Wreck and Salvage: Kafka
Fly an American Flag at Half-Mast on 9/11
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 18:40:16 -0700
DON’T FORGET
Please join us in this FLY THE FLAG AT HALF-MAST ON 911 campaign and PLEASE FORWARD this email immediately to everyone in your address book asking them to also forward it. We have a little less than one week and counting to get the word out all across this great land and into every community in the United States of America. If you forward this email to least 11 people and each of those people do the same…you get the idea.
THIS IS THE PROGRAM:
On Tuesday, September 11th, 2007, an American flag should be displayed at half-mast outside every home, apartment, office, and store in the United States. Every individual should make it their duty to display an American flag at half-mast on this anniversary of one of our country’s worst tragedies. We do this in honor of those who lost their lives on 9/11, their families, and friends and loved ones who continue to endure the pain, and those who today are fighting abroad in an illegal, unnecessary, and brutal war.
In the days, weeks and months following 9/11, our country was bathed in American flags as citizens mourned the incredible losses and stood shoulder-to-shoulder against violence and war. Sadly, that patriotism was used against us and, perhaps not surprisingly, the flags have all but disappeared. Our patriotism pulled us through some tough times and it shouldn’t take another symbolic attempt at manipulation to galvanize us in solidarity. Americans don’t believe in proactive war. Flying an America flag at half-mast is symbolic gesture of mourning and a recognition that together we can prevail over propaganda and ignorance of all kinds.
Action Plan: So, here’s what we need you to do…
(1) Forward this email to everyone you know (at least 11 people). Please don’t be the one to break this chain. Take a moment to think back to how you felt on 9/11 and how you feel about the illegal, counter-productive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and let those sentiments guide you.
(2) Fly an American flag of any size at half-mast size on 9/11.
Honestly, Americans should fly the flag at half-mast year-round until the wars are over, but if you don’t, then at least make it a priority on this day.
Thank you for your participation.
God Bless You and God Bless America
362 Times as Rich
“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country,” said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. “All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day…is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”
The History of Labor Day, U.S. Department of Labor
What happened? Some say it started in the early 80s after Ronald Reagan fired the nation’s air-traffic controllers for striking — something they had no legal right to do — and thereby legitimized a wave of corporate union busting. Others blame it on a more pervasive “greed is good” aggressiveness that engulfed corporate suites starting right about then.
There’s no question that, ever since, and with ever greater alacrity, companies have fired workers for trying to form unions, even though that’s illegal, and have used or threatened to use permanent replacements if workers go on strike — which is legal but was rare before the 80s.
Robert B. Reich | August 31, 2007
What Happened to Labor Day?Just in time for the holiday, two liberal groups – United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies – have issued a gleefully malicious new attack on our CEO class. They point out that the CEOs of large companies earn an average of $10.8 million a year, which is 362 times as much as the average American worker, and retire with $10.1 million in their special exclusive CEO pension funds. They further point out that the compensation of US CEOs wildly exceeds that of their European counterparts, who, we are invited to believe, work equally hard.
Barbara Ehrenreich, August 30, 2007
“It’s Not Easy Being Ultra-Rich”The UFE and IPS report can be found here.
The University in Chains
Most of the players in this market are for-profit institutions that are problematic not only for the quality of education they offer but also for their aggressive support of education less as a public good than as a private initiative and saleable commodity, defined in this case through providing a service to the military in return for a considerable profit. And as this sector of higher education grows, it will not only become more privatized but also more instrumentalized, largely defined as a credentializing factory designed to serve the needs of the military, thus falling into the trap of confusing training with a broad-based education. Catering to the educational needs of the military makes it all the more difficult to offer educational programs that would challenge militarized notions of identity, knowledge, values, ideas, social relations, and visions.
Henry A. Giroux, Inside Higher Education, August 7
I couldn’t agree with Giroux more, in many senses, but I also feel his positions on the military and the university has a built in class bias. It’s really a sin of omission rather than commission. I think this impact of this militarized, credentializing factory education system is going to be blunted at the high status research institutions where Giroux has spent his career.
Or, rather, it will be blunted for the privileged professors who work at these institutions and for their equally privileged students. It will be most sharply
felt at the lower ends of the educational hierarchy, in the community colleges and the online schools. That won’t change until the privileges rooted in the educational hierarchy change.
People sign up in droves for online classes and community colleges because these ‘instrumentalized’ credentials are real capital that can be successfully invested. They sign up because they don’t have access to the liberals arts education system. Perhaps they have been told that they are not “college material,” because they did poorly on a standardized test. Or perhaps they are put off by the risks of the debt needed to get a degree.
There are alternatives, of course. Wealthy research institutions could, for example, create a system of cheap, online education, staffed by tenured professors and specifically designed to meet the needs of these students. They would provide instrumental capital as well as the liberal arts education championed by Giroux. That won’t happen until the privileged professors turn their attention to getting their own houses in order.