Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

Anomaly: a mixed race documentary

[American Dream]

Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs

[American Dream]

For every scar of violence and victimization, we have also inherited legacies of resistance. For every moment of darkness inflicted upon us, we have also received from our ancestors and from one another strength, dignity and love. As displaced peoples, racialized peoples, queer peoples, women - as resisting peoples - we must not shirk our duty to affirm the significance of those lives that are otherwise written off as collateral damage. These lives are sacred and we do not become free by forgetting.

—Journeying with Gaza: Vancouver Status of Women Statement on Israeli
Occupation and Aggression against Palestinian Peoples

[American Dream]

http://www.justseeds.org/other_artists/04sh_norma.html



Sanya Hyland
Norma Esther Andrade
$20

Norma Esther Andrade founded Nuestra Hijas de Regreso a Casa (NHRC) [May our Daughters Return Home] in 2001 in response to the femicides - the intentional murder of women for being women - and disappearances of women and girls of Ciudad Juarez, México. One of the murdered includes her own daughter. For her activism, Norma Esther Andrade was shot five times in the shoulder and hand by an unidentified gunman outside of her home in Ciudad Juarez in December, 2011. On February 3rd, 2012, Andrade was attacked again, this time outside her home in the relative safety of Mexico City. In making this portrait, I hope to bring attention to these femicides [that continue in Ciudad Juarez and which are also on the rise in places like Estado de México (Mexico State) and other southern states] as well as to the precarious condition of Mexican activists and journalists whose government is unable and unwilling to protect them.

[American Dream]

Love is an act of courage, not of fear. Love is commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause - the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical. As an act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not love.

—Paulo Freire

[American Dream]

…for each of us in some way has been both oppressed and the oppressor. We are afraid too look at how we have failed each other. We are afraid to see how we have taken the values of our oppressor into our hearts and turned them against ourselves and one another. We are afraid to admit how deeply “the man’s” words have been ingrained in us.

—Cherríe Moraga

[American Dream]

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1 ... watha.html

A Great Difference between Red and White

Sago-Yo-Watha (Red Jacket), Iroquois, 1805

Sago-Yo-Watha (Red Jacket) was an Iroquois law-giver, whose name in English means "He who keeps us alert". A contemporary observed that he spoke "with a voice as low, as gentle and caressing, as e'er won a maiden's lips". In the following piece, delivered in 1805, he explains to a young Moravian Missionary why he was being refused permission to open a mission on Indian land.
From The Indigenous Voice, edited by Roger Moody.


Friend and brother; it was the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet together this day. He orders all things, and he has given us a fine day for our council. He has taken his garment from before the sun, and caused it to shine with brightness upon us; our eyes are opened, that we see clearly; our ears are unstopped, that we have been able to hear distinctly the words that you have spoken; for all these favors we thank the Great Spirit, and him only.

Brother, this council fire was kindled by you; it was at your request that we came together at this time; we have listened with attention to what you have said. You requested us to speak our minds freely; this gives us great joy, for we now consider that we stand upright before you, and can speak what we think; all have heard your voice, and all speak to you as one man; our minds are agreed.

Brother, you say you want an answer to your talk before you leave this place. It is right you should have one, as you are a great distance from home, and we do not wish to detain you; but we will first look back a little, and tell you what our fathers have told us, and what we have heard from the white people.

Brother, listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned this great island. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of Indians. He had created the buffalo, the deer, and other animals for food. He made the bear and the beaver, and their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered them over the country, and taught us how to take them. He had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. All this he had done for his red children because he loved them. If we had any disputes about hunting grounds, they were generally settled without the shedding of much blood. But an evil day came upon us; your forefathers crossed the great waters, and landed on this island. Their numbers were small; they found friends, and not enemies; they told us they had fled from their own country for fear of wicked men, and come here to enjoy their religion. They asked for a small seat; we took pity on them, granted their request, and they sat down amongst us; we gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return. The white people had now found our country; tidings were carried back, and more came amongst us; yet we did not fear them, we took them to be friends; they called us brothers; we believed them, and gave them a larger seat. At length, their numbers had greatly increased; they wanted more land; they wanted our country. Our eyes were opened, and our minds became uneasy. Wars took place; Indians were hired to fight against Indians, and many of our people were destroyed. They also brought strong liquor among us; it was strong and powerful, and has slain thousands.

Brother, our seats were once large, and yours were very small; you have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets; you have got our country, but are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us.

Brother, continue to listen. You say you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind, and if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right, and we are lost; how do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book; if it was intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given it to us, and not only to us, but why did he not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?

Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit; if there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agree, as you can all read the book?

Brother, we do not understand these things. We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers, and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us their children. We worship that way. It teacheth us to be thankful for all the favors we receive; to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.

Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all; but he has made a great difference between his white and red children; he has given us a different complexion, and different customs; to you he has given the arts; to these he has not opened our eyes; we know these things to be true. Since he has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not conclude that he has given us a different religion according to our understanding. The Great Spirit does right; he knows what is best for his children; we are satisfied.

Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion, or take it from you; we only want to enjoy our own.

Brother, you say you have not come to get our land or our money, but to enlighten our minds. I will now tell you that I have been at your meetings, and saw you collecting money from the meeting. I cannot tell what this money was intended for, but suppose it was for your minister; and if we should conform to your way of thinking, perhaps you may want some from us.

Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors; we are acquainted with them; we will wait, a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again what you have said.

Brother, you have now heard our answer to your talk, and this is all we have to say at present. As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand, and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey, and return you safe to your friends.



Source: Daniel Drake, Lives of Celebrated American Indians, (Boston, Bradbury, Soden & Co. 1843), 283–87.

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

“From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex. The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening. The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm. This world exists simply to satisfy the needs - including, importantly, the sentimental needs - of white people and Oprah.”

—Teju Cole

http://eastafrodite.tumblr.com/post/329 ... hildren-to

[American Dream]

Video of TV Anchor Slamming Anti-Fat "Bully" Goes Viral




A video of a Wisconsin news anchor taking a stand against a viewer who insulted her weight has gone viral. WKBT-TV anchor Jennifer Livingston received an email from a viewer who took issue with what he termed her "physical condition," saying: "Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people." Livingston used the insult to make a statement against bullying.

Jennifer Livingston: "The truth is I am overweight. You could call me fat and yes, even obese on a doctor’s chart. But to the person who wrote me that letter, do you think I don’t know that? That your cruel words are pointing out something that I don’t see? You don’t know me. You are not a friend of mine. You are not a part of my family, and you have admitted that you don’t watch this show so you know nothing about me but what you see on the outside — and I am much more than a number on a scale. To all of the children out there who feel lost, who are struggling with your weight, with the color of your skin, your sexual preference, your disability, even the acne on your face, listen to me right now. Do not left your self-worth be defined by bullies."

