elderly Minnesotans! We need everyone to be involved to win this fight. We can do it. Join us this Saturday and find out about WRC and what we all can do to win! Call WRC to sign up for Celebration or for more information: 612-822-8020. Welfare Rights Committee PO Box 7266, Mpls MN 55407 pho: 612-822-8020 main email: welfarerightsmn [at] yahoo.com alt email: welfarerights [at] qwest.net --------4 of 13-------- From: Debbie <ddo [at] mchsi.com> Subject: Northland women 11.07 12noon Eveleth MN Northland Women's Policy Forum at Mesabi Range College, Eveleth Campus Saturday, November 7, 2009 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The Northland Women's Policy Forum is a gathering designed to bring together policy makers, community leaders, advocates, and all those interested learning more about the intersection of women and public policy. Guests include: Amy Brenengen, Office on the Economic Status of Women; Deb Fitzpatrick, Center on Women and Public Policy, Humphrey institute; Deborah Schlick, Affirmative Options Coalition; Suzanne Koepplinger, Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center; Kathleen Murphy, Constitutional Amendment For Equality (CAFE); Nevada Littlewolf, The White House Project Mesabi Range College, Eveleth Campus AGENDA 12:00 Registration and Lunch 12:30 The Status of Women in Minnesota: The 10,000 foot perspective 1:30 The Status of Women in Minnesota: The "on the ground" perspective (Panel Discussion) 2:30 Facilitated Roundtable Discussions - Three 30-minute discussions centered around: Economic Justice/Disparities for Women; "What exactly is Policy?"; Around the Kitchen Table - What women's issues are we talking about around the table that didn't get mentioned here? 4:00 Benchmarking Women's Leadership with The White House Project 4:30 Interactive Discussion with Elected Officials including State Representative Tom Rukavina; St. Louis County Commissioner Peg Sweeney; City Councilor Liz Kuoppala 5:00 Dessert Networking Reception Online registration is now open. Click here to register or visit: <http://tinyurl.com/northwomen>http://tinyurl.com/northwomen For Further Information: <mailto:womensforum09 [at] gmail.com>womensforum09 [at] gmail.com or 1-800-662-5711 ext 423 Sponsored by: Office on the Economic Status of Women; Rural Women's Leadership Project; The White House Project; Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, Mesabi Range College; Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency; Blandin Foundation; the Women's Foundation of Minnesota --------5 of 13-------- From: Michelle Gross <mgresist [at] visi.com> Subject: CUAPB 11.07 1:30pm Meetings: Every Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at Walker Church, 3104 16th Avenue South http://www.CUAPB.org Communities United Against Police Brutality 3100 16th Avenue S Minneapolis, MN 55407 Hotline 612-874-STOP (7867) --------6 of 13-------- From: Vanka485 [at] aol.com Subject: Northtown vigil 11.07 2pm Peace vigil at Northtown (Old Hwy 10 & University Av), every Saturday 2-3pm --------7 of 13-------- From: Meredith Aby <awcmere [at] gmail.com> Subject: AWC potluck 11.07 6pm Potluck and Politics with the Anti-War Committee Saturday, Nov 7 @ 6:00pm @ May Day Books, 301 Cedar Ave. Mpls Join us for a laid-back discussion of what's next for the anti-war movement. - Bringing a dish to share is appreciated but not required. Hope you can join us! Kids welcome. --------8 of 13-------- From: Michele <mrockne [at] gmail.com> Subject: IWW opening party 11.07 7pm Grand Opening Party- Twin Cities IWW Branch Office- 7pm Sat. Nov. 7th [IWW = Industrial Workers of the World] Greetings all! I hope you can make it to the party on Saturday. The space is really nice, with a huge atrium and lots of free parking. Also, about a half block off the busline. Let me know if you need directions or more information. -Michele Rockne - From: Erik Forman <erik.forman [at] gmail.com> IWW Office Grand Opening Celebration Saturday November 7th Grain Belt Bottling House 79 13th Ave. NE Minneapolis, MN 7:00pm- Scavenger Hunt, Sing-Along, and more fun for the kids 9:30- All-Ages Show: the Black Sails, Rust Belt Ramblers, Bouncer Fighter, the Knotwells, Dante & the Lobster $4-8 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds SOLIDARITY FOREVER --------9 of 13-------- From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net> Subject: Baraka/Fenney/CTV 11.07 9pm Lovely Minneapolis Television Network (MTN) viewers: "Our World In Depth" cablecasts on MTN Channel 17 on Saturdays at 9pm and Tuesdays at 8am, after DemocracyNow! Households with basic cable may watch. 11/7, 9pm Ajamu Baraka Anne Fenney in Concert The keynote speaker at the 2009 MN-National Lawyers Guild Annual Social Justice Dinner, veteran grassroots organizer Ajamu Baraka currently serves as Exec. Director of the US Human Rights Network, a network of over 250 human rights and social justice organizations committed to ending U.S. global impunity and "exceptionalism." Baraka's human rights work spans more than three decades. In 1998 Baraka was honored by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as one of the 300 human rights defenders from around the world. Labor singer Anne Fenney sings to a live audience at the MN Music Cafe.