The credit crunch: Cyclical downturn or more severe?

By Jaimeson Champion

Published Nov 18, 2007

The global capitalist economy is showing ever greater signs of instability. A question on the minds of many members of the multinational working class here in the U.S. and around the world is just how severe a capitalist crisis is coming.

Are the workers facing a cyclical boom-bust process of the type that has happened numerous times over the course of the development of capitalism? Or is this the prelude to a crisis that is much more severe? Is the current volatility on Wall Street heading toward a 1987-type market crash, or is it the opening stage of a crisis on a much larger scale?

Cyclical crises in capitalist economies

The boom-and-bust cycle is inherent to the capitalist mode of production. Under capitalism, periods of rapid expansion in production are followed by sharp slowdowns and recession. This cyclical process results from regular crises of overproduction.

As Karl Marx wrote in “Theories of Surplus Value,” “Overproduction is specifically conditioned by the general law of the production of capital: to produce to the limit set by the productive forces, that is to say, to exploit the maximum amount of labor with the given amount of capital, without any consideration for the actual limits of the market or the needs backed by the ability to pay.”

Overproduction leads to glutted markets. Glutted markets lead to falling profits for the capitalists. This causes the bosses to intensify their drive to slash wages and cut jobs, exacerbating the pain and suffering of the working class during recessionary periods.

In the U.S. today, signs of a cyclical downturn resulting from a crisis of overproduction are readily apparent. From 2000 to 2006 the housing sector was the primary engine for economic expansion in the U.S. The housing bubble of those years was characterized by an unprecedented spike in new home construction.

The rapid expansion in the production of homes brought a profit boom for the capitalist class. Home construction is a multiplier industry, so the bubble meant increased commodity sales in numerous other industries. This increase in commodity sales applied to everything from kitchen appliances and television sets to pickup trucks and building supplies used by construction workers.

The drive to increase production and profits irrespective of the limits of the market, or of the workers’ ability to pay for the goods they produce, was exemplified by the proliferation of infamous sub-prime mortgages during the recent housing bubble. These predatory loans proved unaffordable for millions of working-class families across the country. Delinquencies and defaults on mortgages in the U.S. have now hit record highs.

The housing market is glutted with millions of unsold homes as tidal waves of foreclosures have swept over entire working-class communities. Jobs are being cut and wages slashed with greater intensity in industries ranging from auto production to retail sales.

Is this crisis more severe?

Historically, the capitalist ruling class has dealt with crises of overproduction by increasing the money supply in concerted efforts to increase liquidity—easy access to credit—in the economy and increase aggregate consumer purchasing power. Responses to recent capitalist crises like those of 1987 and 1997 highlight this strategy. Both crises were met with the slashing of interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks, flooding the global economy with liquidity and eventually stabilizing the markets.

It is not surprising that the capitalist ruling class has sought to do the same thing in recent months, ever since the stock markets began gyrating wildly. What makes this situation seemingly more severe is how remarkably little effect the massive liquidity infusions have had in terms of stabilizing the markets.

For months, central bankers and finance ministers in the U.S. and countries across the globe have been scrambling to inject billions upon billions of dollars worth of liquidity into the markets. The Federal Reserve in the U.S. has cut interest rates multiple times.

Thus far, every attempt to stem the growing crisis has seemingly failed. The major stock indexes have not recovered, foreclosures and bankruptcies continue unabated, the dollar continues to fall to new lows, and the price of oil continues to climb to record highs.

The current developing economic crisis appears to contain within it deep contradictions that yield to no easy solution from the capitalist class or its state. What does that mean for the future?

It is important to remember the words of Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin in a speech to the Second Congress of the Communist International in July 1920. Lenin reminded comrades that no capitalist crisis would ever prove “terminal” without the work of committed revolutionaries dedicated to organizing and mobilizing the working class.

In his speech, Lenin said, “Comrades, we have now come to the question of the revolutionary crisis as the basis of our revolutionary action. On the one hand, bourgeois economists depict this crisis simply as ‘unrest,’ to use the elegant expression of the British. On the other hand, revolutionaries sometimes try to prove that the crisis is absolutely insoluble. This is a mistake. ... Practice alone can serve as real ‘proof’ in this and similar questions. All over the world, the bourgeois system is experiencing a tremendous revolutionary crisis. The revolutionary parties must now prove in practice that they have sufficient understanding and organization, contact with the exploited masses, and determination and skill to utilize this crisis for a successful, a victorious, revolution.”

Lenin’s words are as applicable today, as revolutionaries prepare ideologically for future upheavals, as they were when he delivered them.

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Late Night Political Humor

"Ramsey Usef, you know that name? He was the mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack back in '93. He's been rotting in prison -- as he should -- for many years.

He said he's now converted to Christianity. He has seen the light. He can't wait to get out and bomb an abortion clinic"
--Bill Maher

OPEC leaders debate ditching the dollar.

One of the comments on the original post read: "I remember one other Middle East leader who tried to sell oil for Euros a few years ago. I wonder what happened to that guy."--Pete

The Observer reports that during OPEC’s meeting this past weekend, leaders of the oil-producing nations “argued that pricing - and selling - oil using the crippled dollar was damaging the cartel.” The meeting was supposed to have been private, but was mistakenly broadcast to the media for more than half an hour after a technician had incorrectly plugged the TV feed into the wrong socket. (HT: The Zoo)

Mr. Fish's Latest

Click Pic For Larger Image

Mercenaries, immune from prosecution, continue to kill indiscrimitely in Iraq, in our name

Witnesses shed new light on the killing of 17 Iraqis by American contractors in Baghdad.

Check out video on NYT

Corporate U.S. Media Bends Truth Again Regarding Chavez Supporters

JoJo Farrell (ZNet): U.S. Media Bias and Recent Student Violence in Venezuela

Providing links to the major U.S. outlets' reporting "that following peaceful protests in downtown Caracas, masked Chavista gunmen attacked anti-government supporters on the campus of the Central University of Venezuela," Farrell cites "Chávez supporters, eyewitnesses and videotape recorded by the community TV station Catia TV" to show how the U.S. coverage "left out an important chunk of the story."

After last Wednesday's peaceful protest...opposition students, mainly from neighboring private universities, chased down a group of pro-Chávez students putting up signs in favor of the reform. The pro-Chávez group found refuge in the faculty of Social Work.... Opposition students surrounded the faculty, armed with weapons, rocks and gas masks, shouting, "We will lynch you all." According to reports, opposition students fired weapons, threw rocks at the students inside the building and lit fire to the entrance. Chávez supporters present that day affirm that the motorcyclists televised to the world as sinister gunmen arrived on the scene as part of a rescue mission.... They argue that this was necessary because the Venezuelan army or police force are, by law, not allowed to enter the grounds of the university.

While careful to note that "the entire truth is not known," Farrell considers how "the inability of the international press to report an unbiased account calls into question their journalistic integrity," and warns that "the consequences of this could lead to further violence in Venezuela."

Bush nominates judges who donated to his campaign.

On Thursday, President Bush nominated two judges for high-level positions who gave him campaign contributions while under consideration for positions, a practice ethics experts and many federal judges deem “inappropriate.” The Center for Investigative Reporting notes:

Bush nominated Judge Gene Pratter, of Pennsylvania, to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a level just below the U.S. Supreme Court. Pratter, who was featured in the CIR report, “Money Trails to the Federal Bench,” gave $2,000 to Bush in 2003, after interviewing with the White House for her judgeship.

Bush also picked Judge Mark Filip, of Illinois, to be deputy attorney general, the No. 2 spot in the Justice Department. Filip gave Bush $2,000 in 2003, after the president nominated him for his judgeship, as earlier reported by CIR.

Migra out of our schools!

