December 3, 2007 Volume VI, Number 49
A PROJECT OF THE CASCOGREENS
Paul Stephens, Editor and Publisher 406.216.2711 greateco@3rivers.net
THIS BULLETIN IS NOT AN OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF ANY GREEN PARTY (see disclaimers and selected resources at end)
Much of the content of this Bulletin is now being posted at
and
Table of Contents:
UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS
Help Chester, Montana, win an MRI machine! http://www.lchnh.org/
FROM DEMOCRACY NOW!
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
The Highwood Station: Nothing but green lights, ahead
What about CCE?
Punishing the victims: the crusade against "pedophilia "continues
What are the Chavistas thinking?
Hillary and the "insurance mafia"
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO DAVID COBB?
Health care, not warfare by David Cobb/For the Times-Standard
http://www.times-standard.com/davidcobb/ci_6356967
LIBERTY TREE Foundation for the Democratic Revolution
http://www.LibertyTreeFDR.org
FILM AND CULTURE
Mitt Romney's secret weapon: Donny and Marie are back!
One Flew over Mr. Holland's Cuckoo Nest - The Ken Kesey Tradition in Montana Cultural History
Mr. Williamson's Opus
FROM NEWWEST.NET
Nobel Winner Lectures on ‘The Five Stages of Climate Grief’ By Emily Darrell http://www.newwest.net/city/article/nobel_winner_lectures_on_the_five_stages_of_climate_grief/C8/L8/
FROM GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
Greens, citing revealed memo, urge Bush to cancel CIA plans to interfere in Venezuelan referendum and destabilize the Chavez government http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2007_11_30.shtml
FROM GREEN LISTSERVS
America needs a drastic change of political landscape
By Scott McLarty, OpEdNews.com, November 27, 2007
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_scott_mc_071126_america_needs_a_dras.htm
re: Nader-McKinney
More news from Canada, Green Line, etc.
FROM OpEdNEWS.com
The Year of the Naomis--Wolf and Klein--Both with Great Messages
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jim_free_071126_the_year_of_the_naom.htm
Save the Planet: Vote Smart By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times, October 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
ZNET COMMENTARIES
Obama and Pluralist Illusion
By Paul Street
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-10/31street.cfm
"We Want More"
By Ted Glick
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-11/21glick.cfm
The Revolution Will Be Digitized
By Alexander Billet
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-11/03billet.cfm
A NOTE ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION
WEBSITES AND OTHER RESOURCES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE GREENS SUPPORT:
HEALTH CARE DOLLARS FOR HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS -- NOT INSURANCE COMPANIES AND CORPORATE PROFITS http://www.pnhp.org
STOP THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ARE NOT A LOCAL GROWTH INDUSTRY! http://www.antiwar.com/
COAL DEVELOPMENT MUST BE MINIMIZED, NOT MAXIMIZED: GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL! http://www.ipcc.ch/
END CORPORATE DOMINATION AND PREDATION: CORPORATIONS AREN'T PEOPLE, AND THEY DON'T HAVE "PROPERTY" OR OTHER RIGHTS! http://reclaimdemocracy.org/
For an introduction to Green Party philosophy and programs, go to http://www.gp.org/welcome.shtml
You can join the Montana Green Party at the NEW MONTANA GREEN PARTY WEBSITE!! http://www.mtgreens.org
Please read the Platform to find out what we support and oppose:
http://www.mtgreens.org/node/25
New section on Instant Runoff Voting with model bills/initiatives:
http://www.mtgreens.org/node/22
Please help us circulate petitions to regain our ballot status. Information is available at http://www.mtgreens.org/node/104
CYNTHIA MCKINNEY The rising star of the Green Party, with a firm political base already established in Washington, D.C.! Check her out!
http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/
http://www.s6k.com/page.cfm?id=93913181
____________________
If you would like to join the Billings or Great Falls Green Party forums/listservs, here are the links:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/YCGForum/ (Billings)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CascadeCoGreens/ (Great Falls) phone 216-2711
We have reactivated the Great Falls listserv, in hopes of establishing an official local Green Party group. Click on or paste the link, and join! (Spammers are now excluded).
A note about the Glacial Lake Missoula Greens discussion group:
If you live in Missoula and wish to post things directly in this Bulletin, please send them to me. greateco@3rivers.net Or join the GLMG discussion list, and perhaps consider changing the name, since the URL for glmg is now a gay porn site (or was last time I looked.)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GLMG_discussion
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UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS
Do you support the Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement?
Some local municipalities get it on the climate crisis and have been working to meet these objectives. There are now over 500 city, town and county governments representing over 50 million people that have signed onto the Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement, http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/climate/ As explained on the website of Greg Nickels, the Seattle mayor who initiated this effort over two years ago.... [Billings and Missoula are already signed on to this. Tell your mayor to sign on, too!]
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GREENCHANGE.COM
New Green Website - links to all legitimate Green Parties, worldwide! (Including Montana). This is more of a Fundi website - old style "4 Pillars", unites all Green-thinking groups, no discussion of national politics, but links to all major Green Parties and organizations. Check it out!
http://greenchange.live.radicaldesigns.org/index.php
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AERO presents two energy-related events, Saturday December 8th in Great Falls.
DECEMBER 8th SUSTAINABLE HOME TOUR: Visit three energy efficient homes with renewable energy systems!
Join AERO for an informative tour of three homes in the Great Falls area. You’ll get a close look at some of the best energy conservation practices and home-scale renewable energy systems available to homeowners. Architects, contractors, homeowners and renewable energy system installers will give presentations at each site and will be available for questions.
The Tour will feature two near zero-energy, earthen homes built by Ken Thornton, a new efficient home with a simple 2 kW solar array, and a 10 kW Bergey wind generator at a home outside of Town.
Meet at 10 AM at the First English Lutheran Church, 726 2nd Ave. North, Great Falls. The Tour ends at 2 pm. Bus transportation between sites and a catered lunch are included. Registration is $12. Students are $6. Please pre-register with Ben Brouwer at AERO (406-443-7272).
The tour is sponsored by NorthWestern Energy with funding from the Universal System Benefits charge.
*****
DECEMBER 8th COMMUNITY ACTION MEETING: Repowering Montana, one community at a time!
How can community groups work together to bring about ENERGY SAVINGS for their neighbors, school districts, cities and counties? How can cities and towns, neighborhoods and homes not only stop wasting energy but also tap into clean renewable sources like the sun and the wind?
These questions and others will be tackled at a town hall style meeting hosted by AERO, immediately following the Home Tour luncheon. The meeting will feature a presentation of AERO’s energy plan, Repowering Montana: A Blueprint for Home Grown Energy Self-Reliance. There will be a facilitated discussion focusing on specific actions for Great Falls.
The Community Meeting is free and open to the public from 2-4 pm at Bethlehem Hall in the basement of the First English Lutheran Church, 726 2nd Ave. North, Great Falls. Refreshments will be provided. Call Ben at AERO (406-443-7272) with questions. Please join us for this chance to collaborate with your neighbors on positive energy solutions for Great Falls!
***
BEN BROUWER
Renewable Energy and Conservation Program Mgr.
Alternative Energy Resources Org. (AERO)
432 N. Last Chance Gulch
Helena, MT 59601
phone: (406) 443-7272/fax: (406) 442-9120
email: bbrouwer@aeromt.org
website: www.aeromt.org
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FROM GREEN INSTITUTE
The year-end Green Institute newsletter is available on the
http://www.greeninstitute.net/.
Issues included with this edition are our new Interdisciplinary Studies Project, an update on our GreenPRO http://www.greenpolicy.us/ local policy database, and our new website, including a new section on the climate crisis. "Greens Under the Sacred Canopy" by fellow Tom Baugh is new under the Interdisciplinary Studies Project, and a the fourth and final installment of Corporate Control of Hip Hop by fellow Jared Ball will
be posted shortly.
GreenPRO is our main project at the moment. We have a new intern doing research and its content is increasing every week. Please check it out at
We have rehosted and redesigned our site. We are now using an open source system that is more flexible and cheaper to host. The new climate crisis section focuses on some key aspects of the issue: the need for a nation-wide mobilization, the concept of the tipping point and why that makes climate change a climate crisis. We also have a section dealing with aviation and climate change, using the content of Frans Verhagen, our sustainability fellow.
Dean Myerson
Green Institute
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FROM MONTANANS FOR CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY
Media ownership is a 'corporate power' issue, and the FCC's rules on media ownership have been in the news off & on for the past 5 or 6 years. The most recent development is a new proposal by FCC Chairman Martin that would change the rules on "cross-ownership" - specifically, on the ability of the owner of a newspaper to acquire and hold a broadcast license (radio or TV).
There are several factors driving the proposed change: existing law that requires periodic reviews of ownership rules, a court case that remanded 2002/2003 revisions to those rules, the declining financial health of many newspapers, and the ever-present corporate drive for growth and consolidation.
This email provides some websites through which you can find out about, and comment on, the latest proposal. Comments are due by December 11th.
The gist of my comments was to limit the Commission's discretion to approve cross-ownership to only those situations where the size and dispersed ownership of the media market was great enough to ensure local programming and a diversity of programming.
Cedron
-----------------------------
For the general portal to FCC media ownership news:
To see the actual proposal:
choose: "Recent Actions" from the list on the left, then choose: "11/13/07 Chairman Martin Proposes Revision......"
(note: the 6 page PDF includes a brief summary, the actual proposed changes, and an OpEd supporting the proposal by Martin.)
To comment on the proposed changes:
then select "Media Ownership Further Notice ....." (the 8th one down) and hit "continue" at the bottom of the list. For background on the whole media ownership rulemaking, go to:
and in the list of linked documents in the first paragraph, choose DOC-266033A1 (overview, available as .doc or .pdf, or .txt) and DOC-266033A3 (Commissioner Copp's comment)
---------------------------------
Cedron Jones
Volunteer Coordinator
Montanans for Corporate Accountability
(A project of The Policy Institute)
corp@mhrn.org ; 406-442-5506 x18; 442-1271 (h)
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FROM DEMOCRACY NOW
*The End of America: Feminist Social Critic Naomi Wolf Warns U.S. in Slow
Descent into Fascism *
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/28/159221
In her new book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Naomi Wolf says the United States is on the road to becoming a fascist society, right under our very noses. Wolf outlines what she sees as the ten steps to shut down a democratic society and argues that the Bush administration has already implemented many of these steps. Wolf is the author of several books including the 1990s feminist classic, The Beauty Myth.
* Not Through Annapolis: Noam Chomsky Says Path to Mideast Peace Lies in Popular Organizing Against U.S.-Israeli Rejectionism*
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/27/1547221
As the U.S. convenes a Mideast summit in Annapolis, Maryland today, we spend the hour on the Israeli-Palestine conflict with two of the world¹s leading thinkers: former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and world-renowned linguist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky says U.S. backing of continued Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian land is the biggest obstacle to peace. He says: The crimes against Palestinians are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it's likely to harm them. We have to face the reality that our actions have consequences, and they have to be adapted to real-world circumstances, difficult as it may be to stay calm in the face of shameful crimes in which we are directly and crucially implicated.
* Fmr. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Israel Should Heed Lessons of Scripture -- and Apartheid *
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/27/1547230
The South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a key leader in the South African fight against apartheid. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and today continues to speak around the globe for peace and justice. Denouncing the U.S.-backed occupation of Palestinian land, Tutu says Israel and its supporters should follow biblical tradition of forever taking the side of the weak, the oppressed, the downtrodden against the kings and the powerful oppressors.
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GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
The Highwood Station: Nothing but green lights, ahead
There's a public hearing this week, after which Cascade County commissioners will vote to rezone the Urquhart property from agriculture to "Heavy Industrial", in anticipation of selling it to Southern Montana Electric Co-ops as the site for the Highwood Generating Station. It takes place at 9:00 am Tuesday, at the Paddock Club on the fairgrounds. All gamblers and horse racing proponents encouraged to attend. No mention of the Green Party or Montana Green Bulletin permitted, by order of Citizens for Clean Energy.
