I went to MIT to hear former U.S. Army Colonel and BU Professor Andrew Bacevich talk about his new book. I read his last book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. It was somewhat encouraging to hear a man with a military background acknowledging the cost of empire. Wasington Rules, however, seemed much harder hitting. More as I ponder.

Usumacinta Jack-up in the Gulf of Mexico on fire in 2007 [photo: oilrigdisasters.co.uk”]

The owner Mariner Energy,  denies that there was an explosion.  CNN report and early blog posts.

Thanks to Simon, there is a website of oil rig disasters, including Usumacinta Jack-up shown above.

I.  SEAS of Change or Same Old Story

Rally in support of Joan Frankel @ Holyoke Center, Harvard.

Joan Frankel, a 25 year employee of what was the Division of Applied Science, has been told that she’s terminated next Wedesday. Perhaps not with ‘Extreme prejudice’ as in ‘Apocalypse Now’, but despite A+ performance ratings upto and including June 2009, she’s being fast tracked for dismissal. Joan is a member in good standing of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, also known as the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 3650. Labor from Harvard and beyond, gathered in support of her in front of Harvard’s Holyoke Center.

The reincarnation of The Division as The School of Engineering and Applied Science [SEAS] was presided over by former Dean Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti¹. In October of 2009, the new dean, Cherry Murray called the School together in the first “all-hands” meeting.  According to the Crimson,  an anonymous question was posed to her:

When she came to an anonymous question asking for more financial and accounting assistants, Murray asked, “That was you, Harry, wasn’t it?” causing Associate Dean of Finances Harry E. Dumay to smile and shake his head amid laughter.

Whether it was Harry or not, somebody thought the financial office was understaffed.  But to fire it’s most experienced [and ‘expensive’] employee and hire perhaps two younger [and ‘less expensive’] people is short sighted at best.

Joan Frankel in front of Pierce Hall where she works.

¹If necessary, I apologize to the Indian community, by which I mean Professor Homi et.al. Science is ultimately metaphor. Religion pertains to the provably unliteral. I rather like the idea that I am a tributary of the same stream as you. It is less embarassing than the idea that the Deity created Laws of Combustion and then violated them to prove He [:)] was there. But I had to satisfy a most fundamental urge – the pursuit of comedy.
———

II. Ratification Election of the HUCTW Contract.

Today, Thursday July 22, 2010, Harvard’s largest Union votes on the proposed contract for the next the next two years. I’ll have a more detailed look at the proposal in the next hour or two. The short form:

• Work Security contract language  has improved infinitesimally over it’s grossly inadequate form in 2001.
• Work Security in actual practice, as anyone who reads the Crimson knows,  has gotten dramatically worse is likely to continue in that direction.

More real soon now. Y’all come back now, hear?

As finance ministers and heads of state of the world’s “richest” nations gathered for first the G8 and later the G20 meeting, the Council of Canadians held a ‘Shout Out for Global Justice’  featuring an abundance of resourceful people from the left. If you follow Democracy Now!, you can hear Amy Goodman’s talk, “Drilling, Spilling and Killing: From Oil Spills to Oil Wars.”  DN! sent out a Tweet pointing to a Canadian news outlet, I had not heard of rabble.ca. You can see the whole ‘Shout Out’ streamed on a loop from RabbleTV.  You can also see how the Canadian government spent more than $1 Billion fortifying Toronto for the G20 meeting and some of the demonstrations that have occurred.

Included in the ‘Shout Out’ are a bunch of people with interesting and resourceful responses to NeoLiberal globalization.

Dr. Vandana Shiva has been successful in thwarting the attempt by U.S. chemical giant Monsanto to monopolize the seed stock of Indian agriculture. I have a woman friend from India who is not particularly left politically. She has completed her medical training.  She acknowledges that, “It was a good thing she [Shiva] did with the seeds.”  My friend understands biology, I hope she will grow in political economy as well.

