NEWSLETTER ON BRADLEY MANNING #3

OMNI Newsletter on Bradley Manning #3,  February 24,  2013, Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace.   (#1  Dec. 6, 2011; #2  June 29, 2012).  

For more on Manning see my Newsletters and Blogs on WikiLeaks (Assange, Manning).   My Blog:   It's the War Department   http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/

Newsletters on WikiLeaks, Assange, Manning, and related topics:      http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

jbennet@uark.edu

 

Contents of #1

Courage to Resist Fund

Deserves Medal of Freedom

Whistleblower and Revolutionary

UN Investigator

Misclassified to Justify Torture

Law Professors Protest

Contents of #2

Manning Support Network

Amy Goodman: World Contexts

Quigley:   Manning, Solitary Confinement, Occupy

Courage to Resist Supporting Manning

Michael Moore: Manning Started Occupy

Judge Challenges Prosecution Secrecy

Contents of #3

1000 Days

Protests for Manning:  We Have Not Forgotten

Protest for Manning in Illinois Oct.  20

Protests for Manning Sept. 6

Nobel Laureates Defend Manning

Manning Denied Fair Trial

Manning’s Detention is Torture

Navy Violated Protocol

Praise for Manning

 

1000 DAYS

Bradley Manning: 1,000 Days in Detention and Secrecy Still Reigns 
Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK , February 24, 2013  (from David D)
Pilkington writes: "On Saturday Bradley Manning will mark his 1,000th day imprisoned without trial. In the course of those thousand days...Manning has been on a long and eventful journey." 
REA    http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/304-justice/16179-bradley-manning-1000-days-in-detention-and-secrecy-still-reigns

 

    Protest for Bradley Manning at Obama HQ's nationwide

Brian Sonenstein, Firedoglake.com act@firedoglake.com via uark.edu

8-30-12  to Dick

RSVP http://action.firedoglake.com/page/event/search_simple or Donate https://secure.firedoglake.com/page/contribute/manning-dnc to Support Sept. 6th Bradley Manning Protest at Obama 2012 Offices

Dear Dick,

Don't let the Obama campaign ignore Bradley Manning during next week's convention.

As President Obama accepts his party's nomination on September 6th, Pfc. Bradley Manning supporters will gather at his campaign offices across the country to protest the administration's inhumane treatment and secretive prosecution of the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.

We have to seize upon the media spotlight on the Democratic National Convention and President Obama's nomination in Charlotte to continue to raise America's awareness of Bradley and the administration's unparalleled war on whistleblowers.

Can you attend a protest near you, or chip in $10+ to help us promote the protests with Facebook ads?

RSVP to your nearest Bradley Manning protest on Sept. 6th at Obama 2012 campaign offices nationwide.

-- OR --

Donate $10+ to help us run Facebook ads recruiting Manning supporters to the protests.

Kevin Gosztola will arrive at the DNC to cover events and demonstrations just after covering Bradley's pretrial hearing at Ft. Meade this past week.

Organized by the Bradley Manning Support Network, Afghans For Peace and SF Bay Iraq Veterans Against the War, this protest aims to see demonstrations at Obama 2012 campaign offices nationwide as the president takes the stage in Charlotte to accept his party's nomination.

President Obama has tried to keep a tight lid on Bradley Manning's situation over the last few years of his administration. The immense government secrecy surrounding the investigation of Manning, WikiLeaks and their supporters -- combined with the mainstream media's non-adversarial relationship with the institutions they purport to keep in check -- has left the American public largely in the dark on the subject.

But our efforts have already succeeded in getting more journalists involved in covering this story, and with the court martial expected sometime in January, we need to continue to build momentum behind this trial. Your support of this protest at Obama campaign offices across the country will draw attention to Bradley Manning just as the president is making his case for re-election.

RSVP to your nearest Bradley Manning protest on Sept. 6th at Obama 2012 campaign offices nationwide.

