Thursday, August 23, 2007

Sacco and Vanzetti


“Everything should be done to keep alive the tragic affair of
Sacco and Vanzetti in the conscience of mankind.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN, 1947


Thursday, Aug. 23, marks the 80th anniversary of the executions of
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants and anarchists,
for crimes they did not commit. The south plaza of New York's Union
Square will be the site of a commemoration of the judicial murder of the
two Italian anarchists, at 6 p.m. Union Square was the site of a
historic mass protest by over 500,000 supporters of Sacco and Vanzetti
on the day they were hung. Participating in the commemoration on
Thursday will be:

* The Living Theater, with a performance of a scene from their landmark
play, Paradise Now.
* Ahsanullah Khan, immigrant rights activist.
* Robert Palmer, Libertarian Book Club, speaking on the anarchist
background of Sacco & Vanzetti
* Other musicians and spoken-word artists to be announced.

The previous evening, Wed., Aug. 22, at 7 p.m., St. Joseph's Church, 371
Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village (northwest corner of Washington
Place), a teach-in will be held on the case and its continuing
importance. The program will include:

* A performance by Leonard Lehrman of excerpts from his completed score
to Mark Blitzstein's opera, Sacco and Vanzetti.
* A screening of Peter Miller's acclaimed documentary, Sacco and Vanzetti.
* A staged reading of Events & Victims, by Daniel Lang/Levitsky.
* A discussion of the case's continuing importance, facilitated by Mary
Anne Trasciatti, assistant professor and chair of the Speech
Communication, Rhetoric & Performance Studies Department at Hofstra
University.

http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/presskits/sacco_vanzetti/protest.jpg


August 21, 2007

Sacco and Vanzetti Now Available on DVD!

To All Documentary Film Fans:

First Run Features is proud to announce the release on DVD of Peter
Miller's acclaimed documentary, Sacco and Vanzetti.

For five years, Miller devoted his life to making a film about an
important event in the history of America - an event that a lot of people
have heard of, but may not know much about. It's the story of Nicola Sacco
and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant radicals who were accused
of a murder in Boston in 1920, and executed after a notoriously prejudiced
trial.

When we read in the newspaper today how certain immigrants are treated in
this country, it makes us realize that in many ways not much has changed
since the days of Sacco and Vanzetti. If you're from "somewhere else" and
have an accent, or a different skin color, you most likely have to endure
discrimination, resentment, and even violence. And when the government
enacts policies that cut back on civil liberties in the name of protecting
our freedom, how can we not be reminded of the disastrous "red scare" that
set the scene for the Sacco and Vanzetti trial?

If you're interested in the history of America, or the plight of
immigrants, or insight into famous trials and how the law is selectively
applied, or if you're passionate about the death penalty, or concerned
about the protection of our civil liberties, you'll not only enjoy "Sacco
and Vanzetti" but learn a lot from it. If you're fans of Tony Shalhoub
(Monk) or John Turturro (Miller's Crossing), the actors who generously
lent their talents to give voice to Sacco and Vanzetti, or if you
appreciate historians and writers like Howard Zinn and Studs Terkel, or
musicians like Arlo Guthrie, you'll enjoy the film. And if you've got any
Italian in you, this is a must-see.

First Run is offering Sacco and Vanzetti for 25% off the list price of
$24.95. Here's the link to read more about the film, or to purchase it.

Thanks for reading about this, and for helping us get the word out about
this film. Please pass this letter on to anyone you think might be
interested. Also, check out Miller's earlier film The Internationale - a
powerful documentary about music and social change.

Many thanks,
Your Friends at First Run Features

Acclaim for Sacco and Vanzetti!

"Absolutely engrossing! This riveting film masterfully revives the
past."-CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"A rabble-rousing tribute!"-NEW YORK MAGAZINE

"A timely reminder of how things can go when politics obscure reasonable
minds."-BOXOFFICE.COM

"It's cleansing to see the facts laid out with intimacy and rigor. Grade
A!"-ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

"Thoughtful and thought-provoking!"-LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Superb! A concise yet passionate history lesson whose relevance could not
be timelier."-VARIETY

"A must for history buffs! Thorough and interesting throughout."-SALON.COM

"A wonderful film, as timeless as the struggle for human justice, as
relevant as today's headlines."-KEN BURNS

DVD Bonus Features:
Interview with Director Peter Miller
Sacco and Vanzetti F.A.Q.
Archival Photo Gallery
Suggested Readings

STANLEY KAUFFMANN ON FILMS
Crimes Revisited

Post date 04.01.07 | Issue date 04.02.07

On the morning of August 24, 1927, a few weeks before I started high school, I read the headlines in The New York Times announcing the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti. I knew something about their story--newspapers and magazines had been brimming with controversy over it ever since I had been able to read--and my parents and their friends had often discussed it. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, I thought, at least the story is now finished. Last week I saw a new documentary about the case.

Peter Miller, who has worked with Ken Burns, made Sacco and Vanzetti because he feels that the red scare of the early 1920s has an analogue in current fears and jingoism. Even though the story is not much of a parallel with our current miring in mendacity, it shocks in two ways: it shows us how recently, relatively speaking, racial and political prejudices were openly allowed to smirch justice; and it makes us take a look at the vitality of liberalism now. Would such an outrage cause an equivalent storm today?


Nicola Sacco (April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti – (June 11, 1888August 23, 1927) were two Italian-born American anarchists, who were arrested, tried, and executed via electrocution in Massachusetts for the charge of murder and theft. There is much controversy regarding their guilt, stirred in part by Upton Sinclair's 1928 novel Boston. Critics of the trial have accused the prosecution and trial judge of allowing anti-Italian, anti-immigrant, and anti-anarchist sentiment to influence the jury's verdict. However, Upton Sinclair had brief doubts as to their innocence based upon a later conversation with their lawyer, doubts which, upon further investigation and reflection, he found to be unjustified.

In the August 14th, 2006 issue of the Nation Magazine, there’s a review of recent books on Upton Sinclair by Brenda Wineapple that contains the following observation on the muckraking novelist’s involvement with one of the landmark political trials of the 20th century:

“On the whole, Bachelder’s perspective on Sinclair’s unsinkability seems right. Just last December, Sinclair was resurrected and assassinated all over again when the Los Angeles Times ran a story, bruited in the conservative press, about the recent purchase of a Sinclair letter in which he admitted that one of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s defense attorneys had told him that the two Italian anarchists were guilty as charged, and yet he published the novel Boston anyway, to peddle sympathy for them. Neither Mattson nor Arthur would be surprised by the revelatory letter. Each of them amply demonstrates that Sinclair doubted the innocence of at least one, if not both, of the defendants.”

Although Wineapple is understandably focused on Sinclair’s reputation, it is too bad that she allows the reader to assume that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty. This charge has been made mostly by rightwingers like Jonah Goldberg of the National Review, but you find concessions to it from other leftists besides Wineapple, which mostly takes the form of failing to take the charges head-on. In an interview with NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Anthony Arthur, an Upton Sinclair biographer included in Wineapple’s article, skirts around the subject of their guilt and allows the typically liberal NPR listener to assume the worst about Sacco and Vanzetti.

This was not the first documentary done on Sacco and Vanzetti. In 1971 an Italian made Docudrama was released.

Ennio Morricone received his first Nastro d'Argento in 1970 for the music in Metti una Sera a Cena (Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, 1969) and his second only a year later for Sacco e Vanzetti (Guiliano Montaldo, 1971) where he had made a memorable collaboration with the legendary American folk singer and activist Joan Baez.


An Historical Background to the Sacco-Vanzetti Case

by Paul Avrich


For one cannot deal with Sacco and Vanzetti without talking about anarchism; and, as Professor Pernicone pointed out, the greatest single shortcoming in the literature on the case-a literature that is vast, enormous-is its failure to come to grips with Sacco and Vanzetti as anarchists. Anarchism was a central feature of their lives. To write about Sacco and Vanzetti without talking about the anarchist connection, the anarchist dimension, is equivalent to writing about Eugene Victor Debs without talking about socialism, or to writing about Lenin and Trotsky without talking about communism. Anarchism was the passion, the great idea of Sacco and Vanzetti. It was the driving force of their lives. It was their obsession, their love, their chief interest on a day-to-day basis.

I'd like to read three quotations from their writings which illustrate this point. First, a quotation from Vanzetti's brief autobiography, The Story of a Proletarian L ife:

I am and will be until the last instant (unless I should discover that I am in error) an anarchist communist, because I believe that communism is the most humane form of social contract, because I know that only with liberty can man rise, become noble, and complete.

We find a similar idea in Sacco's writings- for example, in one of his last letters to his son Dante, written on August 18, 1927, five days before the execution. He advises Dante to help the persecuted and oppressed "as your father and Bartolo fought and fell yesterday for the conquest of the joy of freedom for all and the poor workers."

Sacco and Vanzetti

by Howard Zinn

Fifty years after the executions of Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti, Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts set up a panel to judge the fairness of the trial, and the conclusion was that the two men had not received a fair trial. This aroused a minor storm in Boston.

One letter, signed John M. Cabot, U.S. Ambassador Retired, declared his “great indignation” and pointed out that Governor Fuller’s affirmation of the death sentence was made after a special review by “three of Massachusetts’ most distinguished and respected citizens—President Lowell of Harvard, President Stratton of MIT and retired Judge Grant.”

