Progressive Calendar 03.28.12 /2 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001umn.edu) | |
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:49:16 -0700 (PDT) |
*P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 03.28.12 /1* 1. Coldwater radio 3.28 7pm 2. Civil rights/KFAI 3.29 9am 3. Trayvon Martin 3.29 6pm 4. Vigil 3.30 1pm Little Falls MN 5. Palestine vigil 3.30 4:15pm 6. Poetry 3.30 7pm 7. PC Roberts - How the New American Empire really works 8. SJ Bramhall - Resist or die 9 Tony Human - We serve the lord [Haiku Open] --------1 of 9-------- Coldwater radio 3.28 7pm Coldwater Radio Documentary by Allison Herrera Wednesday, March 28, 2012 from 7:30-8 PM on KFAI-FM, 90.3 in Minneapolis, 106.7 in Saint Paul or online at www.kfai.org --------2 of 9-------- From: Lydia Howell Civil rights/KFAI 3.29 9am THUR. MAR. 29, 9 AM "DISMANTLING CIVIL RIGHTS OVERSIGHT IN MN", KFAI RADIO Hear MICHELLE GROSS co-founder/activist with COMMUNITIES UNITED AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY (CUAPB).The Civilian Review Authority, which aims to bring accountability and voersight to police--brought into being by Minneapoluis voters in 1990-- and the Minneapolis Civil Rigths Department are under attack. Both entities have already been seriously de-funded. Now,the Police Fedeartion. Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak and the State Legislature are working to dismantle both these organzaitons. For those who are brutazlied or who's loved ones are killed by police would then only have the Minneapolis Police Internal Affairs to turn to---abn organzaiton that has never responded to police abuses with accountability. From equity in city contracts to housing discrimination, whre would people turn without any enforcement mechamism, such as Civil rights departments? CUAPB meets every Sat.1:30pm [at] Walker Church in Mpls. www.cuapb.org Corporate media is NOT reporting on these issues! Tune into CATALYST:politics & culture. Hosted by Lydia Howell KFAI RADIO 90.3fm Mpls 106.7fm ONLINE:live&archived for 2 weeks after broadcast on CATALYST page at : www.kfai.org IT'S SPRING PLEDGE DRIVE at KFAI!~ Pledge on CATALYST--at any amount--and you support PEOPLE POWERED RADIO and everyone gets a premium--books, CDs DVDs and more. CALL DURING CATALYST Thursdays 9am-9:30am (612)375-9030 or pledge at www.kfai.org on the CATALYST page. --------3 of 9-------- From; Lydia Howell Trayvon Martin 3.29 6pm THUR.MAR. 29:6PM JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON MARTIN U of MN, COFFMAN UNION, East Bank, Minneapolis The Twin Cities joins the rest of the country in calling for the murderer of Florida teen, TRAYVON MARTIN, to be arrested and broguht to justice! With a MN version of what's been called "Shoot First,Ask Questions Later" law at our State Capitol--this is a fight that's vital for all who support human rights to join! [ed calls it the Fascist Brown Shirt Enabling Act] --------4 of 9-------- >From WAMM Vigil 3.30 1pm Little Falls MN Vigil for Peace, Economic Justice and the Environment Friday, March 30, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. West of Highway 10 on Highway 27 (Corner of Cobornâs Superstore and Walgreens), Little Falls. Come one, come all. Stand with others in solidarity for peace (no more wars), economic justice (raise the minimum wage to $10.00/hour) and the environment. Bring your own sign or borrow one of the many that will be available for use. Free refreshments will be served. Sponsored by: Little Falls Partners for Peace and others. FFI: Call Robin âthe doveâ Hensel, 620-360-3931. --------5 of 9-------- From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net> Subject: Palestine vigil 3.30 4:15pm The weekly vigil for the liberation of Palestine continues at the intersection of Snelling and Summit Aves in St. Paul. The Friday demo starts at 4:15 and ends around 5:30. There are usually extra signs available --------6 of 9-------- >From AWE Poetry 3.30 7pm Friday, March 30, 7:00pm Exploring Human Experience through Poetry First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, 900 Mount Curve Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55403 --------7 of 9-------- Why the Wars Will Not End How the New American Empire Really Works by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS March 27, 2012 Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive. The empires succeeded, because the value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance. The reason Rome did not extend its empire east into Germany was not the military prowess of Germanic tribes but Romeâs calculation that the cost of conquest exceeded the value of extractable resources. The Roman empire failed, because Romans exhausted manpower and resources in civil wars fighting amongst themselves for power. The British empire failed, because the British exhausted themselves fighting Germany in two world wars. In his book, The Rule of Empires (2010), Timothy H. Parsons replaces the myth of the civilizing empire with the truth of the extractive empire. He describes the successes of the Romans, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Spanish in Peru, Napoleon in Italy, and the British in India and Kenya in extracting resources. Parsons does not examine the American empire, but in his introduction to the book he wonders whether Americaâs empire is really an empire as the Americans donât seem to get any extractive benefits from it. After eight years of war and attempted occupation of Iraq, all Washington has for its efforts is several trillion dollars of additional debt and no Iraqi oil. After ten years of trillion dollar struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington has nothing to show for it except possibly some part of the drug trade that can be used to fund covert CIA operations. Americaâs wars are very expensive. Bush and Obama have doubled the national debt, and the American people have no benefits from it. No riches, no bread and circuses flow to Americans from Washingtonâs wars. So what is it all about? The answer is that Washingtonâs empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americansâ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American Empire functions. The New Empire is different. It happens without achieving conquest. The American military did not conquer Iraq and has been forced out politically by the government that Washington established. There is no victory in Afghanistan, and after a decade the American military does not control the country. In the New Empire success at war no longer matters. The extraction takes place by being at war. Huge sums of American taxpayersâ money have flowed into the American armaments industries and huge amounts of power into Homeland Security. The American empire works by stripping Americans of wealth and liberty. This is why the wars cannot end, or if one does end another starts. Remember when Obama came into office and was asked what the US mission was in Afghanistan? He replied that he did not know what the mission was and that the mission needed to be defined. Obama never defined the mission. He renewed the Afghan war without telling us its purpose. Obama cannot tell Americans that the purpose of the war is to build the power and profit of the military/security complex at the expense of American citizens. This truth doesnât mean that the objects of American military aggression have escaped without cost. Large numbers of Muslims have been bombed and murdered and their economies and infrastructure ruined, but not in order to extract resources from them. It is ironic that under the New Empire the citizens of the empire are extracted of their wealth and liberty in order to extract lives from the targeted foreign populations. Just like the bombed and murdered Muslims, the American people are victims of the American empire. [How much longer will we take it? If it were any other enemy, we' d declare WAR. But, since it is OUR .01%, we smile while we're kicked, robbed, insulted, demeaned, humiliated, imprisoned, sliced, diced, and deep fat fried. After all, we have to have some butts or other to kiss, and theirs are big as all outdoors. Plus, they get off on it.- ed] PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached through his website --------8 of 9-------- Resist or Die by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall March 26th, 2012 Dissident Voice END:CIV Resist or Die,1) according to the promo, âexamines our cultureâs systemic addiction to violence and environmental exploitation.â The title is drawn from Pac Man, an arcade came that first came out in 1980. In one of the worldâs first video games, the player guides Pac Man, a small faceless mouth, through a maze while he devours Pac Dots and tries to escape blob monsters. The first three minutes of END:CIV superimpose a Pac Man game over images of old growth clear cuts, belching smokestacks, factory hog farms, wild fires, hurricanes and the US militaryâs ruthless killing machine. The sequence ends as a gigantic âGAME OVERâ flashes across the screen. The film is based on the Endgame, the best selling two volume book Derrick Jensen published in 2006. In Endgame, Jensen argues that mankind urgently needs to bring down âcivilizationâ before it destroys the planet. He bases his case on twenty basic premises he lists at the beginning of both volumes. The film END:CIV examines four of them. Premise 1 â industrialized civilization has never been and will never be sustainable, mainly because itâs based on non-renewable resources. The film, like Jensenâs book, traces the rise of cities, which by necessity steal resources from distant regions and eventually denude the entire landscape of those resources. After making the case that the corporate elite are mindlessly and voraciously consuming an ever increasing amount of energy, land, water and other resources, the filmmaker points out that we live on a finite planet. He then argues that corporations will most likely continue this greedy consumption until everything is used up â or until we stop them. The imagery in this section consists of shot after shot of old growth clear cuts, through which 90% of the earthâs rainforests have been transforms into deserts. It features cameos by indigenous and environmental activists who argue that industrial civilization has created an elaborate infrastructure for a lifestyle that has no future. They also point out that no âclean green pathâ to sustainable living will ever support the extremely wasteful way of life we have become accustomed to. Premise 2 â traditional communities donât allow willingly allow the confiscation of their natural and mineral resources by capitalist owners. Accordingly, a major focus of industrialized civilization has been to destroy indigenous communities by force. A corollary of Premise 2 is that industrialized civilization would collapse rapidly without, if not for its reliance on widespread violence. This section juxtaposes common media images of violence with consumption-related adverting and infotainment. For example one split screen shows the aerial bombardment of Baghdad together with jewelry specials from the shopping channel; another depicts Bangladeshi sweatshops alongside a series of tiny butts in skin tight jeans. In an excerpt from a public forum, Jensen explains that much of violence is invisible and a matter of conditioning. He gives the example of the cop who will pull a gun and drag you to jail if you donât pay your rent or satisfy your hunger by eating off grocery shelves. He then questions the belief we all grow up with that people have to pay for the right to exist on this planet. The film goes on to criticize the main message put out by the nonprofit environmental movement we can remedy this pervasive violence and extensive resource theft and exploitation by making politically correct purchase choices. In the view of Jensen and other activists featured in the film, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Forest Ethics and similar âeco-bureaucraciesâ have essentially sold out by making preservation of the industrial economy their highest priority and saving the planet secondary. As Jensen points out, future generations wonât care how much we recycled. All they will care about is whether we leave them a living planet. This section is also highly critical of the dogmatic stance of much of the environmental movement towards nonviolent civil disobedience. Jensen does a great send up of the movie Star Wars. In his version, the rebels donât destroy Darth Vader by blowing up the death star. Instead they promote eco-tours and Fair Trade products from endangered planets and send waves of compassion and loving kindness towards Darth Vader, as they lock themselves down on his ship. They also vote to condemn and exclude the renegades who propose to blow up the death star â for allowing themselves to be contaminated by Darth Vaderâs culture of violence. Premise 3 â the culture (of industrialized society) as a whole and most of its inhabitants are insane. The section points out that, contrary to popular belief, no combination of fossil or alternative fuels will allow us to continue our current âhappy motoringâ society. It focuses on Albertaâs insane tar sands project, the most environmentally destructive enterprise in history. Tar sands production is responsible for the second highest rate of deforestation (second to the Amazon rain forest in the world), as well as massive waterway contamination. All this environmental devastation is occurring to develop a technology that has one of the worst rates of Energy Return on Investment (2:1).2 Premise 4 â from the beginning, the culture of civilization has been a culture of occupation. The film ends with a brief overview of the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe. In the final scene, Jensen poses the provocative and disarming question: âIf your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air and contaminated your food supply, at what point would you resist?â END:CIV Resist or Die, 2011, directed by Franklin Lopez, (Free [Creative Commons] download [â] EROI refers to the amount of energy returned for each unit of energy required to extract or create the new energy. Even solar photovoltaic cells, which arenât particularly efficient, have an EROI of 8:1. Saudi oil has an EROI of 10:1. US oil reserves prior to 1970 had an EROI of 23:1. As of 2000, US reserves had an EROI of 8:1 (source: Fleeing Vesuvius). [â] Dr. Stuart Bramhall is a 63-year-old American child and adolescent psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. Her works include a young adult novel The Battle for Tomorrow about a 16 year old girl who participates in the blockade and occupation of the US Capitol and a memoir, The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee. Email her at: stuartbramhall [at] yahoo.co.nz. . --------9 of 9-------- WE SERVE THE LORD The Scum Sucking Rich Stealing from all and Sundry to Service Mammon! T. HUNNICUTT; SHOW ME THE MONEY! -Tony Human showmethemoneytbone [at] gmail.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ShoveTrove
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