Tag Archives: Bailout

Rouge Forum Update: The good and bad resistance and More!

Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil page is up and updated at www.rougeforum.org.

Remember, nominations for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee can be made to Community Coordinator Adam Renner by August 15.

On the Capitalist Education for War and Inequality Front:

Obama to Schools: Change Tenure Laws or Else: The Ed Stim is Merit Pay

UC System Demands 9% Tuition Hike and 8% Pay Cut While Class Size Booms

CSU Boss Wants 20% Tuition Hike

Substance News
carries the wrap up of the National Education Association Rep Assembly

Linda Chavez, a top aide to the American Federation of Teachers’ Albert Shanker, testifies against Sotomayor

On “The Depression can only be a passing fancy” Front:

Paul Craig Roberts: “This should tell even the most dimwitted patriot who “their” government represents.”

Rolling Stone on Goldman Sachs and the Great American Bubble Machine

Chart on the Waves of California Jobs Lost

Reuters: Foreclosures Hit Record High

The International War of the Rich on the Poor Front:

The Bushamagogue Assassination Schemes

Michael Klare’s Shocker: Iraq as the New Oil Pump

And the Resistance (bad example/good example) Front:

So Long EFCA: Union Bosses Can Deliver—nothing

UK Public Worker Strikes Rise

The many crises grow around us apace. Unemployment and foreclosures mean an eradicated tax base, meaning more demands for cuts on education and services, increased taxation of those who have a little, more PR to crush hope in the sense that nothing can be done, more police activity to raise funds and tamp down resistance, and more spectacles. On the war front, more war—for oil, regional control, that is, profits, using the children of the poor to fight the children of the poor on behalf of the rich in their homelands.

What stops the madness? Understanding that the core issue of our time is the relationship of rising color-coded inequality to the potential of mass class-conscious resistance. That has been the project of the Rouge Forum, connection reason to power, for more than a decade. Please join us and help lead the fight-backs that will come.

Thanks to Bob, Al, Sean, Amber, Tony, Kino, Marisol, the Dean, Candace, Sally, Sheri, Barb and Ken (yes, that is right), Donna, Brian, Adam and Gina, Koli, Jesus, Ashwana, Bill, Joe, Dariah, the Susans, and Ann.

Good luck to us, every one.

r

Rouge Forum Update—Bailouts and the “anti-war” movement

Dear Friends,

For those teaching or learning about the current depression, here are some more good sources:

Current Developments:

Criticism of “Progressive” Warmongers:

The term “progressive” may have no meaning anymore. If it is Move.on, that means slavish support for the demagogue, Obama. If it is United For Peace and Justice, it means the same thing in shifty terms. UFPJ’s recent Wall Street demos, deliberately set up to counter demands from rank and filers to demonstrate on the anniversary of the war, failed completely. This is nothing to gloat about even though we said, years ago, that following UFPJ would do just this. Still, it is tragic.

Less than 10,000 people demonstrated, down from the one million who hit the streets six years ago. But numbers are not everything. UFPJ trumped that by teaching people nothing at all important about why things are as they are, what to do in order to develop grand strategy (peace, justice, equality, freedom, etc.) or strategy (how to understand specific local circumstances and to seek out choke points where people can use powerful direct action moves) and tactics (particular actions that link these three elements).

Why would that be? Because UFPJ is run by remnants of the Communist Party USA, people who have never sought to build a mass class conscious movement and who have always fought those who try. The current Rouge Forum News has a very fine article by Tom Suber about the wreckage that UFPJ leadership is creating.

Let us be clear. The core issue of our time is accelerating color coded inequality met by the potential of organized mass class conscious resistance. Neither the CP nor UFPJ want any part of that.
Here is a sampling of UFPJ’s failures:

The task at hand is ours. The $10.9 trillion dollars the corporate state just printed for the banks and insurance companies is going to come from the lives and labor of someone. Either it will come from the ruin of hundreds of thousand of poor and working people, or, if we fight back, it can come from the rich. Let them suffer and pay, as they should. The degree of the pain will be determined by the levels of our real resistance in schools, in communities, at work places, and in the military. When they say Cut Back; We should say Fight Back.

This is a critique from Antiwar.com: Progressive Warmongers.

We note with sadness the death of a friend, Janet Jagan.

Thanks to Joe and Charles B., Steve and all the sharp eyes who caught the misspelled word in the last update (argh), Adam, Gina, Greg and Katie, Wayne, Sandra, Colin, Josh and M, Suber (s), the Sally’s, Penny and Rick, Doug and Connie, Betty, Joe C, Susan O and H, Ginny H, Jim S, Ricky C., Chris, Carol Panetta, Sharon A, David, Donnie A, the Breedloves, and the entire RF Steering Committee and folks working on the upcoming conference. http://www.rougeforumconference.org/

All the best and good luck to us, every one.

r