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

http://libcom.org/library/f-cked-dildo-shop-zoe-noe

F*cked by the Dildo Shop - Zoe Noe



A tale of the toil of work in a cooperative sex shop.

“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy."
—Franz Kafka

It’s the eve of the annual planning meeting for the staff of Feelin’ Groovy, America’s favorite sex toy company—a worker-owned cooperative! A year ago, I was instrumental in helping plan the event. A year later I’m sitting on a California beach, soaking in the waning hours of sunshine, watching the dogwalkers and the kites fluttering in the brisk breeze. I won’t be attending or helping to plan the annual meeting tomorrow because I no longer work there. How did this happen?

When I wrote part one of this odyssey through the revolving door of the job market (see “Lose Jobs Now, Ask Me How!” in PW #17), I began with the realization that “all jobs are temporary”. That is no less a truism today, although in recent years I have concentrated—even staked my employment hopes in enterprises that at least appeared to offer some semblance of a collective work environment.

I joined a neighborhood recycling center which had recently “collectivized” ( see Goodbye Kitty, below). The collective part was true in terms of staff having considerable latitude over day-to-day working conditions, but it was fundamentally limited in that we did not actually own the business. It was owned by the neighborhood council, and major decisions were made by the Board of that organization. We had all the frustration of the worst aspects of the collective experience—acrimonious, excruciating five-hour staff meetings—with very little of the actual control and none of the rewards of ownership. The worst problem was a fundamental schism between the collective and a faction within—led by the son of the man who founded the recycling center back in the seventies—who wanted to bury the collective experiment. They eventually prevailed of course, with the help of the mostly spineless Board, and our collective was history, and the work experience became more regimented, etc.

I never imagined I would become a Macrobiotic cook—certainly one of my early restaurant managers, in firing me, advised me to try anything else—yet I worked for a number of years at an eccentric Macrobiotic restaurant owned by a gruff curmudgeon with tightwad tendencies, who nonetheless was hands off most of the time and in most ways we pretty much ran the place ourselves in a fairly anarchic fashion, and had lots of creative freedom. But we didn’t own the joint; and however much it was evident that things generally ran much better when the owner wasn’t there to fuck things up, still he would meddle often enough that the place could never really be the place we imagined it could be—and was, at moments—not to mention it was constantly losing money.

A new career

I never imagined I would be selling sex toys for a living either, but in the summer of 1999 I landed a temp job working the reception desk for Feelin’ Groovy Sex Toy Emporium, a company that did its part in the latter 20th century to help make masturbation a household word (along with its accessories). Surprisingly, the company was even a worker-owned co-op!

It was an accidental career choice, like so many I’ve experienced. I was jobless, returning from six months away, during the height of the dot com boom. I asked a friend if he knew anyone who was hiring—he forwarded me an email exchange from a woman friend of his who worked there, on the subject of whether they use temps, and whether they even hired men at a woman-owned company. Both answers were affirmative, and I put in a request to be added to their pool of temps, to be perhaps summoned whenever a plethora of boring data entry work accumulated.

I heard nothing for a couple of months, but then was surprised with a call one day from the office manager, asking if I could fill in mornings at the reception desk.

While training, I found that the company was actually between receptionists and was filling the position with temps while accepting applications for the permanent position. Both I and the other part-time temp decided to apply for the job—and since we were already trained in the basics by the time the interviews came around, they hired us both.

I actually lied during my interview and said “a few years” when asked how long I planned to work there. It wouldn’t look good to tell them that I was probably heading back to Florida after a few months, so I didn’t mention it. But then, once I was hired, with the possibility of benefits starting after three months, the new job started to seem pretty good to me, and I quietly decided not to return to Florida. It was a fun place to work, pretty easy, and I got to interact with all sorts of interesting people on a regular basis—not only our eclectic staff, but many sex industry luminaries who would cross my desk on any given day. Also, I was on track to become a co-owner of the company, which basically involved a series of co-op orientation classes, maintaining a satisfactory meeting attendance record and having a token ownership payment deducted from one’s paycheck over the course of a year.

I took being a co-op member quite seriously. Finally, here was a chance to achieve true worker’s self-determination, in a business that really was worker-owned! I got involved with various committees, helped mentor new hires into the co-op process, and even ran for the Board of Directors.

About the cooperative

Feelin’ Groovy didn’t start out as a cooperative, but began as a sole woman proprietorship in the late seventies, an outgrowth of the feminist consciousness raising of that era. Much legend has attached itself to the story, but fact is she tapped into a substantial need for quality sex merchandising and education in a setting that wasn’t demeaning. By the early nineties she had a staff, and a mail order catalog as well, and sales continued to multiply. She sold the business to the staff, who formed a cooperative of 13 people or so—all women. The first man was hired in the mid-nineties. By the time I was hired, staff size had mushroomed upwards of 75 people.

The cooperative dynamic was different from businesses which had been formed as cooperatives or collectives. So-called sex-positivity was the common variable, and there was always a creative tension between those for whom being a co-op simply meant that the profits were shared and others who came into it with a lot of idealism about what it meant to be a co-op; that it implied a more horizontal authority structure. (That tension continues to exist today.)

Such exponential growth brought challenges to the cooperative model that simply did not exist at other co-ops which were much smaller, or whose size had remained somewhat constant over the years. Fact was that, for all of its cooperative idealism, it always retained a fairly hierarchical authority structure, which only became more pronounced as the company increased in size, especially as we began to hire more from outside the company for certain specially-skilled positions high on the hierarchy food chain. The company would often give lip service to, but then usually gloss over, options of job sharing and skill mentoring.

Managers regularly complained about having decisions micromanaged, often by people who worked in other departments. In the late nineties the membership approved a far-reaching proposal that would give managers much more latitude to make decisions unchallenged. Formally separate realms were established within the company: “Operations” which meant the realm of managers to conduct day to day decisions about the functioning of the business, and “Governance” which meant the “co-op” and the issues that the workers were allowed to have a voice in. Issues pertaining to the “co-op” became relegated to a status kind of like being involved in after-school extracurricular activities; sort of noble, and you were often given kudos for doing so, but increasingly they tended to occur a pretty safe distance from the actual governance of the company.

I think many of the workers at the time voted for those proposals without really grasping the far-reaching implications of what they were approving, or how much they were giving up. For it led to a general state of affairs in which the management team made all the really important decisions, with the “governance” side of the company often acting as a rubber stamp to management decisions at tightly scripted general membership meetings where there wasn’t much room for controversy, and at which the really important decisions were usually not in play. Calling Feelin’ Groovy a “cooperative” was similar to calling the United States a “democracy”: it was mainly window dressing to add a kind of legitimacy to management decisions, by being approved by the group at large. This trend within the co-op was further accelerated after the crisis to the business following 9/11, when our managers were trusted to steer the ship, and many of the interesting things that made the co-op a co-op were jettisoned for not being cost-effective. Just like in the real world.