Pablo Solon, Bolivian UN Ambassador, discusses the struggle to resist privatization of resources in Bolivian. Many losses preceded the eventual success in resisting the privatization of water.

Naomi Klein, remarks on the security surrounding the G20 meeting.

Maude Barlow, Chairman of the Council of Canadians and author of Blue Gold.

More  to come…

Time to guard the library.

An international day of action, with events listed [logo above] on four continents. Local Boston area activists listed on the United for Peace with Justice Website.

When: Saturday, June 5, 2010, 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Where: Park Street Station • Park and Tremont Streets • Boston

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom:

and:

and:

are the sponsors. I’m going. Yes, I’m a dog.

Democracy Now! on Twitter announced:

Democracy Now! is heading to the Gulf this weekend. Send story ideas and guest suggestions on the oil spill to “stories@democracynow.org”

I don’t know exactly who’s going and who’s staying in New York to mind the studio, but there’s a good chance some of the folks will tweet over the weekend. They can only do a full broadcast on weekday mornings. They can post to their website at any time, but if they are on the move that’s hard. Twitter provides an immediacy and off-cycle capability.  If they do tweet from the Gulf it might inspire questions and story ideas. Reasonably thought out ideas longer than 140 characters probably should go to the stories address above.  If you’re following them on Twitter remember that the DN! account has 25,000 followers so replies that are too casual and numerous could flood them.

When they went to Haiti producer and on-air Sharif Kaddous on Twitter shared personal observations:

Surgical mask, bandana, T-shirt, cloth, hand, toothpaste or lemon rind on upper lip. These are all ways in Haiti to cover the smell of death
5:08 PM Jan 19th via Echofon

A week after earthquake, bodies are still being pulled from the rubble. This one lies across from the hospital http://twitpic.com/ytrdz
2:33 PM Jan 19th via Echofon

A river of waste and death streams out of the morgue as they sweep away the remains. http://twitpic.com/ytqqc
2:29 PM Jan 19th via Echofon

The morgue has been largely cleared of corpses. But one remains. Without effective aid, more will come.  http://twitpic.com/ytpji
2:20 PM Jan 19th via Echofon

[I’ve only smelled one decomposing human body. It didn’t smell particularly bad
… until I knew what it was. It was my neighbor Todd. Fifteen years later I can still smell it. The horror. I can only guess what it must have been like for Sharif.]

Producer and on-air Anjuli Kamat is on Twitter and  Havard Alumna and camera operator Nicole Salazar is on Twitter. Nicole ain’t said nothing yet, but I’ll let her know there’s somebody listening.

Pulitzer Prize wining photo of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller. Taken by Kent State photojournalism student John Filo. Used in the same manner as used by Wikipedia.  The picture is Lanczos upsized 80% and sharpend 20% with XnView.

Immortalized by Neil Young and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young [YouTube].

Alison, Jeffrey, William and Sandra were not executed by old men in suits. They were shot by young men of about the same age. Why? Was it their own wish?  Or was it to curry favor with old men in suits?

Retrospective by Democracy Now!

The take away message for student activists:  Power is very reluctant to show it’s face to you. That’s why the Corporation¹ hides in Loeb House² and sends the President out³. Power is a lie.⁴ Your weapon is to expose it.  But be careful out there.

I have a very long illustrated post of the Bread and Roses demonstration by Slam⁵. It is started. I also owe Collette et al an apology, but I need to know more to do it right. I’m an ass what?  All this must wait while I have yet another highly protracted argument with the Cambridge Housing Authority.

¹I assume most Colleges and Universities are governed by a corporation. If you know of exceptions tell me about it. the dot guy dot by dot the dot door at gmail dot com. The Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts originally vested governing power of Harvard in the Board of Overseers. It still exists and is elected by the Alumni Association. But in 1650, the GGCoCoM vested power in the Corporation. The BoO was busted back to an advisory role, whatever that actually means.

