Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 04.15.07

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    04.15.07

1. Protest Ellison  4.15 12:30pm? 1pm?
2. Stillwater vigil 4.15 1pm
3. AI               4.15 3pm
4. Corp personhood  4.15 3pm
5. Protest Wilmar   4.15 6:30pm
6. Sami/Iraq        4.15 7pm
7. US crossroads/TV 4.15 8pm

8. Algerian writer  4.16 4:30pm
9. Wine/land        4.16 5:30pm
10. Women/rad art   4.16-22 6pm
11. Killing zone/f  4.16 6:30pm
12. Cam/schools     4.16 7pm
13. US satirized    4.16 7:30pm

14. Dave Marsh   - Rudy Giuliani, a racist with real power
15. Fidel Castro - The terrorist walks
16. Joe Bageant  - Hang the professors, save the eunuchs for later

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

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Protest Ellison 4.15 12:30pm? 1pm?

[Protest Ellison's pro-war vote and his even worse "justification" of it;
Betty McCollom's recent statement on MPR in favor of sending more troops;
Amy Klobuchar's pro-war position; etc.  IS there an opposition party, a
party of the people, an anti-war party - or just another facile tool of
the bloody ruling class? Fed up. -ed]

Sunday, 4/15, 12:30 to 2:30 pm, Keith Ellison holds town hall on "The Iraq
War: Steps Toward Peace," Powderhorn Park Rec Center, 3400 - 15th Ave S,
Mpls. andrea [at] mplscluc.com

Sunday, 4/15, 1 to 6 pm, the Network of Spiritual Progressives sponsors
"Generosity Sunday" to change the security paradigm from domination to
generosity, with speakers like Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison (perhaps
canceled, due to above conflict) plus panelists like Arlen Erdahl and Jim
Klobuchar, Plymouth Congregational Church, 1900 Nicollet Ave (at Franklin),
Mpls.  www.nspmn.org


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

From: scot b <earthmannow [at] comcast.net>
Subject: Stillwater vigil 4.15 1pm

A weekly Vigil for Peace Every Sunday, at the Stillwater bridge from 1- 2
p.m.  Come after Church or after brunch ! All are invited to join in song
and witness to the human desire for peace in our world. Signs need to be
positive.  Sponsored by the St. Croix Valley Peacemakers.

If you have a United Nations flag or a United States flag please bring it.
Be sure to dress for the weather . For more information go to
<http://www.stcroixvalleypeacemakers.com/>http://www.stcroixvalleypeacemakers.com/

For more information you could call 651 275 0247 or 651 999 - 9560


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

From: Gabe Ormsby <gabeo [at] bitstream.net>
Subject: AI 4.15 3pm

GROUP 37 APRIL MEETING REMINDER: SUNDAY, APRIL 15TH - 3 TO 5 P.M.

Join Group 37 for our regular meeting on Sunday, April 15th, from 3:00 to
5:00 p.m.

This month's presenter will be Kay Yanisch, who will discuss human rights
and other conditions in Guatemala. Kay is active locally in LAGOS (Lakes
Area Group Organizing in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala). Her
presentation will begin promptly at 3:00.

In our second hour, we will catch up with the work of our various
sub-groups and other Amnesty International news and campaigns.

Everyone is welcome, and refreshments will be provided.

Location: Center for Victims of Torture, 717 E. River Rd. SE, Minneapolis
(corner of E. River Rd. and Oak St.). Park on street or in the small lot
behind the center (the Center is a house set back on a large lawn).

A map and directions are available on-line:
http://www.twincitiesamnesty.org/meetings.html.


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

From: eric-angell [at] riseup.net
Subject: Corp personhood 4.15 3pm

A community discussion hosted by IMPACT:
"What Peace Activists Need to Know About Corporate Personhood"
Sunday, April 15, 3pm

Mayday Bookstore (Below Midwest Mountaineering)
On Cedar Ave, a block north of Riverside Ave
301 Cedar Ave, Mpls

Economist and activist Karen Redleaf leads the discussion.  Is peace
possible under capitalism?  How do corporations use "personhood"
protections to undermine our efforts to create a just world?  How can
human beings reclaim our sovereignty and create a lasting peace and
meaningful democracy?

Feel free to read something on this not-well-known topic.  Below are a few
suggested, but not required, links:

1. Article: "Is Peace Possible Under Capitalism?":
http://wmom.typepad.com/karen/2006/05/is_peace_possib_1.html

2. "A Force That Gives Us Meaning":
http://www.poclad.org/articles/ferner07.html

3. Corporate Personhood talk:
http://www.wilpf.org/docs/ccp/corp/ACP/Personhood_Talk.pdf


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

From: Brad Sigal <bradsigal [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Protest Wilmar 4.15 6:30pm

COMMUNITY GATHERING AND CANDLE VIGIL TO STOP DEPORTATIONS.
KEEP OUR FAMILIES TOGETHER.

Dear Immigrant Rights Advocates and new Minnesotans,

Come to a community gathering and candle night vigil to call for a
moratorium on deportations and raids in our Minnesota communities like the
one that just occurred in Wilmar.  Bring stuffed animals, family photos,
flowers and candles to value our families and bring hope to the children
and people who have been torn apart by recent immigration raids.  Let's
stand together for humane immigration reform and against terrorizing ICE
activity.

Sunday, April 15, 2007.  6:30 pm.
In front of the Ramsey County Jail, Ramsey County Jail, 425 Grove Street,
Saint Paul, MN 55101

Everyone is invited; let's stand together in the public light against
these injustices.  Various community leaders, legislators, and solidarity
groups will be present.

Community gathering and candle night vigil to end deportations and keep
families together.  Live solidarity music and speakers will address the
participants.  This event is being organized by Jewish Community Action
(JCA), Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition (MIRAC) and Minnesota
Immigrant Freedom Network (MIFN).

To build unity, dignity and hope with the families who are being torn
apart by racial profiling and terrorizing ICE tactics.  To call for an end
to raids and deportations.  To advocate for the passage of an immigration
bill with a clear path to legalization for our nation's new families and
workers.  To come out of the shadows and silence to help our legislators
know these injustices are happening and that they must be immediately
stopped.

For more information, please call 612-250-5926.

