Egypt - Year One Anniversary - "Day of Dignity" Friday; Some
Lessons; Generals Still in Charge

1. Excited Revolutionaries to Return to Tahrir With 'Day of
Dignity' Friday (Ekram Ibrahim in Ahram Online)

2. Year One of the Egyptian Revolution: Some Lessons (Roger
Owen in Egypt Independent)

3. Generals Still in Charge - Tough Days Ahead in Egypt
(Carl Finamore) [...]

Killing Pensions to Benefit the 1 Percent

by Lee A. Saunders

Huffington Post

January 12, 2012

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-a-saunders/wall-street-journal-pensions_b_1200101.html

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, the Pravda of the 1
percent, is at it again, continuing its push to gut the
retirement security of millions of middle class workers
across the country while enriching the Wall Street moneymen
who just three years ago took our economy over the cliff. [...]

Bill Mardo, Writer Who Pushed Baseball to Integrate, Dies at
88

By Richard Goldstein

New York Times
Published: January 24, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/sports/baseball/bill-mardo-writer-who-pushed-baseball-to-integrate-dies-at-88.html?_r=1

Bill Mardo, a sportswriter for the Communist Party newspaper
The Daily Worker who fought major league baseball's color
barrier in the 1940s when the mainstream American news media
was largely silent on the subject, died Friday in Manhattan.
He was 88. [...]

The Occupy Effect

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

TheNation.com Blog
January 26, 2012

http://www.thenation.com/blog/165883/occupy-effect

I don't know how Occupy Wall Street will impact the 2012
election, but one thing seems pretty clear: it's changed the
national conversation.

A few short months ago, the corporate media and inside-the-
Beltway chatter was all debt and deficits, all the time.

Occupy changed that. It reset the media narrative so it's
more aligned with the true crises of our times - income
inequality, downward mobility, and economic fairness. It's
also renewed attention to corporate accountability and the
corrosive role of corporate money in politics. [...]

The State of the Union and the GOP Response - Carl Davidson
and Laura Flanders

1. We're All in the Same Boat? - On the Topic of Obama, the
GOP Can't Even Blush Anymore (Carl Davidson)

2. Not a Peep About the President's Praise for War (Laura
Flanders)

=====

We're All in the Same Boat?

On the Topic of Obama, the GOP Can't Even Blush Anymore [...]

At MoMA

Hal Foster

LRB . Vol. 34 No. 2 . 26 January 2012
pages 30-31
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n02/hal-foster/at-moma
[follow the link for several mural reproductions]

It comes as a surprise to learn that the second artist
given a major show at the Museum of Modern Art was Diego
Rivera, for when the exhibition opened in December 1931,
the 45-year-old Mexican was already a celebrated
Communist. Just as surprising, given that the museum was
founded by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and friends, is what
Rivera chose to display: five fresco panels devoted to
Mexican history from the perspective of the recent
revolution, and [...]

AFL-CIO's Trumka Acknowledges Labor's Divisions Over
Keystone Pipeline

by Mike Elk

Working In These Times
January 17, 2012

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12552/afl-cios_trumka_acknowledges_labors_divisions_over_keystone_pipeline/

On Thursday January 12, at the UN Investor Summit on Climate
Risk, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke publicly about
divisions in the labor movement over the proposed Keystone
Pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada to the Gulf of
Mexico if built. [...]

Greece: Independent Left MP--"The Rulers Are Scared"

Sofia Sakorafa interviewed by the Greek journal Marxist
Thought

translated by Christos Kefalis and Afrodity Giannakis for
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

http://links.org.au/node/2705

At the October 26, 2011, European summit it was agreed to
slash Greece’s debt on the condition that a new, draconian
austerity package and “memorandum”be carried out by the
Greek government. After the agreement and a mass wave of
protests on October 28, a referendum was announced by
Prime Minister George Papandreou, only to be revoked a few
days later. There then followed an endless series of
negotiations, which [...]

Egypt's Anti-SCAF Protests Eclipse Tahrir Square
Anniversary Festivities

By Bel Trew Ahram Online
January 25, 2012

After hundreds of thousands converge on
flashpoint square, some revolutionary groups
hunker down for open-ended sit-in against
military rule

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/32814.aspx

[ Video:
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentMulti/32815/Multimedia.aspx ]

As the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution
draws to a close, hundreds of thousands of protesters
remain in Tahrir Square, which, many claim, saw a
bigger turnout today than on 11 February of last year -
the day that longstanding president Hosni Mubarak
stepped down. [...]

1 Gingrich's Anti-Muslim Sugar Daddy Funded Film Shown To NYPD

2 Jewish Groups Condemn NYPD's Use of Anti-Muslim Propaganda
=========================================

1

Gingrich's Anti-Muslim Sugar Daddy Funded Film Shown To NYPD

By Adam Serwer
Tue Jan. 24, 2012 9:00 AM PST
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/gingrich-anti-muslim-adelson-clarion

The New York Police Department, currently facing criticism
from Muslim and civil liberties groups over a CIA-advised
program that involved "mapping" the city's Muslim enclaves,
showed an anti-Muslim training video to thousands of
officers, the New York Times reports. The film purports to
describe the centuries-long process by which Muslims are
seeking to dominate the planet, and in particular [...]

