From The Theatre Union's 1933 Manifesto

During the 1930s Great Depression, The Theatre Union indicated, in its 1933 manifesto, how the counter-cultural U.S. working-class left's approach to drama differs from the Broadway-Hollywood-Commercial Theatre-Corporate Media Conglomerate Complex's historic approach to drama:

"We produce plays that deal boldly with the deep-going social conflicts, the economic, emotional, and cultural problems that confront the majority of the people. Our plays speak directly to this majority, whose lives usually are caricatured or ignored on the stage. We do not expect that these plays will fall into accepted social patterns. This is a new kind of...theatre, based on the interests and hopes of the great mass of working people.

"We have established a low price sale so that the masses of people who have been barred by high prices can attend the theatre..."

Black Male Worker Jobless Rate: 16.7 Percent Under Obama

Between October and November 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black male workers over 20 years-of-age in the United States increased from 16.3 to 16.7 percent under the Democratic Obama Administration; while the unemployment rate for Black female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 12.7 to 13.1 percent, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The official unemployment rate for all Black workers over 16 years-of-age also increased from 15.7 to 16 percent during this same period; while the jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age was still over 46 percent in November 2010.

Between October and November 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic workers in the United States also increased from 12.6 to 13.2 percent; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” rate for Asian-American workers increased from 7.1 to 7.6 percent between October and November 2010.

The total number of officially unemployed workers in the United States increased from 14,843,000 to 15,119,000 between October and November 2010; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all U.S. male workers over 16-years-of- age increased from 10.4 to 10.6 percent. The official jobless rate for white male workers over 20-years-of-age in the United States increased from 8.9 to 9.2 percent between October and November 2010, while the unemployment rate for white female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 7.3 to 7.6 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ December 3, 5, 2010 press release:

“The unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 percent in November...Employment fell in retail trade…

“The number of unemployed persons was 15.1 million in November…

“Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs rose by 390,000 to 9.5 million in November. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 6.3 million and accounted for 41.9 percent of the unemployed.

“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed over the month at 9.0 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

“About 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in November…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey

“Among the marginally attached, there were 1.3 million discouraged workers in November, an increase of 421,000 from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them…

“Retail trade employment fell by 28,000 in November. Job losses occurred in department stores (-9,000) and in furniture and home furnishings stores (-5,000)…”

Revisiting History of Korea--Conclusion

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following about the situation in Korea between 1993 and 2003:

"From 1993 through 1994...the Clinton administration's Pentagon drew up Operations Plan 5027, designed to attack and destroy North Korea's nuclear facilities. It was estimated that such an attack could lead to full-scale war in which `as many as one million people would be killed, including 80,000 to 100,000 Americans...' When Seoul protested strongly and refused any part in the contemplated war, the United States was obliged to negotiate..."

"...William Perry, secretary of defense in the Clinton administration between 1994 and 1997, was appointed...to advise on North Korea policy. After an intensive, eight-month study and a visit to Pyongyang, his report cleared Pyongyang of suspicion over alleged secret nuclear development, confirmed that it had abided by the freeze.

"...The initial and crucial breaches were American ones. The introduction of nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula in the first place, the refusal to take seriously its obligations under the Non Proliferation Treaty to `negotiate in good faith to achieve a precise result--nuclear disarmament in all its aspects' and the inclusion of North Korea on the nuclear target list were all breaches of the Non Proliferation Treaty. The United States was also in breach of the Agreed Framework by its dilatoriness at the planned light-water reactor site...

"...For more than a decade, the United States insisted that North Korea had `one, possibly two' nuclear weapons. In 2003, however, U.S. intelligence shifted to adopt the South Korean, Russian, and Chinese view: that it actually did not have any at all...

"...Until 2003 North Korea did not, apparently, actually enrich any uranium, much less produce any weapons. As for the Yangbyon reactor, the plutonium-generating program and the reactor waste pools were frozen, as promised, between 1994 and 2003..."

Revisiting History of Korea--Part 6

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following about the situation in Korea since the late 1950s:

"North Korea, the more industrialized region of the peninsula prior to the Korean War, surpassed the southern Republic of Korea in growth during the 1950s and 1960s...

"North Korea's uniqueness...lies first of all in the way it has...lived under the shadow of nuclear threat longer than any other nation. During the Korean War it escaped nuclear annihilation by the barest of margins...Just four years later, and in obvious breaach of the Armistice, the United States introduced nuclear artillery shells, mines, and missiles into Korea, and it added periodically thereafter to a stockpile kept adjacent to the Demilitarized Zone and designed to intimidate the nonnuclear North. When these nuclear weapons were finally withdrawn in 1991...the United States openly continued its rehearsals for a long-range nuclear strike on North Korea..."

Revisiting History of Korea--Part 5

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following about the situation in Korea during the early 1950s Korean War:

"...The UN forces flouted the rules of war by allowing or encouraging South Korean forces to engage in widespread massacres and torture, the details of which are as yet only slowly being revealed. The United States itself committed a series of war crimes, only partially acknowledged and never in any way expiated, by attacking civilian population centers, refugee columns, and the North's civil inrastructure including dams and food supplies (crimes for which German officers had been executed only a few years before)...

"...Between three and four million people died, most of them Korean civilians, and ten million were cut off from their families on either side of the cease-fire line. In proportional terms, North Korea suffered greater losses of population than either the Soviet Union or Poland in the Second World War. The American losses were long put at 54,000 men...but in 2000 these figures were mysteriously scaled back to 36,940, with the explanation that by a clerical error all U.S. military deaths during those years had been counted as Korean War deaths..."

Revisiting History of Korea--Part 4

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following about the situation in Korea during the early 1950s Korean War:

"...[U.S.]General Curtis LeMay...boasted later that `over a period of three years or so, we burned down just about every town in North and South Korea both..., we killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes.' Attacks...also included a 500 bomber raid in June 1952 that destroyed a complex of hydroelectric power stations on the Yalu River, knocking out 90 percent of the country's remaining power supply; massive air assaults in July and August 1952 on Pyongyan, the heaviest bombing attack to that date in a capital, which drenched the city in napalm and produced a civilian death toll of 6,000; and finally, in May 1953, the bombing of the irrigation dams on which the agricultural infrastructure of the country depended. That raid was designed to starve the enemy into submission.

"...An overwhelming proportion of the [Korean] war's three to four million casualties were civilians...

"At the outbreak of war in 1950, one of the first acts of the [South Korean] Rhee regime was to order the execution of political prisoners, whose deaths were in due course attributed to atrocities by the incoming Northern forces...Declassified U.S. documents indicated that `more than 2,000' political prisoners were executed without trial in the early weeks, hundreds of them were taken out to sea from the port of Pohang and shot, their bodies dumped overboard...Throughout the country, according to Gregory Henderson, then a U.S. Embassy official in Seoul and later a prominent historian of Korea, probably over 100,000 people were killed without trial or legal warrant. Investigations into all this have scarcely begun...

"When Seoul was recaptured by U.S. and South Korean forces perhaps as many as 29,000 Koreans were executed on suspicion of collaboration with the North...The occupation of Pyongyang and many other cities and villages above the 38th parallel [by South Korean forces] was characterized by atrocities...According to one estimate, 150,000 people were executed or kidnapped...

"The official U.S. Army report at the end of the [Korean] war gave 7,334 as the figure for civilian victims of North Korean atrocities, a small fraction of those now known to have been executed by [government of South Korean leader] Rhee in the first moments of the war alone...

"...The Taejon Massacre...became the centerpiece of the U.S. case for North Korean brutality...A U.S. Army report on the massacre, including graphic photographs, was published around the world in October 1953...

"At Taejon, a town of about 160 kilometers south of Seoul, a massacre undoubtedly occurred...

"...It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the most brutal North Korean atrocity in the South was actually a Southern atrocity in a brutal ongoing civil war...

"...The figure of 1,800 massacre victims was given...Somebody--presumably in either the American military or government--seems to have made the decision to turn this into a Northern massacre, the characteristic, single atrocity of the entire war. The truth seems inescapable: The worst atorcity of the war was committed by forces acting in the name of the United Nations, and a concerted effort was then made to cover it up by blaming it on the North Korean enemy...

"...On the admission of [U.S.] General Ridgeway's Head Office, more POWs died in United Nations camps than in North Korean camps..."

Revisiting History of Korea--Part 3

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following about the situation in Korea after World War II in the late 1940s:

"In the Soviet zone...broadly popular social and economic reforms were implemented, including the purge of Japanese collaborators, land reform, the emancipation of women, and the transfer to public ownership of all Japanese assets...

