Art, Labor, Politics

I was in my early twenties when I recognized the need to become politically active.  I had entered medical school in the fall, 1964.  When Johnson was elected president that year, it was a response to Barry Goldwater’s jingoistic arguments to expand the war ongoing in Southeast Asia and a defense of his “Great Society” legislation.  Even as the war expanded, a certain ticket for young physicians overseas,  I came face to face with the fact that health care was available to the wealthy and not to the poor.  Training at Los Angeles County Hospital forced me to confront the lessons we were learning:  that our alcoholic, downtrodden, acutely and chronically  ill patients were worthless human beings.  Other students, like me disturbed by the discrepancy in health services to residents of Beverly Hills and Watts, had started a school newspaper.  They’d titled it Borborygmi — presumably the protesting bowel sounds emerging from the shit of our human detritus.  It was here that I first learned about layout and combining art with text.  Here I copied the pictures from the Dover edition of the drawings and etchings and block prints of Kathe Kollwitz.  Some 45 years ago I stumbled on the connection between art, labor and politics that I have been grappling with ever since.

Yes, I had listened to The Weavers, Pete Seeger, and others.  But now I learned to manipulate visual images to enhance the printed word.  And so perhaps this was the first time I considered art as more than spectacle, instead something with which to engage, in which to participate.

Tonight I spent 30 minutes waiting in the Democratic Party HQ in Rogers Park, where I live, waiting to confront the alderman.  The liberal Joe Moore had voted, along with every other alderman, to support the budget of incoming mayor Rahm Emmanuel.  Every alderman, including the liberal Joe Moore, had voted to cut services to the mentally ill and considerably more. As we confronted him, took over his meeting, warned him that we were watching, pictures flashed deep in my brain, remembrances of times when I first found Kollwitz.   When I first saw those wide eyed children with their empty plates gazing upward for food;  the woman being torn asunder and the women grouped together for their collective protection and strength. Tonight one of my cohorts asked how it was possible for artists to respond so quickly to the changing conditions that they find with new and more inventive cartoons at every instance of oppression.

I give thanks to Kollwitz to this very day for making me aware of the importance of combining art and politics, how the artist draws inspiration from the battles of daily life to survive.  And how the artist helps to transform the consciousness, the understanding of the tasks we all have to transform the society in which children have to beg for their next meals.

A number of you-tube videos are available of her work:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzabzZft6WQ

with a Mikis Theodorakis score:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJiLp3AUqCY&feature=related

another very dark score:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB1wbzC13-E&feature=related

Lew Rosenbaum — Monday, 21 November, 2011

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador: On The Anniversary of His Assassination, March 24 1980

[Today's Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales explores the meaning of President Obama's trip to Latin America with Allan Nairn.  Nairn is an historian whose writing exposed the connection between the United States and the Salvadoran death squads and, specifically, with the asassination of Archbishop Romero.  It was 31 years ago today that the Archbishop was killed by the death squads.  Six days later, at his funeral, a quarter of a million people defied the dictatorship and gathered to pay homage to the murdered priest.  Snipers on rooftops opened fire killing 42 people.  In the decade before the assassination, rebel groups in El Salvador came together to form various coalition organizations within which opposition to the government could be expressed.  Militarily this was coordinated through the (underground and, of course, illegal) Farabundo Martin Front for National Liberation (FMLN).  The most effective legal organization was called the BPR, or the Bloque Popular Revolucionario.  Within the BPR the trade unions played a very significant role.  Within the revolution in Central America as a whole, poetry played a vital role: witness the dedication of martyrs Otto Rene Castillo in Guatemala and Roque Dalton in El Salvador itself.  We commemorate the death of Oscar Romero as we remember the role that art and artists have always played as part of the revolution, as part of workers movements.

The story below was published a year ago on the 30th anniversary of Romero's brutal murder. Click here to read the transcript/view the Democracy Now Video -- Lew Rosenbaum]

Joseph A. Palermo

Author/Associate Professor of History

Posted: March 24, 2010 11:22 AM HuffingtonPost

Archbishop Oscar Romero: Thirty Years and Little Learned

Read More: Americas Watch , Archbishop Oscar Romero , Atlacatl Battalion , Carter , Catholic Church , Central America , D’Aubuisson , El Salvador , Major Roberto D’Aubuisson , Oscar Romero , President Carter , President Jimmy Carter , President Ronald Reagan , Reagan , Ronald Reagan , Salvadoran Death Squads , Senator Jesse Helms , World News

Thirty years ago, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was assassinated in the early evening at the tiny church, Divina Providencia. The day before he was killed, at the Cathedral of San Salvador, he had ended a sermon with words he directed at Salvadoran soldiers and police:

“I would like to make an appeal in a special way to the men of the army, to the police, to those in the barracks. Brothers, you are part of our own people. You kill your own campesino brothers and sisters. And before an order to kill that a man may give, the law of God must prevail that says: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God. No one has to fulfill an immoral law. It is time to recover your consciences and to obey your consciences rather than the orders of sin. The church, defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, the dignity of the person, cannot remain silent before such abomination. We want the government to take seriously that reforms are worth nothing when they come about stained with so much blood. In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuously, I beg you, I ask you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!”

A single shot rang out and pierced Romero’s heart. As he bled to death those around him believed they knew what forces in Salvadoran society were responsible for the crime. Church and human rights groups recognized the killing as the familiar work of right-wing death squads. The Washington Post and other U.S. news outlets reported that Romero’s assassination might have been the work of “leftist” rebels.

Archbishop Romero had sent several letters to President Jimmy Carter pleading with him to stop all U.S. aid to what he considered a murderous regime. The day after Romero’s funeral, which itself was marred by violence when armed men in plainclothes fired into a crowd of mourners, Carter approved an increase in “non-lethal” U.S. aid to the Salvadoran government, which included cargo trucks, radar, riot control gear, and night-vision tracking equipment. Three days before he left office, Carter lifted the ban on U.S. arms sales to El Salvador.

