| Progressive Calendar 04.01.10 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001 tc.umn.edu)
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| Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 16:28:27 -0700 (PDT) | |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 04.01.10 1. Eagan peace vigil 4.01 4:30pm 2. Northtown vigil 4.01 5pm 3. Anti-war/new mem 4.01 7pm 4. Viva Cuba/film 4.01 7:30pm 5. Arab music 4.01 7:30pm 6. Anti-racist action 4.01 8pm 7. Ffunch awaits 4.02 11:30am 8. Palestine vigil 4.02 4:15pm 9. ENP 4.02 7pm 10. Bonnie Watkins - Women policy -RSVP ASAP 11. Kathy Kelly - Pacified --------1 of 11-------- From: Greg and Sue Skog <family4peace [at] msn.com> Subject: Eagan peace vigil 4.01 4:30pm 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 11-------- From: EKalamboki [at] aol.com Subject: Northtown vigil 4.01 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. --------3 of 11-------- From: Meredith Aby <awcmere [at] gmail.com> Subject: Anti-war/new mem 4.01 7pm antiwarcommittee.org New Members Meeting Thursday, April 1st @ 7pm @ Diamonds Coffee Shoppe, 1618 Central Ave NE, Mpls Come help organize against the war on Afghanistan and against US intervention across the globe. Come to an Anti-War Committee meeting designed for new people! Meredith Aby antiwarcommittee.org colombiasolidarity.org --------4 of 11-------- From: Joan Malerich <joanmdm [at] iphouse.com> Subject: Viva Cuba/f 4.01 7:30pm The fifth movie in the Minnesota Cuban Film Festival <http://sites.google.com/a/minnesotacubacommittee.org/www/cuban-movie-festival-2010>, Viva Cuba will be shown tomorrow, Thursday, at St. Anthony Main Theatre at 7:30. It will be followed by a discussion at Pracna on Main, downstairs from the theater. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 1 St. Anthony Main Theatre, 115 Main Street, SE, Minneapolis Free parking in ramp at 2nd Street SE and 2nd Avenue SE Admission: $6; 4 for $20 April 1 -- Viva Cuba by Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti In a tale akin to Romeo and Juliet, the friendship between two children is threatened by their parents' differences. Malu is from an upper-class family and her single mother does not want her to play with Jorgito. Jorgito's mother is a poor socialist, proud of her family's social standing, who places similar restrictions on her son. What neither woman recognizes is the immense strength of the bond between Malu and Jorgito. When the children learn that Malu's mother is planning to leave Cuba, they decide to travel to the other side of the island to find Malu's father and persuade him against signing the forms that would allow it. Juan Carlos Cremata's two young stars are captivating, real naturals the camera can't resist. You'll remember them long after you've left the theater. Viva Cuba won 34 national and international awards in all. 80 minutes. General audience discussion of film after screening with Gary Prevost, Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies at St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict, who will facilitate discussion on the Cuban Adjustment Act and the Cuban educational system which provides the highest levels of education to all Cubans for free. Pracna on Main, next to the theater. --------5 of 11-------- Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:44:27 -0600 From: Mizna <mizna [at] mizna.org> Subject: Arab music 4.01 7:30pm Bassam Saba in Concert at the Cedar Cultural Center Thursday, April 1st, 7:30 p.m. (doors open at 7p.m.) Tickets are on sale now from the Cedar Ticketline (612-338-2674 ext 2), Cedar outlets (Homestead Pickin' Parlor, Irish on Grand, Depth of Field, and Electric Fetus) and Ticketweb. $15 in advance, $18 day of show Stop by the Mizna table at the concert and say hello! Bassam Saba is one of the nation's leading figures of Arabic music. Saba is a world-renowned nay virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist, performing on oud, violin, buzuq, saz and western classical flute. Saba studied nay, oud and violin at the Lebanon National Conservatory. At the age of 17, he moved to Paris where he received his BA in Western Classical music and Flute Performance at the Conservatoire Municipal des Gobelins. In 1979, Saba moved to Moscow to study at the prestigious Gnessin Musical Pedagogical Institute where he received an MA in Western Flute Performance and Music Education (1985). He later returned to Beirut where he began to work extensively with the biggest stars of the Arab World: Fairouz, the diva of Lebanon, and composers Marcel Khalife and Ziad Rahbani. Saba moved to New York in 1991. Since then, he has worked with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Simon Shaheen, Wadi El-Safi, Paul Simon, Alicia Keys, Sting, Santana, and jazz musicians like Herbie Hancock, Sonny Fortune and Quincy Jones. Saba currently performs his compositions with his own group, directs the New York Arabic Orchestra, and performs with Simon Shaheen's Al-Qantara and Near Eastern Music Ensemble; Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble; and Christian Jarvi's Absolute Ensemble, premiering a pioneering concerto for nay composed for him by Daniel Schnyder. As a soloist, Saba has performed with multiple symphonic orchestras around the world, such as the Philharmonics of