Got some time for an interesting read. This 68 page piece PDF (Introduction to the Apocalypse) is, well, you make think it's crackpot, you may think it's genius. I've read about half of it so far and I'm still trying to figure out what I think. Is it revolutionary, reactionary, politics, environmental, communist, anarchist, what the hell is it? It is too long to reprint here, the URL is http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2009/12/02/apocalypse_read.pdf

They Call This A Plan?

The Senate has spoken with the voice of thousands of lobbyists. If you like private healthcare and insurance, you'll like this great new plan.

From the California Nurses Association

A Patient’s View of the Senate Christmas Healthcare Gift

Posted by Donna Smith - S... on December 24, 2009 - 6:16am

By Donna Smith

So, all the great fanfare and all the king’s horses. The great and almighty U.S. Senate has spoken. I will have to buy private health insurance – forever, amen. The defective product that has left me wanting for real healthcare for all of my adult life is now a step closer to being the law of the land.

A lump of Christmas coal all polished up with sparkling rhetoric.

Here’s what the Chicago Tribune said this week, and I agree:

On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune published an exhaustive front-page analysis by Northwestern University's Medill News Service and the Center for Responsive Politics of how it was done. The main culprit: "a revolving door between Capitol Hill staffers and lobbying jobs for companies with a stake in health care legislation."

The study found that 13 former congressmen and 166 congressional staffers were actively engaged in lobbying their former colleagues on the bill. The companies they were working for -- some 338 of them -- spent $635 million on lobbying. It was money extremely well spent -- delivering a bill that, by forcing people to buy a shoddy product in a market with no real competition, enshrines into law the public subsidy of private profit.

As we approach the end of Obama's first year in office, this public subsidizing of private profit is becoming something of a habit. It is, after all, exactly what the White House did with the banks. Just as he did with insurance companies, Obama talked tough to the bankers in public, but, when push came to shove, he ended up shoving public money onto their privately held balance sheets.

This is not just bad policy, it's bad politics.

Now, back to my own thoughts as a patient:

I went broke while carrying health insurance, a disability insurance policy and a small healthcare savings account. And if I get sick under this mess of a plan, it will happen to me again. Little has changed except that millions more of my fellow citizens will join my ranks.

How does it happen to insured people under this plan? Easy. Step-by-torturous-step. Slowly. Like water-torture.

1. Buy health insurance at work or on the new exchange;

2. Avoid using insurance due to co-pays, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximum exposures – not to mention lost work time and the worry about losing one’s job in a tough economy;

3. If symptoms are noticed, treat by internet medical site suggestions and over-the-counter drugs until no other option but going to a doctor are available;

4. Attempt to make appointment with doctor but first find one who accepts both new patients and your insurance;

5. Go to doctor and pay co-pay up front before ever speaking to anyone about medical problem;

6. Sit in outer waiting room for as long as required, missing work and worrying;

7. Sit in exam room waiting for doctor for as long as required;

8. See doctor for five or six minutes, if lucky, during which time you will either be prescribed some expensive drug to fix a problem the doctor isn’t sure you have, referred to another doctor who may have a month or two wait for appointments, be directed to get some tests done you aren’t sure your insurance will allow or pay for, and do it all sitting in your underwear or less;

9. Leave medical office owing more than what you thought your insurance and co-pay advertised (and never get an explanation for how that is possible) and never sure if this experience was much different than being to a used car lot where the sales folks have assessed your financing mechanism before showing you anything at all and then only show you what fits the financing not what you need or want;

10. In the alternative, if you collapse or wait until symptoms get so severe that going for an office appointment is impossible, go to an emergency room – repeat steps five through eight – and either be admitted to the hospital if your insurance is adequate and you have any available sick-time from work (if not, beg for drugs and to be released) or go to number nine.

11. Need a dentist? Too bad. Have dental insurance? Still too bad. You might get a cleaning and some x-rays, but getting the care you may or may not need will be again totally related to your ability to pay whatever portion of the dental work is not covered (and amazingly, every penny of what dental insurance will cover will be eaten up by whatever problem you may or may not have) – in the alternative, avoid dentists or just pull teeth as they go bad;

12. When the bills roll in, try to pay some after trying to find out how you can possible owe hundreds if not thousands more than the insurance policy you have indicates is possible;

13. When the collectors call to collect all of the balances due, try to negotiate payments but endure threats of lawsuit, garnishment and worse as the collectors report back to the doctors you saw for a few moments in number eight;

14. Try to get your meds – if too costly, go without;

15. Try to get well – if you cannot, go back to work;

16. Try to act like this is all wonderful and you are grateful to have any insurance at all;

17. Get sued by a collection agency for a doctor bill or hospital bill you cannot cover;

18. Sell your house and use whatever proceeds you have to try to pay some of the debts;

19. Collectors for the doctors and hospitals are not happy if you don’t pay it all in full and up-front most of the time;

20. Feel stress, fear, anguish – but don’t gripe and don’t show it at work – buck it up, chump;

21. Sell keepsakes and anything valuable to try to stay afloat;

22. Stress, more stress. Fear to answer the phone. Friends and family fall away as they don’t want you to ask to borrow money;

23. Keep working – sick or not, keep working or you’ll lose that damn insurance if you cannot pay the premium – or you’ll be back out on the exchange trying to buy another policy that is cheaper and even worse;

24. Watch your elected officials claim victory and history as they work to make sure your kids and grandkids must suffer the same fate if they need healthcare in America;

25. Have a Merry Christmas, so says your U.S. Senate.

Don’t think this can happen to you because it hasn’t yet? Count your blessings this Christmas.

I'd really like the gift of healthcare. Medicare for all, single-payer healthcare would remove so much of this awful process. That would be a gift.

Climate Imperialism

Climate capitalism or climate imperialism, you can call it what you will, but it's what the Obama Administration has endoresed at the Copenhagen Climate Disaster. Africa, of course, is first up to pay the price.

US Reaps Trillions While Condemning Africa To Climate Catastrophe

By Glen Ford

Created 12/22/2009 - 18:57

Printer-friendly version [1]

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

[2]

With humanity at risk and Africa facing “incineration,” the United States opted for “disaster capitalism” at the global climate conference, last week. “President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Copenhagen to end any possibility of a global agreement on greenhouse gasses that the rich nations would be bound to respect.”

Obama, US Continue To Reap Trillions and Condemn Africa To Climate Catastrophe

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The United States went to Copenhagen intent on imposing a ‘disaster capitalism’ regime on the poor nations of the planet.”

The United States, having reaped more benefits than any other nation from the industrial warming of planet Earth, now seeks to turn the resulting global disaster to its own advantage – or, more precisely, to the advantage of the U.S.-based, amoral, world-annihilating corporate class.

In Copenhagen last week, the Obama administration destroyed any chance of averting catastrophe in Africa and the developing nations of the global South. Temperatures will be allowed to rise 2 degrees Celsius on average, which translates to three and a half degrees in the hotter latitudes. As a consequence, said Archbishop Desmond Tutu [3], Africa is the be condemned “to incineration and no modern development.”

What development does occur would be at the pleasure of the United States and Europe. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Copenhagen to end any possibility of a global agreement on greenhouse gasses that the rich nations would be bound to respect. Obama administered the coup de grace to the Kyoto accords, extinguishing all hope of an international agreement that respects the rights of all nations to develop their economies within a binding framework that protects everyone’s interests. Instead, the United States imposed its own take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum: accept the inevitability of catastrophe in Africa and across the global South. And also accept that the U.S. and its corporations will dictate how the developing world will be allowed to grow its economies. Refuse, and the uppity poor countries will be cut off from the rich man’s “aid.”

“While Africa burns, Washington gives up nothing in terms of binding commitments.”

This is “disaster capitalism” in its most hellish form. The term was coined by political writer Naomi Klein in 2005 [4], to describe how the International Monetary Fund induced or exploited economic disasters in the Third World and then forced poor countries to surrender their national sovereignty in order to be eligible for loans and “aid” from the rich countries. The aim was to make it impossible for poor countries to control their own economic and political destinies.