-- OR --

Donate $10+ to help us run Facebook ads recruiting Manning supporters to the protests.

Thank you for your support, from attending protests, to signing petitions, to calling government officials and contributing to our coverage. We couldn't do this without you.

In solidarity,

Brian Sonenstein   Campaign Director,  Firedoglake

 

 

NOBEL LAUREATES SPEAK by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire, Adolfo Peerez Esquivel.   The Nation (Dec. 3, 2012), p. 11.   Manning is a hero whistleblower who deserves the Noble Peace Prize for revealing the truth about U.S. foreign policy.   He has injured nobody.  Thus the severe persecution and  prosecution of Manning should be denounced by all decent people.    (Dick)

 

 

 “Military Madness and PFC Manning” by Lynn Feinerman

From Tikkun, 7-2-12

Webs of blinding irony are being spun around Private First Class Manning, obscuring the military’s methodical denial of Manning’s constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair trial. Read More   http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/military-madness-and-pfc-manning

 

Bradley Manning's Lawyers Focus on Torturous Holding Conditions, Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK, July 31, RSN

Intro: "Manning's lawyers move to have the 22 charges against him dismissed due to treatment during his detention likened to torture."

READ MORE   http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/367-wikileaks/12704-bradley-mannings-lawyers-focus-on-torturous-holding-conditions.

 

Head of Marine Corrections: Bradley Manning’s brig staff viol

Thu Dec 6, 2012 7:27 am (PST) . Posted by:

"Gerry Condon" soldiersayno

Bradley Manning Support Network

www.bradleymanning.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 5, 2012

Contact: Nathan Fuller, (516) 578-2628
press@bradleymanning.org

Head of Marine Corrections: Bradley Manning’s brig staff violated Navy rules
FORT MEADE, MD -- Head of Marine Corrections Chief Warrant Officer Galaviz today testified in court that Marine staff at the Quantico brig, where WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning was held isolated in a 6x8 ft cell for nine months, failed to follow national Marine protocol in several instances.  Protocol was not followed fully when it came to determining classification and assignment (C&A), the two main factors dictating restrictions.  Also violating Navy policy, Quantico ignored brig psychiatrists’ recommendations to remove PFC Manning from suicide watch, which requires constant monitoring and removal of clothing.  CWO Galvaniz described the Prevention-of-Injury (POI) and Suicide Risk statuses upon which PFC Manning remained during his time at Quantico as “invasive” and also acknowledged that being kept on them long-term could cause anxiety.

According to CWO Galaviz, a brig counselor should make a recommendation to the C&A board responsible for determining custody and status, but should not also be a voting member of the board.  Quantico’s then-Gunnery Sergeant Blenis earlier testified that he served as both PFC Manning’s brig counselor in making recommendations to the board, as well as senior voting member of the board.  Additionally, CWO Galaviz explained that C&A boards at all Marine brigs had been instructed to use a standard DD form to assess a prisoner’s custody and status, and that the form should not be filled out prior to C&A meetings, so that meeting discussion could dictate the meeting’s decision.  In contrast with these instructions, Quantico used not the standard DD form but a local improvised form, which led to more subjective decision-making, and the brig counselor filled out the form and gave his recommendation, in essence his vote, prior to the meeting’s
beginning.  

Finally, the brig violated Navy rules when it twice failed to remove PFC Manning from Suicide Risk status in accordance with a brig psychiatrist’s recommendation.  CWO Galaviz testified that under Navy instructions, Suicide Risk watch should be lifted less than a day after a psychiatrist found it unnecessary.  In PFC Bradley Manning’s situation, the brig left him in Suicide Risk status days after his psychiatrist asked he be removed.  The second time PFC Manning was asked to remove his clothing, brig commander Barnes argued she was actually using a modified POI watch; however, the higher-ranking CWO Galaviz believed that removal of clothing was essentially the same as suicide watch, and the same protocol should apply.  The Quantico Marine brig staff’s disrespect for psychiatrists’ opinions of PFC Manning’s mental state appeared to be part of a pattern, as the C&A board also went against three psychiatrists’ recommendations in keeping him
on POI status. Testimony has revealed that Quantico brig commander ordered that PFC Manning be kept on POI status pending a mental health assessment in March.  According to CWO Galaviz, this could have put the C&A board in the position of simply going through the motions.