(10/09) --------10 of 13-------- America The Betrayed Walt Whitman: "Poet of the People" By Richard C Cook Global Research, November 6, 2009 If you want to get an idea of what America once was like, read the poems of Walt Whitman. Whitman was born on Long Island in 1819 and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. His family was poor, but even though he left school at the age of 11 he gave himself an education by reading and working in the printing shop of a newspaper until he gradually became a published writer. He worked as a teacher and news reporter and owned his own newspaper by the age of 20. In 1848 Whitman was a delegate to the founding convention of the Free Soil Party. During the Civil War he worked as a nurse in Union military hospitals and held several government jobs, including interviewing Confederate prisoners for pardons. Some of his greatest poems came from his war experiences, including his famous elegy upon the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, "Oh Captain! My Captain!" His great collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, was self- published. He died a national hero in 1892 in Camden, New Jersey, where thousands of people came to pay their respects. Whitman has always been viewed as a poet of the people, in contrast to the pretentious dandies from academia who have controlled official American culture for much of our history. He wrote of workmen, farmers, sailors, soldiers, lovers, criminals, and prostitutes. In the text of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, he wrote of himself as, "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest." He had discovered a great secret, one that is known to everyone who is young at heart: that the free individual, always potentially a kosmos," stands at a much higher level in the scale of creation than any man-made collective. Thus was Whitman a hero to the Beatniks of the 1950s who tried to rediscover an authentic American voice in the streets and on the roads and highways of this great land. The spirit of Whitman was surely present through the rebellion of the 1960s, when America's young men and women rose up and fought the Establishment to stop the Vietnam War and bring civil rights to racial minorities. The Establishment fought back with a vengeance and, through the most egregious betrayal in history, reduced the world's greatest industrial democracy to the pathetic shadow of its former self we are today. The first thing the Establishment did was destroy the industrial job base by shipping millions of good jobs to China and other Third World nations, where slave laborers could be forced to churn out consumer products at a fraction of the cost of similar work done by American workers. Acting through the CIA and organized crime, the Establishment flooded the cities and college campuses with illegal drugs in order to rot the minds and souls of our youth. They dumbed down education to the point where young people who graduate today know little and can do less of a practical nature. Vocational training is dead. A high school graduate is worth virtually nothing in the job market, and many college graduates are semi-literate and self-absorbed, often lacking backbone, skills, or initiative. Some high school and college graduates are even drug addicts or alcoholics. They turned the economy over to thieves from Wall Street and created a military machine that turns youth into murderers and assassins whose job it is to conquer the world for the fat cats of global capital. They ruined the arts, literature, and music through crass commercialization, making it almost impossible for any real original creativity to be produced or communicated. The one bright light in this darkness is the internet, which is being threatened by commercial suppression of freedom of expression by the ambitions of big communications companies. Thank goodness too for the rare creative genius like Michael Moore who has the courage to hold up a mirror to this deeply diseased society. Then they wrecked people's health with processed food and constant inducements to a sedentary lifestyle while pumping us full of dangerous vaccines and prescription drugs. They drummed it into everyone's head that we are basically weak, ill, helpless creatures who can only survive by taking pills and making constant trips to doctors, hospitals, and clinics. They induced us to fight over our possessions and freedoms in law courts with the aid of greedy lawyers in front of rapacious judges who have built up the largest prison population in the world. They pulled money and credit out of the inner cities and rural areas leaving those segments of the nation and their populations to rot. The list could go on and on and on. Today we are in the midst of not just a recession but a terminal depression. Getting the banks to lend again so people can buy homes at what are still over-inflated prices or so they might compete with immigrants to get construction jobs through building of more useless office buildings or military bases is not a recovery. The "greening of America" is a myth. There is no resurgence of alternative energy investment or new public infrastructure apart from a few highway projects. American family farming is practically dead and is under a new assault from speculators who are undercutting prices and forcing foreclosures. The local manufacturing sector never came back after the calamitous decline produced by the Paul Volcker recession of 1979-1983, when interest rates were deliberately raised to over 20 percent to kill off family-owned businesses so that global corporations could step in and take over. Since then we had the "Reagan Revolution" when the banks took over the economy, the Clinton dot.com bubble of the 1990s which crashed in 2000, and the George W. Bush/Alan Greenspan housing bubble which blew up in 2008. Now Main Street lies shattered and shuttered as a result of the crimes and treacheries of the last 30 years. True, there is a rebellion brewing, including a monetary reform movement that has attacked the power of the Federal Reserve, as well as a few progressive voices that call for a much larger economic "stimulus" than the Obama administration has seen fit to implement. But is there any practical plan on the part of either political party or organized movement to restore America to what it once was - a place where ordinary people could live, work, learn, and flourish? The answer is a resounding "No." Not a chance. And "Change You Can Believe In" hasn't changed a thing. All it has done has been to produce another financial bubble, this time