*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Eyewitness Venezuela
Update on the Case of Luis Posada Carriles
ANSWER Activist Meeting
Tues. April 24, 7pm
2489 Mission St. Room 28, at 21st St., SF
near 24th St. BART/#14,#49 MUNI
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Support the San Francisco 8 on Friday April 27
850 Bryant, San Francisco
• Demonstration at 12noon Courthouse steps
• Court Hearing at 1:30pm Dept. 12
Demand the release of all Political Prisoners!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Hands Off Venezuela:
Jorge Martin Speaking Tour Date in San Francisco
When: Wednesday, May 9, 2007, 7:00 PM
Where: Center for Political Education,
3rd Floor Auditorium
522 Valencia, near 16th St.
(ring bell; not wheelchair accessible)
Cost: $5/$3 students, seniors, unemployed
Transit: BART station, 16th St.
Parking nearby: Mission & Bartlett Garage;
16th & Hoff Garage
Visit our websites at:
www.ushov.org
www.handsoffvenezuela.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ONE COURT DECISION:
EXECUTION OR THE ROAD TO FREEDOM
Stand with Mumia Abu-Jamal May 17 in Philadelphia
and San Francisco.
On May 17, 2007 Mumia Abu-Jamal's lead attorney, Robert
R. Bryan, will present oral arguments to the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. Despite
a mountain of evidence of his innocence, a U.S. criminal
"justice" system saturated with race and class bias has
reduced his case to just four issues: exclusion of Blacks
from the jury panel, racial bias, improper instructions
to the jury regarding the death penalty and prosecutorial
misconduct.
In a 1982 frame-up trial that has been condemned by groups
and individuals including Amnesty International, the
European Parliament, the NAACP, the National Lawyers
Guild, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa,
President Jacques Chirac of France, the Congressional
Black Caucus, hundreds of U.S. and international trade
unions and the Detroit, San Francisco, and Paris, France
city councils, Mumia was falsely convicted of the murder
of a Philadelphia police officer.
Six eyewitnesses stated that the real
killer fled the murder scene while
Mumia himself was found near dead next
to the slain police officer.
Critical evidence of Mumia's innocence
was destroyed or withheld.
"Witnesses" never at the murder scene
were coerced to state that they were
present. Police distorted events and
material evidence at the murder scene.
Mumia himself was excluded from the
majority of his own trial.
Mumia was the victim of a political
frame-up. He is an award-winning
journalist, whose widely-respected
social commentaries are today broadcast
on 124 radio stations. In 1981, as
a radio commentator and President of the
Philadelphia Association of Black
Journalists, he was a leading human
rights critic of the Philadelphia Police
Department, many of whose officers had
been indicted and convicted on charges
of corruption, witness intimidation and
the planting of evidence.
Mumia's judge, Albert Sabo, was overheard
by court stenographer, Terri
Maurer Carter, to say in his antechambers
about Mumia, "Yeah, and I'm going
to help 'em fry the n----r."
Mumia has been on death row nearly 25 years.
He has become a worldwide symbol in
the fight against the barbaric and
racist death penalty. Pennsylvania
authorities seek, for the third time,
to impose the death penalty and
murder Mumia by lethal injection. We must
make the political price of this
execution and continued incarceration
too high to pay. We stand with Mumia as
he fights for his legal right to a new
trial and for his life and freedom.
Join us in Philadelphia on Thursday,
May 17, 9:30 am at the U.S.
Courthouse, 6th and Market Streets,
Philadelphia. On the East Coast call:
215-476-8812. On the West Coast, we
mobilize at the U.S. Court of Appeals
Building, 7th Street and Mission, San
Francisco, 4-6 pm. Call: 415-255-1085
Pam Africa; Ed Asner; Harry Belafonte;
Heidi Boghosian, Exec. Dir, *National
Lawyers Guild; Angela Davis; Hari Dillon,
President, Vanguard Public Foundation;
Eve Ensler; Bill Fletcher Jr., Co-founder,
*Center for Labor Renewal; Danny Glover;
Frances Goldin; Rick Halperin, President,
*Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty;
Dolores Huerta; Barbara Lubin, Dir., *Middle
East Children's Alliance; Jeff Mackler; Robbie
Meeropol, Exec. Dir., *Rosenberg Fund for
Children; Michael Ratner, President, *Center
for Constitutional Rights; Lynne Stewart;
Alice Walker; Cornel West; Howard Zinn
*Organization listed for identification
purposes only.
CONTRIBUTE TO THE EFFORT TO SAVE MUMIA'S LIFE!
Please make checks payable to: Mobilization
to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, 298
Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. -
freemumia.org; alerts@freemumia.org
Sponsors: The Mobilization to Free Mumia
Abu-Jamal (Northern California);
International Concerned Family and Friends
of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
Coalition (NYC); Chicago Committee to Free
Mumia Abu-Jamal; Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ARTICLES IN FULL:
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Lordstown test case: Nonunion janitors,
10-hour straight-time
Jamie LaReau and Dave Barkholz | Automotive News / April 16, 2007
[Via Email from: This is from a subscription site, AutoNews.com,
which is why I am posting the entire piece.
--Steven Matthews steve@panix.com]
2) Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
"Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame
for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees..."
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
3) Young People and the War in Iraq
By JANET ELDER
NY Times, April 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/politics/18web-elder.html?8dpc
4) Denying the Right to Choose
April 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/opinion/19thu1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
5) Frolicking Visitor Delights Hearts, Then Dies
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ and ANN FARMER
April 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/nyregion/19whale.html?ref=nyregion
6) About Shaquanda Cotton: an interview with Terry Howcott
John Calvin Jones
"Editor's note: The recent story of Shaquanda Cotton,
sentenced to seven years in a juvenile prison for her
first offense, pushing a hall monitor at her high school
in Paris, Texas, raises a number of social policy issues.
Though Ms. Cotton was just released, given the revelations
of abuses in the Texas Penal System, where youths were
forced to have sex with guards, thousands of others are
trapped behind bars and are being tracked for prison as
we speak. Many people sought to shed light on the Shaquanda
Cotton case and secure her release. One such woman was
Terry Howcott. I was able to interview Ms. Howcott and
get her thoughts on the Shaquanda Cotton affair and more."
2007-04-09
http://www.virtualcitizens.com/articles/About_Shaquanda_Cotton__an_interview_with_Terry_Howcott
7) Girl in prison for shove released
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
March 31, 2007, 8:41 PM CDT
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070331shaquanda,1,2079171,print.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=2&cset=true
8) The Plot Against Medicare
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 20, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/opinion/20krugman.html?hp
9) U.S. Releases Cuban Bombing Suspect
By ANTHONY DePALMA
April 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/world/americas/20posada.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
10) Union, in Organizing Fight, Tangles With Celebrity Cook
By MARIAN BURROS
April 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20deen.html
11) Statement from the revolutionary government of Cuba
Translated by Granma International
Havana, April 19, 2007
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/abril/vier20/17declara.html
12) U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart
By EDWARD WONG and DAVID S. CLOUD
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html?ref=world
13) Marine Officer to Testify on Iraq Killings
in Exchange for Immunity
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21abuse.html
14) Growing Unrest Posing a Threat to Nigerian Oil
By JAD MOUAWAD
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/business/worldbusiness/21oil.html?ref=business
15) Um Noor
April 16, 2007
http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq/2007/04/um_noor.html
16) In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South
[Please note Cuba's Infant mortality rate:
total: 6.04 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 6.76 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 5.26 deaths/1,000 live births (2007 est.) These
figures are from:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/cu.html
...bw]
By ERIK ECKHOLM
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/health/22infant.html?hp
17) 3 Suspects Talk After Iraqi Soldiers Do Dirty Work
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/middleeast/22detain.html?hp
18) Military Cites ‘Negligence’ in Aftermath of Iraq Killings
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/middleeast/22haditha.html?ref=world
19) Hoping to Curb Drug Trade at a Housing Complex,
the Newark Police Move In
"Most important, the police officers will remain in the courtyard
indefinitely, 24 hours a day, trying to edge out the dealers."
By KAREEM FAHIM
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22newark.html?ref=nyregion
20) In Arctic Foxes, Clues to Effects of Shrinking Habitat
“They didn’t move,” Dr. Dalen said of the European animals.
“That whole population is extinct.”
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
April 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17observ.html
21) Why Darwinism Isn’t Depressing
By Robert Wright
April 21, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/opinion/21wright.html?hp
22) TRAINING IRAQI TROOPS NO LONGER DRIVING FORCE IN U.S. POLICY
By Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers
April 19, 2007
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17104704.htm
23) Castro resumes official business
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6578539.stm
24) Life expectancy in Cuba soon to be 80 years
BY NAVIL GARCIA ALFONSO—Granma International staff writer
Havana. May 19, 2006
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2006/mayo/vier19/longevity.html
25) Words as Weapons
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
April 23, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/opinion/23herbert.html?hp
27) Chávez arms community groups as he anticipates US invasion
By Alfonso Daniels in Caracas, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:59pm BST 21/04/2007
[VIA Email from: Greg McDonald sabocat59@mac.com...bw]
28) Controversial Michael Moore Flick "Sicko"
Will Compare U.S. Health Care with Cuba's
"The average health insurance premiums for a family of four
are $10,880, which exceeds the annual gross income of $10,712
for a full-time, minimum-wage worker."
By Don Hazen, AlterNet
Posted on April 23, 2007, Printed on April 23, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50911/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Lordstown test case: Nonunion janitors,
10-hour straight-time
Jamie LaReau and Dave Barkholz | Automotive News / April 16, 2007
[Via Email from: This is from a subscription site, AutoNews.com,
which is why I am posting the entire piece.
--Steven Matthews steve@panix.com]
General Motors' Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant has become the
test site for a companywide cost-cutting effort that could save
hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
As part of an ambitious productivity strategy dubbed "True North,"
GM is asking local UAW leaders at all plants to consider a variety
of once-taboo efficiency measures.
In late February, GM opened negotiations with Lordstown's union
officials. GM wants the union to accept nonunion janitors, work
10-hour shifts without overtime pay, allow nonunion workers to
replenish parts bins and let nonunion truckers deliver and unload
parts shipments.
The unstated threat: If the workers reject GM's proposals,
production of the 2009 Cobalt might move to Mexico.
If the union allows it, True North could generate big savings.
According to a knowledgeable source, the companywide use of
nonunion janitors -- who would earn about $12 per hour instead of
$28 per hour -- alone could save GM $300 million to $500 million a
year.
Each UAW GM local would have to negotiate its own deal, but
sources say the Lordstown talks could become an important
precedent. Says a source close to GM: "The changes you see in
Lordstown could foreshadow what you see in the rest of GM's
contracts."
Unprecedented concessions
Traditionally, local union leaders negotiate each plant's work
rules in the same year the UAW bargains new labor contracts with
GM, Ford Motor Co. and the Chrysler group.
The national negotiations, which cover wages and benefits, get all
the media attention. But local work rules have a big effect on
each plant's productivity. And this year the Detroit 3 are
demanding unprecedented concessions.
"There's a lot of negotiating going on right now -- not just at
GM, but Ford and Chrysler as well," says Laurie Harbour-Felax, a
manufacturing consultant who is president of Harbour-Felax Group
in suburban Detroit. "They need to get their labor agreements to
be as competitive as possible."
A similar plant-by-plant cost-cutting program launched last year
by Ford could generate more than $600 million in annual savings.
An agreement signed last year at just one plant -- Ford's Rouge
assembly plant in Dearborn, Mich. -- will save $100 million a
year.
A GM source confirmed True North's existence, but declined an
on-the-record interview. Lordstown appears to be a test site in
part because it produces small cars -- a product segment that has
not been profitable for the Detroit 3.
No guarantees
UAW Local 1112, which represents about 2,600 workers at Lordstown
assembly, already has accepted some changes on behalf of some
members who make headliners for Lear Corp. The Lear workers
accepted a five-year pay freeze and eased work rules, and agreed
to $12 weekly benefit co-pays.
Those workers also agreed that skilled-trades workers would assume
additional duties, such as sweeping the floors, without any change
in pay.
But Rich Rankin, Local 1112's Lear shop chairman, says he still is
worried that Lordstown might lose the next-generation Cobalt.
"Everybody is very nervous and on edge," Rankin says. "We're just
fed up. We keep giving and giving with no guarantees."
Other plants face similar cuts. At the Fairfax assembly plant in
Kansas City, Kan., GM's cost-cutting target is $54 million.
GM wants to shift about 20 percent of the work now performed by
UAW members to outside contractors, says Jeff Manning, president
of UAW Local 31. That would affect about 500 of the plant's 2,500
union jobs, he said.
Outside workers would assemble doors, wheels and engines.
Outsiders also would operate forklifts and handle janitorial jobs.
In exchange for the loss of those high-paying jobs, Fairfax would
get a shot at a replacement vehicle when the plant stops producing
the Chevrolet Malibu and Malibu Maxx and Saturn Aura in 2011.
Management sacrifice?
But Manning says the rank-and-file might not approve True North
unless GM management shares the financial sacrifice. "It's going
to be tough," he said. "It'd be far easier if management shared in
the $54 million."
GM has been cagey about its future plans for each assembly plant.
Even if workers at Fairfax and Lordstown embrace True North, GM is
not guaranteeing that those plants will stay open, union officials
say.
GM has not threatened to shut Lordstown if the plant's hourly
workers refuse to budge. But UAW leaders know they're in a
predicament.
"They're asking us to come up with these new work rules, but with
no guarantee of a product," says Dave Green, president of UAW
1714, which represents Lordstown's stamping plant. "That's one of
the sticking points. Everybody is on pins and needles."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
"Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame
for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees..."
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror
film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile
phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's
harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off
by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer
to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the
natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that
pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed
that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread
to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes
with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously home
loving species from finding their way back to their hives.
Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back
this up.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's
inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens,
eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary
Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought
to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and
other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left
behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the
abandoned hives.
The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit
half of all American states. The West Coast is thought
to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population,
with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain,
Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple,
one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23
of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales
and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no
evidence of CCD in the UK."
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the
world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein
once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only
four years of life left".
No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites,
pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed,
but all have drawbacks.
German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes
near power lines.
Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees
refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed
nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could
provide a "hint" to a possible cause.
Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government
and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the
Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."
The case against handsets
Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing.
But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the
biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But
an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones
for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get
a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.
Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that
radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells,
suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in
the prime of their lives.
Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility
that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm
counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified
the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant
texting.
Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official
inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use
mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely
ignored by ministers.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Young People and the War in Iraq
By JANET ELDER
NY Times, April 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/politics/18web-elder.html?8dpc
The younger generation is opposed to the war in Iraq, right? Wrong.
Actually, they're divided on the war, far more so than their
grandparents, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll in March.
Seems younger people are more supportive of the war and the president
than any other age group.
Forty-eight percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old said the United
States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq,
while 45 percent said the United States should have stayed out. That
is in sharp contrast to the opinions of those 65 and older, who have
lived through many other wars. Twenty eight percent of that age group
said the United States did the right thing, while 67 percent said the
United States should have stayed out.
This is nothing new, said John Mueller, author of "War, Presidents
and Public Opinion," and a professor of political science at Ohio
State University. "This is a pattern that is identical to what we saw
in Korea and Vietnam, younger people are more likely to support what
the president is doing," he said.
A review of the March poll suggests Mr. Mueller has a point. Overall,
34 percent of Americans said they approved of the way the president
was handling his job, and 58 percent disapproved. But younger
Americans were more approving than older Americans. Forty percent of
18-29 year olds said Mr. Bush was doing a good job, while 56 percent
said he was not. While 29 percent of people 65 and older said they
approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling his job as president, 62
percent said they did not.
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted March 7-11 with 1,362
adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three
percentage points.
A look back at the Vietnam years showed a similar divide between
young and old. Older Americans were defined as 50 and older, but the
comparison is still apt. In October 1968, when Hubert Humphrey,
Richard Nixon and George Wallace were running for president, a Gallup
poll found that about half, 52 percent, of people under the age of 30
supported the war in Vietnam. But among those 50 and older, 26
percent supported the war.
Some of the respondents to the March poll were called back to talk
about the differences between the young and the not so young.
"Experience," "the draft," "other wars," were mentioned by
respondents on both sides of the generational divide.
Mildred Jenkins, 68, a retired telephone operator from Somerville
Tennessee, said: "We've experienced more than the younger people.
Older people are wiser. We've seen war and we know." Ms. Jenkins said
she usually votes Republican but "may go Democratic this time."
More than one person who lived through the Vietnam war mentioned the
draft and the absence of one for this war. "It's because of life
experience," said Jimmie Powell, 73, a bartender and factory worker
from El Reno, Oklahoma. "I don't think younger people really know a
whole lot about anything. They don't care because there is no draft.
If there were a draft, we'd finally have the revolution we need."
Mr. Powell describes himself as a political independent.
Some of the younger respondents said they were more aggressive than
their elders by virtue of age.
"I think old people tend to want to solve things more diplomatically
than younger, more gung ho types," said Mary Jackson, 28 a homemaker
from Brewton, Alabama. "Younger people are more combative."
Younger people are also more optimistic. Forty-nine percent of them
said the United States was either very likely or somewhat likely to
succeed in Iraq, while only 34 percent of older people said the same
thing.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Denying the Right to Choose
April 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/opinion/19thu1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Among the major flaws in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision
giving the federal government power to limit a woman’s right
to make decisions about her health was its fundamental
dishonesty.