The United States went to Copenhagen intent on imposing a “disaster capitalism” regime on the poor nations of the planet. While Africa burns, Washington gives up nothing in terms of binding commitments. Instead, the U.S. offers – but does not guarantee, or even promise – to create a special fund, possibly eventually amounting to $100 billion, from which “aid” will be doled out. The rich nations will determine who gets a piece of the global warming aid pie, and under what terms. The Americans insist that some of the money will come from private sources, rich corporations that are answerable to no one but their own greedy selves – which means western businessmen will determine how Africa and the global South will be allowed to develop under conditions of climate change. The U.S. reserves the right to make separate deals with favored nations, that is, countries whose leaders surrender their national destiny to the developmental wishes of the West.

Disaster capitalism holds the most vulnerable of the world’s people hostage to imperial blackmail at the hour of the planet’s greatest peril. It is a crime against humanity, and most grievously, a crime against Africa. How ironic that the chief perpetrator of the crime is himself a son of Africa.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com [5].

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [6].

Copenhagen: They're Trying to Sell Us the Left Over Slop

Copenhagen Non Treaty: A pox on all their houses...and unfortunately ours, too.

The following is from Monthly Review

Curing Post-Copenhagen Hangover
by Patrick Bond

In Copenhagen, the world's richest leaders continued their fiery fossil fuel party last Friday night, ignoring requests of global village neighbors to please chill out.

Instead of halting the hedonism, Barack Obama and the Euro elites cracked open the mansion door to add a few nouveau riche guests: South Africa's Jacob Zuma, China's Wen Jiabao (reportedly the most obnoxious of the lot), Brazil's Lula Inacio da Silva, and India's Manmohan Singh. By Saturday morning, still punch-drunk with power over the planet, these wild and crazy party animals had stumbled back onto their jets and headed home.

The rest of us now have a killer hangover, because on behalf mainly of white capitalists (who are having the most fun of all), the world's rulers stuck the poor and future generations with vast clean-up charges -- and worse: certain death for millions.

The 770 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere envisaged in the Copenhagen Accord signatories' promised 15% emissions cuts from 1990 levels by 2020 -- which in reality could be a 10% increase once carbon trading and offset loopholes are factored in -- will cook the planet, say scientists, with nine out of ten African peasants losing their livelihood.

The most reckless man at the party, of course, was the normally urbane, Ivy League-educated lawyer who, a year ago, we hoped might behave with the dignity and compassion behooving the son of a leading Kenyan intellectual. But in Obama's refusal to lead the North to make 45% emissions cuts and offer payment of the $400 billion annual climate debt owed to Third World victims by 2020, Obama trashed not only Africa but also the host institution, according to 350.org leader Bill McKibben: "He blew up the United Nations."

Economist Jeffrey Sachs charged Obama with abandoning "the UN framework, because it was proving nettlesome to US power and domestic politics. Obama's decision to declare a phony negotiating victory undermines the UN process by signaling that rich countries will do what they want and must no longer listen to the 'pesky' concerns of many smaller and poorer countries."

The Accord is "insincere, inconsistent, and unconvincing," Sachs continued, "unlikely to accomplish anything real. It is non-binding and will probably strengthen the forces of opposition to emissions reductions." Moreover, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's "announcements about money a decade from now are mostly empty words. They do not bind the rich countries at all."

As Naomi Klein summed up, the Accord is "nothing more than a grubby pact between the world's biggest emitters: I'll pretend that you are doing something about climate change if you pretend that I am too. Deal? Deal."

A handful of technocrats must also shoulder blame, including two key South African officials. A week earlier, before the politicians arrived, Pretoria bureaucrats Joanne Yawitch and Alf Wills were already criticized by leading Third World negotiator Lumumba Di-Aping for dividing the South's main negotiating group, the G77. Yawitch then forced a humiliating apology from Di-Aping for his frank talk (to an African civil society caucus) about her treachery. On Friday night, Zuma did exactly what she had denied was underway: he destroyed the unity of Africa and the G77.

The Pretoria team went to Copenhagen empowered by endorsements from the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace -- alongside gullible climate journalists -- who took at face value a vaguely promised 34% emissions cut below anticipated 2020 levels, even though absolute decline would only begin after 2030. Tristen Taylor of Earthlife Africa begged Pretoria for details and, after two weeks of delays, learned Yawitch's estimates were from a "Growth Without Constraint" (GWC) scenario.

According to Taylor, "GWC is fantasy, essentially an academic exercise to see how much carbon South Africa would produce given unlimited resources and cheap energy prices." Officials had already conceded GWC was "neither robust nor plausible" eighteen months ago, leading Taylor to conclude, "The SA government has pulled a public relations stunt." WWF and Greenpeace owe an explanation for their incompetence.

Then came Friday, which George Monbiot compared to the 1884-85 Berlin negotiations known as the "Scramble for Africa," which divided and conquered the continent. The African Union was twisted and U-turned to support Zuma's capitulation by the man appointed its climate leader, Meles Zenawi. In September, the Ethiopian dictator claimed, "If needs be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threatens to be another rape of our continent."

But he didn't walk out -- he walked off his plane in Paris on the way to Copenhagen, into the arms of Nicolas Sarkozy. The fateful side deal, according to Mithika Mwenda of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), is "undermining the bold positions of our negotiators and ministers represented here, and threatening the very future of Africa."

Not only did Zuma and Zenawi surrender on emissions cuts, but also on demanding full payment of the North's climate debt to the South. "Meles wants to sell out the lives and hopes of Africans for a pittance,' said Mwenda. "Every other African country has committed to policy based on the science."

Clinton and the US team refused to acknowledge the North's vast climate debt, owed not only for climate damage but for excessive use of environmental space. Huffed Washington's chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, "the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations -- I just categorically reject that."

Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations Pablo Solon replied, "Admitting responsibility for the climate crisis without taking necessary actions to address it is like someone burning your house and then refusing to pay for it. . . . We are not assigning guilt, merely responsibility. As they say in the US, if you break it, you buy it."

Stern's aversion to "culpability" translates into rejection of his own government's straightforward "polluter pays" principle as well as the foundational concepts of the Superfund, responsible for cleaning toxic waste dumps across the US.

Worse, if the Copenhagen Accord is widely endorsed by February 1, much of the promised funding would flow via notoriously corrupt Clean Development Mechanism projects which often do great damage in local settings. According to the Accord, "We decide to pursue opportunities to use markets to enhance the cost-effectiveness of and to promote mitigations actions."

But carbon markets continue failing, as long predicted by the Durban Group for Climate Justice and more recently by The Story of Cap & Trade. Last Thursday, the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme anticipated the feeble Copenhagen outcome -- including a defunct forest offsets deal -- by dropping 5%. The benchmark price is just 13.66 euros, less than half the peak of mid-2008, far lower than required to attract renewable energy investments.

According to European Climate Exchange director Patrick Birley, "We were hoping that a deal in Copenhagen would open up new opportunities for emissions trading. That expectation has now faded."

This leaves South Africa and the others as accomplices to an historic climate crime that cannot be covered up. The claim that post-apartheid Pretoria only looks after itself has often been made elsewhere on the continent. For example, former president Thabo Mbeki's nickname at the World Economic Forum's mid-2003 meeting in Mozambique was "the George Bush of Africa," as the Sunday Times reported.

Climate damage to Africa will include much more rapid desertification, more floods and droughts, worse water shortages, increased starvation, floods of climate refugees jamming shanty-packed megalopolises, and the spread of malarial and other diseases. Ironically, Obama's and Zuma's own rural relatives in Kenya and KwaZulu-Natal will be amongst the first victims of the Accord.

Did Zuma know what he was doing, acting in Copenhagen on behalf of major mining/metals corporations, which keep SA's ruling party lubricated with cash, "black economic empowerment" deals and jobs for cronies, and which need higher SA carbon emissions so as to continue receiving the world's cheapest electricity, and which then export their profits to London and Melbourne?

