CACHE (R)
dir: Michael Haneke; with Juliette Binoche and Daniel Autueil
Film Website
IMDB Posting
Yahoo Preview
Fri. 4/28 - 5:30; 7:35
Sat. & Sun. 4/29-30 - 1:10; 3:20; 5:30; 7:35
Mon. 5/1 - No Showings
Tue-Thu. 5/2-4 - 5:30; 7:30
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Kentucky Theater: Cache (Michael Haneke: 2005)
(Finally... it comes to town!)
CACHE (R)
dir: Michael Haneke; with Juliette Binoche and Daniel Autueil
Film Website
IMDB Posting
Yahoo Preview
Fri. 4/28 - 5:30; 7:35
Sat. & Sun. 4/29-30 - 1:10; 3:20; 5:30; 7:35
Mon. 5/1 - No Showings
Tue-Thu. 5/2-4 - 5:30; 7:30
CACHE (R)
dir: Michael Haneke; with Juliette Binoche and Daniel Autueil
Film Website
IMDB Posting
Yahoo Preview
Fri. 4/28 - 5:30; 7:35
Sat. & Sun. 4/29-30 - 1:10; 3:20; 5:30; 7:35
Mon. 5/1 - No Showings
Tue-Thu. 5/2-4 - 5:30; 7:30
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Socialist Equality Party: A Socialist Response to the Massive Rise in Fuel Prices
(Courtesy of Jerrod Felice)
Here is very good article written from a socialist point of view. Written by the SEP, a true internationalist working class program (ICFI).
Jerrod
A socialist response to the massive rise in fuel prices
A statement by the Socialist Equality Party
26 April 2006
The staggering increase in gasoline prices is taking an enormous toll on working families in the US, whose paychecks are already being eaten up by a host of other rising costs, from health care, to education, to housing and food. In the last two weeks alone, prices at the gas pump have risen nearly 25 cents—to an average of $2.91 per gallon—with prices exceeding $3.10 in California, New York and other states.
Some 70 percent of US adults recently polled said gas prices—which are up 31 percent since last year—were causing them financial hardship. Tens of millions of people in America forced to drive long distances to work, as well as elderly people on fixed incomes, rural residents and small business owners are being devastated, and the crisis could lead to mass layoffs in the airline and trucking industries and throughout the economy.
Underlying this crisis is the fundamental contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the social relations of the capitalist profit system, which finds its starkest expression in the maintenance of a petroleum-based economy that every day becomes more incompatible with human needs and life itself.
After warning that Americans must brace for a “tough summer,” blaming supposed “tight supply” for prices that could reach beyond $4.00 a gallon in the next several months, President Bush responded to mounting outrage by announcing a series of largely meaningless measures Tuesday. These proposals—suspending environmental rules governing gasoline refiners, halting purchases for the government’s emergency stockpile and giving oil companies more time to pay back previous loans of crude oil from these reserves—will do little or nothing to ease prices, while further feeding the profit drive of the energy conglomerates.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, meanwhile, declared that there is “no silver bullet” to bring down prices and advised Americans to tune up their cars and drive more slowly to get better mileage. For workers who are seeing their real wages slashed by the cost of long daily commutes, Frist’s remarks amount to “Let them eat cake.”
While the oil companies and their apologists in Washington have blamed world crude oil prices and environmental regulations for the price hikes, the chief cause is profiteering by oil companies, which are posting record windfalls. Over the last decade, there has been a wave of mergers and consolidations in the oil industry, allowing a handful of monopolies to tighten their grip on supplies, manipulate production levels and drive up prices. The present crisis is the result not of some natural working out of the laws of the market, but rather of definite decisions made by corporate executives who have immense personal interest in the matter.
In the 1990s, oil producers complained of too much refining capacity, not too little, and an “oversupply” of oil that was driving down profit margins. The industry responded by shutting down 25 refineries in the US since 1995 and cutting capacity by 830,000 barrels a day. In addition, competitors conspired to control the amount of oil and gas on the market, eliminate independent producers and consolidate control of supply and pricing in the hands of the oil monopolies.
In 2005, the top five oil companies—Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips—saw their profits surge to more than $111 billion. The world’s largest oil giant, ExxonMobil, made $36.1 billion, the highest amount in US corporate history and more profits than the next four companies on the Fortune 500 list combined. At $339 billion, its revenues exceeded the gross national products of Taiwan, Norway and Argentina.
While millions of ordinary people have been squeezed by rising gas prices, ExxonMobil’s top executives and investors have reaped hundreds of millions in compensation and rising share values. Lee R. Raymond, who retired in December, received more than $400 million in his final year at the company. Between 1993 and 2005, Raymond was paid more than $686 million, or $144,573 for each day he spent leading the Texas-based company. During this time, Raymond engineered the $81 billion acquisition of Mobil—giving ExxonMobil the capacity to produce twice as much oil as the country of Kuwait—and wiped out 10,000 jobs.
Raymond’s successor, Rex Tillerson, saw his pay raised by 33 percent last year to $13 million. All told, the top five executives at Exxon took home more than $130 million in compensation in 2005, own more than $280 million in restricted stock, and have stock options valued at $113 million. The oil bosses throughout the industry have been similarly rewarded as oil prices doubled over the last two years.
These corporations and individuals have reaped massive wealth by exploiting and exacerbating the current crisis. None of them have the slightest interest in mounting the kind of vast social effort that is needed not merely to meet current demand, but, more essentially, to develop alternative safe and sustainable sources of energy.
That the present reliance on petroleum is both unsustainable and a deadly threat is indisputable. The world’s crude oil reserves are finite and will only disappear all the more rapidly to the extent that steps are taken to expand production. At the same time, the burning of these fossil fuels is the central cause of global warming, which—the Bush administration’s suppression of science notwithstanding—threatens to make Earth uninhabitable.
Moreover, the pursuit of this finite resource has given rise to the catastrophic growth of militarism. It is the principal cause of the criminal US war in Iraq, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and those of more than 2,500 US troops. It likewise drives the open preparations for a new war against Iran as well as plans for a military confrontation with China, whose expanding economy makes it a competitor for control of global energy supplies.
The best government oil money can buy
The rising gas prices have prompted politicians—Democrats and Republicans alike—to call for investigations into price gouging and, in some cases, even to seek legislation to impose a “windfall profit tax” on the oil companies. Not a thing will come out of this posturing, which is strictly for public consumption.
Big Oil has long exerted enormous influence over both political parties in Washington, but the level of political control it commands today dwarfs what it possessed in the era of John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil at the turn of the twentieth century. With two former Texas oilmen in the White House and the votes of senators and congressmen lubricated with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying efforts directed toward both parties, Big Oil has nothing to fear. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have provided the oil companies with massive subsidies and tax breaks, lifted environmental and safety regulations, and provided the US military as a virtual private army to guard the companies’ oilfields and pipelines throughout the globe.
ExxonMobil’s ex-CEO Raymond, a close ally of the Bush administration, helped formulate policy regarding drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and opposing any measures to reduce global warming. In 2001, the company was a key participant in Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force, which discussed, among other things, the oil fields of Iraq and the danger that, after the end of UN sanctions, the country’s largely untapped reserves might fall into the hands of Russian, Chinese or French competitors, instead of the US or British oil companies.
Last March, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a public hearing to supposedly “investigate” price gouging by the oil companies. Again, Democratic politicians pontificated about “corporate greed” and wagged their fingers at the oil chiefs who testified. In his remarks, Rex Tillerson, the new CEO of ExxonMobil, scoffed at the impotent gestures, reminding the Senators, “I suspect people on this committee benefited from our success last year.” The lifelong oilman knew of what he spoke: among the wealthy Senators assembled on the committee was Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, a large Exxon shareholder who has long championed the industry’s interests.
The program of the Socialist Equality Party
Under conditions in which the living standards of hundreds of millions of working people in the United States are being driven down by the soaring price of fuel, immediate action must be taken to bring the cost of fuel under control.
At the same time, the larger task of developing alternative energy sources and confronting the mounting threat posed by global warming cannot be postponed.
Neither a short-term answer to the present crisis over gas prices, nor the longer-term solution to replacing an unsustainable petroleum-based economy is possible outside of a direct assault on the capitalist profit system and the powerful social, financial and political interests that are behind the policies of Big Oil.
The Socialist Equality Party advances a policy that places social needs before profit interests. We call for an immediate capping of gas prices for individual consumers and small to medium-sized businesses at $1.50 per gallon.
The exploitation of this crisis in the interests of corporate profits and the private accumulation of wealth must be halted. The actions of Big Oil must be approached objectively for what they are: criminal, anti-social behavior. Criminal investigations must be initiated into the practices of the giant oil companies, including the auditing of the personal accounts of all leading executives. The massive profits recorded by the oil companies during the past year as well as the obscene multimillion-dollar compensation packages paid out to executives must be expropriated and placed in a publicly controlled fund.
These short-term measures must be combined with a fundamental change in the financial structure and organization of the energy industry. The American people and, in fact, the people of the world are being held hostage to the profit interests of vast energy conglomerates that threaten the globe with declining living standards, environmental destruction and war. It is necessary to break this stranglehold nationalizing the energy conglomerates—that is, converting ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, etc., into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities.
This would begin to make available the financial resources that are needed for launching an internationally coordinated, multitrillion-dollar effort to develop alternative energy sources and confront the danger posed to the environment and mankind’s future.
In opposition to the deliberate “fixing” of the market to enrich the wealthy elite, the exploration, development and use of energy supplies must be guided by a rational international plan that is publicly debated and democratically approved by the working class. This plan must meet the needs of the world’s people for low-cost, environmentally safe and renewable energy.
In their efforts to secure vast profits, the energy monopolies and the auto industry have long conspired to prevent the development of reliable public transportation, and, in the past have dismantled existing transit systems. A rational plan for energy use must include the pouring of billions of dollars into urban mass transit and light-rail systems, as well as developing fuel-efficient vehicles.
These ideas are not utopian but absolutely necessary for the future of humanity. They require, however, that working people assert that their rights—to a decent standard of living, secure jobs, a clean environment and a future free from war—take precedence over the profits and property rights of the America’s ruling elite. To achieve this, the working class must build its own political instrument—a mass socialist party—to end the monopoly of the two big business parties and the outmoded and bankrupt capitalist system they defend. This is the perspective of the Socialist Equality Party and our candidates who are running in the 2006 elections.
Here is very good article written from a socialist point of view. Written by the SEP, a true internationalist working class program (ICFI).
Jerrod
A socialist response to the massive rise in fuel prices
A statement by the Socialist Equality Party
26 April 2006
The staggering increase in gasoline prices is taking an enormous toll on working families in the US, whose paychecks are already being eaten up by a host of other rising costs, from health care, to education, to housing and food. In the last two weeks alone, prices at the gas pump have risen nearly 25 cents—to an average of $2.91 per gallon—with prices exceeding $3.10 in California, New York and other states.
Some 70 percent of US adults recently polled said gas prices—which are up 31 percent since last year—were causing them financial hardship. Tens of millions of people in America forced to drive long distances to work, as well as elderly people on fixed incomes, rural residents and small business owners are being devastated, and the crisis could lead to mass layoffs in the airline and trucking industries and throughout the economy.
Underlying this crisis is the fundamental contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the social relations of the capitalist profit system, which finds its starkest expression in the maintenance of a petroleum-based economy that every day becomes more incompatible with human needs and life itself.
After warning that Americans must brace for a “tough summer,” blaming supposed “tight supply” for prices that could reach beyond $4.00 a gallon in the next several months, President Bush responded to mounting outrage by announcing a series of largely meaningless measures Tuesday. These proposals—suspending environmental rules governing gasoline refiners, halting purchases for the government’s emergency stockpile and giving oil companies more time to pay back previous loans of crude oil from these reserves—will do little or nothing to ease prices, while further feeding the profit drive of the energy conglomerates.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, meanwhile, declared that there is “no silver bullet” to bring down prices and advised Americans to tune up their cars and drive more slowly to get better mileage. For workers who are seeing their real wages slashed by the cost of long daily commutes, Frist’s remarks amount to “Let them eat cake.”
While the oil companies and their apologists in Washington have blamed world crude oil prices and environmental regulations for the price hikes, the chief cause is profiteering by oil companies, which are posting record windfalls. Over the last decade, there has been a wave of mergers and consolidations in the oil industry, allowing a handful of monopolies to tighten their grip on supplies, manipulate production levels and drive up prices. The present crisis is the result not of some natural working out of the laws of the market, but rather of definite decisions made by corporate executives who have immense personal interest in the matter.
In the 1990s, oil producers complained of too much refining capacity, not too little, and an “oversupply” of oil that was driving down profit margins. The industry responded by shutting down 25 refineries in the US since 1995 and cutting capacity by 830,000 barrels a day. In addition, competitors conspired to control the amount of oil and gas on the market, eliminate independent producers and consolidate control of supply and pricing in the hands of the oil monopolies.
In 2005, the top five oil companies—Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips—saw their profits surge to more than $111 billion. The world’s largest oil giant, ExxonMobil, made $36.1 billion, the highest amount in US corporate history and more profits than the next four companies on the Fortune 500 list combined. At $339 billion, its revenues exceeded the gross national products of Taiwan, Norway and Argentina.
While millions of ordinary people have been squeezed by rising gas prices, ExxonMobil’s top executives and investors have reaped hundreds of millions in compensation and rising share values. Lee R. Raymond, who retired in December, received more than $400 million in his final year at the company. Between 1993 and 2005, Raymond was paid more than $686 million, or $144,573 for each day he spent leading the Texas-based company. During this time, Raymond engineered the $81 billion acquisition of Mobil—giving ExxonMobil the capacity to produce twice as much oil as the country of Kuwait—and wiped out 10,000 jobs.
Raymond’s successor, Rex Tillerson, saw his pay raised by 33 percent last year to $13 million. All told, the top five executives at Exxon took home more than $130 million in compensation in 2005, own more than $280 million in restricted stock, and have stock options valued at $113 million. The oil bosses throughout the industry have been similarly rewarded as oil prices doubled over the last two years.
These corporations and individuals have reaped massive wealth by exploiting and exacerbating the current crisis. None of them have the slightest interest in mounting the kind of vast social effort that is needed not merely to meet current demand, but, more essentially, to develop alternative safe and sustainable sources of energy.
That the present reliance on petroleum is both unsustainable and a deadly threat is indisputable. The world’s crude oil reserves are finite and will only disappear all the more rapidly to the extent that steps are taken to expand production. At the same time, the burning of these fossil fuels is the central cause of global warming, which—the Bush administration’s suppression of science notwithstanding—threatens to make Earth uninhabitable.
Moreover, the pursuit of this finite resource has given rise to the catastrophic growth of militarism. It is the principal cause of the criminal US war in Iraq, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and those of more than 2,500 US troops. It likewise drives the open preparations for a new war against Iran as well as plans for a military confrontation with China, whose expanding economy makes it a competitor for control of global energy supplies.
The best government oil money can buy
The rising gas prices have prompted politicians—Democrats and Republicans alike—to call for investigations into price gouging and, in some cases, even to seek legislation to impose a “windfall profit tax” on the oil companies. Not a thing will come out of this posturing, which is strictly for public consumption.
Big Oil has long exerted enormous influence over both political parties in Washington, but the level of political control it commands today dwarfs what it possessed in the era of John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil at the turn of the twentieth century. With two former Texas oilmen in the White House and the votes of senators and congressmen lubricated with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying efforts directed toward both parties, Big Oil has nothing to fear. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have provided the oil companies with massive subsidies and tax breaks, lifted environmental and safety regulations, and provided the US military as a virtual private army to guard the companies’ oilfields and pipelines throughout the globe.
ExxonMobil’s ex-CEO Raymond, a close ally of the Bush administration, helped formulate policy regarding drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and opposing any measures to reduce global warming. In 2001, the company was a key participant in Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force, which discussed, among other things, the oil fields of Iraq and the danger that, after the end of UN sanctions, the country’s largely untapped reserves might fall into the hands of Russian, Chinese or French competitors, instead of the US or British oil companies.
Last March, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a public hearing to supposedly “investigate” price gouging by the oil companies. Again, Democratic politicians pontificated about “corporate greed” and wagged their fingers at the oil chiefs who testified. In his remarks, Rex Tillerson, the new CEO of ExxonMobil, scoffed at the impotent gestures, reminding the Senators, “I suspect people on this committee benefited from our success last year.” The lifelong oilman knew of what he spoke: among the wealthy Senators assembled on the committee was Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, a large Exxon shareholder who has long championed the industry’s interests.
The program of the Socialist Equality Party
Under conditions in which the living standards of hundreds of millions of working people in the United States are being driven down by the soaring price of fuel, immediate action must be taken to bring the cost of fuel under control.
