{"id":7202,"date":"2012-06-16T22:03:47","date_gmt":"2012-06-17T06:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/?p=7202"},"modified":"2012-06-16T22:03:47","modified_gmt":"2012-06-17T06:03:47","slug":"rouge-forum-dispatch-go-greeks-and-join-us-in-oxford-ohio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/rouge-forum-dispatch-go-greeks-and-join-us-in-oxford-ohio\/","title":{"rendered":"Rouge Forum Dispatch: Go Greeks and Join Us in Oxford Ohio!"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Say Fight Back!<\/strong><\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n

“To end the domination oj capital, make war impossible, wipe out state boundaries, transform the whole world into one co-operative commonwealth, and bring about real human brotherhood and Jreedom.”\u2014Aims of the Third (Moscow) International, as stated in the Manifesto, 1919.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong> ROUGE \u00a0FORUM Conference: \u00a0 Occupy Education! Class Conscious Pedagogies and Social Change
\nMiami University,
\nOxford, OH June 2-\u00ad24, <\/strong><\/em>2012<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Program \u00a0https:\/\/rougeforum2012.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/06\/rouge-forum-2012-schedule-draft.pdf<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Rouge Forum Keynoter Susan Ohanian on Research Vs Eugenics <\/strong> T<\/strong><\/em>his book review points out that researchers are beginning to question whether the large amount of money spent on medical research devoted to finding genetic differences between races that might explain health disparities might be better directed at looking at how political and economic causes of everyday events alter our bodies, making them sicker or more resistant to disease. For example, women who experience racial discrimination have higher essential hypertension and are more likely to give birth to low-weight babies.
\nIt’s poverty, not race, that makes people sick.
\nConsider the fetuses that were gestating in their mothers\u2019 wombs during the famine that swept the Netherlands at the end of World War II. Not surprisingly, the infants born from starving mothers were undersized and not so healthy. Less expected is that members of this same cohort, examined in adulthood, were twice as likely to be obese as those born before or after the famine. They also had an elevated risk for developing schizophrenia and other mental disorders \u00a0http:\/\/susanohanian.org\/show_research.php?id=482<\/p>\n

And Susan O on those Biosensors for the Kiddies <\/strong> Those Galvanic biosensor bracelets for students are just a small part in Microsoft’s plan for tracking human behavior. See their November 2011 patent application below.
\nThe goal for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose driving purpose is to position children as future workers in the Global Economy, seems to be a riff on that popular TV news announcement: It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?
\nIt’s 10 a.m. and we know the heart rate, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature movement, facial movements, facial expressions, blood pressure, mood, attention level of every child in America.
\nCan’t you just see helicopter parents signing up to receive the minute-by-minute tracking?
\nAnd then the unions will agree that each teacher’s biosensory class profile can be used along with standardized test scores to determine whether she’s adequate.
\nAnd if 92.83% of students aren’t registering “high attention” at any given moment, the U. S. Department of Education can send in a drone to take out the teacher who, according to Microsoft metrics, isn’t stimulating enough. That will wake the students up for 3.14 minutes.
\nOf course the bracelets could come with shocks–give the student who registers inattention a little shock to stimulate attention. \u00a0http:\/\/susanohanian.org\/outrage_fetch.php?id=1328<\/p>\n

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Rouge Forum Keynoter Paul Street on the Electoral Shell Game in Wisconsin <\/strong> I ended up resisting the inclination to write that imagined crow-eating piece for two interrelated reasons: (i) disgust at the tepid and uninspiring centrism of Tommy Barrett, who insisted on denying that he was a \u201cunion candidate\u201d and refused to criticize Walker\u2019s regressive austerity agenda; (ii) my sense that the argument behind the imagined essay, was contingent upon a recall victory – a victory that struck me as highly unlikely given some very harsh technical, monetary, political and ideological realities. One such reality was that, under the state\u2019s recall law, a governor, but not his opponent, is released from the standard contribution limit of $10,000 per individual donor until the moment a recall is formally announced. That moment came at the end of March, 2012. By that time, Walker had already picked up political down payments as high as $500,000 (!) from some individuals.<\/p>\n

… One lesson it seems to me, is the futility, under the current corporate-dollar-drenched U.S. political regime, of trying to translate a genuine popular uprising (Madison, Wisconsin in February and early March 2011) into an election campaign. While Occupy Wall Street and the broader Occupy Movement it sparked had real problems when it came to strategic formulation and action on specific demands that matter to ordinary working class people (and it doesn’t get much more specific than the demand to remove Walker and repeal his terrible anti-union bill), Occupy understood that futility very well. Listen to OWS\u2019 original Declaration of the Occupation of New York City: \u00a0http:\/\/www.zcommunications.org\/wisconsin-lessons-by-paul-street<\/p>\n

A Summer of Resistance or Retreats? By Rich Gibson <\/strong>
\nThe core issue of our time is the potential of mass class conscious activist resistance met by the reality of perpetual war and intensifying exploitation: joblessness, layoffs, low pay, attacks on pensions and benefits.
\nThe core issue to the National Education Association and every major national union in the united states is to obliterate our social context, class and empire\u2019s wars, to shovel members and the public into voting booths in the belief that they can elect the rich out of their money and the government into a democracy that overpowers capitalism. Nonsense, but serious nonsense. \u00a0 richgibson.com\/summerresistance.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

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Remember–Anatomy of Mutinies <\/strong> In the Russian Army of 1917, mutiny became part of the larger Revolution.
\nIn Germany in 1918, mutiny helped to end the rule of the Kaiser and then led nowhere.
\nBut in all three armies, the troops rebelled not only against bad conditions and poor
\nleadership but against the war and the regimes which had brought the scourge upon them.
\nGenerals and governments would like to believe that mutiny represents \u201cindiscipline.\u201d
\nIn many cases it does not. It is collective resistance to war. Nowhere was this more clear
\nthan in the U.S. military in Vietnam.
\nDuring the latter part of the Vietnam War, there were at least ten major instances of
\nmutiny.4 These ranged from refusals by small groups of soldiers to insubordination by
\nunits of a hundred of more. David Cortright describes the largest incident (April, 1972):
\n\u201cWhen troops of C Company, 2nd Battalion\/1st Infantry of the 196th Brigade were
\nordered into trucks to patrol enemy territory, about one hundred of the GIs refused to
\nadvance, considering the mission too dangerous. After some discussion, about half the
\nmen agreed to board the trucks, but approximately forty-five soldiers remained
\nadamant.\u201d \u00a0http:\/\/dimension.ucsd.edu\/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE\/colloques\/pdfPac\/ch-9.pdf<\/p>\n