By Paul Teitelbaum
Tucson, Ariz.

Published Nov 15

On Nov. 6, nearly 100 high school students walked out of their classes and marched to the Tucson Police Station to demand that the Tucson Unified School District and the Tucson Police Department stop bringing Border Patrol agents into the schools. The students marched nearly five miles chanting, “Sí se puede” and “We are students, not criminals.” Many carried signs that read “Migra out of our schools!”

The march was in response to the arrest and deportation of two brothers, both students, and their family on Nov. 1. One of the students deported was very young—a middle school student—and he was pulled out of class without any warning after the Tucson police entered a high school and arrested his older brother for a small amount of marijuana found in his backpack.

The racist police demanded proof of citizenship from the high school student, and when the student failed to produce documents that satisfied the police, the Border Patrol was called into the school.

The deported family had peacefully resided in Tucson for six years and within a matter of hours were uprooted from their home and jobs and pushed out of the country, forced to leave everything behind.

The protesting students did manage to wring a concession from the school board and police. The Border Patrol will no longer be called into the schools.

These determined youth are showing that they can organize quickly and that fighting back against the racist, anti-immigrant onslaught can yield results.

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Persian Contradictions

By Vijay Prashad
ZNet Sustainer Commentary

Sustainer Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org

I read the introduction of Iran's president by Columbia's president with embarrassment. "You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,"said Lee Bollinger, after he noted that the Iranian state had executed 210 people in 2007 (till September 24, the date of the lecture). The US state has only executed 42 people in this same time period (1099 since 1976, when the death penalty was reauthorized). In fact, in recent years, over ninety percent of all state executions have taken place in six countries: China, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan and the USA. Iran's rate has doubled in the last few years, with the state taking the lives of people proven guilty of what had not previously amounted to capital crimes (including the execution of women, such as Nazarin, who fought off would be rapists with whatever means necessary, in her case with a pocket knife). Neither the US nor Iran has the high moral ground on the death penalty. Both routinely use it in "social" cases, against those whose crimes stem from imbalances of their mental state or their poverty, or else their resistance to sanctioned misogyny or racism.

For those with fewer means or with lesser power, both the US and the Iranian states act like "petty and cruel dictators."

Christopher de Bellaigue, a British writer who lives in Teheran with his Iranian wife and family, writes with the kind of humanistic dispatch that should embarrass Bollinger for his sub-academic introduction. A collection of de Bellaigue's essays written for the New York Review of Books is now out (The Struggle for Iran, NYRB, 2007), and it provides a useful and well-written counterbalance to the hysteria of the mainstream media. For one, de Bellaigue offers us an Iran that is complex, whose almost seventy one million people are divided by class and region, by political obligation and moral horizon. There are the conservatives (muhafazakaran) who hold the reins of political power. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a confidant of Ayatollah Khomeini, leads the conservative faction. Khamenei is not a well-regarded theologist (he is not a marja, an Object of Emulation), but he was twice elected President with enormous pluralities. Conservative power is not only derived from the state, but the clerics also used their power to insinuate themselves into the economic order (not only through the seminary system in places such as Qom, which is a beneficiary of the religious taxes, but also through the bonyads, or charity organizations that control just less than third of the economy), and through the state, which controls over three quarters of economic activity and which is under the control of the conservatives.

There is not enough economics in de Bellaigue, who is keener to emphasize the outbreak of reformism led, in the late 1990s, by the then president Mohammed Khatami. Politics of the reform kind, in de Bellaigue's formulation, happens far from its material conditions. The reformers (known as the Dovum Kurdadi after the month when Khatami won the election in 1997) are myriad. They include the well heeled who are de Bellaigue's neighbors in the northern Teheran district of Elahiyeh (Shemiran), and who drive up and down Fereshteh Avenue in fancy cars. For this section, liberty means not only the end to the social rituals of the conservatives, but also the privatization of the economy. It was this section that backed former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the 2005 elections against the relatively obscure mayor of Teheran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the reformers also include an activist section that fights the Islamic Republic on gender rights, human rights, labor rights, free speech rights in other words, from the perspective of the Left. It is an unwieldy alliance, between those who want freedom for hedonism and those who want freedom from autocracy. We hear about the feminists (people such as Mehrangiz Kar and Shirin Ebadi) and the journalists (people such as Akbar Ganji), but nothing from those who work among the working class (such as Mansour Osanlou, head of the Syndicate of Workers of Teheran and Suburbs, and Mahoud Salehi, head of the Bakery Workers' Association, both in jail). De Bellaigue is a reformer in the style of his Elahiyeh neighbors, writing longingly for liberalization of the economy. Privatization and liberalization came on the agenda in the Khatami years, but the conservatives have largely endorsed it as a strategy as well.

In October 2006, Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, told the Cabinet, that in order to overcome the "class gap" in the country "the state should decrease its interferences in economy." Two years before this, the leadership had overturned Article 44 of the Iranian constitution, which mandated that the state should run the core infrastructure. The Elahiyeh reformers find succor in this new direction of the Supreme Leader, although they still chaff at the social constraints of the regime.

The 2005 election, which de Bellaigue intimates might have been stolen by the conservatives, did not clarify the social divisions. "Whatever else he is," writes de Bellaigue, Ahmadinejad is "a man of principle." He favors "principle against expediency," which is why he has interpreted privatization in a unique way. At a public event in October 2006, Ahmadinejad announced the idea of the Justice Share, where the state would divide shares to some companies among 4.6 million of the poorest Iranians, who would automatically become stockholders in the nation's wealth.

Ahmadinejad's policies are idiosyncratic, buoyed partly by high oil prices (returns of $55 billion this year as opposed to $23 billion in 2002-03) but stretched thin by the easy recourse to anti-Americanism. Washington makes it easy to draw on the Islamic Republic's stock dogmas, and it is to this that Ahmadinejad retreats when his economic forays falter. "The government's economic polices are quite transparent and based on planning and reason,"

Ahmadinejad told the press in July, but his own Parliament does not seem to agree. Tehran's delegate Alireza Mahjub told Parliament, "This crisis is growing worse every day."

De Bellaigue does not seem interested in these economic contradictions, but rather he usefully gives us the view from Tehran of the ongoing cultural wars in Iran and on the indifference of Iranians to the bellicosity from Washington. On the culture wars, de Bellaigue carefully shows us that it was stoked by the immorality of liberalization. "Some of the newly rich drank bootleg booze and held un-Islamic parties," he writes, "They drove expensive cars and wore flashy clothes." The rising economic inequality, the total awareness of the class based sacrifices during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s and the lack of secular alternatives probably play a significant role in the movement of the poor toward such characters as Ahmadinejad, who displays a personal piety and an antipathy to the nouveau riche, as well as a populism that appeals in the youth-depleted rural areas and in the slums of cities (44% of urban Iranians live in slums). Washington fulminates about autocracy in Iran and the bomb, but, as de Bellaigue writes, "for most Iranians, the price of food, and the government's failure to lower it, are more important" (this was written in January 2005, but in 2007 inflation in the food and fuel sector continues in Iran). Ahmadinejad's posture revives Iranian national pride as he stands up to US pressure, at the same time as his own personal lack of ostentation and his economic promises (along with high oil prices) mollifies a large section of the country. If he did not have that support he would not be able to cross the Supreme Leader, as he seems to have done.

Washington and Columbia University have made Ahmadinejad the focus of their ire, trying to convert him into Saddam as Cheneyism moves from Baghdad to Tehran. But, as de Bellaigue writes, on foreign and military policy, the President only has an "advisory role." It is the Supreme Leader, in this case Khamenei, who sets policy. Such may no longer be the case. Khamenei's man in the nuclear ring was Ali Larijani, and it is clear that when he resigned in October 20 from his post as chief nuclear negotiator, it exposed a feud between the Supreme Leader and the President. To replace Larijani, the government chose Saeed Jalili, a confidant of Ahmadinejad (who might have written the President's unread letter to Bush). Power struggles at the top and vibrancy below are signs that a new era of reformism might open up in Iran. But Washington is not interested in reformism, keener to speak in the language of force (harf-e zoor meezanam), to tell others what to do.