"Widespread discontent...exploded on the island of Cheju, off [South] Korea's southern coast [in 1948-49]. As a result, between 10 and 25 percent of its 300,000 inhabitants were massacred, more than half of their villages burned, and the panoply of anti-guerrilla measures later developed to the full in Vietnam--herding of the population into strategic hamlets or fortified villages, destruction of crops, scorched earth, slaughter of villagers--put into operation...

"...Syngman Rhee...launched cross-border raids in 1949 to test Northern defenses...Stalin gave his consent to the invasion plans [of North Korean government leader Kim] only reluctantly, after forty-eight telegraphic pleas from Kim...

"...Through early 1950...Rhee grew even more strident in his calls for a `march' north to unify the country and his forces stepped up raids..."

Revisiting History of Korea--Part 2

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following about the situation in Korea after World War II in the late 1940s:

"With the announcement of the Japanese surrender, the capital, Seoul, was swept by joyful anticipation and a spontaneous network of popular local organizations, the `People's Committees,' emerged...The People's Committees were quickly banned...and the rich conservative and staunch anticommunist, Syngman Rhee, an emigre' Korean who had lived for decades in Washington, developing strong ties to conservative Americans, was imposed at the head of a new regime...

"[General] Hodge [the U.S. military commander]'s intelligence told him in February 1946 that leftist elements in the South would be bound to win any fair election, and in that same month a survey found that 49 percent of South Koreans felt that conditions were worse under the Americans than they had been under the Japanese.

"Those associated with the People's Committees...were...arrested or driven underground...The most prominent figure...seeking accommodation with the north, Yo Unhyong, was assassinated in July 1947...

"On November 11, 1947, Patrick Shaw, then head of the Australian diplomatic mission in Tokyo, described the situation in South Korea:

"`Real power is apparently in the hands of the ruthless police force which works at the direction of the G2 Section of the American G.H.Q....Korean prisons are now fuller of political prisoners than under Japanese rule. The torture and murder of the political enemies of the Extreme Right is apparently an accepted and commonplace thing.'..."

Revisiting History of Korea--Part 1

In his 2004 book, Target Korea: Pushing North Korea To The Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, Australian National University Professor Gavan McCormack provided some historical background to the current crisis in Korea, when he wrote the following:

"Nearly 37,000 Americans, and an estimated three million Koreans, died in the Korean War of 1950-1953...

"...We now know that many of the greatest atrocities in that awful [Korean] war were committed by the South Koreans and the United States--at Nogunri, Taejon, and elsewhere--and then by the United States alone, when in its air campaign against the North it devastated dams, power stations, and the infrastructure of social life in breach of international law. In other words,...much of the terror was inflicted by the forces acting in the name of the United Nations...

"...The United States, to suit its global needs, divided a country that had been united for over a thousand years and whose culture and tradition were extraordinarily coherent...In the State Department an arbitrary line was drawn across the map at the 38th parallel, a geographical marker of no previous political or cultural significance, which had the effect of placing Korea's capital, Seoul, and most of its population under American influence...

"Koreans below the 38th parallel who welcomed liberation from Japanese imperialism...were forced instead to accept a subordinate state...The objectives of American policy-makers were...to establish a cooperative regime that would reflect U.S. strategic interests...Nationalist aspiration was anathema to the Americans and had to be crushed..."

47th Anniversary of JFK Assassination: Who Eliminated JFK?

(November 22, 2010 marks the 47th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President Kennedy in Dallas Texas. The following item first appeared in the July 22, 1992 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly newspaper, Downtown).

On October 13, 1964 the ex-wife of former CIA Covert Action Head Cord Meyer--Mary Pinchot-Meyer--"was shot twice, once in the head and once in the chest, with no apparent motive" and she and President Kennedy had been "involved at the time of the president's assassination," according to The Encyclopedia of American Scandal by George Kohn.

Coincidentally, in his book The Senator Must Die, former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow stated that shortly before Mary Pinchot-Meyer was eliminated, he met with a former Deputy Comptroller of the U.S. Treasury, Marshall Diggs, at Paul Young's Restaurant in Washington, D.C. According to Morrow, Diggs told him that Mary Pinchot-Meyer "claimed to my friend that she positively knew that company-affiliated Cuban exiles and the Mafia were responsible for killing John Kennedy." After speakingg with Diggs, Morrow "drove to New York and met with [then-Cuban Exile Leader] Kohly" and "after I told him the story of Mary Meyer, he looked very concerned."

According to Morrow, Kohly then said "just tell Diggs I'll take care of the matter" and "Then he told me to stay away from him and not tell anyone I had seen him or where he could be found." Coincidentally, a week after Morrow's meeting with Kohly in New York, Mary Pinchot-Meyer was eliminated.

Also, coincidentally, in his 1980 book, Conspiracy, Anthony Summers wrote:

"In 1978 I interviewed the son of the late Mario Kohly...The younger Kohly recalled opening a bottle of champagne at the news of President Kennedy's death and then calling his father. According to Kohly, `My father seemed elated and quite relievedl; he seemed more pleased, I would say, than surprised. I am sure he had knowledge of what really happened in Dealey Plaza. But, if you recall, everyone that has had knowledge ended up dead."

The same book also observed that Kohly's son quoted the deceased Cuban Exile Leader as saying "John Kennedy was a traitor...He was a Communist."

Former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow's book about RFK's elimination, The Senator Must Die, also stated the following:

"Bobby Kennedy suspected that a conspiracy involving CIA/Mafia-related people killed his brother.

"...On Aug. 19, 1977, I would seemingly have some confirmation of the Company's involvement in the President's assassination. I received a mysterious phone call to meet with the son of a former high-ranking member of the intelligence community.

"We met the following day for lunch. In our initial conversation, the young man claimed his father, an ex-Air Force colonel and others working for the Central Intelligence Agency had prior knowledge that President Kennedy was going to be assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

"He also claimed that through his father, he learned that the CIA hierarchy had done everything in their power to thwart the Warren Commission investigation, including the suppression and destruction of evidence--evidence that could prove that a conspiracy existed.

"The intelligence officer's son...asserted that his father had been tied into organized crime and had been a bagman for at least one of the payoffs relating to the presidential assassination, transporting a large sum of money to Haiti for payoff purposes during the Summer of 1963...

Former CIA contract agent Morrow also included in his book an affidavit signed by former Reagan White House staff member Diane (Didi) Hess in Sept. 1977 in which Hess stated that she submitted to a taped interview with Morrow on Sept. 27, 1977 in order "to describe the circumstances surrounding the admissions" of a former Air Force Colonel to her "of his personal participation in the assassination conspiracy of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963" and "to state the desire" of this Air Force intelligence officer "to convey this information directly to the prooper authorities upon being granted immunity from prosecution."

According to Morrow, Hess "had lived with the intelligence officer's son over an extended period of time" and "she also told her story to the House Select Committee On Assassinations (HSCA)" during the late 1970s.

(Downtown 7/22/92)

George Bernard Shaw: On Using Writing & Poetry To Change Society

In 1895, the socialist writer and dramatist George Bernard Shaw indicated why great writers and great poets often attempt to use their writing as a tool for creating a new society:

"...If people are rotting and starving in all directions, and nobody else has the heart or brains to make a disturbance about it, the great writers must. In short, what is forcing our poets to follow Shelley in becoming political and social agitators, and to turn the theatre into a platform for propaganda and arena for discussion, is that whilst social questions are being thrown up for solution almost daily by the fierce rapidity with which industrial processes change and supersede one another through the rivalry of the competitors who take no account of ulterior social consequences, and by the change in public feeling produced by popular `education' cheap literature, facilitated travelling, and so forth, the political machinery by which alone our institutions can be kept abreast of these changes is so old-fashioned, and so hindered in its action by the ignorance, the apathy, the stupidity, and the class feuds of the electorate, that social questions never get solved until the pressure becomes so desperate that even governments recognize the necessity for moving. And to bring the pressure to this point, the poets must lend a hand to the few who are willing to do public work in the stages at which nothing but abuse is to be gained by it..."

NYU Law School Prof Who Sentenced Lynne Stewart: His U.S. Attorney's Office/Columbia/Debevoise & Plimpton Connection

In July 2010, an NYU Law School adjunct professor named John Koeltl unconstitutionally sentenced U.S. civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart to 10 years in prison in the Southern District federal courtroom where Koeltl also is employed as a federal judge. Coincidentally, an Assistant U.S. Attorney since June 2000 in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District that prosecuted Lynne Stewart--a Columbia University Law School lecturer-in-law named Jonathan Kolodner--apparently worked for Judge Koeltl as his law clerk between August 1997 and August 1998.

