Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Fwd: [bangla-vision] Tidbits - January 2, 2012



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Romi Elnagar <bluesapphire48@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 8:50 AM
Subject: [bangla-vision] Tidbits - January 2, 2012
To:


 





I belong to several good lists, and I try to forward articles from my favorite websites, one of the reasons being that I hope people will be inspired to go to those websites and find other equally good articles themselves.

Portside is a really good list that I subscribe to, and if you haven't seen them before, they are worth looking at.  If you want the address to subscribe to Portside, let me know offlist and I will be glad to send it to you.  This is a newsletter they send out sometimes, when they have several small articles or reader responses to publish.

Hajja Romi

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Portside Moderator <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Sent: Monday, January 2, 2012 7:52 PM
Subject: Tidbits - January 2, 2012

Tidbits - January 2, 2012

* Harvest of Loneliness
* Re: Tidbits - December 31, 2011 - Clashes Erupt as
  Protests Spread Across Syria - response to Michael Munk
  (Max Obuszewski)
* More on Ron Paul is Not an Alternative (Jan Hillegas,
  Chris Elliott)
* Review of Life Choices: The Teachings of Abortion by Linda
  Weber (Marilyn Albert)
* Re: Review -- Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the Farm
  Tidbits - December 31, 2011 (Lydia G Bracamonte Sanchez)
* Re: Hallinan's 2011 Dispatches News Awards (Bob Deller)

==========

* Harvest of Loneliness

Award winning documentary by Gilbert Gonzalez, Adrian
Salinas and Vivian Price on the guest worker program
of 1942-1964.

Hidden within historical accounts of US workers and
immigrants is the story of millions of Mexican men and
women who experienced the bracero program, a 'guest
worker' program designed to supply workers to
agriculture and undermine farm worker unionization.
The documentary features the men speaking of their
experiences, and the wives and families left behind in
Mexican villages emptied of men from l942-1964.

"Guest worker programs" for non-agricultural sectors
are now part of the arsenal of proposed US immigration
reforms. But what are these programs and how do they
actually operate? "Harvest of Loneliness"  explores
how the bracero program originated, how it was
implemented, and its effects on unions, workers and
the economy. The trailer may be viewed at
http://harvestofloneliness.com.

Cinelatino Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary
at the 2010 Los Angeles International Latino Film
Festival. Voted Best Educational Documentary at the
2010 Amsterdam International Film Festival.

===

* Re: Tidbits - December 31, 2011 - Clashes Erupt as
Protests Spread Across Syria (Michael Munk)

It was astonishing to read what Michael Munk wrote about the
situation in Syria.  The protesters in Syria, some of the
bravest people in the world, like their brothers and sisters
in Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere want an end to the
dictatorship.  In response, they are being slaughtered.

Yet there is no mention of the courage exhibited by the
oppressed in Syria, nor the ruthlessness of the Assad
regime.  Instead Munk makes this inexplicable analogy:
"Imagine reporting on OWS from the perspective and sources
of the occupiers while ignoring or challenging claims of
local governments."  It baffles me how anyone could support
the dynasty in Syria and not side with people expressing a
basic right to elect those who govern them.

Kagiso,

Max Obuszewski
Baltimore

==========

* More on Ron Paul is Not an Alternative

To:  David Makofsky

Adding key words in brackets to your sentences:

    "On the other hand, he is the ONLY [Republican]
    candidate who opposes bank bailouts, the ONLY
    [Republican] candidate who opposes foreign wars and
    plans to cut defense spending, the ONLY [Republican]
    candidate who op poises foreign and military aid to
    Israel.

    "He is an alternative [to other Republicans], no
    matter what you say."

I repeat, from December 26: Please go to www.jillstein.org
and www.gp.org.

There ARE real alternatives.  Why would you even consider
Paul?

Jan Hillegas,
Jackson, MS

===

That people who think of themselves as leftists would
support Ron Paul over Obama is depressingly symptomatic of
the radical left's current anti-Obama hysteria. Gordon
Fitch's comment that Paul is "running to the left" of Obama
calls to mind the Echo and the Bunnymen lyric: "We don't
know our left from right / but we know we love extremes"

This confusion arises when leftists focus on what Ron Paul
is against, rather than what he's for. They don't get that
the libertarian extreme right have always had their own
brand of populism that sounds anti-war, anti-corporate and
pro-civil liberties. But the fact is, under the practice of
Randian Libertarian ideology, property rights trump
everything, and the ones whose civil liberties are protected
are the straight, white, property owning men. That's where
the "strict constructionists" always lead: back to the pre-
civil rights colonial/plantation order of the Founders.