Bollinger, the sub-Bush, spoke just in that way.

Related Article:

Columbia president caught in lie

Published Nov 15, 2007 6:29 AM

When the president of Iran went to Columbia University this September for a scheduled speech, he was insulted and castigated by the school’s president. It was different when Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf visited Columbia in 2005, writes a student in the school’s Spectator newspaper on Nov. 9:

“Even University President Lee Bollinger, who apparently prides himself on his tough-talking, no-nonsense treatment of visiting ‘dictators,’ was found wanting when Musharraf came to Columbia in September 2005. ‘President Musharraf is a leader of global importance, and his contribution to Pakistan’s economic turnaround and the international fight against terror remain remarkable. It is rare that we have a leader of his stature at campus,’ Bollinger opined. Musharraf’s democratic credentials are far inferior to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s, but Bollinger and the U.S. government he worships have never given much play to the ideal of consistency.”

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New Ad Campaign: ‘Progressive. And Proud Of It.’

[Our guest blogger is John Halpin, a Senior Fellow and Executive Speechwriter at the Center for American Progress focusing on the foundations of progressive thought, communications, and public opinion analysis.]

The Center for American Progress, in conjunction with the Glaser Progress Foundation, recently launched a multi-year effort to increase public understanding of what it means to be a progressive given our nation’s history and the challenges we face today.

The first part of the campaign involves a pilot experiment to begin defining progressivism in the public’s mind through a series of distinct advertisements that explain the progressive movement’s core values and policy ideas, its historical accomplishments, and its philosophical differences with conservatives.

Progressive reformers in the 20th century paved the way for a more humane society that ensured decent working conditions; fought corporate abuse and corruption; provided support for the elderly and unemployed; protected our natural resources; and expanded democratic opportunities for all citizens. Our ad campaign is a first attempt at bringing these progressive values and accomplishments to light for modern audiences.

We are just completing a three-week run of four ads in the Columbus, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis media markets. We look forward to hearing ideas from readers of Think Progress and other progressive blogs — let us know what you think:

Think Progress Videos

Another outrage in New Orleans

Stop demolition of public housing

Published Nov 15, 2007 6:51 AM

In what can only be viewed as another racist outrage against Hurricane Katrina survivors—especially those who are still displaced two years after the collapse of the levees—the Bush administration has passed a law calling for the demolition of 5,000 public housing units in New Orleans. They are now scheduled to be demolished on Nov. 19.

The New York Solidarity Coalition with Katrina & Rita Survivors held an emergency press conference, rally and march Nov. 13 against the planned demolition of thousands of public housing units in New Orleans scheduled for Nov. 19. The New York protest was part of a national call to action against the on-going violation of human rights that Katrina survivors continue to suffer at the hand of the Bush administration. Speaking before the press is Joetta Chestnut, a Katrina survivor who now resides in New York. WW photo: Monica Moorehead

Many activists see the destruction of perfectly sound, affordable housing as another indication that the federal government is working hand-in-hand with the big real estate developers and some local and state officials to systematically push out the majority working-class, African-American population—making way for more luxury housing and condominiums for rich, affluent whites.

Along with the real threat of demolition, other developments related to this racist gentrification conspiracy include the privatization of schools, which has led to the massive layoffs of thousands of public school teachers; the lack of health care, especially for the poor; an alarming increase in the homicide rate in the Black community; and more police brutality.

The greatest devastation during Katrina took place in the Lower Ninth Ward, where the majority Black families lost their homes to flooding. To this day these families have been denied insurance coverage and governmental assistance to rebuild.

Progressive forces have called for a national day of protest against this demolition on Nov. 13 in a number of cities, especially where Katrina survivors have relocated. The New Orleans’ Public Housing and Right of Return Movement stated in a recent press release, “We oppose these plans not only because they are a clear violation of Human Rights but also for the corruption involved at every step.”

The statement goes on to say: “This corruption includes local officials’ ties to the federal government’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Jimmie Thorns, a businessman and close friend of Judge Ivan LeMelle, the federal judge that approved demolition, recently received a sweetheart $500,000 appraisal consulting contract from the HUD-controlled local housing authority.”

Since Katrina hit, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) and HUD have only reopened 1,600 public housing units. According to HANO’s records, HUD has approved plans to demolish four major housing developments: Lafitte, St. Bernard, B.W. Cooper and CJ Peete. HUD and HANO have leased the soon-to-be-empty lots to private developers for 99 years to build mixed housing, “mixed” meaning luxury and low-income housing together.

The current 4,600-plus public housing units in these four areas alone will be reduced to less than 750 units—an astounding 82 percent decline, according to HUD. The cost of redevelopment is estimated at $762 million, which does not include any current housing subsidies for low income families. Those subsidies come to about $1,000 per family per month, or $100 million so far.

Although the demolition is set for Nov. 19, there is a legal challenge to push this date to Nov. 28 to allow more time for activists from around the country to travel to New Orleans and participate in direct protests against this blatant injustice.

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Colombian Ironies: Political Prisoner Andrés Gil Unable to Attend Human Rights Forum

Government Continues its Legal Assault on a Key Rural Social Organization

By Dan Feder
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

November 16, 2007

When the European Commission invited veteran Colombian social fighter Andrés Gil Gutierrez to an annual human rights forum in Lisbon last week, the representative who sent the invitation was apparently one of the few who still hadn’t heard: Gil isn’t going to any such events for a long time. Since the first days of October he has been an inmate at the Modelo prison on Bucaramanga, northwest Colombia. Gil, and two of his fellow leaders of the Peasant-Farmer Association of the Cimitarra River Valley (along with one other member of the association), were arrested as the army and intelligence police raided a small village where they were meeting with townspeople, as well as the association’s office in the city of Barrancabermeja. (See a previous report here.)

Andrés Gil Photo: D.R. 2007 International Peace Observatory

The association, known by its Spanish initials ACVC, is one of Colombia’s most influential campesino organizations, working for the last 11 years in the conflictive Middle Magdalena region of the country and part of a national rural social movement fighting for better land and opportunities for the country’s rural poor. The ACVC has reported human rights violations and killings by the Colombian army, and is vocally opposed to the U.S.-imposed drug war policies of toxic crop fumigations that destroy farmers’ livelihoods and the surrounding environment.

The symbolism of this situation – where Colombia’s most important human rights defenders are being locked up or otherwise forced to suspend their work faster than international groups can keep track – will be lost on no one, and least of all Gil himself.

In a telephone interview from the Modelo prison, Gil said that he felt extremely frustrated that he would be unable to go. “There are so many things the association needs to say, so many things we need to denounce, so much information and facts that we need to clarify for all the participants of this important human rights forum in Lisbon. It is a space that we feel is very important to develop, as the Colombian state wants to silence the voices of the excluded, of the marginalized, of the persecuted, and here we have no spaces to be heard.”

From somewhere in a country called América,

Dan Feder
Editor-in-Chief
The Narco News Bulletin
www.narconews.com

Court strikes down BushCo gas-mileage exemptions

Federal Court Finds Bush Administration Violated Law by
Ignoring Global Warming in Setting National Gas-Mileage Standards,
Rejects Loophole for Trucks and SUVs

SAN FRANCISCO— The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today announced its ruling that the Bush government violated the law by ignoring global warming when it set national gas-mileage standards for SUVs and pickup trucks. The court sent the decision back to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for a full Environmental Review of the gas-mileage standards.

