[LAAMN] What will YOU do to Win the Peace TODAY?
Send a few bucks if you have it, start your own movement if you have the energy, but at least visit the web sites. Scott What will YOU do to Win the Peace TODAY? We have asked ourselves this question many times, and bet you may have also. Now we have embarked upon a coarse of action. We are making feature film, 'Lysistrata Unleashed', a comedy based upon the ancient Greek play, 'Lysistrata' by Aristophanes. This amazing theatre classic explores solutions to ending war though brilliant comedic satire. It inspires direct personal action for solving deep economic and military issues. Our movie is guaranteed to stimulate laughter first, and then dialog about how WE can achieve Peace in OUR world today. http://www.LysistrataUnleashed.com It is incredible how the problems of 25 centuries ago reflect upon the dire issues in our own world today. And our theatrical audiences have expressed this to us precisely and emphatically. Polls show that 60% of Americans don't want this endless war in the Middle East. Which is why we are making this movie right now. And why we believe its message is very timely and important. Hence we strive to complete the film in short order, to be released this Fall. What are YOU doing to win the Peace? We would like to enlist your aid and support towards completing our movie, 'Lysistrata Unleashed'. Our IndieGoGo campaign: http://igg.me/p/24968?a=14910i=shlk Please send us $5 (or as much as you can) on IndieGoGo today, AND tell your friends, contacts and network(s) about the film. We thank you for your support and participation. Peace Prosperity, Phoenix and The Lysistrata Unleashed Team PS: You can forward the above letter, use it as a model to re-write, or just send the links in with your own words, like below. -- Checkout the cool Love Peace movie project: -- http://igg.me/p/24968?a=14910i=shlk === The website - http://www.LysistrataUnleashed.com The IndieGoGo - http://igg.me/p/24968?a=14910i=shlk --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] Santa Monica Airport Critics Speak Out at Activist Support Circle July 27 Public Gathering
SPECIAL EVENT ADVISORY FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jerry Rubin 310-399-1000 jerrypeaceactivistru...@earthlink.net Santa Monica Airport Critics Speak Out To Be Theme Of July 27 Activist Support Circle DATE- Wednesday, July 27, 2011 TIME- 7:00 PM (Refreshments served 6:30PM) LOCATION- Friends Meeting Hall 1440 Harvard Street, Santa Monica THEME- Santa Monica Airport Critics Speak Out Santa Monica and Los Angeles residents, environmental activists, and community group leaders who are critical of SMO and who are speaking out on SMO related concerns such as toxic air pollution, noise pollution, and public safety will be attending the support gathering. Participants will include: Martin Rubin- Founder and Director of Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution (CRAAP) Cathy Larson- Chair, Friends of Sunset Park Airport Committee Laura Silagi- Co-Chair, Venice Neighborhood Council Santa Monica Airport Committee Bill Koontz- Co-Chair, Mar Vista Community Airport Committee The support gathering is free and there is free on-site parking. The Activist Support Circle is an ongoing and open support group for progressive activists that began in February, 2005 to help guard against activist burnout. For further information: Call- 310-399-1000 E-mail- activistsupportcir...@earthlink.net Website- www.ActivistSupportCircle.org [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] CANCELLATION
WE HAD NOT REALIZED IT WAS FATHER'S DAY We apologize! The e-mail that was sent out for Sally Peter's garage sale for the 19th of June is CANCELLED. Thank You Kindly, Paz, Sally Peter John Johnson Change-Links Progressive Newspaper change-li...@change-links.org http://change-links.org Subscribe to our list server. Email change-links-subscr...@yahoogroups.com (818) 782-1412 Cell (818) 681-7448. === http://change-links.org/animated%20palestine%20flag1.gif [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: laamn-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] [womeninblack] Jasmina Tesanovic: Mladic