²At Harvard, Loeb House once housed the Presidents, but is now known, as the Board of Overseers house.  The Corporation meets in the second floor dining room. Mortals may enter under certain circumstances.

³At Harvard, the President hides in Massachusetts Hall. President Drew, to her credit, seems to marginally more accessible than the Late Larry Summers was. For the Late Larry, Mass Hall was the Fortress of Solitude.

⁴Izzy Stone used to say, “All governments lie …”.  Universities are chartered by governments, but are operated by governance. We have to update Izzy. “What governs lies.” I think Noam would agree with my extension to power itself. I do have a nit with him. At one point he allows that there may be cases in parent child relations where authoritarian behaviour is justified. Here’s the thing. Power always says about what it’s doing, “it’s for their own good.” Sometimes it’s not well honed. Take My Lai^A. One officer was quoted as saying, “We had to destroy the village to save it.”

⁵The SLAM website is beautifully done. More importantly it uses DruPal a project of the Free Software movement.

^AIt would have been better if “we” hadn’t.

From Mass Trans Political Caucus: Ken and Marcia Garber were on Greater Boston with Emily

Rooney, talking about the Mass Transgener Civil Rights Bill.

C.J. Garber was born a girl.  She became a boy. He was bullied for years in the Quincy Schools. C.J. committed suicide. Hear C.J.’s parents, Ken and Marcia.

“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

I cannot resolve the ambiguity about exactly what Reverend Niemoller actually said, but there is very little doubt he said something of this form. There is debate about exactly which groups he included. No one has suggested that he included transgender people, but the question is should they be included now? I say yes. I want someone to speak up for me.

——–

For Jillian who is a transgender person and Alex who loves one.

It has resurfaced as Budget Amendment #764.  The Mass Transgender Political Caucus is asking us to call our State Representatives today. Alice Wolf has been consistently strong in support of this measure. If you are in her district [as i am] a call/e-mail is not a waste of time. It will help her make the case if she can point to strong constituent support.

Forwarded by the Mass Transgender Political Caucus, a Boston Globe editorial:

No, it’s not a ‘bathroom bill’

I was afraid it had died, but it sounds to me like the opposition is afraid it isn’t. A good sign?

The Harvard Book Store¹ is hosting a talk by Professor Elaine Scarry Thursday April 8 at 7:00 PM.  From their website announcement:

Arguing that post-9/11 legislation and foreign policy severed the executive branch from the will of the people, Elaine Scarry in Rule of Law, Misrule of Men offers a fierce defense of the people\’s role as guarantor of our democracy.

Her interest is in a sense academic and in a sense not. At a faculty meeting [during the Summer’s Reign] on the subject of  free speech, she raised the issue of  Harvard’s response to the Patriot Act:

Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value Elaine Scarry asked how the University planned to address the USA Patriot Act. Part of the act requires extensive disclosure of information about foreign-born scholars, including their library and e-mail records.

“I would like to know what is being done about the consequences falling on some of our community members as a result of the Patriot Act,” Scarry said.

Scarry told the Crimson that the act also affected other members of the academic community, such as librarians, who might be forced to monitor their colleagues.

Did anyone record/video her speech at the walk-out protesting the beginning of the Iraq War?

the (dot) guy (dot) by (dot) the (dot) door (at) gmail (dot) com

There is a Wikipedia page for her, but it is so anemic that it’s not worth a link. If she’ll let me take her picture I’ll post it there.

One of my very best stories about my time at Harvard is about her.

¹The Harvard Book Store is the one remaining independent book store in Harvard Square. For this purpose ‘store’ means has a space near but not on the sidewalk. There are a couple of enterprises on the sidewalk from time to time. They are ‘book sellers’. All the other stores, are members of chains. This includes the Harvard Cooperative Society whose book operation is run by Barnes and Noble.

