Tuesday, May 22, 2007

BAUAW NEWSLETTER - TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2007

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

TONIGHT, Tuesday, May 22, 7 P.M.

LABOR'S RESPONSE TO KATRINA

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE?
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

MALCOLM SUBER
PEOPLES HURRICANE RELIEF FUND

REGISTERED NURSE RESPONSE NETWORK
CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION

MEMBERS OF OTHER UNIONS

A Member of the
NEW ORLEANS COMMUNITY Residing in the Bay Area

MIKE BISHOP
UC-BERKELEY VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR

TUESDAY MAY 22nd - 7pm

$5-10 sliding scale donation –
no one turned away for lack of funds

CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION
2200 FRANKLIN STREET, OAKLAND
(near 19th Street BART Station)

Sponsored By The Bay Area Labor
Committee For Peace & Justice/USLAW
For more info: 510-540-0845

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

ARTICLES IN FULL:

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

1) PARAMILITARIES MURDER A MEMBER OF THE PEACE COMMUNITY
THE PARAMILITARIES HAVE MURDERED FRANCISCO PUERTA
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, a CSN volunteer translator)
Friday, May 18, 2007
CSN News
http://www.colombiasupport.net/news/

2) Colombia warlord claims US link to funds
By DARCY CROWE, Associated Press Writer
Thu May 17, 9:32 PM ET
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1102AP_Colombia_Paramilitaries_Scandal.html

3) Appellate Judges Deliberate
Mumia Case on Hold
By DAVE LINDORFF
Weekend Edition
May 19 / 20, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff05192007.html

4) The Immigration Deal
Editorial
May 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/opinion/20sun1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

5) Illegal Migrants Dissect Details of Senate Deal
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and JULIA PRESTON
May 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/20immig.html?hp

6) 226 Juvenile Inmates to Be Freed in Texas
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/20youth.html

7) 13-Year-Old Arrested In School For Writing On Desk
Principal Urges Cops To Arrest Girl For Writing 'Okay'
Apr 5, 2007 7:51 pm US/Eastern
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_095170448.html

8) Jamestown: The Lessons of Indians and Empire
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
May 3, 2007
prisonradio.org

9) Congress: Your Money and Your Life
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
May 8, 2007
prisonradio.org

10) "Sicko"
"Michael Moore's scathing, important look at the U.S. healthcare
system has plenty to rile the far right -- and a lot more to enrage
the larger American public."
By Andrew O'Hehir
May 20, 2007
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/05/20/cannes_4/

11) Fatah Troops Enter Gaza With Israeli Assent
"Hundreds Were Trained in Egypt Under U.S.-Backed Program to Counter Hamas"
Washington Post Foreign Service
May 18, 2007; A01
http://snipurl.com/1l3pa

12) Union Cuts Help Delphi As Salaried Cuts Lag
by David Barkholz/The Automotive News
http://futureoftheunion.com/?p=4549

13) Fear of Eating
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 21, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21krugman.html?hp

14) Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplace of Hip-Hop?
By DAVID GONZALEZ
May 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/nyregion/21citywide.html?ref=nyregion

15) Honduran Diplomat Assails Police
in Shooting of Unarmed Bronx Man
By THOMAS J. LUECK and TANZINA VEGA
May 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/nyregion/21shoot.html?ref=nyregion

16) Buyout to Form Big Company to Train and Treat Prisoners
By KEN BELSON
May 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/nyregion/21prison.html

17) Prisons' budget to trump colleges'
"No other big state spends as much to incarcerate compared
with higher education funding."
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, May 21, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/21/MNG4KPUKV51.DTL

18) Missile kills Hamas official's family
"At least 8 killed, 13 wounded in attack, officials
say; earlier attacks kill 3."
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:17 p.m. ET May 20, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18732661/

19) CANINE INTELLIGENCE
VIA Email from: Greg McDonald
sabocat59@mac.com

20) Book Review: Revolutionary reflections
by Celia Hart Santamaría gives free rein
to her thoughts on the theory
of Revolution and the world today.
By: ULISES ESTRADA LESCAILLE
cultura@bohemia. co.cu

21) ‘We’re the US and We’re Here
to Help Your Nation’
The Dark Side of Democracy Promotion
By Paul Bouchheit
http://www.counterpunch.org/buchheit05212007.html

22) American Cities and the Great Divide
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 22, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/opinion/22herbert.html?hp

23) Macho Mistakes at Ground Zero
Editorial
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/opinion/22tue1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

24) Cocaine Wars Make Port Colombia’s Deadliest City
By SIMON ROMERO
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/world/americas/22colombia.html?ref=world

25) Insights Into a Terrorist-Supporting Country
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
VIA email from: Howard Keylor
howardkeylor@comcast.net

26) Raul Castro's daughter blasts homophobia
VIA Email from: WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer - photographer - activist
http://www.walterlippmann.com

27) Tale of last 90 minutes of woman's life
County officials express dismay at the events surrounding
the recent controversial death at King-Harbor hospital.
One nurse has resigned.
By Charles Ornstein
Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-king20may20,0,6057993.story?coll=la-home-center

28) REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
THE ENGLISH SUBMARINE
By Fidel Castro Ruz
May 21, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/reflexiones/ing-009.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

1) PARAMILITARIES MURDER A MEMBER OF THE PEACE COMMUNITY
THE PARAMILITARIES HAVE MURDERED FRANCISCO PUERTA
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, a CSN volunteer translator)
Friday, May 18, 2007
CSN News
http://www.colombiasupport.net/news/

The continual killings, attacks and threats against our operation
have not stopped. Every manner of destruction is used against us.
They are using social investment as a war weapon, along with
pressure, killing and threats of the paramilitaries, acting in
conjunction with the armed forces. Our historic obligation,
considering our alternative search for respect for the civilian
population in the midst of the armed conflict, is to report all of
their deeds, so that humanity may one day judge these terrorist
actions. Once again we have to report a new murder in contravention
of the humanitarian zones and against our community:

--Today, Monday, May 14 at 7 a.m., in front of the bus terminal in
Apartado, FRANCISCO PUERTA was murdered by the paramilitaries. He
was a farm leader and the ex-coordinator of the humanitarian zone in
the town of Miramar. Two paramilitaries came up to the store that’s
in front of the terminal. He was sitting there and they shot him
several times. Then they just walked off as if nothing had happened,
in the midst of the police that were all around.

In the same way, today at 7:30 a.m., there was a group of six
paramilitaries, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying long guns,
in El Mangolo, along with another four paramilitaries, also dressed
in civilian clothes and carrying pistols. There were soldiers and
police within two minutes of this paramilitary presence.

--On May 13, a businessman from Apartado came to San Josesito at
about 10:40 a.m., looking to buy some pigs. He told several people
in the community that the paramilitaries are talking in the
neighborhoods of Apartado and saying that they are going to carry out
a massacre in the Peace Community.

--On May 9 at 7:10 a.m., three farmwomen who belong to the community
were detained by three paramilitaries in El Mangolo. El Mangolo is
located as you are leaving Apartado heading for San Jose. The three
men were dressed in civilian clothes and carried pistols and radios
for communication. They said they were “Aguilas Negras” (a new
organization of paramilitaries). They told the women they had been
looking for them and they were going to kill them. They took them to
where the road leads away from Apartado, a place where the police
have a checkpoint.

There the police asked for their identification and started calling
by radio, giving the information on the three of them. The answer on
the radio was that these women were not the ones they were looking
for and that the police should note it down and let them go.
Immediately the three paramilitaries took photos of them told them
that if they said anything about what happened, they would kill them;
that they were going to continue to be around the area because the
orders are to start killing the people in that son-of-a-bitching
peace community.

The paramilitaries continued to ridicule them and told them that they
had a list, that they had gotten away this time but that they
shouldn’t claim any triumph because the paramilitaries had already
been ordered to go into San Josesito, la Union and the other towns
and carry out a massacre.

The women told the paramilitaries that they ought not to do that and
the paramilitaries answered angrily that it had already been
coordinated and the order had been given and that you don’t fool with
the police and with the Army. You have to respect them, they said,
and they said the Army and the police had already given them the
names of those who were to be killed.

The paramilitaries asked the women about some of the leaders of the
community and their wives or partners. They said that those sons of
bitches would not get away, that all the area of San Jose was
entirely guerrilla, and that after two years of having the police
there, there were only a few that would work with them. The others
all were pimps and collaborators with the guerrillas.

After keeping them there for half an hour and continuing to insult
and threaten them, they let them go, repeating that they would be
killed if they said anything about what happened.

These facts are proof of the murderous paramilitary actions that the
government is trying to hide. A new wave of killings of leaders of
the humanitarian zones is starting, with new deadly acts against the
community, as we have reported before.

This plan of extermination by the government against our community
has failed again, as we do not intend to back down on our
principles. We continue more firmly than ever. We are encouraged to
continue openly with our search and we have the solidarity of many
people at the national and international level—people who believe in
a different and just world. The work of FRANCISCO and his memory
give us the strength to continue in even greater solidarity with his
children and his family.

PEACE COMMUNITY OF SAN JOSE DE APARTADO

May 14, 2007

CSN recommends that you send messages to your Members of Congress
expressing outrage for this killing and question if the paramilitary
demobilization really took place in that region of Apartado . Call
for a full and impartial investigation into the killing of Francisco
Puerta and into the reported paramilitary threats against the Peace
Community. Request from the following Colombian authorities to take a
decisive action to confront and dismantle paramilitaries operating in
this region and to break their relations with the security forces.