Reply to sender . Reply to group . Reply via Web Post . All Messages (1) . Top ^

 

Manning Up: Praise for Manning

Thu Dec 6, 2012 7:27 am (PST) . Posted by:

"david sladky"

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/04/manning-up/
The Just Actions of a ‘Fan of Sunshine’ 
Manning Up by RANDALL AMSTER 
Whatever one’s views about his alleged actions, you would need a pretty hard shell not to be moved by the case of Bradley Manning. Hero to some, traitor to others, this diminutive soldier has endured an unprecedented level of mistreatment, languishing in a largely incommunicado pretrial state for more than two years and facing repeated episodes of humiliation and degradation. Compounding this case is Manning’s status as a gay solider, for which he had experienced repercussions well before gaining international notoriety as a purported Wikileaks source for some of the whistleblowing site’s most damning allegations about governmental and military machinations around the world.
Being accused of revealing the "emperor’s new clothes" is likely to land one in hot water, but Manning’s treatment has crossed all bounds of fairness, decency, and legality. Having one’s life stripped down (literally) to its most basic functions, being confined in a space barely the size of a standard bathroom, having to formally ask even for toilet paper while standing at attention, and getting access to the outdoors for only 20 minutes per day is the sort of thing that could drive anyone mad. The fact that the military has justified the conditions of Manning’s confinement by asserting that he was a suicide risk is a specious argument; being in such a state can cause one to seek any way out, and putting all options on the table is more a sign of sanity than the opposite.
We can speculate how any of us would hold up in similar circumstances, which hopefully we’ll never have to find out. But the art and science of breaking down the human spirit is quite well-developed by now, and the harshness of Manning’s confinement is likely intended as a warning and deterrent to anyone else even contemplating blowing the whistle on the architects of empire. It is thus all the more important and impressive that Manning has endured this brutal captivity — doing so through methods like dancing in his cell, "working out" with imaginary weights, and making faces at himself in the small mirror on the wall. Indeed, as Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights observed upon attending the recent hearing on Manning’s confinement, the testimony Manning gave showed him to be "dignified, articulate, smart and self-aware…. His incredible sincerity and strength was visible to all. We are lucky to have people with the courage of Bradley Manning."
Where Manning found this resolve will likely be a subject for biographers someday, but early signs indicate that the military itself may have ironically contributed to it. From his first days as a soldier, Manning seemed to be ill-suited for the role, at least in the eyes of some of his colleagues. In an interview with The Guardian, an anonymous soldier who served with Manning recalls the situation: "The kid was barely 5ft — he was a runt. And by military standards and compared with everyone who was around there — he was a runt. By military standards, ‘he’s a runt so pick on him’, or ‘he’s crazy — pick on him’, or ‘he’s a faggot — pick on him.’ The guy took it from every side. He couldn’t please anyone. And he tried. He really did…. A lot of people let him down. He is not the first one they let down and he is not the last one." If we subscribe to the school of thought that says our scars make us stronger, then Manning’s early duress may have steeled him for what would come later.
In another irony, Manning’s first post after basic training was at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona, where human rights activists would gather annually to demonstrate against the base’s claim to fame as being the headquarters of U.S. Army military intelligence and the place where the "torture manuals" for the War on Terror were developed. The nonviolent protests there specifically addressed cruel treatment of detainees: "We practice nonviolence at Ft. Huachuca to call for civilian, human-rights centered oversight of all interrogation training and practice, which must include absolute prohibition of cruel treatment and command responsibility for any violation of this prohibition." In fact, the history of nonviolent praxis is replete with examples of people enduring suffering for their principles. Gandhi referred to this as tapasya, meaning "austere devotion" and often implemented as a willingness to suffer for one’s beliefs rather than inflict suffering on another.