Hannover and Detroit. He has toured throughout the Middle East, Europe, North America, South America, Australia, Africa and Japan. Saba will be performing with leading classical Arabic percussionist April Centrone. Centrone plays riqq (Arabic tambourine), frame drum, darbakkeh ("dumbek" or goblet drum), oud and violin, and is also a proficient jazz/rock drummer of 15 years. -- ARABIC MUSIC WORKSHOP WITH BASSAM SABA, APRIL 2-3 (FRI-SAT) In addition to Bassam Saba's appearance at the Cedar Cultural Center tonight (see the Mizna website for more information), we are pleased to help spread the word for Saba's Arabic Music Workshop, taking place Friday and Saturday, April 2nd and 3rd, at Patrick's Cabaret. If you would like to take part in this rare opportunity, register now at http://www.newyorkarabicorchestra.org/. Don't miss out! Mizna, Inc., 2205 California Street NE, #109A, Minneapolis, MN 55418 (612) 788-6920 | mizna [at] mizna.org | www.mizna.org --------6 of 11-------- From: greenpartymike <ollamhfaery [at] earthlink.net> Subject: Anti-racist action 4.01 8pm ANTI-RACIST ACTION! Panel Discussion With Veterans of the Anti-Racist/Anti-Fascist Movement in the Twin Cities Thursday April 1st 8PM Macalester College - 4th Floor Old Main 1600 Grand Ave. St. Paul, MN 55105 Neo-Nazis have come out of the woodwork to organize publicly in Minnesota once again. We need to learn from and analyze the history of anti-racist/anti-fascist organizing as we continue to struggle against white supremacy. The panel will discuss and analyze the both the history of Neo-Nazis and racist skinheads in the Twin Cities and the role that Anti-Racist Action played in routing the Nazis out of this community. A Q&A and facilitated discussion with the audience will follow the presentation by the four speakers. -Background- In the 1980s the Twin Cities were a hotbed of Neo-Nazis and racist skinhead gangs, some of which were violent and others which were openly organizing working class white young people to further an agenda of hate and intolerance. Many folks in Twin Cities communities began organizing a response and eventually drove most of the nazis and racist skinheads out and underground through a multi-decade struggle. Among the first groups to organize a response were young punks who formed street crews that eventually founded Anti-Racist Action (ARA). ARA chapters quickly spread to other cities and still exists in other states today. The Minneapolis chapter and the organization in general were successful in many ways while also flawed. *if you are willing to put up or hand out some posters for the event please email parsons1741 [at] gmail.com to get the poster emailed to you. --------7 of 11-------- From: David Shove <shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu> Subject: Ffunch awaits 4.02 11:30am Ffunch 4.02 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 (begin mumbling:) ffunch ffunch ffunch ffunch --------8 of 11-------- From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net> Subject: Palestine vigil 4.02 4:15pm The weekly vigil for the liberation of Palestine continues at the intersection of Snelling and Summit Aves in St. Paul. The Friday demo starts at 4:15 and ends around 5:30. There are usually extra signs available. --------9 of 11-------- From: jwilson [at] enp-news.org Subject: ENP 4.02 7pm Comrades and Friends of the Edgertonite National Party: Just a friendly little reminder that the next meeting is Friday, 2 April 2010 from 7:00 to 8:30 PM at Caribou Coffee, 4210 Winnetka Ave. N. in New Hope, MN, and you are cordially invited. Public transit access is by bus routes 705, 717, and 755. The main topic of discussion will be the future direction of the Party in getting ready for participation in the 2013 and 2014 Elections. Sincerely, John Charles Wilson National Chairman, ENP --------10 of 11-------- From: Bonnie Peace Watkins <bonnie [at] mnwomen.org> Subject: Women Policy -RSVP ASAP The Minnesota Women's Consortium Equali-tree RSVP by Monday noon for Women Come to the Capitol 2010! Tuesday, April 6, 5:30 - 8:00 * Supper & networking * Breakout sessions: Minnesota ERA - Kathleen Murphy; Health care reform - Connie Perpich & Linnea House; or Developing new leaders - Nou Yang & Suyapa Miranda * Dessert, Calliope Women's Chorus, & special guest Wednesday, April 7, 9:30 - 1:30 * Citizen Lobbyist - Rachel Callanan (Am. Heart Assn.) * Breakout sessions: Violence against women - ThaoMee Xiong; or, Economic justice - Patty Tanji, Amy Brenengen, Miss Shannan Paul (B96 radio) * Lunch with Liz Kuoppala (Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless): Does your voice matter? * Mock committee hearing * Meet & greet with legislators $10 for Tuesday only, $10 for Wednesday only, or $15 for both. OK to pay at the door. But please, please click here to RSVP to Lorraine by Monday noon so she can order your yummy food. More info on the blog. Hope to see you soon! Bonnie Peace Watkins for the Minnesota Women's Consortium --------11 of 11-------- Pacified by Kathy Kelly Tuesday, March 30, 2010 CommonDreams.org If the U.S. public looked long and hard into a mirror reflecting the civilian atrocities that have occurred in Afghanistan, over the past ten months, we would see ourselves as people who have collaborated with and paid for war crimes committed against