http://www.americasarmy.com/

Call of Duty, Black Ops Trailer – Product release date set as 11-9-10 -

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Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Public Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

(This article refers directly to today’s issue of the Los Angeles Free Press. If  you have not begun at the beginning of the series, please click HERE.   If you have, but have not yet seen today’s issue, click HERE.)

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today it’s…

…all about: How we’ve let the war in and, if we’ll ever, again, want to say “Nevermore”?

by Steven M. Finger

Commercials that push every button – honor, pride, education, friendship, the adventure of parachuting, undersea diving, flying in that open helicopter just ohhh so casually.  And games, too – even more exciting than all that music in the commercials.  And you get to shoot ‘em up, without ever getting shot yourself.  Wait… you do get shot… but, just a moment… there you are, ‘re-spawned’, good as new, another 1,000 lives to go.

How much fun is it?  Here’s a quick – and VERY old figure – within the first 2 years of its 2002 release, America’s Army was downloaded 16 million times, for 600 million missions; 4 million players registered in (yes, gave their names and birth dates.)  They were, primarily, between the ages of 13 and 21.  And then they spent, in just those two years, 60 million hours playing.  Of course, they can play all day for free.  (Your tax dollars at work!)

Apparently, the experience is not only good for recruitment, it has helped along an entire industry, computer war games for children and adults alike.  One game, Call Of Duty (actually a series) surpassed 55 million units worldwide, that’s $3 billion in retail sales – and that was as of almost a year ago.

More on what this actually means… back at 6.

Here are the keywords to our thinking today: NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Computer Wargames, Military Recruitment, U.S. Army military recruitment, Family, Community, Public Service, Military Service, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corp, U.S. Air Force,  Changing Society, Self-Improvement, Social Change, Society & Culture

Here are links to today’s items:

[1] Let’s Play A Game

[2] Best Military Commercial Ever?

[3] Best Military Commercial Ever – ‘Enhanced’

[4] NIMH Researchers Talk About Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Founder of Labor Day

More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

The First Labor Day

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.

In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Labor Day Legislation

Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

A Nationwide Holiday

The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.

See more at: http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm

In brief, it was the sad tale of Alexandra Jarrin, who had spent her last dime.  Her situation, as Michael Luo wrote, was a stark and tragic comparison to when she had been last employed nearly 2 years before, and earning more than $1,000 a week.

At this point, it appeared that her next move was into her car – and all because she had just joined the ‘99ers’.

What are the 99er’s?  Formerly employed Americans, now out of work for nearly 2 years – at the end of their 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits.

The article has a small graphic that says exactly how incredibly large this group was – then it had almost 1.4 million members, and now it has 200,000 more!

The New York Times article in its entirety may be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03unemployed.html?_r=1&ref=michael_luo

In 1942, as World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific and the song “Rosie the Riveter” filled radio waves across the home front, manufacturing giant Westinghouse commissioned artist J. Howard Miller to make a series of posters to promote the war effort. One such poster featured the image of a woman with her hair wrapped up in a red polka-dot scarf, rolling up her sleeve and flexing her bicep. At the top of the poster, the words ‘We Can Do It!’ are printed in a blue caption bubble. To many people, this image is “the” Rosie the Riveter. But it was never the intention to make this image “Rosie,” nor did many Americans think of her as “Rosie.” The connection of Miller’s image and “Rosie” is a recent phenomenon.

The “Rosie” image popular during the war was created by illustrator Norman Rockwell (who had most certainly heard the “Rosie the Riveter” song) for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943 — the Memorial Day issue. The image depicts a muscular woman wearing overalls, goggles and pins of honor on her lapel. She sports a leather wrist band and rolled-up sleeves. She sits with a riveting tool in her lap, eating a sandwich, and “Rosie” is inscribed on her lunch pail. And, she’s stepping on a copy of Adolph Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf.”

The magazine cover exemplified the American can-do spirit and illustrated the notion of women working in previously male-dominated manufacturing jobs, an ever-growing reality, to help the United States fight the war while the men fought over seas.

The cover was an enormous success and soon stories about real life “Rosies” began appearing in newspapers across the country. The government took advantage of the popularity of Rosie the Riveter and embarked on a recruiting campaign of the same name. The campaign brought millions of women out of the home and into the workforce. To this day, Rosie the Riveter is still considered the most successful government advertising campaign in history.