The day that changed dildo sales forever

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 shattered the illusion that ours was a recession-proof business. We were always amazed by the phenomenal success of the business; every year we would show 15-25% growth almost despite ourselves. Our revenue took a serious hit in the aftermath of the attacks—our retail stores took a big tumble as many people cancelled their vacation plans, and we suddenly discovered just how dependent on tourist traffic we really were. Our mail order division also took a big hit with the anthrax scare. All of a sudden we faced layoffs for the first time in the history of the company. I was amazed that the reception job survived this period, as mine was not one of the jobs eliminated. Many recently hired retail staff were laid off however, and I found myself in the strange situation of training to fill in shifts at the stores.

Along with the reality of layoffs, the culture of our cooperative received a serious blow, as many of the committees and classes and meetings were deemed peripheral to the survival of the business. A great deal of power was consolidated in the hands of management at this time: most people in the company were scared; just wanting to keep our jobs. Indeed, we were in many ways a microcosm of the national mood at that time; that our survival was in jeopardy, and people were willing to trust that our leaders knew best.

Later—once the business stabilized somewhat away from the brink of dire emergency, and the more normal mistrust (between management and front line staff) had room to reassert itself—there arose a pretty substantial backlash to the concentration of authority in the company, but mostly it played itself out in the form of impotent grumbling, an occasional flame at a general membership meeting, but never resulted in any serious challenge to the corporate order. Occasionally, certain disgruntled floor staff were able to ride the backlash to elected seats on the board, but usually within six months on the board those same individuals could be found conforming to the management line about the sacrifices required in order for profitability to happen.


MAO: If we raise the salary differential to 75:1, we'll drive our competitors out of business!
WORKERS: ALL POWER TO THE CO-OP!

A hostile takeover

Anyway, propelled by my enthusiasm for the co-op, I applied for, and was hired as the Secretary to the Board of Directors, which meant taking minutes at Board meetings, as well as being the one to oversee whether everyone was keeping up with their ownership duties.

The co-op part of the business took pride in the fact that we adhered to a reasonable pay ratio between highest and lowest paid employees. At the time I was hired, the differential was 3 to 1; sometime during the past few years the co-op voted to change it to 4:1. (According to Equal Exchange’s web site, based on Business Week’s 2000 annual survey of American corporations the ratio between typical CEO pay and that of average workers is 475 to 1!) Management was often maneuvering to increase the ratio, claiming that it was difficult to attract qualified management personnel for the wages we were able to offer. During this time, the Board and management were working hard on overhauling the company’s compensation policy.

After months and numerous drafts, a completed compensation policy was sent to the Board for approval. The Board passed it, but many staff were unhappy about it; particularly with the provisions which would greatly reduce annual seniority wage increases, and also with the timing: the completed policy was presented to the membership and then Board was scheduled to vote on it the following day!

A group of retail staff, in an effort to keep the new policy from being railroaded through, organized a special meeting of the cooperative in order to veto the Board decision. It was unsuccessful, as most members voted to uphold the new policy. But in the week leading up to the special meeting there was much confusion regarding exactly how many votes were needed to veto a Board decision, since it had never been attempted before. The Bylaws were vague on this topic, and many members—including several Board members—were consulting me in my role as Secretary for a definitive answer.

I used simple logic in figuring out the threshold for a veto, but it turns out my logic was not simple enough. My answer was at odds with the president of the board, who said it was one greater than the number I came up with, which was certainly open to interpretation, and hardly mattered anyway as it was not expected to be a close vote at all. But after the phone call where the board president called me to reassert her interpretation, I knew I was fucked.

Several days later, as I was seated at the reception desk, someone came up to me with a stack of papers she’d found in the restroom, and asked if I could figure out who they might belong to. It was a stack of printed-out emails, left behind by a board member, and I recognized the same blizzard of emails I’d been involved in previously. But there was one added that I had not seen before, from the board president to the other board members, stressing that they needed to get rid of me as Secretary (as I had already been duly warned never to disagree publicly with board members in my role as Secretary), and that there would be a closed door discussion about it at the next board meeting. I was clearly not meant to see that email, but I decided to beat them to the punch, and wrote my resignation letter, and presented it to them at the beginning of the next board meeting, and gave four weeks notice.

My satisfaction was short-lived however. In a seemingly unrelated turn of events, I was summoned the next day to the General Manager’s office, where I was told that my reception job was being eliminated at the end of the month. I was offered part-time hours at one of the retail stores, and after some consideration I decided to take it, even though I really didn’t think I would do very well at retail.

Sheesh, the things I have to do to
just to keep my job!




Yes ma’am, humiliate me some more!

I was often amazed at how I managed to get on the other side of the counter of a place that I wouldn’t otherwise frequent—while meeting so many earnestly kinky young sex radicals who would do anything to have my job. Still, my first few months at the store were surprisingly fun as I was trained in the ins and outs of dildos, vibrators, erotic videos and books, condoms and lubes, light bondage gear, customer service, register skills, ridiculous novelty items, how to deal with unsavory customers (known as “wankers”), and the potential benefits and hazards of various materials (such as silicone, and the ubiquitous jelly rubber). My coworkers were lively, and I appreciated the change of pace; working as a team, compared with the office which was so compartmentalized. And for the most part I enjoyed having direct contact with the buying public (in my dual role as sales associate and occasional sex counselor). I enjoyed doing the actual front line work fulfilling the company’s sex-positive mission, and proved more adept at it than I would have thought possible.

Or so I thought. My illusion of comradely co-existence was rudely shattered nearly four months later, when I finally had my overdue mid-training performance evaluation with my supervisor and found that we had a serious mismatch of expectations. She had pages worth of minor infractions, which became major due to the sheer volume of them (many which I could have worked on much sooner if they had not been kept secret from me for so long). Heinous misdeeds such as asking too many questions (as training retail staff we were encouraged to ask questions, but apparently it was not okay; in my case it often came down to asking the wrong question to the wrong person at the wrong time.), talking to people sometimes while they were on their break (horrors!), picking the wrong time apparently to explain something to a customer (or failing occasionally to take advantage of an opportunity to cross-sell a certain product). (Oh yeah, and lateness. Though once I found out I was officially in the doghouse, I was not late again!)

I was put on probation, with a month to basically clean up my act, and request any additional training I might think I’d need. I pretty much gave up on asking questions altogether, for fear I might step on some toes. It became increasingly obvious that many of my coworkers were spying on me—and that many of them would run to my supervisor to complain instead of just bringing it up to me. Which provided some real gems at my probationary check-in a month later. I thought I’d been really making some improvements, but my supervisor came in with pages more of infractions against me. Such as putting deposit slips in plastic ziplock bags even when there were no coins in the deposit. Or (gasp!) taking a little too long to gift wrap a purchase. Or being unduly generous in offering to fill in for people at the other stores who were calling me almost daily begging me to cover shifts for them.