Alondra Kiawitl Espejel Communications Organizer aloespejel [at] yahoo.com
651.287.0660 x4 Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network 2500 University
Avenue, Suite C8 St. Paul, MN 55114 www.mnfr.org


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

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Sami/Iraq 4.15 7pm

Sunday, 4/15, 7 pm, Muslim Peacemaker Team founder Sami Rasouli speaks at
Prospect Park United Methodist Church, 22 Orlin Ave SE, Mpls.  Kelly Jewett,
612-729-5814.


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

To: mizna [at] mizna.org, MPC <MinnesotaProgressiveCaucus [at] yahoogroups.com>
Subject: US crossroads/TV 4.15 8pm

America at a Crossroads
tpt2 Sunday, April 15 through Thursday, April 19 from 8-10PM
tpt2 Friday, April 20 from 9-11PM
America at a Crossroads

Distinguished journalist Robert MacNeil introduces 11 documentaries that
explore the challenges confronting the world after 9/11, including the war
on terrorism; the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; the experience of
American troops; the struggle for balance within the Islamic world; and
Muslim life in America. Visit the companion web site for details on the
films in the series.


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

From: Joelle Vitiello <vitiello [at] macalester.edu>
Subject: Algerian writer 4.16 4:30pm

Macalester College
Monday, April 16 at 4:30 PM in Humanities 401
Rachid Boudjedra
"Faulkner et la littérature maghrébine"

Rachid Boudjedra (born in 1941) is a prolific  Algerian writer who has
published numerous poems, essays, plays and novels. Boudjedra's fiction
is written in a difficult, complex style, reminiscent of Faulkner. "La
Répudiation" (1969) brought him sudden attention, both for the strength
with which he challenged traditional Muslim culture in Algeria and for
the strong reaction against him.

Sponsored by The Department of French and Francophone Studies, the
Cultural Services of the French Embassy, and the Wells Fargo Foundation.


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

From: tom [at] organicconsumers.org
Subject: Wine/land 4.16 5:30pm

Next Monday, April 16th, there is a great opportunity to support the
organization doing more in MN to keep factory farms in check and support
sustainable, family farms, the Land Stewardship Project (LSP).

The Wine Company (http://www.twcwines.com/index2.cfm) is hosting Taste of
the Earth where over 60 organic, biodynamic, or wines from sustainable
farms will be available to sample. All proceeds go to the LSP and if you
purchase any wine from a participating retailer a portion of those dollars
will also be donated to LSP.

Taste For the Earth
A wine tasting benefit for the Land Stewardship Project
Monday April 16, 2007 - 5:30 - 7:30 pm
Old Arizona Theater - Minneapolis

You are invited to attend The Wine Company's Taste For the Earth, a wine
tasting event celebrating environmental stewardship. Attendees will have
the opportunity to choose from over 50 different organic, biodynamic and
sustainably produced wines from some of the most environmentally sound and
innovative wineries in the world.

You will be able to order sampled wines at the event from your preferred
wine shop using forms provided at the event.

In recognition of Land Stewardship Project's 25th anniversary, The Wine
Company is generously donating 100% of ticket sales and all of their
profits from wine sales proceeds to the Land Stewardship Project.

The tasting will be held on Monday, April 16, from 5:30 - 7:30 at the Old
Arizona Theater in Minneapolis (2821 Nicollet Avenue).
Tickets are $23 and are required for the event. They can be purchased
online at www.localwineevents.com/Twin-Cities-Wine/event-121149.html.
If you have any questions please contact Mike McMahon at 612-722-6377.


--------10 fo 16--------

From: wsac [at] umn.edu
Subject: Women/rad art 4.16-22 6pm

[NOTICE: This schedule is printed here JUST THIS ONCE - if interested,
SAVE this notice  -ed]

The Women's Student Activist Collective Proudly presents our annual week
long event

Revolutionary Art Thing (RATH): Community Art Building
April 16-22

RATH is the Women's Student Activist Collective's annual spring event that
promotes art as an expression of social change. Past years' focus has been
on music, fabric art and hip hop/street dance. 2007's theme is Community
art building in all its diverse shapes and forms.

We are excited to offer so many diverse and exciting events- from DIY
workshops to performances! Please check out our schedule below and let us
know if you have any questions or concerns on wsac [at] umn.edu or 612 625-1611
Many events are held at the of University of Minnesota and Coffman
Memorial Union (CMU), 300 Washington Av SE.

Monday April 16th Workshop on Global Resistance through Art in the
Zapatista Movement. Learn and discuss! Zapatista coffee will be served
with snacks 6-7.30 pm in WSAC space, CMU 202

Tuesday April 17th Community Clothing Swap! Bring all the clothes that you
never wear anymore and exchange them for "new" clothes. This can include
scarves/hats, purses, belts and shoes, etc. Even if you find stuff that
doesn't fit- you can use our fancy sewing machine and make it fit!  And
this is not just for women, men can come too! Snacks and a good time
guaranteed!!! 12-5 pm Come and go as you please in WSAC space, CMU 202

Wednesday April 18th Movie Screening and facilitated discussion: "Black
and White" by Kirsty MacDonald "shines a sensitive light on a subject that
is too often either shunned or sensationalized: the experience of intersex
people."  This beautiful and stylish film artfully explores the potent
creative collaboration between Mani Bruce Mitchell and the acclaimed
photographer Rebecca Swan. Snacks provided! 7 pm in WSAC space, CMU 202

Thursday [two events!] April 19th
1) Do It Yourself Pad Workshop! Come and learn how to make your own pad-
environmentally sounds and super fun! We'll also be talking about
alternatives to store bought tampons and pads. Snacks provided! 2.30 pm in
WSAC space, CMU 202

2) "Underground Transit" performance by Scott Turner Schofield! FREE and
VERY FUN!
Thursday, April 19, 6:00 p.m.
"Underground Transit" performance
Nolte Center Room 140, University of Minnesota, east bank of the
Minneapolis campus (315 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455)
Directions, map and parking info:
http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/maps/NCCE/ Cost: FREE!