APPEALS TO:

President of the Republic
Señor Presidente Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Presidente de la República, Palacio de Nariño, Carrera 8 No.7-2,
Bogotá, Colombia
Fax: +57 1 337 5890 / 342 0592
Salutation: Dear President Uribe

Minister of the Interior and Justice
Dr. Carlos Holguín Sardi
Ministro del Interior y Justicia
Ministerio Del Interior Y De Justicia, Carrera 9a. No. 14-10, Bogotá
D.C. Colombia
Fax: +57 1 560 46 30
Salutation: Dear Sir

Attorney General
Dr. Mario Germán Iguarán Arana
Fiscal General de la Nación, Fiscalía General de la Nación
Diagonal 22B (Av. Luis Carlos Galán No. 52-01) Bloque C, Piso 4
Bogotá, Colombia
Fax: + 57 1 570 2000 (a message in Spanish will ask you to enter
extension 2017)
Salutation: Dear Mr Iguarán

COPIES TO:
Human Rights Ombudsman
Sr. Volmar Antonio Pérez Ortiz, Defensor del Pueblo, Defensoría del
Pueblo
Calle 55, No. 10-32/46 oficina 301, Bogotá, Colombia

Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

2) Colombia warlord claims US link to funds
By DARCY CROWE, Associated Press Writer
Thu May 17, 9:32 PM ET
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1102AP_Colombia_Paramilitaries_Scandal.html

BOGOTA, Colombia -- A warlord accused of spearheading civilian
massacres claimed Thursday that some U.S. companies who buy
Colombia's bananas had made regular payments to his illegal
right-wing militias.

Imprisoned paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso did not specify why
the companies would have paid money, but the militias commonly
exacted "war taxes" from businesses and ranchers in areas where they
operated, countering extortion tactics carried out by leftist rebels.

Mancuso claimed in his testimony that the companies "paid one cent
for each box of bananas they exported," according to Jesus Vargas, a
lawyer for victims of paramilitary violence who was present at the
hearing, to which the press was barred.

He named Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte as having made such payments,
according to Vargas. Mancuso's lawyer, Hernando Benavides, confirmed
his client's testimony.

A spokesman for California-based Dole Food Co. denied the accusation.

"Recent press accounts implicating Dole with illegal organizations in
Colombia is absolutely untrue," said Marty Ordman.

Messages seeking comment left with the other fruit companies that
operate in Colombia were not immediately returned.

Chiquita Brands International Co. has acknowledged paying
paramilitaries $1.7 million over six years. Chiquita says the
payments were made to protect the safety of its workers but
Colombia's chief prosecutor has said companies that made such
payments shared the responsibility for paramilitary violence. In an
agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, the company paid a $25
million fine.

Mancuso — who was testifying as part of a peace deal with the
government — and about 60 other jailed warlords ordered the massacres
of about 10,000 people, many civilians, over a period of about 10
years beginning in the mid-1990s, according to Colombia's chief
prosecutor. They also stole millions of acres of land.

In his testimony, he also accused Colombians beverage giants Postobon
and Bavaria of paying "taxes" to the paramilitaries in return for
permission to operate along the Atlantic coast, a longtime stronghold
of the illegal militia.

"Bavaria has not made payments of any kind to illegal groupings
operating in various areas in Colombia," a company statement said.

Mancuso also said that the coal companies that operated in the
province of Cesar, home to one of the world's largest coal reserves,
paid "taxes", and that the companies that transported coal paid
$70,000 a month to the paramilitaries.

Wealthy landowners and drug traffickers first created the
paramilitaries in the early 1980s to protect them from rebel
extortion and kidnapping but the groups have since largely
degenerated into murderous gangs.

The paramilitaries, known by their Spanish acronym AUC, were listed
as a "foreign terrorists organization" in 2001 by the U.S. government.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

3) Appellate Judges Deliberate
Mumia Case on Hold
By DAVE LINDORFF
Weekend Edition
May 19 / 20, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff05192007.html

Momentous decisions are ahead in the 25-year-long case
of Philadelphia death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal,
following a hearing before a three-judge panel of the
Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia Thursday.

Assistant District Attorny Hugh Burns, who has been the
lead attorney for the Philadelphia DA on this case since
at least 1995, and who heads the appeals unit, went
up against San Francisco death penalty appellate
attorney Robert R. Bryan, who assumed the role of
lead attorney for Abu-Jamal in 2003.

Abu-Jamal, who was not present at the packed hearing
in the ceremonial courtroom of the Federal Courthouse
across from the Liberty Bell museum in Philadelphia,
had three claims before the Appellate Court, all
challenging his conviction for the 1981 murder of
Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Judith
Ritter, Abu-Jamal's local counsel, argued argued
against a claim by the District Attorney to overturn
a 2001 decision by a lower federal court which threw
out his death sentence. Christina Swarns, a counsel
with the NAACP Legal defense Fund, argued in support
of Abu-Jamal's appeal as a "friend of the court."

The two-and-a-half-hour hearing began with prosecutor
Burns tryng to make the case that Federal District
Judge William Yohn had erred in vacating Abu-Jamal's
death sentence. Judge Yohn had ruled in 2001 that an
ambiguous and poorly worded jury verdict form, and an
even more ambiguous instruction from the judge in the
case, Albert Sabo, had left jurors believing, wrongly,
that they had to all agree on any mitigating circumstances
before weighing them in their decision as to the death
penalty. In fact, any one juror can find a mitigating
circumstance, while a death penalty decision must be
unanimous. Burns claimed that Yohn's basis for his
ruling was flawed. But all three of the judges-Chief
Judge Anthony Scirica and Judge Robert Cowen, both
Reagan appointees, and Thomas Ambro, a Clinton appointee-
seemed to take a dim view of Burns' arguments. Judging
from their challenging questions to Burns, and their
generally favorable questions to Abu-Jamal's attorneys,
it seemed likely that they would, in the end, uphold
Yohn's decision.

If they do, Abu-Jamal's death sentence would be lifted
once and for all. At that point, the DA would have 180
days to decide whether to seek a retrial on just his
sentence (not guilt). Several years ago, in an interview
with this reporter, Joseph McGill, the original prosecutor
at Abu-Jamal's trial, said the DA's office had apparently
not decided whether it would seek a retrial on the death
penalty if Yohn was upheld on appeal, as this would
require impaneling a new jury, and essentially retrying
the case, since a new jury would not know the issues
leading to conviction. The DA has to realize that a
death sentence would be much harder to win in today's
Philadelphia, where it would be much harder for the
prosecution to obtain a jury of 10 whites and two blacks,
as it managed to do for the trial in 1982. Also, in 1982,
Jamal had an attorney who had never handled a death penalty
case before, and he didn't even attempt to bring in witnesses
to offer mitigating evidence against a death sentence.

A definitive end to Abu-Jamal's death sentence, even if
his conviction remained in place or on appeal, would mean
a major change in his status. For one thing, the DA's
office would no longer be able, as it has done since 2001,
to pressure the courts into keeping him locked away in
solitary confinement on the state's super-max death
row outside Pittsburgh.

On the conviction issues, the court and Abu-Jamal's
attorneys focused on a claim that his jury had been
unconstitutionally purged of African Americans by
a prosecutor who had a history of removing blacks
from capital juries-a so-called Batson claim (after
the US Supreme Court decision in 1986). The main
presentation of the case by attorney Bryan was
hampered by frequent questions from the judges, who
kept asking for more evidence than just the undisputed
fact that prosecutor McGill had used peremptory
challenges to remove 10 otherwise qualified black
jurors from the jury, compared with only five whites.
Bryan pointed out that McGill had made his concern
about black jurors clear when, during the trial,
he raised an alarm that a black judge had entered
the courtroom and sat near Abu-Jamal's supporters
in the spectators' gallery. Reading from the court
transcript, Bryan noted that McGill had said,
"If the court pleases, the two black jurors may
know him." (Of course, as Abu-Jamal's then attorney
Anthony Jackson noted, there was an equal chance
any of the white jurors might have known the judge,
but McGill didn't seem to care about them.) In his
written brief to the court, Bryan also notes that
McGill, over the course of six capital trials
including Abu-Jamal's, used peremptory challenges
to strike 74 percent of qualified black jurors,
compared to only 25 percent of white jurors. That
brief also notes that over Ed Rendell's two terms
as Philadelphia district attorney, when the man
who is now Pennsylvania's governor was McGill's boss,
the DA's office struck black jurors in capital cases
58 percent of the time, compared to only 22 percent
of the time for whites. (Indeed, in 1982, and until
the high court's Batson ruling in 1986, the
Philadelphia DA actually followed a state supreme
court decision called Henderson, which ruled that
it was permissible for prosecutors to strike blacks
from a jury if they thought they might tend to favor
a defendant of the same race.)

Prosecutor Burns, for his part, focused on an argument
that Abu-Jamal's jury bias claim had been forfeited
on procedural grounds because he allegedly had not
made it soon enough-either during his trial or in
the early stages of his state court appeal. This
argument was weakened by the fact that the Supreme
Court only made race-based jury selection clearly
illegal in 1986, well after Abu-Jamal's trial, and
by the fact that documentary scientific evidence
of the Philadelphia prosecutor's systematic rejection
of black jurors did not come to light until after 1997,
after Abu-Jamal's state appeal had been exhausted.