By this point I was begging my managers and HR to let me give up my cherished status as an “owner” of this great establishment, let me just be an on-call flex person at the other retail stores. That way everyone will be happy; people will be thrilled to get their shifts covered, and you guys will be spared having to answer the wrong questions at the wrong moments. But because I was on probation, I wasn’t allowed any flexibility over where I could work at all. Isn’t being part of a cooperative wonderful?

I was given an ultimatum of no more than two infractions in the coming month, which I unfortunately wasn’t able to overcome, especially now that coworkers at the other stores I filled in at were also spying on me; reporting such grievous offenses as taking a long time to complete a downtime task, or being in the wrong section of the store at a certain given moment. My supervisor deftly ambushed me one afternoon, cheerfully suggesting we could step outside for a little check-in, and casually shooting the shit with me on the way out there, where the store and HR managers were waiting for me with my last check in hand.

At Feelin’ Groovy, we often prided ourselves on navigating uncharted territory—being a sex toy company the size we were while remaining worker owned and operated—but I wonder if the sheer size of the group is fundamentally incompatible with the co-op experiment. Other pressures have to do with the fact that, despite the universal need for non-judgmental sex information and quality sex accessories, our revenue was essentially reliant on selling luxury items—there’s only so many Rabbit Pearls or Hitachi Magic Wands the average person could need. (It’s not like co-op natural foods store with a regular customer base that can be counted on to come in and buy their organic rice and veggies every week.)

It’s remarkable to me how an organization with an oft-expressed commitment to “diversity” can result in such a cookie-cutter approach to sales staff. And how such creative free speech enthusiasts can end up creating a work atmosphere where people are afraid to speak their mind about the subject of work—and where it gets more likely to be fired for the crime of just wanting to be a human being while at work.

I feel for many of those who are still there, who tell me how morale is at an all-time low, with everyone—even veterans of over ten years—fearful that they will be the next ones to get the axe. I may have exchanged some relative certainty for an additional degree of precariousness, but I don’t miss the impending betrayal and humiliation. Nor do I miss being expected to sell an increasing array of cheesy gag gifts aimed at suburban bachelorettes with loose wallets in order to meet the bottom line. How sad that “sex-positive” would come to this!

“Goodbye Kitty”

I knew it was an exciting fashion moment when I looked at the full-page Macy’s ad in the paper, which featured full-body catsuits in luxuriant velour. Not my usual style, but I was especially enticed by the black & white leopard print variety. “I have to have that!,” I remarked to my co-workers at the restaurant.

They didn’t have my size at Macy’s (I’m a big guy; tall and slender), but I shopped around, and found one at a boutique on Haight Street that fit me pretty well. I wore it at all three of my part-time jobs. Customers at the Macrobiotic restaurant were amused, slightly titillated, but took it in stride, quite used to the eccentric staff. People barely raised an eyebrow when I wore it at the gay newspaper where I worked as a production assistant. I had no reason to imagine they wouldn’t be similarly blasé at the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood recycling center where my commitment was dwindling anyway.

I had worked at the recycling center for five years, much of it enjoyable (see my tale of toil, “There Goes the Neighborhood”, in Processed World issue #26/27), but it was a grimy job, our failed attempt at collectivization had taken its toll on me, and I had recently moved across the Bay to Oakland, and was holding on to just one shift a week while I contemplated giving notice.

My remaining shift wasn’t even at the yard, but helping staff a pilot program for recycling office paper at some of the large office buildings downtown. Since I was commuting from Oakland, I would just meet my co-workers at the loading dock of a certain building. They would drop off a truckload of empty barrels along with a handtruck, and my job was to visit all the offices we had contracted with, and exchange all our empty barrels for full ones, and bring them down to the loading dock.

I actually tried to give three-weeks notice, but it was denied by the assistant manager (who was in charge while our regular manager was out on paternity leave). For some petty, ridiculous reason that I never understood, he didn’t trust me to train anyone else to take over my duties: I had to wait until the head of the office pickup program returned from a lengthy vacation before I could resign. This didn’t sit well with me, and I wasn’t sure yet how I would respond. Certainly, it was a discouraging reminder of how far workplace dynamics had fallen in the couple of years since we ceased formally being a collective.

One particular September morning (coincidentally the same day that would have been my last had I been allowed to give notice), I met my truck crew and received the barrels, then decided to change into the catsuit in the bathroom on the 41st floor before working my way down to the ground floor. As I made my way from floor to floor, I received quite an assortment of responses. Secretaries and receptionists loved it; it brightened their day, and was a welcome relief from the usual business drag. Senior stockbroker types also got a kick out of it, regarding me with slightly condescending smiles that nonetheless suggested that they too welcomed a sight that was a little out of the ordinary. It was the middle management types—who were still concerned with climbing the corporate ladder—who couldn’t handle it.

On the 29th floor, middle-aged woman, her face as severe and ashen grey as her power suit, confronted me, shaken, and told me that my attire was completely unacceptable, and that I must leave the building at once. I sidestepped her and boarded the freight elevator amused with how uptight some people are. When I got to the loading dock though, a security guard was waiting for me, and refused to let me even unload the full barrels of paper from the freight elevator, insisting only that I leave the building at once. I said “fine, you get to unload the freight elevator then!”

Once outside of the building, I found a suitable location and changed back into street clothes, and took a lunch break. Then I slipped back into the building and quickly, quietly did the remaining floors (so that my co-workers wouldn’t be stuck having to do it). I gathered all of the full barrels on the now unattended loading dock, and went home.

The next morning though, I received a phone call at home from the assistant manager, who was very angry and upset, saying that the phone had been ringing off the hook during my stunt, with calls from various offices that I had visited, complaining that my attire was inappropriate and left very little to the imagination. (He said one of the callers said they could “see everything”.) In short, I was being fired. When pressed for comment from me, I just laughed and said, “Sayonara, I’m through!”

Several years later, I was in the Haight, and happened to pay a visit to the recycling center. A couple of my former co-workers were still there, and one of them introduced me to a young woman who had recently begun working there. When I told her my name, her eyes widened and she exclaimed, “Oh my God, are you the one who got fired for wearing the cat suit?!!”

—Z.N.

[American Dream]

http://fuckyeahdukkha.tumblr.com/post/3 ... -appearing



Pro-Tolerance Ads Begin Appearing In NYC Subway

(New York, NY – WNYC) Three religious groups — two Christian and one Jewish — have decided to fight speech with speech in the clamor over a controversial subway ad. Pro-Muslim ads from those groups have begun showing up in the New York City subway — in some cases, cheek by jowl with an ad that equates the the word “jihad” with savages.