What sad, deluded "leftists": willing to sign on to ultra
right "alternative" Ron Paul's white supremacy and wild
west-era property relations (going back to the gold
standard!) in order to punish Obama for not being "left"
enough!

Chris Elliott

==========

* Review of Life Choices: The Teachings of Abortion by Linda
Weber

Published by Sentient Publications, Boulder, Colorado

www.lifechoicesteachingsofabortion.com

1970 New York City:  Abortion had just been legalized in New
York State, and the first abortion clinics opened in New
York.  Several women I knew who were active in the women's
liberation movement had gotten a new type of job at one of
the first abortion clinics in Manhattan. This job did not
have a name yet, but came to be known as "abortion
counselor".

My friend Linda was among the first abortion counselors in
the country. Because she worked at the Manhattan  clinic at
night, I babysat her two tiny girls.  I recall Linda had
very strong feelings about her new job, and talked about how
she wanted to write about her experiences as an abortion
counselor and feelings about abortion.

Now, after forty years of counseling women seeking
abortions, here is Linda's  book, Life Choices: The
Teachings of Abortion.  As we mark in 2011, the 40th
anniversary of the ground-breaking book Our Bodies, Our
Selves, Linda Weber's memoir/guidebook is of the same genre
-- interlocking the personal and the  political to assist
women in better understanding their own lives.

Linda reminds those of us who are old enough to remember:
When she began as an abortion counselor, there were no
safehouses, no rape crisis centers, nowhere for battered
women to go for shelter.  No universities had women's
studies departments and many prestigious schools did not
admit women. There were no sexual harassment laws. Women
earned half as much as men for the same work.

We have come very far in those forty years. For many women,
it is because they could legally and safely terminate an
unwanted pregnancy that they were able to achieve their life
goals.

Though much has improved in women's lives, we live in a
world where rape is shockingly common as an act of war
around the world, where oppression and abuse of women are at
the base of many, many cultures and economies,  and in what
is said to be a modern,  developed country,  physicians with
the courage to provide comprehensive reproductive health
services are murdered openly in their communities.

A third of children in the United States live in poverty,
while the same forces who would deny the most basic
requirements to those children, hypocritically  promote
laws which would define the products of conception as a
"person".

Life Choices merges the personal stories of women having
abortions with the historical and political context of
abortion.  One chapter, "History and Women's Lives",
documents the history of  abortion in the United States. In
"Beyond Abortion" Weber discusses how the class nature of
society and capitalism itself will have to change to permit
full equality of all people. She discusses the
"medicalization" of abortion and how it disempowers and
dehumanizes women.

Central to this book are stories of individual women,  along
with  advice about coping with one's feelings about
abortion. Chapters such as: "Why We Feel Bad About
Ourselves",  "Difficulty Initiating Decisions",  "Wanting
and Not Wanting to Be Pregnant" and "Moving Beyond Grief"
make this book an indispensable guide for women of child-
bearing age, or an informative gift  to a young woman
starting out in life.

Life Choices: The Teachings of Abortion,  by Linda Weber is
available from Sentient Publications,
www.sentientpublications.com, and from its own website,
www.lifechoicesteachingsofabortion.com

Reviewed by Marilyn Albert, RN

December 2011

==========

* Re: Review -- Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the Farm
Tidbits - December 31, 2011

I am awestruck that this is considered enlightened. The
"conclusions that many people think or believe that Cesar
was single handed in "building the Union" is a show if
ignorance and lack of familiarity of who Cesar Chavez.

Neither his family nor the leadership are so naive to
believe that the Union was created by one single individual.
As all unions, it is the membership and their level of
active participation that creates the strength of the
organization and the backbone of its achievements.

I worked with the Union and was privileged to know the
families that made up the leadership. I worked with
membership in the fields of tomatoes, melons, lettuce and
grapes. And yes the various groups are distinct. But you and
no one else can discount the will and determination, the
belief in the workers which came from Cesar is a critical
element that melded the various and diverse groups together.
He worked tirelessly arguing with the most militant, who
came from the Philippines, and with those that believed that
farmworkers could not be organized into a cohesive driving
force for change. But the change was not just for
farmworkers, but for consumers, Student movements, and the
boost to Unions through the US.  Cesar's Idea to take the
fields to the factories movement, which mandated that
farmworkers go the cities to talk of their struggle changes
the way that older unions had become accustomed to operating
in.  It brought us back to the old wobbly ways of organizing
and reignited the movement for workers struggles everywhere
in this country.

Lydia G Bracamonte Sanchez

==========

* Re: Hallinan's 2011 Dispatches News Awards

only within capitalism

Bob Deller

==========

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: portside@portside.org

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate




__._,_.___

Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/

No comments:

Post a Comment