Why America needs Dr. Martin Luther King again

Are we losing our civil rights in America today?

Is racism gaining a stronger foothold?

 

Here in Big Horn County, we have racial diversity that is unique among the rural counties of Montana. We benefit from the legacy of Dr. King’s struggle for our nation’s freedom, but we can easily be drawn into the recent national degradation of civil rights. This unfortunate trend is making a mockery of the gains those of us experienced with neighbors and friends back in the 60’s. Our loss of civil rights is most concentrated in our prisons. Our county has one of the highest incarceration rates in Montana, if not the entire U.S.

 

We have a tradition in America of listening to God’s words on behalf of the civil rights of those who suffer, and hearing the Godly path to real security. Jesus’ Sabbath reading from Isaiah at the Nazareth synagogue around 32 A.D. alludes to this central agenda of the prophets, including Jesus, as recorded by Evangelist St. Luke.

 

Luke 4:16 – “Now Jesus … stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.'”

 

Two present day intellectuals, Randall Robinson and Michelle Anderson, point out that our “get tough on crime” rhetoric has led to class warfare in America. The title of Anderson’s new book captures the hidden nature of this new apartheid in America – “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

 

Of course real people sometimes wrongly suffer regardless of race in our criminal justice system, but the racial bias in prison, courts and law enforcement mocks the justice and freedom concepts written into our constitution. A few tidbits from Anderson’s and Robinson’s books:

 

Twelve percent of all non-violent drug arrests involve black people, yet 56 percent of all drug prosecutions are of blacks. While drug use and selling rates are the same among races nationwide, African Americans are incarcerated at rates more than double those of other races.

 

A higher percentage of blacks are imprisoned in America now than were imprisoned in South Africa at the height of apartheid. Today, there are more African Americans under correctional control, whether in prison or jail, on probation or on parole, than there were enslaved in 1850. To add insult to injury, our national incarceration rate is an almost laughable shame when compared to other civilized nations.

 

No other nation disenfranchises prisoners like we do. Even those who have served their time, reformed and returned as productive citizens, are banned from voting. More blacks are disenfranchised from voting now in America than were banned from voting in the registration laws of 1870, found unconstitutional.

 

Most devastating for slaves in America was the loss of family and even family memories because of forced separation of parents and children. Today, this family destruction is returning. Those freed from incarceration cannot return and recover their provider status with their families. They cannot get food stamps, cannot live with their families without the whole family being evicted from public housing, cannot get jobs, cannot get a car loan. They also live under pressure to return to crime and unfortunately, many succumb. Our criminal justice system has abysmal recidivism rates.

 

For generations, Montana prisoners have manufactured license plates. This is overseen by our government to guarantee no profiteering from the vulnerability of prisoners like in China or, thirty years ago, the Soviet Union. Everywhere else, that’s all changing.

 

Historically, prison-labor programs have allowed prisoners to work for the public sector, for example, to manufacture lisence plates.  Advocates of prison labor point to reduced costs to the state, vocational training, and work ethic as benefits of such programs.  However recent changes, promoted by ALEC, allow prison labor for private sector products and open the door to profiteering.    The new prisons for profit program promoted in our twisted private enterprise system gives prisoners jobs.  Absenteeism is not an issue.  Workers can be controlled effectively, and have little recourse.   Benefits, such as health care, are paid by the tax payer, as are room, board, and security.  How will legitimate employers hope to compete with this no-cost, no union labor force?  

 

With new laws and our massive American incarceration rates there is never a lack of workers.  The multi-billionaire Koch brothers have significant investments in for-profit prisons also invest millions in media and policy think-tanks.  To read about the return of slavery in America’s prisons, use the links below and pray/work for deliverance of those in captivity. Alternatively, have a rational fear session, from a prophet speaking in the tradition of the Bible’s prophets about judgment under God. Watching Dr. King’s 1968 speech on Viet Nam is useful for those who believe the Bible’s spirituality speaks to politics today:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U

or read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

Click on the link “Viet Nam War”

 

­­‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑Other Sources:

 

Michelle Alexander, civil rights advocate and the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which has just been re-released in paperback. She won a 2005 Soros Justice Fellowship and now holds a joint appointment at the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Alexander served for several years as the director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California, which spearheaded the national campaign against racial profiling. At the beginning of her career she served as a law clerk on the United States Supreme Court for Justice Harry Blackmun. She lives outside Columbus, Ohio.

 

Randall Robinson, founder and past president of TransAfrica and a law professor at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of An Unbroken Agony and the national best sellers The Debt, The Reckoning, Quitting America, and Defending the Spirit, as well as the novel The Emancipation of Wakefield Clay. He is the creator, co-producer, and host of the public television human rights series World on Trial. Robinson lives with his wife Hazel in St. Kitts, West Indies.

 

Our national incarceration rates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

 

ALEC and prison labor profits:

http://www.thenation.com/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor

 

Michelle Alexander’s new book on the growing racial bias of our criminal justice system:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Michelle-Alexander/dp/1595586431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326516207&sr=8-1

 

Video of interview with Michelle Alexander and Randall Robinson:

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/13/on_eve_of_mlk_day_michelle

 

Public schools in low income communities inadvertently teach criminal mentality, preparing students for incarceration instead of success in America. http://www.truth-out.org/stop-school-prison-pipeline/1326636604

 

John Paul Lederach was a fellow student of mine in college. His experience and ideas are relevant to the dominant culture’s paradigm of conflict handling on the res. This I contend is near the root of the despair over racism, abuse, dysfunction and poverty around us.  It’s a useful problem to address in health education, because the habits associated with the paradigm are so pervasive, concentrated in relational behaviors at all levels of society in this county, and the irrationality makes it a prime agenda for education.

http://blog.onbeing.org/post/15823286942/the-art-of-peace-from-conflict-resolution-to

 

 

--
David Graber
RR 1 Box 1211D
631 Woodley Ln
Hardin, MT  59034

406 665-3373
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
Bonnie's email graberbj@gmail.com

Honoring our returning warriors

Big Horn County families have proportionally many more loved ones returning from service in Iraq this New Year. They need a strong welcome home. Now is the time for an honest look at our partially-ended Iraq war, and critically examine the rationale to re run the Iraq war buildup with the next one, substituting "n" for the "q" in Iraq. We are following an almost identical script. It escapes me how an honest, open appraisal of our huge investment of taxpayer money and citizen blood could be anything but highly patriotic, and the best way to honor our veterans. But it's been given that brazenly stupid twist by packs of our paranoid neoconservative politicians and pundits, repeating the war propaganda script (see general-clark- propaganda-iraq-rerun).