At least one judge, Ambro, seemed clearly sympathetic
with Abu-Jamal's Batson claim. The other two judges
were harder to read, as they asked tough questions
of both Bryan and Burns. One judge, Cowen, on several
occasions suggested the improbable possibility that
since nobody knew the racial mix of the Abu-Jamal
jury pool, it "might have been" majority African-
American, "in which case the prosecutor's peremptory
challenges might be seen as having been biased against
whites." This view is clearly preposterous in a city
where the court system had been--and to some extent
still is--struggling to obtain an appropriate representation
of African Americans on juries. Indeed, back in 1982, the
city was still using only voter registration lists to call
people to jury duty, and blacks at that time, while
constituting 40 percent of the city's population, were
notoriously under-represented on the voter rolls. Years
later, following a federal lawsuit, the city has changed
its method for compiling jury pools, but a lawyer long
familiary with the issue says it would have been "almost
inconceivable" for there to have been a majority black
jury pool in 1982 under the old system.

If at least two of the three judges on the Third Circuit
panel were to find prima facie evidence of a Batson violation
in Abu-Jamal's trial, they would likely send the case back
to the Federal District Court, where Judge Yohn would be
ordered to hold a full evidentiary hearing on the issue.
In general, courts have held that the threshold for proving
a prima facie case of a Batson violation--and thus winning
an evidentiary hearing--is fairly low, while proving an
actual case of bias--and winning a new trial--can be
much harder.

The second appeal claim by Abu-Jamal--that his trial
had been unconstitutionally tainted by a summation
statement to the jury by prosecutor McGill in which
he told jurors their guilty verdict would "not be final"
because Abu-Jamal would have "appeal after appeal," was
given relatively short shrift at the hearing, because
of the time spent on the Batson issue. Nonetheless it
won support from a surprising quarter.

Prosecutor Burns argued to the court that they should
not even be considering the issue, since the US Supreme
Court has never ruled that such clearly improper
language by a prosecutor should undo a conviction--
only a death sentence. But Judge Cowen, looking
incredulous, asked Burns, "Isn't saying that undermining
a defendant's right to a fair trial?"

If Cowen took that question seriously--and feels that
telling jurors that their judgment isn't really final,
could undermine the concept of "proof beyond a reasonable
doubt"-then he could be considering overturning the
guilty verdict. If a second judge went along with his
view, that would mean a new trial for Abu-Jamal--except
for the fact that the DA would certainly appeal such
a decision to the US Supreme Court, (which would be
bound to consider it, because of such a ruling's
far-reaching implications).

There was no discussion of Abu-Jamal's third claim,
which was that his post-conviction hearing had been
constitutionally flawed because of a pro-prosecution
bias on the part of Judge Albert Sabo, the same judge
who had presided over his trial. The fact that there
was no argument on this claim by either side doesn't
matter much, since both sides have filed detail briefs
with the court, as they also did on the other claims.
Apparently, the three judges had no major questions
for either side regarding their respective arguments.

There is no specific timetable for the court to decide
on the four claims before it, though some attorneys
predict a decision can probably be expected in one
or two months.

Outside the courtroom, in the plaza in front of the
courthouse, and along 6th Street, several hundred
pro-Abu-Jamal demonstrators, many carrying "Free Mumia"
signs, staged a spirited demonstration. Inside the
courtroom, Abu-Jamal supporters filled most of the
seats reserved for spectators. Near the front sat
Officer Faulkner's widow, Maureen, and several family
members and supporters, who were allowed to enter
the courtroom via a private entrance while other
spectators had to go through security gates and
line up at the courthouse's main entrance.

Prosecutor McGill was also in attendance.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an
Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-
Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled
"This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common
Courage Press. Information about both books and other
work by Lindorff can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

4) The Immigration Deal
Editorial
May 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/opinion/20sun1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

The immigration deal announced in the Senate last week poses
an excruciating choice. It is a good plan wedded to a repugnant
one. Its architects seized a once-in-a-generation opportunity
to overhaul a broken system and emerged with a deeply flawed
compromise. They tried to bridge the chasm between brittle
hard-liners who want the country to stop absorbing so many
outsiders, and those who want to give immigrants — illegal
ones, too — a fair and realistic shot at the American dream.

But the compromise was stretched so taut to contain these
conflicting impulses that basic American values were uprooted,
and sensible principles ignored. Many advocates for immigrants
have accepted the deal anyway, thinking it can be improved
this week in Senate debate, or later in conference with the
House of Representatives. We both share those hopes and
think they are unrealistic. The deal should be improved.
If it is not, it should be rejected as worse than a bad
status quo.

The good. Part of the compromise is strikingly appealing.
It is the plan to give most of the estimated 12 million
immigrants here illegally the chance to live and work
without fear and to become citizens eventually. The
conditions are tough, including a $5,000 fine, and a wait
until certain “trigger” conditions on border security
are met and immigration backlogs are cleared. It requires
heads of households to apply in their home countries,
sending them on a foolish “touchback” pilgrimage. That
is a large concession to Republican hard-liners, but
they, too, have come a long way: consider that last
year the House of Representatives wanted to brand the
12 million and those who gave them aid as criminals.
A winding and expensive path to citizenship is still
a path.

The bad. The deal badly erodes two bedrock principles
of American immigration: that employers can sponsor
immigrants to fill jobs and that citizens and legal
permanent residents have the right to sponsor family
members — young children and spouses, of course, but
also their grown children, siblings and parents. The
proposal would eliminate several categories of family-
based immigration, and it would distribute green cards
according to a point-based system that shifts the
preference toward those who have education and skills
but not necessarily roots in this country. Supporters
say that the proposal has been tweaked to give some
weight to kinship, and that many immigrants would
still be able to bring loved ones in. But the repellent
truth is that countless families will be split apart
while we cherry-pick the immigrants we consider brighter
and better than the poor, tempest-tossed ones we used
to welcome without question.

The awful. The agreement fails most dismally in its
temporary worker program. “Temporary means temporary”
has been a Republican mantra, motivated by the thinly
disguised impulse to limit the number of workers,
Latinos mostly, doing the jobs Americans find most
distasteful. The deal calls for the creation of a new
underclass that could work for two years at a time,
six at the most, but never put down roots. Immigrants
who come here under that system — who play by its rules,
work hard and gain promotions, respect and job skills —
should be allowed to stay if they wish. But this deal
closes the door. It offers a way in but no way up,
a shameful repudiation of American tradition that
will encourage exploitation — and more illegal
immigration.

It is painful, for many reasons, to oppose this
immigration deal. It is no comfort to watch as this
generation’s Know-Nothings bray against “amnesty”
from their anchor chairs and campaign lecterns,
knowing that it gives hope to the people they hate.

It is especially difficult because lives are in the
balance. The millions without documents live in
constant fear: a campaign of federal raids has
spread panic and shattered families. Congress’s
dithering has encouraged the rise of homegrown
zealots: mayors, police departments, county executives
and legislators who take reform into their own hands,
with cruelly punitive measures. No amount of hostile
legislation is going to drive the immigrants away.
A collapsed immigration deal could put off reform
for years, and encourage more of this cruelty.

It is the nation’s duty to welcome immigrants, to
treat them decently and give them the opportunity
to assimilate. But if it does so according to the
outlines of the deal being debated this week, the
change will come at too high a price: The radical
repudiation of generations of immigration policy,
the weakening of families and the creation of
a system of modern peonage within our borders.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

5) Illegal Migrants Dissect Details of Senate Deal
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and JULIA PRESTON
May 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/20immig.html?hp

TUCSON, May 19 — Under the shade of a mesquite tree here
one morning this week, waiting for work that did not come,
Elías Ramírez weighed the hurdles of what could be the
biggest overhaul in immigration law in two decades.

To become full legal residents, under a compromise Senate
leaders announced Thursday, Mr. Ramírez and other illegal
immigrants would have to pay a total of $5,000 in fines,
more than 14 times the typical weekly earnings on the
streets here, return to their home countries at least
once, and wait as long as eight years. During the wait,
they would have limited possibilities to bring other
family members.

“Well, it sounds difficult, but not impossible,” said
Mr. Ramírez, 24, a native of Chiapas, Mexico, who has
been here a year. “I would like to be here legally
in the future, so these things are what I might
have to do.”

Another man among the group gathered outside a church
here that serves as a hiring site for day laborers
overheard Mr. Ramírez and approached with disdain.

“It’s almost impossible to bring your family,” he said,
rattling off information he had gleaned from a Spanish-
language newspaper. “You have to go back first, and what
are you going to do in Mexico while you are there and
there is no work? I’ve been here 20 years and I still
work and support my family, so why would I do any
of these things?”

The compromise bill has offered a glimmer of hope to
illegal immigrants here, 60 miles from the border, and
elsewhere. But they and others, through news reports,
advocates and lawyers, are just now learning the fine
print.

Advocacy groups here said they would lobby lawmakers
to reject the bill, saying it would place onerous
restrictions on illegal workers who want to win legal
status and also hurt efforts to unify immigrant families.