At the same time, the larger task of developing alternative energy sources and confronting the mounting threat posed by global warming cannot be postponed.
Neither a short-term answer to the present crisis over gas prices, nor the longer-term solution to replacing an unsustainable petroleum-based economy is possible outside of a direct assault on the capitalist profit system and the powerful social, financial and political interests that are behind the policies of Big Oil.
The Socialist Equality Party advances a policy that places social needs before profit interests. We call for an immediate capping of gas prices for individual consumers and small to medium-sized businesses at $1.50 per gallon.
The exploitation of this crisis in the interests of corporate profits and the private accumulation of wealth must be halted. The actions of Big Oil must be approached objectively for what they are: criminal, anti-social behavior. Criminal investigations must be initiated into the practices of the giant oil companies, including the auditing of the personal accounts of all leading executives. The massive profits recorded by the oil companies during the past year as well as the obscene multimillion-dollar compensation packages paid out to executives must be expropriated and placed in a publicly controlled fund.
These short-term measures must be combined with a fundamental change in the financial structure and organization of the energy industry. The American people and, in fact, the people of the world are being held hostage to the profit interests of vast energy conglomerates that threaten the globe with declining living standards, environmental destruction and war. It is necessary to break this stranglehold nationalizing the energy conglomerates—that is, converting ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, etc., into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities.
This would begin to make available the financial resources that are needed for launching an internationally coordinated, multitrillion-dollar effort to develop alternative energy sources and confront the danger posed to the environment and mankind’s future.
In opposition to the deliberate “fixing” of the market to enrich the wealthy elite, the exploration, development and use of energy supplies must be guided by a rational international plan that is publicly debated and democratically approved by the working class. This plan must meet the needs of the world’s people for low-cost, environmentally safe and renewable energy.
In their efforts to secure vast profits, the energy monopolies and the auto industry have long conspired to prevent the development of reliable public transportation, and, in the past have dismantled existing transit systems. A rational plan for energy use must include the pouring of billions of dollars into urban mass transit and light-rail systems, as well as developing fuel-efficient vehicles.
These ideas are not utopian but absolutely necessary for the future of humanity. They require, however, that working people assert that their rights—to a decent standard of living, secure jobs, a clean environment and a future free from war—take precedence over the profits and property rights of the America’s ruling elite. To achieve this, the working class must build its own political instrument—a mass socialist party—to end the monopoly of the two big business parties and the outmoded and bankrupt capitalist system they defend. This is the perspective of the Socialist Equality Party and our candidates who are running in the 2006 elections.
H-NET Urban History Discussion List: Remembering Jane Jacobs
(A post announcing the death of the important urban thinker/writer/theorist Jane Jacobs)
It is with great sadness that I must announce that Jane Jacobs has passed away this morning in Toronto. Her contributions to our field of endeavor can hardly be measured, though I am sure that we will all compile a list over the next few days. To me she was undoubtedly one of the sharpest minds of the last half century, not because of the answers she provided about how cities work and should work, but because of the questions she asked and continued to ask. In my own work, I have frequently disagreed with her and those who had adopted her views. However, as a Torontonian, I am eternally grateful for her commitment to reminding us of the very human (and humane) elements of our city (and cities in general), which very much helped the city save itself in the early 1970s.
Kevin Brushett
---------------------------------------------------
Preservation Institute: Jane Jacobs' Writing on the Web
Interviewed by Jim Kunstler in the Metropolis Magazine
The Jane Jacobs Home Page
Urban planning guru Jane Jacobs on the traps we set for ourselves
Wikipedia: Jane Jacobs
Cities and Web Economies
Reason Magazine Interview
CNN Profile
It is with great sadness that I must announce that Jane Jacobs has passed away this morning in Toronto. Her contributions to our field of endeavor can hardly be measured, though I am sure that we will all compile a list over the next few days. To me she was undoubtedly one of the sharpest minds of the last half century, not because of the answers she provided about how cities work and should work, but because of the questions she asked and continued to ask. In my own work, I have frequently disagreed with her and those who had adopted her views. However, as a Torontonian, I am eternally grateful for her commitment to reminding us of the very human (and humane) elements of our city (and cities in general), which very much helped the city save itself in the early 1970s.
Kevin Brushett
---------------------------------------------------
Preservation Institute: Jane Jacobs' Writing on the Web
Interviewed by Jim Kunstler in the Metropolis Magazine
The Jane Jacobs Home Page
Urban planning guru Jane Jacobs on the traps we set for ourselves
Wikipedia: Jane Jacobs
Cities and Web Economies
Reason Magazine Interview
CNN Profile
Antonia Juhasz: On the Oil Connections of the Bush Administration
(Courtesy of Courtney Barlow)
This is an interview from Democracy Now! I won't bore you with the whole thing however I found this part to be very interesting.
Thanks, Court
----------------------------------
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Antonia Juhasz, author and activist, wrote The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. Now, gas is over $3 in many places. What's the connection?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, here's the connection. The Bush administration is the most beholden administration probably in American history to the oil and gas industry. This is the first time in history that the President, Vice President and Secretary of State are all former energy company officials. In fact, both Bush and Rice have more experience as energy company officials than they do as government leaders. Cheney outbeats them. He’s spent 30 years working for government. However, his five years at Halliburton have been so profitable that you might say that his Halliburton years outweigh their oil years, because Bush was a very bad oil company executive. But their links to the oil sector are deep.
The oil industry provided more than 13 times more money to the Bush-Cheney ticket in the first round of elections than it did to his competitor, nine times more in the second. And this industry has been absolutely coddled by the Bush administration: enormous tax subsidies, deregulation, and, I would argue, a war waged on their behalf.
Now, there's two intimate connections between the war and the price of gas. But first, I think it’s very important for people to understand that the vertical integration of the oil industry, which has been absolutely exacerbated under the Bush administration. For example, ChevronTexaco and Unocal merging into one company, the completion of Exxon and Mobil's merger, all of these little companies merging into enormous behemoths, so that you have ExxonMobil being the company that has received the highest profits of any company in the world, over the last two years, ever in the history of the world. That is because of the vertical integration and monopoly power of these companies. That means that they control exploration, production, refining, marketing and sales.
The price of oil at the pump is about 50% the price of a barrel of oil, about 25% taxes, and then the rest is marketing and just the price determined by the company at the pump. So that means that about 18% to 20% is absolutely determined by the oil companies themselves and governed by the companies themselves. So they could reduce the price of oil and reduce their profit margin, or they could jack up the price of oil and increase their profit margin. They have chosen to do the latter.
And one of the things that has helped them do that is, first of all, the United States is receiving a tremendous amount of oil from Iraq. Oil is down in overall export and production, but not tremendously so. We were -- at prewar was 2.5 million barrels a day. We’re now at about 2 or 2.2 million barrels a day. But 50% of that, on average, is coming to the United States, and it’s being brought to the United States by Chevron and Exxon and Marathon. The myth of dramatically reduced supply has helped them create an argument to the American public, which is, you know, it’s a time of war, we’re suffering, gas prices are going to go up, everyone needs to come in and support this because this is war. Well, that's just not true. The companies are using that as a myth to help make it okay for them to receive these utterly ridiculous profits.
AMY GOODMAN: In your chapter "A Mutual Seduction," you have a quote of Ken Derr, the former C.E.O. of Chevron, 1998. I know his tenure well. It was the time in the Niger Delta that Chevron was involved with the killing of two Nigerian villagers, who were protesting yet another oil spill of Chevron and jobs not being given to the local community as they drilled for oil. But your quote here says, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas, reserves I would love Chevron to have access to.” And then you follow that by a quote of John Gibson, Chief Executive of Halliburton Energy Service Group, who says, “We hope Iraq will be the first domino and that Libya and Iran will follow. We don't like being kept out of markets, because it gives our competitors an unfair advantage.”
ANTONIA JUHASZ: I love it when they’re honest. It doesn’t happen very often. Yeah, these companies have been explicit, for decades, that they want in, particularly to Iraq. The reason is obvious. Iraq certainly has the second largest oil reserves in the world, but some geologists believe it has the largest, at least on par with Saudi Arabia. That's a tremendous pool of wealth. And not just have the companies been clear that they want access to that oil, U.S. leaders -- for example, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld -- have all been explicit for the past 20 years that what the U.S. needs to do is gain increased access to the region's oil, and most explicitly during the ‘90s, Iraq's oil, that this is something that shouldn’t be in the hands of Saddam Hussein.
The difference, going into the current Bush administration, was that the rhetoric changed to and the reality changed to not just we need a new leader, we need a new -- a fully new political and economic structure in Iraq, and we need to be in that country to make sure that that structure gets put into place. And that is exactly what they have achieved, and now Halliburton, Chevron, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin have profited tremendously from this process already. Chevron’s -- the U.S. value of Iraqi oil, imported Iraqi oil, has increased by 86% between 2003 and 2004. Those profits have gone to Exxon, Chevron and Marathon.
En paz y solidaridad
This is an interview from Democracy Now! I won't bore you with the whole thing however I found this part to be very interesting.
Thanks, Court
----------------------------------
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Antonia Juhasz, author and activist, wrote The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. Now, gas is over $3 in many places. What's the connection?
ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, here's the connection. The Bush administration is the most beholden administration probably in American history to the oil and gas industry. This is the first time in history that the President, Vice President and Secretary of State are all former energy company officials. In fact, both Bush and Rice have more experience as energy company officials than they do as government leaders. Cheney outbeats them. He’s spent 30 years working for government. However, his five years at Halliburton have been so profitable that you might say that his Halliburton years outweigh their oil years, because Bush was a very bad oil company executive. But their links to the oil sector are deep.
The oil industry provided more than 13 times more money to the Bush-Cheney ticket in the first round of elections than it did to his competitor, nine times more in the second. And this industry has been absolutely coddled by the Bush administration: enormous tax subsidies, deregulation, and, I would argue, a war waged on their behalf.
Now, there's two intimate connections between the war and the price of gas. But first, I think it’s very important for people to understand that the vertical integration of the oil industry, which has been absolutely exacerbated under the Bush administration. For example, ChevronTexaco and Unocal merging into one company, the completion of Exxon and Mobil's merger, all of these little companies merging into enormous behemoths, so that you have ExxonMobil being the company that has received the highest profits of any company in the world, over the last two years, ever in the history of the world. That is because of the vertical integration and monopoly power of these companies. That means that they control exploration, production, refining, marketing and sales.
The price of oil at the pump is about 50% the price of a barrel of oil, about 25% taxes, and then the rest is marketing and just the price determined by the company at the pump. So that means that about 18% to 20% is absolutely determined by the oil companies themselves and governed by the companies themselves. So they could reduce the price of oil and reduce their profit margin, or they could jack up the price of oil and increase their profit margin. They have chosen to do the latter.
And one of the things that has helped them do that is, first of all, the United States is receiving a tremendous amount of oil from Iraq. Oil is down in overall export and production, but not tremendously so. We were -- at prewar was 2.5 million barrels a day. We’re now at about 2 or 2.2 million barrels a day. But 50% of that, on average, is coming to the United States, and it’s being brought to the United States by Chevron and Exxon and Marathon. The myth of dramatically reduced supply has helped them create an argument to the American public, which is, you know, it’s a time of war, we’re suffering, gas prices are going to go up, everyone needs to come in and support this because this is war. Well, that's just not true. The companies are using that as a myth to help make it okay for them to receive these utterly ridiculous profits.
AMY GOODMAN: In your chapter "A Mutual Seduction," you have a quote of Ken Derr, the former C.E.O. of Chevron, 1998. I know his tenure well. It was the time in the Niger Delta that Chevron was involved with the killing of two Nigerian villagers, who were protesting yet another oil spill of Chevron and jobs not being given to the local community as they drilled for oil. But your quote here says, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas, reserves I would love Chevron to have access to.” And then you follow that by a quote of John Gibson, Chief Executive of Halliburton Energy Service Group, who says, “We hope Iraq will be the first domino and that Libya and Iran will follow. We don't like being kept out of markets, because it gives our competitors an unfair advantage.”
ANTONIA JUHASZ: I love it when they’re honest. It doesn’t happen very often. Yeah, these companies have been explicit, for decades, that they want in, particularly to Iraq. The reason is obvious. Iraq certainly has the second largest oil reserves in the world, but some geologists believe it has the largest, at least on par with Saudi Arabia. That's a tremendous pool of wealth. And not just have the companies been clear that they want access to that oil, U.S. leaders -- for example, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld -- have all been explicit for the past 20 years that what the U.S. needs to do is gain increased access to the region's oil, and most explicitly during the ‘90s, Iraq's oil, that this is something that shouldn’t be in the hands of Saddam Hussein.
The difference, going into the current Bush administration, was that the rhetoric changed to and the reality changed to not just we need a new leader, we need a new -- a fully new political and economic structure in Iraq, and we need to be in that country to make sure that that structure gets put into place. And that is exactly what they have achieved, and now Halliburton, Chevron, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin have profited tremendously from this process already. Chevron’s -- the U.S. value of Iraqi oil, imported Iraqi oil, has increased by 86% between 2003 and 2004. Those profits have gone to Exxon, Chevron and Marathon.
En paz y solidaridad
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Democracy Now Today
Rumsfeld OKs Expansion of SpecialOps Forces Across Globe
- Hundreds of Thousands Protest In Nepal
- CIA Official: Bush Ignored Iraq WMD Intelligence
- Report: UK Warned Illegality of Supporting U.S. Attack on Iran
- Number of Terrorist Attacks in 2005 Top 10,000
- Bin Laden Says Crusade Being Waged Against Islam
- CIA Fires Official For Leaking Info About Secret Prisons
- Protesters At Stanford Univ. Block Bush Motorcade
- Civil Rights Activists Gather to Mourn Death of Anne Braden
To Watch/Listen
- Hundreds of Thousands Protest In Nepal
- CIA Official: Bush Ignored Iraq WMD Intelligence
- Report: UK Warned Illegality of Supporting U.S. Attack on Iran
- Number of Terrorist Attacks in 2005 Top 10,000
- Bin Laden Says Crusade Being Waged Against Islam
- CIA Fires Official For Leaking Info About Secret Prisons
- Protesters At Stanford Univ. Block Bush Motorcade
- Civil Rights Activists Gather to Mourn Death of Anne Braden
To Watch/Listen
Monday, April 24, 2006
Nancy Gregg: Get Over It
(Dedicated to everyone, including family members, friends, ex-wife and complete strangers, who insisted I just "get over it")
Get Over It
Nancy Gregg
My Town (posted by Harlan Bennett)
An Excerpt:
I am an American. I will not be dismissed, minimalized or marginalized, especially by hypocrites like Scalia et al, who persist in throwing rocks at my patriotism from inside their glass houses.
I will not be preached to by warmongering pseudo-Christians; I will not be reminded of the importance of family values by people who have no values at all. I will not be lied to, stolen from, manipulated. I will not be assuaged by meaningless rhetoric; I will not be lectured on the topic of honesty by people who wouldn't recognize the truth if it walked up to them on the street and bit them in the
ass.
I will not be condescended to by people who are as immoral as they are greedy and self-serving. I will not be shooed away from the adult dinner table like an ignorant child, while the alleged grown-ups plot the destruction of my own nation, or the nations of others. I will not be told to remain silent in the face of wrongdoing. I will not relinquish a single freedom that is my birthright as an American.
And no, I WILL NOT GET OVER IT.
When my fellow citizens are suffering, I will speak out for them, and stand with them. When disaster strikes, I will not GET OVER IT by going shopping, or attending a birthday party, or catching a ballgame. REAL AMERICANS don't do things like that - and besides, it seems pretty obvious that those jobs are already taken.
REAL AMERICANS do not need to be told how to act, or how to react. We know what needs to be done, and we do it every time. Within minutes of the 9/11 attack, firefighters, police officers, and emergency workers were on the scene. They risked their lives to save others without hesitation. Not one of them walked away in an attempt to GET OVER IT. And dare I say it? Not one of them found it necessary to stop and read The Pet Goat in its entirety before springing into action.
REAL AMERICANS don't condone torture, secret prisons, or rendition. REAL AMERICANS don't look at photographs from Abu Ghraib and GET OVER IT. REAL AMERICANS don't watch footage of dead Iraqi children on the nightly news and GET OVER IT. REAL AMERICANS don't read about their soldiers being wounded and killed in an ill-disguised attempt to put MONEY into the pockets of the rich and the powerful and GET OVER IT.
This Administration, and the elected officials who support it, have brazenly picked a fight with myself and my fellow citizens. Wrong move, wrong crowd. They obviously don't know who they're up against. You see, real Americans don't GET OVER IT when it's their own country under siege. They don't kneel, they don't bow, they don't yield.