Those three “distinguished and respected citizens” were viewed differently by Heywood Broun, who wrote in his column for the New York World immediately after the Governor’s panel made its report. He wrote:

It is not every prisoner who has a President of Harvard University throw on the switch for him….If this is a lynching, at least the fish peddler and his friend the factory hand may take unction to their souls that they will die at the hands of men in dinner jackets or academic gowns.

Heywood Broun, one of the most distinguished journalists of the twentieth century, did not last long as a columnist for the New York World.

On that 50th year after the execution, the New York Times reported that: “Plans by Mayor Beame to proclaim next Tuesday ‘Sacco and Vanzetti Day’ have been canceled in an effort to avoid controversy, a City Hall spokesman said yesterday.”

There must be good reason why a case 50-years-old, now over 75-years-old, arouses such emotion. I suggest that it is because to talk about Sacco and Vanzetti inevitably brings up matters that trouble us today: our system of justice, the relationship between war fever and civil liberties, and most troubling of all, the ideas of anarchism: the obliteration of national boundaries and therefore of war, the elimination of poverty, and the creation of a full democracy.

The case of Sacco and Vanzetti revealed, in its starkest terms, that the noble words inscribed above our courthouses, “Equal Justice Before the Law,” have always been a lie. Those two men, the fish peddler and the shoemaker, could not get justice in the American system, because justice is not meted out equally to the poor and the rich, the native born and the foreign born, the orthodox and the radical, the white and the person of color. And while injustice may play itself out today more subtly and in more intricate ways than it did in the crude circumstances of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, its essence remains.

Michael D. Yates, "Sacco and Vanzetti"

In the spring of 1920 two Italian immigrants, Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, were accused of the April 15 robbery of the payroll of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Factories in South Braintree, Massachusetts and the murders of the paymaster Frederick A. Parmenter and his guard Alessandro Beradelli. The accused were anarchists, followers of Luigi Galleani, a prominent Italian radical, who advocated violence against the state. At the start of the trial the Great Red Scare was in full swing, fueled by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the growth of radical sentiment in the United States, and the draconian laws enacted during the First World War. Immigrants, painted as anti-American radicals, bore the brunt of it, harassed, arrested, and summarily deported on the flimsiest of charges. After a spectacularly unfair trial, in which judge Webster Thayer displayed blatant bias against the defendants and prosecutor Frederick Katzman willfully violated much of the canon of legal ethics, the jury convicted Sacco and Vanzetti of murder. Between their conviction on June 14, 1921 and their execution on August 23, 1927, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti became a cause celebre in the United States and around the world.

Sacco and Vanzetti
Two Immigrants Targeted For Their Beliefs
by Marlene Martin

To understand why this travesty of justice occurred, we first have to look at the hostile political climate towards immigrants and radicals. Following the First World War, the U.S. government responded to a wave of strikes and political unrest with a crackdown. The Palmer raids of the early 1920s, organized by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, resulted in thousands of radicals, especially immigrants, being rounded up, beaten, and held incommunicado for days.

It’s clear from the proceedings that Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted not because the evidence proved them guilty, but because they were anarchists and immigrants.



Dana Gioia Online - Italian-American Poetry


The first generation of Italian-American writers to work in English made their most important contributions neither in poetry nor fiction but in radical politics. Carlo Tresca and Arturo Giovannitti, for example, were both published poets, but today they are remembered for their social activism. Their political journalism, which passionately addressed the timeless concerns of equality and justice, remains more vital than their verse. Selden Rodman boldly reprinted Bartolomeo Vanzetti's last speech to the court as verse in his 1938 New Anthology of Modern Verse, and Vanzetti's proud words spoken in slightly awkward English sustain the pressure of transcription. Few poems by his Italian-American contemporaries still read so well.

Despite the stylistic diversity, one does notice certain underlying themes that unite the work of first and second generation writers. I would cite four central experiences that haunt —either overtly or subtly—the Italian-American poetic imagination. The first is poverty. The poets and their families have usually known genuine privation and penury both here and in Europe. This bitter memory informs their views of America and themselves. Their original status as economic and social outsiders in America also colors their political views. It often makes them suspicious or critical of established power. Anarchy appeals to the Southern Italian worldview. Revolution and resistance also exercise a mythic charm. Early Italian-American poets were usually political radicals, though rarely loyal and obedient members of any party. More recently, several Italian-American women—most notably Sandra Mortola Gilbert—are significant figures in the feminist movement.


WOODY GUTHRIE
BALLADS OF SACCO & VANZETTI
(Folkways), recorded 1946-'47.

IN 1945 Moses Asch commissioned balladeer Woody Guthrie -- who had already written on such themes as the Oklahoma Dust Bowl -- to go to Boston and document the story of anarchists and trade unionists Sacco and Vanzetti. The songs were recorded in January 1947 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of their execution, and released as an album in 1960.

VANZETTI'S LETTER

The year, it is 1927, an' the day is the third day of May;
Town is the city called Boston, an' our address this dark Dedham jail.
To your honor, the Governor Fuller, to the council of Massachussetts state,
We, Bartolomo [sic] Vanzetti, an' Nicola Sacco, do say:

Confined to our jail here at Dedham an' under the sentence of death,
We pray you do exercise your powers an' look at the facts of our case.
We do not ask you for a pardon, for a pardon would admit of our guilt;
Since we are both innocent workers, we have no guilt to admit.

We are both born by parents in Italy, can't speak English too well;
Our friends of labor are writin' these words, back of the barsin our cell.
Our friends say if we speak too plain, sir, we may turn your feelings away,

Widen these canyons between us, but we risk our life to talk plain.

We think, sir, that each human bein' is in close touch with all of man's kind,
We think, sir, that each human bein' knows right from the wrong in his mind.
We talk to you here as a man, sir, even knowing our opinions divide;
We didn't kill the guards at South Braintree, nor dream of such a terrible crime.

We call your eye to this fact, sir, we work with our hand and our brain;
These robberies an' killings, were done, sir, by professional bandit men,
Sacco has been a good cutter, Mrs. Sacco their money has saved;
I, Vanzetti, l could have saved money, but I gave it as fast as received.

l'm a dreamer, a speaker, an' a writer; I fight on the working folks' side.
Sacco is Boston's fastest shoe trimmer, and he talks to the husbands and wives.
We hunted your land, and we found it, hoped we'd find freedom of mind,
Built up your land, this Land of the Free, an' this is what we come to find.

If we was those killers, good Governor, we'd not be so dumb and so blind
To pass out our handbills and make workers' speeches, out here by the scene of the crime.
Those fifteen thousands of dollars the lawyers and judge said we took,
Do we, sir, dress up like two gentlemen with that much in our pocketbook?

Our names are on the long list of radicals of the Federal Government, sir,
They said that we needed watching as we peddled our literature.
Judge Thayer's mind's made up, sir, when we walked into the court;
Well, he called us anarchistic bastards, said lots of other things worse.

They brought people down there to Brockton to look through the bars of our cell,
Made us act out the motions of the killers, and still not so many could tell.

Before the trial ever started, the jury foreman did say,
An' he cussed us an' said, "Damn they, well, they'd ought to hang anyway."
Our fatal mistake was carryin' our guns, about which we had to tell lies
To keep the police from raiding the homes of workers believing like us.

A labor paper, or a picture, a letter from a radical friend,
An old cheap gun like you keep around home, would torture good women and men.
We all feared deporting and whipping, torments to make us confess
The place where the workers are meeting, the house, your name, and address.

Well. the officers said we feared something which they called a consciousness of guilt.
We was afraid of wreckin' more homes, and seein' more workers' blood spilt.
Well, the very first question they asked us was not about killing the clerks,
But things about our labor movement, and how our trade union works.

Oh, how could our jury see clearly, when the lawyers, and judges, and cops
Called us low type Italians, said we looked just like regular wops,
Draft dodgers, gun packers, anarchists, these vulgar sounding names,
Blew dust in the eyes of jurors, the crowd in the courtroom the same.

We do not believe, sir, that torture, beatings, and killings and pains
Will lift man's eyes to a highest of view an' break his bilbos and chains.
We believe that you must struggle for freedom before your freedom you'll gain,
Freedom from fear, sir, and greed, sir, and your freedom to think higher things.

This fight, sir, is not a new battle, we did not make it last night,
'Twas fought by Godwin, Shelly, Pisacane, Tolstoy and Christ;
It's bigger than the atoms an' the sands of the desert, planets that roll in the sky;
Till workers get rid of their robbers, well, it's worse, sir, to live than to die.

Your Excellency, we're not askin' pardon but askin' to be set free,
With liberty, and pride, sir, and honor, and a pardon we will not receive.
A pardon you given to criminals who've broken the laws of the land;
We don't ask you for pardon, sir, because we are innocent men.

Well, if you shake your head "no", dear Governor, of course, our doom it is sealed.
We hold up our heads like two sons of men, seven years in these cells of steel.
We walk down this corridor to death, sir, like workers have walked it before,
But we'll work in our working class struggle if we live a thousand lives more.


Sacco and Vanzetti. Produced by Curtis Fox, 1998. Part of a radio series, The Past Present: History for Public Radio. Distributed for broadcast to public radio stations in January, 1999.


Marc Blitzstein's Magnum Opus At Last
Sacco and Vanzetti

"The Sacco-Vanzetti case united the liberals," wrote David Riesman in the 1960s. "The Rosenberg case divided them."

