Jill Carroll released unharmed.
Does Mansfield Manliness require me to be taciturn about this?
Archive for March, 2006
The Right to Unionize: Allied Security workers under contract to Harvard…
…. keep the bad people out. [Well the one’s that don’t have Harvard ID’s, anyway.]
“gil”
They deserve a living wage too. The only known tool to do that, is the right to unionize.
SEIU which represents the custodial workers is also organizing security guards - Nationwide and at Harvard.
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SEIU which represents the custodial workers is also organizing security guards - Nationwide and at Harvard.
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This spring SLAM is upping the pressure so that even The Crimson has noticed.
The guy by the door remembers the good times of the Harvard Living Wage Campaign. I also remember Steve, then president of HUSPMGU. But a particular memory, most fond because of it’s contrast with the context of pain and loneliness I felt at the time, is of late night visits to the Widener guard house and Howard.
Doubleheader: Military Recruitment @ Harvard & MIT Iraq Teach-in
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Young people [and a few 60’s holdovers] Walked Out of school and work on Nov. 2, 2005 to protest the Bush regime - shown here in front of the Recruiting office opposite Boston Common. Organized by The World Cant Wait. Since then, this has proved to be true for ~200 American service personnel and ~5400 Iraqi civilians.
From Harvard Initiative for Peace & Justice:
Meeting - This Friday March 17- 2:00pm - Loker Commons
to DISCUSS and take ACTION around…
- MILITARY RECRUITERS who’ve been welcomed back to campus
- War contracts this university is profiting off of
- War criminals who are finding a home at Harvard
- War in Iraq and now threats of the next war in Iran
This meeting will be followed by a trip to the teach-in at MIT.
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From MIT: The Free Radicals, The Thistle, The Technology and Culture Forum, and the Graduate Student Council Funding Board:
It’s been three years since the beginning of the current war in
Iraq–do we know what’s going on, or what to do about it? Join
us for a teach-in, as we find out more from students, faculty
and community members about the past, present, and future of
Iraq. Take the chance to talk about your ideas and debate what
our responses should be, both locally and internationally.
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* Teach-in On Iraq War *
* MIT W20-491 (Student Center) *
* Friday, March 17, 3-6pm *
* + Free Pizza After *
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Topics include:
* History of Iraq
* Iraq under sanctions
* Why is the U.S. there?
* What is life like in Iraq now?
* Where do we go from here?
Speakers include:
* a veteran from Iraq
* MIT Faculty
* and MIT students!
The event is open to everyone and so whether you consider
yourself a news junkie ready to debate or a political novice
curious to learn more, come on your own or bring a friend or
ten. Free dinner after the event! Spread the Word!
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Not long ago, I learned from Noam that Saudi Arabia’s oil is also under Shiite sand. The Royal family are not Shia. Administration angst about Iraq/Iran alliance along Shiite lines would surely be exacerbated if they think about it. Juan Cole gives a lot of good information, but I haven’t been able to keep up. The Wikipedia page on Iraq is a little anemic. I need a good teach-in! But I have to stay and guard the library. Can I borrow somebody’s notes?
G Smooth
Appearing on the sidewalks of downtown Boston, with a shopping cart full of keyboards [and vocals], live from Dorchester:
G Smooooooooooth
Support local art. Support street performance.
And, of course, support cheap art. Spring is coming. The budding of the trees always catches me by surprise. And so does Bread and Puppet Theater.
Military families, Iraq Vets, Vets for Peace, and a guy named Kerry.
Last Night @ Kennedy School of Government
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Military Families Speak Out , Iraq Veterans Against the War , and Veterans for Peace
gathered outside Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government last night in response to a guy named Kerry being invited inside. A particular favorite of mine is Greater Boston chapter of Vets for Peace called the Smedley Butler Brigade. Major General Butler was at the time of his death the most decorated U.S. Marine in history and possibly the first to describe the military-industrial complex in his 1935 book War is a Racket…
It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most
vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits
are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority
of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the
benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make
huge fortunes.
[The Brigade at Faneuil Hall , Boston Common. Smedley’s Wikipedia Page.
“>This woman is not a Gold Star Mother. May she not become one.
They were all saying the same thing:
The SLA, sj, and aerogel.
The SLA has not been in the news much since Patty Hearst
settled down to suburban life in Connecticut. Yet, I met with the newly
annointed leader of this organization just last week. The Special
Libraries Association has had a longer run than the Symbionese
Liberation Army.
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Yes President Bok, Harvard is way too corporate …
… and here is the latest example. Young Professor Luboš had a student
fall ill and unable to take the final exam so he arranged for a
colleague [whom I know and respect] to supervise the exam at home in
Central New York. Mr. President, this is precisely the kind of
flexibility we should be encouraging. But NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Pf. Luboš attributes this to recalcitrance of the unions. He is by his
own admission a reactionary and a theorist [I can’t decide which is
worse :)] Being an experimentalist and Union Representative [HUCTW] I
told him that I am not sure the blame lies with my colleagues in HUCTW.
