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December 7, 2012
In This Issue
Full Employment
Fiscal Cliff Metaphor Trap
Sanders Socialist Voice
Fred Hampton Remembered
Scenes from SOAW
Destroying Green Jobs
Afghan Footdragging
Dave Brubeck, RIP
Film: Chen's 'Dragon'
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 Dialogue & Initiative 2012



The new annual edition of our journal of discussion and analysis is now out. More than 130 pages, it includes 13 articles related to the Occupy! movement, as well as seven others vital to study in this election year. Cost is $10 plus shipping. Or get one by becoming a sustainer. Click the title to buy it directly.
THE ACTIVISTS: War, Peace, and Politics in the Streets


New one-hour video on the antiwar movements
Blog of the Week:    
Jacobin

Review of 'Lincoln'
Lost Writings of SDS..

Revolutionary Youth the the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the RYM Documents and other Lost Writings of SDS

Edited by Carl Davidson

 



Changemaker, 273pp, $22.50

For the full contents, click the link and view 'Preview' under the cover graphic.
'They're Bankrupting Us!': And Twenty Other Myths about Unions
Tina at AFL-CIO

New Book by Bill Fletcher, Jr. 

By Randy Shannon, CCDS

 

 

 "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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Full Employment Booklets

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...In a new and updated 2nd Edition

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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CCDS Discussion
Sex and the Automobile in the Jazz Age

Tina at AFL-CIO

By Peter Ling in History Today: 'Brothels on wheels' thundered the moralists but Peter Ling argues the advent of mass motoring in the 1920s was only one of the changes in social and group relationships that made easier the pursuit of carnal desire.

 
A Memoir of the 1960s by Paul Krehbiel

Autumn Leaf Press, $25.64

Shades of Justice:  Bringing Down a President and Ending a War
Shades of Justice Video: Bringing Down a President, Ending a War

Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary

Tina at AFL-CIO

By Giuseppe Fiori
Verso, 30 pages
Gay, Straight and the Reason Why



The Science of Sexual Orientation


By Simon LeVay
Oxford University Press
$27.95



New Book: Diary of a Heartland Radical

By Harry Targ

Carl Davidson's Latest Book:
New Paths to Socialism



Essays on Mondragon, Marx, Gramsci and the Green and Solidarity Economies
Solidarity Economy:
What It's All About

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Edited by Jenna Allard, Carl Davidson and Julie Matthaei

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Introducing the 'Frankfurt School'

Voices from the Underground Press of the 1960s, Part 2
  • Foreword by Susan Brownmiller
  • Preface by Ken Wachsberger
$37.50 + $6 shipping

Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement




By Don Hamerquist
An Invitation to CCDSers and Friends...
 

Tax the Rich,
and Then What?    
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 [email protected]!

Most of all, it's urgent that you defend voter rights, plan for 2014 races now, oppose austerity, make solidarity with the Occupy! movement 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...
Why It's Hard to Replace the 'Fiscal Cliff' Metaphor

By George Lakoff
Truthout Op-Ed

Dec 3, 2012 - Regardless of how inaccurate it may be, the conceptual metaphor of the fiscal cliff is here to stay, thanks to the way our brains are wired.

Writers on economics have been talking since the election about why the "fiscal cliff" metaphor is misleading. Alternative metaphors have been offered like the fiscal hill, fiscal curb, and fiscal showdown, as if one metaphor could easily be replaced by another that makes more sense of the real situation. But none of the alternatives has stuck, nor has the fiscal cliff metaphor been abandoned. Why? Why do some metaphors have far more staying power than others, even when they give a misleading picture of a crucial national issue?

The reason has to do with the way that metaphorical thought and language work in the brain. From a cognitive linguistics perspective, "fiscal cliff" is not a simple metaphor bringing "fiscal" together with "cliff." It is instead a linguistic metaphor that is understood via a highly integrated cascade of other deeper and more general conceptual metaphors.

A cascade is a neural circuit containing and coordinating neural circuits in various parts of the brain.

Let's take a look at the metaphorical complexity of "fiscal cliff" and how the metaphors that comprise it fit together. The simplest, is the metaphor named MoreIsUp, which is a neural circuit linking two distinct brain regions, one for verticality and one for quantity. It is a high-level general metaphor widespread throughout the world, and occurs in a vast number of sentences like: Turn the radio up; the temperature fell, and so on.