The ruling, written by Senior Circuit Judge Betty Binns Fletcher, found against the administration’s decision to exempt SUVs and light trucks from fuel-economy standards. “That class 2b trucks have never been regulated by NHTSA is not a reason for not regulating them now. We remand to NHTSA to revisit this issue and promulgate average fuel economy standards for these vehicles, or to provide a validly reasoned basis for continuing to exclude them from the regulation.”

“This ruling is a big help in holding the Bush administration accountable for its refusal to accept the realities of global warming and forcing it to start taking responsible actions to implement the obvious solutions,” said Kassie Siegel, Climate, Air, and Energy program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Raising fuel-economy standards is one of the most effective actions the government can take to quickly and significantly reduce greenhouse gas pollution. There’s no reason SUVs and light trucks should be exempt from these standards.”

The Ninth Circuit filed its decision on the case, Center for Biological Diversity v. National Highway Traffic Administration, No. 06-71891, heard by Senior Circuit Judge Betty Binns Fletcher, Circuit Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, and Sixth Circuit Senior Judge Eugene E. Siler. The case, filed on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity by the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic, is consolidated with similar challenges by California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, District of Columbia, the city of New York, and four other public-interest groups, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen, and Environmental Defense.

Plaintiffs argued that the administration violated the Energy Policy and Conservation Act by setting low fuel-economy standards of 22.5, 23.1, and 23.5 miles per gallon for upcoming model years 2008, 2009, and 2010 respectively. Plaintiffs also argued that the administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to consider greenhouse gas emissions and global warming before selecting the low mileage standards.

"This is an important victory in the fight against global warming," said Deborah Sivas, director of the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic and the attorney of record on the case. "It's hard to imagine a federal action more significant to the problem of climate change than one which dictates fuel-consumption standards."

Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act in the wake of the 1973-1974 oil embargo as a technology-forcing statute to conserve energy and oil. The law requires the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to set corporate average fuel-economy (CAFÉ) standards for SUVs and light trucks at the maximum feasible level.

The Ninth Circuit ruling can be downloaded at:
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/programs/policy/energy/CBD-vs-NHTSA-ruling-11-15-2007.pdf

The Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit conservation organization with more than 35,000 members dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Contacts:

Brian Nowicki, Center for Biological Diversity, (916) 201-6938 (cell)
Deborah Sivas, Stanford Environmental Law Clinic, (650) 723-0325 (office), (650) 269-2489 (cell)
Amy Poftak, Stanford Law School, (650) 725-7516 (office)

...and more killer cops

Police Shoot Unarmed 18-Year-Old Black Man in Brooklyn Twenty Times

By Gabriel Thompson, RaceWire
Posted on November 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.racewire.org//67999/

This post, written by Gabriel Thompson, originally appeared on RaceWire

On the same day that ColorLines and The Chicago Reporter published a special joint investigation into fatal police shootings across the country, the New York Police Department shot to death an unarmed 18-year-old Black man in a public housing development in Bedford-Stuveysant, Brooklyn.

The mother of the deceased, Khiel Coppin, had called 911 and reported a domestic disturbance, and police reported that on the call they overheard a man saying he had a gun. When the NYPD arrived, Coppin climbed out of a first-floor window and was shot at twenty times by five officers. Thirteen bullets found their target, and after Coppin fell to the ground the police handcuffed him. The only object found on Coppin was a hairbrush, and he was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

An angry crowd immediately protested the shooting outside the development. The New York Times reported that one woman shouted a message to the police: "You need training--this is absurd!" Another outraged man told the cops: "I'm not trying to start a riot. I'm just saying it's not right."

The community's nearly instantaneous transformation from shock to anger can be best explained not just by the shooting of Coppin--details of which are still emerging--but also by the death of another unarmed Black man, Timothy Stansbury, in 2004. The 19-year-old Stansbury was climbing the stairs of the Louis Armstrong Development, three blocks from Coppin's apartment, when he met Officer Richard S. Neri Jr. Officer Neri was conducting a routine patrol of the complex with his gun drawn, loaded, and his finger on the trigger (despite the fact that he wasn't responding to a specific threat). When he met Stansbury he fired a fatal bullet through his chest. Neri was later acquitted by a grand jury, stating that he had been "startled."

Eyewitness accounts raise serious questions about the behavior of the police yesterday. As the Times reports: "Two bystanders who said they had seen the shooting said that Mr. Coppin was not armed, but was carrying a hairbrush when he climbed out the window and that he dropped it when the firing began. The two witnesses also said they both heard one officer yelling for the shooting to stop."

That doesn't sound good for the police, though the NYPD is clearly trying to control the narrative by offering a different story. As the Times continues: "According to the police, another witness described Mr. Coppin as concealing the hairbrush under his shirt, pointing it outward." This is nothing new, of course: when weapons don't appear, the police must offer a theory to explain the death of another unarmed victim.

Investigations are ongoing, so it is still too early to say what the results will be. But when an officer can kill an unarmed man like Stansbury and remain on the police force by citing a "startled" defense, one can only surmise that if the shooting was improper, the Coppin family will have a long road ahead in trying to hold the NYPD accountable.

Gabriel Thompson is a Brooklyn-based writer currently working on a book about Mexican immigrants.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.racewire.org//67999/

Brevitas

The journalist Bernard Fall noted that the French, after Dien Bien Phu, had no choice but to leave Southeast Asia. America, with its vast military, financial, and technological resources, was able to stay because it had the capacity to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Our war against "terrorism" has been in many ways a domestic version of our Vietnam strategy. We keep making the same mistakes over and over because, until now, we could afford to. One of these has been to define the problem by its manifestations rather than its causes. This turns a resolvable political problem into a irresolvable technical problem, because while, for example, there are clearly solutions to the Middle East crisis, there are no other solutions to the guerilla violence that grows from the failure to end it.

In other words, if you define the problem as "a struggle against terrorism" you have already admitted defeat because the guerilla will always have the upper hand against a centralized, technology-dependent society such as ours. There is one way to deal with guerilla warfare and that is to resolve the problems that allow it to thrive. The trick is to undermine the violence of the most bitter by dealing honestly with the complaints of the most rational. - Sam Smith

Democracy Belongs in the Workplace, Not Just in the Voting Booth

By Omar Freilla, Movement Vision Lab
Posted on November 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67664/

Think about this question for a moment. How often do you experience democracy?

We've all been told that we live in a democracy. We've heard it repeated over and over by our schools, media, friends, family, co-workers and random people on the street. Democrats and Republicans alike say we've got so much of it here in the U.S. that we've got to export it overseas on fighter jets. Surprisingly though, whenever I ask people this question all I get is silence.

…So do you have an answer yet? Are you still thinking about it? Is it once a week, once a month, once a year, once every few years at the voting booth? Maybe you're wondering when the last time was? If you're wondering what my definition of democracy happens to be, then that in itself is a problem. After all, if I asked how often you experienced a car crash, unemployment, a full stomach, relaxation, anger or genuine happiness you probably wouldn't bother to wonder what I meant?

The fact of the matter is that, despite our rhetoric, most of us in the U.S. rarely experience democracy in our daily lives. We elect people within our political system to represent our interests at local, regional and national levels. And we take great pride in using "one person, one vote" to do it (the electoral college system being the one great exception). Feminism has brought democracy into a small yet growing number of our homes. But by and large the institutions of our daily lives, the places where we work, play, learn, and live are fundamentally anti-democratic. Children learn form their parents to do as they're told. Teachers take over the reigns from parents, placing more emphasis on command and control than on critical thinking. They, in turn, pass the product (us) on to our final destination -- our jobs -- where bosses tell us what to do and when to do it. Throughout the whole chain of command we're expected to merely do as we're told. Asking for input or sharing decision-making is not part of the equation. Parents, teachers and bosses who cultivate our desires and help us find our own path are the celebrated exception rather than the rule.