Mensaje original Asunto: Mladic Fecha: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:08:30 -0700 (PDT) De: jasmina tesanovic politicalid...@yahoo.com The self proclaimed God of genocide in Srebrenica, the Serbian ethnic generalRatko Mladic was arrested today in a small village eighty kilometers from Belgrade. Mladic sheltered there with a relative, and lived under a false name. For years on end he hid like a house-mouse, and was arrested with a similar meekness. Old, docile, with one hand crippled, the formerly ferocious warlord lived peaceably and invisibly in a house that had been searched repeatedly by the Serbian police. This long-wanted war criminal and exceedingly successful fugitive from justice had a 10 million euro award on his head. And yet, recent polls say that, despite the suffering and ignominy he brought them, 51 percent of Serbian citizens would not have given him up to the international war tribunal in the Hague. No, not for any money. Serbian stubbornness has gone beyond the period of Mladic's bloodstained hero-worship. Nowadays the Serbs have grown indifferent to Mladic while actively resenting the European Union, whose economic disorders have made Serbian life miserable. And yet it appears that somebody did betray Mladic for the reward: someone among his circle of close friends. Some years ago, an entire group of people, who were all accused of actively sheltering Mladic, were released from a Serbian court through lack of evidence. After his arrest, only a few drunken people gathered before his hideout, and also in downtown Belgrade: the usual hooligan nationalist bands. Mladic was taken to thespecial court of war crimes in Belgrade to be interrogated. But this effort was interrupted because of the former general's difficult psychological and physical condition. Mladic seems to have been babbling, but he managed to say, according to his lawyer, that he does not recognize the war tribunal in Hague, and will not plead guilty or innocent. He was armed with two pistols when he was arrested, but he gave himself peacefully. Who will pick up the 10 million euro reward? How much prosperity did Ratko Mladic cost Serbia over these 16 years? These money issues are the big questions in Serbian press. Although the police said they will not take a penny, they did their regular job. As a further financial twist, the state still owes the general his regular pension, which he never received (as a fugitive). Handsome lump-sums have paid by and to the other citizens of the state -- mainly, blood money for his victims. And what about the dead? Do they have a price? Gone without a name, many of them still without graves since their bodies, dismembered and scattered all over the territory are still being sought. The silence of the ghosts is loud as ever in this moment of joy and victory. More recently, European pressure has intensified from the Hague tribunal; on June 6 the Serbian government faced a grim report from Serbia by Serge Brammertz, citing them for non-cooperation with the United Nations. Europe is experiencing many difficulties, but Serbia, like a tin can tied to a cat's tail, suffers them even more so. The primary obstacle to Serbia's European harmonization is and was, of course, the genocidal war criminal Ratko Mladic. We citizens of Serbia all knew that Mladic was hiding among us in Serbia; don't ask me why, but we never believed the many tales spread about his death or his exile. Given his modest rural circumstances, he was concealed more discreetly than the Pakistanis hid Osama bin Laden -- but the parallels there are obvious. Mladic had his protectors in the covert wing of the government, and the Serbian government is traditionally an enterprise in which everything is covert, and yet everybody knows. Ask them not why they turned him in, but why they delayed until today. A couple of years ago, Radovan Karadzic, the mastermind of the ethnic cleansing inBosnia, was arrested in downtown Belgrade. Dr. Karadzic had been hiding under a long beard as a New Age quack guru. Witnessing this travesty on television, my aged father said: Ratko Mkadic is a soldier! He will never do a thing like that! He will rather commit suicide than humiliate himself in that manner or get arrested by police! Mladic will never go to The Hague! The same myth of fearless valor was running for the late president of Serbia, Milosevicwho actually was arrested and died in The Hague. Milosevic was a close collaborator with the Bosnian Serb warlords, Karadzic and Mladic, in surpressing the Muslim population of Bosnia. This demon dream team of Balkan genocide: Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic, were all destined for The Hague. They were playing chess with one another in the anteroom of justice, waiting for a sentence longer than their lives. Only death could bring them peace and liberation. Radovan Karadzic
[LAAMN] Venezuela: 900 representatives of factory committees meet to strengthen the fight for Workers' Control
