Tidbits, Reader Comments, Announcements - August 20, 2012

* Re: Friday Nite Videos (Eda Hallinan)
* Re: AFL-CIO Demands `Second Bill of Rights' (Paul Krehbiel)
* Re: South African Massacre (Sandra Blakely)
* Re: Ralph Nader on 'Paul Ryan's Vicious Budget' (Sherwood
  Ross, Jolivette Anderson, Laurel MacDowell)
* Re: Moral Drones and the New York Times (Leonard J. Lehrman)
* Re: The US and Honduras (Jean Damu)
* Re: Neanderthal sex (John Allison)
* Chicago and the Fight for the Future of Education - They
  need your help (LaborNotes)
* 2012 November Vigil: Close the SOA - School of the Americas
  November 16 - 18, 2012
* French CP audio-visual documents now available to all

==========

* Re: Friday Nite Videos

Being busy all the time (sigh, I don't know why), I have never
watched and did not quite understand what Friday Nite videos
were....in spite of the great title.

Practicing avoidance on doing something I don't want to
do....I decided to clic on this weeks offerings.....watched
every one of them and will never miss it again. It is a great
idea.

I will be sending this to everyone I know.

Eda Hallinan

==========

* Re: AFL-CIO Demands `Second Bill of Rights'

Why are you posting news from CNS News? Its a far-right
organization. In this article about an important labor
initiative, CNS News uses the right's code words, such as "Big
Labor." And since CNS News readers are right-wingers, the
comments are a steady stream of the most vicious anti-labor
slanders and attacks on labor. For Portside readers who
aren't familiar with CNS News they will be getting this right-
wing stuff on the Portside site. The AFL-CIO's 2nd Bill of
Rights is an important initiative that deserves wide
publicity, but not on the CNS News site. Can you find
something on this initiative from the AFL-CIO, or other labor
or progressive organization, or even the mainstream media that
gives a straight-forward accounting? Thanks much.

Paul Krehbiel

==========

* Re: South African Massacre

The Platinum industry walks hand in hand down the aisle with
the diamond industry. What did the world expect? Oppression of
Africans by colonizers of the vast land and mineral resources
of the continent never stopped, it just changed the way the
game is played.

Sandra Blakely

==========

* Re: Ralph Nader on 'Paul Ryan's Vicious Budget'

Congratulations, Ralph Nader! This is far and away the best
analysis written yet on the Ryan Budget. Thanks!!

Sherwood Ross

===

What's left of the donkey is its ass with a foot rising up to
kick it!

Jolivette Anderson
Born-and-Raised Democrat

===

I completely agree with Nader. In another era, people would
have called Ryan's corporatist philosophy fascism. The
Democratic Party needs to make it clear to the electorate how
destructive this approach is to the vast majority of the
people (the 99%), to American democracy, and to the future of
the nation.Such hard-hitting articles are useful but critics
need to take to the air waves and use social media to get the
warning across.

Laurel MacDowell

==========

* Re: Moral Drones and the New York Times

Partly in response to this excellent, perceptive article, Joel
Shatzky and I have written a song called "The Man Who Controls
the Drones." A performance is viewable on YouTube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8cgrzXeFfw&feature=youtu.be
The text is included in the notes.

Admiringly and respectfully submitted -

Leonard J. Lehrman

==========

* Re: The US and Honduras

"Is the US lending financial support to a police force and
army linked to a campaign of extra-judicial killings?"

Shocking, I say to you. Just shocking. Who ever could have
imagined such a thing?

Jean Damu

==========

* Re: Neanderthal sex

Judging from the current crop of Republican presidential
candidates; Paul Ruinn and Mutt Wrongski, I'd say there are
still considerable presence among us of hybrids of humans and
Neanderthals.

John Allison, Anthropologist,
Eureka! Northwest Coast of North America.

==========

* Chicago and the Fight for the Future of Education - They
need your help

The Chicago Teachers Union is battling Mayor 1% Rahm Emanuel
over the future of public education, not just in the city but
across the country.

They need your help.

The Chicago teachers are fighting for high-quality education
for students in all zip codes in the Windy City. They're
advocating for smaller classes, nurses and social workers in
schools, a relevant and rounded curriculum, and a contract
that respects the 58 hours of work they put in every week.

Emanuel and his unelected school board, on the other hand,
have continued to cut funding for much-needed programs and
services while giving out millions in tax breaks to
corporations and cronies. They push standardized testing and
charter schools.

As students head back to school, the Chicago Teachers Union is
gearing up for a potential strike. The outcome of this fight
will set the tone for struggles over public education to come.

Labor Notes is helping sponsor solidarity events where you can
hear from Chicago teachers and build support for them. Here's
how to join in:

1. Come to a solidarity event. CTU members will be explaining
why their fight is so important for the future of education
and how supporters can help.

Madison
Wednesday, August 22 at 7 p.m.
Labor Temple, Room 201B
1602 S. Park Street

New York
Thursday, August 23 at 6:30 p.m.
Joseph S. Murphy Institute, Room 18 C/D
25 W. 43rd Street, Manhattan

Oakland
Thursday, August 23 at 6:30pm
Francesco's Restaurant, 8520 Pardee Dr.