When Marc Blitzstein began writing his magnum opus, the three-act opera, "Sacco and Vanzetti," commissioned by the Ford Foundation and optioned by the Metropolitan Opera in 1960, he was thinking of the Rosenbergs. His sister, Josephine Davis, told me that, when I first met her and looked at his unfinished works in 1970, six years after his death.

Both cases had provoked a worldwide outcry at the injustice of executing people for crimes they had not committed: robbery and murder in the 1920s case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti; stealing the "secret" of the atom bomb in the 1950s case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

The "good shoemaker" and the "poor fish peddler" who were executed in 1927 after a bitter, seven-year battle in court, in the press and in many minds, keep agitating American imaginations. Composer Marc Blitzstein is writing an opera about them, and an off-Broadway producer is planning a musical. This week NBC presents the second installment of its two-part Sacco-Vanzetti Story, billed as a "dramatic interpretation of the much-disputed case." Taken together, the two taped installments provide two absorbing hours, somewhat marred by overly insistent pleading.

Letters From Prison, 1921-1927

Sacco & Vanzetti Trial Homepage

Letters of Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Letters written in 1921-24 in Charlestown State Prison
Letters written in 1925 in the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane
Letters written in 1925-April 1927 in Charlestown State Prison
Letters written in April-June 1927 in Dedham Jail
Letters written in July-August 21, 1927 from Charlestown State Prison
Letters written August 21-22, 1927 from the Death House, Massachusetts State Prison

Letters of Nicola Sacco
Letters written in 1921-June 1927 in Dedham Jail
Letters written in July-August 18, 1927 in Charlestown State Prison


Source: The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, edited by Marion D. Frankfurter and Gardner Jackson (1928).


The Atlantic Monthly, June 1977

The Never-Ending Wrong

by Katherine Anne Porter

For several years in the early 1920s when I was living part of the time in Mexico, on each return to New York, I would follow again the strange history of the Italian emigrants Nicola Sacco a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti a fishmonger, who were accused of a most brutal holdup of a payroll truck, with murder, in South Braintree, Massachusetts, in the early afternoon of April 15, 1920. They were tried before a Boston court and condemned to death about eighteen months later.

I cannot even now decide by my own evidence whether or not they were guilty of the crime for which they were put to death. They expressed in their letters many thoughts, if not always noble, at least elevated, exalted even. Their fervor and human feelings gave the glow of life to the weary stock phrases of those writing about them, and we do know now, all of us, that the most appalling cruelties are committed by apparently virtuous governments in expectation of a great good to come, never learning that the evil done now is the sure destroyer of the expected good. Yet, no matter what, it was a terrible miscarriage of justice; it was a most reprehensible abuse of legal power, in their attempt to prove that the law is something to be inflicted--not enforced--and that it is above the judgment of the people.

Sacco and Vanzetti
by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman
[Published in The Road to Freedom (New York), Vol. 5, Aug. 1929.]


THE names of the "good shoe-maker and poor fish-peddler" have ceased to represent merely two Italian workingmen. Throughout the civilised world Sacco and Vanzetti have become a symbol, the shibboleth of Justice crushed by Might. That is the great historic significance of this twentieth century crucifixion, and truly prophetic, were the words of Vanzetti when he declared, "The last moment belongs to us--that agony is our triumph."

We hear a great deal of progress and by that people usually mean improvements of various kinds, mostly life-saving discoveries and labor-saving inventions, or reforms in the social and political life. These may or may not represent a real advance because reform is not necessarily progress.

It is an entirely false and vicious conception that civilisation consists of mechanical or political changes. Even the greatest improvements do not, in themselves, indicate real progress: they merely symbolise its results. True civilization, real progress consists in humanising mankind, in making the world a decent place to live in. From this viewpoint we are very far from being civilised, in spite of all the reforms and improvements.

True progress is a struggle against the inhumanity of our social existence, against the barbarity of dominant conceptions. In other words, progress is a spiritual struggle, a struggle to free man from his brutish inheritance, from the fear and cruelty of his primitive condition. Breaking the shackles of ignorance and superstition; liberating man from the grip of enslaving ideas and practices; driving darkness out of his mind and terror out of his heart; raising him from his abject posture to man's full stature--that is the mission of progress. Only thus does man, individually and collectively, become truly civilised and our social life more human and worth while.

This struggle marks the real history of progress. Its heroes are not the Napoleons and the Bismarcks, not the generals and politicians. Its path is lined with the unmarked graves of the Saccos and Vanzettis of humanity, dotted with the auto-da-fé, the torture chambers, the gallows and the electric chair. To those martyrs of justice and liberty we owe what little of real progress and civilization we have today.

The anniversary of our comrades' death is therefore by no means an occasion for mourning. On the contrary, we should rejoice that in this time of debasement and degradation, in the hysteria of conquest and gain, there are still MEN that dare defy the dominant spirit and raise their voices against inhumanity and reaction: That there are still men who keep the spark of reason and liberty alive and have the courage to die, and die triumphantly, for their daring.

For Sacco and Vanzetti died, as the entire world knows today, because they were Anarchists. That is to say, because they believed and preached human brotherhood and freedom. As such, they could expect neither justice nor humanity. For the Masters of Life can forgive any offense or crime but never an attempt to undermine their security on the backs of the masses. Therefore Sacco and Vanzetti had to die, notwithstanding the protests of the entire world.

Yet Vanzetti was right when he declared that his execution was his greatest triumph, for all through history it has been the martyrs of progress that have ultimately triumphed. Where are the Caesars and Torquemadas of yesterday? Who remembers the names of the judges who condemned Giordano Bruno and John Brown? The Parsons and the Ferrers, the Saccos and Vanzettis live eternal and their spirits still march on.

Let no despair enter our hearts over the graves of Sacco and Vanzetti. The duty we owe them for the crime we have committed in permitting their death is to keep their memory green and the banner of their Anarchist ideal high. And let no near-sighted pessimist confuse and confound the true facts of man's history, of his rise to greater manhood and liberty. In the long struggle from darkness to light, in the age-old fight for greater freedom and welfare, it is the rebel, the martyr who has won. Slavery has given way, absolutism is crushed, feudalism and serfdom had to go, thrones have been broken and republics established in their stead. Inevitably, the martyrs and their ideas have triumphed, in spite of gallows and electric chairs. Inevitably, the people, the masses, have been gaining on their masters, till now the very citadels of Might, Capital and the State, are being endangered. Russia has shown the direction of the further progress by its attempt to eliminate both the economic and political master. That initial experiment has failed, as all first great social revaluations require repeated efforts for their realisation. But that magnificent historic failure is like unto the martyrdom of Sacco and Vanzetti--the symbol and guarantee of ultimate triumph.

Let it be clearly remembered, however, that the failure of FIRST attempts at fundamental social change is always due to the false method of trying to establish the NEW by OLD means and practices. The NEW can conquer only by means of its own new spirit. Tyranny lives by suppression; Liberty thrives on freedom. The fatal mistake of the great Russian Revolution was that it tried to establish new forms of social and economic life on the old foundation of coercion and force. The entire development of human society has been AWAY from coercion and government, away from authority towards greater freedom and independence. In that struggle the spirit of liberty has ultimately won out. In the same direction lies further achievement. All history proves it and Russia is the most convincing recent demonstration of it. Let us then learn that lesson and be inspired to greater efforts in behalf of a new world of humanity and freedom, and may the triumphant martyrdom of Sacco and Vanzetti give us greater strength and endurance in this superb struggle.

France: July, 1929.

_______________

(This joint article reached America on the 17th of July. It is altogether too good to be left till another time. How penetrating the analysis and how apt the historical inferences! It is indeed a long time since Comrade Berkman has seen his name signed to an article in an English Anarchist paper and nearly as long since Emma Goldman has appeared as a contributor. Road to Freedom is grateful for this opportunity to bring out a joint article wherein both our immutable fighters are in such complete agreement. We hope we merit more from their powerful pens in future issues.--Ed.)


The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti,
Ben Shahn, 1931-32, Tempera on canvas

Over the years, Jewish writers and artists kept the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti alive, among them Ben Shahn, who produced a series of 23 paintings of the men and their trial in the early 1930s.

Fuller Decides - TIME

Monday, August 15, 1927


Twelve leading Paris newspapers last week devoted four times as much space to two remote Italians as to the break-up of the Geneva Naval Conference. Why? The French, as lovers of liberty, were interested in whether these two Italians were to be killed by a democracy for a crime of which they were innocent or whether they were actually guilty and had been responsible for an international campaign to defeat justice.

Eleventh Hour. These demonstrations did not aid the new Sacco-Vanzetti attorney, Arthur D. Hill, and his associate, Francis B. Sayre, son-in-law of the late Woodrow Wilson, who were making eleventh-hour appeals for a new trial in Massachusetts or Federal courts. But hope for Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti was scant. Death loomed.


Charlestown State Prison, Mass., Tuesday, Aug. 23 -- Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti died in the electric chair early
this morning, carrying out the sentence imposed on them for the
South Braintree murders of April 15, 1920.
Sacco marched to the death chair at 12:11 and was pronounced lifeless at 12:19.
Vanzetti entered the execution room at 12:20 and was declared dead at 12:26.
To the last they protested their innocence, and the efforts of
many who believed them guiltless proved futile, although they
fought a legal and extra legal battle unprecedented in the
history of American jurisprudence.