The people on the county planning board are unanimous in supporting this change. I believe there were two opponents last time they voted on it, who have since been replaced, and the remaining members are all dedicated to doing what they are told rather than what they think is right. So, expect this to pass. If you know anyone there, try to have a private conversation with them. They need to be informed of the consequences of making the wrong decision, here. If permitted, this calamity will be with us for the next 50 years or more. And the strip-mined landscape, the mountains of toxic ash and other by-products, and the depletion of local water resources will be with us for centuries to come.
The decision is up to them. They have ample evidence (and complete discretionary power) to act in the public interest, rather than enriching a few individuals and corporate interests at everyone else's expense. Let's make sure that they do so. And if the County Commissioners insist on continuing to promote this massive burden on the taxpayers and local rate-payers, they must be recalled or criminally prosecuted for graft and corruption, as the case may be.
The struggle between the City and County over the imagined $9 million a year in additional tax revenues from the HGS continues apace. The county will probably successfully oppose any city annexation of the site, and the County has already expressed itself as being in favor of using a large part of the expected tax revenues to fund site preparation, roads, utilities, and other services to the "industrial park." Thus, the "benefits" of this additional tax base to local services, schools, etc. will be minimal for many years to come.
There are plans for a second coal-fired plant, doubling the original one (but using the same smokestack), and strip mining and ash heaps covering many square miles within the Golden Triangle - Montana's richest wheat-producing area. Governor Schweitzer has generously volunteered to re-open the coal mines at nearby Stockett and Sand Coulee, or wherever else coal can be cheaply strip-mined. Welcome to Novi Kolstrip, Montana. I hope everyone likes black bread and cabbage.
Meanwhile, PPL continues to protest something like $20 million in taxes from its hydro-electric dams in Cascade County, adjacent to the proposed HGS, and that protest has been used as an excuse to build the Highwood Station, imagining that it will "make up for" some of these lost taxes which PPL refuses to pay. Meanwhile, PPL has been spreading money all over the community in order to garner good will from the professional elite who serve on the boards of local museums, public radio, the school district, and other entities who have been forced to cut programs as a result of PPL's tax protests. The total amount which PPL has thus distributed amounts to $1 million or less - a small fraction of what they would have been paying to support many of these same public services had they just paid their taxes.
Since most of the people involved are Republicans for whom any tax is evil, they have widespread support. PPL will never have to return the vital hydro dams it stole from us so long as these Republicans are in power. Even many Democrats are now paid off by the same corporate interests, so there is little or no interest among Democrats, either, in forcing PPL to pay its taxes, and to re-regulate the rates it can charge to Montana customers (let alone expose the criminal process by which PPL acquired the dams in the first place, so that we can take them back under threat of condemnation).
What about CCE?
Citizens for Clean Energy, the group I helped start in order to oppose the construction of the Highwood Station (and any other coal-fired power plants), apparently still exists in some form. However, they are now largely controlled by Republicans and "pro-development" Democrats who have a common interest in opposing environmentalists and advocates for peace and social justice, public power, green co-ops, and the like. I had a long conversation with Col. Liebert the other night, and it finally became clear that the systematic purging and vilification of the Greens was a key part of CCE's agenda - intentional, rather than "a misunderstanding", as some have claimed. (It isn't a misunderstanding if no one is willing to correct it, or address the strategic and transparency issues which CCE leaders were trying to conceal from the membership).
Aside from a few organic farmers and concern from downwind/downstream communities that they will be poisoned with mercury and other heavy metal particulates, there is really no further opposition to the HGS on environmental grounds. Now that that silly Al Gore has become the Apostle of Global Warming, they absolutely KNOW that it doesn't exist. It's just like Gore claiming to have invented the Internet, they say.
As I've said all along, most of the deals were made before the HGS ever appeared on the public radar. Urquhart and his Republican buddies would make a killing on the land sale, and the development of an "industrial park" on his land (all subsidized at tax-payer's expense); labor Democrats would be guaranteed a few high-paying jobs; the tax base would be expanded by $9 million, thus getting the strong support from teacher's unions, public employees unions, and all the other local tax-funded organizations and services; and best of all, our Congressional delegation agreed to "save the Front" and make some other deals to protect sensitive wilderness areas in exchange for "environmentalists" not opposing the HGS.
Those deals and understandings are apparently still in place. The only decision which has yet to be made is whether or not the Rural Utilities Services and Bear, Stearns will be willing and able to come up with the financing. In spite of the country being bankrupt and unable to fund even the most essential health care and infrastructure spending (because of the war and its associated costs, and the fact that any federal program ends up costing much more than it should because of all the built-in pork and other corruption), it seems likely that King Koal will continue to have its way with us, and force us to keep building and paying for its global warming machine.
Who cares, anyway? It's been below freezing in Great Falls for most of the past two weeks. Who said there was any global warming going on, anyway? They must be communists! -- PHS
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Punishing the victims: the crusade against "pedophilia "continues
Does anyone have any idea how many great and famous people were involved in what is now called "pedophilia?" (Or what is often confused with it, pederasty?) What, exactly, is "pedophilia?" It is, literally, the love of children. Isn't that a good thing? Not if you're a puritan. Not if you don't believe in love. And especially not if you're part of the "criminal justice system", or profiting from the prison-industrial complex.
But these crusaders aren't talking about people who love children, or teachers who have loving relationships with their students. They're talking about people who rape, torture, and murder children, right? Isn't that what they're talking about? Unfortunately, in most cases, no. There have always been severe punishments for anyone who kidnaps, rapes, tortures, or otherwise exploits children. And if the law won't do it, there are many others (parents, friends, vigilantes, etc.) who will.
In a recent news series on the local CBS affiliates, there were interviews with a couple of FBI agents who specialize in the capture and prosecution of "internet predators" who supposedly exploit and in some cases even kidnap, enslave, or kill children they have met on the internet. A couple of high-profile cases were discussed, along with the fact that some 30 cases in Montana have already been prosecuted and another 40 are awaiting trial.
In the last legislature (as readers of this Bulletin will recall), the laws against "child pornography" were drastically stiffened, with penalties of up to 20 years in prison without parole for those found IN POSSESSION of "child pornography." More sinister still, the DEFINITIONS of child pornography were changed, so that the traditional criteria were weakened to the extent that ANY portrayals of children which were used for purposes of sexual arousal (masturbation) would qualify, even if there was no frontal nudity, no depiction of sex acts, and nothing flagrantly sexual in the pictures. MERELY TO BE FOUND IN POSSESSION OF SUCH PICTURES, AND ADMITTING TO BEING SEXUALLY AROUSED BY THEM, is sufficient under this new legislation, which passed almost unanimously and was signed into law by Gov. Schweitzer. I claimed that a Maxfield Parrish print would certainly qualify as "pornography" under this definition, and no legal authority or the author of that bill, John Parker (who receives this Bulletin), bothered to deny it.
Since the law was changed, at least two cases have gone to trial and the possessors of "child pornography" have received stiff prison sentences. IN NEITHER CASE WAS THE PERSON CONVICTED SHOWN TO HAVE EXPLOITED ANY CHILDREN, OR EVEN CREATED AND SOLD THE MATERIALS IN QUESTION FOR FINANCIAL GAIN.
In one case, a man and his wife who were sexually attracted to children tried to "reprogram" themselves by creating their own artwork, along with a collection of children's underwear, such as the child beauty pageants might promote and sell. He got 20 years, and his wife, who turned him in, was awaiting sentencing last I heard. Even though they had children, there was absolutely no evidence or indication that they used their own children's pictures, or exploited them in any way. Needless to say, their children were removed and put into foster homes.
In the local news story, there was a statistic quoted which is key to this issue, and which I believe is entirely false. It was that "65-80% of people who look at child pornography later become sex offenders against children." Thus, pictures of naked children are believed to be a kind of "gateway drug" for the development of child molestors. Surely it is the other way around.
We know, for example, that every person who is sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children was him/herself subjected to molestation (or some sort of psychological equivalent) as a child. And these are THE ONLY PEOPLE who are sexually attracted to children - something which is quite incomprehensible even to sex addicts and other people who are obsessed with sex in later life. They have to experience it from the other side as a child to have any desire to perpetrate the same "punishment" on other children. It is the same with parents who beat their children. Virtually all of them were themselves beaten as children. (And that is something which is illegal in many parts of the world, and was quite incomprehensible to Native Americans, among others. What kind of people would beat up on a small person who can't defend himself?)
Most "pedophiles" are heterosexual, just as 90-95% of the general population is. But "gay pedophiles" are the ones usually targeted, and there is a widespread prejudice to the effect that ALL gays are pedophiles, and in fact, the two categories are indistinguishable. I once had the very unpleasant experience of someone I was in love with accusing a gay friend of having pedophilic designs on her son! Most children engage in sex play of some kind, and are none the worse for it. Perhaps I was fortunate in that no adults offered to "play" such games with me, or it was the case that any prospective pedophiles feared retribution by my then-powerful family. I've asked several gay friends with Catholic backgrounds if they were molested by priests. They all said, "No, but I was hoping to be." Is "hands-on sex education" really such an awful thing? (Especially from those whom the child already loves and respects?) Or is it the case that "the authorities" can't stand to admit that there is such a thing as love and respect, or a joyful, loving relationship?
Gay pedophiles, of course, are especially singled out because it is believed they are trying to "convert" (or subvert) children who would otherwise be "straight" to become homosexual. Most human development experts now believe that there is a "gay gene" or other natural predisposition to homosexuality. For lesbians, it may be different. Surely life experience is of some importance in both cases, but I can't think of a single gay person I've known (out of hundreds) who had the desire or tendency to "convert" their children or others to their own sexual orientation. And if they did, it was part of some other criminal motive like revenge or extortion.
I'm not prescribing or justifying any sort of real criminal activity, here. I'm simply arguing that anything which is truly loving and peaceful is probably a good thing. Since when did the "criminal justice system" become a defender of human rights? Each case must be judged on its own merits. Parents have the legal right to restrict or control their children's contacts with others. And we can say that no one has the right to exploit children for money or other remuneration, or to physically or psychologically harm them in any way. Beyond that, it's nearly all contextual, in my view. We should rely on the Common Law and precedent, not the neurotic fixations of some professionally-motivated legislator.
We all want children to be loved, respected, and cared for by all the adults (and older children) they encounter. But the paranoia against "pedophilia" and the confusion of love with torture and exploitation must come to an end. The mere possession of erotic pictures (which might have been downloaded for free from the internet by almost anyone) is certainly no basis for criminal prosecution.
Let's arrest and prosecute those who exploit real children for money (like the child beauty pageants and corporate obesity-promoters), not those who simply can't help themselves, and get some simple pleasure from seeing a picture of a naked child.
-- Paul Stephens
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What are the Chavistas thinking?
Just when we thought we had a real example of a democratic, "Bolivarian" revolution in a major oil-producing country, what happens? Chavez decides its not enough to be elected President and carry out reforms. Now, he wants to be Dictator for Life. I think I agree with the King of Spain, who some weeks ago told him to "just shut up." Now, all Greens, progressives, democrats, and anti-imperialists will have to make that fateful choice: between corporate imperialism and communist dictatorship. We'll see if the Venezuelan people are stupid enough to fall for Chavez's megalomania. If they do, they will have sealed their own fate. And of course, the CIA and Neo-Cons are happy to provide an excuse for Chavez's paranoia. I guess it's really our fault; for not being able to rid ourselves of our own corporate fascist dictatorship. There's more than enough "white guilt" to go around, so don't let's fight over it!
(See some other, more "official" Green Party views on the Venezuelan election, below. It turns out he isn't asking to be "dictator for life" - but only the opportunity to keep running - in other words, the abolition of Venezuela's current Term Limits provision. However, there were also some provisions to suspend civil rights, etc. in case of "national emergency" - much like the USA Patriot Act. As this Bulletin nears completion, the news is that the Referendum failed, 51-49%. The Bolivarian Revolution continues. -- PHS)
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Hillary and the "insurance mafia"
Weren't "protection rackets" supposed to have been outlawed? Having never had the benefit of a formal legal education, some of these points are foggy in my mind. I never heard about the repeal of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, either, but surely that has happened!
I must say, I was stunned (if not surprised) by Hillary's blatant, up-front endorsement of Mitt Romney's (and Arnold Schwarzenegger's) compulsory "health insurance" racket. Which party, now, was she running with (for, to, around - whatever the correct preposition might be)? It sounded like she was giving a speech in favor of Romney's "statesmanlike" solution to "the problem of the uninsured."
