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“They can kill somebody’s body, but they can’t kill love.” - Cindy
Sheehan, April 13th at Indianapolis.
Watch Cindy Sheehan at Traprock Peace TV (CounterPunch "website of
the day"):
http://www.traprockpeace.org/traprock_video/
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Tell Bush and Congress:
Don't Release Luis Posada Carriles!
Extradite Posada to Venezuela
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr006=238mdc75w3.app8a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=159
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Reflections by the Commander in Chief
A BRUTAL REPLY
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 10, 2007
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2007/ing/f100407i.html
2) Now the South Erupts
Inter Press Service
Ali al-Fadhily*
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000564.php#more
3) Cuban Youth Searching for Their Inner Selves
Juventud Rebelde reveals the finding of its Third National Survey of Youth
2007-04-10 | 13:31:23 EST
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/cuba/2007-04-10/cuban-youth-searching-for-their-inner-selves-/
4) Paying the Price
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
April 12, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/opinion/12herbert.html?hp
5) Four Years Later in Iraq
Editorial
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/opinion/12thu1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
6) Civilian Claims on U.S. Suggest the Toll of War
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12abuse.html?hp
7) U.S. Suspects That Iran Aids Both Sunni and Shiite Militias
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html?ref=world
8) About Creation, Pope Melds Faith With Science
By IAN FISHER
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/europe/12pope.html
9) Life in Iraq Worsening, Red Cross Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12redcross.html
10) 4 Years On, the Gap Between Iraq Policy
and Practice Is Wide
By DAVID E. SANGER
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12policy.html
11) Panel on Walter Reed Woes Issues Strong Rebuke
By SCOTT SHANE
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12medical.html?ref=us
12) As His Time Grows Short, a Dog Seeks a Reprieve
By PAUL VITELLO
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/nyregion/12dog.html
13) The Blinded Leading the Blind
A Jones for Justice
Connecting the Dots: Law, Slavery, and Immigration
By Dr. John Calvin Jones, PhD, JD
BC Columnist
www.blackcommentator.com/225/225_jones_for_justice_law_slavery_immigration_pf.html
14) REFLECTIONS OF PRESIDENT FIDEL CASTRO
"More than three billion people in the world condemned
to premature death from hunger and thirst."
March 28, 2007
Fidel Castro.
Translated by Granma International
[This email was sent as a service by Roland Sheppard.
My website is http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret . Read
my book, The View From The Painter's Ladder available
at Amazon.com]
15) Marines’ Actions in Afghanistan Called Excessive
By CARLOTTA GALL
April 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/world/asia/15afghan.html?hp
16) 2 Ejected From Bush Speech Posed a Threat, Lawyers Say
"...the president’s staff can lawfully remove anyone who
expresses points of view different from his."
By DAN FROSCH
April 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/us/15eject.html
17) President’s Military Medical Care Panel Hears Frustrations
of Soldiers Wounded in Iraq
By ROBERT PEAR
April 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/washington/15wounded.html
18) HS SPURS FUROR WITH CUBA TRIP
By DAVID ANDREATTA
April 16, 2007
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04162007/news/regionalnews/hs_spurs_furor_with_cuba_trip_regionalnews_david_andreatta.htm
19) Protesters still defiant against T. Don Hutto
By Daniel K. Lai
[VIA Email from: dorinda moreno
dorindamoreno@comcast.net
20) U.S. Missile Deals Bypass, and Annoy, European Union
By CRAIG S. SMITH
April 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/world/europe/18missiles.html?ref=world
21) Trailer-Park Sales Leave Residents
With Single-Wides and Few Options
By COREY KILGANNON
April 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/nyregion/18trailer.html?ref=nyregion
22) JUVENTUD REBELDE
Another American tragedy
"33 killed at a University in Virginia. The country is appalled
by a new large-scale massacre. Youths open fire on professors
and classmates."
By: Juana Carrasco Martín
internac@jrebelde.cip.cu
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Havana, Cuba
"Un paraiso bajo el bloqueo"
April 17, 2007
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
23) 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]
24) 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
25) 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
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1) Reflections by the Commander in Chief
A BRUTAL REPLY
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 10, 2007
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2007/ing/f100407i.html
George W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a system of
terror forced on the world by the technological, economic and political
superiority of the most powerful country known to this planet. For this
reason, we share the tragedy of the American people and their ethical
values. The instructions for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen Cardone,
of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday, granting Luis Posada Carriles
freedom on bail, could only have come from the White House.
It was President Bush himself who ignored at all times the criminal and
terrorist nature of the defendant who was protected with a simple accusation
of immigration violation leveled at him. The reply is brutal. The government
of the United States and its most representative institutions had already
decided to release the monster.
The backgrounds are well-known and reach far back. The people who trained
him and ordered him to destroy a Cuban passenger plane in midair, with 73
athletes, students and other Cuban and foreign travelers on board, together
with its dedicated crew; those who bought his freedom while the terrorist
was held in prison in Venezuela, so that he could supply and practically
conduct a dirty war against the people of Nicaragua, resulting in the loss
of thousands of lives and the devastation of a country for decades to come;
those who empowered him to smuggle with drugs and weapons making a mockery
of the laws of Congress; those who collaborated with him to create the
terrible Operation Condor and to internationalize terror; the same who
brought torture, death and often the physical disappearance of hundreds of
thousands of Latin Americans, could not possibly act any different.
Even though Bush‚s decision was to be expected, it is certainly no less
humiliating for our people. Thanks to the revelations of „Por Esto!‰ a
Mexican publication from the state of Quintana Roo later complemented by our
own sources, Cuba knew with absolute precision how Posada Carriles entered
from Central America, via Cancun, to the Isla Mujeres departing from there
on board the Santrina, after the ship was inspected by the Mexican federal
authorities, heading with other terrorists straight to Miami.
Denounced and publicly challenged with exact information on the matter,
since April 15, 2005, it took the government of that country more than a
month to arrest the terrorist, and a year and two months to admit that Luis
Posada Carriles had entered through the Florida coast illegally on board the
Santrina, a presumed school-ship licensed in the United States.
Not a single word is said of his countless victims, of the bombs he set off
in tourist facilities in recent years, of his dozens of plans financed by
the government of the United States to physically eliminate me.
It was not enough for Bush to offend the name of Cuba by installing a
horrible torture center similar to Abu Ghraib on the territory illegally
occupied in Guantánamo, horrifying the world with this procedure. The cruel
actions of his predecessors seemed not enough for him. It was not enough to
force a poor and underdeveloped country like Cuba to spend 100 billion
dollars. To accuse Posada Carriles was tantamount to accusing himself.
Throughout almost half a century, everything was fair game against our small
island lying 90 miles away from its coast, wanting to be independent.
Florida saw the installation of the largest station for intelligence and
subversion that ever existed on this planet.
It was not enough to send a mercenary invasion on the Bay of Pigs, costing
us 176 dead and more than 300 wounded at a time when the few medical
specialists they left us had no experience treating war wounds.
Earlier still, the French ship La Coubre carrying Belgian weapons and
grenades for Cuba had exploded on the docks of Havana Harbor. The two well
synchronized explosions caused the deaths of more than 100 workers and
wounded others as many of them tool part in the rescue attempts.
It was not enough to have the Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the
world to the brink of an all-consuming thermonuclear war, at a time when
there were bombs 50 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
It was not enough to introduce in our country viruses, bacteria and fungi to
attack plantations and flocks; and incredible as it may seem, to attack
human beings. Some of these pathogens came out of American laboratories and
were brought to Cuba by well-known terrorists in the service of the United
States government.
Add to all this the enormous injustice of keeping five heroic patriots
imprisoned for supplying information about terrorist activities; they were
condemned in a fraudulent manner to sentences that include two life
sentences and they stoically withstand cruel mistreatment, each of them in a
different prison.
Time and again the Cuban people have fearlessly faced the threat of death.
They have demonstrated that with intelligence, using appropriate tactics and
strategies, and especially preserving unity around their political and
social vanguard, there can be no force on this earth capable of defeating
them.
I think that the coming May Day celebration would be the ideal day for our
people, --using the minimum of fuel and transportation-- to show their
feelings to the workers and the poor of the world.
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2) Now the South Erupts
Inter Press Service
Ali al-Fadhily*
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000564.php#more
BASRA, Apr 11 (IPS) - The eruption of demonstrations in the
south of Iraq this week could rob the occupation forces of
what was considered a critical bastion of support.
The southern areas of Iraq have long been said to be secure,
and people there peaceful towards the occupation forces. Iraqis
living in the south were also believed to be cooperative with
the occupation to the extent that they supported administrative
steps taken by successive Iraqi governments.
The majority of the population of the south are Shia Muslims,
and Iraq has had Shia- dominated governments under the occupation.
But demonstrations against the occupation and the United States
by hundreds of thousands of angry Shias in Najaf, Kut and other
cities across the south Apr. 9 mark a sharp break from a policy
of cooperation. Protesters demanded an end to the U.S.-led
occupation, burnt U.S. flags and chanted "Death to America!"
Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Mayahi, a police commander in Najaf,
told reporters that at least half a million people joined the
demonstration there.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad,
told reporters, "We say that we're here to support democracy.
We say that free speech and freedom of assembly are part of that.
While we don't necessarily agree with the message, we agree with
their right to say it."
Clashes after the demonstration left at least one U.S. soldier
dead and another wounded in Diwaniyah, 180 km south of Baghdad.
"We have been patient and we have sacrificed a lot thinking the
situation would be better one day soon," Hussein Ali, a teacher
from Diwaniyah told IPS. "The result we see now is that we were
dragged into a swamp of hatred between brothers, and that all
the bloodshed was for the sake of war leaders to get more power
and fortune."
Fighting is continuing in Diwaniyah between the occupation
forces and the Mehdi Army led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Additional U.S. and Iraqi troops have been brought into the city
to make arrests and carry out door-to-door raids in search
of illegal weapons and wanted militiamen.
Muqtada al-Sadr, quiet for a considerable period after clashing
with U.S. troops early on in the occupation period, publicly
called on his militia to attack occupation troops.
So far this month, five occupation troops have been killed
every day on average, according to U.S. Department
of Defence figures.
The new Shia armed uprising, which appears to be in its early
days, is a further blow to occupation forces that are already
stretched thin.
"Four years of patience and what do we get?" Ali Hashim,
a merchant from the southern city Basra told IPS. "We got
nothing but the loss of our country to those who spoke a lot
but did nothing. The United States failed us and sold us cheap
to those who would have no mercy on us."
Mahmood al-Lamy, a historian from Basra told IPS the situation
there was critical.
"Basra is the biggest southern city and the only Iraqi city
that has a port near the Gulf. It is now controlled by various
militias who fight each other from time to time over an oil
smuggling business that is flourishing under the occupation."
Lamy said residents fear that "the situation here will be
a lot worse in the coming months due to disputes that are
appearing between major parties."
Lamy was referring to the withdrawal last month of the al-Fadhila
Party from the Shia Islamic Coalition Parliament Group, and the
dismissal of two ministers from the al-Sadr movement as
a punishment for contacting U.S. officials in Nasiriyah
in southern Iraq.
The Shia political group is increasingly divided over many
issues, and it seems unlikely that it will hold together.
But many of the groups are increasingly opposed to the
occupation.
"We were late to realise that we were wrong about U.S.
intentions," Salman Yassen of the Basra city municipality
council told IPS. "We waited four years while U.S. and Iraqi
authorities kept us busy fighting each other while they were
setting the plan of stealing our oil and tearing our country
apart so that their allies would feel safe."
Four years of the occupation of Iraq have seen many changes
in U.S. strategies, ambassadors and tactics, but the changes
may be too little, too late.
"The delay in moving politically has cost Iraq, the U.S.
and many other countries a great deal," former Iraqi police
colonel Ahmed Jabbar told IPS in Baghdad. "The least to be
said is that the world would have been better off without
this occupation and the catastrophic security disturbance
it has caused."
*(Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration
with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who
travels extensively in the region)
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3) Cuban Youth Searching for Their Inner Selves
Juventud Rebelde reveals the finding of its Third National Survey of Youth
2007-04-10 | 13:31:23 EST
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/cuba/2007-04-10/cuban-youth-searching-for-their-inner-selves-/
The Cuban Center for Youth Studies (CESJ in Spanish) carried
out an important investigation – not only learn about young
people more deeply, but to encourage further studies.
The Third National Survey of Youth was given to more than
3,000 youngsters, ranging from 15 to 29 years of age, all
living in urban areas in all the provinces of the island.
The survey looked into conditions and influences, which
included their socio-demographic characteristics, housing
and economic conditions, education and employment situation,
and leisure opportunities.
Below, JR describes the youth interviewed and the
survey findings.
Looking Inside
For French writer Honore de Balzac, marriage was
“in the end, a passionate battle where spouses ask
for God’s blessing because loving ‘until death do
us part’ is the most frightful of tasks.” Maybe
this is why our youth suffer gamophobia (the fear
of marriage). Consequently, as the survey reveals,
most of them are still singles.
Another of the questions addressed is the sensitive
problem of housing, a major challenge facing Cuban
society as a whole, and which is also experienced
by youth. More than the 50 percent of them live
in houses with construction problems.
Interviewees complained about space and structural
conditions of their houses, considering them insufficient
for their development. Housing issues, family dependence
and a lack of privacy are their principal dilemmas.
Still, it’s revealing that 72.3 percent have their
own room or a minimally shared room. Overcrowding
tends to be more frequent in substandard housing.