It’s in front of the Lamont Library in the South East corner of Harvard Yard,  is frocked all winter, …

… and has a floral accompaniment at the moment. John A. Collins tells me that the space in the middle is supposed to represent the space that the sculptor played in as an infant. A protected space formed by his mother with her body. The Lamont Librarian used to take a working lunch in that space. She was fair and wore pastel floral prints. She blended.

Harvard Magazine told us who figured out when and how to frock and that it is now waxed rather than lacquered. But who actually puts the frock on and takes it off. How often is the statue waxed and who does the waxing? Do they get a living wage? When I know, you’ll know.

… Due to Measures Unimplemented  by …

…me.

I screwed up about Robert Rubin. It was Robert Reich at the Sackler. I’m told that it took half the talk for them to get a box high enough for him to be seen over the podium. I’m going to do the manly thing:

1)  I’ll take Full Responsibility for this not really all that significant mishap.

2) I’ll assassinate the character of my source in the most obscure possible way so it won’t look like that’s what I’m doing.

3) I’ll take Full Responsibility for this unfortunate but totally understandable misoccurance.

But first I’ll get something to eat.

A friend tells me he has seen a small number of posters for an appearance by former Treasury Secretary, former Citigroup adviser, and still Harvard Fellow Robert Rubin.  According to my source the talk is in the Auditorium of the Sackler Museum on the corner of Broadway and Quincy St.  at 4:00 PM today 4/5/2010. The friend wonders, how long it will take Rubin to say, “It wasn’t my fault.” I ask what form of HarvSpeak will he use to say, “It wasn’t my fault.”

United for Justice with Peace has a full calendar of justice and peace events in the Greater Boston Area.

Today Friday,  April 2.

• Democracy’s Endgame, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman 3:30 PM MIT & webcast.

The main lecture hall is ‘sold out’ but they have 5 overflow rooms planned. While it will be webcast, it might be a good show of strength to fill all the overflow rooms. I’ll try to get pictures from them all and post them here.

Not on the UJP calendar, but well worth attending, Amy Goodman and former Harvard Crimson President Bill McKibben¹ at Tufts University in Medford. It’s part of new series called Inside the Activist’s Study. I caught the first episode with Amy and her brother Dan.

¹This is NOT an April Fool’s joke. Bill McKibben really was President of the Harvard Crimson, but you may know him better as the environmental activist who in addition to being gassed by the WTO, wrote Deep Economy and co-founded 350.org.

The $10 Billion  Large Hadron Collider has recorded it’s first collisions at 7 Tev [3.5 Tev/beam]. The design capability of the machine is 9 Tev [4.5 Tev/beam]. The machine was turned on in late 2009 after a repair/recovery mission from a mishap in 2008, but the energy attained was only 2.36 Tev [1.18 Tev/beam]. That was just enough energy to beat the then record holding machine in Batavia Illinois, the Tevatron.  Today’s energy offers the possibility of seeing ‘significant new physics.’

LHC, located at the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire¹ [CERN] in Geneva, Switzerland,  a significant world wide web  presence. This is kind of a good thing, given that the World Wide Web emerged from the wilds of speculative research into a household convenience largely due to work by Sir Tim Berners-Lee that was done at and/or paid for by CERN.  But, LHC can claim to be the first major accelerator of the Twitter age. So if you want to follow the nitty gritty details you can. [CERN][USLHC] Look at the ‘following’ lists to get individual experiments. On the other hand, you might feel this is just too much information about the trees and totally lacking a view of the forest. Significant results will no doubt be ’emargoed’ i.e. withheld from the public until a prespecified release date and time. This strategy has two benefits:

1) It gives the collaborations² a chance to be sure of their interpretation of the results.

2)It gives a measure of fairness to theorists at institutions that are ‘less well connected’.³

So you probably won’t see tweets that preview significant findings. If you do, you can bet that PhD student will probably be in a lot of trouble. But you will see tweets that point you to press releases on the major lab sites. And if you want to know what it all means, look to Cosmic Variance.