Under the modest-sounding guise of following existing
precedent, the majority opinion — written by Justice Anthony
Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices
Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito — gutted
a host of thoughtful lower federal court rulings, not to
mention past Supreme Court rulings.
It severely eroded the constitutional respect and protection
accorded to women and the personal decisions they make about
pregnancy and childbirth. The justices went so far as to
eviscerate the crucial requirement, which dates to the 1973
ruling in Roe v. Wade, that all abortion regulations must
have an exception to protect a woman’s health.
As far as we know, Mr. Kennedy and his four colleagues
responsible for this atrocious result are not doctors.
Yet these five male justices felt free to override the
weight of medical evidence presented during the several
trials that preceded the Supreme Court showdown. Instead,
they ratified the politically based and dangerously dubious
Congressional claim that criminalizing the intact dilation
and extraction method of abortion in the second trimester
of pregnancy — the so-called partial-birth method — would
never pose a significant health risk to a woman. In fact,
the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
has found the procedure to be medically necessary in
certain cases.
Justice Kennedy actually reasoned that banning the
procedure was good for women in that it would protect
them from a procedure they might not fully understand
in advance and would probably come to regret. This way
of thinking, that women are flighty creatures who must
be protected by men, reflects notions of a woman’s place
in the family and under the Constitution that have long
been discredited, said a powerful dissenting opinion by
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John
Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer.
Far from being compelled by the court’s precedents,
Justice Ginsburg aptly objected, the new ruling is so at
odds with its jurisprudence — including a concurring opinion
by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (who has now been succeeded
by Justice Alito) when a remarkably similar state abortion
ban was struck down just seven years ago — that it should
not have staying power.
For anti-abortion activists, this case has never been
about just one controversial procedure. They have correctly
seen it as a wedge that could ultimately be used to undermine
and perhaps eliminate abortion rights eventually. The court
has handed the Bush administration and other opponents of
women’s reproductive rights the big political victory they
were hoping to get from the conservative judges Mr. Bush has
added to the bench. It comes at a real cost to the court’s
credibility, its integrity and the rule of law.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Frolicking Visitor Delights Hearts, Then Dies
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ and ANN FARMER
April 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/nyregion/19whale.html?ref=nyregion
A 12-foot-long whale that had surfaced and frolicked near
the mouth of the Gowanus Canal on Tuesday, delighting and
surprising even the most hardened of Brooklyn residents,
died yesterday, officials said.
The whale — a minke, the second-smallest whale species —
had been thought to be in good health because it was not
surfacing erratically. Like other ocean mammals, whales
must surface to breathe.
Shortly before 5 p.m., during low tide, it was seen churning
in the water. Teri Frady, a spokeswoman for the Fisheries
Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
said, “It swam by a bulkhead” near the canal’s mouth, “thrashed
a little, and then expired.” Neither its age nor sex were known.
Earlier in the day, biologists speculated that the whale
might have followed krill or another food source into the
Gowanus Canal, whose polluted waters have cleared somewhat
in recent years.
Kim Durham, the rescue program director for the Riverhead
Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, which arranges
for rescues of dolphins and other sea animals, said the dying
whale apparently beached itself after hitting rocks near a Hess
oil refinery.
Ms. Durham said she received an urgent phone call from
researchers at the scene. “ ‘Kim, there’s a lot of splashing
going on across the waterway,’ ” Ms. Durham recalled the
researchers saying. “ ‘We’re going to check it out.’ Our
team got on scene and the animal was dead.”
The Riverhead team secured the whale’s carcass with ropes
so it would not float out to sea, Ms. Durham said.
The Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to transport the
carcass, which weighs several tons, to its Caven Point center
in New Jersey, across from Liberty Island. A necropsy is
scheduled for today, Ms. Durham said.
Word of the whale’s death reached Ms. Frady minutes after
in a telephone interview in which she described the difficulties
of rescuing an ill or hungry animal the size of a whale.
“The animal’s not going to sit there and let you net it,”
she said.
Big nets might pull human rescuers into the water, Ms. Frady
said. A flotilla of boats might not be able to coax the whale
back to sea. And if the whale is sick, the trauma of the rescue
attempt may hasten its death, Ms. Frady said.
A minke (pronounced MINK-ee) is the smallest of the whales,
except for the pygmy whales, according to Diana Reiss, a senior
research scientist at the New York Aquarium.
The largest whale, the blue whale, can reach 100 feet and
weigh more than 100 tons. The minke is a fast-swimming and
inquisitive species, and adult males can reach 26 feet and
females 33 feet.
For two days, the whale had been an object of admiration.
Parents brought small children, whale watchers brought
binoculars and photographers brought long lenses to the
areas overlooking the canal.
Debra Clarke, 36, an apartment and office organizer, arrived
in the early evening yesterday only to learn of the whale’s
death.
“We just came hoping for good news,” she said, noting that
she and her friends had spent most of the day watching
broadcast news of the Virginia Tech massacre. “After Virginia,
you come here rooting for the whale. You hope that something g
ood has to happen, because it turns out these are days
for tears.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) About Shaquanda Cotton: an interview with Terry Howcott
John Calvin Jones
"Editor's note: The recent story of Shaquanda Cotton,
sentenced to seven years in a juvenile prison for her
first offense, pushing a hall monitor at her high school
in Paris, Texas, raises a number of social policy issues.
Though Ms. Cotton was just released, given the revelations
of abuses in the Texas Penal System, where youths were
forced to have sex with guards, thousands of others are
trapped behind bars and are being tracked for prison as
we speak. Many people sought to shed light on the Shaquanda
Cotton case and secure her release. One such woman was
Terry Howcott. I was able to interview Ms. Howcott and
get her thoughts on the Shaquanda Cotton affair and more."
2007-04-09
http://www.virtualcitizens.com/articles/About_Shaquanda_Cotton__an_interview_with_Terry_Howcott
Terry Lynn Howcott, MSW, is an educator and activist.
She lives in Detroit, constantly working on matters of
social justice and resisting discrimination and bigotries
against people based upon their race, culture gender,
what she calls “attractional orientation” and any number
of other areas of oppression. She is the founder,
co-builder and host of the website, terryhowcott.com
John Calvin Jones: Ms. Howcott, tell us about your
orientation on the topic of social justice and where
you see that we need to work, in order to improve the
lives of us all?
Terry Howcott: Thank you and I appreciate your thinking
of me for this interview. A discussion of social justice
or lack thereof is so vast that one’s orientation almost
requires one be somewhat disoriented or off balance.
There are so many paths that the oppressor uses to clamp
down on so many of us that it’s hard even for those
of us who think we know a little something to wrap our
brains around the magnitude. Somewhere I decided that
too many people were preaching to the choir, i.e.
activists, intellectuals, and others talking to themselves
about racism, sexism, intra race bigotry and other forms
of oppression, and that not enough work was being done
to plant some seeds with folk who really don’t “get it.”
I don’t have any magical ideas as to how we move from
gathering together and agreeing with one another into
a more mature community organizing model – but out of
desperation terryhowcott.com was born which, in a nutshell,
says that Black unity has to be unconditional. So far,
we have placed so many barriers and controls against
African people that we never even hear the word “unity”
uttered anymore. Too many have actually pulled back
from Black unity concepts that authentic unity might
never be realized. To insist upon a partial coming
together is an unhealthy thing and is not a valid
approach to Black liberation. So, with my website,
I hope to forge ahead as my numbers grow – and things
are looking good – toward the planning of the first
annual “Broad and Black” Family Reunion.
JCJ: I had the pleasure of hearing you during an
interview you had on KPFT (kpft.org), the Pacifica
Radio station of Houston, Texas. You were discussing
the case of Shaquanda Cotton, what can you tell us
about Ms. Cotton and her current circumstances?
TH: Shaquanda Cotton is a 15 year-old Black girl-child,
who was sentenced and imprisoned for shoving a hall monitor
at her school in Paris, Texas. Having heard about it,
and perusing online I saw other people writing on the
subject, but thought there were some additional points
that ought to be raised.
Of course, we know intuitively that the environment
in Texas and in the South is especially oppressive.
So a child who might already have social difficulties
growing up in a racist, unsupportive environment would
naturally be a prime candidate to act out, by pushing
or shoving someone. But why was she picked out and
given such a harsh sentence? We know that her mother,
Ms. Creola Cotton, had long been an outspoken resister
to racist practices, and the elder Ms. Cotton has
reported problems in Paris, Texas for some time.
And we also know the effects of racism and oppression
on Shaquanda, since her incarceration we know that
`Shaquanda has tried to hurt herself in prison.
JCJ: Before we go further, tell us why you care about
what happened to Shaquanda or her future. I mean,
she is not related to you is she?
TH: For me, Shaquanda is closer than kin. This
teenage girl is a reflection of who I am, and vice
versa. Her Black girlhood is my history just as much
as I want to believe that my Black womanhood
is her future.
Let me give an anecdote. I was at a grocery store
today, and after I got to the line, I realized I had
forgotten something. I laid my stuff down and ran
back to the aisle. When I returned, two women had
joined the line, the one in front with a few items
and the gracious one in the rear granted me space
to get back to my place after I explained. The one
in front, rolled her eyes and said “we don’t use
food to hold our place in line here.”
When I posed to her a quick diagnosis of her problem
(that being that she was suffering some control dilemmas
combined with old-time racism) she took her little hand
basket and proceeded to slam it on top of my food,
three times! The sister almost turned my grapes
to grape juice. At that very moment, I felt Shaquanda’s
spirit pass through me as I explained angrily to that
woman “violence is no fun unless all parties get to
participate.” I calmed down, but these kinds of
incidents that we have suffered in some form or
fashion inform us that Shaquanda might have experienced
harassment, or some social intrusion that she might
not be able to identify given her age and socio-
political unawareness. I see Shaquanda and her case
as an example where a young girl reacted in a manner
that was meant to push away, shove and reject these
types of subtle or overt acts of indignity and attitudes
on our behalf.
JCJ: When I heard your interview, you said that few
details are known about the incident involving Shaquanda.
Then you added, we do not know the background of the
White man whom she supposedly pushed. From your
perspective, as Black woman, as a Social Work Practitioner
with a critical eye, tell us why you see questions
of background as significant?
TH: A person’s background and the social context, just
as is the case with history, means everything. All events
leading to a particular offense can change and rearrange
our perceptions of what we think we know. Investigation
of the facts is critical to our ability to reason and make
proper decisions. We should know why Shaquanda chose to
shove that particular guard. What did this hall monitor
say to Shaquanda just before Shaquanda reacted? What,
if any, past issues or incidents did these two have?
What is the history of this hall guard with other Black
and Brown students? I submit that a less than thorough
exploration or law enforcement and school or organizational
decision-making often mean that the officials in charge
are exercising a deliberate misuse of power. They manipulate
events or hide relevant facts that in turn generate criminal
convictions that can destroy people’s lives.
JCJ: On Democracy Now, Amy Goodman alluded to the fact
that Shaquanda was singled out because her mother complained
about racism in the schools in Paris, Texas, what do you
know about that?
TH: I only know of various press accounts about how
Shaquanda’s mother, Creola, complained to the school
board about racism in the schools in Paris, Texas.
But from a larger perspective, I know first-hand of
the overt and subtle reactions we receive when we
challenge White superiority and racism, be it with
institutions like schools or in private relationships
with colleagues and friends.
We know that even the most progressive White people
can be incapable of evaluating their own bigotries
unless they have discovered them on their own – which
is often rare. We also know that too frequently,
White people will pull back, become cold, stone like,
emotionally unavailable if you raise issues of race
or White Supremacy.
If Creola Cotton pushed these school officials, and
they reacted as most do, becoming defensive and
resentful for hearing about their own bigotries, it
is likely that they retaliated and Shaquanda was
punished as a result. Instead of considering the
complaints of the Cotton family in earnest, and
accepting criticism in a way to construct an authentic
learning environment, they retaliated, and struck out
with the tool of punishment instead of healing.
JCJ: What about Shaquanda, and the message the school
administrators and the courts sent to her directly?
TH: We can presume that Shaquanda is in tune with
her mother’s questions and concerns. As such, we can
suspect that Shaquanda might have also accused her
hall monitors, teachers or school personnel of being
racist. As we know, the status quo in this country
is weak with fear of debate – especially over the top
of racism and White Supremacy.
So much of this fear manifests as discussions about
control and regulating behavior of others. For example,
recently the National Institute of Mental Health provided
a report that gave suggestions as to what parents could
do to keep their children “from being bad.” Authors of
the NIMH report actually considered evidence of children
being “bad” to include their being “argumentative.”
So the position from government officials and Mental
Health professionals is that a child who is smart enough
to ask questions is “bad.” We will never find cures
for cancer and AIDS if we allow schools to farm our
children like ears of corn – depriving them of a sense
of inquisitiveness and ability to challenge status quo
positions on a given issue. From what I can see, this
is how Shaquanda’s schools is and was operating.
Any allegations by the school system that they were
concerned about Shaquanda’s conduct, so much so, that
they had to have this girl who had no criminal record,
arrested and sent to prison, probably had more to do
with this child claiming her right to share her thoughts.
Fighting for the right of our children to speak their
minds is our duty. As we can tell, even from the “Bong
Hits for Jesus” case in the Supreme Court, no school
administrators will ever side with children and their
creativity and independence.
JCJ: Shaquanda Cotton is from Paris, Texas (Northeast
of Dallas and close to the Oklahoma border), but she
is housed in a prison in Brownwood, Texas (275 miles
to the Southwest), in the middle of Texas Brownwood
is not even near a major airport. Hence Creola Cotton,
Shaquanda’s mother, could not visit her often.
My understanding is that such a practice is common,
namely housing prisoners as far from their families
as possible. Tell us what you know about the practice
in general and how it affects both the incarcerated
and the families.
TH: I am glad that you raise that issue. We see
similar conduct where I live in Michigan. In Detroit
we had a Police Chief, Jerry Oliver, who proposed, on
behalf of Detroit’s Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a program
that would transport Detroit-area prisoners to other
states. I had never seen such a vengeance-hearted policy.
Of course we know that this practice of commodifying
prisoners feeds the very corporations that strive to
humiliate and victimize prisoners beyond the basic
circumstances of imprisonment. In her particular case,
the further away that Shaquanda is and was from her
family and community, the less love and support she
had via her Grandmother, Mother and other loved ones
and friends.
Shipping Shaquanda or any prisoners, so far from home,
is an attempt to damage her psychologically, and serves
as a microcosm of what is happening to our community
at-large. Shaquanda and youths like her are considered
future crop for corporate devils who work to create
a steady flow of younger and younger Black bodies into
their private prison system.
I once wrote a paper on prisons. Through my research
I learned that these private-prison corporations and
their parent companies lobbies Congress against Head
Start Programs, knowing full well that studies suggest
children who engage Head Start are less likely to go
to prison. Those who prey on Black and Brown and the
poor actually lobby against good social policy and
educational opportunities for Brothers and Sisters
who are particularly at risk of being netted into
prison. Thus the retaliation against the resistance
offered by Creola Cotton came with the same message:
“not only will we will get you, but we will get you
by isolating Shaquanda and making it as unlikely as
possible that she will be a success in her future.”
JCJ: I see Shaquanda Cotton as a symbol for a larger
complex of pathologies. That is, she attended
a public school, in a system that is run more like
a prison than a sanctuary for learning, and the State
of Texas – like others, forces students to learn thousands
of unintegrated facts and prepare to take multiple choices
tests, which is really about teaching obedience over
creativity. From your experience and perspective,
comment about what you see happening in our schools
and to masses of young people?
TH: Our young people are rightfully unhappy in today’s
public schools. We should point out that schools were
never really made for us, Black and Browns. The highest
ideal, of the public school as a place to develop future
leaders through a classical or liberal arts education
was not intended to benefit us. Further as the school
system has split and created the Black and Brown, mindless
skill track – designed to create a vocational class of
passive workers – is not made for our styles of learning.
Moreover, the schools have never been structured in a way
that allows for truth telling.
Black children are born to tell truths because truth is
a reflection of their intelligence. However, Black
children are acculturated to telling lies after matriculating
into these schools. That is, we learn to discount our own
reality and encouraged to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr.
said that race is unimportant or should not be recognized
or that the U.S. is not an imperialist nation. Like Kanye
West said after Katrina, “George Bush doesn’t care about
Black people.” We all see it. New Orleans and the entire
Gulf Region have not been rebuilt, but billions are spent
on war in Iraq and Afghanistan. When our public schools do
not incorporate this neglect of our people into their lessons
and truths, Black children learn that they are undervalued.
I am not saying there aren’t some children, Black and White
who learn dishonesty before they enroll in school, but I think
you get my drift.
JCJ: Your website is massive and has hundreds of links,
news articles, stories, and commentaries. How did you put
it together and what do you hope to do with it?
TH: Well, I did that with a lot of help from some special
people – a committee I formed to help prop me up and advise
me, some of whom were Detroiters and others were monitoring
and loving the process from afar. I envisioned its parts and
researched and wrote artists and museums and photographers
around the world begging for use of their wares, found an
amazing site builder who saw the vision, loved what I had
collected - and the rest is history.
JCJ: Returning to the specifics and generalities of
Shaquanda Cotton, I know that a few web pages encourage
others to write to the judge who sentenced her, asking
for mercy. But it seems to me, that such is like asking
a member of the KKK to remove the rope during a lynching.
Are there not a host of other strategies that are more
practical and far reaching? What do you think?
TH: I believe in the art of protest, and I strongly
believe that it is important to protest and keep old
anger flowing out to make room for what will enrage
us soon thereafter. I also think that oppressive people
generally only listen to other oppressive people.