The economy is seen as moving forward and either moving up, moving down or staying level, where verticality metaphorically indicates the value of economic indicators like the GDP or a stock market average. These are indicators of economic activity, such as overall spending on goods and services, or the sale of stocks. Why is economic activity conceptualized as motion? Because a common conceptual metaphor is being used: ActivityIsMotion, as in sentences like: The project is moving along smoothly; the remodeling is getting bogged down, and so on. The common metaphor TheFutureIsAhead accounts for why the motion is "forward."

In a diagram of changes over time in a stock market or the GDP, the metaphor used is ThePastIsLeft and TheFutureIsRight, which is why the diagram goes from left to right when the economy is conceptualized as moving "forward."

When Ben Bernanke spoke of the "fiscal cliff" he undoubtedly had an mind a graph of the economy moving along, left to right, on a slight incline and then suddenly dropping way down, which looks like a line drawing of a cliff from the side view. Such a graph has values built in via the metaphor GoodIsUp. Going down over the cliff is thus bad....(Click title for more)
'We Will Not Accept Cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid'..Or Why the Socialist Voice of Bernie Sanders Matters



By Lynn Stuart Parramore

Alternet.org

Dec 3, 2012 - According to Sen. Bernie Sanders, it's time for progessives to stop playing defense, and start playing offense. He wants us to start with a strong stand to keep billionaires from controlling our political process, as they are now attempting to do in the so-called fiscal cliff debate. "We will not accept cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid," he said to thundering applause at a New York City gathering on Monday night.

Progressives turned out last night to support the Nation Institute, a nonprofit media center guided by President Andy Breslau to extend the reach of progressive ideas and bolster the independent press. The vibe in the room was one of energy and excitement about a new progressive coalition that seems to be building momentum.The program, MC'd by MSNBC's Chris Hayes, included remarks by Senator Sanders as well as Katrina vanden Heuvel, NAACP president Ben Jealous, and others.

Hayes kicked off the evening with a reference to Spielberg's Lincoln, touching on how debates sparked by the film illustrate the vitality and diversity of the left. He reminded the audience that the Nation magazine was founded by abolitionists like radical congressional leader Thaddeus Stevens (portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln), who combined "moral witness" and "moral prophecy" in a "Sisyphean struggle" against injustice. Victor Navasky, the Nation's former editor and currently professor of journalism at Columbia University, continued the Lincoln theme with his view that many filmgoers were wrong in their assertion that the movie celebrated the president as a great bargainer. Rather, he insisted, it showed a man unafraid to take a "principled stand."

In one of the evening's many highlights, Ben Jealous was presented with the annual $100,000 Puffin/Nation Prize for creative citizenship. As head of the NAACP, Jealous has been a front-line fighter for justice and equality, and he inspired the crowd with his impassioned calls for activism on causes ranging from marriage equality to voter surpression. (See this exclusive AlterNet interview [3] with Jealous on his view that the Koch brothers have galvanized the progressive community.)

Progressive icon Katrina vanden Heuvel introduced the most anticipated speaker of the night, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. After giving a rousing cheer for all the women who had won seats in the recent election, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, vanden Heuvel welcomed to the stage a man she reminded the audience had spent nothing on TV advertising to win his seat.

Sporting a shock of white hair and the Brooklyn accent of his working-class childhood, the irrepressible Sanders launched right into the political topic of the moment, the "fiscal cliff." He declared that the deficit was a result of the Bush tax cuts, a Wall Street-driven recession, and two unfunded wars initiated by George W. Bush. The principled stand for progressives, he insisted, was to defend Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from any cuts. Social Security, he emphasized, "has not contributed a nickel to the deficit." Sanders also called for progressives to end red state/blue state reigional divisions and embrace a new 50-state strategy. "There are good people in Mississippi," Sanders reminded the audience, and "we need to stand with them." Sanders also focused on the travesty of income inequality and poverty in the United States, a global embarrassment, and announced his hope that in two years, he will preside over a single-payer healthcare system in Vermont. The primary problems facing the country, he said, were unemployment, infrastructure and climate change -- not the deficit.