To view the photos at end article, please click on the url: http://www.marxist.com/venezuela-900-representatives-strengthen-workers-control.htm Venezuela: 900 representatives of factory committees meet to strengthen the fight for Workers' Controlhttp://www.marxist.com/venezuela-900-representatives-strengthen-workers-control.htm Written by Patrick Larsen in Ciudad Guayana Friday, 27 May 2011 [image: Print]http://www.marxist.com/venezuela-900-representatives-strengthen-workers-control/print.htm# *On the 21st of May, a spectacular meeting of more than 900 worker activists took place at the SIDOR steel works in Ciudad Guayana in the eastern part of Venezuela. The purpose of this encounter was to discuss the ongoing struggle for workers' control in the Bolivarian Revolution.* [image: guayana-completo]http://www.marxist.com/images/stories/venezuela/guayana-completo.jpgAfter a short cultural event on Friday, the meeting itself opened on Saturday 21stof May in the theatre hall of SIDOR. This venue has a total capacity of 550, but the room quickly got completely packed, with more than 200 extra workers following the proceedings standing up. More workers joined the meeting on Sunday, thus giving a total assistance of 900. The opening ceremony was especially emotive, with the singing of the Venezuelan national anthem followed by the anthem of the world proletariat: The International. The meeting had been organized by different groups, most of them from the UNT trade union confederation. It is worth pointing out, that the workers' leaders of the Basic Industries in Guayana, Venezuela's Industrial heartland, had played an extraordinary role in the convening of this gathering. This should not surprise anyone, as Guayana is the place where the struggle for workers' control has reached the most advanced level, being confronted directly with physical violence on the part of the bureaucratic factions in the state apparatus. The gathering at SIDOR was probably one of the most representative meetings of the Venezuelan labour movement in the last couple of years. Around one hundred factories were represented and the participants had come from 21 out of Venezuela's 24 states. The logistics of the meeting had been organized by the workers of Guayana, based mainly on voluntary work and the sacrifices of the ordinary workers who opened their houses to give accommodation to the participants from other parts of the country. The proceedings of the meeting were divided into three parts: 1) Exchanges of experiences of workers' control 2) Workshop discussion about the nature and obstacles for workers' control and 3) Plenary session with the conclusions and agreements of the encounter Bureaucratic sabotage against workers' control A theme that sprung up again and again was the way in which the bureaucratic sectors of the state are constantly trying to undermine the implementation of workers' control. Despite the fact that president Chávez on several occasions has spoken energetically in favour of workers control and even suggested that managers be elected in the state industries, local mayors and governors are doing everything possible to crush such initiatives. Almost every report at the meeting bear testimony to this fact. An important moment at the SIDOR meeting was when Elio Sayago, the president of the nearby aluminum plant ALCASA addressed the audience. Sayago is a worker of ALCASA who was appointed president of the factory by Chávez in May 2010, after having been recommended by his co-workers. At that time Chávez called upon the workers to implement workers' control and he appointed other workers in SIDOR, BAUXILUM and VENALUM as presidents of the factories. [image: guayana-mesas]However, in the year which has passed, the governor of Bolívar State, Rangel Gómez (who was elected on a PSUV ticket) has been actively supporting the FBT (Bolivarian Workers' Force), a trade union faction which is using violent methods to sabotage the implementation of workers' control. In the case of ALCASA, this took the form of a violent picket which lasted for 34 days, during which hired gangsters took control of the factory gates, in order to sabotage production. The aim was to bring down Sayago and stop the process of workers' control that he is trying to develop. Similar actions have taken place in BAUXILUM and, to a lesser degree, in SIDOR. The interventions of workers from other parts of the country pointed in the same direction. Yenni Cortéz of the GOTCHA factory in Maracay, Aragua state, explained how both the governor and the local mayor has turned a deaf ear to the constant appeals for nationalization of this textile firm, which has been occupied for two years by its female workers. Yahaira López, member of the factory committee at INAF, a factory in Cagua, Aragua state, which produces articles for bathrooms, gave voice to the same concerns, when she pointed out that the nationalization of the plant, which was announced by
[LAAMN] Alan Woods - Europe in crisis: Italy and Belgium next