ABOUT UNDERGROUND TRANSIT: Transgressing, undressing, digressing: go
underground with an almost-Homecoming Queen turned gender renegade. This
edgy yet accessible spoken word roll through one Southerner's budding
trans identity set against the cityscape of the New York City subway
features rock n' roll with a touch of drag, and incredible poetry that
draws you in for the ride. See some clips at:
http://www.undergroundtransit.com/movies.html

ABOUT SCOTT TURNER SCHOFIELD: Scott Turner Schofield is a performance
artist from Atlanta. Even more improbably, he's a Female-to-Male (FTM)
transsexual with a queer, transgender identity living and working in the
South. Aside from producing the fabulous work of other gender-focused
artists (S. Bear Bergman, Athens Boys Choir, TEAM GINA) Schofield tours
two original solo performances "Underground Transit" and "Debutante Balls"
to colleges, festivals, and theaters nationwide, and has lectured on
living realities of gender theory at over 30 universities since 2001. To
learn more, please visit www.undergroundtransit.com or
www.myspace.com/s_turner_s

Friday April 20th
UPCC Dinkytowner Concert Friday April 20th @ 9pm --> save the date
Friday April 20th; 9pm
Dinkytowner Bar
UPCC benefit concert featuring GENA, The Battle Royale, Parallax and
Dessa from Doomtree!
To celebrate a fabulous first year of the University Pro-Choice
Coalition
$3.00 cover, all proceeds helping UPCC organize events you've been hearing
about all year. 18+
Co-sponsored by WSAC

Saturday [two events!] April 21st:

1) Book Making Workshop! Be creative and learn how to collaboratively make
a book together through unconventional materials and with a theme to work
around. Snacks provided! 2-4 pm in WSAC space, CMU 202

2) Witness for Peace: An evening of celebration against neo-liberal
globalization! Art, politics and food! Saturday, April 21st at 6:00PM at
the Resource Center of the Americas, 3019 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis, MN
55406-1931

Join us for an evening of art, music, food, and drink while we welcome
Gloria Andina and celebrate the on-going creation of an international
community, united against the forces of neo-liberal globalization. Gloria
is a Nicaraguan community-leader who has been at the forefront of the
anti-globalization movement for decades and has continuiously resisted the
changing faces of US intervention in Latin America throughout the years.

Gloria will share her experiences in an evening that also highlights the
work of local artists combining art and politics, locally-made foods from
Latin America, refreshments, and live local-music.
Co-sponsored by WSAC

Sunday April 22nd
Revolutionary Performance Art!
The last RATH event of the week that you just can't miss! Get
revolutionized by the Twin Cities local performance art scene and have a
good time with friends and allies!

Performers: Desdamona with Il Chemistry, Finest B-Girls in the Cities [i.e.
from the Rhytm Queens], Dancing Dave, Spoken Word with Verse, Genesys, Lady
Lite, October, Songs with Mosun Rap with Nancy Drew and the Case of the
Friendship Elephants

The Whole Music Club, Coffman Basement B-52
Sunday April 22nd 6-8 pm
This is an absolutely FREE event

The mission of the Women's Student Activist Collective is to empower women
and transpeople to make positive changes in society through the
elimination of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, classism, and all
interrelated forms of inequality.

wsac [at] umn.edu, www.tc.umn.edu/~wsac, 612.625.1611 300 Washington Ave. SE,
Suite 202


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

From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Killing zone/film 4.16 6:30pm

FREE Third Monday Movie and Discussion: "The Killing Zone"

Monday, April 16, 6:30 p.m. St. Joan of Arc Church, Hospitality Hall, 4537
Third Avenue South, Minneapolis. British report on Israeli violence in
Gaza against not only Palestinian civilians but international aid
volunteers and foreign reporters, as well. Sponsored by: WAMM Third Monday
Movies.  FFI: Call WAMM, 612-827-5364.


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

From: Cam Gordon <CamGordon333 [at] msn.com>
Subject: Cam/schools 4.16 7pm

You are invited to a roundtable discussion with me, Council Member Cam
Gordon, and Minneapolis Public School District Parent Advisory Council
Area B Representatives Kate Towle and Craig Nelson, on the future of our
schools: Monday, April 16, 7-9pm, Van Cleve Park, 901 15th Ave SE.

The meeting will offer us a chance to gather after The Minneapolis School
Board's recent decision to close six neighborhood schools, including
Tuttle School in Southeast Como. The bulk of the Tuttle program will be
merged with Pratt School in Prospect Park.

The discussion will be open and the meeting will offer a chance for all of
us to debrief and share our feelings and thoughts about the recent
decision and the intensity of the past few weeks.

I also hope we can begin to address questions about the future. How can
we, as a community, prepare for the closing of Tuttle? How can the
facility remain a strong, healthy community asset for the Como
neighborhood? Are there ways we can make sure in continues to serve
children and families? Could it potentially be reused as a school outside
of the Minneapolis Public School system?

How can I, as a City Council Member, participate most effectively in
responding to this blow to the community and positively influence what
happens next?

How can we, as a community, do more to support each other, across
jurisdictions and across neighborhood boundaries, to strengthen our
schools and all our community assets that serve children and families?

We will be joined by representatives of District Parent Advisory Council
Area B Kate Towle and Craig Nelson, who probably know and care about our
schools as much as anyone in the community. District Councils are groups
pulled together to provide parents and community members an opportunity to
express their opinions and concerns with one another, as well as with
district staff. Area B covers Central, Longfellow, Near North, Nokomis,
Phillips, Powderhorn and University neighborhoods.

While Tuttle is not actually in Ward 2, but in Ward 1, this is certainly a
matter of concern to the entire Southeast community as well as the larger
community. There are three Minneapolis Public Schools in Ward 2: Pratt
Elementary, Seward Montessori, and Sullivan Communication Center.

The meeting is open to everyone. Please spread the word. Cam Gordon
Minneapolis City Council Member, Ward 2


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

From: david unowsky <david.unowsky [at] gmail.com>
Subject: US satirized 4.16 7:30pm

Mike Palecek brings his national driving tour for *THE AMERICAN DREAM *
(CWG Press) to Magers and Quinn Booksellers 7:30 pm Monday April 16.