So one of them is going to have to say “Buck” or “Jeb”
I think we gotta’ let that old Black girl go.” This is
why at my page, I suggested contacting some of the folks
who will be spending money in Texas this Spring Summer.
Also, I think a day off from work from all the Black
folk and their allies in Texas could cripple that state.
That could help draw that first wave of attention to
a national strike. As working people we hold the purse
strings, much like a legislature, except we have the
potential to have an immediate effect and we have much
more courage than any legislators to stand up against
economic power and oppression.
JCJ: Is there anything more that you would like to add
when you reflect on the Shaquanda Cotton case, and
a wide range of social, economic and political issues
that are manifest in her ordeal? Thankfully, due to
social pressure and public scrutiny, Shaquanda was
recently released.
TH: Well, perhaps the most important thing is that
I hope Shaquanda Cotton’s Mother, Creola, and Grandmother
are holding themselves together with what must be a
devastating and heartbreaking experience for them.
The school system, the prosecutors and all those involved
with this case must pay reparations to this family.
Shaquanda Cotton needs some good strong professional
support, cultural engagement and loads of tender loving
care after this experience.
I think that Shaquanda’s situation and the quality of
response to her case with Black bloggers, radio hosts
and others is indicative of the larger matter that people
are really tired. Hopefully, the redress given Shaquanda
can egg on Black people and other activists in this country
to take the offensive saying: “We’re going to shoot back
at oppression. We can take your best shot, and we will
come back.”
Lastly, I think that this nation is in a dangerous position
considering that the president has made moves so that he can
declare Martial Law more easily. G. W. Bush is a deeply
troubled ideologue who might want to lock this country down
and recreate it in his own image. I hope that we don’t fall
for what appears to be exactly what he and his handlers want
– that is violence. Bush is a man who has proven that he has
no problem with ordering the killing a whole lot of innocent
people, issuing orders for torture, and who is as ruthless
and heartless as I have seen in my lifetime.
Thank you.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Girl in prison for shove released
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
March 31, 2007, 8:41 PM CDT
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070331shaquanda,1,2079171,print.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=2&cset=true
HOUSTON -- After spending a year behind bars, Shaquanda
Cotton walked out of a central Texas youth prison Saturday
pretty much like many 15-year-olds would: eager for a hug
from her mom and pining for a Big Mac.
So McDonald's was the first stop for the soft-spoken black
teenager, who was abruptly released by Texas officials
after nationwide civil rights protests erupted over her
sentence of up to 7 years for shoving a teacher's aide
at her high school.
"I feel like I have a second chance," she said, moments
after devouring her hamburger. "I'm going to be a better
person now. I'm a good person, but I want to be a better
person."
Soon after the restaurant stop, though, Cotton and her
mother Creola headed out on the five-hour drive from the
prison in Brownwood back home to Paris, the small northeast
Texas town that has been roiled by protests and racial
acrimony over her case and broader allegations of racial
discrimination in the town's schools and courts.
What reception awaits the teenager there in coming days
is anyone's guess, but her mother says she is concerned.
"I don't want to place my daughter in danger," Creola
Cotton said. "I hope we can stay in Paris because this
is where my family is. I would hate to have to pick up
and leave."
At the heart of the controversy, which exploded across
hundreds of Internet blogs and then scores of newspapers
and radio and TV stations in the last three weeks, was
the seeming severity of the teenager's sentence for
an offense that caused no documentable injury to the
teacher's aide.
Three months before Cotton, who had no prior criminal
record, was sentenced by Paris Judge Chuck Superville
in March, 2006, to up to seven years in youth prison
for the shoving incident, Superville sentenced a 14-year
-old white girl convicted of the more serious crime of
arson to probation. Later, when the white teenager
violated her probation, Superville gave her yet another
chance and declined to send her to prison. Only when
the youth violated her probation a second time did the
judge order her locked up.
School officials, the Paris district attorney and the
judge have all strongly denied that race played a role
in the prosecution and sentencing of Cotton. But her
case has coincided with an ongoing investigation of
the Paris school district by the U.S. Department of
Education, which is examining allegations that the
district systemically discriminates against black
students by disciplining them more frequently and
more harshly than whites.
The furor over Cotton's case caused the special
conservator now in charge of the Texas Youth Commission,
the state's juvenile prison system, to examine it more
closely last week, at the urging of civil rights leaders.
The conservator, Jay Kimbrough, who is charged with
completely overhauling the Texas Youth Commission
because of a spreading sex scandal involving prison
officials who allegedly coerced sex from inmates,
decided Friday that Shaquanda merited immediate release.
Kimbrough said his decision was not based on the
circumstances of the teenager's prosecution and sentence
but rather on the arbitrary way in which her indeterminate
sentence had been extended by prison authorities since
she had been incarcerated. Authorities penalized her
because she was found with "contraband" in her cell—an
extra pair of socks.
"The TYC staff brought that file in to me [Friday] morning
and were so surprised by what they saw that they felt like
immediate action was justified, and I supported that
wholeheartedly," Kimbrough said.
Cotton was the first of an estimated 400 juveniles
incarcerated across the state whom Kimbrough has ordered
released, beginning Monday. Those youths have all satisfied
their minimum sentences and have committed no serious
violations while in custody.
Kimbrough has also convened a special review panel to examine
the sentences of all 4,700 juveniles in Texas Youth Commission
custody, with the goal of releasing any whose sentences have
been unjustly extended by prison authorities.
"This is the right thing to do and TYC could have and should
have done it long before Mr. Kimbrough took over," said
Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas chapter
of the ACLU. "Shaquanda was the first domino, but there
will be hundreds if not thousands to follow."
hwitt@tribune.com
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) The Plot Against Medicare
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 20, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/opinion/20krugman.html?hp
The plot against Social Security failed: President Bush’s
attempt to privatize the system crashed and burned when
the public realized what he was up to. But the plot
against Medicare is faring better: the stealth privatization
embedded in the Medicare Modernization Act, which Congress
literally passed in the dead of night back in 2003,
is proceeding apace.
Worse yet, the forces behind privatization not only continue
to have the G.O.P. in their pocket, but they have also been
finding useful idiots within the newly powerful Democratic
coalition. And it’s not just politicians with an eye on
campaign contributions. There’s no nice way to say it:
the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens
have become patsies for the insurance industry.
To appreciate what’s going on, you need to know what has
been happening to Medicare in the last few years.
The 2003 Medicare legislation created Part D, the drug
benefit for seniors — but unlike the rest of Medicare,
Part D isn’t provided directly by the government. Instead,
you can get it only through a private drug plan, provided
by an insurance company. At the same time, the bill sharply
increased payments to Medicare Advantage plans, which
also funnel Medicare funds through insurance companies.
As a result, Medicare — originally a system in which the
government paid people’s medical bills — is becoming,
instead, a system in which the government pays the insurance
industry to provide coverage. And a lot of the money never
makes it to the people Medicare is supposed to help.
In the case of the drug benefit, the private drug plans
add an extra, costly layer of bureaucracy. Worse yet, they
have much less ability to bargain for lower drug prices
than government programs like Medicaid and the Veterans
Health Administration. Reasonable estimates suggest that
if Congress had eliminated the middlemen, it could have
created a much better drug plan — one without the notorious
“doughnut hole,” the gap in coverage once your annual
expenses exceed $2,400 per year — at no higher cost.
Meanwhile, those Medicare Advantage plans cost taxpayers
12 percent more per recipient than standard Medicare. In
the next five years that subsidy will cost more than $50 billion
— about what it would cost to provide all children in America
with health insurance. Some of that $50 billion will be passed
on to seniors in extra benefits, but a lot of it will go to
overhead, marketing expenses and profits.
With the Democratic victory last fall, you might have expected
these things to change. But the political news over the last
few days has been grim.
First, the Senate failed to end debate on a bill — in effect,
killing it — that would have allowed Medicare to negotiate
over drug prices. The bill was too weak to have allowed Medicare
to get large discounts. Still, it would at least have
established the principle of using government bargaining
power to get a better deal. But in spite of overwhelming public
support for price negotiation, 42 senators, all Republicans,
voted no on allowing the bill to go forward.
If we can’t even establish the principle of negotiation,
a true repair of the damage done in 2003 — which would
require having Medicare offer seniors the option of getting
their drug coverage directly, without involving the insurance
companies — seems politically far out of reach.
At the same time, attempts to rein in those Medicare
Advantage payments seem to be running aground. Everyone
knew that reducing payments would be politically tough.
What comes as a bitter surprise is the fact that minority
advocacy groups are now part of the problem, with both
the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens
sending letters to Congressional leaders opposing plans
to scale back the subsidy.
What seems to have happened is that both groups have been
taken in by insurance industry disinformation, which falsely
claims that minorities benefit disproportionately from
this subsidy. It’s a claim that has been thoroughly debunked
in a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities —
but apparently the truth isn’t getting through.
Public opinion is strongly in favor of universal health
care, and for good reason: fear of losing health insurance
has become a constant anxiety of the middle class. Yet even
as we talk about guaranteeing insurance to all, privatization
is undermining Medicare — and people who should know better
are aiding and abetting the process.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) U.S. Releases Cuban Bombing Suspect
By ANTHONY DePALMA
April 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/world/americas/20posada.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
A 79-year-old anti-Castro Cuban exile and former C.I.A.
operative linked to the bombing of a Cuban airliner was
released on bail yesterday and immediately returned to
Miami to await trial on immigration fraud charges.
The man, Luis Posada Carriles, was released from the
Otero County Prison in Chaparral, N.M., after posting
a $350,000 bond on the immigration charges.
His release infuriated the authorities in Cuba and Venezuela,
who have been trying to extradite him to stand trial over
the 1976 airliner bombing, which killed 73 people, including
several teenage members of Cuba’s national fencing team.
The United States Justice Department had tried unsuccessfully
to prevent his release, arguing that his escape from
a Venezuelan prison in 1985 increased the risk that he
might flee before the scheduled start of his trial on
immigration charges on May 11.
The court rejected the Justice Department’s argument, but
it increased security measures by ordering Mr. Posada to
be fitted with an ankle bracelet to track his whereabouts.
He was ordered to remain under house detention with his
wife in Miami until the immigration trial begins.
Mr. Posada, a gray-haired former intelligence operative
and United States Army officer, has been detained since
May 2005, when he entered the United States illegally.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela said Thursday in Caracas,
“We demand that they extradite that terrorist and murderer
to Venezuela, instead of protecting him.”
Dagoberto Rodríguez Barrera, the chief of the Cuban
Interests Section, Cuba’s diplomatic representation
in Washington, told Agence France-Presse yesterday,
“Cuba forcefully condemns this decision and holds the
government of the United States totally responsible for
the fact that Posada Carriles is free in Miami.”
Prensa Latina, the Cuban news agency, reported last night
that 50,000 people had gathered at a demonstration in Bayamo,
a city in southeastern Cuba, to protest the release of
Mr. Posada and to demand that he be tried for the jetliner
bombing.
The Cuban government has also accused Mr. Posada, an avowed
opponent of the island’s Communist rule, of plotting to
assassinate the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, in Panama in
2000, and of planning a series of explosions in tourist
hotels in Havana in 1997.
Mr. Posada was jailed in Panama in connection with the
attempt on Mr. Castro’s life but was later pardoned by
Panamanian officials. He admitted, then later denied, that
he had directed the wave of hotel bombings in 1997.
He has also repeatedly denied responsibility for the bombing
of the plane, known as Cubana Airlines Flight 455. The jet
blew apart and crashed off the coast of Barbados
on Oct. 6, 1976.
Investigators in Venezuela, where Mr. Posada had been
chief of operations in the secret intelligence police,
traced at least one of the bombs to the plane’s luggage
compartment. The investigators found that two Venezuelans
had checked bags through to Havana but got off the plane
at a scheduled stop in Barbados.
The men had worked for Mr. Posada, who was arrested in
Venezuela and charged with the bombing. He escaped from
prison in 1985 dressed as a priest after associates bribed
a guard.
Cuban officials have accused the United States of hypocrisy
in battling terrorists by not prosecuting Mr. Posada or
deporting him to stand trial on terrorism charges in another
country. They routinely refer to Mr. Posada as “the bin
Laden of the Americas.”
Mr. Posada’s shadowy past as a Central Intelligence Agency
operative put the United States in a politically delicate
position. In his early years, he had received military
training in the United States and worked for the C.I.A.
to bring down the Castro government. He participated in the
failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Later he was involved
in supplying arms to rebels in Nicaragua.
The United States has acknowledged his long record of
violent acts. In court papers filed in his immigration
fraud case, the Justice Department described him as “an
unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist
plots.”
Mr. Posada was detained in 2005 after he entered the
United States on false pretenses. According to an indictment
unsealed this year, he lied when he told border officials
he had paid a smuggler to drive him from Mexico to Texas.
He actually entered the country on a small boat. He also
lied about using an alias.
An immigration judge has blocked Mr. Posada’s extradition
to Cuba or Venezuela, ruling that he could be subject
to torture in those countries. Efforts to deport him
to another country have failed because so far no other
country has been willing to take him.
His arrival in Miami yesterday afternoon set off mixed
reactions among the area’s many Cuban exiles, who see
him as both a patriot and an embarrassment.
“We have been fighting this war on terror, and here we
are releasing a man who has a history of terrorist acts
and is a fugitive of justice in other countries,” said
Elena Freyre, executive director of the Cuban-American
Defense League, a moderate exile group in Miami.
“It’s absolutely appalling.”
But Miguel Saavedra, president of Vigilia Mambisa,
a small, hard-line anti-Castro exile group, said he
felt vindicated by Mr. Posada’s release on bail.
“The only ones accusing him are the governments of Cuba
and Venezuela,” Mr. Saavedra said. “They can only accuse
him because they haven’t been able to prove anything.
If he is sent to Cuba or Venezuela, it would be the
equivalent of executing him.”
Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Miami.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Union, in Organizing Fight, Tangles With Celebrity Cook
By MARIAN BURROS
April 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20deen.html
WASHINGTON, April 19 — Paula Deen, the Food Network’s
ebullient queen of butter-drenched Southern cooking,
has found herself in the middle of a dispute between
Smithfield Foods Inc. and a union that has long tried
to organize one of the company’s pork processing plants.
As part of a national campaign to win support for its
effort, the union, the United Food and Commercial Workers,
is trying to get Ms. Deen to sever her ties to Smithfield,
for which she has been a paid spokeswoman since last fall.
Within the growing world of food-celebrity endorsements,
Ms. Deen is the first personality to have become entangled
in such a fight.
The latest round of it took place on Wednesday night
at the National Museum of Natural History here, where
Ms. Deen, on a national book tour, made an appearance
before a sold-out crowd.
Outside, as promised, about two dozen people supporting
unionization of the huge plant, in Tar Heel, N.C., held
a prayer vigil as the audience arrived. Inside, as Ms. Deen
responded later to questions that had been submitted
to her in writing, a member of the union tried to speak
to her from the audience and deliver a letter. That woman,
Leila McDowell, and a former Smithfield worker, Lenore
Bailey, were swiftly ushered out by museum guards.
Ms. Deen, for her part, issued a news release in which
she said, “Now, I’m not an expert on the union situation
but here’s what I do know: I know the folks at Smithfield
care about their employees and work hard to support the
communities where they live, work and raise their families.”
In 2004, the National Labor Relations Board found that
Smithfield, through threats, spying and firings, had
prevented fairness in a 1997 election in which the union
failed to organize the Tar Heel plant. A federal appeals
court upheld the decision last year, concluding that
Smithfield had engaged in “intense and widespread coercion”
and ordering reinstatement of four fired workers, one of
whom had been beaten by the plant’s police on the day
of the election.
The effort to speak with Ms. Deen on Wednesday followed
a letter to her from the North Carolina Council of Churches
describing conditions at the plant and suggesting that she
would not have signed with Smithfield if she had known about
them. Quoting a report based on data from the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration, it said worker injuries
were up 200 percent since 2003. The company says its
injury rate is no different from the industry average.
The union says it will continue to demonstrate against
Ms. Deen, though on a larger scale, wherever she goes
on her book tour.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Statement from the revolutionary government of Cuba
Translated by Granma International
Havana, April 19, 2007
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/abril/vier20/17declara.html
Cuba condemns the shameful decision to release terrorist
Luis Posada Carriles and points to the United States
government as the only one responsible for this cruel
and despicable action, which seeks to buy the terrorist’s
silence regarding his crimes in the service of the CIA,
particularly during the time when Bush Sr. was that
agency’s general director.
With this decision, the U.S. government has ignored
the clamor that has arisen throughout the world,
including in the United States, against the impunity
and political manipulation involved in this action.
This decision is an insult to the people of Cuba and
other nations who lost 73 of their sons and daughters
in the abominable 1976 attack that brought down a
Cubana de Aviación civilian airliner off the coast
of Barbados.
This decision is an insult to the people of the United
States themselves, and a categorical refutation of the
so-called "war on terrorism" declared by the government
of President George W. Bush.
The U.S. government had only to certify Luis Posada
Carriles as a terrorist to prevent his release and,
in line with Section 412 of the U.S. Patriot Act, to
acknowledge that his release would "threaten the national
security of the United States or the safety of the
community or any person."
The U.S. government could also have implemented the
regulations enabling Immigration and Customs Enforcement
to detain a foreigner who is not admissible to U.S.
territory and subject to deportation.
For that, it would have sufficed for U.S. authorities
to have determined that Posada Carriles is a threat to
the community, or that releasing him would involve
a flight risk on his part.
Why did the U.S. government allow the terrorist to
enter U.S. territory with impunity, despite the warnings
sounded by President Fidel Castro?
