Tidbits for June 18, 2012
Announcements and a Response

1. Voices for Peace Concert
2. New at Online University of the Left
3. Greek Elections

===
1.
VOICES FOR PEACE CONCERT

Featuring:

Vukani Mawethu Choir, Emmit Powell & the Gospel Elites,
Earth Amplified, Country Joe, and Maria Muldar -

Friday, June 22 7:30pm 
Scottish Rite Center in Oakland
1547 Lakeside Drive, at Lake Merritt.

http://oakland-scottishrite.org)

Exciting concert, part of a two-day kick-off for Summer
of Peace 2012, a 3-month global celebration of and call
to action for inner and outer Peace.

Tickets are $25/pp and can be purchased at
www.voicesforpeace.eventbrite.com or at the door.

This concert is a benefit for Oakland's Urban Peace
Movement.

We hope to see you there!

Pat Pat Jameson-Amwele Exec.Dir. / Bus.Mgr. Vukani
Mawethu Choir

www.vukani.com

===
2.
New at Online University of the Left
June 18, 2012
 
Today the Online University of the Left (OUL)
http://ouleft.org/ site starts a new feature, a blog.
Unlike most blogs, it is not the 'Home Page', but you
can access it from the tab on the homepage, or bookmark
it. The idea is to post interesting articles--either
your own or those you pick--send them to me, and I post
them for discussion. You can comment on any post by
clicking the 'comments' line near the post title, but
to keep out spammers, you have to give a name and email
with your comment.

I've started us off with a new piece on 21st Century
Socialism, by Marta Harnecker, featured in Science and
Society.

We also now have properly functioning buttons to
subscribe or make one time contributions. It's very
helpful to start lending a hand here, because we're
getting to the end of our initial startup grant. So
make use of the Paypal buttons!  Marxists, I'm sure you
will recall, appreciate the need for an economic base
as well as a superstructure!

We also now have a Facebook Page linked to our site.
This is to help promote the project among the millions
of young people on Facebook. You can get to it by
clicking the button under the 'Contact Us' tab. Or
simply search for 'Online University of the Left'
inside Facebook.  The FB page regularly posts notes
about new features and helpful hints on how to use the
OUL, and we a slowly building a wider circle of
'Friends.' If you haven't 'friended' us yet, do so, and
pass it on to others.

We will also try a 'Live Class' next week on the
Climate Change Crisis. I'll post the details when they
are ready.

So far, nearly 2000 people have visited the site, with
one-third of them making repeat visits. This is not bad
for just getting started, but we really want to
increase this by a factor of 10 or more.

Finally, the suggestion box is always open. Send me
links to your stuff!

Carl Davidson

[log in to unmask]

===
3.
Greek Elections
From: www.michaelmunk.com
Date: June 18, 2012

According to the BBC, "the victory was delivered not
only by [the rightist] New Democracy party machine, but
by the hundreds of thousands of liberal and socialist
voters who gritted their teeth and voted for the
conservatives to stop Syriza. I heard stories of
"progressive" middle-class people - with antagonisms
toward ND going back generations - flying back from
remote islands just to vote for  [ND leader]Samaras."

Syriza is a recent alliance of eurocommunists,
feminists, ecologists and betrayed socialists from the
former ruling "socialist"party Pasok. The "moderate"
Democratic Left party (which is expected to support the
rightist government) and the sectarian Communist party
(which will not) are its rivals on the left.

Straight proportional representation would have given
the ND only 80 seats for its final 29.9% of the popular
vote. On the other hand, if Syriza (26.7%)  had picked
up another 3.2% from another rump of Pasok's
"socialist" 12.5% , the Democratic Left  (6.1%) or the
CP (4.5%), it would have been rewarded with the free
bonus of 50 seats as the most popular party.

___________________________________________

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