In the annals of nonviolence, Thoreau’s famed essay "Civil Disobedience" stands out as a testament to the principled endurance of unjust confinement: "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." In his equally celebrated "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr. extols the virtues of myriad activists for justice "willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake." Perhaps Manning, implicitly if not outright, was aware of the essence of these teachings when he made the alleged decision to transgress the hegemon by revealing its secrets. If so he would be in good company, as validated by the "198 methods of nonviolent action" developed by Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution and their inclusion of "disclosing identities of secret agents" among the list of tactics — which we can extrapolate to include disclosing damning evidence of the sort that Manning is said to have given to Wikileaks.
Manning may be guilty of revealing state secrets, but that action pales before the state’s guilt in perpetrating atrocities and committing them to secrecy in the first place. In a recent accounting of what these revelations demonstrate, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange catalogues their import:
"The material that Bradley Manning is alleged to have leaked has highlighted astonishing examples of U.S. subversion of the democratic process around the world, systematic evasion of accountability for atrocities and killings, and many other abuses…. the cables show that torture and killing are not isolated events, but the violent manifestations of an aggressive policy of coercion used by the United States in the pursuit of its strategic commercial and political goals around the world."
The implications of this are wide-ranging and eminently clear: whatever privileges of democratic governance and material comfort we enjoy here in the U.S. (and in other privileged nations), they are provided at the expense of innumerable underprivileged others’ democracy and comfort. Perhaps some are content with this bargain, and they will accordingly construct Manning as a traitor. Many others, however, grasp more deeply that such an inherently unequal system is untenable and unjust. Eventually, it entraps even those nominally "privileged" within its confines, turning us all into captives of a sort as the tentacles of inequality and injustice expand their network. Again, Assange, from a recent interview with Democracy Now! in which he considers the digital-age implications:
"I think this tension between power and knowledge is extremely important. So, we’ve all heard the saying that knowledge is power. Well, it’s true. And the mass surveillance and mass interception that is occurring to all of us now who use the internet is also a mass transfer of power from individuals into extremely sophisticated state and private intelligence organizations and their cronies. Now, if that is to be resisted, we must have a transfer of information that is going the other way."
In getting to hear directly from Manning for the first time, we not only learn more about his story and personal qualities, but also come to understand the deeper connections between this small man and the big questions raised by his alleged actions. Intriguingly, Manning’s testimony itself alludes to the basic issues of transparency that determine whether the balance of power will be struck in favor of "the people" or the entrenched "powers that be" in the days ahead. As reported in The Guardian, in his landmark pretrial testimony Manning reflected on the deprivation of natural light during his excessive period of confinement. "I’m a fan of sunshine," he stated. If we care at all about the cause of justice in our world, Bradley Manning’s fortitude should render us all devotees of sunshine…
Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D., is the Graduate Chair of Humanities at Prescott College. He serves as Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and is the publisher and editor of New Clear Vision. Among his recent books are Anarchism Today (Praeger, 2012) and Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness (LFB Scholarly, 2008).

Reply to sender . Reply to group . Reply via Web Post . All Messages (1) . Top ^

9

 

 

 

END BRADLEY MANNING #3

US CAPITALISM NEWSLETTER #11,

 

OMNI US CAPITALISM NEWSLETTER #11, February 24, 2013.    Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice  (#1 Jan. 30, 2011; #2 August 24, 2011; #3 October 2, 2011; #4 Oct. 29, 2011; #5 Jan. 29, 2012; #6 April 7, 2012; #7 June 8, 2012; #8 July 14, 2012; #9 Nov. 12, 2012; #10 Dec. 27, 2012).

