April 19th, 2006
Please sign the open letter on-line at:
http://www.traprockpeace.org/sfsu/
and/or send your own to:
President Robert A. Corrigan, Ph.D.
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
(415) 338-1381
corrigan@sfsu.edu
This just in: The ten SFSU students cited on Friday have been
allowed back onto campus. This is a great victory. But everyone
should write to President Corrigan and demand that it not happen
again because students will protest the presence of the military again
and again for as long as they step onto school grounds!...BW
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National Boycott - May 1, 2006
Amnesty! Full Rights for All Immigrants!
NO Work, School, Buying, or Selling! NO Business as Usual!
"A Day Without an Immigrant"
Join immigrants and supporters to make Monday, May 1, 2006 a
national “day without an immigrant.” Anti-immigrant politicians
and hatemongers call immigrants as “a drain on society” - they try
to pass repressive legislation like HR 4437 and encourage groups
like the racist “Minutemen.” But immigrants contribute billions to
the economy and receive few benefits in return. We will settle for
nothing less than full amnesty and dignity for the millions of
undocumented workers presently in the United States. Let’s show
the government, corporations and racist politicians that a powerful,
united peoples’ movement has the power to win Civil Rights,
workers’ rights and make history. No business as usual on May 1!
11am March & Rally, gather Justin Herman Plaza, march to Civic Center
Sponsored by the May 1 Coalition
5pm Rally, Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate
Sponsored by Barrio Unido para Amnistia General
The ANSWER Coalition supports both of these actions.
For more info on national May 1 actions, visit www.answercoalition.org.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Make a tax-dedctible donation to A.N.S.W.E.R.
email answer@actionsf.org
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People United for General Amnesty
May 1, 2006, 5:00 p.m.
Federal Building
450 Golden Gate Avenue
San Francisco
(For more information: 415-431-9925)
We make a call to all people to come and celebrate International
Workers Day by surrounding the Federal Building with our flags
and picket signs showing that we have built the richness and
strength of the United States of North America from our countries
up to now and that we are part of the work force in this country.
That is why we raise our national flags high, not as an insult to the
United States of North America, but to recognize that even though
we come from other countries we have enriched this soil and that
gives us the moral right to demand general amnesty for all.
COME AND UNITE IN THE STRUGGLE!
Barrio Unido por una Amnistia General
1 de Mayo 2006, 5:00 p.m.
450 Golden Gate Avenue
San Francisco
Mas informacion: 415-431-9925
Hacemos un llamado a toda la poblacion a celebrar el Dia de los
Trabajadores rodeando el Edificio Federal con nuestras banderas
y pancartas demostrando que desde nuestros paises hasta cuando
trabajamos aqui en este pais hemos contribuido a la riqueza y
poderio de los Estados Unidos de Norte America. Por eso levantamos
nuestras banderas nacionales, no como insulto a los Estados Unidos,
sino como reconocimiento que viniendo de otros paises hemos
enriquecido su suelo y con ese derecho moral demandamos una
amnistia general para todos.
Ven Y unete a la lucha
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APPEAL TO: COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS, LAWYERS, TRADE UNIONISTS
AND POLITICAL ORGANIZERS
FROM: BARRIO UNIDO POR UNA AMNISTIA INCONDICIIONAL
We make a call to all those who want to support our struggle, lawyers,
community organizations, unions, political organizations, to help us
in the following way:
1. Community organizations please close organization on May 1,
2006. Put a banner stating you support a general and unconditional
amnesty for all immigrants.
2. Lawyers form legal teams to defend those workers that have been
fired or will be fired. Defend all those who will suffer any repercussions
when defending immigrants.
3. Trade unions go to places where people are being fired and organize
and demand that workers be reinstated.
4. Political organizations organize the white workers of this country to
unite in solidarity with us, the immigrant workers, and walk out of their
jobs on May 1, 2006 and for them not to look at us as their enemy
but as their allies.
5. For all of you to endorse, support and participate in our rally on
May 1, 2006 at 5:00 P.M. in front of the Federal Building. Allow us
immigrants to empower ourselves and make the decisions of our
lives.
We thank all those who want to help us. We the immigrants will
lead our struggle for a General and Unconditional Amnesty for All.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL: 415-431-9925
APELACION A: ORGANIZADORES DE LA COMUNIDAD,
ABOGADOS Y ORGANIZADORES POLITICOS.
DE: BARRIO UNIDO POR UNA AMINISTIA INCONDICIONAL
Hacemos una llamada a todos ustedes que quieren apoyarnos en
nuestra lucha: abogados, uniones, organizadores de la comunidad,
y organizadores politicos que nos ayuden de la siguientes maneras:
1. Organizadores comunitarios porfavor cierren sus organizaciones
el 1ero de Mayo del 2006. Pongan una pancarta señalando que
ustedes apoyan una amnistia general e incondicional para todos
los inmigrantes.
2. Abogados formen un equipo legal para defender a los trabajadores
que han sido despedidos o seran despedidos. Defiendan a todas
las personas que sufriran injusticias por defender a los inmigrantes.
3. Uniones vayan a lugares donde los trabajadores estan siendo
despedidos y organizen y demanden que los empleados obtengan
su trabajo de nuevo.
4. Organizaciones politicas organisen a los empleados anglos de
este pais para ue se unan en solidaridad con nosotros, y para que
ellos no nos persivan como sus enemigos si no como sus aliados.
5. Para que todos ustedes apoyen y participen en nuestra demonstracion
el 1ero de Mayo del 2006 a las 5:00pm al frente del Edificio Federal.
Permitanos a nosotros los inmigrantes luchar por nuestros derechos
y decidir por nuestra vida.
Les agradecemos a todos ustedes que quieren ayudarnos.Nosotros
los inmigrantes vamos a luchar por una aministia general
e incondicional para todos!
PARA MAS INFORMACION LLAME: 415-431-9925
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SCROLL DOWN TO READ:
EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTS
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
ARTICLES IN FULL
LINKS ONLY
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EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTS
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People United for General Amnesty
May 1, 2006, 5:00 p.m.
Federal Building
450 Golden Gate Avenue
San Francisco
(For more information: 415-431-9925)
We make a call to all people to come and celebrate International
Workers Day by surrounding the Federal Building with our flags
and picket signs showing that we have built the richness and
strength of the United States of North America from our countries
up to now and that we are part of the work force in this country.
That is why we raise our national flags high, not as an insult to the
United States of North America, but to recognize that even though
we come from other countries we have enriched this soil and that
gives us the moral right to demand general amnesty for all.
COME AND UNITE IN THE STRUGGLE!
Barrio Unido por una Amnistia General
1 de Mayo 2006, 5:00 p.m.
450 Golden Gate Avenue
San Francisco
Mas informacion: 415-431-9925
Hacemos un llamado a toda la poblacion a celebrar el Dia de los
Trabajadores rodeando el Edificio Federal con nuestras banderas
y pancartas demostrando que desde nuestros paises hasta cuando
trabajamos aqui en este pais hemos contribuido a la riqueza y
poderio de los Estados Unidos de Norte America. Por eso levantamos
nuestras banderas nacionales, no como insulto a los Estados Unidos,
sino como reconocimiento que viniendo de otros paises hemos
enriquecido su suelo y con ese derecho moral demandamos una
amnistia general para todos.
Ven Y unete a la lucha
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Major Mobilization Set for April 29th
Dear Friends,
We are pleased to announce the kick-off for the organizing
of what promises to be a major national mobilization on
Saturday, April 29th. Today, each of the initiating groups
(see list below) is announcing this mobilization. Our
organizations have agreed to work together on this
project for several reasons:
The April 29th mobilization will highlight our call for an
immediate end to the war on Iraq. We are also raising
several other critical issues that are directly connected
to one another.
It is time for our constituencies to work more closely:
connecting the issues we work on by bringing diverse
communities into a common project.
It is important for our movements to help set the agenda
for the Congressional elections later in the year. Our
unified action in the streets is a vital part of that process.
Please share the April 29th call widely, and please use
the links at the end of the call to endorse this timely
mobilization and to sign up for email updates.
April 29th Initiating Organizations
United for Peace and Justice
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
National Organization for Women
Friends of the Earth
U.S. Labor Against the War
Climate Crisis Coalition
Peoples' Hurricane Relief Fund
National Youth and Student Peace Coalition
A war based on lies
Spying, corruption and attacks on civil liberties
Katrina survivors abandoned by government
MARCH FOR PEACE,
JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY
End the war in Iraq -
Bring all our troops home now!
SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 2006
NEW YORK CITY
Unite for change - let's turn our country around!
The times are urgent and we must act.
Too much is too wrong in this country. We have a foreign
policy that is foreign to our core values, and domestic
policies wreaking havoc at home. It's time for a change.
No more never-ending oil wars!
Protect our civil liberties & immigrant rights. End illegal
spying, government corruption and the subversion of
our democracy.
Rebuild our communities, starting with the Gulf Coast.
Stop corporate subsidies and tax cuts for the wealthy
while ignoring our basic needs.
Act quickly to address the climate crisis and the
accelerating destruction of our environment.
Our message to the White House and to Congress
is clear: either stand with us or stand aside!
We are coming together to march, to vote, to speak
out and to turn our country around!
Join us in New York City on Saturday, April 29th
Click here to endorse this mobilization:
http://unitedforpeace.org/modinput4.php?modin=119
Click here to sign up for email updates on plans for April 29th:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/email
April 29th Initiating Organizations
United for Peace and Justice
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
National Organization for Women
Friends of the Earth
U.S. Labor Against the War
Climate Crisis Coalition
Peoples' Hurricane Relief Fund
National Youth and Student Peace Coalition
......................................................................
ANSWER Coalition: All Out for April 29 in New York City!
End Occupation from Iraq to Palestine, to Haiti, and Everywhere!
Fight for workers rights, civil rights and civil liberties - unite
against racism!
300,000 Came to Washington on Sept. 24
In recent weeks the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition has been in the final
stages for planning a national demonstration in Washington DC on April
29, 2006. This action was to follow the local and regional
demonstrations for March 18-19 and youth and student actions scheduled
on March 20 on the 3rd anniversary of the criminal bombing, invasion
and occupation of Iraq.
On September 24, 2005 more than 300,000 people surrounded the White
House in the largest mobilization against the Iraq war and occupation
since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. This demonstration was
initiated by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition in May 2005 and we urged a
united front with other major anti-war coalitions and communities. We
marched demanding immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq. We
also stood in solidarity with the Palestinian and Haitian people and
others who are suffering under and resisting occupation. Coming as it
did following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we changed the demands of
the September 24 protest to include the slogan "From Iraq to New
Orleans, FundPeople's Needs not the War Machine."
During the past several years, and as demonstrated in a powerful
display on September 24, the anti-war movement has grown significantly
in its breadth and depth as the leadership has included the Arab and
Muslim community -- those who are among the primary targets of the
Bush Administration's current war at home and abroad.
The anti-war sentiment inside the United States is rapidly becoming a
significant obstacle to the Bush Administration's war in Iraq. The
anti-war movement has the potential to be a critical deterrent to the
U.S. government's aspirations for Empire. At this moment the White
House and Pentagon are issuing threats and making plans to move
against other sovereign countries. Iran and Syria are being targeted
as the U.S. seeks to consolidate power in the Middle East.
Simultaneously the Bush administration is working to undermine the
gains of the people of Latin America by working totopple the
democratically elected president of Venezuela and destroy the
revolutionary process for social change going on in that country.
Likewise it is intensifying the economic war and CIA subversions
against Cuba.
We believe that our movement must weld together the broadest, most
diverse coalition of various sectors and communities into an effective
force for change. This requires the inclusion of targeted communities
and political clarity. The war in Iraq is not simply an aberrational
policy of the Bush neo-conservatives. Iraq is emblematic of a larger
war for Empire. It is part of a multi-pronged attack against all those
countries that refuse to follow the economic, political and military
dictates of the Washington establishment and Wall Street.
This is the foundation of the political program upon which the
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition has organized mass demonstrations in the recent
years. The fact that many hundreds of thousands of people
havedemonstrated in Washington D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, New
York and other cities is a testament to the huge progress that has
been made in building a new movement on this principled basis.
The people of the United States have nothing to gain and everything to
lose from the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Haiti and
the threats of new wars and intervention in Syria, Iran, Venezuela,
Cuba, the Philippines, North Korea and elsewhere. It has been made
crystal clear in recent weeks that Washington is aggressively
prosecuting its strategy of total domination of the Middle East. U.S.
leaders are seeking to crush all resistance to their colonial agenda,
whether from states or popular movements in the region. The
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition andthe anti-war movement is raising the demand,
"U.S. Out of the Middle East."
At its core, the war for Empire is supported by the Republican Party
and Democratic Party alike, which constitute the twin parties of
militarism and war, and this quest for global domination will continue
regardless of the outcome of the 2006 election. In fact, leading
Democrats are attacking Bush for being "soft" on Iran and North Korea.
Real hope for turning the tide rests with building a powerful global
movement of resistance in which the people of the United States stand
with their sisters and brothers struggling against imperialism and the
new colonialism.