Why did the U.S. government protect him during the months
he remained illegally in its territory?
Why, having all the elements to do otherwise, did it
limit itself this past January 11 to charging him with
lesser crimes, essentially immigration-related, and not
with what he actually is: a murderer?
Why is he being released, when Judge Kathleen Cardone
herself, in her April 6 ruling ordering the release of
the terrorist, admitted that he was accused of "...having
been involved in, or associated with, some of the most
infamous events" of the 20th century? Some of the events
include "the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Iran-Contra affair,
the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, the tourist bombings
of 1997 in Havana, and even — according to some conspiracy
theorists — the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."
Why is the U.S. Homeland Security Department’s Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agency not using the mechanisms it
has at its disposal for maintaining the terrorist in prison,
with the irrefutable argument, already used by the U.S.
Attorney General’s office on a date as recent as this past
March 19, that if he were released, there is a risk that
he could flee?
Why has the U.S. government ignored the extradition
application submitted, in line with all relevant requirements,
by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela?
How is it possible that today, the most notorious terrorist
who has ever existed in this hemisphere is being released
while five Cuban men remain in cruel imprisonment for the
sole crime of fighting terrorism?
For Cuba, the answer is clear. The terrorist’s release has
been organized by the White House as compensation so that
Posada Carriles will not divulge what he knows, so that he
won’t talk about the countless secrets he holds in relation
to his long career as an agent of the U.S. special services,
in which he acted as part of Operation Condor, and in the
dirty war against Cuba, Nicaragua and other nations in
the world.
The full responsibility for the terrorist’s release and
the consequences deriving from it, fall directly on the
United States government, and most particularly on the
president of that country.
Even now, after his release, the U.S. government has all
the information and legal mechanisms to re-arrest him. All
that is lacking is the political will to seriously combat
terrorism, and to recall that, according to President Bush,
"if you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist,
if you feed a terrorist, you will be as guilty as the
terrorists."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart
By EDWARD WONG and DAVID S. CLOUD
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD, April 20 — American military commanders in Baghdad
are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening
sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-
long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite
neighborhoods.
Soldiers in the Adhamiya district of northern Baghdad,
a Sunni Arab stronghold, began construction of the wall last
week and expect to finish it within a month. Iraqi Army
soldiers would then control movement through a few checkpoints.
The wall has already drawn intense criticism from residents
of the neighborhood, who say that it will increase sectarian
tensions and that it is part of a plan by the Shiite-led Iraqi
government to box in the minority Sunnis.
A doctor in Adhamiya, Abu Hassan, said the wall would
transform the residents into caged animals.
“It’s unbelievable that they treat us in such an inhumane
manner,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re trying
to isolate us from other parts of Baghdad. The hatred will
be much greater between the two sects.”
“The Native Americans were treated better than us,” he added.
The American military said in a written statement that “the
wall is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition
and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence.”
As soldiers pushed forward with the construction, Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates insisted to the Iraqi government
that it had to pass by late summer a series of measures
long sought by the White House that were aimed at advancing
reconciliation between the warring Sunni Arabs and Shiite
Arabs.
Whether Parliament meets that benchmark could affect
a decision that the Bush administration plans to make in
late summer on extending the nearly 30,000 additional troops
ordered to Iraq earlier this year, Mr. Gates said.
His words were the bluntest yet by an American official
in tying the American military commitment here to the
Iraqi political process. It reflected a growing frustration
among Bush administration officials at Iraq’s failure
to move on the political elements of the new strategy.
President Bush’s new security plan here is aimed at
buying time for the feuding Iraqi factions to come
to political settlements that would, in theory, reduce
the violence.
In recent weeks, Democrats in Congress have been intensifying
pressure on the president, through negotiations on financing
for the war, to set political deadlines for the Iraqis and
tie them to the withdrawal of American troops.
Speaking to reporters after talks with the Iraqi prime
minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Mr. Gates urged Parliament
not to adjourn for a planned summer recess without passing
legislation on sharing oil revenues, easing the purges of
former Baath Party members from government positions and
setting a date for provincial elections.
“Our commitment to Iraq is long term, but it is not
a commitment to have our young men and women patrolling
Iraq’s streets open-endedly,” he said, adding that he
told Mr. Maliki that “progress in reconciliation will
be an important element of our evaluation in the late
summer.”
This is not the first time the Bush administration has
set a timetable for Iraq to pass the reconciliation
measures. Late last year, the White House gave the Iraqi
government a goal of March to pass the legislation. March
came and went, and senior administration officials shrugged
off the missed target, saying it was counterproductive
to press the Iraqis on the issue.
Mr. Gates’s demand, with its strong hint of conditions
attached, could force the Bush administration into a corner.
If progress on the reconciliation measures proves impossible
before the target date, as many Iraqi politicians say they
believe, American officials will have to decide whether
to follow through with the veiled threat. American military
commanders have already indicated privately that it may be
necessary to extend the troop reinforcements because the
time between now and August is not be long enough for the
new strategy to work.
A senior White House official in Washington said that
Mr. Gates had not threatened to remove American troops
if Mr. Maliki cannot act by midsummer. Instead, the official
argued, “He simply said what everyone has said, which
is that the process of political accommodation has
to speed up.”
President Bush spoke with Mr. Maliki in a secure video
conference on Monday morning and also emphasized the need
to pass the legislation, aides said.
Mr. Maliki’s office issued a statement on Friday saying
that the prime minister was confident that steps toward
reconciliation could be achieved this year.
Mr. Gates delivered his message at the end of a week of
major political turmoil and security setbacks for
Mr. Maliki’s government. Mr. Maliki’s strongest political
supporter, the firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr,
withdrew his six ministers from the cabinet. Car bombs
in Baghdad killed at least 171 people on Wednesday,
puncturing Iraqi confidence in the security plan.
Ceaseless violence is what led American commanders in
Adhamiya to build a wall to break contact between Sunnis
and Shiites. It is the first time the Americans have
tried a project of that scope in Baghdad. The soldiers
jokingly call it “The Great Wall of Adhamiya,” according
to military officials.
Commanders have sealed off a few other neighborhoods
into what they call “gated communities,” but not with
a lengthy wall. In the earlier efforts, American and
Iraqi soldiers placed concrete barriers blocking off
roads leading into the neighborhoods and left open
one or more avenues of egress where people and vehicles
were searched.
Soldiers did that to a degree in the volatile district
of Dora during a security push there last summer. More
recently, American and Iraqi Army units have closed
off almost all roads into the western Sunni Arab
neighborhoods of Amiriya and Daoudi. Residents of
Amiriya say violence dropped when the roads were first
blocked off late last year, but has gradually increased
again.
Adhamiya is different, because it involves the building
of a three-mile wall along streets on its eastern flank.
It consists of a series of concrete barriers, each weighing
14,000 pounds, that have been transported down to Baghdad
in flatbed trucks from Camp Taji, north of the city.
Soldiers are using cranes to put the barriers in place.
Once the wall is complete, Iraqi Army soldiers will
operate entry and exit checkpoints, Capt. Marc Sanborn,
a brigade engineer for the Second Brigade, 82nd Airborne
Division, said in a news release on the project issued
this week by the American military.
The wall “is on a fault line of Sunni and Shia, and
the idea is to curb some of the self-sustaining violence
by controlling who has access to the neighborhoods,”
Captain Sanborn said.
Adhamiya has been rife with violence throughout the
war. It is a stalwart Sunni Arab neighborhood, home
to the hard-line Abu Hanifa mosque, and the last place
where Saddam Hussein made a public appearance before
he went into hiding in 2003. Shiite militiamen from
Sadr City and other Shiite enclaves to the east often
attack its residents, and Sunni insurgent groups battle
there among themselves.
“Shiites are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis
are retaliating across the street,” Capt. Scott McLearn,
an operations officer in the area, said in a written
statement.
Abu Hassan, the doctor in Adhamiya, said his neighborhood
“is a small area.”
“The Americans and Iraqi government should be able to
control it” without building a wall, he said.
Many Sunnis across Baghdad complain that the Shiite-led
government has choked off basic services to their
neighborhoods, allowing trash to pile up in the streets,
banks to shut down and health clinics to languish.
So the wall raises fears of further isolation.
A spokesman for the American military, Maj. Gen. William
B. Caldwell IV, said at a news conference on Wednesday
that the military did not have a policy of sealing off
neighborhoods.
The American military has tried sealing off entire
cities during the war. The most famous example is
Falluja, in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar Province,
where marines began operating checkpoints on all main
roads into and out of the city after laying siege to
it in late 2004.
On Friday, a child was killed and nine people were
wounded in a mortar attack in Baghdad, and 19 bodies were
found across the capital. Hospital officials in Mosul
said they were treating 130 Iraqi Army trainees suffering
from stomach illness, in a possible case of mass poisoning
at a training center north of the city.
An American soldier was killed and two wounded in a rocket
attack on a base in Mahmudiya on Thursday night,
the military said.
Sahar Nageeb and Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from
Baghdad, and David E. Sanger from Washington.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Marine Officer to Testify on Iraq Killings
in Exchange for Immunity
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21abuse.html
The officer in immediate command of three marines accused
of killing civilians in a house-to-house attack in Haditha,
Iraq, in 2005 has been granted immunity to testify at his
subordinates’ military hearings, lawyers involved in the
case said.
In exchange, the officer, First Lt. William T. Kallop, agreed
to answer all questions that prosecution or defense lawyers
ask him, the lawyers said. The immunity granted to Lieutenant
Kallop, who gave an order to take control of a house where
several civilians were killed, could bolster the defense
of the three enlisted men charged with murder in the case,
lawyers said, because it would show that they were following
orders.
Lieutenant Kallop, 25, is one of at least eight marines
granted immunity to testify about the attack on Nov. 19, 2005,
that killed 24 people after the marines’ convoy was struck by
a roadside bomb that killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas. Four
officers also face charges of dereliction of duty for the way
they dealt with the initial report of what happened in Haditha.
Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, the Marine
officer overseeing the prosecution of the case, dismissed
charges against a fourth enlisted marine, Sgt. Sanick
P. Dela Cruz, 24.
General Mattis granted immunity to Lieutenant Kallop
on April 3, days after lawyers for another marine facing
murder charges asked the Marine Corps to grant immunity
to Lieutenant Kallop so he could testify at hearings for
the men, said Kevin B. McDermott, a civilian lawyer for
an officer charged in the case. The grant of immunity
was first reported in The Washington Post yesterday.
Several lawyers for the marines charged in the case said
the deal strengthened the arguments of the three enlisted
men.
“It’s central to the case if an officer is telling marines
to take the house,” said Brian J. Rooney, a civilian lawyer
for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, the highest-ranking
officer charged in the case.
Mr. McDermott, who represents Capt. Lucas McConnell,
the company commander who was not present during the
killings, said the immunity deal bolstered his client’s
case.
“If the government’s not going to charge the lieutenant
that was at the scene and gave the order to clear the
house,” Mr. McDermott said, “I don’t know how he’s not
in the same boat as McConnell.”
At least seven other marines have also been granted
immunity to testify at preliminary hearings scheduled
for next month, lawyers said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Growing Unrest Posing a Threat to Nigerian Oil
By JAD MOUAWAD
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/business/worldbusiness/21oil.html?ref=business
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria — There are few safe places left for
oil companies in the Niger Delta, the epicenter of this
country’s petroleum industry.
Armed rebel gangs have blown up pipelines, disabled pumping
stations, and kidnapped over 150 foreign oil workers in the
last year. Companies now confine employees to heavily
fortified compounds, allowing them to travel only by
armored car or helicopter.
One company has fitted bathrooms with steel bolts to turn
them into “panic” rooms, if needed. Another has coated the
pylons of a giant oil-production platform 80 miles offshore
with waterproof grease to prevent attackers from climbing
the rig.
The violence in the Niger Delta is likely to be one of the
thorniest political problems for Nigeria’s new president,
to be chosen in the election April 21. Oil, after all,
is the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy, providing 65 percent
of its revenue.
The events in Nigeria, the world’s eighth-largest oil
exporter, have rippled across energy markets, contributing
to higher prices and tighter supplies.
[On Friday, gunmen attacked a boat carrying oil workers
to an offshore rig in the delta, pushing up oil prices by
more than $1.50, to $63.38 a barrel.]
The United States imports more than one million barrels
of crude oil from Nigeria every day.
Many analysts warn that tensions here could derail plans
to boost oil production in this country of 140 million people.
Already, a quarter of Nigeria’s oil output has been shut down,
costing an estimated $12 billion in lost sales in over the last
year. Some foreign operators have abandoned oil fields,
or left the country altogether.
“I can’t think of anything worse right now,” said Larry Johnson,
a former United States Army officer who was recently hired
to toughen security at a site here operated by Eni, an Italian
oil producer. “Even Angola during the civil war wasn’t as bad.”
Violence is not new to the Niger Delta, a vast area of 40,000
square miles of swamps and creeks where the Niger River washes
out into the Atlantic Ocean. The region, which produces most
of the country’s oil, is also one of the nation’s poorest.
In the 1990s, there were occasional kidnappings. But at the
time, recalled Chris Haynes, a senior Shell executive, “you
could usually get them released for a few bags of rice or
a cow.”
Since January 2006, however, violence in the delta has surged.
So far in 2007, there have been at least 18 attacks against
oil facilities or bases in the delta, according to Bergen Risk
Solutions, a consultancy based in Bergen, Norway.
And about 70 foreigners have been abducted in 2007, although
most have been released within weeks in exchange for ransoms,
typically hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oil companies
find themselves in an uneasy position, stuck in a crisis
that they, in a sense, helped create. For years, human rights
groups accused them of turning a blind eye to the corruption
of Nigeria’s successive military regimes while damaging the
environment in the delta.
Some companies have acknowledged these past grievances but
say they changed after Nigeria returned to civilian rule
in 1999.
Still, gas flaring into the atmosphere remains a serious
problem despite a government deadline to end the practice
by 2008; few expect that deadline will be met. Also, oil
spills continue to spoil the delta’s fragile environment.
Energy executives blame locals for sabotaging their pipelines
either to steal the oil or to gain lucrative cleanup contracts.
By all accounts, petroleum profits have brought huge benefits
to this country’s rulers, but few to its people. Oil companies
typically keep 7 percent of the profits from oil sales; the
government gets 93 percent.
Nigeria ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the
world according to Transparency International, a Berlin-
based anti-corruption group; 70 percent of the country’s
population lives on $1 a day or less. Life expectancy
is 47 years.
Between 1960 and 1999, more than $380 billion was stolen
or wasted, according to Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s top anti-
corruption official. In that period, the country produced
over $400 billion worth of oil.
In an effort to redistribute wealth, the government now
gives 13 percent of the proceeds from oil sales to the
producing states but there is little accountability of
how these funds are spent. Much of it simply disappears,
wasted by inefficient or corrupt local officials, according
to a recent Human Rights Watch report.
The River States government, for example, had a budget
of $1.3 billion in 2006, the report said. It includes
transportation fees of $65,000 a day for the governor’s
office; $10 million for catering, entertainment, gifts
and souvenirs; and $38 million for two helicopters.
Health services received $22 million.
“Oil companies are caught in an impossible situation,”
said Chris Albin-Lackey, a researcher with Human Rights
Watch. “They cannot meet the expectations of the communities
in which they operate. At the same time, you have
a government unwilling to do anything about the delta.”
Oil companies have all set up programs to build roads,
hospitals or schools in their communities. Shell, for
example, said it spends over $100 million each year on
social and health programs in the Niger Delta. Exxon, which
has set aside $21 million for similar projects in 2007,
noted it had built 95 percent of the roads in the town
of Eket, close to one of its operations.
But in the absence of government services, executives
say their programs alone cannot buy them sustained peace.
“The government should really be the one who looks after
everybody else,” said Basil Omiyi, Shell’s managing director
in Nigeria. “I don’t think the capital program of oil and g
as companies can be the government in the Niger Delta.”
John Chaplin, Exxon’s top executive in Nigeria, said “The
demands are limitless.”
Critics say governments in Abuja, the country’s modern capital,
have neglected the delta region and blame oil companies for
being complicit in a system that ignores the communities
where the oil is produced.
“The situation here is deplorable,” said John Owubokiri,
an advocate for the rights of the delta states in Port
Harcourt. “The people are being shortchanged.”
That message is now being delivered in a more forceful way
than the largely nonviolent militancy of the past decade.
A new group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger
Delta, has emerged in the past year and claimed responsibility
for many of the kidnappings and attacks against oil companies.
MEND wants more money for the delta states and has vowed
to bring Nigeria’s oil exports to a stop if its demands
are not met.
“We are more than capable of escalating the violence,”
the MEND spokesman, Jomo Gbomo, who regularly sends e-mail
messages to the media, wrote in response to e-mailed
questions. The group, he said, is prepared for “a protracted
military confrontation.”
The violence has driven some companies away. Willbros,
one of the world’s largest independent contractors, left
Nigeria last summer after nearly 45 years, because nine
of its employees were held in the swamps for weeks. After
their release, Willbros said the dangers in Nigeria “exceed
our acceptable risk levels.”
After one of Shell’s big export sites was bombed in February
2006, the company abandoned its operations in the Western
part of the delta and shut half its production, or 500,000
barrels a day. In early April, Shell outlined plans to
restart production within six months. Meanwhile, the
government has been unable to quell the unrest, security
consultants said. “Nigeria’s security forces are ill
equipped, poorly led, unmotivated, and outgunned,” said
Ian Pilcher, the head of Nigerian operations for ArmorGroup,
a British security consultant.