Perhaps, but on the other hand, two other explanations -- ignorance and cowardice -- were, eight years ago, Zuma's plausible defenses for promoting AIDS denialism in 2000. He helped Mbeki during the period in which 330,000 South Africans died due to Pretoria's refusal to supply anti-retroviral medicines (as a Harvard Public Health School study showed). To his credit, Zuma reversed course by 2003, as public pressure arose from the Treatment Action Campaign and its international allies. That's exactly what the main local activist network, Climate Justice Now! South Africa, must repeat, or otherwise permit Zuma to remain a signatory to a far worse genocide.

In the US, given that Obama's counterproductive cap-and-trade legislation is gridlocked in the Senate, the logical response -- if he cares a whit about the climate -- is to compel the Environmental Protection Agency to start shrinking greenhouse gas emissions by the worst polluters through its recent "endangerment" finding, to locate serious resources (e.g. through Third World debt cancellation) to pay carbon debt damages that can finance adaptation for climate victims, and to formally decommission the nascent US carbon markets, which delay the needed structural change towards a post-carbon economy. None of these strategies need congressional authorization.

In South Africa, Zuma should do exactly the same. Neither will, of course.

So uncivil society will have to take up the slack and apply direct pressure, starting with the slogan "leave the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole, and the tarsand in the land!" Indeed the most effective antidote to the post-Copenhagen hangover came from environmentalists -- most visibly, Greenpeace -- stretching from Australia to Africa to Appalachia to Alberta.


On December 20, on a bridge leading to the world's largest coal port, in Newcastle, Australia's Rising Tide activists blocked a train for 7.5 hours, with 23 arrests.

In South Africa, groundWork, Earthlife, and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance are amongst the country's serious environmentalists trying to keep coal in the hole, by protesting the recently-announced $3.75 billion World Bank loan to Eskom (which helps fund the vast Medupi coal-fired plant), increased coal exports from Richards Bay, ultra-cheap electricity for aluminum smelters and mines, filthy operations of Sasol oil-to-coal, a new dirty oil refinery near Port Elizabeth, and a proposed Durban-Johannesburg pipeline which will double fuel flow to Africa's least sustainable city.

Up the Atlantic Coast, the climate's and the people's main ally is the militancy which keeps Niger Delta oil in the soil. The Port Harcourt-based NGO Environmental Rights Action, led by visionary Nnimmo Bassey, links local destruction to global climate chaos. Sabotage of oil extraction is the consistent tactic of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which ended a two-month ceasefire by attacking a Shell and Chevron pipeline six hours after the Copenhagen Accord was signed.

In Appalachia, West Virginia's Climate Ground Zero activists have, according to a December 19 report by Vicki Smith, "chained themselves to giant dump trucks, scaled 80-foot trees to stop blasting and paddled boots online into a 9 million-gallon sludge pond. They've blocked roads, hung banners and staged sit-ins. Virginia-based Massey Energy claims a single 3 1/2-hour occupation cost the company $300,000."

And in Canada on December 20, anti-tarsands environmentalist Ingmar Lee climbed a flagpole at the British Columbia parliament to protest carbon crimes by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Provincial Premier Gordon Campbell, and their ally Tzeporah Berman from the corrupted NGO ForestEthics. At the Canadian High Commission on London's Pall Mall last week, Camp for Climate Action activists offered solidarity to Alberta's indigenous Canadian tarsands victims by cutting down the maple-leaf flag, drowning it in crude oil, and then locking down on an upstairs balcony.

So if only two things were accomplished in Copenhagen, they were the unveiling of Pretoria, Delhi, Beijing, and Brasilia as willing criminal accomplices to the Washington/Brussel/Tokyo/
Melbourne/Ottawa axis, and the rise of Climate Justice Action, Climate Justice Now!, 350.org, and parallel movements whose hundreds of thousands of protesters swarmed streets of the world's cities.

The next question is whether in 2010, before the next fiasco in Mexico City, the latter can cancel the former. We all depend upon an affirmative answer.

Patrick Bond directs the UKZN Centre for Civil Society. URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bond221209.html
MR

A Guy You Never Heard of, Lester "Red" Rodney, Died This Week

Lester "Red" Rodney died this week. You've probably never heard of him. He was a sports writer who battled against racism. He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. You haven't and he isn't because he wrote for the Daily Worker. Can't be having no commies in the Hall.

The following is from Edge of Sports.

More than a Sportswriter: Lester "Red" Rodney: 1911-2009
By Dave Zirin
Print this article

It didn't make SportsCenter, but one of history's most influential sportswriters died this week at the age of 98. His name was Lester Rodney. Lester was one of the first people to write about a young Negro League prospect named Jackie Robinson. He was the last living journalist to cover the famous 1938 fight at Yankee Stadium between "The Brown Bomber" Joe Louis and Hitler favorite, Max Schmeling. He crusaded against baseball's color line when almost every other journalist pretended it didn't exist. He edited a political sports page that engaged his audience in how to fight for a more just sports world. His writing, which could describe the beauty of a well-turned double play in one sentence and blast injustice in the next, is still bracing and ahead of its time. He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead he was largely erased from the books.

If you have never heard of Lester Rodney, there is a very simple reason why: the newspaper he worked at from 1936-1958 was the Daily Worker, the party press of the U.S. Communist Party. Lester used his paper to launch the first campaign to end the color line in Major League Baseball. I spoke to Lester about this in 2004 and he said to me, "It's amazing. You go back and you read the great newspapers in the thirties, you'll find no editorials saying, 'What's going on here?

This is America, land of the free and people with the wrong pigmentation of skin can't play baseball?' Nothing like that. No challenges to the league, to the commissioner, no talking about Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, who were obviously of superstar caliber. So it was this tremendous vacuum waiting."

The campaign was integrated into the Party's anti-racist work of the 1930s: "I spoke to the leaders of the YCL [the Young Communist League]. We talked about circulating the paper [at ballparks]. It just evolved as we talked about the color line and some kids in the YCL suggested, 'Why don't we go to the ballparks-to Yankee Stadium, Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds-with petitions?' We wound up with at least a million and a half signatures that we delivered straight to the desk of [baseball commissioner] Judge Landis."

As Lester fought to end the Color Ban, he also never stopped highlighting and covering the Negro League teams, giving them press at a time when they invisible men outside of the African American press.

But it was Jackie Robinson who captured Lester's imagination. Armed with a press pass to the Ebbets Field locker room, he saw up close the way Robinson was told to "just shut up and play" despite the constant harassment during his inaugural 1947 campaign. "Jackie was suppressing his very being, his personality," said Lester. "He was a fiercely intelligent man. He knew his role and he accepted it. And the black players who followed him knew what he meant too."

Lester saw the way their play – and their courage – helped inspire the struggle for Civil Rights, especially in the South. Lester told me about a dramatic exhibition game in Atlanta where all the dynamics of the Black Freedom Struggle were on display. "This exhibition game wound up with the Black fans being allowed in because they had overflowed the segregated stands, they had poured in from outlying districts to see the first integrated game in Georgia history. The Klan had said, 'This must not happen.' That night there was this tremendous sight of Robinson, [Dodgers African American players] Don Newcombe, and Roy Campanella coming out and the black fans behind the ropes and in the stands standing and roaring their greeting. A large sector of whites were just sitting and booing. Then other white people, hesitantly at first, stood up and consciously differentiated themselves from the booers and clapped. This was an amazing spectacle.

This was the Deep South many years before the words civil rights were widely known. So it had its impact… Roy Campanella, once said to me something like, 'Without the Brooklyn Dodgers you don't have Brown v. Board of Education.' I laughed, I thought he was joking but he was stubborn. He said, 'All I know is we were the first ones on the trains, we were the first ones down South not to go around the back of the restaurant, first ones in the hotels.' He said, 'We were like the teachers of the whole integration thing.'"