“This is an unprecedented shift from family unity
being the cornerstone of our immigration policy,” said
Isabel Garcia, a lawyer and a chairwoman of Derechos
Humanos, an advocacy group here. Ms. Garcia also objected
to what she called “insurmountable” obstacles in the bill.

The compromise Senate bill proposes an initiative to give
legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.
It also portends a major shift in the priorities and values
of American immigration for the future. It would gradually
change a system based primarily on family ties, in place
since 1965, into one that favors high-skilled and highly
educated workers who want to become permanent residents.

In the future, low-skilled workers like the men waiting
for work here would largely be channeled to a vast new
temporary program, where they would be allowed to work
in the United States for three stints of two years each,
broken up by one-year stays in their homeland.

“This is a different architecture,” said Doris Meissner,
a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute,
a nonpartisan research group in Washington, and
commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service from 1993 to 2000.

Illegal workers already here would gain a provisional
legal status, known as a Z visa, fairly quickly. But
to become permanent residents they would have to pay
the big fines and get in an eight-year line behind
others who have already applied legally for green cards,
as permanent resident visas are known.

Still, despite the outcry from immigrant advocates,
a reading of the details of the legislation suggests
important benefits for relatives of legal immigrants
and naturalized American citizens who have been waiting
for green cards for as long as 22 years in some cases.

A first step is to eliminate, within eight years, the
backlog of 4 million people who have applied to come
legally to the United States, allotting 440,000 visas
a year for that purpose, according to summaries provided
by the Department of Homeland Security and the office
of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat
who was a chief author of the bill.

“We are adding to our family-based system, we are not
substituting merit for family,” said Laura Capps,
a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy.

After the backlog is cleared, a slowly increasing number
of permanent visas would be approved through a merit
system, based on points granted for English language
proficiency (an acute hurdle for the men waiting for
work here, as none spoke English), level of education
and job skills, among other factors.

Siblings and adult children of legal immigrants will
no longer be able to apply for visas, and visas for
parents of United States citizens will be limited
to 40,000 a year.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President
Bush said that the measure “will improve security
at our borders. It will give employers new tools
to verify the employment status of workers and hold
businesses to account for those they hire.”

Mr. Bush added, “The legislation will clear the backlog
of family members who’ve applied to come to our country
lawfully, and have been waiting patiently in line. This
legislation will end chain migration by limiting the
relatives who can automatically receive green cards
to spouses and minor children. And this legislation will
transform our immigration system so that future immigration
decisions are focused on admitting immigrants who have
the skills, education, and English proficiency that will
help America compete in a global economy.”

The immigration debate has long stirred politics, sometimes
dividing members of the same party and forcing lawmakers
to reconsider positions. This bill is no different.

Last year, as he sought re-election, Senator Jon Kyl
of Arizona, a Republican, was critical of giving illegal
immigrants legal status. But this week Mr. Kyl stood with
John McCain, Arizona’s senior senator and a candidate
for the Republican presidential nomination, as the
compromise was announced, saying ideological sacrifices
had to be made.

The proposal, though, divided the two Democratic members
of Congress from here in southern Arizona, Gabrielle
Giffords and Raúl M. Grijalva.

Ms. Giffords called it a positive step while Mr. Grijalva,
whose father was a migrant farm worker, told The Arizona
Daily Star it was “tentative and unfinished.”

In south Tucson, outside the Southside Presbyterian Church,
where immigrants — mostly men — have gathered for decades
to find work, the immigration debate is also playing out
as the men wait for jobs.

There are people like Mr. Ramírez, who spent several years
just over the border in Sonora before finally coming
to Arizona for construction and other work. He has not
seen his family, he said, for 10 years.

Sipping from a bottle filled with ice as the day’s heat
soared, Mr. Ramírez occasionally broke away when pickup
trucks and other vehicles approached, joining others
begging for a day’s work.

The biggest obstacle, Mr. Ramírez said, would probably
be paying the $5,000 in fines on the way to permanent
legal status. He does not have health insurance now,
which he would be required to provide for his family if
he decided to return to Mexico and come back as
a temporary worker. “I don’t know who sells that
or what it costs,” he said.

Still, all in all, “the important thing is saving.
The fines are similar to what we pay polleros,”
Mr. Ramírez said, using a Spanish slang term for
the smugglers who guide people across the border.

Teoforo Valdés, 32, nodded in agreement. He has lived
in and around Tucson for 10 years and still makes
occasional trips home to Sonora, evading the Border
Patrol.

But Mr. Valdés has grown tired of the journey, he said,
and, at least upon first look at the proposal,
sees reason for optimism.

“Right now, we have nothing, no real way to legalize
ourselves,” he said. “This government is giving us
steps and so we have to think how we can take them.”

As the morning wore on, the number of potential employers
driving past grew thin. The workers began to disperse,
though some stayed behind to use the bathroom and
a shower at the church.

Jesús Antonio Rodríguez, 49, who said he was a legal
resident and acts as an informal adviser to the men,
summed up the dilemma.

“People do not believe it but we really do come to work,”
Mr. Rodríguez said. “We are not delinquents here. We have
to work. And we want to cooperate, but everything
is always so hard here.”

Randal C. Archibold reported from Tucson, and Julia
Preston from New York.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

6) 226 Juvenile Inmates to Be Freed in Texas
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/20youth.html

AUSTIN, Tex., May 19 (AP) — The agency that runs the state’s
juvenile prison system said it would release 226 inmates
after a review found their sentences were improperly
extended.

Advocates for Texas Youth Commission inmates and their
families have complained that sentences are often extended
inconsistently or in retaliation for filing grievances.

Jay Kimbrough, who is heading an investigation into
accusations of physical and sexual abuse at the agency’s
facilities, formed a panel to review the records of nearly
all inmates with extended sentences. The six-member panel,
which included community advocates and prosecutors, reviewed
the cases of 1,027 inmates whose sentences were extended.

“For the youth we’re releasing, we did not find that the
extensions were warranted,” an agency spokesman, Jim Hurley,
said Friday. “The others will be reviewed on a regular basis.”

Mr. Hurley said the 226 inmates would be released on parole
as soon as guardians can pick them up or they can be
transferred to an interim halfway house.

The commission incarcerates about 4,700 offenders
ages 10 to 21.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

7) 13-Year-Old Arrested In School For Writing On Desk
Principal Urges Cops To Arrest Girl For Writing 'Okay'
Apr 5, 2007 7:51 pm US/Eastern
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_095170448.html

(CBS) NEW YORK In this day and age where young students are
frequently charged for serious school offenses such
as possessing weapons, dealing drugs, or assaulting
other students on school property, one Brooklyn teen's
arrest may come as a surprise. A 13-year-old girl was
handcuffed and placed under arrest in front of her
classmates in Dyker Heights after she wrote "Okay"
on her desk.

The "suspect," Chelsea Fraser, says she's sorry for
scribbling the word on her desk, but both she and her
mother are shocked at the punishment.

"I'm appalled, because here we have rapists, murderers,
and you're taking a 13-year-old kid? Wasting valuable
manpower to arrest a child who wrote on a desk?"
Fraser's mother Diana Silva told CBS 2.

Police confirm that that's exactly what's written on
her arrest record and for the crime, she's been charged
with criminal mischief and the making of graffiti.
Fraser says the day she marked her desk, she was
wrongly grouped together with troublemakers who had
plastered stickers all over the classroom.

Fraser was arrested at the Dyker Heights Intermediate
School on March 30 along with three other male students.
She says she was made to empty her pockets and take off
her belt. Then she was handcuffed and led out of the
school in front of her classmates and placed in the
back of a police car.

"It was really embarrassing because some of the kids,
they talk, and they're going to label me as a bad kid.
But I'm really not," Fraser said. "I didn't know writing
'Okay' would get me arrested."

"All the kids were ... watching these three boys and
my daughter being marched out with four -- they had
four police officers -- walking them out, handcuffed,"
Silva said. "She goes to me, 'Mommy, these hurt!'"

The students were taken to the 68th Precinct station
house where Silva says they were separated for three
hours. "MY child is 13-years-old -- doesn't it stand
that I'm supposed to be present for any questioning?"
Silva said. "I'm watching my daughter, she's handcuffed
to the pole. I ask the officer has she been there the
entire time? She says, 'Yes.'"

On her report card, under conduct, Fraser has earned all
"satisfactory" marks and one "excellent" mark.

"My daughter just wrote something on a desk. I would have
her scrub it with Soft Scrub on a Saturday morning when
she should be out playing, and maybe a day of in-house
and a formal apology to the principal," Silva said.

CBS 2 contacted both the NYPD and the Board of Education
for a response. The police say the arrests followed
a request by the school's principal. The Board of Education
said the matter is under investigation, adding that
graffiti was found on several desks.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

8) Jamestown: The Lessons of Indians and Empire
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
May 3, 2007
prisonradio.org

It was a bright spring day, May 14th, 1607, when one hundred
and eight men and boys from England went ashore in an area
that we now call Virginia. Before a generation could pass,
the indigenous people would be all but destroyed. They would
become the sad reflection of the English missions
of civilization and Christianizing. Having failed
in this dubious experiment, the soˆcalled Indians would
be reduced to beggars in the land of their fathers.