I am, as I have been for some time now, on the cusp.  $10 Billion could house 25,000 homeless people even at Cambridge prices. It could probably feed millions for years in many parts of the world. There are much more pressing needs to be met. But LHC will help us know a little more about how the universe is made and how it got started. I want to know, even if I can’t be on the frontier myself. $10 Billion probably would not buy one Nimitz class aircraft carrier at today’s prices. We probably can afford to do big science, if we don’t do continuous cascading war. But would we? What new weapons will supersymmetry make possible? And will we build them?⁴ My problem you see, is that I have become stark raving sane.

¹I cut and pasted it. My multi-lingual abilities are limited to knowing when to believe Google translate and when not.

²These experiments are large collaborations. You can readily see from tweets by various member collaborations of LHC that it is in fact, a loose confederation of large collaborations. Perhaps it is time to look once again at a subject that has a significant history at Harvard. The growth of Big Science. Is Derek J.de Solla Price’s  Little Science, Big Science still true?

³I hope at some point to relate the a tale of collegiality vs. insider gossip HEP business. It was between a woman experimentalist protecting her working relationships and a male theorist trying to exploit an ‘insider tip’. Was gender important? I’ll have to let you decide, but Sidney was at his best in settling the disagreement.

⁴ Early in my first year of graduate school, when the Nixon cuts to research budgets had already set in, class discussion turned to the future. Pavao Senjanovic piped up, “If we have a war with Mars, high energy physicists will have jobs.” Thanks, Pavao. You spoke to me only once, but you were kind.

From United for Peace with Justice

Howard Zinn Memorial Event

The Boston University community will hold a memorial event for Howard Zinn.

This memorial will be addressed by family and friends of Howard including Frances Fox Piven, Jim Carroll, Noam Chomsky, Betty Zisk and others. Members of Howard’s family will participate.

Before the Massachusetts Legistature now:

Scholars using the Lamont Library at Harvard today are advised that tree work is being done near the entrance. While an ever increasing amount of work in the Yard is being outsourced. This particular work is being done by Harvard ‘direct employees’. Consultation between a worker from Facilities Maintenance Operations and a patrol officer from the Harvard University Police has led to a carefully designed cordon of yellow caution tape around the affected area. Please take it seriously as a measure to prevent injury from falling debris. Also, please take seriously any advisories from the HUPD officer. Harvard administrators may be more concerned about protecting The Endowment than protecting you, but Harvard Labor cares about you. Thank you.

Harvard’s response to this sort of risk has improved dramatically since a chunk of concrete from the Lamont roof overhang fell a foot behind me. More …

I’m trapped in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. I’ll try to smooth this out later. Tnx.

The lead story of this morning’s Democracy Now! was International Women’s Day. In Amy Goodman’s introduction, the first celebration was due to a ‘…group of women from seventeen countries gathered in Copenhagen…’ but her first guest, Kavita Ramdas, said:

…it actually started right here in New York City. It was a group of—prior to 1910, it was a group of activist women laborers in New York City who were challenging the fact that women in sweatshops used to be locked up in those sweatshops. And because the Socialist Movement made that workers’ struggle a banner and a cause, the United States essentially shut down any recognition of its own history…

The official International Women’s Day 2010 website attributes the first International Women’s Day to Clara Zetkin head of the Women’s Office of the Social Democratic Party in Germany. It was held on March 19 to commemorate the King of Prussia making concessions to the proletariat during the revolution of 1848. The website is registered in the .com top level domain and has sponsorship ads from the European Investment Bank and Thomson Reuters. Reuters got it’s start with men rowing out to incoming ships in New York harbor to get ‘advance news’ for select Wall Street patrons i.e. asymmetrizing information.¹ Reuters got it’s start as neither socialists nor free market capitalists.