The American people are now standing knee-deep in a foul-smelling liquid. They know what it looks like, what it smells like; they KNOW what it is. So stop telling us it's raining. Stop trotting yourselves out into the public square with your half-truths and your spin. We all know the emperor has no clothes; don't insult our intelligence with grandiose descriptions of his wardrobe.
Entire Rant ;)
Get Over It
Nancy Gregg
My Town (posted by Harlan Bennett)
An Excerpt:
I am an American. I will not be dismissed, minimalized or marginalized, especially by hypocrites like Scalia et al, who persist in throwing rocks at my patriotism from inside their glass houses.
I will not be preached to by warmongering pseudo-Christians; I will not be reminded of the importance of family values by people who have no values at all. I will not be lied to, stolen from, manipulated. I will not be assuaged by meaningless rhetoric; I will not be lectured on the topic of honesty by people who wouldn't recognize the truth if it walked up to them on the street and bit them in the
ass.
I will not be condescended to by people who are as immoral as they are greedy and self-serving. I will not be shooed away from the adult dinner table like an ignorant child, while the alleged grown-ups plot the destruction of my own nation, or the nations of others. I will not be told to remain silent in the face of wrongdoing. I will not relinquish a single freedom that is my birthright as an American.
And no, I WILL NOT GET OVER IT.
When my fellow citizens are suffering, I will speak out for them, and stand with them. When disaster strikes, I will not GET OVER IT by going shopping, or attending a birthday party, or catching a ballgame. REAL AMERICANS don't do things like that - and besides, it seems pretty obvious that those jobs are already taken.
REAL AMERICANS do not need to be told how to act, or how to react. We know what needs to be done, and we do it every time. Within minutes of the 9/11 attack, firefighters, police officers, and emergency workers were on the scene. They risked their lives to save others without hesitation. Not one of them walked away in an attempt to GET OVER IT. And dare I say it? Not one of them found it necessary to stop and read The Pet Goat in its entirety before springing into action.
REAL AMERICANS don't condone torture, secret prisons, or rendition. REAL AMERICANS don't look at photographs from Abu Ghraib and GET OVER IT. REAL AMERICANS don't watch footage of dead Iraqi children on the nightly news and GET OVER IT. REAL AMERICANS don't read about their soldiers being wounded and killed in an ill-disguised attempt to put MONEY into the pockets of the rich and the powerful and GET OVER IT.
This Administration, and the elected officials who support it, have brazenly picked a fight with myself and my fellow citizens. Wrong move, wrong crowd. They obviously don't know who they're up against. You see, real Americans don't GET OVER IT when it's their own country under siege. They don't kneel, they don't bow, they don't yield.
The American people are now standing knee-deep in a foul-smelling liquid. They know what it looks like, what it smells like; they KNOW what it is. So stop telling us it's raining. Stop trotting yourselves out into the public square with your half-truths and your spin. We all know the emperor has no clothes; don't insult our intelligence with grandiose descriptions of his wardrobe.
Entire Rant ;)
U.S. State Legislatures Begin Calling for Bush Impeachment
(Courtesy of Rebecca Glasscock and Bellaciao and Truthout)
Articles are from OpEdNews:
Bush Impeachment - The Illinois State Legislature is Preparing to Drop a Bombshell: Utilizing a little known rule of the US House to bring Impeachment charges
California Becomes Second State to Introduce Bush Impeachment
Articles are from OpEdNews:
Bush Impeachment - The Illinois State Legislature is Preparing to Drop a Bombshell: Utilizing a little known rule of the US House to bring Impeachment charges
California Becomes Second State to Introduce Bush Impeachment
Recommended Reading, Pt. 1
I just got a World Cinema course put on the books for Spring 2007 and so I am consulting the latest texts to get a handle on the wide world of cinema (I would appreciate all suggestions for new/classic books, articles, websites and films for my course). One of the best reads so far is this book that I just finished:
It moves geographically and chronologically to paint a picture of the cinema outside of corporate American cinema (formerly known as the brand "Hollywood"--can we still consider it as "Hollywood" when the big studios are gone and replaced by transnational corporations?)
This is a collection of essays that cover unique moments in each national/regional cinema that is being covered. The writing is engaging and the topics are wide-ranging. I would have wished for essays on Korean and Mexican cinema, but still, this is an important collection.
Here is Rutgers University Press's description:
Traditions in World Cinema brings together a colorful and wide ranging collection of world cinematic traditions-national, regional, and global-all of which are in need of introduction, investigation and, in some cases, critical reassessment. The movements described range from well-known traditions such as German expressionism, Italian neorealism, French, British, and Czech new wave, and new Hollywood cinema to those of emerging significance, such as Danish Dogma, postcommunist cinema, Brazilian post-Cinema Novo, new Argentine cinema, pre-independence African film traditions, Israeli persecution films, new Iranian cinema, Hindi film songs, Chinese wenyi pian melodrama, Japanese horror, and global found-footage cinema.
------------------------------------------------------
I highly recommend this book, especially since it is very reasonably priced at $23.95 for the paperback copy. Besides being informative it was very enjoyable to read and it includes filmographies/bibliographies at the end of each section.
The editors assured me that this is but the first of a series and I look forward to later editions (it was originally published by Edinburgh University Press and is distributed in the US by Rutgers)
It moves geographically and chronologically to paint a picture of the cinema outside of corporate American cinema (formerly known as the brand "Hollywood"--can we still consider it as "Hollywood" when the big studios are gone and replaced by transnational corporations?)
This is a collection of essays that cover unique moments in each national/regional cinema that is being covered. The writing is engaging and the topics are wide-ranging. I would have wished for essays on Korean and Mexican cinema, but still, this is an important collection.
Here is Rutgers University Press's description:
Traditions in World Cinema brings together a colorful and wide ranging collection of world cinematic traditions-national, regional, and global-all of which are in need of introduction, investigation and, in some cases, critical reassessment. The movements described range from well-known traditions such as German expressionism, Italian neorealism, French, British, and Czech new wave, and new Hollywood cinema to those of emerging significance, such as Danish Dogma, postcommunist cinema, Brazilian post-Cinema Novo, new Argentine cinema, pre-independence African film traditions, Israeli persecution films, new Iranian cinema, Hindi film songs, Chinese wenyi pian melodrama, Japanese horror, and global found-footage cinema.
------------------------------------------------------
I highly recommend this book, especially since it is very reasonably priced at $23.95 for the paperback copy. Besides being informative it was very enjoyable to read and it includes filmographies/bibliographies at the end of each section.
The editors assured me that this is but the first of a series and I look forward to later editions (it was originally published by Edinburgh University Press and is distributed in the US by Rutgers)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Building
(Courtesy of the Bluegrass Film Society and the BCTC Peace and Justice Coalition)
Please join us for a special showing of the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room on Wednesday, April 26 from 5:00 until 6:50 in the Bluegrass Community and Technical College's Academic-Technical Building Lobby. Seating for about 50.
Please join us for a special showing of the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room on Wednesday, April 26 from 5:00 until 6:50 in the Bluegrass Community and Technical College's Academic-Technical Building Lobby. Seating for about 50.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Neil Young: Lets Impeach the President
Neil Young has made a new album "Living With War" that includes a song called "Lets Impeach the President." Check out this interview of Neil demonstrating his intelligence and awareness:
CNN Neil Young Interview
Also check out Mouse Musings for an extensive post on this new album
CNN Neil Young Interview
Also check out Mouse Musings for an extensive post on this new album
Howard Zinn: America's Blinders
(Courtesy of loveecstasycrime)
America’s Blinders
By Howard Zinn
The Progrssive
Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war, now that they no longer trust Bush and his Administration, now that the evidence of deception has become overwhelming (so overwhelming that even the major media, always late, have begun to register indignation), we might ask: How come so many people were so easily fooled?
The question is important because it might help us understand why Americans—members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen—rushed to declare their support as the President was sending troops halfway around the world to Iraq.
A small example of the innocence (or obsequiousness, to be more exact) of the press is the way it reacted to Colin Powell’s presentation in February 2003 to the Security Council, a month before the invasion, a speech which may have set a record for the number of falsehoods told in one talk. In it, Powell confidently rattled off his “evidence”: satellite photographs, audio records, reports from informants, with precise statistics on how many gallons of this and that existed for chemical warfare. The New York Times was breathless with admiration. The Washington Post editorial was titled “Irrefutable” and declared that after Powell’s talk “it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”
It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture, and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people. If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against being deceived.
One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical perspective. The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.
Entire Essay
America’s Blinders
By Howard Zinn
The Progrssive
Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war, now that they no longer trust Bush and his Administration, now that the evidence of deception has become overwhelming (so overwhelming that even the major media, always late, have begun to register indignation), we might ask: How come so many people were so easily fooled?
The question is important because it might help us understand why Americans—members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen—rushed to declare their support as the President was sending troops halfway around the world to Iraq.
A small example of the innocence (or obsequiousness, to be more exact) of the press is the way it reacted to Colin Powell’s presentation in February 2003 to the Security Council, a month before the invasion, a speech which may have set a record for the number of falsehoods told in one talk. In it, Powell confidently rattled off his “evidence”: satellite photographs, audio records, reports from informants, with precise statistics on how many gallons of this and that existed for chemical warfare. The New York Times was breathless with admiration. The Washington Post editorial was titled “Irrefutable” and declared that after Powell’s talk “it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”
It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture, and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people. If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against being deceived.
One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical perspective. The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.
Entire Essay
Joe Bageant: In Praise of Holy Madness
In Praise of Holy Madness: The Wild Palms of Etowah
By JOE BAGEANT
Counterpunch
Entire Essay
By JOE BAGEANT
Counterpunch
One mark of our soulless New American Century is the lack of respect for saintly madmen. By that I mean holy seers of the Blakean-Coleridge stripe that could be found on America's streets as recently as the hippy era. The kind of crazy adept and enlightened iconoclasts honored by Allen Ginsberg and the beats, holy foolishness in the tradition of Saint Simeon with the dead dog tied to his waist and throwing nuts at the congregation, or Tibetan lama myonpas and India's avadhutas. Perhaps such holy madmen are still out there among the homeless and the crack whores. Maybe there are legions of Zen alcoholics and the like, and maybe we have lost the ability to see them in this season of imperial hubris, consumer fatigue and existential numbness. But I don't think so. I know crazy wisdom and saintly madness in men's eyes when I see it, and I am not seeing it very often in America these days. It has been outlawed by the Republicans and soundly condemned as Devil's work by the Christian Right.
...
Now I ask you this: What do you call the opposite of someone who is out of his mind? A poet? A divine monster? We do not much acknowledge horror in this country, except the petty stage-managed kind for which we have developed such an appetite, such as Terri Schiavo's morbid gurgling, etc. Yet none of it comes close to the type of horror and grandeur that's lacking in our life, the kind from which we flee, such as our own graves or the sight of the things we do to sentient others so long as they are poor, voiceless, out of sight, or perhaps have four legs. And even then, the only way we can keep up the ghastly charade is by deeming the saints amid us as madmen, and anointing the truly depraved among us kings, avoiding at all costs our divine monsters.
Entire Essay
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Wisconsin Public Radio: Here on Earth
I like exploring the world, but under my present circumstances of being a new professor and trying to pay off debts I can't explore all the cultures/places I would like to... that's why I really appreciate radio shows like Here on Earth. Below are some recent examples which you can listen to free on the Internet by visiting the archive of past shows
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Here On Earth - 04/16K
Living in a Japanese internment camp in the California desert during World War II, Gordon Sato began thinking how to abolish hunger and build a self-sufficient community in deserts. Sixty years later, he is busy teaching a whole nation in Africa how to feed itself. After three, on Here on Earth, join Jean Feraca for a scientist's story of abolishing hunger and poverty.
Here On Earth - 04/16J
After two, on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders, Jean Feraca talks with the former Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trial, Ben Ferencz (Fer-ENDS) about his life's work to replace "the rule of force with the rule of law."
Here On Earth - 04/15K
Fundamentalist Mullahs (muh-LAHS) in Pakistan have banned music, claiming it's forbidden in the Qur'an (koh-RAHN). After three, on Here on Earth, join Jean Feraca as she talks with a Pakistani rock star who is fighting the ban and the extremist forces behind it.
GUEST: Salman Ahmad (SAHL-man ah-MAHD), guitarist with the Pakistani rock band Junoon and subject of the BBC documentary, "The Rock Star and the Mullahs."
Here On Earth - 04/15J
In May 2002, seventeen year old Said Hyder Akbar traveled to Afghanistan for the summer. He traveled to join his father who was working as President Hamid Karzai's chief spokesman. After two, on Here On Earth, Jean Feraca's guest, born in Afghanistan, but raised in California, talks about his experiences during three visits to his native country.
GUEST: Hyder Akbar, co-author, "Going Back to Afghanistan"
Here On Earth - 04/09K
After eight on Here on Earth, Jean Feraca explores new synergies between neuroscience and Buddhism and a proposal to teach meditation in the public schools.
Here On Earth - 04/09J
She's been called the Rosa Parks of Pakistan and the Mother of a Nation, but her life hangs in the balance. After eight, on Here on Earth, Jean Feraca gets an update on one woman's campaign to fight rape and illiteracy in rural Pakistan.
Here On Earth - 04/08K
This hour on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders, join Jean Feraca in exploring what hapens when teachers expand their classrooms to the Peruvian Amazon, the Canadian Arctic, and the Tanzanian Serengeti.
Here On Earth - 04/08J
After eight, on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders, Jean Feraca explores a new post-modern gypsy music coming out of Serbia where the Roma people are struggling to define themselves, and fight for their rights.
------------------------------------------------------------
Here On Earth - 04/16K
Living in a Japanese internment camp in the California desert during World War II, Gordon Sato began thinking how to abolish hunger and build a self-sufficient community in deserts. Sixty years later, he is busy teaching a whole nation in Africa how to feed itself. After three, on Here on Earth, join Jean Feraca for a scientist's story of abolishing hunger and poverty.
Here On Earth - 04/16J
After two, on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders, Jean Feraca talks with the former Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trial, Ben Ferencz (Fer-ENDS) about his life's work to replace "the rule of force with the rule of law."
Here On Earth - 04/15K
Fundamentalist Mullahs (muh-LAHS) in Pakistan have banned music, claiming it's forbidden in the Qur'an (koh-RAHN). After three, on Here on Earth, join Jean Feraca as she talks with a Pakistani rock star who is fighting the ban and the extremist forces behind it.
GUEST: Salman Ahmad (SAHL-man ah-MAHD), guitarist with the Pakistani rock band Junoon and subject of the BBC documentary, "The Rock Star and the Mullahs."
Here On Earth - 04/15J
In May 2002, seventeen year old Said Hyder Akbar traveled to Afghanistan for the summer. He traveled to join his father who was working as President Hamid Karzai's chief spokesman. After two, on Here On Earth, Jean Feraca's guest, born in Afghanistan, but raised in California, talks about his experiences during three visits to his native country.
GUEST: Hyder Akbar, co-author, "Going Back to Afghanistan"
Here On Earth - 04/09K
After eight on Here on Earth, Jean Feraca explores new synergies between neuroscience and Buddhism and a proposal to teach meditation in the public schools.
Here On Earth - 04/09J
She's been called the Rosa Parks of Pakistan and the Mother of a Nation, but her life hangs in the balance. After eight, on Here on Earth, Jean Feraca gets an update on one woman's campaign to fight rape and illiteracy in rural Pakistan.
Here On Earth - 04/08K
This hour on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders, join Jean Feraca in exploring what hapens when teachers expand their classrooms to the Peruvian Amazon, the Canadian Arctic, and the Tanzanian Serengeti.
Here On Earth - 04/08J
After eight, on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders, Jean Feraca explores a new post-modern gypsy music coming out of Serbia where the Roma people are struggling to define themselves, and fight for their rights.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
April 25th Panel Discussion at Bluegrass Community and Technical College: “The Iran Crisis: An Unexpected Consequence of the War in Iraq?”
Dear Faculty and Staff,
In light of the emerging crisis in Iran, several individuals have indicated an interest in having a presentation on the issues. In response to this request, a panel discussion is planned for the last week of classes.
What: “The Iran Crisis: An Unexpected Consequence of the War in Iraq?”
When: Tuesday, April 25, from 6:30-7:45 p.m.
Where: Oswald Building Auditorium (OB 230)
Description:
Panel discussion focusing on the historical and political aspects of the current Iranian crisis. Panelists: Dr. Robert Olson, UK
History Professor and Mr. Hossein Motamedi, BCTC Assistant Professor of Political Science and History and native of Iran. Dr. Olson and Mr. Motamedi will each speak for about 10 to 15 minutes. At that point, Dr. Eileen Abel will moderate a question and answer session.