using huge amounts of public debt through the sale of U.S. Treasury bonds. Business is not growing and jobs are not coming back. The only thing that has gone up has been the meeting of military recruitment quotas. This latest bubble will fail too, because money created through lending to float the prices of assets is not wealth. Rather wealth consists of goods and services produced by labor applied to natural resources. Those who provide the labor must be recompensed fairly. So what is to be done? The answer is that nothing can or will be done, if by that you mean whether a political savior is going to come along to rescue our nation and its people from destruction. In fact, what they are planning is to continue to throttle and enslave us with a predatory financial establishment and a military policy that is preparing the groundwork for World War III. The war will be fought with American troops against Russia and China, after which China will take over as the world's policeman while this country disappears from the face of the earth. It's the ultimate plan of the New World Order, the ones American politicians, financiers, military leaders, and academics bow down to. It is time for each and every individual who values his or her own life along with the creative potential of the human spirit to begin to work with others to create a new nation and world. The government isn't going to do it for us. Please believe me. This is not a system that can be reformed. It is a system that must be replaced. And it must be replaced by the ordinary working men and women who have been crushed, used, and abused during the past ugly half-century. Americans, get to work. Call your friends and family together today and begin to figure out what to do. Start with 15 minutes of prayer and meditation. You will be shown the way from within yourselves. My own view is that setting up local currency systems, as many communities are now doing, is a good place to start. Richard C. Cook is a former federal analyst who writes on public policy issues. His latest book is "We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform." His website is www.richardccook.com. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. © Copyright Richard C Cook, Richard C. Cook, 2009 --------11 of 13-------- Republic of Fools The Evil Empire By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS CounterPunch November 6-8, 2009 The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that "our" government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire. Obama is already set on the course to a one-term presidency. He promised change, but has delivered none. His health care bill is held hostage by the private insurance companies seeking greater profits. The most likely outcome will be cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in order to help fund wars that enrich the military/security complex and the many companies created by privatizing services that the military once provided for itself at far lower costs. It would be interesting to know the percentage of the $700+ billion "defense" spending that goes to private companies. In American "capitalism," an amazing amount of taxpayers' earnings go to private firms via the government. Yet, Republicans scream about "socializing" health care. Republicans and Democrats saw opportunities to create new sources of campaign contributions by privatizing as many military functions as possible. There are now a large number of private companies that have never made a dollar in the market, feeding instead at the public trough that drains taxpayers of dollars while loading Americans with debt service obligations. Obama inherited an excellent opportunity to bring US soldiers home from the Bush regime's illegal wars of aggression. In its final days, the Bush regime realized that it could "win" in Iraq by putting the Sunni insurgents on the US military payroll. Once Bush had 80,000 insurgents collecting US military pay, violence, although still high, dropped in half. All Obama had to do was to declare victory and bring our boys home, thanking Bush for winning the war. It would have shut up the Republicans. But this sensible course would have impaired the profits and share prices of those firms that comprise the military/security complex. So instead of doing what Obama said he would do and what the voters elected him to do, Obama restarted the war in Afghanistan and launched a new one in Pakistan. Soon Obama was echoing Bush and Cheney's threats to attack Iran. In place of health care for Americans, there will be more profits for private insurance companies. In place of peace there will be more war. Voters are already recognizing the writing on the wall and are falling away from Obama and the Democrats. Independents who gave Obama his comfortable victory have now swung against him, recently electing Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia to succeed Democrats. This is a protest vote, not a confidence vote in Republicans. Obama's credibility is shot. And so is Congress's, assuming it ever had any. The US House of Representatives has just voted to show the entire world that the US House of Representatives is nothing but the servile, venal, puppet of the Israel Lobby. The House of Representatives of the American "superpower" did the bidding of its master, AIPAC, and voted 344 to 36 to condemn the Goldstone Report. In case you don't know, the Goldstone Report is the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. The "Gaza Conflict" is the Israeli military attack on the Gaza ghetto, where 1.5 million dispossessed Palestinians, whose lands, villages, and homes were stolen by Israel, are housed. The attack was on civilians and civilian infrastructure. It was without any doubt a war crime under the Nuremberg standard that the US established in order to execute Nazis. Goldstone is not only a very distinguished Jewish jurist who has given his life