innocent civilians who meant us no harm. Two reporters, Jerome Starkey (the Times UK), and David Lindorff, (Common Dreams), have persistently drawn attention to U.S. war crimes committed in Afghanistan. Makers of the film "Rethinking Afghanistan" have steadily provided updates about the suffering endured by Afghan civilians. Here is a short list of atrocities that have occurred in the months since General McChrystal assumed his post in Afghanistan. December 26th, 2009: US-led forces, (whether soldiers or "security contractors" (mercenaries) is still uncertain), raided a home in Kunar Province and pulled eight young men out of their beds, handcuffed them, and gunned them down execution-style. The Pentagon initially reported that the victims had been running a bomb factory, although distraught villagers were willing to swear that the victims, youngsters, aged 11 - 18, were just seven normal schoolboys and one shepherd boy. Following courageous reporting by Jerome Starkey, the U.S. military carried out its own investigation and on February 24th, 2010, issued an apology, attesting the boys' innocence. February 12, 2010: U.S. and Afghan forces raided a home during a party and killed five people, including a local district attorney, a local police commander two pregnant mothers and a teenaged girl engaged to be married. Neither Commander Dawood, shot in the doorway of his home while pleading for calm waving his badge, nor the teenaged Gulalai, died immediately, but the gunmen refused to allow relatives to take them to the hospital. Instead, they forced them to wait for hours barefoot in the winter cold outside. Despite crowds of witnesses on the scene, the NATO report insisted that the two pregnant women at the party had been found bound and gagged, murdered by the male victims in an honor killing. A March 16, 2010 U.N. report, following on further reporting by Starkey, exposed the deception, to meager American press attention. Two weeks later: February 21st, 2010: A three-car convoy of Afghans was traveling to the market in Kandahar with plans to proceed from there to a hospital in Kabul where some of the party could be taken for much-needed medical treatment. U.S. forces saw Afghans travelling together and launched an air-to-ground attack on the first car. Women in the second car immediately jumped out waving their scarves, trying desperately to communicate that they were civilians. The U.S. helicopter gunships continued firing on the now unshielded women. 21 people were killed and 13 were wounded. There was press attention for this atrocity, and U.S. General Stanley McChrystal would issue a videotaped apology for his soldiers' tragic mistake. Broad consensus among the press accepted this as a gracious gesture, with no consequences for the helicopter crew ever demanded or announced. Whether having that gunship in the country was a mistake - or a crime - was never raised as a question. And who would want it raised? Set amidst the horrors of an ongoing eight-year war, how many Americans think twice about these atrocities, hearing them on the news. So I'm baffled to learn that in Germany, a western, relatively comfortable country, citizens raised a sustained protest when their leaders misled them regarding an atrocity that cost many dozens of civilian lives in Afghanistan. The air strike was conducted by US planes but called in by German forces. On September 4, 2009, Taleban fighters in Kunduz province had hijacked two trucks filled with petrol, but then gotten stuck in a quagmire where the trucks had sank. Locals, realizing that the trucks carried valuable fuel, had arrived in large numbers to siphon it off, but when a German officer at the nearest NATO station learned that over 100 people had assembled in an area under his supervision, he decided they must be insurgents and a threat to Germans under his command. At his call, a U.S. fighter jet bombed the tankers, incinerating 142 people, dozens of them confirmable as civilians. On September 6, 2009, Germany's Defense Minister at the time, Franz Josef Jung, held a press conference in which he defended the attack, playing down the presence of civilians. He wasn't aware that video footage from a US F15 fighter jet showed that most of the people present were unarmed civilians gathering to fill containers with fuel. On November 27, 2009, after a steady outcry on the part of the German public, the Defense Minister was withdrawn from his post, (he is now a Labor Minister), and two German military officials, one of them Germany's top military commander Wolfgang Schneiderhan, were forced to resign. I felt uneasy and sad when I realized that my first response to this story was a feeling of curiosity as to how the public of another country could manage to raise such a furor over deaths of people in faraway Afghanistan. How odd to have grown up wondering how anyone could ever have been an uninvolved bystander allowing Nazi atrocities to develop and to find myself, four decades later, puzzling over how German people or any country's citizenship could exercise so much control over their governance. Today, in the US, attacks on civilians are frequently discussed in terms of the "war for hearts and minds.". Close to ten months ago, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters at a June 12, 2009 press conference