http://www.marxist.com/europe-in-crisis-italy-and-belgium-next.htm Europe in crisis: Italy and Belgium nexthttp://www.marxist.com/europe-in-crisis-italy-and-belgium-next.htm Written by Alan Woods Thursday, 26 May 2011 [image: Print]http://www.marxist.com/europe-in-crisis-italy-and-belgium-next/print.htm# *The Euro zone is in a mess. After a year of huge financial bail outs intended to calm the markets, the latter are very unstable, with a marked downward tendency. Signs of slowing global growth, and the continuing euro zone debt crisis, have caused the markets to slump. The nervousness of the markets is an accurate reflection of the growing anxiety of the bourgeois about the economic prospects for Europe.* [image: The Euro - a bomb waiting to explode. Illustration: Latuff Dromos] http://www.marxist.com/images/stories/europe/Latuff_n_Dromos-Euro_timebomb.gif *Events in Greece have brought the euro area to a crossroads: the future character of European monetary union will be determined by the way in which this situation is handled.* (Jens Weidmann, Bundesbank president and European Central Bank governing council member, Hamburg, May 20) The politicians are panicking once again. Their latest recipe to raise cash is to privatise on a massive scale. In a desperate attempt to raise cash, the Spanish government is selling off the family jewels. They are privatising the state lottery, as well as the state airports authority. The sale of the state lottery is expected to raise between 6.5bn and 7.5bn. If completed it would create Europes most valuable listed gaming group. That will make a lot of money for big business, but it will lose money for the Spanish state. The state lottery earned a net profit of just under 3bn in 2009, with 2.92bn going to the Spanish treasury. This is an excellent example of the plundering of the state: nationalizing the losses and privatizing the profits. Already the big banks are queuing up to get their hands on this highly profitable business. Lazard is viewed by company insiders as a favourite to manage the process, with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley among several others that are in the running for other roles, which count among the most prestigious investment banking outfits. Given their record in gambling (and losing) billions of their clients money, thus provoking a collapse of the worlds banking system three years ago, they seem well qualified for the running of the world's largest gambling company. But the main concern is still Greece, which they are pressurizing to privatise more than the previously agreed 50bn. The only snag is that the EU doesn't trust the Greeks to do it themselves. Instead, they want an independent commission to do the dirty work. Make the Greeks pay! Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks - and the Acropolis too! The hysterical headline of *Bild*, Germanys leading tabloid when the dire state of Greeces finances was first made public sounded like the usual exaggerations of the yellow press. But one year later, the same far from elegant message is being delivered by Europes finance ministers. As we predicted, the rescue package to Portugal was not enough to stop the crisis spreading to Spain, Belgium and Italy. Now everybody is talking about contagion. At a time when the attentions of the worlds press were fully occupied with the exciting adventures of the (former) President of the IMF and a certain chambermaid in a New York hotel, the heads of European finance were busy deciding the destinies of millions of people in Greece. Serious commentators expressed concern lest the absence of DSK (unavoidably detailed as a guest of the New York Police Department) might affect the efficacy of the proceedings. They need not have worried. The trials and tribulations of Monsieur Strauss Khan did not prevent the recent meeting in Luxembourg, where ministers from the countries that use the euro delivered a harsh message to the people and government of Greece: push through more reforms and privatize everything, or you will not receive a single euro more from your European partners. This indicates that Europes financial crisis is not over. On the contrary, it is entering a new and even more dangerous phase. All the rescue packages have failed to save the Greek economy, which continues to fall. The mood in Germany is hardening. This is not just a reflection of public unease, or the fears of Angela Merkel that she will not be reelected. It is a realization that the financial resources of the Bundesbank are finite after all, and cannot serve to prop up the whole of Europe. The Germans are taking an increasingly harsh line. The Bundesbank, which controls the EUs purse strings, has warned that if politicians take even a modest step towards a restructuring of the Greek debt, the ECB will cut Greek banks off from its liquidity supply, triggering a financial collapse that would push the countrys economy into the abyss. Todays
[LAAMN] Krugman: Medicare and Mediscares, Amy G: Vermont, a Healthy First