But Nigerian officials say they do not want to escalate
tensions by sending more troops to the region.
“It’s definitely not a first option,” said Edmund Daukoru,
Nigeria’s oil minister, referring to a more forceful
military response.
The lack of security has created demand for private
security firms to help oil companies make conditions
safer for their workers who are adjusting to a new lifestyle.
For example, Triple Canopy, an American security firm founded
shortly after the Iraq invasion, opened its first office
outside of the Middle East in Lagos last summer.
While the attacks against oil companies have slowed recently,
replaced largely by election violence, few analysts believe
the militant movement will disappear soon.
Just a few months ago, foreign employees in Port Harcourt,
the center for oil operations in the delta, lived in
apartments with their families and could relax at local
bars, including one popular pub, Goodfellas.
But after a rash of attacks around town last year, families
have packed up and gone home, while workers and executives
have retreated inside fortified bases surrounded by high
walls and razor wire.
On a recent evening, about a dozen men, mainly Italians,
settled at the mess inside one such campus here operated
by Eni to watch a live soccer game from Rome on satellite
television. The 50-acre compound houses offices, dormitories,
and some guest houses; there are tennis courts and manicured
lawns, a swimming pool and a new gym.
There is also a large field for soccer games between the
company team and local soldiers. The cook, the food and
the wine come from Italy.
The Eni campus is an oasis compared with the rest of town,
a chaotic cluster of five million people. But violence can
visit here at any moment, as it did a few months ago when
a cellphone-activated car bomb blew up just across the
street.
“It’s sad what is going on here,” said Marco Castelli,
a manager at Eni, who moved to Nigeria last June. After
years living alone in far-flung places like Kazakhstan,
Congo and Iran, Mr. Castelli was looking forward to
a quiet family assignment in Nigeria. His wife was about
to quit her job as a marketing executive for a drug
company in Italy to join him.
But soon after he arrived, gunmen entered a bar in Aker
Base, a slum outside of Port Harcourt, and kidnapped
an Italian worker. An army sergeant was shot dead as
he tried to stop the attackers. Later that day, soldiers
returned to the scene and razed the village.
The hostage was released the same week, but shortly
after that event Mr. Castelli’s wife scrapped her
plans to join him.
“The more the situation worsened,” he said, “the more
the restrictions became tough.”
Still, many workers here say they are undeterred by the
violence and few are considering leaving.
Antonio Fiore, an engineer with Eni, has been confined
to the Port Harcourt base since December. In his three
decades with the company, Mr. Fiore helped build
a refinery in Iraq in the 1970s, worked on a petrochemical
plant near the Iranian town of Isfahan in 1989, and spent
time in Kuwait after the first gulf war. He has been posted
in Nigeria for the last three years.
“What we’re doing here is important,” he said. “I have been
in many critical areas. But for us, what happened last
year was a nightmare.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Um Noor
April 16, 2007
http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq/2007/04/um_noor.html
Is there a proverb that says everything unpredictable
happens in the morning?
A knock on the front door at seven in the morning is not
predictable; I jumped. What now?
I look out the entrance window hesitantly to find a small
lady covered in black from head to toe, standing outside.
Um Noor!
Um Noor (mother of Noor) is a sweet soul in a tiny
frame, who used to come help me with household duties
once a week, from 2000 until I went away in Feb, 2003.
I am ecstatic! I have been trying to find her ever
since I came back; she is so energetic and so proud
of her faultless work.
I open the door with a cry of welcome on my lips,
and she comes in. She looks at me and bursts out crying.
And the story comes pouring out.
She was happily married for twenty years, when Iraq
was occupied.
After a while strange, little used words start
flying around.
Sunni … Shiite … Sunni … Shiite … Then fighting
started breaking out because of this long submerged
difference. In her neighborhood, as in the greater
majority of Baghdad's neighborhoods, no one is really
sure who on their bloc is Sunni, or Shiite; and nobody
really cares.
Soon after, the IEDs and car bombs started taking
their toll from people still bewildered as to:
Why is this happening?
BOOM! She loses her husband, on his way to work,
a Shiite.
Being a Sunni herself, she is urged - very strongly
- to move away; their part of Amil is Shiite controlled.
Having nowhere to go, she stays.
A car stops in front of their home.
BANG, BANG, BANG! She loses her son (20), her
brother, and nephew.
She takes her remaining children and flees, finding
no haven - except in Abu Ghraib, (Sunni controlled)
where she lives in perpetual fear lest her dark secret
be uncovered: that her kids are – of course – Shiite.
Her two remaining sons (16 and 10) live imprisoned
in their hut; she has buried all their IDs and tells
everyone that they got lost …………and as a result they
cannot receive rations.
They are starving to death.
How, and why, has it suddenly become important,
this Sunni – Shiite business; and since when did
Iraqis care?
I myself had not even heard the terms until
I was an adult.
How to help????????
Can anyone see a light at the end of this
dark, dark, tunnel?
Posted at 04:43 AM | Permalink
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South
[Please note Cuba's Infant mortality rate:
total: 6.04 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 6.76 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 5.26 deaths/1,000 live births (2007 est.) These
figures are from:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/cu.html
...bw]
By ERIK ECKHOLM
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/health/22infant.html?hp
HOLLANDALE, Miss. — For decades, Mississippi and neighboring
states with large black populations and expanses of enduring
poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But,
in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress
has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen
in Mississippi and several other states.
The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts
in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and,
many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes
and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip
the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.
“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing
trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,”
said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss.,
and past president of the National Perinatal Association.
To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen
the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age
of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate
jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in
2003, the last year for which data have been compiled,
was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama,
North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina
saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.
Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say,
rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well
above the national average.
Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the
large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths
among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005
from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among
whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national
average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)
The overall jump in Mississippi meant that 65 more
babies died in 2005 than in the previous year, for
a total of 481.
The toll is visible in Hollandale, a tired town in
the impoverished Delta region of northwest Mississippi.
Jamekia Brown, 22 and two months pregnant with her third
child, lives next to the black people’s cemetery in the
part of town called No Name, where multiple generations
crowd into cheap clapboard houses and trailers.
So it took only a minute to walk to the graves of
Ms. Brown’s first two children, marked with temporary
metal signs because she cannot afford tombstones.
Her son, who was born with deformities in 2002, died
in her arms a few months later, after surgery. Her daughter
was stillborn the next year. Nearby is another green
marker, for a son of Ms. Brown’s cousin who died at
four months, apparently of pneumonia.
The main causes of infant death in poor Southern regions
included premature and low-weight births; Sudden Infant
Death Syndrome, which is linked to parental smoking and
unsafe sleeping positions as well as unknown causes;
congenital defects; and, among poor black teenage mothers
in particular, deaths from accidents and disease.
Dr. William Langston, an obstetrician at the Mississippi
Department of Health, said in a telephone interview that
officials could not yet explain the sudden increase and
were investigating. Dr. Langston said the state was
working to extend prenatal care and was experimenting
with new outreach programs. But, he added, “programs
take money, and Mississippi is the poorest state in
the nation.”
Doctors who treat poor women say they are not surprised
by the reversal.
“I think the rise is real, and it’s going to get worse,”
said Dr. Bouldin Marley, an obstetrician at a private
clinic in Clarksdale since 1979. “The mothers in general,
black or white, are not as healthy,” Dr. Marley said,
calling obesity and its complications a main culprit.
Obesity makes it more difficult to do diagnostic tests
like ultrasounds and can lead to hypertension and
diabetes, which can cause the fetus to be undernourished,
he said.
Another major problem, Dr. Marley said, is that some
women arrive in labor having had little or no prenatal
care. “I don’t think there’s a lack of providers or
facilities,” he said. “Some women just don’t have the
get up and go.”
But social workers say that the motivation of poor
women is not so simply described, and it can be affected
by cuts in social programs and a dearth of transportation
as well as low self esteem.
“If you didn’t have a car and had to go 60 miles to
see a doctor, would you go very often?” said Ramona
Beardain, director of Delta Health Partners. The group
runs a federally financed program, Healthy Start, that
sends social workers and nurses to counsel pregnant
teenagers and new mothers in seven counties of the Delta. “
If they’re in school they miss the day; if they’re working
they don’t get paid,” Ms. Beardain said.
Poverty has climbed in Mississippi in recent years,
and things are tougher in other ways for poor women,
with cuts in cash welfare and changes in the medical
safety net.
In 2004, Gov. Haley Barbour came to office promising
not to raise taxes and to cut Medicaid. Face-to-face
meetings were required for annual re-enrollment in
Medicaid and CHIP, the children’s health insurance
program; locations and hours for enrollment changed,
and documentation requirements became more stringent.
As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly
children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs
declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years.
According to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program
in Jackson, some eligible pregnant women were deterred
by the new procedures from enrolling.
One former Medicaid official, Maria Morris, who resigned
last year as head of an office that informed the public
about eligibility, said that under the Barbour
administration, her program was severely curtailed.
“The philosophy was to reduce the rolls and our
activities were contrary to that policy,” she said.
Mississippi’s Medicaid director, Dr. Robert L. Robinson,
said in a written response that suggesting any correlation
between the decline in Medicaid enrollment and infant
mortality was “pure conjecture.”
Dr. Robinson said that the new procedures eliminated
unqualified recipients. With 95 enrollment sites available,
he said, no one should have had difficulty signing up.
As to Ms. Morris’s charge that information efforts had
been curbed, Dr. Robinson said that because of the frequent
turnover of Medicaid directors — he is the sixth since 2000
— “our unified outreach program was interrupted.” He said
it has now resumed.
The state Health Department has cut back its system of
clinics, in part because of budget shortfalls and a shortage
of nurses. Some clinics that used to be open several
days a week are now open once a week and some offer
no prenatal care.
The department has also suffered management turmoil
and reductions in field staff, problems so severe that
the state Legislature recently voted to replace the director.
Oleta Fitzgerald, southern regional director for the
Children’s Defense Fund, said: “When you see drops
in the welfare rolls, when you see drops in Medicaid
and children’s insurance, you see a recipe for disaster.
Somebody’s not eating, somebody’s not going to the doctor
and unborn children suffer.”
Visits with pregnant women and mothers in several Delta
towns suggest that many poverty-related factors —
including public policies, personal behaviors and
health conditions — may contribute to infant deaths.
Krystal Allen, a cousin of Jamekia Brown’s, was 17 when
she had her first baby. When he was 4 months old, she
said, he developed breathing problems. Ms. Allen took
the child to an emergency room, where he was put on
a vaporizer and given an antibiotic and a prescription
and they were sent home, where they slept for a few hours.
“When I woke up I thought he was sleeping, and I was
getting ready for church,” Ms. Allen said. “But he
was dead.”
Now 21, a mother of two with a third on the way,
Ms. Allen lives in a sparsely furnished house in
Hollandale with her unemployed boyfriend and his mother.
Her children live with her parents.
Ms. Allen greeted visitors with breakfast in hand:
a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of chips.
Janice Johnson, a social worker with Delta Health
Partners, urged her to eat more healthily. “I’m going
to change my diet one day,” Ms. Allen replied.
She had been to a doctor for one visit but had to sign
up for Medicaid to get continued care. That required
a 36-mile trip to an office in Greenville.
“Can’t you go this Friday?” Ms. Johnson asked.
“Well, if my mom is going to Greenville,” Ms. Allen
replied, “and if she has gas in the car.”
As for Ms. Brown, having lost two babies and suffering
from thyroid disease and hypertension, her latest
pregnancy is considered high risk. Ms. Johnson has
helped arrange for intensive medical monitoring.
Eunice Brown, 21, another of Ms. Johnson’s clients,
was fortunate nothing went wrong with her first pregnancy.
She was afraid to tell her mother. In the eighth month
of her pregnancy, she went to the hospital with a stomach
ache and delivered a healthy baby.
“I was 15 and I didn’t think prenatal care mattered
that much,” she said in the one-bedroom home she shares
with her mother, her three children and two nieces her
mother is tending. Ms. Brown, who was three months’
pregnant with her fourth child, said she would apply
for Medicaid “when I get the transportation.” The family
has lived mainly off her welfare checks and her intermittent
work, in elderly day care, which led her welfare check
to be reduced from $194 a month to $26 a month. A father
“sometimes helps with money,” she said.
In the past 10 years, the infant mortality rate for blacks
in most of the Delta has averaged about 14 per thousand
in some counties and more than 20 per thousand in others.
But just to the south of Hollandale, Sharkey County, one
of the poorest, has had a startlingly different record.
From 1991 through 2005, the rate for blacks hovered
at around 5 per thousand.
State officials say the county’s population is too small
— it registers only 100 births a year — to be statistically
significant. But many experts feel it is no coincidence
that a steep drop in infant deaths followed the start of
an intensive home-visiting system run by the Cary Christian
Center, using local mothers as counselors.
“If this is a fluke it’s a 15-year fluke,” said Dr. Glick,
the neonatologist.
The program, which is paid for with private money, buses
nearly all pregnant blacks in Sharkey and a small
neighboring county to pre- and postnatal classes.
Irma Johnson, who has worked for the Cary Center for
14 years, was a soothing presence as she visited Erica
Moore, a 24-year-old with young twins. With Vaseline,
warm water, a toothbrush and soft murmurs, she showed her
how to combat cradle cap, a scaly buildup on the scalp.
But personal attention cannot always change ingrained
attitudes.
Barbara Williams, another veteran counselor of the
Cary center, made an unannounced visit to a cluster
of trailers in Anguilla occupied by the extended
Jackson family.
“I’ve been following this family for 18 years, and
they’re in a bad cycle,” Ms. Williams said, noting that
three generations of women had dropped out of high school.
As Ms. Williams entered one crowded trailer a young
woman tried to hide, then stood defiantly. The woman,
Victoria Jackson, 22, already has three small children
and was five months pregnant.
No, she said, she has not signed up for Medicaid and
she has not seen a doctor, and she brushed aside
offers of help.
Ms. Williams, visibly upset, said later, “Victoria
never gives a reason why she doesn’t see a doctor.
I guess she thinks she’s gotten away with it three
times already.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) 3 Suspects Talk After Iraqi Soldiers Do Dirty Work
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/middleeast/22detain.html?hp
BAGHDAD, April 21 — Out here in what the soldiers call
Baghdad’s wild west, sometimes the choices are all bad.
In one of the new joint American-Iraqi security stations
in the capital this month, in the volatile Ghazaliya
neighborhood, Capt. Darren Fowler was heaping praise
on his Iraqi counterparts for helping capture three
insurgent suspects who had provided information he
believed would save American lives.
“The detainee gave us names from the highest to the
lowest,” Captain Fowler told the Iraqi soldiers.
“He showed us their safe houses, where they store
weapons and I.E.D.’s and where they keep kidnap victims,
how they get weapons, where weapons come from, how they
place I.E.D.’s, attack us and go away. Because you
detained this guy this is the first intelligence
linking everything together. Good job. Very good job.”
The Iraqi officers beamed. What the Americans did not
know and what the Iraqis had not told them was that
before handing over the detainees to the Americans,
the Iraqi soldiers had beaten one of them in front
of the other two, the Iraqis said. The stripes on the
detainee’s back, which appeared to be the product of
a whipping with electrical cables, were later shown
briefly to a photographer, who was not allowed to
take a picture.
To the Iraqi soldiers, the treatment was normal and
necessary. They were proud of their technique and
proud to have helped the Americans.
“I prepared him for the Americans and let them take
his confession,” Capt. Bassim Hassan said through
an interpreter. “We know how to make them talk. We
know their back streets. We beat them. I don’t beat
them that much, but enough so he feels the pain and
it makes him desperate.”
As American and Iraqi troops set up these outposts
in dangerous neighborhoods to take on the insurgents
block by block, they find themselves continually facing
lethal attacks. In practice, the Americans and Iraqis
seem to have different answers about what tactics are
acceptable in response.
Beatings like this, which are usually hard to verify
but appear to be widespread given the fears about the
Iraqi security forces frequently expressed by ordinary
Iraqis, present the Americans with a largely undiscussed
dilemma.
The beaten detainee, according to Captain Fowler, not
only led the Americans to safe houses believed to be
used by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but also confessed to
laying and detonating roadside bombs along a section
of road heavily traveled by American patrols. Just
a month ago, four soldiers from Captain Fowler’s regiment
died on that road after the explosion of a large, deeply
buried bomb, possibly made in the bomb factory that the
Americans were able to dismantle because of the detainee’s
information, Captain Fowler said.
But beating is strictly forbidden by the United States
Army’s Field Manual, as well as American and Iraqi laws.
When the Americans learned about the beating, they were
quick to condemn it.
The use of torture by American soldiers and contractors
at Abu Ghraib only compounded Iraqi hatred of Americans
and further undermined American moral claims in Iraq.
It also produced little valuable information. Most
experts, including in the military, say they believe
that coerced confessions are an unreliable way to learn
about enemy operations because people being tortured will
often say whatever they think it will take to stop the pain.
This joint security station in Ghazaliya opened on
March 15, about a month after the latest increase
in American troops began. The station, inhabited by
about 70 soldiers of Company D of the Second Battalion,
12th Cavalry, and their Iraqi counterparts, is named for
Specialist Robert Thrasher, a member of the unit killed
by sniper fire on Feb. 11 when the company was scouting
for a station site.
Thrasher, as the station is known, sits in the southern
part of Ghazaliya, one of the roughest areas of western
Baghdad. In the northern part, Shiite militias, led by
the Mahdi Army, have been driving out Sunni Arabs through
raids and assassinations. Sunnis have pushed Shiites out
of the southern part.