Sanders' strong words on the so-called fiscal cliff were especially welcome given the flurry of mixed signals coming out of Washington. Tim Geithner, the bank-centric Treasury Secretary chosen by Obama to lead negotiations, said on Monday that Social Security should be dealt with using a separate process [4], hinting at the possible creation of a new commission. Noticeably, he left the door open to the idea that cuts would be part of that separate process....(Click title for more)


Nothing but a Northern Lynching:   

The Assassination of Fred Hampton, Dec 4, 1969 

 

 

 

By G. Flint Taylor
Progressive America Rising via People's Law Office

 

At 4:30 in the morning of December 4, 1969, 14 heavily armed Chicago police officers, acting at the direction of Cook County State's Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan, raided a tiny apartment on the west side of Chicago where local Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and eight Party members were sleeping. Minutes later, Hampton and Peoria, Illinois BPP leader Mark Clark lay dead, several of the other Panthers were seriously wounded, and the survivors were hauled off to jail on attempted murder charges.  http://peopleslawoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/1970.Hampton-.Search-And-Destroy..pdf  

 

I was a second year Northwestern law student working at the fledgling People's Law Office when I received a call that "the Chairman had been murdered" and was directed to come to the apartment. The crime scene was shocking - - - the plasterboard walls looked like swiss cheese, ripped by scores of bullets from police weapons that included a machine gun, a semi automatic rifle, and several shotguns. A large pool of blood stained the floor at the doorway where Hampton's body had been dragged after he was shot in the head, and there were fresh blood stains on all the beds in the apartment. I had met Chairman Fred only months before when I escorted him to the Law School to speak to the student body in venerable Lincoln Hall. He was only 21 years old, but he captivated the audience, as he always did, with his dynamic and analytical speaking skill, a mixture of Malcolm X, Dr. King, and Lupe Fiasco. http://peopleslawoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Hampton.-20th-Anniversary-Booklet-1989.pdf  

 

It was his unique leadership, together with the revolutionary politics he so convincingly espoused, http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm that made him a primary target of law enforcement. Directly after the raid, State's Attorney Hanrahan and his police loudly proclaimed that the "vicious Black Panthers" had instigated a "shootout" during which they fired a fuselage of shots at the raiders. http://mike-gray.org/multimedia/hampton.htm  

 

The cold and bloody crime scene made lie of this official story, and Panther members led thousands of people on tours of the apartment for the next ten days while People's Law Office lawyers and staff documented the evidence that would later establish that the police fired 99 bullets while the Panthers fired but one.  http://peopleslawoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Hampton.-1970-FGJ-Report.pdf  

 

A elderly African American lady best captured this reality when she said, while sadly shaking her head during the tour, that the raid was "nothing but a Northern lynching." Confronted with the ballistics evidence, Hanrahan was forced to drop the attempted murder charges against the surviving Panthers. The Richard Nixon Justice Department investigated, but refused to indict. In response to community outrage, a specially appointed Cook County Prosecutor subsequently indicted Hanrahan, his first assistant, and a number of the raiding officers, not for murder or attempted murder, but rather only for obstruction of justice.  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-chicagodays-pantherraid-story,0,3414208. 

 

A Democratic machine judge acquitted Hanrahan and his co-conspirators on the eve of the 1972 election, but an inflamed African American electorate voted Hanrahan out of office, a story spawning a movement that paved the way for the election of Mayor Harold Washington a decade later. All the while, the People's Law Office continued to litigate a civil rights lawsuit in federal court on behalf of the Hampton and Clark families and the survivors of the raid. Through the discovery process, we unearthed FBI documents showing that the FBI's secret COINTELPRO program was behind the raid.  http://watchamericangangster.com/american-gangster-season-3-episode-5-j-edgar-hoover/  

 

The documents, which were suppressed by the FBI for years, together with independent toxicological tests, further revealed that an FBI COINTELPRO agent supplied a floor plan of the Panther apartment, complete with markings where Hampton slept, to Hanrahan's raiders; that William O'Neal, the COINTELPRO informant who drew the floor plan, most likely drugged Hampton so that he could not defend himself; and that after the raid FBI director J. Edgar Hoover rewarded O'Neal with a $300 bonus for making the raid a "success."

http://peopleslawoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Hampton.7th-Cir-Brief.pdf 

 

In 1983, after an 18 month trial http://openjurist.org/600/f2d/600/hampton-v-hanrahan and 13 years of litigation, the City of Chicago, Cook County and the Federal Government all finally settled with the Hampton and Clark families and the survivors of the raid. http://peopleslawoffice.com/issues-and-cases/panthers/  

 

While this financial settlement brought some modicum of justice, no one, except the Panther survivors, ever spent a day in jail. But the murderous raid, once falsely depicted as a shootout, is now rightly considered not only to be a northern lynching, but also an official assassination that was instigated by the FBI.  http://www.hamptonbook.com/Hampton_Book/Home.html  

 

And while we will never know what heights Fred Hampton would have reached as a leader had he lived, we do know, in the words first spoken in eulogy by People's Law Office attorney Francis Andrew nearly forty three years ago, that the spirit of Fred Hampton continues to live on.