On the home front the Bush administration is involved in a
far-reaching assault against working class communities as most
glaringly evidenced by its criminal and racist negligence towards the
people of New Orleans and throughout the hurricane ravaged Gulf
States. While turning their backs on these communities in the moments
ofgreatest need, the U.S. government is now working with the banks and
developers who, like vultures, are exploiting mass suffering and
dislocation to carry out racist gentrification that only benefits the
wealthy. The administration is also working to eviscerate hard-fought
civil rights and civil liberties, engaging in a widespread campaign of
domestic spying and wiretapping against the people of the U.S. and
other assaults against the First and Fourth Amendments.
In early December 2005, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition filed for permits
for a national march in Washington DC on April 29, 2006. We were
preparing to announce the April 29 action but in recent days we have
heard from A.N.S.W.E.R. organizers in a number of unions that U.S.
Labor Against the War was seeking union endorsements for a call for an
anti-war demonstration on the same day in New York City. Having two
demonstrations on April 29 in both Washington D.C. and New York City
seems to us to be lessadvantageous than having the movement unite
behind one single mobilization. As such, we decided to hold back our
announcement. Subsequently, the New York City demonstration has been
announced by a number of organizations. Underscoring the need to have
the largest possible demonstration on April 29, the A.N.S.W.E.R.
Coalition has decided to fully mobilize, in all of its chapters and
organizing centers, to bring people to the New York City demonstration
on April 29. The banners and slogans of different coalitions may not
be the same, but it is in the interest of everyone to march
shoulder-to-shoulder against the criminal war in Iraq and the Bush
administration's War for Empire, including its racist, sexist and
anti-worker domestic program.
All out for a united, mass mobilization on April 29 in New York City!
Click here to become a transportation center in your city or town for
the April 29 demonstration.
Click here to receive updates on A.N.S.W.E.R.'s mobilization for the
April 29 NYC demonstration.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 323-464-1636
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Click here to unsubscribe from the ANSWER e-mail list.
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BIKING TO BECHTEL!
Cycling from colleges to Bechtel Int'l Headquarters!
Thurs, May 4, San Francisco, leave 12 noon, arrive 1 PM
BUSH, BIG BUSINESS AND BECHTEL, TAKE YOUR WARS AND GO TO HELL!
((((( students & activists & everyone welcome! )))))
Ever since Bechtel executives advised President Bush to invade in 2003,
Bechtel has made a killing in Iraq, doing reconstruction in the same
cities they told Bush to bomb. It's time to stick it to Bechtel and Bush
and tell them, "US military out of Iraq, and war profiteers like
Bechtel, too!"
12 noon. Students and activists will depart various campuses, such
as SFSU, City College, and Berkeley. Destination: Bechtel.
1 PM. Cyclists join walkers & circle Bechtel, 50 Beale St, San Francisco.
Rally/march/music. Wheelchair accessible.
We cycle to tell Bush & Bechtel we don't want your oil wars.
We cycle to say no to wars fought for corporate profit.
What does Bechtel have to do with the war in Iraq?
>>Several Bechtel bigwigs played an important role in urging Bush
to go to war in the first place. A few of the worst bigwigs:
- Riley Bechtel, CEO, is on Bush's Export Council, and advises Bush
on trade issues such as procuring sources of oil.
- George Schultz, Bechtel board member and senior counsel, is
advisory board Chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of
Iraq, which played a key role in leading to the US invasion.
- Jack Sheehan, Senior Vice President, is on the influential Defense
Policy Board with close ties to the White House.
>>Bechtel was handed one of the first contracts for "construction"
in Iraq ˆ an insider contract of $680 million ˆ for public works
projects. But the first project they worked on, while Iraqis were
left without hospitals, water, or sewage, was the drudging and
upgrading of Umm Qasr seaport. In essence, Bechtel said, "Iraqis
may be suffering, but at least Iraq and its oil fields are open for
business!"
Oppression in Latin America. Bechtel has privatized water in Bolivia,
hiking costs to thirsty Bolivians. Following massive riots, Bechtel fled,
but sued Bolivia for "damages."
Get involved today!!!
Join the bike ride! Please meet here, 12 noon on May 4:
Malcolm X Plaza, San Francisco State University
Join the rally! Come to Bechtel's Int'l Headquarters, 1 PM at
50 Beale St, San Francisco, near the Embarcadero BART,
for a rally and march to circle the building!
Sponsor an individual cyclist! Please send a check made out
to LKM for $15 (or more!) to: 1203 S Van Ness Ave, SF, CA 94110.
We urge you to consider sponsoring a cyclist!
Also, please come to the Biking to Bechtel kick-off event!
Learn more about war profiteers like Bechtel & get pumped!
Jim Haber of War Resisters League West presents "Stop the
Merchants of Death." Wed, 5 PM, May 3,
San Francisco State University,19th Ave & Holloway, San Francisco,
Cesar Chavez Student Center, Rm Rosa Parks F.
Event organized by an ad hoc group from Students Against War at
SFSU, United Students for Global Justice at City College, and others.
Q&A: Contact Lacy MacAuley, (703) 850-5542, Butterfly@Lacy.com.
bikes not bombs ˆ mother earth not daddy warbucks ˆ
need not corporate greed
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In a message dated 4/21/06 4:00:46 PM,
asumchai@sfbayview.com writes:
PROTEST GENOCIDE IN BAYVIEW HUNTERS POINT!
BY DECREE OF THE UNITED NATIONS
YOU ARE INVITED TO PROTEST
The Government Sponsored Physical Extermination
Displacement and Genocide of the African American
People in Bayview Hunters Point
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
1:00 pm
CITY HALL
CARLTON B. GOODLETT, PH.D, M.D. ENTRY
From: Ahimsa
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Jorge Martin, International Secretary of the Hands Off Venezuela
Campaign, to speak in San Francisco
7:00 PM, Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Center for Political Education, 522 Valencia, third floor,
close to 16th Street BART Station, San Francisco
(not wheelchair accessible).
Donation: $5/$3 students, seniors, unemployed
Jorge Martin is at the forefront of the international solidarity campaign
in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution. He has been actively involved
in the revolutionary process in Venezuela and is well known for his
analysis of the situation. Jorge has participated in many conferences
and meetings on workers control in Venezuela and has participated
directly in the movement of factory occupations.
He will speak on the current situation in Venezuela combined with
the advances made by the student and union movements. He has
recently returned from Venezuela and this will be his only
appearance on the West Coast. We strongly encourage everyone
interested in the positive developments in Venezuela to attend.
There will be plenty of time for questions and answers.
For more information please contact us by email
sfbay@ushov.org or call 415-786-1680.
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"BUILDING RESISTANCE"
An Anti-War Benefit Evening of Theater,
Conscience, and Thought with Not in Our Name
Thursday, May 11, 2006
7:00 pm to 9:30 pm
Grand Lake Theater
3200 Grand Ave., Oakland
Tickets: $9 adv. / $10 door
Advance tickets, posters/graphics, and more:
http://tickets.notinourname.net
FEATURING
* GOLDEN THREAD PRODUCTIONS
Dedicated to the production of theatrical works exploring
the Middle Eastern culture and identity. Golden Thread
Productions will stage "Sniper" by Egyptian-born playwright
Yussef El Guindi.
* ANDREA LEWIS, emcee
Our evening's emcee Andrea Lewis is the co-host and
producer of KPFA's "Morning Show"
* DAHLIA WASFI MD
Dr. Wasfi spent her early childhood in Iraq during the
70's. Currently of Denver, Colorado, she recently returned
from Iraq in March following her most recent visit.
* BETH PYLES
Beth Pyles of Fairmont, West Virginia recently returned
from her second assignment with Christian Peacemaker
Teams in Iraq on March 21, 2006.
* PABLO PAREDES
San Diego-based sailor turned war resister Pablo Paredes
is a member of Iraq Vets Against the War. He recently led
the 241 mile "March for Peace" from Tijuana, Mexico that
reached San Francisco on March 27, 2006.
A benefit for Not in Our Name Bay Area - an Oakland-based
grassroots project dedicated to opposing endless war,
attacks on immigrants, and assaults on our civil liberties.
Special thanks to: Allen Michaan and the historic Grand Lake Theater *
International Solidarity Movement * American Muslim Voice * Bay Area
United Against War * Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors *
CODEPINK *Courage to Resist * Global Exchange * International Socialist
Organization *Middle East Children's Alliance * Radical Women and
the Freedom Socialist Party * World Can't Wait!
For more info, call 1-800-95-NOWAR x710, or
http://tickets.notinourname.net
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Code Pink Mother's Day Vigil May 13-14, in Washington DC
Mother's Day is often seen as if through a soft-focus lens --
a sentimental day of cards and flowers and frills. It has a
surprisingly radical history, however. Just as International
Women’s Day, March 8, started as a day for women to rise
up for peace and justice, so did Mother’s Day in the US begin
with Julia Ward Howe’s inspirational 1870 Proclamation against
the carnage of the Civil War:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!…
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity,
mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes
up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
Julia goes on to exhort women to leave their homes and
gather for an “earnest day of counsel” to figure out how
“the great human family can live in peace.” It’s time to
take Julia’s words to heart and bring them to fruition
in the world. Bouquets of spring flowers may be lovely,
but lasting peace is the greatest way to honor all mothers
-- past, present and future. Read the rest of Julia's
Proclamation here.
Join us this Mother's Day weekend, May 13-14, in
Washington DC as we gather for a 24-hour vigil outside
the White House. Bring your mother, your children, your
grandmother, your friends, your loved ones. Come for
the whole vigil (4pm Saturday to 4pm Sunday) or for
a few hours! We’ll sing, dance, drum, bond, laugh,
cry and hug. We’ll write letters to Laura Bush to appeal
to her own mother-heart, and read them aloud. We’ll
discuss new ideas for ending the war and building peace.
In the final two hours, from 2-4pm on Sunday, we’ll be
joined by some amazing celebrity actresses, singers,
writers--and moms. For more information & a schedule
of events to help you plan your trip, check out the
Mothers' Day page on the CODEPINK website. If you
can’t join us, you can create or join a Mother's Day
activity in your own community. For ideas to help
you plan an action check out the resources section
of the Mother's Day page.
And whether you’re in the US or overseas, please
consider writing a letter to Laura Bush to ask her how
she, as a mother, can continue to support a war that
is leaving scores of American and Iraqi mothers bereft.
Send your letters to laurabush@codepinkalert.org,
we’ll deliver them en masse; we'll also take the most
compelling letters and turn them into a book, “Letters to Laura.”
Let’s make this Mother’s Day, May 14, one where we
heed Julia Ward Howe’s original call to action. Let’s
come together to build the world we want for our
children -- and our mothers.
Alison, Dana, Farida, Gael, Jodie, Medea, Rae and Tiffany
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PUSH FOR PEACE
MEMORIAL DAY KICKOFF
MONDAY, MAY 29, 2006
GOLDEN GATE PARK, S.F.
(Exact location to be announced.)
Welcome to the Official Push for Peace Site!
http://www.pushforpeace.us/civic/index.php?q
The Push For Peace movement is geared to combine the efforts of
able-bodied activists to those with special needs or challenges,
so that all people can participate and be counted.
The Push for Peace logo shows a Navy veteran in a wheelchair
with a peace sign on the wheel, with people marching behind
him. It can be seen at:
http://www.pushforpeace.us/civic/index.php?q=node/71
Just in case we don't get to modify the map before the weekend,
I'll just name our proposed stops. We start, of course with Golden
Gate Park, from there we head south to Los Angeles. Turning
east we move to Phoenix, then on to Albuquerque. Now it's
north to Denver, and east to St Louis. North again to Chicago,
and east to Detroit. Continue east to Cleveland, and then NYC
if all goes well Central Park (Imagine), culminating at the gates
of the White House on July 4, 2006
Push For Peace is a collective of veterans, progressive activists,
and everyday citizens working together through education,
motivation, and truth to bring America's troops home from the
war in Iraq and to help bring healing and peace to our nation.
The Push For Peace movement is geared to combine the efforts
of able-bodied activists to those with special needs or challenges,
so that all people can participate and be counted. The Push
For Peace effort will include organized rallies and marches,
as well as appearances and performances by high-profile
speakers and entertainers, to rally the American people and
show them we stand united with our fellow citizen and soldier.
It is our goal to grow the base of participants each day resulting
in a cross-country Push culminating at the gates of the White
House on July 4, 2006. Events will be scheduled across the
country leading up to the big Push in July. So keep checking
the Push calendar for events near you. Mapping it all out...
[Website shows map of stops in US en route to DC on July 4, 2006...bw]
This is a tentative and unfinished P4P route and is only a work in progress.
The Push is set to leave Golden Gate Park on Memorial Day 2006 (currently
working on permits) and then we will Push our way across the country
to arrive in DC across from the White House gathering at Lafayette Park
(currently working on permits) on July 4th, 2006. Golden Gate Park,
San Francisco, California Las Vegas Nevada Phoenix, Arizona Denver,
Colorado Crawford, Texas New Orleans, Louisiana more states pending...
Pushing real Democracy! http://www.pushforpeace.us/civic/index.php?q=
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
REMINDER TO ALL GROUPS: BE SURE AND POST ALL ACTIONS AND
EVENTS TO WWW.INDYBAY.ORG TO REACH THE MOST PEOPLE
AGAINST THE WAR IN THE BAY AREA!
http://www.indybay.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Flash Film: Ides of March
http://isahaqi.chris-floyd.com/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
NO BORDERS! NO WALLS! NO FENCES! GENERAL AMNESTY FOR ALL!
