E Wayne Ross

The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil web page is updated. There you can find key articles, dating back to 1999, on education, war, the economy, and whatever there is of the left.

Of special interest is this note from a Rouge Forum organizer who attended the recent Brecht Forum on the state of the antiwar movement. Here is a short excerpt: “now I can understand how they have taken a movement with millions in the streets at one time to a “movement” today that can’t muster even a few thousand people…”

Substance News covered the NEA and AFT conventions this year. While both unions’ leaders sought to restrict press passes for Substance journalists, no other resource can come close to the coverage Substance gave to the most unionized sector of the US, education workers.

On the whole, NEA and AFT bosses got what they wanted from the conventions. They deflected nearly everything into the electoral arena, dodged around on Iraq and other wars, and ducked on the crux of NCLB while they criticized NCLB….and they all got raises to boot.

However, there was a little surprise about one thing from each convention. From NEA, it was a surprise that Dennis Van Roekel remained a nonentity. Many people expected DVR, who is not utterly inept like past NEA boss Reg Weaver, to be far more assertive and, to some degree, militant. They felt he had been biding his time inside the bowels of NEA and that the “Real” DVR was far to the left of the one that had slogged along being number two and three for all those years. It is pretty clear that AFT’s Randi Weingarten will, if DVR does not change fast, eclipse the NEA (again) in the national spotlight, and that DVR will not be the stealth militant so many people hoped he would be. NEA is, by the way, about three times the size of the AFT and is the largest union in the USA.

From the AFT, it was a bit of a surprise that outgoing president McElroy called for abolition of NCLB. The Rouge Forum, Substance, and others created the pressure for that. Of course, he is lying. AFT is doing merit pay, stealing money from members wherever they can. Local leaders are attacking one another out of sheer opportunism. AFT continues to work with the reactionaries in the Business Roundtable, and the National Endowment for Democracy, and is going to go right along with the Obamagogue project to continue the regimentation of schooling through high stakes exams and to offer national service as a middle class offset to the draft.

Here is Street in Z on the demagogue, Obamagogue And more to come from his hometown, Chicago, in Substance.

On a cheerier note:

An invitation to all to an August potluck in lovely San Diego:

Who: Anyone interested in getting together
Where: Rich and Amber’s house in San Diego
When: Saturday, August 9, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Why: Socializing and fun
How: Call us at 619-287-2322 or email rgibson@pipeline.com for directions and then bring yourself and something to share

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee will meet on September 27 in Detroit to plan our coming year. Suggestions and comments always welcome.

And we will host a social gathering at AERA in San Diego in 2009. Be there or be square.

All the best

r

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the new folks, from all over the world, on our Rouge Forum list. For newcomers, the Rouge Forum home page is at
www.rougeforum.org</a . There you will find current updates on education, the wars, and those good-for-the-rest-of-our-lives Rouge Forum posters on sale at cost.

Substance News won a small victory after the paper of the education resistance was denied a press pass for the American Federation of Teachers convention coming up soon. After Rouge Forum members and Substance readers let the AFT leadership know that Substance is indeed a “legitimate” news source, the AFT leaders changed course. Here is one sentence from their recent response: “”By the way, could you please let your subscribers know that you will be covering the convention so that they’ll stop e-mailing and calling?”

Substance is carrying live online updates from the National Education Association Representative Assembly right now at
http://www.substancenews.net/ and will have even broader coverage of the AFT conference soon. A subscription to the hard copy of Substance is just $16, a good way to spend a small portion of the hush money Bush is sending to people in the US.

Here is a short, 4 minute piece from George Carlin on Who Owns Education, and US?

Bill Moyers’ Journal on Post Civil War Slavery (Moyers and his guest seem to have forgotten that W.E.B. Dubois broke the ground on this)

Ten years ago, Osama bin Laden demanded that oil should be priced at $144 a barrel. Now it is. Where is Osama? For those who want to follow events in Central Asia, see the bourgeoisie nationalist Ahmed Rashid, “Descent into Chaos.” While his standpoint makes him as unable to see a way out as Bush, his presentation is detailed and worth the candle.

An overview of world military spending is here.

My own checking suggests that the US military is the most excessive user of oil and gas in the world, using about 160 million gallons of gas a month, and that sets aside oil used for other military purposes: tires, plastics in weaponry, etc. While the subprime crisis, a result of the mastery of the US economy by finance capital, surely is related to the acceleration of oil costs, as speculators shifted away from the US dollar, the massive US military increase in using oil products has to be considered—in the context that oil moves the military of every nation in the world and no nation is prepared to convert to anything else. Oil and empire are intertwined. Thus, oil and war.

Nations that promise perpetual war on the world will make peculiar demands on their schools.

Rouge Forum updates will be sporadic through the summer. Next, among other highlights, a review of the Obamagogue/McWarcriminal dogfight and the nature of capitalist democracy—and education.

For those in Southern California, we will host a Rouge Forum potluck in early August, heading back to school.

All the best,

r

Dear Friends,

For most of us, school is out for the summer. Oddly enough, the wars continue and the economy is not on vacation. But let us take a breather. Here are the Angry Tired Teachers at the old ballgame.

Good fun, comrades, and study are offered at the San Francisco Freedom School led by Kathy Emery in July and August.

As a summer study interlude, here is a link to David Harvey’s classroom presentations on Karl Marx’s “Capital.” Harvey has taught “Capital” for more than 40 years. The link will hold thirteen two hour classes examining “Capital,” chapter by chapter.

Harvey’s book, “Limits to Capital,” is truly challenging, more that worth the candle. His later, unfortunate, “New Imperialism,” follows the commonplace current liberal call for a new, “New Deal.” That book is reviewed here in JCEPS.

Michael Baker’s path-breaking radio program, Room 101, streams here. Note the recent interviews with test resister Carl Chew and UBC’s Wayne Ross on cutting the schools to war pipeline.

Michael Klare has written for years about the central role of oil in the coming imperial wars. Here he is in Tomgram, reiterating the point that the New York Times only recognized in today’s (Sunday) editorial suggesting that it is rather unseemly for US oil companies to go forward with the seizure of Iraq’s oil assets.

Some of us have yet to receive our hush money from President Bush. But we’re assured it will be here for the hottest months of summer, to keep us shopping while the media ignores the wars (less than 4% of current TV news broadcasting now addresses Iraq or Afghanistan). Perhaps, with just 16 dollars of that hush money, colleagues could offer gift subscriptions to Substance News. Here is a recent Substance article on school resistance and a link for subscribing.

Members of the Rouge Forum from many corners of the earth were up in Vancouver, guests of Wayne Ross and Sandra Mathison at UBC. Here is a link to presentations, complete with powerpoints and photos!

Rouge Forum updates will be sporadic between June and August as we hit the road to promote the resistance–and check out woods to hide in if necessary. We will have updates on the NEA and AFT conventions where leaders hope time will be devoted to anointing new presidents, at $450,000 and $600,000 per year respectively, and the billion dollar election spectacle, while activists will push for serious debate about war, NCLB, and the fight-back against cutbacks.

Up the Rebels!

all the best, r