For the most part we have little say in the institutions that govern our daily lives. Is it any wonder then that so few people turn out to the voting booth to influence the political institutions that govern our country, regions, cities, and towns? If there's one exception to all of this, it's probably consumption. Shopping -- assuming you've got the cash to do it -- is perhaps the only part of daily life where we feel a sense of power and influence. Is it any wonder then that shopping is the thing we do most when we're not working, or that we consume so much that we're trashing the planet?

If what we want is a healthy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then perhaps we should be paying greater attention to making democracy a part of our daily lives. A democratic economy requires more than conscious consumption or pushing politicians to keep closer tabs on corporations. Bringing democracy to our workplaces requires a fundamental restructuring of ownership. It may seem exotic, grand, and far-fetched but there is a very real and growing movement of people in this country who are doing just that by establishing worker-owned cooperatives.

Worker co-ops have achieved great successes in other parts of the world, from the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of northern Spain, to the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, and on to Argentina, worker-run businesses have been gathering strength and establishing an alternative to the economy we've been raised on. Here at home, the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives is helping to grow the worker co-op movement. And as unlikely as it may seem to those who associate co-ops with hippies and lava lamps, the worker co-op movement has taken a foothold even in the South Bronx, birthplace of hip hop. The largest worker co-op in the U.S. is the 1,000-brown-women-strong Cooperative Home Care Associates. Nearby, we at Green Worker Cooperatives are doing our own part for a "green collar" job-filled economic democracy, incubating worker co-ops in the South Bronx that are also good to the earth. And in just a few months we'll be launching our first worker co-op, ReBuilders Source, the first worker cooperative reuse center for building materials in the country.

The alternatives are already here. That other world we hope for is already happening. And we don't have to go very far to see it. Greening the economy and holding corporations accountable mean we each have to do our part to extend the dream of democracy into new realms, break old taboos, and live in ways that are genuinely fulfilling. It's democracy -- where it counts.

Omar Freilla is the Executive Director of Green Worker Cooperatives in the Bronx, NY.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/67664/

Sources: Latest Senate FISA Bill Does Not Contain Telecom Immunity

Good Tentative News!--Pete

By Greg Sargent - November 15, 2007, 6:13PM
From Talking Points Memo

This is pretty big. As some people have been speculating today, aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have confirmed to me that the version of the FISA bill that was just reported out of the Judiciary Committee does not -- repeat, does not -- contain retroactive immunity for the telecom companies.

And a source close to Reid says that this is "most likely" the version that the Majority Leader will file a motion to proceed on. The aide declined to comment when this might happen, however, saying that it could happen next month.

All in all, it looks like a big victory for opponents of telecom immunity.

Late Update: Here's a bit more detail on what happened on the Judiciary Committee today. Sources say Senator Russ Feingold offered an amendment that would have stripped telecom immunity from the bill, but it was defeated. Then Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking GOPer on the committee, offered a "compromise" amendment saying that in these lawsuits the Federal government, and not the telecoms, would be the defendants.

But because of a procedural difficulty Specter's amendment wasn't voted on -- and Senator Patrick Leahy, the chair of the committee, essentially went around Specter's amendment and moved to have a vote to report the bill out of committee without any telecom immunity in it. That passed along strictly party lines. And that's where we are.

Just One More Killer Cop

POCKET PARADIGMS

The wondrous mystery of America is found not in its perfection but in its ability to improve, its perpetual search for a more perfect union. The idea had been fading for some time, not just because we came to think of power as an adequate substitute, but because we came to ignore such mundane matters as teaching children democracy with the same vigor that we teach them how to drive or about the dangers of drugs. And so we tried to recover from 9/11 with a flag and loyalty to a place called America, but without its dream. We used instead military power, anti-democratic security measures, seductive technology, and yet another elephantine bureaucracy -- offering still more temptations for guerillas with simple weapons and no love of life. The 9/11 attackers, and the tens of millions around the world who share some measure of their anger, have only seen our money and our fist -- not the decency, democracy and dream that made America strong in the first place. These virtues are still lying in the rubble. Our job is to recover them, revive them, share them, and become once more a model rather than a target. Only then will we be both safe and free. - Sam Smith

Feinstein Faces Dem Censure

Progressive Democrats Call For DiFi Censure

One day after voting to elevate a divisive conservative judge to the federal appeals court in New Orleans, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein was the president's guest aboard Air Force One. She had been invited to survey the damage from the recent spate of Southern California wildfires.

The senator later remarked privately that she found her conversation with Bush aboard Air Force One "illuminating," a source close to Feinstein told the Huffington Post.

Two weeks later, Feinstein was one of two Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee to vote to send Michael Mukasey's nomination to be the new attorney general to the full Senate. Her support helped turn the tide in favor of a nomination that faced an uncertain future after Mukasey refused to say whether waterboarding was torture.

When the full Senate voted, Feinstein was one of only six Democrats to vote in favor of confirming Mukasey.

Now, a coalition of progressive Democrats upset with Feinstein's controversial votes will ask the California Democratic Party to censure her at its executive board meeting this weekend, the Huffington Post has learned.

The move comes as Feinstein again finds herself under fire for saying Thursday that she now supports granting legal immunity to telecom companies that shared customer email and phone messages with the federal government as part of the warrantless surveillance program.

"Dianne Feinstein does not listen to the people of California," said Rick Jacobs, president of the Courage Campaign, a progressive organization in California. "She supports George Bush's agenda time after time."

Feinstein's office did not respond to messages seeking comment.

East Bay For Democracy, a chartered Democratic Club outside San Francisco, will introduce the censure motion on Saturday at the state party's executive board meeting in Anaheim. The Governing Board of the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party and the Progressive Democrats of America are also backing the measure.

In addition to her move to back Mukasey, critics have lashed out at her decision last month to vote to confirm Judge Leslie Southwick to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Southwick's opponents charged that his record on the bench in Mississippi demonstrated that he was both racist and homophobic. The Congressional Black Caucus, Human Rights Campaign and People for the American Way opposed his nomination.

The censure resolution faces an uphill battle. In order to be considered by the full executive board, it must first make it through the party's resolutions committee, which must approve the text unanimously.

The text of the resolution is below:

Whereas Senator Dianne Feinstein voted to support the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey as United States Attorney General, thereby elevating to the highest position in law enforcement a man who refused to renounce the right of the President to resort to torture and who refused to recognize waterboarding as a form of torture, and by this action Senator Feinstein failed to oppose President Bush and failed to stand for the ideals of the Democratic Party, which abhors torture and stands firmly against its use by the United States at all times and places; and

Whereas Senator Feinstein voted to confirm Judge Leslie Southwick for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit despite his clear record of racism and gender discrimination, thus failing to stand firmly with the Democratic Party, which supports gender equality and opposes racism in any of its manifestations; and

Whereas these examples are far from the only instances where Senator Feinstein, after seeking and securing the support and endorsement of the California Democratic Party, has failed to support the policies and principles of our party

Therefore be it resolved that the California Democratic Party expresses its disappointment at, and censure of, Senator Feinstein for ignoring Democratic principles and falling so far below the standard of what we expect of our elected officials.

This Revolution Could Be Televised On FOX

From AfterDowningStreet

By Dave Lindorff

Now even the New York Times is saying it. In an editorial on Oct. 20, the Times wrote, “Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year.” Noting how the Democratic House and Senate had rolled over and given the president permission to massively spy on Americans without showing any probable cause, the Times concluded, “It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.”

There is no question about it. The Democrats, after persuading voters to hand over control of Congress to them last November, have been worse than failures. They have betrayed the trust of the voters.