OUR HOMELAND IS WHERE WE LIVE!
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
QUICKVOTE
Do you agree with Charlie Sheen that the U.S. government
covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks?
[So far it's running 83 percent in agreement.]
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/showbiz.tonight/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
REPEAL THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT IN 2007!
Check out: 10 EXCELLENT REASONS NOT TO JOIN THE MILITARY
http://www.10reasonsbook.com/
Public Law print of PL 107-110, the No Child Left Behind
Act of 2001 [1.8 MB]
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html
Also, the law is up before Congress again in 2007.
See this article from USA Today:
Bipartisan panel to study No Child Left Behind
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
February 13, 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-02-13-education-panel_x.htm
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Hello.
Are you an immigrant?
Do you have a history of immigration?
Do you support immigration issues?
Are you against the hr4437 bill?
Speak out
VISIT www.studentsresponseshr4437.com
A new website where students (and non-students)
can speak out on the hr4437 bill.
Please foward.
Thanks,
Cecilia
National Immigrant Solidarity Network
No Immigrant Bashing! Support Immigrant Rights!
webpage: http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org
e-mail: info@ImmigrantSolidarity.org
New York: (212)330-8172
Los Angeles: (213)403-0131
Washington D.C.: (202)544-9355
Please consider making a donation to the important
work of National Immigrant Solidarity Network
Send check pay to:
ActionLA/SEE
1013 Mission St. #6
South Pasadena CA 91030
(All donations are tax deductible)
*to join the immigrant Solidarity Network daily
news litserv, send e-mail to:
isn-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
or visit: http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/isn
*a monthly ISN monthly Action Alert! listserv, go to webpage
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/isn-digest
Please join our following listservs:
Asian American Labor Activism Alert! Listserv, send-e-mail to:
api-la-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
or visit: http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/api-la
NYC Immigrant Alert!: New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania
areas immigrant workers information and alerts, send e-mail to:
nyc-immigrantalert-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
or visit: http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/nyc-immigrantalert
US-Mexico Border Information: No Militarization of Borders!
Support Immigrant Rights! send e-mail to:
Border01-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
or visit: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Border01/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Protests Planned Against Media War Coverage
By Danny Schechter
Source: MediaChannel.org
http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/3378
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
TELL BUSH AND CONGRESS: STOP THE WAR
ON IRAN BEFORE IT STARTS!
Please join the online campaign to
STOP THE WAR ON IRAN BEFORE IT STARTS!
YOUR EMERGENCY ACTION IS NEEDED NOW!
Send emails to President Bush, Vice President
Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, U.N. Secretary-
General Annan, Congressional leaders and
the media demanding NO WAR ON IRAN!
http://stopwaroniran.org/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
WHY WE FIGHT
A film by Eugene Jarecki
[Check out the trailer about this new film.
This looks like a very powerful film.]
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/decind.html
http://www.usconstitution.net/declar.html
http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/02/1805195.php
Bill of Rights
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html
http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/02/1805182.php
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
ARTICLES IN FULL:
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
1) Mexican pride boosted by US immigrant marches
By Tim Gaynor
Wed Apr 19, 6:04 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060419/wl_nm/mexico_usa_dc_1
2) Immigration Satire:
The Real Apple Pie: Bashing Immigrants
By Tommi Avicolli Mecca
Published: April 20, 2006, SF Bay Times
3) Amnesty for All
By Carole Seligman
(Speech delivered to the April 10th Immigrant Rights Amnesty
Demonstration, San Francisco)
4) The Military Wants Your Children
By Bonnie Weinstein
(Speech delivered to the April 10th Immigrant Rights Amnesty
Demonstration, San Francisco)
5) Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
No. 15/2006
13- 19 Apr. 2006
http://us.f542.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=466_8002363_12956_3537_14035_0_43593_48236_3196859754&Idx=7&YY=91766&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=u&head=&box=Inbox
6) Israel - Palestine: The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
By Todd May - Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6883.htm
7) The Transit Union Chief's Long March to Jail
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
April 24, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/nyregion/24toussaint.html?hp&ex=1145937600&en=e326c1bd75ce6c97&ei=5094&partner=homepage
8) CSI: Trade Deficit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
April 24, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/opinion/24krugman.html?hp
9) Senators to Reignite Debate on Immigration
By CARL HULSE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
April 24, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/washington/24immig.html
10) Tax Cuts, Executive Pay and Golden Parachutes
The Rich are Different
By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
April 21, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/brauchli04212006.html
11) For Latinos in the Midwest, a Time to Be Heard
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
April 25, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/us/25kansas.html?hp&ex=1146024000&en=1598569c1253aed9&ei=5094&partner=homepage
12) Potheads and Sudafed
By JOHN TIERNEY
April 25, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/opinion/25tierney.html?hp
13) The Immigration Impasse
New York Times Editorial
April 25, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/opinion/25tue1.html?hp
14) Rebuilding of Iraqi Pipeline as Disaster Waiting to Happen
By JAMES GLANZ
April 25, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/world/middleeast/25pipeline.html
15) Lethal Cruelty
New York Times Editorial Against the Death Penalty
April 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/opinion/26weds1.html?hp
16) US agriculture and immigration tied in a knot
By Christine Stebbins
Wed Apr 26, 2006 6:07 AM ET
http://today.reuters.com/misc/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-26T100701Z_01_N25208342_RTRUKOC_0_US-ECONOMY-IMMIGRATION-AGRICULTURE.xml
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
1) Mexican pride boosted by US immigrant marches
By Tim Gaynor
Wed Apr 19, 6:04 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060419/wl_nm/mexico_usa_dc_1
For years, many Mexicans looked to their political leaders to win
a better deal for millions of relatives living and working illegally
in the United States, and they were always disappointed.
Now the sight of sons, daughters, cousins and even parents
stepping out of the shadows and clamoring for their rights
in huge pro-immigrant marches and vigils across the United
States this month has reinvigorated a sense of national pride.
"It's great to see, and it makes you feel proud," said Mario
Castillo, a buyer for Intel Corp. whose doctor father works
in a hospital in Yuma, Arizona.
"You feel that, at last, Latinos have the courage to raise
their hands and say, 'You know what, we're here and you
have to respect us as a people and human beings'," he added.
Hundreds of thousands of people toting bullhorns and
waving placards have taken to the streets in more than 60
cities from California to New England to protest a bill that
sought to criminalize illegal immigrants and build a wall along
a stretch of the border with Mexico.
More than half the estimated 12 million undocumented
immigrants in the United States are originally from Mexico.
Many see the protests as a turning point for Mexicans who
often feel belittled by the United States, and humiliated by
a lack of progress in a long struggle for immigrant rights.
Mexican expatriate workers, millions of whom work in
low-paid jobs on farms, construction sites and in hotels
and restaurants, have noted few gains since Mexican-
American labor activist Cesar Chavez founded the
National Farm Workers Association back in the 1960s.
President Vicente Fox has also so far failed to win
a migration deal with Washington for Mexicans working
stateside despite making it his No. 1 foreign policy goal.
But the sight of so many migrant workers standing up for
their rights has helped restore dented national pride.
It has also put pressure on the U.S. Congress, which
is locked in a divisive fight over immigration reform.
NATIONALIST PRIDE
"In terms of Mexican nationalism it contributes a lot
to the feeling of self, and contributes to that sense
of pride," said Jorge Chabat, a political analyst in
Mexico City.
The pro-immigrant marches, hailed as one of the most
significant U.S. protest movements since the push for civil
rights in the 1960s, is planning further demonstrations
and a labor stoppage across the United States on May 1.
Inspired by the success of the direct action movement there,
many in Mexico are planning a boycott of U.S. businesses
and franchises on the day, in a gesture of solidarity.
One widely circulated e-mail sent by activists urges consumers
not "to buy any gringo products in the country on May 1, nor
consume anything from any American franchises or go
shopping in the USA."
The message, one of several making the rounds, urged
consumers not to shop at stores including fast-food giants
McDonald's Corp., Burger King, as well as retail powerhouse
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which is capturing an ever-larger market
share in Mexico.
While some fear the gesture is misguided and question whether
it will have any effect, for many frustrated Mexicans, it is just
good to see migrants making their presence felt.
"It makes you proud to see Mexicans stand up for themselves,"
said Faustino Soto, 52, a driver in Mexico City. "If there were
marches here in Mexico on the day, I would definitely take part."
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
2) Immigration Satire:
The Real Apple Pie: Bashing Immigrants
By Tommi Avicolli Mecca
Published: April 20, 2006, SF Bay Times
If the proposed federal bill HR 4437 (Sensenbreener
and King) becomes law, workers at AIDS and other
social service agencies will have to ask for papers
before helping anyone who walks in the door with an
accent. Lo siento mucho, señor: No green card, no AIDS
test. It’s that simple. The new law will make it a
felony not only to be an “illegal” alien but also to
assist one. It’s all about protecting our country
against terrorism. It’s even in the title of the bill,
“The Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal
Immigration Control Act.”
Allowing “illegals” to get medical care or a homeless
shelter bed will send the wrong message to those
foreigners who want to blow up our buildings and take
away our precious freedoms. It’s a known fact that
terrorists come here to use our hospitals and
HIV-positive support groups just before they release
dangerous gases into the subway system (oh wait, that
was our government).
If your partner is undocumented, better draw up the
divorce papers now and call the INS (not the IRS).
Even the mere knowledge of someone’s illegal status
can lead to five years in jail, if you don’t report
him or her immediately to the nearest immigrant
official.
It all makes perfect sense. After all, we’ve always
been a country of legal immigrants. Christopher
Columbus and his men carried their green cards on the
Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. The first thing
the Pilgrims did when they stepped off the Mayflower
onto Plymouth Rock was to show Native American
immigration officials their papers. The European
immigrants with the most impressive papers, however,
were the southern Italians, though for some strange
reason they earned the nickname WOPs (WithOut Papers).
It’s impossible to comprehend why some people are now
saying that our country hates immigrants. Millions of
protesters with foreign names have taken to the
streets with banners that attack our country as
anti-immigrant. They’re obviously being misled by the
liberal media. Our country is damn crazy about
immigrants. Every July 4th, we get all warm and fuzzy
about the poem written at the base of the Statue of
Liberty, which was sent to us by some foreign
government. Most of us can probably recite one or two
words of it. “Uh, give me your poor, your tired,
your...uh...people from many lands, amen.” America is
the great melting pot. All those ethnic groups mashed
together and cooked over a high flame for a few
centuries has produced a suburban McCulture that’s the
envy of the world. That’s why so many people want to
come here. You can’t blame them. Actually, we can. We
can deport them, too, if they’re not the right color
and class.
Those ultra liberal ACLU types just want us to hate
our own country. They point to “No Italians Need
Apply” signs that were proudly displayed in shops a
century ago or the fact that those Chinese workers
building the railroads weren’t allowed by law to send
for their wives. They bring up anti-Semitism as if
it’s still the ‘60s. The NINA signs were designed to
protect Italians from possible racist violence on the
job. As for the Chinese, having wives here would have
distracted them from their work. And anti-Semitism,
wasn’t that eradicated when we crushed Adolph Hitler?
Besides, what’s the point of dwelling on the past?
It’s not as if it’s going to teach us anything. The
Sensenbrenner/King bill makes good American sense:
Criminalize the people who come to this country to do
sweaty, back-breaking work in our fields and in the
kitchens of our restaurants, not to mention the people
who cross borders desperate for work fixing our
toilets because the international treaties we make
with their governments leave their villages poor and
without jobs.
When it comes right down to it, anti-immigrant laws
are more American than apple pie.
Tommi Avicolli Mecca raises hell as a radical
working-class southern Italian faggot living in San Francisco.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
3) Amnesty for All
By Carole Seligman
(Speech delivered to the April 10th Immigrant Rights Amnesty
Demonstration, San Francisco)
When the United States sent planes to bomb Afghanistan they
crossed many borders.
When they sent ships, planes, and soldiers to Iraq they crossed
many borders.
When they sent their money and agents to Venezuela to try
to overthrow the elected President Hugo Chavez, they crossed
borders.
When they sent their economic hit men into Iran, Iraq, Panama,
Bolivia, and countries all over the world to profit U.S. corporations
they had no problems with borders.
And, when they exploit the resources of Africa, Asia, and Latin
America‹including the most precious resource of all, the labor
power of the workers of all those continents‹they take no heed
of borders. Not at all.
No, the very idea of borders, walls, and fences, the idea that some
people are legal and others are not, is a lie that is used for only
one purpose--to divide working people by national origin in order
to exploit them and keep all workers wages low.
We working people do not recognize the borders set up by
the rich. We know that they are wrong.
And just as the government has no right to wage war against
the people of Iraq, no right to send working people here to kill
working people there, the government has no right to make laws
declaring some people--immigrants--"illegal."
What is an illegal person, a person without papers, in a country
made up entirely of immigrants? Immigrants from every part of
the world who came here for better opportunities for survival than
they could get at home (except the Indians who were already here
and the Africans who were kidnapped and brought here against
their will).
We say: No person is illegal!
The movement for amnesty is a profound and powerful source
of inspiration to all who struggle for justice. These demonstrations
are the biggest in the whole history of California.
The government wants to use you. They want to trade citizenship,
papers, for your willingness to fight the rich man1s war in Iraq
and sacrifice your sons and daughters to that war. They want you
to allow them to recruit your children to fight their dirty wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq, to cross those borders, in exchange
for citizenship.