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/opinion/27krugman.html?nl=todaysheadlines http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/opinion/27krugman.html?nl=todaysheadlines emc=tha212 emc=tha212 Medicare and Mediscares Paul Krugman NY Times: May 27, 2011 Yes, Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, is a sore loser. Why do you ask? To be sure, Mr. Ryan had reason to be upset after Tuesday's special election in New York's 26th Congressional District. It's a very conservative district, so much so that last year the Republican candidate took 76 percent of the vote. Yet on Tuesday, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, took the seat, with a campaign focused squarely on Mr. Ryan's plan to dismantle Medicare and replace it with a voucher system. How did Ms. Hochul pull off this upset? The Wisconsin congressman blamed Democrats' willingness to shamelessly distort and demagogue the issue, trying to scare seniors to win an election, and he predicted that by November of next year the American people are going to know they've been lied to. You can understand Mr. Ryan's bitterness. He has, after all, experienced quite a comedown over the course of the past seven weeks. Until his Medicare plan was rolled out in early April he had spent months bathing in warm approbation from many pundits, who had decided to anoint him as an icon of fiscal responsibility. And the plan itself received rapturous praise in the first couple of days after its release. Then people who actually know how to read a budget proposal started looking at the plan. And that's when everything started to fall apart. Mr. Ryan may claim - and he may even believe - that he's facing a backlash because his opponents are lying about his proposals. But the reality is that the Ryan plan is turning into a political disaster for Republicans, not because the plan's critics are lying about it, but because they're describing it accurately. Take, for example, the statement that the Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it. This may have Republicans screaming Mediscare! but it's the absolute truth: The plan would replace our current system, in which the government pays major health costs, with a voucher system, in which seniors would, in effect, be handed a coupon and told to go find private coverage. The new program might still be called Medicare - hey, we could replace government coverage of major expenses with an allowance of two free aspirins a day, and still call it Medicare - but it wouldn't be the same program. And if the cost estimates of the Congressional Budget Office are at all right, the inadequate size of the vouchers - which by 2030 would cover only about a third of seniors' health costs - would leave many if not most older Americans unable to afford essential care. If anyone is lying here, it's Mr. Ryan himself, who has claimed that his plan would give seniors the same kind of coverage that members of Congress receive - an assertion that is completely false. And, by the way, the claim that the plan would keep Medicare as we know it intact for Americans currently 55 or older is highly dubious. True, that's what the plan promises, but if you think about the political dynamics that would emerge once Americans born a year or two too late realize how much better a deal slightly older Americans are getting, you realize that this is a promise unlikely to be fulfilled. Still, are Democrats doing a bad thing by telling the truth about the Ryan plan? If you demagogue entitlement reform, says Mr. Ryan, you're hastening a debt crisis; you're bringing about Medicare's collapse. Maybe he should have a word with his colleagues who greeted the modest, realistic cost control efforts in the Affordable Care Act with cries of death panels. Anyway, the underlying premise behind statements like that is the assumption that the Ryan plan represents a serious effort to come to grip with America's long-run fiscal problems. But what became clear soon after that plan was unveiled was that it was no such thing. In fact, it wasn't really a deficit-reduction plan. Once you remove the absurd assumptions - discretionary spending, including defense, falling to Calvin Coolidge levels, and huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, with no loss in revenue? - it's highly questionable whether it would reduce the deficit at all. What the Ryan plan is, instead, is an attempt to snooker Americans into accepting a standard right-wing wish list under the guise of deficit reduction. And Americans, it seems, have seen through the deception. So what happens now? The fight will shift from Medicare to Medicaid - a program that has become an essential lifeline for many Americans, especially children, but which in the Ryan plan is slated for a 44 percent cut in federal aid over the next decade. At this point, however, I'm optimistic that this initiative will also run aground on popular disapproval. What of Mr. Ryan's hope that voters will realize that they've been lied to?