"Mike Palecek writes with passion, wit, and always with a profound social
conscience."--Howard Zinn

"The American Dream" is a satirical novel about life in a small town
during the reign of George Bus - a town asleep in time of war--asleep at
work, asleep at church, asleep at the wheel. The bus is headed toward a
gigantic cliff and nobody is aware or seems to care. The people sleep,
through the alarm, the house afire.

It follows the path of anti-hero Michael M., after he is taken to a gulag
in the corn after ramming his moped into the war memorial in the city
park. M wants nothing more than to be on "The Home Helper Show" to be able
to fix up his little house and make his family happy. He runs into an
unusual set of circumstances, obstacles, dangers.

He is seen by his neighbors as The Evil One. He is running around his own
home town, down the alleys, maybe like The Fugitive if you remember that
TV show--really unable to fathom what is going on, while around him the
world burns.

Mike Palecek is a peace activist and an anti-war protestor. He has been a
seminarian, teacher, writer, editor-publisher of a small prize-winning
newspaper in southeast Minnesota, prisoner, social worker, construction
worker, janitor and Democratic candidate for Congress. Mike lives in
Sheldon, Iowa.

For further information, contact: David Unowsky 612/822-4611
davidu [at] magersandquinn.com Publisher website: www.cwgpress.com Author
website: www.iowapeace.com


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

Rudy Giuliani, a Racist With Real Power
The Imus Affair, Hip Hop and Politics
By DAVE MARSH
CounterPunch
April 14

In the immediate aftermath of the Don Imus scandal - before there was a
resolution, in fact - respectable folks turned their sights on what I
guess is the real threat to social harmony in this country: rap music. "A
line has been drawn as to what is acceptable and what will not be
tolerated," huffed Today show weatherman Al Roker. "A dialog has been
started about race in our country. An opportunity has been created to
start holding responsible those who produce and broadcast offensive music
lyrics, both rap and rock, that denigrate and marginalizes women." Even
more nauseating was the assault - you can't describe it better - by Kansas
City Star columnist, Jason Whitlock, whose position is basically that Imus
should have been left alone until the scourge of bad music and out-of-line
musicians was repelled. The liberals and progressives I talked to and read
mostly thought this a nifty keen thought, though of course Imus had to go,
too.

Presumably Roker and Whitlock are merely the warmup acts for the nation's
chief hater of rap, rock and black youth: Bill Cosby, who must have been
out making pudding or something during last week's contretemps. And where
was that harridan against hip-hop excess, Oprah Winfrey, all week? The
Imus mess certainly has given us a chance to observe the priorities of
rich and powerful African-Americans - Cosby, Winfrey, Whitlock and Roker
are all black.

Somehow, maybe it would be hard for you to understand why, I found much
more frightening than the last Busta Rhymes album (arguably, the best of
his career) this New York Times headline:

In Alabama, Giuliani Calls Confederate Flag a Local Issue

(from the Wednesday May 11 paper, buried at the back of the A section; you
can read it here.)

That is, the leading Republican Presidential candidate is making a naked
appeal to states' rights. If you're too young to remember, states rights
was the pretext for the Civil War and a hundred years of Jim Crow and
lynching after it.

According to the deaf, dumb and blind boys who run the Washington and
national political press corps, Giuliani is electable partly because he's
a Northerner and not a "social conservative." (According to Imus, who hung
with all those pundits, Giuliani's candidacy was appealing because he's
"somebody who's willing to take three big ones and drop one on Mecca, one
on Jeddah, and one onRiyadh." He said this about eight weeks before his
"slip of the tongue" about the women who lost a basketball game for
Rutgers.)

Rudoph Giuliani has a history very similar to Don Imus, on whose show he
was sometimes a guest, and more pertinently, to the last disgraced NYC
talk show mouth, Bob Grant, an even more unapologetic racist. Rudy
appeared quite frequently on Grant's show before Bob got bounced off WABC
for celebrating the death of Clinton's African-American commerce
secretary, Ron Brown, on the air. I'd say Rudy's considerably worse than
either Imus or Grant, though.

Grant used to refer regularly on his show to Mayor David Dinkins,
Giuliani's immediate predecessor, as "the washroom attendant," and got
away with it. But Giuliani empowered the racism of the New York Police
Department in a special way. Giuliani used Grant's bigot rhetoric to help
make himself mayor. In the midst of his 1992 campaign against Dinkins,
Rudy cheerfully appeared at a demonstration (which came closer to the
description "riot") of NYPD officers on the steps of City Hall. The cops
were outraged that Dinkins had proposed a police review board run by
civilians. Sure enough, one of the angry cops referred to Dinkins as "The
Washroom Attendant." Giuliani stepped to the mic, and said nothing about
the slur. So he didn't actually say the words but his unreserved support
for the cops was endorsement enough.

During Rudy Giuliani's terms as mayor, Amadou Diallo was murdered with 41
shots from gun-crazy cops.

While Rudy Giuliani was mayor, Abner Louima was raped with a broomstick by
Rudy's police.

During his mayoralty, Rudy Giuliani slashed the budget of the Civilian
Complaint Review Board that was established over his protests. In its
first five years, during all of which Giuliani was mayor, the CCRB
received 20,000 complaints - 4,000 a year. One cop lost his job - until
the Louima rape. Then several went to jail. And having learned its lesson,
the system allowed the Diallo cops to be tried upstate, instead of by a
jury of New York City citizens.

After the Louima rape, Giuliani characterized as "shameful" his opponents
efforts to publicize and politicize it.

We can probably count on him to do the same if his endorsement of states'
rights in the form of the traitor's flag of the Confederacy is raised in
the Presidential race.

That's exactly why it needs to be raised, raised again and again.

And when Jason Whitlock writes a column on this, he'll get some respect
from me. Until then, he can kiss Busta Rhymes ass, maybe. I wouldn't have
him near mine.

Dave Marsh is editor of Rock & Rap Confidential. Marsh's definitive and
monumental biography of Bruce Springsteen has recently been reissued, with
12,000 new words, under the title Two Hearts. He can be reached at:
marsh6 [at] optonline.net

Rock and Rap Confidential, one of the few newsletters both editors of
CounterPunch read from front to back the moment it arrives, is edited by
Lee Ballinger and Dave Marsh and now it's available to you for FREE simply
by sending an email to: rockrap [at] aol.com.