The Pocket Economy
Although the Cuban economy moved forward and overcame
the harsh recession of the 1990s, people’s pockets
didn’t seem to catch up that fast. The household budget
of Cubans must still adjust to shortages.
Most interviewees are economically dependent on
other people. Most of them live in the eastern
region of the island, are women and range between
the ages of 15 and 29.
The survey demonstrated that youth spend their incomes
in the same way as the rest of the population: on food,
clothes, shoes, and household expenses. Women and young
adult share their income in accordance with other people’s
needs or with those of the home.
Seeking the Other Half
Some youngsters read through the horoscope to learn
of their fortune in affairs of the heart, or to look
for secret aphrodisiacs or some other sort of aid to
make them luckier in their pursuits. If you ask them
about one of their main goals, with no hesitation they
will answer: finding a partner. The same sentiments
were expressed by the investigators, especially the
women. They give top priority to this goal. Meanwhile
youth over 25 vehemently defended the right to be single.
Love and common likes are fundamental to a successful
relationship, asserted the youth, with all agreeing
that this was regardless of sex or age.
Regarding the prior study (the Second National Survey
of Youth), some of the youth’s priorities have shifted
in importance. Having children, in particular, has
dropped from the third to the seventh position —
an alarming sign given the unbalanced aging of
Cuban society.
Issues of greatest interest for this cohort were
those related to employment, leisure, personal
problems and future plans.
Employment on the Mind
The study demonstrated that over the 36 percent
of youth are students, while high school graduates
are 50 percent of this population and university
graduates 35.5 percent.
The largest part of the younger generation are
workers (37.7 percent). This group is made up mainly
of manual laborers, technicians, and service workers
— most of them working for the government.
When the study was carried out, most unemployed youth
spent their time doing house chores; the rest could
be divided into two groups: those who didn’t work
or study and those actively looking for employment.
Just as in the second national survey, the state
sector —along with the developing sector (tourism,
joint ventures, and publicly-run corporations) —
continue to be the most popular among youth.
Interviewees say their choice of field of employment
is closely related to the country’s economic situation,
the search for better working conditions as well
as the pay offered.
Prejudices and Stereotypes
Although hardly no teenagers and youth said they
had experienced rejection or mistreatment, they
highlighted certain prejudices and stereotypes that
go against the principles of Cuba’s socialist system.
A small number had experienced rejection within
society, owing to difference of opinion, their
economic situation, sex, or skin color.
Racial stereotypes have promoted discriminatory
behavior among adolescence and youth, especially
within the family and among couples.
The availability and use of free time was also
underlined as a problem. The majority said to have
little options for leisure. Likewise, there is a
tendency to fulfill those needs using personal
resources and not those provided by the government.
The primary aspirations of adolescence and youth
regarding family, studies, and employment go hand
in hand with the principles of Cuban society. Their
main aspirations are to find a partner, to strengthen
their present relationship, to go to college and work
in a field that allows them to satisfy their spiritual
and material needs.
Youth shift between reality and longings, between
dilemmas and the dreams of solving them. Cuban youth,
with its contradictions and challenges, is constructing
the destiny of our country — leading the way to humanism,
like the morning precedes the day.
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4) Paying the Price
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
April 12, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/opinion/12herbert.html?hp
You knew something was up early in the day. As soon
as I told executives at MSNBC that I was going to write
about the “60 Minutes” piece, which was already in pretty
wide circulation, they began acting very weird. We’ll
get back to you, they said.
In a “60 Minutes” interview with Don Imus broadcast
in July 1998, Mike Wallace said of the “Imus in the
Morning” program, “It’s dirty and sometimes racist.”
Mr. Imus then said: “Give me an example. Give me one
example of one racist incident.” To which Mr. Wallace
replied, “You told Tom Anderson, the producer,
in your car, coming home, that Bernard McGuirk
is there to do nigger jokes.”
Mr. Imus said, “Well, I’ve nev — I never
use that word.”
Mr. Wallace then turned to Mr. Anderson,
his producer. “Tom,” he said.
“I’m right here,” said Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Imus then said to Mr. Anderson, “Did I use
that word?”
Mr. Anderson said, “I recall you using
that word.”
“Oh, O.K.,” said Mr. Imus. “Well, then I used
that word. But I mean — of course, that was an
off-the-record conversation. But ——”
“The hell it was,” said Mr. Wallace.
The transcript was pure poison. A source very close
to Don Imus told me last night, “They did not want
to wait for your piece to come out.”
For MSNBC, Mr. Imus’s “nappy-headed ho’s” comment
about the Rutgers women’s basketball team was bad
enough. Putting the word “nigger” into the so-called
I-man’s mouth was beyond the pale.
The roof was caving in on Mr. Imus. More advertisers
were pulling the plug. And Bruce Gordon, a member
of the CBS Corp. board of directors and former head
of the N.A.A.C.P., said publicly that Mr. Imus
should be fired.
But some of the most telling and persuasive criticism
came from an unlikely source — internally at the
network that televised Mr. Imus’s program. Women,
especially, were angry and upset. Powerful statements
were made during in-house meetings by women at NBC
and MSNBC — about how black women are devalued in
this country, how they are demeaned by white men
and black men.
White and black women spoke emotionally about the
way black women are frequently trashed in the popular
culture, especially in music, and about the way
news outlets give far more attention to stories
about white women in trouble.
Phil Griffin, a senior vice president at NBC News
who oversaw the Imus show for MSNBC, told me yesterday,
“It touched a huge nerve.”
Whether or not Mr. McGuirk was hired for the specific
noxious purpose referred to in the “60 Minutes”
interview, he has pretty much lived up to that job
description. He’s a minstrel, a white man who has
gleefully led the Imus pack into some of the most
disgusting, degrading attempts at racial (not to
mention sexist) humor that it’s possible to imagine.
Blacks were jigaboos, Sambos and Brilloheads. Women
were bitches and, above all else, an endless variety
of ever-ready sexual vessels, born to be degraded.
The question now is how long the “Imus in the Morning”
radio show will last. Just last month, in a reference
to a speech by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Selma,
Ala., Mr. McGuirk called Mrs. Clinton a bitch and
predicted she would “have cornrows and gold teeth”
by the time her presidential primary campaign against
Senator Barack Obama is over.
Way back in 1994, a friend of mine, the late Lars-Erik
Nelson, a terrific reporter and columnist at The Daily
News and Newsday, mentioned an Imus segment that offered
a “satirical” rap song that gave advice to President
Clinton on what to do about Paula Jones: “Pimp-slap the
ho.” Mr. Nelson also wrote that there was a song on the
program dealing with Hillary Clinton’s menstrual cycle.
So this hateful garbage has been going on for a long,
long time. There was nothing new about the tone or the
intent of Mr. Imus’s “nappy-headed ho’s” comment.
As Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association
of Black Journalists, told me the other night, “It’s
a long pattern of behavior, and at some point somebody
has to say enough is enough.”
The crucial issue goes well beyond Don Imus’s pathetically
infantile behavior. The real question is whether this
controversy is loud enough to shock Americans at long
last into the realization of just how profoundly racist
and sexist the culture is.
It appears that on this issue the general public, and
the women at Mr. Imus’s former network, are far ahead
of the establishment figures, the politicians and the
media biggies, who were always so anxious to appear
on the show and to defend Mr. Imus.
That is a very good sign.
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5) Four Years Later in Iraq
Editorial
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/opinion/12thu1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Four years ago this week, as American troops made their
first, triumphant entrance into Baghdad, joyous Iraqis
pulled down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein. It was
powerful symbolism — a murderous dictator toppled, Baghdad
is taking to the streets without fear, American soldiers
hailed as liberators.
After four years of occupation, untold numbers killed
by death squads and suicide bombers, and searing experiences
like Abu Ghraib, few Iraqis still look on American soldiers
as liberators. Instead, thousands marked this week’s
anniversary by burning American flags and marching
through the streets of Najaf chanting, “Death to America.”
Once again, tens of thousands of American troops are pouring
into Baghdad. Yesterday the Pentagon announced that battle-
weary Army units in Iraq would have to stay on for an
additional three months past their scheduled return dates.
Mr. Bush is desperately gambling that by stretching the
Army to the absolute limits of its deployable strength,
he may be able to impose some relative calm in the capital.
And he seems to imagine that should that gamble succeed,
the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki will, without any serious pressure from
Washington, take the steps toward sharing political power
and economic resources it has tenaciously resisted since
the day it took office a year ago.
Unless Mr. Maliki takes those steps — eliminating militia
and death squad members from the Iraqi Army and police,
fairly sharing oil revenues, and rolling back laws that
deny political and economic opportunities to the Sunni
middle class — no lasting security gains are possible.
More Iraqi and American lives will be sacrificed.
Even among Shiites, who suffered so much at the hands
of Saddam Hussein and who are the supposed beneficiaries
of Mr. Maliki’s shortsighted policies, there is a deep
disillusionment and anger. This week, a Washington Post
reporter interviewed Khadim al-Jubouri, who four years
ago swung his sledgehammer to help knock down the
dictator’s statue. Mr. Jubouri said that ever since
he watched that statue being built he had nourished
a dream of bringing it down and ushering in much
better times.
Now, with friends and relatives killed, kidnapped
or driven from their homes, the prices of basic
necessities soaring and electricity rationed to
four hours a day, Mr. Jubouri says the change of
regimes “achieved nothing” and he has come to hate
the American military presence he once welcomed.
Mr. Maliki’s supporters can be even more frightening
to listen to. This week’s demonstration in Najaf
was organized by the fiercely anti-American Shiite
cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose political party and
militia helped put Mr. Maliki in power and are
still among his most important allies.
Two months into the Baghdad security drive, the gains
Mr. Bush is banking on have not materialized. More
American soldiers continue to arrive, and their
commanders are talking about extending the troop
buildup through the fall or into early next year.
After four years, the political trend is even more
discouraging.
There is no possible triumph in Iraq and very
little hope left.
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6) Civilian Claims on U.S. Suggest the Toll of War
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12abuse.html?hp
In February 2006, nervous American soldiers in Tikrit killed
an Iraqi fisherman on the Tigris River after he leaned over
to switch off his engine. A year earlier, a civilian filling
his car and an Iraqi Army officer directing traffic were shot
by American soldiers in a passing convoy in Balad, for no
apparent reason.
The incidents are among many thousands of claims submitted
to the Army by Iraqi and Afghan civilians seeking payment
for noncombat killings, injuries or property damage American
forces inflicted on them or their relatives.
The claims provide a rare window into the daily chaos and
violence faced by civilians and troops in the two war
zones. Recently, the Army disclosed roughly 500 claims
to the American Civil Liberties Union in response to
a Freedom of Information Act request. They are the
first to be made public.
They represent only a small fraction of the claims filed.
In all, the military has paid more than $32 million to
Iraqi and Afghan civilians for noncombat-related killings,
injuries and property damage, an Army spokeswoman said.
That figure does not include condolence payments made
at a unit commander’s discretion.
The paperwork, examined by The New York Times, provides
unusually detailed accounts of how bystanders to the
conflicts have become targets of American forces grappling
to identify who is friend, who is foe.
In the case of the fisherman in Tikrit, he and his
companion desperately tried to appear unthreatening
to an American helicopter overhead.
“They held up the fish in the air and shouted ‘Fish!
Fish!’ to show they meant no harm,” said the Army report
attached to the claim filed by the fisherman’s family.
The Army refused to compensate for the killing, ruling
that it was “combat activity,” but approved $3,500 for
his boat, net and cellphone, which drifted away and
were stolen.
In the killings at the gas station in Balad, documents
show that the Army determined that the neither of the
dead Iraqis had done anything hostile or criminal, and
approved $5,000 to the civilian’s brother but nothing
for the Iraqi officer.
In another incident, in 2005, an American soldier in
a dangerous Sunni Arab area south of Baghdad killed
a boy after mistaking his book bag for a bomb satchel.
The Army paid the boy’s uncle $500.
The Foreign Claims Act, which governs such compensation,
does not deal with combat-related cases. For those cases,
including the boy’s, the Army may offer a condolence
payment as a gesture of regret with no admission of fault,
of usually no higher than $2,500 per person killed.
The total number of claims filed, or paid, is unclear,
although extensive data has been provided in reports
to Congress. There is no way to know immediately whether
disciplinary action or prosecution has resulted from
the cases.
Soldiers hand out instruction cards after mistakes are
made, so Iraqis know where to file claims. “The Army
does not target civilians,” said Maj. Anne D. Edgecomb,
an Army spokeswoman. “Sadly, however, the enemy’s tactics
in Iraq and Afghanistan unnecessarily endanger innocent
civilians.”
There are no specific guidelines to tell Army field
officers judging the claims how to evaluate the cash
value of a life taken, Major Edgecomb said. She said
officers “consider the contributions the deceased made
to those left behind and offer an award based on the facts,
local tribal customs, and local law.”
In Haditha, one of the most notorious incidents involving
American troops in Iraq, the Marines paid residents
$38,000 after troops killed two dozen people
in November 2005.
The relatively small number of claims divulged by the
Army show patterns of misunderstanding at checkpoints
and around American military convoys that often result
in inadvertent killings. In one incident, in Feb. 18,
2006, a taxi approached a checkpoint east of Baquba
that was not properly marked with signs to slow down,
one Army claim evaluation said. Soldiers fired on the
taxi, killing a woman and severely wounding her daughter
and son. The Army approved an unusually large condolence
payment of $7,500.
In September 2005, soldiers killed a man and his sister
by firing 200 rounds into their car as it approached
a checkpoint, apparently too quickly, near Mussayib.
