Progressive Calendar 02.16.08
From: David Shove (shove001tc.umn.edu)
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:17:13 -0800 (PST)
              P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    02.16.08

1. Pancake breakfast 2.16 8am
2. NWN4P Minnetonka  2.16 11am
3. NewHope vigil     2.16 1pm
4. Northtown vigil   2.16 2pm
5. Immigrant rights  2.16 2pm Owatanna MN
6. Immigrant rights  2.16 2pm
7. Agee/Cuba/CIA/CTV 2.16 9pm

8. Andre Vltchek - The French are not lazy (Deleting Sarkozy)

                                  [ed swamped with car actions]

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From: *Tatiana O* <spinswebs [at] hotmail.com <mailto:spinswebs [at] 
hotmail.com>>
Subject: Pancake breakfast 2.16 8am

WOMENS PRISON BOOK PROJECT  Pancake Breakfast

It's that time again!!!  Bring your family.  Bring your friends.  Bring
your your neighbors and EAT!  mmmmm....yummy pancakes!

If you've never been to the WPBP pancake breakfast, know these things: 1)
it's their most important fundraiser and your presence is greatly
appreciated, 2) it's SUPER busy, but in a good way, and 3) fun, fun, fun
and extra yummy.

Saturday, February 16 - 8am-noon

The Walker Church, 3104 16th Ave. S---1 block south of Lake St., 1 block
east of Bloomington
Only $6 adults, $3 kids

The Women's Prison Book Project, a twelve year old volunteer run
organization that sends free books and resources to women in prison all
over the country.

All proceeds will go directly toward helping women in prison all over the
country get books.


--------2 of 8--------

From: Carole Rydberg <carydberg [at] comcast.net>
Subject: NWN4P Minnetonka 2.16 11am

NWN4P-Minnetonka demonstration- Every Saturday, 11 AM to noon, at Hwy. 7
and 101.  Park in the Target Greatland lot; meet near the fountain. We
will walk along the public sidewalk. Signs available.


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From: Carole Rydberg <carydberg [at] comcast.net>
Subject: NewHope vigil 2.16 1pm

Saturday, 1-2PM - Weekly NWN4P vigil for peace in New Hope at the corner
of 42nd (Co. Rd. 9) and Winnetka Ave. N.  We usually park in the
Walgreen's lot or near McDonald's. You may use one of our signs or bring
your own. All welcome. Carole-763-546-5368.


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>From Vanka485 [at] aol.com Sun Jan  6 17:58:32 2008
Subject: Northtown vigil 2.16 2pm

Peace vigil at Northtown (Old Hwy 10 & University Av.), every Saturday
2:00 -- 3:00 PM.


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From: David Strand <mncivil [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Immigrant rights 2.16 2pm Owatanna MN

As you might be aware this year, like in the previous ones, Governor
Pawlenty began his attacks against the hardworking immigrant families of
this state.

That is why the members of Centro Campesino and the community of southern
Minnesota are gathering this Saturday February 16th to break the silence
and send a message to the Governor and as a way to create awareness in our
community. We will send a message from all of the children and families
who are so important for the progress and cultural enrichment of this
state.

We are inviting you to come and join us on this date to unite our voices
and forces to send a clear message in favor of real and fair immigration
reform and send a strong no to "scapegoat politics" used by the Governor.
Our community should not be used as scapegoats to be categorized as
criminals. Enforcement only polices as well as scapegoat politics do not
and will not solve the issue of immigration.

We hope to see you there to count with your support as we have in previous
struggles.

Owatonna Central Park
2:00 p.m.
Saturday February 16th.

Ernesto Velez Bustos Immigration Reform Organizer


--------6 of 8--------

From: Meredith Aby <awcmere [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Immigrant rights 2.16 2pm  Mpls

Immigrant Rights March
SAT, 2/16 @ 2pm @ corner of Lake & Chicago, Minneapolis

On January 7th, Gov. Pawlenty proposed a package of immigrant bashing
laws. He is attaking immigrant communities for electoral gain.  We will
not allow politicians to abuse immigrants for their political games.  We
must speak out and stand up for immigrant communities. There will be a
march followed by a community forum to learn what Pawlenty's proposed laws
mean, how we can stop them, & start to build a long-term struggle to win
immigrant rights in MN. Sponsored by the MN Immgirant Rights Coalition and
the Welfare Rights Committee.  For more info go to MNImmigrantRights.Net.