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

A Brutal Reply
The Terrorist Walks
By FIDEL CASTRO
CounterPunch
April 14 / 15, 2007

George W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a system
of terror forced on the world by the technological, economic and political
superiority of the most powerful country known to this planet. For this
reason, we share the tragedy of the American people and their ethical
values. The instructions for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen Cardone,
of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday, granting Luis Posada Carriles
freedom on bail, could only have come from the White House.

It was President Bush himself who ignored at all times the criminal and
terrorist nature of the defendant who was protected with a simple
accusation of immigration violation leveled at him. The reply is brutal.
The government of the United States and its most representative
institutions had already decided to release the monster.

The backgrounds are well-known and reach far back. The people who trained
him and ordered him to destroy a Cuban passenger plane in midair, with 73
athletes, students and other Cuban and foreign travelers on board,
together with its dedicated crew; those who bought his freedom while the
terrorist was held in prison in Venezuela, so that he could supply and
practically conduct a dirty war against the people of Nicaragua, resulting
in the loss of thousands of lives and the devastation of a country for
decades to come; those who empowered him to smuggle with drugs and weapons
making a mockery of the laws of Congress; those who collaborated with him
to create the terrible Operation Condor and to internationalize terror;
the same who brought torture, death and often the physical disappearance
of hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans, could not possibly act any
different.

Even though Bush's decision was to be expected, it is certainly no less
humiliating for our people. Thanks to the revelations of "Por Esto!" a
Mexican publication from the state of Quintana Roo later complemented by
our own sources, Cuba knew with absolute precision how Posada Carriles
entered from Central America, via Cancun, to the Isla Mujeres departing
from there on board the Santrina, after the ship was inspected by the
Mexican federal authorities, heading with other terrorists straight to
Miami.

Denounced and publicly challenged with exact information on the matter,
since April 15, 2005, it took the government of that country more than a
month to arrest the terrorist, and a year and two months to admit that
Luis Posada Carriles had entered through the Florida coast illegally on
board the Santrina, a presumed school-ship licensed in the United States.

Not a single word is said of his countless victims, of the bombs he set
off in tourist facilities in recent years, of his dozens of plans financed
by the government of the United States to physically eliminate me.

It was not enough for Bush to offend the name of Cuba by installing a
horrible torture center similar to Abu Ghraib on the territory illegally
occupied in Guantnamo, horrifying the world with this procedure. The cruel
actions of his predecessors seemed not enough for him. It was not enough
to force a poor and underdeveloped country like Cuba to spend 100 billion
dollars. To accuse Posada Carriles was tantamount to accusing himself.

Throughout almost half a century, everything was fair game against our
small island lying 90 miles away from its coast, wanting to be
independent. Florida saw the installation of the largest station for
intelligence and subversion that ever existed on this planet.

It was not enough to send a mercenary invasion on the Bay of Pigs, costing
us 176 dead and more than 300 wounded at a time when the few medical
specialists they left us had no experience treating war wounds.

Earlier still, the French ship La Coubre carrying Belgian weapons and
grenades for Cuba had exploded on the docks of Havana Harbor. The two well
synchronized explosions caused the deaths of more than 100 workers and
wounded others as many of them tool part in the rescue attempts.

It was not enough to have the Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the
world to the brink of an all-consuming thermonuclear war, at a time when
there were bombs 50 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.

It was not enough to introduce in our country viruses, bacteria and fungi
to attack plantations and flocks; and incredible as it may seem, to attack
human beings. Some of these pathogens came out of American laboratories
and were brought to Cuba by well-known terrorists in the service of the
United States government.

Add to all this the enormous injustice of keeping five heroic patriots
imprisoned for supplying information about terrorist activities; they were
condemned in a fraudulent manner to sentences that include two life
sentences and they stoically withstand cruel mistreatment, each of them in
a different prison.

Time and again the Cuban people have fearlessly faced the threat of death.
They have demonstrated that with intelligence, using appropriate tactics
and strategies, and especially preserving unity around their political and
social vanguard, there can be no force on this earth capable of defeating
them.

I think that the coming May Day celebration would be the ideal day for our
people, - using the minimum of fuel and transportation - to show their
feelings to the workers and the poor of the world.

Havana, April 10, 2007.


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

Hang the Professors, Save the Eunuchs for Later
A Feral Dog Howls in Harvard Yard
By JOE BAGEANT
CounterPunch
April 14 / 15, 2007

It is time to close America's universities, and perhaps prosecute the
professoriat under the RICO act as a corrupt and racketeering-influenced
organization. American universities these days have the moral character of
electronic churches, and as little educational value. They are an
embarrassment to civilization.
 -- Fred Reed, American expatriate writer and "equal-opportunity
irritant."

If there is one bright spot in the bleak absurdity of slogging along in
our new totalist American state, it is that ordinary working Americans are
undisciplined as hell. We are genuine moral and intellectual slobs whose
consciousness is pretty much glued onto an armature of noise, sports, sex,
sugar and saturated fats. Oh, we nod toward the government bullhorns of
ideology, even throw beer cans and cheer when told we are winning some war
or Olympic sports event. But when it comes right down to it, we could
generally give a rat's ass about government institutions and are
congenitally more skeptical of government than most nations, especially
nations that get things like good teeth and free higher education for
their tax dollars.

Surely, there are governmental facts of life no working American can
escape, like the IRS, but no ordinary person is dumb enough to actually
trust political parties, banks, the courts or the news media. Born with
the organizational instincts and global awareness of a box turtle, we take
the most torpid political path - we call it all bullshit, pay lip
service, vote occasionally, then forget about our government altogether
until April 15th of the next year.

As inhabitants (you couldn't really call what we practice citizenship) of
a nation that is essentially one big workhouse/shopping compound, American
life is simultaneously both easy for us and rather dangerous to the rest
of the world. For instance, when the corporate state's
CBS-ABC-CBS-FOX-NBC-XYZ television bullhorns told us some warthog named
Saddam Hussein blew up the World Trade Center and probably fixed the NFL
ratings too, Tony the electrician said, "Well, OK then. Sure, go ahead and
bomb the fucker." Then he flicked to the Home and Garden Channel, where
the guy in the plaid shirt is explaining how to get a skylight installed
without leaking. Thanks to American industrial molecular science, there's
yet another new sticky stuff miracle from Dupont, a tube of which costs
about as much as the entire friggin roof. After the obligatory Dupont
public relations sponsored tour of the plant where the goo is cooked up,
plaid shirt guy gives "application instructions," meaning he tells you how
to squirt it out of the tube. And somewhere along the line, between the
plant tour and watching the goo dry, Tony gave "informed consent" to the
war in Iraq without even knowing it, or for that matter, giving a shit.