Please come and bring your questions for Dr. Olson and Mr. Motamedi.
In light of the emerging crisis in Iran, several individuals have indicated an interest in having a presentation on the issues. In response to this request, a panel discussion is planned for the last week of classes.
What: “The Iran Crisis: An Unexpected Consequence of the War in Iraq?”
When: Tuesday, April 25, from 6:30-7:45 p.m.
Where: Oswald Building Auditorium (OB 230)
Description:
Panel discussion focusing on the historical and political aspects of the current Iranian crisis. Panelists: Dr. Robert Olson, UK
History Professor and Mr. Hossein Motamedi, BCTC Assistant Professor of Political Science and History and native of Iran. Dr. Olson and Mr. Motamedi will each speak for about 10 to 15 minutes. At that point, Dr. Eileen Abel will moderate a question and answer session.
Please come and bring your questions for Dr. Olson and Mr. Motamedi.
Gas War Email
Since this is the tenth time I have received an announcement this week about joining an isolated boycott of Exxon and Mobil, here is a little bit of economic background on the likely effect of this type of isolated boycott:
Snopes on Gas War Email
This site is very good for checking on Internet forwards--as a cultural studies scholar I highly recommend it.
Please send this link to the countless people forwarding this email.
Snopes on Gas War Email
This site is very good for checking on Internet forwards--as a cultural studies scholar I highly recommend it.
Please send this link to the countless people forwarding this email.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Seamus Heaney: May 5th at University of Kentucky
(Courtesy of James Fenton)
A reading by Seamus Heaney, Friday 5th May at 5.00PM, King Library, University of Kentucky
A reading by Seamus Heaney, Friday 5th May at 5.00PM, King Library, University of Kentucky
Friday, April 14, 2006
Tony Wesolowsky: Fear of the Polish Plumber
Fear of the Polish Plumber
By Tony Wesolowsky
In These Times
Neoliberalism’s discontents are fighting back in Europe.
The “Polish plumber”—a symbol of cheap labor—became a catchphrase in France’s “No” camp during its referendum on the E.U. constitution. His specter, wrench in hand, is rising again.
Since the start of the year, public opposition has foiled two attempts by the European Union parliament to pass sweeping “liberalization” laws in the shipping and service industries. Labor unions and anti-neoliberal organizations like the French group ATTAC protest that corporate elites are using the European Union as a front to roll back Europe’s enviable, but eroding, social welfare system.
Armed with slingshots, whistles and placards, thousands of workers from across Europe descended on Strasbourg, France—headquarters of the European parliament—on Jan. 16. Inside, European lawmakers were considering whether to “liberalize” dock services across Europe. Angry workers were met by police armed with tear gas and water cannons. Sixty-four police and an unspecified number of picketers were injured. At the same time, an estimated 50,000 dockworkers in Antwerp, Rotterdam, Le Havre and other ports shut down shipping operations with a 24-hour strike.”Not one crane is moving,” said German dock union spokesman Uwe Schroeder.
The E.U. measure aimed to end monopoly cargo handling operations at many of Europe’s ports—an attempt to lower costs and raise productivity and investment. Dockworkers feared that breaking up the monopolies would eliminate jobs, lower wages and raise safety risks. The protests and strike worked, as the European parliament voted 532 to 120 to reject the measure.
A month later in February, a bigger battled loomed with legislation to liberalize the E.U. service sector. The European Union’s argument: Goods can be freely traded within all 25 E.U. members, but not services. Named the Bolkestein Directive (in honor of Frits Bolkestein, the former E.U. Commissioner for the internal market and industry), it would have introduced the controversial “country of origin principle.”
In theory, what opponents called the “directive from hell” would allow any company to set up shop anywhere in Europe, but operate under the laws and regulations of its home country. In practice, it would have allowed firms from eastern European countries like Poland—where wages are a fraction of those in western Europe and labor laws are weak—to operate anywhere in the European Union under Polish laws.
On Feb. 16, a massive labor-led campaign against the Bolkestein Directive paid off when the European parliament passed, by 179 votes, a version of the directive minus the controversial “country of origin principle” provision and with labor safeguards intact.
The battle over the Bolkestein Directive illustrated an East-West fissure in the European Union. Workers in the west saw it as a back-door attempt to cut their wages and erode standards. Those in the former Communist bloc viewed it as a front-door entrance to better paying jobs. Eastern Europeans have become unwitting foot soldiers for neoliberalism. Last year, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, declared that immigration from eastern Europe had “reduced wage inflation” in Britain.
To Read the Article
By Tony Wesolowsky
In These Times
Neoliberalism’s discontents are fighting back in Europe.
The “Polish plumber”—a symbol of cheap labor—became a catchphrase in France’s “No” camp during its referendum on the E.U. constitution. His specter, wrench in hand, is rising again.
Since the start of the year, public opposition has foiled two attempts by the European Union parliament to pass sweeping “liberalization” laws in the shipping and service industries. Labor unions and anti-neoliberal organizations like the French group ATTAC protest that corporate elites are using the European Union as a front to roll back Europe’s enviable, but eroding, social welfare system.
Armed with slingshots, whistles and placards, thousands of workers from across Europe descended on Strasbourg, France—headquarters of the European parliament—on Jan. 16. Inside, European lawmakers were considering whether to “liberalize” dock services across Europe. Angry workers were met by police armed with tear gas and water cannons. Sixty-four police and an unspecified number of picketers were injured. At the same time, an estimated 50,000 dockworkers in Antwerp, Rotterdam, Le Havre and other ports shut down shipping operations with a 24-hour strike.”Not one crane is moving,” said German dock union spokesman Uwe Schroeder.
The E.U. measure aimed to end monopoly cargo handling operations at many of Europe’s ports—an attempt to lower costs and raise productivity and investment. Dockworkers feared that breaking up the monopolies would eliminate jobs, lower wages and raise safety risks. The protests and strike worked, as the European parliament voted 532 to 120 to reject the measure.
A month later in February, a bigger battled loomed with legislation to liberalize the E.U. service sector. The European Union’s argument: Goods can be freely traded within all 25 E.U. members, but not services. Named the Bolkestein Directive (in honor of Frits Bolkestein, the former E.U. Commissioner for the internal market and industry), it would have introduced the controversial “country of origin principle.”
In theory, what opponents called the “directive from hell” would allow any company to set up shop anywhere in Europe, but operate under the laws and regulations of its home country. In practice, it would have allowed firms from eastern European countries like Poland—where wages are a fraction of those in western Europe and labor laws are weak—to operate anywhere in the European Union under Polish laws.
On Feb. 16, a massive labor-led campaign against the Bolkestein Directive paid off when the European parliament passed, by 179 votes, a version of the directive minus the controversial “country of origin principle” provision and with labor safeguards intact.
The battle over the Bolkestein Directive illustrated an East-West fissure in the European Union. Workers in the west saw it as a back-door attempt to cut their wages and erode standards. Those in the former Communist bloc viewed it as a front-door entrance to better paying jobs. Eastern Europeans have become unwitting foot soldiers for neoliberalism. Last year, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, declared that immigration from eastern Europe had “reduced wage inflation” in Britain.
To Read the Article
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
National Radio Project: Labor Desk
National Radio Project
The Labor Desk at National Radio Project highlights the struggles of everyday people for healthcare, childcare, livable wages and more. This Desk challenges the false image people have of organized labor and the broader labor movement. The Labor Desk also provides training opportunities for independent journalists and individuals involved in community building activities.
Supported by independent funding sources, the Labor Desk is free to explore and expose government and corporate roles in labor issues.
Past Programs Available at the Site:
15-06 The History of Class Struggle in the U.S.
04-06 Harvesting Justice
35-05 Daze of Labor, Days of Change
17-05 Social Security "Reform": Rolling Back the New Deal
36-04 Election Watch '04: Working Hard for Change
24-04 CAFTA: The Cost of Free Trade
20-04 Working Democracy: Participatory Movements in Latin America
05-04 Empty Promises? NAFTA at 10
46-03 The Invisible Farmers: Women Growing in the Americas
35-03 Striking Back: Organized Labor and Solidarity
08-03 Bottled Rights: Coca-Cola Workers
47-02 Job Insecurity: Labor Rights and the U.S. War on Terrorism
16-02 What is Security? Budget Cuts Make Way for War
08-02 Temp Work: Full-Time Insecurity?
17-01 Class Action: The Relevance of May Day
35-99 Labor Unions: Boom or Bust?
24-99 Free for Whom? NAFTA and Mexican Labor
21-99 Booming Inequity: Work and the New Economy
10-99 Crossing the Line: Civil Disobedience
49-98 Behind Brand Names: U.S. Companies and Foreign Labor
40-98 Empty Promises: NAFTA and the Workforce
31-98 Joblessness in the Inner-City
01-98 Rising from the Ranks: Women in the Labor Movement
Labor Desk
The Labor Desk at National Radio Project highlights the struggles of everyday people for healthcare, childcare, livable wages and more. This Desk challenges the false image people have of organized labor and the broader labor movement. The Labor Desk also provides training opportunities for independent journalists and individuals involved in community building activities.
Supported by independent funding sources, the Labor Desk is free to explore and expose government and corporate roles in labor issues.
Past Programs Available at the Site:
15-06 The History of Class Struggle in the U.S.
04-06 Harvesting Justice
35-05 Daze of Labor, Days of Change
17-05 Social Security "Reform": Rolling Back the New Deal
36-04 Election Watch '04: Working Hard for Change
24-04 CAFTA: The Cost of Free Trade
20-04 Working Democracy: Participatory Movements in Latin America
05-04 Empty Promises? NAFTA at 10
46-03 The Invisible Farmers: Women Growing in the Americas
35-03 Striking Back: Organized Labor and Solidarity
08-03 Bottled Rights: Coca-Cola Workers
47-02 Job Insecurity: Labor Rights and the U.S. War on Terrorism
16-02 What is Security? Budget Cuts Make Way for War
08-02 Temp Work: Full-Time Insecurity?
17-01 Class Action: The Relevance of May Day
35-99 Labor Unions: Boom or Bust?
24-99 Free for Whom? NAFTA and Mexican Labor
21-99 Booming Inequity: Work and the New Economy
10-99 Crossing the Line: Civil Disobedience
49-98 Behind Brand Names: U.S. Companies and Foreign Labor
40-98 Empty Promises: NAFTA and the Workforce
31-98 Joblessness in the Inner-City
01-98 Rising from the Ranks: Women in the Labor Movement
Labor Desk
Ryan Singel: Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room;
(Courtesy of T. Harris who states: "Pay close attention at how the machine is going to be upgraded in the not so distant future >?!!! I have contacted all the media outlets that I know of, but there is nothing. I have emailed my senator and there is nothing. I want to arrange a protest in every major city about this. So I am telling all of you. I am thinking that if the media is going to cover this issue, which they are obviously being censored on, then there must be protests at a nation wide level. Pass it on to your friends and email me if you are interested.
The fact that AT&T and the NSA has been monitoring all information is frightening. What is more frightening is the fact that this has been a news item for nearly a week and a half and has not covered by one large media outlet. PERIOD. What does that tell you about your media ?")
----------------------------------------------------------
Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room
by Ryan Singel
Wired
AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.
Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.
On Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT&T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT&T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.
According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.
"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."
Klein's job eventually included connecting internet circuits to a splitting cabinet that led to the secret room. During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.
"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.
To Read the Entire Hyperlinked Report
Electronic Frontier Foundation
EFF Class Action Lawsuit Against AT & T for Collaboration with Illegal Domestic Spying Program
Also reported by Bewert at Daily Kos:
All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400
The fact that AT&T and the NSA has been monitoring all information is frightening. What is more frightening is the fact that this has been a news item for nearly a week and a half and has not covered by one large media outlet. PERIOD. What does that tell you about your media ?")
----------------------------------------------------------
Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room
by Ryan Singel
Wired
AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.
Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.
On Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT&T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT&T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.
According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.
"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."
Klein's job eventually included connecting internet circuits to a splitting cabinet that led to the secret room. During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.
"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.
To Read the Entire Hyperlinked Report
Electronic Frontier Foundation
EFF Class Action Lawsuit Against AT & T for Collaboration with Illegal Domestic Spying Program
Also reported by Bewert at Daily Kos:
All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Nila: Daydreaming
The topic at Saul Williams' site is daydreaming (a favorite) and I liked this one from Nila:
the moon smiled at me twice
and I promise to go silent into his faithful night
while he drowns me in eternal pleading light
my heart pumped rivers
and gave me oxygenated oceans to swim in
and I let go of fear and waded in hope
opened my lungs to breath
and found confidence easy to exhale
he said infinity was only half way to his eternity
and I would need a boat made of trust to sail the rest of the way
he warned me of violent seas wanting flesh
and to remember Neptune was a rapist
for he feared that I could be bait to fill Medusa’s shoes
so I took flowers to Persephone
and she gave me use of the ferryman
but warned me of looking back
and I have never looked back into darkness
but wait for light to heat my skin
the ferryman tells me stories of death
but I cannot listen
for I’ve been there and he is taking me to new life
ask him if he can tell me of living
and he rows me on silent waves
made full by his reminiscing tears
I drink no water and eat no earth
and on the seventh day I see my love laying atop my horizon
a bounty of feathers clutches his shoulders
and I never once looked back
while I bleed upon his staff
he plants drops of me and says orchids will grow
but my dreams smell of poppies
and red snow covers my feet
so he warms me in blue smiles
and tends flowers only made for me
he says one day he’ll teach me of planting dreams
and I find my toes warming in soil
fertile enough for eve-rything
and eve-ning sighs each time he winks at me
Poem Link
the moon smiled at me twice
and I promise to go silent into his faithful night
while he drowns me in eternal pleading light
my heart pumped rivers
and gave me oxygenated oceans to swim in
and I let go of fear and waded in hope
opened my lungs to breath
and found confidence easy to exhale
he said infinity was only half way to his eternity
and I would need a boat made of trust to sail the rest of the way
he warned me of violent seas wanting flesh
and to remember Neptune was a rapist
for he feared that I could be bait to fill Medusa’s shoes
so I took flowers to Persephone
and she gave me use of the ferryman
but warned me of looking back
and I have never looked back into darkness
but wait for light to heat my skin
the ferryman tells me stories of death
but I cannot listen
for I’ve been there and he is taking me to new life
ask him if he can tell me of living
and he rows me on silent waves
made full by his reminiscing tears
I drink no water and eat no earth
and on the seventh day I see my love laying atop my horizon
a bounty of feathers clutches his shoulders
and I never once looked back
while I bleed upon his staff
he plants drops of me and says orchids will grow
but my dreams smell of poppies
and red snow covers my feet
so he warms me in blue smiles
and tends flowers only made for me
he says one day he’ll teach me of planting dreams
and I find my toes warming in soil
fertile enough for eve-rything
and eve-ning sighs each time he winks at me
Poem Link
Gal Beckerman: Indymedia
Indymedia: Between Passion and Pragmatism
By Gal Beckerman
Columbia Journalism Review, reposted on AlterNet (September, 2003)
Who wants to be design coordinator this week?" The question comes from Nandor, a red-bearded trollish man moderating an evening meeting of New York City's all-volunteer Independent Media Center. He is composing the table of contents for the next issue of the collective's biweekly newspaper, the Indypendent.
A pair of fans swish warm air around in the low-ceilinged Manhattan loft. The thirty members of the print committee sit in a circle beneath an upside-down American flag and pass around a packet of trail mix. Someone named Jed, not present at the meeting, is finally nominated to be design coordinator, partly because no one else seems to want to do it: "What about Jed? He's unemployed, isn't he?"
The meeting lasts one hour and five minutes; Nandor clocks it on his watch. Like all things at the center, the process has been precarious, democracy teetering on the edge of anarchy. There are some rules -- people raise their hand to speak -- but the collective believes everyone should have his or her say. Tony wants to report on union labor and summer fashions. Someone else knows a columnist who has a piece to contribute "It's about the deportations, but it's really funny." Don, in his seventies and by a few decades the oldest member of the collective, has an idea for a historical piece about the Spanish-American War. "It's about how we have been misled into past wars," he says. Everything makes it in. There is no editor to say otherwise. At least not yet.
Meetings like this one, experiments in democratic media, have been taking place all over the world in increasing numbers. New York City's Independent Media Center is just one piece of the rapidly expanding Indymedia movement, a four-year-old phenomenon that grew out of the trade protests of the late 1990s, and now encompasses a constellation of about 120 local collectives from Boston to Bombay. Each collective has a diverse palette of mediums it uses, including radio, video, print, and the Internet. Each is driven by political passions its volunteers don't find in the mainstream press, and each struggles to make the process of covering news as inclusive and empowering as possible for the community in which it exists.