Jamestown. During this month, and throughout the year,
we may be hearing of memorials or even celebrations
of the English settlement. We‚re taught about the great
English leader, Captain John Smith, and the struggle
of an Indian's chief's daughter, Pocahontas, to save
his life. Her plea for the man's life is as central
to America's founding mythology as the fantastic wolf-fed
children of Romulus and Remus was to Rome. When most
Americans think of America's founding families, they
think more often of Plymouth, Massachusetts, than of
Virginia. England's settlers landed in Virginia thirteen
years before settlers arrived in New England. When local
Indians resolved to let the English starve rather than
endure their harsh treatments, Smith chose to attack
and take what he wanted from his neighbors. As one
recorder noted, "seeing by trade and courtesy there was
nothing to be had, he, Smith, made bold to try such
conclusions as necessity enforced, though contrary
to his commission, let fly his musket, ran his boat
on shore, whereat they all fled into the woods."

Englishmen were poor farmers, and further, many felt
such work beneath them, so they either bartered foodstuffs
from the Indians, stole it, or forced them to work for them.
How many of us know that the first cross-cultural slavery
in the Americas was of Indians, not Africans. The Dominican
friar Bartolomé de las Casas, who accompanied Columbus
on the voyage from Spain, wrote home to request permission
to exploit Africans as slaves because the Indians were
dying too quickly.

Jamestown was four hundred years ago, yet it set a pattern
of conquest, destruction, and self-deception that continues
down to this very day. The history that began with Indians
did not end with them. The successful conquest of Indians
led inexorably to the conquest of a third of Mexico, and
seizure of their lands. It led to the Monroe Doctrine,
looking at the nearest continent as this nation's "backyard."
Jamestown. Four hundred years. Yes, let us celebrate and
commemorate conquest, death and genocide. There's something
to be learned in this. But I doubt it's the lesson we think
it is.

From Death Row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

9) Congress: Your Money and Your Life
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
May 8, 2007
prisonradio.org

With congressional passage of the administration’s
supplemental money bill, the president threatens
a veto because of his aversion to timetables. But
whether he vetoes it or not, the die is cast. More
money for war, a war that never should have been
waged in the first place.

When news broke of the congressional passage,
I thought not of Congress but of a robber, like
the ones of old time movies who snarled, “Your
money or your life.” Congress goes one better,
for it’s your money and your life. For while bowing
to the false political imagery of supporting the
troops, congress has socked more U.S. billions into
a losing proposition to prop up a doddering regime
in Baghdad. The troops trope is a political maneuver
meant to evade the charge that the democratically
controlled Congress is soft on defense and betrayed
the military in the midst of war.

Instead of recognizing the handwriting on the wall,
imperial hubris of left and right feeds the illusion
that more money can save Iraq. Only Iraqis can save
Iraq. What we are witnessing are simply the limits
of U.S. imperial power. When Rome reached the limits
of its stretch, Emperor Hadrian ordered the building
of a wall across Britain's colonial areas. The U.S.
has ordered the building of walls throughout Baghdad,
to further divide an already divided city.
Echoes of empire, echoes of history.

Vietnam was waged years after it was abundantly clear
that peace was inevitable. In that interim, tens
of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands
of Vietnamese, perished in a maelstrom of madness
to save the faces of presidents. A generation later,
although the scope is different, the dismal reality
is the same. More war, more needless death.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

10) "Sicko"
"Michael Moore's scathing, important look at the U.S. healthcare
system has plenty to rile the far right -- and a lot more to enrage
the larger American public."
By Andrew O'Hehir
May 20, 2007
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/05/20/cannes_4/

May. 20, 2007 | "I know the storm awaits me back in the United
States," Michael Moore told a wall-to-wall throng of reporters here
after the Saturday morning press premiere of his new film, "Sicko."
Then he heaved a deep breath and added, "But this is just so pleasant."

It was indeed another gorgeous, summery morning on the French
Riviera, but the real heat was indoors. There wasn't a single empty
seat inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière -- which holds more than 2,000
people -- for "Sicko," and dozens of stragglers were locked out on
the sidewalk. Moore's screed against the outrageous state of American
healthcare was received with uproarious affection, but one might
argue that Cannes provided the softest possible crowd. An American
left-wing populist, attacking America's profit-motive, private-sector
ideology before a roomful of international intellectuals, at least
half of them Europeans. May I introduce a new phrase into the
Franglais dictionary? C'était un slam-dunk.

"Sicko" does not display Moore at his most cinematically inventive or
imaginative. It presents a TV-documentary-style parade of episodes,
characters and settings, bouncing from various American cities to
Canada, Britain, France and Cuba (and yes, don't worry, we'll get to
that). Moore plays a far smaller personal role in this film,
appearing only occasionally in his comic-relief role as the clueless
buffoon who can't seem to grasp that healthcare in all those other
countries is free, or virtually so. When he's eating dinner with a
group of Americans living in Paris who begin to list all the things
they can have as free or nearly free entitlements -- not just
healthcare but an emergency doctor who makes house calls; not just
childcare but a part-time in-home nanny -- Moore puts his hands over
his ears and begins singing "La la la la la." (If you have kids or
any kind of chronic family health problems, your reactions might
include weeping in despair, slitting your wrists or booking a one-way
ticket.)

Still, there is no mistaking the passion and political intelligence
at work in "Sicko." It's both a more finely calibrated film and one
with more far-reaching consequences than any he's made before. Moore
is trying to rouse Americans to action on an issue most of us agree
about, at least superficially. You may know people who will still
defend the Iraq war (although they're less and less eager to talk
about it). But who do you know who will defend the current method of
healthcare delivery, administered by insurance companies whose
central task is to minimize cost and maximize shareholder return?
Americans of many different political stripes would probably share
Moore's conclusions at the press conference: "It's wrong and it's
immoral. We have to take the profit motive out of healthcare. It's as
simple as that."

"Sicko" purposefully does not focus on the 50 million or so Americans
who don't have health insurance, as scandalous as that is, but on the
horror stories of middle-class working folks who believed they were
adequately covered. There are so many of these they begin to blur
into each other: the woman in Los Angeles whose baby was denied
treatment at an emergency room outside her HMO network, and died as
it was being transferred hours later; the woman in Kansas City whose
husband was repeatedly denied various drugs his physician prescribed
for kidney cancer, and who in the last stage of life was denied a
bone-marrow transplant that could have saved his life; the woman who
was told her brain tumor was not a life-threatening illness, and
died; the woman who was told her cancer must have been a preexisting
condition, and died.

One might respond that anecdotes like these have tremendous emotional
power but little analytical rigor, but in this case I think we all
know (and fear) that these worst-case outcomes exemplify the system
perfectly. Moore interviews two healthcare whistle-blowers, both now
plagued with guilt, who explain what should be obvious: The point of
the system is to treat as few people as possible as cheaply as
possible, and those who get ahead in the healthcare industry are
those who find ever more devious ways to deny coverage. (For example,
you can now be denied for certain preexisting conditions you didn't
know about, on the premise that you should have known about them.)

OK, let's get to the headlines: Yes, in the film Moore travels with a
group of ill and injured 9/11 rescue workers (along with several
other of his film's protagonists) to Cuba, where they receive free
and apparently excellent medical treatment. It's unquestionably
another button-pushing Michael Moore stunt, designed to provoke
controversy. It's cheap but funny, dubious as evidence but affecting
anyway. Moore does not even seem aware of the possibility that the
Cubans were shrewd enough to see the propaganda value in this
exercise, and put on a dog-and-pony show for his and our benefit.
(For that matter, we don't know how much of the visit was planned in
advance with Cuban authorities.) All that aside, within the context
of the film and the argument Moore is building, Cuba makes as much
sense as anywhere else.

Moore begins his foreign odyssey in the film after meeting a 22-year-
old Michigan woman who has moved across the Ontario border (not
entirely on the up-and-up) because she's been denied treatment for
cervical cancer. He wanders around emergency rooms in London,
Ontario, and London, England (where he discovers that the cashier's
window is for paying patients their travel expenses, not for settling
the bill). He zips from one Parisian arrondissement to another with
an on-call physician on the night shift. He dines with the
aforementioned Americans abroad, who seem dazed and a little guilty
about their escape from healthcare hell.

Much of this is played as comedy; Moore corners a young Afro-British
couple with a wiggling bundle in the hallway of a London hospital and
says cheerfully, "So -- how much they charge you for that baby?" But
Moore is trying to push us beyond the universally shared idea that
something must be done to the slightly more controversial idea that
something has been done, and that all we have to do is appropriate
it. Americans have of course been conditioned for generations to
believe that socialized medicine is first of all a disaster in its
own terms, and secondly, the pathway to totalitarianism.

His portrayal of the Canadian, British and French systems is
undoubtedly simplistic , and several Canadian reporters took that up
with him at the press conference -- although all of them admitted
they wouldn't trade their system for ours. But Moore's overall point
is, I think, inarguable: Flawed as they may be, those systems are a
hell of a lot more humane and civilized than anything we've got.
(Life expectancy is significantly higher, and infant mortality lower,
in all of those countries than the United States. Whatever outdated
stereotypes you may hold, these days poor people in Britain are
statistically healthier than rich people in America.)

Addressing a series of questions from foreign reporters at the press
conference, Moore said: "We should do what we always do as Americans,
steal the best things you're doing and make them our own. The
Canadians do certain things very well. The Brits do certain things
very well. The French have the best system in the world, and that's
not my opinion. That's how the World Health Organization rates them.
None of them is perfect, but it's not my role to make criticisms.
It's my role as an American to say, why don't we take the best
elements you're doing and blend them together, and call it the
American system?"