Passing laws against your rights to live and work here serves
only their need to exploit you. The working people of North
America gain nothing from these laws, from false borders
between people.
We say NO to exploitation and borders established for
the wealthy to exploit the workers.
Amnesty for all!
No one is illegal!
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
4) The Military Wants Your Children
By Bonnie Weinstein
(Speech delivered to the April 10th Immigrant Rights Amnesty
Demonstration, San Francisco)
San Francisco voters voted to Bring the Troops Home Now in 2005.
We voted to Get the Military Out of Our Schools this past November;
and 95 percent of parents here in San Francisco signed the Military
opt out forms in order to keep the military away from our children.
But The San Francisco Board of Education just passed The Equal
Access for Recruiters Policy resolution (62-14Sp1) that completely
circumvents all of this. It, in fact, brings the military right through
the front doors and in close contact with our children on a regular
basis in spite of the wishes of the parents and the voters.
This resolution allows two recruiters each from the Army, Navy,
Air Force, and Marines into the schools each time colleges, universities,
trade unions and employers visit. The Board passed this policy because
the No Child Left Behind Act, which comes before congress again
in 2007, forces the schools to sacrifice our children to the military
in order to stay open. That law withholds federal funds to schools
that don’t give the military “equal access.” And these funds add
up to millions of dollars—money the schools can’t do without.
But here is what this new policy concretely means. At the George
Washington High School Career Fair Tuesday, April 4, the military
showed up in force. And, with a $2 billion dollar advertising budget
in their pockets, they attracted hundreds of students by giving away
flashlights, nylon-web key chains, rulers, charts; pens; stickers;
emblems; posters and, of course, slick brochures that tell them they
can become electric guitar players or video game designers if they
just join the military.
They even tell students that they don’t have to go into combat—
that there are non-combat jobs available for the asking. And, they
promise them thousands of dollars in bonuses and money for college
—money less than ten percent of those that serve ever get. In fact they
will say anything to get the kids to sign up. They even sign contracts
with students knowing full well that as soon as the student signs up,
those contracts are null and void and the "enlistee" soon finds out
that they are just another piece of military equipment for the service
to do with as they please.
And the military recruiters don’t go to all schools equally. They
don’t go to the schools for the rich. Those schools don’t rely on
Federal Funds so the military leaves them alone. They prey on the
poor—especially schools with large immigrant populations. Just
as they promise college money, they promise immigrant students
and their families “a chance” for citizenship if they just agree to
“serve this country” and fight in the war.
The war has been good for the rich. It has contributed to the two-
fold increase in the number of billionaires from 476 three years ago
to 793 this year—and many of these billionaires live right here in
San Francisco. Yet they, and all the multi-billion-dollar corporations
that make San Francisco their home, and whose children are exempt
from the military, are routinely rewarded with huge tax breaks and
tax give-backs, just for making San Francisco their home.
The ever-increasing trillion-dollar war budget is the prime reason
for the draconian cutbacks in all social service programs—especially
the schools. And while the San Francisco Board of Education is being
forced to facilitate this swindle, it should also be obligated to fight
the No Child Left Behind Act and inform students and their families
that the military is not a road to citizenship, scholarship, skill
or higher education. It is a road to death; and its function is to
uphold and strengthen the dictatorship of the wealthy over the poor!
The School Board should inform all involved that the billions of dollars
lining the pockets of the rich and the trillions of dollars spent on war
could undo all the poverty, want and need in the world if it were put
to that use! In other words, the San Francisco Board of Education
should join with us!
You know, the people of France won a fantastic victory by acting
en masse and in solidarity for their demand that the government
rescind a law that would have allowed employers to fire workers
under 26 years old without cause and at any time. But the people
of France united, acted, and were not defeated! They were
victorious and the reactionary law was rescinded!
We are here tonight to say we are united and we will not be defeated!
We want the troops brought home IMMEDIATELY! We want military
recruiters out of our schools! And we’re here to say: NO TO BORDERS,
NO TO WALLS and NO TO FENCES! WE DEMAND AMNESTY FOR ALL!
OUR HOMELAND IS WHERE WE LIVE!
ALL OUT MAY 1, 5 P.M., Federal Building, San Francisco!
450 Golden Gate Avenue
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
5) Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
No. 15/2006
13- 19 Apr. 2006
http://us.f542.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=466_8002363_12956_3537_14035_0_43593_48236_3196859754&Idx=7&YY=91766&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=u&head=&box=Inbox
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Escalate Attacks on Palestinian Civilians
and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)
-A Palestinian child killed by IOF in Beit Lahia and a Palestinian activist
died from a previous wound.
-41 Palestinians, including 19 children, were wounded
by the IOF gunfire.
-IOF continued to shell Palestinian areas in the Gaza Strip, especially
the northern area, putting Palestinian homes at risk.
-IOF conducted 35 incursions into Palestinian communities
in the West Bank, particularly Nablus.
-74 Palestinian civilians, including 11 children, were arrested by IOF.
-Wives and mothers of allegedly wanted Palestinians were arrested
by IOF and one has remained in custody.
-10 houses were transformed by IOF into military sites.
-IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT; IOF have
closed border crossings of the Gaza Strip; the north of the West Bank
has been separated from the south; and IOF arrested 8 Palestinian
civilians, including two children, at checkpoints in the West Bank.
-IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall in the West
Bank; IOF have closed outlets on the section of the Wall between
Qalandya checkpoint and the Dahiat al-Barid area.
-Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and
property in the OPT; the settlers violently beat a Palestinian civilian
and his child in Hebron.
Read more at Palestinian Center for Human Rights:
http://www.pchrgaza.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
6) Israel - Palestine: The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
By Todd May - Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6883.htm
09/09/04 -- Recently, the debate about Israel and Palestine has
taken an odd turn. The idea of a single democratic state in historic
Palestine, once thought dead, has re- emerged as an option worthy
of consideration. For some, the idea of a single state is a matter of
realism. Tony Judt, for example, argues in The New York Review of
Books that the integration of the West Bank may already be irreversible,
and suggests that a single binational state may be the only
alternative to ethnic cleansing. More recently, Noah Cohen has
criticized Noam Chomsky's endorsement of a two-state solution.
In Cohen's view, we ought to think of Palestine on the model
of South Africa, and follow its solution of endorsing a democratic
state for all who live in it.
Like many, I long favored a two-state solution. It seemed to me
the best of a set of bad solutions to the problem of two peoples
living side by side on a small parcel of land. I believe now that
I was wrong. The two-state solution is neither moral nor realistic.
The only politically and ethically viable approach to the problem
of Israel and Palestine is to support a single democratic secular
state that provides equal rights for all of its citizens. Furthermore,
the failure to recognize this has, I believe, helped underwrite
some of the most egregious of Israel's policies. The most
important reason for this has not, to my knowledge, yet been
sufficiently addressed. I would like to do so here.
Many Palestinians have argued that the formation of Israel was
a case of solving European problems on Arab land. Let us look
a little more closely at what that solution has consisted in.
A single people is thought, in the name of its religion, to have
primary dominion over that land. There are others living on the
land; they are to be accorded secondary rights. (Although Israel
claims its Palestinian citizens possess equal rights, such a claim
is ludicrous. It is well known that the Palestinians are unable
to form parliamentary coalitions with the Jewish parties that
universally reject them, they do not enjoy equal municipal
funding in their towns, they are dispossessed of their land,
they are denied equal access to education, and so on.)
This is not simply a moral matter. Nor is it simply a historical
one. It is both. And that is the problem that we who have
endorsed a two-state solution have neglected.
To privilege a single people on a land that supports others
as well is to create two intertwined problems. First, it implicitly
accords a greater moral worth to that people. We who live
in the United States should be viscerally aware this, given
our history with native Americans and people of African descent.
Second, according this greater moral worth erases the moral
limits that any person or people should enjoy relative
to others. Once those moral limits are erased, the door
is open to abuses of the kind that are rife in Israel's history.
Think, for example, of the recent issue of terrorism. How
many of us are ready to ascribe terrorism to suicide bombings
but not to the destruction of homes with people still in them
or the enforced starvation of towns and villages or the
indiscriminate firing on nonviolent protestors? This imbalance
is never far to seek, and even those of us who support the
Palestinians find ourselves on the defensive. However, we
who have supported a two-state solution have negligently
endorsed the framing of the issue that allows this to happen.
We endorse a "right to exist" that seems to apply to a particular
nation but in fact applies only to a particular people within that
nation: Jewish people. Furthermore, that right is exercised
at the expense of others whose rights, as the Bush administration
does not cease to remind us, must be earned by renouncing
their struggle against occupation.
The core of the problem lies here. To privilege politically
a single people is to lay the foundation for all subsequent
abuses. This is not to say that those abuses follow logically
from this privileging. Nor is it to say that they were historically
inevitable. Rather, it is that the struggle against such abuses
concedes at the outset what it should not: that there is a certain
privilege legitimately accorded to Israeli Jews.
We should deny this privilege, and anything that follows from it.
One of the things that follow from it is a two-state solution
in which Jews enjoy privilege in one of those states (and,
presumably, non-Jews in the other one). We should endorse
what we should always have endorsed: a single state that
privileges nobody, a state where the primary address from
one of its members to another is that of "citizen."
I am sure that this approach must ring false to the ears of many.
There are a number of objections that one might raise to it. Let
me put a few forward, and then answer them in the hope of
giving some plausibility to an idea that cuts against the grain
of much of received wisdom.
A first objection might appeal to the motivation for recognizing
(although, historically, not for forming) a Jewish state in the first
place. The Holocaust seemed to many to prove that Jews were
unsafe anywhere, and that they needed a place where they
could erect a barricade against the history of genocide they
faced. A Jewish state would be a natural way to do so.
This objection is misplaced. Jews were indeed often unsafe
in Europe. They were not nearly as unsafe in the United States,
nor were they in Palestine before the advent of Zionism. That
the Holocaust proves that European Jews deserve protection
against the history of hatred against them is undeniable.
It does not follow from this that they deserved a state where they
would be privileged vis-à- vis another people. That idea has
more to do with nineteenth-century nationalism than with the
internationalism more characteristic of the contemporary world.
Moreover, history has shown the effects of this privileging.
I should note in passing that in replying to this objection I do
not mean to rule out the possibility of a single binational state,
one that, like South Africa or Canada, recognizes the collective
rights of all of its groups and seeks to protect them. However,
I do not, with Professor Chomsky, see a two-state solution as
a potential path toward binationalism. For the reasons I have
given, I have come to see the former as resting on assumptions
that undermine the possibility both of binationalism and even
of the two-state solution itself.
The second objection is that it is unrealistic to expect Palestinians
and Jews to live side by side without acrimony. Things have gone
too far; hatred has become too deep to expect anything but
a cycle of violence and counterviolence. While hatred is certainly
palpable between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, its inevitable
longevity can be reasonably doubted. During the Oslo period,
although Israel continued systematically to dispossess Palestinians
of their land and settle Jews on it, there were numerous acts
particularly of economic cooperation between Palestinians and
Israeli Jews. Much of this cooperation occurred out of the glare
of the media, so it was not noticed. But occur it did. Indeed, one
should not be surprised. The opportunity for enhancing one's
livelihood has proven a powerful motivator over the course
of human history. There is no reason to expect economic
cooperation, particularly if it is fostered, to drown in a sea
of hatred. In fact, there is reason to expect the opposite.
The final objection is perhaps the most powerful one, because
it is the most entrenched. All of this talk of a single state, one
might say, is idle dreaming. Israel will not allow it to happen,
because it will mean the end of Israel as a state and Zionism
as an idea. In short, the proposal is a non-starter.
In addressing this objection, we should first recognize that
what is and is not realistic to endorse depends on what the
options are. Presumably, the more realistic alternative is
a two-state solution. But is this really more realistic? The
entire sweep of Israeli history argues against it. There is not
a single moment in the history of Israel, and in particular of
the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
and East Jerusalem, in which Israel was prepared to recognize
a viable, independent Palestinian state existing along its
borders. (The Barak proposal at Camp David is often offered
as a counterexample. However, I fail to see how a demilitarized
state that does not have control of its borders, its airspace, its
aquifers, or many of its central roads is considered a viable state.
If there is a non-starter, that was certainly it.) There is no reason
to believe that Israel is to be enticed into a two-state solution,
so the question then becomes one of the terms in which it is
to be confronted.
Some might say, however, that Israel will more easily succumb
to confrontation if it involves something less than the end of
Zionism. I used to believe this. I no longer do. It is precisely the
privileging of Jews to which Zionism is committed that fosters
the idea that Israelis are justified in their horrific treatment of
Palestinians. That is the tenet that needs to be attacked. We
should not seek to welcome Israel into the community of nations,
but rather seek to welcome Jews into the community of people.
The first endorses a sense of Jewish exceptionalism, the second
an integration that is all anyone is entitled to and something
everyone (including Palestinians) should be protected in.
The struggle for a single state will certainly be a long one. But
the struggle for two states has been a long one as well, and its
results so far have not been promising. My suggestion here is that
the reason for such meager results has more than a little to do
with the framework within which many of us have thought about
the issue. I do not want to deny that there are, in politics, times
in which moral compromise is necessary for the sake of preventing
a far worse fate. It has become increasingly evident that this is not
one of those times. The politics of Palestine require that we remove
our moral blinders, not in order to attain a greater moral purity
in approaching a just solution to the "problem of Palestine," but
in order to see our way to a solution at all.