Prior to being appointed to the federal judicial bench by U.S. Secretary of State Clinton's husband in 1994 (on the recommendation of a now-deceased former AIPAC-backed U.S. Senator named Daniel "Pat" Moynihan), NYU Law School Professor Koeltl worked for years as a corporate lawyer at the Debevoise & Plimpton corporate law firm in Manhattan. While working at Debevoise & Plimpton, Judge Koeltl apparently wrote, for example, legal briefs for Mobil Oil in the Raymond vs. Mobil Oil case, after Mobil Oil was sued for its alleged age discrimination policies. In addition, while working at Debevoise & Plimpton, Judge Koeltl also apparently attended a June 18, 1987 board of directors meeting of The Council for Tobacco Research--along with the top executives of tobacco companies like American Tobacco and Phillip Morris who sat on this apparently then-tobacco industry-dominated board.

Coincidentally, a member of Debovise & Plimpton's Litigation Department (whose aviation industry practice apparently handles litigation arising out of the September 11, 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center buildings)--a Debevoise & Plimpton Counsel named Suzanne Grosso--also used to work as a law clerk in the late 1990s for the judge who sentenced Lynne stewart to 10 years in prison.

Black Female Worker Jobless Rate: 12.7 Percent Under Obama

Between September and October 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black female workers over 20 years-of-age in the United States increased from 12.6 to 12.7 percent under the Democratic Obama Administration; while the unemployment rate for Black male workers over 20-years-of-age was still 16.3 percent, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The official unemployment rate for all Black workers over 16 years-of-age was still 15.7 percent in October 2010; while the jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age was still 48 percent in October 2010. Between September and October 2010, the number of officially unemployed Black female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 1,143,000 to 1,168,000; while the number of jobless Black youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age increased from 298,000 to 334,000.

Between September and October 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic workers in the United States also increased from 12.4 to 12.6 percent; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” rate for Latina or Hispanic female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 11.1 to 11.7 percent between September and October 2010. The “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latino or Hispanic youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age also increased from 31 to 31.6 percent between September and October 2010; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white youths increased from 23.4 to 23.6 percent during this same period. Between September and October 2010, the number of Latino or Hispanic workers with jobs in the United States decreased from 20,070,000 to 19,939,000, according to the “seasonally adjusted” data; while the number of officially unemployed Latino or Hispanic workers increased from 2,840,000 to 2,865,000.

The total number of officially unemployed workers in the United States increased from 14,767,000 to 14,843,000 between September and October 2010; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all U.S. male workers over 16-years-of- age was still 10.4 percent in October 2010. The official jobless rate for white male workers over 20-years-of-age in the United States was still 8.9 percent in October 2010, while the unemployment rate for white female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 7.2 to 7.3 percent between September and October 2010. The official “seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed white female workers in the United States increased from 3,949,000 to 4,010,000 between September and October 2010; while the number of white male workers over-20-years-of-age with jobs dropped from 59,755,000 to 59,431,000 during this same period.

Between September and October 2010, the official jobless rate for all white workers over 16-years-of-age increased from 8.7 to 8.8 percent; while the unemployment rate for all U.S. workers remained at 9.6 percent. The total number of white workers with jobs decreased from 114,500,000 to 113,974,000 between September and October 2010; while the total number of unemployed white workers in the United States increased from 10,904,000 to 10,933,000 during this same period.

The official jobless rate for all Asian-American workers also increased from 6.4 to 7.1 percent between September and October 2010, according to the "not seasonally adjustated" data; while the total number of unemployed Asian-American workers increased from 463,000 to 519,000 under the Democratic Obama Administration during this same period.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ November 5, 2010 press release:

“…The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was about unchanged over the month at 6.2 million. In October, 41.8 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more…

“Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 64.5 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 58.3 percent, edged down over the month…

“About 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in October, up from 2.4 million a year earlier…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey…

“Among the marginally attached, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers in October, an increase of 411,000 from a year earlier…Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them….

“Employment in manufacturing changed little in October (-7,000)…

“…Employment in construction, wholesale trade, transportation, information, and financial activities showed little change in October…

“…Employment in local government, excluding education, decreased by 14,000 over the month…The number of temporary decennial census workers fell by 5,000 in October…”

ZNet Editor Michael Albert: `Money Matters On The Left'

In his autobiography, Remembering Tomorrow, ZNet Editor Michael Albert indicated how foundation money and ultra-rich donors apparently exercise a special influence on the U.S. left's alternative media and Democratic Party-oriented political agenda:

"...We know that money matters in society, but we don't seem to realize that money matters on the Left...

"...The area I have some experience with, alternative media, is graphically if not universally donor, and donor dynamics, dominated. For example, The Nation was begun and financed by large donors who, at most points, occupied the key decision positions in the periodical. The same holds true for Monthly Review, Mother Jones, Utne Reader, In These Times, and New Left Review. In cases where the big donor didn't come abroad, it was generally the best fund-raiser or most financially connected participant who had the corner office. With our activist hats on we decry mainstream media for being owned and thus beholding to big money in its motivations and structural choices, but then, when we don our media hats, we construct operations no less beholden to big-money interests, but now via the largesse of donors rather than direct owners.

"When leftists I have known have talked about a major nonprofit--say the Ford Foundation--they...certainly haven't described an institution free of constraint...

"Mother Jones magazine was financed into existence by Adam Hochschild. Adam's money allowed MJ to do massive mailings over and over, to build up and maintain a readership. It turns out that Adam's money came from African mining...

"...Adam not only put his money into MJ but put himself into MJ too, in the corner office...But the salient point about Adam was the amount of cash he had available versus the amount that he made available. It seemed that Adam was richer than Adam would admit to himself. What he was giving, which was quite considerable by Left accounts, wasn't even denting his capacity. He was doing a fraction of what he might have done, given his actual resources...

"David Hunter...managed the Stern Foundation...I got an invitation to see David Hunter in New York City at the Stern Foundation offices...

"The meeting was held over lunch at the Harvard Club. We chatted a bit and Hunter asked to see our financial statement...

"Hunter told me...that he paid no attention to the actual numbers in such documents because he took it for granted that everyone asking for donations lied. He required the documents but he looked at them only to see if they were done prooperly...

"...You got Hunter's aid, and even more, you got aid from other donors, if they liked you, pure and simple...

In his autobiography, ZNet editor Albert also indicated how he apparently initially attempted to increase reader traffic on his ZNet website:

"...In the ZNet forum system, at its outset, I felt I had to do something to engender participation...To prod participation, I logged on with numerous false names, writing messages under each name, giving the system a flow of content that seemed to come from diverse people. I would engage in long debates, not only under my name, but also under four or five other names--including masquerading as two women..."

George Bernard Shaw: `On Newspaper Drama Critics'

As long ago as 1891, a socialist UK playwright and former UK drama critic named George Bernard Shaw indicated why many newspaper drama critics may not be really that qualified to evaluate the quality of the plays they review. In his 1891 appendix to The Quintessence of Ibsenism, for example, Shaw wrote:

"...In fact, the `dramatic critic' of a newspaper, in ordinary circumstances, is at his best a descriptive reporter, and at his worst a mere theatrical newsman. As such he is a person of importance among actors and managers, and of no importance whatever elsewhere. Naturally he frequents the circles in which alone he is made much of; and by the time he has seen so many performances that he has formed some critical standards in spite of himself, he has also enrolled among his personal acquaintances every actor and manager of a few years' standing, and become engaged in all the private likes and dislikes, the quarrels and friendships in a word, in all the partialities which personal relations involve, at which point the value of his verdicts may be imagined. Add to this that if he has the misfortune to be attached to a paper to which theatrical advertisements are an object, or of which the editor and proprietors (or their wives) do not hesitate to incur obligations to managers by asking for complimentary admissions, he may often have to choose between making himself agreeable and forfeiting his post. So that he is not always to be relied on even as a newsman where the plain truth would give offence to any individual...