Never mind health care. INSURANCE is what we want and need. INSURANCE for the healthy only. INSURANCE with deductables so high that most health care services won't be covered. INSURANCE which has risen in price by double-digit rates nearly every year for the past 20 years. INSURANCE which no one would voluntarily buy, so they must be coerced to buy it! INSURANCE which ensures that half or more of our healthcare dollars no longer go to any sort of healthcare providers.
THIS INSURANCE IS A CLASSIC MAFIA PROTECTION RACKET! It doesn't insure your health; it "protects" any property or other assets you may have from being confiscated by hospitals or other medical care providers, who charge people without insurance several times more for their services than even the for-profit insurance companies are willing to pay!
PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE OR LOSE YOUR ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE AND YOUR HOME, YOUR PENSION, AND ANY OTHER ASSETS YOU MAY HAVE! YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
For those who understand what the traditional (as opposed to the Hollywood) mafia were thinking, their "institutions" were often parodies of what duly-constituted governments do to us on a daily basis. Isn't Blackwater the same as Murder, Inc.? The difference is, duly constituted governments are supposed to have an independent judicial system, no power to coerce or tyrannize the citizenry, and a vigorous and competitive press and other mass communications media. Not that we have any such duly-constituted government in the United States, today! We're only trying to restore or re-establish one.
Hillary is the very embodiment of the Totalitarian Center. In her view, it is critics and dissidents who are responsible for all our problems, not corporations. The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Labor-Education-Prison complex isn't the problem - it's the people who talk about it, and try to restore the Constitution, personal freedom, responsibility, and community self-determination. Is Hillary the Jackie Kennedy of her day? Certainly not the Eleanor Roosevelt! Who, exactly, is this woman, and why is she trying to destroy our country?
Anyone who doesn't understand the difference between universal health care and universal, compulsory "insurance" (protection racket), surely doesn't deserve anyone's vote - excepting, perhaps, those who work for insurance companies. I hope that every one of them votes for Hillary, regardless of which party she claims to represent. -- PHS
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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO DAVID COBB?
Health care, not warfare
David Cobb/For the Times-Standard
http://www.times-standard.com/davidcobb/ci_6356967
Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" opened in theaters last week, and it is taking the country by storm. This is probably Moore's best film yet, and may well win yet another Oscar award for best documentary for Moore.
The movie is a scathing indictment of the U.S. health care system in general, and especially health insurance corporations. The film ends with a bold and obvious conclusion: America has a choice. We can either have quality health care guaranteed for everyone, or we can maintain a system based on corporate insurance that only works for the very rich. But we can't have both.
I am confident that the American people will realize that it's time to demand a single-payer national health plan (also known as Medicare For All) and stop privileging corporate profits over the health -- indeed the very lives -- of the American people.
Of course, the private insurance industry, the mainstream politicians they fund, and the corporate media are already trying to undermine the message of "Sicko." They're disparaging national health care at every opportunity, and there is an all-out assault on "Sicko" in the corporate media.
But the movie only documents what we all know
-- the U.S. health care system is thoroughly broken. There are over 45 million Americans (approximately 16 percent of the population) who do not have any health insurance at all, including 10 million children. Another 16 million folks are underinsured, meaning that whatever insurance they do have does not adequately protect them.
And almost 40 percent of the uninsured live in households that earn $50,000 or more per year. That's because a growing number of middle-income families simply cannot afford health insurance payments even when their employers offers some type of coverage.
In other words, in the richest country the world has ever seen, over 40 percent of the population is without access to proper health care. Another way to look at it: The United States is the only industrialized country on the entire planet that does not make access to health care a fundamental right of citizenship.
No wonder that the U.S. ranks 37th in the World Heath Organization's listing of health care systems. (On the bright side, we edged out Slovenia).
Ready to take action? Make a call, send an e-mail, or write a letter to your elected representatives and ask them to support John Conyers' National Health Insurance Act ( HR 676). The National Health Insurance Act provides publicly financed private health care by expanding Medicare to cover all Americans and cutting out the insurance companies which Moore lambastes in his film.
This program would cover all medically necessary services (including primary care, inpatient care, outpatient care, emergency care, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment, long-term care, mental health services, dentistry, eye care, chiropractic, and substance abuse treatment). Plus, patients would have their choice of physicians, hospitals and clinics with no co-pays or deductibles.
Here in California, our Legislature is reconsidering Senate Bill 840, which was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger last year. (So much for the Governator's claim to support the interests of working folks). Senate Bill 840 would provide comprehensive, high-quality health insurance for all Californians by creating one health insurance plan (single payer) that would cover every California resident.
And in response to all the naysayers who oppose such a common-sense approach, I ask, have you ever heard of anyone refusing to accept the provisions of Medicare when they reach 65? Of course not! Let's make the benefits of Medicare available to all Americans.
And here is a final thought: The illegal and unconstitutional occupation of Iraq currently drains $10 billion monthly from our national treasury. This is more than enough money to pay for health care for U.S. citizens. And we'd have money left over to pay for impeachment proceedings.
________
David Cobb, the 2004 Green Party Candidate for President went on to found Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, California. It is part of a network of Green organizations which includes Global Exchange, Fair Vote, Reclaim Democracy in Bozeman and Liberty Tree in Madison, Wisconsin. For more of David Cobb's newspaper columns, go to:
http://www.times-standard.com/davidcobb
Here are some other links:
http://www.duhc.org/ Democracy Unlimited Humboldt County
http://www.libertytreefdr.org/partners.php Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution website - includes links to all democratizing groups - several dozen of them.
______________
LIBERTY TREE
Foundation for the Democratic Revolution
~ Liberty Tree News 3.23 ~
November 30, 2007
--> Defend Venezuelan democracy from CIA destabilization efforts
* * * URGENT ACTION - Venezuelan Constitutional Reform * * *
It is happening again. Having failed once, twice, to engineer the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Venezuela, the CIA is at it again. This time, however, the American public has forewarning:
* Noted journalist Eva Golinger has exposed the CIA's 'Operation Pliers' efforts to destabilize Venezuela in advance of this Sunday's national referendum on constitutional reform. Read Golinger's report here: http://www.libertytreefdr.org/democracyNews.php#news56
* The Center for Economic Policy Reform's Mark Weisbrot warns of likely attempts to distort exit polls on that referendum vote. Read Weisbrot's analysis here: http://www.libertytreefdr.org/democracyNews.php#news57
* And Venezuela en Vivo is scheduling regular broadcasts in English and Spanish from Venezuela. Click here to listen to Radio Venezuela en Vivo: http://www.libertytreefdr.org/democracyNews.php#news55
Be cautious of what you read in U.S. newspapers of current events in Venezuela. In the coming days you can expect to see the continued ramping-up of rhetoric and dramatic fictions against what is sure to be a strong "Yes" vote for Venezuelan constitutional reform.
--> What you can do:
The Bush administration, and the Clinton administration before it, established the tone of current U.S. relations with Venezuela. U.S.-Venezuelan relations were not always so unfortunate. Venezuelan democrats came to the British colonies to fight on behalf of the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson's administration gave aid to Simon Bolivar and the South American struggle against Spanish imperialism. In memory of those legacies, let American democrats once again support the democratic aspirations of the people of Venezuela:
* Write letters to your local and national newspapers denouncing this third attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela.
* Call your local, state, and federal elected officials and urge them to introduce resolutions denouncing the destabilization campaign against Venezuela.
-------------
REMEMBER:
If someone forward this message to you, you are likely not subscribed to the Liberty Tree News service. In order to receive the Liberty Tree News, you must subscribe at:
Our postal address is
P.O. Box 260217
Madison, Wisconsin 53726-0217
United States
/\/\/\/\/\
FILM AND CULTURE
Mitt Romney's secret weapon? Donny and Marie are back!
Having grown up with Mormon friends in a heavily Mormon community, I never thought much about the Osmond's, or Donny and Marie. The first time I ever heard Donny was the song "Puppy Love", which got a lot of airplay here in Great Falls when it first came out in 1972, just about the time I returned from California with a degree in Economics (Chicago School), and nearly two years working in an academic computer center. To say that I was "ahead of the curve" here would be a monumental understatement. As far as I can tell, my understanding and experience, then, would still be "ahead of the curve" of what is happening in Great Falls in 2007!
In any case, I've seen a number of TV profiles recently featuring a revived Donny and Marie. She hosts "Dancing with the Stars," a popular TV show which hearkens back to Lawrence Welk, Branson, Missouri, etc. -- "family entertainment". I wonder, though, if this has anything to do with Mitt Romney's run for President? Watching some of the Osmond's early footage, I couldn't help but think that they were a sort of "White Motown" (Mitt's father was Governor of Michigan in those days). And of course, they're all Mormons and part of the same American Zionist tradition.
I never quite understood the promotion of the sort of incestuous love which was displayed between Donny and Marie. One would have thought they were married, much like Cleopatra and her brother. I guess it's all good - love is love, and we all ought to love one another, even if we're siblings. There was another big-name group doing that, then, too - The Carpenters. Of course, Karen later starved herself to death. I was actually fond of the Carpenter's, and had some of their albums. (I might still have one, somewhere). But I wouldn't have thought of buying (or even pirating) an Osmond album. -- PHS
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FILM AND CULTURE
One Flew over Mr. Holland's Cuckoo Nest - The Ken Kesey Tradition in Montana Cultural History
Another film I got on tape for a dollar awhile back was "Mr. Holland's Opus." I already had one of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," which I remembered as being a kind of prequel to "Amadeus." (Both were directed by Milos Foreman, and I later met a guy who claimed he had worked on both films, so I had some additional insights from him.) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073486/ (IMdB user rating: 8.8/10)
It all goes back to Wallace Stegner, who spent part of his boyhood here in Great Falls, just a couple of blocks from where I live, today. Stegner was, of course, a quintessential Western writer (and historian), and the spirit behind Stanford University's great writer's workshop in the 1950's and 60's, which nurtured many of the Beat and later Hippy writers, including Ken Kesey. So we go way back. Maybe we should rename the Whittier Elementary School, which serves this neighborhood, the Stegner Elementary School! Or even the Cuckoo's Nest! I'll drink to that!
"Cuckoo's Nest" is one of the greatest films ever made (as is "Amadeus"). These are real "art films" with serious literary (or other cultural) history. ("Amadeus" closely followed Pushkin's play, "Mozart and Salieri," part of the canon in Soviet Bloc countries, but not in the West.) They have a whole different look and feel from the typical Hollywood productions of that time. And this was the film where Jack Nicholson fully matured as an actor. McMurphy is, of course, a role to die for, and he certainly made the best of it. This is also the first film I remember with Danny DeVito in a prominent role.
I've spent a little time in mental wards, myself (and been thought insane for most of my adult life, apparently), and it is the exposure of the "mental health" racket which is the strong suit in this film. 1975, when it was released, was right about the time that state mental hospitals were being closed down; draconian "treatments" like lobotomies and electro-convulsive "shock therapy" were falling into disrepute, and community-based treatment centers using pharmaceuticals and group homes were found to be a far more humane (and inexpensive) way of treating mental illness, and caring for those who could not function on their own. So, there is a large social activism element to this film, as well. Enjoy. -- PHS
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FILM
Mr. Williamson's Opus
A film (and life) review by Paul Stephens
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113862/
[The following review of Mr. Holland's Opus is slightly adapted from a piece I wrote for The Great Times in 1997. I can't recall whether or not it was actually published. Although I could probably look that up, like Bartlesby, I'd prefer not to. -- PHS]
Whatever emotional rewards and attachments go along with teaching high school students, the emotional (or "affective") rewards of teaching music seem to be an order of magnitude greater than any other kind of teaching. It is not only teaching a subject which is inherently more interesting and important to most teenagers, but teaching "life lessons" which will serve every student well. The film Mr. Holland's Opus has been out for a couple of years, now, and is available on video from Hastings. I saw it for the first time last week.
Few people in Great Falls seem to remember Bill Williamson, the charismatic chorus teacher at Great Falls High School in the early 1960's, but if you've attended a play or concert at CMR, you've sat in the Bill Williamson Hall named for him. This film, I contend, may be a kind of imaginary lifetime of Bill Williamson. Mr. Holland, played by Richard Dreyfuss, starts teaching at a new high school - John F. Kennedy High School - in the mid 1960's.