Moore decided to go to Cuba, as he explains in the film, after
learning the peculiar irony that detainees at Guantánamo Bay are
entitled to something American citizens are not: free healthcare. In
a brief and awkward scene, he tries to bring a fishing boat with his
9/11 refugees aboard into U.S. waters just off the naval base. They
are refused entry (Moore is evasive about the details) and then seek
treatment at the best hospital in Havana.

"The point of this was not to go to Cuba," Moore said at the press
conference. "The point was to go to Guantánamo Bay, to get the 9/11
workers the same medical care we're giving to members of al-Qaida."
If the detainees had been at a U.S. base in Spain or Italy or
Australia -- all countries with universal healthcare -- he'd have
taken his 9/11 workers there instead. In fact, when Moore drops the
jokes and political attitudinizing during the Cuba sequence, the
pathos of the story makes his point for him: A poor Caribbean island,
whatever its ideology, can afford healthcare for everyone while we do
not. The only possible conclusion is that our society has chosen not to.

When asked about his potential prosecution for violating U.S.
Treasury sanctions against trade with or travel to Cuba, Moore was
uncharacteristically sober. "I know a lot of you have written things
like, 'How dumb are they?'" he said, "but I don't take this lightly.
The Bush administration may try to claim that my footage was obtained
illegally. We haven't discussed this possibility yet, but actions
could be taken to prevent this film from opening on June 29. I know
that sounds crazy to the Americans in the room. I guess it is crazy."

When Americans do get to see "Sicko," Moore says, "They will
understand that this was about helping 9/11 rescue workers who've
been abandoned by the government. They're not going to focus on Cuba
or Fidel Castro or any other nonsense coming out of the Bush White
House. They're going to say: 'You're telling me that al-Qaida
prisoners get better medical treatment than the people who tried to
recover bodies from the wreckage at ground zero?'"

When Moore interviews Tony Benn, a leading figure on the British
left, his larger concerns come into focus. Benn argues that for-
profit healthcare and the other instruments of the corporate state,
like student loans and bottomless credit-card debt, perform a crucial
function for that state. They undermine democracy by creating a
docile and hardworking population that is addicted to constant debt
and an essentially unsustainable lifestyle, that literally cannot
afford to quit jobs or take time off, that is more interested in
maintaining high incomes than in social or political change. Moore
seizes on this insight and makes it a kind of central theme; both in
the film and aloud, at the press conference, he wondered whether some
essential and unrecognized change has occurred in the American
character.

"I hope this film engenders discussion, not just about healthcare,
but about why we are the way we are these days," Moore told us.
"Where is our soul? Why would we allow 50 million Americans, 9
million of them children, not to have health insurance? Maybe my role
as a filmmaker is to go down a road we might be afraid to go down,
because it might lead to a dark place."

Moore's last revelation in "Sicko" is sure to be endlessly debated in
the right-wing blogosphere that is so obsessed with him (and may be
of little interest to ordinary viewers). Some time ago, Jim Kenefick,
proprietor of the especially bilious anti-Moore site Moorewatch,
almost shut down his site to focus on his wife's worsening illness
and escalating healthcare costs. An anonymous donor then sent him
$12,000 to cover his wife's bills and keep the site running. (She has
apparently recovered.) Now that donor has been revealed and, as
Kenefick now says he suspected all along, it turns out to be Michael
Moore.

"I want him to know that it was done with all the best intentions,"
said Moore, adding that he planned to phone Kenefick personally after
the press conference. (According to Kenefick's blog, Moore left him a
voice-mail message later on Saturday.) "I went back and forth about
whether to use that material," Moore went on. "I asked myself, would
you be doing this if it weren't in the film? I decided that I would,
and I should, and that that's the way I think we should live."

Moore says he began exercising and lost 25 pounds while working on
his healthcare film; "I'm actually a fairly skinny person for the
Midwest," he quipped. He says he's tried to maintain a lower public
profile since "Fahrenheit 9/11" and would like Kenefick and his many
other critics to cut him some slack. "You know, I begin to hope that
as I enter the discourse with this film, I might get some kind of a
break. As far as the accuracy of my movies goes, I think the record
speaks for itself. Maybe people will say: He warned us about General
Motors, he warned us about school shootings and he warned us about
Bush."

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

11) Fatah Troops Enter Gaza With Israeli Assent
"Hundreds Were Trained in Egypt Under U.S.-Backed Program to Counter Hamas"
Washington Post Foreign Service
May 18, 2007; A01
http://snipurl.com/1l3pa

JERUSALEM, May 17 -- Israel this week allowed the Palestinian party Fatah to
bring into the Gaza Strip as many as 500 fresh troops trained under a
U.S.-coordinated program to counter Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that
won Palestinian parliamentary elections last year. Fighting between Hamas
and Fatah has left about 45 Palestinians dead since Sunday.

The forces belong to units loyal to the elected Palestinian Authority
president, Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate Fatah leader whom the Bush
administration and Israel have sought to strengthen militarily and
politically. A spokeswoman for the European Union Border Assistance Mission
at Rafah, where the fighters crossed into Gaza from Egypt, said their entry
Tuesday was approved by Israel.

The troops' deployment illustrates the increasingly partisan role that
Israel and the Bush administration are taking in the volatile Palestinian
political situation. The effort to fortify the armed opposition to Hamas,
which the United States and Israel categorize as a terrorist organization,
follows attempts to isolate the radical Islamic movement internationally and
cut off its sources of financial aid.

Israel on Thursday also carried out a series of airstrikes against Hamas
targets across Gaza, killing at least six gunmen. [Additional airstrikes
early Friday killed four people, doctors in Gaza told the Associated Press.]

Fatah, the movement formerly led by Yasser Arafat, has recognized Israel, in
contrast to Hamas, whose charter calls for the creation of a future Islamic
state across territory that now includes the Jewish state. The two
Palestinian parties -- one secular, one Islamic -- have been fighting for
control of various security services and, by extension, political power and
patronage since Hamas won democratic elections in January 2006.

Hamas's militant brand of Islam has given it dominant political standing in
impoverished Gaza, where many of its leaders were born or arrived as
refugees, while Fatah remains strong in the wealthier and more secular West
Bank.

The Bush administration recently approved $40 million to train the
Palestinian Presidential Guard, a force of about 4,000 troops under Abbas's
direct control, but both Israel and the United States, each deeply unpopular
among Arabs in the region, have been trying to avoid the perception of
taking sides in a conflict that this week in Gaza has resembled a nascent
civil war. Many within Fatah are avowed opponents of Israel, and any
alliance with the Jewish state against the militant movement could damage
Fatah's standing among Palestinians.

"We're not the ones giving these forces operational orders. That will be up
to Abbas," said Ephraim Sneh, Israel's deputy defense minister, asserting
that Hamas's arms smuggling from the Sinai and military training in Iran
have given the movement a battlefield advantage. "The idea is to change the
balance, which has been in favor of Hamas and against Fatah. With these
well-trained forces, it will help right that imbalance."

As Palestinian rocket fire into Israel continued Thursday, the Israeli air
force conducted a series of strikes across Gaza, from which Israel withdrew
in 2005 after a nearly four-decade presence.

The airstrikes killed at least six Hamas gunmen that Israeli officials said
were involved in rocket assaults on Israeli towns near Gaza. Among those
killed was Imad Shabanah, a Hamas military leader who Hamas officials
acknowledged had taken part in manufacturing rockets. His car was hit as it
traveled through Gaza City.

"All options for our response are open," said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas
spokesman in Gaza. Some Hamas military leaders said specifically that
"martyrdom operations," or suicide bombings, could be used in retaliation
for the Israeli airstrikes.

Israeli military officials said Palestinian gunmen fired at least 17 rockets
Thursday from Gaza, bringing the three-day total to more than 80. At least
seven fell Thursday in the border town of Sderot, wounding several Israelis
and damaging a synagogue, a high school and a building inside an industrial
park, military officials said. One Israeli woman was seriously wounded by
rocket fire earlier this week, and dozens of others have suffered light to
moderate injuries or have been treated for shock.

A small number of Israeli tanks also pushed just inside northern Gaza, the
first ground operation there this year, and an artillery battery took up
position on the border. Israeli military officials called both deployments
defensive measures.

Israel has used shelling and limited ground operations in the past to stop
Palestinian rocket fire. But the results have never been decisive against a
weapon that is cheap, highly mobile and difficult to detect until it has
been fired. The Israeli tactics have also resulted in many Palestinian
civilian deaths.

"Hamas has essentially gone back to what we always knew they were -- a
terrorist organization acting as a government," said Miri Eisin, spokeswoman
for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "What they are trying to do is drag
Israel back into Gaza after we left every inch of it. We do not want to rule
Gaza."

The factional fighting cooled Thursday in the shadow of Israel's stepped-up
military operations. But Fatah gunmen ambushed a Hamas funeral procession in
Gaza, killing two men in the crowd.

Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to discuss the subject, said the decision to allow Fatah troops
into Gaza this week was based on trying to help Abbas take control of
northern Gaza. That area is the prime launching ground for the erratic if
lethal rockets known as Qassams.