With them died Celestino f. Madeiros, the young Portuguese, who
won seven respites when he "confessed" that he was present at
the time of the South Braintree murder and that Sacco and
Vanzetti were not with him. He died for the murder of a bank
cashier.


And so, on the evening of August 22, 1927, more than 500 policemen in blue uniforms enforced a mile-long barricade that encircled the prison. Most carried tear gas and gas masks. Mounted horses clip-clopped on the cobblestones, firemen stood ready with hoses, machine guns peeked over the top of the prison's red granite wall, and searchlights probed the surrounding darkness. The thousands of protesters who milled against the barricade included Dorothy Parker and John Dos Passos, as well as a host of anarchists, immigrants, day laborers, and a claque of garment workers, who kept up a constant round of "Solidarity Forever." The crowd swelled, with placards reading "JUSTICE IS CRUCIFIED" swaying overhead. Militants from the Hog Carriers' Union ran at the prison gate, and mounted troopers charged the masses. Several were hurt, many more were arrested. A cheer had gone up at the appearance of Sacco's wife, who'd brought their two children, and Vanzetti's sister, who'd arrived recently from Italy. But the women -- who had bid Sacco and Vanzetti farewell a few hours earlier, then hurried to the governor's office, got down on their knees, and begged for a stay of execution -- were defeated.

February 1928

Vanzetti's Last Statement: A Record by W.G. Thompson



The following document, which is not printed to prolong an argument, has no
bearing upon the official record of the tragic case to which it forms the
natural epilogue. But in human records its extraordinary character gives it a
place unlike any other known to us. - THE EDITORS, ATLANTIC MONTHLY



Monday, August 22, 1927

Sacco and Vanzetti were in the Death House in the State Prison at Charleston.
They fully understood that they were to die immediately after midnight. Mr.
Ehrmann and I, having on their behalf exhausted every legal remedy which
seemed to us available, had retired from the active conduct of the case,
holding ourselves in readiness, however, to help their new counsel in any way
we could.

I was in New Hampshire, where a message reached me from Vanzetti that he
wanted to see me once more before he died. I immediately started for Boston
with my son, reached the prison in the late afternoon or early evening, and
was at once taken by the Warden to Vanzetti. He was in one of the three cells
in a narrow room opening immediately to the chair. In the cell nearest the
chair was Madeiros, in the middle one Sacco, and in the third I found
Vanzetti. There was a small table in his cell, and when I entered the room he
seemed to be writing. The iron bars on the front of the cell were so arranged
as to leave at one place a wider space, through which what he needed could be
handed to him. Vanzetti seemed to be expecting me; and when I entered he
rose from his table, and with his characteristic smile reached through the
space between the bars and grasped me warmly by the hand. It was intimated to
me that I might sit in a chair in front of the cell, but not nearer the bars
than a straight mark painted on the floor. This I did.

I had heard that the Governor had said that if Vanzetti would release his
counsel in the Bridgewater case from their obligation not to disclose what he
had said to them the public would be satisfied that he was guilty of that
crime, and also of the South Braintree crime. I therefore began the interview
by asking one of the two prison guards who sat at the other end of the room,
about fifteen feet from where we were, to come to the front of the cell and
listen to the questions I was about to ask Vanzetti and to his replies. I
then asked Vanzetti if he had at any time said anything to Mr. Vahey or Mr.
Graham which would warrant the inference that he was guilty of either crime.
With great emphasis and obvious sincerity he answered no. He then said what
he had often said to me before, that Messrs. Vahey and Graham were not his
personal choice, but became his lawyers at the urgent request of friends, who
raised the money to pay them. He then told me certain things about their
relations to him and about their conduct of the Bridgewater case, and what he
had in fact told them. This on the next day I recorded, but will not here
repeat.

I asked Vanzetti whether he would authorize me to waive on his behalf his
privilege so far as Vahey and Graham were concerned. He readily assented to
this, but imposed the condition that they should make whatever statement they
saw fit to make in the presence of myself or some other friend, giving his
reasons for this condition, which I also recorded.

The guard then returned to his seat.

I told Vanzetti that although my belief in his innocence had all the time
been strengthened, both by my study of the evidence and by my increasing
knowledge of his personality, yet there was a chance, however remote, that I
might be mistaken; and that I thought he ought for my sake, in this closing
hour of his life when nothing could save him, to give me his most solemn
reassurance, both with respect to himself and with respect to Sacco.
Vanzetti then told me quietly and calmly, and with a sincerity which I could
not doubt, that I need have no anxiety about this matter; that both he and
Sacco were absolutely innocent of the South Braintree crime, and that he
(Vanzetti) was equally innocent of the Bridgewater crime; that while, looking
back, he now realized more clearly than he ever had the grounds of the
suspicion against him and Sacco, he felt that no allowance had been made for
his ignorance of American points of view and habits of thought, or for his
fear as a radical and almost as an outlaw, and that in reality he was
convicted on evidence which would not have convicted him had he not been an
anarchist, so that he was in a very real sense dying for his cause. He said
it was a cause for which he was prepared to die. He said it was the cause of
the upward progress of humanity, and the elimination of force from the world.
He spoke with calmness, knowledge, and deep feeling. He said he was grateful
to me for what I had done for him. He asked to be remembered to my wife and
son. He spoke with emotion of his sister and of his family. He asked me to do
what I could to clear his name, using the words "clear my name."

I asked him if he thought it would do any good for me or any friend to see
Boda. He said he thought it would. He said he did not know Boda very well,
but believed him to be an honest man, and thought possibly he might be able
to give some evidence which would help to prove their innocence.

I then old Vanzetti that I hoped he would issue a public statement advising
his friends against retaliating by violence and reprisal. I told him that,
as I read history, the truth had little chance of prevailing when violence
was followed by counter-violence. I said that, as he well knew, I could not
subscribe to his views or to his philosophy of life; but that, on the other
hand, I could not but respect any man who consistently lived up to altruistic
principles, and was willing to give his life for them. I said that if I were
mistaken, and if his views were true, nothing could retard their acceptance
by the world more than the hate and fear that would be stirred up by violent
reprisal. Vanzetti replied that, as I must well know, he desired no personal
revenge for the cruelties inflicted upon him; but he said that, as he read
his story, every great cause for the benefit of humanity had had to fight
for its existence against entrenched power and wrong, and that for this
reason he could not give his friends such sweeping advice as I had urged. He
added that in such struggles he was strongly opposed to any injury to women
and children. He asked me to remember the cruelty of seven years of
imprisonment, with alternating hopes and fears. He reminded me of the remarks
attributed to Judge Thayer by certain witnesses, especially by Professor
Richardson, and asked me what state of mind I thought such remarks indicated.
He asked me how any candid man could believe that a judge capable of
referring to men accused before him as "anarchistic bastards" could be
impartial, and whether I thought that such refinement of cruelty as had been
practiced upon him and upon Sacco ought to go unpunished.

I replied that he well knew my own opinion of these matters, but that his
arguments seemed to me not to meet the point I had raised, which was whether
he did not prefer the prevalence of his opinions to the infliction of
punishment upon persons, however richly he might think they deserved it. This
led to a pause in the conversation.

Without directly replying to my question, Vanzetti then began to speak of the
origin, early struggles, and progress of other great movements for human
betterment. He said that all great altruistic movements originated in the
brain of some man of genius, but later became misunderstood and perverted,
both by popular ignorance and by sinister self interest. He said that all
great movements which struck at conservative standards, received opinions,
established institutions, and human selfishness were at first met with
violence and persecution. He referred to Socrates, Galileo, Giordano Bruno,
and others whose names I do not now remember, some Italian and some Russian.
He then referred to Christianity, and said that it began in simplicity and
sincerity, which were met with persecution and oppression, but that it later
passed quietly into ecclesiasticism and tyranny. I said I did not think that
the progress of Christianity had been altogether checked by convention and
ecclesiasticism, but that on the contrary it still made an appeal to
thousands of simple people, and that the essence of the appeal was the
supreme confidence shown by Jesus in the truth of His own views by forgiving,
even when on the Cross, His enemies, persecutors, and slanderers.

Now, for the first and only time in the conversation, Vanzetti showed a
feeling of personal resentment against his enemies. He spoke with eloquence
of his sufferings, and asked me whether I thought it possible that he could
forgive those who had persecuted and tortured him through seven years of
inexpressible misery. I told him he knew how deeply I sympathized with him,
and that I could not say that if I were in the same situation I should not
have the same feeling; but I said that I had asked him to reflect upon the
career of One infinitely superior to myself and to him, and upon a force
infinitely greater than the force of hate and revenge. I said that in the
long run the force to which the world would respond was the force of love and
not of hate, and that I was suggesting to him to forgive his enemies, not
for their sakes, but for his own peace of mind, and also because an example
of such forgiveness would in the end be more powerful to win adherence to his
cause or to a belief in his innocence than anything else that could be done.

There was another pause in the conversation. I arose and we stood gazing at
each other for a minute or two in silence. Vanzetti finally said that he
would think of what I had said. [See Endnote 1].

I then made a reference to the possibility of personal immortality, and said
that, although I thought I understood the difficulties of a belief in
immortality, yet I felt sure that if there was a personal immortality he
might hope to share it. This remark he received in silence.