Harriet Olson, CEO of United Methodist Women, said she and her colleagues objected to the original ad and wanted to counter it with a “visual response.” So her group matched the anti-jihad group’s $6,000 ad buy for posters in ten Manhattan subway stations. “We think that respectful dialogue is absolutely important and that the work for peace is very difficult,” she said in an interview with TN, before referring to the anti-jihad ad: “incendiary speech is not the way to get there.”

Jim Wallis of Sojourners, a Christian social justice group, said he was similarly offended by the original ad. “As a rabbi wrote in The New York Times last week, this ad may be legal but it’s wrong and repugnant,” he said. The Sojourners ad reads simply, “Love your Muslim Neighbors.”

It will begin appearing on Monday, as will a separate pro-Muslim ad by Rabbis for Human Rights. That message reads: “In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.”

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the executive director for the group, which includes 1,800 rabbis. “We want it to be clear that the Jewish community doesn’t support this de-humanization of an entire group of people, but rather the Jewish community values working in partnership with our Muslim neighbors,” she said.

After the original ad caused an outcry, including a rowdy confrontation at a New York MTA board meeting last week, the MTA considered banning so-called issue ads from its properties. The authority decided instead to put a disclaimer on some ads that express political, religious or moral views. The disclaimer would read that the ad “doesn’t imply an endorsement” by the MTA. The pro-Muslim ad by United Methodist Women does not include a disclaimer.

http://transportationnation.org/2012/10 ... yc-subway/

[American Dream]

http://www.blackagendareport.com/conten ... thing-else

Freedom Rider: How Mass Incarceration Affects Everything Else
Wed, 10/03/2012


by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Mass incarceration affects every aspect of Black life. “It is not mysterious that a group with large numbers of its members locked away would have higher rates of HIV or lower rates of marriage or a median net worth of only $4,955.” So great is the weight that imprisonment imposes on Black America, “every negative statistic that bedevils the black community” is tied to the phenomenon.

“Statistics about black people cannot be trusted because incarcerated men aren’t included in them.”

The United States is the imprisonment capital of the world. Just one state, Louisiana, has an incarceration rate 5 times higher than Iran and 13 times higher than China, nations which Americans are supposed to feel superior to. More than 2 million Americans are behind bars in jails and prisons, which is the highest on earth in total number and by percentage of population.

The phenomenon we now know as mass incarceration began in the early 1970s and has steadily increased since. In this country minor infractions result in prison terms and an ever increasing number of offenses are added to the list. Black people are a minority of Americans but make up fully half of the imprisoned population, and most of those were convicted of non-violent crimes.

Imprisonment was and is seen as a tool to keep black people from fully realizing their gains made in the 1960s. It was no longer legal to keep black people from living where they wanted, getting jobs they were qualified to get or preventing them from going to the polls. It was possible to put people in jail for any and every offense, however. People can’t compete for good jobs or agitate for their rights if they are in jail. Problem solved.

The toll that mass incarceration has taken on black people is enormous. A newly published book entitled Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress gives the facts and figures behind the crime committed against black people. Prisoners are disappeared persons who are removed from census figures, who lose their voting rights, and who upon gaining their freedom are banned from entire categories of employment. According to author Becky Pettit, statistics about black people cannot be trusted because incarcerated men aren’t included in them.

“Black people are a minority of Americans but make up fully half of the imprisoned population.”

Every negative statistic that bedevils the black community is tied to the awful effects of imprisonment. It is not mysterious that a group with large numbers of its members locked away would have higher rates of HIV or lower rates of marriage or a median net worth of only $4,955. As Invisible Men so clearly points out, the large numbers of black men who are behind bars and who therefore disappear from productive life means that these dismal statistics would be even worse if the incarcerated were not also disappeared from the numbers.

Invisible Men is just the latest in a series of books such as The New Jim Crow and A Plague of Prisons which reveal the terrible toll that incarceration is taking on the black community. These works are seriously needed, documenting with hard data the depth of the attack on black people. Unfortunately, this plethora of books doesn’t seem to be lowering rates of incarceration. The great recession and its resultant budget constraints around the country have been the only thing forcing some states and municipalities to open up some of the prison doors.

It all may have started slowly, but the code words and race baiting were evident from the beginning. Terms like “law and order,” “war on drugs,” “dead beat dads” all meant that more and more black people would end up behind bars for infractions big and small. Yet it must be pointed out that code words exist for a reason. They speak with a nudge and a wink to the intended audience in a language that others may not understand.

There is a nagging question about these statistics, an elephant in the room as it were. America could not have become the world’s prison capital if a majority of the population didn‘t want it to happen. A recent poll regarding New Yorkers’ attitudes toward the NYPD stop and frisk policies shows a clear racial divide. Most whites polled, 55%, think that stop and frisk is acceptable while only 35% of blacks are supportive.

“America could not have become the world’s prison capital if a majority of the population didn‘t want it to happen.”

It isn’t surprising that the victims of police abuse are more likely to oppose it, but that shouldn’t stop the non-victims from opposing it too. Stop and frisk, like imprisonment, assures many white people that black people will be locked up far away from them, or at the very least will be sufficiently inconvenienced that they will not be able to compete for any benefits which society might offer. In the case of stop and frisk the victimized population may just decide to leave town for good and take themselves out of sight and out of mind.

This is the challenge of discussing not only mass incarceration but many other issues too. Black people suffer as a direct result of conscious and unconscious thinking on the part of white people. Some of those New Yorkers who will tell a pollster that stop and frisk is acceptable would not admit to harboring racist thoughts, but their reticence in owning up to those feelings doesn’t change the fact that their desires hold sway in public policy making. Stop and frisk would end immediately if enough white people wanted it to.

The wave of scholarship on incarceration is all to the good but it isn’t enough if it doesn’t address the why behind the numbers. Black people have a history of seeing political victories turn pyrrhic. The backlash against black progress is an old story that keeps repeating itself and mass incarceration is just the latest manifestation. The next steps must include ways of honestly addressing the fact that racism is at the root of almost every crisis facing black people. If this simple fact isn’t addressed, all of these excellent books and studies will in fact be irrelevant.


Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

[American Dream]

http://libcom.org/library/role-catholic ... -1941-1945

The role of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia's holocaust
- Seán Mac Mathúna, 1941-1945



Historical information about Catholic priests and Muslim clerics being willing accomplices in the genocide of the Yugoslavia's Serbian, Jewish and Roma population during the Second World War.