Lester would still become emotional when he recalls Jackie Robinson and his impact. "There are very few people of whom you can say with certainty that they made this a somewhat better country. Without doubt you can say that about Jackie Robinson. His legacy was not, 'Hooray, we did it,' but 'Buddy, there's still unfinished work out there' He was a continuing militant, and that's why the Dodgers never considered this brilliant baseball man as a manager or coach. It's because he was outspoken and unafraid. That's the kind of person he was. In fact, the first time he was asked to play at an old-timers' game at Yankee Stadium, he said 'I must sorrowfully refuse until I see more progress being made off the playing field on the coaching lines and in the managerial departments.' He made people uncomfortable. In fact it was that very quality which made him something special. He always made you feel that 'Buddy, there's still unfinished work out there.'" We can absolutely say the same about Lester Rodney, albeit with a twist. Yes, Lester made you feel like there was unfinished work out there. But he also made you feel like the great fun in life was in trying to get it done. That and seeing a perfectly turned 6-4-3 double play.


[Read Irwin Silber's Press Box Red for a terrific biography on Lester. It's a hell of a story.]

79-Year-Old Woman Says Houston Police Gave Her A Beating

A 79 year old women has filed a lawsuit over a police beating that occurred last August. The woman was stopped for a routine traffic check on her way home from church when she was attacked. Let's see...the woman was African American...could racism have been involved? Police brutality, racism...never heard of such a thing, have you?

From the Houston Press

79-Year-Old Woman Says HPD Gave Her A Beating

By Chris Vogel in Courts

​It was a steamy hot day in mid-August when 79-year-old Tillion Thomas was driving home after a church function. Suddenly, she saw police lights in her mirror. A cop was pulling her over for allegedly speeding.

It was, however, anything but a routine traffic stop, claims Thomas. The retired school teacher is suing the City of Houston and its police department in Houston federal court for violating her civil rights, claiming that the cop beat up and hospitalized her.

"It's a blatant case of excessive force and police brutality," Thomas' attorney, Jason Gibson, tells Hair Balls. "I have no idea what the officer was thinking. I don't know what someone her age could do to make an officer fear for his life in such a way that he would apply that much force."

Thomas says that the officer pulled her over on Cullen and then made the senior citizen drive down a dark gravel side-street. There, the officer asked to see Thomas's ID.

And that's when things began to go bad, says Thomas.

According to the lawsuit:

As Thomas was pulling her license out of her wallet, [the officer] snatched the wallet and threw it to the ground. [The officer] proceeded to jerk Thomas by her left hand, placed Thomas in handcuffs and kicked her in the back of the leg, causing her to fall to the ground. [The officer] violently drug Thomas across the gravel road and jammed his knee into both her neck and chest, causing severe pain and trauma to Thomas.

Thomas was ordered to get up, but she could not because she was still pinned to the ground under [the officer]. Thomas was again drug across the gravel road and thrown to the floor of [the officer's] police cruiser, where she was taken to the police station. Thomas was physically unable to get out of the cruiser or enter the station by herself and had to be carried.

Afterward, says Gibson, Thomas' pants had holes in the knees from being dragged across the gravel. But that was the least of the damage. At the police station, Thomas claims, officers took pictures of her wounds and then drove her to the hospital, where she received care for injuries to her back, neck and chest.

From there, the police drove Thomas back to the station, where they charged her with resisting arrest. Gibson says the charge has since been dismissed.

Gibson believes the attack on Thomas, an African-American, was racially motivated. "She was coming home from church in a new Mercedes," he says. "To me, it seems like it's got to be a pure racial situation."

Thomas claims that she still suffers pain from the injuries and is seeking damages.

"Normally I don't like hauling off on law enforcement unless it's something egregious," says Gibson. "This wasn't some kid mouthing off and doing something, but was an elderly lady who posed no threat whatsoever. It's just inexcusable."

City attorney Annie Teehan says that because the case was recently filed, she has no comment at this juncture.

THE OREAD DAILY IS BACK

We're back but we're different. From now on, I'll publish hear some stuff that I've posted that day at my facebook site. What you'll get is a very short comment from me, and an article from somewhere (which I'll note). Is this worthwhile? I don't know, but it is simple...so what the hell.

I'll probably need to update my links, but not today.

One Year Later: America's Worst Environmental Disaster Continues with No Regulatory Relief in Sight

One year after environmental disaster in Tennasee area residents describe the
area as a moonscape, a war zone, a sad sight.

Press Release from Environmental Justice

One Year Later: America's Worst Environmental Disaster Continues with No
Regulatory Relief in Sight

Spill in Tennessee Dec. 22, 2008, sent 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash into
nearby homes, rivers, and communities

December 21, 2009

Washington, DC -- It's been one year and piles of coal ash still remain. Train
cars full of the toxic waste move from Kingston, Tennessee to Perry County,
Alabama. The few remaining residents along the Clinch and Emory Rivers say the
cleanup goes on, but not much of the scenery has changed. They describe it as a
moonscape, a war zone, a sad sight.

One year ago, a billion gallons of toxic coal ash -- the leftovers from
coal-fired power plants that contain dangerously high levels of arsenic,
selenium and other toxins -- burst through a dam at the Tennessee Valley
Authority's Kingston Plant. It spread across 300 acres, destroying dozens of
homes and poisoning the Emory and Clinch Rivers.

The nation quickly took notice. Congress convened hearings about the disaster
and brought experts in to discuss the impacts that coal ash has not only in
Kingston, but at similar sites across the U.S. Local newspapers wrote about coal
ash ponds in other parts of the country. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson vowed
that her agency would introduce the first ever federal regulations on coal ash
ponds by the end of this year. But just last week, the EPA announced they were
going to delay federal coal ash regulations "due to the complexity of the
analysis the agency is currently finishing."

"We're obviously disappointed that the EPA couldn't get these regulations out to
the public before the end of this year," said Earthjustice attorney and coal ash
expert Lisa Evans. "Power industry lobbyists have relentlessly pressured EPA,
the White House, and other federal agencies to back off regulating toxic ash.
Polluters are spreading baseless fears about cost and compliance. But what we
know to be true is that the tragedy that happened in Tennessee is just waiting
to happen again unless the EPA acts quickly and forces stronger protections."

Earthjustice has compiled a timeline of events related to the Tennessee disaster
over the last year. It can be found at:
http://www.dipity.com/earthjustice/Kingston-Plat-Coal-Ash-Spill-The-First-100-Da\
ys

In March, the EPA sent letters to every coal ash pond owner seeking information
about the size, age, location and last inspection of coal ash ponds. 584 coal
ash ponds were tallied, but some companies refused to turn over the information,
citing "confidential business information" claims.

In June, the EPA identified 49 "high hazard" coal ash ponds, where the failure
of a dam will probably cause a loss of human life. But it wasn't until members
of Congress and environmental groups got involved that EPA decided to share the
list of high hazard sites with the public.

"For 30 years, these coal ash ponds have gone unnoticed and unchecked," Evans
added. "It's sad to think that it took a tragedy such as what happened in
Tennessee to get our government to finally take notice."

Contact:

Lisa Evans, Earthjustice, (781) 631-4119
Jared Saylor, Earthjustice, (202) 236-5855

Prachanda warns of 4th movement and indefinite General Strike from January 24th

Nepal's Maoists promise there is more to come and a fourth movement will start
soon with general strike to follow. Prachanda expresses disgust with New Deli's
interference in the internal affairs of Nepal.

From "Democracy and Class Struggle"

Prachanda warns of 4th movement and indefinite General Strike from January 24th

KATHMANDU: Wrapping up a three-day nationwide general strike at a victory rally
in the capital Tuesday, Nepal's Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal

Prachanda warned it was also the announcement of a fourth protest movement
against the government that would culminate in an indefinite general strike from
Jan 24.

In the past, the Maoists had enforced a 15-day blockade during the 10-year
"People's War" and a 19-day peaceful general shutdown in 2006 as part of the
pro-democracy movement against King Gyanendra's attempt to rule the country with
the help of the army. Prachanda said the new protests would start from Christmas
Day as a mass awareness campaign to open people's eyes to the presence of
"foreign agents" in their midst. He also said the campaign would expose the
corrupt indicted in the Rayamajhi Commission that was formed after the fall of
the royal regime. Though the commission was formed to punish the perpetrators of
the anti-people coup, including the king, its report was never made public.