Although the individual collectives have their political and cultural idiosyncrasies, they are united through their Web sites. To join the worldwide collective, a new Independent Media Center must have an online presence. This is the kernel of the experiment, the clearest expression of the movement's vision. The concerns and interests of these activist-journalists are immediately apparent on any of the local Indymedia sites. Go to the Melbourne, Australia, site, for example, for an article about aboriginal elders protesting the dumping of nuclear waste on their land; or to the Washington, D.C., site to read about the USA Patriot Act's many alleged violations of the Bill of Rights; or to the United Kingdom site for a piece titled, "New EU Constitution Threatens Free Education."
The sites all have a similar format and feature a newswire that employs a technology called open publishing. This allows a writer to post a story directly to the newswire from his or her own computer, without going through an editor. Using a simple form on the site, you merely paste in your file, click "Publish," and immediately see a link to your article appear at the top of the Web site's wire.
To Read the Entire Article
By Gal Beckerman
Columbia Journalism Review, reposted on AlterNet (September, 2003)
Who wants to be design coordinator this week?" The question comes from Nandor, a red-bearded trollish man moderating an evening meeting of New York City's all-volunteer Independent Media Center. He is composing the table of contents for the next issue of the collective's biweekly newspaper, the Indypendent.
A pair of fans swish warm air around in the low-ceilinged Manhattan loft. The thirty members of the print committee sit in a circle beneath an upside-down American flag and pass around a packet of trail mix. Someone named Jed, not present at the meeting, is finally nominated to be design coordinator, partly because no one else seems to want to do it: "What about Jed? He's unemployed, isn't he?"
The meeting lasts one hour and five minutes; Nandor clocks it on his watch. Like all things at the center, the process has been precarious, democracy teetering on the edge of anarchy. There are some rules -- people raise their hand to speak -- but the collective believes everyone should have his or her say. Tony wants to report on union labor and summer fashions. Someone else knows a columnist who has a piece to contribute "It's about the deportations, but it's really funny." Don, in his seventies and by a few decades the oldest member of the collective, has an idea for a historical piece about the Spanish-American War. "It's about how we have been misled into past wars," he says. Everything makes it in. There is no editor to say otherwise. At least not yet.
Meetings like this one, experiments in democratic media, have been taking place all over the world in increasing numbers. New York City's Independent Media Center is just one piece of the rapidly expanding Indymedia movement, a four-year-old phenomenon that grew out of the trade protests of the late 1990s, and now encompasses a constellation of about 120 local collectives from Boston to Bombay. Each collective has a diverse palette of mediums it uses, including radio, video, print, and the Internet. Each is driven by political passions its volunteers don't find in the mainstream press, and each struggles to make the process of covering news as inclusive and empowering as possible for the community in which it exists.
Although the individual collectives have their political and cultural idiosyncrasies, they are united through their Web sites. To join the worldwide collective, a new Independent Media Center must have an online presence. This is the kernel of the experiment, the clearest expression of the movement's vision. The concerns and interests of these activist-journalists are immediately apparent on any of the local Indymedia sites. Go to the Melbourne, Australia, site, for example, for an article about aboriginal elders protesting the dumping of nuclear waste on their land; or to the Washington, D.C., site to read about the USA Patriot Act's many alleged violations of the Bill of Rights; or to the United Kingdom site for a piece titled, "New EU Constitution Threatens Free Education."
The sites all have a similar format and feature a newswire that employs a technology called open publishing. This allows a writer to post a story directly to the newswire from his or her own computer, without going through an editor. Using a simple form on the site, you merely paste in your file, click "Publish," and immediately see a link to your article appear at the top of the Web site's wire.
To Read the Entire Article
Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price: A multimedia report on television newsrooms' use of material provided by PR firms on behalf of paying clients
Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed: A multimedia report on television newsrooms' use of material provided by PR firms on behalf of paying clients
Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price
Center for Media and Democracy
This report includes:
Video footage of the 36 video news releases documented in this report, plus footage showing how actual TV newscasts incorporated them and/or a related satellite media tours.
A map showing the locations of the 77 television stations throughout the United States that aired this fake news.
An itemized list of the 77 television stations that aired this fake news, by state.
Link to the Report/Videos
Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price
Center for Media and Democracy
This report includes:
Video footage of the 36 video news releases documented in this report, plus footage showing how actual TV newscasts incorporated them and/or a related satellite media tours.
A map showing the locations of the 77 television stations throughout the United States that aired this fake news.
An itemized list of the 77 television stations that aired this fake news, by state.
Link to the Report/Videos
Georgia Bill to Mandate the Development of Curriculum to Teach Bible Studies in Public Schools
Georgia is close to becoming the first state in the nation to pass a bill mandating the development of curriculum to teach bible studies in public schools.
Demand that Governor Perdue defend the Constitution and Georgia's citizens from the attack on the doctrine of separation of church and state.
To the delight of the radical religious right, the Georgia State Senate passed two pieces of legislation that pose a serious threat to the separation of church and state. One would create state-funded Bible classes in Georgia public schools. The second would allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed by county governments.
By singling out the Bible and the Ten Commandments as symbols to be promoted in the public sphere -- one in classrooms and the other in government buildings -- the government of Georgia is showing preferential treatment to a specific religion and violating the rights of its citizens. Both bills are on Governor Sonny Perdue's desk, and he is contemplating whether to signing them. That's why we need you to take action today.
The religious right will stop at nothing to push their theology in the public square or our public schools. And now, they want to use public dollars to do it!
Urge Georgia's Governor to veto these bills and protect the sanctity of our nation's Constitution and the doctrine separating church and state.
Sincerely,
Michael Lawley,
Care2
Demand that Governor Perdue defend the Constitution and Georgia's citizens from the attack on the doctrine of separation of church and state.
To the delight of the radical religious right, the Georgia State Senate passed two pieces of legislation that pose a serious threat to the separation of church and state. One would create state-funded Bible classes in Georgia public schools. The second would allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed by county governments.
By singling out the Bible and the Ten Commandments as symbols to be promoted in the public sphere -- one in classrooms and the other in government buildings -- the government of Georgia is showing preferential treatment to a specific religion and violating the rights of its citizens. Both bills are on Governor Sonny Perdue's desk, and he is contemplating whether to signing them. That's why we need you to take action today.
The religious right will stop at nothing to push their theology in the public square or our public schools. And now, they want to use public dollars to do it!
Urge Georgia's Governor to veto these bills and protect the sanctity of our nation's Constitution and the doctrine separating church and state.
Sincerely,
Michael Lawley,
Care2
Monday, April 10, 2006
Recommended Music, pt 2
Some recent music that has been making me smile... (not listed here, but possibly one of my all time favorites is a two disc mix from Ricia):
This disc seems to be the bastard love child of Funkadelic, Frank Zappa and (early) Pink Floyd ... raised on 70s AM music and new age mysticism (what you say--I know, freaky!!! and I like it)
The Wand by Flaming Lips
"(You've got the power in there)
(Waving your wand in the air)
Time after time those fanatical minds try to rule all the world
Telling us all it's them who's in charge of it all
I've got a tricked out magic stick that will make them all fall
We've got the power now, motherfuckers; that's where it belongs
You've got that right
(Power in there)
You know that it's...
(Wand in the air)
They've got their weapons to solve all their questions, they don't know what it's for
(Cause they don't know what it's for)
Why can't they see it's not power, just greed, to just want more and more?
(Just want more and more)
I got a plan and it's here in my hand but it's all made of rights
We're the enforcers, the sorcerer's orphans, and we know why we fight
(And we know why we fight)
You've got that right
(You've got the power in there)
(Waving your wand in the air)
(You've got the power in there)
(You've got the power in there)
(You've got the power in there)
(Waving your wand in the air)
You've got that right
You know that it's..."
----------------------------------------------------------
Southern woman trapped in conservative culture, absorbs style and sensibility, and spits it back with subversive, witty lyrics (some of the best I have heard in awhile)--but does it so beautifully that you really have to listen closely to realize she is attacking some cherished social ideas.
"Rise up with fists" by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
What are you changing?
Who do you think you're changing?
You can't change things.
We're all stuck in our ways.
It's like trying to clean the ocean.
What do you think, you can drain it?
Well, it was poison and dry
Long before you came.
But you can wake up younger under the knife;
And you can wake up sounder if you get analyzed.
And I'd better wake up.
There but for the grace of god go i.
It's hard to believe your prophets
When they're asking you to change things.
But with their suspect lives, we look the other way.
Are you really that pure, sir?
Thought I saw you in Vegas
It was not pretty, but she was
(not your wife)
But she will wake up wealthy,
And you will wake up forty-five.
And she will wake up with baby.
There but for the grace of god go i.
What am I fighting for?
The cops are at my front door.
I can't escape that way,
The windows are in flames.
And what's that on your ankle?
You say they're not coming for you,
But house arrest is really just the same.
(just the same)
Like when you wake up behind the bar,
Trying to remember where you are,
Having crushed all the pretty things.
There but for the grace of god go I.
But I still believe.
And I will rise up with fists.
And I will take what's mine.
(mine, mine, mine)
There but for the grace of god go i.
There but for the grace of god go i.
There but for the grace of god go i.
There but for the grace of god go i.
----------------------------------------------------
I saw this band at Lexington's The Dame on March 4th and they blew me away. Music that builds slowly and vibrates to the roots of the soul. The build up and crescendos produced orgasmic sensations in many of the more attuned audience members (it did for me).
No lyrics, but then this music says everything that is needed...
--------------------------------------------------------
... and a tip of the hat to a mellow artist speaking truth to power
Man of God by Eliza Gilkyson
the cowboy came from out of the west
with his snakeskin boots and his bulletproof vest
gang of goons and his big war chest
fortunate son he was doubly blessed
corporate cronies and the chiefs of staff
bowin' to the image of the golden calf
startin up wars in the name of god's son
gonna blow us all the way to kingdom come
man of god, man of god
that ain't the teachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the preachings of a man of god
coalition of the willing and the judgmental
patricians, politicians, and the fundamentalists
you never have to tell them how the money's spent
you never have to tell them where their freedom went
homophobes in the high command
waitin' for the rapture like it's disneyland
hide all the bodies from out of view
channel all the treasure to the chosen few
man of god, man of god
that ain't the teachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the preachings of a man of god
if I could I surely would
stand on the rock where moses stood
look out people now we're gonna get fleeced
by a wolf masquerading as a man of peace
jesus said blessed are the meek
jesus said you gotta turn the other cheek
jesus said help the poor and the weak
if he lived today he'd be a liberal freak
all the money changers would be out on the street
weepin and wailin and gnashin their teeth
me I'm waitin on the reckoning day
when the whole world gonna rise up and say
man of god, man of god
that ain't the teachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the preachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the teachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the preachings of a man of god
This disc seems to be the bastard love child of Funkadelic, Frank Zappa and (early) Pink Floyd ... raised on 70s AM music and new age mysticism (what you say--I know, freaky!!! and I like it)
The Wand by Flaming Lips
"(You've got the power in there)
(Waving your wand in the air)
Time after time those fanatical minds try to rule all the world
Telling us all it's them who's in charge of it all
I've got a tricked out magic stick that will make them all fall
We've got the power now, motherfuckers; that's where it belongs
You've got that right
(Power in there)
You know that it's...
(Wand in the air)
They've got their weapons to solve all their questions, they don't know what it's for
(Cause they don't know what it's for)
Why can't they see it's not power, just greed, to just want more and more?
(Just want more and more)
I got a plan and it's here in my hand but it's all made of rights
We're the enforcers, the sorcerer's orphans, and we know why we fight
(And we know why we fight)
You've got that right
(You've got the power in there)
(Waving your wand in the air)
(You've got the power in there)
(You've got the power in there)
(You've got the power in there)
(Waving your wand in the air)
You've got that right
You know that it's..."
----------------------------------------------------------
Southern woman trapped in conservative culture, absorbs style and sensibility, and spits it back with subversive, witty lyrics (some of the best I have heard in awhile)--but does it so beautifully that you really have to listen closely to realize she is attacking some cherished social ideas.
"Rise up with fists" by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
What are you changing?
Who do you think you're changing?
You can't change things.
We're all stuck in our ways.
It's like trying to clean the ocean.
What do you think, you can drain it?
Well, it was poison and dry
Long before you came.
But you can wake up younger under the knife;
And you can wake up sounder if you get analyzed.
And I'd better wake up.
There but for the grace of god go i.
It's hard to believe your prophets
When they're asking you to change things.
But with their suspect lives, we look the other way.
Are you really that pure, sir?
Thought I saw you in Vegas
It was not pretty, but she was
(not your wife)
But she will wake up wealthy,
And you will wake up forty-five.
And she will wake up with baby.
There but for the grace of god go i.
What am I fighting for?
The cops are at my front door.
I can't escape that way,
The windows are in flames.
And what's that on your ankle?
You say they're not coming for you,
But house arrest is really just the same.
(just the same)
Like when you wake up behind the bar,
Trying to remember where you are,
Having crushed all the pretty things.
There but for the grace of god go I.
But I still believe.
And I will rise up with fists.
And I will take what's mine.
(mine, mine, mine)
There but for the grace of god go i.
There but for the grace of god go i.
There but for the grace of god go i.
There but for the grace of god go i.
----------------------------------------------------
I saw this band at Lexington's The Dame on March 4th and they blew me away. Music that builds slowly and vibrates to the roots of the soul. The build up and crescendos produced orgasmic sensations in many of the more attuned audience members (it did for me).
No lyrics, but then this music says everything that is needed...
--------------------------------------------------------
... and a tip of the hat to a mellow artist speaking truth to power
Man of God by Eliza Gilkyson
the cowboy came from out of the west
with his snakeskin boots and his bulletproof vest
gang of goons and his big war chest
fortunate son he was doubly blessed
corporate cronies and the chiefs of staff
bowin' to the image of the golden calf
startin up wars in the name of god's son
gonna blow us all the way to kingdom come
man of god, man of god
that ain't the teachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the preachings of a man of god
coalition of the willing and the judgmental
patricians, politicians, and the fundamentalists
you never have to tell them how the money's spent
you never have to tell them where their freedom went
homophobes in the high command
waitin' for the rapture like it's disneyland
hide all the bodies from out of view
channel all the treasure to the chosen few
man of god, man of god
that ain't the teachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the preachings of a man of god
if I could I surely would
stand on the rock where moses stood
look out people now we're gonna get fleeced
by a wolf masquerading as a man of peace
jesus said blessed are the meek
jesus said you gotta turn the other cheek
jesus said help the poor and the weak
if he lived today he'd be a liberal freak
all the money changers would be out on the street
weepin and wailin and gnashin their teeth
me I'm waitin on the reckoning day
when the whole world gonna rise up and say
man of god, man of god
that ain't the teachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the preachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the teachings of a man of god
man of god, man of god
that ain't the preachings of a man of god
Indian Dam Protest
(Posted for VA)
P l e a s e c i r c u l a t e w i d e l y ... here is a site where you may send a free fax to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to save 35,000 families from submergence without rehabilitation in the coming monsoon by STOPPING the SSP dam from going up to 121 m as passed by the Narmada Control Authority in March.
For full text of letter and to SIGN
P l e a s e c i r c u l a t e w i d e l y ... here is a site where you may send a free fax to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to save 35,000 families from submergence without rehabilitation in the coming monsoon by STOPPING the SSP dam from going up to 121 m as passed by the Narmada Control Authority in March.
For full text of letter and to SIGN
PostSecret
An online, confessional, anonymous postcard art site:
PostSecret
Info and Caveat about Mailing In Your Secrets
Women and Theatre Program’s Feminist Pedagogy Work Group: CFP, Deadline May 15, 2006
Women and Theatre Program’s Feminist Pedagogy Work Group
Call For Participants
Deadline for Submissions: May 15, 2006
The discourse of feminist pedagogy has made significant contributions to transforming academic structures and influencing individuals who teach drama, theatre and performance. More than merely sharing personal stories, putting our chairs in a circle and critiquing the canon, feminist pedagogy in the theatre calls for us to use our art to reflect upon and act upon our identities and communities to make real social change. By constructing community, creating transnational spaces, engaging global perspectives, can we change institutions? Have we discovered productive ways of troubling disciplinary boundaries? Can we bring together both university and our surrounding communities to escape from the ivory tower? How have we shifted paradigms of teaching through digital technology? In what ways do we engage dialogue and difference beyond gender to allow for deep, embodied and passionate learning? How does feminist teaching guide our day to day interactions with students, shape our politics, our world view and nourish our spiritual lives? But when do we dangerously destabilize our own assumptions and identities? How do we stay open and willing to engage? When do we need to create our own boundaries? What makes us vulnerable within our own institutions? How can we support and acknowledge our own context specific work within disparate communities of practice? What resources, networks, and support systems do we need to create within the Women and Theatre Program to mentor and nurture ourselves?