"All this does not mean that the entire Press is hopelessly corrupt in its criticism of Art. But it certainly does mean that the odds against the independence of the Press critic are so heavy that no man can maintain it completely without a force of character and a personal authority which are rare in any profession, and which in most of them can command higher pecuniary terms and prospects than any which journalism can offer. The final degrees of thoroughness have no market value on the Press; for, other things being equal, a journal with a critic who is good-humored and compliant will have no fewer readers than one with a critic who is inflexible where the interest of Art and the public are concerned. I do not exaggerate or go beyond the warrant of my own experience when I say that unless a critic is prepared not only to do much more work than the public will pay him for, but to risk his livelihood every time he strikes a serious blow at the powerful interests vested in artistic abuses of all kinds (conditions which in the long run tire out the strongest man), he must submit to compromises which detract very considerably from the trustworthiness of his criticism. Even the critic who is himself in a position to brave these risks must find a sympathetic and courageous editor-proprietor who will stand by him without reference to the commercial advantage--or disadvantage--of his incessant warfare. As all the economic conditions of our society tend to throw our journals more and more into the hands of successful moneymakers, the exceeding scarcity of this lucky combination of resolute, capable, and incorruptible critic, sympathetic editor, and disinterested and courageous proprietor, can hardly be appreciated by those who only know the world of journalism through its black and white veil..."

Black Male Worker Jobless Rate: 17.6 Percent Under Obama

Between August and September 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black male workers over 20 years-of-age in the United States increased from 17.3 to 17.6 percent under the Democratic Obama Administration; while the unemployment rate for Black female workers over 20-years-of-age was still 12.6 percent, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The official unemployment rate for all Black workers over 16 years-of-age was 16.1 percent in September 2010; while the jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age jumped from 45.4 to 49 percent between August and September 2010.

Between August and September 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic workers in the United States also increased from 12 to 12.4 percent; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” rate for Latino or Hispanic male workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 10.4 to 11.1 percent between August and September 2010. The “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latino or Hispanic youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age was still 31 percent in September 2010; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white youths was still 23.4 percent in September 2010.

The official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all U.S. male workers over 16-years-of- age was still 10.5 percent in September 2010; while the unemployment rate for all U.S. male workers over 20-years-of-age was still 9.8 percent during this same month. The official jobless rate for white male workers over 20-years-of-age in the United States was still 8.9 percent in September 2010, while the unemployment rate for white female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 7.1 to 7.2 percent between August and September 2010.

The official “seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed workers in the United States was 14,767,000 in September 2010; while the official jobless rate for all U.S. workers was 9.6 percent in September 2010. According to the “not seasonally adjusted” data, the number of Asian-American workers who had jobs also dropped by 49,000 between August and September 2010.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ October 8, 2010 press release:

“Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-95,000) in September…Government employment declined (-159,000), reflecting both a drop in the number of temporary jobs for Census 2010 and job losses in local government…

“The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over), at 6.1 million was little changed over the month…In September, 41.7 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more…

“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) rose by 612,000 over the month to 9.5 million. Over the past 2 months, the number of such workers has increased by 943,000. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job…

“About 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in September, up from 2.2 million a year earlier…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey…

“Among the marginally attached, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers in September, an increase of 503,000 from a year earlier…Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them…

“Employment in construction edged down (-21,000) over the month…

“Government employment fell by 159,000 in September…Employment in local government decreased by 76,000 in September with job losses in both education and noneducation…

“The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised from -54,000 to -66,000, and the change for August was revised from -54,000 to -57,000…”

40 Years After Women's March for Equality & `Rat' Takeover--Conclusion

According to Ms.’s editor in the late 1990s, Marcia Ann Gillespie, the magazine’s then-current management played no role in formulating the Smith College library’s policy of restricting access in the 1990s to the Ms. archives material from the period when Pat Carbine and Gloria Steinem managed the magazine, prior to its subsequent re-organization.

Ms. was purchased in 1996 by Jay MacDonald’s MacDonald Communications, in partnership with Bud Paxson’s Paxson Communications media conglomerate. In its May 15, 1998 issue, the New York Times described Paxson Communications, then, as “the nation’s largest owner and operator of television stations” in 1998; and noted that Paxson’s vice-chairman at that time, William Simon Jr., was the son and business partner of former Secretary of the Treasury William Simon, Sr.—the then-president of the right-wing John M. Olin Foundation.

Later in 1998, Ms. founder Steinem and other investors created Liberty Media and repurchased the magazine from MacDonald Communications and Paxson Communications. But by 2001, Steinem’s Liberty Media was facing bankruptcy and Ms. magazine was sold to the tax-exempt Democratic Party-oriented Feminist Majority Foundation, which then turned it into a quarterly publication. But Steinem is still listed on the Ms. magazine masthead as a “Consulting Editor,” according to the magazine’s web site at www.msmagazine.com.

Ironically, despite its policy of still restricting the public’s access to some of the Ms. archives material during the late 1990s, the Sophia Smith Collection reported in its February 1998 newsletter that it received a $107,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities “to process eight collections documenting women’s activism.” And, coincidentally, according to the www.gloriasteinem.com site, Steinem is now apparently “working with the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College on a project to document the grassroots origins of the U.S. women's movement.”

Steinem also currently sits next to Robin Morgan on the board of directors of the Women’s Media Center, whose president—“a native of Austin” named Jehmu Greene—“got her start working in the fertile ground of Texas politics including an early stint with Governor Ann Richards’ campaign in 1994,” “later played key roles at…the Democratic National Committee” and was “an advisor and national surrogate for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign,” according to the Women’s Media Center website. In 2008, the Women’s Media Center received over $935,000 in contributions and grants, according to its Form 990 financial filing; and in 2009, the Ms. Foundation for Women also gave a $5,000 grant to the Women’s Media Center , according to the Ms. Foundation for Women’s Form 990 financial filing. And, coincidentally, between 2006 and 2010 the Ford Foundation gave three more grants, totaling $750,000, to the Ms. Foundation for Women, according to the Ford Foundation’s website. In addition, in 2010, the Ford Foundation—on whose board of trustees sit both Goldman Sachs Senior Director and former Vice-Chairman Robert Kaplan and Former Morgan Stanley Asset Management Vice-Chairman Peter Nadory—also gave a $100,000 grant to the International Women’s Media Foundation, a $100,000 grant to WomenEnews, a $200,000 grant to the Women’s Leadership Fund and a $300,000 grant to the Young Women’s Leadership Institute.

On a national level in recent years, U.S. working women in their 20s--who made a median income of $25,467--still earned less than working men in their 20s--who made a median income of $28,523. Yet in some U.S. cities, such as New York City and Dallas, U.S. women in their 20s have apparently been earning more than their young male counterparts. As an article that appeared in the August 3, 2007 issue of the New York Times, titled “For Young Earners in Big City , a Gap in Women’s Favor,” observed:

“Young women in New York and several of the nation’s other largest cities who work full time have forged ahead of men in wages, according to an analysis of recent census data. The shift has occurred in New York since 2000 and even earlier in Los Angeles, Dallas and a few other cities….

“The analysis was prepared by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College, who first reported his findings in Gotham Gazette…It shows that women of all educational levels from 21 to 30 living in New York City and working full time made 117 percent of men’s wages, and even more in Dallas, 120 percent….

“In 1970, all New York women in their 20s made $7,000 less than men, on average, adjusted for inflation. By 2000, they were about even. In 2005, according to an analysis of the latest census results they were making about $5,000 more: a median wage of $35,653, or 117 percent of the $30,560 reported by men in that age group.

“Women in their 20s also make more than men in Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and a few other big cities. But only in Dallas do young women’s wages surpass men’s by a larger amount than in New York. In Dallas, women make 120 percent of what men do, although their median wage there, $25,467, was much lower than that of women in New York….Even among New Yorkers in their 30s, women now make as much as men.”

But although a lot of money from corporate sponsors and foundations has apparently been distributed to various organizations led by certain feminist women in the 40 years since Rat was taken over by radical feminist women and large numbers of U.S. women marched for equality on August 26, 1970, only a minority of U.S. women seem to have completely escaped the economic effects of continued institutional sexism, racism and classism in the United States in the 21st-century. While the official unemployment rate for white female workers over 20-years-of-age in the United States of 7.1 percent in July 2010 was less than the 8.6 percent jobless rate for white male workers and much less than the official 16.7 percent unemployment rate for Black male workers, over 6 million U.S. women workers over 16-years-of-age were still officially unemployed in July 2010.

Even though 40 percent of U.S. women who work now have jobs as either managers or middle-class professionals within an economic system whose corporations exploit women workers at home and abroad and whose endless imperial wars kill large numbers of women annually, 1.3 million U.S. women still worked as maids, 1.4 million as waitresses, 3.1 million as secretaries, 2.2 million as cashiers, 1.2 million as receptionists, 1.6 million as retail salespeople, 1.2 million as health care aides, 1.2 million as child care workers and 821,000 as office clerks for low wages in 2009. And although around 90 percent of the over 2 million people currently imprisoned in the United States are men, “the number of women in prison, a third of whom are incarcerated for drug offenses, is increasing at nearly double the rate for men,” according to The Sentencing Project’s website.