Although the party clearly has the power to end the Iraq War by simply refusing to approve funds for continuing the mayhem and madness, it has instead given the president every dollar he’s asked for to continue it, and then some. Although every leading Democrat admits that the president has been torturing the Constitution, not one member has submitted a bill calling for the president’s impeachment, and the one bill submitted calling for Cheney’s impeachment, submitted by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, has been pushed off on a siding by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her gang of “leaders.” More recently in the Senate, where 41 Democrats could stop any presidential appointment, 53 Democrats instead approved a new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, who refuses to say waterboarding is torture and illegal, and who, even worse, says that in his view the president has the power to ignore laws passed by the Congress.

I would go the Times one step further. There is no need to check to see if Democrats won control of Congress. It doesn’t matter. The Democrats have simply ceased to be an opposition party. The party of Franklin D. Roosevelt is now simply a collection of incumbent hacks who are looking to their own re-election, and who stand for nothing.

So what is to be done?

Various left-leaning activist organizations, like Democrats for America and Progressive Democrats of America, and pseudo-progressive organizations like Move-On and DailyKos, argue that liberal Democrats need to work within the party to elect more progressive candidates and party officials. But this strategy is doomed for several reasons. First of all, the leadership of the Democratic Party doesn’t want real liberals or, heaven-forefend, lefties. It wants candidates who can appeal to the corporations that bankroll both parties. And second, the leadership undermines those liberals who do have a chance of replacing the hacks who currently hold Democratic seats in Congress.

As I have written before, we have seen more than 50 years of betrayal of liberal and left voters and their issues by the Democratic Party, and despite the efforts of would-be reformers, the situation has been getting worse, not better.

The answer, I submit, is to tell Democratic incumbents and party officials that we’ve finally had it. We are not going to be ignored or walked over or taken for granted any longer.

How to do this? By mass resignations from the Democratic Party, at which it is made crystal clear that there are two reasons for the actions: Congress isn’t stopping the war funding, and Congress isn’t initiating impeachment hearings.

I am proposing that left and progressive organizations, civil rights groups, Church groups, anti-war coalitions, labor unions and other progressive and liberal groups start organizing mass actions that involve marches to the local board of elections or voter registrar’s office, for collective de-registration from the Democratic Party. Here in Philadelphia, we could have a mass march from Independence Hall to the Board of Elections, for example.

This is a strategy that would hit the Democratic Party leadership like a bucket of ice water—or a brick--in the face.

The beauty of the idea is that it will garner enormous press coverage, even if the numbers are relatively small. Thanks to the overall pro-Republican bias of the media, news outlets like AP, CNN and especially Fox TV, will find the idea of Democratic activists marching on voter offices and quitting the Democratic Party irresistible. And as other groups across the country see these protest actions, they will want to join in.

In no time, Democratic incumbents in Congress, at the DNC, and in city halls and Democratic clubs across the country will see their most loyal voting base eroding.

If that should happen, they will be in a panic. Just watch how fast they start impeachment hearings and stop passing war funding appropriation bills!

Now whenever I’ve suggested this scheme, after the wild applause subsides, there are always those who raise the question about voting for progressive candidates in primaries, and about electing progressives to party office. I agree these are important steps, and that they should be attempted, but mass party quitting doesn’t preclude doing them.

In many states, first of all (CA, NH, VA, MA, and SC, for instance), you don’t need to be registered in a party to vote in that party’s primary. But even in those states like my own Pennsylvania, where you do need to be registered in a party to vote in its primary, it is an easy thing to re-register in time to qualify for the primary. Just check with your voter registrar and learn the deadline. Then, after you’ve voted, just quit again. The same for party caucuses. Those who are elected to positions like county committeeperson should stay in the party, where they can try (good luck!) to make change.

The important thing is those mass quit events.

The other thing I hear is the argument that people should not be just urged to quit; they should be urged to join a third party.

I disagree. As soon as you start trying to get agreement about joining a third party, you are introducing division into a movement that should be narrowly focused on the two issues of getting the Democrats, now, to end funding for the war and to initiate impeachment hearings. Anything else is a diversion.

Besides, getting significant numbers of progressive-minded people to cut their ties to the Democratic Party offers the potential of creating a new base out of which a genuine mass party of the left might come. The first step though, is for all of us, who have been tethered to the Democratic Party for most of our adult lives, to cut the leash.

If desperate Democratic officials respond by according us the same attention and support that they regularly accord to hedge fund managers and health insurance companies, if they meet our demands to end the war and defend the Constitution, so be it. Maybe we will back them in November ‘08.

If they don’t, then we’re free to go somewhere else, or to found a new party.

One thing is clear: If we don’t do this, we will no longer live in a democratic state. We will live in a one-party state.
______________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Resume For George Bush

[From the blog of Marc Perkel, 2004]

Past work experience

- Ran for Congress and lost.

- Produced a Hollywood slasher B movie.

- Bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas, company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

- Bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using tax-payer money. Biggest move: Traded Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox

- With father's help (and his name) was elected Governor of Texas. Accomplishments: Changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the Union. Replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog ridden city in America. Cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government to the tune of billions in borrowed money. Set record for most executions by any governor in American history.

- Became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes with the help of my fathers appointments to the Supreme Court.

Accomplishments as President

- Either lied or used extremely flawed intelligence against the advice of many of our own military, most of our allies, and most of the church leaders of America to waste much of our wealth and many of our soldiers lives on an unwise and unjust war.

- Spent the huge surplus left by the Clinton administration and bankrupted our nation's treasury.

- Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.

- Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.

- First president in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

- First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in U.S. history (25%).

- After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.

- Set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in U.S. history.

- In just two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.

- Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in U.S. history.

- Set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12 month period.

- Presided over a 45% increase in the loss of home ownership in America since the year 2000.

- Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in U.S. history.

- Set the record for the least amount of press conferences than any president since the advent of television.

- Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any president in U.S. history.

- Presided over the biggest energy crises in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.

- Presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history and refused to use the national reserves as past presidents have.

- Cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.

- Set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest against any person in the history of mankind.

- Dissolved more international treaties than any president in U.S. history.

- The most secretive and unaccountable administration in U.S. history.

- The wealthiest cabinet ever in U.S. history. (the poorest multi-millionaire, Condoleeza Rice had a Chevron oil tanker named after her).

- Presided over the biggest corporate stock market frauds of any market in any country in the history of the world.

- Created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States.

- Set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any president in U.S. history.

- First president in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the human rights commission.

- Withdrew from the World Court of Law.

- Removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in U.S. history.

- Made the United States the least respected member of the entire United Nations.

- Refused to allow independent inspectors access to U.S. prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.

- First president in U.S. history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. elections).

- All-time U.S. (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.

- George W. Bush's biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).

-Spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in U.S. history.

- First president in U.S. history to unilaterally attack a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.

- First president to run and hide when the U.S. came under attack

- Took the biggest world sympathy for the U.S. after 911, and in less than a year made the U.S. the most detested country in the world

- With a policy of 'disengagement' created the most hostile Israeli-Palestine relations in at least 30 years.

- Changed U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

- Removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in U.S. history.

- In a little over two years created the most divided country in decades, possibly the most divided the U.S. has ever been since the Civil War.

- Entered office with the strongest economy in U.S. history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.

Records and References

- At least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available)

- AWOL from National Guard and deserted the military during a time of war.

- Refuse to take drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.