Some may remember that after the Kennedy assassination, there was a strong movement to name our new high school after the fallen president. It was rejected, even in this Democratic stronghold, by a largely conservative school board which claimed that "C.M. Russell" was set in stone, and could not be changed at that point. [Guess who was the Chairman of that school board? 5 points if you answered "Orville Gray," Randy's father.] In fact, CMR did not open for nearly two years after the assassination, and the name could have easily been changed. (I'm personally glad it wasn't, however. Russell is a far more important figure in our history, and it is better to name schools after artists or scientists than politicians).
Mr. Holland's first year of teaching in the film was 1965 - the same year that CMR opened. Unfortunately, the dress and behavior of the students (as well as the slang) is often displaced by a decade or more. No one said "Have a nice day," or "Hang with me" in those days. The Beatles, Beach Boys, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Jan and Dean, The Ventures, Elvis, etc. were in full flower in 1965, none of whom are mentioned in this film. (John Lennon's later work with Yoko Ono, and his tragic death are included). The students claim to like rock 'n roll, but there is no Chuck Berry, no Jerry Lee Lewis - not even a Barbra Streisand or the Broadway musicals of the period. When the students in the film do a Broadway show, it is Gershwin, from 40 years earlier.
Mr. Holland, like Mr. Williamson, was a dedicated performer and musician before he got into teaching. Bill Williamson performed with a group called "Three Young Men from Montana" - a folk group which had cut an album which sold fairly well. I still remember the album displayed in the chorus room which many of us traversed en route to band. I never took chorus, but I remember well the polished, professional performances which Mr. Williamson drew out of his students. This was the beginning of the great Broadway musical productions which still happen at CMR in the hall which bears his name (as well as at Great Falls High, my own alma mater but least favorite school to work in when I subbed). Paul Ritter (GFHS - his daughter is the Ritter on KUFM news), too, it could be said, was very much in the same tradition at Great Falls High. I once saw the latter break up a serious fight, a scene which was somewhat less dramatically re-enacted in this film. It's not clear how large a school JFK is supposed to be, but in a high school with 2000+ students like CMR or GFHS, there have always been separate band, orchestra, and chorus teachers.
Mr. Williamson was dead before I graduated from GFHS in 1965, the victim of a drunk driver who hit him head-on at the Warden Bridge when he was returning from a gig at the airport. (Or he might have been visiting some friends who were playing there. I wonder, now, if maybe he wasn't drunk, himself? Suppressing that part of the story, if true, could have even been the cause for selling off the Great Falls Tribune to the out-of-state Cowell chain, which happened soon thereafter. But this is purely hypothetical....)
What a shock to the students who loved him! Although Richard Dreyfuss in his youthful makeup does bear some resemblance to Williamson, he lacked the heavy horn-rimmed glasses and short-sleeved buttoned sweaters which made Mr. Williamson look more like a student of that time than a teacher. But when he performed or led a class, you knew he was the teacher, and one who changed the lives of many students even in the two brief years he was here.
Mr. Holland struggles on through the 60's, 70', 80's, and 90's, when the music program is finally terminated in the name of budget cuts. There was never any danger of art, music, and drama programs being eliminated here, or in most places where public education remains the norm. In fact, the 1990's was when an arts-based curriculum was widely recognized as essential to academic success, and Mr. Holland is a fervent advocate for that position, even as he is being laid off due to budget cuts. We know that this has happened in "the real world," but it is hard to imagine the circumstances, or what sort of political constituency could back such cuts. Even fundamentalist churches and church schools nowadays glorify their music programs, with the music sounding much more like rock 'n roll than traditional hymns or other sacred works.
Like all great music teachers, Mr. Holland treats music as a universal. All styles and forms are equally important, and students are encouraged to play and listen to what they like, rather than what some formal curriculum demands. Even the musically illiterate soon learn to enjoy and perform great music. This is the beauty of the show, and one which will long remain with those who are fascinated by the process of music education.
There are many references to Dreyfuss's other characters and performances, the most notable probably being his inability to teach music to his own deaf son. "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," from 20 years earlier, uses the Kodaly Method for teaching music to the deaf as a means of communicating with aliens. Some of this content is integrated into later scenes in "Opus," where Mr. Holland's son, Cole, becomes a teacher of the deaf, and there are performances utilizing a light show to translate music into visual terms. Dreyfuss received an Oscar nomination for this film, and it is widely considered one of his best. -- PHS
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A MAXIM
Feed your paranoia/carefully each day/So it will grow up big and strong/and carry you away. -- (I wrote that! -- PHS)
/\/\/\/\/\
FROM NEWWEST.NET
Nobel Winner Lectures on ‘The Five Stages of Climate Grief’
Running Says More Should Move to Acceptance Stage
http://www.newwest.net/city/article/nobel_winner_lectures_on_the_five_stages_of_climate_grief/C8/L8/
By Emily Darrell, 11-27-07
Since learning last month that he was a co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, University of Montana professor Steve Running has received many letters and emails regarding his win, and not all have been congratulatory.
The hate mail, Running said in a lecture at the UM campus Monday evening, has come from those going through the "anger" phase of what Running calls "The Five Stages of Climate Grief."
Running, a professor in UM’s College of Forestry and Conservation, won the Nobel for his work as one of the leading authors of the fourth assessment report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC was formed in 1988 by two United Nations organizations. Scientists from around the world were chosen to analyze a huge amount of data on climate change and compile it into reports. Each of the panel’s reports, particularly the latest one, has emphasized three major points: the Earth is getting warmer; it’s getting warmer quickly; and it’s getting warmer because of human activity.
In Monday’s speech Running adapted Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s "Five Stages of Grief" model to apply to climate change. Running said there are those in denial (the earth isn’t getting warmer, and if it is it isn’t our fault); those who are angry; those who are bargaining ("It was always too cold in Montana, anyway," Running quipped); those who are depressed; and those who have come to accept climate change as a fact.
Running would like to see more people moving to the acceptance or, as he called it, the "let’s get to work" phase.
After briefly explaining the difference between climate and weather - weather is delivered directly from the atmosphere; climate is weather trends over a long period of time - Running provided many grim examples of how climate change will likely affect Montana if warming trends continue as predicted. All the glaciers in Glacier Park may be gone by 2020, Running said. In 50 years Missoula won’t receive any snowfall. The fire season will continue to get longer and more intense. Snowpacks at high altitudes will continue to diminish.
The worst case climate scenario, which would occur if world carbon emissions keep rising at their current annual rate, is so bad, Running said, that climate scientists aren’t even sure if the Earth could maintain a functioning biosphere at that temperature. To avoid this fate, Running said, drastic measures must be taken. According to Running, the work of climate scientists is largely done.
"[The problem of global warming] is becoming a political science question and not a climate science question," Running said. "We need politicians willing to admit we’re in a big pickle."
Running also said American society needs to be "willing to do a little sacrificing."
Though he knows it won’t be pretty, and certainly not popular, Running believes that the government must begin drastically increasing the taxes on oil. Running would like to see the price of gasoline rise a dollar a gallon each year for the next five. Running said that he isn’t a big fan of cap and trade, a policy of taxation that would target corporate polluters.
This taxation proposal, Running said, would provide serious incentive to create new energy technologies.
"If [a tax] affected everybody," Running said, "it would get everybody’s attention."
Running also emphasized that to help slow global warming we must come up with innovative energy solutions and leave coal in the ground.
Though the picture he painted was certainly bleak, Running did offer a few words of encouragement. In the 1970’s, Running said, nobody could have possibly imagined a gadget as sophisticated as the iPhone. Advances in communications technology in recent years have been almost unfathomable, Running said.
"[Think] what we did for communications technology," Running said. "We have to do the same thing for energy for the next 40 years."
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US Key to Balanced Carbon Budget
Haider Rizvi of Inter Press Service says that "Calls for profound change in the environmental behavior of the United States are on the rise as world leaders prepare to attend a major summit on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, next month."
Bush, Gore Bond Over Warming at White House
The Associated Press reports: "Talk about an inconvenient truth. Al Gore finally won his place in the Oval Office on Monday - right next to George W. Bush. Forever linked by the closest and craziest presidential race in history, the two men were reunited by, of all things, White House tradition."
Source of Water for West at Risk
The Arizona Republic writes: "The West's natural water-delivery system is breaking down under the strain of rising temperatures, upsetting a fragile truce between people and the dry land they inhabit."
UN: "Taser Use Is Torture"
Le Monde reports: "The UN Committee Against Torture (CAT), an agency charged with overseeing the application of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, arrived at the conclusion ... the use of the electric pulse Taser gun constitutes a 'form of torture' and 'can even provoke death.'" And Brian Myles, at Le Devoir, investigates the controversy surrounding the weapon's use in Canada.
Chris Hedges | America in the Time of Empire
Chris Hedges writes: "All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance. This rot takes place over decades, as with the Soviet Union, or, even longer, as with the Roman, Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is often imperceptible."
The Anti-Crusader
From Mother Jones, Josh Harkinson reports, "Mikey Weinstein fights those who push evangelical Christianity in the military - and draws decidedly unchristian responses."
Bush Commits Troops to Iraq for the Long Term
The Guardian UK's Suzanne Goldenberg writes: "The Bush administration formally committed America yesterday to a long-term military presence in Iraq, pledging to protect the government in Baghdad from internal coup plots and foreign enemies."
So Much for "Remaking" Its Image: Wal-Mart Sues Brain-Damaged Worker
James Parks of the AFL-CIO writes: "Wal-Mart has spent millions trying to convince consumers that its critics are wrong about its anti-worker actions and that it is a good company that cares about its employees and the community. But the way the company has treated Deborah Shank shows the retail giant's true colors."
Ethanol Craze Cools as Doubts Multiply
The Wall Street Journal's Lauren Etter says, "Little over a year ago, ethanol was winning the hearts and wallets of both Main Street and Wall Street, with promises of greater US energy independence, fewer greenhouse gases and help for the farm economy. Today, the corn-based biofuel is under siege."
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FROM GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
Greens, citing revealed memo, urge Bush to cancel CIA plans to interfere in Venezuelan referendum and destabilize the Chavez government
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2007_11_30.shtml
Greens note that the Bush Administration has targeted President Chavez for numerous reasons: his nationalization of several industries, especially oil, which has angered US corporate interests; provision of financial security, jobs, and health care for Venezuela's severely impoverished multiracial majority; and expansion of democracy in a nation formerly ruled by a small white elite.
"President Chavez has refused to take Washington's orders to make his country a source
of cheap oil and other resources for US corporate profits," said Clifford W, Thornton, Jr.,
co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. "That's why the CIA's 'Operation Tenaza' [Operation Pincers] has been authorized -- to reopen markets for the benefit of corporations, and to teach Venezuela and all of Latin America a lesson."
"The US media blackout on the uncovered memo recalls the blackout by most media on the revelation of Republican operations to manipulate the US election in Ohio and other states in 2004," said Mr. Thornton.
MORE INFORMATION
Green Party of the United States
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193
. Green Party News Center
. Green Party Speakers Bureau
. Green candidate database for 2007 and other campaign information:
Green Party International Committee
"CIA Operation 'Pliers' Uncovered in Venezuela" By Eva Golinger, venezuelanalysis.com, November 28, 2007
"Counterattack as Fateful Referendum Looms; CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces" By James Petras, CounterPunch, November 28, 2007
"Venezuela's Constitutional Reform: Article-by-Article Summary"
By Gregory Wilpert
"Over 150 European Parliamentarians Declare Support for Venezuelan Reform"
Global Research, Venezuelanalysis.com, November 30 2007
"Democrats, retreating on troop withdrawal, impeachment, don't deserve votes in 2008"
Green Party press release, July 26, 2007
______________
American Transnationals Keep Undermining Trade Union Growth
Writing in Political Affairs, the Socialist Voice says, "A recent large-scale survey by the University of Limerick, which examined the patterns of trade union recognition among transnational corporations in Ireland, points to a growing trend of union avoidance among already unionized companies, which are establishing new sites on a non-union basis."