On Nov. 16, 2004, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research issued a press release which reflected its evaluation of what the status of women in the United States has been in recent years. The press release, titled “New Report: Women Still 100 Years From Full Equality,” stated the following:

“After decades of progress, women are still decades away from achieving full equality in America, according to a new report on the status of women.

“`At the rate things are changing, it’ll be 50 years before women’s paychecks equal men’s, and nearly a full century before women hold half the seats in Congress,’ according to economist Heidi Hartmann…

“Seven states are rated worst for women in 2004 [than in the previous few years]; Mississippi, South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas…

“American women are paid 76 cents for every dollar men earn, according to the new report…

“While it will take 50 years for women to close the wage gap, it will take women of color even longer. At the rate of progress between 1989 and 2001, it will take African American women 75 years to close the gap between their earnings and those of white men’s…Hispanic women are the hardest hit, as they have not experienced any progress in closing wage gap, and in fact the gap has widened…

“`There’s been progress since our benchmark report in the mid-90s, when there were only 58 women in Congress, but we’re still worlds away from the 268 seats American women have a right to expect,’ according to political scientist Amy Caiazza, one of the report’s editors.

“At the rate of change over the past decade, it will take 75 years for African American women to achieve equality of representation in Congress, and it will take Hispanic women 66 years…

“State legislatures are all heavily weighted toward men…

“One of every eight American women is living in poverty…Nationwide, nearly one out of four African American women live in poverty…One-fourth of all Native American women nationally live in poverty…

“`Life is getting worse, not better, for women near the bottom of the American economy…’ according to Hartmann.”

But, not surprisingly, the tax-exempt, multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation still had enough surplus capital in 2010 to give the Institute for Women’s Policy Research a $700,000 grant in 2010—40 years after U.S. women marched for equality and took over the Rat underground newspaper in Manhattan. (end of article)

40 Years After Women's March for Equality & `Rat' Takeover--Part 2

In late 1975, Redstockings self-published 5,000 copies of their theoretical journal, Feminist Revolution, which contained an article, titled “Gloria Steinem and the CIA;” and, on March 15, 1976, Redstockings signed a contract with Random House for Feminist Revolution to be published intact. But when the book was finally published by Random House in February 1979, according to an article by Nancy Borman--titled “Random Action: Whatever Happened to `Feminist Revolution’?"—which appeared in the May 21, 1979 issue of The Village Voice, “the chapter on Gloria Steinem and the CIA had been deleted in its entirety.”

According to the September 1979 issue of a Manhattan newspaper on the Upper West Side that was then published by the Columbia Tenants Union, Heights and Valley News, the chapter on Steinem and the CIA was “axed following complaints and threats of libel suits from an array of well-heeled, well-connected (and mostly inter-connected) individuals, corporations, and foundation-grant-funded women’s organizations.;” and “both the Village Voice and Heights and Valley News, two of the New York City newspapers that” broke “the near total media blackout on this information,” were apparently ”subjected to written threats of libel suits in an effort to stop publication of articles they were planning on the Redstockings case,” from Steinem’s attorneys.

And on September 6, 1979, a letter which was signed by at least 70 radical feminist activists (such as former New York SDS Regional Activist and novelist/poet Marge Piercy) also stated:

“We feel that we must respond to the latest in a series of attempts to suppress inquiry into the details and nature of Gloria Steinem’s association with the Central Intelligence Agency. We are alarmed that the most visible commentary on these events has come from several well-known figures in the feminist movement who not only condone but endorse this suppression. Because feminism’s appeal and impact spring from a fundamental intellectual honesty, it is particularly distressing that the suppression of dissent may be seen as some kind of official feminist position…

“…Gloria Steinem, Clay Felker…and Ford Foundation president Franklin Thomas were among those who threatened to sue for libel if Random House allowed the CIA chapters to be published in the Random edition of Redstockings' Feminist Revolution…The offending chapters were deleted. Thus, Steinem and her powerful supporters successfully used the threat of litigation to exercise prior restraint over publication…

“All this legal harassment was in response not to any actual instance of false, malicious defamation, but to the potential raising of embarrassing questions about some feminists’ relations with the power elite…

“…There is an urgent need for wide-ranging debate in the feminist movement on such questions as:

“…Is there a conflict-of-interest problem that our movement needs to solve—as other movements have tried to solve it—when movement representatives accept positions on the government or corporate side of the bargaining table? Are `right-wingers’ the only reason for the growing number of setbacks for women? Or is the feminist movement failing to discuss its own serious mistakes? Does dependence on government and corporate funding and foundation grants increase or decrease the effectiveness of feminist groups? Does it distort their politics and activities?...”

But in 1993 the Ms. Foundation for Women, for example, accepted the following three grants from the Ford Foundation: a $4.5 million grant for an “endowment campaign;” a $500,000 grant for “enhancing operational capacity” and a $45,000 grant for an “endowment feasibility study.” And by the early 1990s one of the daughters of the now-deceased Texas oil billionaire H.L. Hunt was sitting next to Gloria Steinem and a Rockefeller Family & Associates associate named Elizabeth McCormack on the Ms. Foundation for Women’s board of directors. As the Fall 1992 Newsletter of the Ms. Foundation, for example, noted:

“Nine years ago, Helen and Swanee Hunt, two sisters from Dallas, decided to start a foundation…Today, Helen is an active member of the Board of Directors of the Ms. Foundation for Women…Helen Hunt has made many leadership gifts to the Foundation. Most recently, her gift will enable us to allocate a portion of each…grant we give…for work with the Media…The Ms. Foundation for Women is proud to have the leadership and commitment that Helen Hunt has given us.”

In 1989 a book by Vance Packard, titled The Ultra Rich: How Much Is Too Much?, estimated that “at one point in the early 1980s the money of families created by H.L. Hunt amounted to $6 or $7 billion” and in 1986 the New York Times estimated that the total assets of the Helen and Swanee Hunt (and their brother Ray Hunt of Dallas) was around $2 billion. Besides helping to fund the Ms. Foundation for Women in the early 1990s, Swanee Hunt also contributed $251,000 to the 1992 presidential campaign of Secretary of State Clinton’s husband, prior to being named U.S. Ambassador to Austria by Bill Clinton in 1993. And by December 2009, the Ms. Foundation for Women was distributing over $4 million in grants each year and the value of its endowment had increased to nearly $24 million.

Coincidentally, in the late 1990s some of the material in the 250 boxes of Ms. magazine archives donated by the magazine to the Smith College library’s Sophia Smith Collection in Northampton, Massachusetts still contained “restricted material” that a woman anti-war activist and this Movement writer were still not allowed to examine. But some of the “restricted material” was briefly described in the typed index of the Ms. records which the woman anti-war activist and this Movement writer were allowed to look at. The “restricted material” contained in box 115 of the Ms. archives included Gloria Steinem’s 1971-1977 correspondence, material on the Ms. Foundation, Women’s Action Alliance annual meeting reports for the years 1980 to 1982 and “Gloria Steinem—correspondence clippings, 1971-1982.” The “restricted material” in Box 62 was described as “Gloria Steinem speaking request—fee correspondence” for the years 1973 to 1976. And the “restricted material” in Box 132 included material on Gloria Steinem’s 1970 to 1981 appearances, more material on the Ms. Foundation and more Steinem correspondence. In the course of examining the typed index of the Ms. records, the woman anti-war activist also noticed the following hand-written note on one page: “Material re: Redstockings events & Elizabeth Harris restricted.”

In her 1997 book Inside Ms.: 25 Years Of The Magazine And The Feminist Movement, former Ms. editorial staff member Mary Thom claimed that the Independent Research Service entity “had been founded by former National Student Association [NSA] officials”—not by Steinem; and that “Steinem learned of the CIA financing from NSA people.” Yet in a February 21, 1967 New York Times article which confirmed the Ramparts magazine disclosure, Steinem had told the Times that: (1) the CIA had been “a major source of funds” for the Independent Research Service since its formation in 1958; (2) “she had talked to some former officers of the National Student Association, who told her CIA money might be available;” (3) she “was a full-time employee of the service” until 1962; and (4) “The CIA’s big mistake was not supplanting itself with private funds fast enough.”