He then returned to his discussion of the evil of the present organization of
society, saying that the essence of the wrong was the opportunity it afforded
persons who were powerful because of ability or strategic economic position
to oppress the simple-minded and idealistic among their fellow men, and that
he feared that nothing but violent resistance could ever overcome the
selfishness which was the basis of the present organization of society and
made the few willing to perpetuate a system which enabled them to exploit the
many.

I have given only the substance of this conversation, but I think I have
covered every point that was talked about and have presented a true picture
of the general tenor of Vanzetti's remarks. Throughout the conversation,
with the few exceptions I have mentioned, the thought that was uppermost
in his mind was the truth of the ideas in which he believed for the
betterment of humanity, and the chance they had of prevailing. I was
impressed by the strength of Vanzetti's mind, and by the extent of his
reading and knowledge. He did not talk like a fanatic. Although intensely
convinced of the truth of his own views, he was still able to listen with
calmness and with understanding to the expression of views with which he did
not agree. In this closing scene the impression of him which had been
gaining ground in my mind for three years was deepened and confirmed - that
he was a man of powerful mind, of unselfish disposition, of seasoned
character, and of devotion to high ideals. There was no sign of breaking
down or of terror at approaching death. At parting he gave me a firm clasp
of the hand and a steady glance, which revealed unmistakably the depth of
his feeling and the firmness of his self-control.

I then turned to Sacco, who lay upon a cot bed in the adjoining cell and
could easily have heard and undoubtedly did hear my conversation with
Vanzetti. My conversation with Sacco was very brief. He rose from his cot,
referred feelingly though in a general way to some points of disagreement
between us in the past, said he hoped that our differences of opinion had not
affected our personal relations, thanked me for what I had done for him,
showed no sign of fear, shook hands with me firmly, and bade me good-bye.
His manner also was one of absolute sincerity. It was magnanimous in him not
to refer more specifically to our previous differences of opinion, because
at the root of it all lay his conviction, often expressed to me, that all
efforts on his behalf, either in court or with public authorities, would be
useless, because no capitalistic society could afford to accord him justice.
I had taken the contrary view; but at this last meeting he did not suggest
that the result seemed to justify his view and not mine. [See Endnote 2].

Endnotes:

1. it is credibly reported that when, a few hours later, Vanzetti was about
to step into the chair, he paused, shook hands with the Warden and Deputy
Warden and the guards, thanked them for their kindness to him, and, turning
to the spectators, asked them to remember that he forgave some of his
enemies. - W.G.T.


2. I afterward talked with the prison guard to whom I have referred in this
paper. He told me that after he returned to his seat he heard all that was
said by Vanzetti and myself. The room was quiet and no other persons were
talking. I showed the guard my complete notes of the interview, including
what Vanzetti had told me about Messrs. Vahey and Graham. He read the notes
carefully and said that they corresponded entirely with his memory except
that I had omitted a remark made by Vanzetti about women and children. I
then remembered the remark and added it to my memorandum. - W.G.T.

Vanzetti,
“with his sense of peace at his fate,” wrote in a last letter to a
friend: “If it had not been for these things [his imprisonment and
imminent execution] I might have lived out my life talking at street
corners to scorning men. I might have died unmarked, unknown, a
failure. This is our career and our triumph.
Never in our full life could we hope to do such work
for tolerance, for justice,
for man’s understanding of man,
as we now do by accident.
--- That last moment belongs to us
- that agony is our triumph.”

On August 23, 1977, fifty years to the day of the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, Michael S. Dukakis, Governor of Massachusetts, issued a proclamation that concluded with the words:

Therefore, I, Michael S. Dukakis, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ... hereby proclaim Tuesday, August 23, 1977, "NICOLA SACCO AND BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI MEMORIAL DAY"; and declare, further, that any stigma and disgrace should be forever removed from the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, from the names of their families and descendants, and so ... call upon all the people of Massachusetts to pause in their daily endeavors to reflect upon these tragic events, and draw from their historic lessons the resolve to prevent the forces of intolerance, fear, and hatred from ever again uniting to overcome the rationality, wisdom, and fairness to which our legal system aspires.

They weren't pardoned. That would have been a declaration that they had been guilty. They were --- in a manner of speaking --- apologized to.

Remember Sacco and Vanzetti
By Vera B. Weisbord
(From the magazine "La Parola del Popolo" July 1977)

WHILE President Carter preaches human rights, crusading as the leader of the whole world, a more realistic stand is taken by a lesser official, Governor Dukakis who on July 19 issued a statement that Sacco and Vanzetti did not have a fair trial. Coming fifty years after the event, even this belated acknowledgement must be considered as progressive. In the 1920s the case of Sacco and Vanzetti won world-wide support perhaps more than any other civil rights case. For the sake of newcomers on the scene we shall tell once more their tragic story.

Nicola Sacco was a man of Italian origin who worked in a shoe factory in Stoughton, Massachusetts. He had a home, a wife and a little son. Bartolomeo Vanzetti, also Italian, worked as a fish peddler in nearby Plymouth. The two men were friends. On the afternoon of April 15, 1920, it happen that a crime was committed on the streets of South Braintree, another small industrial town of the vicinity. Five bandits held up the paymaster of a shoe factory, killed him and his guard and escaped with the loot of over $15,000.

What connection did this event have with our two Italian workingmen? None, none whatever. Neither was anywhere near the scene of the crime. Both had ample proof of their alibis. Nevertheless they were arrested, thrown into jail and charged with the crime of first degree murder.

The jail doors never opened for Sacco and Vanzetti. For seven agonizing years of alternating hope and despair they waited while their defense tried every possible legal device, appeal after appeal being rejected until at last on August 22, 1927, the electric chair put an end to their martyrdom.

To explain how such an outrage could occur in this fair land of peace, justice, prosperity and above all of FREEDOM we must first look into the situation prevailing in the United States in that post World War I period.



Peter Miller: Lessons of Sacco and Vanzetti -

We'll never know if Sacco and Vanzetti committed the shoe factory murder, and the question of guilt or innocence remains politically volatile even to this day. A recent flap based on a misreading of a letter by the novelist Upton Sinclair is the most recent proof of the ongoing radioactivity of this subject. But to focus on the issue of innocence or guilt is missing the point. The more fundamental question is whether they received a fair trial, and the answer is a resounding no.

More important still is the question of what we can still learn from their story. As our country remains fixated on the threat of domestic terrorism today, we would do well to reflect on how we responded to similar threats eighty years ago. Were we really more secure as a country as a result of the unconstitutional attacks on radical movements in the 1910s and '20s? Did the judicial murder of Sacco and Vanzetti help protect us from crime and terror?

Muslims and Arabs have become the current targets of racial profiling in the name of protecting our security. Looking at history will remind us that such treatment used to be reserved for Italians, now a fully-assimilated immigrant group whose members includes two justices on the Supreme Court. Does a defendant's ethnicity or political creed continue to shape the kind of justice that we offer in this country? How often do we still think something along the lines of "damn them, they ought to hang them anyway" when considering the fate of a defendant from an unpopular ethnic group, or whose beliefs are antithetical to our own?

Sacco and Vanzetti's fate also raises unsettling questions about capital punishment. As hundreds of death penalty convictions are now being overturned due to the introduction of new evidence, can the electrocution of these two men 80 years ago remind us of the folly -- not to mention the brutality -- of killing a defendant before the truth is settled?

Perhaps the greatest lesson we can take away from the Sacco and Vanzetti case was its ability to inspire millions of people to stand up on behalf of justice and reason. As the case played itself out over seven years in the 1920s, the unfairness of Sacco and Vanzetti's treatment in the courts fueled protests not just in the United States but throughout the world. Protests erupted in Boston, New York, and dozens of American cities, as well as is Paris and London, Tokyo and Buenos Aires, numerous cities in Africa, and countless other places. Books, poems, operas, and works of art further publicized the story of the two men and their legal ordeal. Would such a movement happen today?



It has in Canada. Public outcry and protests saw Freedom and Justice
for Maher Arar. Though he still cannot get the same in America.

SEE

Paranoia and the Security State

State Security Is A Secure State

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent


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Stelmach Falls Can't Get Up

In a downward spiral goes the Man Who Would Be Premier.Unelected and unloved is our Eddie. And he lives up to his nickname of Steady. As in de-Klein, err decline. He goes from the Man Who Would Be King to the Man Who Is Strom.

Support for Stelmach drops, poll finds

Edmonton -- A new poll suggests support for Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach's Progressive Conservative government has dropped significantly in August to 32 per cent from 54 per cent in January.

The Cameron Strategy poll provided to The Globe and Mail also shows during that same time period the number of undecided or unsure voters has risen to 36 per cent from 18 per cent.

Mr. Stelmach became Premier last December after Ralph Klein retired. A provincial election is expected as early as next spring.

The telephone survey of 602 people was conducted between Aug. 7 to 13, and has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points 19 times out of 20.

And if that wasn't bad enough.

Ex-Tory slams Tories

The former president of the Alberta young Tories has a message for the Stelmach government heading into the next election: wake up and smell the disenchantment.

David McColl resigned as president of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Youth Association earlier this year, saying the party isn't progressive enough.

Now, with the prospect of a winter or early spring election, McColl says the Conservatives - and politicians across Canada, for that matter - must change their ways: politics must focus on social action, not on the cult of personality or pursuit of power.

Otherwise, it will face increasingly hostile public receptions.

McColl points to the PCs' own annual general meeting a few months ago, at which its members from across Alberta asked for a provincial commitment to set national environmental protection standards and to put future surpluses into savings for the days when oil can no longer sustain the economy. Both ideas were rejected.