After the war, numerous requests were made for the Saturday Evening Post image of Rosie the Riveter, but Curtis Publishing, the owner of the Post, refused all requests. The publishing company was possibly concerned that the composers of the song “Rosie the Riveter” would hold them liable for copyright infringement.

Since then, the J. Howard Miller “We Can Do It!” image has replaced Norman Rockwell’s illustration as “Rosie the Riveter” in the minds of many people. Miller’s Rosie has been imprinted on coffee mugs, mouse pads, and countless other items, making her and not the original “Rosie” the most famous of all labor icons.

See more at: http://www.dol.gov/laborday/history-rosie.htm

By Eve Tahmincioglu (CareerDiva.net)

The headline in my local newspaper today reads: “Jobless must set sights lower.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if your local newspaper or radio station has a similar story today. This is the kind of sensational angle the media loves to focus on during all types of holidays. For example, a Christmas day massacre or a Halloween candy poisoning will get endless attention by editors, especially in this Internet age where all most media care about is how many times you guys click on a story.

But on this Labor Day, a time when we’re supposed to be celebrating the advances workers have achieved in the workplace, let’s not just roll over and accept what has become the standard employer line — you have to take less money for more work — and let’s concentrate on what needs to be done to bring back a job market with better quality jobs for the working stiff.

Today, President Obama is expected to announce a series of steps to stimulate the economy. Yes, the pundits will be tearing him apart today, saying it’s just a government bailout and the free market needs to do its thing. But if we look back in history, these types of measures the administration is touting are what brought workers back from the brink during another bad economic down turn, the Great Depression.

During that time there was a segment of society doing quite well while the regular guys and gals suffered, and during this recession many of those telling workers to accept less and do more are also doing quite well.

This from a great opinion piece in the New York Times last week called “How to End the Great Recession,” by Robert Reich, the former labor secretary under Clinton:

Where have all the economic gains gone? Mostly to the top. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty examined tax returns from 1913 to 2008. They discovered an interesting pattern. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income.

It’s no coincidence that the last time income was this concentrated was in 1928. I do not mean to suggest that such astonishing consolidations of income at the top directly cause sharp economic declines. The connection is more subtle.

Reich has some suggestions how to make things better:

THE Great Depression and its aftermath demonstrate that there is only one way back to full recovery: through more widely shared prosperity. In the 1930s, the American economy was completely restructured. New Deal measures — Social Security, a 40-hour work week with time-and-a-half overtime, unemployment insurance, the right to form unions and bargain collectively, the minimum wage — leveled the playing field.

In the decades after World War II, legislation like the G.I. Bill, a vast expansion of public higher education and civil rights and voting rights laws further reduced economic inequality. Much of this was paid for with a 70 percent to 90 percent marginal income tax on the highest incomes. And as America’s middle class shared more of the economy’s gains, it was able to buy more of the goods and services the economy could provide. The result: rapid growth and more jobs.

By contrast, little has been done since 2008 to widen the circle of prosperity. Health-care reform is an important step forward but it’s not nearly enough.

That’s where Obama’s proposals may come in.

This news alert just in from Politico.com, according to a White House spokesman:

“The president will work with Congress to enact a new up-front investment in our nation’s infrastructure – an investment that would help jump-start additional job creation, while also laying the foundation for future growth. This initial investment would fund improvements in the nation’s surface transportation, as well as our airports and air traffic control system.” The measures include the “establishment of an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars, and focus on investments of national and regional significance that often fall through the cracks in the current siloed transportation programs,” and “the integration of high-speed rail on an equal footing into the surface transportation program.”

It’s hard to tell whether such measures will be enough, and a lot of smart and dumb people will surely be debating this today. But the bottom line is, just encouraging workers to accept a worse lot in life will not reinvigorate the middle class, and it won’t help the economy at large, right?

The answer could lie in renewed organizing efforts.

This from Amy B. Dean, co-Author of “A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement,” in a Huffington Post piece today:

It takes the organized efforts of working people to reverse these trends toward exclusion and to ensure that each new epoch will bring a shared prosperity. During the transition to the industrial economy, it was not preordained that the auto, steel, or textile industries would provide living wages, health care, pensions, and other benefits that allowed for a stable, thriving middle class in this country. Rather, employees needed to use the institution of collective bargaining to come together, negotiate with their employers, and demand the conditions that would provide a healthy quality of life for working people.

