Latest Agreement Won't Resolve Greek Crisis, Likely to
Make it Worse, CEPR Co-Director Says

European Authorities Pushing Greece Deeper Into
Recession, Toward Default and Exit from Euro

Center for Economic and Policy
Research
February 21, 2012

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-releases/press-releases/latest-agreement-wont-resolve-greek-crisis-likely-to-make-it-worse-cepr-co-director-says

Washington, D.C.

The agreement between the European authorities and
Greece won't resolve Greece's economic crisis and is
likely to make it worse, said Mark Weisbrot, economist
and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research (CEPR). [...]

Eastern Europe's Conservative Crackdown on Reproductive
Freedom

By Jake Blumgart
Toward Freedom
February 3, 2012

http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/europe/2706-eastern-europes-conservative-crackdown-on-reproductive-freedom

Across Eastern and Central Europe, as unemployment
surges and the European Union dithers, nationalist
conservative and far right parties are on the march.
Emboldened right-wing leaders are resurrecting debates
around abortion and other reproductive services, even
in countries like Hungary, one of the first European
countries to explicitly legalize abortion. [...]

'Call to Disobedience'

A Rift in the German-Speaking Catholic Church

Spiegel (Germany)
February 20, 2012

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,816 528,00.html

A call by reform-minded Catholics in the
German-speaking world for the church to soften
its stances on homosexuality, divorce and
celibacy among priests and to end its ban on
women in the clergy is drawing loud criticism
from conservatives. They argue the group is
threatening to create a schism within the
Catholic Church. [...]

Cooperative Success Confounds Liberals, Analysts Alike

By Matthew Martin Staff Reporter
The Exponent (Purdue - West Lafayette,Ind)
February 17, 2012

http://www.purdueexponent.org/campus/article_cea97626-7952-521c-a743-6d798191d245.html

Analysts said it couldn't happen and liberals said it
was too early to come, but the Spanish cooperative of
Mondragon has grown into a global powerhouse.

The Mondragon cooperative of 120 different companies
was the focus of Carl Davidson, a writer and the
national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence
for Democracy and Socialism, who talked on Thursday to
a sparse audience in Lawson Hall. The speech was
sponsored by the Committee on Peace Studies and the
Latin American [...]

National Union of Healthcare Workers

NUHW Bulletin
February 21, 2012

700,000 Members Of The International Association of
Machinists Partner With NUHW

Three years ago, NUHW was established to advance the
vision of a new national movement of healthcare
workers, united in an organization that would put
members in control of their own future, refuse to
settle for less than what caregivers and patients
deserve, and transform the labor movement in the
healthcare industry and beyond. [...]

Fracking, Obama and the 2012 Debate

By Ted Glick

Future Hope column, Feb. 20, 2012

http://www.tedglick.com/columns/118.html

"This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above
strategy. . . that develops every available source of
American energy. . . We have a supply of natural gas
that can last America nearly one hundred years. . . The
development of natural gas will . . . prov(e) that we
don't have to choose between our environment and our
economy. . . And by the way, it was public research
dollars. . . that helped develop the technologies to
extract all this natural gas out of [...]

Is Your Local Restaurant Relying on Exploited
Women's Labor?

By Michelle Chen,
Ms. Blog Posted on February 16, 2012,
Printed on February 20, 2012

http://www.alternet.org/story/154171/is_your_local_restaurant_relying_on_exploited_women%27s_labor

Next time you plunk down some change on the table
before leaving a restaurant, think about what might be
behind that service with a smile. A new study warns
that when Americans eat out, they feed into an industry
fueled by exploitation and rampant discrimination
against women. [...]

Presidents Come and Presidents Go

By Victor Grossman

Berlin Bulletin No. 38 February 18, 2012

Berlin and its surroundings have had plenty to keep it
occupied: an airline strike, a short strike of the bus,
streetcar and subway lines, the euro crisis and price
increases. Or, on the happier side, warmer weather and
the film Berlinale, with visits by many stars and an
interesting, international mix of films often by young
and new film-makers. And last week's successful
resistance to the annual February attempts by the Nazis
to show their strength in Dresden. [...]

Anticipating Fear

By Mary Elizabeth King
Waging Nonviolence, /Op-ed

http://www.nationofchange.org/anticipating-fear-1329749758

Black History Month has many meanings. For me, it is a
time to remember the tremendous contribution African
Americans have made to the building of the United
States--as much as any group, and possibly more. I mean
this literally, as in constructing so much of the
nation's material infrastructure, but I also am
speaking of another realm. [...]

The Farm Workers' Filipino Champion

By Dick Meister

The birth date of Cesar Chavez, the late farm workers'
leader, will be celebrated next month, and rightly so.
But it's well past time we also celebrated the life of
probably the most important of the other leaders who
played a major role in winning union rights for farm
workers and otherwise helping them combat serious
exploitation. [...]