During the Second World War in Yugoslavia, Catholic priests and Muslim clerics were willing accomplices in the genocide of the nations Serbian, Jewish and Roma population. From 1941 until 1945, the Nazi-installed regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia carried out some of the most horrific crimes of the Holocaust (known as the Porajmos by the Roma), killing over 800,000 Yugoslav citizens - 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma. In these crimes, the Croatian Ustasha and Muslim fundamentalists were openly supported by the Vatican, the Archbishop of Zagreb Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960), and the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Many of the victims of the Pavelic regime in Croatia were killed in the war's third largest death camp - Jasenovac, where over 200,000 people - mainly Orthodox Serbs met their deaths. Some 240,000 were "rebaptized" into the Catholic faith by fundamentalist Clerics in "the Catholic Kingdom of Croatia" as part of the policy to "kill a third, deport a third, convert a third" of Yugoslavia's Serbs, Jews and Roma in wartime Bosnia and Croatia (The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, Vladimar Dedijer, Anriman-Verlag, Freiburg, Germany, 1988).

On April 6th 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia. By April 10th, Croatian fascists led by Ante Pavelic were allowed by Hitler and his ally Mussolini to set up a "independent" puppet state of Croatia. Hitler granted "Aryan" status to Croatia as his fascist allies carved up Yugoslavia. Pavelic had been awaiting these developments whilst under the auspices of Mussolini in Italy who had granted them the use of remote training camps on a Aeolian island and access to a propaganda station Radio Bari for broadcasts across the Adriatic. As soon as the new fascist state of Croatia was born, and campaign of cold-blooded terror began, as noted by John Cornwell in his book Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Viking, London, UK, 1999):

"(It was) an act of 'ethnic cleansing' before that hideous term came into vogue, it was an attempt to create a 'pure' Catholic Croatia by enforced conversions, deportations, and mass exterminations. So dreadful were the acts of torture and murder that even hardened German troops registered their horror. Even by comparison with the recent bloodshed in Yugoslavia at the time of writing, Pavelic's onslaught against the Orthodox Serbs remains one of the most appalling civilian massacres known to history" (p 249)

Furthermore, as Cornwell notes, Pius XII had not only "warmly endorsed" Croat nationalism, he had, before the war in November 1939, described the Croats in a speech as an "the outpost of Christianity" of whom "the hope of a better future seems to be smiling on you". Pavelic and Pope Puis XII "frequently exchanged cordial telegrams" according to Dedijer, one on New Year's Day 1943, saw the Pope give his blessing to Pavelic:

Everything that you have expressed so warmly in your name and in the name of the Croatian Catholics we return gracefully and give you and the whole Croatian people our apostolic blessing (Dedijer, p 115).

On April 25th 1941, following his seizure of power, Pavelic decreed that all publications, private and public, of the Cyrillic script was banned. In May 1941, anti-Semitic legislation was passed, defining Jews in racist terms, preventing them from marrying "Aryans". One month later all Serb Orthodox primary and preschools were closed. As soon as Pavelic had taken power, the Catholic Church in Croatia began compelling Orthodox Serbs to convert to the Catholic religion. But this was, as pointed out by Cornwell, a highly-selective policy: the fascists had no intention of allowing Orthodox priests or members of the Serb intelligentsia into the religion - they were to be exterminated along with their families. However, for those Serbs who were forced to convert, there was no immunity or protection from the Catholic church when the "crazed bloodletting" of the Ustashe began, as indicated by the speech made by the Croatian Nazi Mile Budak, who was a Minister in the Ustasha regime in Gospic, Bosnia during July 1941:

We will kill one part of the Serbs, the other part we will resettle, and the remaining ones we will convert to the Catholic faith, and thus make Croats of them (Dedijer, p 130).

Budak was talking about something that had already started: In an example of savage butchery carried out in the village of Glina on May 14th 1941, hundreds of Serbs were brought to a church to attend an obligatory service of thanksgiving for the fascist state of Croatia. Once the Serbs were inside, the Ustashe entered the Church armed only with axes and knives. They asked all present to produce their certificates of conversion to Catholicism - but only two had the required documents, and they were released. The doors of the church were locked and the rest slaughtered.

Like with the Jews, who had to wear the Star of David in public, the Serbs were forced to wear a blue band with the letter "P" (i.e., Orthodox) on their sleeve. The Nazi regime decreed that the Roma were to be "treated as Jews" and they were forced to wear yellow armbands. (A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia, David M. Crowe, St. Martin's Griffin, New York, USA, 1994).
Stepinac blesses the puppet Nazi regime in Croatia

When the Nazi's installed the puppet Ustashi regime in May 1941, Stepinac immediately offered his congratulations to Pavelic, and held a banquet to celebrate the founding of the new nation. After the opening of the Ustasha Parliament, Pavelic attended Zagreb cathedral, where Stepinac offered special prayers for Pavelic and ordered a solemn "Te Deum" to be sung in thanks to God for the establishment of the new regime. In May 1941, Stepinac also arranged to have Pavelic received personally by Pope Pius XII in Rome in the Vatican, where on the same occasion, he signed a treaty with Mussolini. Once Pavelic was in power, Stepinac issued a Pastoral Letter ordering the Croatian clergy to support the new Ustasha State. Stepinac alter recorded in his diary on 3rd August 1941 that "the Holy See (the Vatican) recognized de facto the independent State of Croatia". In the same year, Stepinac himself declared:

"God, who directs the destiny of nations and controls the hearts of Kings, has given us Ante Pavelic and moved the leader of a friendly and allied people, Adolf Hitler, to use his victorious troops to disperse our oppressors... Glory be to God, our gratitude to Adolf Hitler and loyalty to our Poglavnik, Ante Pavelic."

The involvement of Catholic clergy either in active participation or in blessing the Ustashi involvement in the Holocaust is well-documented. Stepinac himself headed the committee which was responsible for forcible "conversions" to Roman Catholicism under threat of death, and was also the Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar of the Ustashi Army, which effected the slaughter of those who failed to convert. Stepinac was known as the 'Father Confessor' to the Ustashi and continually bestowed the blessing of Catholic Church upon its members and actions.

Right from the very beginning, the Vatican knew what was happening in Croatia, and certainly known to Pius XII when he greeted Pavelic in Vatican - jus four days after the massacre at Glina. On this visit, Pavelic had a "devotional" audience with Pius XII, and the Vatican granted de-facto recognition of fascist Croatia as a "bastion against communism" - despite the fact that the Vatican still had diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia. Cornwell observes that right from the start it was known that Pavelic was a "totalitarian dictator", a "puppet of Hitler and Mussolini", that he had passed racist and anti-Semitic laws, and that he was "bent on enforced conversions from Orthodox to Catholic Christianity". Effectively, on behalf of Hitler and Mussolini, the Pope was "holding Pavelic's hand and bestowing his papal blessing" to the new puppet state of Croatia. Thus, it can argued, that the Catholic Cardinals in the Vatican were accomplices of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and the extermination of the countries Jews, Serbs and Roma citizens. Indeed, many of members of Croatian Catholic clergy took a "leading part" in the Holocaust.