Clearly the quality of work life is suffering.

The story telling workers to shoot low in my local paper today quoted a worker, Sue Fritz, 49, who works at a state facility helping care for people who have developmental disabilities.

“We’re working shorter with less people, and more is being expected of us. It’s a very strenuous day. To have to get up and go back in every morning…you have no choice.”

There are choices, and things do change if workers want them to.

Let’s go back in time to the first Labor Day.

Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss offers a history lesson:

It was first celebrated in this country in the 1880s — at a time when people commonly worked 12-hour days. The first Labor Day rally, in 1882, was in support of an eight-hour workday.

A word about CareerDiva.net:

The thinking man’s and woman’s career blog.
Eve Tahmincioglu, author, journalist and columnist for MSNBC’s Your Career.

I love this site… check it out, enjoy it, take this lady’s advice, and move forward.

More than 40 years ago(!) the LA Free Press printed this article.  Then, many readers might have thought this was ‘far out’.  And, now??

Credit Cards Threaten Privacy! Los Angeles Free Press, 1969

Credit Cards Threaten Privacy! Los Angeles Free Press, 1969

Phil Zimmerman is the developer of the program Pretty Good Privacy. PGP is widely used on the internet by companies and individuals to maintain privacy. Big Brother does not like this program because PGP can prevent the government from viewing exchanges between individuals on the internet i.e. internet-tapping.  As a result, Zimmerman has a long history of involvement in litigation with the government over legislation and rules preventing the export of PGP to other countries. The L.A. Free Press will provide you with more information about zphone as this story develops.

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Public Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

(This article refers directly to today’s issue of the Los Angeles Free Press. If you have not yet seen it, please, before reading further, click HERE.)

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today it’s…

all about who’s looking into our life and why, and how we, individually and collectively, have come to say no way, no more.

by Steven M. Finger

Thought it was important to let you know, via our first Item, that the invasion of privacy (in this case, pronounced as the British do…priv’acy) is not just an act of our government, but spreading throughout Europe like the latest fashion.

With that point made, we needed to return back to the US to make another one that may surely affect the future of our country.   Most of us know of the Patriot Act, and we know it circumvents many civil rights we hold dear.  But few of us have considered – may not even have known – of the impact it has on the rights of students.  (Click here to review that posted article.)

In our earlier Series on the growing distrust of our government and the consequent rise of movements and third parties, students – educated, motivated and not willing to have their needs lowly prioritized – will be striving to be a larger component of the political process.  The Patriot Act may put a brake on that.

On the other hand, an act of outright defiance – by what many consider one of the most meek and mild-mannered professional groups (librarians!!) – virtually ground one of those Patriot Act provisions to halt.  While the article here speaks about the Chapters of the American Library Association putting forth resolutions, the word is that many a librarian simply put the regulation aside by refusing to record what books a patron choose to read.

They are lessons well-learned:  divided we stand…, and personal courage shapes nations.

Our final Item ties more closely to those to lessons than you might suspect:  it enables you to take a personal stand and it leads to a tale of personal fortitude and intrigue – another act of defiance that said, loud and clear that our personal business is our own business, here’s a wall for your peeking eyes.

Here are the keywords to our thinking today: Big Brother in Britain, Fair Trials International, James Slack, Surveillance Society, ACLU, Personal Privacy, Patriot Act, Section 203, Section 215, Section 901, Student Activist Groups, Students, Terrorists, American Library Association, Lauren Barack, Librarians, Patriot Act, Section 206, Section 215, Section 505, Cell Phone Encryption, PGP, Phil Zimmerman, Pretty Good Privacy, zphone, Art Kunkin,  L.A. Free Press, Los Angeles Free Press, Changing Society, Self-Improvement, Social Change, Society & Culture

Here are links to today’s items:

[1] European police to spy on Britons: Now ministers hand over Big Brother powers to foreign officers

[2] Patriot Act Stands Over Students

[3] Librarians Push Against Patriot Act

[4] Encrypt Your Phone Conversations! Make Them Secure From Big Brother!