This sort of life has its advantages, such as never having to analyze the
institutions that manage us - not that we'd know how even if we cared to.
That's what television is for. Right? Given our short attention spans,
compliments of the business state's 100-channel national nerve system
(three minutes into the show and the blonde hasn't taken her bra off or
killed anybody yet, CLICK!) diversion fills the void of understanding as a
nation of clueless mooks knocks around the new American emptiness,
wandering the mall food courts, and maybe half-heartedly looking for a
pair of size XXXL 50-inch waist long wicking NBA shorts (they actually
make'em), but generally is just bored.

But hold yer drawers there, hoss, because we nevertheless do possess a
seed of existential angst, however tiny, this despite the liberal
intellectual managing class' and leftist profs' claims to the contrary.
And that makes us potentially unmanageable politically speaking,
potentially dangerous even (it's the length of the fuse that is
deceiving.) We may be being lead around by our stomachs and our dicks with
our eyes taped shut, but we're not total ideological slaves yet. Because
even the worst ideology requires at least a modicum of thought, and as a
people with no authentic intellectual culture, we haven't enough
collective intellect or education these days to pull it off.

Meanwhile, when it come to pulling off, that small American class in
charge of all things intellectual are doing just that, jerking off a whole
nation. Admittedly, it's an unenviable job, but there are people selfless
enough to do it. These poor intellectual bastards constitute the most
servile class in America - the Empire's house niggers. It is their job to
maintain the semblance of ideological control over the pizza gobbling herd
(America eats 126 acres of pizza a day!) for the Corporate States of
America, which entertains no breach of official ideology, that collection
of cliches and things that sound as if they ought to be true, according to
our mercantile mythology and conditioning. So it is the American
intellectual's gig to weave some philosophical and ideological basket of
American Truth out of mercantile folklore and smoke in such a way as to
appear to hold water when viewed at great distance by the squinting
millions out there in the burboclaves, office campuses, construction sites
and fried chicken joints. If the result were not so abysmally eye glazing,
tedious and predictable, it would be an act of pure alchemy, truly
spinning gold from chaff, turning mud bricks into bullion. Like we said,
somebody's gotta do it, but the question remains as to why anyone would
choose to. Answer: It beats working.

"Blessed are the thinking classes, for theirs is the kingdom of tenure."
 -- Jesus to the Boston University Philosophy Department

Though they never admit it, and especially to each other, these
professors, book editors, intellectual critics, and social and economic
"theorists" are very class conscious, privileged and understand that they
occupy their desk chairs at the pleasure of The Corporation. You don't
have to stand back very far to see they have been the spin masters of the
business class from the outset, and have either held America together, or
kept the fuck job going from the beginning, depending upon the class from
which you are viewing American history.

Of course they are only human. Like any group of people with a class
advantage, they prefer to keep on drinking cognac and pissing it out
upstream from the rest of the Pepsi swilling herd destined for bladder
cancer. So this class sticks together, despite its prissy intellectual
disputes in journals and critical publications. They produce "criticism"
for the for the New York Times Book Review, or The National Review, etc.,
which, though it may even be lively at times, and often full of that
vacuous wit that garden variety liberals so love because it revolves
around a few threadbare names and dead ideas they learned during their
college days or masters degree indoctrination.

But the thinking classes' main job is to serve as intellectual hit men for
the ruling elites, the business class, which doesn't come all that hard
for them, having been all stamped out of the same dough on the Corporate
system's university conveyor belt. Most are utterly convinced they are
original and thinking for themselves, which in the university scheme of
things means absorbing vast amounts of text, fermenting it in some sort of
a second stomach and regurgitating it as a concentrated cud, supposedly
unique because they alone coughed it up. The few who understand that this
in no way resembles original thought usually keep mum, and keep their jobs
in publishing or academia. Or flee screaming in despair once they figure
out what is going on.

Then too, there is a huge number for whom America's university system is a
sheltered workshop; people who simply could not survive in the real
working world, which, miserable as it may be, nevertheless demands a
modicum of practicality and some scant ability to socialize. I once dated
a university professor with a doctorate in linguistics who, honest to god,
let her Irish wolfhound shit all over the house and completely destroy
every piece of furniture in her place until she was forced to sleep in the
attic crawlspace in a sleeping bag, and actually did not understand why
nobody ever accepted her dinner party invitations. She was not, by the
way, brilliant or eccentric. Just completely helpless and out of it in her
own little corner of academic goo-goo-land. Yet out there on the plains of
Washington State University hers was a reasonably respected intellect.

Now you can skin the cat (or that goddamned wolfhound) any way you choose,
but if you want to be a really respected intellectual, you must serve
business and power. You must serve the only apparatus capable of allowing
you exposure enough to make a lunge at respect, which after all, merely
amounts to being allowed to create something scientifically useful to the
Empire's goals, or in other cases, achieve that weird localized hothouse
plant celebrity as an intellectual one finds on every campus. Either way,
you'll never make as much money as say, Ann Coulter, who is infinitely
more useful to the Empire and the business class that runs it than any
intellectual can ever hope to be.


Pistol whipped with the "business end" of a good education

The United States has the most obsessive business class in the world. This
would be no big deal if it did not direct the minds of the nation's
population thorough its public relations indoctrination industry. This is
a matter of life and death for the financial pickle vendors, sub-prime
mortgage shysters and CitiBank, Morgan Stanley and other high financiers
who have come to actually own this country. There is only one threat to
their empire of debt: people acting in the interests of ordinary society
- which in the rest of the world is known as socialism. Consequently, we
have no socialist politicians and no socialist journalists in our entire
press and media, which is simply unimaginable in most civilized places
like Europe. It is important that the working class thinks it has the
self-determination they learned about in high school civics classes
designed in the universities, that they feel any kind of individual power
at all, which basically comes down the tepid power of consumer choice,
which makes them malleable, and intolerant of any voice that suggests
otherwise. But if even one iota of class awareness were allowed to
flourish here, well, much of the American business class and the entire
Yale University faculty would be hiding out in Argentina.