David Morris | An Electrifying Thought for Ford's St. Paul Plant
In the Minneapolis Star Tribune, David Morris says, "In these pages two years ago I urged the Ford Motor Co. to make its St. Paul Ranger plant the centerpiece for a bold new transportation initiative - a battery-powered vehicle, charged from a household socket, with a backup biofueled engine.... At the time Ford was uninterested, and worse."
The GreenStone Story: Radio That Talked to Women
Writing for The Women's Media Center, Kristal Brent Zook reports: "On September 12, 2006, GreenStone Media threw a star-studded soiree for the official, public launch of its female-targeted radio network at New York City's Museum of Television and Radio. Named prominently on the invitation were co-founders of the venture, Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem, who, together with activist and writer Robin Morgan, had spun GreenStone off from the not-for-profit Women's Media Center, founded two years earlier. The buzz was thick, the mood crackling with expectation."
Dioxin Plume Could Be Worst Ever in US
The Associated Press reports: "A find of dioxin at the bottom of the Saginaw River could be the highest level of such contamination ever discovered in the nation's rivers and lakes, according to a federal scientist involved in cleanup efforts downstream from a Dow Chemical Co. plant."
Dahr Jamail | "Tactical Perception Management" in Iraq
On TomDispatch.com, Dahr Jamail writes: "Name them. Maim them. Kill them. From the beginning of the American occupation in Iraq, air strikes and attacks by the US military have only killed 'militants,' 'criminals,' 'suspected insurgents,' 'IED [Improvised Explosive Device] emplacers,' 'anti-American fighters,' 'terrorists,' 'military age males,' 'armed men,' 'extremists,' or 'al-Qaeda.'"
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FROM GREEN LISTSERVS
America needs a drastic change of political landscape
By Scott McLarty
OpEdNews.com, November 27, 2007
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_scott_mc_071126_america_needs_a_dras.htm
Let's consider the following scenario:
*Thirty years from now, American politics remains the exclusive domain of the Democratic and Republican parties.
* The US in 2037 is no closer to national health care. HMOs and insurance companies are still paying off legislators, still in charge of most Americans' health care, and making record profits while the number of uninsured has doubled. (These companies have become so powerful that they've wrecked the national health care programs of Britain and some other European countries.)
* Republican lawmakers, with help from Democrats, have fatally damaged Social Security, Medicare, public education, and other programs through partial or full privatization. The disastrous effect on working Americans hasn't dampened the zeal of politicians for the free market and dismantling "big government." New trade agreements, built on the early successes of NAFTA, have resulted in even greater economic upheavals in the US and abroad, with whole populations facing displacement.
* Under both Democratic and Republican White Houses and Congresses, the US has launched new wars as oil, fresh water, food, and other resources became scarcer and more expensive. The conversion of agriculture in many parts of the world from provision of food to provision of biofuel has threatened peace as nations began to realign -- many of them against the US, thanks to American overconsumption and decades of belligerency that began after 9/11.
* By 2037, the effects of climate change have accelerated, leading to mass evacuation in some areas. Carbon-trading among polluting industries and the construction of hundreds of nuclear power plants have had no effect on global warming's advance. Nuclear power has proved an enormous liability to security and the environment.
Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the executive branch has gained nearly unlimited power. Thanks to the new national ID card and microchips in credit cards, cars, and other items, satellites can pinpoint the whereabouts of any American at any given time. (Associated Press, November 11: "A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy."
<
As a result of new spy technology, warrantless surveillance of citizens, the War on Drugs, more zero-tolerance laws, and increasing poverty, America's prison population has more than doubled since 2007.
With campaigns now costing millions of dollars, even for local office, both parties' politicians take record amounts of cash from corporate contributors. Elections in the 2030s are huge, expensive spectacles, but hardly anyone bothers to vote. Among Democrats, a small group of progressives hold out hope that they can rehabilitate their party. But the Democratic Party's leadership knows from the evidence of the past century that it can assume the votes of progressive, antiwar, and ecologically minded voters, as well as African Americans, gay people, and other constituencies, because they have
nowhere else to turn....
That's what the world might look like thirty years from now. All of the above is either
probable or all too plausible.
On the evidence of the Reagan, Clinton, and both Bush administrations and the current crop of likely nominees for 2008, the US will continue in the same direction whether we elect Democrats or Republicans to the White House and Congress. The only difference is that it'll happen a few years sooner under Republicans.
Can we forecast an alternative, more humane future? Yes... but not without a dramatic
disruption to the political status quo. America needs a transformation comparable to the
abolitionist Republican challenge to pro-slavery Democrats and Whigs in the 1850s, the
confrontations that led to the end of the Robber Baron Era and ultimately to progressive and New Deal reforms that gave the middle class its mid 20th century prosperity, and the point of anger that led black people to launch the Civil Rights movement.
Americans are by nature conservative. They prefer stability instead of revolution. Some historical upheavals, like the Civil War, resulted in enormous violence and suffering. It's very likely that the thirty-years-from-now scenario I described will also bring violence, domestic as well as international, unless some kind of less tumultuous political disruption happens now to offset it. In short, we need a drastic change in America's political landscape.
Bipartisan business as usual
We can begin by admitting that the Democratic Party, if it regains executive or maintains legislative power or both, is not going to end the Iraq War or enact national health care or make other significant changes. The Democratic leadership has no incentive to do so, nor do they intend to gamble with the generosity of corporate contributors.
On the Iraq front, Democrats no less than Republicans want to keep US control over the oil spigot as much as possible. Democratic leaders have endorsed the Iraqi hydrocarbon law "benchmark" that would place 2/3 of Iraq's oil resources under the control of major US and UK energy companies. The benchmark will require continued US military presence in Iraq to protect the investments of corporations like ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and BP.
It's why top Dems are only offering delayed timetables for partial withdrawal, instead of a plan for all US troops be ordered home safe and sound as quickly as possible. Democrats in Congress could force such a withdrawal simply by stalling on Bush's requests for war funding, but have declined to do so. According to an Associated Press news report on October 10, congressional Democrats have put troop removal "on the back burner," and in November passed a bill (doomed to veto) for partial withdrawal by the end of 2008, but which will leave tens of thousands of US troops deployed in Iraq (Associated Press, November 11: "Democrats' bill on Iraq wouldn't end war"
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hCwFdr1kPXe2fDoezo2dDrBqR2HgD8T32QS00 ).
The same oil companies that contribute to Republicans also give campaign checks to Democratic candidates. Insurance, HMO, and pharmaceutical industry contributions (with Hillary Clinton a top recipient among both parties) ensure that none of the leading
Democratic presidential hopefuls will endorse genuine universal care under a single-payer
national health plan.
There's no greater evidence of such collusion than the reluctance of Democratic leaders to seek impeachment and hold the Bush-Cheney gang responsible for criminal abuses of power: deceiving the American people about why we invaded Iraq, torture, detention without trial, surveillance of US citizens without warrant, violation of international laws and treaties, inaction and racist response to environmental emergencies (Hurricanes Katrina and Rita), endangering public health by tampering with scientific research on global warming, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's revelation that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were involved in the conspiracy to expose the identity of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame.
When Dems in the current Congress approved the nominations of Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court and Michael "Waterboard" Mukasey as the next Attorney General, they made the damage of the Bush-Cheney White House extensive and probably permanent.
There's a tendency among many liberal and progressive Americans to think of the Democratic Party as the opposition, that it provides a check on the Republican agenda, and that the excessive power of the Bush Administration represents a break in two-party democracy.
This is wrong. The Bush catastrophe is a natural, perhaps predictable outcome of bipartisan politics. Dems and Repubs compete on the same turf, seeking corporate campaign donations and the votes of a vaguely defined 'moderate' constituency, without any strong countervailing progressive political force. The drift of Democrats into ever greater loyalty to corporate lobbies and increasing abandonment of working people has guaranteed a license for the Republican Party, under neoconservative standard-bearers, to adopt agenda so extreme they imperil US democracy and global stability. It was thus inevitable that a Bush and a Cheney would come to power and wreak havoc
Progressive and antiwar Dems remain a vocal bloc in their party, but with nearly zero influence. The Democratic Party's leadership knows that upstarts like Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel won't get the corporate dollars necessary to compete with the Clinton and Obama war chests, that they barely register in the media, and that Democratic voters who oppose the Iraq War and favor various progressive reforms will vote for a nominee anointed by Wall and K Streets who shares none of their sentiments "because they have nowhere else to turn."
Mr. Kucinich and Mr. Gravel will have no effect on the Democratic Party platform and will not be permitted to speak at the party's convention. Their only effect in 2008 will be similar to the role played by Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown, Al Sharpton, Mr. Kucinich, and others during the past few decades: they'll corral millions of voters behind a Democratic ticket that ignores them.
As Green Party candidate David Cobb said during his 2004 presidential campaign, "The Democratic Party is where progressive ideas go to die."
read more>> http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_scott_mc_071126_america_needs_a_dras.htm
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They're right to fear alternative candidates. The Commission on Presidential Debates (owned and run by the Democratic and Republican parties, funded with big corporate checks) restricts the number of debaters because it knows that millions of Americans, if sufficiently informed about all the names on the ballot, would seriously consider voting third party.
In this context, Green and other alternative party participation in elections doesn't just
offer a challenge to politics-as-usual. It's a necessary rebuke against the bipartisan
perversion of US democracy.
As Ebenezer Scrooge learned near the end of 'A Christmas Carol,' the future isn't carved in stone. The scenario at the top of this essay describes a few things that are likely based on a reading of the current state of US politics -- unless something else intervenes.
According to chaos theory, interference in a process with an expected outcome is caused by one or more agents from outside, after which many other very different and unpredictable outcomes are possible. It's in these possible futures that we should seek some hope. Without the interference of Green, independent, and other 'free radicals,' the world thirty years from now -- or two years from now, if Democratic and Republican leaders make good on recent threats to attack Iran -- will be a very dark place.
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Scott McLarty has served as media coordinator for the Green Party of the United States and for the DC Statehood Green Party. He has had articles, guest columns, and book reviews published in Roll Call, Z Magazine, Green Horizon, The Progressive Review, In These Times, and several local and community publications and small press. He joined
the Green Party in 1996, and in 1998 ran for the Ward 1 seat on the Washington, DC City Council. Mr. McLarty grew up in Long Island, New York, and now lives in Washington, DC.
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Subject: Re: [usgp-nc] McKinney-Nader
Dear Green Colleagues,
It seems to me obvious that Nader is not the best Green presidential candidate in '08. I say that with great regret because I admire the life he's lived and all he's done to make America a better place to live in, and because I was happy to work my ass off for him in 2000.
But after his bizarre behavior in '04, he can't be taken seriously as a Green candidate. When he not only refused to seek our nomination but actually declared in advance that he wouldn't take it if offered, he grossly dissed all the Greens who had so ardently supported him four years earlier. He may have thought that we HAD TO endorse him simply because he was Nader. Perhaps his own entourage encouraged that idea because they didn't want to share the decision-making with the Greens or with anybody else. All this embarrasses me because I spent four years defending Nader from malicious Democrats who said he was vain and egotistical. Well, his refusal to work with us in '04 (except on his own terms) certainly does make him look vain and egotistical. Let's face it.
And he certainly didn't do himself any favors by denying himself the Green ballot lines that were already open. Instead, he forced himself to waste energy, time and money fighting Democrat parasites in their dishonest attempts to keep him off the ballot.
One of the worst things about Nader's stubbornness in '04 is that it took the progressive alternative to Republicrats and split it in two. This was a betrayal of progressive voters, most of whom correctly wished for a progressive party AND the progressive candidate they were most familiar with. Many were damn confused when they looked at their ballots on election day and found their preferred candidate and their preferred party on different tickets. If Nader didn't want to run as a Green, he could have endorsed Cobb and campaigned for him. Such statesmanlike behavior would have earned him nothing but admiration. Instead, he allowed some of his operatives, like Peter Camejo and Joshua Frank, to indulge in malicious attacks on Cobb and the Greens. He could have told them to shut up if they couldn't act like gentlemen.
And now, for some weird reason, some Greens are still chanting "Run Ralph run" and working to "draft" someone who totally ignores us when he's not taking us for granted. Have my comrades learned nothing from 2004? I guess not. Indeed, Nader hasn't either. If he had, he would be admitting he was wrong in '04 and working to patch things up with us.
I'm for McKinney.
Tom McCormick
Nebraska Green Party
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From Elizabeth May webadmin@greenparty.ca
Green Party of Canada
Parti Vert du Canada
Dear Green Party friend,
It may be a bit early for an end-of-year message, but I wanted to write to you now, before you find yourself caught up in the happy chaos of the holiday season....
-- A record, and increasing number of Canadians now support us, with opinion polls indicating between 8% and 14% support across the country
-- The Green Party of Ontario garnered a historic 8% of the vote in the recent provincial election, tripling its 2003 result and coming close to electing Shane Jolley, who won 33% of the vote in his riding
-- In the last Prince Edward Island election, we came in ahead of the NDP
-- More and more prominent Canadians are supporting the Green Party, including Order of Canada recipients Margaret Atwood, Graeme Gibson and Farley Mowat
-- According to independent surveys, over 75% of Canadians want us in the televised leadership debates
We have the momentum for an electoral breakthrough and, for the first time, to win seats. But to do that we must maintain a strong presence in your riding and in the media. Voters must see us and hear from us if we are to have the credibility we need to elect Green MPs....
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FROM GREEN LINE the monthly e-newsletter of the Green Party of the United States. Subscribe for free at www.gp.org
Green Party Jennings running for Annapolis Alderman
The Maryland Green Party is running a candidate in a special city council election this December 19 in the state capital, Annapolis. The Ward Two Alderman for the City of Annapolis resigned in the middle of his term, and Karen Jennings, a Green Party organizer since 1996 and dedicated community activist, is running to fill the position. The election will be a three way race between Ms. Jennings and the Democratic and Republican candidates.
Jennings's platform includes such issues as establishing a clear line of communication between Ward 2 neighborhoods and city hall, ensuring that new development meets the needs of the community, promoting green buildings and technology, and developing a community policing approach to crime prevention.
Due to the timing and nature of this election, there is likely to be a low voter turnout. This means that a small number of votes can win the election, making this a very winnable race in a high profile city. We need financial support from Greens nationwide, however, to help cover the costs of literature and mailings. Please send checks today to "Jennings for Annapolis" and mail to P.O. Box 2230, Annapolis MD 21404. The campaign has imposed a $100 limit per
For more details, see http://www.jenningsforannapolis.org/
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More Green wins in November 6 local elections
15 Green candidates, out of 94 who ran on November 6, won their races for local office. A total of 142 Greens ran for public office in the 2007 off-year elections.
"We're very proud of all our 2007 candidates. Along with our winners, we also note that Green candidates who didn't win received impressive percentages in cities and towns where Greens are still a new party, or where local politics have been dominated by a single party, as in Baltimore and Tucson. These percentages prove that more and more Americans are willing to vote Green, and that the party made a leap forward in 2007," said TE Smith, a member of the DC Statehood Green Party.
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GREEN VICTORIES on November 6:
CALIFORNIA http://www.cagreens.org
. Larry Bragman and Lew Tremain were re-elected to the Fairfax City Council. Mr. Bragman finished first with 1,322 votes or 40.74%, and Mr. Tremain finished second with 969 votes or 29.66 %. Three candidates competed for two seats. http://www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/rv/main/CurrentElection/Results.htm
CONNECTICUT http://www.ctgreens.org
. Alan Brison scored an upset victory in his race for Ward 10 Alderman in New Haven. Mr. Brison beat his competition by 100 votes in the East Rock and Cedar Hill neighborhoods. http://ctgreens.org/candidates/brison2007
. Jean deSmet was elected First Selectman of the town of Windham. (At 9:30 pm on Tuesday, Ms.deSmet was 120 votes ahead of the Democrat and far ahead of the Republican.) Ms. deSmet is also co-chair of the Green Party of Connecticut. http://www.VoteJean.com
. Write-in candidate Leif Smith won his race for Redding Constable.
ILLINOIS
. The Illinois Green Party met the early filing deadline on November 6 for placing presidential, congressional, and other candidates on the ballot for the state's February 5 primary. In 2006, Illinois Greens who their ballot line, overcoming difficult ballot access rules and obstruction efforts by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who used $800,000 in taxpayers' money trying to block the Green Party.
Green gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney drew over 10% in 2006, more than twice Illinois' 5% requirement to maintain ballot access. According to Phil Huckelberry, chair of the Illinois Green Party's government and elections committee, the party has set a goal of having 100 to 110 state and local candidates on ballots in 2008.
For more information on Illinois Green races, contact Mr. Huckelberry at 309-268-9974 or phil.huckelberry@gmail.com
MAINE http://www.mainegreens.org
. John Anton won his race for Portland City Council. Mr. Anton finished first among four candidates for two at-large seats, drawing 6,320 votes or 29.04%. http://www.johnanton.us/
MASSACHUSETTS http://www.massgreens.org
Chuck Turner easily won reelection to Boston City Council (District 7) with 81% of the vote. . Luc Schuster won reelection to the Cambridge School Committee, finishing fourth out of nine candidates for six seats. Mr. Schuster received 1,658 first place votes. http://www.voteluc.org/
PENNSYLVANIA
. Sam Ettaro won as a write-in candidate for Curwensville Borough in Clearfield County. http://www.ettaro.com http://www.citizensadvocate.net
VIRGINIA http://www.vagreenparty.org
. Three Virginia Green were elected to local Soil and Water Conservation Boards: Chris Simmons in Loudon County; Kathleen Harrigan (write-in) for the Tri-County Soil and Water commission in Fredericksburg; and Daniel Metraux in Staunton. For more details go to http://www.gp.org/press.shtml
New Mexico Qualified for Ballot Access 2008
The New Mexico Green Party will be on the ballot in 2008. On November 12th, the NM Secretary of State notified the New Mexico Green Party that they will continue to qualify as a minor party for the 2008 election cycle. This ensures that the Green Party Presidential Candidate will be on the ballot. It also means that Congressional candidates will need to gather apx. 2000 signatures to get on the ballot, instead of having to circulate party qualifying petitions simultaneously. The party is currently recruiting candidates to run for office at the local, state and federal level.
Congrats New Mexico Greens!
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FROM OpEdNEWS.com OpEdNews.com November 26, 2007
The Year of the Naomis--Wolf and Klein--Both with Great Messages
By Jim Freeman
Naomi Wolf’s title, "The End of America: a Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot," is an attention grabber.
End of America? Didn’t we just have Francis Fukuyama missing the cultural deadline (as well as reality) with "The End of History"?
If there’s one thing to be learned about predicted ends, it’s that they are not often true. Now, having said that (and thereby conserving my predictive powers for another day), Wolf is no alarmist, no stranger to writing about the current state of events and no neophyte researcher of historical archives. In a recent Op-Ed in my favorite rag, the Washington Post, she writes;
Is America still America if millions of us no longer know how democracy works?
When I speak on college campuses, I find that students are either baffled by democracy's workings or that they don't see any point in engaging in the democratic process. Sometimes both.
Not long ago, I gave a talk at a major university in the Midwest. "They're going to raze our meadows and put in a shopping mall!" a young woman in the audience wailed. "And there's nothing we can do!" she said, to the nods of young and old alike.
I stared at her in amazement and asked how old she was. When she said 26, I suggested that she run for city council. Then she stared at me-- with complete incomprehension. It took me a long time to convince her and her peers in the audience that what I'd suggested was possible, even if she didn't have money, a major media outlet of her own or a political "machine" behind her.
America certainly risks losing itself to sit-com status if we forget how it works, that’s for sure. I’ve wondered (often and in print) why there are no students in the streets as there were in the 60s and Wolf has an answer for me-one that is sobering-one that had never occurred to me because I am of an earlier generation....
During the Vietnam War, the left further weakened itself by abandoning the notion of patriotism. Young antiwar leaders burned the flag instead of invoking the ideals of the republic it represents. By turning their backs on the idea of patriotism -- and even on the brave men who were fighting the unpopular war -- the left abandoned the field to the right to "brand" patriotism as it own, often in a way that means uncritical support for anything the executive branch decides to do.
Jesus. Wolf makes clear what has been driving me nuts-how those of us who disagree with the current administration became ‘unpatriotic’ and how any Congressional oversight at all was shriveled by the accusation of being soft on terror....
Naomi Klein, on the other hand, dispels any notions you may have had about the CIA and its usefulness as a tool in the belt of American democracy.
A Canadian journalist, Klein ruthlessly and in agonizingly researched detail, carries us through Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of nation building. Klein has done the legwork, so we needn’t tromp our way up and down the dusty corridors, lined with closet after closet, ringing with the cries of the tortured, the disappeared, the silenced witnesses to grand theft of their countries....
Friedman first learned how to exploit a shock or crisis in the mid-70s, when he advised the dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Not only were Chileans in a state of shock after Pinochet's violent coup, but the country was also traumatized by hyperinflation. Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy - tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation.
It was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a "Chicago School" revolution, as so many of Pinochet's economists had studied under Friedman there. Friedman coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic "shock treatment". In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or "shock therapy", has been the method of choice.
This, from the introduction to The Shock Doctrine and it pretty much hit me between the eyes, as I have been a life-long admirer of Friedman. Who knew? The whole dirty business had been cloaked in secrecy and propaganda.
. . . Until recently, these conditions did not exist in the US. What happened on September 11 2001 is that an ideology hatched in American universities and fortified in Washington institutions finally had its chance to come home. The Bush administration, packed with Friedman's disciples, including his close friend Donald Rumsfeld, seized upon the fear generated to launch the "war on terror" and to ensure that it is an almost completely for-profit venture, a booming new industry that has breathed new life into the faltering US economy. Best understood as a "disaster capitalism complex", it is a global war fought on every level by private companies whose involvement is paid for with public money, with the unending mandate of protecting the US homeland in perpetuity while eliminating all "evil" abroad.
Add to Don Rumsfeld's Friedman enthusiasm, the names of Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Eliot Abrams and Douglas Feith; Friedman disciples all and the main architects of the Iraq disaster.
Just 135 pages in to the 465 total, I find Naomi Klein's treatise so absorbing, well written and carefully researched (60 pages of footnotes) that--believe or not believe--it’s a wonderful exploration of what has gone wrong along the route to globalizing American business.
________________________________________________________
Media comment;
CounterPunch-CA-America's Days of Reckoning
Don Hazen Interview-The End of America? Naomi Wolf Thinks It Could Happen
St Louis Post Dispatch-The Shock Doctrine
[I have long rejected the idea that Milton Friedman and "Chicago School" economics had anything to do with dictators, corporate globalization, and the other evils which Klein associates with it. Somewhere along the line, though, the Neo-Con Straussian political philosophy seems to have overrun the "classical liberalism" of the Chicago economists. I can find evidence for this as early as the final volume of Hayek's "Law, Legislation, and Liberty." In the original manuscript, Hayek identified Carl Schmitt's legal philosophy (also highly influential on the Neo-Cons - Schmitt was Hitler's chief legal theorist) as being highly illiberal and the source of the kind of totalitarianism which Hayek always opposed. Basically, Schmitt promulgated the idea that law is whatever the state or its leaders say it is - a view obviously embraced wholeheartedly by the Bush Administration. By the time Hayek's book was published (by the University of Chicago Press - some of his best years were spent there with The Committee on Social Thought, later dominated by the Straussians), he had withdrawn his objections to Schmitt's views! (He was then nearly 80 years old, lionized by the Thatcherites and other authoritarians, etc.) And so it goes.
Just recently, I saw a presentation by a Chicago School economist on C-SPAN in which he outlined the "change in thinking" which brought about the change in position from strong defenders of anti-trust legislation (essential to the workings of a real market economy) to essentially rejecting it in toto in favor of monopoly "finance capitalism." In his early book, "Capitalism and Freedom," Friedman strongly criticizes the role and workings of corporations. Obviously, he "got over it" in his later years, and after winning the Nobel Prize, he became a dedicated tool of the global imperialists. So, I have to believe Naomi Klein is largely correct in her analysis of "shock therapy," although Friedman was only one of many right-wing, anti-communist, Neo-Con Zionists responsible for the present crisis. She might want to add Ayn Rand to the list. - PHS]
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Forget the Green Technology - the Hot Money Is in Guns
By Naomi Klein
The Guardian UK http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/113007O.shtml
Go to Original
Friday 30 November 2007
Far from saving us from catastrophe, the market is developing fortresses to shield the haves from the victims of the future.
Anyone tired of lousy news from the markets should talk to Douglas Lloyd, a director of Venture Business Research, which tracks trends in venture capitalism. "I expect investment activity in this sector to remain buoyant," he said recently. Lloyd's bouncy mood was inspired by the money that is gushing into private security and defence companies. He added: "I also see this as a more attractive sector, as many do, than clean energy."
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Save the Planet: Vote Smart
New York Times, October 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Op-Ed Columnist
"People often ask: I want to get greener, what should I do? New light bulbs? A hybrid? A solar roof? Well, all of those things are helpful. But actually, the greenest thing you can do is this: Choose the right leaders. It is so much more important to change your leaders than change your light bulbs.
Why? Because leaders write the rules, set the standards and offer the tax incentives that drive market behavior across a whole city, state or country. Whatever any of us does individually matters a tiny bit. But when leaders change the rules, you get scale change across the whole marketplace. And the energy-climate challenge we face today is a huge scale problem. Without scale, all you have is a green hobby.
Have no illusions, everything George Bush wouldn't do on energy after 9/11 - his resisting improved mileage for cars and actually trying to weaken air-conditioner standards - swamped any good works you did. Fortunately, the vacuum in the White House is being filled by leaders from below.
Take the New York City taxi story. Two years ago, David Yassky, a City Council member, sat down with one of his backers, Jack Hidary, a technology entrepreneur, to brainstorm about how to make New York City greener - at scale. For starters, they checked with the Taxi and Limousine Commission to see what it would take to replace the old gas-guzzling Crown Victoria yellow cabs, which get around 10 miles a gallon, with better-mileage, low-emission hybrids. Great idea, only it turned out to be illegal, thanks to some old size regulations designed to favor Crown Vics.
Recalled Mr. Hidary: "When they first told me, I said, 'Are you serious? Illegal?' So he formed a nonprofit called SmartTransportation.org to help Mr. Yassky lobby the City Council to change the laws to permit hybrid taxis. They also reframed it as a health issue, with the help of Louise Vetter, president of the American Lung Association of the City of New York.
'New York City has among the dirtiest air in the U.S.,' Ms. Vetter said. 'When it comes to ozone and particulate matter, New Yorkers are breathing very unhealthy air. Most of it is tailpipe emissions. And in New York City, where asthma rates are among the highest in the nation, the high ozone levels create very serious threats, especially for kids who spend a lot of time outdoors. Converting cabs from yellow to green would be a great gift to the city's children.'
Matt Daus, who heads the taxi commission, which is independent of the mayor, was initially reluctant, but once he learned of the health and other benefits, he joined forces with Messrs. Yassky and Hidary, and the measure passed the City Council by 50 to 0 on June 30, 2005. Since then, more than 500 taxi drivers have converted to hybrids - mostly Ford Escapes, but also Toyota Highlanders and Priuses, and others.
On May 22, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the greenest mayors in America, decided to push even further, insisting on a new rule, which the taxi commission has to approve, that will not just permit but require all cabs - 13,000 in all - to be hybrids or other low-emission vehicles that get at least 30 miles a gallon, within five years.
'When it comes to health and safety and environmental issues, government should be setting standards,' the mayor said. 'What you need are leaders who are willing to push for standards that are in society's long-term interest.' When the citizens see the progress, Mr. Bloomberg added, 'then they start to lead.' And this encourages leaders to seek even higher standards.
I asked Evgeny Freidman, a top New York City fleet operator, how he liked the hybrids: "Absolutely fabulous! We started out with 18, and now we have over 200, mostly Ford Escapes. Now we only put hybrids out there. The drivers are demanding them and the public is demanding them. It has been great economically. With gas prices as they are, the drivers are saving $30 dollars a shift." He said drivers who were getting 7 to 10 miles a gallon from their Crown Vics were getting 25 to 30 from their hybrids. The cost of shifting to these hybrids, he added, has not been onerous.
Now Mr. Hidary is trying to get law firms and investment banks, which use gas-guzzling Town Cars - 12,000 in the city - to demand hybrid sedans only.
This is how scale change happens. When the Big Apple becomes the Green Apple, and 40 million tourists come through every year and take at least one hybrid cab ride, they'll go back home and ask their leaders, 'Why don't we have hybrid cabs?'
So if you want to be a green college kid or a green adult, don't fool yourself: You can change lights. You can change cars. But if you don't change leaders, your actions are nothing more than an expression of, as Dick Cheney would say, 'personal virtue.'"
[Is Tom Friedman about to join the Green Party? Why not? Let's all welcome him enthusiastically. He could be a major donor. -- PHS]
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ANNOUNCING THE NEW BROOM COALITION FOR A CLEAN SWEEP OF CONGRESS
SEEKING CANDIDATES
We are a group of challengers for Congressional seats currently held by people who won't support impeachment.
We are seeking like-minded candidates. Our goal is to have challengers in every Congressional district, both in the primaries and in the general election; thus we can have up to two challengers per district.
We believe that by next November, we can put enough of our candidates into Congress to change the direction of this country, no matter who is elected president.
To join, a candidate must subscribe to our mission statement- see below.
If you are a candidate, or know a suitable candidate, please contact us through our website
Or email me directly, at cwolman@mcn.org
MISSION STATEMENT
1) We believe Bush and Cheney have committed many impeachable offenses. If elected, we will work to impeach them in the first two opening weeks of the 111th Congress, and will continue the process after they leave office. We will get rid of precedents they have set, and make them subject to criminal proceedings, which will strip them of the perks and protections that ex- executives usually receive. We will restore the rule of law, and bring lawbreakers to justice.
2) We will seek to restore the Constitution, especially the balance of powers among the branches, and the Bill of Rights.
3) We will work to restore paper ballots and ensure the integrity of the election process.
4) We will work for withdrawal from occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, stop threatening Iran, and seek a negotiated peace with these countries, on a fair basis. We will work actively for world peace, and put an end to endless war.
5) We will make it priority to address global concerns such as global warming, and to work with other nations on the basis of leadership, not military might. We will put planetary survival and restoration of ecological balance above private profit.
6) We will seek to control nuclear weapons by restoring the nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, pressuring Israel, India and Pakistan to join it, and start the process of disarmament of nuclear nations mandated by Article VI.
Carol S. Wolman, MD is a psychiatrist in Northern California. A lifelong peace activist, she has written extensively on the psychology of our times. She is a cochair of Bay Area Impeach Bush-Cheney. You can join or form a local group at
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ZNET COMMENTARIES
Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet. To learn more folks can consult ZNet at
Obama and Pluralist Illusion
By Paul Street
As I write this commentary near the end of October 2007, Barack Obama's campaign for the United States presidency seems to have run into something of a wall. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton leads him by a considerable margin in national polls and Obama is locked in a difficult three-way race for the pivotal Iowa Caucuses. Obama has said things that led many to question his foreign policy qualifications and seems plagued by an especially high gap between the large number and percentage of Americans who like him and the smaller quantity willing to actually vote for him. His fellow centrist Clinton has repeatedly outscored Obama in candidate debates and John Edwards had been out-flanking him from the left in Iowa and elsewhere.
None of these problems are fixed in stone and Obama continues to be a formidable and incredibly well-funded and media-favored political actor. But the "smart money [was] on Hillary" and Edwards continues to be a threat to win the nomination for a presidential run that should - thanks to the disastrous record of the George. W. Bush administration - put a Democrat in the White House in 2009.
No matter how his campaign fares in the next few months, however, Obama has already entered the pages of United States political and cultural history. In just two years, he rose from little known state lawmaker to national celebrity. "Galloping onto the national stage," Obama's biographer David Mendell notes, "Obama would become a source of hope and optimism for disillusioned Democrats from California to New Hampshire. Obama's come-from-nowhere ascent would make it starkly evident just how passionately many Americans yearned for an inspirational leader who could mend the various divisions within the country - racial, political, cultural, spiritual…Not since the days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy," Mendell rapturously adds, "and their luminous political Camelot, had a politician captured so quickly the imagination of the such a broad array of Americans. Not since Ronald Reagan had a politician been so adept at sharing his own unwavering optimism with a disheartened electorate." Further:
"Wherever he went, Obama drew impassioned crowds in the thousands. Throughout 2006, Obama would grace the covers of national magazines and front pages of national newspapers. 'It's like nothing I've ever seen before,' said Julian Green, a former aide. 'We actually have fans among the media. I've never run across anything like that for any other politician.' 'Dreaming of Obama' and 'Great Expectations' and 'Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President' - these headlines would feed his growing legend. Among politicians, Obama would be in the highest demand for television's endless talk circuit. 'We originally scheduled the Rolling Stones,' the New Hampshire Governor, John Lynch, told fifteen hundreds Democrats who had shelled out twenty five dollars apiece to see Obama in December 2006. 'But we cancelled them when we realized Senator Obama would sell more tickets....'"
read complete article, with notes at: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-10/31street.cfm
For dominant socioeconomic, imperial and racial interests, moreover, Obama's supposedly pluralist and universal appeal is a useful illusion. It provides welcome cover for his deeper allegiance and subordination to power "elites" atop leading global and domestic hierarchies. In that sense, the "Obama phenomenon" is in fact richly analogous to John Fitzgerald Kennedy's (JFK) "Camelot" presidency, when a handsome, young, and charismatic chief executive's declared commitment to non-ideological and at once idealistic and pragmatic goals of national unity cloaked a deep and dangerous adherence to dominant hierarchies and doctrines at home and abroad. Like his fellow centrist Democrat JFK, Obama can in fact - with some basic critical investigation - be "found on the ideological spectrum." He's a "progressive" of a very particular corporate and imperial type.
This is his fault but it is also the fault of a narrow, corporate-dominated and militaristic U.S. political culture that make it essentially impossible for Obama or anyone else to become president without distancing themselves from elementary truths about U.S. history, society, and policy. We should not shrink from making critical judgments about the moral cost inherent in Obama's decision to join rather than to fight "the establishment" - to climb rather than criticize and challenge the American System. But our most critical concern should be with the system that compromises Obama (and countless other policymakers and politicians), not the individuals compromised. Following the counsel of Martin Luther King, Jr., I at least do not condemn Obama for acting on what King called "the Drum Major Instinct": the desire to "be important," "the best," and recognized for personal achievement. I more fundamentally criticize the perversion of that natural human instinct by the twisted, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing logics of empire, inequality, and corporate-plutocratic winner-take-all politics.
* The liberal weekly magazine The Nation would not look at even a draft of this essay; it did not respond to a 250-word description submitted through its website.
Paul Street is a writer, speaker and activist based in Iowa City, IA and Chicago, IL. He is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); and Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in Post-Civil Rights America ( New York: Routledge, 2005. Paul can be reached at paulstreet99@yahoo.com
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ZNet Commentary
"We Want More"
By Ted Glick
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-11/21glick.cfm
Words fail me as I try to figure out how to capture in words the profound significance of the student-based Power Shift conference which took place November 2-5 at the University of Maryland and on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Historic-Powerful-Deep-Amazing-Awesome-Astounding-Incredible-Hope at the Highest Level: these are the adjectives and phrases that come to mind.
So what happened?
From November 2nd to the 4th upwards of 6,000 people, overwhelmingly young people, multi-racial but predominantly white, from all over the country and with some international representation, met on the campus of the University of Maryland in College Park at the "first-ever national youth climate summit." Over the course of two and a half days they heard lots of speakers and music at plenary sessions and panels and took part in close to 300 different workshops, on a range of topics.
Some of the topics covered in the workshops and panels included:
-anti-racism and anti-oppression, a central priority for this burgeoning movement of hope for the world
-organizing strategies and tactics on the climate issue on college campuses
-community-based, statewide and national organizing and legislative approaches on the climate issue
-ending the U.S. addiction to coal and oil
-media and messaging
-skills trainings
-spirituality and faith and environmental sustainability
-civil disobedience and direct action in the climate movement
-corporate campaigning
This was a conference of thousands of SERIOUS young people. They were not there just to enjoy one another's company, although that was definitely going on. They were there primarily to learn, to contribute, to strategize, to return home as smarter and more effective activists for a justice-based, peace-encouraging, world-changing clean energy revolution.
And more.
One of the political high points for me was when, during a major plenary session Saturday night, a "we want more" chant went up from some of those in the crowd of thousands during the speeches of Congresspersons Ed Markey and, following him, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House. Markey is the chair of a special House committee on global warming set up by Pelosi earlier this year.
Markey and Pelosi were the two prominent national politicians who spoke at Power Shift. I was told that all of the Presidential candidates were invited and, tellingly, none came.
I was especially pleased by this interruption of Markey's and then Pelosi's speeches because I was disappointed by the initially loud and strong welcoming of Pelosi when she was introduced to the crowd. Other speakers Friday night and earlier Saturday night had received a warm response when they spoke against the war in Iraq during their time on the stage. So for Pelosi to be received so positively given her misleadership in Congress on that issue was not what I had thought would happen. I was hoping that the response would be more mixed.
But then the "we want more" chant rose up out of the crowd. Here's how it was described on the Power Shift website blog by one of those who led it, Juliana Williams:
"Tonight at Power Shift, as Congressman Ed Markey stood before us inciting us to support the proposed Energy Bill, a few of us began chanting 'We want more, we want more.' Congressman Markey stopped short to listen. We chanted for a full minute with a fervor, intensity and volume that left me light-headed, hoarse and thoroughly invigorated. As we chanted, for the first time, I felt an almost painful desire for the future we want to see. . .
"We don't just want policy fixes, or simply a change in leadership in the White House, higher fuel economy standards, or 80% emissions reduction by the year 2050. This movement is about more than just politics. This movement is about more than just supporting clean energy sources. This movement is about recognizing the patterns of consumption, patterns of thought, patterns of behavior that have led to the social ills we see today. It's about rediscovering the value of our resources, the value of our neighbors, the value of life on this planet."
"We want more" came forward as a chant another time that I heard over the course of the weekend. It was on Monday the 5th on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol during a rally of close to 2,000 young people in mid-day in between morning and afternoon mass lobbying by the students in support of the strong legislative demands of the 1 Sky campaign (www.1skycampaign.org
The best lobby day story I heard about was what happened in the Hart Senate Office Building that morning. Spontaneously, hundreds of students started chanting "80 by 50" (80% reductions in carbon emissions by 2050) across an atrium in the center of that building around which Senate offices are lined up. I was with a group of about 25 that chanted anti-war slogans into that atrium space during the first week of the Iraq war in March of 2003, and we were loud, so I'm sure hundreds of students chanting on Monday were heard by everyone in the building.
The best visual of the weekend for me was at the end of the Monday rally. Dozens of young people were up on the stage, singing and dancing along with music coming out of the loudspeakers. Hundreds of others were doing the same on the ground as cameras clicked and rolled. I was moved as I watched the joyful energy and read the signs people were holding: Green Jobs-No Coal-1 Sky-30 by 2020-Power Shift-Danger: End of World Ahead-Congress Listen: Act Now-Youth Want Green Energy-God's Creation, Our Home-Hope Is Green.
Our hope for the future absolutely is green: a connection to the green, life-giving force of our Mother Earth. A green, clean energy economy that gets us off the dirty fossil fuels which are destroying the ecosystem and are the reason for the U.S.'s wars of occupation in the Middle East and elsewhere trying to control oil and natural gas. A green, clean energy revolution that creates millions of jobs, lifts people out of poverty, strengthens communities and reduces the power of destructive corporations.
And there is movement in Congress toward this future. It is possible that a piece of global warming legislation could come onto the U.S. Senate floor for a debate and vote early next year, although it will not be strong enough and will likely provide even more subsidies for coal, auto and oil companies. There will be a need for significant grassroots mobilization to demand that it either be strengthened and changed or defeated.
Most immediately, there's an energy bill that could be passed by Congress in early December that could-repeat, could-be the beginnings of a turn by the federal government in the right direction on the energy issue. If that's to happen the climate movement needs to work very hard between now and then to pressure legislators for a good bill. A good bill will include an increased fuel efficiency standard for cars to at least 35 mpg by 2020, a renewable electricity standard requiring utilities to get at least 15% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, a strong green jobs program and absolutely no subsidies for liquid coal, nuclear energy, coal or oil.
As we work to get this kind of energy bill passed we should be building toward actions all over the country on December 8th, the third International Day of Climate Action. This is taking place during the time of the Dec. 3-14 United Nations Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia. There will be actions on the 8th in more than 50 countries.
Power Shift. As was talked about this past weekend, a phrase with a double meaning. A shift from carbon to clean energy, and a shift from old, corporate-dominated politics as usual to the new, democratic (small "d"), participatory politics experienced by thousands at the University of Maryland. We are on the way, we are moving, we have hope, we can see the future, and we are determined to do what needs to be done to get there. Young people are rising up and giving leadership and all of us of whatever age need to follow and work with them. Si, se puede! Si, se puede!
Ted Glick is on the 65th day of a Climate Emergency Fast (www.climateemergency.org
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The Revolution Will Be Digitized
By Alexander Billet
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-11/03billet.cfm
On October 10th, Radiohead released their seventh record, In Rainbows. It is an album highly anticipated, their first since 2003's Hail to the Thief. It was released without a record label. Fans can download it through a website run by the band. The price? As much as you feel like.
That's right. Fans have access to new music by one of the world's biggest and most popular bands, for as much or as little money as they desire, including nothing. A discbox including CD and vinyl versions as well a bonus album will be released in December, but in the meantime there are no parasitic record labels involved, no exorbitant CD prices. Just a direct channel between artist and listener.
Ever since 1997's OK Computer, the group has been well known for breaking the musical mold. While the stale, amorphous concept of "post-grunge" seemed to be the direction most rock music was going in, OK Computer dared to mix spacey electronica, abstract avant-garde and more traditional rock instruments into an artistic range that went well beyond the confines of the mainstream.
After their contract with mega-label EMI expired, they opted to record their album without re-signing. Their disdain for the traditional music industry was made humorously obvious by singer Thom Yorke: "What we would really like is the old EMI back again, the nice genteel arms manufacturers who treated music [as] a nice side project who weren't too concerned with the shareholders. Ah well, not much chance of that."
If Radiohead have always sought to shatter convention, perhaps that's because they find convention so incredibly repressive. Their expansive sound has always had a surreal menace to it, senses of both despair and abject panic that push back against each other with teeth-grinding harshness. Their lyrics extract as much from Naomi Klein's No Logo (which they have cited as a political influence) as they do from dystopian science fiction (they are fans of New Wave sci-fi writer JG Ballard). When these influences spring forth, the result is a feeling of absolute foreboding, the idea that dystopia could be right here, right now. In Rainbows continues this in this fashion, while also defying expectations of how it was "supposed" to sound. The album is, in Yorke's own words "embarrassingly minimalistic," while still employing most of the elements of their past albums, chiefly their experimentation with dissonance and electronica. The frantic "Bodysnatchers" builds toward a desperate ending as Yorke's disturbing yet beautiful voice tries to escape something-everything-in total futility: "Have the lights gone out for you / 'Cause the light's gone out for me / This is the 21st Century/ You can fight it like a dog / And they brought me to my knees/ All the lies run around my face / And for anyone else to see."
"House of Cards" is a deceptively lovely track. On the surface it is a love song, until we hear references to infrastructure collapsing and voltage spikes. Beneath the surface of this pristine world, there is something very sinister and frightening.
In Rainbows is an attempt to break free from that world. Its model has proven popular. Within two days, the album went platinum (the average purchase price was eight dollars). Successful groups like Oasis and Jamiroquai have already announced they will release future records in similar fashion. These groups can most certainly afford it, but the precedent still stands. In short, Radiohead, long known for breaking boundaries, have opened a floodgate with this album. If it's opened wide enough, who knows what might be there when the waters settle?
**** Alexander Billet is a music journalist and activist living in Washington, DC. He is a frequent contributor to Dissident Voice and Znet, and has also appeared in CounterPunch, Socialist Worker and MRZine. He is currently working on his first book Sounds of Liberation: Music and Social Change in the 21st Century.
His blog, Rebel Frequencies, can be viewed at
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A NOTE ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION
If you value this publication and want to see it continue, please contact me, and send a contribution. I don't have any other income or source of livelihood. We are down to the last few issues without some sort of plan for reader support. This is an independent publication -- something which is practically non-existent in America, today. We will not sell out to any corporate or special interest, nor are we editorially controlled by any outside forces. This is the real "free press." A large donor or two who values this content would be especially helpful at this point. I hate to beg, and I'm a terrible salesman and self-promoter. I'm also open to re-locating.
-- Paul Stephens greateco@3rivers.net 406 216-2711
THE MONTANA GREEN BULLETIN is an unofficial publication of the Cascade County Greens. We network among the Green Party of the United States and other Green Party organizations, including the Montana Green Party, Glacial Lake Missoula Greens, Yellowstone Greens, Greens/WORK, and others. We also belong to the Montana Peace Seekers, and various other peace, justice, and environmental sustainability groups. All opinion and analysis is presented according to traditional "fair use" doctrines, and remains the property and responsibility of the authors. Any corrections or retractions will be made the following week, if received in time to do so.
This Bulletin is distributed without charge to public officials and the media, as well as those who request it. It should be taken as a kind of weekly press release, and anything in it which isn't otherwise copyrighted or reserved may be freely reprinted or distributed with attribution, or may be used as a news source (again, with attribution) by other media.
For more information, to volunteer or join the CascoGreens, please contact
Paul Stephens (406) 216-2711 greateco@3rivers.net
PO Box 2501
Great Falls, MT 59403
We accept donations and contributions of all kinds, but we are not a 501 C-3, and they are not tax deductible. We accept cash, checks, and money orders only -- no credit cards. We also work by the hour, day, or week (Figure $25/hour. Long-term commitments unlikely). Call or e-mail me with proposals or offers. -- PHS
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Valuable websites and other resources:
Alternative Radio from Boulder, CO http://www.alternativeradio.org/ is broadcast Mondays at 1:00 p.m. on KUFM/KGPR, 89.9 FM in Great Falls, and at other frequencies in western Montana. Making Contact originated by Norman Solomon can be heard Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. on the same stations. You can hear Pacifica radio on the internet at http://www.kpkf.org (that's the LA station), or your favorite part of the country, linked from there. Great Falls native Suzi Weissman's show, Beneath the Surface, airs Monday nights at 6:00, Mountain time, and is archived at http://www.suziweissman.com Pacifica's Democracy Now with Amy Goodman is available M-F and archived on the net at http://www.democracynow.org .
Try other major stations by searching the web, or browsing (call letters).org. Internet radio is coming to be a necessity here in Montana, and is an excellent source of foreign language news and culture, as well. You can also get KEMC, Billings public radio from
http://www.yellowstonepublicradio.org in various streaming formats.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/ national Bozeman-based election/corporate law reforms
http://www.greeninstitute.net/ non-profit educational institute for Green values
http://www.wildrockies.org/ Alliance for the Wild Rockies member organizations
http://www.meic.org website of the Montana Environmental Information Center
http://www.aeromt.org/ Alternative Energy Resource Organization, Helena
http://www.newworldwindpower.com/ Russ Doty's site for MT energy links, etc.
http://OrganicConsumers.org news and information about food safety
http://www.ippn.org links to just about every Green, peace, and justice organization
http://www.montanapeaceseekers.org Montana peace seekers, local chapters
http://www.greencommons.org national website and discussion forum for Green activists
http://www.chlorophyll.us/ another prominent Green blog
http://www.wagingpeace.org/ "Sunflowers" Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
http://www.native-voice.com Website for bi-weekly newspaper, The Native Voice
http://www.IndianCountry.com Indian Country Today, daily national newspaper
http://www.missoulanews.com Missoula Independent weekly newspaper, online
http://www.billingsnews.com Billings Outpost independent weekly newspaper, online
http://www.queencitynews.com Helena independent weekly newspaper, online
http://www.drugpolicy.org Website of the Lindesmith Center, Drug Policy Foundation
http://www.fairvote.org/irv/ The Center for Voting and Democracy
http://www.rachel.org/ Great resource for health and environmental issues
http://nukeinfo.org/ Website by Missoula green Rick Gold -- all sorts of nuclear links
http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml GP News links and blogs
http://www.greens.org/s-r/ Synthesis/Regeneration, publication of Greens/GPUSA
1 comment:
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