Sunday, August 07, 2005

Weekly Reading list for 7-30-05

This is a little late(like a week). Hey when you're working and running a national campaign, which by the way is getting good response, then you don't have a whole lot of time. Anyway here's what I found interesting that week. Keep your eye on what is happening with the AFL-CIO and the Buiding Trades Council. The Labor "movement" is in flux and we don't know where or when it will solidify.
This is positive for hte "Restore The Vote' Slate which will be in Las Vegas the week starting August 22nd.

Supreme Consequences
by Wendy Chavkin, M.D., TomPaine.com
The doctors who performed abortions before Roe know what's on the line as the Senate prepares to question John G. Roberts.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050721/supreme_consequences.php


Going With The Wind
by George Sterzinger, TomPaine.com
Adopting a standard for renewable energy -- including wind power -- would benefit both the economy and the environment.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050721/going_with_the_wind.php



Timing And Turnout In Ohio
by Walter Mebane, TomPaine.com
A new department of justice report on Election 2004 glosses over major factors that contributed to disenfranchisement.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050721/timing_and_turnout_in_ohio.php


BIG-TIME TROUBLE, BUT WHY WORRY?
Molly Ivins, AlterNet
As most of the country focuses almost entirely on social
issues and culture wars, our economic problems are
threatening to bring the country down by its foundations.
http://www.alternet.org/story/23670/

THE 'LANGUAGE OF VALUES' IN POLITICS
George Lakoff, AlterNet
In this podcast from Tikkun's Spiritual Activism Conference,
renowned cognitive scientist George Lakoff expounds on how
moral beliefs affect political actions.
http://www.alternet.org/story/23662/


Will the AFL-CIO Split? A Debate on the Future of Organized Labor
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072205S.shtml
The labor movement brought American workers the forty-hour week, pensions,
healthcare, and basic rights on the job. The venerable American Federation of
Labor may face the largest rupture in its history next week. DemocracyNow! hosts
a debate on the future of organized labor.


Cost-Competitive Solar Called 'Imminent'
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072205EA.shtml
"Concentrating solar electric power is on the cusp of delivering on its promise
of low-cost, reliable, solar-generated electricity at a cost that is competitive
with mainstream electric generation systems," said Vahan Garboushian, president
of Amonix, Inc. of Torrance, California.


The End of Insouciance
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072205EC.shtml
Just as runaway oil prices incite us to establish an "energy balance sheet" for
our way of life, so we must integrate the water variable at the level of our
civic values. Corn growers and golf players will have to learn the end of
insouciance. It's an old idea in Europe that water is both free and abundant.
That's passe.


David Bacon | Labor Needs a Hard Left Turn
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072205LA.shtml
Labor journalist David Bacon interviews Bill Fletcher, former labor federation's
director of education, and later an assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
Forced out over his radical politics, Fletcher has since proposed a wide-ranging
set of ideas for a truly new direction for US unions.


Harold Meyerson | Disunion Nears
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072205LB.shtml
Unless someone pulls a last-minute rabbit out of an eleventh-hour hat, the
biennial convention of the AFL-CIO, which begins on Monday in Chicago, will be
radically smaller than originally planned. As things now stand, the four
dissident unions that have raised the specter of disaffiliation from the labor
federation will announce over the weekend that they won't be attending the
convention.


The Oppression of Women Is a Social Disease
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072205WB.shtml
American feminist and a professor of law, Catharine A. MacKinnon, is the source
of the American Supreme Court's 1986 acknowledgment of sexual harassment as
sexual discrimination. Le Figaro interviews this great American theoretician and
militant.



Tom Engelhardt | The Spies Who Came In from the Hot Tub
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072205F.shtml
It just so happens that this "extraordinary rendition" took place on the
democratic soil of an ally that possessed an independent judiciary, and that the
team of 19 or more participants, some speaking fluent Italian, passed through
that country not like the undercover agents of our imagination, but, as former
CIA clandestine officer Melissa Boyle Mahle told Reuters, "like elephants
stampeding through Milan. They left huge footprints."


Paul Krugman | China Unpegs Itself
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072205O.shtml
China's unpegging the yuan from the dollar could be simply a piece of theater.
It could also be the start of a process that will turn the world economy upside
down - or, more accurately, right side up.


William Rivers Pitt | Bush's Soviet State
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072205Y.shtml
George W. Bush and his administration are pursuing a course of determined
unreality that mirrors the delusional fantasies that ultimately consigned the
Soviet Union to the dustbin of history. This Rove-Plame thing is but one small
aspect of the main.


House Votes to Make Patriot Act Powers Permanent
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072205K.shtml
The House voted Thursday to extend permanently virtually all the major
antiterrorism provisions of the USA Patriot Act after beating back efforts by
Democrats and some Republicans to impose new restrictions on the government's
power to eavesdrop, conduct secret searches and demand library records.


House Poised to Reauthorize USA Patriot Act
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072105Q.shtml
The House of Representatives, ignoring protests from civil liberties groups and
some conservatives, moved on Thursday to renew the USA Patriot Act giving the
government unprecedented powers to investigate suspected terrorists.


Christopher Hayes | The Case for a Democratic Marker
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072105S.shtml
It's a gambling term. A marker basically is a commitment to pay. In "Guys and
Dolls," Nathan Detroit would say, "that guy holds my marker." It's something you
can't back out of, on pain of getting your knees broken. The marker that
Republicans have is that everyone who runs for office has to sign a pledge -
it's enforced by their own knee-breaker, Grover Norquist - that on pain of
political death they're not going to raise taxes.


John F. Rohe | Jobs Americans Will Not Do
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072105LA.shtml
Vincente Fox has been scolded for declaring that Mexicans do jobs that "even
blacks won't do." Curiously, nary a whimper is heard when President Bush insults
all citizens by referring to "Jobs Americans Won't Do." In fact, Americans do
these jobs. They do not shrink from work. Americans just resist enslaved wages
and indecent working conditions.


Janice Fine | Debating Labor's Future
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072105LB.shtml
As the ranks of unions have thinned, economic inequality for all, particularly
along racial and ethnic lines, has reached historic proportions. It is in this
harrowing context that a debate has erupted, which will come to a head at the
federation's July 25-28 convention, about the purpose and future of labor's
central governing body, the AFL-CIO.



David Bacon | Reconnecting Labor with Its Radical Roots
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072005LA.shtml
With the AFL-CIO convention to begin Monday, Bacon examines the current debate
surrounding the organizations' limited gains in the past years. While the
current AFL-CIO debate over structure makes important points, there are deeper
issues that need to be resolved. Our history should tell us that radical ideas
have always had a transformative power. Unions need a large core of activists at
all levels who are unafraid of radical ideas of social justice, and who can link
them to immediate economic bread-and-butter issues.


David Moberg | Power to the Pictures
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072005LB.shtml
David Moberg explores the legacy of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
who inspired an engrossing history, filled with stories of heroic efforts by
America's downtrodden workers to improve their lives, and of brutal repression.
The Wobblies, as they were nicknamed, created a popular, radical, working-class
culture of songs, legends, cartoons, newspapers and much more.


Ringing the Alarm for Earth
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072005EA.shtml
Leading botanist Peter Raven calculates that species crucial to the survival of
the human race are in steep decline. Tim Radford interviews the man dubbed a
'hero of the planet.'


A Police Station of Their Own
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/072005WB.shtml
More than 300 women's police stations have opened in Brazil since the first one
was inaugurated in São Paulo 20 years ago, allowing victims of domestic violence
to seek assistance from precincts staffed entirely by women. This national
phenomenon has also grown into an international phenomenon, with at least 10
nations in Latin America and Asia having similar systems for registering and
investigating charges of domestic violence, threats, child abuse, sexual
assaults, and other crimes often perpetrated against women.


David Corn | The Anti-Neocon
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072105O.shtml
Journalist Robert Merry is a hard-ass practitioner of global realpolitik who
rips apart that small band of ideologically driven chickenhawks and leaves their
bones scattered on the floor.



Kelpie Wilson | The Tragic Abuse of Corn
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072005A.shtml
It was one of those things that you can't quite believe is real. I was flipping
through a magazine and saw an ad for a stove that burns corn. For heat. Corn is
food, not fuel, I thought...


Molly Ivins | We're Missing the Point
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072005L.shtml
The entire Republican Party is shocked (!) anyone would think that Karl Rove
(!!) would leak a story to damage a political opponent. Oh, the horror. And Karl
has always been such a sweet guy.


THE NEW FORD FOCUS
Zack Pelta-Heller, AlterNet
Two major environmental campaigns -- one using the carrot,
the other the stick -- are getting big results with Ford
Motor Co. and Home Depot.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/23582/


The House of Representatives is moving toward a vote on the proposed Central
American Free Trade Agreement, and the spin machines of the White House and the
corporate special interests are working overtime in efforts to ensure the bill's
passage.

These are the days when the big lies about trade get told, as John Nichols
explains in The Online Beat, in an attempt to convince the American public that
corporate-managed free trade will "life all boats," to use a particularly silly
free-market phrase. To counter the Orwellian twists of facts and figures on
behalf of CAFTA, Nichols offers a Top Ten list of trade doublespeak--and the
facts to counter it.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=7204

And visit The Nation's Action Center to send a letter imploring your member of
Congress to vote no on CAFTA.
http://www.capwiz.com/thenation/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=7805476

Downing Street Memo Events on July 23
This Saturday, July 23, is the three-year anniversary of the meeting at Ten
Downing Street in London that was recorded in the now infamous minutes known as
the "Downing Street Memo." Suggesting that the Bush Administration was intent on
going to war with Iraq with or without intelligence on Saddam's WMD, the memo
has given new impetus (and vindication) to antiwar critics of the invasion. To
highlight these disclosures, AfterDowningStreet.org, a new and growing coalition
of veterans' groups and activist organizations, has organized hundreds of
events, dramatic performances, house parties and study circles planned coast to
coast. Click below for details.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow?bid=4&pid=6706


Cheney And Plame
by Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com
Karl Rove may well have leaked the identity of an agent, but was he covering up a trail that leads to the vice president.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050719/cheney_and_plame.php


Thicker Than Blood
by Don Kraus and Dominic Holt, TomPaine.com
What in the world could make Harry Reid and Bill Frist work together? Curiously, one of the most serious global problems: water
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050719/thicker_than_blood.php


Robert Dreyfuss | Oil-Control Formula
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071905G.shtml
George W. Bush's war in Iraq may not be going as planned. But for those who've
stopped believing the myth that prewar Iraq represented any sort of threat to
the United States, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence mounting that the
real reason for the American invasion of Iraq was the most obvious one: Oil. In
this case, "oil" doesn't mean that we went to war for the commercial benefit of
US oil companies-and in fact, as I reported in Mother Jones magazine in early
2003, before the war, most US oil firms and their executives were against the
war.

Matt Bai | George Lakoff and the Framing Wars
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071905O.shtml
After last November's defeat, Democrats were like aviation investigators sifting
through twisted metal in a cornfield, struggling to posit theories about the
disaster all around them. Then they began taking lessons from an obscure
Berkeley linguistics professor named George Lakoff.


A Chinese Riot Rooted in Confusion
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/071805LA.shtml
Lacking a Channel for Grievances, Garment Workers Opt to Strike in Xizhou,
China. It was a shocking first for Xizhou, a raw industrial zone on the
northeastern edge of the city of Guangzhou, in southern China's muggy Pearl
River Delta. But across China there are thousands of such explosions every year
- by farmers who lose their land, workers who get laid off and villagers who
feel cheated by corrupt officials. The protests have become a major concern for
the Communist Party government in Beijing at a time of meteoric economic growth
and massive migration from villages to factories, raising the prospect of broad
instability that could potentially undermine the party's grip on power.


Immigrant Workers Attract Attention from Activists
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/071805LB.shtml
The number of immigrant day laborers is rising fast on the heels of the
construction boom. Immigrants who lack permanent employment, relying instead on
jobs that may change from one day to the next, are a fixture of the US economy,
numbering as many as one million nationwide, according to advocacy groups. A
substantial number of these workers - no one knows how many - are in the US
illegally. Now, the issue is becoming a magnet for activist groups on both sides
of the broader political debate over immigration.


A Place Where Women Rule
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/071805WA.shtml
Ten years ago, a group of women established the village of Umoja, which means
unity in Swahili, on an unwanted field of dry grasslands. The women said they
had been raped and, as a result, abandoned by their husbands, who claimed they
had shamed their community. What started as a group of homeless women looking
for a place of their own became a successful and happy village.


Oil-Control Formula
by Robert Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com
The United States didn't invade Iraq for the commercial benefits of oil. It invaded to control the black gold as a strategic commodity.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050718/oilcontrol_formula.php


Why Plame Matters
by Ray McGovern, TomPaine.com
When you sift through the hype, the Plame affair is about how the Bush White House deceived America into a war.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050718/why_plame_matters.php


FBI Monitored Web Sites for 2004 Protests
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071805B.shtml
FBI agents monitored Web Sites calling for protests against the 2004 political
conventions in New York and Boston on behalf of the bureau's counterterrorism
unit. The ACLU claim the Bush administration has blurred the distinction between
terrorism and political protest.

A 21st Century Powerhouse: China Rising
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071805D.shtml
If the 20th was the American century, the 21st may belong to China. Just five
years into it, China has become the world's third-largest trader, one of its
fastest-growing economies, a rising military power in Northeast Asia.

Casualty of War: The US Economy
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071805G.shtml
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost taxpayers $314 billion, and
the Congressional Budget Office projects additional expenses of perhaps $450
billion over the next 10 years...the most expensive military effort in the last
60 years.

Matthew Cooper | "What I Told The Grand Jury"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071705X.shtml
I told the grand jury something else about my conversation with Rove. Although
it's not reflected in my notes or subsequent e-mails, I have a distinct memory
of Rove ending the call by saying, "I've already said too much." This could have
meant he was worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late
for a meeting or something else. I don't know, but that sign-off has been in my
memory for two years.


John Pilger | Fighting Fascism Then, and Now
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071705Y.shtml
That legacy is needed today more than ever. Impeccable gentlemen now invade
defenceless countries in our name. They speak of freedom and democracy, and our
way of life and our values. They don't wear armbands and they don't strut. They
are different from fascists. But their goals are not different. Conquest,
domination, the control of vital resources.

THE PICK IS IN
Mary Lynn F. Jones, AlterNet
Bush's nominee to replace O'Connor on the Supreme Court
comes as a surprise to both Republicans and Democrats. Just
what do we know about Judge John Roberts?
http://www.alternet.org/story/23630/

PATTERN OF DECEPTION, REVEALED
Molly Ivins, AlterNet
The Rove-Plame scandal is just the most visible example of
the administration's willingness to destroy anyone in order
to achieve its goals.
http://www.alternet.org/story/23622/

ONE THOUSAND WOMEN FOR PEACE
Kamla Bhasin, India Together
Giving the Nobel Peace prize collectively to 1,000 women
would state loudly and clearly that peace cannot be
achieved by one individual.
http://www.alternet.org/story/23629/
___________________________________________________


Paul Krugman | Unemployed: The Dropout Puzzle
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071805O.shtml
While unemployment rates look low, the figures leave out millions of Americans
who have no jobs, Krugman reports.


FBI Builds Huge File on Anti-War, Rights Groups
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071805Z.shtml
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of
internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and
antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle
political opposition to the Bush administration.


UNCLE SAM, MEET THE BLOGGERS
Kelly Hearn, AlterNet
An FEC commissioner's comments flame through the
blogosphere, mobilizing bloggers and questioning the role
of 'citizen journalists.'
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/23532/

THE EVOLUTION OF FRANKENFOODS?
John Feffer, AlterNet
The multibillion-dollar nanotech industry wants to change
what you eat at the molecular level.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/23534/

LIVING ON $1 A DAY
Xanthe Scharff, Christian Science Monitor
Selina, her husband, and four children are among the 1.2
billion people in the world living on less than a dollar a
day -- what the United Nations calls 'extreme poverty.'
http://www.alternet.org/story/23369/

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