[LAAMN] labor law reform - a key battle for mexican unions today
Labor Law Reform - A Key Battle for Mexican Unions Today by David Bacon Published by the Americas Program on: May 26, 2011 http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/4654 Editor's Note: This is the second installment of a series on border solidarity by journalist and immigration activist David Bacon. This article and subsequent installments were originally published in the Institute for Transnational Social Change's report Building a Culture of Cross-Border Solidarity. To download a PDF of the entire report, visit the Americas Program website. Changing Mexico's labor law threatens the lives of millions of workers. It would cement the power of a group of industrialists who have been on the political offensive for decades, and who now control Mexico's presidency and national government. Labor law reform will only benefit the country's oligarchs, claims Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who most Mexicans think won the last presidential election in 2006, as candidate of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution. Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, head of the miner's union who was forced into exile in Canada in 2006, says Mexico's old governing party, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), which lost control of the presidency in 2000, is trying to assure its return by making this gift to big business, putting an end to labor rights. In part, the change is drastic because on paper, at least, the rights of Mexican workers are extensive, deriving from the Revolution that ended in 1920. At a time when workers in the U.S. still had no law that recognized the legality of unions, Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution spelled out labor rights. Workers have the right to jobs and permanent status once they're hired. If they're laid off, they have the right to severance pay. They have rights to housing, health care, and training. In a legal strike, they can string flags across the doors of a factory or workplace, and even the owner can't enter until the dispute is settled. Strikebreaking is prohibited. A new labor law would change most of that. Companies would be able to hire workers in a six-month probationary status, and then fire them at the end without penalty. Even firing workers with 20 or 30 years on the job would suddenly become much easier and cheaper, by limiting the penalty for unjust termination to one year's severance pay. That's an open invitation to employers, according to Arturo Alcalde, Mexico's most respected labor lawyer and past president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers. The bosses themselves say the PRI reform is the road to a 'paradise of firings.' It will make it much cheaper for companies to terminate workers. The justification, of course, is that by reducing the number of workers at a worksite, while requiring those remaining to work harder, productivity increases and profits go up. For workers, though, a permanent job and stable income become a dream, while the fear of firing grows, hours get longer, and work gets faster, harder and more dangerous. The PRI labor law reform proposal deepens those changes. The 40-hour workweek was written into the Federal Labor Law, which codified the rights in Article 123. That limit would end. Even the current 7-peso/hour minimum wage ($5/day) would be undermined, as employers would gain the unilateral right to set wages. The independent review of safe working conditions would be heavily restricted. Mexican workers aren't passive and organize work stoppages and protests much more frequently than do workers in the U.S. Greater activity by angry workers, therefore, wouldn't be hard to predict. So the labor law reform takes this into account as well. Even in union workplaces with a collective agreement setting wages and conditions, an employer could force workers to sign individual agreements with fewer rights or lower wages. Companies could subcontract work with no limit, giving employers the ability to find low-cost contractors with no union to replace unionized, higher-wage employees. And it would become much more difficult to go on strike. THE proposed labor law reform is the fourth in a series of basic changes in Mexico's economic, legal and political framework over the last decade. A fiscal reform began the process of privatizing the country's pension system, much like the Social Security privatization plans proposed for the U.S. Teachers charge that Mexican education reform is intended to remove their influence over the curriculum, which still espouses values that would seem very progressive in a U.S. classroom. In many cases, they say, it will remove them from their jobs also. Current Mexican President Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN) proposed an energy reform aimed at privatizing the national oil company, Pemex. Fierce opposition, however, was able to restrict it to some degree. All the