 

Danes claim truly about their country where “few have too much and fewer still too little.”   There are many capitalisms, and the US has chose to make a land where too many have too much, and too many have too little.

 

My blog:  The War Department and Peace Heroes

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/ 

Newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

Index:

http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/ 

 

See Class, Corporations, Economics, Greed, Inequality, Information Control, Lobbying, Marx, Military Industrial Complex, Monopoly, Occupy, Regulation, Socialism, Working Class, and related newsletters.

 

Nos. 7 & 8 at end

 

Contents #9 Nov. 12, 2012

Hedrick Smith, Who Stole the American Dream?

To Schneiderman:  Prosecute or Resign

Taibbi, Why Government Doesn’t Fight Wall Street

Barofsky, Bailout on TARP

Nader: Where Were the Whistleblowers?

Freeland, Plutocrats

Reich, Book on US Capitalism

Reich, Interviewed About US Capitalism

Survey:  Confidence in Capitalism Declines

Wolf:  Global Financial Fraud

Looking Back at Capitalist Greed, PBS:  Remember the Triangle Fire

 

Contents #10

Ha-Joon Chang, About Capitalism

Gibney Video: Park Avenue, 1% of 1%:

Hacker and Pierson: Winner-Take-All Politics

Bybee, War on Wages

Foster and McChesney, Monopoly-Finance Capital

Pollin, Full Employment

Wenz, Progressive Taxation

Mondiot, Unregulated Capitalism and Climate Change

Williams, Socialism

 

Contents #11

Taibbi, Lies about Bailout

Ad Busters on US Capitalism

Ad Busters on Canadian Capitalism

Moyers  Co. Programs

Richard Wolff’s Books

Jim Wallis, Serving the Common Good

 

Here is the link to all OMNI topical newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/   Many of these newsletters expose the liabilities of US capitalism (unregulated corporations, large gap between rich and poor, deceptive advertising, endemic boom and bust, and so on).

 

 

 

Matt Taibbi | Secret and Lies of the Bailout 

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, RSN, January 5, 2013 
Taibbi writes: "Not only did the bailout prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul - right? Wrong." 
READ MORE http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/15395-secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout

 

 

CAPITALISM AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Can America Go "'Forward' on Climate"?

By Adbusters   16 February 13

 The Biggest Climate campaign in History eclipses the elephant in the room.

he Sierra Club, Bill Mckibben's 350.org fight-climate-change crew, 130 other organizations, plus thousands of Americans from all walks are meeting at Noon on Sunday, February 17 in Washington, D.C. to make "Forward on Climate" the largest climate rally in history.

Their first goal is to convince Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline once and for all, for it could unlock vast amounts of additional carbon the planet simply cannot afford to burn. But his final decision on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will only be a test of whether he's truly serious about walking his talk. The Forward on Climate Rally will put unparalleled pressure on Obama to act on his word, and in an unprecedented way. It is their hope that he will do all in his power to face, and combat, global warming.

But before America can move "Forward" on climate issues - they must "face" the facts. Ignorance and denial abound in individuals and institutions across the country (there are, alas, institutions like Heartland dedicated to perpetuating skepticism and denial about climate change). A 2007 Harris poll found that 71% of Americans believe that continued burning of fossil fuels would cause the climate to change. By 2009 this figure dropped to 51%, and fell again in 2011 to just 44%. According to Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, this is "among the largest shifts over a short period of time seen in recent public opinion history."

Meanwhile, record droughts, food scarcity, floods, severe super-storms, billions in damage, lives lost, and the hottest year on record in the United States have all come to pass in 2012. The amount of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere has increased by 40 percent in a century, due to our perpetual burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. NASA's James Hansen explains that business as usual - such as burning the tar sands bitumen - will guarantee "game over for the climate."

But America could be a major leader in a worldwide clean energy revolution, that is, if Obama chooses the people, the land, and the future of the planet, over corporate interest. This clean energy revolution could transform the nation, cut carbon pollution drastically, and resist or even reverse the inertia of impending climate disaster. Forward On Climate states, "we need President Obama to commit to that fight with all the ambition and determination he can bring." But why do they put so must faith in Obama's character and power? How are they so easily assuaged by his soaring rhetoric?

The president spoke somberly about climate change for half an hour this Tuesday during his State of the Union speech, earning him brownie points with some, but the eloquence of his promises have never been something to be contested. Despite his rhetoric, and avowal to address global warming and not betray future generations, he fails to face the elephant in the room. With less than five percent of the world's population, it is the USA that consumes a quarter of the world's fossil fuels. Where is his "mea culpa" moment? Instead, Obama shows no recognition of America's five-planet lifestyle ... no recognition that a small slice of the Earth's population consumes a lions share, and wrecks the rest.

And yet on an even deeper level, Obama's invocation of the need for "sustainable energy sources" suggests that he believes fossil fuels themselves are to blame. And perhaps he's not at fault. This is what most people believe. But what about the root of our climatic, environmental problem: the exploitative economic paradigm we operate, the political stagnation that goes with that, the social inequalities we are forced to endure, the cult of hyper-consumption that defines American culture - it is this systemic destructiveness that endorses ravenous fossil fuel use in the first place.

Until Obama, and the activists putting pressure on him, stop confounding the symptoms with the disease, there will be a stark limit to how effective, enduring and powerful a revolutionary movement can be.

 

US/CANADIAN CAPITALISM

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: larry Hicks <curmujeon@yahoo.com>

 

[I say US capitalism, since there are varieties of capitalism, US vs. Norway, for example.   This Ad Busters essay reminds us to say US/Canadian, or North American. There’s an upside to this dark reality:  More and more people are recognizing what Noam Chomsky and a few others were explaining 50 years ago, that the US was a military-industrial-congressional-mainstream media complex.  –Dick]

https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/why-nothing-sticks-harper.html

This is why nothing sticks to Harper

Thanks to a hyperactive press, the energy baron agenda continues unabated. It’s a dangerous endgame indeed. You’ve heard the buzzwords involved – Enbridge, tar sands, Keystone XL – but maybe only as a jumble, a sick constellation no news official connects the dots to. And such is the consequence of a “watchdog” news industry with no teeth. We’re forced to connect the dots ourselves.

Meanwhile, the State facilitates the madness of capital as the west coast hangs in the balance. Again, the mainstream news cycle misses the gravity of what’s really in store for North America, the continent, the planet. The reality we face is that, in the name of progress, profit logic, and “job creation,” massive projects predicated on fossil fuels will proceed, including the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline to Kitimat BC – and the Kinder Morgan Transmountain Pipeline to the Burrard Inlet. From here, nearly a tanker a day will transport Alberta’s crude oil to Asia, increasing the odds for oil spills off the coast. Already etched on the public consciousness are “Exxon-Valdez” and “Deepwater Horizon” (which exploded on Earth Day for god’s sake). Thanks to coverage after the fact, images of petroleum-slick sea life can still be recalled. How soon until the next catastrophe? We need coverage now. We need awareness of the evils of enterprise.

Corporate collusion equals dying ecosystem. There’s no way around it. Economists can muster all the apologias they want, but such is reality. Now we’re at a tipping point for environmental health. But the direness, the desperation needed to explain the situation is lamentably not found in the paper.

If you question whether the conditions are desperate, go to where the rubber meets the road, in Kitimat, say, or northern Alberta – where machines the size of McMansions gut the earth for sludge, blast it with superheated water, and send it west as a ware for China. As an added irony, tanker traffic must traverse the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in order to reach foreign markets. Ships transporting fossil fuel are forced to sail through trash – if it weren’t so deplorable, it’d almost be funny. But such is the Alice in Wonderland world wrought by capitalism.

Where is the analysis of this? The urgency? It’s relatively stunted within public discourse. Harper remains largely unscathed by the media, and he relies on tricks and alternative communications to reach supporters. The 24-hour news cycle does some of the work for him. In a general ethos of collective forgetfulness, the cycle moves quickly from one story to the next, leaving environmental atrocities to slip through the cracks. Moreover, Harper capitalizes off of local news outlets, which are sycophantic and more willing to toe his line without checking the facts. Through these machinations he is able to spin the stories regarding tankers, pipelines, energy company excess, and for that matter, Afghan detainees and threats to Net Neutrality too.

Standing up to the massive energy enterprise are Defend Our Coast, the Dogwood Initiative, ForestEthics, and West Coast Environmental Law – all orgs that represent the best line of defense against ecocide, against Boreal Forest shredding and Canada’s global warming impact. The key to fighting back is using Harper’s own trick to reach conscientious supporters through other channels, such as social media and email. The stakes are high, and the work is ahead of us, but so far protests have had impact. Harper’s already had to back away from some statements regarding tanker traffic and pipelines. But the environment can’t afford for us to rest on these laurels alone.

It's up to us all to keep the pressure on the State even when the media won’t.

Dugan Nichols is a Ph.D. student interested in cultural theory, race, neo-Marxism, and the way capitalism makes the upside-down world we live in seem natural – or the only way things can be. He's from Milwaukee, WI but currently lives in Vancouver, B.C for school, and all along skateboarding has been a part of his identity (even though the culture has a major consumerist ethos).

-- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BG  thinkcivic@gmail.com
Protect Clean Air, Clean Water, Clean Food

 

 

MOYERS & CO. INTERVIEWS

In this and in his earlier PBS programs (NOW, Bill Moyers’ Journal), Moyers has interviewed many knowledgeable people about the vagaries and corruptions of  US capitalism.   For example:

Feb. 16, 2012, Bruce Bartlett and Yves Smith on the economy.  Asked what they would do about the "fiscal cliff," both recommended diving, that it would be better for  people (enormous cut in military budget, for example).

 Discussion of revolving door in Congress, a mechanism of corporate power (Liz Fowler as a notorious example), and Obama's broken promises about constraining it.

 

, 2013

Full Show: Who’s Widening America’s Digital Divide?

February 8, 2013 | 

Internet scholar Susan Crawford explains how media conglomerates put profit ahead of the public interest, and author Nick Turse shares what we never knew about the Vietnam War (wars symptomatic of US capitalism, some 50 US  invasions and interventions since 1945--Dick).

 

 

RICHARD WOLFF’S BOOKS

Professor Richard D. Wolff

·      The Economic Crisis

 

·      Class Analysis

 

·      Economic Theory

 

·      Marxism

 

·      Economic Democracy

 

·      Economy and Psychology

Books

Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism

A new historical vista is opening before us in this time of change, Wolff writes in this compelling new manifesto for a democratic alternative based on workers directing their own workplaces.

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Publication Date May 2012

List Price $17.00

Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism

Today's economic crisis is capitalism's worst since the Great Depression. Millions have lost their jobs, homes and healthcare while those who work watch their pensions, benefits and job security decline. As more and more are impacted by the crisis, the system continues to make the very wealthy even richer. In eye-opening interviews with prominent economist Richard Wolff, David Barsamian probes the root causes of the current economic crisis, its unjust social consequences and what can and should be done to turn things around.

 

While others blame corrupt bankers and unregulated speculators or the government or even the poor who borrowed, the authors show that the causes of the crisis run much deeper.

ReviewsMore information

Contending Economic Theories: neoclassical, keynesian, and marxian

Contending Economic Theories offers a unique comparative treatment of the three main theories in eco- nomics as it is taught today: neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. Each is developed and discussed in its own chapter, yet also differentiated from and compared to the other two theories. The authors identify each theory’s starting point, its goals and foci, and its internal logic.