It is possible, McColl said, to be fiscally conservative but still recognize the legitimacy of social progress; in fact, he said, the public already verges towards a consensus middle-ground on many issues that politicians don't seem to even realize exists.

"Peter Lougheed gets this and is spot on: we're supposed to be the wealthiest province but we won't be forever the way we're doing things. "

There are long-term issues that have to be resolved in Alberta, and the party isn't listening and it isn't questioning. Instead, it's just more smoke and mirrors."


Ouch.



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Nude Newz 8/07


Stripping off due to Climate Change. And as usual guys who just like to strip off and jog, climb, etc.
Hundreds of People Pose Nude on Switzerland Glacier to Raise Awareness About Climate Change

FOX News - 18 Aug 2007
The photo shoot by New York artist Spencer Tunick, famous for his pictures of nude gatherings in public settings worldwide, was designed to draw attention ...

At least they didn't fall off the Glacier.



Nude rock climber falls
Elmira Star-Gazette, NY - 20 Aug 2007
Steven Diehl of Willowstreet, Pa., was spotted climbing nude near the state Welcome Center along Route 15 around 1:50 pm Sunday. State Police patrols who


And if you don't have a Mountain around how about a back wood lot.
Nude protest organized by creepy man with no interest in climate change
NewsBiscuit (satire), UK - 20 Aug 2007
Since he was unable to travel to an Alpine Glacier or the North Pole he proposed that the mass nude protest take place ‘in the woods near my house. ...
Jogging Nude can be a religious experience. But not all religious sect accept that. In this case a protestant in Mormon Utah attacks a Catholic for accepting African cultural norms.

TORKELSON: Nude jog no help to Catholic image
Rocky Mountain News, CO - 19 Aug 2007
Here's a surefire way to scatter the flock on a Sunday morning: Just walk up after Mass and ask folks what they think about their pastor being caught jogging naked





Also See:

Nude

Naked

Sexuality

Gender


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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Croc Tales


Stupid human tricks.





A Vietnamese teenager had his left hand bitten off by a crocodile in a tourist area Saturday after he jumped over a safety barrier and approached the animal kept in an enclosure.

Nguyen Van Thuan, 15, of Duong To commune in Phu Quoc island in southern Vietnam visited the Suoi Tranh tourist center which raises 20 crocodiles and dipped his left hand in the crocodile pond. A two-meter-long, 100kg animal instantly bit off his arm up to the elbow.

Hearing shouts, employees rushed to the scene and took him to a local hospital where he is recovering.

No indication if the boy was wearing a watch. Or if the croc now tocks.

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Crikey!

My six nights up a tree, by Crocodile George

An Australian cattle rancher has told how he spent seven days up a tree looking down into the jaws of two hungry crocodiles after stumbling into a swamp crawling with the reptiles.


David George, 53, was knocked unconscious after falling from his horse during a bush-burning operation in north Queensland.

Dazed and bleeding after coming round, he remounted his horse hoping it would take him home. Instead it took him to a swamp criss-crossed by crocodile tracks.

Surrounded by "salties" - saltwater crocodiles - Mr George realised his only chance was to climb.


Salt water crocodiles: Rancher tells of his week-long ordeal

The rancher said: "There were some monstrous tracks and the big ones are never far from the nest," he said.

"I couldn't go back. It was too far and too dangerous. So I headed to the nearest high ground and stayed there, hoping someone would come and find me before the crocs did.

"Every night I was stalked by two crocs who would sit at the bottom of the tree staring up at me. All I could see was two sets of red eyes below me, and all night I had to listen to a big bull croc bellowing a bit further out.

He was lucky he could have ended up like this shark.
Look for this to eventually show up on Ultimate Fight TV.

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While it looks small against a full-grown crocodile or beside the great white shark, one of the other killers of the ocean, the bull shark is responsible for numerous fatal attacks on humans around the world.

In fact, the great white has often been blamed for a deadly attack on a swimmer when the real culprit is a bull shark.

Which is why even feared salt-water crocodiles, which share river estuary waters with bull sharks in the Northern Territory, tend to keep their distance from them.

Three bull sharks were caught in a lake on the popular Queensland Gold Coast in 2003 after a swimmer was attacked and killed. And just last year a 21-year-old university student was killed by a bull shark on Queensland's Stradbroke Island.

But on this occasion, the 18ft crocodile decided to take on the shark, a creature reported by the respected National Geographical Society as being potentially more dangerous than even the notorious great white.

The two predators became locked in a deadly battle, watched by an astonished fisherman, Mr Indrek Urvet, who was fishing on the banks of the Northern Territory's Daly River.

And speaking of 18 foot Croc's here is one that has gotten away with murder.

Tourists at Bhitarkanika warned against crocodile

Kendrapara, Aug 18: A giant 18-feet crocodile, which had killed five persons in the past, has been exhibiting signs of hostility again at a national park in Orissa, leading authorities to issue a warning to tourists.

The amphibious reptile, the largest in the Bhitarkanika national park and a prime tourist attraction, of late has ensconced itself in the Khola water body, the entry point to the national park, official sources said today.

"There is every possibility that it may attack humans," the sources said.

"Recently we received reports of the reptile attacking fishermen who had a close call," the officials said.

It has also devoured three to four heads of cattle in the past few months, they added.

The crocodile, a male, has developed a strong dislike for any form of human interference in its habitat, wildlife officials said.

Though it attacked and killed five persons, it has not turned on humans in the last 10 years, the sources said.

And it appears that the war between the crocs and the residents in the park continues.

Kendrapara: In the latest outbreak of man-wildlife conflict in the Bhitarkanika National Park, five persons, including two minor children, were injured following attack by violent salt-water crocodiles since past three days while there are reports of agitated locals in Rajnagar tehsil launching assault on the violent species.
India is not the only country with crocs which are protected as an endangered species. And one that has an attitude.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: Wildlife rangers want to catch an endangered crocodile that has sparked a rare scare in a coastal Malaysian city after it attacked a man bathing in a river, an official said Wednesday.

Residents have been warned not to swim or fish in northeastern Kelantan state's main river until the 3-meter (10-feet)-long saltwater crocodile is found, said Zaharil Dzulkafly, assistant director of Kelantan's wildlife department.

The reptile has been spotted repeatedly in the river in Kelantan's capital city of Kota Baru over the past two months, but authorities left it alone until it attacked a 60-year-old carpenter Monday. The man struggled free but suffered cuts and bruises.

"Since this accident, of course, we have to catch it," Zaharil said. "We are monitoring it very closely."

Ibrahim Yaakub, the man who was attacked, said he was bitten on his hands and left leg.

"The crocodile, which had a yellowish streak on its tail, began to swim away quickly after I struggled free," he told The Star newspaper.

The saltwater or estuarine crocodile is protected in Malaysia under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

The species can be found in brackish and freshwater regions of Southeast Asia, eastern India and northern Australia.

Croc stew, a dish that bites back.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have caught a smuggler trying to bring 70 crocodiles into the country, state media reported on Monday.

The haul of crocs, each about 70 centimetres (28 inches) and weighing 1.5 kg (3.3 lb), along with baby turtles was made in Guangdong province in the country's far south, a part of the world where locals have famously adventurous eating habits.

But the report by Xinhua news agency said the crocodiles were "ornamental" and were caught with 3,000 baby turtles in the port city of Zhuhai. It did not say where they came from or what happened to the smuggler.



I have heard of watching for falling rocks but falling crocs?!

Crocodile falls 12 floors in escape bid

A CROCODILE survived a fall from the 12th floor of a block of flats in Russia after trying to escape through a window.

Diving out of the window has become a habit for the crocodile, called Khenar, with concerned neighbours saying it was the third time the animal had used that method to flee.

It lost a tooth in the latest fall but was otherwise unscathed. "It seems the owner was not at home when the crocodile came out of the window," a spokesman for the emergencies ministry in Nizhny Novgorod said.

The crocodile was put in a local aquarium to recover from its fall. Within a few hours, its concerned owner came to pick it up and the reptile was last seen being driven away, lying on the back seat of its owner's car.


In Egypt the folks in Cairo are upset that amongst the flotsam and jetsam of debris in the Nile may be a log that is not a log. A log with teeth.

Floating down the Nile's muddy waters on any given day are soda cans, plastic bags, swimming boys, tourists on felucca boats and patches of marsh grasses with birds hitching a ride.

This summer, a crocodile joined the flotsam and jetsam. Or so it seems.

No photos have confirmed the rumor in the two weeks since reports of sightings surfaced, but the Egyptian media have been abuzz. All that's clear is that an animal from the crocodilian family — perhaps a native Nile croc or a foreign alligator — has made its way to the urban waters of the northern Nile, something Cairenes say hasn't happened in living memory.

The officer in charge of the police patrolling the waterways in central Cairo confirms there is, in fact, a reptile in the river.

Nile crocodiles have made a recovery in other parts of Africa since being hunted to the edge of extinction by the 1950s. But they are rare in northern Egypt, and especially in settled areas where people often kill them for their prized hides — and out of fear.

In Florida bullying in the wildlife park is an evictable offense. But sheesh its just a croc's nature.Though I never thought I would see an alligator referred to as a couch potato.

The staff at Gatorland was busy on Wednesday trying to force a crocodile to move, WESH 2 News reported.The crocodile was hiding in a swamp at the park. The reptile apparently wasn't aware it was moving day.