GOD BLESS PALESTINE
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7) The Transit Union Chief's Long March to Jail
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
April 24, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/nyregion/24toussaint.html?hp&ex=1145937600&en=e326c1bd75ce6c97&ei=5094&partner=homepage
When Roger Toussaint, the transit workers' union president, leads
a procession of chanting union members and labor leaders across
the Brooklyn Bridge today on his way to a jail cell in Manhattan,
it will be only the latest bizarre twist in a contract fight that never
seems to end.
"We've seen some of the most complex and strange events that
anyone has ever seen in a labor dispute," said Mr. Toussaint,
who headed a 60-hour transit shutdown in December that
forced many cold, disgruntled New Yorkers to walk across
bridges themselves.
In January, subway and bus workers rejected a 37-month deal
by a razor-thin margin of 7 votes out of 22,461 cast. But in
a revote announced last Tuesday, members overwhelmingly
approved the exact same deal, 71 percent to 29 percent.
Meanwhile, leaders of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority,
who once urged the union to hold a revote after members first
rejected the deal, have called the new vote "an empty gesture."
Just days after the two sides reached the original agreement,
Gov. George E. Pataki, who controls the authority, denounced it
for being too generous to workers who had engaged in an illegal
strike.
About the only thing clear is that Mr. Toussaint will head today
to the Tombs, the jail in Lower Manhattan. But first he will have
quite a send-off — a 4 p.m. march across the Brooklyn Bridge
with union members and labor leaders, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s
president, John J. Sweeney. And transit workers are planning
to hold vigils outside the Tombs for a few hours each day.
In sentencing him to 10 days in jail, Justice Theodore T. Jones
of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn said Mr. Toussaint had shown
contempt for the law by heading an illegal strike.
But the jail stay, some labor experts say, could end up helping
Mr. Toussaint by turning him into a martyr. The sentence, they
said, could help clinch his re-election later this year in a fractious
union where dissidents have repeatedly edged out embattled
leaders in elections.
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Toussaint said his jailing was
"stupid politically."
"It's one thing if you threaten a jail sentence while a strike is on,"
he said. "It's another thing to send someone to jail three months
afterward."
Insisting that the state's Taylor Law, which prohibits strikes by
public employees, was biased against labor, he said authority
officials had engaged in illegal behavior but were not being
punished. Even though the Taylor Law bars public-sector
employers and unions from insisting on pension changes
in contract talks, the authority's negotiators demanded that
the union agree to a far less generous pension plan for new
transit workers.
Last Monday, Justice Jones fined the union, Local 100 of the
Transport Workers Union, $2.5 million and suspended its ability
to collect members' dues automatically from paychecks,
a move that will cost it millions. These moves, union officials
said, could bankrupt Local 100.
"It's a pretty high penalty," said Harry C. Katz, dean of the Cornell
School of Industrial and Labor Relations. "It will make unions
in the city think twice about striking. Some people say this will
make unions more compliant. But unions will just look for other
ways to exert influence — and that might take the form of exerting
more political influence."
Mr. Toussaint voiced little concern about going to jail. "I'll deal
with it," he said. "To me, the drama is the contract and the
ratification."
After announcing that union members had ratified the deal,
Mr. Toussaint said Local 100 would go to court if the authority's
board does not vote on it at its regular meeting this Wednesday.
Authority officials have said there will not be a vote.
The authority asserts that the original deal was rendered moot
as soon as union members voted it down in January. Seemingly
eager to walk away from the deal, the authority petitioned for
binding arbitration, saying the dispute had reached an impasse,
and the state's Public Employment Relations Board agreed.
The union argues that now that it has carried out its legal
responsibility to do its utmost to get its members to ratify
the deal, the authority must do its best to get its board
to approve it as well.
The deal called for raises averaging 3.5 percent in each
of three years and for the workers, who previously paid
no health insurance premiums, to pay 1.5 percent of their
wages toward premiums.
The union opposes arbitration, partly because it would deny
transit workers a vote on the outcome and partly because
an arbitration panel cannot include in its ruling two provisions
of the original deal that union members hailed: an improved
health plan for retirees and the repayment of about $130
million to 20,000 members who had made excess contributions
into the pension system. Under state law, arbitration panels
in public employee disputes cannot make decisions regarding
pensions and retirees.
"It's too bad the M.T.A. doesn't just ratify the agreement," said
Dean Katz. "You basically have them grinding the workers'
face into the ground when these workers already have morale
problems. I can't imagine that bodes well for the quality
of service."
Several labor experts said they believed the authority's strategy
was to wait until the arbitration panel was about to issue a ruling
— which could take months — and then resume negotiations
to press the union to accept changes in the original deal.
"I don't think it's possible without the structure of the arbitration
in place to get a deal done," said Barry Feinstein, a member
of the authority's board.
Authority officials say they hope the union will agree to drop
the provision that Mr. Pataki denounced most vigorously,
a side agreement in which the authority promised to repay
the $130 million in pension contributions even if lawmakers
in Albany blocked that provision.
Union officials oppose such a concession, fearing that Mr. Pataki
will prevent the transit workers from ever receiving the
$130 million. But some are looking to a possible Democratic
successor to Mr. Pataki to make good on the deal.
It was Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, as the state's chief legal
officer, who asked Justice Jones to fine the union and jail
Mr. Toussaint. But now the union might look to a future
Governor Spitzer to make good on the $130 million pension
deal that the authority's board seems eager to turn its back on.
Yet another strange twist.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
8) CSI: Trade Deficit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
April 24, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/opinion/24krugman.html?hp
Forensics are in. If you turn on the TV during prime time, you're
likely to find yourself watching people sorting through clues from
a crime scene, trying to figure out what really happened.
That's more or less what's going on right now among international
finance experts. The crime in question is the U.S. trade deficit, which
according to the broadest measure reached an amazing $805 billion
last year. The mystery is how we've been able to run huge deficits, year
after year, with so few visible adverse consequences. And the future
of the U.S. economy depends on which of two proposed solutions to
the mystery is right.
Here's the puzzle: the trade deficit means that America is living beyond
its means, spending far more than it earns. (In 2005, the United States
exported only 53 cents' worth of goods for every dollar it spent on
imports.) To pay for the excess of imports over exports, the United
States has to sell stocks, bonds and businesses to foreigners. In fact,
we've borrowed more than $3 trillion just since 1999.
By rights, then, the investment income — interest payments, stock
dividends and so on — that Americans pay to foreigners should
be a lot larger than the investment income foreigners pay
to Americans. But according to official statistics, the United
States still has a slightly positive balance on investment income.
How is this possible? The answer, almost certainly, is that there's
something wrong with the numbers. (Laypeople tend to treat
official statistics as gospel; professional economists know that
putting these numbers together involves a lot of educated
guesswork — and sometimes the guesses are wrong.) But
depending on exactly what's wrong, the U.S. economy either
has hidden strengths, or it's in even worse shape than it seems.
In one corner are economists who think the official statistics
miss invisible U.S. exports — exports not of goods and services,
but of intangibles like knowledge and brand-name recognition,
which allow U.S. companies to earn high rates of return on their
foreign investments. Proponents of this view claim that if we
counted these invisible exports, which they call "dark matter,"
much of the U.S. trade deficit would disappear.
The dark matter hypothesis has been eagerly taken up by some
journalists, who like its upbeat message. It seems to say that the
U.S. economy is, as a cover article in Business Week put it, "much
stronger than you think."
But there's a problem: U.S. companies operating abroad don't,
in fact, seem to earn especially high rates of return. Why, then,
doesn't the United States seem to be paying a price for all its
borrowing? Because according to the official data, foreign
companies operating in the United States are remarkably
unprofitable, earning an average return of only 2.2 percent
a year.
There's something wrong with this picture. As Daniel Gros
of the Center for European Policy Studies puts it, it's hard
to believe that foreigners would continue investing in the
United States "if they were really being constantly taken
to the cleaners."
In a new paper, Mr. Gros argues — compellingly, in my view —
that what's really happening is that foreign companies are
understating the profits of their U.S. subsidiaries, probably
to avoid taxes, and that official data are, in particular, failing
to pick up foreign profits that are reinvested in U.S. operations.
If Mr. Gros is right, the true position of the U.S. economy isn't
as bad as you think — it's worse. The true trade deficit, including
unreported profits that accrue to foreign companies, isn't $800 billion
— it's more than $900 billion. And America's foreign debt, including
the value of foreign-owned businesses, is at least $1 trillion bigger
than the official numbers say.
Of course, optimists have a comeback: if things are really that
bad, why are so many foreign investors still buying U.S. bonds?
And they point out that those predicting problems from the trade
deficit have been wrong so far. But I have two words for those
who place their faith in the judgment of investors, and believe
that a few good years are enough to prove the skeptics wrong:
Nasdaq 5,000.
Right now, forensic analysis seems to say that the U.S. trade
position is worse, not better, than it looks. And the answer
to the question, "Why haven't we paid a price for our trade
deficit?" is, just you wait.
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9) Senators to Reignite Debate on Immigration
By CARL HULSE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
April 24, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/washington/24immig.html
WASHINGTON, April 23 — Prodded by large demonstrations and
the prospect of another on the horizon, Senate leaders will try
to revive stalled immigration legislation this week, with some
urging President Bush to mediate personally the sharp differences
among Republicans on the volatile issue.
Two weeks after the Senate walked away from its immigration
debate, leaders of both parties are expressing a new sense of
urgency to act before the November midterm elections. Mr. Bush,
who has made an immigration bill a centerpiece of his legislative
agenda and who could use a victory on Capitol Hill to revive his
flagging second term, is expected to address the issue again
on Monday in an appearance in Irvine, Calif.
"This is a top priority, and the president wants to see the
Congress press ahead and get something done, in
a comprehensive way," the White House press secretary,
Scott McClellan, told reporters on Sunday.
After an Easter recess punctuated by large immigrant rights
protests, both Democrats and Republicans say their colleagues
recognize that if they do not press ahead it could stir a reaction
from those who want stricter border enforcement, business
operators who rely on foreign workers and advocates
of immigrant rights.
"We're not going to be stampeded, but at the same time we
understand that there is a giant problem out there," said
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who set
a hearing for Tuesday on the economic impact.
Mr. Specter said he intended to use a White House meeting
the same day to encourage Mr. Bush to "get into the fray
now" by getting House and Senate Republicans to reconcile
differences before the Senate passes a bill. "The time has
come for specifics," Mr. Specter said.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader blamed
by Republicans for tying up the legislation, and Senator Edward
M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, a chief architect of the
Senate measure that fell apart two weeks ago, also called on
Mr. Bush to get involved. In interviews, each said the president
must push back against conservatives who want to limit the
legislation to stronger border enforcement.
"The president is going to have to weigh in on this," Mr. Reid
said. "Somebody has to stand up to the right wing that is not
allowing us to go forward."
Mr. Bush has said he favors legislation that includes a guest
worker program for illegal immigrants, and he used his radio
address on Saturday to reiterate that goal.
A spokesman said the president was eager to work with
Congressional leaders to advance a bill. "The president's
position is that it is important to keep that legislation moving,"
said Ken Lisaius, deputy White House press secretary.
Mr. Bush has shown little appetite for the give and take of
negotiations, preferring to outline his goals and leave details
to his Congressional allies. But those allies are now feuding
bitterly among themselves.
Some Senate Republicans, led by John McCain of Arizona,
champion an approach mixing stiffer border controls with
potential citizenship for some illegal immigrants. But conservatives
in the House and the Senate balk at talk of legal residency for those
in the country illegally.
"The differences between the two approaches are so great, I do
not know how you connect those dots," said Representative Tom
Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, who favors more border enforcement.
"The idea of providing amnesty, which is inherent in every one of the
Senate plans, is abhorrent to most members of the House Republican
Conference."
Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said Saturday
in an article for National Review Online that he wanted to finish
immigration legislation by the end of May. But he will face resistance
from some in his own party.
Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, said he was leery.
"We need to think very seriously about how we want immigration
to be conducted in the future," Mr. Sessions said, citing estimates
of 30 million new arrivals in the next decade. "Just passing 'something'
is not respectful of the American people."
Immigration will not be the first order of business for the Senate.
Lawmakers will consider a $106.5 billion emergency spending
measure for the war in Iraq and hurricane recovery, which will
expose another Republican split over spending.
That fight will push any immigration bill into the first week of May
at the earliest. But trying to assuage conservatives and ease the way
for a broader bill, Republicans want to add $2 billion to the emergency
spending bill for additional border agents and enforcement tools like
fences for high-traffic areas and new surveillance aircraft.
"Under any circumstances, security has to come first," Mr. Frist
wrote in his article.
Mr. Reid, who two weeks ago resisted a Republican push for a series
of conservative amendments to a bipartisan compromise on immigration,
said in an interview that he was willing to agree to what he described
as a reasonable number of them. But he said Mr. Frist, Mr. McCain
and other Republican backers of a broad measure would eventually
have to join Democrats in forcing a final vote if they wanted to
produce a bill.
Mr. Reid and Mr. Specter called for guarantees on how the Senate
would conduct immigration talks with the House, including
a commitment that senators would not give in to House conservatives.