in Brussels that General Stanley McChrystal "would work to minimize Afghan civilian casualties, a source of growing public anger within Afghanistan." "Every civilian casualty -- however caused -- is a defeat for us," Gates continued, "and a setback for the Afghan government." On March 23rd, 2010, McChrystal was interviewed by the Daily Telegraph. "Your security comes from the people," he said. "You don't need to be secured away from the people. You need to be secured by the people. So as you win their support, it's in their interests to secure you, .... This can mean patrolling without armored vehicles or even flak jackets. It means accepting greater short-term risk - and higher casualties - in the hope of winning a "battle of perceptions and perspectives" that will result in longer-term security." And on March 2nd, 2010, he told Gail McCabe "What we're trying to do now is to increase their confidence in us and their confidence in their government. But you can't do that through smoke and mirrors, you have to do that through real things you do - because they've been through thirty-one years of war now, they've seen so much, they're not going to be beguiled by a message." We're obliged as Americans to ask ourselves whether we will be guided by a message such as McChrystal's or by evidence. Americans have not been through thirty-one years of war, and we have managed to see very little of the consequences of decades of warmaking in Afghanistan. According to a March 3, 2010 Save the Children report, "The world is ignoring the daily deaths of more than 850 Afghan children from treatable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia, focusing on fighting the insurgency rather than providing humanitarian aid." The report notes that a quarter of all children born in the country die before the age of five, while nearly 60 percent of children are malnourished and suffer physical or mental problems. The UN Human Development Index in 2009 says that Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, second only to Niger in sub-Saharan Africa. The proposed US defense budget will cost the U.S. public two billion dollars per day. President Obama's administration is seeking a 33 billion dollar supplemental to fund wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most U.S. people are aware of Taleban atrocities, and many may believe the U.S. troops are in Afghanistan to protect Afghan villagers from Taleban human rights abuses. At least the mainstream news media in Germany and the UK will air stories of atrocities. The U.S. people are disadvantaged inasmuch as the media and the Pentagon attempt to pacify us, winning our hearts and minds to bankroll ongoing warfare and troop escalation in Afghanistan. Yet it isn't very difficult to pacify U.S. people. We're easily distracted from the war, and when we do note that an atrocity has happened, we seem more likely to respond with a shrug of dismay than with a sustained protest. At the Winter Soldier hearings, future presidential hopeful John Kerry movingly asked Congress how it could ask a soldier "To be the last man to die for a mistake," while contemporary polls showed less prominent Americans far more willing to call the Vietnam war an evil - a crime - a sin - than "a mistake." The purpose of that war, as of Obama's favored war in Afghanistan, was to pacify dangerous populations - to make them peaceful, to win the battle of hearts and minds. Afghan civilian deaths no longer occur at the rate seen in the war's first few months, in which the civilian toll of our September 11 attacks, pretext for the war then as it is now, was so rapidly exceeded. But every week we hear - if we are listening very carefully to the news, if we are still reading that final paragraph on page A16 - or if we are following the work of brave souls like Jerome Starkey - of tragic mistakes. We are used to tragic mistakes. Attacking a country militarily means planning for countless tragic mistakes. Some of us still let ourselves believe that the war can do some good in Afghanistan, that our leaders' motives for escalating the war, however dominated by strategic economic concerns and geopolitical rivalries, still in some small part include the interests of the Afghan people. There are others who know where this war will lead and know that our leaders know, and have simply become too fatigued, too drained of frightened tears by this long decade of nightmare, to hold those leaders accountable anymore for moral choices. It's worthwhile to wonder, how did we become this pacified? But far more important is our collective effort to approach the mirror, to stay in front of it, unflinching, and see the consequences of our mistaken acquiescence to the tragic mistakes of war, and then work, work hard, to correct our mistakes and nonviolently resist collaboration with war crimes. Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Kathy Kelly's email is kathy [at] vcnv.org ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 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 Research almost any topic raised here at: CounterPunch http://counterpunch.org Dissident Voice http://dissidentvoice.org Common Dreams http://commondreams.org Once you're there, do a search on your topic, eg obama drones
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