When President Ronald Reagan came to power he poured even larger amounts of arms and money into the Salvadoran civil war making El Salvador the single largest recipient of U.S. aid in Latin America. Military assistance went from $5.9 million in fiscal year 1980 to $35.5 million in 1981, and then to $82 million the following year. During this same period, economic aid to El Salvador went from $58.3 million in 1980 to $114 million in 1981, and then to $182.2 million in 1982. [Americas Watch]

In the U.S. Senate, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who was then the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, heaped high praise on Salvadoran Major Roberto D’Aubuisson and his men for being staunch allies in the fight against communism. Senator Helms’s blandishments came despite evidence that suggested elements of D’Aubuisson’s paramilitary organization were possibly responsible for murdering Romero. The career diplomat, Robert White, who was Carter’s ambassador to El Salvador called D’Aubuisson and his armed supporters “pathological killers.”

The killing in El Salvador escalated after Romero’s death. In late 1981, when reports surfaced that the U.S.-backed “Atlacatl Battalion” of the Salvadoran Army massacred peasants near the village of El Mozote, both the Salvadoran government and the Reagan Administration denied it happened. The El Mozote massacre had left 767 men, women, and children dead.

Americas Watch, the nonprofit human rights organization that monitors Latin America, estimated that in El Salvador right-wing death squads tied to the government’s security services were responsible for killing 30,000 people. And in 1991, a “truth commission” sponsored by the United Nations made clear that the Salvadoran military and the death squads were “one and the same.”

In the United States, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) emerged in 1981 as an umbrella organization of peace activists, clergy, and other groups that worked with refugees who were fleeing the bloodshed and seeking asylum. Each year CISPES activists held candlelight vigils on the anniversary of Archbishop Romero’s slaying. The first one took place on March 24, 1981.

And what did those who formulate United States foreign policy learn from the carnage in El Salvador? The same thing they should have learned from Vietnam: Whenever the United States sticks its nose into another country’s civil war it only raises the level of death and destruction making the politics all the more intractable. And in the end it achieves very little other than what could have been worked out peacefully in the first place.

We recently heard that the “conservative” members of the Texas State Board of Education voted to erase Archbishop Oscar Romero from children’s history textbooks, which is an ironic decision since their hero, Ronald Reagan, believed that Central America was the “front line” against the spread of Soviet communism in the Western Hemisphere.

Today, American drone aircraft are engaging in “targeted assassinations” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere. More often than not these strikes result in the killing and maiming of innocent people, including women and children. On the one hand, Pentagon officials tell us the war in Afghanistan is about 85 percent political and only 15 percent military and that the only path to success is to win the hearts and minds of the people, to build schools and clinics, provide jobs and build infrastructure, and help improve the lives of regular people. While on the other hand, these same Pentagon officials tell us that the means to accomplish this noble and just end must include blowing away women and children with an endless barrage of drone attacks. They seem incapable of seeing, like in El Salvador in the 1980s, that escalating the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan will do little to address the underlying social and political problems that produced the conflict in the first place.

Archbishop Oscar Romero gave his life trying to prevent a bloodbath in the country he loved. He tried to shield his people from the U.S.-backed repression, consistent with his mission as the top Catholic cleric in the country. Romero’s liberation theology didn’t arise from abstract ideological or canonical principles but was grounded in his seeing all around him the crushing poverty, hungry children, and innocent victims of class violence in El Salvador. Despite the actions of the mighty Texas Board of Education to erase his memory, Archbishop Romero will be long remembered as a friend of the oppressed, a champion of the poor, an advocate of peace, and a tribune for justice.

There But For Fortune: The Film Bio of Phil Ochs Reviewed By Howard Romaine

SIXTIES SINGER-SONGWRITER-ORGANIZER PHIL OCHS BIO OPENS

By HOWARD ROMAINE, writer, http://www.thetennesseetribune.com/

Just days after its opening in Boston, DC, and other places, the new film biography of Phil
Ochs opened in NASHVILLE at the Belcourt Theatre. If one wants a good, brief biography of the
sixties, taught from the perspective of the ‘singer-songwriter,’ this is the movie. If one wants to see
the origins of the singer-songwriter ‘folk’ crowd before it moved out to places like Nashville, New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco and Macon, and Atlanta, Georgia, Austin, Texas, and Woodstock, New York, this is your movie.
If one is younger, and wants, from lack of personal knowledge,  a puzzled back look
at what all the musical and cultural excitement and horror of the sixties was about – from the perspective of the young and engaged – this is the one movie one should see, and have history classes see.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/philochstherebutforfortune/

From the early photos, movies and songs about the election of President Kennedy and his idealistic energy to the spread of this spirit to “Negroes” demanding the vote, or a seat at the table, to images of the death of Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X,  to the dogs attacking demonstrators in Birmingham, one gets the perspective and the reactions of the young folk crowd in New York, and, in effect, literary commentary on those events which were, at least in my case, as a college student of the era, the ‘facts’ as well as the ‘feelings’ about the facts which only songs, and songs from a certain milieu, in this case, Greenwich Village, and the urban sophisticated ‘south’ of ‘the movement,’ and the folk and coffee houses there, could provide.

Omission – the black presence and creative factor

Unfortunately, for me, the movie fails to provide much of the ‘black song’ which also arose from and enveloped these events – songs by Nashville and New York’s Julius Lester, or Cordell Reagon, or LA’s Lynn Chandler, or Albany and Atlanta’s Bernice Johnson Reagon, who met and married Nashville’s Cordell in the SNCC’s ‘Freedom Singers,’ and continued to  create, throughout her career, the musical soundtrack to the resistance to the racist repression of the sixties and ensuing years, rising to a high tide with Barry Goldwater, and his clone, Ronald Reagan.

After an early career with the SNCC Freedom Singers, and a move to DC for a Ph.D. at Howard in Musicology, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon’s created and sustained the acapella genius of Sweet Honey in the Rock, and helped Anne Romaine, here in Nashville, and thru the region,  sustain the folk cultural vision for years with events like the Grass Roots Days in Nashville, and concerts with artists around the country as diverse as John D. Loudermilk to Babe Stovall, and the Rev. Pearly Brown, Pete and Mike Seeger, Alice and Hazel, and Lynn Chandler,  and many other artists linked like chains of visionary poets to the principal events sadly and sharply depicted in this movie – from civil rights to Kennedy deaths, to Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam, to its continuation by the two criminals Nixon and Spiro Agnew, shown here as they ascend; and the New York folk scene shifts from vocal opposition to active organizing – a role of Ochs which was new and revealing to me. It would have made a better, and more balanced,  movie to show the black origins of the music and organizing tradition of the era, as best reflected in Dr. Reagon’s long career.