The Senate returns to its debate on the issue as immigrant advocacy
groups plan an economic boycott on May 1, the latest in a series
of large-scale demonstrations that have sharpened Congressional
focus on the issue. Some lawmakers and members of the public
have been upset at foreign flags at the rallies. Some predict that
the proposed national school and job walkout could stir
a stronger negative reaction.
"There is some real concern about the marches," said Representative
Steve Chabot, an Ohio Republican who played host to Mr. McCain
for a campaign event during the recess but does not share his
position on immigration. "For the most part, people think we
ought to control our borders."
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
10) Tax Cuts, Executive Pay and Golden Parachutes
The Rich are Different
By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
April 21, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/brauchli04212006.html
Once again the tidings of the season and the news from the news
reminded one and all that it is better to be rich than to be poor.
The week ended with news of the Cheneys' tax refund and began
with stories in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal
reminding us that the rich get richer and the rest don't.
The Cheney news was that Dick and Lynne Cheney would be
getting a $1.9 million tax refund because they had overpaid their
estimated taxes. They were simply getting back their own money.
Being slightly more money than many of my readers anticipate
receiving in wages for the foreseeable future, to say nothing of
tax refunds, it highlighted the difference between Dick and Lynne,
and the rest of us. The refund has nothing to do with the pay
Mr. Cheney got for being vice president, which is only $205,031,
nor does it have anything to do with $211,465 of deferred
compensation he received from Halliburton that a White House
spokesman pointed out has nothing to do with Halliburton's
performance or earnings. It had to do with profits Mr. Cheney
realized when he exercised stock options given him when he
left Halliburton. The White House spokesman forgot to say
those profits had something to do with Halliburton's performance
and earnings since they affect the stock price. (Halliburton
and the Iraqis have been the principal beneficiaries of Mr. Bush's
invasion of Iraq. Thanks to Mr. Bush's post-war planning,
Halliburton stock has proved to be worth more than Iraqi lives).
The Wall Street Journal depressed retired readers by pointing
out in discouraging detail what many retirees had already
discovered. A cutback in medical benefits promised upon
retirement does not affect all retirees equally.
The United Auto Workers Union agreed with General Motors
in 2005 that retirees should begin paying a portion of their
health insurance premiums, a change that will cost retirees
hundreds of dollars each year. Ron Gettelfinger, UAW president,
admitted it was difficult to agree that retirees should begin
paying for something they'd been getting for free but it was
"a right decision to make in the long term." He was not, of
course, referring to rich retirees. Their treatment was described
in the Wall Street Journal story written by Ellen Schultz and Theo Francis.
The story showed that the more money a retired executive
receives from the company in retirement, the more likely it is
that the executive will not be asked to pay for health insurance.
The less money a retired employee receives in retirement, the
more likely it is that the employee will have to pay all or part
of his or her health insurance premiums.
Northrop Gruman Corp. requires its vanilla flavored retirees
to pay an ever increasing share of their health insurance
premiums based on inflation whereas a select group of
executives participate in a different program in which all
cost increases based on inflation are paid by the company.
AT&T pays its top executives $100,000 annually for out of
pocket health care costs before and after retirement.
Commenting on this benefit a spokeswoman said that
compared with other companies AT&T gives those who are
not top executives "very good medical benefits". Not reported
was how "very good medical benefits" for the humble employee
compare with the benefits received by the more exalted.
At Northwest Airlines regular employees must work 23 years
before they are eligible for retiree health insurance coverage
beginning at age 55. It disappears when the employee qualifies
for Medicare. The company's top executives, in contrast, receive
full health care coverage for life for themselves and their
dependents after three years with the company.
The report on health benefits for the retired was not the only
reminder that the rich get richer. On April 13 the New York Times
described the retirement package received by Lee R. Raymond,
chairman and chief executive of Exxon from 1993 to 2005. It was
reportedly worth $398 million and included not only cash, stock
options and stock but country club fees and other benefits. It was
not clear whether Mr. Raymond had to pay for his own health
insurance out of the $398 million. A follow-up story two days
later reported that during the time Mr. Raymond led the company
his average daily compensation was $144,573, somewhat more
than many of his employees earn in a year.
There is something to be learned from the foregoing. In favoring
tax cuts and other benefits for the rich, Mr. Bush is not demonstrating
original thinking. He is reflecting the attitude towards money that the
rich would say has made America great. The non-rich can simply envy
as they wonder.
Christopher Brauchli is a lawyer in Boulder, Colorado. He can be
reached at: Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu.
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11) For Latinos in the Midwest, a Time to Be Heard
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
April 25, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/us/25kansas.html?hp&ex=1146024000&en=1598569c1253aed9&ei=5094&partner=homepage
LIBERAL, Kan., April 21 — The pro-immigration rally here two
weeks ago was not the largest or most sophisticated, considering
the tens of thousands of people who marched in places like Washington,
Los Angeles and New York.
It came together in just a few days, spread by word of mouth and
a hastily written flier posted in stores. People picnicked or milled
about as children played and vendors sold ice cream. They chanted
"Sí, se puede" — yes, we can — but did not venture many more
slogans than that.
But the turnout of 800 or so in this windswept prairie town reflects
the activism around the immigration debate that has rippled
to rural areas in the Midwest, where the Latino population has
soared in recent years but opposition to illegal immigration
remains deeply ingrained.
"We've never been united like that, all of us Latinos," said
Jose Torres, a meatpacking plant worker who attended the
rally. "We are here and not leaving, and we need to let
people know that."
The main elements of the national debate are here, just
somewhat hidden beneath the surface: the mutually dependent
relationship of employers and immigrant workers, the financial
benefits and setbacks an influx of immigrants brings to
a community, and the awkward question of who is legal
and how much it should matter.
There have long been Latinos in southwestern Kansas, a place
steeped in Americana. One of the towns, Dodge City, still
promotes the legend of Wyatt Earp. Liberal celebrates an
annual pancake festival and stakes a tourist-minded claim
as the hometown of Dorothy from the "Wizard of Oz" —
complete with a yellow brick road.
Mexican laborers first arrived more than a century ago to
help build railroads, and some of their descendants remain.
The marches here and in nearby towns, however, underscored
the other, parallel world of newly arrived Mexican laborers
living impoverished in trailer parks and working in the
unglamorous meatpacking industry.
With the growth of the meatpacking industry here in the early
1980's came droves of new immigrants. At $10 an hour, the
messy, taxing and sometimes dangerous assembly-line work
of slaughtering cows and processing them into steaks and
hamburger was a bonanza compared with jobs in Mexico,
El Salvador and elsewhere in Latin America.
By 2000, the Latino share of the population of this town of
20,000 had quadrupled to 43 percent from 10 percent in
1980, reflecting a pattern throughout southwest Kansas.
"They came to fill important jobs in the community and work,
and people in our world respect hard workers," said Donald
D. Stull, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas who
has studied the demographic changes across the region.
Liberal got its name, the story goes, from the generosity
of its founder, S. S. Rogers, who would give out water to
settlers passing through. That welcoming spirit pervaded
many prairie towns and continues to some extent today.
Still, many people here who are not Hispanic take offense
at the waving of foreign flags — during the rally here a few
carloads of young white men drove past pointedly brandishing
American flags — and chafe at hearing so much Spanish
spoken on the streets.
In a Survey USA poll earlier this month for The Wichita Eagle
and KWCH-TV, nearly three-quarters of 500 adults statewide
answered "yes" when asked if the United States should find
and deport all illegal immigrants.
Even so, there has been a respect here, sometimes grudging,
that the majority of the immigrants have come to work and
have helped keep Liberal and other towns hanging on, in
contrast to dying farm towns. But complaints about the
strain on services and crowded schools are growing, too.
"We don't look at it as growth and progress always because
we are getting the growth and progress, but from the lower
incomes that are a drain on government services," said Sally
Cauble, a longtime resident who is running for the state
school board.
The imprint of Latinos in Liberal goes well beyond the schools.
Bakeries, Mexican food stands, Spanish-language radio and
other businesses catering to them have sprouted up over the
years. On Pancake Boulevard, a main drag dotted with fast
food restaurants and cheap motels, a restaurant, El Amigo
Chavez, rubs shoulder with the KFC, and the counter girl
at McDonald's takes orders in Spanish while a group of older
white men hold court at a table.
"They work hard and don't cause too much trouble, so I guess
it's been good for these parts," said one of the men in the
McDonald's, Fred Sanders, a former Liberal resident on a visit.
It is common belief, if difficult to prove, that many of the
new arrivals are illegal, but this town generally has taken
a "don't ask, don't tell" approach. For many years, it was
better not to know — the work that needed to get done
was getting done.
Nonetheless, the nationwide crackdown by the Department
of Homeland Security on illegal immigrants and those who
employ them has caused a stir here, as many believe the
meatpacking plants, despite assurances from executives
that identity documents are checked, employ some workers
with fake work permits and Social Security cards.
The state's political leadership has been split on how to
deal with the problems of illegal immigration. Last month,
state legislators beat back a proposal to repeal college tuition
breaks for the children of illegal immigrants, a proposal the
governor, Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, had criticized.
Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican, broke with fellow
conservatives to favor a provision in a Senate bill that would
allow a guest worker program that ultimately would steer
illegal immigrants to citizenship. That put him in the company
of major agriculture and industry leaders here.
The state's other senator, Pat Roberts, also a Republican,
has emphasized a crackdown on the border to keep illegal
immigrants out. The congressman from this region,
Representative Jerry Moran, a Republican, voted for a House
bill in December that, apart from strengthening border security,
would make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant or aid one.
Against the uncertain political backdrop, some Latinos see
opportunity. In recent months a generation of longtime workers
and their relatives, some of whom have moved on to better-
paying work, opened businesses and raised families here,
have seized on the immigration debate in an effort to increase
Latino political power.
"I went to a meeting in Topeka and they said, 'What, there are
Hispanics in southwest Kansas?' " said Concha Aragon, a custodial
worker in Ulysses who is organizing a chapter of an advocacy
group, Hispanos Unidos, in the area. "I said, 'Yes, and we're
taking action.' "
The younger generation, especially the children of the immigrants,
who make up nearly two-thirds of the public school enrollment
now, are also beginning to assert themselves.
Kasmine Hidalgo, 25, whose father came here years ago to work
in a meatpacking plant, National Beef, recalled an awkward moment
when a local radio reporter approached her during the demonstration
here on April 10.
"He asked me, well, 'Are you Mexican or American?' " Ms. Hidalgo
said. "I said: 'I am Mexican-American. I was born here.' People do
not realize a lot of us are from here. We do need more political
leaders, and maybe this is a step."
As in a lot of the country, much of the focus these days is on May 1,
when immigrant groups in many states are threatening a work
stoppage. Organizers here are discussing the possibility of joining
the boycott, but some church leaders argue against it and some
workers fret over antagonizing their bosses at the plants. National
Beef, which operates plants here and in Dodge City, issued a letter
before the April 10 demonstration sympathizing with the cause of
immigration law reform but discouraging employees from skipping
work.
Fresh from her shift at the plant, Adela Torres sat at the kitchen
table of her Liberal home in a neighborhood of small houses and
mobile homes.
"We have to keep this going, to claim our rights," Ms. Torres said.
"We're just deciding how."
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12) Potheads and Sudafed
By JOHN TIERNEY
April 25, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/opinion/25tierney.html?hp
Police officers in the 1960's were fond of bumper stickers reading:
"The next time you get mugged, call a hippie." Doctors today could
use a variation: "The next time you're in pain, call a narc."
Washington's latest prescription for patients in pain is the statement
issued last week by the Food and Drug Administration on the supposed
evils of medical marijuana. The F.D.A. is being lambasted, rightly, by
scientists for ignoring some evidence that marijuana can help severely
ill patients. But it's the kind of statement given by a hostage trying
to please his captors, who in this case are a coalition of Republican
narcs on Capitol Hill, in the White House and at the Drug Enforcement
Administration.
They've been engaged in a long-running war to get the F.D.A.
to abandon some of its quaint principles, like the notion that it's
not fair to deny a useful drug to patients just because a few criminals
might abuse it. The agency has also dared to suggest that there
should be a division of labor when it comes to drugs: scientists
and doctors should figure out which ones work for patients, and
narcotics agents should catch people who break drug laws.
The drug cops want everyone to share their mission. They think
that doctors and pharmacists should catch patients who abuse
painkillers — and that if the doctors or pharmacists aren't good
enough detectives, they should go to jail for their naïveté.
This month, pharmacists across the country are being forced
to lock up another menace to society: cold medicine. Allergy and
cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine, a chemical that can
illegally be used to make meth, must now be locked behind the
counter under a provision in the new Patriot Act.
Don't ask what meth has to do with the war on terror. Not even
the most ardent drug warriors have been able to establish
an Osama-Sudafed link.
The F.D.A. opposed these restrictions for pharmacies because
they'll drive up health care costs and effectively prevent medicine
from reaching huge numbers of people (Americans suffer a billion
colds per year). These costs are undeniable, but it's unclear that
there are any net benefits.
In states that previously enacted their own restrictions, the police
report that meth users simply switched from making their own
to buying imported drugs that were stronger — and more expensive,
so meth users commit more crimes to pay for their habit.
The Sudafed law gives you a preview of what's in store
if Representative Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, succeeds
in giving the D.E.A. a role in deciding which new drugs get approved.