- All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my father's library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

- All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

- All minutes of meetings for any public corporation I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

- Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

From Today's Crooks and Liars

Countdown On Veterans Day: Bush Goes AWOL, Vets Silenced, Marlboro Marine Jobless

By: Logan Murphy on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 6:45 PM - PST

Download (1115) | Play (1363) Download (669) | Play (722) (h/t Scarce)

On today’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann aired a somber and enraging segment on the sad state of affairs for our veterans on this Veteran’s Day. Talking with Paul Rieckhoff from IAVA, Olbermann blasted George Bush for ducking out of the ceremonies at Arlington Cemetary, talked about the growing number of homeless Iraq & Afghanistan vets and the utterly disgraceful silencing of anti-Iraq veterans in Massachusetts and Southern California who were not allowed to participate in Veterans Day parades — some were even arrested. On the one day of the year their voices should have been heard and they should have been honored, they were instead betrayed by their fellow citizens. I don’t have the words to describe that kind of cruelty.

Keith also touches on the gut wrenching story of Lance Corporal James Blake Miller– better known as the Marlboro Marine–who is now jobless, divorced and near suicidal since being discharged from the military after being diagnosed with PTSD. With little aid from his government, Miller received help from an unlikely source — Luis Sinco, the LA Times photographer who snapped the famous picture of him during the battle of Fallujah in 2004. You can read Sinco’s story in the LAT here.

Iraq Vets Banned From Veteran's Day Parade

By Steven Reynolds, The All Spin Zone
Posted on November 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://allspinzone.com/wp//67601/

This post, written by Steven Reynolds, originally appeared on The All Spin Zone

Iraq veterans are banned from marching in Veterans Day Parades. Who the heck do these people think they are supposed to be honoring? If they can't honor Iraq War Veterans, then they need to quit the job of running these parades.

They had a Veterans Day Parade in Long Beach Saturday, and some veterans groups against the War in Iraq applied to join in the parade, presumably to honor their brothers who have died. Alas, politics got in the way. Evidently they no longer allow veterans to participate in Veterans Day Parades unless they are 100% behind the idea of war, no matter the circumstance. From the Press-Telegram:

Iraq veteran Jason Lemieux might not be marching in the 11th annual Long Beach Veterans Day Parade on Saturday. The Marine, who served three tours of duty in Iraq and is now against the war, was hoping to march as a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a national organization that calls for immediate withdrawal of troops in Iraq.

The group's application, however, was rejected last month because of its political views, parade coordinators said.

"I wanted to march like the rest of the Iraq veterans," said Lemieux, a 24-year-old Anaheim resident. "I served my country. I'm a veteran of a foreign war. I think I deserve that respect."

Iraq Veterans, along with the groups Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out, applied to march together in the parade this year under the entry "Military Patriots."

After reviewing each group's mission statement, the Veterans Day Parade Committee, a non-profit group that organizes the event, voted unanimously to reject the application, said parade coordinator Martha Thuente.

http://allspinzone.com/wp/

"They do not fit the spirit of the parade," she said. "The spirit being one of gratitude for what the veterans have done. We do not want groups of a political nature, advocating the troops' withdrawal from Iraq." Parade coordinators work hard to keep the event free from politics, Thuente said.

"We're not allowed to take a political stance."

Now there's the stupid excuse of the year by Ms. Thuente. She tries to keep the parade free of politics by keeping out anyone who is in political disagreement with the President? What a load of crap. That woman should be fired for stupidity, much less for disrespecting our veterans of the failed War in Iraq.

Steven Reynolds is a regular blogger for the All Spin Zone

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://allspinzone.com/wp//67601/

Christ Kills Two, Injures Seven In Abortion-Clinic Attack (Satire)

HUNTSVILLE, AL–Jesus Christ, son of God and noted pro-life activist, killed two and critically wounded seven others when He opened fire in the waiting room of a Huntsville abortion clinic Tuesday.

Enlarge Image

A U.S. Marshal leads Christ to a holding cell. Inset: One of the injured is loaded into an ambulance.

Security guards at the Women's Medical Clinic of Huntsville were able to disarm the Messiah before He could reload His weapon, a secondhand Glock 9mm pistol that authorities said He purchased legally at a Jackson, MS, sporting-goods store. "Abortion is a sin," said Christ as He was led away in handcuffs. "It is an abomination in the eyes of Me." Witnesses said the attack, which took the lives of Dr. Nelson Woodring, 51, and clinic nurse Danielle Costa, 29, came from "out of nowhere."

"He walked up to the admissions desk and asked if He could see Dr. Woodring," receptionist Iris Reid said. "The next thing I knew, He was shouting Biblical verses and opening fire on everything moving."

"It was horrible," said injured clinic nurse Jessica Combs, recovering at a local hospital with bullet wounds to the leg and abdomen. "He put his hands over Dr. Woodring's head and told him He forgave him for his sins, and then He shot him right in the face." Huntsville police officials are not certain how the Messiah was able to bypass clinic guards and proceed undetected past security cameras and into the clinic waiting room, where He produced the gun from its hiding place in the folds of His robe. Federal investigators are similarly baffled, saying that the heavily armed Christ had moved in "mysterious ways."

Speaking to reporters from His holding cell, Christ, 33, said He had "no regrets" about what He had done.

"As I said in John 16:21, every life is precious," Christ said. "This means every life, not just those who have already been born. My father, the Lord, feels the same way I do. In Jeremiah 1:5, He said unto the prophet Jeremiah, 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.' The unborn fetus is a sacred, living creation of my Father in Heaven and should be treated as such."

Added Christ: "What if the Virgin Mary had decided to abort me? Certainly she must have been tempted to do so. After all, it wasn't even her decision to conceive me in the first place. But in the end, she made the right decision, bringing her pregnancy to term and giving the world a Savior. Blessed is she among women." According to legal experts, if convicted, Christ could face the death penalty.

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Christ (second from right) leads pro-life demonstrators at a 1995 rally in Washington, D.C.

"The state of Alabama has the death penalty, and this crime is certainly the sort that would be construed as a capital offense," University of Michigan law professor Arthur Lipscomb said. "With the right judge and jury, Christ could very well be put to death yet again." In such a case, Lipscomb said, Alabama would likely use lethal injection rather than crucifixion. Christ said He is unafraid of the prospect of execution. "Those who know me know that I am willing to die for the sins of others, whether those sins be avarice, slothfulness, false idolatry or the butchering of unborn life," Christ said. "The bottom line is, abortion stops a beating heart." Tuesday's shooting is not Christ's first brush with the law. On April 8, 29, He was arrested in the Roman province of Judea for alleged false claims to the throne of the Kingdom of Israel. On Jan. 11, 1996, He and six other pro-life activists were jailed for blocking the entrance to a Cheektowaga, NY, abortion clinic. In October 1997, He was arrested for plotting to mail anthrax-laced packages to two dozen abortion doctors across the U.S. "Abortion is an abomination. It is a sin. It is murder," Christ said. "I only did what any good Christian would have done." Christ's followers have been overwhelmingly supportive of their leader.

"As it says in Psalm 139:13-16, 'For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body,'" said Ralph Anson of the Houston-based Every Life Is Precious. "Those people at that clinic were killers, and they deserved to die." "We may not understand everything He does, but we must believe it is for the best," said Rev. Joseph Abernathy, minister at First United Baptist Church of Huntsville. "As Christians, it is not our duty to question what our Savior does. We can only live according to His example.

Is The Onion America's Most Intelligent Newspaper?

By Greg Beato, Reason Magazine
Posted on November 7, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67039/

In August 1988, college junior Tim Keck borrowed $7,000 from his mom, rented a Mac Plus, and published a 12-page newspaper. His ambition was hardly the stuff of future journalism symposiums: He wanted to create a compelling way to deliver advertising to his fellow students. Part of the first issue's front page was devoted to a story about a monster running amok at a local lake; the rest was reserved for beer and pizza coupons.