One leading member of the Catholic church in Croatia was the Nazi collaborator Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac. When he met Pavelic on April 16th 1941, he later noted that he had promised that he would "not show tolerance" to the Orthodox Serbian church - which gave Stepinac the impression that Pavelic "was a sincere Catholic". By June 1941, when German army units were reporting that the "Ustashe have gone raging mad" killing Serbs, Jews and Roma, Catholic priests, notably Franciscans took a leading part in the massacres, as pointed out by Cornwell:

"Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres. Many, went around routinely armed and performed their murderous acts with zeal. A Father Bozidar Bralow, known for the machine gun that was his constant companion, was accused of performing a dance around the bodies of 180 massacred Serbs at Alipasin-Most. Individual Franciscans killed, set fire to homes, sacked villages, and laid waste the Bosnian countryside at the head of Ustashe bands. In September of 1941, an Italian reporter wrote of a Franciscan he had witnessed south of Banja Luka urging on a band of Ustashe with his crucifix." (p 254).

It is clear now, that other members of the Catholic Cardinals in Europe also knew about the massacres. On March 6th 1942, a French Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, a close confident of the Pope to the Croatian representative to the Vatican:

"I know for a fact, that it is the Franciscans themselves, as for example Father Simic of Knin, who have taken part in attacks against the Orthodox populations so as to destroy, the Orthodox Church. In the same way, you destroyed the Orthodox Church in Banja Luka. I know for sure that the Franciscans in Bosnia and Herzegovina have acted abominably, and this pains me. Such acts should not be committed by educated, cultured, civilized people, let alone by priests".(p 259)

The Catholic Church took full advantage of Yugoslavia's defeat in 1941 to increase the power and outreach of Catholicism in the Balkans - Stepinac had shown contempt for religious freedom in way that even Cornwell says was "tantamount to complicity with the violence" against Yugoslavia's Jews, Serbs and Roma. For his part, the Pope "was never but benevolent" to the leaders and representatives of fascist Croatia - in July 1941 he greeted a hundred members of the Croatian police force headed by the Zagreb chief of police; in February 1942, he gave gave an audience for Ustashe youth group visiting Rome, and he also greeted another representation of Ustashe youth in December of that year. The Pope showed his true colours when in 1943 he told a Croatian papal representative that he was:

"Disappointed that, in spite of everything, no one wants to acknowledge the one, real and principal enemy of Europe; no true, communal military crusade against Bolshevism has been initiated" (p 260)

Stepinac for one, appears to have been a full supporter of forced conversions - along with many of his bishops, one of whom described the advent of fascist Croatia as "a good occasion for us to help Croatia save the countless souls" - i.e., Yugoslavia's non-Catholic majority. Throughout the war, Croatian bishops not only endorsed forced conversions, they never, at any point, dissociated themselves from Pavelic's regime, let alone denounce it or threaten to excommunicate him or any other senior member of the regime. In fact, before Yugoslavia was invaded, Stepinac had told Regent Prince Paul of Yugoslavia in April 1940:

"The most ideal thing would be for the Serbs to return to the faith of their fathers, that is, to bow the head before Christ's representative (the Pope). Then we could at last breathe in this part of Europe, for Byzantinism has played a frightful role in the history this part of the world" (p 265).

The Pope was better informed of the situation inside Yugoslavia than he was about any other area of Europe. His apostolic delegate, Marcone, was a regular visitor to Croatia, travelling on military planes between Rome and Zagreb. Cornwell describes Marcone - who was the Popes personal representative in Croatia - as "an amateur who appeared to sleepwalk through the entire bloodthirsty era" (p 257).

The Vatican would also have been aware of frequent BBC broadcasts on Croatia, of which the following (which were monitored by the Vatican State), on February 16th 1942, was typical:

"The worst atrocities are being committed in the environs of the archbishop of Zagreb [Stepinac]. The blood of brothers is flowing in (the) streams. The Orthodox are being forcibly converted to Catholicism and we do not hear the archbishop's voice preaching revolt. Instead it is reported that he is taking part in Nazi and Fascist parades" (p 256).

And, according to to Dedijer:

Throughout the whole war in more than 150 newspapers and magazines, the church justified the fascist state under Pavelic as the work of God.

Many Roman Catholic priests served the Ustasha state in high positions. The pope appointed the highest military vicar for Croatia. The latter had a field chaplain in every unit of the Ustasha army. The task of this field chaplain consisted among other things of repeatedly goading the Ustasha units in their mass murders of the peasant population. High dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church and of the Ustasha state together organized the mass conversion of the Orthodox Serbian population. Hundreds of Orthodox churches in Serbia were plundered and destroyed; the three highest dignitaries and two hundred clerics were murdered in cold blood; the remainder of the clergy were driven into exile. In the concentration camp of Jasenovac, hundreds of thousands of Serbs were murdered under the command of Roman Catholic priests.

The papal emissary Marcone was in Croatia during this entire time. He sanctioned silently all the gory deeds and permitted pictures of himself with Pavelic and the German commanders to be published in the newspapers. After the visit to Pope Pius XII, Ante Pavelic exchanged Christmas and New Year's greetings with him that were published in the Ustasha press.

Pavelic escapes to Argentina disguised as a Catholic priest

The Catholic Church was not only closely involved with the Ustasha movement in wartime Croatia, it helped many Nazi war criminals escape at the end of the war, including Ante Pavelic, who fled to Argentina via the Vatican and the "ratlines" of the Vatican. In mid-year 1986 the U.S. government released documents of their counter-espionage agency, the OSS. These reveal that the Vatican had organized a safe-flight route from Europe to Argentina for Pavelic and two hundred of his advisors known by name. The fascists hid frequently during their flight in cloisters and in many instances disguised themselves as Franciscan monks (Pavelic himself escaped disguised as a Catholic priest).

Also, at the end of the war, the Ustashe looted some $80 million from Yugoslavia, much of which was composed of gold coins. Here again, they had the total collaboration of Vatican, which according to Cornwell included not only hospitality of a pontifical Croatian religious institution (the College of San Girolamo degli Illirici in Rome), but also provision of storage facilities and safe-deposit services for the Ustashe treasury. During the war, the College of San Girolamo became a home for Croatian priests receiving Vatican-sponsored theological education - after the war, it became the headquarters for the postwar Ustashe underground, providing Croatian war criminals with escape routes to Latin America.

A leading figure at the College of San Girolamo was the Croatian priest and Nazi war criminal Father Krunoslav Draganavic - described once by U.S. intelligence officials as Pavelic's "alter ego". His arrival in Rome in 1943 was to coordinate Italian-Ustashe activities, and after the war, he was a central figure in the organising escape routes for Nazi's to Argentina. It was later claimed that members of the CIA had said that he had been allowed to store the archives of the Croatian legation inside the Vatican, as well as valuables brought out of Yugoslavia by fleeing Ustashe in 1945.