Applicants to this work group may be graduate students, junior faculty or established scholars from any discipline that utilizes theatre and/or performance to actualize a feminist pedagogy. You are invited to submit a 500 word assignment or position paper that articulates a particular problem or discovery that relates to your teaching. We are particularly interested in teaching issues that pose critical questions and theorize feminist pedagogies in theatre. Once applicants have been accepted to the workgroup, they will be placed in affinity groups based on similar themes and questions. Participants will have the opportunity to read the work of other participants prior to the conference, have the option of corresponding over email, and will be encouraged to read such works as hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, Donkin and Clement’s Upstaging Big Daddy, Fisher’s No Angel in the Classroom, Dolan’s Geographies of Learning, Stucy and Wimmer’s Teaching Performance Studies, and Macdonald and Sanchez-Casal’s Twenty-first Century Femnist Classrooms. On August 1st from 12:30-3:30 (the first session of the wtp conference) the work group will convene and a moderator will be designated for each affinity group. After individual affinity group meetings, participants will have a time period to share themes and insights with each other and other attendees at WTP, giving us a broad overview of our work as feminist teachers in theatre/performance.
The themes explored will depend on the applicants, but below are possibilities to consider:
Models of Collaboration: assignments for group learning, techniques for creating classroom community, team-teaching practices, collective creation and devising performances
Embodied Practices: bridging body and mind, challenging acting and performance practices, reading history through the body, theorizing through the body, engaging technology through the body
Activist Dramaturgies: taking feminist teaching into production seasons and engaging and listening to audiences
Bridging Communities: exploring interdisciplinary identity crises, service learning serving feminist activism, distance learning and building communities through technology, and the role of theatre/performance in Women’s Studies programs
Shifting Paradigms: integrating technology, rethinking structures of time and space, re-evaluating what counts as learning, creating transnational spaces and global perspectives
Confronting Power: performing and embracing authority, dealing with student resistance, critiquing hierarchies, exploring the dynamics of power, locating and confronting privilege, moving from engaged dialogue to strategic action
Deadline for Submissions: May 15, 2006
Notification Date: June 15, 2006
Work Group Meeting Time: August 1, 2006 12:30-3:30
The 26th Annual Women and Theatre Program Conference will be co-sponsored by: Columbia College Chicago, Department of Art & Design and the Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media. This conference takes place August 1-2, 2006 (a pre-conference before the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference) and will be held at Columbia College, Chicago. The 26th Annual Women and Theatre Program Conference will focus on active feminist responses to geopolitical realities that shape our artistic and academic work, “Displacements :: Genealogies, Generations and Geopolitics.” Confirmed Guests Artists for the conference include: About Face Theatre Company, Teatro Luna, and Karen Finley (a performance co-sponsored by Performance Studies and LGBT through an ATHE Focus Group Grant). For more information about the Women and Theatre Pre-conference
For the Feminist Pedagogy Work Group, all inquiries and Position Papers should be sent to the Co-Chairs, preferably via email:
Ann Elizabeth Armstrong
Center for Performing Arts, Room 131
Department of Theatre
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
mailto:Armstra2@muohio.edu
Kathleen Juhl
Dept. of Theatre
Southwestern University
P.O. Box 770
Georgetown, Texas 78627
mailto:juhlk@southwestern.edu
Call For Participants
Deadline for Submissions: May 15, 2006
Feminist pedagogy is . . . teaching that engages students in political discussion of gender and justice. Berenice Malka Fisher
The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. bell hooks
The discourse of feminist pedagogy has made significant contributions to transforming academic structures and influencing individuals who teach drama, theatre and performance. More than merely sharing personal stories, putting our chairs in a circle and critiquing the canon, feminist pedagogy in the theatre calls for us to use our art to reflect upon and act upon our identities and communities to make real social change. By constructing community, creating transnational spaces, engaging global perspectives, can we change institutions? Have we discovered productive ways of troubling disciplinary boundaries? Can we bring together both university and our surrounding communities to escape from the ivory tower? How have we shifted paradigms of teaching through digital technology? In what ways do we engage dialogue and difference beyond gender to allow for deep, embodied and passionate learning? How does feminist teaching guide our day to day interactions with students, shape our politics, our world view and nourish our spiritual lives? But when do we dangerously destabilize our own assumptions and identities? How do we stay open and willing to engage? When do we need to create our own boundaries? What makes us vulnerable within our own institutions? How can we support and acknowledge our own context specific work within disparate communities of practice? What resources, networks, and support systems do we need to create within the Women and Theatre Program to mentor and nurture ourselves?
Applicants to this work group may be graduate students, junior faculty or established scholars from any discipline that utilizes theatre and/or performance to actualize a feminist pedagogy. You are invited to submit a 500 word assignment or position paper that articulates a particular problem or discovery that relates to your teaching. We are particularly interested in teaching issues that pose critical questions and theorize feminist pedagogies in theatre. Once applicants have been accepted to the workgroup, they will be placed in affinity groups based on similar themes and questions. Participants will have the opportunity to read the work of other participants prior to the conference, have the option of corresponding over email, and will be encouraged to read such works as hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, Donkin and Clement’s Upstaging Big Daddy, Fisher’s No Angel in the Classroom, Dolan’s Geographies of Learning, Stucy and Wimmer’s Teaching Performance Studies, and Macdonald and Sanchez-Casal’s Twenty-first Century Femnist Classrooms. On August 1st from 12:30-3:30 (the first session of the wtp conference) the work group will convene and a moderator will be designated for each affinity group. After individual affinity group meetings, participants will have a time period to share themes and insights with each other and other attendees at WTP, giving us a broad overview of our work as feminist teachers in theatre/performance.
The themes explored will depend on the applicants, but below are possibilities to consider:
Models of Collaboration: assignments for group learning, techniques for creating classroom community, team-teaching practices, collective creation and devising performances
Embodied Practices: bridging body and mind, challenging acting and performance practices, reading history through the body, theorizing through the body, engaging technology through the body
Activist Dramaturgies: taking feminist teaching into production seasons and engaging and listening to audiences
Bridging Communities: exploring interdisciplinary identity crises, service learning serving feminist activism, distance learning and building communities through technology, and the role of theatre/performance in Women’s Studies programs
Shifting Paradigms: integrating technology, rethinking structures of time and space, re-evaluating what counts as learning, creating transnational spaces and global perspectives
Confronting Power: performing and embracing authority, dealing with student resistance, critiquing hierarchies, exploring the dynamics of power, locating and confronting privilege, moving from engaged dialogue to strategic action
Deadline for Submissions: May 15, 2006
Notification Date: June 15, 2006
Work Group Meeting Time: August 1, 2006 12:30-3:30
The 26th Annual Women and Theatre Program Conference will be co-sponsored by: Columbia College Chicago, Department of Art & Design and the Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media. This conference takes place August 1-2, 2006 (a pre-conference before the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference) and will be held at Columbia College, Chicago. The 26th Annual Women and Theatre Program Conference will focus on active feminist responses to geopolitical realities that shape our artistic and academic work, “Displacements :: Genealogies, Generations and Geopolitics.” Confirmed Guests Artists for the conference include: About Face Theatre Company, Teatro Luna, and Karen Finley (a performance co-sponsored by Performance Studies and LGBT through an ATHE Focus Group Grant). For more information about the Women and Theatre Pre-conference
For the Feminist Pedagogy Work Group, all inquiries and Position Papers should be sent to the Co-Chairs, preferably via email:
Ann Elizabeth Armstrong
Center for Performing Arts, Room 131
Department of Theatre
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
mailto:Armstra2@muohio.edu
Kathleen Juhl
Dept. of Theatre
Southwestern University
P.O. Box 770
Georgetown, Texas 78627
mailto:juhlk@southwestern.edu
Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature: Thematic Summaries of Recent Historical Books
Want to catch up on the latest history books? Blackwell's journal the Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature has posted a free access issue that includes these thematic summaries of recent historical books:
I Ancient History
D.R Nightingale
II Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (300–900)
P. S. Barnwell
III The Central Middle Ages (900–1200)
C.P Lewis, Sarah Hamilton
IV Later Middle Ages (1200–1500)
Stephen Rigby, D.M. Webb
V Sixteenth Century
Peter Fleming, Stephen Bowd
VI Seventeenth Century
Martyn Bennett, Andrew Spicer
VII Eighteenth Century
Rosemary Sweet, Malcolm Crook
VIII Nineteenth Century
Andrew Croll, Tim Crumplin, Julie–Marie Strange, Roger Price, Ian Farr
IX Twentieth Century
Keith Laybourn, Peter Davies
X Africa
Paul Nugent
XI The Americas
Alan Day, Frank Cogliano, Robert Mason, Jonathan Vance, Rebecca Earle, Kenneth Morgan
XII Middle East, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands
Siobhan Lambert-hurley, Paul Bailey, James Grayson, Duncan Waterson, Peter Lineham
Chapter XIIa China, Japan and Korea
To Access the Issue
I Ancient History
D.R Nightingale
II Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (300–900)
P. S. Barnwell
III The Central Middle Ages (900–1200)
C.P Lewis, Sarah Hamilton
IV Later Middle Ages (1200–1500)
Stephen Rigby, D.M. Webb
V Sixteenth Century
Peter Fleming, Stephen Bowd
VI Seventeenth Century
Martyn Bennett, Andrew Spicer
VII Eighteenth Century
Rosemary Sweet, Malcolm Crook
VIII Nineteenth Century
Andrew Croll, Tim Crumplin, Julie–Marie Strange, Roger Price, Ian Farr
IX Twentieth Century
Keith Laybourn, Peter Davies
X Africa
Paul Nugent
XI The Americas
Alan Day, Frank Cogliano, Robert Mason, Jonathan Vance, Rebecca Earle, Kenneth Morgan
XII Middle East, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands
Siobhan Lambert-hurley, Paul Bailey, James Grayson, Duncan Waterson, Peter Lineham
Chapter XIIa China, Japan and Korea
To Access the Issue
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Evan Derkazc: What do orgasms and TV news have in common?
What do orgasms and TV news have in common?
by Evan Derkacz
AlterNet
They've been faking it.
Clear Channel, News Corp./Fox Television, Viacom/CBS Corp, Tribune Co. and Sinclair Broadcast Group, among others, have all aired Video News Releases (VNR), corporate sponsored ads masquerading as news, according a report from the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Free Press.
I feel so cheated, so used, so so so... betrayed. According to Tim Karr nearly half of the American public is reached by the stations implicated in the report and:
Despite repeated claims from broadcasters that they do not air VNRs as news, the new report reveals just the tip of the iceberg. Instances of fake TV news documented by CMD likely represent less than 1 percent of VNRs distributed to local newsrooms since June 2005. Fraudulent news reports have likely been aired on hundreds of more local newscasts in the past year.
The examples, like the one below would be comical but for the fact that it isn't a far cry from accepting this kind of deception from accepting, uncritically, the words of those in power. And speaking of the damage corporate journalism wreaks on the American public, according to Karr, the report "draw[s] a clear line between media consolidation and the broadcast of deceptive, pre-packaged propaganda. When all station owners care about is the bottom line, fake news can prove irresistible."
Read the Entire Report and See The Fake News Videos
by Evan Derkacz
AlterNet
They've been faking it.
Clear Channel, News Corp./Fox Television, Viacom/CBS Corp, Tribune Co. and Sinclair Broadcast Group, among others, have all aired Video News Releases (VNR), corporate sponsored ads masquerading as news, according a report from the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Free Press.
I feel so cheated, so used, so so so... betrayed. According to Tim Karr nearly half of the American public is reached by the stations implicated in the report and:
Despite repeated claims from broadcasters that they do not air VNRs as news, the new report reveals just the tip of the iceberg. Instances of fake TV news documented by CMD likely represent less than 1 percent of VNRs distributed to local newsrooms since June 2005. Fraudulent news reports have likely been aired on hundreds of more local newscasts in the past year.
The examples, like the one below would be comical but for the fact that it isn't a far cry from accepting this kind of deception from accepting, uncritically, the words of those in power. And speaking of the damage corporate journalism wreaks on the American public, according to Karr, the report "draw[s] a clear line between media consolidation and the broadcast of deceptive, pre-packaged propaganda. When all station owners care about is the bottom line, fake news can prove irresistible."
Read the Entire Report and See The Fake News Videos
Downtown Neighborhood Associations: Local Lexington Political Forums
(Courtesy of Jim Fenton)
If you have an interest in the upcoming city elections, a coalition of Downtown Neighborhood Associations is hosting a series of forums to meet candidates and ask questions.
Forum for 1st District
Tues 4/11/06 at 7:00 - 9:00
The Rock/La Roca Church, 1015 North Limestone
Host - Castlewood Neighborhood Association
Forum for Councillor At Large
(April) 4/17/06 (Mon) - 7:00 - 9:00
Sayre School, 194 N. Limestone Street
Host - Georgetown Neighborhood Association
Forum for Mayor
(April) 4/26/06 (Wed) - 7:00 - 9:00
Sayre School, 194 N. Limestone Street
Host - Georgetown Neighborhood Association
Forum for Judges and Attorneys
(April) 4/18/06 (Tue) - 7:00 - 9:00
Transylvania University, 300 N. Broadway
Rosenthal Commons - 4th and Broadway
Host - North Side Neighborhood Association
Information about the Sponsoring Organizations:
Central Sector Neighborhood Coalition intends to address the concerns of neighbors within central sector boundaries as defined by our police officers. The Central Sector includes much of Lexington's north and northeast sides. Our neighborhood associations have begun collaborating with each other, with support from Central Sector police, to make progress faster on the opportunities and problems we all face. We are stronger together.
Currently eight neighborhood associations and one non-profit organization within the Central Sector are taking part in the Coalition. These include:
1. Georgetown Street Neighborhood Association
2. Martin Luther King Neighborhood Association
3. Meadows-Loudon Neighborhood Association
4. North Limestone Street Neighborhood Association
5. North Upper Street Neighborhood Association
6. Northside Neighborhood Association
7. Castlewood Neighborhood Association
8. Aylesford Neighborhood Association
9. North East Lexington Initiative (NELI)
If you have an interest in the upcoming city elections, a coalition of Downtown Neighborhood Associations is hosting a series of forums to meet candidates and ask questions.
Forum for 1st District
Tues 4/11/06 at 7:00 - 9:00
The Rock/La Roca Church, 1015 North Limestone
Host - Castlewood Neighborhood Association
Forum for Councillor At Large
(April) 4/17/06 (Mon) - 7:00 - 9:00
Sayre School, 194 N. Limestone Street
Host - Georgetown Neighborhood Association
Forum for Mayor
(April) 4/26/06 (Wed) - 7:00 - 9:00
Sayre School, 194 N. Limestone Street
Host - Georgetown Neighborhood Association
Forum for Judges and Attorneys
(April) 4/18/06 (Tue) - 7:00 - 9:00
Transylvania University, 300 N. Broadway
Rosenthal Commons - 4th and Broadway
Host - North Side Neighborhood Association
Information about the Sponsoring Organizations:
Central Sector Neighborhood Coalition intends to address the concerns of neighbors within central sector boundaries as defined by our police officers. The Central Sector includes much of Lexington's north and northeast sides. Our neighborhood associations have begun collaborating with each other, with support from Central Sector police, to make progress faster on the opportunities and problems we all face. We are stronger together.
Currently eight neighborhood associations and one non-profit organization within the Central Sector are taking part in the Coalition. These include:
1. Georgetown Street Neighborhood Association
2. Martin Luther King Neighborhood Association
3. Meadows-Loudon Neighborhood Association
4. North Limestone Street Neighborhood Association
5. North Upper Street Neighborhood Association
6. Northside Neighborhood Association
7. Castlewood Neighborhood Association
8. Aylesford Neighborhood Association
9. North East Lexington Initiative (NELI)
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Peter Phillips, Caitlin Lampert, and Ned Patterson: California Television Stations Caught in Fake News Study
California Television Stations Caught in Fake News Study
By Peter Phillips, Caitlin Lampert, and Ned Patterson
Project Censored
Channel 40 news in Sacramento and Santa Barbara KEYT-3 channel 5 both aired fake news stories according to a recent study from PR Watch.
Fox news Channel 40 in Sacramento aired a news story on June 10, 2005 about a new dental technique that would check saliva samples to determine possible diseases. The story was aired as Fox news, but was actually a video news release made MultiVu, a PR Newswire Company, who were paid by the American Dental Association. Fox news repackaged the video by replacing the voice from MultiVu and using the same images to present their story without telling their audience that the source was from a pre-packaged video news release (VNR) paid for by the American Dental Association.