The nearly two-hour rally in Naya Baneshwor - that was the site of violent
clashes between protesters and security forces Sunday - saw Prachanda, for the
first time throwing a direct challenge to India, accusing it of naked
intervention in Nepal's internal matters. "I held talks with the Nepali Congress
(NC) leaders but they produced no result," the former revolutionary said with
biting sarcasm. "I held talks with the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist
Leninist (UML), the Prime Minister... But none produced results. Now I have to
go to Delhi for talks."

Prachanda reminded his audience that in the years after 2002, when King
Gyanendra had sacked Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and propped up three
successive governments of his own choosing, the then governments had asked the
underground Maoists to declare a ceasefire and start dialogue. "But we had
refused, saying we will not negotiate with the servants," he said. "We said we
will talk only with the master. It is now time to say the same thing."

The Maoist chief alleged that New Delhi had propped up Nepal's coalition
government, which was a "puppet" and a "robot" in its hands. When Nepali Prime
Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal returned from the UN climate summit in Copenhagen,
Prachanda said the government did not project Nepal's interests abroad but only
tried to project that Indian premier Manmohan Singh had expressed his support
for it as well as the Chinese government. "The Maoists are not NC or UML," he
said. "Treat the Maoists as Maoists."

The new Maoist anger with New Delhi was stoked afresh last week after Nepal's
army chief Gen Chhatraman Singh Gurung went to India at the invitation of the
Indian Army chief, Gen Deepak Kapoor, to receive the traditional honour of being
declared general of the Indian Army by Indian President Pratibha Patil.

During the visit, at a banquet hosted by the Nepali general, Gen Kapoor was
reported as saying that he opposed the merger of the Maoists' People's
Liberation Army with the Nepal Army as that would lead to the politicisation of
the latter. "The comprehensive peace agreement (that ended the Maoist insurgency
in 2006) promises the integration," Prachanda said. "Kapoor's statement was a
naked intervention in Nepal's internal matters and yet the corrupt ministers of
the current government remained silent."

Prachanda said that at a time his party was striving to restore civilian
supremacy in Nepal by campaigning against the President, Dr Ram Baran Yadav, who
had resurrected the possibility of another military coup by preventing his
government from sacking the insubordinate army chief, it was clear that civilian
supremacy was actually murdered in New Delhi.

The Maoists have laid down a five-point agenda for their talks with India. They
have also announced a month-long campaign from Dec 25, after which, they have
warned of an indefinite nationwide general strike from Jan 24.

Maoist agenda for talks with India

- All unequal treaties should be scrapped, including the 1950 Peace and
Friendship Treaty; all secret treaties have to be revealed

- All border disputes have to be resolved; India has to recall troops from
Nepal's Kalapani area

- Trade deficit with India has to be corrected

- India should enact prompt strategy to make Nepal gain from being sandwiched
between the world's two fastest growing economies

- India has to accept Nepal as an equal state.

Source: Times of India

Nation's Largest RN Organization Says Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to Insurance Industry

A few days ago I got into an argument with some "Democrats" on facebook. That
was an experience. Anyway, they were lambasting me for thinking the current
healt reform bill was a sham. They said I wasn't a "wonk" like them, so how
could I know what I was talking about. I mentioned my years working at an inner
city community health center, as a street outreach worker for people with HIV
and drug users, and as director of a free clinic. I don't think that convinced
them. So this is for them. Perhaps, they will accept that the nations largest
union of RNs might have some idea of what they are talking about.


Nation's Largest RN Organization Says Healthcare Bill Cedes Too Much to
Insurance Industry

By National Nurses United

December 21, 2009

The 150,000 member National Nurses United, the nation's largest union and
professional organization of registered nurses in the U.S., today criticized the
healthcare bill now advancing in the U.S. Senate saying it is deeply flawed and
grants too much power to the giant insurers.

"It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine,
comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually
exacerbate the healthcare crisis and financial insecurity for American families,
and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous
insurance industry," said NNU co-president Karen Higgins, RN.

NNU Co-president Deborah Burger, RN challenged arguments of legislation
proponents that the bill should still be passed because of expanded coverage,
new regulations on insurers, and the hope that it will be improved in the
House-Senate conference committee or future years.

"Those wishful statements ignore the reality that much of the expanded coverage
is based on forced purchase of private insurance without effective controls on
industry pricing practices or real competition and gaping loopholes in the
insurance reforms," said Burger.

Further, said NNU Co-president Jean Ross, RN, "the bill seems more likely to be
eroded, not improved, in future years due to the unchecked influence of the
healthcare industry lobbyists and the lessons of this year in which all the
compromises have been made to the right."

"Sadly, we have ended up with legislation that fails to meet the test of true
healthcare reform, guaranteeing high quality, cost effective care for all
Americans, and instead are further locking into place a system that entrenches
the chokehold of the profit-making insurance giants on our health. If this bill
passes, the industry will become more powerful and could be beyond the reach of
reform for generations," Higgins said.

NNU cited ten significant problems in the legislation, noting many of the same
flaws also exist in the House version and are likely to remain in the bill that
emerges from the House-Senate reconciliation process:

1. The individual mandate forcing all those without coverage to buy private
insurance, with insufficient cost controls on skyrocketing premiums and other
insurance costs.

2. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94
metropolitan areas where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice
and competition.

3. An affordability mirage. Congressional Budget Office estimates say a
family of four with a household income of $54,000 would be expected to pay 17
percent of their income, $9,000, on healthcare exposing too many families to
grave financial risk.

4. The excise tax on comprehensive insurance plans which will encourage
employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote
proliferation of high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care
and medical bankruptcies, especially as more plans are subject to the tax every
year due to the lack of adequate price controls. A Towers-Perrin survey in
September found 30 percent of employers said they would reduce employment if
their health costs go up, 86 percent said they'd pass the higher costs to their
employees.

5. Major loopholes in the insurance reforms that promise bans on exclusion
for pre-existing conditions, and no cancellations for sickness. The loopholes
include:


* Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double
charges to employees who fail "wellness" programs because they have diabetes,
high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions.
* Insurers are permitted to sell policies "across state lines",
exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will thus set up
in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public
protections won by consumers in various states.
* Insurers can charge four times more based on age plus more for
certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick
healthier, less costly enrollees.
* Insurers may continue to rescind policies for "fraud or intentional
misrepresentation" – the main pretext insurance companies now use to cancel
coverage.

6. Minimal oversight on insurance denials of care; a report by the California
Nurses Association/NNOC in September found that six of California's largest
insurers have rejected more than one-fifth of all claims since 2002.

7. Inadequate limits on drug prices, especially after Senate rejection of an
amendment, to protect a White House deal with pharmaceutical giants, allowing
pharmacies and wholesalers to import lower-cost drugs.

8. New burdens for our public safety net. With a shortage of primary care
physicians and a continuing fiscal crisis at the state and local level, public
hospitals and clinics will be a dumping ground for those the private system
doesn't want.

9. Reduced reproductive rights for women.

10. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to
care still determined by ability to pay. Nothing changes in basic structure of
the system; healthcare remains a privilege, not a right.

"Desperation to pass a bill, regardless of its flaws, has made the White House
and Congress subject to the worst political extortion and new, crippling
concessions every day," Burger said.

"NNU and nurses will continue to work with the thousands of grassroots activists
across the nation to campaign for the best reform, which would be to expand
Medicare to cover everyone, the same type of system working more effectively in
every other industrial country. The day of that reform will come," said Ross.

ACRE/AKKO: ANTI-JEWISH RIOTS OR AN ANTI-ARAB POGROM

The city of Acre or Akko was calm last night after four nights of riots. Police were out in force trying to keep a lid on things. Roadblocks were placed at the entrances to Acre as police mobilized hundreds of officers from its Special Patrol Unit and on horseback.