 

It was about a month before Christmas in the late '50's with the moon just past full, enough light to see dimly this phenomenon in the original back 40 of my father's farm. He had just bought this adjacent pasture and timber ground, and went to the local sale barn to buy at auction some 50 head of spring lambs to fatten for the market before Christmas.

 

He was concerned that wooly critters, new in our valley, could incur a dog problem. So a billy goat and Corriedale buck were each outfitted with a bell just in case my father's worries became reality, and we the family could know what's really happening.

 

Then came November. My father woke my brother and me around 4:00 AM because the bells were ringing. Getting access to the problem took some effort and risk. The lights on our '51 Studebaker flatbed worked occasionally. With shotguns and enough buckshot shells, we three quickly jumped in. There were several correctly timed solid bumps turning the lights on just in time to miss a tree. We  drove out of the timber up to an open flat meadow ridge and stopped.

 

The bells were close, but nothing else sounded amiss except a small dog's excited "yip-yip." We carefully closed the doors and ran lightly with guns loaded toward the far side of the ridge. Down in a shallow grassy cirque we saw in the moonlight a  serious fracas. Three dogs were obsessed with their task, and didn't see us. We noted the carcasses of several lambs they had left mortally wounded, to go after another target. They weren't hungry; they had no real need for the carnage. The three dogs were totally focused and their mission was clear.

 

With the small one yipping and leading the way, they soon got another lamb down. As they ganged up to tear flesh into total submission we let loose with 12 gauge pumps and both triggers of a 10 gauge double barrel (Dad). We killed all three dogs, inadvertently finishing off the latest lamb.

 

Then we saw that one of the dogs we killed was ours.  The other two belonged to neighbors. One neighbor tried to press charges for loss of a valuable bird dog, but got nowhere because both law and custom gave rights to farmers to protect their livelihood.

 

For a long time I wondered how our good farm dog, having learned not to do more than nip sheep in the heel, had, in the heat of the pack, quickly forgotten his reason for existence as our farm dog.  In fact, we didn't know he was there, and he didn't come to greet us. What caused him to get so frenzied he couldn't hear the truck? What happened in his mind?

 

We aren't the only beings, us humans that is, who lose our common sense and civility when we run in a pack feeding greed with systemic destructive instincts. We can undermine our existence as a nation, if not our species, with the pack behavior that got us into our last four wars and kept the profits flowing.  This is the unspoken truth behind our deceptive political paranoiacs who pack themselves up and run down with dripping fangs anything that wriggles wrong for them, but remains right and constitutional for 99% of the rest of us. 

 

It's the same mind that now infests all branches of our government and all our political parties. How could Representative Dennis Kucinich, right about Iraq then, now be seen as so wrong about Iran (truthdigger-dennis-kucinich-01-01-2012)? 

 

Now almost every American agrees with Obama that we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran, and all options are on the table.  What should we do to defend ourselves against an Iran gone nuclear? Start by asking an Iraq war vet. Check out what the Israeli intel chief says (December 29 Mossad-Israeli-Iran-Threat).  Read the facts of what our own intelligence says.

 

Then pray we won't have another Middle East war retreat without victory after another million deaths and ten more years. Then start helping us build back the traditions that made America great since the 1770's, the most important being our tradition of an elected government of, by and for the people. Not for the government. Not for the corporations that profiteer from war. For the people. 

 

For other American traditions now being brought down as those lambs were in the back 40 of my youth, and resources cited, read on

 

 

Innocent until proven guilty

The Bill of Rights of the Constitution

Education for all

The right to work for a living

A fair economy

Habeas Corpus

Freedom from unreasonable search, seizure and detention

Government respect when seeking entry to our homes

A military that defends our borders, and respects other nations and nationalities

Abiding by The Geneva Convention we helped create after World War II

Government leaders beholden to laws in no lesser degree than citizens

Freedoms and civil rights for citizens over corporations (latest Montana Supreme Court finding helps recover this one!)

Racial equality of opportunity

Freedom to exist, regardless of race, class, religion, ethnicity or gender.

health care access regardless of income or wealth

Trust busting, breaking up illegal monopolies

Truth in borrowing, lending, financing, buying and selling.

 

Here are some sources used in this column in BHC News January 4, 2012:

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/04/avoiding-another-long-war/ (a group of veteran intelligence professionals who have served in the CIA)

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/12/29/395711/mossad-israel-iran-existential-threat/?mobile=nc (for the Israeli intel chief Tamir Pardo on Iran threat)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBgRAWHJ89U  (General Clark on war propaganda)

http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/29/time-go-deeper (Jim Wallis on 2011 and pessimism for 2012)

http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/23/heeding-bethlehem-call-freedom-comes-tenacity  (Tom Getman on spiritual tenacity for freedom)

 

 

It's easy let our elected dogs, supposedly the safeguards for our American traditions, focus on those lambs as immediate prey instead of future family provision. It's more than greed; it's a simple diversion from the more complex task of guaranteeing fathers work for livelihood of our nation's children's children. Note the political sound bites of the season, picturing as prey: Obamacare, government regulation, Season's Greetings, gay marriage, immigrants, an Afro-American president with some Muslim influence in his heritage, fair taxes on the rich, Iran, habeas corpus, and other American traditions as listed above.

 

We sold our lambs, took our losses, and my father never raised sheep again. The neighbors agreed with us we did not want to tie up our dogs every night. So instead, we removed from all the dogs the opportunity to go berserk over sheep meat.  As my father said that night, once a dog tastes sheep while running in a pack at night, there is no option but destroying it.  Sheep slaughtering, after all, is in canine genes. They were created to be predators.

 

Humans were not. But those three dogs represent politics to me:  Republicans, Democrats, and Tea Partiers. All three are despoiling our future national security as well as our well being as a nation.

 

The Tea Party dog is the latest and smallest on the block, ravenous, easily excited, often irrational, but a good bird dog with the right training. He is the lead attack dog on the sheep of our economy and national political conversation.

 

The Democrat dog is our farm dog, dedicated to the welfare of the whole family, but under cover of darkness sneaks off to serve the ravenous appetites of the 1%. This explains the current fed's political connections that allowed 7.7 trillion dollars to go to bailout Wall Street, ten times the amount congress and the nation were blissfully debating at $700,000,000,000, the amount we thought we taxpayers lent to those dogs on Wall Street.  We still aren't supposed to know about the $7,700,000,000,000.00; note how little the TV and talk media have mentioned it.

 

The Republican dog would explain that only weak sheep would be culled. Trust me, he says, I'll give you plenty of jobs cleaning up my mess and feeding my puppies. Anyway, we are the energy sector pushing the Keystone Pipeline project, and we're in the 1% family too big to fail. We are so big we can guarantee future national security. This dog doesn't want us looking into the exaggerated job estimates, steel from the Far East creating jobs there instead of America, and the 4 to 41 billion subsidy—depending on sources of this hidden information—that we sink our teeth in from taxes on the 99%. This dog wants to keep hidden how the Republicans stopped Obama from cutting $4 billion of this government spending on unneeded energy sector subsidy. There's lots in this world for Americans to fear, and this dog wants to be our favorite watchdog.

 

The Republican dog would push the falsehood as truth that the big operators make more jobs for America. This is illustrated in the hugely inflated job numbers of the Keystone Pipeline, complete with ridiculous distortions like counting "permanent" jobs by job years—i.e. 500 jobs for 10 years would be 5,000 permanent jobs, the way these liars figure.  Five hundred just happens to be the actual number of permanent jobs this project is projected by a third-party reliable source to provide, yet hear the Republicans bark their enthusiasm of more mutton money jobs we're all supposed to believe in. Yet our gov'ment needlessly spends 4 to 41 billion of our national treasury annually on subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, like Keystone Pipeline—an issue the Dempublican Super committee refused to address.

 

A realistic scientific appraisal of our planet's health for long term American if not human survival must be tied in with appropriate non-fossil energy investment, but it gets almost no press.  Now that this seems the only realist alternative, why is there still no political party with any sense of how to do this in America? Why do we turn our noses up against 95% of the world's population in every climate change conference, and turn the other way as our dogs commit carnage against planet earth's future? It's time to dispose of the Republocrats in Congress and sell the sheep of short-term gain.

 

As much as we don't want to, it's time to tie up our dogs that don't need the bloody mess they make to fatten themselves on our economy, the resource we have tended as American families over the centuries.  Other dogs can be elected to serve the real interests of our nation, more than the wealthy one percent.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/100282510

 

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/01/cain-kills-abel-the-first-class-war/

The first article is by a Baptist minister. Others are equally useful for any evaluative discussion of our latest war run up.

 

http://www.nationofchange.org/propaganda-re-runs-1325090084

Comments by General Wesley Clark

 

Iran stands accused of being very close to developing an atom bomb. In 2002, so was Iraq.

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" He replied, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" -- meaning the Secretary of Defense's office -- "today." He continued, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I asked, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"

..end..

Snip is from General Wesley Clark, speaking with Amy Goodman.

The propaganda parallels are so obvious as to reek of laziness. Can't they even make up better lies now?

 

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/globallaborinstitute/research/Keystonexl.html

Follow the links on this site for official testimony and comprehensive scientific findings.

 

http://4closurefraud.org/2011/12/07/bernanke-letter-to-congress-re-bloomberg-7-7-trillion-secret-bailout-article/

 

The Rigged Keystone Pipeline Game

 

We in Big Horn County know a rigged game when we see one.  That's when the outcome is set ahead of the game, and power brokers pay a few important players to rig the game in favor of the brokers, against the wishes of the public to access a livelihood.\. 

 

The Keystone Pipeline federal EPA environmental review is a case in point.  Who did it? For whose benefit? With what advance understanding, or surreptitious contract?

 

The Washington Post, after countless news media outlets simply regurgitating the power brokers' propaganda, finally broke through with some truth:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/keystone-pipeline-debate-heats-up/2011/11/04/gIQA824rpM_story.html

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/keystone-pipeline-jobs-claims-a-bipartisan-fumble/2011/12/13/gIQAwxFisO_blog.html

 

It turns out the estimate of 20,000 jobs created by the keystone XL project owner TransCanada is another case of liars who figure.  The figures that don't lie are the 20,000 "one person, one year" jobs, rather than the much fewer jobs period, quoting Russ Girling, TransCanada's CEO who defended the lie. Translated, this means each year each worker is hired it counts as job. So if the project were to take 10 years, the way most of us in Big Horn County understand the word "jobs" it would be $2,000. It wouldn't take that long, but even so it begs the question, "How many permanent, as in lifetime, jobs will the Keystone XL project create?" Obviously, they don't want to project that information. The truth is uncomfortable.

 

That brings up the next question: "What priorities have been given to the workers and the economy of this country in TransCanada's business plan for the Keytsone XL project?"  Once again, like too many of the too-big-to-fail enterprises of our great nation, they say one thing to please the government and the citizens, and then do the opposite, buying steel from the far East, getting pipes built in another country, and manipulating figures to mislead us with the truthful lie of 20,000 jobs for American workers. 

 

http://stoptarsands.org/powerful-mini-documentary

 

http://stoptarsands.org/earthquake-keystone-xl-pipeline-route-proves-state-department-wrong

 

 

 

 

 

The U.S. State Department, which must green light the project, forecasts just 5,000 direct U.S. jobs over a two year construction period.

Even according to TransCanada, the amount of permanent jobs created would be only in the hundreds.

"Those are the real numbers," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of international programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The Republicans have been acting as if this is a national jobs package, and it's not."

Meanwhile, one study from Cornell University said the pipeline could actually lead to a decline in jobs in the long run. One reason is that the pipeline would lead to higher fuel prices in the Midwest, the study said, and that would slow consumer spending and cost jobs. The study also said jobs could also be lost due to crop failures or other events associated with higher pollution levels the oil sands would bring. And it said more oil would mean a decline in green jobs.

 

 

http://www.truth-out.org/new-york-city-council-vote-against-corporate-personhood-citizens-united/1325701337   from comments on this website by

Thomas Spencer

His comments follow:

The SCOTUS made a very serious free speech error in allowing unlimited political contributions by corporations. Essentially, they gave corporations a First Amendment right to buy a Congress that will promote their greed at the expense of the human public well being. They agreed with the saying that "money talks", and decided that money was to have free speech.

This was NOT a matter of free speech as they asserted. It IS a matter of one-man-one-vote in a republican form of government. By allowing unlimited contributions by corporations they have essentially given them as many votes as they can afford. It is the equivalent of saying that votes can be had for every x number of dollars, or that only landowners can vote; a concept proposed and rejected by our founders. In addition, they have ignored the laws that prohibit political contributions by foreign interests because almost all publicly held companies have some stock owned by non citizens. Shouldn't it be a violation to let corporations with foreign ownership decide who is going to be a US public servant?

Corporations are NOT people; they are commercial and legal paper entities, and they have legal protections people do not. They do not have children who need good schools, they cannot get cancer from a polluted environment, they cannot lose their lives in wars of choice, they cannot be sent to prison or jail, and they do not benefit from a happy populace. Their sole interest is in monetary profit. When corporations enter political debates with vast expenditures and propaganda, they seek to further their own interest, not those of humans. Far too often their interests prevail at the expense of the public well being because of their immense wealth.

The ruling was a fiasco that threatens the very nature of our republic. It leads us towards an oligarchy (rule by an elite group), which in our case will be a plutocracy, a rule by wealthy paper entities with money, with some level of foreign ownership influence.

The kicker on the SCOTUS is Clarence Thomas's compromised integrity. He actually broke the law by not reporting income: and that income was from special interests that are bringing cases before the court. Not to mention his perceived lack of judicial competence.

It's really scary to know your republican form of government might depend on disease or accident to alter the bent of the SCOTUS. This is the second error they have made recently, the first being putting Bush in office: both obviously politically motivated. We have the worst Supreme Court in history. It's time for a constitutional amendment limiting SCOTUS terms or allowing for public recall.

 

--
David Graber

Hardin, MT  59034

The Real War on Christmas

 

Each year Fox News broadcasts footage on the "war on Christmas," noting businesses that substitute the word "holiday" for "Christmas," or school districts that bow to non-Christian parents' demands to end singing of "Silent Night".   

The idea vehemently defended by Fox is the Christmas of modern culture.  But the first Christmas did not take place in a decorated home, around a tree bright with ornaments and flanked with piles of gifts, with the whole happy family gathered together singing carols.  It was not announced by department store fliers, displayed in colored lights, or celebrated with warm beverages and frosted cookies.  

Rather, the Creator of the Universe came to earth as a tiny infant in a dark and dangerous time of fear and repression.  The Lord of All was born to a teenage mother, far from home and family support, isolated and rejected, in an animal shelter.  His birth was not announced on the lawns of the government offices to the citizens of occupied Rome. It was announced to non-citizens on the outskirts of town, the working-class shepherds.  They would welcome the sign: a baby in a manger.  Christ the Savior is born, poor and homeless to non-citizens from Nazareth.

And the birth of the King of Kings was announced through the appearance of a star. This sign was heralded by foreign intellectuals. They traveled far to welcome the Christ. But it was not "good news" to the entrenched powers.  King Herod wielded his mighty arm to defend the empire by ordering the slaughter of every male child in Bethlehem under the age of two.

 

So Christmas really happened first in violence, fear, grief and despair.   "On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned." --Isaiah 9:2b.  

On one hand, Fox News defends the celebration of the Christmas holiday.  And then, commentators herald the steady promotion of consumerism, the defense of wealth and power (and bonuses for bank execs), and regularly belittle or attack efforts to overcome poverty or protect the vulnerable.

On the other hand, the first Christmas offers the joyful promise of peace and the hope of reconciliation with God and among people.  No other religion has its God becoming flesh, totally human and poor, born in such a vulnerable and dangerous environment with government oppression, yet bringing hope of complete salvation. Christ the Savior is born.

Fox News proffers the constant drumbeat of war, the reliance on military solutions to social conflict, the demonizing of our enemies, and trust in American dominance. It never mentions credible reports of over 160 children killed by American predator drones in Pakistan since we came up with this new weapon (civilian reports top 300, Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Aug 2011).

The real Christmas lifts up the Virgin Mary's song of praise for her baby boy: "He has brought the mighty down from their thrones, and lifted the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away."  How could Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, and Ann Rand avoid labeling this language from Mary's Magnificat as "class warfare?"

The real war on Christmas is lost to those who bury their noses in the sand of our commercial culture.  The effect is the same whether we never sing Silent Night in school, or we spin ourselves into a holiday frenzy that leaves no room for Christ. Christmas without God's true Salvation through Christ—the transformation of hearts, minds, people and powers­—is a hollow shell. Talking only about personal individual salvation, as powerful and important as it is, misses most of the Bible's reason for the season, and hides the real war on Christmas

Is there room this year, in our safe, warm inn, to welcome a homeless, vulnerable stranger, the Son of God?  Is there room in the most powerful nation on earth to trust in the Prince of Peace?

Here's Jim Wallis or Sojourners summary of this cultural war on Christmas, to whom I credit several of the ideas of my column:

http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/15/real-war-christmas-fox-news

 

The following is continued from Big Horn County News:

 

Quote from Jim Wallis:
"The real Christmas announces the birth of Jesus to a world of poverty, pain, and sin, and offers the hope of salvation and justice."

The first chapters of each of the four Gospels in the New Testament tell the story. Christmas is about the real presence of the Living God, Creator of the Universe, among us in real flesh—a tiny, vulnerable infant.  The theological term for this reality is incarnation.  No other religion has its God becoming flesh, prone to all the fallibility of humanity, born to a poor and homeless young mother in the midst of a military occupation by an empire.

 

"God's becoming flesh — human — and entering into history in the form of a vulnerable baby born to a poor, teenage mother in a dirty animal stall."—Jim Wallis of Sojourners

 

An interesting element is the origin of many of our commercial symbols of Christmas. Many of these originated with the Roman Empire, in its efforts to Christianize Europe, adopted the pagan symbols of the solstice celebrations. This includes the Christmas tree, the lights, and the date of December 25. The Empire just took away the pagan gods and left the symbols and the festivals and the date intact. But this history of tainted symbols has nothing to do either with the Bible's Christmas story, and while an interesting conflict, doesn't touch the Bible's allusion to a need for peace then and now.

 

While not overtly a Christmas story, Dr. Chi Huang's recounting of his medical service to street children of Bolivia comes as close as I have seen to a modern Christmas story. It really does reflect the values and struggles of the first Christmas story. This book is definitely adult material, When Invisible Children Sing, 1997. The author is a family friend.

 

--
David Graber

Hardin, MT  59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Fundamentally pro-life—The Advent of Christ

 

Infanticide was brutally common in the Roman empire of Mary and Joseph's time. Abortion was also practiced, but the trauma and poor chances of any survival made it a rare procedure. Yet the beginning of Christianity was fundamentally pro-life. What can we learn from those first Christians?

 

Near the time of Mary's surprise pregnancy, Sepphoris, the Greek/Jewish/Roman city of 30,000 barely 4 miles from Nazareth, was swept with turmoil. Infanticide and abortion, along with starvation and executions, were already present in Galilee with Pax Romana ruthlessly imposed by the Roman occupation and influx of Hellenic culture and idolatry. Civil war could only increase these practices. This new chapter began when Judas, son of the Jewish guerilla leader Ezekias executed by Herod, broke in and looted the Roman arsenal in Sepphoris. He distributed the weaponry and declared the city liberated. The Jewish population hoped the abominations practiced by the heathen occupation were ended.

 

But victory was brief. True to form, the Romans ruthlessly quelled the rebellion.  No Jew was left living in the city. Those who weren't able to escape to the countryside, or to risk surrender into slavery, were killed. Caesar, known to the Roman world as Filio Deus (Son of God) was to be worshiped by law as the god above all gods. He He permitted Herod Antipas to make Sepphoris his personal capital. He needed Jewish "tektones", carpenters and masons who previously farmed and were cheated out of their land by the economy of Rome. Being in virtual starvation and without hope to carve out an existence, they braved the journey into enemy territory. Daily they walked to Sepphoris from Nazareth and other nearby villages, and rebuilt the heathen temples, public baths and homes for the rich. Of course, most were not hired, and became the multitudes to which Jesus later ministered primarily.

 

Jesus almost certainly grew up to accompany his earthly carpenter father daily to work in Sepphoris, by then transformed into a center of Greek/Roman culture. Inevitably the Jewish families of Nazareth including Joseph, Mary and Jesus would have known about hunger, violence and sexual oppression rampant at the time near Roman frontier cities such as Sepphoris.

 

Such was the environment when Joseph discovered that his intended was pregnant.  The options were deadly, and certainly, as Scripture implies, Joseph knew precedents.  "Putting away" a young pregnant girl was an almost certain death sentence for mother and unborn.  In a law-abiding rich Jewish family, the Leviticus law provided the death penalty. Among poorer families, less able to keep the law, such unfortunate girls were more likely put away.  But this too was almost surely a death sentence. If they survived pregnancy, abortion, or suicidal depression, they could end up in a brothel working in the Roman baths or prostitution shrines for the occupation.

 

Because of these practices, combined with the economic and social pressure to birth male babies, by the end of the 2^nd century the Roman Empire suffered from gender imbalance. Especially in major cities, males outnumbered females 3:2. It was opposite in Christian communities where 60% or more were female.  This happened because Christians rescued girl babies found abandoned on city streets, really infanticide euphemistically called "expose the infant." Christians also rescued young women caught in the dilemma similar to Mary, but without an angel visitation to her and to her betrothed.

 

Christianity spread not simply because of miracles.  It also spread because Christian slaves such as those exiled from insurgency-prone provinces like Galilee and Judea advised their troubled masters "We Christians know how to live." Christians at that time fought against infanticide and abortion more as a symptom, showing unlimited compassion and care for the humanity of all, even enemies. Thus, by 250 AD, early Christians had built fundamentally pro-life communities throughout the Roman Empire. These communities featured disciplined training that amounted to pro-life transformation. It was essential to the astounding growth of Christianity exactly at the time of its greatest and most violent opposition. It was comprehensively and foundationally pro-life, unlike the narrow focus of today's pro-life activists.

 

This advent, along with Mary 2,000 years ago, let's connect the powerful few with the deprivation of many poor and lowly, down even to the preborn, and prioritize God's acts on all their behalf as she did in the pregnancy and birth of her Son:
"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior . . .
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;
He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty."

            —Selections from Luke 1:45ff

Following is a brief list of books and a video supporting a scholarly understanding of early Christianity, most of which are on my shelf.

 

Myers, Chad, Binding the Strong Man (Orbis, 1997) 500 pages. Essentially this a commentary on Mark's Gospel.  But more than a commentary on individual words, it includes a plethora of ancient documents relevant to Mark's narrative and the background of its writing. Replete with scholarly sources cited, this reading of Mark's Gospel has a bias (p. xxii "forward" by Daniel Berrigan): "…an attentive analysis of the politics of Jesus; that Way of defiance, loving, albeit courageous, toward the worldly powers that in His time and ours ravage the world and legalize crime. Iniqitous authority, lawless and spurious, must be cast from its illegitimate throne; justice must be enthroned.  This is the work of Jesus. It proceeds in the community of Jesus. Love, defiance. Instinctive affection toward persons, even the worldly powers; defiance of their power, its malfunctioning and maleficence."

 

Claiborne, Shane and Christ Haw, Jesus for President (The Simple Way, 2008). Entertaining artistic layout of quotes of many historical documents reflected in my column of December 2011 in the Big Horn County News. An example from p. 183: "Tacitus said that people feared the peace of Rome…because streams of blood and tears of unimaginable proportions followed in the 'peace'."  And from a US soldier in Iraq, "We are dying and killing for abstract nouns like freedom and democracy…but this is not the gospel of Jesus Christ."

 

Heschel, Abraham, The Prophets (2007).  Heschel, a rabbinical Old Testament scholar, was a good friend and theological influence on Dr. Martin Luther King for many years.

 

Sobrino, No Salvation Outside the Poor (2008). Sobrino is a Catholic theologian from Spain with vast experience in Central and South America.

 

Romero, Oscar, The Violence of Love (2004). Excerpts from Archbiship Romero's sermons and papers prior to his silencing by an assassin's bullets at the moment of consecration during Holy Mass at his church in El Salvador highlight this book.  Some of this content is used in the documentary film, Romero, available at video outlets. It traces the fascinating transformation of this scholarly priest from avowed theological conservative to radical liberal because of his years of living with the Indians and poor of El Salvador.

 

Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity (1997). Historical documents are organized into a fascinating detailed account of the first centuries of Christianity by this respected scholar. This book is a primary source for my column of December 2011, "Foundationally pro-life: The Advent of Christ"

 

McClaren, Brian, Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide (Sep 2009) McLaren was invited to address a coalition of Christian leaders for a week in Ruwanda and Botswana following the genocide, trying to process the grief of the nation with Biblical vision. Participants discovered the Bible's words from Jesus and the prophets made clear that God's priorities focus on the greatest causes of human suffering and premature death, rather than on the "spiritual" agenda adopted by most denominations in Christian mission to Africa. The title of the book comes from an exclamation, with tears, of one of the participants.

 

From Jesus to Christ        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NLQfZdkzzM

First produced by PBS, this documentary in three parts and is long and detailed, but not boring.  It was shot on site in locations in which the history occurred. Important and little known documentation of early Christianity is in this series, but the narrative is tainted by an agenda to discredit some dearly-held Christian beliefs. It's an excellent video documentary except for this bias.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Has America gone lazy?

Last week, President Obama shared his thoughts about complacency in America over the last two decades – and he used the word lazy. The words were barely out of his lips last Tuesday when Republican presidential candidates pounced on the morsel and regurgitated it on their blogs. Buried under the ludicrous salivations is a huge cache of truth.

From 2001 to 2003 while I was in China, I was questioned over and over by workers, college students and business leaders – whenever people gathered to practice their English on an American. The question they asked was so repetitive that in time it became nauseating – "When do you think China will overtake America?"

"In what?" I learned to counter. Sometimes I queried further, "In good will and civilized behavior to ethnic minorities?" They always had another agenda.

Beneath their anti-American rhetoric was the same truth. Chinese citizens know how to work with their hands, and Americans have forgotten how. However, this is nto the result of laziness. It's the result of a service-based economy and a focus on information jobs instead of growth in industrial and manufacturing positions that are more hands on.

It's true that the economy of China is rapidly overtaking that of the U.S. in practically every measure. It's been that way for almost a decade. Some measures indicate China is already ahead of America.

In September, an article in The Economist predicted China's economy would surpass America's by 2016. We have outsourced our "blue collar" jobs out of our borders. Actually, the wealthy one percent have outsourced our talented labor force. That doesn't make those of us who are out of work lazy, but it has almost fatally damaged our nation's economic engine — workers.

All this should give pause to the naysayers on talk radio defending the few skilled technical hand laborers left in this country in the face of computer driven and information technology skills. It's true, as Romney and Perry proclaim, that the working few of this nation are still the world's best. But those jobs are becoming more and more scarce.

Meanwhile, our children grow up not knowing how to use their hands.

It's not just because automotive technology has advanced to the point where tools and technical know-how are now too complex for any farmer to dig into engine overhaul or even replacing brake pads. While that's definitely part of the problem, there is also too much time spent away from learning about how "real stuff" works – that which can't be replicated on a computer.

Young people, by and large, no longer know how to move dirt with a shovel to block or open a field ditch, how to mulch potato plants, strip out the last of the milk in a back quarter, scald and pluck a chicken, let alone pound a nail or fasten a hose on a bib.

Here on the Back 40, family and friends have been joining us in building models of sustainable solar-assisted and energy efficient systems for heating, cooling, sewage treatment and farm production. Successes, mostly from borrowed technical information on the web, slightly overbalance failures.

But the greatest success has been the young people who come with zero experience working with their hands, yet end up with a strong value for learning such skills. They practiced with the stuff of vegetable, animal, metal, wood, rubber tire, soil and stone products and found they could be successful and useful with their hands. Stop in at the Back 40 and see the results.

This is a huge difference from when I was their age in 1960. Back then, I knew no one who was as ignorant about using their hands intelligently as most young people seem to be now.

No, President Obama and hopeful GOP candidates, laziness is not precisely the focal point. Greed is more the problem, and the hope of making more money with less physical and mental effort. It has been cultivated by the unfortunate collaboration of big government and big business, who do things for us we would be better off doing for ourselves, at obscene profits for the one percent.

So in this Thanksgiving season, I'm grateful for the young people who are moving out of the comfort of the corporate-government box to experience handling stuff with their own hands, in order to provide for themselves and their family. Work really does work, and it's enormously fulfilling when it connects to real stuff and builds real human relationships. The future of our nation depends on it.

Hardin, MT 59034

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

The Economist gets it wrong.

The Economist pretends laissez faire economics is American as apple pie.

The Economist, along with the media from NPR to Fox, propagates the knee-jerk falsehood that a growing segment of world citizens are attacking American capitalism per se. I was expecting hard-nosed reality from The Economist, with Greece teetering on economic collapse and the biggest bank failure ever on Wall Street last week. Then I opened my mailbox and saw the cover caption, "Rage Against the Machine: Capitalism and its critics."

Sure, some are critical of capitalism, and a few Americans dislike apple pie too.

But it's not true for the vast majority of us who have learned capitalism can work for all of us. We've learned recently to distrust Wall Street and our government. We the people, even in Big Horn County, MT, have the savvy to see through their smoke. Our governing CEO's and elected representatives have failed to live up to the foundational principles of our capitalist economy laid down during out nation's infancy. We have been fed a dose of propaganda that laissez faire economics is the American way.

In fact, it seems no media outlet is discussing this term I learned in 8^th grade Civics class in 1957. So I checked to see if my kids learned it in the 80's in Big Horn County schools. Sure enough, they did. And they knew it meant "let go" of government regulations of our economy. They also knew it was a major factor in the Great Depression.

To recover, our elected representatives in 1933 restored old rules for banks and mortgage institutions. Some provisions restoring the kind of capitalism our founders envisioned, counter balancing laissez faire were:

Glass-Steagall Act of 1933: This act separated commercial from investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to protect small deposits.

Farm Credit Act: This act refinanced a fifth of all farm mortgages and created the Farm Credit Administration.

National Industrial Recovery Act: This act created a massive program of public works, guaranteed workers the right to bargain collectively, established codes of fair practice and trade, and created the National Recovery Administration to carry them out.

Truth-in-Securities Act: This act requires anyone offering stocks, bonds or other securities for sale to make a "full and fair disclosure" of financial and other information relating to the issues involved. It also mandated that companies disclose the securities holdings of their officers and directors. This was after years of dishonest dealings by investors seeking to cut their losses short as the Depression worsened.

These provisions and more were nullified or disempowered during the Clinton and Bush administrations, and now we continue similar steps under Obama (look up huppi-kangaroo-timeline). We must return to those principles reaffirmed and clarified during the recovery from the Great Depression, principles spelled out with the warning that failure to keep them will bring on the next Depression.

I cannot understand why the October 22 issue of The Economist, the premier weekly magazine worldwide on economics, gets it so wrong. In four lead articles, the October 22 edition fails to mention laissez faire economics, and the subsequent abdication of our national economy to financial executives rather than elected governance. The Wall Street Occupation is not to protest capitalism but to call capitalism to it's proper role: to serve the economy of our great nation, for our common good.

The danger is not that we could be leaving capitalism, going Marxist, nor is it that capitalism itself is the big bad bugaboo. But corporations must put shareholder profit above all other considerations, including the stability of our national economy. And over the past decade we've seen the results of deregulation. Only our elected representatives in congress are answerable to the American people. Whom shall we trust?

At best, the lead article leaves unquestioned this mistaken bias in order to sound the alarm that Wall Street Occupations nationwide are unfocused and leaderless. At least this issue does cite the research proving that loss of a middle class brings social disorder to a nation. At least the congressional action under Clinton's administration repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 is mentioned (see my blog for info). There is some consensus between Occupy Wall Street and The Economist on this. But leaving intact the phony idea that this populist movement in America is anti-capitalism is irresponsible, even if some Wall Street Occupiers think they are protesting capitalism per se.

It's difficult to find the facts from the media. Wall Street's political insiders in Washington then as now propelled the government into fewer regulations against super sizing and secret insider trading. So the elected governance of our economy again continues shrinking and the un-elected governance of corporations skyrockets in power and wealth acquisition. At the same time, our elected government gets bigger and bigger punitive authority over governance of smaller and smaller units of human relationship, now down to mother and unborn infant. Witness the new personhood laws, and its explanations covering up the huge growth of government as promoted by the tea party and Republicans.

Recovery again requires reform of our American capitalism back to the intentions of our nation's founders, and repudiation of the singular focus on ending oversight and transparency regulations by the people of this country of our economy, labeled erroneously "big government." Our governing business-owned media flails against Keynes and "Keynesian economics" as the only option to their unnamed obsession with laissez faire economics. So now we have the growth of bigger and badder businesses we cannot afford to allow to fail, businesses that abuse and cheat masses of this country's citizens, wealth concentrations that dictate to Obama who dictates to Europe and Greece what must happen to save American banks—and citizens— from the emerging Greater Depression.

These occupiers are the ones taking seriously our history, and saying we should learn to avoid repeating the mistakes of the 30's depression. Why should we have to go to the independent media to read our history? Why cannot The Economist tell us the truth and connect the real dots? Does The Economist deliberately lead our departure from free, open transparent capitalism with the common good the bottom line? Does it support the distortions leading us astray by the elite's cronies who dominate talk shows and the media, financed and censored by their owners?

A rash of letters with a perspective similar to this column is posted on line at The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/node/21536537

What happened to our nation's economy since 1970 is fortunately well documented: http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152811/

A timeline of events leading up to the depression of the 1930's and the recovery into the 40's: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Timeline.htm .

Michael Hudson, at UMKC.edu, tells the truth in detail with the evidence in his latest book : Super Imperialism - New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance. See it reviewed on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Super-Imperialism-Origin-Fundamentals-Dominanc/dp/0745319890/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I19B9M2MEC46GX&colid=2UL2N592BVKVD

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

The Wall Street Sandbox

Who doesn’t like toys? A newly installed sandbox with bulldozers and backhoes was tantalizing for our flock of neighborhood children. Two strong-willed three-year-olds set the tone—the more I have, the more I want, and you can’t have it. The scene degenerated until sand throwing and tears turned the attention of my neighbor and me from tractor repair to our children. With a few firm words, parity in the power to acquire equity was restored.

Our nation has lost that parity. This is the second time in our history. A century ago it led to the Great Depression. We have become so accustomed to greedy children acting out in the Wall Street Sandbox that we as a nation simply roll our eyes and repeat, “That’s Wall Street.”

The year Ronald Reagan was elected, the wealthiest 1 percent collected 10 percent of the nation’s income, and the rest of us shared the remaining 90 percent. Now that 1 percent owns more than the bottom 50 percent of all American citizens. Since 1980 we all contributed to a great national success of our GNP, but the upward redistribution of wealth, because of rule changes, “translates into a trillion extra dollars a year for the richest 1 percent.” (Josh Holland in Alternet.org, October 4, 2011, “If the Top 1% hadn’t ripped off trillions…”)

We adults used to monitor the Wall Street Sandbox. Our oversight through our government stopped unregulated accumulation before it started. Back then, we knew we owned Wall Street and took responsibility for its role in our economy.

Such government intervention after the great depression led to a fairer economy, highways, airports, schools, a safe banking system, libraries, a common defense, etc. and all benefited. Even more importantly, it led to a progressive system of taxation to pay for these priorities and discourage the escalation of massive wealth accumulation that has now made our society unstable.

When Wall Street rolled in crisis as our nation’s biggest banks threatened to collapse, Obama didn’t regulate, he conceded. When the profit-driven medical insurance machine protested Obamacare, Baucus and Obama conceded again to exclude the public option. Like in the Savings & Loan Scandal of the 80’s, we now need a government take-over and jail time, not just a few weak threats, for those who grab our citizens’ earnings and put our nation at risk.

I hoped in vain to hear someone in congress or in the presidential debates speak the truth of what’s gone wrong. Instead they either attack each other, or, following the finger pointing of Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh, attack designated whipping boys like Frances Fox Piven. The really patriotic Americans are those who speak the truth our Wall Street Sandbox children need to hear, without personal attacks.

Just last Monday, a poll was released saying a majority of citizen Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Partiers would agree on Obama’s plan to restore some of the Reagan era tax rates on the 1% richest. Yet the Republican congress maintains its opposition to Obama’s jobs bill, because they can attach the label “tax raise.” They don’t want our American president working to fix that sandbox fracas causing not just a few eye scratches, but massive human deprivation and death world wild.

Some three weeks ago, for the first time in my life I heard massive numbers of grownup citizen voices speaking this truth about Wall Street. Amazingly, these are mostly college kids, or kids who dropped out because they couldn’t get jobs or afford college.

So we can take hope. Not only has the Arab Spring become the American Autumn, we are also building a new private sector on values of “Social Entrepreneurs.” Our private sector with worldwide support is leading the way to restore grownup rules to the world economy, which is similarly in shambles. There really are large international corporations bringing corporate interests of the world back into adult responsibility in our world economy. One of many credible organizations facilitating this revolution is “Bioneers.” Look them up on line, or find

greenwoodback40.blogspot.com

(the following is continued from the shorter version in Big Horn County News)

As the economic equity of our nation is increasingly concentrated among fewer of our citizens, consequences more dire than sand in the eyes threaten our nation and the world. This is hidden from our awareness in America by subtle but pervasive censorship. The institutions of a fair economy, a free press, law-abiding armed forces and police, our system of jurisprudence, and even our capitalist democracy are in trouble, and we are left in the dark as to how and why.

I have a copy on my desk of the most recent edition of Project Censored, released last week. See greenwoodback40.blogspot for a short review.

On Project Censored

Every two years a group of writers and scholars, inspired by reporters such as Walter Cronkite, have been gathering with editor Peter Philips, sociology professor at Sonoma State University, to assemble the research.

A wave of real reform in the worldwide economic institutions of finance and banking is escaping the attention of mainstream American business. Some of the biggest corporations are abandoning venture capitalism, hedge funds, and the modern wave of complex economic risk taking that has burst our American economic bubble. Well before any danger was detected in Wall Street, these reforms were burgeoning.

We are so entrenched in the profound changes in our rules, changes coordinated by the elite of Wall Street and confirmed by all three branches of our government, that we have forgotten the prosperity and freedoms we enjoyed prior to our departure from our original values of American capitalism and from the freedoms enshrined in our constitution and our form of government. The world has noticed, and reacted. Most of the reaction has been building on the writings and history of America.

On the Wall Street Occupation: If it’s like the first Wall Street Occupation of the late 1800’s, these young people will continue for decades to be routed, attacked and arrested by police, and an election will repudiate their dreams and voices until the next Great Depression decades later. I hope and pray this doesn’t happen for us. We Americans, at least 99% of us, need to act grownup about our ownership of that sandbox now. Newly grownup players like Warren Buffet and the Gates family will help us restore grownup rules to the economy now run by our Wall Street Sandbox. Unbelievably, Congress remains stubbornly opposed. Having failed to learn from our history with Wall Street and the Great Depression, we seem destined to repeat it.

On “Bioneers”

It’s not always been this way. The dramatic changes in rules facilitating greed in Walls Street are the focus of a paper by Economists Thomas Picketty and Emanuel Saez of UC Berkeley (elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf). Some of their recollections:

Rabobank International's Manager of Corporate Social Responsibility from Holland, which was voted World's Third Most Sustainable Bank; Meiny Prins, CEO of Priva, a leading Dutch environmental services company, who was voted "Dutch Businesswoman of the Year"; Michael Jacobson, Director of Intel's Corporate Responsibility Office; and Hugo Steensma, former director of Sustainable Asset Management and CEO of Rabobank North America.

"Business-As-Unusual: New Models of Enterprise, Ownership and Social Entrepreneurship" will survey the emerging topography of new organizational business and financial species to harness commerce and trade for the common good. Hosted by Michael Marx, Executive Director of Corporate Ethics International and Business Ethics network, the panel also features Steven Hill, leading political thinker and groundbreaking author of Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope for an Insecure Age; Deborah Hirsh of B Lab, a nonprofit supporting the community of Certified "B Corporations" with comprehensive social and environmental standards; Bodhi Garrett, eco-tourism entrepreneur and founder of North Andaman Tsunami Relief in Thailand; and Jenny Kassan, Managing Director of Katovich Law Group, and board member of the Sustainable Business Alliance.

Unlike the many pessimistic scape-goating pundits on talk radio promoting their side show interests, I believe many of the options we embarked upon in Obama’s election of 2008 are right. The way forward is clear. But overwhelmed by the size of the changes needed, by scary side shows pummeling the populace, the decision itself to move in the right direction has become stymied. We have ground the Obama administration and the nation to a stop.

Christopher Ketcham's essay "The Reign of the One Percenters," was published on Orion's website, is available on Alternet Oct 7, “the_reign_of_the_one_percenters” and is forthcoming in the November/December 2011 issue of the magazine.

Wall street criminals arrested to date: 0

“Occupy Wall Street” citizens protesting Wall Street crimes arrested: over 700.

The largest mass arrest in US history took place last Saturday, October 1, when citizens demonstrating against Wall Street CEO’s who have profited enormously through bailouts from citizen taxpayers while their insider trading and deceptive wealth grabbing schemes remains uninvestigated and not one arrested. There is evidence the NYPD entrapped the Wall Street demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge by clearing a traffic lane, then blocking both ends of the bridge and arresting everyone.

http://www.nationofchange.org/eric-cantors-hyper-partisan-hypocrisy-he-hails-tea-party-fighting-condemns-occupy-wall-street-mo