So far, despite a temporary success last year, he hasn't been able
to impose this policy, but the F.D.A.'s biggest fear is that Congress
will let the drug police veto new medications. In that case, who
would ever develop a better painkiller? The benefits to patients
would never outweigh the potential inconvenience to the police.
Officially, the D.E.A. says it wants patients to get the best
medicine. But look at what it's done to scientists trying to study
medical marijuana. They've gotten approval for their experiments
from the F.D.A., but they can't get the high-quality marijuana
they need because the D.E.A. won't allow it to be grown. The
F.D.A. actually wants to know if the drug works, but the D.E.A.
is following the just-say-know-nothing strategy: as long as
researchers can't study marijuana, they can't come up with
evidence that it's effective.
And as long as there's no conclusive evidence that medical
marijuana works, the D.E.A. and its allies on Capitol Hill can
go on blindly fighting it. Representative Mark Souder, the
Indiana Republican who's the most rabid drug warrior in
Congress, has been pressuring the F.D.A. to crack down
on medical marijuana. Last week the agency finally relented:
in return for not having to start busting anyone, it issued
a statement stressing the potential dangers and lack of
extensive clinical trials establishing medical marijuana's
effectiveness.
The statement was denounced as a victory of politics over
science, but it's hard to see what political good it does
the Republican Party.
Locking up crack and meth dealers is popular, but voters
take a different view of cancer patients who swear by marijuana.
Medical marijuana has been approved in referendums in four
states that went red in 2004: Nevada, Montana, Colorado and
Alaska. For G.O.P. voters fed up with their party's current big-
government philosophy, the latest medical treatment from
Washington's narcs is one more reason to stay home this
November.
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13) The Immigration Impasse
New York Times Editorial
April 25, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/opinion/25tue1.html?hp
If there ever was a moment in the debate over immigration when
presidential leadership was urgently needed, it was yesterday,
when Congress returned from its two-week intermission with
the Senate's short-lived compromise in tatters. But all President
Bush offered was a restatement of the painfully obvious and
a bunch of bland generalities.
In the last installment of this melodrama, Senate leaders failed
to find the courage to foil the Republicans who had lighted
the fuse on amendments intended to blow apart a pale and
fragile compromise. Meanwhile, nervous and defensive
Democrats wrapped the bill tightly in a procedural blanket.
Mr. Bush might have thought he was answering lawmakers'
pleas for help when he informed an audience in California
that mass deportations wouldn't work. That's a sensible —
if fairly obvious — generality. But this is a moment for specifics.
The president could have argued forcefully for comprehensive
reform and spelled out the distinction that the Senate has
drawn between an earned route to legalization and the
detested free ride of amnesty. Instead, he blandly labeled
the Senate compromise an "interesting approach," as if he
were pondering a piece of modern art rather than the fate
of something central to his domestic agenda.
The pieces of comprehensive reform are in place: tighter
borders and stricter enforcement of employment laws, more
visas for temporary workers, and a path to citizenship for
many of the 11 million to 12 million people who are here
illegally. But the ingredients of an endless stalemate are there,
too, nurtured by a Republican hard core that blindly insists
that there are only two things to do with illegal immigrants:
exploit them or expel them.
The Senate's latest immigration bill is an awkward, unappetizing
compromise, which would shut out many newer immigrants
and impose daunting red-tape hurdles on the rest. But
at least it remains wrapped around a vital principle: the
option of citizenship for those in the shadow population
who want and deserve to become Americans.
Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee,
says his panel will take up immigration immediately, and he
insists that a majority in the Senate support comprehensive
reform. But it's not clear how willing the majority leader, Bill
Frist, is to stand up to those in his party's right wing who
want to enshrine police-state enforcement as the beginning
and the end of immigration strategy.
Comprehensive reform will also mean ensuring that if
a decent bill is passed by the Senate, it will not be destroyed
later when the House and Senate negotiate privately over
their different measures. Supporters of comprehensive reform
deserve a guarantee that a conference committee will not
include senators who are eager to shred good legislation
to reconcile it with the xenophobic bill passed in December
by the House. And Mr. Bush needs to signal the House that
he is behind the Senate's approach.
With elections looming, there are many who are content
to confine the immigration debate to a netherworld of bumper
stickers and T-shirt slogans, where remedies are simplistic
and short-term. The Republican National Committee, after all,
has begun broadcasting lies on Spanish-language radio in the
Southwest. The ads accuse the Democrats of supporting efforts
to turn illegal immigrants into felons, when the opposite is true.
With a strong push from Mr. Bush, the tardy Mr. Frist could
guide this wearying saga to a better ending. Millions are
watching, and waiting.
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14) Rebuilding of Iraqi Pipeline as Disaster Waiting to Happen
By JAMES GLANZ
April 25, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/world/middleeast/25pipeline.html
When Robert Sanders was sent by the Army to inspect the
construction work an American company was doing on the
banks of the Tigris River, 130 miles north of Baghdad, he
expected to see workers drilling holes beneath the riverbed
to restore a crucial set of large oil pipelines, which had been
bombed during the invasion of Iraq.What he found instead that
day in July 2004 looked like some gargantuan heart-bypass
operation gone nightmarishly bad. A crew had bulldozed
a 300-foot-long trench along a giant drill bit in their desperate
attempt to yank it loose from the riverbed. A supervisor later
told him that the project's crews knew that drilling the holes
was not possible, but that they had been instructed by the
company in charge of the project to continue anyway.
A few weeks later, after the project had burned up all of the
$75.7 million allocated to it, the work came to a halt.
The project, called the Fatah pipeline crossing, had been a
critical element of a $2.4 billion no-bid reconstruction contract
that a Halliburton subsidiary had won from the Army in 2003.
The spot where about 15 pipelines crossed the Tigris had been
the main link between Iraq's rich northern oil fields and the
export terminals and refineries that could generate much-
needed gasoline, heating fuel and revenue for Iraqis.
For all those reasons, the project's demise would seriously
damage the American-led effort to restore Iraq's oil system
and enable the country to pay for its own reconstruction.
Exactly what portion of Iraq's lost oil revenue can be attributed
to one failed project, no matter how critical, is impossible
to calculate. But the pipeline at Al Fatah has a wider significance
as a metaphor for the entire $45 billion rebuilding effort in Iraq.
Although the failures of that effort are routinely attributed to
insurgent attacks, an examination of this project shows that
troubled decision-making and execution have played equally
important roles.
The Fatah project went ahead despite warnings from experts
that it could not succeed because the underground terrain was
shattered and unstable.
It continued chewing up astonishing amounts of cash when the
predicted problems bogged the work down, with a contract that
allowed crews to charge as much as $100,000 a day as they
waited on standby.
The company in charge engaged in what some American officials
saw as a self-serving attempt to limit communications with the
government until all the money was gone.
And until Mr. Sanders went to Al Fatah, the Army Corps of
Engineers, which administered the project, allowed the show
to go on for months, even as individual Corps officials said
they repeatedly voiced doubts about its chances of success.
The Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, formerly Kellogg Brown & Root,
had commissioned a geotechnical report that warned in August
2003 that it would be courting disaster to drill without extensive
underground tests.
"No driller in his right mind would have gone ahead," said
Mr. Sanders, a geologist who came across the report when
he arrived at the site.
KBR defended its performance on the project, and said that
the information in the geotechnical report was too general
to serve as a warning.
Still, interviews by The New York Times reveal that at least two
other technical experts, including the northern project manager
for the Army Corps, warned that the effort would fail if carried
out as designed. None of the dozen or so American government
and military officials contacted by The Times remembered being
told of the geotechnical report, and the company pressed ahead.
Once the project started going bad, senior American officials
said, an array of management failures by both KBR and the Corps
allowed it to continue. First, some of those officials said, they
seldom received status reports from the company, even when
they suspected problems and made direct requests.
"Typically when you manage a project, you have people who
can tell you that you've got so much of your project finished
and this much money that has been spent," said Gary Vogler,
a senior American official in the Iraqi Oil Ministry. "We couldn't
get anything like that."
Some warnings did in fact make their way to senior officials
who could have stopped the project, said Donna Street,
a Corps engineer who examined correspondence on the
project after it failed. But neither the Corps nor the company
seemed to act on them, Ms. Street said.
"It seems to me that there was pretty much an absence of
anything," she said. "The reports went out. The questions
were asked. But there was just no response."
An independent United States office, The Special Inspector
General for Iraq Reconstruction, began an investigation of
the project and issued a report earlier this year. It sharply
criticized KBR for not relaying the problems, and concluded
that "the geological complexities that caused the project
to fail were not only foreseeable but predicted."
The company received a slap on the wrist when it got only
about 4 percent of its potential bonus fees on the job order
that contained the contract; there was no other financial penalty.
In interviews, two of the top Army Corps commanders who
have had involvement at Al Fatah were reluctant to criticize
the work done by KBR in Iraq. That was also the case in
February when the Army Corps agreed to pay Halliburton
most of its fees on a large fuel supply contract in Iraq, even
though Pentagon auditors had found more than $200 million
of the charges were questionable.
Congressional Democrats have accused Halliburton of enjoying
special privileges because Vice President Dick Cheney was its
chief executive before he became vice president.
Although independent experts have noted that it is one of
a handful of companies with the experience and size to handle
enormous jobs like the reconstruction effort, KBR is often
sheltered by a military that is heavily dependent on it.
Through a spokeswoman, Melissa Norcross, KBR rejected the
criticisms leveled at it in the Fatah pipeline case by the inspector
general and other officials, saying that the company had
responded properly to an urgent request by the United
States government to build the crossing quickly in a dangerous
area.
Ms. Norcross asserted in a written response to questions that
the geotechnical report was too general to suggest any
measures but extensive ground testing, which would
have required sophisticated equipment. "Such equipment
was not available in the region, and certainly not in Iraq,"
she said.
She said statements that the company did not report
regularly about the project are "completely without merit"
and that daily and monthly reports were duly filed.
Ms. Norcross said that when serious problems arose,
"the Corps directed KBR to continue" with the drilling.
With the failed effort at Al Fatah, the inspector general
estimated lost money from crude oil exports at as much
as $5 million a day. The United States was forced to issue
a new $66 million job order that includes another attempt
to run pipelines across the Tigris — this time using
a different technique.
Stunned by a Change in Plans
On April 3, 2003, invading American troops had reached
the outskirts of Baghdad and were eyeing its smoking
skyline. A naval aircraft dropped a single bomb on the
Fatah crossing.
Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff who
was the allied air commander, said that bridges were
not generally targets in the war, but that he approved
the Fatah strike to stop the enemy from crossing the
bridge on which the original pipelines had run through
openings beneath the road.
The pipelines had carried crude oil from the fields
around Kirkuk, 60 miles to the northeast, crossed the
Tigris at Al Fatah and transported the crude to refineries
or to export terminals in Turkey.
Still, there was reason for optimism. The Fatah bridge
was one of three bridges chosen as high priorities in
an initial $680 million rebuilding program mandated
by Congress. Army Corps engineers estimated that it
would cost some $5 million and take less than five
months to string the pipelines across the bridge once
it was repaired.
"There is an urgent and compelling need to accomplish
this feat as soon as possible," Douglas Lee Cox, the
northern Iraq project manager for the Army Corps,
wrote in a memo on June 9, 2003.
Then, as quickly as the bridge project had been approved,
it was dropped with little explanation, in favor of a bridge
in Tikrit. Older buried pipelines were able to carry limited
amounts of oil, American officials said, but breakdowns
were a constant worry.
Army Corps officials were stunned. Without the Fatah
bridge, they were forced to consider new ways of putting
pipelines across the river. They debated options like
digging a huge trench in the riverbed and laying the
pipelines in it — the option that would later be chosen
after the KBR project failed.
KBR ultimately settled on trying to put the pipelines
under the Tigris using a technique called directional
drilling, in which nearly horizontal holes are bored out
in an arc through the riverbed. In a written response to
questions, the company said it chose the technique because
it was the only one that could be used to complete the project
as quickly as the Army Corps had demanded.
Mr. Cox said he had not even been consulted. Gary Loew,
another senior Corps official in Iraq at the time, remembers
that the idea for drilling came from KBR and said that the Corps
approved it verbally in the summer of 2003.
Mr. Cox, who was familiar with the technique from his own work
in Texas, knew that with the heavy equipment and supplies
needed for the job, his colleagues' claims that Fatah could
be finished in 60 to 90 days were nonsense, particularly with
the deteriorating security on the road from Kirkuk, where the
supply planes would land.
"I said, 'Now how in the heck do you think you're going to do
directional drilling with the situation we have here?' " Mr. Cox
recalled, adding that he had told KBR officials, "It takes us
forever to get enough security to drive down this road, and
that's at 70 miles an hour."
That same month, a KBR pipeline expert saw a preliminary
design and advised the company "that the project would
probably fail," according to the inspector general report.
The most blatant warning came from the study that KBR had
commissioned from Fugro South, a geotechnical firm. The
study stated repeatedly that the project should not begin
without extensive field exploration and laboratory testing
of the area.
KBR went ahead with the work without sharing the report
with senior oil officials in Iraq. Nor did it carry out the
testing that the report strongly recommended.
The report had cited "past tectonic activities near the site."
The words, suggesting slippage of the earth's crust in
eons past, would prove prophetic.
Troubles From the Start
The Fugro report did have one important consequence.