Milwaukee
Monday, August 27 at 4:30 p.m.
Milwaukee Teachers Education Association office
5130 West Vliet Street

2. Get your local to pass a resolution in support of the CTU.
Email Theresa Moran at [log in to unmask] for sample text
or more information.

3. Donate to the Chicago Teachers Union Solidarity Fund. The
CTU is asking both unions and individuals to contribute. The
money will help the CTU print educational materials,
coordinate rallies, send members to speaking events, and
distribute information on the union's fight for quality public
education in Chicago.
https://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4013/c/468/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=7204

Read more at Labor Notes about the battle Chicago teachers are
waging to provide basic services and defend a rounded
curriculum, push back against the billionaires' agenda for
schools, and mobilize members, parents, and community allies.

==========

* 2012 November Vigil: Close the SOA - School of the Americas

November 16 - 18, 2012
http://soaw.org/

Join the SOA Watch movement at the gates of Fort Benning in
Columbus, Georgia, this November 16-18, as we continue to
speak truth to power and demand a real change in US foreign
policy!

As we converge each year at the gates of Fort Benning,
Georgia, we are creating a strong community and a powerful
force that will close the SOA, end U.S. militarization in the
Americas and dismantle the broader system of oppression of
which the SOA is a part. Our movement unites vast sectors of
society, including union workers, immigrants, people of faith,
anarchists, pacifists, students, torture survivors, and many
others. We recognize the existence of the School of the
Americas as an example of the pervasive culture of
militarization. We stand together with many justice movements
in our joint struggle for social change.

We stand with the prison abolitionists, as so many of our own
prisoners of conscience have come to understand the criminal
injustice system through harsh prison sentences. We stand with
immigrants fighting deportation, many of whom have fled the
repression in their own countries. For 520 years, the
indigenous peoples of the Americas have resisted the many
manifestations of economic and military violence perpetrated
against their communities.

The SOA, repressive police forces, coups and economic slavery
are the continuations of those policies - in Latin America and
right here at home. This year, as we demand money for human
needs and not for military repression, we converge at Fort
Benning in the largest demonstration following the November
elections. We know that not politicians but only continuous
and consistent grassroots organizing will bring about the
change we need in the world.

http://soaw.org/

==========

* French CP audio-visual documents now available to all

Precious Documents Available to All
French Communist Party Films

Translated Friday 17 August 2012, by Gene Zbikowski and
reviewed by Bill Scoble

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article2119

The audio-visual collections of the French Communist Party and
of the democratic and labor movements have been put together
on the cinearchives.org website. This precious data base,
which is open to everyone, has now been updated to provide
better and clearer access.

The website's mission is simple: to preserve and promote these
archives. With over 1200 audiovisual sources, Ciné-Archives is
a goldmine for historians and people who are interested in a
wide range of topics. Do you want to learn about the Second
World War? The archives contain exceptional films about the
mobilization of Resistance fighters and the Liberation of
France. The same goes for the May 1968 events - audio-visual
documents are an obvious choice for eye-witness accounts of
the worker and student ferment in that month of May, and allow
younger generations to understand for themselves the
effervescence of that unique situation.

Since 1928, the French Communist Party has been producing and
collecting many films and audio-visual documentaries. They
were made for different reasons - to reinforce social
movements, to communicate the Party's theories and explain the
measures it wanted to realize, but above all out of cultural
motivations, and more generally as a contribution to History.
Indeed, these documents are essential historical sources. The
archives allow the visitor to undertake a veritable voyage in
time.

The oldest film documents the Fête de Garches, the festival
that replaced the Fête de l'Humanité between 1925 and 1932.
The prefect of Paris, having refused to allow the French
Communist Party to use the parks under his control, the Union
of Paris Trade Unions (C.G.T.U.) organized the event.
Nevertheless, l'Humanité had a stand which you can see at the
very beginning of the excerpt that is on-line. The film then
documents all of the activities on offer at the festival and
proves the success of the event by showing the large number of
participants.

The Internet site offers a great many films produced between
1928 and the present day. Some are grouped together by theme.
Each of the thematic collections, such as "the Popular Front,"
"The Spanish Civil War," and "May 1968," offers, in addition
to the films, an explanation of the historical context,
precise chronological dates, and a document composed of
photographs and short biographies of the personalities seen in
the excerpts. The Internet user has all the information
necessary to understand the chosen video document, both in the
political and in the wider context. The thematic grouping
"Fête de l'Humanité" will be available from September 2012.

These eyewitness documents on values not only allow the viewer
to learn about the great political events, but also to
understand the "counter-cultural" role played by the French
Communist Party in large-scale mobilizations such as strikes
or anti-war struggles, notably against the Vietnam War.

Everyone will find what he or she is looking for on this new
website and will be able to spend hours going through this
fraction of our contemporary history from an angle that was
long inaccessible to the general public.

[thanks to James H. Williams for sending this to Portside to
share with our readers.]

==========

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