 

Flint Taylor is one of the lawyers for the family of slain Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.. For more information on the Hampton/Clark case, the history of Black Panther Party, and the FBI's Program to destroy it, visit peopleslawoffice.com

 

Civil Disobedience at the SOAW Protest, 2012
SOAW Protest 2012 - Nashua Chantal, Civil Disobedience
NASHUA CHANTAL, 60 OF AMERICUS, GEORGIA CROSSES OVER FT. BENNING FENCE TO CARRY THE SOAW (www.soaw.org) PROTEST ONTO THE MILITARY BASE, FACES SIX MONTHS IN FEDERAL PRISON - FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE: http://www.soaw.org/news/news-alerts/4004-media-release-

GOP Carbon Burners: Destroy Jobs to 'Create' Jobs?

California Wind Giants Urge Extension of Tax Credit

 

 

BY REBECCA KHEEL
SolidarityEconomy.net  

via Bakersfield Californian staff writer

 

An extension to a tax credit for the wind industry has been lumped into the so-called year-end "fiscal cliff," and industry leaders in Kern County are urging politicians to put aside partisan bickering and renew the credit that has helped the wind industry grow for the past 20 years.

 

"We have no idea whether the federal incentive will continue," said Greg Wetstone, vice president of government affairs for Terra-Gen Power, a renewable energy company with wind turbines in Tehachapi. "We're hopeful there will be a deal as part of the fiscal cliff, but we don't know."

 

The federal Wind Production Tax Credit is set to expire on Dec. 31. First passed in 1992, the credit knocks off 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour of wind energy produced from a business' tax bill. It has been extended every one or two years since 1992, with one exception in 2004 when it was allowed to lapse.

 

At an editorial board meeting at The Californian on Wednesday, supporters for the credit spoke about how wind energy benefits Kern County and what negative effects the credit's expiration would have.

 

Opponents of the tax credit have said that after 20 years, the wind industry no longer needs the credit to survive. They have also said it costs too much, pointing to Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that a one-year extension will cost taxpayers $12.1 billion....(Click title for more) 


Keep Pushing for Withdrawal:
Obama Reviewing Afghanistan Options


Drone warfare in Afghanistan

By Tom Hayden

Beaver County Peace Links via Peace Exchange

Dec. 5, 2012 - Military commanders are pushing President Obama to keep a maximum number of American troops through the coming Afghanistan "fighting season," maximizing their combat role before the December 2014 date for ending offensive operations.

There currently are 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan at an unfunded cost of at least $65-70 billion. To retain those numbers from spring through autumn 2013 - the span of the fighting season - would continue present cost levels, not to mention the toll on troops becoming the last to die or suffer wounds as the American war winds down.

The Senate weighed in last week with a 62-33 vote in general favor of an accelerated troop withdrawal, and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) is expected to forward a similar proposal signed by 100 House members this week.

An October Pew poll showed 60 percent of Americans favoring withdrawal as soon as possible, a sharp shift from 2008 numbers.

Neoconservatives such as Fred and Kimberley Kagan are calling for 30,000 American troops to remain in country to assume counterterrorism roles, including drones, airpower, special ops, and backup troops for force protection.

The Associated Press cites "analysts" who estimate 10-15,000 will be needed for the US goals of counterterrorism, training Afghan forces and logistical support. (December 3, 2012)

Fear of "abandoning" Afghanistan runs high because of the widespread belief in official circles that the US "took its eye" off Afghanistan in 1996, when the Soviet army withdrew, and again in 2003, when the George Bush administration diverted US forces to Iraq.

But it is implausible to believe that 10-15,000 American residual troops could succeed where over 100,000 failed during a decade of war. The residual troops would be caught in sectarian crossfire as the corrupt and unpopular Karzai regime struggled for its existence. Even Republican Rep. C.W. Young (R-FL), chairman of the House subcommittee on defense spending, said, "We're killing kids who don't need to die."