Without class interests and class awareness there can be no genuine
politics or political parties. So, to the everlasting relief of the
business classes, and with thanks to our university system's poli-sci,
history and social science departments, we have neither. Despite all the
media's political white noise, we have a depoliticized society. It may be
that the Internet is changing things. It surely is the most refreshing
opportunity to come along maybe in all of modern American history, and it
does put heat on some political campaigns. No arguing that it influences
certain influencers in society, to the degree that anything besides
advertising influences anybody in the consumer republic. Problem is
though, how do you create critical political mass in a depoliticized
society? Most people don't vote and when it comes to actual participation
in politics, opportunity is zilch. If you are not from the relatively
privileged political and business segments, what the hell access is there
for the individual to participate, except in one of the two business based
and supported parties offered? Even at the local level. Anyone who has
tried to affect one of these parties locally knows you either play
entirely by the party line or stand isolated, over in the corner of the
Holiday Inn meeting room with your paper plate of stale salami and
Triscuits and keep your mouth shut and let the Rotary Club's big dogs
bark. "Save the class dissidence bullshit for your next Al-Qaeda cell
meeting, buddy!"

It is 1958 and I am twelve years old, living on the edge of niggertown in
Winchester, Virginia and hiding out in the Handley Public Library from the
redneck bully kids. I am reading a somewhat pompous but erudite biography
of a Harvard dean and wondering how such a mythical magical being could
possibly exist in the same country and on the same planet as me. A place
where my dad came home from the gas station every night, skin penetrated
by and forever smelling of motor oil and cigarettes. Yet this man in this
book, this Harvard dean who apparently ate fish eggs called caviar (I
looked it up in the dictionary,) was a bulwark against something called
McCarthyism, hated some people called communists and was friends with a
fellow named John Kennedy. His name was McGeorge Bundy, which meant
absolutely nothing to me, neither at the time, nor even later when he
became one of the Kennedy administration's gurus who launched the Bay of
Pigs and the cranked up Vietnam War. Still, reading about him beat the
hell out of being bloodied by the red-faced inbred yokels who plagued the
10-block walk home from school. That same year I read Allen Ginsberg's
"Howl," a copy of which was given me by am older kid, a fellow habitue of
the decaying old Southern library, the queer son of the local insurance
agent. It changed my life forever:

"America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?"

Learning is a fickle thing. You never know which parts of it will turn out
to be important and you don't really need any credential or even much
literacy to begin the journey. After reading Howl I was pretty sure I was
a class dissident, even though the word was not even in use yet. Before a
word is born, there is a mumbling in the heart that cries for a name.

All these years later I find great comfort in that there are any number of
genuine class dissidents and original thinkers still nested within the
university system, nursing happy-hour pitchers, writing poetry,
formulating perfectly rational antidotes to our national delusions, even
though they serve now as mere manikin proof of the great academy's
tolerance for diverse ideas. They have been rendered eunuchs, but at least
they are dissident eunuchs with health insurance. But I have always
enjoyed living in or visiting major university communities. Just last week
I had one of the most meaningful evenings in ages with the dissident crowd
at the University of Pennsylvania in Philly. Thankfully, such dissidents
prefer to congregate there instead of, say, Bob Jones Cult College or
wearing the secret Mormon underwear of Brigham Young University. It felt
like old times. It felt free. Sort of. Still though, there was a nagging
feeling that these people were an endangered species. And also that they
were actually philosophers and bards and artists, noble pursuits once
esteemed by universities and the intellectual class, but somehow now fall
under the category of dissents - which in America is code for terrorist
sympathizing malcontents.

>From the viewpoint of university administrators, my puny philosophy
department, and even the entire humanities division, looks rather like
some vestigial organ. The business school is the heart, the natural
sciences are the brain, and we, who read Plato and Descartes, Homer and
Montaigne, are the appendix, just waiting to be excised once and for all.
  -- Justin E. H. Smith, Concordia University philosophy professor.

Meanwhile, until appendectomy happens, there are the nation's intellectual
hall monitors to deal with. Most of America's intellectual class, like any
privileged one that expects to maintain privilege, the intellectual class
must be self-policing. So real dissidents and original thinkers are
ignored and we watch B. F. Skinner's extinction behavior practice put into
action. Smile and ignore the dissident to death professionally. Sometimes
though, in spite of the best pest eradication efforts in the garden of
academe, there sprouts a weed so completely antithetical to the great lie
that he or she cannot be ignored. And if the offending party is
particularly unlucky, he or she may be discovered by one of the political
hacks sponsored to "elected office" by the Corporation, usually a
Republican congressman looking for threats from within this very republic
of eagles under god. Then all hell breaks loose. First the dissident is
publicly discredited and demonized by an organized media lie campaign.
After that, an appointed academic committee somehow discovers that his or
her credentials, even after 25 years in the university system, are
fraudulent and that there are some serious questions about his or her
sexual appetites, not to mention his or her whereabouts on September 11.

I once thought I understood the ways in which America removes those who
would point to the essential global criminality by which all Americans
draw their ration of bread. But as I watched this process be conducted on
my friend Ward Churchill, I realized how the extraction of these people
from society has become an exquisitely brutal form of public surgery,
certainly chilling on the face of it, but even more horrifying for the
entertainment value it provided for the cheap seats in the Coliseum. I've
known Church for over 30 years and though I've never completely agreed
with what I considered his somewhat violent take on things, I agree with
him now. Not simply because the system took out another of my dissenting
friends, but because for the first time I could see how the dismemberment
of a thinking citizen's identity and life is conducted, tissue by tissue,
through carefully sharpened lies and fraudulent moral and intellectual
charges. In his starkest truth telling about the genocide perpetrated upon
indigenous peoples, and in his now infamous description of the Empire's
"little Eichmanns" occupying the World Trade Center towers, Church came
too close to the truth about the kind of psychic violence that underpins
The American Way, the unacknowledged kind that is executed by America's
most servile class, the bureaucratic, managerial and intellectual classes
that maintain a system which could never survive the light of truth or
anything resembling real justice.