The most famous Nazi mass-murderer who passed through the College of San Girolamo was Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyons, the Gestapo police chief in that French city between 1942 and 1944, who had tortured and murdered Jews and members of the French resistance. Barbie lived under Draganavic's protection at San Girolamo from early 1946 until late 1947, when the US Counter Intelligence Corp helped him escape to Latin America. Another Nazi war criminal, Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka death camp was assisted with false papers and hiding places in Rome by the Nazi sympathizer Bishop Alois Hudal. Draganavic was expelled from San Girolamo a few days after Pope Pius XII death in October 1958.

While it may be true that individual Catholics risked their lives to save the Jews, Roma and Serbs from the Holocaust, the Catholic Church, as an entity, did not. The Vatican also assisted thousands of Nazi war criminals such as Adolph Eichmann, Franz Stangl (the commandant of Treblinka), Walter Rauf (the inventor of the "mobile" gas chamber), and Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyons"). Pope Pius XII personally authorized the smuggling of Nazi war criminals, which was directed by his political advisor Giovanni Montini (who later became Pope Paul VI). Shortly before his death in Madrid in 1959, Pope John XXIII granted Pavelic his special blessing. On his death bed, Pavelic held a wreath that was a personal gift from Pope Pius XII from the year 1941.

Stepinac found guilty of collaboration

After the war Stepinac was arrested by the Yugoslav government and sentenced to 17 years in prison for war crimes. A parade of prosecution witnesses at his trial in Zagreb testified on October 5, 1946, that Catholic priests armed with pistols went out to convert Orthodox Serbs and massacred them. In one instance, one witness said 650 Serbs were taken into a church under false pretenses, and then were stabbed and beaten to death by Ustashi members after the doors were locked. Stepinac was convicted on all principal counts of aiding the Axis, the Nazi puppet of Ante Pavelic, and of glorifying the Ustashi in the Catholic press, pastoral letters, and speeches. He eventually died under house arrest in 1960 after being sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration by the postwar communist government in Yugoslavia.

The Investigation by the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission established that Stepinac had played a leading part in the conspiracy that led to the conquest and breakdown of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941. It was furthermore established that he had played a role in governing the Nazi puppet state of Croatia, that many members of his clergy participated actively in atrocities and mass murders, and, finally, that they collaborated with the enemy down to the last day of the Nazi rule, and continued after the liberation to conspire against the newly created Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia.

Stepinac only served a few years in prison because of the Vatican's anti-Communist propaganda of the "suffering martyr" and their organizing of "Cardinal Stepinac Associations" which lobbied for his release.

Jews and Serbs say that Stepinac was a Nazi collaborator. Catholic supporters claim he initially backed the regime, but later withdrew his support because of the mass executions and forced conversions of Orthodox Christians to Catholicism - although little credible evidence is presented of this.

Archbishop Stepinac was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Croatia on October 1998. Following the countries succession from Yugoslavia in 1991, the ultra-Nationlist Tudjman regime in Croatia renamed a village in Krajina after him. The late President Tudjman himself is on record as having said that he is "proud that his wife has no Jewish or Serbian blood in her". Ironically, unlike Pavelic himself, whose wife seems to have been Jewish (Pavelic's mother-in law, Ivana Herzfeld was said to be was Jewish)

Like the French Nazi Jean-Marie Le Pen (who described the Holocaust as a "mere detail of history"), Tudjman also become a Holocaust revisionist. In his book Wastelands of History, he questioned the truth behind the Holocaust and moved to cover up the role of Ustashe regime in the darkest period of Croatia's history. Worse, Tudjman rehabilitated fascist war criminals and gave them medals, and, as in the case of Stepinac, had streets named after them.

On two occasions in 1970 and 1994, attempts were made to the Yad Vashem Holocaust to get Stepinac added to the "List of the Righteous" - which includes people like Oskar Schindler, but this was turned down. Interestingly, the request was sent by private Jewish citizens from Croatia and not the official Jewish organization in Croatia, which has never sent such a request Explaining the refusal, an official of the Yad Vashem explained that:

"Persons who assisted Jews but simultaneously collaborated or were linked with a Fascist regime which took part in the Nazi orchestrated persecution of Jews, may be disqualified for the Righteous title".

Nazi connection to Franciscan Order uncovered near Medjugorje, Bosnia

The Franciscan order has always denied the evidence of its wartime ties to the Ustasha regime in Croatia. They acted as facilitators and middlemen in moving the contents of the Ustasha Treasury from Croatia to Austria, Italy and finally South America after the war. During the Nazi occupation of Bosnia, the Franciscans were closely involved with the Ustashe regime. Not far from Medjugorje in Bosnia (where the Virgin Mary is said to put in nightly appearances for the tens of thousands of Roman Catholic pilgrims), is the Franciscan monastery at Sirkoi Brijeg which has become the centre of allegations linking it to disappearance of the Ustashe treasury after the war.

In San Francisco Federal Court in November 1999, in what was described as "tangible proof" of the Nazi Franciscan connection, was obtained when cameramen working for Phillip Kronzer (who has helped expose the Medjugorje myth) obtained entry to the Monastery and filmed a secret shrine honouring the Ustashe. A plaque dedicated to Franciscan monks who were Ustasha members was filmed along with a massive shrine lining the walls complete with photographs of Ustasha soldiers some in Nazi uniforms. The admonition, "Recognize us, We are yours" can clearly be seen in the video footage. On a later visit to the monastery the shrine had been dismantled but the videotape preserved the evidence and has now been made available by the Kronzer Foundation.

Cold War Era Files May Hold the Key to Holocaust Lawsuit

A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was filed in August 2000 in San Francisco, USA by California attorneys Jonathan Levy and Tom Easton against the U.S. Army and the CIA. Easton and Levy are also pursuing a Holocaust era lawsuit against the Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order regarding the disappearance of the World War II Nazi Croatian treasury including gold, silver, and jewels plundered from concentration camp victims in Croatia and Bosnia, mainly Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies.

The lawyers are seeking the release of over 250 documents from the files of Draganavic. He is now regarded as one of the of the principal operators of the so-called Vatican "ratline" that smuggled Nazis and their loot to South America between 1945 and the late 1950's. Beneficiaries of the ratline included Adolf Eichman, Klaus Barbie "the butcher of Lyons" and the notorious Croatian mass murderer Ante Pavelic as well as thousands of lesser known Nazis and collaborators.

While file releases on the ratline date from as early as the 1983 Barbie case, a core of documents remain withheld on grounds of "national security." It is these documents the attorneys want from the Army and CIA. They describe him as a "sinister priest" who is alleged to have worked at various times for the secret services of Croatia, the Vatican, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia as well as British and American intelligence.

The attorneys have suggested that the withheld documents, most well over 40 years old are highly embarrassing to the Americans, the British, and Vatican and hold the key to a multinational money laundering scheme that used Holocaust victim loot to finance covert Cold War era operations against the Soviet Union and its allies.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.


By Seán Mac Mathúna