"If you look at exit scenarios for what's going on there now, you could have
a force loyal to Abbas in northern Gaza that could be highly useful to
Israel," one Israeli official said. "But within the larger crisis you have
to be careful. We don't want to be a part of this conflict, so this is a
balancing act."

The troops were trained by Egyptian authorities under a program coordinated
by Lt. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, a special U.S. envoy to the region who has been
working to improve security in Gaza and the West Bank in order to foster
Israeli-Palestinian economic alliances in the short term and peace prospects
over time.

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Dayton
had not yet begun his phase of training Fatah forces because the funding was
only recently approved. He said none of the troops who arrived in Gaza this
week were trained with U.S. funds.

Although it is under Abbas's authority, the Presidential Guard is run by
Mohammed Dahlan, a Fatah lawmaker who has worked closely with several U.S.
administrations. Abbas named Dahlan his national security adviser after
Hamas and Fatah agreed in February to establish a power-sharing government.

The appointment infuriated Hamas leaders, who despise Dahlan for the
crackdown he carried out against them as head of the Preventive Security
branch following the 1993 Oslo accords. Hamas opposed the agreement, which
created the Palestinian Authority.

"This is a complex situation, and we clearly hear Abbas say he wants to stop
terrorism," a second Israeli official said. "But he has not been able to
extend his authority over all of Gaza."

Israeli officials said the forces, whom one Israeli Defense Ministry
official called "Dayton's guys," were trained in Egypt and numbered between
400 and 500 men.

Although Israel handed the Rafah crossing over to Palestinian and Egyptian
control after evacuating Gaza, it maintains the ability to deny entry to
anyone it does not want to pass through the terminal. It frequently employs
this prerogative to prevent known members of armed Palestinian groups from
entering the strip.

Maria Telleria, spokeswoman for the E.U. Border Assistance Mission deployed
at Rafah as part of the turnover agreement, said the men arrived in several
buses. "We had been informed they were arriving," Telleria said. "But this
was coordinated between Israel and the Palestinian government. All we did
was monitor the crossing."

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

12) Union Cuts Help Delphi As Salaried Cuts Lag
by David Barkholz/The Automotive News
http://futureoftheunion.com/?p=4549

Massive U.S. labor cuts are starting to benefit Delphi
Corp.'s bottom line, with the bulk of salaried cuts
still to come.

Delphi, which is trying to emerge from Chapter 11
reorganization, narrowed its U.S.
operating loss to just $11 million in March.

In the first quarter, Delphi's global net loss also
narrowed to $300 million, excluding $233 million of
one-time charges. In the year-earlier quarter, the
net loss was $363 million.

A group of private equity firms led by Appaloosa
Management LP is insisting on lower labor costs
before completing a tentative deal to buy Delphi
for up to $3.4 billion.

Delphi hourly workers are noting the improvement
as well. UAW dissident Gregg Shotwell
questions why union workers should make additional
concessions demanded by Delphi when the supplier's
hourly work force has been cut by nearly 40 percent
since the Chapter 11 filing in October 2005.

"All of the sacrifices are being made on one end,"
said Shotwell, a leader of the dissident group Soldiers
of Solidarity. He is a former Delphi employee who
transferred to General Motors.

Work force restructuring

Plant closings and a GM-financed early retirement
program cut Delphi's unionized U.S. work force
from 33,100 in December 2005 to 20,000 today.

What's more, the new hires who replaced the 20,000
members who took a buyout or early retirement earn
a starting wage of $14 an hour with minimal benefits,
compared with $28 an hour with full benefits for veterans.

The savings are substantial. In the first quarter
alone, the Delphi Steering unit saved $28 million
from having a lower-paid work force, the company
revealed in its first-quarter financial filing
this week.

The unit represents just 10 percent of the $6.7 billion
in Delphi sales posted in the first quarter. So the
companywide savings would have been much greater in
the quarter. Delphi spokeswoman Claudia Piccinin
declined to provide total savings.

Analyst Kirk Ludtke said Delphi's first-quarter results
show "clear evidence of a turnaround in the company's
financial performance." That is especially so in light
of declining North American sales at GM, Delphi's
largest customer, said Ludtke, who works for CRT Capital
Group LLC in Stamford, Conn.

Meanwhile, announced salaried cuts have been slow in
coming. More than a year ago, Delphi said it was cutting
8,500 salaried jobs worldwide. But the company has reduced
its salaried work force by just 1,000, to 36,500 --
or 2.7 percent. If an additional 7,500 salaried workers
had been cut, Delphi would have saved an additional
$562.5 million, assuming a $75,000 per person cost.

Most of Delphi's U.S. salaried workers also have avoided
the ax. While the hourly ranks have fallen 39.6 percent,
or 13,100, since the Chapter 11 filing, Delphi's U.S.
salaried work force has dipped to 13,000 from 14,500,
or 10.3 percent.

Equality of sacrifice?

Shotwell said Delphi's U.S. operations might have been
profitable if the company had made salaried staff cuts
that were equivalent to the sacrifices made by the union.

"How do you justify keeping such a high proportion of
salaried employees to hourly workers?" Shotwell asked.
"You have more than one salaried worker in the U.S. for
every two hourly workers. That's an awfully top-heavy
organization."

Delphi's Piccinin said the company has thinned and
added to the salaried ranks based on the skills required.

The prospective buyers of Delphi want more wage and
benefit cuts. A Delphi proposal to the UAW in late
March asked for wages $1 an hour lower than the $14
starting wage. It also sought to slow raises over the
course of a supplemental UAW contract with Delphi that
expires in 2011. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger vehemently
rejected the contract bid and threatened to strike Delphi
if the company tries to void current labor contracts
through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

The UAW is preparing a counteroffer for Delphi later
this month. Delphi wants to emerge from Chapter 11 this
year, but a deal requires a new labor contract for the
potential buyers.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

13) Fear of Eating
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
May 21, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21krugman.html?hp

Yesterday I did something risky: I ate a salad.

These are anxious days at the lunch table. For all you know,
there may be E. coli on your spinach, salmonella in your
peanut butter and melamine in your pet’s food and, because
it was in the feed, in your chicken sandwich.

Who’s responsible for the new fear of eating? Some blame
globalization; some blame food-producing corporations;
some blame the Bush administration. But I blame
Milton Friedman.

Now, those who blame globalization do have a point.
U.S. officials can’t inspect overseas food-processing
plants without the permission of foreign governments —
and since the Food and Drug Administration has limited
funds and manpower, it can inspect only a small percentage
of imports. This leaves American consumers effectively
dependent on the quality of foreign food-safety enforcement.
And that’s not a healthy place to be, especially when
it comes to imports from China, where the state of food
safety is roughly what it was in this country before
the Progressive movement.

The Washington Post, reviewing F.D.A. documents, found
that last month the agency detained shipments from China
that included dried apples treated with carcinogenic
chemicals and seafood “coated with putrefying bacteria.”
You can be sure that a lot of similarly unsafe and
disgusting food ends up in American stomachs.

Those who blame corporations also have a point. In 2005,
the F.D.A. suspected that peanut butter produced by ConAgra,
which sells the product under multiple brand names, might
be contaminated with salmonella. According to The New York
Times, “when agency inspectors went to the plant that made
the peanut butter, the company acknowledged it had destroyed
some product but declined to say why,” and refused to let
the inspectors examine its records without a written
authorization.

According to the company, the agency never followed through.
This brings us to our third villain, the Bush administration.

Without question, America’s food safety system has degenerated
over the past six years. We don’t know how many times concerns
raised by F.D.A. employees were ignored or soft-pedaled
by their superiors. What we do know is that since 2001 the
F.D.A. has introduced no significant new food safety
regulations except those mandated by Congress.

This isn’t simply a matter of caving in to industry pressure.
The Bush administration won’t issue food safety regulations
even when the private sector wants them. The president of the
United Fresh Produce Association says that the industry’s
problems “can’t be solved without strong mandatory federal
regulations”: without such regulations, scrupulous growers
and processors risk being undercut by competitors more willing
to cut corners on food safety. Yet the administration refuses
to do more than issue nonbinding guidelines.

Why would the administration refuse to regulate an industry
that actually wants to be regulated? Officials may fear that
they would create a precedent for public-interest regulation
of other industries. But they are also influenced by an
ideology that says business should never be regulated,
no matter what.

The economic case for having the government enforce rules
on food safety seems overwhelming. Consumers have no way
of knowing whether the food they eat is contaminated, and
in this case what you don’t know can hurt or even kill you.
But there are some people who refuse to accept that case,
because it’s ideologically inconvenient.

That’s why I blame the food safety crisis on Milton Friedman,
who called for the abolition of both the food and the drug
sides of the F.D.A. What would protect the public from
dangerous or ineffective drugs? “It’s in the self-interest
of pharmaceutical companies not to have these bad things,”
he insisted in a 1999 interview. He would presumably have
applied the same logic to food safety (as he did to airline
safety): regardless of circumstances, you can always trust
the private sector to police itself.

O.K., I’m not saying that Mr. Friedman directly caused tainted
spinach and poisonous peanut butter. But he did help to make
our food less safe, by legitimizing what the historian Rick
Perlstein calls “E. coli conservatives”: ideologues who won’t
accept even the most compelling case for government regulation.