What some call riots, others call a pogrom against Palestinians.

In the housing project in the eastern part of town, it was easy to identify the Arab apartments by the damage they had suffered, with uniformed police stationed near some of the undamaged apartments.

Haaretz reports the Acre municipality on Sunday had to deal for the first time since the Second Lebanon War with residents who had lost their homes. "This time it was not because of Katyushas from Lebanon that did not differentiate between peoples, but the result of the recent vandalism and riots. This time, all the families who lost their homes were Arab."

Dozens of people gathered at the entrance to City Hall on Sunday to demand that the municipality finds them alternatives residences. The homes of some had been lost to arson, others were hit by rocks and some people were simply afraid for their lives if they went home.

Meanwhile, Police Commissioner David Cohen said Monday morning that that 64 people - 27 Jews and 37 Arabs - had been arrested as a result of the Akko riots of the past few days, and that 34 are still in custody. The police have received 85 complaints of damage done to their cars many when hundreds of Arabs rampaged in a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur, smashing cars and store windows.

Police on Monday evening arrested Arab resident Jamal Taufik, who drove through an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood of Acre on the evening of Yom Kippur, after an investigation found that he allegedly drove at an unreasonable speed which some say triggered the riots.

Taufik told an urgent meeting of the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee that he "made a mistake" when he careened his car into a Jewish neighborhood on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. He denied accusations that he had been drunk, and that he had been playing his car stereo excessively loud. In fact, he denied having been listening to music at all, and said the past five days had been a difficult experience for him.

Police also said they were hunting for a Muslim man believed to have taken control of the speaker system of a mosque in the Old City on Wednesday evening, at the beginning of Yom Kippur, and who wrongly broadcast that an Arab driver had been killed by a Jewish mob, causing hundreds of Arabs armed with axes and sticks to march on east Acre.

Whoever the guy is, he wasn't alone in trying to incite violence. Haaretz said that Jewish hackers broke into a Hebrew-language website and posted incitement calls against Arabs in addition to calling on the Jews to boycott all Arab-owned businesses.

Following the first quiet night in Acre since the outbreak of Arab-Jewish violence on the eve of Yom Kippur, President Shimon Peres arrived in the divided town and met with Arab and Jewish leaders. According to the Jerusalem Post, Peres expressed surprise over the good will that existed between the two sides, and stressed the need to keep the clashes from boiling over and spreading to other mixed towns.

During the meeting with Peres, Acre leaders decided to assemble an inter-religious forum that will be compiled of rabbi and sheikhs, who will be charged with taking to the streets to calm the charged atmosphere.

Not everyone was singing Kumbaya though.

An owner of a house torched by Jewish rioters, Subhi Murasi, told Haaretz: "Everyone thinks that only Jews are being hurt in the eastern neighborhood, and nobody's paying any attention to us. All the money I invested in this house, and now everything has been destroyed."

An angry Israeli Jew criticized the reporting of Haaretz about the riots writing in that paper,"No where do you mention how all those in the hospital are Jews, about the Jewish boy who may lose an eye or all the stores damaged by Arab rioters. WHY NOT??????????"

Arab Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh (Hadash) blamed the riots on what he called radical Jews who he said were encouraged to settle in the city by "political elements sitting around this table." Barakeh also claimed that Jews had tried to burn down an Arab home with tenants inside it several months ago, with the full support of Mayor Shimon Lankry.

Agreeing with Barakeh were Arab residents of the northern city. They said those responsible were Jews who have moved to Akko from Gaza and the West Bank; and among them are many hesder yeshiva students, who wish to disrupt the current way of life in the city.

"Even our long time Jewish neighbors, tell us 'you know those responsible are not longtime Akko Jews,'" Akko resident Adal Hobashi told Ynet.

According to Arab residents, the establishment of the hesder yeshiva in the mixed Wolfson neighborhood was detrimental to the status-quo; citing examples the 2006 Simchat Torah riots, which broke out when the yeshiva students tried to circle the neighborhood; or the 2007 Ramadan incident, in which they prevented Muslims clerics form using speakers to announce the fast's end.

Out of some 52,000 Akko residents, Arabs claim that only several hundred can be described as "newcomers". City Councilman, Ahmed Ooda, claimed that "we are talking about some 500-600 families, who bring others in, especially from settlements. We have requested that they be removed, no one listened then, and no one is listening now."

In a mirror image of the Arabs complaint many Jewish residents of the city they call Acre say Palestinian extremist elements have moved into Akko in recent years from surrounding Arab communities. They are not long-time Akko residents, they said, and so they do not share a relationship of mutual respect with the city's Jews.

Shas (a religious Sephardic Jewish party) MK David Azoulay, a resident of the city, blamed the Arab police officers for not immediately taking control of the situation when the incident first occurred. Azoulay said Jamal (the car driver mentioned above) and other Arabs ran into Jamal's house and began hurling rocks at the Jews in the street below, as well as at the police "who went up and down but did not call on them to turn themselves in."

The Shas lawmaker added that it was not the first such incident, but rather a continuation of similar provocations that began at the end of the holiday of Simchat Torah last year, and the year before.

However, he added, "The problem is that the street is heated up, and harming the Jews on Yom Kippur Eve is not a regular thing. More than 200 masked people chant 'Allah Hu Akbar (Arabic for G-d is Great) and 'Itbah al Yahud' (slaughter the Jews) and the police are not present in the area."

Hamas held a mass march in the Gaza city of Jebalya on Saturday night, expressing solidarity with the Arab residents of Akko in their struggle against the "Zionist conquerors."

The main speaker, Hamas party whip in the Palestinian Authority legislature Mushir Al-Masri, fired up the crowd with his promise that, "The moment of victory is coming closer, and the day will soon come when soldiers of Hamas and the Al-Kassam Brigades will liberate Akko, with the help of Allah."

"The enemy will be crushed on the walls of Akko," Al-Masri railed, "just like the other invaders in past history... The normalization and the negotiations will never cause us to forget even one inch of our stolen land of Palestine."

The Islamic Jihad leader in Palestine, Nafez Azzam, is calling for a "deliberated" response to the ongoing attacks against Palestinian residents inside Israeli boundaries, most notably in Akko.

Jihad leader Azzam told the Palestinian News Network (PNN Monday), “This is confirmation that the state of Israel is racist and there is no room for coexistence between victim and executioner.”

Extreme-right activist Baruch Marzel of the Jewish National Front, visited Akko following the riots, telling Ynet News that he plans on "helping" local residents setup a "defense organization" for the Jewish population.

"I am sorry that these organizations need to be created in Israel, but it seems that the Jews of Akko feel like they are in the Diaspora," said Marzel. He also called on Jewish residents of the west bank, who were expelled for the duration of the olive harvest, to move to Akko.

Yigal Sarna in a column in YNet News writes:

"Iyad Barghouti, an Arab journalist and social activist who lives on Herzl Street, spoke to me about the Arab fear of Akko's Judiazation, about the settlers that are growing more numerous, about new Yom Kippur roadblocks aimed to marking boundaries in the city, about "Death to the Arabs" graffiti, and about the anti-Arab campaign over the past year that included the torching of doors. All the early signs."

Meanwhile, the Jews spoke to me about the city growing poorer, about the shift of Arabs into every neighborhood because apartments cost only $30,000, about shops declining on the main street, while Old City merchants grow rich."

Both sides, the Jews and the Arabs, feel like they are being screwed up, abandoned, and weak; there are many poor people and great distress in Akko – this is the war of poor against poor."

Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) is calling upon the Jewish and Arab public to take part in a solidarity meeting Tuesday. The theme will be confronting racism and violence, upholding coexistence and addressing of the severe poverty, unemployment and discrimination which it says are the root cause of the riots and violence.

The event will occur tomorrow, October 14, 2008, 12.00 on the Acre Esplanade (near the lighthouse).

The following is from Haaretz.

`Acre Jews warn: Arabs will kill you with knives`

A young woman - kerchief on her head, baby in her arms - stood behind the barred windows of her apartment yesterday and shouted: `Get all the Arabs out of here... We don`t want them here... They`ve made our lives a misery.`

The balcony blinds of the adjacent apartment are shattered. Its former residents, the family of Mahmoud Samary, are gone, having temporarily fled the hail of stones on their home. The young woman yelled: `They should get out. The Arabs are taking all our girls.`

It was Saturday afternoon at number 18, Burla Street in Acre - part of a crowded, shamefully neglected housing project where three Arab families and 29 Jewish families inhabit a single building. At the entrance to the building, a group of policemen stood around idly. The street was lined with cars with shattered windows.

It was not only Bosnia that Acre called to mind yesterday; the city was also reminiscent of Nablus - checkpoints at every corner, hundreds of policemen under every parched tree. A city that could have been a tourist attraction was instead the most miserable in Israel. My colleague Jack Khoury, an Israeli Arab, said as we entered the neighborhood: `I don`t believe I`m traveling here in such fear and tension.`

A young man who lives in the project told us aggressively: `Don`t you dare enter the Old City. The Arabs will kill you with knives.` He would like us to leave his neighborhood, too.

But the Old City, just a few minutes` drive away, was another world: In that beautiful but neglected neighborhood, which was virtually empty yesterday, people were mourning the cancelation of Acre`s theater festival and still speaking of peace and coexistence.

Acre went up in flames all at once. It was a clash between poor and poor, Jews and Arabs, egged on by nationalists, with a religious holiday as the catalyst - the most dangerous of all possible clashes, which threatens to ignite a conflagration.

The fire could be out by press time, but as of yesterday afternoon it seemed liable to break out anew: Young men from the housing project had agreed to meet at 7:30 P.M. that evening, God only knows why.

Yet even if the fire is extinguished now, it will reignite someday. This binational city is sitting on a volcano - a volcano of nationalism and distress, fear and hatred.

If the housing project was the tensest party of the city, the saddest was the Old City, where the empty halls were all that remained of the theater festival that was supposed to have taken place this week.

The spotlights had been removed, the actors and directors were gone, the tables in the cafe on the lawn remained folded. Instead of the festival, Acre got a scandal - the scandal of its cancelation.

The technical crews said it was outrageous to cancel the most important event of Acre`s year `because of 100 or 200 psychos.` They suggested holding a reconciliation festival instead, and promised to ensure the guests` safety. `You also fight with your wife, but then you go to bed with her,` analogized one, Asfari Khalil.

Munir Abu al-Tayir, who sells pomegranate juice, had thus far sold exactly two glasses all day. At a nearby felafel booth, a young Arab responded to Jewish claims that the riots were provoked by an Arab driver blasting music on Yom Kippur by saying that during Ramadan, the Jews had offended Arab sensibilities by drinking beer, but there were no Arab riots. Issam Jalem, owner of a barbershop, warned that without the festival, `things will not be good.`

To all, it was clear that Mayor Shimon Lankri`s hasty decision to cancel the festival had one purpose, and one only: to punish the Arabs who earn their living from the event.

F., an Arab resident of the largely-Jewish Kibbutz Galuyot Street, fled his house with his wife and children; now he fears the house will be torched. Salim Najami, a city councilor, denounced all extremists, Jewish and Arab alike.

Daoud Halila, director of an Arab non-profit organization, accused the police of `pampering the Jews.` Long-time communist Salim Atrash blamed the disengagement from Gaza, saying an extremist yeshiva that opened in the city following the pullout has been fanning the flames.

Atrash pulled out a copy of a notice that has been circulating on the Internet: `We will no longer buy anything from Arabs, we will not honor any of their holidays or any place of theirs. Arabs of Acre, go find your place in the villages.` The notice was signed with an epigram: `A Jew is the son of a king, an Arab is the son of a dog.`

Welcome to a little Bosnia in the making.

WOMEN LOCKED OUT OF PARLIAMENT DURING CLIMATE RUSH RALLY IN LONDON

Police shut the public entrance to Parliament, closing and barring the doors at St Stephen's Gate, after environmental demonstrators and anti-aviation demonstrators attempted to gain entrance - however none of the group succeeded in breaching security.

A statement, Scotland Yard said: "On arriving at the St Stephen's Gate entrance the crowd attempted to rush the entrance.

"A pre-deployed line of police officers prevented this from happening. Additional officers were put in place to start to disperse the crowd from the Palace of Westminster. None of this group gained access to the Palace of Westminster.

Doors at the main St Stephen's Gate entrance were closed and secured with two large metal bars. Protesters striking the doors were clearly audible from the inside.

In addition to the police presence on the streets, armed officers patrolled the hall within.

The rally, organized by the group Plane Stupid and entitled Climate Rush, was designed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the suffragettes going to Parliament to demand change and the protesters were all women.

One of those women, Rosie Haworth-Booth, 62, from Wandsworth, south-west London, told the BBC: "It's a pity we couldn't get into Parliament. I was near the front and got a bit afraid. I'm too old for this.

Protesters from many communities concerned about the British Government's disregard for climate change are demanding an end to airport expansion (the government gave the go-ahead to Stansted's airport expansion this month and a decision on Heathrow is due this year). and other measures that would frustrate national efforts to reduce global warming emissions. They came with the following three demands:

1. No airport expansion.

2. No dirty coal fired power stations.

3. Cross-party policy in line with the most recent climate research and science.

Carole Barbone, of Stop Stansted Expansion, said: "I can understand the police might have felt there was a risk due to the numbers of people involved but there was no intention from anyone involved to cause any damage or harm to people or property.

"We simply wanted to exercise our legal right to make our representations to Parliament."

The call for the action read:

"Normal people really can change the world. 100 years ago the Suffragettes went to Parliament and demanded that their society change. They held a mass rally outside Parliament to which thousands came, before a number of them rushed into Parliament and got everyone's attention. We invite you all to celebrate the 100th anniversary of this world changing event. We invite you to celebrate when women got radical. Enjoy a rally and speeches in Parliament Square. Enjoy social change."

The following is from the Press Association.

Protesters try to enter Parliament

Police were forced to lock the doors to Parliament after protesters attempted to force their way into the Palace of Westminster.

Scotland Yard said none of the environmental demonstrators, campaigning against airport expansion, had managed to breach security.

There was one confirmed arrest - of a 23-year-old woman for breach of bail.

A spokesman said an "appropriate policing plan" had been put in place to deal with the protest, which had been expected.

Met Police Inspector Tim Barfoot, who was on the scene, said: "The situation is being dealt with. We are concerned to ensure the effective running of Parliament."

Asked whether any protesters were able to get in to the Palace, he said: "No, we were able to deal with the situation."

There had been a larger than usual police presence at Westminster throughout the afternoon in readiness for the protest.

Doors at the main St Stephen's entrance were closed and secured with two large metal bars, with the hammering of protesters clearly audible from the inside.

The latest attempt to breach security comes months after the anti-aviation group Plane Stupid gained access to the roof of Parliament, unfurling banners and chaining themselves to the historic building.

"THE SYSTEM MAY RECOVER...BUT ONLY AT A GREAT COST TO WORKING PEOPLE"

They're scared to death as well they should be. They, being the big capitalists, are at a loss as to what to do about the crisis of capitalism. There really isn't much they can. Capitalism's cycles are an economic law, a fact of life. All the credit bullcrap that has gone on the past few years managed to delay the down cycle, but it had to come and it has.

The big finance bosses and their buddies running countries like ours are thrashing about like mad tyring to find a way out of the mess they've got themselves into.

An editorial in the Economic Observer said: "The United States is no longer the omnipotent savior and global protector of American values ... The demise of Wall Street means that the cornerstone of this global financial empire has been broken and no one knows whether it can ever be repaired."

John Bellamy Foster, editor of the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, said in a recent interview:

"But in the face of this massive financial crisis, now 14 months old, and rapidly morphing into what looks like a full-scale debt deflation on the order of the Japanese meltdown/stagnation in the early 1990s -- even threatening to turn into a new Great Depression on the scale of the 1930s -- the U.S. government is bailing like mad with bigger and bigger buckets, and trying absolutely everything it can think of."

But the capitalists won't find a quick fix.

And we will all suffer for it. Some obviously worse than others. The crisis will undoubtedly hit the poor countries of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America hardest. Just today, for example, the UN warned that hunger in Africa is being made and will be made worse thanks to capitals latest hiccup.

Capitalism is global now and so are its problems.

And so is speculation. So waffleheads sitting at their computers around the world are buying and selling stocks by the seconds trying to make one more buck...voila today the stock market goes down 700, goes up a bit, goes down 500, goes up over 100 and ends up down again over 100. Nothing is real...it's lala land.

Then there are those who seeing this as the demise of the superpower United States (which it is) turn to China asking for help. Some of them have called on Beijing to snap up stakes in United States financial institutions and further China's influence on global financial power.

China should lead rescue efforts for the US financial crisis, Mexican tycoon Carlos Sim, one of the world's richest men, told the press last week.

"China is now the most important country to help responsibly in this crisis," he says. "In the past, developed countries had reserves and financed developing countries, while today developed countries, especially the United States, are being financed with resources from developing countries".

The Chinese aren't so sure now is the time to come riding in and save the West. From Asia Times, "Although fortified with great liquidity and large reserves, Chinese banks and government investors have preferred to sit on their hands rather than go on a shopping spree of tumbling Wall Street firms."

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan told former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday as the largest developing country and a rising market, China's priority is to well handle its own problems

Premier Wen Jiabao summed up China's cautious position: maintaining "steady and fast growth" is the "biggest contribution" China can make to help the world overcome the current financial crisis stemming from the United States, he said during an inspection tour of Chinese provinces this week.

The Chinese aren't stupid thought. They know they are tied into international capitalism now just like everybody else. Their own stock market is going anywhere but up at the moment.

China is following closely Washington's response to the ongoing financial crisis for its own reasons. Chinese ambassador to the US Zhou Wenzhong said the other day the turmoil in the US has affected Chinese investment there, especially the large amount of US bonds being held by the Chinese.

"As China holds large amounts in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares and in US bonds, the financial storm has definitely impacted Chinese investment. So we're paying a good deal of attention to the crisis," said Zhou in a speech on China-US trade relations at the Center for National Policy in Washington DC, on Wednesday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, says the current turmoil in the financial market is global, rather than confined to any single country. He says it is beyond any single state's ability to deal with such crisis. Qin says that's why all members of the international community should make joint efforts to cope with it. He says this is China's clear message as well as a solemn commitment to the international community. He says China will ensure the stable development of its own economy at a relatively fast pace and that will be an important contribution to the world economy.

People's Bank of China (PBOC) spokesman Li Chao told Xinhua today, "The PBOC will continue close contacts and cooperation with counterparts and international financial organizations to jointly maintain stability of global financial market." The global economic slowdown reduced demand for Chinese exports and inevitably affected China's economy, he said.

But China has something the US doesn't anymore.

China actually produces "things." They have factories.

And that ain't all China has.

Li Chao points out, "China has a huge domestic market and the liquidity is abundant. As long as we take strong measures to boost domestic demand, the economy has big potential for sustainable growth."

There are some folks who have other ideas although you'll seldom see them and those presenting them will be attacked for making them.

Marx argued that the cycles of capitalism could no more be abolished than the tides or the seasons. Since the 1990s, Marxism has either been ignored or dismissed by almost all mainstream economists and media commentators as an old time religion, of no relevance to the modern world.

Maybe they should think again.

At a news conference in Luxembourg, the communist parties from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg this week called for a new financial institution that will serve the interests of the people, not maximum profits.

Whoa, there's a strange idea.

“Instead of throwing public money at private banks over and over again – as if to satisfy their craving for a drug, we are instead calling for a major redistribution of wealth, a redistribution of income and property,” said Jo Cottenier of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB). This is the way we can ultimately achieve A fair re-evaluation of public and collective property.”

Aloyse Bisdorff, member of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Luxemburg says following the Southeast Asia economic crisis and the crisis of the “New Economy,” this is already the third great crisis caused by free-market capitalism since its recent domination of the world. "While the governments try to save the capitalist system with the help of taxpayers’ money, they are at the same time creating the basis for a new crisis.”

Will the capitalist crisis weather the storm and right itself at some point. I'd say that's a good bet. As Marx pointed out over 150 years ago, capitalism has internal mechanisms — driving down wages, reorganizing work, massive bankruptcies — that allow it to recover from these crises. There will be no “final” economic crisis of capitalism — it will have to be overthrown.

But what does a "recovery" really mean.

The journal Solidarity says, "Whoever is elected President in November 2008 will likely face the same “stagflation” — the combination of price inflation and economic stagnation — that Nixon, Ford, and Carter wrestled with through the 1970s. For most of us, an ever-sharper attack on working-class standards of living will be the main consequence of the current crisis."

In the Monthly Review on line William K. Tabb writes what he thinks Marx might say today:

"Yes, the system may recover -- but only at great cost to working people, who will eventually understand that they do not have to put up with all this." He would also add that we now have the potential to meet human needs, accept that the development of each of us should be the goal of all of us, reject wars for oil, save the planet, and have ordinary people learn that they can govern themselves."

In the same analytic piece Tabb writes:

"David Harvey in an introduction to a new printing of The Communist Manifesto called attention to one of its modest proposals for reform, the centralization of credit in the hands of the state. This is happening already on a temporary basis as it did in Sweden and now in the UK and other places. So wrote Harvey earlier this year, why not consider some of the other equally modest but wholly sensible proposals -- such as free (and good) education for all children, serious progressive taxation, and significant inheritance taxation? The proposals made in the Manifesto for the most part now strike us as tame stuff. Yet even those which were to some extent achieved have been significantly repealed in the last decades in America. It would be useful to think about what we need and want and demand it, if not in some grand manifesto then in public discussion, demonstrations, and electoral struggles... And, if these are good ideas for a time of crisis, why not as a route to a more just economic system? We may be moving closer to a point similar to the one when the New Deal began: an entire economic system is understood to be broken and the usual policies of bailing out corporations can't reverse the decline, fear permeates all and hundreds of millions of Americans are desperate. At such times, people begin to say if this is how capitalism works it is time to figure out something better."

As John McCain would say, "I know what that something is!"

Says the Socialist Party USA (speaking in general terms what we all know), "The real solution to the vast majority of these problems would be to move rapidly to a socialist society, one in which housing is provided to all as a basic right, the financial sector and commanding heights of the economy are made publicly accountable through social ownership and worker control of the economy, and production is oriented toward the needs of working people, rather than maximizing the profits of an obsolete ruling class of multi-millionaires and billionaires."

Last week, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was giving a lecture in Georgetown. Greenspan, the consumate capitalist, said the crisis will mean, "a return to the ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism.” He added, “Many of us thought that struggle was over with the collapse of the command economies, but this is not the case.”

I sure as hell hope not.

The following is from Bloomberg.

Berlusconi Says Leaders May Close World's Markets
By Steve Scherer

Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world's financial markets while they "rewrite the rules of international finance."

"The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed," Berlusconi said today after a Cabinet meeting in Naples, Italy. A solution to the financial crisis "can't just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much 8.1 percent in early trading and pared most of those losses after Berlusconi's remarks. The Dow was down 0.5 percent to 8540.52 at 10:10 in New York.

Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers are meeting in Washington today, and will stay in town for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings this weekend. European Union leaders may gather in Paris on Oct. 12, three days before a scheduled summit in Brussels, Berlusconi said today, while Group of Eight leaders may hold a meeting on the crisis "in coming days," he said.

Berlusconi didn't give any details about what kind of rules leaders were looking to change, except to say that leaders are "talking about a new Bretton Woods."

The Bretton Woods Agreements were adopted to rebuild the international economic system after World War II in a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The aim of the agreements was to establish a monetary management system, initially by pegging currencies to gold. The IMF was set up later to help manage the international financial system.