The Army lieutenant colonel who handled the claim
awarded relatives a $10,000 compensation payment,
finding that the soldiers had overstepped the rules
of engagement.
“There are some very tragic losses of civilian life,
including losses of whole families,” said Anthony D.
Romero, the A.C.L.U.’s executive director, in an interview.
He said the claims showed “enormous confusion on all sides,
both from the civilian population on how to interact with
the armed services and also among the soldiers themselves.”
Of the 500 cases released, 204, or about 40 percent, were
apparently rejected because the injury, death or property
damage was deemed to have been “directly or indirectly”
related to combat. Of the claims approved for payment,
at least 87 were not combat-related, and 77 were condolence
payments for incidents the Army judged to be combat-related.
About 10 percent of the claims were rejected because the
Army could not find a “significant activity” report
confirming an incident.
A summary of the cases is online at
www.aclu.org/civiliancasualties.
In Iraq, rules for evaluating claims have changed.
Before President Bush declared major combat operations
over, in May 2003, commanders considered most checkpoint
shootings to be combat-related. Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli,
the former commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq,
stiffened rules at checkpoints. In late 2003, as more
Iraqis were accidentally injured or killed, the Army
began offering condolence payments. It has not always
worked as planned, said Sarah Holewinski, the executive
director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict,
a nonprofit group in Washington.
“Sometimes families would get paid and sometimes their
neighbors wouldn’t,” she said. “It caused a lot of
resentments among the Iraqis, which is ironic because
it was a program specifically meant to foster good will.”
The Army usually assigns a captain, major or lieutenant
colonel to accept claims in Iraq and Afghanistan and
decide on payment.
But in and near combat zones in Iraq, a claim’s merit
is quickly judged by an officer juggling dozens of new
claims each week, said Jon E. Tracy, a former Army captain
and lawyer who adjudicated Iraqi civilian claims in the
Baghdad area from May 2003 through July 2004.
“I know plenty of lawyers who did not pay any condolences
payments at all,” said Mr. Tracy, who is now a legal
consultant for the Campaign for Innocent Victims in
Conflict. “There was no reason for it. It was clearly
not combat, and the victim was clearly innocent, all
the facts are there, witness statements, but they
wouldn’t pay them.”
Half of the claims he adjudicated were property damage
claims from collisions with military vehicles, he said.
Most fraudulent claims were property claims; few were
for wrongful killings. “You just had to read people,”
he said.
About a quarter of claims were for personal injury
or deaths. In his year judging claims, Mr. Tracy said
he paid 52 condolence payments, most for deaths. “I had
three to four times more,” Mr. Tracy said, “I just didn’t
have enough money.”
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting from New York,
and Edward Wong from Baghdad.
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7) U.S. Suspects That Iran Aids Both Sunni and Shiite Militias
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD, April 11 — Arms that American military officials
say appear to have been manufactured in Iran as recently
as last year have turned up in the past week in a Sunni-
majority area, the chief spokesman for the American
military command in Iraq said Wednesday in a news
conference.
The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said
that detainees in American custody had indicated that
Iranian intelligence operatives had given support to
Sunni insurgents and that surrogates for the Iranian
intelligence service were training Shiite extremists
in Iran. He gave no further description of the detainees
and did not say why they would have that information.
“We have in fact found some cases recently where Iranian
intelligence sources have provided to Sunni insurgent
groups some support,” said General Caldwell, who sat
near a table crowded with weapons that he said the
military contended were largely of Iranian manufacture.
The weapons were found in a mostly Sunni neighborhood
in Baghdad, he said, a rare instance of the American
military suggesting any link between Iran and the Sunni
insurgency. It has recently suggested a link with
Shiite militants in Iraq.
The accusation of a link between the Iranian intelligence
service and Sunni Arab insurgents is new. The American
military has contended in the past that elements in Iran
have given Shiite militants powerful Iranian-made roadside
bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, and training
in their use.
Critics have cast doubt on the American military statements
about those bombs, saying the evidence linking them to
Iran was circumstantial and inferential.
The weapons displayed on Wednesday were more conventional,
and officials pointed to markings on them that they said
indicated Iranian manufacture.
The display came as the military released figures showing
that 26 percent fewer civilians were killed and wounded
in Baghdad from Jan. 1 through March 31 than during the
previous quarter, as the new American effort to secure
Baghdad got under way, but that nationwide civilian
casualties had risen.
From February to March the number of dead and wounded
nationwide, including civilians and members of Iraqi
and American security forces, rose 10 percent, according
to the military report.
“What does that mean?” General Caldwell said. “It means
we still have a lot of work to do.”
The military announced that one soldier died on the
eastern side of Baghdad from a roadside bomb early
Wednesday and that another soldier died in southern
Baghdad on Tuesday.
In his statement, General Caldwell renewed American
contentions that Iran was not doing enough to stop
weapons from being moved into Iraq from outside.
It is unclear from the military’s comments on Wednesday
whether it is possible to draw conclusions about how
the weapons that the military contends are of Iranian
origin might have made their way into a predominantly
Sunni area or why Shiite Iran would arm Sunni militants.
There are several possibilities, military officials
who were not authorized to speak publicly for attribution
said privately. One is that they came through Syria,
long a transit route for Iranian-made weapons being
funneled to the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.
Another possibility is that arms dealers are selling
to every side in the conflict.
The weapons on the table next to General Caldwell were
found two days ago, the general said, after a resident
of the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood called
Jihad, in western Baghdad, informed the local Joint
Security Station run by Iraqi and American soldiers
that there were illegal arms in the area.
The soldiers found a black Mercedes sedan and on its
back seat, in plain view, a rocket of a type commonly
made in China but repainted and labeled and sold by
Iran, said Maj. Marty Weber, a master ordnance
technician who joined General Caldwell at the
briefing. In the trunk were mortar rounds marked
“made in 2006.”
In a nearby house and buried in the yard, the soldiers
found more mortar rounds, 1,000 to 2,000 rounds of
bullets, five hand grenades and a couple of Bulgarian-
made rocket-propelled grenades, Major Weber said.
The weapons that the military officials said were
of Iranian origin were labeled in English, which
Major Weber said was typical of arms manufactured
for international sale. He added that the military
knew that they were of Iranian origin by “the
structure of the rounds, the geometry of the
tailfins and, again, the stenciling on the warheads.”
He also said the mortar rounds marked 81 millimeters
on the table were made regionally only by Iran.
In the political arena, the members of Parliament
allied with the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr
announced that they would leave the government unless
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki set a fixed
timetable for the withdrawal of American troops
from Iraq. Mr. Maliki rejected the idea this week.
The capital was largely quiet on Wednesday, but 16
bodies were found around the city and a director
general of the city’s electricity ministry was
assassinated, an Interior Ministry official said.
The center of the city, where fighting raged on Tuesday,
remained extremely tense.
The United States military raised the death toll
from Tuesday’s estimate to 14 insurgents in Fadhil
killed, 8 detained and 12 wounded.
Sheik Jasim Yehiya Jasim, the imam of Al Joba mosque,
whose brother was killed by the Iraqi Army, said he
was devastated and confused about why his brother had
been singled out and killed. “He was born only in 1982,”
Sheik Jasim said. “He did the call to prayer. I thank
the Iraqi and American governments in the name of the
people of Fadhil for this bloody democracy.”
Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting.
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8) About Creation, Pope Melds Faith With Science
By IAN FISHER
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/europe/12pope.html
ROME, April 11 — Science cannot fully explain the mystery
of creation, Pope Benedict XVI said in comments about
evolution that were published in a book on Wednesday.
At the same time, he did not reject evolutionary theory
or endorse any alternative for the origins of life.
“I would not depend on faith alone to explain the whole
picture,” Benedict, a former theology professor, told
his former students in September at a private seminar
outside Rome on evolution, according to an account
of the book from Reuters.
As pope, Benedict has not publicly defined his position,
amid angry debates in the United States over “intelligent
design” and questions raised two years ago by a leading
cardinal on whether evolution was compatible with
Catholicism.
But his comments at the seminar, published in German
by students who were present, seemed largely to avoid
any such debate: Rather, they seemed consistent with
his often-stated views on other subjects — that science
and reason, however valuable, should not rule out God.
The debate over evolution, he said, concerned “the great
fundamental questions of philosophy: where man and the
world came from and where they are going.”
The book, called “Creation and Evolution,” was not
publicly available on Wednesday, and Reuters did not
say how it had obtained a copy.
Apart from the pope’s comments, the book includes
essays from Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, a former
student of the pope who set off much debate in 2005
after seeming to raise doubts about evolution.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became pope
two years ago, Benedict had expressed concern that
on several fronts, including evolution, science was
overstepping its competence, denying the existence
of God and becoming its own system of belief. Though
he did not reject evolution, he noted in the remarks
quoted from the book that science could not completely
prove evolution because it could not be duplicated
in the laboratory.
But, Reuters reported, he also defended what is known
as theistic evolution, the idea that God could use
evolutionary processes to create life, if not through
the direct engineering suggested by “intelligent design,”
which posits that life is so complex that it requires
an active creator.
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9) Life in Iraq Worsening, Red Cross Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12redcross.html
GENEVA, April 11 — The situation for civilians in Iraq is
“ever worsening,” though security in some places has improved
because of stepped-up efforts by the American-led multinational
forces, the International Red Cross said Wednesday.
Thousands of bodies lie unclaimed in mortuaries, with
relatives either unaware that they are there or afraid
to recover them, said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director
of operations for the International Committee of the
Red Cross. Medical professionals have been fleeing the
country after the killings and abductions of colleagues,
the group said.
“Whatever operation that is today under way, and that
may be taken tomorrow and in the weeks after,
to improve the security of civilians on the ground
may have an effect in the medium term,”
Mr. Kraehenbuehl said.
“We’re certainly not seeing an immediate effect
in terms of stabilization for civilians currently.
That is not our reading.”
Referring to southern Iraq, he said, “It is clear that
the security situation has improved in certain instances.”
But the central region, including Baghdad, remains greatly
troubled, despite new security efforts, he added.
The Red Cross has reduced operations in Iraq since
attacks on its staff and Baghdad headquarters in 2003.
It relies on an affiliate for much of its information.
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10) 4 Years On, the Gap Between Iraq Policy
and Practice Is Wide
By DAVID E. SANGER
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12policy.html
WASHINGTON, April 11 — Four years after the fall of Baghdad,
the White House is once again struggling to solve an old
problem: Who is in charge of carrying out policy in Iraq?
Once again President Bush and his top aides are searching
for a high-level coordinator capable of cutting through
military, political and reconstruction strategies that
have never operated in sync, in Washington or in Baghdad.
Once again Mr. Bush is publicly declaring that his
administration has settled on a strategy for victory —
this time, a troop increase that is supposed to open
political space for Sunnis and Shiites to live and
govern together — even while his top aides acknowledge
that the White House has never gotten the execution right.
“We’re trying to learn from our experience,” Stephen
J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said in an
interview on Wednesday. Confirming a report that first
appeared in The Washington Post, Mr. Hadley said he
had been sounding out retired military commanders
to assess their interest in a job where they would
report directly to President Bush.
“One of the things that we’ve heard from Republicans
and Democrats is that we need to go a step further
in Washington and have a single point of focus,
someone who can work 24/7 on the Washington end
of executing the strategy we’ve put in place for
the next 22 months,” to the end of Mr. Bush’s term.
Mr. Hadley came to his job in the beginning of 2005,
after four years as deputy national security adviser,
and said from the outset that the Achilles’ heel
of the administration had been its failure to execute
its policies.
Now, Mr. Hadley said, he had decided that “while we’ve
had plans and due dates and stoplight charts, what we
need is someone with a lot of stature within the
government who can make things happen.” That official,
Mr. Hadley said, would deal daily with the new American
ambassador in Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, and the new commander,
Gen. David H. Petraeus, and then “call any cabinet
secretary and get problems resolved, fast.”
Mr. Hadley says he has not yet brought top candidates
into the White House for formal interviews. But what
he is seeking is someone willing to take on, at the
end of a war-weary administration, one of the most
thankless jobs in Washington: overseeing policy in
Iraq and Afghanistan, where the administration has
discovered that changing regimes was a lot easier
than changing habits.
It is telling that Mr. Hadley and Mr. Bush are still
wrestling with this problem. Four years ago, both had
hoped and expected that by 2007, Iraq would essentially
be a cleanup operation, involving a comparatively small
American force. Instead, the current force of 145,000
is building to 160,000.
For both men, deciding who in Washington should take
the reins on Iraq strategy is hardly a new task.
It was in August 2003, five months after the American
invasion, that Mr. Bush ordered the formation of an
Iraq Stabilization Group to run things from the White
House. That action reflected the first recognition
by the White House that Donald H. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon
was more interested in deposing dictators than
nation-building.
When that group was formed, Mr. Rumsfeld snapped that
it was about time that the National Security Council
performed its traditional job — unifying the actions
of a government whose agencies often spent much
of their day battling one another. That approach
worked, for a while.
But then the insurgency in Iraq grew formidable,
reconstruction efforts were slowed, the State and
Defense Departments reverted to bureaucratic spats,
and the White House never managed to get its arms
around the scope of the problem, in Baghdad or in
Washington.
That was evident earlier this year when Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice and the new defense
secretary, Robert M. Gates, openly clashed on the
question of who would provide the personnel for
new Provincial Reconstruction Teams that were
charged with trying, once again, to rebuild Iraq.
But that was only a small part of the problem: When
the Iraq Study Group turned out its recommendations
in December for revamping strategy, it cited “a lack
of coordination by senior management in Washington,”
declaring that “focus, priority setting, and skillful
implementation are in short supply.”