The United Nations website mentions the first National Women’s Day occuring on February 23, 1909

In What were the Origins of International Women’s Day, 1886-1920?, by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Lauren Kryzak. (Binghamton, NY: State University of New York at Binghamton, 2000).

National Woman’s Day is Celebrated in the U.S. , 1909

In 1908 the Socialist Party of the U.S. established a Woman’s National Committee. One of the Committee’s first acts was to declare that the last Sunday in February should be recognized as National Woman’s Day. The first celebrations took place the following year, February 23, 1909. (See Document 9) In subsequent years National Woman’s Day was widely celebrated by socialists, working women, and middle-class reformers. (See Documents 6-15).

But farther down:

Women’s Day is Celebrated Internationally in Europe in 1911

The success of National Woman’s Day in the United States in 1910 probably influenced Clara Zetkin and other delegates in 1910 at the Second International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen, who created a Women’s Day, “to aid in the attainment of women’s suffrage.”  … The first “International Woman’s Day” was held on the 19th of March, 1911, that day commemorating an 1848 uprising in Prussia. In 1913 International Women’s Day was celebrated on March 8, the date on which it is still celebrated today.

This publication is available to Harvard ID holders as an internet resource. The electronic redistributer Alexandra Street Press does have about a quarter of it’s catalog available for free. Unfortunately this isn’t one of them, but you can ask you librarian to request a free trial.

A significant confusion factor in this story is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire which occurred just weeks after the first International Women’s Day.

The officer, apparently oblivious to the three dead young women at his feet is probably looking up at other young women trying to decide whether it’s better to jump to their death than be burned. [Photo: unknown]

¹For those of you who have forgotten or never taken Harvard’s Ec 10 asymmetric information is the bane of the ideal classical market in the form of the Welfare Theorem.

The bread was good.  A touch of sweet and cinnamon.

——-

Friends,

Sunday, March 7th 2010  1 – 3 PM
Boston, MA

Theme: “Bread and Peace: Women Say NO to War.” Bring signs,  banners.(for example, “Universal healthcare, not global warfare,”  “Bring our troops and war $ home,” “Bread not drones”… We will raise our voices for peace and justice, form a symbolic bridge  reaching out to our international sisters and brothers, join in a ring of peace, march through the heart of downtown to the Park Street T station for final vigil and call to action.

Location:
Copley Square Boston
Copley Square
Boston, MA

Contact:

Sarah Roche-Mahdi

Sponsored By:
initiated by Code Pink Greater Boston, endorsed by Raging Grannies,
Women’s Fightback Network

———

Thanks to David Fillingham of Veterans for Peace for pointing this out. More on the varieties of  Women’s Day Politics after the rally. See ya’.

Photo: Wikimedia Foundation

Dear Amy,

Sorry I can’t come hear you. This is one of the rare occasions on which I could hear you for free and maybe even meet you, but I have to guard the library. Oh, well – a dream deferred. 🙁  But I do want to congratulate the Extension School for doing something clearly better than the muscle bound Faculty of Arts and Sciences. [Maintaining excellence, indeed!]

See you sometime,

-r

——-

Award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, host of the daily, grassroots, global, radio/TV news hour Democracy Now!, is on a national speaking tour to mark DN!’s 14th anniversary and launch her new book, Breaking the Sound Barrier.

The buskers are tuning up for ya.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Here they are, His Holiness¹ the Reverend Busker and Friends.

Valentine’s Day Show  ->  Friday Feb. 12, 2010

A  Benefit Concert for First Church Shelter  11 Garden St, Cambridge

8p   ->  11p    $10 [suggested donation]

¹He calls himself Reverand Busker. I gave him the promotion.

She’s twenty something and I’m sixty something, but I follow her. She knows I’m there. It doesn’t spook her. We’re on twitter. Sindi was bored, bored, bored. This video made her a little homesick for Vancouver.  Then:

You always think you have all the time in the world..then someone is ripped from your life. Rip doll 🙁9:20 PM Jan 30th from TweetDeck

Jenny was twenty something too. She didn’t want to wear a seat belt. Sindi tweets disbelief. Three hours later Sindi went from ‘super sad’  to  ‘super pissed off’ – a little Kübler-Ross thing going on. I didn’t mention it to Sindi at the time. Now I have – twofold. I like to tell people in grief about Kübler-Ross. It feels like helping. I don’t know if it is.

Sindi asked us all to please wear a seat belt. It won’t bring Jenny back, but it’ll make Sindi feel better. Be safe, if not for yourself, for Sindi and the Jenny that lingers within her.

my girl is still signed onto yahoo messenger… sent her a message, knowing I wont get a reply. Hoping it’s all just a bad dream..it’s not.7:51 AM Jan 31st from web

Sindi had a great deal of trouble sleeping.  She was awake well into the morning.

Laying in bed..crying…wishing I was holding into her. This is something I cannot shake.9:17 AM Jan 31st from TweetDeck

“…holding into her.”  Typo or intriguing variation. Freudian in a good way.

So..Um… I’m just supposed to go to bed? Put my ipod down and get on with my life? 🙁9:36 AM Jan 31st from TweetDeck

Eventually weariness prevailed to some extent. After fitful on-and-off sleep:

Shock is starting to fade. Reality is set in…my girl is gone 🙁 Keep going to my phone to look for texts from her…there is none.about 13 hours ago from web

Sindi is a digital native – a loved one dies and she suffers on the net. Netizens  do their best to console her. I’m a netizen, but an immigrant – a very experienced immigrant.  Part of my accent is to worry about her privacy. I’m so touched by her that I had to share it more widely. But I’ve been cryptic about some details and if she feels I’ve made her grief too public, i’ll remove or alter it. I do hope she feels good about it though, because this post will complement nicely my somewhat overdue post about recent BGLT activism in Massachusetts.

Jenny, I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is.     –Forrest Gump

I’m a very smart man, but I’m not sure I know what love is.     –the guy who makes windows

I believe Forrest and as much as he suffered for it, I believe his love for Jenny was worth it. I believe Sindi and as much as she suffers for it, I believe her love for Jenny was worth it.

Explaining the Drive Towards Empire and Endless War

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report and Black is Back
Saadia Toor, Action for a Progressive Pakistan
Bruce Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.
Michael Schwartz, author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context

Debunking the War on Terror

Salma Abu Ayysh, Palestinian activist
Pardiss Kebriaei, Guantanamo Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights
Danny Schechter, journalist and Executive Editor of mediachannel.org
Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America

Click here to see speaker bios

Workshops

Haiti’s Unnatural Disaster: Send Doctors, Not Troops with Jacques-Antoine Jean, Josue Renaud. and Ashley Smith
War at Home led by Jon Flanders of Troy NY Labor Council and Nellie Bailey of Harlem Tenants Council
International Struggle for World Free of Nuclear Weapons led by Joe Gerson of AFSC
Cutting War Spending 25%: Funding Jobs and Neighborhoods by Mike Prokosch
Global Warming and War led by Ted Glick and Maggie Zhou
Student Organizing led by Wes Strong, Marissa Blaszko and others
Veterans led by Priscilla Loundes from March Forward!, IVAW & VfP
Covert & False Flag Operations and 9/11 led by Peter Dale Scott, Paul Zarembka and Barry Zwicker
Israel as an Apartheid State with Nancy Murray & Sarah Roche-Mahdi
War in Latin America by Omar Sierra, Venezuelan Consulate, Antoine del Castro Rio from Colombia Polo Democrático, & Tito Meza, Proyecto Hondureño

Plenary

Organize regional campaigns to build the March 20 antiwar march on DC, to redirect military spending to meet human needs, and to end the siege of Gaza.