KBR included it in a "request for proposals" to drilling
subcontractors — along with contradictory information
from KBR suggesting that the ground was made of ordinary
clays, silts and sandstones, the inspector general report found.
Faced with that contradictory information, the subcontractor
that won the bid negotiated a contract that required it only
to try drilling holes on a daily basis — not necessarily succeed.
"There was no requirement that the subcontractor complete
any holes," the inspector general wrote.
Ms. Norcross, the KBR spokeswoman, said that no subcontractor
would have been "willing to mobilize equipment and personnel
to an unstable war zone" if the contract had been written more
stringently.
An official in the inspector general's office saw it differently.
"It was a horrible contract," the official said. "It's basically, 'Give
it your best shot, spend six months doing it.' "
In late January, 2004, drilling began. The plan called for boreholes
to accommodate 15 pipelines, which would arc beneath the Tigris
at shallow angles. Troubles turned up instantly. Every time workers
plied the riverbed with their drills, they found it was like sticking
their fingers into a jar of marbles: each time they pulled the drills
out, the boulders would either shift and erase the larger holes
or snap off the bits.
The area had turned out to be a fault zone, where two great pieces
of the earth's crust had shifted and torn the underground terrain
into jagged boulders, voids, cobblestones and gravel. It was just
the kind of "tectonic" shift that the Fugro report had warned of
— hardly the smooth clays and sandstones that KBR had suggested
the drillers would find.
The crew abandoned the first borehole and started a second,
the inspector general reported. Twenty-six days later, the
borehole went through. But the crews found it impossible to
enlarge the hole enough for a 30-inch pipe to pass through.
By the end of March, five months after arriving in Iraq, they
managed to jam a 26-inch pipe through.
The crews would never again get anything larger than that
across the riverbed. To make matters worse, the project
suffered from constant equipment shortages, just as Mr.
Cox, the Army Corps project manager, had predicted.
If KBR had declined to write performance clauses into the
drill subcontract, the company had also included language
that prevented the crews from speaking directly with the
Army Corps, let alone passing along word that some of
them knew that the effort was futile.
The company "restricted subcontractor communications
by requiring all communications be addressed to them,"
the inspector general found.
Mr. Vogler, the senior Oil Ministry official, said he began
hearing rumors from Iraqis in the ministry in Baghdad that
something had gone terribly wrong, but the company itself
seemed determined not to clarify what had happened.
"We couldn't get a good status report," Mr. Vogler said.
"We kept asking for it," he said. "We couldn't get one."
Still, a trickle of information found its way through the
command structure of the Army Corps. Ms. Norcross of
KBR said that in April 2004, the company notified
a contracting officer in Baghdad that 75 percent of the
$220 million allocated for the job order had been exhausted.
By then the insurgency had worsened, and the camp suffered
regular attacks. The threat became so severe that drilling
was temporarily suspended "while KBR and the Army Corps
of Engineers worked to address the lack of adequate force
protection," Ms. Norcross said.
After security concerns were addressed, the work at Al Fatah
resumed and so did problems with the drilling. Troubling
reports from KBR officials at the site eventually reached
higher in the Army Corps, but there was little reaction.
J. Michael Stinson, an American who took over as senior
oil adviser to the Oil Ministry in March, said not all of the
blame for the project lies with the company.
"I don't know that the Corps covered itself with glory either,"
Mr. Stinson said. "The engineers, the managers, probably
should have said: 'Time out. Let's send a bunch of people
home. Let's find out if this is going to work.' "
'Culpable Negligence'
Finally, in early July 2004, some eight months after the
project began, the Army Corps sent Mr. Sanders to Al Fatah.
A geologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma and
a former oilman, the blunt-spoken Mr. Sanders, now 68, said
he joined the Army Corps when he grew bored with retirement.
One of the first documents he found at the site was the Fugro
report, and it set off alarm bells.
"You just don't see a consultant's report like that that
is totally dismissed," he said.
"That put them on notice," Mr. Sanders said. "When they
didn't take that notice, they accepted what I would call
culpable negligence."
KBR maintains that the report did not contain enough detailed
information to raise questions about the project.
But Mr. Sanders said drill supervisors at the site, the kind of
workers he liked to call "tool pushers," had indicated otherwise.
Hoping to start a conversation with them during his visit,
Mr. Sanders said the geology around the area looked as if it
could be tough on a drilling operation. The men did not hesitate.
"They agreed that it was just the wrong place for horizontal
drilling," Mr. Sanders said. "They didn't see any probability
of getting one of the big holes done."
But he said they had been told to keep drilling — pushing
their tools, anyway. Of course, by giving Mr. Sanders any
information, they had probably violated their contract with KBR.
Mr. Sanders, outraged by the poor quality of the work and
what he described as the indifference of the Army Corps to
it, contacted the inspector general. "Everything I could see
out of it was being swept under the rug," he said.
But it was already too late. One morning at about the time
of his visits, American officials in the Oil Ministry in Baghdad
finally obtained a status report from KBR.
All the money had been spent.
Col. Emmett H. Du Bose Jr., who in December 2003 assumed
command of the task force of the Corps in charge of the project,
said other items in the $220 million job order, like putting
emergency power generators at oil installations, did get done.
KBR provided him with optimistic assessments nearly to the
end of the line, Colonel Du Bose said in a telephone interview,
and he was convinced that the project would be a success.
But he said that he was not sure who, if anyone, might have
seen the contradictory information in the Fugro report.
"In hindsight, knowing what I know today, I would have
probably said we need more geology information before
we start drilling those holes," Colonel Du Bose said.
The new Al Fatah project is being carried out by a joint
venture involving Parsons Corporation and the Australian
company Worley, said Col. Richard B. Jenkins, commander
of the Gulf Region Division-North for the Army Corps,
in a telephone interview from Iraq.
The work relies on a less risky method in which the pipelines
are laid down in a trench dug into the river bottom and
encased in concrete. Colonel Jenkins said that Al Fatah
was now "essentially a completed project."
But as of last week, an official at Iraq's State-owned North
Oil Company said, oil was still not flowing at Al Fatah.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington for
this article, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times
from Kirkuk, Iraq.
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15) Lethal Cruelty
New York Times Editorial Against the Death Penalty
April 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/opinion/26weds1.html?hp
Lethal injection is considered by some to be a more humane
alternative to the electric chair. But the Supreme Court hears
arguments today in a case that shines a light on the reality:
if lethal injection is poorly administered, it can in fact be
particularly barbaric. In today's case, Clarence Hill,
a condemned man, is arguing that it would be unconstitutional
for Florida to execute him with what he contends are its
flawed lethal injection procedures. The case comes to
the court in a tricky procedural posture that poses the
question of whether Mr. Hill should be able to bring his
claim at all. The court should clear the way for Mr. Hill's
challenge.
We believe that the death penalty is in all cases unconstitutional,
and that the Supreme Court should spare Mr. Hill's life on that
ground alone. But even justices who do not share that view
should be troubled by a method of execution that may impose
tremendous pain on a condemned prisoner in the process
of killing him. It appears that Florida's use of lethal injection
can do just that.
In lethal injection, three different chemicals are administered
in sequence. The first is an anesthetic, another paralyzes the
muscles and stops breathing, and a third stops the heart.
Improper administration of the anesthetic can have the ghoulish
effect of leaving the prisoner able to feel the tremendous pain
of being killed by the poison that is injected into him while
rendering him unable to communicate his agony by sound
or gestures.
In a "friend of the court" brief, Physicians for Human Rights
warned that if the chemicals weren't used correctly, they could
"cause an inmate to suffocate, while consciously experiencing
the blinding pain of" a coronary arrest. Meanwhile, it said,
"onlookers believe him to be unconscious and insensitive
to any pain."
Lethal injection is used today in nearly every death penalty
state, but it is facing increased criticism. In a recent report,
Human Rights Watch declared that "there is mounting evidence
that prisoners may have experienced excruciating pain during
their executions."
This month, a federal judge in North Carolina delayed an
execution until the state found a means of ensuring that
the condemned prisoner was unconscious when the second
and third chemicals were administered.
Over the years, several justices have concluded that the death
penalty is in all cases unconstitutional, including Justice Harry
Blackmun, who famously declared, "From this day forward,
I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death." We agree
with Justice Blackmun and hope that the tinkering will someday
stop and that the law of the land will recognize that the Eighth
Amendment bars capital punishment completely. But even justices
who think the Constitution permits capital punishment should
find that lethal injections that torture prisoners in the process
of killing them are unconstitutional.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
16) US agriculture and immigration tied in a knot
By Christine Stebbins
Wed Apr 26, 2006 6:07 AM ET
http://today.reuters.com/misc/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-26T100701Z_01_N25208342_RTRUKOC_0_US-ECONOMY-IMMIGRATION-AGRICULTURE.xml
CHICAGO (Reuters) - In the debate about how tough the United States
should be on millions of illegal immigrants, Big Agriculture is warning
Americans that the $12 trillion U.S. economy could be forced to go
on a big diet if illegal immigrants are restricted.
Immigrants have flooded into many industries in what President
George W. Bush calls "the jobs Americans don't want." Agriculture
is a prime area where mostly Mexican immigrants have sent down
roots so strong that companies may no longer be able to operate
without them.
"To find and deport workers who are in the country right now
would throw a wrench into the economy of the United States that
would leave people in disbelief," said Dave Ray, spokesman for
the American Meat Institute, a meat industry group.
"What makes food so cheap in the United States is because we
do things efficiently and if you wiped out that efficiency by creating
an unnecessary labor shortage, it essentially will foist a high food
price on to consumers," Ray said.
The meat production unit of privately held Cargill Inc on Tuesday
said it decided to close down operations at five U.S. beef plants
and two hog plants next Monday.
Cargill, the No. 2 U.S. beef producer and No. 3 pork producer,
will close so employees can participate in mass rallies scheduled
across the country to protest a bill passed by the U.S. House of
Representatives that would erect a fence along much of the
U.S.-Mexico border and declare illegal immigrants felons.
"We talked with employees and many wanted to participate in
the May 1 activities. Because we share the concerns of many
employees ... we felt it was appropriate to change the schedules,"
said Cargill spokesman Mark Klein.
Similar rallies on April 10 cut U.S. meat production at top meat
producer Tyson Foods Inc. Industry officials say all U.S.
slaughterhouses and meat processing plants depend on
immigrant labor.
"What we've seen with the mobility of labor, particularly from
Mexico, has enabled that industry to stay in the United States,"
Chris Hurt, agricultural economist at Purdue University, said of
meat processing. "It's entirely possible that if labor had not been
mobile that parts of the industry would have to moved to other
countries like Mexico."
MEAT PRODUCTION, BUT MUCH MORE
But production in the multibillion-dollar meat industry, from
farms to processing, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes
to immigrant labor in U.S. agriculture.
World Perspectives, an agricultural consulting firm, estimated
that 40 percent of all immigrants in the United States work
in agriculture. Of that, 25 to 75 percent of U.S. farm laborers
are "fraudulently documented," it says.
From crop production to grain and oilseed processing to turf
farms, horticulture and lawn services, Hispanic labor -- legal
and illegal -- permeates the U.S. countryside.
A recent study by the American Farm Bureau Federation said
a crackdown on illegal immigrant labor could cause production
losses in U.S. agriculture of $5 billion to $9 billion in the first
one to three years and up to $12 billion over four or more years.
Most of the immediate effects would be seen in the fruit and
vegetable sector but problems would be felt everywhere in the
crop and animal-feeding sectors, notably in the Midwest.
"It's not just a fruit-and-vegetable California problem. This
affects anyone who owns the machines, custom harvests --
virtually these jobs are a 100 percent migrant work force,"
said Austin Perez, policy director for the AFB.
"You find the highest illegal immigration counties are now
in the Midwest," Perez added.
AFB says that despite heavy use of machines to plant and harvest
the largest U.S. crops -- corn, soybeans and wheat -- Midwestern
farmers often rely on cheap labor to fill positions that family
members once performed.
The size, concentration and tight margins of industrial farm
production have fueled a continuous demand for cheap labor
to keep the pipeline running.
Dairy operations from a few hundred to many thousands of cows
are round-the-clock milking and feeding jobs. Massive hog and
poultry barns now housing thousands of animals in close quarters
also require constant labor and monitoring in what can be harsh,
unsanitary and dangerous conditions.
So "raids" by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
can be disruptive, analysts said.
"A few years ago INS did a raid in Nebraska and it messed up the
cattle market. It drove live cattle prices lower -- $1.50 to $2 per
hundredweight because there weren't enough employees in packing
plants to run the cattle through," said World Perspectives
analyst Dave Juday.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
LINKS ONLY
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
THE 10 WORST CORPORATIONS OF 2005
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2006/000238.html
A Mistrial for a Father, but a Son Is Guilty
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and JEFF KEARNS
April 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/us/26mistrial.html
Antiwar Dad Lets Fingers Do Marching
By PETER APPLEBOME
April 26, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/nyregion/26towns.html
Student's Prize Is a Trip Into Immigration Limbo
By NINA BERNSTEIN
April 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/nyregion/26deport.html?hp&ex=1146110400&en=6200b6fc15479f36&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Dahr Jamail | Subject to the Penalty of Death
Jamail presents the facts: "To keep the perspective right,
let me repeat: it is the high ranking officials in the Bush
administration who are primarily responsible for creating
a situation in Iraq in which war crimes have been normalized."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042506A.shtml
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