A report by the Center for Media Democracy (PR Watch) was released April 6, 2006. The study was compiled by Diane Faresetta and Daniel Price over ten months in 2005. The research shows how fake news stories are making their way into the American mainstream corporate news programs. Fake news stories, VNRs, are created by public relations firms on behalf of corporate clients and released to news sources for broadcast.
Traditional journalism ethics have always demanded that reporters cite their sources and give objective honest accounts of news stories. The American public tends to believe news on television as unbiased, balanced and accurate.
Santa Barbara KEYT-3 channel 5 news, airs high tech stories by Robin Raskin, former editor of Family PC Magazine. Raskin does on-going news updates about personal computers and new technologies without telling the audience that she is being paid by Panasonic, Namco, and Techno Sources.
Similarly KOKH-25 in Okalahoma City shares stories on the latest technology advancements. On January 3, 2006 KOKH aired a feature story on the latest advancements in internet cable television. The technology featured in the report was limited to the Viiv media network platform from Intel. The entire story was taken from a VNR video created by D S Simon Productions and funded by Intel.
In Shreveport, LA, KSLA -12, channel 7 aired a two minute unedited VNR that discussed the vast changes in auto sales since General Motors launched the first online sales web site in 1996. Unfortunately, General Motors was not the first to have an automobile web site. The news reporters did not conduct independent research to fact check GM' claims.
According to PR Watch "the number of media formats and outlets has exploded in recent years, television remains the dominant news source in the United States. More than three-quarters of U.S. adults rely on local TV news, and more than 70 percent turn to network TV or cable news on a daily or near-daily basis, according to a January 2006 Harris Poll. The quality and integrity of television reporting thus significantly impacts the public's ability to evaluate everything from consumer products to medical services to government policies."
VNR use is widespread. Pr Watch found 69 TV stations that aired at least one VNR from June 2005 to March 2006 covering over half the population in the US.
To Access the Report
Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored a media research organization, Caitlin Lampert is an undergraduate sociology major at SSU and Ned Patterson is a graduating senior in sociology.
By Peter Phillips, Caitlin Lampert, and Ned Patterson
Project Censored
Channel 40 news in Sacramento and Santa Barbara KEYT-3 channel 5 both aired fake news stories according to a recent study from PR Watch.
Fox news Channel 40 in Sacramento aired a news story on June 10, 2005 about a new dental technique that would check saliva samples to determine possible diseases. The story was aired as Fox news, but was actually a video news release made MultiVu, a PR Newswire Company, who were paid by the American Dental Association. Fox news repackaged the video by replacing the voice from MultiVu and using the same images to present their story without telling their audience that the source was from a pre-packaged video news release (VNR) paid for by the American Dental Association.
A report by the Center for Media Democracy (PR Watch) was released April 6, 2006. The study was compiled by Diane Faresetta and Daniel Price over ten months in 2005. The research shows how fake news stories are making their way into the American mainstream corporate news programs. Fake news stories, VNRs, are created by public relations firms on behalf of corporate clients and released to news sources for broadcast.
Traditional journalism ethics have always demanded that reporters cite their sources and give objective honest accounts of news stories. The American public tends to believe news on television as unbiased, balanced and accurate.
Santa Barbara KEYT-3 channel 5 news, airs high tech stories by Robin Raskin, former editor of Family PC Magazine. Raskin does on-going news updates about personal computers and new technologies without telling the audience that she is being paid by Panasonic, Namco, and Techno Sources.
Similarly KOKH-25 in Okalahoma City shares stories on the latest technology advancements. On January 3, 2006 KOKH aired a feature story on the latest advancements in internet cable television. The technology featured in the report was limited to the Viiv media network platform from Intel. The entire story was taken from a VNR video created by D S Simon Productions and funded by Intel.
In Shreveport, LA, KSLA -12, channel 7 aired a two minute unedited VNR that discussed the vast changes in auto sales since General Motors launched the first online sales web site in 1996. Unfortunately, General Motors was not the first to have an automobile web site. The news reporters did not conduct independent research to fact check GM' claims.
According to PR Watch "the number of media formats and outlets has exploded in recent years, television remains the dominant news source in the United States. More than three-quarters of U.S. adults rely on local TV news, and more than 70 percent turn to network TV or cable news on a daily or near-daily basis, according to a January 2006 Harris Poll. The quality and integrity of television reporting thus significantly impacts the public's ability to evaluate everything from consumer products to medical services to government policies."
VNR use is widespread. Pr Watch found 69 TV stations that aired at least one VNR from June 2005 to March 2006 covering over half the population in the US.
To Access the Report
Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored a media research organization, Caitlin Lampert is an undergraduate sociology major at SSU and Ned Patterson is a graduating senior in sociology.
61-year-old commercial real estate broker, Harry Taylor: “I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington.”
North Carolina man tells Bush certain simple truths
By David Walsh
World Socialist Web Site
Excerpt:
The speech was idiotic and unconvincing by any objective standard. Unhappily, most of the audience, seemed to eat it up. And the questions from the audience were predominantly friendly, and in some cases, fawning (“And I wanted to say to you, Mr. President, that on the war on terror, Social Security, the tax cuts, Dubai Ports, immigration, you have shown immense political courage. And I really think that you will be vindicated on all of those positions, as Ronald Reagan was, for example. And also I wanted to know what else would it take for me to get my picture taken with you?”)
Finally, Harry Taylor, seated in the balcony, was called on. He spoke slowly and soberly. “You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that,” he told Bush. “But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are—”
Bush interrupted him, facetiously, “I’m not your favorite guy. Go ahead. Go on, what’s your question?”
Taylor continued, “Okay, I don’t have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I—in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and—”
Some in the audience booed. Bush intervened, benevolently, “No, wait a sec—let him speak.”
Taylor went on, in the same deliberate fashion, “And I would hope—I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself.”
Of course, Bush was incapable of responding to Taylor’s comments. His critic’s moral appeal fell on entirely deaf ears. The president never seriously replied to the final comment. How could he, this coward and sadist, without a hint of self-knowledge?
Remarkably, in his answer, Bush did not deny any of Taylor’s charges, which, after all, were quite serious, that the administration had arrogated to itself the right to tap its citizens’ telephones, arrest and hold them without charges, prevent them from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food, and, if they were women, restrict their reproductive choices.
One would have thought that a political leader, facing such a list of accusations, would have responded with a firm and detailed denial, indicating how misguided or malicious his critic truly was. Nothing of the kind. On the one hand, Bush has no doubt been coached, in these days of disastrously slipping poll numbers, to pretend to encourage a “give-and-take” and exhibit grace under fire (he hardly has a choice, since he is so widely despised). On the other, the charges are all true and the president does not have the intellectual means with which to come up with convincing impromptu answers.
So Bush witlessly responded, “I’m going to start off with what you first said, if you don’t mind, you said that I tap your phones—I think that’s what you said. You tapped your phone—I tapped your phones.”
Now, if you “start off” with a response to one point, presumably you will later go on to answer the others your critic has raised. Bush did no such thing. He went off on a rambling defense of his illegal wiretapping program, claiming that he had been assured that he had a constitutional right to authorize such actions and concluded with a demagogic, “But you said, would I apologize for that? The answer—answer is, absolutely not.” Of course Taylor had not asked him to apologize, he had merely expressed the hope that the president had the “the humility and the grace” to be ashamed of himself “inside” himself.
The American media responded with wonderment to Taylor’s comments. Incapable themselves of summoning up the courage once to confront the president about leading the country into a disastrous war on entirely false pretenses (no one, for example, has ever said to him at a press conference, “Mr. President, first of all, the facts show that you are a thoroughgoing liar ...”), US reporters termed Taylor’s “scolding” of Bush an “extraordinary encounter.” It is only extraordinary because of the overall unreality of American political life, which has been entirely ritualized. When a genuinely spontaneous moment occurs, when for one instant real public opinion surfaces, the only response is amazement, and hostility.
Asked after the event about Bush’s (non-)response, Taylor commented, “I didn’t care about his response. I wanted to say what I wanted to say and I wanted him to know that despite being in a room with a thousand people who love him ... there are plenty of people who don’t agree with him in any way, shape or form.”
Link to the Entire Article
By David Walsh
World Socialist Web Site
Excerpt:
The speech was idiotic and unconvincing by any objective standard. Unhappily, most of the audience, seemed to eat it up. And the questions from the audience were predominantly friendly, and in some cases, fawning (“And I wanted to say to you, Mr. President, that on the war on terror, Social Security, the tax cuts, Dubai Ports, immigration, you have shown immense political courage. And I really think that you will be vindicated on all of those positions, as Ronald Reagan was, for example. And also I wanted to know what else would it take for me to get my picture taken with you?”)
Finally, Harry Taylor, seated in the balcony, was called on. He spoke slowly and soberly. “You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that,” he told Bush. “But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are—”
Bush interrupted him, facetiously, “I’m not your favorite guy. Go ahead. Go on, what’s your question?”
Taylor continued, “Okay, I don’t have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I—in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and—”
Some in the audience booed. Bush intervened, benevolently, “No, wait a sec—let him speak.”
Taylor went on, in the same deliberate fashion, “And I would hope—I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself.”
Of course, Bush was incapable of responding to Taylor’s comments. His critic’s moral appeal fell on entirely deaf ears. The president never seriously replied to the final comment. How could he, this coward and sadist, without a hint of self-knowledge?
Remarkably, in his answer, Bush did not deny any of Taylor’s charges, which, after all, were quite serious, that the administration had arrogated to itself the right to tap its citizens’ telephones, arrest and hold them without charges, prevent them from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food, and, if they were women, restrict their reproductive choices.
One would have thought that a political leader, facing such a list of accusations, would have responded with a firm and detailed denial, indicating how misguided or malicious his critic truly was. Nothing of the kind. On the one hand, Bush has no doubt been coached, in these days of disastrously slipping poll numbers, to pretend to encourage a “give-and-take” and exhibit grace under fire (he hardly has a choice, since he is so widely despised). On the other, the charges are all true and the president does not have the intellectual means with which to come up with convincing impromptu answers.
So Bush witlessly responded, “I’m going to start off with what you first said, if you don’t mind, you said that I tap your phones—I think that’s what you said. You tapped your phone—I tapped your phones.”
Now, if you “start off” with a response to one point, presumably you will later go on to answer the others your critic has raised. Bush did no such thing. He went off on a rambling defense of his illegal wiretapping program, claiming that he had been assured that he had a constitutional right to authorize such actions and concluded with a demagogic, “But you said, would I apologize for that? The answer—answer is, absolutely not.” Of course Taylor had not asked him to apologize, he had merely expressed the hope that the president had the “the humility and the grace” to be ashamed of himself “inside” himself.
The American media responded with wonderment to Taylor’s comments. Incapable themselves of summoning up the courage once to confront the president about leading the country into a disastrous war on entirely false pretenses (no one, for example, has ever said to him at a press conference, “Mr. President, first of all, the facts show that you are a thoroughgoing liar ...”), US reporters termed Taylor’s “scolding” of Bush an “extraordinary encounter.” It is only extraordinary because of the overall unreality of American political life, which has been entirely ritualized. When a genuinely spontaneous moment occurs, when for one instant real public opinion surfaces, the only response is amazement, and hostility.
Asked after the event about Bush’s (non-)response, Taylor commented, “I didn’t care about his response. I wanted to say what I wanted to say and I wanted him to know that despite being in a room with a thousand people who love him ... there are plenty of people who don’t agree with him in any way, shape or form.”
Link to the Entire Article
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Democracy Now: Military Tribunals Resume at Guantanamo Despite Pending Supreme Court Case on Legality of Hearings
Military Tribunals Resume at Guantanamo Despite Pending Supreme Court Case on Legality of Hearings
Democracy Now
Host: Amy Goodman
Special Guest: Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. In January, he traveled to Guantanamo Bay to observe some of the proceedings before the military tribunals. He has also been closely monitoring the Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and authored a friend of the court brief in the case.
Excerpt:
We turn to the U.S. military prison at the Guantanamo Bay where a Canadian teenager and nine other detainees are appearing before a military tribunal this week even though the legality of the pre-trial hearings remains in doubt. Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that will decide whether the government can legally use military commissions to try detainees.
Although the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the case, the military is going ahead with the pre-trial hearings.
One of the detainees appearing before the tribunal today is the Canadian-born Omar Khadr. U.S. forces detained him four years ago in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.
Human rights lawyers say Omar is the first person in modern world history to face a military commission for alleged crimes committed as a child. He is accused of killing U.S. special forces soldier Christopher Speer with a grenade during a firefight near the village of Khost, Afghanistan in July 2002.
Earlier this week Khadr's attorney challenged the fairness of the proceedings. Over the past few months the attorney, U.S. Marine Lt. Col Colby Vokey, has only been allowed to talk to his client for two hours and he has been unable to see all of the evidence against the teenager. Khadr's legal team is expected to file a motion to halt the tribunal proceedings, arguing that the hearing's presiding officer does not have the power to put the Canadian on trial.
Similar complaints have been expressed by other attorneys representing detainees before the military tribunal.
To Listen/Watch/Read the Report
Democracy Now
Host: Amy Goodman
Special Guest: Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. In January, he traveled to Guantanamo Bay to observe some of the proceedings before the military tribunals. He has also been closely monitoring the Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and authored a friend of the court brief in the case.
Excerpt:
We turn to the U.S. military prison at the Guantanamo Bay where a Canadian teenager and nine other detainees are appearing before a military tribunal this week even though the legality of the pre-trial hearings remains in doubt. Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that will decide whether the government can legally use military commissions to try detainees.
Although the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the case, the military is going ahead with the pre-trial hearings.
One of the detainees appearing before the tribunal today is the Canadian-born Omar Khadr. U.S. forces detained him four years ago in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.
Human rights lawyers say Omar is the first person in modern world history to face a military commission for alleged crimes committed as a child. He is accused of killing U.S. special forces soldier Christopher Speer with a grenade during a firefight near the village of Khost, Afghanistan in July 2002.
Earlier this week Khadr's attorney challenged the fairness of the proceedings. Over the past few months the attorney, U.S. Marine Lt. Col Colby Vokey, has only been allowed to talk to his client for two hours and he has been unable to see all of the evidence against the teenager. Khadr's legal team is expected to file a motion to halt the tribunal proceedings, arguing that the hearing's presiding officer does not have the power to put the Canadian on trial.
Similar complaints have been expressed by other attorneys representing detainees before the military tribunal.
To Listen/Watch/Read the Report
ACLU Report: FBI Spy Files
Is the FBI Spying on You?
The ACLU has launched a nationwide effort to expose and prevent FBI spying on people and groups simply for speaking out or practicing their faith. As a first step, the ACLU and its affiliates have filed Freedom of Information Act requests in more than a dozen states. Although the FBI has refused to turn over most of the files, we have obtained evidence (pdf) that confirms the FBI and local police, working through Joint Terrorism Task Forces, are spying on political, environmental, anti-war and faith-based groups. We think the public deserves to know who is being investigated and why. We have sued (pdf) the FBI and the Department of Justice to get those answers.
Our clients comprise advocates for causes including the environment, animal rights, labor, religion, Native American rights, fair trade, grassroots politics, peace, social justice, nuclear disarmament, human rights and civil liberties. When the FBI invades the privacy of political and religious groups in the name of fighting terrorism, it abuses our trust and freedom.
To go to the website
The ACLU has launched a nationwide effort to expose and prevent FBI spying on people and groups simply for speaking out or practicing their faith. As a first step, the ACLU and its affiliates have filed Freedom of Information Act requests in more than a dozen states. Although the FBI has refused to turn over most of the files, we have obtained evidence (pdf) that confirms the FBI and local police, working through Joint Terrorism Task Forces, are spying on political, environmental, anti-war and faith-based groups. We think the public deserves to know who is being investigated and why. We have sued (pdf) the FBI and the Department of Justice to get those answers.
Our clients comprise advocates for causes including the environment, animal rights, labor, religion, Native American rights, fair trade, grassroots politics, peace, social justice, nuclear disarmament, human rights and civil liberties. When the FBI invades the privacy of political and religious groups in the name of fighting terrorism, it abuses our trust and freedom.
To go to the website
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Jessica Valenti: A Good Job is Hard to Find
A Good Job Is Hard to Find
By Jessica Valenti (Executive Editor of Feministing)
AlterNet
President Bush is betting $500 million that poor women are better off having a man than holding a job.
American women are 40 percent more likely than men to be poor. In fact, 90 percent of welfare recipients are women. While the Bush administration pours money into ineffective marriage-promotion programs, it ignores what may be the best bet for women to lift themselves out of poverty -- "men's work."