Sewage pools in the streets. Water and electricity are
almost nonexistent, and fewer than half the houses are
occupied. The neighborhood graffiti broadcasts the presence
of an active insurgency: “Long live Abu Hamza al-Muhajar,”
reads one scrawl, referring to a local insurgent leader.
The outpost’s location, along one of the main arms
smuggling routes from Falluja, was chosen because it was
next to a litter-filled lot that was a dumping ground for
bodies. When they first arrived, the American soldiers found
30 bodies there, among them women and children.
Now it is rare to find more than one or two, said Captain
Fowler, who keeps photos of every one on his computer as
a reminder of how much worse it was before his company took
up residence. He can also point to other signs of progress:
children have begun to play outside again, and women walk
to the market.
But the area remains far from calm. The radio in the joint
operations room crackles all day long with reports of bomb
explosions or newly sighted explosive devices that must
be scouted by the soldiers. The distance to the next
security station is barely half a mile, but it is so
dangerous that the soldiers cannot walk there and do not
like to drive more often than necessary.
Although one tenet of the Baghdad security plan is that
soldiers should patrol on foot to get to know local
residents, it was on just such a patrol that Specialist
Thrasher died. Now, said Sgt. Trevis Good, 34, “foot
patrols don’t exist; they are not something we do.” The
company’s partner is the Third Battalion, Fourth Brigade,
of the Iraqi Army’s 10th Division. The soldiers come from
Amara, the largest town in rural Maysan Province in the
far south, a mostly peaceful area where in a year of active
duty they never had an injury, much less a fatality.
In just three weeks in Ghazaliya, the battalion has lost
two officers and a soldier; 16 troops have been wounded.
A few hundred Iraqi soldiers live in three attached houses
just over a brick wall from the Americans. The houses,
beefed up only by sandbags, lie outside the station’s
fortified area. Visiting their quarters means crouching
down and running behind vehicles until entering one of
the houses.
The Iraqi soldiers have their own network of informants,
and they picked up the detainee who was later beaten,
Mustafa Subhi Jassam, after seeing him loitering around
a main patrol route twice in the same day. The other
two insurgent suspects were picked up separately.
After interrogating Mr. Jassam, a thin young man wearing
a blue and red warm-up outfit, for much of the night,
the Americans took him to point out one of the houses
where the Qaeda militants made bombs. When the Americans
arrived, a half-eaten lunch was on the table next to
a couple of detonators and some blasting wire. The insurgents
appeared to have been gnawing on chicken and flat bread while
making fuses for I.E.D.’s, improvised explosive devices,
the military’s term for the roadside bombs found here.
On the table and in bags on the floor were mountains of soap,
which can be used in homemade explosives. Blasting wire lay
in coils. Buried in the garden were two large antiaircraft
guns known as Duskas, three propane tanks, and an oxygen
tank that was partly cut in preparation for being turned
into a huge bomb, probably similar to the one that killed
the four soldiers. On the roof a large pile of homemade
explosives was drying in the sun.
The Iraqi soldiers were ecstatic. They had delivered. They
snapped photos of each other in front of the cache with the
blasting cords in their mouths, grinning. The Americans were
nervous. “One spark will blow this place up,” said First
Lt. Michael Obal as an Iraqi soldier flicked a lighted
cigarette butt within inches of one cache of explosives.
“It’s highly unstable TNT.”
Later, the Americans plotted into their computers the
location of each of the Qaeda safe houses that Mr. Jassam
had pointed out. “He was singing like a songbird,” said
First Lt. Sean Henley, 24.
After the prisoner was returned to the Iraqis, Captain
Fowler was asked whether the Americans realized that
the information was given only after the Iraqis had
beaten Mr. Jassam. “They are not supposed to do that,”
he said. “What I don’t see, I don’t know, and I can’t
stop. The detainees are deathly afraid of being sent
to the Iraqi justice system, because this is the kind
of thing they do. But this is their culture.”
Later, Captain Fowler said that he thought Mr. Jassam
had talked because he hoped to be released. The captain
wanted him let go so that he could act as an informant.
The Iraqi soldiers vetoed the idea.
Mr. Jassam is now being held in an Iraqi government
detention center, widely rumored to be places where
suspected insurgents are abused.
Lieutenant Obal, the captain’s deputy, was distraught
at the thought that the detainee had been beaten.
“I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “We have
intelligence teams, they have techniques for getting
information, they don’t do things like that. It’s not
civilization.”
About 30 yards away, on the other side of the wall,
the Iraqi soldiers suggested that the Americans were
being naïve. The insurgents are playing for keeps,
they say, and force must be answered with force.
“If the Americans used this way, the way we use,
nobody would shoot the Americans at all,” Captain
Hassan said. “But they are easy with them, and they
have made it easy for the terrorists.”
“I didn’t beat them all, I beat Mustafa in front
of the others. We tell him we’re going to string him
up.” He demonstrated, his arms spread wide. “And,
I made the others see him,” he said.
Captain Hassan and his colleagues said they knew the
Iraqi Army had rules against beatings, but “they tell
us to do what we have to do,” he said.
“For me it’s a matter of conscience, not rules,”
he said.
Captain Fowler’s proposal to release Mr. Jassam in
the hope he would become an informant struck Captain
Hassan as useless and quite possibly dangerous.
“It’s kind of not a good idea,” he said carefully,
as if explaining something to a child. “He’ll never
become an informant. Al Qaeda will know he’s been captured.
He’ll go back to them and say, ‘The Americans wanted me to
be an informer, but I will be loyal to you.’ He will be
more afraid of Al Qaeda guys than of the Americans.”
But some detainees may have a simpler motivation:
survival. The Iraqi soldiers say many of the insurgents
are paid for their attacks, and they gain respect and
protection from other militants.
Another officer in the Iraqi unit, Major Hussain, who
would not give his full name, said the only way to
lure such militants out of the insurgent life would
be to offer them a comparable standard of living.
“Ziad, over there, wanted to come work with us,” Major
Hussain said, indicating one of the insurgent suspects,
Ziad Sabah Jasim, who became cooperative after witnessing
the beating of Mr. Jassam. “He said, ‘Just let me join you,’ ”
“Most of them don’t believe in this insurgency,” he said.
“They are young people. They are having to stay home
without employment. They want food. They want money.
They want to be able to marry. But there are no jobs.
If you offered them jobs, most of them would not be
working with Al Qaeda.”
The American soldiers would agree, but they also are
clear that the only way to bring jobs is first to make
the neighborhood secure. “You need a J.S.S. every kilometer
or so,” Captain Fowler said. For now, there are nowhere
near that many security stations on Baghdad’s west side.
Ashley Gilbertson contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Military Cites ‘Negligence’ in Aftermath of Iraq Killings
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/middleeast/22haditha.html?ref=world
A military investigation has found that senior Marine Corps
commanders in Iraq showed a routine disregard for the lives
of Iraqi civilians that contributed to a “willful” failure
to investigate the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis by marines
in 2005, lawyers involved in the case said.
The report, completed last summer but never made public,
also found that a Marine Corps general and colonel in Iraq
learned of the killings within hours that day, Nov. 19,
2005, in the town of Haditha, but failed to begin a thorough
inquiry into how they occurred.
The 130-page report, by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of
the Army, did not conclude that the senior officers covered
up evidence or committed a crime. But it said the Marine
Corps command in Iraq was far too willing to tolerate
civilian casualties and dismiss Iraqi claims of abuse
by marines as insurgent propaganda, according to lawyers
who have read it.
“All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties,
even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural
and intended result of insurgent tactics,” General Bargewell
wrote in his report, according to two people who have read
it. “Statements made by the chain of command during
interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole,
suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important
as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing
business, and that the Marines need to get the job done
no matter what it takes.”
The killings in Haditha, in Anbar Province, began with
a roadside bombing that killed one American marine and
wounded two. Several marines then began methodically
killing civilians in the area, eventually going door
to door in the village and killing women and children,
some in their beds, according to a Naval criminal
investigation.
General Bargewell’s report, completed at the request
of Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the day-to-day commander
of American forces in Iraq at the time, did not focus
on the killings themselves, but rather on commanders’
handling of the aftermath.
The Washington Post published details of the report’s
findings on Saturday. Spokesmen for the Marine Corps
declined to comment, citing hearings for the three
enlisted marines charged with murder in the case and
for four officers charged with dereliction of duty
for failing to ensure a proper investigation.
General Bargewell’s report was said to have found what
it called “inattention and negligence, in certain cases
willful negligence,” among Marine officers who reported
the civilian deaths immediately up their chain of command
in ways that the report said were “untimely, inaccurate
and incomplete.”
It is critical of the Marine division commander, Maj. Gen.
Richard A. Huck, and the regimental commander, Col. Stephen
W. Davis, for fostering a perception that civilian Iraqi
lives were not as important as American lives and for failing
to investigate the civilian deaths in Haditha, lawyers
who read the report said.
Lawyers for the four officers charged with dereliction
of duty — a lieutenant colonel, two captains and a first
lieutenant — disagreed Saturday with the report’s
conclusions about them.
“Colonel Chessani, Colonel Davis and General Huck all viewed
this — and still do — as a legitimate combat action,” said
Brian J. Rooney, a civilian lawyer for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R.
Chessani, who was relieved of his command and is the highest-
ranking officer known publicly to be punished in the Haditha
matter. “That same night and the next morning Colonel Chessani
reported up the chain of command what he had learned about
the attacks,” including that marines had killed civilians.
“I don’t know how that’s untimely, inaccurate and incomplete.”
The Bargewell report, which was recently declassified, also
established that junior officers, including a captain who
issued a news release on the episode that blamed a roadside
bomb planted by insurgents for most of the deaths, knew
from the beginning that marines had killed the civilians,
the lawyers said.
The captain, Jeffrey S. Pool, told General Bargewell’s
investigators that he was given reports from battalion
commanders that accurately described the marines’ killing
of civilians, said lawyers who read the report. But Captain
Pool said he issued a news release blaming insurgents for
the deaths because he believed that the killings were
ultimately a direct result of the roadside bombing of the
marines, the lawyers said.
“The way I saw it was this,” Captain Pool told two colonels
questioning him, according to a lawyer who read the report
to a reporter. “A bomb blast went off, or was initiated,
that is what started, that is the reason they’re getting
this, is a bomb blew up, killed people. We killed people
back, and that’s the story.” (Since the investigation, the
captain has been promoted to major and is again working as
a public affairs officer in Anbar Province.)
Lawyers for the four officers charged with failing to
properly investigate the civilian killings blame the
inaccurate news release for creating the false perception
that the Marine Corps chain of command had covered up the
killing of civilians. But one lawyer also said that the
captain’s thinking reflected that of his superiors, who
believed that civilian casualties, though regrettable,
were an inevitable part of war.
“That’s the rubric that the whole division was operating
under,” the lawyer said. The report, he said, came to
a similar conclusion. “It just was the culture of the
Marine Corps,” he said, paraphrasing the report, “to
think that the Iraqis’ story was propaganda, and didn’t
investigate.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) Hoping to Curb Drug Trade at a Housing Complex,
the Newark Police Move In
"Most important, the police officers will remain in the courtyard
indefinitely, 24 hours a day, trying to edge out the dealers."
By KAREEM FAHIM
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22newark.html?ref=nyregion
NEWARK, April 21 — One man, in all seriousness, asked whether
President Bush was here.
Here is Pennington Court, a public housing project in Newark’s
East Ward. And the man’s question was not totally unreasonable,
given what he and other residents saw in the courtyard early
Saturday: police officers on horseback, on motorcycles and
in a helicopter, along with a mobile police tower that can
lift a watchful officer up to 24 feet.
The arrival of the officers was part of an eight-month
investigation into the illegal narcotics trade at the housing
project, conducted by the Newark police, the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration and others. Knocking on doors
before the sun rose on Saturday, the police made 21 arrests.
In recent days, they also arrested Simmied Tut, 41, whom
officials called the ringleader of the local drug trade.
The drug raid, which also targeted narcotics distributors
in Pennsylvania, was named after Mr. Tut and the housing
project where the police said he ran his business: Operation
King and His Court.
If the snappy name conjured images of yet another inner-city
drug raid, officials said this one was different: Most
important, the police officers will remain in the courtyard
indefinitely, 24 hours a day, trying to edge out the dealers.
A page of mug shots — of men arrested in the raid, and men
who are still wanted — was passed around the basketball
court as if it were a celebrity magazine.
“They got Abdul? The fat one?” said one woman in her 50s,
referring to Abdul Oliver, who is known as Butch and who
the police allege was Mr. Tut’s second in command. The
woman, who refused to give her name, tapped a grill next
to her. “This is his barbecue,” she said.
In the summer, residents said, the dealers cook for some
of the 260 families living here, and give the children
money for ice cream. And when Carlos Denizac and his family
dress up and go to church, three times a week, the dealers
are respectful, he said, momentarily moving their trade
out of the family’s view.
But for every resident who spoke of the drug dealers’
largess, there were others who talked about how bad the
situation had become. Even Mr. Denizac said he welcomed
the police presence. The question for him, and others,
was how long the officers would stay at the Court, as the
complex of three-story red brick buildings is known.
“We’re not going to walk away until it’s done,” said
Garry F. McCarthy, Newark’s police director, who promised
in January, after announcing the formation of a new
narcotics squad, that he would reclaim parts of the
city from drug dealers.
To go with the police presence, the Newark Housing Authority
has begun cleaning up Pennington Court, whitewashing
graffiti-filled hallways. The strategy is in many ways
a throwback to New York City’s “model block” program,
which Mr. McCarthy presided over in the late 1990s in the
Washington Heights neighborhood.
Pennington Court is not the most dangerous of Newark’s
housing projects, and is surrounded by the residential
streets and industrial pockets of the city’s Ironbound
district. But the drug trade in the Court is stubborn,
and the dealers have more staying power than the police,
some residents said.
“The drugs are like cockroaches,” said Maritza Felix,
who said she had served jail time on drug-related charges.
“You’re not going to get rid of them.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) In Arctic Foxes, Clues to Effects of Shrinking Habitat
“They didn’t move,” Dr. Dalen said of the European animals.
“That whole population is extinct.”
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
April 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17observ.html
If its habitat starts to shrink and shift, several things
can happen to a species. It can stay and adapt to new
conditions. It can move with the habitat. Or it can do
neither and die off.
While there has been much research on what happens to
species when habitat expands — no surprise, they tend
to expand into it — there has been little research into
what happens when habitat contracts.
Love Dalen, currently at the University of London,
and colleagues examined the subject using a species,
the Arctic fox, whose habitat has changed markedly since
the last ice age. Back then, 10,000 years ago, the species
had the run of continental Europe, which because of the
cold climate had tundra-like vegetation. But as the planet
warmed again and the ice sheets receded, the fox’s habitat
shifted northward and decreased. The animals are now
found in Scandinavia and Siberia.
“We wanted to know what happened with the Arctic foxes
over the transition from the ice age to the current warm
period,” Dr. Dalen said. “When the tundra shifted up to
Scandinavia and Siberia, did they move too?”
The researchers analyzed DNA from fossilized fox bones
found at European ice age sites, and compared it with
DNA from the current Scandinavian and Siberian populations.
They found that there was no connection between the
ancient and modern populations.
“They didn’t move,” Dr. Dalen said of the European animals.
“That whole population is extinct.”
The researchers, whose findings were published in The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest
that Scandinavia was probably repopulated by foxes from
the part of northeastern Siberia known as Beringia, which
wasn’t frozen over during the ice age and thus served
as a refuge for many species.
The findings have implications for how species may
respond to global climate change, as certain habitats
shift northward or shrink. “Scientists need to be able
to understand which species will make it and which won’t,”
Dr. Dalen said. “We need to get a picture of exactly how
this process takes place.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
21) Why Darwinism Isn’t Depressing
By Robert Wright
April 21, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/opinion/21wright.html?hp
Scientists have discovered that love is truth.
Granted, no scientist has put it quite
like that. In fact, when scientists
talk about love—the neurochemistry,
the evolutionary origins—they make it
sound unlovely.
More broadly, our growing grasp of the
biology behind our thoughts and
feelings has some people downhearted.
One commentator recently acknowledged
the ascendancy of the Darwinian paradigm
with a sigh: “Evolution doesn’t
really lead to anything outside itself.”
Cheer up! Despair is a plausible response
to news that our loftiest feelings
boil down to genetic self-interest,
but genetic self-interest actually turns
out to be our salvation. The selfishness
of our genes gave us the
illuminating power of love and
put us on the path to a kind of
transcendence.
Before hiking to the peak, let’s pause
for some sobering concessions. Yes,
love is physically mediated, a product
of biochemistry. (Why this would
surprise anyone familiar with alcohol
and coffee is something that has long
baffled scientists.) And, yes, the
biochemistry was built by natural
selection. Like it or not, we are
survival machines.
But survival machines are unfairly
maligned. The name suggests, well,
machines devoted to their survival.
In truth, though, natural selection
builds machines devoted ultimately
to the survival of their genes, not
themselves.
Hence love. A love-impelled grandparent
sacrifices her life to save a
child’s life. Too bad for the grandparent,
but mission accomplished for the
love genes: they’ve kept copies of
themselves alive in a vibrant vehicle
that was otherwise doomed, and all
they’ve lost is a vehicle that, frankly,
didn’t have the world’s most auspicious
odometer anyway. Love of offspring
(and siblings) is your genes’ way
of getting you to serve their agenda.
Feel manipulated? Don’t worry—
we get the last laugh.
Genes are just dopey little particles,
devoid of consciousness. We, in
contrast, can perceive the world.