Mr. Hadley’s initiative won support on Wednesday from
Mr. Gates, who has spent much of the past four months
demonstrating that he is the anti-Rumsfeld.
At a news conference, Mr. Gates offered a public
endorsement for the idea of empowering someone at
the White House to better carry out the president’s
priorities. “This person is not ‘running the war,’ ”
Mr. Gates said. “This ‘czar’ term is, I think,
kind of silly.”
Instead, he said, “this is what Steve Hadley would
do if Steve Hadley had the time, but he doesn’t have
the time to do it full time.”
Part of the new job is to make sure, in Mr. Gates’s
words, that when Ambassador Crocker or General Petraeus
“have requested something from the government and not
gotten it, or it’s moving too slowly through the
bureaucracy, that there is somebody empowered by the
president to call a cabinet secretary and say, ‘The
president would like to know why you haven’t delivered
what’s been asked for yet.’ ”
As David J. Rothkopf, who wrote a history of the
National Security Council titled “Running the World”
(Public Affairs, 2005), noted Wednesday, “It’s been
a difficult thing for the N.S.C. to do because it is
an almost impossible task.”
“This is a problem of Sunnis and Shiites, and it is
not about Republicans and Democrats or the rank of
officials or bureaucratic rivalry,” he said. “The
Sunnis started fighting the Shiites a thousand years
before we got to Plymouth Rock, and it’s hard to create
a new special implementer to deal with that.”
But by this point in the Bush administration, officials
say, their only hope is to take the surge and run with
it. So when Meghan L. O’Sullivan, a deputy national
security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, told Mr.
Hadley a few months ago that she was ready to leave,
the White House seized the moment to open a post nearly
equivalent in power to Mr. Hadley’s own job.
For a White House that invaded Iraq with hopes that
it would become a model for the Middle East, this seems
to be another step away from ideological missions and
toward the nuts and bolts of rescuing its troubled
nation-building experiment.
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11) Panel on Walter Reed Woes Issues Strong Rebuke
By SCOTT SHANE
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12medical.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON, April 11 — An independent panel assessing
dilapidated facilities and red tape for wounded Iraq
war veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on
Wednesday issued a sweeping indictment of leadership
failures, inadequate training and staffing shortages.
The panel, headed by two former secretaries of the Army,
Togo D. West Jr. and John O. Marsh Jr., found that a high
standard of care for troops when they were first evacuated
from war zones and hospitalized fell apart when they became
outpatients, with a “breakdown in health services” and
“compassion fatigue” on the part of overworked staff
members.
“Leadership at Walter Reed should have been aware
of poor living conditions and administrative hurdles
and failed to place proper priority on solutions,”
the panel said in a summary of its draft report
released at a meeting at Walter Reed.
The report called the current system for assessing
soldiers’ disabilities “extremely cumbersome,
inconsistent, and confusing,” saying it must be
“completely overhauled.” It called for the creation
of a “center of excellence” on treatment, training
and research on two conditions suffered by thousands
of troops in Iraq: traumatic brain injury and post-
traumatic stress disorder.
The panel, called the Independent Review Group,
was appointed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates
in February after The Washington Post reported on
the problems at Walter Reed, the Army’s century-old
medical center in Washington. A presidential commission
and a Department of Veterans Affairs task force are
also assessing the troubles.
The conditions at Walter Reed, including moldy, rat-
infested quarters and a bureaucratic maze that left
severely injured soldiers in limbo for months, have
become a symbol of the government’s broader failure
to help troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. President
Bush visited patients at the facility March 30 and said,
“I apologize for what they went through, and we’re going
to fix the problem.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Gates, Cynthia O. Smith, said
Wednesday that he “welcomes the findings and believes
our wounded warriors deserve the best treatment possible
both as inpatients and outpatients.”
The initial reports in February led to a shake-up of Army
leadership. Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey fired Walter
Reed’s commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman, and replaced
him with Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army surgeon general.
But critics said General Kiley had been told about the
problems and failed to act. Mr. Gates then publicly
criticized the Army’s response as inadequate, and both
Mr. Harvey and General Kiley stepped down.
Since then, the Army has moved aggressively to make
improvements at Walter Reed. Patients have been moved
out of the most squalid building. Some 28 new case
managers have been added to help wounded soldiers
navigate the medical system. A telephone hot line
has been opened and information handbooks have been
distributed to families of wounded service members.
In remarks at Wednesday’s meeting, Mr. West, a former
military lawyer who served as both secretary of the
Army and secretary of veterans affairs under President
Bill Clinton, strongly criticized the tortuous bureaucracy
that assesses soldiers’ disabilities.
“The horrors inflicted on our wounded service members
and their families in the name of the physical disability
review process simply must be stopped,” Mr. West said.
He said the Army’s system currently requires four
proceedings before an official board, causing delays
and excessive paperwork and producing “inexplicable
differences in standards and results.”
“We can and must do better,” he said.
Mr. West also said the panel concluded there was
inadequate understanding of how to diagnose and treat
the brain injuries that have become a signature
of the Iraq war, where thousands of troops have
been wounded by improvised explosive devices,
and the mental effects of long exposure to the
constant threat of attack.
“We believe there is a need for greater and better
coordinated research in this area,” he said.
Under legislation introduced Wednesday by Senators
Evan Bayh of Indiana and Hillary Rodham Clinton
of New York, both Democrats, troops suffering from
traumatic brain injuries would be kept on active
duty, rather than being retired, so they would
receive more medical attention.
Steve Robinson, a longtime veterans’ advocate with
Veterans for America, said he welcomed the findings
of the review panel. But he said the panel should
address the problems of discharged soldiers who
were not getting V.A. benefits they needed.
“What are we going to do about the thousands of
people who have unjustifiably lost their V.A. benefits
forever?” Mr. Robinson said. “It’s not enough just
to fix the problems starting from the point that
President Bush went to Walter Reed.”
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12) As His Time Grows Short, a Dog Seeks a Reprieve
By PAUL VITELLO
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/nyregion/12dog.html
BAY SHORE, N.Y., April 11 — In legal papers filed on
Wednesday in the Appellate Division of State Supreme
Court, the conflicting portraits of the prisoner seem
to describe two different individuals.
He is a vicious predator with a history of assault.
Or, he is the kind who would not even show his teeth
if you pulled his ears.
After three and a half years on doggie death row,
Duke, a 5-year-old American pit bull terrier, is the
subject of an unusual, last-ditch appeal of a judge’s
“order of destruction” over his attacks on a neighbor
dog twice in two months in 2003. His lawyer contends
that Duke was wrongly convicted and harshly sentenced,
based on a law that took effect on Jan. 1, 2004, two
weeks after the attack, making dog-on-dog attacks
subject to serious punishment. Before that, only
dogs attacking humans were punished severely.
“We are running out of options,” said the lawyer,
Amy Chaitoff. “And it would be a terrible injustice.”
Duke’s case has drawn considerable attention on Long
Island. Dog rescue organizations staged a demonstration
at Islip Town Hall in 2005, demanding that he be freed.
And during a 2006 hearing, a crowd of about 60 gathered
outside the courthouse to show solidarity with Duke’s
owners, Denise and Chanse Menendez of Hauppauge.
But if the judges of the state Appellate Division in
Brooklyn rule against him this time, Duke, who has
been confined to the last cage on the east tier of Kennel
No. 1 at the Town of Islip Animal Shelter here since
Dec. 26, 2003, will probably soon eat his last biscuit.
(His cage is adjacent to the small room where workers
administer lethal injections to a dozen or so animals
each week.)
In some ways, legal experts say, Duke represents a new
class of death-row dog. New York is among a dozen states
that have changed laws over the past 10 years to make
it possible to seize dogs from their owners and order
them euthanized for biting other dogs.
Ledy VanKavage, director of legislation for the American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said
the stricter provisions reflected several factors: the
rising numbers of pet dogs in American households,
a growing concern about highly publicized vicious
dog cases, and what she called the “evolving human-
animal bond.”
“The thinking goes: ‘My dog is a member of my family.
If you attack my dog, you are attacking my family,’ ”
she said.
But Ms. VanKavage said this was flawed logic, noting,
“Dogs are predators, after all.”
The opposing view is in the papers filed on behalf
of Duke’s former neighbor, Dominick Motta, who
testified that on Oct. 23, 2003, Duke and his pit
bull sister, Shelby, chased Mr. Motta’s bulldog,
Daisy, and that Duke bit her.
After a hearing, Duke was designated a “dangerous
dog” by District Court Judge Madeleine A. Fitzgibbon
of Suffolk County. His owners were ordered to keep
him indoors or in a specially built kennel outdoors.
When Duke got loose on Dec. 13, 2003, and again
chased and bit Daisy, Mr. Motta, who then had three
children ages 2 to 7, filed a follow-up complaint,
which resulted in Judge Fitzgibbon’s order of
destruction.
“My client did not order the dog euthanized,
a judge did,” Mr. Motta’s lawyer, John L. Belford Jr.
of St. James, said in an interview. “And the judge’s
decision was not designed to protect my client alone.”
If Duke shares with some human death row residents
the kind of mysterious personality that can look
darkly dangerous to some and intriguing to others,
he also shares what seems like the equanimity of
one who is at peace with himself.
“Watch this, I’m going to do some things that no
aggressive dog would tolerate,” said Jeff Kolbjornsen,
an animal behaviorist who attended the rallies on Duke’s
behalf, on a visit to the shelter the other day.
He clamped a hand over the dog’s mouth. He pushed him.
He stepped on his paw, lightly. He gently slapped
the dog’s head.
Duke — whose skull is about the size of a baby watermelon,
whose neck is roughly as thick as a man’s thigh, and whose
mouth is ear to ear — sat on his hind legs, panting,
his tongue extended just past the widest part of his
wide chest. He nudged and then licked Mr. Kolbjornsen’s
hand.
“This is the nicest, calmest dog I have ever worked with,
and I’ve been here seven years,” said Joanne Daly,
an attendant at the shelter.
In the brief filed with the court on Wednesday by
Ms. Chaitoff, the lawyer for Duke’s owners, affidavits
from Ms. Daly and from Matt Caracciolo, the shelter
supervisor, were included praising the dog’s unflappable
and friendly nature.
But the main thrust of her argument is that the law under
which he was prosecuted, Section 108 of the state’s
Agriculture and Markets Law, which defines “a dangerous
dog,” changed from the time of the attacks to the time
of his trial.
In 2003, the law defined a dangerous dog as one who
attacks a person or attacks certain types of service
animals, like Seeing Eye dogs. It was in 2004 that
the law was expanded to include “companion animals,”
pets like Mr. Motta’s Daisy.
Therefore, Ms. Chaitoff said, in the eyes of the law,
as well as his friends, “Duke is an innocent dog.”
Related:
The Dukes of Hazard?
Duke the pitbull has a web site where supporters
can sign a petition:
www.SaveDuke.homestead.com
Dog trainer says death row rulings were unjustified
BY DENISE FLAIM
Newsday Staff Writer
For photo of evaluator and Duke - see
http://newsday.typepad.com/news_local_flaim/2006/08/the_dukes_of_ha.html
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13) The Blinded Leading the Blind
A Jones for Justice
Connecting the Dots: Law, Slavery, and Immigration
By Dr. John Calvin Jones, PhD, JD
BC Columnist
www.blackcommentator.com/225/225_jones_for_justice_law_slavery_immigration_pf.html
I used to teach courses in government and politics
at a small college at South College in South Texas
(and I mean south – 260 miles south of San Antonio).
Though there was to be some sort of check on the
competence and baseline knowledge of the faculty,
i.e. that they knew something about the subject matter
in the courses that they taught, I quickly learned that
my colleagues in the department of government were,
to put it nicely, limited. While two others even knew
of Michael Parenti's Democracy for the Few, most had
never heard of an organization called the Project for
a New American Century (whose members include Dick
Cheney, Jeb Bush, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul
Wolfowitz, Philip Zelikow, and Zalmay Khalilzad),
no one else recognized the ubiquity and debilitating
effects of depleted uranium, and all but one other
thought that the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery
in the United States. The last point was particularly
troubling because my colleagues told all their students
that the 13 Amendment outlawed slavery in the United
States and demanded that the students repeat the lie.
Trained Ignorance
The collective wisdom of the school's administration
and my colleagues had determined that the best way
to determine if we instructors were dispensing relevant
information (much less teaching) anything apropos,
was to employ a uniform set of test questions that
we would give to the students taking intro classes
in government. Such was to work as a type of validity
test whereby each instructor would collect data and
report how many students got the "right" answer to
various trivia questions in the subject of American
and Texas government and politics.
Though I protested the entire project in theory, the
use of a uniform or department-wide test via a set
of multiple choice test questions is the logical
extension of the silly, if not criminal, project of
standardized testing demanded through programs like
No Child Left Behind. Included in this list of
about 50 questions was "which amendment banned slavery
in the United States?" While the non-reading, so-called
instructors claimed that the "correct answer" to the
question was the 13th Amendment. (Note, I refer to
my former colleagues as "instructors." They were not
professors in that only one of them had earned a PhD
and apparently he did not like to read anymore than
the rest of them). As I had known for about 20 years,
after reading the Constitution without a filter
(i.e. ignorant, yet licensed teacher), that the 13th
Amendment did not outlaw slavery in the United States,
I told my esteemed colleagues that that they were
mistaken. I explained, by citing the text (a rare
practice I have learned), that the Amendment did not
outlaw slavery at all, instead, the addition codifies
when slavery is legal.