--------7 of 8--------

From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net>
Subject: Agee/Cuba/CIA/CTV 2.16 9pm

Truth-seeking Minneapolis Television Network (MTN 17) viewers:
"Our World In Depth" cablecasts on MTN Channel 17 on Saturdays at 9pm and
Tuesdays at 8am, after DemocracyNow!.  Households with basic cable may
watch.

Sat, 2/16, 9pm and Tues, 2/19, 8am "One Man's Story: Philip Agee, Cuba and
the CIA"  Short documentary film about CIA acts in Latin America,
particularly Cuba, with commentary by August Nimtz, U of M professor and
co-coordinator of the MN Cuba Committee.  Hosted by Karen Redleaf.


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ZNet Commentary
The French Are Not Lazy (Deleting Sarkozy) February 15, 2008
By Andre  Vltchek

For decades, the French economic and social system has been haunting
Anglo-Saxon market fundamentalists. While Americans work late into the
evenings, often with only 2 weeks vacations, worrying about inadequate
health insurance, education for their children and crumbling
infrastructure, the majority of the French seem to enjoy their lives to
the fullest. With 6 weeks paid leave they travel the globe. Their state
run medical system is free and excellent. Education for talented students
is still considered something of a human right instead of an "investment".

The French chat with their friends and colleagues over long lunches, read
newspapers and books in cafes; most of them work only 35 hours a week.
They live longer than the citizens of the US and Great Britain and their
HDI - Human Development Index (normalized measure of life expectancy,
literacy, education, standard of living, and GDP per capita for countries
worldwide) - is higher.

While there is an undeniable movement of educated, mostly business and
trade oriented, men and women seeking opportunities across the Channel, an
incomparably larger number of British citizens are settling down in
France, which is renowned for its high quality of life and pleasant living
conditions. To many around the world, France is synonymous not only with
elegance, but also with a high quality in scientific, academics, culture
and creative standards.

Yet the French system is constantly under fire, at home and abroad. It is
often described by its critics as archaic or even obsolete. The left and
center want to reform it while the right seems determined to destroy and
replace it with the standardized Anglo-Saxon model. French citizens show
periodically erratic and confused behavior, showering with votes
extremists like Jean-Marie Le Pen a French far-right nationalist
politician, founder and president of the Front National (National Front)
party. Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times, including in
2002, when in a surprise upset he came second, securing more votes in the
first round than the main left candidate, Lionel Jospin.

Were French voters "punishing the establishment" yet again when they
elected Nicolas Sarkozy?

It seems that it had already been decided by the corporate world (and
therefore by the media that it controls) that the French system is
gangrenous, deadly and highly contagious. The French don't work enough,
they are not stimulated to work; they waste precious time on frivolous
activities, mostly leisure.

While the mainstream English-language press rarely reviews contemporary
French fiction or non-fiction books, there was plenty of fuss around
Corinne Maier's "Hello Laziness" ("Bonjour Laziness - Jumping Off The
Corporate Ladder"). As one reader put it, "Maier encourages an anarchistic
approach to corporate life, one which professes that the avoidance of
responsibility and action is the best revenge against an oppressive
bureaucratic structure, and that increased job satisfaction will come with
working less." That seemed to be exactly what critics of the French social
state were waiting for. Maier and her short best seller were immediately
brought to the spotlight; allegedly the book was proving that work ethics
and the social state couldn't share the same bed. Commentaries had an
almost identical conclusion: the present French system encourages laziness
and makes France uncompetitive.

False. Of course the French tend to work fewer hours than citizens of
other industrialized nations. That's what they fought for and won.
According to a Forbes reported survey (03.22.05 "France, Bastion of
Productivity") of 25 industrialized countries conducted by the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the French
do work less than most others. They clocked an average 1,431 hours per
year. Even allowing six weeks vacation, this works out to just 31 hours
per week, less than even "les heures" would dictate. But Norwegian and
Dutch employees worked even less. German workers, who traditionally have
been viewed as paragons of industrial effort, put in 1,446 hours, barely
more than the French. British (1,673 hours), Americans (1,792 hours) and
Koreans (2,390 hours) worked substantially more." But the article
continues: "Still, French workers remain among the most productive in the
world, ahead of Britain, Germany, the United States and Japan, according
to the European statistics agency Eurostat, the AP reports."

France produces first-rate automobiles and airplanes (Airbus is assembled
in Toulouse). Its state run energy and transportation sectors are probably
the most efficient, high-tech and ecological in the world. France has the
fastest trains in the world, connecting almost all major cities. Its urban
areas as well as countryside are elegant, served by modern public
transportation, with large public spaces, combining centuries-old history
and cutting edge technologies. French design, arts and fashion are
considered an etalon of quality all over the world. So are the food and
wine.

But that doesn't seem to be enough and it probably isn't, at least from
the corporate point of view and from the angle of the New World Order.
France may have some of the mightiest companies in the world, some of the
largest banks and some of the richest people on the planet. But it also
has an "extremely spoiled" work force; men and women who are stubbornly
convinced that their country should serve its citizens, not the corporate
culture, convinced that they should work in order to eat and travel and
enjoy life, not in order to make a few corporate tycoons outrageously
rich.

And these annoying people are determined to fight for their rights, as
they did for decades and centuries.

That may be unacceptable in a world where daring to even criticize the
present system may be synonymous with extremism, even terrorism.

To a large extent thanks to its free and excellent education system,
French citizens are extremely well read and informed. Although the
circulation of major newspapers (like everywhere else) is declining,
France has still some of the mightiest alternative publications in the
world and these in turn have a global impact, like Le Monde Diplomatique.
French films may not be as revolutionary and avant-garde as they once
were, but many still carry strong social messages. Politics,
globalization, the environment and imperialism are some of the topics
still discussed at those long and leisurely-spent hours in cafes,
restaurants and bars. The French dare to take precious time off and trash
the system, instead of making the companies and their CEOs richer and
richer. It would be unacceptable from the point of view of New Labor in
Britain or the Democratic Party in the US.

And to make things worse, even conservative French Presidents like Jacque
Chirac actually opposed several US military actions, including the
US-British invasion of Iraq. At least pro-forma and for a time. Not that
the French government would ever send troops or the air force to defend
some desperate country under US attack (like Laos or Vietnam), but at
least it made sufficient noise to help show that the world is not yet
fully run by global dictatorship.

French "dissent" is not taken lightly by the ruling powers. France has
become a target of ridicule and criticism, similar to that unleashed, for
different reasons, against China (PRC).

But to neo-cons and market fundamentalists in Washington and London (and
also in places like Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur or Riyadh), France's
social system represents a much greater danger than its foreign policy.

Fear of becoming unemployable, fear of being labeled as extremists, fear
of being photographed and marked: all that prevents American and British
workers from doing what they were doing in earlier decades and centuries:
fighting for improvement of their conditions even if it meant trashing
their own cities in order to get better pay and benefits, to gain free
education for their children and free and decent medical care for their
sick. Surveillance techniques employed by the state and private sector, a
general lack of political opposition, and the deeply implanted belief that
it is impossible to change the system: all this has thrown the workers in
Anglo-Saxon countries and elsewhere back to the ages of pre-industrial
revolution.

But in France, people are still fighting. They strike. They riot.
Sometimes the opposition is fragmented or marginalized (Dominique Vidal,
deputy editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, once explained to me how the state
went far out of its way to sow the seeds of mistrust between the French
poor, workers and foreign migrants: groups that should naturally form one
strong alliance).

Despite the setbacks, alliances are periodically forged and some unions
are playing more than a decorative role. French people are deeply
suspicious of capitalism. They know well that if unchecked, the market
system will act like that old computer game Pac Man, eating all there is
on its way. Only the state can prevent it from taking full control of the
society. Only the state can act in the interest of the people, of the
majority. It can hardly be expected from private enterprise, as history
has repeatedly proven.

Multi-national companies hate it, but French people simply know too much.
They understand too much. They have too much time on their hands to think
and to read. They don't worry enough about their health and education, and
about their mortgages. Their children can even go to subsidized
kindergartens. Six weeks a year, often longer, French citizens can travel
the world, compare and learn how it ticks. And they want more social
securities, not fewer. And when monied forces try to take all that away
from them, they go to the streets and Paris burns. And other regional
capitals burn. "Chaos!" screams mainstream media all over the world.

"Well, better than the chaos of tens of millions of people dying
prematurely because of inadequate or non-existent medical insurance, like
in the United States," many French would argue. "Better than the chaos of
working day and night and feeling too scared to even complain to the face
of your boss."

But it is not easy to be different. Mainstream media, as well as foreign
media, bombards French voters with assiduous criticism of their country's
social and economic system. The thousand times repeated lie, about how
uncompetitive of a system they have inherited, is becoming truth.
Unemployment is being mentioned relentlessly; the unemployment that is, at
7.9%, definitely high, but still lower than in Germany (8.1%) and just
slightly higher than the EU average of 7.2%. Often given as comparison is
the unemployment rate of only 4.9% in the US, but what is not pronounced
is that almost no French worker in his or her right mind would accept
salaries and "benefits" offered to low-paid American workers, many of who
are "fully employed" on paper only.

The French are being told that they are missing the train, that they will
not be able to compete with Asia, with the US, the Irish Republic,
Britain. There are no solid indicators backing it, but the need for a
change is emphasized so frantically and repeatedly, that last year many
French voters opted for a radical move and elected an over-ambitious pro
marketer and self-proclaimed ally of the United States - Nicolas Sarkozy.

And Nicolas Sarkozy went to work as he promised: determined to dismantle
the French social state in the shortest time possible. He is, of course,
facing street protests and growing resentment from the French people. But
he is on a crusade; he is determined and inspired by multitudes of
"reformers" of recent years and decades: from Ms. Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan to Tony Blair, Helmut Kohl and Berlusconi; by all those "leaders"
who took advantage of the disappearance of global pluralism and began
turning back the clock of history.

This return to an early stage of capitalism may not go as smoothly in
France as it went elsewhere. The country was on the vanguard of social
movements and revolutions for decades and centuries. It was a home base of
some of the greatest humanists, rebels and social thinkers, from Anatole
France to Victor Hugo and Emil Zola and countless others. That's where La
Marseillaise was written, sung and later became the national anthem, where
The Internationale - the famous socialist, anarchist, communist, and
democratic anthem was born.

France is the country where democracy and striving for equality and social
justice didn't fall from the sky or arrive from abroad: the country fought
for them, step by step. And each step had tremendous and often terrible
costs, counted in human lives and lakes of spilled blood. Some of the
bravest and brightest sons and daughters of France died in the barricades,
on the streets and in the prisons. Nicolas Sarkozy has no right and no
mandate to dismantle the legacy of centuries long struggle for justice and
social rights.

France may be one of the last bastions of social and socialist ideals,
along with several countries in Latin America and a few in Europe. It is
not a perfect country, far from it. Its colonial past is appalling and its
periodic outbursts of intolerance deeply regrettable. But there is no
perfect country on this planet and there is definitely more in modern
France and its system worth defending and improving than rejecting and
discarding.

Unlike Britain (and to some extent Germany), France will not go without a
fight. Europe, unlike Venezuela, does not allow referendums where the
people can freely vote for the economic system (socialism or capitalism)
that they desire. Therefore we don't know what percentage of people will
join on each side. The outcome of the fight is uncertain. But it is fair
to predict that unless Sarkozy wants to trigger riots on the scale of the
civil war, he will not dare to touch the core of the social system of
France.

"Punishing the system" went too far. French voters already made their
point. And they saw the face of the alternative. The face is scary. It is
time to return to real progress, to build on the foundations of
solidarity, fraternity and equality. Otherwise French people may end up,
like elsewhere, as servants and slaves of the faceless corporate monster.

As a nightmare, as a computer virus, an inflated Sarkozy is now hanging
over Paris, threatening to bring France some hundred years back to the
beginning of the 20th Century. He should be quickly deleted from political
power, reduced to normal human size.

The French people are definitely not lazy, no matter what the market
fundamentalists say. Lazy people can't make the most comfortable passenger
planes, trains that run well over 300km/h, they wouldn't be able to design
architectural masterpieces and write hundreds of great novels, direct
wonderful films and make delicious cheeses and noble wines. They can do
all this on 35 hours a week average. Why should they do more? There is no
shortage of anything in the stores as it is!

Now that we determined that they are not lazy at all, we should ask French
people to work feverishly on one particular project that is so important
for them and for the rest of humanity: the project to get rid of Sarkozy.
Maybe they should try to find a way to send him as a cheerleader to
Washington. Or he should be offered to run an outsourcing company in
Britain. Anything, just not this, not what he is allowed to do now. If not
deleted soon, he may really try delete all of France as we know it.


Andre Vltchek: novelist, playwright and journalist. Co-founder of Mainstay
Press (http://mainstaypress.org), publishing house for political fiction.
Editorial director of Asiana Press Agency (www.asiana-press-agency.com).
He lives and works in Asia and South Pacific and can be reached at:
andre-wcn [at] usa.net


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   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
   rhymes with clove         Progressive Calendar
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