However, many of the other leading lights of the era appear to give commentary, from Joan Baez, to Pete Seeger, to the record company executives of Electra, Ochs early publisher, to A & M, his publisher as he moved to Los Angeles in the second half of the sixties decade and to new alternative musical modes of creativity, to other musicians, friends, and relatives, sister, brother, daughter, whose appearance as a small child is one of the more moving black and white images in the middle part of the film, as her color commentary at the end, about  her father’s life and legacy, is sobering.

The extent of Ochs’ career, as a writer, as well as an activist, which continues with artists like Buono, of U2, is well captured with many later artist-activists, many of which I did not know. The early village scene with artists like Bob Dylan, and Baez, and the concurrent musical themes reacting to the events in the South is very well captured. And the size and diversity of his musical creations are given regular short shots throughout the movie, well paced between song, interview and visuals. Many of Ochs best known performances are available now on UTube, for example -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5pgrKSwFJE

Although I had read of the competition between Ochs and Dylan, and it is briefly touched on in the movie, it is not a main theme, and indeed, their complimentary if competitive paths re-coalesce at an Ochs organized benefit after the CIA sponsored military takeover of the Allende democrats in Chile, in which the singer-songwriter, Victor Jara, was led into a stadium, filled with onlookers, and the singer’s fingers and hands were systematically smashed by rifle butts as a warning to the populace.

Ochs was sufficiently political and world traveled to have visited the Chilean singer just before the military coup, and organized a concert in Carnegie Hall to protest the vivid and viscious symbolic smashing of the songwriter’s hands by the Nixon-Kissinger-CIA backed military hunta.

According to the movie, the singer, Victor Jara, walked, his hands bleeding, toward the stands, and began to sing a patriotic song, and was joined by all in the stands, gradually, before he was shot down, murdered by the military.

Ochs and Village friends organized a Carnegie protest of this to bring it to world attention. The reconnection between Dylan and Ochs at this event is emphasized, rather than their sometime brutal competition, as footage of their joining together at the Carnegie Concert is shown, an event, again, which had slipped my ordinarily unrelenting Dylan history memory.

One could continue, as some reviews do, with reflections on Ochs ‘manic-depression’ and growing alcoholism, or marvel at his various incarnations – as an Elvis interpreter, in self-ironic jest – as a co-hort of the ‘yippies’ Ruben and Abbie Hoffman, (another alleged ‘manic depressive’ and drug abuser), or speculate about the lack of support of friends and family as he descended into ‘madness’ which various scenes toward the end capture – but, to me, this tragic aspect of his life is not the centerpiece.

No, that’s the beautiful voice, the tunes seemingly unending from his guitar, his laugh and joy in creation and opposition, and the contrast between a beautiful, if defeated creative life, and various evil, misguided, and murderous policies he dedicated his life and art to opposing.

Go see the movie for yourself. Or read the reviews, then go see it.

http://www.beyondchron.org/articbeles/Film_Review_Phil_Ochs_There_But_For_Fortune__8994.html

It plays two or three more days at the Belcourt. It’s the best movie I’ve ever seen about the sixties, but then, again, I see the era from the vantage point of its early literature – the song!! And, I know tragedy and literary triumph interconnect like earth, rain and spring.

Calling Up The National Guard Against Unions — Huffington Post

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Readies National Guard Against Unions

AP/The Huffington Post Posted: 02/11/11 06:39 PM

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said Friday that he was willing to mobilize the state’s National Guard force in order to address the potential repercussions of his stated proposal to eliminate collective bargaining rights for state employees.

The Associated Press reports:

Gov. Scott Walker says the Wisconsin National Guard is prepared to respond wherever is necessary in the wake of his announcement that he wants to take away nearly all collective bargaining rights from state employees.Walker said Friday that he hasn’t called the Guard into action, but he has briefed them and other state agencies in preparation of any problems that could result in a disruption of state services, like staffing at prisons.

On Thursday, Walker told the Associated Press that he will propose removing nearly all public employee collective bargaining rights to help plug a $3.6 billion budget hole.

Walker, a Republican who took office in January, said no one should be surprised by the move he will ask the GOP-controlled Legislature to approve next week given that he’s talked about doing it for two months.

“This is not a shock,” he said. “The shock would be if we didn’t go forward with this.”

But union leaders, and even some Republicans, were taken aback at the scope of his proposal.

“This is a shocking development,” said Bryan Kennedy, president of AFT-Wisconsin, which represents 17,000 workers. “It ends collective bargaining for public employees in our state, after 50 years of management and workers solving problems together.”

Democrats almost certainly will unite against the proposal but are powerless to stop it. Republicans control the Assembly 60-38-1 and the Senate 19-14.

“To say it’s a power grab would be a huge understatement,” said Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha. “It’s hard to believe he’s even serious about this.”

Walker said the changes are necessary to avoid up to 6,000 state employee layoffs and the removal of more than 200,000 children from the Medicaid program.

The state faces a $137 million budget shortfall in the fiscal year that ends June 30. Walker said he will ask the Legislature on Friday to pass his plan next week in a special session. Walker will unveil his two-year budget plan to address the larger $3.6 billion shortfall on Feb. 22.

Under Walker’s immediate plan, all collective bargaining rights would be removed for state and local public employees starting July 1, except when it comes to wages. But any salary increase they seek could be no more than the consumer price index, unless voters in the affected jurisdiction approved a higher raise.

Contracts would be limited to one year and wages would be frozen until the next contract is settled. Public employers would be prohibited from collecting union dues and members of collective bargaining units would not be required to pay dues.

The proposal would effectively remove unions’ right to negotiate in any meaningful way. Local law enforcement and fire employees, as well as state troopers and inspectors would be exempt.