And how! Thanks to love, we see beyond our
selves and into the selves around us.
A thought experiment: Suppose you
are a parent and you (a) watch someone
else’s toddler misbehave and then
(b) watch your own toddler do the same.
Your predicted reactions, respectively,
are: (a) “What a brat!” and (b)
“That’s what happens when she skips her nap.”
Now (b) is often a correct
explanation, whereas (a)—the “brat”
reaction—isn’t even an explanation.
Thus does love lead to truth. So, too,
when a parent sees her child show
off and senses that the grandstanding is
grounded in insecurity. That’s an
often-valid explanation—unlike, say, “My
neighbor’s kid is such a showoff”—
and brings insight into human nature.
Yes, yes, love can warp your perception,
too. Still, there is an
apprehension of the other—an
empathetic understanding—that is at least
humanly possible, and it would never
have gotten off the ground had love not
emerged on this planet as a direct
result of Darwinian logic.
Some people, on hearing this, remain
stubbornly ungrateful. They hate the
arbitrariness of it all. You mean I
love my child just because she’s got my
genes? So my “appreciation” of her
“specialness” is an illusion?
Exactly! If you’d married someone else,
there would be a different child you
considered special—and if you then
spotted the child that is now yours on
the street, you’d consider her a brat.
(And, frankly ... but I digress.)
O.K., so your child isn’t special.
This doesn’t have to mean she’s not
worthy of your love. It could mean
instead that other people’s kids are
worthy of your love. But it has
to mean one or the other. And—especially
given that love can bring truth—
isn’t it better to expand love’s scope than
to narrow it?
I’m a realist. I don’t expect you
to get all mushy about the kid next door.
But if you carry into your everyday
encounters an awareness that empathetic
understanding makes sense, that’s progress.a
Transcending the arbitrary narrowness
of our empathy isn’t guaranteed by
nature. (Why do you think they call
it transcendence?) But nature has given
us the tools—not just the empathy,
but the brains to figure out how
evolution works, and thus to see
that the narrowness is arbitrary.
So evolution has led to something outside
itself—to the brink of a larger,
more widely illuminating love, maybe
even to a glimpse of moral truth.
What’s not to like?
Robert Wright, author of “The Moral Animal,”
is a senior fellow at the New
America Foundation and runs the
Web site Bloggingheads.tv.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
22) TRAINING IRAQI TROOPS NO LONGER DRIVING FORCE IN U.S. POLICY
By Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers
April 19, 2007
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17104704.htm
WASHINGTON -- Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up
Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now
believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure
control of troubled provinces.
Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush
administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials
in Baghdad and Washington said.
No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said
training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our
mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing
security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.
But evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no
longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no
new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch
28,000 additional troops to Iraq. The officials spoke only on the condition
of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss the policy shift
publicly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made no public mention of training
Iraqi troops on Thursday during a visit to Iraq.
In a reflection of the need for more U.S. troops, the Pentagon decided
earlier this month to increase the length of U.S. Army tours in Iraq from
12 to 15 months. The extension came amid speculation that the U.S.
commander there, Army Gen. David Petraeus, will ask that the troop increase
be maintained well into 2008.
U.S. officials don't say that the training formula -- championed by Gen.
John Abizaid when he was the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and
by Gen. George Casey when he was the top U.S. general in Iraq -- was doomed
from the start. But they said that rising sectarian violence and the
inability of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to unite the country changed the
conditions. They say they now must establish security while training Iraqi
forces because ultimately, "they are our ticket out of Iraq," as one senior
Pentagon official put it.
Casey's "mandate was transition. General Petraeus' mandate is security.
It is a change based on conditions. Certain conditions have to be met for
the transition to be successful. Security is part of that. And General
Petraeus recognizes that," said Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard, commander of the
Iraq Assistance Group in charge of supporting trained Iraqi forces.
"I think it is too much to expect that we were going to start from scratch .
. . in an environment that featured a rising sectarian struggle and lack of
progress with the government," said a senior Pentagon official. "The
conditions had sufficiently changed that the Abizaid/Casey approach alone
wasn't going to be sufficient."
Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who's in charge of training Iraqi troops, said in
February that he hoped that Iraqi troops would be able to lead by December.
"At the tactical level, I do believe by the end of the year, the conditions
should be set that they are increasingly taking responsibility for the
combat operations," Dempsey told NBC News.
Maj. Gen. Doug Lute, the director of operations at U.S. Central Command,
which oversees military activities in the Middle East, said that during the
troop increase, U.S. officers will be trying to determine how ready Iraqi
forces are to assume control.
"We are looking for indicators where we can assess the extent to which we
are fighting alongside Iraqi security forces, not as a replacement to them,"
he said. Those signs will include "things like the number of U.S.-only
missions, the number of combined U.S.-Iraqi missions, the number where
Iraqis are in the lead, the number of Joint Security Stations set up," he
said.
That's a far cry from the optimistic assessments U.S. commanders offered
throughout 2006 about the impact of training Iraqis. President Bush first
announced the training strategy in the summer of 2005. "Our strategy can be
summed up this way," Bush said. "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand
down."
Military leaders in Baghdad planned to train 325,000 Iraqi security forces.
Once that was accomplished, those forces were to take control.
Casey created military transition teams that would live side by side with
their Iraqi counterparts to help them apply their training to real-world
situations. Throughout 2006, Casey and top Bush administration leaders
touted the training as a success, asserting that eight of Iraq's 10
divisions had taken the lead in confronting insurgents.
But U.S. forces complained that the Iraqi forces weren't getting the support
from their government and that Iraqi military commanders, many who worked
under Saddam Hussein, weren't as willing to embrace their tactics.
Among everyday Iraqis, some said they didn't trust their forces, saying they
were sectarian and easily susceptible to corruption. Most important,
insurgents and militiamen had infiltrated the forces, using their power to
carry out sectarian attacks.
In nearly every area where Iraqi forces were given control, the security
situation rapidly deteriorated. The exceptions were areas dominated largely
by one sect and policed by members of that sect.
In the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, which Bush celebrated last year as
an example of success, suspected Sunni Muslim insurgents set off a bomb last
month that killed as many as 150 people, the largest single bombing attack
of the war. Shiite Muslim mobs, including some police officers, pulled
Sunnis from their homes and executed dozens afterward. U.S. troops were
dispatched to restore order.
Earlier this month, U.S. forces engaged in heavy fighting in the southern
city of Diwaniyah after Iraqi forces, who'd been given control of the region
in January 2006, lost control of the city.
U.S. officials said they once believed that if they empowered their Iraqi
counterparts, they'd take the lead and do a better job of curtailing the
violence. But they concede that's no longer their operating principle.
Pentagon officials won't say how many U.S. troops are engaged in training,
though they said that the number of teams assigned to work alongside trained
Iraqi troops hasn't changed.
Military officials say there's no doubt that the November U.S. elections,
which gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress, helped push
training down the priority list. The elections, they said, made it clear
that voters didn't have the patience to wait for Iraqis to take the lead.
"To the extent we are losing the American public, we were losing" in the
transition approach, said a senior military commander in Washington.
Military analysts cite a number of reasons that the training program didn't
work.
"The goal was to put the Iraqis in charge. The problem is we didn't know how
to do it and we underestimated the insurgency," said Anthony Cordesman, of
the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Said Paul Hughes of the U.S. Institute for Peace: "In our initial efforts
to hand security missions over to Iraqi forces, we took the training wheels
off too early -- and the bike fell over."
Military officials now measure success by whether the troops are curbing
violence, not by the number of Iraqi troops trained.
Many officials are vague about when the U.S. will know when troops can begin
to return home. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
the U.S. is trying to buy "time for the Iraqi government to provide the good
governance and the economic activity that's required."
One State Department official, who also asked not to be named because of the
sensitivity of the subject, expressed the same sentiment in blunter terms.
"Our strategy now is to basically hold on and wait for the Iraqis to do
something," he said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
23) Castro resumes official business
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6578539.stm
Cuba's Fidel Castro has held talks with a top
delegate from China in what is thought to be his
first official act since his illness last year.
Mr Castro - who has handed over power temporarily
to his brother, Raul - has appeared to play a
greater role in Cuba over the last few weeks.
The Communist Party newspaper Granma said the
talks were "fruitful".
Its website also carried a photograph of Mr
Castro, standing and shaking hands with the
Chinese delegation.
The latest pictures published by Cuban official
media also show him talking and apparently taking
notes during Friday's meeting.
Mr Castro's health, which remains a state secret,
came under close scrutiny by international media
after he had stomach surgery last July.
The Cuban president has not been seen in public
since then but his ally, Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez, has been giving regular updates on
his condition and recently said Mr Castro was
"almost totally recovered".
The speculation now is whether Mr Castro might
soon be fit enough to appear in public, reports
the BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Havana.
The forthcoming International Labour Day on 1 May
is one possible date. For most of the last 47
years of his rule, Mr Castro has marked the
occasion with a lengthy speech in Havana's
revolution square.
While few expect Mr Castro to address the crowd
this year, some sort of appearance is not being
ruled out, our correspondent says, Mr Castro held
talks for about an hour with Wu Guanzheng, a
member of the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo,
Granma reported.
Mr Castro was handed a letter from Chinese
President Hu Jintao, in which he praised the
"excellent ties" between the two countries, the
newspaper said.
In 2006 China became the country's second largest
trading partner, with trade between the two
nations worth some $1.8m (1.4m euros; £0.94m) last year.
Mr Wu is on a four-day visit to boost political
and trade ties between the two communist allies.
After his meeting with Mr Castro, Mr Wu also held
talks with Raul Castro.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
24) Life expectancy in Cuba soon to be 80 years
BY NAVIL GARCIA ALFONSO—Granma International staff writer
Havana. May 19, 2006
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2006/mayo/vier19/longevity.html
AGING with health is the maxim of the 4th International
Conference on Satisfactory Longevity: an Integral Vision,
which took place in Cuba’s Hotel Nacional, sponsored
by the Caribbean Medical Association and the 120 Years Club.
Doctor Eugenio Selman-Houssein Abdo highlighted the
conditions developed in Cuba to maintain good quality
of life conditions, including nutrition, health, physical
activity, culture, motivation and the environment.
"Cuba guarantees education and healthcare free of charge;
full access to sports and culture; it promotes healthy
eating and keeps elderly people motivated through their
association with senior citizen centers," Selman noted.
"We also have a high-quality health infrastructure that
includes 430 multi-disciplinary teams for gerontology
services and a pharmaceutical industry that produces
80 percent of the medications used in the country."
That combination of factors will soon make it possible
for life expectancy in Cuba, currently at 77 years,
to reach 80 years, according to Doctor Alberto Fernández
Seco, director of the National Program for Attention
to Older Adults.
However, noted Fernández Seco, the aging of the population
increases the risks for disabilities and illnesses that
come with it, which requires specialized medical services
for long-term patient care.
Several seniors who are considered stars of Cuban sport
shared their experiences and the importance of physical
exercise for staying healthy.
They included boxer Orlando Martínez, the first Olympic
gold medalist of the Revolution’s sports programs, and
baseball players Máximo García and Pedro Almenares, who
left professional baseball to join the Revolution’s
sports movement.
José Ramón Fernández, president of the Cuban Olympic
Committee, noted that one main goal is for older athletes
to stay active, so that they can help develop the nation’s
sports with their valuable experience. Likewise, he
highlighted the importance of exercise as a guarantee
for reaching 120 years with a life that is pleasant,
lucid and useful.
For more information: redac2@granmai.cip.cu
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
25) Words as Weapons
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
April 23, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/opinion/23herbert.html?hp
Just days after Don Imus was taken off the air for a slur
hurled at members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team,
a police sergeant conducting a roll call at a precinct
in Brooklyn is reported to have called the three female
officers in the room “hos” as he gave them an order
to stand up.
The women, two of whom are black and one a Latina,
refused to stand.
Another officer, unable to resist the great “fun” of
mocking his female colleagues, is reported to have called
out, “No, sergeant, not just hos, but nappy-headed hos.”
The women said they were stunned almost to the point
of disbelief by the comments. They were the only women
in the gathering of 17 police officers in the room,
including the supervising sergeant. There was a sickening
quality to the moment. The women said they felt violated,
hurt and humiliated.
The incident occurred on April 15, a Sunday, at the
70th Precinct, which gained national notoriety in 1997
as the precinct in which Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant,
was sodomized by police officers with a broken broomstick.
The three women, Tronnette Jackson, 36, Karen Nelson, 31,
and Maria Gomez, 29, said they were attending a routine
roll call session when Sgt. Carlos Mateo, referring
to them, said, “Stand up, hos.”
The Imus controversy, in which Mr. Imus had referred to
the Rutgers players as “nappy-headed hos,” was still big
news and on everyone’s mind. The three women remained
seated.
They said another police officer, Ralph Montanez, then
chimed in: “No, sergeant, not just hos, but nappy-headed
hos.”
The women remained silent, and seated.
Sergeant Mateo is reported to have said, “Jackson and
Gomez, why aren’t you standing?”
Another police officer said to the sergeant, “They are
offended and they are protesting that you called them hos.”
This is just one example of the myriad ways in which
racist and sexist comments like Mr. Imus’s help to poison
the atmosphere all around us. Another example occurred
two days prior to this incident when a narcotics sergeant
in Queens is alleged to have “jokingly” said to a black
female officer, “Don’t give me no lip or I’ll have to call
you a nappy-headed ho.”
One of the toughest points to get across in this society
is that racism and sexism are always contemptible, and
are never harmless. The targets of racist and sexist
comments should not just swallow the insults. They should
react as if they’d been slapped in the face.
The three women in the 70th Precinct case have decided
to fight back. Their initial complaint to Sergeant Mateo,
immediately after the roll call, was brushed aside, they
said. They then complained to the precinct’s integrity
control officer and hired a lawyer, Bonita Zelman.
This morning they will file a complaint in federal court,
asserting that the degrading comments at the roll call
amounted to illegal discrimination against them based
on their gender and ethnic background. This is not
a small matter. It’s fair to wonder, for example, how
eager a supervisor might be to recommend a major promotion
for an employee he refers to as a “ho.”
“We have tremendous concern about the effect of language
like this on women police officers,” said Ms. Zelman,
“particularly women of color trying to make their way
in the largely white male bureaucracy of a police
department.”
Also concerned about the effect of language like this
is the police commissioner, Ray Kelly. Discussing the
70th Precinct case, he told me yesterday that he found
the comments “despicable.” He declined to go into much
detail because the matter is being investigated by the
department’s Equal Employment Opportunity division.
But the department let it be known that Sergeant Mateo
had been transferred out of the 70th Precinct and would
no longer be serving in a supervisory position. Both
he and Officer Montanez could be subject to disciplinary
charges.
Commissioner Kelly said he found the entire matter
“very, very disturbing” because the city had worked
hard over the past few years to make the Police Department
a place where women and minorities “could feel at home.”
The Queens narcotics sergeant is also likely to face
disciplinary action by the department, which has been
infected, like other organizations around the country,
with what Ms. Zelman calls the “Imus virus.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
26) Flight Patterns
By JONATHAN ROSEN
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22birds.t.html
European starlings have a way of appearing in unexpected
places — the United States, for example, where they are
not native but owe their origin to a brief reference in
Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1.” In 1890, a drug manufacturer
who wanted every bird found in Shakespeare to live in America
released 60 starlings in Central Park. After spending
a few years nesting modestly under the eaves of the American
Museum of Natural History, they went from a poetic fancy
to a menacing majority; there are now upward of 200 million
birds across North America, where they thrive at the expense
of other cavity nesters like bluebirds and woodpeckers,
eat an abundance of grain — as well as harmful insects —
and occasionally bring down airplanes.
In Europe, where the birds are native — Mozart had a pet
starling that could sing a few bars of his piano concerto
in G major — they still have the power to turn heads.
Each fall and winter, vast flocks gather in Rome. They spend
the day foraging in the surrounding countryside but return
each evening to roost. (Rachel Carson, author of “Silent
Spring,” called the birds reverse commuters.) They put
on breathtaking aerial displays above the city, banking
in nervous unison, responding like a school of fish to
each tremor inside the group.
The birds are beloved by tourists and reviled by locals
— understandably, since the droppings cover cars and
streets, causing accidents and general disgust. A flock
of starlings is euphoniously called a “murmuration,” but
there is nothing poetic about their appetites. Their ability
to focus both eyes on a single object — binocular vision —
allows them to peck up stationary seeds as well as insects
on the move. In the countryside outside Rome, they feast
on olives. Like us, the birds are enormously adaptable
but what we admire in ourselves we often abhor in our
neighbors.
Richard Barnes’s photographs capture the double nature
of the birds — or at least the double nature of our
relationship to them — recording the pointillist delicacy
of the flock and something darker, almost sinister in
the gathering mass. Many of Barnes’s photographs, which
will be shown at Hosfelt Gallery in New York this fall,
were taken over two years in EUR, a suburb of Rome that
Mussolini planned as a showcase for fascist architecture.
The man-made backdrop only enhances the sense of the vast
flock as something malign, a sort of avian Nuremberg rally.
It is, of course, natural for birds to surrender individual
autonomy to the flock; according to the Roman ornithologist
Claudio Carere, who has identified 12 basic flock patterns,
the starlings are primarily trying to evade falcons. But
we project onto the natural world a large measure of
ourselves. In ancient Rome, augurs studied the flight
patterns of birds to divine the will of the gods; part
of the fascination of the starlings is the way they seem
to be inscribing some sort of language in the air, if
only we could read it.