ReviewsMore information

ReviewsMore information

State Capitalism, Contentious Politics and Large-Scale Social Change

Vincent Kelly Pollard (Editor)

State capitalism is back. It never went away. This book looks at the role of state capitalism in major European and Asian societies. It confronts neo-liberal pieties about the role of markets and private property in capitalist development and radical accounts which see the state as the antithesis of capitalism. State capitalism is a normal form of capitalist development. Its extremes may vary but it has been, and remains, central to an understanding of modern capitalism. This is especially the case in the so called Communist and Communist worlds of Russia and China, and for alternative economies like that of India and the Philippines, which are the focus of this timely and challenging book.

ReviewsMore information

Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It

Capitalism Hits the Fan chronicles one economist’s growing alarm and insights as he watched, from 2005 onwards, the economic crisis build, burst, and then dominate world events. The argument here differs sharply from most other explanations offered by politicians, media commentators, and other academics. Step by step, Professor Wolff shows that deep economic structures—the relationship of wages to profits, of workers to boards of directors, and of debts to income—account for the crisis. The great change in the US economy since the 1970s, as employers stopped the historic rise in US workers’ real wages, set in motion the events that eventually broke the world economy.

ReviewsMore information

Class Struggle on the Homefront

Home Front examines the gendered exploitation of labor in the household from a postmodern Marxian perspective. The authors of this volume use the anti-foundationalist Marxian economic theories first formulated by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff to explore power, domination, and exploitation in the modern household.

More information

Rethinking Marxism

This festschrift volume honors the works of Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy. An introductory essay by the editors examines the evolution of their contributions to Marxian theory and analysis. A bibliography provides the most complete listing of their work to the point of publication. Internationally renowned Marxist scholars (including Ernest Mandel, Charles Bettelheim, Immanuel Wallerstein and many others) contributed original essays in fitting tribute to the importance of the honorees' works.

More information

Bringing It All Back Home

Bringing It All Back Home uses the intimate arena of the household as the novel setting for a groundbreaking study of the relationships between class, gender and power today. The authors - and the feminist scholars who offered responses to their critique - integrate the rich traditions of Marxism and feminism, and more recent developments in Marxian theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, to theorise a new approach to the contemporary crisis of the family. They offer an innovative reading of the relationship between class and gender, in which the household itself can be seen as the site of conflict and of profound transformation. In the process, they suggest a new range of possibilities for thinking about and understanding the complexity of human existence.

More information

Class and Its Others

While references to gender, race and class are everywhere in social theory, class has not received the kind of theoretical and empirical attention accorded to gender and race. A welcome and much-needed corrective, this book offers a novel theoretical approach to class and an active practice of class analysis.

The authors offer new and compelling ways to look at class through examinations of such topics as sex work, the experiences of African American women as domestic laborers, and blue- and white-collar workers. Their work acknowledges that individuals may participate in various class relations at one moment or over time and that class identities are multiple and changing, interacting with other aspects of identity in contingent and unpredictable ways.

 

A new book from Jim Wallis!

Sojourners [sojourners@sojo.net]

ActionsTo: James R. Bennett Tuesday, March 05, 2013 8:56 AM

Forward this message to a friend ⇒

 

 

Dear Dick, "My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side.”—Abraham Lincoln Jim Wallis’ newest book, On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good, examines the deepest problems this world faces. What we need is a commitment to an ancient idea whose time has urgently come: the common good. How do we work together, even with people we don’t agree with? How do we treat each other, especially the poorest and most vulnerable? How do we take care of not just ourselves, but also one another? On God’s Side will be released on April 1, but you can read an exclusive excerpt in the April issue of Sojourners magazine! To be inspired to make a spiritual and practical commitment to the common good, order your subscription to Sojourners magazine. If you order today, you’ll receive our very best price!