By and large, union members don’t make policy. Unlike my fellow Union
Representative Geoff Karens, I’m sure you know what a “Management
Rights” clause is and how it defines the dividing line between policy
and implementation.
There was another rather egregious case that occurred in your absense.
We had a homeless alumna living in the gates for more than a year [i.e.
two winters] while an army of administrators passed the buck. It was
Harvard Labor [Union and contract] that kept her from freezing to
death.
But detailed blame aside, I agree with Pf. Luboš that the response of administration, makes no sense whatsoever. May
I suggest that as a re-entry excercise, you get the student
h(is|er) grade. I will help you. Hopefully by the time you reach the
parties involved they will already be aware of the public interest in
this problem.
Sincerely yours,
the guy by the door
P.S.
Unless quantoken has a unique ability to measure tachyonic states, h(er|is) comment is totally wrong.
CODE PINK: URGENT CALL FOR ACTION!!!
From CODE PINK aka Women Say No to War!
“This is not the world we want for ourselves or our children. With fire in our bellies and love in our hearts, we women are rising up - across borders - to unite and demand an end to the bloodshed and the destruction.”
All gender invited.
Dear friends–
This week, in celebration of International Women’s Day, a courageous group of Iraqi women will converge in Washington DC to hold George Bush and Congress accountable for the chaos, the killing, the violence that is engulfing their nation. They represent Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, religious and secular women. They are united in their horror at the killings, their outrage at the Bush administration and U.S. elected officials, and their determination to stop the violence.
We can stand with them in solidarity by signing the Code Pink’s Urgent Call for Peace, at www.womensaynotowar.org. On March 8 the signatures are to be delivered to officials in Washington DC and to U.S. embassies worldwide. The full text of the statement can be found at www.womensaynotowar.org. Nationals of any country are welcome to sign. The campaign is not limited to women. You and everyone you know is invited.
As the organizers of this action say, “This is not the world we want for ourselves or our children. With fire in our bellies and love in our hearts, we women are rising up - across borders - to unite and demand an end to the bloodshed and the destruction.”
Eleanor
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Code Pink is not soley a creature of the internet. They appear in numbers at events around the country, including Crawford, Texas [and Cambridge, Massachusetts. :)]
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Four miles from Bush’s Ranch, the supporters of Cindy Sheehan, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, stopped because the McLennan County Sherriff’s Department said the group had disobeyed orders by walking on the roadway, not the grassy shoulder. Supporters included members of Veterans for Peace, Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against War, Vietnam Veterans Against War, CodePink Austin, and the Crawford Peace House. [Lone Star Iconclast.]
A long silence. Jill Carroll still MIA.
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Nothing new from the Mainstream Media. I had hoped for something from the blogosphere, but alas only this one post from the Right Truth with a belated rehash of mainstream reportage. I question Minister Jabr’s identification of the kidnappers. The demand for the release of a small number of women detainees is much more focussed and limited in scope than any other demand from Iraqi insurgent groups. It seems like a different group. And Mr. Jabr certainly has a personal stake in the matter. Regardless of who is holding her, it would not serve their interests to kill her and keep it a secret. I may not agree with Mr. Jabr about who is holding her but I agree with his conclusion. She is alive. |
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Media credit: Nafis M. Azad, Collegian Students
release white balloons into the air, symbolizing their prayers for the release of Jill Carrol |
As Dan Kennedy pointed out some days ago in his blog Media Nation, the mainstream media cannot appear overlyself-absorbed. Presumably that partially explains the silence leading up to the Feb. 26 deadline. Also, the U.S. Government probably convinced the media that attention would jeopordize attempts to rescue her. I think the reverse is true, which is why I flapped about it. I know I am but a butterfly in the winds of the world wide web, but the web is a complex nonlinear system. It probably has directions in which it has sensitive dependence on initial conditions. A butterfly flapping his wings in one place can cause a typhon on the other side of the world.
There was some mainstream coverage around the time of the deadline and the blogosphere essentially followed suit. The silence returned. There is a problem of fatigue. How many ‘no news’ news bits are people willing to read? Even the guy by the door has to worry about that.
Perhaps the techtopian dream of ordinary people all over the world breaking down the barriers of space, time, censorship, and hatred has not been realized in Iraq well enough to help Jill. Or perhaps it’s unreasonable to try to create a typhon in place where there is one already going on.Apparently the previously reported detente between the Sunni’s and the Shia was a mere flash in the pan. TV coverage on one of the Boston channels compared an early video tape of Jill with the last one received. I agree with their male terrorism expert. She did appear frightened to distraction in the early tape and calm and resolute in the latter. He opined that she is her own best instrument of survival. This may be self-serving for those who won’t dothe right thing to save her. It may be self-serving for those of us who have run out of improbable ideas to help her. But it is probably true.