to bringing people to accountability for their crimes against humanity, but also a Zionist. However, the Israelis have demonized him as a "self-hating Jew" because he wrote the truth instead of Israeli propaganda. US Representative Dennis Kucinich, who is now without a doubt a marked man on AIPAC's political extermination list, asked the House if the members had any realization of the shame that the vote condemning Goldstone would bring on the House and the US government. The entire rest of the world accepts the Goldstone report. The House answered with its lopsided vote that the rest of the world doesn't count as it doesn't give campaign contributions to members of Congress. This shameful, servile act of "the world's greatest democracy" occurred the very week that a court in Italy convicted 23 US CIA officers for kidnapping a person in Italy. The CIA agents are now considered "fugitives from justice" in Italy, and indeed they are. The kidnapped person was renditioned to the American puppet state of Egypt, where the victim was held for years and repeatedly tortured. The case against him was so absurd that even an Egyptian judge ordered his release. One of the convicted CIA operatives, Sabrina deSousa, an attractive young woman, says that the US broke the law by kidnapping a person and sending him to another country to be tortured in order to manufacture another "terrorist" in order to keep the terrorist hoax going at home. Without the terrorist hoax, America's wars for special interest reasons would become transparent even to Fox "News" junkies. Ms. deSousa says that "everything I did was approved back in Washington," yet the government, which continually berates us to "support the troops," did nothing to protect her when she carried out the Bush regime's illegal orders. Clearly, this means that the crime that Bush, Cheney, the Pentagon, and the CIA ordered is too heinous and beyond the pale to be justified, even by memos from the despicable John Yoo and the Republican Federalist Society. Ms. deSousa is clearly worried about herself. But where is her concern for the innocent person that she sent into an Egyptian hell to be tortured until death or admission of being a terrorist? The remorse deSousa expresses is only for herself. She did her evil government's bidding and her evil government that she so faithfully served turned its back on her. She has no remorse for the evil she committed against an innocent person. Perhaps deSousa and her 22 colleagues grew up on video games. It was great fun to plot to kidnap a real person and fly him on a CIA plane to Egypt. Was it like a fisherman catching a fish or a deer hunter killing a beautiful 8-point buck? Clearly, they got their jollies at the expense of their renditioned victim. The finding of the Italian court, and keep in mind that Italy is a bought-and-paid-for US puppet state, indicates that even our bought puppets are finding the US too much to stomach. Moving from the tip of the iceberg down, we have Ambassador Craig Murray, rector of the University of Dundee and until 2004 the UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which he describes as a Stalinist totalitarian state courted and supported by the Americans. As ambassador, Murray saw the MI5 intelligence reports from the CIA that described the most horrible torture procedures. "People were raped with broken bottles, children were tortured in front of their parents until they [the parents] signed a confession, people were boiled alive". "Intelligence" from these torture sessions was passed on by the CIA to MI5 and to Washington as proof of the vast al Qaeda conspiracy. Amb. Murray reports that the people delivered by CIA flights to Uzbekistan's torture prisons "were told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they'd been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes". "I was absolutely stunned," says the British ambassador, who thought that he served a moral country that, along with its American ally, had moral integrity. The great Anglo-American bastion of democracy and human rights, the homes of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the great moral democracies that defeated Nazism and stood up to Stalin's gulags, were prepared to commit any crime in order to maximize profits. Amb. Murray learned too much and was fired when he vomited it all up. He saw the documents that proved that the motivation for US and UK military aggression in Afghanistan had to do with the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The Americans wanted a pipeline that bypassed Russia and Iran and went through Afghanistan. To insure this, an invasion was necessary. The idiot American public could be told that the invasion was necessary because of 9/11 and to save them from "terrorism," and the utter fools would believe the lie. "If you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you'll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It's what it's about. It's about money, its about energy, it's not about democracy". Guess who the consultant was who arranged with then Texas governor George W. Bush the agreements that would give to Enron the rights to Uzbekistan's and Turkmenistan's natural gas deposits and to Unocal to develop the trans-Afghanistan pipeline. It was Karzai, the US-imposed "president" of Afghanistan, who has no support in the country except for American bayonets. Amb. Murray was dismissed from the UK Foreign Service for his revelations. No doubt on orders from Washington to our British puppet. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts [at] yahoo.com --------12 of 13-------- bumpersticker/sign ----------------- HONK if you've HAD IT WITH OBAMA ----------------- --------13 of 13x-------- button I have had it with Obama How about you? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - 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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