Rouge Forum Update from Rich Gibson:
The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil web page was shut down for nearly a week because so many people have been visiting the pages. That’s a good problem to have, and we are trying to figure out how to get more space, at no cost. Over the holiday break we will also continue to update the format of the web pages—your comments always appreciated.
In the interim, attacks on educators escalated at all levels. TA’s at NYU went on strike and were threatened with not just dismissal, but blacklists. Teachers in California were transferred and disciplined for speaking out against the NCLB. And Oregon teachers went on strike, in part because of the NCLB, but settled and retreated on all of the NCLB issues they faced. All of this is outlined on the Rouge Forum education page. Also see the Workplace Blog for updates on the NYU TA strike.
The Rouge Forum endorsed the December 6 US National Day of Counter Recruitment, seeking to drive military recruiters off educational grounds, and will be participating in actions around the US.
This week’s New Yorker has important articles for educators and anti-war activists. Here is a link to Sy Hersh writing on the unlikely troop withdrawals.
The New Yorker also has an extensive examination of the Pennsylvania lawsuit regarding teaching evolution in schools (this article is not linked to the New Yorker web page as yet, but there is a short question and answer piece related to it). However, H. Allen Orr’s May 2005 New Yorker article on why “intelligent design” isn’t is available online.
Contrary to pundits and turned war hawks in Congress, the US can neither stay nor leave the Middle East and Central Asia quagmires. The wars are already lost, the great superpower fought to a standstill by unorganized, poorly led, unsupplied citizen-militias, and the Ozymandius of the west, having played its spectacular techno-war cards stands exposed to its imperial rivals. Yet the US cannot leave, as the oil fields, and the social power they represent, cannot be abandoned, at least not until the fields and the pipeline can be controlled—which could take a decade. Now, troops are in their third rotation to the Caspian and Iraq areas, and contemplating more, as their families struggle to get food stamps.
Hope is measured in the potential changes of mind, and deepened consciousness, that can rise from the necessary, vital, struggles of daily life.
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