Mike Hileman and two others were trying to move the 7-foot saltwater crocodile from its pen because of an attitude problem."The reason we're moving her ... is she's being a bully to some of the animals," Hileman said.Gatorland officials said bullying equals eviction, so the handlers came armed with the help of calf rope, electrical tape and towels.With

"Alligators are like couch potatoes. Crocodiless are more springy, aglile, like athletes -- more aggressive,"


Baby Boomers the Croc Generation?


This Crocodile Nation

Earlier this week, I was talking to a young student who works in my local pub. I was telling him about a bizarre nature documentary I'd seen in which an adult male crocodile began eating its own young shortly after they were born. At the time, I turned to my son and said, "Don't worry; I'm not going to eat you!"

While relating this tale, it suddenly struck me that the UK has become something of a 'crocodile country' because, in financial terms at least, we are also eating our own young. What I mean is that the younger generation is losing out big-time to their parents and grandparents in the wealth stakes.

Indeed, as I explained in The Golden Generation, although people aged over fifty account for a third of the UK population (or twenty million people), these adults own three-quarters (75%) of the UK's entire net wealth. In fact, this age group owns £5.16 trillion of the UK's total wealth of £6.89 trillion, making them WOOPies, or Well Off Older Persons.

With all that wealth they can afford a Chanel Croc bag or shoes.

Italian luxury brand Salvatore Ferragamo has a fashionable musuem collection in Florence. The shoes in the museum speak the style of famous Hollywood celebrities from the 40s era. In fact, every season Ferragamo re-invents the shoe styles of a Hollywood star in a new avatar, but without altering its classic style. And it’s not just shoes which are re-visited by the luxury maker. Bag models have been reinterpreted too.

There is the top-handle crocodile bag with the ‘Gancino’ ornament, in golden brown, yellow, red and bright green hues. Made of gold kid, multi-coloured suede and crocodile, the collection is further enriched by a small bag with a chain that can also be used as a belt.

My Other Handbag’s in the Shop Clockwise from far left: Azzedine Alaïa shoe, about $1,500. Call 011-331-42-72-19-19. Etro cuff, $480. At Etro, 720 Madison Avenue. Givenchy clutch, $1,630. At Barneys New York and Blake, Chicago. Burberry patent-leather crocodile sandal, $665. At select Burberry stores. Giorgio Armani ring on Plexiglas base, price on request. At Giorgio Armani stores. Versace crocodile bag, $2,640. At Versace stores. Taher Chemirik silver choker with flower, $10,300, and gold ribbon cuff (bottom left), $13,200. Choker at Jeffrey, 449 West 14th Street. Cuff at Susan, Burlingame, Calif. Mark Davis prystal Bakelite and peridot bangle, $1,910. At Barneys New York.

Photo: Dan Tobin Smith


With prices for gator bags and shoes that high is it any wonder this happened?

OREM, Utah (ABC 4 News) - A taxidermist called police early in the morning on August 12 to report that someone had broken into his business.

Police say taxidermist Kenneth Kirkham arrived at his Orem shop to find the door had been kicked in. Kirkham said a large quantity of exotic hides and materials valued at more than $40,000 were missing.

Kirkham said the missing items include leopard skins, a crocodile skull, a replica crocodile head, an alligator skin, ring-tailed cat skins, bobcat skins, and several deer skins.



Is Esperanto the origin of the phrase;" See ya later alligator, in a while crocodile." Nope it was Bill Halley and the Comets.

A few weeks ago, on a sultry day in the western reaches of Hanoi, I crocodiled with an Australian. I also alligatored with a Nepalese and, with a charming young woman from Madagascar, I caymaned — in French.

Most of the time, however, I was trying hard to speak Esperanto, the most enduring and widely used of the international auxiliary languages, tongues invented to foster communication between people from different nations. Esperantists pride themselves on seeing beyond nationality, class, ethnicity and gender, but when it comes to language, they are given to fine distinctions. Krokodili — “to crocodile” — means to speak one’s native language at an Esperanto gathering. It’s one of several no-nos in Esperantujo, the imaginary country conjured into existence whenever Esperantists congregate, as they did in force in Hanoi at the 63rd annual International Youth Congress of Esperanto.

Alligatori means to speak one’s first language to someone speaking it as a second language; kaymani means to carry on a conversation in a language that is neither speaker’s mother tongue. In fact, the only time I heard “Ne krokodilu!” (“Don’t crocodile!”) was from the lips of someone unable to do so: a denasko, or Esperantist “from birth,” the offspring of two love-struck enthusiasts who met, coupled and raised children in their only common tongue. For the vast majority of Esperantists, though, the language is a motherless tongue — something they have chosen to adopt, often using “teach-yourself” guides or online tutorials.





In Australia generations of Australian Aborigines still wait for justice.
And like the crocs they face extinction.


Tears of crocodile man fall in grief for his people

Mandawuy Yunupingu (left) is embraced by dancers from Maningrida at the Garma festival in Arnhem Land.

Mandawuy Yunupingu (left) is embraced by dancers from Maningrida at the Garma festival in Arnhem Land.
Photo: Glenn Campbell

SIXTEEN years ago, Mandawuy Yunupingu sang his way into the heart of the nation with the anthem of his people, Treaty, a plea for understanding between black and white Australia.

In every sense, the lead singer of Yothu Yindi, the crocodile man, became the face of reconciliation. The song was an international hit. Yunupingu was named Australian of the Year.

Since then, the 50-year-old has watched the momentum for reconciliation peter out and his hopes for a treaty dissipate.

As the Federal Government pushes through legislation that he believes will further undermine the rights and welfare of indigenous Australians, the man who once held so much hope for a more equitable Australia fears not only for the future of his people but for his own.

In January Yunupingu entered a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre. The man so many thought would never fall was fighting for his life.

"As the saying goes with rock and roll, alcohol and drugs can take you to the road of no return, the road of despair," he said from his home in north-east Arnhem Land. "I now know how much damage excessive consumption of alcohol can do."

Winning the battle for sobriety is just one of Yunupingu's health challenges. He is also diabetic and will soon have dialysis treatment for renal failure. He is a long way from the optimistic voice that spoke from his warrior's heart, a heart that carried the hopes of so many Australians, black and white.

But Yunupingu's story is more than that of another rock music casualty. It is intrinsically tied to the struggle of his people.

His family (the name means "rock that stands against time") is synonymous with the struggle for Aboriginal land rights.

The famous 1963 bark petition from the Yolngu people of north-east Arnhem Land marks the first Aboriginal land claim and hangs in the national Parliament. Elder brother Galarrwuy, a senior elder of north-east Arnhem Land, was Australian of the Year in 1978 and remains a force in Australian politics.

And finally a happy ending, though the croc in this tale turned out to be a dragon.

Escaped 'crocodile' picked up by owners

Turtle the bearded dragon was reunited yesterday with his delighted owners.

Hannah Huynh and Calvin Cam showed up at the Vancouver animal shelter to take their "baby" home.

"We were sure he was dead by now because he can't survive in cold conditions and it rained all [last] weekend," said Huynh, 18.

Hannah Huynh, 18, reunited with her pet lizard, Turtle, at the city pound. Turtle escaped on Sunday and police were called by a man who claimed it was a large crocodile on the loose. The lizard is only 30 centimetres long.

Hannah Huynh, 18, reunited with her pet lizard, Turtle, at the city pound. Turtle escaped on Sunday and police were called by a man who claimed it was a large crocodile on the loose. The lizard is only 30 centimetres long.


My fascination with crocodiles? Well blame Walt Disney's Peter Pan. I thought the Crocodile was the best character in the movie.

aptain Hook is a pirate with a grudge. Although he fancies himself too clever for an impudent imp like Peter Pan, in their last bout the boy fed Hook's hand to a crocodile. Now Hook wants revenge, and his ship and all its men will stay anchored in Never Land's waters until he gets it. If only he could find Pan's hideout, he'd trap him in his lair. The deed will take diabolical planning and a treacherous streak of charm, and no one takes greater pleasure in both than Hook. If only that dreaded crocodile would stop circling his ship, licking its chops for the rest of him, he might be able to concentrate on the matter at hand ... er ... hook.

The Crocodile: A crocodile who swallowed an alarm clock and is after the remains of Hook; Pan had cut off Hook's hand and threw it to the Crocodile who enjoyed the little appetizer so much, he's been following him ever since. In comics published later on, the character was known as Tick-Tock the Croc. In the books Peter and the Starcatchers/Peter and the Shadow Thieves, he was called Mr. Grin.


SEE:

Godzilla Croc



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Jelly Bean Summit

"They Melt in Your Mouth Not Your Hands."

Here is the official joint statement of the Three Amigos from the SPP / North American Union Summit in Montebello.

Not one mention of jelly beans, which appear to have been a big focus of trade discussions, which of course had to be kept secret.

Nor any mention of intergalactic highways. Which was a witty way for Harper to dismiss protests about this hush hush secret meeting. He was of course making fun of Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's English. Low blow.

The official press release of the Leaders Statements post summit is just the usual neo-con pap about Free Trade, NAFTA, APEC, etc. So the question is; since we all know what the neo-con agenda is, why all the secrecy?


"I'm amused by the difference between what actually takes place in the meetings and what some are trying to say takes place," President Bush said at a news conference in Montebello, Quebec.