Labor Takes Early Shots At Romney, Republicans--On and
Off Air
WEDNESDAY JAN 25, 2012 6:27 PM
DAVID MOBERG
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12621/labor_takes_early_shots_at_romney_republicans--on_and_off_air/

Without a Democratic presidential primary contest,
unions this year are taking early potshots at Republican
primary candidates--especially Mitt Romney--and other GOP
leaders through radio and TV ads, as well as other
means.

The aim seems less to influence Republican primary
voters than to define Romney, who until this week
following Newt Gingrich's South Carolina primary victory
was the front-runner in the race, and to gain leverage
on other labor issues by tying them to high-profile
Republicans vulnerable to bad publicity. [...]

Tidbits, January 24, 2012

1 Portside and Earthlink - problems continue - message from
Portside Moderator
2 "Can the Labor Movement and Occupy
Wall Street March down the Same Road?" - New York City -
Jan. 27
3 Re: Fighting a Forbidden Battle: How I Stopped
Covering Up for a Hidden Wrong (Nancy Rubin Mikelsons)
4 Re: Controversial Killer Flu Research Paused (Beth
Moriarty)
5 Re: Chicago City Council Passes Rahm Emanuel's
Anti- Protest Ordinances (Madeline Breslin)
6 Re: Red Tails in the Sunset (Dave Ecklein, Jim Williams) [...]

Historic Online March Celebrates Roe v. Wade

NATIONAL ONLINE MARCH SUPPORTS REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE / HEALTH
/ RIGHTS

Posted to portside by Ellen Shaffer.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - January 22, 2012- Americans in support
of reproductive justice, health and rights are having our
say on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade without having to take
a plane, bus or car. With just one click on their computers,
mobile phones or iPads, marchers from Hawaii to Maine are
linking up in a national online march targeting Congress,
governors and state legislatures. [...]

Students Step Up Tucson Walkouts

Protest School District Folly and Mexican American Studies
Banishment

By Jeff Biggers
Common Dreams
January 24, 2012

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/24-2

As the nation watches the Tucson Unified School District’s
spiral into disarray, hundreds of students walked out of
their Tucson schools Monday in a coordinated protest against
the banishment of the district’s acclaimed Mexican American
Studies program.

Pouring into the downtown Tucson area from Pueblo, Cholla and
Tucson high schools, among other institutions, the students
brought their march to the offices of floundering Tucson
Unified School District (TUSD) administrators. In recent
days, administrators and board members have [...]

More Lockouts as Companies Battle Unions

By Steven Greenhouse

The New York Times
January 23, 2012 (posted January 22)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/business/lockouts-once-rare-put-workers-on-the-defensive.html

America's unionized workers, buffeted by layoffs and
stagnating wages, face another phenomenon that is
increasingly throwing them on the defensive: lockouts.

From the Cooper Tire factory in Findlay, Ohio, to a country
club in Southern California and sugar beet processing plants
in North Dakota, employers are turning to lockouts to press
their unionized workers to grant concessions after contract
negotiations deadlock. Even the New York City Opera locked
out its orchestra and singers for more than a week before
settling [...]

Apple's Chinese factories to be audited after violation of
working conditions

Local HR practice blamed, but suicides, long working hours
and disciplinary wage deductions give cause for concern

By Juliette Garside
guardian.co.uk,
January 24, 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/24/apple-factories-china-independent-audit

The man's hand is twisted into a claw, crushed, he says by a
metal press at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, where Apple's
luxury electronics are assembled. He is looking at an iPad -
he has never seen one switched on. His mangled hand strokes
the screen, bringing it to life. [...]

Not all jobs are equal
A lower unemployment rate isn't enough.
Americans need work that pays the bills.
By Jonathan Tasini
Los Angeles Times
January 24, 2012
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-tasini-high-unemployment-is-just-part-of-the-20120124,0,4204870.story

Politicians bickering over private equity's impact on
jobs and how to bring down the high unemployment rate
are entirely missing the point about the crisis facing
working Americans. The predicament we face isn't simply
that there are too few jobs; it's also that an
increasing number of workers don't have the kind of job
that can pay the bills. [...]

(1)
Longshore Union, Occupy Poised to Greet Grain Ship
by Eduardo Soriano-Castillo
Labor Notes
January 23, 2012

http://labornotes.org/2012/01/longshore-union-occupy-poised-greet-grain-ship

Conflict is looming over a grain exporter's attempt to
use scab labor to load a freighter in Longview,
Washington. Occupiers and Longshore unionists-who
blocked a train in September-expect a heavily armed
police presence, but their own friction is adding
difficulties.

Waiting somewhere in the Columbia River is a freighter.
The transnational grain exporter EGT wants to use scab
labor to load it at the small Washington state port of
Longview and send it to Asia. [...]

Obama's Choice on Housing: A Sweetheart Deal for the 1%
or a Fair Deal for the 99%

by Van Jones and George Goehl

Published on Monday, January 23, 2012 by Common
Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/23-5

Rumor has it that as early as today, after months of
negotiation with big banks, the White House may
announce a settlement that would let the banks off the
hook for their role in the foreclosure crisis -- paying
a tiny fraction of what's needed in exchange for
blanket immunity from future lawsuits. [...]

Egypt Today, One Year Later

A Revolution Revisited

By Carl Finamore

January 21, 2012

Submitted to portside

Cairo, Egypt - One year ago in February 2011, getting
to Egypt wasn't that easy.

Back then, my London flight crew suddenly refused, in
midair, to layover in Cairo. Instead, we touched down
in Athens where the airline did not actually even have
formal landing rights. As a result, we were confined to
the aircraft as it sat on the tarmac. [...]