Walker’s plan also calls for state employees to contribute 5.8 percent of their salaries to their pensions starting April 1. They would have to contribute at least 12.6 percent toward their health care. Those two items would generate $30 million by July 1 and roughly $300 million over the next two years when combined with the other concessions.

Walker insisted he was not targeting public employees and that his primary concern was balancing the budget. His bill also calls for selling off state heating plants to save money and refinancing state debt to save $165 million in the fiscal year that ends June 30.

The bill also would give the Department of Health Services the power to make any changes to Medicaid it deems necessary to reduce costs, regardless of current law. Any changes it makes would only need approval of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee. Medicaid is projected to be $153 million short by June 30.

“I got elected to deal with the problems we face in the state,” Walker said. “The two biggest problems are the economy and the budget.”

Still, going after collective bargaining rights in such a dramatic fashion will almost certainly set off a firestorm in the state Capitol, not just among workers but even Republicans reluctant to go as far as Walker wants.

Republican leaders in the Senate and Assembly issued statements supporting Walker’s plan, but he still might find trouble trying to convince enough others to get it passed.

“They’re still soaking it in,” Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said when asked if he thought Republicans would approve the plan as proposed.

The right of private sector employees to be members of unions is governed by federal law, but state and local unions are covered by Wisconsin law. The right to collectively bargain over a broad array of issues, including salary and benefits, is granted under that law. Walker and the Legislature can add or remove negotiable issues by changing that law, the State Employment Labor Relations Act.

There’s nothing stopping Walker from proposing a law change, said Paul Secunda, a Marquette University law professor who specializes in labor law.

“But unions and public unions are very strong in Wisconsin, but if he wants to take on that he’s going to lose a lot of the support that got him here in the first place,” Secunda said.

There are roughly 175,000 public sector employees – including state and local government workers and teachers – who are union represented in Wisconsin, according to data maintained by Georgia State University professor Barry Hirsch and Trinity University professor David Macpherson. Of those, roughly 39,000 are state employees and more than 106,000 are teachers.

How the Pentagon Turns Working-Class Men into the Deadliest Killers on the Planet

[Some folks have been decrying the torture behind turning dogs into killing machines.  Here David Swanson points out how the pentagon, as an organized force (not an aberration) turn human beings into killing machines.  Perhaps the model we are supposed to follow in society, one that requires "a few good men" to step forward and do their duty, provides the context for violence in the rest of society.  This excerpt from a book by Swanson was published on his blog, Let's Try Democracy,  and on Alternet. -- Lew Rosenbaum]

---

By davidswanson – Posted on 14 December 2010

By David Swanson, davidswanson.org
http://www.alternet.org/story/149165/

The following is an excerpt from David Swanson’s self-published new book War is a Lie (David Swanson, 2010).

Since the Vietnam War, the United States has dropped all pretense of a military draft equally applied to all. Instead we spend billions of dollars on recruitment, increase military pay, and offer signing bonuses until enough people “voluntarily” join by signing contracts that allow the military to change the terms at will. If more troops are needed, just extend the contracts of the ones you’ve got. Need more still? Federalize the National Guard and send kids off to war who signed up thinking they’d be helping hurricane victims. Still not enough? Hire contractors for transportation, cooking, cleaning, and construction. Let the soldiers be pure soldiers whose only job is to kill, just like the knights of old. Boom, you’ve instantly doubled the size of your force, and nobody’s noticed except the profiteers.

Still need more killers? Hire mercenaries. Hire foreign mercenaries. Not enough? Spend trillions of dollars on technology to maximize the power of each person. Use unmanned aircraft so nobody gets hurt. Promise immigrants they’ll be citizens if they join. Change the standards for enlistment: take ‘em older, fatter, in worse health, with less education, with criminal records. Make high schools give recruiters aptitude test results and students’ contact information, and promise students they can pursue their chosen field within the wonderful world of death, and that you’ll send them to college if they live — hey, just promising it costs you nothing. If they’re resistant, you started too late. Put military video games in shopping malls. Send uniformed generals into kindergartens to warm the children up to the idea of truly and properly swearing allegiance to that flag. Spend 10 times the money on recruiting each new soldier as we spend educating each child. Do anything, anything, anything other than starting a draft.

But there’s a name for this practice of avoiding a traditional draft. It’s called a poverty draft. Because people tend not to want to participate in wars, those who have other career options tend to choose those other options. Those who see the military as one of their only choices, their only shot at a college education, or their only way to escape their troubled lives are more likely to enlist. According to the Not Your Soldier Project:

“The majority of military recruits come from below-median income neighborhoods.

“In 2004, 71 percent of black recruits, 65 percent of Latino recruits, and 58 percent of white recruits came from below-median income neighborhoods. “The percentage of recruits who were regular high school graduates dropped from 86 percent in 2004 to 73 percent in 2006. “[The recruiters] never mention that the college money is difficult to come by – only 16 percent of enlisted personnel who completed four years of military duty ever received money for schooling. They don’t say that the job skills they promise won’t transfer into the real world. Only 12 percent of male veterans and 6 percent of female veterans use skills learned in the military in their current jobs. And of course, they downplay the risk of being killed while on duty.”

In a 2007 article Jorge Mariscal cited analysis by the Associated Press that found that “nearly three-fourths of [U.S. troops] killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.” (Click here to read more)

Black Kos: Remembering The Orangeburg Massacre

[South Carolina has a storied history in our country.  The home state of John Calhoun, who led the pre-civil war political pro-slavery battle, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union and the launching pad for the Fort Sumter assault that began the Civil War. In our own time as the state which glorified the continued presence of the Confederate flag at the state house, South Carolina as carried forward that tradition.  This excellent article retraces the steps from  1968 when, on February 8, a the Orangeburg campus of the University was riddled with the blood of students and activists protesting the Vietnam war. Along with the article are videos and photo exhibits of this largely neglected but immensely important historical event. -- Lew Rosenbaum]

Black Kos, Tuesday’s Chile

by Black Kos

Tue Feb 08, 2011 at 01:00:01 PM PST

A Day of Remembrance: the Orangeburg Massacre

Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47

Today, Feb the 8th is the anniversary of what took place at South Carolina State University (SCSU) in Orangeburg in 1968. Three young men lost their lives, 28 were wounded (most shot in the back) a pregnant young woman lost her baby and a young activist Cleveland Sellers was railroaded into jail.
These are the young men who were murdered:

Henry Smith, Delano Middleton,and Samuel Hammond Jr. Read more by clicking here.

Automation and Robotics News – Jan 30, 2011

[Along with the usual excitement about drone technology and war making, this issue of Automation and Robotics News brings insightful articles about robot job displacement including replacement of entire occupations.  There should be no wonder why Egyptian workers with diplomas cannot find jobs . .

By Larry McCormack, The (Nashville) Tennessean James Scott says the printing industry "is flooded with people looking for jobs."

.and what does that say about the future in the US?  Check out the worker replacement guide below to find out  — Lew Rosenbaum]

Automation and Robotics News–Jan 30, 2011
Tony Zaragoza

Archives: http://academic.evergreen.edu/z/zaragozt/arnews.htm

TERROR, MILITARY, POLICING, SURVEILLANCE

Stats Back Al-Qaida Claim of Drone Pain
Spencer Ackerman, January 27, 2011

Is the U.S. drone war in Pakistan putting the squeeze on al-Qaida’s safe havens? It’s not a question that lends itself to easy answers, given the difficulties of reporting from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where al-Qaida’s top leaders are believed to be. But a new statistical analysis by researchers at Harvard finds that the deadly robots overhead are reaping modest “counterterrorism dividends” — something that al-Qaida itself is complaining about.

Even DHS Is Freaked Out by Spy Drones Over America

Spencer Ackerman January 26, 2011

Police departments around the country are warming up to unmanned spy planes. But don’t expect the Department of Homeland Security to catch drone fever anytime soon. It’s too controversial for an agency already getting hammered for naked scanners and junk-touching.

Return of The ‘Beast of Kandahar’ Stealth Drone
Spencer Ackerman, January 25, 2011

It returns from the skies! Back in 2009, the Air Force confirmed that it had a mysterious stealth drone, the Lockheed RQ-170, flying over Kandahar in Afghanistan — the subject of much online speculation and grainy photography. Now, after something of a lull,  the Secret Projects forum has new pics of the drone that Ares aviation ace Bill Sweetman dubbed “The Beast of Kandahar.”

Will Israel Sell Russia Its Prized Monster Drone?

Spencer Ackerman, January 18, 2011

Israel and Russia: once Cold War enemies, now partners-in-drone. Only the Russians want Israel to let the Kremlin in on its most powerful unmanned spy plane.

INDUSTRY

Fanuc Bets Future on ‘Cranes With Brains,’ Inaba Says

BusinessWeek - Jason Clenfield - Jan 17, 2011

Inaba built Fanuc into an automation empire over three decades, focusing on making the controls that run more than half of the world’s computerized tools. …

Robots Dominate Manufacturing – Take a Look Inside the Making of a Memory Card …

Singularity Hub - Aaron Saenz - Jan 20, 2011

Watching these slick industrial robots do their thing is something else. You have to check out the video below and see what I mean. …

Little Helper Robot Wants to Be Big Help on Factory Floor

POSTED BY: Samuel Bouchard  /  Wed, January 05, 2011

The manufacturing industry in many countries, facing labor shortages and pressed to become ever more efficient, can certainly use a little help. Or how about a Little Helper?

AGRICULTURE AND FOOD PRODUCTION

Robots: Harvest Automation

Robotspodcast.com, January 14th, 2011

In today’s episode we look at a new market in robotics with huge potential, agriculture. With us, <http://www.harvestautomation.com/About.html>Joe Jones, co-founder of Harvest Automation and father of the Roomba.

SERVICE SECTOR

Digging through a high-tech recycling center

January 24, 2011, Martin LaMonica

A waste recycling center uses a series of machines to automatically sort material to enable single-stream recycling for consumers.

Teasdale Quality Foods Achieves Significant Savings by Automating Invoice…

Business Wire (press release) - Jan 25, 2011

Teasdale’s implementation of the EZCM accounts payable automation solution was so successful that, within months, order entries and accounts receivable were …

‘Go to’ clouds of the future, part 1

January 03, 2011, James Urquhart

Two companies will play major roles in the cloud computing transformation in the next decade, and who they are might surprise you–as well as how they will do it.

Robot puts ill teen back in classroom

Chicago Sun-Times - Jan 21, 2011

WICHITA FALLS, Texas — A Texas school district here has teamed up with a communications company to allow a homebound student to attend class via robot.

Restaurant robot delivers the future of food service

DVICE -Adario Strange - Jan 25, 2011

The MK Robot Project produced the robot to assist waiters with an eye towards total autonomy in the future. Although slow and still in need of human …

Robot glider to investigate Australia floodwaters

msnbc.com - Jan 24, 2011

A gliding robot is set to cruise over a stretch of Australian coast that has been devastated by the recent flooding. The glider will be on a reconnaissance …

12 Advances In Medical Robotics

Looking to make an informed robot-buying decision? Here are some options for assisting (or replacing) your employees.

InformationWeek - Jan 29, 2011

Japan, which has a large elderly population, has developed a number of robot-based technologies that appear to help slow down the advent of dementia, …

Robots to fix parking problems in Abu Dhabi

The National - Jan 23, 2011

The “valet” is a mechanical robot, it promises to park or retrieve your car inside 50 seconds – and best of all, parking will be free.

With Home Carpeting Conquered, Robots Eye the Office

Jack Loftus, 1/16/11

The Roomba has conquered the home. No more vacuuming! Now robots must tackle mail delivery and coffee-making tasks in the office. Enter the coldly-named humanoid bot HRP-4. It doesn’t surf the net. It doesn’t gossip. It simply serves.

Sushi Restaurant Uses Sushi Robots and Control Centers to Cut Costs

Casey Chan

Kura, a sushi chain, focuses on efficiency and turning a profit. So much so that they’ve eschewed traditional sushi chefs for sushi robots, a large staff of waiters for conveyor belts and restaurant managers for a control center with video link.

PACKING AND SHIPPING

Adept introduces packaging robot platform

Vision Systems Design - Jan 6, 2011

Built on the USDA-accepted Adept Quattro s650HS robot, the Adept PAC is the first robotic packaging platform designed from the ground up to address the …

ENERGY

Move Over, WALL-E: Puttering Along Power Lines

New York Times (blog) - Matthew L. Wald - Jan 12, 2011

Electric Power Research Institute A prototype of the robot that would monitor transmission lines for problems.

JOB DISPLACEMENT

Tense time for workers, as career paths fade away

USA Today - Rick Hampson - Jan 12, 2011

•Globalization and automation may export or eliminate not only jobs, but entire occupations — ways of life, really. The Labor Department predicts that …

The Robot Economy is Here by Derek Thompson

The Atlantic (blog) - Derek Thompson - Jan 18, 2011

Entrepreneur Marshall Brain–that’s his real name–says robots will become widely available by 2030 and could eventually take nearly half of all jobs in the …

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Automation Touted As Way To Help Fix Immigration System

National Journal - Aliya Sternstein - Jan 13, 2011

Nextgov.com reports that the government can fix the immigration system without legislation, by automating visa processing and by …

Barcelona Seeks Technologies for Automation of Urban Services

TMC Net -Calvin Azuri - Jan 24, 2011

The city of Barcelona invites international solutions providers and research centers who can materialize its automation goals through sensors and other …

The Killer Robot Caucus

01/25/11 WSJ Washington Wire

Members of Congress love their drones, but they want to give all robots their due. So the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Caucus…

BUSINESS OF AUTOMATION AND ROBOTICS

Robotics Industry Is Optimistic in 2011

by Bennett Brumson, Contributing Editor

Posted: 01/11/2011 As the global economy emerges from the Great Recession of 2008-2009, business activity is slowly picking up….

RESEARCH AND NEW DEVELOPMENTS

Japanese Robot Cargo Ship En Route to Space Station

Space.com - Jan 24, 2011

An unmanned Japanese cargo spaceship is closing in on the International Space Station, on track to link up with the orbiting lab Thursday (Jan. 27).

Seoul To Spend US$89.5 Million On Robot Pilot Projects

Bernama - Jan 26, 2011

SEOUL, Jan 27 (Bernama) — The government will spend 100 billion won (US$89.5 million) on robot-related pilot projects to bolster growth of the cutting edge …

After 50 Years Robots Have New Horizons

by Bennett Brumson, Contributing Editor

Posted: 01/11/2011 Advancements in safety systems, end-effectors and sensors are rapidly bringing robotics into new applications…

Building a Super Robust Robot Hand

Erico Guizzo  /  Tue, January 25, 2011

German researchers have built an anthropomorphic robot hand that can endure collisions with hard objects and even strikes from a hammer without breaking into pieces. In designing the new hand system, researchers at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), focused on robustness. They may have just built the toughest robot hand yet. The DLR hand has the shape and size of a human hand, with five articulated fingers powered by a web of 38 tendons, each connected to an individual motor on the forearm.

Cloud Robotics: Connected to the Cloud, Robots Get Smarter

Erico Guizzo  /  Mon, January 24, 2011

Connected to the Cloud, Robots Get Smarter

In the first “Matrix” movie, there’s a scene where Neo points to a helicopter on a rooftop and asks Trinity, “Can you fly that thing?” Her answer: “Not yet.” Then she gets a “pilot program” uploaded to her brain and they fly away. For us humans, with our non-upgradeable, offline meat brains, the possibility of acquiring new skills by connecting our heads to a computer network is still science fiction. Not so for robots. Several research groups are exploring the idea of robots that rely on cloud-computing infrastructure to access vast amounts of processing power and data. This approach, which some are calling “cloud robotics,” would allow robots to offload compute-intensive tasks like image processing and voice recognition and even download new skills instantly, Matrix-style. Imagine a robot that finds an object that it’s never seen or used before—say, a plastic cup. The robot could simply send an image of the cup to the cloud and receive back the object’s name, a 3-D model, and instructions on how to use it, says James Kuffner, a professor at Carnegie Mellon currently working at Google.

Top 20 Robot Videos of 2010

Erico Guizzo  /  Tue, January 11, 2011

Last year was an incredible time for robotics, and to recap the best robot moments of 2010 we decided to compile a list of our favorite videos. Check out below our selection — going from No. 20 to the No. 1 — and let us know what you think.

The Best Robots of CES 2011

One of the best robots of 2010

Erico Guizzo  /  Tue, January 11, 2011

Robots made a big appearance at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. There were home robots, robotic pets, humanoids, telepresence systems, and even a little robot to massage people’s backs. Check out the highlights

In The Presence Of My Enemy: Ron Kovic Remembers Vietnam — on Truthdig

In the Presence of My Enemy: A Reflection on War and Forgiveness

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/in_the_presence_of_my_enemy_a_reflection_20110120/

Posted on Jan 20, 2011

By Ron Kovic 

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over. (Psalms 23:5)

As this, the 43rd anniversary of my wounding in Vietnam approaches, and I once again try to find meaning in that day and the days which were to follow, my thoughts return to the northern bank of the Cua Viet River on Jan. 20, 1968. It is a day that will change my life forever.

I am medevaced from the battlefield to the intensive care ward in Da Nang, Vietnam. For the next several days I struggle with everything inside me to live. The dead and dying are everywhere. I am in and out of morphine every four hours. I awaken to the screams of the wounded all around me—young men like myself, 19, 20-year-olds. I am told by a doctor that I will never walk again, that I will be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.

Still I am grateful to be alive, to still be breathing. I dream of my hometown, of my mother, my father and my backyard where I had played as a boy. All I want to do now is survive, to get out of this place somehow and return home. I completely lose track of time; I don’t know if it is day or night. They keep bringing in the wounded and carting out the dead.

It is the eve of the Tet offensive. A young Vietnamese man who has been severely wounded is brought into the intensive care ward. I can still remember that day clearly—his face, the fear in his eyes. One of the nurses tells me that he is a Viet Cong soldier who had been shot in the chest only a few days before. I look into his eyes as he is carefully placed in his bed directly across from me. “He’s the enemy, the Viet Cong, the ‘Gook,’ the Communist,” I think to myself,  “the one my country sent me to fight and kill. The one I must fear, the one I must hate, the man who is not even human.”

That belief and hatred had been reinforced in Marine Corp boot camp, at Parris Island, S.C., where we had chanted, “I’m going to go to Vietnam. I’m going to kill the Viet Cong!” Perhaps he was the one who had pulled the trigger a few days before, trying to kill me, the one who had shot and paralyzed me from my mid-chest down for the rest of my life. I will never know for sure. Yet as I lie in that hospital bed and our eyes meet, I feel no hatred or animosity toward him. On the contrary, I feel compassion for this man I had been taught to hate, this man who is my enemy.

Each day upon awakening from the morphine I look at him and he looks back at me, our eyes meeting, our gaze a recognition of each other’s presence, our humanity, an understanding that both our worlds have been turned upside down and we are now in a far different place than we had been only a few days before. We reach an equality of sorts in this place of the wounded and dying, that great leveler, where distinctions vanish, where there is no prejudice or hatred, where all becomes equal. We are two wounded young men in late January of 1968 simply trying to survive, two human beings who only want to live.

A sort of unique bond begins to develop between my “enemy” and myself over the next several days, a strange and at first somewhat uneasy camaraderie without words, which is both unsettling and at the same time seems completely natural to me. I do not think of him as my enemy anymore. I begin to care about him more and each time I awaken from the morphine, and with the screams of the wounded and dying all around me, I reach out to him with my eyes, with my heart, as he lies across from me in his bed. I now want him to live just as much as I want to live.

“Keep fighting,” I think as I watch him trying to communicate. We are together in this now, and none of those other things seem to matter anymore. “If you don’t give up I won’t give up,” I think, pressing my lips together, reaching out to him, one human being to another, no longer enemies—two young men struggling to live and go home, leave all of this sorrow behind, back to our families, our homes and our towns where it was simple again, where it was safe.

The days and nights and hours pass. The lights are always on and I never know if it is night or day, and after a while it doesn’t really matter anymore. I awake one day and look across and see the empty hospital bed. He is gone, and the nurse tells me he has died. There is no emotion in her voice. She is very tired, and there will be many more dead and many more wounded before it is all over. I stare at his empty bed for a long time, feeling a sadness I could not fully comprehend.

In the years that have passed, I have often thought about those days on the intensive care ward and about that young Vietnamese man, my “enemy,” who lay in that hospital bed across from me, and how we are all perhaps much closer to each other as brothers and sisters on this Earth than we realize. Despite all our differences, there is, I believe, a powerful connectedness to our humanity—a deep desire to reach out with kindness, with love and great caring toward each other, even to our supposed enemies, and to bring forth “the better angels of our nature”—that is undeniable and cannot be extinguished, even in death.

This, I believe, is the hope of the world. This is the faith we now need in these times.

In the years that followed, I would attempt to write about the war and about that long and often difficult journey home, trying to give meaning to what I and so many others had gone through. There would be other profound moments of reconciliation and forgiveness to come, but almost always my mind would drift back to that young Vietnamese man who laid across from me for those few brief days on the Da Nang intensive care ward in 1968.

AP

A wounded Marine is dragged to an evacuation helicopter by Cpl. James Williams of Craig, Colo., left, and Cpl. Frank T. Guilford of Philadelphia, who sustained a face wound himself when a supply column was attacked on Vietnam’s Van Tuong Peninsula on Aug. 19, 1965.

 

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A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2011 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

Ron Kovic is a Vietnam veteran and author of Born On The Fourth of July

Myth Of American Primacy: How Does The US Compare With Other Countries?

 

Just How Exceptional is the US?

The Myth of American Primacy

By DAVID ROSEN

The New Year season is a good time to reflect on the U.S.’s true standing in the world.

Politicians of every stripe ceaselessly repeat the well-worn clichés about America’s uniqueness and prowess at 4th of July, Memorial Day, election campaign and other patriotic celebrations.

But how exceptional are we?

The following list of some 35 categories compares our standing to other nations.

Sadly, the five categories in which America ranks #1 are Military Expenditure, Incarceration, Marriage, Cosmetic Procedures and Obesity.

Read on …

U.S. Ranked #1

Military Expenditures (2008)

#1 — U.S. = $663.2 billion (4% of GDP)
#2 — China = $98.8 billion (2% of GDP)

Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Military Expenditure Database (2009)

Military Expenditure per GDP (2005)

#1 — Omar = 11.4%
#25 — U.S. = 4.2%

Source: CIA Factbook

Incarceration Rate

#1 — U.S. = 756 per 100,000 (1,613,740 in 2009)
#2 — Russia = 629 per 100,000 (86,9814 in 2006)

Source: King’s College London International Centre for Prison Studies: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Marriage Rate (“crude,” 2007)

#1 — U.S. = 7.4 per 1,000
#7 — Denmark = 6.7 per 1,000

Source: National Healthy Marriage Resource Center

Cosmetic Surgical Procedures (2009)

#1 — U.S. = 1.5 mil
#2 — Brazil = 1.0 million

Source: ISAPS

Obesity Rate

#1 — U.S. = 34% (2008)
#2 — Mexico = 30% (2006)

Source: OECD

Happiness

#1 — Costa Rica = 76.1
#114 — U.S. = 30.7

Source: Happy Planet Index 2.0

Satisfaction with Life Index (2006)

#1 — Denmark = 273.4
#23 — U.S. = 246.7

Source: Adrian White, “A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being: A Challenge To Positive Psychology?”

Subjective Well-Being (2007)

#1 — Denmark = 4.24
#16 — U.S. = 3.55

Source: World Values Surveys

National Economy

Gross Domestic Product (2009)

#1 — European Union = $14.4 trillion
#2 — U.S. = $14.1 trillion

Source: CIA Factbook

Per Capita GDP

#1 — Lichtenstein = $122,100 (2007)
#11 — U.S. = $46,000 (2009)

Source: CIA Factbook

Human Poverty Index (2007-2008, lowest)

#1 — Sweden = 6.3
#17 — U.S. = 15.4

Source: Human Development Index

Current Account Balance (2009)

#1 — China = $297.1 billion
#190 — U.S. = ($378.4 billion)

Source: CIA Factbook

Competitive Economy

#1 — Switzerland
#4 — U.S.

Source: World Economic Forum

Digital Economy

#1 — Sweden
#3 — U.S.

Source: Economist Intelligence Group’s “e-readiness”

Information Technology

#1 — Sweden
#4 — U.S.

Source: World Economic Forum

Environmental Impact

Renewable Electricity Production (2009)

#1 — China = 682.1
#3 — U.S. = 413.2

Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy, June 2009

Environmental Impact (worst to best)

#1 — Brazil
#2 — U.S.

Source: University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute in Australia

CO-2 Emissions (Climate Change Performance Index, of 56 countries, 2008, best to worst)

#2 — Germany = 3.0% share
#55 — U.S. = 21.4% share

Source: Germanwatch

Wellness

Life Expectancy

#1 — Japan = 82.6 years
#38 — U.S. = 78.2 years

Source: United Nations (2005-2010)

Infant mortality (to 1,000 live births, 2009)

#1 — Iceland = 2.9
#33 — U.S. = 6.3

Source: UN Population Division

National Health Systems

#1 — France
#37 — U.S.

Source: World Health Organization

Health Care Expenditures (% of GDP, 2006)

#1 — France = 11.0%
#37 — U.S. = 15.8%

Source: OECD

Overweight Rate

#1 — Mexico = 70% (2006)
#2 — U.S. = 68% (2008)

Source: OECD

Domestic Life

Divorce Rate (of marriages, 2002)

#1 — Sweden = 54.9%
#7 — U.S. = 45.7%

Source: Americans for Divorce Reform

Cohabitation Rate (20 year-old plus, 2007)

#1 — France = 14.4%
#6 — U.S. = 5.5%

Source: National Healthy Marriage Resource Center

Non-Married Childbirths (2007, US and Europe)

#1 — Sweden = 54.7%
#6 — U.S. Denmark = 38.5%

Source: National Healthy Marriage Resource Center

Motherhood Ranking (best to worst)

#1 — Norway
#28 — U.S.

Source: Save the Children “Mothers Index”

Gender Gap (narrowest to widest)

#1 — Iceland
#19 — U.S.

Source: World Economic Forum

Education

Secondary School Graduates (2008)

#1 — S. Korea = 93%
#18 — U.S.= 73%

Source: OECD

College Graduates (25-34) (2007)

#1 — Canada = 55.8%
#12 — U.S. = 40.3%

Source: the College Board

Reading

#1 — Korea = 539
#15 — U.S. = 500

China was divided into three regions (Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macao) and Shanghai and Hong Kong out-performed the U.S).

Source: OECD PISA

Science Education

#1 — Finland = 554
#20 — U.S. = 502

China was divided into three regions (Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macao) and each out-performed the U.S.

Source: OECD PISA

Math Education

#1 — Singapore = 562
#28— U.S. = 487

China was divided into three regions (Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macao) and each out-performed the U.S.

Source: OECD PISA

Telecommunications Services

Internet Users (2008)

#1 — China = 298 million
#2 — U.S. = 231 million

Source: CIA Factbook

Wired Broadband (2010)

#1 — Netherlands = 37.8 per 100 (6.2 mil subscribers)
#14 — U.S. = 27.1 per 100 (183.3 mil subscribers)

Source: OCED

Wireless Broadband (2010)

#1 — Korea = 95.0 per 100 (146.3 mil subscribers)
#9 — U.S. = 44.4 per 100 (136.3 mil subscribers)

Source: OCED

Broadband Data Rate (downsteam)

#1 — Korea = 36.9 Mb/s
#31 — U.S. = 9.9 Mb/s

Source: Speedtest

Broadband Data Rate (upsteam)

#1 — Korea = 20.3 Mb/s
#33 — U.S. = 2.5 Mb/s

Source: Speedtest

Please add you own categories and circulate.

David Rosen is the author of “Sex Scandals America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming” (Key, 2009). He can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com.

 

Supporting the Peace Movement is No Crime

[You may not want to read any further.  It could be dangerous. Worse than any virus that might infect your computer.  You see, the FBI is convinced that reading about peace, reading about opposing war, reading about people organizing to defend themselves against threats to their economic survival are subversive acts.  Lest the FBI descend upon you early one morning, you may consider closing your browser now.  If, however, you believe that if you hide for too long you might be the last one left and in need of help, well, check this out.]

 

Opposing war and occupation is not a crime

By Staff, Fight Back News

January 1, 2011

Read more articles in In-Justice System

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following call from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression.

Join the National Day of Action on Tuesday, January 25, 2011

In December 2010, under the direction of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the FBI delivered 9 new subpoenas in Chicago to anti-war and Palestine solidarity activists – bringing the total number of subpoenaed activists to 23. Patrick Fitzgerald’s office is ordering the 9 to appear at a Grand Jury in Chicago on January 25.

In response, we are calling for protests across the country and around the world to show our solidarity. Hundreds of organizations and thousands of people will be protesting at Federal Buildings, FBI offices, and other appropriate places, showing solidarity with the 9 newly subpoenaed activists and with all the activists whose homes were raided by the FBI.

Fitzgerald’s expanding web of repression already includes the 14 subpoenaed when the FBI stormed into homes on September 24th, carting away phones, computers, notebooks, diaries and children’s artwork. In October, all fourteen activists from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Michigan decided to not participate in the secret proceedings of Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury. Each signed a letter invoking their Fifth Amendment rights. However, three women from Minneapolis – Tracy Molm, Anh Pham and Sarah Martin – are facing re-activated subpoenas. They are standing strong and we are asking you to stand with them – and with the newly subpoenaed nine activists – by protesting Patrick Fitzgerald and his use of the Grand Jury and FBI to repress anti-war and international solidarity activists.

Defend free speech! Defend the right to organize! Opposing war and occupation is not a crime!

**Tell Patrick Fitzgerald to call off the Grand Jury!

**Stop FBI raids and repression!

Please organize a local protest or picket in your city or on your campus and e-mail us at stopfbi@gmail.com to let us know what you have planned.