Under Steinem’s leadership, the CIA-funded Independent Research Service had, according to Ramparts magazine, “actively recruited a delegation of hundreds of young Americans to attend” world youth festivals in Vienna in 1959 and in Helsinki in 1962 “in order to actively oppose the communists;” and important officers and ex-officers of the CIA-funded National Student Association “were very active in the Independent Research Service activities in Vienna and Helsinki.” At the 1962 Helsinki Youth Festival, the Independent Research Service distributed a daily newspaper, The Helsinki News, which was printed in five languages. The Helsinki News was apparently edited by Clay Felker—the New York magazine editor who would later fund and distribute Ms. magazine’s initial December 1971 sample issue as an insert in his patriarchal New York magazine.

Also attending the 1962 Helsinki Youth Festival with Steinem was Barney Frank, who subsequently became an aide to Democratic Boston Mayor Kevin White and then a long-time Massachusetts Democratic representative in Congress. As The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream by Richard Cummings would note in 1985:

“Barney Frank at Harvard had been with the Independent Research Service delegation to Helsinki, an operation which, by Frank’s own admission, he clearly understood was CIA-backed. Frank joked about the role of fellow delegate Gloria Steinem, whom he described as `running around at nightclubs set up by the CIA in Helsinki, helping to win over Africans.'”

Steinem was “on the agency’s payroll” for 4 years, according to America’s Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty by Sig Mickelson. And in late February 1967, the then-32-year-old Steinem had told Newsweek magazine:

“In the CIA, I finally found a group of people who understood how important it was to represent the diversity of our government’s ideas at the Communist festivals. If I had the choice, I would do it again.”

In November 1968, Steinem then apparently attended a meeting in New York City of Redstockings to gather material about the new wave of feminism for her magazine column in Clay Felker’s New York magazine. (end of part 2)

40 Years After Women's March For Equality & `Rat' Takeover--Part 1

Forty years ago, on Aug. 26, 1970, between 20,000 and 50,000 women marched in Manhattan to demand equality for women in the United States. And earlier in that same year anti-war Movement women in Downtown Manhattan took control of the Lower East Side anti-war 1960s counter-cultural underground newspaper, Rat. As Robin Morgan wrote in her “Introduction: Women’s Revolution” essay that appeared in the 1970 Random House book which she edited, Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology Of Writings From The Women’s Liberation Movement: “Women have attacked, disrupted, seized, or completely taken over certain media institutions: Rat and High School Free Press, two major underground radical newspapers, have been taken over completely by women.”

In a lengthy essay, titled “Goodbye to All That,” which was published in the Feb. 6-23, 1970 issue of the now-defunct Rat, Morgan explained why she felt Movement women needed to take over Rat in 1970. She wrote, for example, the following:

“So Rat has been liberated, for this week, at least. Next week? If the men return to reinstate the porny photos, the sexist comic strips, the `nude-chickie’ covers (along with their patronizing rhetoric about being in favor of Women’s Liberation)—if this happens, our alternatives are clear. Rat must be taken over permanently by women—or Rat must be destroyed.

“Why Rat?...Rat…has always tried to be a really radical cum life-style paper…It’s the liberal co-optive masks on the face of sexist hate and fear, worn by real nice guys we all know and like, right? We have met the enemy and he’s our friend. And dangerous…

“And that’s what I wanted to write about—the friends, brothers, lovers in the counterfeit male-dominated Left…

“Goodbye to the male-dominated peace movement.

“Goodbye to the `straight’ male-dominated Left…

“It is the job of revolutionary feminists to build an ever stronger independent Women’s Liberation Movement, so that the Sisters in counterleft captivity will have somewhere to turn…

“…All male leadership out of the Left as the only way; and it’s going to happen, whether through men stepping down or through women seizing the helm…

“Goodbye, goodbye forever, counterfeit Left, counterleft, male-dominated cracked-class-mirror reflection of the Amerikan Nightmare. Women are the real left…We are rising with a fury older and potentially greater than any force in history, and this time we will be free or no one will survive. POWER TO ALL THE PEOPLE OR TO NONE. All the way down, this time.”

Yet for nearly three years before Movement women took over Rat and Morgan urged revolutionary feminist activists in 60s New Left groups to either form and build separatist Women’s Liberation Movement groups in the USA or assume leadership roles in the patriarchal New Left, women activists in SDS had already been demanding an end to male supremacy and male chauvinism both within the United States and within SDS. At the June 1967 SDS National Convention, for example, the now-deceased former U.S. political prisoner, Marilyn Buck, had chaired a plenary session in which the report of an autonomous women’s workshop on women’s liberation was presented to the National SDS organization as a whole. And in the March 18, 1968 issue of SDS’s New Left Notes, two other New Left women activists, Naomi Jaffe and Bernardine Dohrn, had already previously written, in an article titled “The Look Is You,” that “over the past few months, small groups have been coming together in various cities to meet around the realization that…we are unfree within the Movement and in personal relationships, as in the society at large;” and “a strategy for the liberation of women, then, does not demand equal jobs (exploitation), but meaningful creative activity for all; not a larger share of power but the abolition of commodity tyranny; not equally reified sexual roles but an end to sexual objectification and exploitation; not equal aggressive leadership in the Movement, but the initiation of a new style of non-dominating leadership…”

Following its takeover by revolutionary feminist women forty years ago, Rat was only published until early 1972. Funding for Rat from its white feminist supporters and white advertisers in Manhattan apparently had dried-up--after a collective of Black and Latina women staff members had eventually been given editorial power at the radical feminist underground newspaper in 1971. And by 1975, one of the founders of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1960s, Marlene Dixon, would write the following:

“…What happened to the Women’s Liberation Movement in the early 1970s is precisely what happened to each mass movement of the previous decade: internal differentiation along class and political lines. In the case of the women’s movement, the remnant of Women’s Liberation have come to be dominated by a middle-class leadership, reducing a vigorous and radical social movement to a politically and ideologically co-opted reformist lobby in the halls of Congress…

“For the middle class woman, particularly if she has a career or is planning to have a career, the primary problem is to get men out of the way (i.e., to free women from male dominance maintained by institutionalized discrimination), in order to enjoy, along with the men, the full privileges of middle-class status…

“…Abolishing discrimination would not lead to a `revolution’ in the status of women because it would leave the class structure absolutely untouched. Gloria Steinem might build a corporation, a woman might become a general or a corporation vice-president, but the factory girl would remain the factory girl…

“…Sisterhood temporarily disguised the fact that all women do not have the same interests…

“…Political conflict…became acute throughout 1970-71. Under the guise of rejecting `elitism,’ left-wing women were attacked mercilessly for being `domineering,’ `oppressive,’ `elitist,’ `male-identified,’ etc. In fact, the early radical leadership was in this way either discredited or driven out of the movement…

“…Leadership thus passed to liberal reformers or left opportunists…

“…Usually women’s studies programs arose as a demand of Women’s Liberation as the women’s arm of the student movement for democratization and reform of the university…Early women’s studies programs tended to bring in staff who were progressive; this in turn alarmed university and college administrations. The result was a dual tactic of financial strangulation and staff purges…

“…The co-optation of women’s studies were part of the general purge that was being carried out against radicals and radical activists in North American universities and colleges…Women who had built careers in the context of liberal professionalism were as hostile to the intellectual and social challenge of the Radicals as were their male counterparts…”

In addition, on May 9, 1975, a press release would be issued at a Women in Media Conference by Redstockings--a radical feminist group, whose members initiated much of the theory, slogan, writings, and actions that helped launch the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1960s--which stated:

“…Gloria Steinem has a ten-year association with the CIA stretching from 1959 to 1969 which she has misrepresented and covered up.

“Further, we have become convinced that Ms. magazine, founded and edited by her, is hurting the Women’s Liberation Movement.

“As the originators of consciousness-raising and the Miss America Protest, as the women who were the first to talk in public about their abortions and the need for women to control their own bodies, who coined such slogans as “sisterhood is powerful” and “the personal is political” that launched the movement, we are concerned that Steinem, Ms. magazine and Ms. Corporation are endangering the feminist movement.

“In 1967 the New York Times made the first revelation of Steinem’s past in setting up a CIA front, the Independent Research Service. This was after Ramparts magazine had just disclosed the organization had been funded by the CIA…

“Both Steinem’s career in political journalism and Ms. magazine were launched by the publisher of New York [magazine] Clay Felker who worked as an editor of a newspaper published by this CIA front.