[LAAMN] Ash: Post bin Laden America
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/6068-post-bin-laden-ameri ca Post bin Laden America By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News 27 May 11 Reader Supported News | Perspective sama bin Laden is dead. Of course he deserved it, that is not the question. The question is, what did we deserve? The attacks of September 11th, 2001, came out of a clear blue sky, and out of the blue it seemed, came the news that the mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden, was dead. Killed - President Barack Obama announced in a special late night address from the White House - by a US Special Forces team. Brushed aside by the jubilant young crowds who flocked to the White House that evening were any questions about the legality of the US sending an extra-judicial assassination team to foreign soil, in this case Pakistan, to carry out the killing. It is, however, in that disregard for international law in pursuit of the head of Osama bin Laden, that bin Laden's own legacy survives him. America after bin Laden is sadly an America more in line with bin Laden's own ideological perspective. We are a more intolerant, more repressive and socially restrictive society than we ever had been before bin Laden. Many of the most draconian new social measures have come at the hands of those who postured themselves as bin Laden's most ardent foes, and freedom's staunchest defenders. If the object was to, defeat bin Laden, not become him, clearly from a standpoint of social justice in America, we have failed. The issues are stark and substantive. Political surveillance and repression in the US are at levels not seen since the darkest days of Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunts and J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO. We are now an America that rationalizes and debates the merits of torture. From the talk shows to the floor of congress - that, which for one hundred and fifty years has been unspeakable conduct for an American government, now has openly shameless defenders. Among them, a prominent law professor from Berkeley, and a sitting judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Both apparently enjoying unassailable careers. Both legal advisors to George W. Bush who crafted legal opinions justifying - if renaming - what the world calls torture. Perhaps bin Laden was rendered lifeless by SEAL Team 6, but he is very much alive in the way we live our lives today in this land that's known as freedom. The government is now allowed to tap your phone without a warrant. Repeat: The government is now allowed to tap your phone without a warrant. In fact, Congress said so twice. First in a knee-jerk piece of legislation that bin Laden must have had a good laugh over called the USA PATRIOT Act, and then, in case you didn't hear it the first time, in the FISA Amendments Act, which expressly validated warrantless wiretapping, and retroactively indemnified the telecommunications companies from lawsuits for having done it at the behest of the Bush administration. Osama bin Laden, the gift that keeps on giving. Surveillance of anti-war groups, no problem, blame it on bin Laden. Free speech zones, cameras, cameras everywhere, warfare and military glorification restored after decades of post-Vietnam distain, citizen's rights to privacy all but canceled, separation of church and state open to interpretation. The list goes on and on. Worst of all, education vilified, and ignorance encouraged. It's Osama's America now. Maybe the attacks of September 11th and the news of bin Laden's death came out of the blue, but Osama bin Laden certainly did not. The offspring of a wealthy Saudi bin Laden family heavily connected to the Saudi royal family, western interests and particularly US oil interests, Osama was educated in England at Oxford, trained and armed by US operatives to fight with the Mujahideen against the Soviets after the CIA baited them into the so-called Afghan trap. Robert Scheer lays it all out brilliantly in his essay titled A Monster of Our Own Creation http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_monster_of_our_own_creation_20110504/ . The Osama bin Laden that we have come to dread was indeed a monster of our own creation, but more precisely a tool of the same capitalist, colonialist complex that benefits from the fear he and they thrive on. In 1968, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young in their song, Chicago http://bit.ly/m8v41i , asked a question: In a land that's known as freedom, how can such a thing be fair? _ Marc Ash is the founder and director of Reader Supported News, as well as Truthout. Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network