For those of you who care to read and (re)learn,
please note that the 13th Amendment reads as follows:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within
the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction. (Italics added).
To put it more simply, in the United States, slavery
and or involuntary servitude is legal, when compelled
as punishment for a crime.
Though I demonstrated this plain language to my fellow
legal scholars, and added the need to demonstrate to
our students both the political and legal ramifications
of the 13th Amendment and how such is relevant today,
I was met with criticism about my being too hard, and
trying to push esoteric knowledge or being too ideological.
While I did not and do not mind others being in disagreement
with me, the fact that these people are paid by the state
to preach a lie is criminal. More importantly, because
these elders are "teaching" youth, there are particular
negative social ramifications for such pedagogy. What
shall the victims of ignorance and mendacity, and nearly
all these young people are Mexican-American, do or think
when faced with a newspaper story of so-called immigrant
labor shortages and the use of prison labor (including
imprisoned immigrants) to harvest crops in Colorado?
Without a recognition that slavery is legal, has been
and is maintained throughout American history, how can
our children make sense of a small news story and see
that the larger picture that touches on immigration law,
labor rights, outsourcing, and racism?
Colorado Works Its Slaves
According to Nicholas Riccardi, because of state laws
and crack downs on Mexican and Latino migrant laborers
in Colorado, various farms there are facing a labor
shortage – crops will be lost unless harvested.[1] And
while economic theorists might see the resulting shortage
of exploitable labor as a good thing for youth and
underemployed Americans who might fill the void,
Agribusiness and prison officials in Colorado have
a better idea – prison labor.
Riccardi finds that the Colorado Department of Corrections
is launching a pilot program, contracting with more than
a dozen farms to provide inmates to pick melons, onions
and peppers. (Note the program is only new to Colorado,
chain gangs and forced slave labor in agriculture
is nothing new in America).
Though she and colleagues in the Colorado legislature
empowered local police to engage in Nazi-style stop and
"check for papers" harassment leading to the arrest
of thousands of migrants, now Colorado Legislator
Dorothy Butcher wants to force prisoners to pick peppers
for pennies "to make sure the agricultural industry
wouldn't go out of business."
Ironically, under the Colorado prison-crop picker plan,
farms will pay more for inmate labor than they pay for
undocumented migrants. According to Riccardi, the
prisoners will be paid [sic] (i.e. credited, apparently
Mr. Riccardi has never been in prison) with 60 cents
a day. And it is unlikely that individual prisoners
will refuse. Firstly, while the program will employ
perhaps as many as 700 prisoners, Colorado has over
22,000 prisoners with "agricultural experience".
Secondly and more importantly, prison overseers can
use a combination of punishments and inducements to
encourage their participation.
Where to begin? The federal government sells fewer
than 200 visas for farm laborers every year. Colorado
arrests undocumented immigrant laborers – who cannot
obtain necessary documents. Prisoners forced to work.
"Prisoners" are paid more than migrant farm workers.
Migrant field workers in Colorado earn less than
60 cents a day. The cost to hold someone in jail
or prison costs the taxpayers anywhere from $30-75
per day! The prospect of prison wardens harvesting
the labor of their inmates is akin to Wal-Mart managers
forcing "associates" to work off the clock or walk home.
All Politics are Local, National and International
Without any plan for his presidency, other than
enrichment of his friends, murder of millions, and
praying for Armageddon prior to November 2008, Bush
is now turning attention from Iraq and Iran to the
US-Mexican border. Once again, speaking with Bushisms
and contradictions, W. announced a need for guest-
worker programs all the while calling for security
to "fight terrorism".[2]
To quote Keith Olbermann, Bush's words are lies.
Rather than provide for the orderly and legal entry
of thousands who come here to work, Bush orders or
allows his deputies in the Nazi-like Department
of Homeland Security (Hitler called it the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt) to round up thousands
(including women and children).
These people who are denied legal admission to the
U.S., are arrested at work and their children nabbed
at school in the name of "a war on terror" or a policy
of "law and order" that is simply insane (part of
a White Supremacist megalomania), economically inefficient,
and horribly cruel. How long will it be until thousands
of detained immigrants are farmed out in slave-labor camps?
That is how the Nazis took care of their inferior
populations, isn't it?
This week, as he has done for the past months, a Texan-
Activist, Jay Johnson-Castro, will be walking to Austin
to protest the imprisonment of hundreds of immigrants
in a system of private prisons across the state. Bush
could order the release of these people … but instead,
corporate interests in the private prison industry and
the Christo-fascist wing of the Republic party demand
militarization of the border and mass incarceration.
The entire system is immoral, but legal – as international
treaties and international laws to the contrary have
no force inside the United States.
Millions of us are beginning to learn the truth about
this system of slave labor and the immigration traps.
How many of us need to act out to stop it?
Sources:
[1] Riccardi, Nicholas 2007. "Colorado to Use Inmates
to Fill Migrant Shortage", Los Angeles Times, 1 March.
Posted at Truth Out
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030107F.shtml
[2] Daily News & Analysis. "Bush renews call for
comprehensive immigration reforms", Wednesday, April 11, 2007.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1090197
BC Columnist Dr John Calvin Jones, PhD, JD has
a law degree and a PhD in Political Science. His
Website is virtualcitizens.com. Click here to
contact Dr. Jones. jcjones@virtualcitizens.com
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14) REFLECTIONS OF PRESIDENT FIDEL CASTRO
"More than three billion people in the world condemned
to premature death from hunger and thirst."
March 28, 2007
Fidel Castro.
Translated by Granma International
[This email was sent as a service by Roland Sheppard.
My website is http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret . Read
my book, The View From The Painter's Ladder available
at Amazon.com]
"More than three billion people in the world condemned
to premature death from hunger and thirst."
THAT is not an exaggerated figure, but rather a cautious
one. I have meditated a lot on that in the wake of President
Bush’s meeting with U.S. automobile manufacturers.
The sinister idea of converting food into fuel was
definitively established as an economic line in U.S.
foreign policy last Monday, March 26.
A cable from the AP, the U.S. news agency that reaches
all corners of the world, states verbatim:
"WASHINGTON, March 26 (AP). President Bush touted the
benefits of ‘flexible fuel’ vehicles running on ethanol
and biodiesel on Monday, meeting with automakers
to boost support for his energy plans.
"Bush said a commitment by the leaders of the domestic
auto industry to double their production of flex-fuel
vehicles could help motorists shift away from gasoline
and reduce the nation's reliance on imported oil.
'"That's a major technological breakthrough for the
country,' Bush said after inspecting three alternative
vehicles. If the nation wants to reduce gasoline use,
he said “the consumer has got to be in a position to
make a rational choice.”
"The president urged Congress to 'move expeditiously'
on legislation the administration recently proposed
to require the use of 35 billion gallons of alternative
fuels by 2017 and seek higher fuel economy standards
for automobiles.
"Bush met with General Motors Corp. chairman and chief
executive Rick Wagoner, Ford Motor Co. chief executive
Alan Mulally and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group
chief executive Tom LaSorda.
"They discussed support for flex-fuel vehicles, attempts
to develop ethanol from alternative sources like
switchgrass and wood chips and the administration's
proposal to reduce gas consumption by 20 percent
in 10 years.
"The discussions came amid rising gasoline prices.
The latest Lundberg Survey found the nationwide
average for gasoline has risen 6 cents per gallon
in the past two weeks to $2.61."
I believe that reducing and moreover recycling all
motors that run on electricity and fuel is an
elemental and urgent need for all humanity. The
tragedy does not lie in reducing those energy costs
but in the idea of converting food into fuel.
It is known very precisely today that one ton of
corn can only produce 413 liters of ethanol on
average, according to densities. That is equivalent
to 109 gallons.
The average price of corn in U.S. ports has risen
to $167 per ton. Thus, 320 million tons of corn
would be required to produce 35 billion gallons
of ethanol.
According to FAO figures, the U.S. corn harvest
rose to 280.2 million tons in the year 2005.
Although the president is talking of producing fuel
derived from grass or wood shavings, anyone can
understand that these are phrases totally lacking
in realism. Let’s be clear: 35 billion gallons
translates into 35 followed by nine zeros!
Afterwards will come beautiful examples of what
experienced and well-organized U.S. farmers can
achieve in terms of human productivity by hectare:
corn converted into ethanol; the chaff from that
corn converted into animal feed containing 26% protein;
cattle dung used as raw material for gas production.
Of course, this is after voluminous investments only
within the reach of the most powerful enterprises,
in which everything has to be moved on the basis
of electricity and fuel consumption. Apply that recipe
to the countries of the Third World and you will see
that people among the hungry masses of the Earth will
no longer eat corn. Or something worse: lend funding
to poor countries to produce corn ethanol based on
corn or any other food and not a single tree will
be left to defend humanity from climate change.
Other countries in the rich world are planning to
use not only corn but also wheat, sunflower seeds,
Rapeseed and other foods for fuel production. For the
Europeans, for example, it would become a business
to import all of the world’s soybeans with the aim
of reducing the fuel costs for their automobiles and
feeding their animals with the chaff from that legume,
particularly rich in all types of essential amino acids.
In Cuba, alcohol used to be produced as a byproduct
of the sugar industry after having made three extractions
of sugar from cane juice. Climate change is already
affecting our sugar production. Lengthy periods of drought
alternating with record rainfall, that barely make it
possible to produce sugar with an adequate yield during
the 100 days of our very moderate winter; hence, there
Is less sugar per ton of cane or less cane per hectare
due to prolonged drought in the months of planting and
cultivation.
I understand that in Venezuela they would be using
alcohol not for export but to improve the environmental
quality of their own fuel. For that reason, apart from
the excellent Brazilian technology for producing alcohol,
in Cuba the use of such a technology for the direct
production of alcohol from sugar cane juice is no more
than a dream or the whim of those carried away by that
idea. In our country, land handed over to the direct
production of alcohol could be much useful for food
production for the people and for environmental
protection.
All the countries of the world, rich and poor, without
any exception, could save millions and millions of
dollars in investment and fuel simply by changing
all the incandescent light bulbs for fluorescent
ones, an exercise that Cuba has carried out in all
homes throughout the country. That would provide
a breathing space to resist climate change without
killing the poor masses through hunger.
As can be observed, I am not using adjectives to
qualify the system and the lords of the earth.
That task can be excellently undertaken by news
experts and honest social, economic and political
scientists abounding in the world who are constantly
delving into to the present and future of our species.
A computer and the growing number of Internet networks
are sufficient for that.
Today, we are seeing for the first time a really
globalized economy and a dominant power in the
economic, political and military terrain that in no
way resembles that of Imperial Rome.
Some people will be asking themselves why I am talking
of hunger and thirst. My response to that: it is not
about the other side of the coin, but about several
sides of something else, like a die with six sides,
or a polyhedron with many more sides.
I refer in this case to an official news agency,
founded in 1945 and generally well-informed about
economic and social questions in the world: TELAM.
It said, and I quote:
" In just 18 years, close to 2 billion people will
be living in countries and regions where water will
be a distant memory. Two-thirds of the world’s
population could be living in places where that
scarcity produces social and economic tensions
of such a magnitude that it could lead nations
to wars for the precious 'blue gold.'
"Over the last 100 years, the use of water has
increased at a rate twice as fast as that of
population growth.
"According to statistics from the World Water
Council, it is estimated that by 2015, the number
of inhabitants affected by this grave situation
will rise by 3.5 billion people.
" The United Nations celebrated World Water Day
on March 23, and called to begin confronting, that
very day, the international scarcity of water,
under the coordination of the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), with the goal of highlighting
the increasing importance of water scarcity on
a global scale, and the need for greater integration
and cooperation that would make it possible to
guarantee sustained and efficient management
of water resources.
"Many regions on the planet are suffering from
severe water shortages, living with less than
500 cubic meters per person per year. The number
of regions suffering from chronic scarcity of
this vital element is increasingly growing.
"The principal consequences of water scarcity
are an insufficient amount of the precious liquid
for producing food, the impossibility of industrial,
urban and tourism development and health problems."
That was the TELEAM cable.
In this case I will refrain from mentioning other
important facts, like the melting ice in Greenland
and the Antarctic, damage to the ozone layer and
the growing volume of mercury in many species of
fish for common consumption.
There are other issues that could be addressed,
but with these lines I am just trying to comment
on President Bush's meeting with the principal
executives of U.S. automakers.
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15) Marines’ Actions in Afghanistan Called Excessive
By CARLOTTA GALL
April 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/world/asia/15afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan, April 14 — American marines reacted
to a bomb ambush with excessive force in eastern Afghanistan
last month, hitting groups of bystanders and vehicles with
machine-gun fire in a rampage that covered 10 miles of highway
and left 12 civilians dead, including an infant and three
elderly men, according to a report published by an Afghan
human rights commission on Saturday.
Families of the victims said this week that they had demanded
justice from the American military and the Afghan government,
and they described the aftermath of the marines’ shooting,
in Nangarhar Province. One 16-year-old newly married girl
was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to
her family’s farmhouse. A 75-year-old man walking to his
shop was hit by so many bullets that his son did not recognize
the body when he came to the scene.
In its report, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission
condemned the suicide bomb attack that initially struck a convoy
of a Marine Special Operations unit on March 4, wounding one
American, and said there may also have been small-arms fire
directed at the convoy immediately after the blast. But it
said the response was disproportionate, especially given the
obviously non-military nature of the marines’ targets long
after the ambush.
“In failing to distinguish between civilians and legitimate
military targets, the U.S. Marine Corps Special Forces employed
indiscriminate force,” the report said. “Their actions thus
constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian
standards.”
The bombing and subsequent shooting was the most high profile
of a number of human rights violations in the fighting in
Afghanistan that were documented by the human rights commission.
The report comes amid resurgent Taliban violence and coalition
reprisals that are costing an increasing number of civilian
lives and that have brought harsh criticism of the government
and international forces.
A spokesman for the military’s Central Command said the report
had been forwarded to Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior
American officer in the region, for review.
The military, which is conducting its own criminal investigation,
has said that the marines involved were being kept in Afghanistan
and that the rest of their 120-man company has been pulled out
of the country. One senior official who has served in Afghanistan
said in a recent interview that such a recall was unprecedented
and was a sign of the seriousness of the incident.
The deputy director of the human rights commission, Nader Nadery,
warned that incidents like the highway shooting have greatly
contributed to outrage in Afghanistan, contradicting efforts
by coalition forces to win people’s support away from the
Taliban.
“There is a high level of frustration among the public and
civilians that they are victims of both sides of the conflict,”
he added.
In Spinpul, where the incident happened, and in the whole province
of Nangarhar, that frustration is evident. Still mourning, the
families of the victims said this week that they had demanded
from President Hamid Karzai and the American generals they
had met that those responsible be punished. Some of them said
the soldiers should be tried under Islamic law and face the death
penalty if found guilty of the killings.
“They committed a great cruelty; they should be punished,”
said Ghor Ghashta, 65, whose daughter-in-law was killed at
the door of their farmhouse compound, several hundred yards
from the road and the scene of the blast. The American troops
were firing from the road and raked the river bed where workers
were digging a ditch and the surrounding fields with gunfire,
he and other witnesses said.
“She was cutting grass in the field and she was carrying the
bundle of grass on her head back into the house for the animals,”
said his eldest son, Abdel Muhammad, 25.
“There was a big blast and then I heard firing. I started walking
toward my house,” he said. “When I reached the house, my sister
called and said my sister-in-law had been killed,” he said.
The young woman, Yadwaro, 16, was shot in the back and fell
dead across the threshold, he said. Her husband, Tera Gul, 18,
sat listening silently to his brother and then got up and
walked away.
The suicide bomb attack happened some 500 yards along the road
from the bridge that gives the village its name, White Bridge,
on the main highway about 25 miles east of the town of Jalalabad.
A man driving a minibus in the opposite direction to the Marine
unit exploded his vehicle as he passed the convoy of five or
six Humvees, according to the commission’s report, which was
drawn from interviews with witnesses, police officers, community
leaders and hospital officials. One marine was wounded by shrapnel
from the blast, it said.
The convoy may then have come under small arms fire from one
vehicle on the same side of the road as the bomber, Mr. Nadery
said. In the days after the episode, the United States military
said that the convoy had come under a “complex ambush from
several directions,” but the human rights commission
questioned this.
“If such an attack did indeed occur, as it is claimed by the
U.S. military, it was almost certainly very limited in scope
and restricted to the immediate site” of the suicide bombing,
it said in its report.
Two Humvees then moved forward 500 yards to the bridge and
opened fire with roof-mounted machine-guns on a car that had
stopped on a side road, some yards from the highway. The
gunners then swung their weapons around and began firing
on the nearby river bed and fields. They killed six people
instantly and wounded at least another, the report said.
The driver of the car, a veteran mujahedeen fighter who
goes by the name of Lewanai, 45, was wounded but survived
the shooting by diving out of his door and scrambling behind
a mound of earth. But the big guns shredded his car and the
three people inside: his father, Hajji Zarpadshah, 80; his
uncle, Hajji Shin Makhe, 75; and his nephew, Farid Gul, 16.
“It was an illegal action,” he said. “I know the army rules,
and when I heard the blast I stopped my car, I was thinking
in case they shoot me,” he said in an interview at his home
nearby. “They opened fire and were shooting for 10 minutes.”
The car, now parked at a nearby gas station, is torn by gashes
from the bullets over its hood, side and roof and the seats
are shredded from the power of the gunfire, the ceiling is
smattered with debris and bits of blood and bone. Mr. Nadery
said that the vehicle had been hit by 250 bullets.
“Their insides were all coming out,” said Noor Islam, 22,
who saw the dead men in the car after the attack. “We were
very upset. Two of them were old men with white beards, and
one was young,” he said. “They had no weapons.”
Near the car was Shin Gul, 70, who was waiting for a ride
to the nearby bazaar of Markoh where the family had a shop
selling sacks of flour. He was cut down on the spot and his
body so torn apart that his son, Muhammad Ayub, 35, said he
could not recognize him when he first came on the scene.
“I saw a notebook in his pocket and then I knew it was him,”
he said.
Nearby a 30-year-old shepherd named Farid was shot. He died
two weeks later in the hospital.
Mr. Ayub said he was with a group of workers digging a ditch
in the river bed when they came under fire from the Humvees
at the bridge. They all survived by taking cover in the ditch,
but the bullets went over their heads. Those were the shots
that killed the newlywed girl, Yadwaro, about 100 yards beyond.
As the Humvees pulled away across the bridge they opened
fire on a gas station and other vehicles, killing four people
in one minibus, including a 1-year-old child, the report said.
In more incidents over the 10-mile stretch of road from Spinpul,
the marines killed six more people and wounded 25.
The report covered other civilian killings in recent weeks,
including extensive human-rights violations by Taliban fighters
and their allies, like beheadings and the mutilation of victims.
In other cases involving coalition troops in Afghan, the report
detailed an airstrike in Kapisa Province in March that killed
a family of nine people, including two pregnant women and four
children younger than 5.
The report also criticized ongoing house raids by American
forces, including one on the house of one of the human rights
commission’s staff members, who the report said was hooded
and handcuffed to a detonator and told not to move in case
it exploded.
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16) 2 Ejected From Bush Speech Posed a Threat, Lawyers Say
"...the president’s staff can lawfully remove anyone who
expresses points of view different from his."
By DAN FROSCH
April 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/us/15eject.html
DENVER, April 13 — Lawyers for two men charged with illegally
ejecting two people from a speech by President Bush in 2005
are arguing that the president’s staff can lawfully remove
anyone who expresses points of view different from his.
Lawyers for the two, Michael Casper and Jay Klinkerman, said
the men were working as organizers for a public presidential
forum on Social Security at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and
Space Museum in Denver on March 21, 2005, when they were involved
in ejecting two audience members, Alex Young and Leslie Weise.
Mr. Young and Ms. Weise filed a lawsuit in Federal District
Court here, saying they were ejected shortly after they had
arrived in a car that had an antiwar bumper sticker, although
they had done nothing disruptive. The suit charged Mr. Casper
and Mr. Klinkerman with violating Mr. Young’s and Ms. Weise’s
First Amendment right to free speech.
Mr. Casper and Mr. Klinkerman lost their motion for dismissal,
and this week their lawyers filed an appeals brief arguing that
their clients had the right to take action against Mr. Young
and Ms. Weise precisely because the two held views different
from Mr. Bush’s.
“They excluded people from a White House event because they
posed a threat of being disruptive,” said a lawyer for Mr. Casper,
Sean Gallagher.
The brief filed by Mr. Gallagher and other lawyers refers to
a 1992 case involving a woman who wore a button supporting Bill
Clinton for president as she tried to enter a campaign rally
in support of George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle. She was denied
entry until she removed the button.
A lawyer for Ms. Weise and Mr. Young, Martha Tierney, said that
case was different because the event was sponsored by the
Strongsville, Ohio, Republican Party, a private entity.
“I think if the court adopts this argument, they’ll essentially
gut the First Amendment in terms of viewpoint discrimination,”
Ms. Tierney said.
Earlier this year, Mr. Young and Ms. Weise filed a separate
lawsuit against three White House staff members who were also
working at the Denver speech, saying they were responsible for
their removal and thus had violated their right to free speech.
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17) President’s Military Medical Care Panel Hears Frustrations
of Soldiers Wounded in Iraq
By ROBERT PEAR
April 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/washington/15wounded.html
WASHINGTON, April 14 — Wounded soldiers and veterans poured
out their frustrations with the military health care system
on Saturday, telling a presidential commission that they had
often had difficulty getting care because military doctors
were overwhelmed by the needs of service members injured
in Iraq.
Speaking from experience, the soldiers and veterans described
the military health care system as a labyrinth, said their
families had been swamped with paperwork and complained that
some care providers lacked compassion.
Marc A. Giammatteo, who has undergone more than 30 operations
to repair a leg torn apart by a rocket-propelled grenade in
Iraq, said the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington,
had been inundated with wounded members of the armed forces
who surpassed its capacity.
Mr. Giammatteo, a West Point graduate and former Army captain,
said he had observed a “lack of caring or compassion in some
of the work force” at Walter Reed.
“On several occasions,” Mr. Giammatteo said, “I, and others
I have spoken to, felt that we were being judged as if we chose
our nation’s foreign policy and, as a result, received little
if any assistance. Some individuals, most of whom are civilian
workers and do not wear the uniform, judge the wounded unfairly
and treat them similarly, adopting a ‘Can’t help you, you’re
on your own’ attitude.”
Mr. Giammatteo, a member of the commission, testified at the
first meeting of the panel on Saturday.
President Bush created the nine-member panel on March 6 to
investigate the care that wounded troops receive when they
return from the battlefield. Former Senator Bob Dole,
a Republican, and Donna E. Shalala, who was secretary of
health and human services in the Clinton administration,
are co-chairmen of the panel, known officially as the
President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning
Wounded Warriors.
The panel plans to hold several hearings around the country
and is supposed to issue its report, with recommendations,
by June 30. The deadline can be extended to July 31 if
necessary.
Dr. John H. Chiles, a retired colonel who was chief of
anesthesiology at Walter Reed and chief of staff at the
United States Army hospital in Baghdad, said the military
medical system was “underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed.”
Jose R. Ramos, a hospital corpsman who lost his arm in combat
in Iraq, said he received first-class care at the National
Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. But he said he had often
been frustrated in seeking care at Walter Reed and at a local
veterans hospital.
Mr. Ramos, a commission member, said he had been thwarted
by the “military bureaucracy.”
At Walter Reed, Mr. Ramos said, he experienced long delays
because of “the sheer numbers of patients each doctor must
keep track of.”
“It was rare that I ever saw the same doctor,” Mr. Ramos
reported. “I constantly had to re-explain my symptoms and
medical history.”
Moreover, Mr. Ramos said, the transition from Walter Reed
to the Department of Veterans Affairs was a struggle.
“Three different times I had to gather all my medical
information and resubmit a package because three different
times the V.A. managed to lose it,” Mr. Ramos said. “Even
after I was medically retired, the V.A. had no idea that
I was an amputee.”
In an interview, Mr. Ramos recalled how he informed his
doctor at the V.A. that he had an artificial limb:
“I knocked on my carbon-fiber arm and said, ‘I’m missing
an arm, buddy.’ ”
Mr. Dole, the Republican presidential nominee in 1996, said
military medicine had made great strides since he was wounded
in action in Italy 62 years ago, on April 14, 1945. Of the
commission’s work, he said, “This is not going to be a witch
hunt or a whitewash.”
Tammy Edwards, another commission member, said she faced
a never-ending “battle with paperwork” as she tried to get
care for her husband, Staff Sgt. Christopher Edwards, who
was severely burned in Iraq when a 500-pound bomb exploded
under his vehicle.
After getting out of the intensive care unit at Brooke Army
Medical Center in San Antonio, Ms. Edwards said, her husband
faced a new problem. “He was not receiving any mental health
services and had fallen into a deep depression,” she said.
“He felt that he would be stuck in the hospital forever.
His pain was so intense that he would often ask me why we
did not let him die in the first place.”
Ms. Edwards said the armed forces should focus on “healing
the family unit as a whole.”
“Family members are often overlooked,” Ms. Edwards said.
Richard F. Weidman, executive director of Vietnam Veterans
of America, a nonprofit group with 60,000 members, said,
“What happened at Walter Reed was not an aberration.” It
resulted, he said, from a policy of “taking care of our
soldiers on the cheap.”
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18) HS SPURS FUROR WITH CUBA TRIP
By DAVID ANDREATTA
April 16, 2007
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04162007/news/regionalnews/hs_spurs_furor_with_cuba_trip_regionalnews_david_andreatta.htm
April 16, 2007 -- A group of Manhattan public high-school students and a
history teacher with a soft spot for Cuba flouted federal travel
restrictions by taking a spring-break field trip to the communist nation -
and now face up to $65,000 apiece in fines, The Post has learned.
The lesson in socializing and socialism was given to about a dozen
students from the selective Beacon School on the Upper West Side, which
for years has organized extravagant overseas trips with complementary
semester-long classes.
Some past destinations include France, Spain, South Africa, Venezuela,
Mexico and, according to the school Web site, Cuba in 2004 and 2005.
The principal, Ruth Lacey, insisted she did not approve the April 1-10
jaunt, in which students and teachers said the group was briefly detained
on their return by American customs officials in The Bahamas and now faces
fines.
In a telephone interview, Lacey initially claimed to have no knowledge of
the trip but later recalled having denied approval for it. She said the
teacher, Nathan Turner, then took it upon himself to arrange the
excursion.
Turner, 35, a popular teacher whose classroom walls, students said, are
adorned with posters of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Marxist
revolutionary Che Guevara, declined to comment.
"I don't know anything about the trip because it wasn't school-sponsored.
I only care about the trips that go through the school," Lacey said.
"This, to me, would be an outrage if it happened."
But the trip was advertised on the school's Web site in the fall. And a
list of 30 students selected in November to take the journey and to attend
preparation classes for it could be found on its Web site last week.
It was not clear how many students actually went, though sources said it
was about a dozen.
Asked whether the previous trips to Cuba had been approved, Lacey said
they had, explaining, "At the time, I think the climate in the country was
different."
City Department of Education spokesman David Cantor said the agency denied
the school permission to run the trip and that, after The Post's
inquiries, had asked city investigators to look into how the excursion and
any previous jaunts got off the ground.
"This trip should not have happened," Cantor said.
Some parents of students who made the journey said they knew it was not
sanctioned by the school, with some recalling receiving a letter from
Beacon describing the excursion as "an independent trip."
The Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, pastor at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem,
said he was unclear on the travel restrictions to Cuba but allowed his son
to go because he and his wife felt the experience would be educational.
He added that he was unaware that the students got into hot water at
customs but that he was not overly concerned with the consequences.
"It concerns me more that we have a blockade on Cuba that's lasted more
than 40 years," Kooperkamp said.
Molly Millerwise, spokeswoman for the Treasury Department's Office of
Foreign Assets Controls, which enforces economic sanctions and grants
licenses for travel to Cuba, would neither confirm nor deny that students
and the teacher were detained.
But she said educational travel licenses are granted only to college and
graduate-school students who plan trips no shorter than 10 weeks long, and
that individuals violating the sanctions face penalties ranging from a
warning to $65,000 in fines.
Traveling to Cuba has been difficult for Americans since 1962, but tighter
restrictions adopted in 2003 made visits by high-school students with no
family on the island near impossible, travel agents say.
"I don't see a legal way for high-school kids to go [to Cuba] right now,
given what the restrictions say," said Malia Everette, travel director for
Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based company that arranges professional
and educational tours to Cuba and worked with Beacon on its Venezuela trip
in 2006.
"I'm turning away undergraduates as well as high-school students left and
right," she said. "It's not the time or place right now."
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19) Protesters still defiant against T. Don Hutto
By Daniel K. Lai
[VIA Email from: dorinda moreno
dorindamoreno@comcast.net
Following a second three-day trek from the state capitol
in Austin, roughly 75 protesters staged a five-hour protest
and candlelight vigil outside the T. Don Hutto Residential
Center in Taylor Sunday.
“We're not going anywhere,” Jose Orta, founding member of the
Taylor League of United Latin American Citizens Council, said.
“Just by being here we are making a difference. It's the
little things that we can see happening. We're not going
to move a mountain overnight. We'll take our victories
as we get them.”
The 512-bed facility, which was remodeled and reopened in
May 2006 under contract to the federal Immigration and
Customs Enforcement service as a detention center for
families, caught the eye of several human rights organizations
following a Dec. 16 protest march against the detention
of children. Previously, the facility housed county prisoners
and federal detainees under various contracts with law
enforcement agencies.
“We're here because we think this violates everything
America stands for,” Jay Johnson-Castro of Del Rio said.
“There is no longer this feeling of ‘give me your tired,
your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free'
in this country. The government baits immigrants with
a promise of liberty and then they profit off of their
incarceration.
“This isn't about keeping immigrants out of the country
because it would be a lot cheaper to send them back home,
not incarcerate them.”
According to the lease agreement between Williamson
County and Corrections Corporation of America, which
operates the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, the county
agrees to subcontract all aspects of the facility's
operations to CCA. In exchange, CCA receives payment
of about $2.8 million from ICE to house up to 512 inmates.
The company pays the county an administrative fee of
$1 per day per inmate held at the facility.
“When people come here, they give up everything just
to get here,” one of the protesters said Sunday. “I don't
know what it would take for me to give up what I have and
flee; it would have to be something awful. These people
have given up so much already and then to be put in
prison is just heart breaking.”
Elgin resident Magdalena Padron, said, as a mother, the
issue of detaining children has affected her personally.
“There are no words to explain how I feel,” she said.
“We're in a free country. To see them locked up in a free
country doesn't make any sense.”
During a preliminary injunction hearing on Tuesday in
a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union,
the University of Texas law school's immigration clinic
and an international law firm, U.S. District Judge Sam
Sparks called the continued detention of children in
“substandard conditions” at the T. Don Hutto Residenti
al Center an urgent problem.
In March, the ACLU filed the suit on behalf of 10 immigrant
children, challenging their detention at the center. Since
then, all but three of the cases have been dropped since
seven of the 10 families have already been sent home.
The lawsuits - which charge that the children are being
imprisoned under inhumane conditions - claim the detainees
were subject to psychological abuse from guards, received
poor medical care and inadequate nutrition at the center
while their parents await immigration decisions.
Sparks set an expedited August trial date.
“As far as I'm concerned, this is a showdown between
American democracy and American tyranny,” Johnson-Castro
said.
“The government speaks on illegal immigrants who commit
crimes,” one protester shouted. “For every one that does,
there are hundreds who do not. No one mentions the thousands
of dollars immigrants pay into Social Security of which
they will never see a dime of. When it comes to the
argument of our government having to spend taxpayers'
dollars to capture these immigrants, I don't think so.
I think these people are enriching us in more ways
than one.”
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20) U.S. Missile Deals Bypass, and Annoy, European Union
By CRAIG S. SMITH
April 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/world/europe/18missiles.html?ref=world
PARIS, April 13 — Much of Europe is arguing over a Washington
proposal to plant in Poland fewer than a dozen antimissile
missiles that might not work, to guard against an Iranian
threat that may not exist.
The main party in Poland’s governing coalition is inclined
to accept the deal, and the country’s president, Lech Kaczynski,
known in Europe for his fierce conservatism and nationalist
talk, has been invited to the White House in July to talk
things over with President Bush.
The Czech Republic’s fragile government coalition, meanwhile,
has agreed to negotiate placement of high-powered American
tracking radar on its soil despite widespread local opposition.
The radar, now in the Marshall Islands, would help guide
the antimissile missiles from Poland to hit and destroy
their fast-moving targets in outer space.
The European missile shield would be part of an integrated
system that is already taking shape in California and Alaska,
where the United States expects to deploy 30 long-range
interceptors to guard against missile attack by the end
of 2008.
Washington says the Eastern European system could act
in time to protect most of Europe and all of the United
States and even much of Russia from a nuclear attack by
Iran, that is, if Iran ever developed or obtained nuclear
weapons and rockets with a range long enough to reach
those targets, as well as a desire to fire them. They
don’t have those armaments now, but they might by 2015,
the Bush administration says.
Not everyone agrees that a threat is imminent, but
Washington isn’t asking anyone to help pay for the
system.
Why, then, are so many people unhappy?
It is not the cost. The United States has already spent
tens of billions of dollars on the missile shield. A few
more billion won’t draw that much attention from Congress
or taxpayers.
Nor is it Russia’s complaining that the antimissile
missiles will chip away at its nuclear position. The
10 interceptor missiles that Washington is proposing to
put in Poland could hardly stop Russia’s hundreds
of intercontinental ballistic missiles in the event
of all-out war.
The American antimissile missiles will be placed too
close to Russia to be of use against ICBMs fired from
anywhere west of the Ural Mountains. If they work, though,
the antimissile missiles in Alaska and California could
stop a Russian ICBM fired in America’s direction from
east of the Urals. The fact is that in tests the antimissile
missiles don’t work much of the time, and when they do it
is under controlled circumstances that are far from typical
in an actual attack.
No, what is going on in Europe has less to do with missiles
than with diplomacy and European queasiness about American
power and influence on the Continent.
The European Union is upset because Washington is negotiating
bilaterally with Poland and the Czech Republic about something
that affects Europe as a whole. The union has been trying
for years to patch together a coherent European security
and defense policy independent of NATO, and it doesn’t help
when member states start cutting deals with Washington on
their own.
Many Europeans are also offended that the talks are not being
routed through NATO, which has been struggling to stay relevant
ever since the cold war.
“The offer created a situation where it isn’t clear what the
role of NATO is in providing collective security,” says Ondrej
Liska, a leader of the Czech Green Party, which is a member of
the Czech Republic’s governing coalition.
NATO will discuss the subject on Thursday.
But the Bush administration knows that reaching a consensus
on such a delicate subject within the recently expanded NATO,
now with 26 member nations, would take longer than it could
afford. It is rushing to get the program far enough along
that the next administration would be reluctant to kill it.
Russia, meanwhile, is upset because the little missile base
in Poland and its companion radar base in the Czech Republic
would give the American military its largest and most permanent
footprint yet in the former territory of the Warsaw Pact.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, complained
in an article in the Financial Times this month that it was
“unacceptable” for the United States to use the European
Continent as “their own strategic territory.”
Russia’s lower house of Parliament issued a unanimous
statement that said talk of the antimissile shield was
“already bringing about a new split in Europe and unleashing
another arms race.”
Is another cold war looming? Not yet. But Poland is buying
American F-16s and Russia is moving surface-to-air missiles
into Belarus near Poland’s border, and tensions are deepening.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, as Soviet troops withdrew
from Eastern Europe and America began to talk about closing
bases in Germany, Europe looked as if it might become the big,
peaceful, postmodern federation that European Union architects
had long dreamed of: a humanist club where conflicts at home
and abroad would be resolved by talking everything to death
instead of killing.
Then the Balkans blew up and the United States military stepped
in to stop a war that Europe seemed incapable of facing.
That frustrated Russia, which supported Serbia in the war,
but Russia could not offer much help because it was still
impotent and staggering from the collapse of its Soviet empire.
Now Russia is rich with oil and gas and its military spending
is soaring. The rest of Europe — for Moscow increasingly defines
itself as European — is wary of stirring up old animosities.
“We should be very careful about encouraging the creation
of new dividing lines in Europe or the return of an old order,”
President Jacques Chirac of France said last month when asked
about the American antimissile missile plans.
The former Soviet president Mikhail S. Gorbachev put it more
succinctly when he told the official Russian news agency,
Ria Novosti, last week that “It is all about influence
and domination in Europe.”
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21) Trailer-Park Sales Leave Residents
With Single-Wides and Few Options
By COREY KILGANNON
April 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/nyregion/18trailer.html?ref=nyregion
SYOSSET, N.Y., April 11 — In the middle of Long Island’s Gold
Coast, where home prices easily reach $1 million, sits the
Syosset Mobile Home Park, where a trailer can be had for
under $50,000 and the monthly fee for taxes, water and sewage
runs about $500. The children growing up in the park’s
80 narrow homes attend Syosset schools, reputed to be
among the best in the country.
But fliers stuffed in the mailboxes next to the decorated
trailer hitches and propane tanks on April 9 brought bad news:
The park had been sold. It was left to the affable handyman
to expand on the single-sentence announcement, explaining
that the new owners had told him they planned to replace
the 250 working-class residents’ single-wide slice of the
American dream with luxury housing.
“I was totally dumbfounded,” said Debbie St. Clair, a Web
site developer in her mid-50s who moved to an aging blue-
and-white trailer here three years ago after finding she
could not afford even a small house in Nassau County.
“When I bought, no one ever told me the land could be sold
out from under us. I planned on spending the rest
of my life here.”
Syosset, the last remaining trailer park in Nassau and
one of a dwindling number in the New York suburbs,
is among several in the region being snapped up by
developers in an ever-tightening real estate market.
Hidden behind shabby fences, they have persisted for
decades as quiet pockets of affordability in expensive
enclaves, but as sprawl has grown denser and property
values have increased, these parks are steadily being
squeezed out.
Local officials and homeowners have long regarded the
parks as blight, and now their owners are finding it
harder to turn down lucrative offers from developers
wanting to build high-end town houses or shopping malls.
It is happening at the Manhattan Mobile Home Park in
North Bergen, N.J., a 10-minute drive from the Lincoln
Tunnel, and also at Knolls Trailer Court in Mahopac, N.Y.
Two parks in Lodi, N.J., are fighting a plan by local
government to replace them with a shopping center and
housing for the elderly. Other parks are besieged with
fears of closing, including the Frontier Mobile Home
Park in Amityville, N.Y., where a used single-wide goes
for as little as $10,000 and the trip to Midtown Manhattan
by train or car is about an hour.
For residents, who typically own their trailers but rent
the plots they sit on, often on one-year leases, such
a sale can quickly turn a $50,000 asset into a liability.
In New York State, owners are required to give residents
written notice of a pending sale, but no compensation,
and can begin eviction proceedings six months after
leases expire. Many of the decades-old trailers could
not survive being moved even on a flatbed truck, and
available plots in the dwindling number of local parks
are almost nonexistent.
So Assemblyman Marc S. Alessi, a Democrat who watched
the 30-unit Roll-In Mobile Home Park in his Suffolk
County close in 2005 and be turned into a Walgreens,
has proposed legislation that would require park owners
to consider a fair market value bid from the trailer
owners before selling to outsiders, similar to laws
already on the books in New Jersey and Connecticut.
“These mobile home owners have nowhere to go,” Mr. Alessi
said. “People have invested in these trailer homes, but
they’re no longer trailers. They’re stuck on their plots,
so the owner has no bargaining power.”
Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., a Republican who
is also pushing a bill to allow trailer owners to make
court challenges to large rent increases in the parks,
agreed. “These people invested in their homes with the
understanding they could stay on the land,” said Mr. Thiele,
whose Suffolk district includes mobile home parks in the
Hamptons and Montauk. “But they wind up being at the mercy
of whatever the landowner decides to do.”
The lawmakers say suburban trailer parks have become
a crucial affordable housing alternative amid rising home
prices, and census figures show that their populations
are increasingly younger, better educated and more solidly
middle class than previous generations of trailer park
residents.