“To many people, Ms. appears to be the voice of the women’s liberation movement. But in actuality it has substituted itself for the movement, blocking knowledge of the authentic activists and ideas. Ms. outgrowths proliferate into many other areas—women’s studies programs, television shows, feminist organizations—duplicating and many times substituting for the original, authentic activists and groups that sparked the movement. It is widely recognized that one major CIA strategy is to create or support `parallel organizations' which provide an alternative to radicalism…

“…A look below the surface shows that Ms. is…promoting token women, wonderwomen, and `role models’ and denigrating the real achievements of most women…

“This whole structure is backed by curious corporate financing.

“Women’s liberation’s popularity and groundbreaking success preceded the installation of Gloria Steinem as the movement’s `leader’ by the rich and powerful. Today all the trappings of the radical upsurge remain, but the content and style have been watered down…”

(end of part 1)

Black Male Worker Jobless Rate: 17.3 Percent Under Obama

Between July and August 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black male workers over 20-years-of-age in the United States increased from 16.7 to 17.3 percent under the Democratic Obama Administration; while the unemployment rate for Black female workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 12.9 to 13.2 percent, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The official unemployment rate for all Black workers over 16-years-of-age also increased from 15.6 to 16.3 percent between July and August 2010; while the jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age jumped from 40.6 to 45.4 percent between July and August 2010.

In August 2010, the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic workers in the United States was still 12 percent; while the official “seasonally adjusted” rate for white male workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 8.8 to 8.9 percent between July and August 2010. The “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latino or Hispanic youths between 16 and 19-years-of-age was still 33 percent in August 2010; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white youths increased from 23.5 to 23.8 percent between July and August 2010.

The official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all U.S. male workers over 16-years-of age increased from 10.4 to 10.6 percent between July and August 2010; while the official unemployment rate for all U.S. male workers over 20-years-of-age increased from 9.7 to 9.8 percent during this same period. The official “seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed workers in the United States also increased from 14,599,000 to 14,860,000 between July and August 2010.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ September 3, 2010 press release:

“…Government employment fell, as 114,000 temporary workers hired for the decennial census completed their work…

“…In August, 42.0 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more…

“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 331,000 over the month to 8.9 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

“About 2.4 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in August…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometimes in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

“Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged workers in August, an increase of 352,000 from a year earlier…Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them….

“Manufacturing employment declined by 27,000 over the month…”

Rush Limbaugh Earned $3 Million In 1992

Being a right-wing extremist U.S. radio and television commentator has, historically, been a quite lucrative hustle. Former Republican Party committeewoman Millie Limbaugh's son, former U.S. Ambassador to India Limbaugh's grandson and 1990s U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Limbaugh's nephew--Rush Limbaugh III--"in 1992...said that he was earning $3 million for the year and expected to earn $5 million in 1993," for example, according to the March 1993 issue of Current Biography.

Since 1988, this right-wing extremist has been syndicating the daily three-hour Rush Limbaugh Show, which by the early 1990s was aired by 560 U.S. radio stations. As a lucrative tie-in to his radio show, the [now 59-year-old] Limbaugh was also able to market over 2 million copies of his The Way Things Ought To Be book in the early 1990s.

In September 1992, the former presidential campaign media advisor to both Ronald Reagan and George Bush [I]--Roger Ailes--also began producing a nightly tv show for Limbaugh that was then syndicated by Multi-Media Entertainment Inc. on 180 U.S. tv stations; and, by January 1993, this half-hour Rush Limbaugh Show was being aired on 206 U.S. tv stations.

(Downtown, 5/26/93)

Journalism Ethics vs. Foundation-Sponsored Alternative Media Censorship

If you check out many of the left alternative media radio/tv shows, publications, websites or blogs that receive grants from U.S. foundations like the Ford Foundation, Billionaire George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Lannan Foundation, the Glaser Progress Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Center for Media & Democracy/Schumann Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation, you'll notice that these alternative media radio shows, publications, websites or blogs rarely provide their listeners, viewers or readers with any critical news about their foundation funders. Yet, according to the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, U.S. journalists are supposed to:

"Avoid conflicts of interests, real or perceived.

"Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

"Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel, and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office, and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.

"Disclose unavoidable conflicts.

"Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. [Note: Including those who hold power within the U.S. multi-billion dollar foundation world]

"Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

"Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money."

`Rolling Stone' Magazine's Salon/Adobe/Oracle/Dell Connection

As the recent replacement of General McChrystal by General Petraeus as military leader of the Pentagon’s endless war in Afghanistan indicates, a news article that’s published by Rolling Stone magazine can sometimes affect U.S. politics during the current U.S. historical era of endless war abroad and endless economic recession at home. But it’s unlikely that Rolling Stone ( www.rollingstone.com ) will publish many news articles that are critical of either the Internet magazine Salon’s (www.salon.com ) lack of reporting about U.S. political prisoners or of the way Salon, Adobe Systems, Oracle or Dell Inc. executives obtain their wealth.

One reason might be because: (1) as of June 1, 2010 Rolling Stone Magazine Owner Jann Wenner and his Wenner Media LLC firm apparently owned 10.1 percent of the Salon Media Group’s common stock; (2) Adobe Systems Co-Chairman of the Board John Warnock is also Salon’s chairman of the board; (3) former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen sits on Oracle’s corporate board; and (4) and current Adobe president and CEO, Shantanu Narayen, sits next to Texas Billionaire Michael Dell on the Dell Inc. board of directors.

Between 2004 and February 2006, Wenner also sat on Salon’s board of directors, after investing $200,000 in the Salon Media Group in December 2003. According to a Jan. 15, 2004 Salon press release, after Rolling Stone invested in Salon, the Salon founder and then-CEO, David Talbot, stated:

“I look forward to working with Jann Wenner on the Salon board of directors…Everyone at Salon is also very excited about collaborating with Rolling Stone…Salon’s partnership with Rolling Stone is full of great promise.”

The same press release also reported that Wenner said: “I’m excited about this collaboration between Rolling Stone and Salon.”

Ironically, a few years before Wenner joined its corporate board, Salon had posted an article by Sean Elder on June 28, 2002, titled “The death of Rolling Stone,” which observed:

“…The truth is that Rolling Stone has been such an undistinguished hybrid—part ‘70s-style journalism (investigative reporting, distinct voices and rambling interviews), and part any other entertainment magazine you can name for so long that most of its subscribers are probably unaware that they still get it…

“As Rolling Stone has slowly morphed into a magazine just like dozens of others, it has lost its reason for being…Rolling Stone seems like an anachronism, the Ladies’ Home Journal of rock journalism…”

Salon’s Website attracts about 5.4 million unique visitors per month and “ultimately, Salon charges advertisers for a set number of ad impressions viewed by a Website visitor,” according to the Salon Media Group’s June 2010 10K S.E.C. financial filing. Between March 2009 and March 2010, for example, Salon collected over $2.9 million from its corporate advertisers and $701,000 from its 15,800 paid subscribers (who pay Salon between $29 and $45 each year). In addition, none of Salon’s 45 full-time and 2 part-time employees are unionized or subject to a collective bargaining agreement.

Yet, according to its June 2010 10 K financial filing:

“Salon has been relying on cash infusions primarily from related parties to fund operations. The related parties are generally John Warnock, Chairman of the Board of Salon, and William Hambrecht. William Hambrecht is the father of Salon’s former President and Chief Executive Officer, Elizabeth Hambrecht, a Director of the Company. During the year ended March 31, 2010, related parties provided approximately $2.6 million in new loans.

“Curtailment of cash investments and borrowing guarantees by related parties could detrimentally impact Salon’s cash availability and its ability to fund its operations.”

Warnock (a founder and former CEO of Adobe Systems, as well as an Adobe board co-chairman since 1989) has sat on the Salon corporate board since 2001 and been Salon’s chairman of the board since December 2006. As of June 1, 2010, Adobe board chairman Warnock owned 41 percent of Salon’s Series D Preferred Stock, 52.8 percent of Salon’s Series C Preferred Stock, and 18.5 percent of Salon’s Series A Preferred Stock; while his Adobe Systems firm owned 100 percent of Salon’s Series B Preferred Stock.

Besides providing “cash infusions” for the media firm whose former president and former CEO is his daughter, William Hambrecht currently sits next to Salon board member Elizabeth Hambrecht on the WR Hambrecht & Co. investment firm’s corporate board, is a member of the Motorola and AOL corporate boards, and co-founded the United Football League in December 2009. The Hambrecht family’s tax-exempt Sarah & William Hambrecht Foundation also owns stock in Salon.