Last month, President Bush committed $100 million a year for the next five years to a "Healthy Marriage Initiative" as part of the welfare reform bill reauthorization. This move diverts funds from programs that have proven successful -- such as education, child care and job training -- and gives money to often religious-based programs that tell women marriage is the best way out of poverty.
The Bush administration swears up and down that the programs are simply common sense. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services touts marriage promotion as helping "couples who choose marriage for themselves gain greater access, on a voluntary basis, to services where they can develop the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain a healthy marriage."
Sounds innocuous enough, but the goal of this initiative isn't about helping people have healthy marriages, it's about ensuring that they have "traditional" marriages. In fact, President Bush cited his Healthy Marriage Initiative in the same breath that he defined marriage as a heterosexual institution in a 2003 statement on the creation of "Marriage Protection Week."
Read the Entire Hyperlinked Article
By Jessica Valenti (Executive Editor of Feministing)
AlterNet
President Bush is betting $500 million that poor women are better off having a man than holding a job.
American women are 40 percent more likely than men to be poor. In fact, 90 percent of welfare recipients are women. While the Bush administration pours money into ineffective marriage-promotion programs, it ignores what may be the best bet for women to lift themselves out of poverty -- "men's work."
Last month, President Bush committed $100 million a year for the next five years to a "Healthy Marriage Initiative" as part of the welfare reform bill reauthorization. This move diverts funds from programs that have proven successful -- such as education, child care and job training -- and gives money to often religious-based programs that tell women marriage is the best way out of poverty.
The Bush administration swears up and down that the programs are simply common sense. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services touts marriage promotion as helping "couples who choose marriage for themselves gain greater access, on a voluntary basis, to services where they can develop the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain a healthy marriage."
Sounds innocuous enough, but the goal of this initiative isn't about helping people have healthy marriages, it's about ensuring that they have "traditional" marriages. In fact, President Bush cited his Healthy Marriage Initiative in the same breath that he defined marriage as a heterosexual institution in a 2003 statement on the creation of "Marriage Protection Week."
Read the Entire Hyperlinked Article
William V. D'Antonio: Walking the Walk on Family Values
(Via Dave Ralis and Coffee House Studio)
Walking the walk on family values
By William V. D'Antonio
The Boston Globe
PRESIDENT Bush and Vice President Cheney make reference to "Massachusetts liberals" as if they were referring to people with some kind of disease. I decided it was time to do some research on these people, and here is what I found.
The state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation is Massachusetts. At latest count it had a divorce rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population, while the rate for Texas was 4.1.
But don't take the US government's word for it. Take a look at the findings from the George Barna Research Group. George Barna, a born-again Christian whose company is in Ventura, Calif., found that Massachusetts does indeed have the lowest divorce rate among all 50 states. More disturbing was the finding that born-again Christians have among the highest divorce rates.
The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that "the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people." The 10 Southern states with some of the highest divorce rates were Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. By comparison nine states in the Northeast were among those with the lowest divorce rates: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
How to explain these differences? The following factors provide a partial answer:
More couples in the South enter their first marriage at a younger age.
Average household incomes are lower in the South.
Southern states have a lower percentage of Roman Catholics, "a denomination that does not recognize divorce." Barna's study showed that 21 percent of Catholics had been divorced, compared with 29 percent of Baptists.
Education. Massachusetts has about the highest rate of education in the country, with 85 percent completing high school. For Texas the rate is 76 percent. One third of Massachusetts residents have completed college, compared with 23 percent of Texans, and the other Northeast states are right behind Massachusetts.
The liberals from Massachusetts have long prided themselves on their emphasis on education, and it has paid off: People who stay in school longer get married at a later age, when they are more mature, are more likely to secure a better job, and job income increases with each level of formal education. As a result, Massachusetts also leads in per capita and family income while births by teenagers, as a percent of total births, was 7.4 for Massachusetts and 16.1 for Texas.
The Northeast corridor, with Massachusetts as the hub, does have one of the highest levels of Catholics per state total. And it is also the case that these are among the states most strongly supportive of the Catholic Church's teaching on social justice issues such as minimum and living wages and universal healthcare.
For all the Bible Belt talk about family values, it is the people from Kerry's home state, along with their neighbors in the Northeast corridor, who live these values. Indeed, it is the "blue" states, led led by Massachusetts and Connecticut, that have been willing to invest more money over time to foster the reality of what it means to leave no children behind. And they have been among the nation's leaders in promoting a living wage as their goal in public employment. The money they have invested in their future is known more popularly as taxes; these so-called liberal people see that money is their investment to help insure a compassionate, humane society. Family values are much more likely to be found in the states mistakenly called out-of-the-mainstream liberal. By their behavior you can know them as the true conservatives. They are showing how to conserve family life through the way they live their family values.
William V. D'Antonio is professor emeritus at University of Connecticut and a visiting research professor at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
Article Link
Walking the walk on family values
By William V. D'Antonio
The Boston Globe
PRESIDENT Bush and Vice President Cheney make reference to "Massachusetts liberals" as if they were referring to people with some kind of disease. I decided it was time to do some research on these people, and here is what I found.
The state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation is Massachusetts. At latest count it had a divorce rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population, while the rate for Texas was 4.1.
But don't take the US government's word for it. Take a look at the findings from the George Barna Research Group. George Barna, a born-again Christian whose company is in Ventura, Calif., found that Massachusetts does indeed have the lowest divorce rate among all 50 states. More disturbing was the finding that born-again Christians have among the highest divorce rates.
The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that "the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people." The 10 Southern states with some of the highest divorce rates were Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. By comparison nine states in the Northeast were among those with the lowest divorce rates: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
How to explain these differences? The following factors provide a partial answer:
More couples in the South enter their first marriage at a younger age.
Average household incomes are lower in the South.
Southern states have a lower percentage of Roman Catholics, "a denomination that does not recognize divorce." Barna's study showed that 21 percent of Catholics had been divorced, compared with 29 percent of Baptists.
Education. Massachusetts has about the highest rate of education in the country, with 85 percent completing high school. For Texas the rate is 76 percent. One third of Massachusetts residents have completed college, compared with 23 percent of Texans, and the other Northeast states are right behind Massachusetts.
The liberals from Massachusetts have long prided themselves on their emphasis on education, and it has paid off: People who stay in school longer get married at a later age, when they are more mature, are more likely to secure a better job, and job income increases with each level of formal education. As a result, Massachusetts also leads in per capita and family income while births by teenagers, as a percent of total births, was 7.4 for Massachusetts and 16.1 for Texas.
The Northeast corridor, with Massachusetts as the hub, does have one of the highest levels of Catholics per state total. And it is also the case that these are among the states most strongly supportive of the Catholic Church's teaching on social justice issues such as minimum and living wages and universal healthcare.
For all the Bible Belt talk about family values, it is the people from Kerry's home state, along with their neighbors in the Northeast corridor, who live these values. Indeed, it is the "blue" states, led led by Massachusetts and Connecticut, that have been willing to invest more money over time to foster the reality of what it means to leave no children behind. And they have been among the nation's leaders in promoting a living wage as their goal in public employment. The money they have invested in their future is known more popularly as taxes; these so-called liberal people see that money is their investment to help insure a compassionate, humane society. Family values are much more likely to be found in the states mistakenly called out-of-the-mainstream liberal. By their behavior you can know them as the true conservatives. They are showing how to conserve family life through the way they live their family values.
William V. D'Antonio is professor emeritus at University of Connecticut and a visiting research professor at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
Article Link
Kimberly F. Balsam: "Multiple oppressions: Trauma, stress, and resilience among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults"
The University of Kentucky Program in Gender and Women's Studies is pleased to present
Kimberly F. Balsam, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Psychology
University of Washington
"Multiple oppressions: Trauma, stress, and resilience among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults"
Friday, April 7th
11:00 a.m. to 12:30
Taylor Education Building room 122
Dr. Balsam will speak on her research on the psychological and health consequences of social oppression among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults. Currently she is working to operationalize and assess minority stress and resilience in LGBT populations. Drawing upon qualitative interviews and focus groups with ethnically diverse LGBT adults in urban and rural Washington State, she has developed and piloted questionnaire measures of these constructs. Her prior research has included studies of mental health among LGBT adults, trauma and victimization experienced by LGBT people over the lifespan, same-sex couples and families, LGBT veterans of the U.S. armed forces, and incarcerated women.
Kimberly F. Balsam, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Psychology
University of Washington
"Multiple oppressions: Trauma, stress, and resilience among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults"
Friday, April 7th
11:00 a.m. to 12:30
Taylor Education Building room 122
Dr. Balsam will speak on her research on the psychological and health consequences of social oppression among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults. Currently she is working to operationalize and assess minority stress and resilience in LGBT populations. Drawing upon qualitative interviews and focus groups with ethnically diverse LGBT adults in urban and rural Washington State, she has developed and piloted questionnaire measures of these constructs. Her prior research has included studies of mental health among LGBT adults, trauma and victimization experienced by LGBT people over the lifespan, same-sex couples and families, LGBT veterans of the U.S. armed forces, and incarcerated women.
Lexington, KY: 4/7 Adopt-A-Minefield Benefit Concert: Reel World String Band
4/7 Adopt-A-Minefield Benefit Concert: Reel World String Band
WHAT:
Benefit for Bluegrass Adopt-A-Minefield Campaign
Reel World String Band
WHEN:
Friday April 7
6:30 delicious spaghetti supper
8:00 concert
WHERE:
Unitarian Universalist Church
3564 Clays Mill Road
Lexington
Map to the location
Admission is by donation.
DETAILS:
The Bluegrass Adopt-A-Minefield Campaign is within $2500 of reaching the amount necessary to clear its adopted site in Mozambique and hopes to do that at this benefit concert.
SPONSORS:
Bluegrass Adopt-A-Minefield Campaign
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Bob Hensley
WHAT:
Benefit for Bluegrass Adopt-A-Minefield Campaign
Reel World String Band
WHEN:
Friday April 7
6:30 delicious spaghetti supper
8:00 concert
WHERE:
Unitarian Universalist Church
3564 Clays Mill Road
Lexington
Map to the location
Admission is by donation.
DETAILS:
The Bluegrass Adopt-A-Minefield Campaign is within $2500 of reaching the amount necessary to clear its adopted site in Mozambique and hopes to do that at this benefit concert.
SPONSORS:
Bluegrass Adopt-A-Minefield Campaign
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Bob Hensley
ACTE Legislative Alert: Action Needed NOW to Oppose Inadequate House Budget Bill
April 4, 2006
ACTE Legislative Alert: Action Needed NOW to Oppose Inadequate House Budget Bill
THE ISSUE: The House plans to consider its version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 budget resolution as soon as this Wednesday, April 5. Like the Administration’s budget request, the House budget resolution would cut overall funding for education, employment and training, and social services by nearly $5 billion. This would leave appropriators with no choice but to make deep cuts to many key programs – which could include Perkins.
Moderates Republican Representatives (see list below), led by Nancy Johnson, (R-CT), and Michael Castle, (R-DE), continue to urge for increasing discretionary spending in the budget resolution to protect domestic programs in health, education and other areas from likely funding cuts.
ACTION NEEDED: Please contact your Representative to urge him/her to:
· Oppose any budget resolution that will force harmful cuts to education.
· Support efforts to increase funding in the FY 2007 budget for education, employment and training, and social services.
If your member is one of the 23 Republican Moderate Representatives (see list below), please thank them for their efforts to protect badly needed federal funding for education, employment and training, and social services.
Please visit ACTE’s Legislative Action Center and connect with your Representative today!
BACKGROUND: Funding for Perkins has been threatened this year by the Bush Administration’s proposal to cut overall funding for education, employment and training, and social services by nearly $5 billion, and to completely eliminate funding for the Perkins program. The first step in the Congressional consideration of this proposal is passage of a budget resolution. The budget resolution sets the total dollars to be available for all the services funded by the federal government. While the budget resolution does not make decisions about individual programs, if the total is set too low, the budget resolution will force appropriators to cut programs in order to meet the amount budgeted under the budget resolution.
On March 16, the Senate passed its budget resolution, which included an amendment from Senators Specter & Harkin that – if included in a final budget resolution that passes both the House and Senate – would provide an additional $7 billion over the President’s budget request for education, employment and training, and social services programs.
On March 29, the House Budget Committee voted along party lines (22-17) to approve its version of the budget resolution. The House version includes $873 billion for discretionary spending, the same amount proposed in the Administration’s FY 2007 budget request and $16 billion less than the amount included in the resolution that passed the Senate on March 16.
House Republican moderates, led by Nancy Johnson, (R-CT), and Michael Castle, (R-DE), continue to demand more discretionary spending so that domestic programs in health, education and other areas do not face deep cuts for the second straight year.
Republican Moderate Representatives
Nancy Johnson (CT)
Fred Upton (MI)
Christopher Shays (CT)
Sherwood Boehlert (NY)
Jim Ramstad (MN)
Steven LaTourette (OH)
Todd Platts (PA)
Jim Gerlach (PA)
Bob Ney (OH)
Ray LaHood (IL)
Jon Porter (NV)
Rick Renzi (AZ)
JoAnne Emerson (MO)
John M. McHugh (NY)
Ed Whitfield (KY)
Health Wilson (NM)
John R. (Randy) Kuhl (NY)
Mike Castle (DE)
Rob Simmons (CT)
Joe Schwarz (MI)
Curt Weldon (FL)
Jim Leach (IA)
Wayne Gilchrest (MD)
Leglative Alert Information
We appreciate your efforts! For more information, contact the Association for Career and Technical Education's Public Policy Department, 1410 King Street, Alexandria, VA, 22315, 1-800-826-9972
ACTE Legislative Alert: Action Needed NOW to Oppose Inadequate House Budget Bill
THE ISSUE: The House plans to consider its version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 budget resolution as soon as this Wednesday, April 5. Like the Administration’s budget request, the House budget resolution would cut overall funding for education, employment and training, and social services by nearly $5 billion. This would leave appropriators with no choice but to make deep cuts to many key programs – which could include Perkins.
Moderates Republican Representatives (see list below), led by Nancy Johnson, (R-CT), and Michael Castle, (R-DE), continue to urge for increasing discretionary spending in the budget resolution to protect domestic programs in health, education and other areas from likely funding cuts.
ACTION NEEDED: Please contact your Representative to urge him/her to:
· Oppose any budget resolution that will force harmful cuts to education.
· Support efforts to increase funding in the FY 2007 budget for education, employment and training, and social services.
If your member is one of the 23 Republican Moderate Representatives (see list below), please thank them for their efforts to protect badly needed federal funding for education, employment and training, and social services.
Please visit ACTE’s Legislative Action Center and connect with your Representative today!
BACKGROUND: Funding for Perkins has been threatened this year by the Bush Administration’s proposal to cut overall funding for education, employment and training, and social services by nearly $5 billion, and to completely eliminate funding for the Perkins program. The first step in the Congressional consideration of this proposal is passage of a budget resolution. The budget resolution sets the total dollars to be available for all the services funded by the federal government. While the budget resolution does not make decisions about individual programs, if the total is set too low, the budget resolution will force appropriators to cut programs in order to meet the amount budgeted under the budget resolution.
On March 16, the Senate passed its budget resolution, which included an amendment from Senators Specter & Harkin that – if included in a final budget resolution that passes both the House and Senate – would provide an additional $7 billion over the President’s budget request for education, employment and training, and social services programs.
On March 29, the House Budget Committee voted along party lines (22-17) to approve its version of the budget resolution. The House version includes $873 billion for discretionary spending, the same amount proposed in the Administration’s FY 2007 budget request and $16 billion less than the amount included in the resolution that passed the Senate on March 16.
House Republican moderates, led by Nancy Johnson, (R-CT), and Michael Castle, (R-DE), continue to demand more discretionary spending so that domestic programs in health, education and other areas do not face deep cuts for the second straight year.
Republican Moderate Representatives
Nancy Johnson (CT)
Fred Upton (MI)
Christopher Shays (CT)
Sherwood Boehlert (NY)
Jim Ramstad (MN)
Steven LaTourette (OH)
Todd Platts (PA)
Jim Gerlach (PA)
Bob Ney (OH)
Ray LaHood (IL)
Jon Porter (NV)
Rick Renzi (AZ)
JoAnne Emerson (MO)
John M. McHugh (NY)
Ed Whitfield (KY)
Health Wilson (NM)
John R. (Randy) Kuhl (NY)
Mike Castle (DE)
Rob Simmons (CT)
Joe Schwarz (MI)
Curt Weldon (FL)
Jim Leach (IA)
Wayne Gilchrest (MD)
Leglative Alert Information
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