In Suffolk County’s approximately 40 parks, the median
household income increased to $43,825 in 2005 from $33,015
in 1990, a much bigger jump than the overall increase
in the county, to $78,900 from $76,547. The median age
of the park residents fell to 48 from 61, while the median
age in Suffolk overall rose to 37 from 33.
At the same time, the percentage of trailer-park residents
with a college degree more than doubled, to 18.2 percent
in 2005 from 7.7 percent in 1990, and the percentage lacking
a high-school diploma dropped to 14.5 from 33.7. (In both
cases, the changes outpace those in the county overall:
college degree holders jumped to 31.7 percent from 23.2,
and those without diplomas dipped to 10.2 percent from 17.7.)
There are some 75,000 trailers in 2,100 parks across New
York State, including about 15,000 in 300 parks ranging in
size from 5 to 400 units within a 75-mile drive from New
York City, according to the New York Housing Association,
a trade group for the factory-built home industry. (Just
one is within the New York City limits: Goethals Garden Homes
Community in Staten Island, a clutch of 130 trailers between
a marsh and the Staten Island Expressway near the Goethals
Bridge.)
There are roughly 250 trailer parks across Connecticut,
according to state officials. No numbers were available
in New Jersey, either from the state government or the
industry association.
The longtime owner of the Manhattan Mobile Home Park in North
Bergen, N.J., died last year, and the property will soon be
sold, according to Paul Kaufman, administrator of the late
owner’s estate. He said several residential developers had
expressed interest since a light rail station opened next
to the park.
“We feel like sitting ducks,” said Maria Castaneda, who has
lived in the park about 10 years and takes a quick bus ride
to her job as a hair stylist in the Port Authority Bus Terminal
on Manhattan’s West Side. “This park is a godsend. How
else could you live this cheaply so close to Manhattan?”
James Hayes, 73, a retired stagehand who pays $350 monthly
rent to keep his rundown trailer there, said: “I’ve been
offered $50,000 for it, but now that the park is closing,
it’s worth nothing.”
The morale is no better at Brown’s Trailer Park or the Costa
Trailer Court in nearby Lodi, N.J., where residents and the
owner are fighting the borough’s attempt to invoke eminent
domain to close them.
“We don’t know exactly when, but the end is coming,” said
Clifton Lawrence, 51, an auto mechanic who bought his trailer
20 years ago for $7,500 and pays $650 a month rent at Brown’s.
“Are they going to just wipe out our homes and push us all
out into the street with nothing? Is this a third-world
country?”
John Agor, whose family owns Knolls Trailer Court in Mahopac,
N.Y., said he had already been offered more than $1 million
for the 3.5-acre plot an hour’s drive north of New York City,
and that he planned to close the park if it is rezoned for
commercial development, a change that he has requested.
“Property in that area has so appreciated,” he said. “It
used to be farmland and now it’s surrounded by a shopping
center and a gas station.”
Mr. Agor said he did not plan to pay anything to residents
of the park’s 14 trailers, many of whom are World War II
veterans who have lived there for decades. “The state law
says you just have to give them notice,” he noted.
Ray Matthews, 80, a retired propane-gas service technician
and a Navy veteran who served in the South Pacific, has been
at Knoll’s 38 years. He said he had paid $9,500 for his
trailer when he moved in, plus rent that is now $450 a month,
and had invested in hardwood floors, ceiling repairs and
new siding.
“I put my life into this trailer, and now it’s going to be
junked,” Mr. Matthews lamented. “I worked hard all my life,
but I have no savings and no pension. I live on Social
Security checks. Senior housing’s all taken up and rents
are up around $1,500. This place was my salvation, and now
I’ve got nowhere to go.”
Amid the spate of sales, Richard K. Freedman, president
of Garden Homes Management, which owns 74 parks in New York,
New Jersey and Connecticut, including Goethals in Staten
Island, said he was holding fast. “We would never sell
a park for another use because they bring in good income
the way they are,” Mr. Freedman said.
But here in Syosset, in the shadow of luxury developments
under construction like Stone Hill at Muttontown, where
custom houses start at $2.3 million, the trailer park
offers people with Civil Service and blue-collar jobs
a chance to own a home where they grew up. With residents
shaken by the news in their mailboxes, Bill Mazzie, the
park handyman, said he had pressed one of the new owners,
Larry Rush, about plans for the park.
“He said, ‘We want to build condos,’ ” Mr. Mazzie recounted
as he showed off a spruced-up single-wide that recently
sold for $75,000. “I said, ‘Can I tell the residents this?’
and he said, ‘No problem.’ ”
Messages for Mr. Rush were answered by Michael Weinstein,
a lawyer who said he represented a group of investors who
bought the property but would not say what they planned
to do with it.
“My clients are developers, but there are no specific plans
at the moment,” he said.
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22) JUVENTUD REBELDE
Another American tragedy
"33 killed at a University in Virginia. The country is appalled
by a new large-scale massacre. Youths open fire on professors
and classmates."
By: Juana Carrasco Martín
internac@jrebelde.cip.cu
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Havana, Cuba
"Un paraiso bajo el bloqueo"
April 17, 2007
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
Discussion intensifies: should new gun control legislation be enforced
in the U.S.? Is it rational to restrict or ban the possession of arms?
What makes young Americans open fire against their professors and
classmates? Is such violence uncontrollable because it’s part of a
culture daily seen in imperial wars? How to stop this symptom of a
deranged society?
The worst shooting yet at a U.S. school took place this Monday in
Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, where 33 people were killed –
including the attacker– and no less than 26 wounded.
Hours after the massacre the killer’s identity, and his motives, were still
unrevealed, but his name will swell an already long list: Charles
Whitman, who killed 15 at the University of Texas and his own home
in 1966; Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Columbine’s two famous
teenagers who left 13 victims behind before killing themselves; the
man who murdered 10 Amish girls at a Pennsylvania school last
October, and many others whose outbursts of irrational hatred have
been for years blamed on stress, depression, everyday violence,
sadistic computer games, horror films, drugs, broken homes, harsh
punishment or mistreatment by schoolteachers or classmates, real or
imaginary trauma or thirst for fame, among plenty of others.
However, there are many who assure that such acts of savagery could
be prevented were the perpetrators unable to get hold of the murder
weapon so easily or laws enacted against the existing social and
official encouragement to carry a weapon.
CAPTION
A desperate mother looking for her son. Photo: AP
As the 8th anniversary of Columbine is drawing near (April 20), many
are concerned that nothing has been done in the U.S. to put a check
on or face up to such a far-reaching problem. The National Rifle
Association remains as influential as ever before and the gun
manufacturers keep feathering their nest without any setbacks. The
cult of violence is America’s distinctive feature.
This time there were two shootings at Virginia Tech. First, at around 7
a.m., the man charged against a dormitory, where he killed two. A
couple of hours later, the students were warned –by e-mail!– to
beware, right when he had extended his killing spree to classrooms in
Norris Hall. Panic and confusion spread all over campus and among its
25 000 students, including cadets. According to witnesses, many of
them were jumping out the windows as SWAT squads wearing helmets
and bulletproof vests and armed with assault rifles stormed the
building.
To show his grief, President George W. Bush made a statement where
he said that both he and Laura were praying for the victims, their
families, and the University community «devastated by this terrible
tragedy»... Nevertheless, his spokeswoman Dana Perino made one
thing clear: «The president believes people have right to have
weapons, but all laws must be followed». A sinister mockery that
leaves the door open to further killers...
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23) 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."
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24) 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.
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25) 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.
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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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
US Troop Deaths Up 21 Percent in Iraq "Surge"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041507A.shtml
Tax Returns Rise for Immigrants in U.S. Illegally
By NINA BERNSTEIN
April 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/nyregion/16immig.html?ref=us
Virginia Tech Shooting Kills at Least 31
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and ANAHAD O’CONNOR
April 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/16cnd-shooting.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Western Terror Acts in Cuba Mirror Those in Zim
The Herald (Harare)
INTERVIEW
April 14, 2007
Posted to the web April 14, 2007
http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200704140038.html
Quantum Secrets of Photosynthesis Revealed
Contact: Lynn Yarris (510) 486-5375, lcyarris@lbl.gov
April 12, 2007
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-quantum-secrets.html
Conclusions Are Reported on Teaching of Abstinence
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, April 14 (AP) — Students who participated in sexual
abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those
who did not, according to a study ordered by Congress.
Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes
reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners
as those who did not attend the classes. And they first had
sex about the same age as other students — 14.9 years, according
to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.
The federal government spends about $176 million a year promoting
abstinence until marriage. Critics have repeatedly said they
did not believe the programs worked.
Bush administration officials cautioned against drawing sweeping
conclusions from the study, saying the four programs were some
of the very first established after Congress overhauled the
nation’s welfare laws in 1996.
Officials said one lesson they learned from the study was that
the abstinence message should be reinforced in subsequent years.
“This report confirms that these interventions are not like
vaccines,” said Harry Wilson, associate commissioner of the Family
and Youth Services Bureau at the federal Administration for Children
and Families. “You can’t expect one dose in middle school, or
a small dose, to be protective all throughout the youth’s high
school career.”
April 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/washington/15sex.html
Cuba: Ally Says Castro Has Resumed Some Duties
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing | Americas
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela told a news conference
that his close friend and ally Fidel Castro had “almost totally
recovered” from his illness and had “reassumed a good part
of his duties” as Cuba’s leader, although not formally.
Mr. Chávez has regularly offered updates on Mr. Castro’s
health in the more than eight months since the Cuban leader
underwent emergency intestinal surgery and ceded his leadership
responsibilities to his brother Raúl. The Cuban foreign minister,
Felipe Pérez Roque, traveling in Vietnam, also said that Mr. Castro,
who is 80, had resumed some of his leadership responsibilities.
“He receives reports about the country’s situation and is directly
involved in managing some important issues,” Mr. Roque said.
April 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/world/americas/14briefs-castro.html
Canadian Rail Workers Reject Contract Offer
By IAN AUSTEN
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/business/worldbusiness/12rail.html
Battle Over the Banlieues
By DAVID RIEFF
April 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15elections.t.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
The New Suburban Poverty
by EYAL PRESS
[from the April 23, 2007 issue]
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070423&s=press
Canadian Auto Workers occupy parts
plant in Scarborough, Ontario
By Julian Benson from Toronto
Thursday, 12 April 2007
http://www.marxist.com/canadian-auto-workers-occupation110407.htm
U.S. Is Extending Tours of Army
By DAVID S. CLOUD
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12military.html
Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture’s Novelist, Dies
By DINITIA SMITH
April 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html?hp
Robert Fisk: Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad
"Revealed: a new counter-insurgency strategy to carve up
the city into sealed areas. The tactic failed in Vietnam.
So what chance does it have in Iraq?"
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2439530.ece
Published: 11 April 2007
Refugees Speak of Escape from Hell
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail
"DAMASCUS, Apr 11 (IPS) - Refugees from Iraq scattered
around Damascus describe hellish conditions in the country
they managed to leave behind."
April 11, 2007
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/syria/000565.php#more
Manhattan: Leash-Free Dogs at Night in City Parks
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
The Parks and Recreation Department announced yesterday
that a policy of allowing dogs off leashes during overnight
hours will become effective next month. Beginning May 10,
owners with a license and proof of a current rabies
vaccination will be permitted to let their dogs roam
in designated areas of city parks from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m.
Under an unofficial policy, the department has for years
not given tickets to dog owners who let their pets run
free at night in parks.
April 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/nyregion/11mbrfs-dogs.html
How Trees Might Not Be Green in Carbon Offsetting Debate
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/10/443/
There is climate change censorship - and it's the
deniers who dish it out
"Global warming scientists are under intense pressure
to water down findings, and are then accused
of silencing their critics."
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 10, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2053521,00.html
American Tortured in Iraq Sues Rumsfeld
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040907J.shtml
And These Refugees Are Lucky
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/syria/000561.php#more
Bush Renews Effort on Immigration Plan
By DAVID STOUT
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/washington/09cnd-prexy.html?hp
Ranchers and Army Are at Odds in Old West
By DAN FROSCH
"DENVER, April 6 — Mack Louden worries that his 30,000-acre
ranch sits in the cross hairs of the Army’s plans to expand
its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site at Fort Carson, and he, along
with other Colorado ranchers, are increasingly upset
about the idea.
'Where we live, how we live, it’s all going to die a slow death
if the Army gets our land,' said Mr. Louden, a fourth-
generation rancher from Las Animas County, along the
southern edge of the state."
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09hearing.html?ref=washington
Big Coal Invokes Reverse Nuremberg Defense
Massey Energy's CEO: Just Giving Orders, Not Carrying Them Out
By CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
April 9, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/ccr04092007.html
The political situation in Venezuela – interview
with Yonie Moreno, member of the CMR in Venezuela
By Yonnie Moreno
Monday, 09 April 2007
www.handsoffvenezuela.org/political_situation_venezuela_moreno.htm
FOCUS | US Warplanes Attack Shiites as Civil War Rages in Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040807Z.shtml
FOCUS | Thousands in LA Demand Immigrant Rights
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040807Y.shtml
Pesticides Linked to Honeybee Population Decline
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4279.cfm
Executive Pay: A Special Report
More Pieces. Still a Puzzle.
By ERIC DASH
April 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/business/yourmoney/08pay.html?ref=business
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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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
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[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
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'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
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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
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"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]
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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
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Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/
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George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
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Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
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Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327
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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
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Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
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"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]
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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
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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/
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You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4
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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
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[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]
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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
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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.
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