It is because of guys like Church that the American intellectual
establishment must conduct the self-policing of their own class. So a
carefully nurtured and sustained system of intellectual critics finds
faults, finds problems in the basic thesis or critical thinking or premise
of any writer or thinker whose observations do not match the national
hallucination being sold by the system's elites (to whom they must cater
without appearing to cater.) Even the supposed intellectual left does
this. In fact, probably does it best of all through its staunch assertions
of the evils of free market capitalism, even though free market capitalism
does not even exist and has never been practiced (more on that later).
Most born into the establishment's intellectual class are born blind,
rather like kangaroos or possums inside safe dark middle or upper middle
class marsupial pouches where they experience nothing except what feels
good as defined by the moist darkness of their nurture. And when they
emerge they feel entitled to be where they are and honestly cannot see the
system itself, never giving it a thought until they go off to college and,
between spring breaks and beer parties, learn to experience and define
reality through texts.

Those who do see the system for what it is are either worn down by the
sheer mass of our institutions, or construct elaborate mental architecture
to bridge over and avoid the truth. While their efforts are often
applauded taken up by fellow intellectuals - post modernism has been the
latest of these, and like all such constructions, contains a maybe one or
two fly-shit sized specks of truth - they are utterly lost in the
national machinery of fabrication. Text is not reality. Hell, reality
isn't even reality in this country.

It is not too hard to grasp why unlettered but intuitive - and not a
little bit vengeful - Chinese peasants in their revolution killed,
humiliated and imprisoned the intellectuals. If Mao got one thing right it
was that those intellectuals who pretend to ignore the existence of class,
or refuse to live at the level of the most common class, are actually
class exploiters, and entertain the pretense at their own eventual peril.
No amount of text, no amount of ideology or pretense can ultimately
protect us from reality, something which Americans are about to learn the
hardest way possible.

When it comes to the state sanctioned American intellectual
establishment's support of charade and pretense, the biggest fraud of all
has been the notion of capitalism and free markets. There never was a free
market, and, as Howard Zinn has so often demonstrated, every single
industrialized nation was built on protectionism from the beginning. Even
a cursory study of economic history shows that not a single developed
nation in the world has ever followed the rules of free market capitalism.
Not one. Early America built its textile industry on protectionism from
the British. A hundred years later our steel industry came about the same
way.

That is not to say the rules of free market capitalism are never observed.
The rules of free market economics are for ramming down the throats of
Third World or otherwise uncooperative peoples. Especially those tracking
crude oil through the marketplace on the soles of their sandals. Yet there
is scarcely a college or university, or business or school of that mumbo
jumbo ritual called "economics" in this nation that does not teach "free
market history" and free market "solutions" to such problems as the
devastating eco collapse in progress, or that millions of babies shit
themselves to death from dysentery or die for lack of a plain old drink of
clean water.

Watching doomsday on HBO

Free market capitalism may have been a fraud from the git-go, but at least
there was once a version which accepted the notion that any market needed
customers. Once upon a time business in the industrialized world needed
its citizen laborers as customers, as consumers, which implied they be
paid at least enough to buy the products of the businesses and
corporations that beat their asses into submission along America's
assembly lines and hog slaughtering plants. That was called American
opportunity and prosperity and it looked pretty damned good to millions of
war ravaged Urpeen furiners trying to decide whether to eat a wharf rat or
the neighbor's cat for dinner. As for the Third World, they could eat dirt
and do native dances for what few tourists existed then (otherwise called
the rich), but mainly they should stay out of the way of "our" natural
resources in their countries.

At any rate, when the citizen labor force, by their sheer numbers, held
most of the dough in their calloused mitts, there was no avoiding them by
the business classes. But now that so much of not just this nation's, but
the world's wealth, has become concentrated in the hands of so few, that
is no longer a problem for the rich. People are cheaper than ever and
getting more plentiful by the minute. So work'em to death, kill'em, eat'em
if you want to. Who the fuck cares? The international rich, the managers
and controllers of the new financial globalism and the world's resources
and the planet's labor forces, whether they be Asian "Confucian
capitalists," masters of Colombian Narco state fortunes or Chinese Tongs,
New York or London brokerage and media barons, or Russian oligarchs, hold
increasing and previously unimaginable concentrated wealth. They look to
be a replacement for the mass market, indeed even a better one with fewer
mass distribution problems, higher grade demand and at top prices.

Until then however, the real dough is still in the energy game, the big
suckdown of hydrocarbons, that plus convincing Americans to burn up their
own seed corn. Academics, economists and scientists offer "free market
solutions," such as ethyl alcohol from corn - which most readers here
know requires more petroleum to grow than energy it produces, and will
deprive the rest of the world of much needed food - just so Americans may
continue motoring the suburban savannah lands, grazing on Subway Cold Cut
Combos and Outback's Kookaburra Chicken Wings.

But even when the last Toyota Prius is forever moldering in the globally
warmed deserts of Minneapolis, we proles will not be totally unprofitable
creatures. Yesterday I read a gem of an economic paper asserting that in
the emerging information, amusement, service, and "experience and
attention economy," it is vital that "private business capture ownership
and control of the public's knowledge and its attending rent streams."
Apparently it's not bad enough that we become a third rate gulag of
impoverished nitwits. They are going to charge us for the privilege.

Oh, dammit to hell anyway. Like a lady in Philly told me last week, "Joe,
you're always so grim about these things." She's right. It's not the end
of the world. Just the opening act. There is still quite a bit of this
ugly little drama to be played out. But I can say one thing with
certainty: This may be, as the economic intellectuals assert, the new
American "attention economy," but I sure as hell ain't gonna to pay to
watch.

Joe Bageant is the author of a forthcoming book, Deer Hunting With Jesus:
Dispatches from America's Class War, from Random House Crown about working
class America, scheduled for spring 2007 release. A complete archive of
his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the
subject of class may be found at: http://www.joebageant.com. Feel free to
contact him at: joebageant [at] joebageant.com.

Copyright 2007 by Joe Bageant


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