A consortium of ornithologists, physicists and biologists
in Italy and other European countries has in fact begun
studying the birds with the aim of learning not only
about the relationship of individual birds to the surrounding
flock but about human behavior as well. The project, named
StarFLAG, entertains hopes of using the birds to illuminate
herding responses in human beings with a particular eye
on stock-market panics.
The starling in “Henry IV” that inspired those first American
birds is a mimic, capable of tormenting a king by speaking
the name of Mortimer. Mozart’s bird sang his own music back
to him. But Mozart may also have smuggled a few of the bird’s
notes into his own compositions. When humans contemplate
animals, the question is always who is imitating whom.
The starlings that so plague us in America (where we kill
more than a million of the birds a year) grew out of our
desire for nature to be poetic, rather than truly wild;
they reflect the consequences of such self-serving fantasies.
It isn’t their fault that they treated an open continent
much as we ourselves did.
More and more, as surrounding habitat is flattened, we may
find fragments of the wild world coming home, literally,
to roost. The abundance of starlings in Rome is partly the
result of climate change — they used to go farther south
before Roman winters warmed up. Bird-watching thrives
on the recognition that the urban and the wild must be
understood together. We are, after all, urban and wild
ourselves, and still figuring out how to make the multiple
aspects of our nature mesh without disaster.
Jonathan Rosen is the editorial director of Nextbook. His
book about bird-watching, “The Life of the Skies,” will be
published next year.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
27) Chávez arms community groups as he anticipates US invasion
By Alfonso Daniels in Caracas, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:59pm BST 21/04/2007
[VIA Email from: Greg McDonald sabocat59@mac.com...bw]
A dozen people gather inside a rudimentary, two-storey brick house in
Catia, the most dangerous of all the slums that ring the Venezuelan
capital, Caracas.
They talk excitedly about plans to repair crumbling walls, clear
sewage and help local enterprises. It is the business of civic
leaders everywhere - yet this gathering is also the vanguard of
Leftist president Hugo Chávez's 21st-century "socialist revolution".
By the time they have been trained and armed, they will also be ready
to defend Venezuela against outside interference, including the US
invasion that Mr Chávez says he expects.
"El Comandante (Mr Chávez) told us to create communal groups and to
tackle problems ourselves," said Lenny Guerrero, 35, to nods of
assent from others in the room. "Some government officials came here
to help us create the groups. Power will now rest with the people."
On Mr Chávez's order, 17,000 communal councils have now been set up
across the country, and an estimated £1 billion earmarked to fund
them. As the official slogan, "Build power from below", proclaims,
their stated purpose is to promote grass-roots democracy and hand
power directly to the people - in particular the urban poor who make
up the bulk of his most fervent supporters.
But as well as grappling with the grim conditions in slums such as
Catia, members of these voluntary groups will constitute a nationwide
militia, schooled in Cuban-style tactics for both guerrilla warfare
and counter-insurgency.
Gen Alberto Mueller, an advisor to Mr Chávez, told The Sunday
Telegraph: "Some communal groups have already received military
training. They'll train in their own neighbourhoods and will be
equipped with any arms - guns, grenades, knifes - the community can
provide. We have a right to defend ourselves, like the UK has, and be
sure we'll do it."
advertisement
The move has caused alarm among Mr Chávez's critics, who claim the
groups will be used to repress internal dissent. They point out that,
unlike Venezuela's military reservists, the communal councils come
under Mr Chávez's direct control, including the appointments of their
oversight committees and allocation of funding.
They are being created in tandem with plans to expand Venezuela's
military reserve fivefold, from about 200,000 people to one million -
a move Mr Chávez has introduced in the belief that his sworn foe
America is planning some kind of military intervention.
Tensions with Washington and the West are likely to escalate further
next month, when the Chávez government plans to begin taking control
of the main European and American-owned oil fields in Venezuela - a
move ordered by presidential decree in February.
The communal councils project is being overseen by David Velasquez, a
communist who is the president's new "minister of the popular power
for participation and social development".
Although the favoured blueprint for the scheme is the Paris Commune
of 1871, under which socialism briefly reigned in the French capital,
critics say it is more reminiscent of "mini-Soviets", which will be
used to monopolise Venezuelan local politics.
Emilio Grateron, an opposition councillor from the rich Chacao area,
claimed that communal councils which did not toe the Chávez line were
usually denied permission to set up. "When we went to the ministry to
set them up, they asked us our political affiliation. When they saw
we're not Chavistas they didn't say no, but flooded us with requests
until you feel like giving up," he said.
Luis Enrique Lander, a sociologist at the Central University of
Venezuela, said that some official regulatory committee members were
pushing for "non-Chavista" groups to be denied acceptance and funding.
Ironically the new communal council in Catia has been devoting its
energy to fighting the expansion of the nearby Fabricio Ojeda
industrial complex, which is built with state oil money and which the
Chávez administration portrays as an example of its new socialist co-
operative model. Local residents are sceptical of promises to
resettle them in better conditions.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
28) Controversial Michael Moore Flick "Sicko"
Will Compare U.S. Health Care with Cuba's
"The average health insurance premiums for a family of four
are $10,880, which exceeds the annual gross income of $10,712
for a full-time, minimum-wage worker."
By Don Hazen, AlterNet
Posted on April 23, 2007, Printed on April 23, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50911/
To state that controversy and Michael Moore go hand and hand
is to utter the obvious, and Moore's latest film Sicko will
clearly be no exception.
Sicko, which will be premiering at the Cannes Film Festival
in May, is a comic broadside against the state of American
health care, including the mental health system. The film
targets drug companies and the HMOS in the richest country
in the world -- where the most money is spent on health care,
but where the U.S. ranks 21st in life expectancy among the
30 most developed nations, obviously in part due to the fact
that 47 million people are without health insurance.
The timing of Moore's film is propitious. Twenty-two percent
of Americans say that health care is the most pressing issue
in America. Health care will clearly be a major issue
in the upcoming presidential campaign, as the problems
with America's health care system have mushroomed during
the Bush administration. For example, between 2001 and 2005
the number of people without health insurance rose 16.6 percent.
The average health insurance premiums for a family of four
are $10,880, which exceeds the annual gross income of $10,712
for a full-time, minimum-wage worker. In addition, the lack
of insurance causes 18,000 excess deaths a year while people
without health insurance have 25 percent higher mortality
rates. Fifty-nine percent of uninsured people with chronic
conditions such as asthma or diabetes skip medicine or
go without care.
Under wraps, but one surprise out of the bag
The details of Moore's new film are being kept under tight
wraps. According to inside sources, only a handful of
people have seen the film, and both the film maker and
Harvey Weinstein -- the film's distributor, who also
distributed Moore's hugely successful Fahrenheit 9/11
-- are remaining tight-lipped about the film's contents.
Nevertheless, one aspect of the film will not be a total
surprise. One of the film's segments, an increasingly
controversial boat trip to Cuba, exploded onto the pages
of The New York Post, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid,
when at least one 9/11 cleanup worker who had been
invited to participate in a trip to Cuba for Moore's
Sicko went to the press.
The boat trip, according to sources who spoke to both
the NY Post and The Daily News, took ailing rescue
workers to Cuba for health treatment for respiratory
ailments which they suffer as a result of working at
Ground Zero, and for which a number of the workers have
no health insurance. The purpose of the trip, according
to some, was to show that the free health care in Cuba
is superior to the health care system in the U.S. Those
invited on the trip, as described by Janon Fisher in the
Post, were told the "Cuban doctors had developed new
techniques for treating lung cancer and other respiratory
illnesses," and that health care in Cuba was free.
Health care advances in Cuba
According to the Associated Press as cited in the Post
article, "Cuba has made recent advancements in biotechnology
and exports its treatments to 40 countries around the world,
raking in an estimated $100 million a year. ... In 2004,
the U.S. government granted an exception to its economic
embargo against Cuba and allowed a California drug company
to test three cancer vaccines developed in Havana."
Although trip participants signed confidentiality agreements
prohibiting them from talking about the trip, some thought
the trip a success. From the NY Post:
"From what I hear through the grapevine those people who
went are utterly happy, said John Feal, who runs the
Fealgood Foundation to raise money for responders and
was approached by Moore to find responders willing to
take the trip. "They got the Elvis treatment."
According to staff writer Bill Hutchinson from the Daily
News, Moore was praised for seeking medical alternatives.
Retired Firefighter Vinnie Forras, 49, said he's been going
to Ecuador and Bolivia for experimental treatments for
lung damage and severe headaches which he suffered at
Ground Zero. "For me, anyone who's looking to try to help
the guys and women who are sick is a good thing. I don't
care where you go for that treatment."
On the other hand, some balked at the idea of going:
"I would rather die an American than go to Cuba," Joe
Picurro told the NY Post. Picurro, an ironworker with
a laundry list of respiratory and other ailments, said,
"I just laughed. I couldn't do it. "
America's second-class health care system
Clearly one of the themes of Moore's films, highlighted
by the trip to Cuba, is to challenge the myth that the
U.S. has superior health care when compared with other
countries. In a recent AlterNet article, attorney Guy
Saperstein explained:
"The World Health Organization ranks health care systems
based on objective measures of medical outcomes: The
United States' health care system currently ranks 37th
in the world, behind Colombia and Portugal; the United
States ranks 44th in the world in infant mortality,
behind many impoverished Latin American countries.
While infant mortality in the United States is skewed
toward poor people, who have rates double the wealthy,
the top quintile of the U.S. population has infant
mortality rates higher than Canadians in the lowest
quintile of wealth.
"The United States has fewer physicians, nurses and
hospital beds than most developed nations. In the
United States, 28 percent say it is "difficult to
get care"; in most European countries, Japan, Australia
and New Zealand, 15 percent say that. In terms of
continuity of care (i.e., five-plus years with the
same doctor), the United States is the worst of all
developed nations. By every objective measure, the
United States has a second-rate health care system."
It is unclear how soon after Cannes Sicko will open
in U.S. theaters. But with the aggressive and often
Oscar hungry Weinstein at the distribution helm, there
is little doubt that the movie will make a big splash,
bubbling up many more controversies. Moore's film has
been a long time coming -- three years since his huge
success with Fahrenheit 9/11, which was awarded the
Palme d'Or (Golden Palm), the festival's highest
award, by an international jury in 2004.
Legend has it that while Moore has been critical
of Cuba, he became a hero there after a pirated
version of Fahrenheit 9/11 was shown on government-
controlled TV. It's ironic that Cuba showed a free
version, because the film has made boatloads of money.
According to the Wikipedia, "As of January 2005,
[Fahrenheit 9/11] had broken all box office records
for a documentary grossing nearly US $120 million
in U.S. box office, and over US $220 million worldwide,
an unprecedented amount for a political documentary;
Sony reported first-day DVD sales of two million
copies, again a new record for the genre."
Only time will tell if Moore can duplicate his success.
Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Incremental Health Reform: Whose Life Doesn't Count?
by Rose Ann DeMoro
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rose-ann-demoro/incremental-health-reform_b_45605.html
Officials Backing Down From Plan for Wall in Iraq
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and JON ELSEN
April 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/world/middleeast/23cnd-Iraq.html?hp
When Bremer Ruled Baghdad
How Iraq was Looted
By EVELYN PRINGLE
April 21 / 22, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/pringle04212007.html
FOCUS | Key Part of Bush's "No Child" Law Under Federal Probe
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042207Y.shtml
Now That Imus is Gone, What About All The Right-Wing Lies?
Fire The Media
by Mark T. Harris; April 22, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=91&ItemID=12633
William Fisher | Guantanamo Detainees in Isolation,
Diplomatic Limbo
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042107A.shtml
Lower Manhattan, Higher Testosterone
"Since 2000, men, mostly between ages 25 and 44, have
accounted for more than three-fourths of the population
increase in Lower Manhattan. As a result, according to
a special census calculation, the sex ratio there increased
to 126 men per 100 women in 2005, from 101 men per 100 women
in 2000. In the rest of Manhattan, and in the city over all,
there were only 90 men for every 100 women."
By SAM ROBERTS
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22downtown.html?ref=nyregion
Blue Angel Jet Crashes at S.C. Air Show
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Blue-Angel-Crash.html?ref=us
A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves
By JASON DePARLE
April 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22Workers.t.html?ref=world
War Resister Agustin Aguayo Released
"Army medic Agustin Aguayo was released this week after
more than six months in military custody for refusing
to deploy to Iraq a second time.
Aguayo went AWOL for weeks after refusing the order.
He was taken into military custody and jailed after
turning himself in. We speak with Agustin Aguayo's
wife, Helga."
Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/20/1336213
Mike Farrell of M*A*S*H on His Journey to Actor and
Activist
"Actor Mike Farrell is perhaps best known for his role
as Captain B.J.Hunnicutt in the popular TV series
M*A*S*H. But aside from that, he is also
known for his decades of social justice activism.
Farrell has just come out with a new book called "Just
Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and
Activist."
Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/20/1336220
VIDEO | Depleted Uranium: Poisoning Our Planet
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042007B.shtml
FOCUS | Soldier Says He Was Deployed With Head Injury
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042107Z.shtml
Ongoing Defiance/Political Gridlock in Lebanon
April 20, 2007
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/lebanon/000575.php
Maryland: Bodies of Miners Are Found
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Workers found the bodies of two miners trapped when a wall
section collapsed in an open-pit coal mine in western Maryland,
a federal mine official said. The official, Bob Cornett,
acting regional director for the federal Mine Safety and
Health Administration, said the men, one of whom was found
in a backhoe, and the other, found in a bulldozer, appeared
to have died instantly. The cause of the collapse was under
investigation. Mr. Cornett said heavy rain and the ground’s
freezing and thawing could be a factor. The mine, about
150 miles west of Baltimore, has had no fatal injuries since
at least 1995 and was not cited for violations in its most
recent inspection, which began March 5, according the federal
mine agency.
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21brfs-BODIESOFMINE_BRF.html
Fish-Killing Virus Spreading in the Great Lakes
By SUSAN SAULNY
"CHICAGO, April 20 — A virus that has already killed tens
of thousands of fish in the eastern Great Lakes is spreading,
scientists said, and now threatens almost two dozen aquatic
species over a wide swath of the lakes and nearby waterways."
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21fish.html
Army’s Documents Detail Secrecy in Tillman Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21tillman.html
Anger and Alternatives on Abortion
By GINA KOLATA
April 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21docs.html
World Opposed to U.S. as Global Cop
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/617/
Supreme Court Backtracks on Abortion Rights
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/616/
Report: World Needs to Axe Greenhouse Gases by 80 Pct
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/638/
Iraq Refugees: The Hidden Face of the War
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/622/
World Bank May Target Family Planning
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/19/636/
2 Miners Trapped in Maryland Under Up to 100 Feet of Rock
By SEAN D. HAMILL
April 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20miners.html
Leading Article: A global warning from the dust bowl of Australia
Published:?20 April 2007
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2465904.ece
General strike in the Spanish province of Cadiz to support
employees of Delphi
April 18, 2007
http://euronews.net/index.php?page=eco&article=417644&lng=1
Graffiti Figure Admired as Artist Now Faces Vandalism Charges
By THOMAS J. LUECK
April 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/nyregion/19grafitti.html?ref=nyregion
Pet Food Recall Expanded
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Pet-Food-Recall.html?ref=us
Pet Food Recall
Updated: April 19, 2007
http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html
Gates Reassures Israel About Arms Sales in Gulf
By DAVID S. CLOUD
April 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/world/middleeast/19cnd-gates.html
A Lot of Uninvited Guests
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail
"DAMASCUS, Apr 18 (IPS) - The massive influx of Iraqi refugees
into Syria has brought rising prices and overcrowding, but most
Syrians seem to have accepted more than a million of the
refugees happily enough."
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/syria/000571.php
Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Abortion Procedure
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:53 p.m. ET
April 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Abortion.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Almost Human, and Sometimes Smarter
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
April 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17chimp.html
Housing Slump Takes a Toll on Illegal Immigrants
By EDUARDO PORTER
"HURON, Calif. — Some of the casualties of America’s housing
bust are easy to spot up and down California’s Central Valley."
April 17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/business/17construct.html?hp
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN
The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Although
Dr. Al-Arian is no longer on a hunger strike we must still demand
he be released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
a grand jury in Virginia. He has long sense served his time yet
Dr. Al-Arian is still being held. Release him now!
See:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/16/1410255
ACTION:
We ask all people of conscience to demand the immediate
release and end to Dr. Al- Arian's suffering.
Call, Email and Write:
1- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Fax Number: (202) 307-6777
Email: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
2- The Honorable John Conyers, Jr
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov
3- Senator Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202)224-4242
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov
4- Honorable Judge Gerald Lee
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314
March 22, 2007
[No email given...bw]
National Council of Arab Americans (NCA)
http://www.arab-american.net/
Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War of
Terror
By Charlotte Kates, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6767.shtml
Related:
Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America
This systematic censorship of Middle East reality
continues even in schools
Published: 07 April 2007
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ fisk/article2430 125.ece
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
Excerpt of interview between Barbara Walters and Hugo Chavez
http://www.borev.net/2007/03/what_you_had_something_better.html
Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories hammer history's account of the
Sand Creek Massacre"
CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning
documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by
Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about
what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral
histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial,
Colorado film company.
"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient
Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for
public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the
story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness
this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."
"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness
value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we
also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal
elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film
shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century
Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "
Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black
Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and
Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado
history professor, are featured.
The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.
Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed
information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still
images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the
proposal page.
Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality
products that serve to educate others about the human condition.
Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
7078 South Fairfax Street
Centennial, CO 80122
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use
of these illegal weapons
http://poisondust.org/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.
Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:
Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.
You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.
Happy Holidays!
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment