Tidbits, Reader Response & Announcements
 July 21, 2012

-  Venezuela to Mercosur
-  Romney's Song (To the tune of "America
    the Beautiful")
-  Re: Baltimore and the LIBOR Scandal: 'We
    Can't Leave Any  Money on the Table'
    (Bruce Smith)
-  Re: The Reckoning - Global Warming's
    Terrifying New Math
    (Laurel MacDowell, Sterling Vinson,
    David S chwartzman)
-  Re: Red-Baiting Camp Kinderland (Yvette Pollack)
-  Important discussion: "Wars on Women"
     Mark Your Calendars  - August 6, 2012
________________

Chavez Confirms Dilma's Invitation to Mercosur
Meeting in Rio

    Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said he had
    talked with his peer from Brazil Dilma Rousseff
    who confirmed the invitation to an
    extraordinary meeting of Mercosur July 31
    in Rio do Janeiro.

Merco Press
July 21, 2012

http://en.mercopress.com/2012/07/21/chavez-confirms-dilma-s-invitation-to-mercosur-meeting-in-rio-on-july-31?utm

"Great news for a new Venezuela and new South
America", said Chavez "Great news for a new
Venezuela and new South America", said Chavez

"I've had a most satisfying chat with President
Dilma, our most beloved companera. She confirmed
I'm invited to the Mercosur summit" said Chavez on
Friday in his [log in to unmask]

The message is followed by a second in which he
asserts "Venezuela to Mercosur! This is really
GREAT! A new Venezuela! A new South America!
New Geopolitics!"

Last Tuesday Chavez confirmed he would be
travelling to Rio do Janeiro July 31 for the formal
incorporation of Venezuela as full member of
Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay),
even when Paraguay was suspended from the group
last June following the removal of Fernando Lugo,
who was replaced by Federico Lugo.

Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay at the end of last
June in a controversial decision agreed to suspend
Paraguay and admit the incorporation of Venezuela
which was pending for several years and blocked
precisely by the Paraguayan Senate. All Mercosur
decisions are supposed to be taken by consensus.

==========

-  Romney's Song
(To the tune of "America the Beautiful")

O beautiful and legal too,
Tax havens I adore.
My money sits with interest
Upon a tax-free shore.

America, America,
You've been so great to me.
You let me keep my tax returns
For no one else to see.

Seymour Joseph

==========

-  Re: Baltimore and the LIBOR Scandal: 'We Can't
Leave Any Money on the Table'

Maybe just the tip of the iceberg.  If this
investigation goes ahead, where might it lead?  I
want to end with "Enjoy," but " Read it and weep
may be more appropriate;" the dastardly deeds of
these pirates of finance need to be exposed but
might mean more suffering for poor slobs like us.

Bruce Smith

==========

-  Re: The Reckoning - Global Warming's Terrifying
New Math

We all owe a debt to Bill McKibben for talking
straight about climate change. It is scary to see how
accurate climatologists' predictions are and how
fast climate change is happening. We are in a bit of
a canundrum as he says. How do we motivate
people to insist that companies and politicians act
responsibly, which they are not doing. Coinciding
with the climate crisis is a financial crisis, which is
getting more attention. The roots of both are the
same. There has been an enormous shift in wealth
to the top 1% around the world, partly because
enormous companies have consolidated into global
multinationals that are richer than most
governments, are totally unaccountable and
oriented to profit alone without regard to their
social or environmental impacts. This system will
implode just as the age of the robber barons in the
1920s crashed and resulted in the Great
Depression of the 1930s. There has to be a systemic
change on several levels, not only to create a
sustainable socie ty, but to create a more equal
society.

How one motivates people to act it is hard to say.
But young people are beginning to try through social
media, the international Occupy movement, the
international links being made by the labour
movement, the work of many environmentalists, the
emergence of more Green parties.

There is no choice but to keep working, articulating
the irresponsibility of the fossil fuels and other
industries and the corporations that dominate them,
and the need for new politicians who will represent
the public interest which is to deal with climate
change and at the same time create a more equal
society. The neocons have been in power since the
80s. It is time for a 'green era' to begin if we are to
survive. Even as I write, the Arab spring continues
where people are trying to overthrow dictators. The
results have been mixed but there is no doubt that
when people decide they have had enough, they are
very powerful. Hold that thought! Power to the
people!

Laurel MacDowell

===

With luck, we'll be dead before it gets much worse.
But our children will suffer more than we.

Sterling Vinson

===

McKibben's article could not more timely,
highlighting the growing danger of our world
plunging into irreversible catastrophic climate
change (C3) if rapid and radical reduction of carbon
emissions is not implemented.  He is right to point
to the fossil fuel industry as an enemy, but I find his
focus both too narrow and too broad,  too narrow
because this industry is an integral component of
the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), more
precisely the Military Industrial Fossil Fuel, Nuclear,
State Terror Complex. And too broad because he
lumps all fossil fuels together with the main focus
on hydrocarbons (petroleum), rather than
prioritizing the rapid phase out the consumption of
coal and non-conventional petroleum (mainly tar
sands and fracked gas).

Why focus on MIC, more specifically on militarism
and the imperial agenda of the US and other major
capitalist countries in connection with the threat of
C3? McKibben has long ignored this issue, in
contrast to other prominent environmentalist such
as Lester Brown and Jeffrey Sachs who have called
for big cuts in the military budget. I doubt it is
because the Pentagon is "going green", i.e., boosting
biofuels and solar power in Afghanistan.  As
Michael Klare put it the Pentagon is the "oil
protection service", the military arm to make the
world safe for transnational capital. Most critically,
the imperial agenda blocks the global cooperation
and equity required to prevent C3, witness the
failure of Durban and Rio 20.  The U.S./Israeli war
threats to Iran and continuing U.S.-led
demonization of Chavez and Correa are all about
regime change to widen the control of MIC over
global hydrocarbon reserves. And there are wider
targets for what should be called the "resource
protectio n service", including rare earth metals.
lithium and coltan used in aerospace and wind
technologies.

Yes, McKibben does recognize that "even if you
could force the hand of particular companies, you'd
still have to figure out a strategy for dealing with all
the sovereign nations that, in effect, act as fossil-
fuel companies".  But all sovereign nations are not
equal with respect to exerting power in the present
world. Is Venezuela really the equivalent of the U.S.?

And now returning to his too broad focus advocated
in this article.  To be sure, McKibben's heroic efforts
to block the X-L Keystone Pipeline identified big
carbon-footprint tar sands as a "game-changer for
the climate" (Jim Hansen's words). In this article
McKibben urges "effective action" that  "would
require actually keeping most of the carbon the
fossil-fuel industry wants to burn safely in the soil,
not just changing slightly the speed at which it's
burned". But only conventional petroleum can
supply the energy needed to create a wind/solar
power infrastructure to replace the fossil fuel-
dominated existing supply of global energy, while
simultaneously minimizing future carbon emissions
bringing us closer to C3. Coal and unconventional
petroleum (tar sands, fracked gas and oil shale)
have significantly higher carbon emissions per
energy delivered  and should be rapidly phased out.
And this is exactly what is on the agenda of 350.org.

McKibben points out "even if we stopped increasing
CO2 now, the temperature would likely still rise
another 0.8 degrees, as previously released carbon
continues to overheat the atmosphere."   Hence,
carbon sequestration with transfer from the
atmosphere to the soil and crust is imperative to
reduce atmospheric CO2 levels below the safe limit
of 350 ppm (hence "350.org").  In our own study,
we show that a full wind/solar transition is
achievable in no more than 30 years with the
consumption of less than 40% of the proven
reserves of conventional petroleum, while
supplying sufficient energy to sequester CO2 from
the atmosphere using a combination of global
agroecologies increasing soil carbon storage and
solar-powered-industrial-burial of carbonate in the
crust.  This approach would maximize the
possibility of reaching a safe atmospheric CO2
level before the tipping points to C3  are reached as
well as ending energy poverty in the global South,
reaching a rough minimum delivery necessary for
state of the science life expectancy for everyone on
Earth (for details go to www.solarUtopia.org).

Finally, McKibben points to a strategy: "If people
come to understand the cold, mathematical truth -
that the fossil- fuel industry is systematically
undermining the planet's physical systems - it might
weaken it enough to matter politically. Exxon and
their ilk might drop their opposition to a fee-and-
dividend solution; they might even decide to become
true energy companies, this time for real." And while
McKibben quotes George Monbiot, here is something
more relevant to this issue from this Guardian
columnist, writing about Rio 2012:

"World leaders at Earth summits seem more
interested in protecting the interests of plutocratic
elites than our environment... 'To see Obama
backtracking on the commitments made by Bush
the elder 20 years ago is to see the extent to which a
tiny group of plutocrats has asserted its grip on
policy.'...The environmental crisis cannot be
addressed by the emissaries of billionaires. It is the
system that needs to be challenged, not the
individual decisions it makes. [bold added] In this
respect the struggle to protect the biosphere is the
same as the struggle for redistribution, for the
protection of workers' rights, for an enabling state,
for equality before the law.... Without mass
movements, without the kind of confrontation
required to revitalize democracy, everything of value
is deleted from the political text. But we do s not
mobilise, perhaps because we are endlessly seduced
by hope. Hope is the rope from which we all hang."
(June 18, 2012)

I submit that McKibben is not being as radical as
reality itself.  Will Exxon go green because of
political pressure? Or are the requirements for a
robust Global Green New Deal higher, the actual
transfer of power from the 0.1% to the 99.9%,
including nationalization of the energy industries.
The political requirement for realizing the "other
world that is possible" is transnational,
multidimensional class struggle.  Class struggle in
the 21st Century transcends the narrower
conceptions of the 19th and 20th centuries centered
around the activity of the industrial working class.
21st Century class struggle encompasses the
creative activity of the 99%. It is profoundly
democratic, aimed at expanding democracy to all
spheres, political, economic and social. Maybe
McKibben is thinking along these lines already, but
he is not yet willing to advocate this path. But it
should be ours.

David Schwartzman Washington DC

==========

-  Re: Thank You, Daily Caller, for Red-Baiting Camp
Kinderland

And thank you, Katie, for this wonderful letter
which brought back so many memories to me of my
Kinderland experiences  as a pre-pubescent camper
there in about 1935.

I firmly believe I can owe a life time devoted to
fighting for "Menschlich causes" to my time well
spent there.

I'm delighted to hear that you have made a film
about this and would like to know how I can obtain
a copy to share with my children, grandchildren and
great grandchildren.

Yvette Pollack  aka bubayvie

==========

-  Important discussion on the "Wars on Women"--
MARK YOUR CALENDARS  - August 6, 2012

The Socialist Education Project (SEP) of the
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and
Socialism (CCDS) presents an open 2012
Teleconference on:

THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE WARS
ON WOMEN

Monday, August 6, 2012, 8:30 to 10 p.m. Eastern,
7:30 to 9 pm Central time, 6:30 to 8pm Mountain,
5:30 to 7pm Pacific time.

Teleconference.  To join see instructions at the end
of this email. Free and open to all

Since the victory of reaction in the 2010 elections,
women have become the central target of legislative
assaults in Congress and state legislatures.

-Legislation has passed removing government
funding for reproductive health services.

- In 2/3 of the states legislation has been
introduced restricting or limited women's right to
choose.

- Some states have introduced laws requiring
draconian medical examinations before women may
secure abortions.

-And legislative campaigns have been launched to
restrict or eliminate the use of contraceptive devices.

-These specific and targeted campaigns against
women are paralleled by attacks on rights to health
care, union representation, fair wages, and healthful
and safe working conditions that disproportionately
affect women.

The long years of struggle to achieve equal rights for
women are being undermined by the same
reactionary forces who want to reverse human
progress for the entire working class. And as a result
it is no accident that a majority of women identify
with more progressive political candidates then
men.

This teleconference will discuss the nature and root
causes of the "wars on women" and what can be
done to challenge them. Particular attention will  be
given to how the struggles for women's liberation
can be more effectively incorporated in the
campaign to build a progressive majority.

Speakers:

-  Leslie Cagan, long-time political activist in civil
rights, anti-war campaigns, women's rights, and gay
rights. She has served as a chair of United for Peace
and Justice and co-chair of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.
Cagan has also been on the board of Pacifica Radio.

-  Mildred Williamson, HIV/AIDS, Section Chief,
Illinois Department of Public Health, holds a Ph.D
in Social Work from the University of Chicago, and
has been a long-time Chicago women's and civil
rights political activist. She is a member of the
National Coordinating Committee of the Committees
of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

After short presentations the speakers will respond
to questions and lead discussion.

To join:

Topic: THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE
WARS ON WOMEN Date: Monday, August 6, 2012
Time: 8:30 pm, Eastern Daylight Time (New York,
GMT-04:00) Meeting Number: 809 898 242 Meeting
Password: jan123

To join the online meeting (Now from mobile devices!)

1.
Go to
https://ccds.webex.com/ccds/j.php?ED=181368592&UID=0&PW=NMGNiY2JjOTA4&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D

2.
If requested, enter your name and email address.

3. If a password is required, enter the meeting password: jan123 4. Click "Join".

=====

To join the audio conference only: Call-in toll
number (US/Canada): +1-408-600-3600 Access
code:809 898 242

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