"It's quite comical, actually, when you realize the difference between reality and what some people are talking on TV about," Bush said. "You lay out a conspiracy and then force people to try to prove it doesn't exist.

































SEE:


Kim Campbell on North American Union

Mother Prevails

Nationalism Will Not Stop North American Union


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Coren Is An Idiot

The evidence is in. In black and white. Michael Coren is an idiot.

And why he has a
TV and Radio Talk Show let alone a column in the Sun newspapers shows the shallow depths of the social conservative right wing will dredge to find someone, anyone, who will say anything to cause a controversy.

His opinion on matters is usually outrageous, but the ultimate off the wall comment is his latest column. All 'opinion' and reaction, and being a reactionary of course he will excuse himself, with no factual basis to back up his assertions.

Though you will find his opinion of animals, animal rights and the glorious animal husbandry of farmers shared by members of the Federal Conservative Government as well as rural MLA's and right wingers in the West.

I will excerpt the stupidest and most moronic of his statements. They are not suitable for young children, people with weak hearts, or folks with any heart.

They are the ramblings of mental case who would not matter if he did not have access to the media because they are desperate for right wing commentators to offset the supposed dominance of liberal left news bias.

OK, the evidence is in.

People who are obsessed with the welfare of animals and become hysterical when they hear about a dog or cat being abused are mentally ill.

No need here for compromise or silliness. Animal rights types are mentally ill.

Good God, get a grip! People matter more than animals.

Even bad people matter more than animals.

No relativism please, no soppy arguments about cute puppies compared to mass murderers.

The human spirit and soul is unique and deserves respect, dignity and reverence.

FOR US TO USE

Animals, on the other hand, are there to be used. Not abused, but used. So we can eat them, wear their skins, experiment on them if we can thus improve the human condition.

A million kittens do not one human life make. So if by testing medication on a million kittens we can find a cure for cancer, we should have not a second's pause.

Animals have no rights, but we have responsibilities. To treat them properly.

Farmers do this best because they treat them precisely as animals. Keep them fed and warm, show them affection and care, make them better when sick, but kill them if need be.

But not little Rover or cuddly Whiskers. Because they are dumb they must be special and because they give us pleasure they must be kind. Nonsense. Animals can be cruel, are invariably selfish and exist for us and not us for them.


And right wing columnists who claim to speak for the unborn can be cruel, dumb but must be given special privileges because they speak for those who have yet to exist. And like their fantasy worlds of the before life and after life, they condemn those who live in the here and now to their medieval ideal of hierarchy, man above animals, the King above human rights, and God above Man.

I would be remiss if I did not correct Coren's misleading allegations, assertions, and distortions

Not that he reads my blog, but rather because a letter to the editor while short and pithy does little to refute his over the top column.

First what got Coren's goat was the incident in Toronto this past week. Or more correctly not the incident itself but the reactions to it.

An idiot left his dog in his car with the windows rolled up on a very hot day. The car became a hotbox and the dog's brain was boiling. A Humane Society officer rescued the dog and in the process was confronted by the dogs owner, who interfered in the rescue.

The Humane Officer handcuffed him to his car and took the dog to the emergency vet clinic. The idiot who was broiling his dogs brain seems to have attracted some attention to his blight, and got beat up. As a result the Humane Society officer was suspended from his job. A protest in support of him ensued and Coren considers this an indication animal advocates mental illness.

The real sufferers of mental illness are those who would leave animals in a hot car with the windows closed. And contrary to Coren's relativist assertion that animals are less relevant than humans, these same brain dead types are also the folks who leave children in their cars.

Animal abusers often become human abusers, in fact they often become serial killers, as forensic psychologists will tell you.

And clearly this is the case in Edmonton currently.

Edmonton task force seeking serial cat-killer

Of course using Coren's illogic the police are wasting their time, since;" A million kittens do not one human life make."

Coren's illogic is frighteningly similar to the Nazi's belief that untermenschen were not humans. Once you have determined that there is a difference between humans and the 'other'; animals or humans, you are on that slippery slope to mass species genocide.

Animals have sentience, intelligence through learning, calculative thought processes, communication abilities, etc. But for Coren this matters not they are just dumb animals. It has recently been documented that dogs have the ability to remember hundreds of words, and that in human terms they have the intelligence of a three year old.

Elephants, dolphins, monkeys and apes all cogitate, that is have the capacity to learn, and now we are finding they use tools. Humans domesticated animals in a symbiotic relationship, horses, oxen, dogs, cats, etc. Not by force but through mutual aid to meet each others needs.

It was with development of capitalist agriculture that animals were seen as beasts of burden, not unlike the indentured servant, the serf and slave, those who were disposed of their land due to the English encroachment acts.

When Coren praises farmers as having a sympathetic understanding of the animals in their care, one must be forgiven for LOL. Farmers, ranchers and the like view their animals as property just as their fore bearers did. One can see the sympathetic treatment of animals at the rodeo, where horses who 'would be sold for horse meat" are sacrificed in the horror show that is chuckwagon races.

Coren's over the top rant is not much different from the arguments put forward by Reform/Alliance/Conservative MP Myron Thompson who has opposed strengthening Canada's woefully inadeuate animal protection laws, in order to protect rodeos. The laws concerning animal cruelty date back to 1892.

Since he claims to be a convert to Catholicism I would remind Coren of the venerable Saint Francis of Assisi who saw all creatures as part of Gods Creation, and not dumb animals to be processed, mutilated, tortured, abused, etc. Of course Saint Francis is not Coren's kind of Catholic, since he also was a pacifist as well as animal rights activist.

And speaking of St. Francis of Assisi, and dumb animals, this coyote proves Coren wrong.


Chicago City Animal Care and Control workers unsuccessfully tried Monday afternoon to catch a coyote that has been running wild in the Lincoln Park neighborhood for several days.

For two hours, three workers in three trucks couldn't grab the coyote that ran near children, dog walkers and eventually Cardinal Francis George's residence in the nearby Gold Coast neighborhood. At one point, the animal rested near a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and the environment.

Workers finally gave up their hunt when the coyote slipped away again into a backyard area of George's home.


Dumb animal indeed. Gave dem workers da slip. And knowing Chicago is a Sanctuary City, this illegal alien sought sanctuary from Saint Francis and on Catholic Church property. Indeed Chicago has the largest urban coyote population in North America. That is one Wiley E. Coyote.


SEE:

Animal Crimes

Katrina: It's a Dog-Gone Crime

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

We Love Animals


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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Conservatives Kill Beef Plant



Here is a case where our Conservative Federal government in Ottawa seems to have forgotten that they claim to speak for "farmers" in Alberta.

Balzac beef plant closes after 14 months

Rancher's Beef Ltd. has shuttered its $40-million state-of-the-art processing plant in Balzac and laid off employees, just 14 months after opening to serve global markets.

Loan guarantees promised by the federal government fell short about $10 million because of changes to the funding formula, he said, adding the missing millions had to be taken out of the plant's operating budget to complete construction.

"We would never have built this plant if the government did what they did (sooner)," he said.

The company, a partnership of about 50 ranchers, farmers and feedlot owners from Alberta and B.C., had no choice but to file for bankruptcy, Van Raay said.

The closure of the slaughterhouse is a blow to Canada's fragile beef industry that is still recovering from the 2003 BSE crisis, said Ted Haney, president of Canada Beef Exports.
Meanwhile that other Tory Farmers Government of Eddie Stelmach did not bail out the plant. Instead they have been mired in a water diversion controversy about providing taxpayer subsidized infrastructure to Balzac for a Horse Racing Track, Casino and mall.

The Tories know where their bread is buttered. It ain't farm processing plants, as we saw with their fire sale of the old Gainers plant. Nor is it farmers support, as we saw in the corporate bail out over BSE.

Nope they subsidize horse racing and promote gambling. The latter being where they make all their money, since oil royalties are a subsidy to the oil industry.

This is just another nail in the coffin of the family farm.

Kill and Chill: Restructuring Canada's Beef Commodity Chain

By Ian MacLachlan,

Both horrified and fascinated by a visit with his geography students to the Canada Packers Lethbridge plant, Ian MacLachlan searched for a book that would explain the main features of the Canadian meat packing industry. Finding very little available, he set about writing an account of the industry that is both an economic geography and economic history.Comprehensive in its treatment of the whole system surrounding the Canadian beef industry, Kill and Chill offers a history of the structural changes in Canada's cattle and beef commodity chain, beginning with calf production and cattle feeding on farms and feedlots. It goes on to describe the changes in cattle marketing, the historical development of meatpacking-in particular the emergence of Canada's 'Big Three' meatpacking firms-and the rise of meatpacking unionism. Carrying the story almost to the present with the takeover of Maple Leaf by the McCain family in the mid-1990s, the work concludes with a discussion of current trends in retail beef marketing.

SEE:

Alberta State Capitalism


Agribusiness Bad Boys



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Hurricane and Howard Dean



Mexico, Belize bracing for wrath of Dean


Texas Warily Watches Dean and Prepares


Reminded me; we had not heard from or about Howard Dean in a while.

So has Dean been as big a disaster for the Democrats as his hurricane namesake appears to be for Jamaica and Mexico?

Not so says this article.

Bloggers and Billionaires, MoveOn and Howard Dean: The Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party


Plus I get to use the screamin' Dean photo again.

And this YouTube flashback.






SEE:

Sach Dean

Purple Wave USA


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