Oldest Animals Ever Discovered
Posted By: Greg Laden
Smithsonian.com
February 10, 2012
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2012/02/oldest-animals-ever-discovered/

Life on Earth began very soon after the planet formed
about 4.5 billion years ago. After the planet cooled
enough, perhaps only tens of millions or a few hundred
million years passed before the first life-like things
existed. The geological record is sparse for that early
period, about 3.5 billion to 3.8 billion years ago, so
we can't be sure. (And it may depend in part on how one
defines "life.") For the next few billion years, it
seems, single-celled organisms had the run of the
planet. [...]

Spain Protests Labor Reforms As Hundreds Of Thousands
Take To Streets
By Paul Day and Tomás Cobos
Huffington Post
February 19, 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/19/spain-protests-labor-reforms_n_1287491.html#s708163

MADRID, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of
people protested across Spain on Sunday against reforms
to the labour market they fear will destroy workers'
rights and spending cuts they say are destroying the
welfare state. [...]

Pew Study Shows Need for Modern Voting System
By Wendy Weiser & Lianna Reagan
Brennan Center
February 14, 2012
http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/archives/pew_study_shows_need_for_modern_voting_system/

[moderator:

find the Pew study here
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Pew_Upgrading_Voter_Registration.pdf

and the Brennan Center proposal here
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/pages/voter_registration_modernization]

Today, the Pew Center on the States released a report
detailing some of the serious flaws in our voter
registration systems, the lynchpin of election
administration. Their study reaffirms what election
administrators and voter advocates have known for a long
time - that the voter rolls are filled with errors, and
an unconscionable percentage (almost a quarter,
according to Pew) of American citizens who are eligible
[...]

Tidbits & Announcements - February 19, 2012

* Boycott Divestment Sanctions vs. Israeli Apartheid:
The Legacy of Mandela and King - Chicago - Feb. 26

* Re: The Senate and Grammys Condone Domestic Abuse
(Isabel Thompson, Germaine Cook)

* Re: The African World An Apology Ceremony That We
Need to Publicize (R.Clarke, Arnoldo Garcia)

* Re: Shame On Europe For Betraying Greece (Judith
Ackerman, Martha Rosler) [...]

Trickle-Down in the Other `Down Under'
By Sam Pizzigati
Too Much
February 12, 2012
http://toomuchonline.org/trickle-down-in-the-other-down-under/

Where in the developed world do rich people pay the
least in taxes? To Americans these days, this question
would seem to have an obvious answer. The tax laws New
Zealand has locked in place almost read like a "tax
reform" wish list - on steroids - from GOP Presidential
candidates. [...]

Bahrain Deports Four Foreign Activists

Observers for rights groups expelled amid
security clampdown to prevent mass pro-
democracy protests in capital.

Aljazeera
February 18, 2012

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/02/201221882048795168.html

Photo:http://tinyurl.com/75le78u

Bahrain announced the deportation of four foreign
activists for "taking part in illegal demonstrations"
in the country, adding to a number of deportations of
activists over the past week.

The four activists were deported for "lying on
immigration forms" as their "visas were issued for the
purposes of tourism but all were participating in
illegal demonstrations", the official BNA news agency
reported late on Friday. [...]

Greek Left Has Most Support But is Fragmented

By Kerin Hope in Athens
Financial Times
February 14, 2012

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e409bf80-5733-11e1-be25-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1mUqJpHNf

With his stylish haircut, sharp suits and BMW motorbike
parked outside parliament, Alexis Tsipras cuts an
striking figure in Greek politics.

His defiant message underscores the reservations of
Greece's triple-A rated eurozone creditors, who on
Tuesday night postponed signing off on the new bail-
out, fearing it would only be derailed, like its
predecessor, by the country's fractious politicians and
mounting social unrest. [...]

Shame On Europe For Betraying Greece

Capitalism is triumphant as EU states sacrifice
the Greek people in a desperate attempt to
appease the gods of speculation

By William Wall
The Independent (UK)
February 14, 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/14/europe-betraying-greece?INTCMP=SRCH

'We condemn Greece to misery and poverty to keep
Standard & Poor's off our backs. But we have
miscalculated.' Photograph: Argyropoulos/Sipa/Rex
Features

The behaviour of the EU states towards Greece is
inexplicable in the terms in which the EU defines
itself. It is, first and foremost, a failure of
solidarity. [...]

The African World

An Apology Ceremony That We Need to Publicize

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial
Board
BC
Feruary 16, 2012

http://www.blackcommentator.com/459/459_aw_apology.php

On February 26th, a ceremony is to take place in
California apologizing to the approximately 400,000
people of Mexican ancestry who were deported from the
USA in a spate of ethnic cleansing that gripped the USA
during the Depression. What is at stake in this
ceremony is not only the apology but what it says about
racism and ethnic cleansing in times of economic
crisis. [...]

REWIND - A Week of Quotes & Cartoons

SUNDAY

Quote of the Day
February 12, 2012

'As is usual in Greek protests, only a small fraction
of the crowd fought the police. Others held up banners
saying "Popular uprising!," "It's us or them!" and
"Don't gamble away all we have achieved".'

Reuters
February 12, 2012
http://tinyurl.com/7oqqb7n

Toon of the Day
http://tinyurl.com/74ezrk2
Religious Exemptions
Brian McFadden - New York Times [...]