Hey Soolay Saul where are you???

Today I didn't get me no little job so I am figuring just making the entries to this that I can get out more or less a combination personal letter and then the various political public type of things as I get to them either as I edit and read through "my stuff" or I check out sites that I have made note of or visited before that are related to the effort I am hoping we can get to eventually around what we do here...

Sooooo..... Even just a little looking randomly around the Web for ideas etc gets you realizing that there are a lot of people out there trying to "monetize" whatever screwing around they're doing with blogging and web sites and the like. And that, predictably there are countless scams and counter scams that turn out to be scams too etc. So I think we just go about the business of finding and creating quality content around our own personal integrity standards and keep at it and I'd say give it 6-12 months of really doing it and learning as we go and see if it don't get us somewhere- including to a place where actually "getting a little something for ourselves" for our efforts is an ongoing part of the results of said efforts.

To my files and some sites then... how about this here: http://www.unesco.org/cgi-bin/webworld/portal_freesoftware/cgi/page.cgi?g=Cool;d=1
an interesting resource at the very least... I first was looking for the “CERN” document server and free software from them for once dialogD gets bigger IE more documents and links and orgs cataloged.

For a little levity maybe check this out: http://www.anecdotage.com/ but hey sites like this one are not exactly what I have in mind... but then again I do think we have to talk to and try to involve, talk to, and communicate with more than just the current crop of more or less progressive liberal lefty leaning political type activists that are out there, you know, losing the war against right wing extremism and ultra unequal wealth distribution more blatantly with each decade since the 60's supposedly was going to change everything the other way and direction…

http://www.accuracy.org/

An interesting guy here, a Prof at UMass and this a recent article:
http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.1/wolff.htm an excerpt:

"When Marx likened wage-workers to slaves, he brought the lessons of oppositions to slavery to the emerging movements against capitalism. Put bluntly, Marx argued against forms of anti-capitalism that limited themselves to improving workers’ living conditions. Fast-forwarding to today, Marx would criticize movements such as those for “a living wage” or “pension reform” or “welfare increases” or “saving social security” and so on. A Marxist opposition to capitalism is rather one focused on its abolition as a system. Marxists, he might say, are to capitalism what abolitionists were to slavery.
For Marx, the crux of the issue is that capitalism entails exploitation. A large part of the population (productive laborers) produces a surplus that is appropriated and distributed by a small part of the population (capitalists). In capitalist enterprises, workers are hired only if the value that their labor adds (to the raw materials, tools, and equipment their work uses up) exceeds the value paid to them as wages for doing that labor. That excess value – the surplus – belongs to the capitalists since they own the outputs of production, sell them in markets, and thereby realize the surplus value in them. In the preferred language of capitalism, that surplus value comprises the “profits” of the capitalists, their “private property” to dispense in their own interests.
The less wages that capitalists must pay to workers, the more surplus they get for themselves. Exploitation thus situates tension, hostility, and conflict in the heart of production. Capitalists and workers are set into oppositional struggles. Moreover, those struggles ramify and provoke competitive struggles among capitalists and among workers. Alongside the outputs of capitalist production yielding impressive incomes and accumulating wealth, there are also the countless, ramifying social costs of the conflicts and competitions."

Howard Dean's old campaign operative:

http://www.joetrippi.com/

So what of it. Folks in the know of todays political chicanery may not be the ones to get us anywhere new. But then again, I think some of the more or less progressive activists out there could be a great help if they weren't so entrenched in their careers and upper middle class life styles that today's way of doing business and politics does allow even if the lefts happy warriors are consistently fighting an ongoing losing battle from a position of ever more marginalized weakness. Oh well...

And then there's this, which appears at first look to be a damn good blog to me, worth searching for content and people aka content producers and potential collaborators in this "Confederation of Activists" wich is what is needed- a coordinated and not so atomized and piecemeal and thus often mealy mouthed failing effort to, like, you know, speak, like truth to power, man...

http://www.weblogsky.com/works.html

Well folks, that's about all I have time for before these here fifth graders get back from Art.

The idea of A Progressive Democracy Solidarity movement...

... in the good old USA will need some sorts of funding mechanisms that are not currently readily available. A kind of in house socially conscious venture capital firm to fund the startups of someof the kinds of activities that are being called for. check out this article and comment or add what you think or find.

http://www.sristocks.com/Learn/Socially-responsible-investing-starts-at-$0.66.html

How to start it? Solicit funds on dialogD blog and Web Site.And a Constitutional Amendment 527 funding and organizing committee in each state who then hire and train Working America type laborers who then form a new kind of community based viral labor and progressive Union Party… a real world boots on the ground dialogD organizing presence in each state, ultimately in each congressional district, and so on…

a fear I have expressed articulated by others...

http://gnn.tv/headlines/16658/Lessing_Obama_will_be_assassinated

Hopefully not, eh?

More From Soolay Saul...

Getting back to relevent questions about the almost farcical nature of the so called bipartisan "debate" and the big money mainstream sporting event styled selection of the head of our "Democratically chosen" Executive Branch".

Which again, is not anything that shouldn't be more widely discussed and isn't much in the mainstream and only points ou more the need for "Something completely different..." just like old Cactus Ed used to say. Anyway check out the links:

http://gnn.tv/articles/3517/The_Insurgency_of_Barack_Obama

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/11/6985/

And this one from Portland Saul...

Published on Saturday, February 9, 2008 by Rolling Stone
The Chicken Doves
by Matt Taibbi
Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.Solidifying his reputation as one of the biggest pussies in U.S. political history, Reid explained his decision to refocus his party’s energies on topics other than ending the war by saying he just couldn’t fit Iraq into his busy schedule. “We have the presidential election,” Reid said recently. “Our time is really squeezed.”

Link to entire article at Common Dreams:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/09/6945/

Saully you little welp start posting...

I know it's like dropping a couple raindrops into the ocean but we have to start doing this on a daily basis. With that in mind here are a couple of links from today's school snow day number one of the season:

http://www.ourfuture.org/take-back-america-2008

and of course, there's the tried and true:

http://www.commondreams.org/

Now, ultimately we have to do more than just find something of interest and post the link to whatever .org or article or book or writer or god forbid current political operative or office holder. Once we have the blogging going on a real consistent basis we have to start emailing our blog and main Web Site links to these people and solicit both organizational collaboration and financial support for some of the specific things we propose as we get going.

Ciao, Brew