Blog of the Week:
TREEHUGGER The Place for Everything Green 
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By Randy Shannon, CCDS
choice "Everyone has the right to work, to free of employment, to
just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against
unemployment."
- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948
I. Introduction
The "Great Recession" that began in 2007 has caused the greatest
percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is
the end of an era of unrestrained 'neo-liberal' capitalism that became
public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new
level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that
targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II. |
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Order Our
Full Employment Booklets
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Capitalism may well collapse under its own excesses, but what would one
propose to replace it? Margaret Thatcher's mantra was TINA...There Is No
Alternative. David Schweickart's vision of "Economic Democracy"
proposes a serious alternative. Even more fundamentally, it opens the
door to thinking about alternatives. His may or may not turn out to be
the definitive "successor system," but he is a leader in breaking out of
the box. |
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Quick Links...
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Solidarity Economy:
What It's All About
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Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging
Edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Naber
$45, Syracuse University Press
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Malcolm X: A Life
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by Manning Marable
Viking Adult
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Planet of Slums
by Mike Davis
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Carl Davidson's Latest Book:
New Paths to Socialism
Essays on Mondragon, Marx, Gramsci and the Green and Solidarity Economies |
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An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
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No Clout...
We're the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism...Do you have friends who should see this? Pass it on...Do you have a blog of your own? Others you love to read every day? Well, this is a place where you can share access to them with the rest of your comrades. Just pick your greatest hits for the week and send them to us at carld717@gmail.com! Most of all, it's urgent that you oppose austerity, make solidarity and end the wars! We're doing more than ever, and have big plans. So pay your dues, make a donation and become a sustainer. Do it Now! Check the link at the bottom... |
Grassroots Organizing: Hoosiers Meet to
Discuss Van Jones' 'Rebuild the Dream' Proposal'
By Harry Targ Diary of a Heartland Radical Seventeen community activists met Tuesday August 16, 2011 to view Van Jones' speech initiating his "American Dream Movement." The 70 minute video was followed by 45 minutes of discussion on how progressives in Central Indiana should respond to the national, state, and local economic and political crises of 2011. Participants included activists from various local organizations: the local labor council and building trades, the peace movement, Planned Parenthood, the independent Obama campaign organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the local alternative newspaper,the Lafayette Independent. Jones gave his inspirational speech hoping to initiate a national progressive movement at Town Hall, in New York on June 23, 2011. Jones, a former advisor to the Obama administration on green jobs, resigned from office after being attacked for radicalism by Fox News. The specious attack on Jones preceded similar attacks on the community organization, ACORN, and Department of Agriculture expert Shirley Sherrod. In none of these cases did the Obama administration defend the targets of lies and slander. In his speech, which was designed to inspire progressives to organize house parties and other public meetings in every city and town in America, Jones identified four lies that have come to shape our political discourse. The first lie, plastered across the screens and print media, is that America is broke. Presenting data and analysis, Jones showed that the US economy was not broke. In fact, the United States remained the richest country in the world, but the wealth and income was shifting ever more dramatically from the vast majority of the population to banks and corporations. The second lie, he claimed, which has become part of common wisdom, though untrue, is that if the rich are taxed more equitably, the economy will be hurt....
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If You Don't Meet and Plan, You're
Not Organized and Have No Clout!
Americans Are Angry. Why Aren't They Protesting?
By David S. Meyer
Progressive America Rising via Washington Post
August 12, 2011 - There's something exciting, sometimes terrifying, about people taking to the streets to get what they want. In Cairo's Tahrir Square, they gathered to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. In Athens, demonstrators set up a gallows in front of Parliament, threatening the socialist government, which was imposing austerity measures in the face of 15 percent unemployment. Most recently, in London and across England, young people have assembled at night, looting stores and burning cars to demand - well, that's not clear yet.
Whether you're inspired or appalled depends on your politics. Demonstrators who play to our hopes are heroes; those who challenge our beliefs are at best misguided and at worst terrorists. Regardless, those in the streets carrying petrol or placards project their anger and aspirations to an audience as broad as possible. When they're successful, we talk about their concerns as well as their tactics.
What about here in the United States? Polls consistently show that fewer than half of Americans approve of the job that President Obama is doing, and those ratings are far higher than Congress or either political party receives. Unemployment remains stubbornly above 9 percent. There is plenty of anger in America today: anger about joblessness across the nation, about cutbacks in services in the states, about increased tuition at our universities, about economic and political inequality that seems to be increasing, and at a government that seems unable to do anything about any of this. Where are the people taking to the streets? ...
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America's Lost Wars: The Choice in 2012
 Will We Have a Peace Candidate? The United States remains embroiled in conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. The outcome of the current presidential-election campaign will determine whether it can escape another decade of war.
By Paul Rogers
Open Democracy
The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have to a degree been overshadowed in 2011 by events elsewhere in the "greater middle east". Yet each has continued, albeit with different rhythms. The persistent violence and the broader impact of the wars on American society ensure that they, and the US's foreign entanglements more broadly, will play an important part in the presidential-election campaign of 2012. But what will the wars' political influence be, and will this in the end favour bringing the era of war to an end or extending it into another decade?
The context of the choice is the election campaign of 2008, when Barack Obama owed his victory in part to the fact that he articulated a policy over Afghanistan and Iraq that reflected the public opinion of the American majority.
The consensus view at the time was that Iraq was a "bad war". It had been started by the George W Bush administration, justified by fraudulent reference to the 9/11 attacks, involved 150,000 troops and untold casualties; after almost six years of an unwinnable war, it was time to get out. Yet in formulating his Iraq policy, Obama was aided by the apparent success of the "surge" of US forces ordered by Bush in early 2007; this provided the new president with a reasonable assurance that he could make substantial withdrawals early in his term.
By contrast, Afghanistan was still considered and could be represented as a "good war". It had been started a month after 9/11 and, since the Taliban were playing host to the al-Qaida movement at the time, this direct link provided justification for continuing the war even after seven years of at best uncertain progress.
Yet in relation to Afghanistan, there was an important difference in the proposed approach of the rival candidates in 2008. John McCain's view was that (following the Iraq precedent) a major surge of troops into the country was needed in pursuit of a comprehensive defeat of the Taliban. Obama also endorsed an increased commitment, and once elected initiated the surge - though his strategic thinking was more convoluted. He had come to consider the war unwinnable, so rather than expecting to destroy the Taliban sought the lesser objective of establishing a position of military superiority and then negotiating a way out.
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Michele Bachmann vs. Rick Perry:
Who's the Bigger Right-Wing Extremist?
Who really deserves a reputation as too much of a right-wing extremist for the Beltway media to take seriously?
By Amanda Marcotte
Alternet.org
Aug. 18, 2011 - As the battle for the Republican nomination for president heats up, more attention is being paid to Rep. Michele Bachmann from Minnesota, who is cast as the crazy-eyed right-wing nut, and Gov. Rick Perry from Texas, who gets to play the role of the more reasonable Republican who will likely win the nomination.
But, as the progressive press has been doggedly trying to expose, Bachmann and Perry are far more alike in the "crazy right-wing nut" department than they might initially seem. After all, Perry has a record of ordering the execution of an obviously innocent man, which goes beyond being tough on crime into the territory of killing as a demonstration of power.
So what's the real story? In a battle of who's the biggest right-wing nut, who would win, Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry? I compiled a set of barometers of modern right-wing nuttery and weighed each candidate against them to see who really deserves a reputation in the Beltway media as too much of a right-wing extremist to be taken seriously:
Christian Dominionism. Dominionism used to be a fringe belief, even among fundamentalist Christians in politics, because it's rooted in Christian Reconstructionism, an ideology that promotes extreme theocracy and includes legalizing slavery and stoning people as criminal punishments for such "crimes" as homosexuality and disobedience to parents. However, in recent years, evangelicals have picked up Dominionism, ignoring its most unsavory aspects in favor of running with the arguments for theocracy. As Michelle Golberg recounted in the Daily Beast, both Bachmann and Perry have taken beliefs from Dominionists, and put into action the idea that the American government should be a Christian theocracy based around a fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture. ...
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The Rebel Feminist Priest
The Vatican has nearly kicked Roy Bourgeois out of the priesthood for supporting women's ordination.
By George Fish
In These Times
Aug 16, 2011 - The Vatican's outrage at American priest Roy Bourgeois for publicly supporting the ordination of women to the priesthood has nearly reached its final stage: removal from the priesthood ("laicization") by the Vatican and expulsion from the Catholic missionary order Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, which ordained him 39 years ago.
Official condemnation of Bourgeois--triggered by his participation in the August 2008 ordination service of Rev. Janice Sevre-Duszynska--escalated on March 29, 2011, when the priest received a letter (the First Canonical Warning) from the Superior General of the Maryknoll order demanding that he publicly recant his support for female ordination or be removed from the priesthood. Since Bourgeois refused to do so, the Second Canonical Warning, or final notice of pending removal from the Maryknoll Order, was issued on July 27, 2011.
Both letters went out over the signatures of Edward M. Dougherty, superior general of the 100-year-old Catholic order, and Maryknoll's Secretary General, Edward J. McGovern. The first letter noted that consultations had taken place between the Maryknoll Order and the Vatican, and that Bourgeois had been notified over two years ago after Sevre-Duszynska, a member of the group Roman Catholic Womenpriests, became the 35th woman to be ordained under its auspices.
Although Bourgeois is considered excommunicated latae senteniae, i.e., upon commission of the deed, for participating in the ordination ceremony of Sevre- Duszynska, the Vatican did not move to formally excommunicate him and the matter remained in limbo from late 2008 on. But things escalated this year after Bourgeois spoke in February on a panel at Barnard College in conjunction with the showing of the award-winning documentary on women's ordination, Pink Smoke over the Vatican. ...
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The Invention of the White Race: The Short Summary of the Two-Volume Classic by its Author
 By Theodore W. Allen
1. The two-volume work presents a historical treatment of a few precisely defined concepts: of the essential nature of the social control structure of class societies; of racial oppression without reference to "phenotype" factors; of racial slavery in continental Anglo-America as a particular form of racial oppression; of the "white race"--an all-class association of European-Americans held together by "racial" privileges conferred on laboring-class European-Americans relative to African-Americans--as the principal historic guarantor of ruling-class domination of national life.
On the misleading concept of "race"
2. The concept of "race," in the scientific sense of particular group-identifying characteristics resulting from aeons of inbreeding in isolation, has nothing to do with "race relations," whatever that term may be taken to mean, in the four thousand years of recorded human history; certainly not in the nano-second of evolutionary time represented by the four hundred years since the founding of Jamestown in 1607. We have the assurance of eminent authorities in the fields of physical anthropology, genetics and biology, such as Stanley M. Garn and Theodosius Dobzhansky, that the study of evolution has nothing but disclaimers to contribute to the understanding of "racism" as a historical phenomenon; as Dobzhansky puts it: "The mighty vision of human equality belongs to the realm of ethics and politics, not to that of biology."2 With greater particularity, Garn writes that Race "has nothing to do with racism, which is simply the attempt to deny some people deserved opportunities simply because of their origin, or to accord other people certain undeserved opportunities only because of their origin."3
3. The assertion that opens Chapter I of Volume One of The Invention of the White Race is altogether consistent with those disclaimers: "However one may choose to define the term 'racial'-- it concerns the historian only as it relates to a pattern of oppression (subordination, subjugation, exploitation) of one group of human beings by another."4
4. When, therefore, a group of human beings from "multiracial" (the anthropologists' term) Europe goes to North American or South Africa, and there, by constitutional fiat, incorporates itself as the "white race," that is no part of genetic evolution. It is, rather, a political act: the invention of "the white race." Thus it lies within the proper sphere of social scientists, and is an appropriate objective for alteration by social activists....
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Film Review: With Friends Like These: On the Philippine-American War in John Sayles' 'Amigo'
By J. Hoberman
The Village Voice
Aug 17 2011 - John Sayles's Amigo aspires more to educate than entertain, but it's no less engrossing for that. Torn from the pages of history, if not those of Sayles's recently published, epic turn-of-the-20th-century novel A Moment in the Sun, the movie harks back to America's first real imperial adventure-the bloody pacification of the Philippines.
Featuring a large Filipino cast and shot by a mainly Filipino crew, Amigo is set in a northern Luzon village occupied by U.S. soldiers and surrounded by guerrilla insurrectos. It's a movie of multiple perspectives and four languages: Spanish, Tagalog, Chinese, and English. The protagonist, Rafael (Filipino superstar and the movie's co-producer Joel Torre), is the village leader, caught in the middle and pitted against himself-a self-proclaimed amigo to the Americans and, with his brother and young son camped out in the jungle, an ambiguous "friend of the revolution." Sayles takes care to establish the historical forces at play-feudalism, nationalism, colonialism, religion-but Amigo is in many respects a family quarrel. As the amigo's wife (Rio Locsin)-who, unlike him, is a devout Catholic and thus beholden to his rival, the village padre (Yul Vázquez)-asks, "How can both sides be right?"
Good question. Amigo is a movie in which everyone has their reasons, and various sides commit atrocities, although this sense of relative values does not necessarily make for subtlety. "The little monkey ran right in here-I see'ed him!" are the first English words we hear, as U.S. forces pursue a presumed guerrilla into the village. The Americans are mainly cheerful Southern boys weaned on lynchings and grizzled Westerners, veterans of the Apache wars. (The frontier had only just closed when the war began in 1899; Richard Slotkin's Gunfighter Nation convincingly argues that President Theodore Roosevelt and others regarded and promoted the Philippines adventure as the next splendid step in America's Manifest Destiny.)...
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Become a CCDS member today!
 The
time is long past for 'Lone Rangers'. Being a socialist by your self is
no fun and doesn't help much. Join CCDS today--$36 regular, $48
household and $18 youth.
Better yet, beome a sustainer at $20 per month,
and we'll send you a copy of Jack O'Dell's new book, 'Climbing Jacobs
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1950s and 1960s.
Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS |
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