The sentiment runs deep, across partisan lines, that the US has "done enough" and cannot afford further entrapment in quagmires. Sentiment is even stronger for a face-saving diplomatic patch-job including power sharing and the engagement of regional powers, especially Pakistan, India, China and Russia, beyond the withdrawing NATO coalition.

A similar debate raged for two years about the Iraq War without being resolved before American troops finally departed. ...(Click title for more)

Dave Brubeck, 1921-2012, Classic Jazzman
- and an Early Voice against Segregation

By Marah Eakin
Newswire

Dec 5, 2012 - Jazz musician Dave Brubeck has died at the age of 91. The pianist became a household name in the '50s with his groundbreaking recordings like "Take Five" and "In Your Own Sweet Way." Known for his unusual time signatures, Brubeck blended classical training with a flair for improvisation.

Dave Brubeck Quartet - In Your Own Sweet Way (Belgium 1964)
Dave Brubeck Quartet - In Your Own Sweet Way (Belgium 1964)

Brubeck was inspired to form a band while playing piano during a Red Cross show in WWII. His group, The Wolfpack, was one of the armed forces' first integrated bands. After the war, he came back to the states to study piano, and later started working more often with saxophonist and composer Paul Desmond, whom he had met during the war.

In 1951, Brubeck organized the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Desmond on sax. They played regularly in San Francisco and toured college campuses, releasing a series of albums recorded at those shows, including Brubeck's debut on Columbia Records, Jazz Goes To College. Brubeck was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1954-only the second jazz musician to appear there, after Louis Armstrong in 1949.

Notably, Brubeck refused to play segregated jazz clubs, canceling several concerts and television appearances because club owners and producers had objections to his integrated band.

In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet released Time Out, which featured a number of original compositions written in unusual time signatures inspired by Eurasian folk music. That album went platinum and included tracks like "Take Five," "Blue Rondo A La Turk," and "Three To Get Ready." Several similar albums followed, including Countdown: Time In Outer Space, released in 1962 and dedicated to astronaut John Glenn.

In the early '60s, the Quartet was especially prolific, releasing as many as four albums per year, including the excellent At Carnegie Hall and a series of Jazz Impressions albums inspired by the group's travels.

The quartet disbanded in 1967, allowing Brubeck to devote more time to the longer works he'd become more interested in. He wrote several orchestral pieces, including an oratorio on Jesus' teachings called The Light In The Wilderness and a cantata called The Gates Of Justice that mixed the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. with even more biblical messages. He joined the Catholic Church in 1980, right around the time he completed To Hope, a mass commissioned by the national Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor.
Dave Brubeck - Take Five
Dave Brubeck - Take Five

In 1996, Brubeck received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2000, with wife Iola, he founded the Brubeck Institute at the University Of The Pacific. He was a 2009 Kennedy Center Honoree and earned honorary doctorates from several universities. He released well over 100 records in his lifetime, his last being 2011's Their Last Time Out, a recording of his Quartet from 1967.
Film Review: Dragon (Wu xia)

Details:
Dragon (Wu xia)
Directed by Peter Chan
The Weinstein Company

By Nick Pinkerton
The Village Voice

The roaring popular success of Peter Chan's Wu xia in China-renamed Dragon for export-is no mystery: It's an adept genre exercise with rare primal depths.

Liu Jin-xi (Donnie Yen), a paper-mill worker and by all accounts a meek family man, blunderingly dispatches two bandits who attempt a robbery in his sleepy Yunnan Province village, and so becomes the center of an investigation by the paranoiac detective charged with covering the inquest, Xu Bai-ju (Takeshi Kaneshiro).

WU XIA trailer HD
WU XIA trailer HD
Xu, using circa-1917 forensics that draw heavily on his knowledge of acupuncture, begins to suspect that Liu is someone other than who he says, his "accidental" valor in fact being the work of a trained killer. The script, by Aubrey Lam, bears a marked resemblance to David Cronenberg's A History of Violence and a score of old westerns beside-the retired bad man rustled out of retirement by figures from the past-while the fleet spirit of the film evokes happier days of Hong Kong cinema.

Although Yen does not catch every facet of his character's ambivalence, he choreographs himself flexibly shot, lucid fight duets with Kara Hui and Jimmy Wang, whose considerable bulk proves impervious to blade strikes-Wang's 1967 The One-Armed Swordsman is, for reasons which become apparent after a rather gruesome plot twist, another partial inspiration. Dragon itself has been dismembered, shorn of nearly 20 minutes for its U.S. release, but what remains is more than sufficient to do the job.


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