Sitting next to Salon Chairman of the Board Warnock on Adobe’s corporate board between December 2000 and April 2008 was an Adobe executive named Bruce Chizen who “has served as a strategic advisor to Adobe Systems Incorporated…since November 2007,” according to the website of the Oracle computer software company—on whose corporate board former Adobe board member (and Adobe’s CEO between April 2000 and January 2005) Chizen currently sits. Coincidentally, on June 16, 2010, Bloomberg News reported the following:

“Oracle Corp., the world’s second- biggest software maker, faces a lawsuit brought by a whistleblower and the U.S. Justice Department claiming it overcharged the government by tens of millions of dollars.

“Oracle failed to disclose discounts that it gave its most favored commercial customers, according to a complaint in federal court in Alexandria , Virginia . Under General Services Administration contracts, the government must get the company’s best prices, according to the complaint.

“`Oracle knowingly and recklessly employed these techniques to offer commercial customers deeper discounts without offering those deeper discounts to the U.S. government,’ it said….

“The complaint alleges `various schemes Oracle used to give commercial customers deeper discounts than the GSA schedule provided.’

“Taxpayers `overpaid for each Oracle software product by the amount of discounts and reductions from other commercial pricing practices that should applied to each such purchase,’ according to the complaint…”

When Oracle board member Chizen was an executive at Salon board chairman Warnock’s Adobe firm, he apparently was not reluctant to eliminate the jobs of a lot of Adobe workers in order to enrich Adobe’s already wealthy top executives and stockholders. As the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, observed on June 3, 1999:

“Adobe Systems Inc. yesterday announced it will slash 250 jobs by the end of the year, the second round of layoffs to hit the San Jose graphics software maker in the past nine months.

“Adobe officials said savings from the layoffs, which will cut about 9 percent of Adobe's workforce...

“Yet in the same breath, Adobe executives said revenues for its second quarter, which ends tomorrow, should be better than expected. Adobe expects as much as $246 million in revenues for the quarter, which would touch the high end of analysts' estimates.

"`The business is doing well and we are certainly excited by that,’ said Bruce Chizen, Adobe executive vice president for worldwide products.

"`But we have an obligation to…our stockholders…to grow this company aggressively’" he said….

“Adobe dominates the market for graphics and document software used by publishers with programs like Illustrator, Photoshop and PageMaker…

“Last August, Adobe announced a restructuring that eventually pared 350 positions, or 12 percent, of its workforce…

“…Chizen said the company's goal is to save about $25 million to $30 million in administrative costs annually.”

And in 2005, Chizen and Salon board chairman Warnock’s profitable Adobe firm was also not reluctant to lay off more U.S. workers, despite generating “record profits” in 2005. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (12/16/05) noted:

“Adobe Systems Inc. posted higher fourth-quarter earnings Thursday but said it expects to cut 650 to 700 jobs as it folds recently acquired rival Macromedia Inc. into its operations…

“At Thursday's earnings announcement, Chief Executive Bruce Chizen said 2005 was `another remarkable year for Adobe.’ He added, `We grew our business 18 percent, generated record profits, and for the third consecutive year achieved record revenue for the fourth quarter and year.’…

“The 11 percent to 12 percent companywide work force reduction will…help the company…achieve its 2006 financial targets, said Murray Demo, Adobe's chief financial officer…”

Salon Chairman of the Board Warnock founded his then-privately-owned Adobe Systems firm with his current co-chairman of the Adobe corporate board, Charles Geschke, in 1982; but, ironically, “their original product called PostScript was derived from technology…developed at the University of Utah,” a publicly-funded state university, according to A History of the Personal Computer by Roy Allan. The same book also noted that “shortly after the founding of Adobe, Apple Computer made a significant financial investment in the company.”

Besides owing 19 percent of Adobe’s stock until 1989, Apple Computer was apparently, simultaneously, the biggest “customer” of the same Adobe firm that it partially owned until 1989. As the 1997 book Apple by Jim Carlton revealed:

“[Apple Computer Founder] Steve Jobs…got Apple to invest $2.5 million in a 15 percent stake in Adobe…

“By 1989, Adobe had grown to a minibehemoth selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Postscript and related programs per year…Adobe licensed PostScript for use on Apple’s Macintosh, with Adobe receiving royalty payments as well as money for the use of PostScript-related Type 1 fonts…It had mushroomed in size in tandem with Apple’s growth…

“…Apple paid Adobe royalties on PostScript sold in Laser-Writers, as well as an extra $300 for each Type 1 font needed to print characters…”

In 1986, for example, Apple accounted for 80 percent of Adobe’s sales, according to the International Directory of Company Histories.

The current Adobe CEO and president (who both sits next to Salon board chairman Warnock on Adobe’s corporate board and next to Texas Billionaire Dell on Dell Inc.’s corporate board), Shantanu Narayen, also has not been reluctant to lay-off a lot of Adobe workers. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, for example, on December 4, 2008:

“Adobe Systems in San Jose is laying off 600 employees…

“The layoffs…represent 8 percent of Adobe's global workforce…

“`The global economic crisis significantly impacted our revenue during the fourth quarter,’ Adobe's president and chief executive officer, Shantanu Narayen, said in a statement. `We have taken action to reduce our operating costs and fine-tune the focus of our resources on key strategic priorities.’

Yet the AFL-CIO website indicates that “in 2009 Shantanu Narayen received $6,663,781 in total compensation”—after the Adobe CEO and Dell Inc. board member eliminated the jobs of 8 percent of Adobe’s workers in 2008. And although Adobe’s 2009 revenues still exceeded $2.9 billion, in November 2009 the Tech Crunch website confirmed that Adobe executives were going to lay off 680 more Adobe workers--representing 9 percent of Adobe’s remaining work force--in 2010.

According to the TechAmerica Foundation’s recently-released annual Cyberstates report, Cyberstates 2010: The Definitive State-by-State Analysis of the High-Technology Industry, the U.S. high-tech industry lost 245,600 jobs in 2009--including 112,600 jobs eliminated by high-tech manufacturing firm executives and 20,700 jobs eliminated by software services company executives.

But at Adobe board Co-Chairman Warnock’s Salon Media Group, Salon executives still seem to earn a lot more money than the average U.S. worker. According to Salon’s December 2009 10K financial filing, for example, Salon Editor-in-Chief Joan Walsh “received cash compensation of $219,000 during fiscal year 2009” and “Richard Gingras, who became” Salon's “CEO effective May 1, 2009, earns a base salary of $230,000.” Coincidentally, in a July 10, 1999 Salon article, Salon Editor-in-Chief Walsh wrote the following in reference to U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and his U.S. left supporters:

“…The Mumia cult sickens me like little else in American politics today. For the white left, it's Black Panther worship all over again, with even less to worship….Abu-Jamal has done little but run a one-man self-promotion machine from prison.

“…Mumia's minions are content with marching in the streets and signing petitions on behalf of their cuddly convict. `He is just beautiful,’ says author Alice Walker. `He has a lot of light. He reminds me of Nelson Mandela.’ What an insult to Mandela…

“Mumia madness pushed me over the edge earlier this year, when Oakland teachers demanded to stage a teach-in on his behalf throughout the Oakland schools…. “

Besides owning both stock in Adobe Co-Chairman Warnock’s Salon Media Group and Rolling Stone magazine, Wenner’s media firm also owns both Us Weekly magazine (www.usmagazine.com) and Men’s Journal magazine (www.mensjournal.com). According to New York Magazine (3/27/00) in at the turn of the century, Wenner Media was still a private company “worth somewhere between $500 million and $750 million, with earnings in the $40 million-to-$60 million range.”

In the early 1990s, Wenner spent about four months out of the year at his three-story country manor in East Hampton, Long Island, employed servants there, and also owned both a five-story Manhattan townhouse and a Mercedes limousine, according to the book Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History by Robert Draper. And in October 2009, Wenner apparently purchased an eight-room, three-story waterfront home on 1 ½ acres in Montauk, Long Island for $11.9 million--after previously purchasing a 62.9 acre upstate estate in Tivoli, New York for $5.8 million in 2007, according to the NY Post (10/22/09).

So if you’re a U.S. music fan who’s been suffering economically during the current U.S. historical era of endless war abroad and endless economic recession at home (or been laid-off recently by corporations like Adobe, Oracle and Dell), don’t expect Rolling Stone or Salon to be that eager to promote a more equitable redistribution of the U.S. celebrity music world and U.S. high-technology computer industry’s surplus wealth in 2010.

(This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog)