10 May, 2010 — News Dissector
Goldman Sachs is to “sue for peace” in the fraud trial bought by the Securities Exchange Commission and offer to admit to a lesser charge of negligence if the main charges are dropped.
http://widgets.vodpod.com/w/video_embed/Groupvideo.5610599
10 May, 2010 — SocialistWorker.org
Erik Wallenberg explains how the 1960s environmental movement took shape–and the lessons it offers for today’s struggles.
A picture of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill approaching the coast of Louisiana, taken from the NASA Space Observatory (Jesse Allen)
APRIL 22, 1970, was one of the largest days of protest in U.S. history, including a march in Washington D.C., with the slogan, ‘Give Earth a Chance,’ taken directly from the antiwar slogan of the time, ‘Give Peace a Chance.’
With the passing of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, it’s no small irony that this day might now mark a new anniversary of environmental destruction. What’s looking to become one of the largest single ecological disasters in modern U.S. history–the explosion of BP’s deep-water oil rig and the spewing of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico–only highlights how far we still have to go in creating a world where ecological integrity is a priority.
Some 20 million people are estimated to have participated in some action on the original Earth Day. More than 1,500 colleges held teach-ins across the country. One action, which would seem appropriate for today, included a group pouring oil into a reflecting pool outside Standard Oil’s headquarters in San Francisco.
8 May, 2010 — MRZine-Monthly Review – Telesur
President Morales exhorted workers to rethink, because the latest wage increase of 5 percent is superior to what previous governments offered and, moreover, over the four years under his administration, the wages have risen 40 percent. He called on workers’ unions to compare this wage increase with the current inflation rate of 0.26 percent in Bolivia.
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The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, this Saturday asked workers to “be rational and responsible for the country,” not just think about the wages, after the united Bolivian Workers’ Center (COB) called a strike, demanding higher wage increases than the 5 percent increase offered by the government.
Morales said that some sectors disagreed with the wage increase without taking into account that it is a decent increase if compared with the current inflation rate of 0.26 percent in this Andean country, besides being far superior to what previous governments offered.
“While we have started to improve, I think that some compañeros want everything to go to wages and only wages. We have to invest in Bolivia. Only by investing can we create more jobs,” he said.
The head of state made a point of noting that, during the four years of his administration, the wages have increased by over 40 percent and that he personally made decisions to aim at equality of all, lowering his compensation of 40,000 Bolivian pesos (5,600 dollars) to only 15,000 (2,100 dollars), the rule which was also applied to monthly incomes of ministers and parliamentarians.
Download Coldtype (PDF) May, 2010
INSIDE YOUR 64-PAGE FREE COLDTYPE READER
COVER STORY – LOST IN THE USA: Detroit: Chasing the Vultures Away; Behind the Scenes in Arizona; We’re on the Road to Zimbabwe; Insid e Occupied Washington DC; America: The Grim Truth; The Dream that Became a Nightmare.
PLUS: Unshakable Truth in Haiti; Liberation’s Lies; Trying to Explain the Plunder and the Crime; Zero Tolerance on Workplace Slaughter; the Pentagon Papers are Public this Time; Warmongers of the World, Unite; Putting the Pope on Trial; Anderson Cooper and Class Solidarity; A Grand Adventure; Facing the Threat from the Far Right; Shell and the Irish Fishermen; Collateral Damage of Smart Sanctions; Is Iran really a Threat to World Peace?
THIS MONTH’S READER EXTRA is Waiting For Superban, an excerpt from Radical Middle: Chasing Peace While Apartheid Ruled, Denis Beckett’s new book on the perils of publishing in South Africa under Apartheid,
PLUS FIVE ESSAYS & BOOK EXCERPTS
3. The Big Man, an excerpt from Michela Wrong’s new book on political corruption and greed, It’s Our Turn To Eat
4. Dear Hoe, by Joe Bageant
5. Israel’s Big and Small Apartheid, by Jonathan Cook
6. V For Viability, by T=Rebecca Solnit
7. The Urge To Stay, by Tom Engelhardt
Enjoy! (and if you don’t, let us know why)
Tony Sutton (Editor)
10 May, 2010
“The public and markets want…to see a “government in place”” — Alistair Darling
You didn’t need a visit to the Delphic Oracle in order to figure out what would happen, in any case I doubt that many want to visit Greece these days. So, on 8 May the carve-up began with Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats meeting a team of Tory advisors in order to strike a deal to try and form a ‘coalition’ government. So much for ‘first past the post’ electoral system, designed in pre-historic times to maintain the hegemony of the ruling class. And if a deal can’t be struck with the Tories the next stop will be the Labour Party, though a deal with Labour is unlikely as it would require every party, aside from the Tories that is, to vote with the Lib-Dem/Labour coalition on the substantive policy issues.
Perhaps an analysis of the vote is in order or the ‘first past the post’ system as it is called. As you can see from the stats on the vote tally, there is actually very little between them, so how come seats in Parliament doesn’t reflect the three-way split?
Conservative 306 seats 36.1%
Labour 258 seats 29.0%
Liberal Democrat 57 seats 23.0%
The turnout averaged around 65%, the highest it’s been for decades, a reflection of two things: 1, an unprecedented media onslaught exhorting the punters to vote and 2, an electorate who do want change. But in real terms the numbers above represents much less than two-thirds of the electorate so the Tories actually got about 25% of the potential vote, Labour 20% and the Lib-Dems around 16%, a clear case of a ‘plague on all your houses’ even though it was the highest turnout since the 1970s when turnout was in the 70+ percentile range.
10 May, 2010 — JohnGreyZone
Palestinian civil society has called on Elton John to respect their boycott call and cancel his June 17th concert in Tel Aviv. If he does so, he’ll be joining Santana and Gil-Scott Heron, who recently cancelled their spring concerts in Israel. This video suggests six reasons why Elton should join the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement.
10 May, 2010 — Palestine Think Tank – Al-Ahram Weekly
Israel’s ten-part negotiating strategy with the Palestinians is designed to prolong negotiations as long as possible, while creating unavoidable facts on the ground, writes Mohsen Saleh* (from Al Ahram Weekly)
Israel has a negotiating strategy that is designed to prolong the negotiations, allowing more time for the construction of facts on the ground and putting it in a position to impose its will on the “final-status” talks. In fact, the strategy can be broken down into 10 distinct sub-strategies, done in the article that follows.
Overall, the Israeli strategy is based on conflict management, not conflict resolution, and it seeks to weaken its opponents bit by bit until they are convinced that the only option for a solution is the one made available by Israel — hence Israel’s prolonged negotiation process.
As a result, Israel dismisses the international conference approach to finding a comprehensive settlement, and it has always refused to reveal its trump cards, instead adopting a step-by-step policy in negotiations. This policy breaks agreements into separate tracks and then fragments them further into stages.
10 May, 2010 — MRZine-Monthly Review – olympiarafahmural.org
The Rachel Corrie Foundation and Break the Silence Mural Project co-present
The Mural Speaks
Come celebrate the completion of this dynamic, interactive mural at a free event at 6:00 p.m., Saturday, May 8 at the Labor Temple building, corner of State and Capitol, downtown Olympia. The Mural Speaks event is more than a mural commemoration; it’s a public art project that has galvanized and touched local residents, as well as individuals and groups nationwide and globally. The Mural Speaks is also the finale to the People’s Movement Assembly, May 8th, 9-5, a gathering of Olympia’s grassroots organizers to discuss the US Social Forum and other strategies moving forward (for more information: omjp.net).
The Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project furthers Rachel Corrie’s dream of building a sister city relationship between Rafah, Gaza Strip, Palestine, where she was killed in 2003, and Olympia, Washington, USA, where she grew up and attended The Evergreen State College. “Through collaborative art the mural educates and raises awareness that human rights are universal — everyone deserves a viable life,” says Susan Greene, a clinical psychologist and muralist, who conceived of the project.
10 May, 2010 — MRZine-Monthly Review
“We’ve come to tell the story of hopes that didn’t come true, of promises that weren’t made good. Here are five heroes of perestroika. . . . An idealistic democrat. A noble businessman. A heroic revolutionary. A bitter nationalist. And a woman who has found her own voice. . . . How the Democrat and the Businessman sang like a pair of lovebirds: Freedom! Freedom! How quickly they figured out that there are things more important than freedom. . . . Hatred for authority. That’s the main thing. Revolution, that’s the ticket. After it’s over, we’ll see what kind of revolution it was.”
http://widgets.vodpod.com/w/video_embed/Groupvideo.5606284
more about “Chto Delat, “Perestroika Songspiel”“, posted with vodpod
Film by Chto Delat? (Olga Egorova, Dmitry Vilensky, Natalia Pershina [Gliuklya], and Nikolai Oleinikov; Director: Olga Egorova (Tsaplya); Music: Mikhail Krutik; Screenplay: Tsaplya, Dmitry Vilensky, and Gliuklya; Editing: Tsaplya and Dmitry Vilensky; Camera and Lighting: Artem Ignatov; Sound: Sergei Knyazev; Set Design: Nikolai Oleinikov and Dmitry Vilensky. 2009. Chto Delat/What Is To Be Done? was founded in 2003 by a group of artists and writers from Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, and Petersburg with the goal of merging art, activism, and political theory. See, also, Chto Delat, “Partisan Songspiel: A Belgrade Story.”
The New Dark Age 