Almost 20 years later, The Onion stands as one of the newspaper industry's few great success stories in the post-newspaper era. Currently, it prints 710,000 copies of each weekly edition, roughly 6,000 more than The Denver Post, the nation's ninth-largest daily. Its syndicated radio dispatches reach a weekly audience of 1 million, and it recently started producing video clips too. Roughly 3,000 local advertisers keep The Onion afloat, and the paper plans to add 170 employees to its staff of 130 this year.

Online it attracts more than 2 million readers a week. Type onion into Google, and The Onion pops up first. Type the into Google, and The Onion pops up first.

But type "best practices for newspapers" into Google, and The Onion is nowhere to be found. Maybe it should be. At a time when traditional newspapers are frantic to divest themselves of their newsy, papery legacies, The Onion takes a surprisingly conservative approach to innovation. As much as it has used and benefited from the Web, it owes much of its success to low-tech attributes readily available to any paper but nonetheless in short supply: candor, irreverence, and a willingness to offend.

While other newspapers desperately add gardening sections, ask readers to share their favorite bratwurst recipes, or throw their staffers to ravenous packs of bloggers for online question-and-answer sessions, The Onion has focused on reporting the news. The fake news, sure, but still the news. It doesn't ask readers to post their comments at the end of stories, allow them to rate stories on a scale of one to five, or encourage citizen-satire. It makes no effort to convince readers that it really does understand their needs and exists only to serve them. The Onion's journalists concentrate on writing stories and then getting them out there in a variety of formats, and this relatively old-fashioned approach to newspapering has been tremendously successful.

Are there any other newspapers that can boast a 60 percent increase in their print circulation during the last three years? Yet as traditional newspapers fail to draw readers, only industry mavericks like The New York Times' Jayson Blair and USA Today's Jack Kelley have looked to The Onion for inspiration.

One reason The Onion isn't taken more seriously is that it's actually fun to read. In 1985 the cultural critic Neil Postman published the influential Amusing Ourselves to Death, which warned of the fate that would befall us if public discourse were allowed to become substantially more entertaining than, say, a Neil Postman book. Today newspapers are eager to entertain -- in their Travel, Food, and Style sections, that is. But even as scope creep has made the average big-city tree killer less portable than a 10-year-old laptop, hard news invariably comes in a single flavor: Double Objectivity Sludge.

Too many high priests of journalism still see humor as the enemy of seriousness: If the news goes down too easily, it can't be very good for you. But do The Onion and its more fact-based acolytes, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, monitor current events and the way the news media report on them any less rigorously than, say, the Columbia Journalism Review or USA Today?

During the last few years, multiple surveys by the Pew Research Center and the Annenberg Public Policy Center have found that viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are among America's most informed citizens. Now, it may be that Jon Stewart isn't making anyone smarter; perhaps America's most informed citizens simply prefer comedy over the stentorian drivel the network anchormannequins dispense. But at the very least, such surveys suggest that news sharpened with satire doesn't cause the intellectual coronaries Postman predicted. Instead, it seems to correlate with engagement.

It's easy to see why readers connect with The Onion, and it's not just the jokes: Despite its "fake news" purview, it's an extremely honest publication. Most dailies, especially those in monopoly or near-monopoly markets, operate as if they're focused more on not offending readers (or advertisers) than on expressing a worldview of any kind.

The Onion takes the opposite approach. It delights in crapping on pieties and regularly publishes stories guaranteed to upset someone: "Christ Kills Two, Injures Seven In Abortion-Clinic Attack." "Heroic PETA Commandos Kill 49, Save Rabbit." "Gay Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance of Gays Back 50 Years." There's no predictable ideology running through those headlines, just a desire to express some rude, blunt truth about the world.

One common complaint about newspapers is that they're too negative, too focused on bad news, too obsessed with the most unpleasant aspects of life. The Onion shows how wrong this characterization is, how gingerly most newspapers dance around the unrelenting awfulness of life and refuse to acknowledge the limits of our tolerance and compassion. The perfunctory coverage that traditional newspapers give disasters in countries cursed with relatability issues is reduced to its bare, dismal essence: "15,000 Brown People Dead Somewhere." Beggars aren't grist for Pulitzers, just punch lines: "Man Can't Decide Whether to Give Sandwich to Homeless or Ducks." Triumphs of the human spirit are as rare as vegans at an NRA barbecue: "Loved Ones Recall Local Man's Cowardly Battle With Cancer."

Such headlines come with a cost, of course. Outraged readers have convinced advertisers to pull ads. Ginger Rogers and Denzel Washington, among other celebrities, have objected to stories featuring their names, and former Onion editor Robert Siegel once told a lecture audience that the paper was "very nearly sued out of existence" after it ran a story with the headline "Dying Boy Gets Wish: To Pork Janet Jackson."

But if this irreverence is sometimes economically inconvenient, it's also a major reason for the publication's popularity. It's a refreshing antidote to the he-said/she-said balancing acts that leave so many dailies sounding mealy-mouthed. And while The Onion may not adhere to the facts too strictly, it would no doubt place high if the Pew Research Center ever included it in a survey ranking America's most trusted news sources.

During the last few years, big-city dailies have begun to introduce "commuter" papers that function as lite versions of their original fare. These publications share some of The Onion's attributes: They're free, they're tabloids, and most of their stories are bite-sized. But while they may be less filling, they still taste bland. You have to wonder: Why stop at price and paper size? Why not adopt the brutal frankness, the willingness to pierce orthodoxies of all political and cultural stripes, and apply these attributes to a genuinely reported daily newspaper?

Today's publishers give comics strips less and less space. Editorial cartoonists and folksy syndicated humorists have been nearly eradicated. Such changes have helped make newspapers more entertaining -- or at least less dull -- but they're just a start. Until today's front pages can amuse our staunchest defenders of journalistic integrity to severe dyspepsia, if not death, they're not trying hard enough.

Greg Beato writes regularly about pop culture for Las Vegas Weekly and Reason magazine, where he is a Contributing Editor. His work has appeared in more than 70 publications worldwide.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/67039/

Workers to meet in Mexico

Banned in the U.S.

By Cheryl LaBash

Published Nov 8, 2007 10:39 PM

Feeling battered by pay cuts, layoffs, foreclosures, medical, utility and fuel costs? You’re not alone. But you have a chance to learn how workers are struggling for a better life right now—and making gains—in other countries.

On Dec. 7, 8 and 9 the fourth Cuba/Venezuela/North America Labor Conference will bring together workers on the front line of social change from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico, Colombia and the United States. Immigrant rights organizers and Katrina survivors are invited.

A special evening of solidarity with the Cuban Five on Friday, Dec. 7, begins the conference. The Cuban Five have begun their tenth year of unjust imprisonment in the U.S. Irma Sehwerert will represent the families of the Cuban Five. Her son, René González, is serving a 15-year sentence in the federal prison in Marianna, Fla., where he is denied visits from his spouse, Olga Salanueva. The International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five is collaborating on this event.

Saturday topics will include U.S./Cuba relations and ALBA, the alternative to NAFTA and other “free trade” agreements. U.S./Latin America immigration issues will be discussed on Sunday.

The conference will be held in Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego, Calif., because the U.S. State Department refuses to approve visas for representatives from the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC).

The U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange initiated the conference. It is supported by Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME); World Organization for the Right of the People to Healthcare, SEIU 1199 NY; National Network on Cuba (NNOC); Venezuela Solidarity Network (VSN); International Action Center (IAC); Cuba Solidarity New York (CSNY); Southwest Workers Union, San Antonio, Texas; Converjencia de los Movimientos de los Pueblos de las Américas (COMPA); Peace and Freedom Party; Movimiento Latino USA; Cuba-U.S. Sustainability Project; March 25 Coalition; and the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five.

Registration and hotel information can be found at laborexchange.blogspot.com; or send e-mail to laborexchange@aol.com.

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