Earlier this month the administration named, you guessed it,
a “food safety czar.” But the food safety crisis isn’t caused
by the arrangement of the boxes on the organization chart.
It’s caused by the dominance within our government of
a literally sickening ideology.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

14) Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplace of Hip-Hop?
By DAVID GONZALEZ
May 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/nyregion/21citywide.html?ref=nyregion

Hip-hop was born in the west Bronx. Not the South Bronx,
not Harlem and most definitely not Queens. Just ask anybody
at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue — an otherwise unremarkable high-rise
just north of the Cross Bronx and hard along the Major Deegan.

“This is where it came from,” said Clive Campbell, pointing
to the building’s first-floor community room. “This is it.
The culture started here and went around the world. But this
is where it came from. Not anyplace else.”

O.K., Mr. Campbell is not just anybody — he is the alpha D.J.
of hip-hop. As D.J. Kool Herc, he presided over the turntables
at parties in that community room in 1973 that spilled into
nearby parks before turning into a global assault. Playing
snippets of the choicest beats from James Brown, Jimmy Castor,
Babe Ruth and anything else that piqued his considerable musical
curiosity, he provided the soundtrack savored by loose-limbed
b-boys (a term he takes credit for creating, too).

Mr. Campbell thinks the building should be declared a landmark
in recognition of its role in American popular culture. Its
residents agree, but for more practical reasons. They want
to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic
Places so that it might be protected from any change that
would affect its character — in this case, a building for
poor and working-class families.

Throughout the city, housing advocates said, buildings like
1520 Sedgwick are becoming harder to find as owners opt out
of subsidy programs so they can eventually charge higher
rents on the open market.

The Sedgwick building is part of the state’s Mitchell-Lama
program, in which private landlords who receive tax breaks
and subsidized mortgages agree to limit their return on
equity and rent to people who meet modest income limits.
The contracts allow owners to leave the program and prepay
their mortgage loan after 20 years. Rent regulations can
protect tenants from increases, but not always.

While Mitchell-Lama buildings in parts of Manhattan, like
the Lower East Side, were among the first to leave the
program, housing experts say that the trend has spread
far beyond, from the Rockaways to the west Bronx.

Tom Waters, a housing policy analyst at the Community
Service Society of New York, said there are about 40,000
Mitchell-Lama units in the city, down from 66,000 in 1990.
The rate of buildings leaving the program has accelerated
since 2001, he said, as landlords find they can do better
on the open market.

Labor groups and housing advocates have called for safeguards
on moderate-income housing, which they said was essential
for the city’s economic health. While the groups have lauded
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for his commitment to building
such housing, they said the State Legislature should address
policies that affect the city’s housing market.

“There is no single solution,” said Ed Ott, executive director
of the New York City Central Labor Council. “Preservation
of currently affordable housing is something we need to
look at. Working people are going to have no place to go.”

In February, tenants of the Sedgwick Avenue building, which
has 100 units, were told that the owners planned to leave
the Mitchell-Lama program. The building’s owners did not
respond to several requests for comment for this article.

Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New
York, said landlords were entitled by contract to opt out
after a set period. He said that if there were concerns
about keeping the buildings in the program, the government
should consider better incentives.

“Contracts should still mean something,” Mr. Spinola said.
“Affordable housing is clearly a problem in the city. I do
not believe the social concerns for citizens of the city
of New York should fall on the backs of one particular
owner when it is a citywide problem.”

The problem has been widespread enough to keep Dina Levy
of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board looking for new
strategies to slow it down. The group, a nonprofit housing
advocacy organization, is advising the Sedgwick tenants.

“The market is so out of control in every corner of every
borough,” said Ms. Levy, director of organizing and policy
for the group. “We have run out of land, so anywhere in
the boroughs can be the next hot real estate market.
That’s why we’re scrambling to find preservation
opportunities to keep them affordable.”

That usually involves seeing if there are mortgage
requirements or land covenants that mandate the property
be used for moderate-income housing, she said. But when
tenants of 1520 Sedgwick came to her group in February,
organizers stumbled on an interesting fact when they searched
for the address online.

“The first hundred hits said ‘birthplace of hip-hop,’ ” said
Dan DeSloover, an organizer for the group. “Kool Herc had
lived there. That was a great coincidence to have this
building be part of that history.”

The idea to have the building declared a landmark as a way
of keeping it affordable for moderate-income families
developed slowly, as organizers discussed it with tenants
and elected officials’ staff members.

Preservationists doubted it would stop the building’s owners
from leaving the subsidy program, since the landmark distinction
would apply to the structure and not necessarily its use.
And there is another obstacle: to be eligible for the National
Register, a building normally has to be at least 50 years old.
The Sedgwick building falls short of that by 12 years.
Exceptions are made for extraordinary cultural significance.

“It is complicated when you try to preserve some other feature
of a building besides its architecture,” said Lisa Kersavage,
a preservationist at the Municipal Art Society of New York.
“But this is a very important cultural touchstone for New York,
and awareness should be raised.”

Cindy Campbell, who promoted the first party where her brother
spun the tunes, is intent on doing at least that. She hopes
that by highlighting the history of the building, where her
family lived for nine years, she might be able to enlist big-
name rappers to Mayor Bloomberg in her campaign to help the
tenants.

She still recalls the first party — on Aug. 11, 1973, she says
— which she dreamed up as a way for her to get some extra money
for back-to-school clothes.

“I didn’t want to go to Fordham Road to buy clothes because
you’d go to school and see everybody with the same thing on,”
she said. “I wanted to go to Delancey Street and get
something unusual.”

Her brother wound up giving the neighborhood something
unusual, too, inside the packed and sweaty community room.
Drawing on his wide-ranging musical tastes, he combined
sounds and in time those sounds were combined in new ways
as he extended the beats to the delight of the dancers.

“It wasn’t a black thing, it was a we thing,” said
Mr. Campbell, now 52. “We played everything. Gary Glitter?
We rocked that. We schooled people about music.”

Since leaving 1520 Sedgwick, Mr. Campbell has moved to Long
Island and has continued spinning tunes. (On Sunday, he was
the D.J. for the city’s first Dance Parade, which traveled
from Midtown to Lower Manhattan.)

Some old-timers rushed up to him last week when he and
his sister visited the building. They told him — to his
dismay — that the community room has been closed for
renovations since last year.

“All of it came from here,” he said. “From this building.
It should be respected.”

Curtis Brown, who was a teenager living a few blocks away
during Kool Herc’s heyday, agreed. Mr. Brown went from
being a fan to becoming Grandmaster Caz of the Cold Crush
Brothers, an early and influential rap group.

“That place means everything,” he said. “You can look at
it objectively and say it could have happened somewhere
else. Maybe. But this is where it did happen.”

To him it is already a landmark.

“As far as government and what they consider important,
who knows?” he said. “But for something that saturated
the world culture, that went from one building to the world,
I would want to hold on to the historical significance
of that building.”

Related:

Mitchell-Lama Housing Program
http://www.dhcr.state.ny.us/ohm/progs/mitchlam/ohmprgmi.htm

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

15) Honduran Diplomat Assails Police
in Shooting of Unarmed Bronx Man
By THOMAS J. LUECK and TANZINA VEGA
May 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/nyregion/21shoot.html?ref=nyregion

Appearing at a sidewalk memorial for an unarmed driver shot
dead by an off-duty officer in the Bronx, the senior Honduran
diplomat in New York criticized the police yesterday, saying,
“We are not going to let this go by unnoticed.”

“The police cannot shoot crazily or indiscriminately,” said
Javier Hernández, the consul general, who said he had been
living in New York for 19 years. “Before, there was courtesy,
now there is intimidation, and I think it should be the other
way around,” Mr. Hernández said. Like the driver, Fermin Arzu,
many residents of the Longwood neighborhood, where the shooting
occurred, are Honduran immigrants.

The Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau continued
its investigation yesterday into the death of Mr. Arzu, 41,
on Friday night. The Bronx district attorney’s office was
also reviewing the case.

Mr. Arzu was shot by Officer Raphael Lora, 37, who had
confronted Mr. Arzu after he crashed his minivan into
another car near Officer Lora’s home near midnight.

“The consul general can be assured there will be a complete
investigation,” said the chief police spokesman, Paul J. Browne.
“It is already under way.”

The shooting comes during a difficult period for the police.
Weeks of public protest were touched off on Nov. 25, when
five officers shot 50 bullets into a car in Queens, killing
its driver, Sean Bell, and wounding two of his friends.
Two officers were indicted on manslaughter charges and
one was charged with reckless endangerment.

Relatives of Mr. Arzu, a building porter and musician,
described him yesterday as a responsible, hard-working man
who had never tangled with the police, and who was under
the emotional stress of caring for his fiancée,
a cancer patient.

The fiancée, Thomasa Sabio, 46, said in an interview that
less than five hours before he was shot, Mr. Arzu had
driven her home to the apartment they shared on Westchester
Avenue. Ms. Sabio had undergone a mastectomy, and had
been discharged from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center.

After helping her change clothes and making her comfortable
in the apartment, she said, Mr. Arzu said he needed some
air and left at 7:30 p.m. She never heard from him again.
Relatives said they did not know where he went after that.

“He was such a good man, he supported me through my illness,”
she said, fighting back sobs in the public housing apartment
she shared with Mr. Arzu and her 10-year-old son. “Now that
he is not with me, I feel the pain eating from inside.”

By late yesterday, reaction to the shooting had settled
into familiar contours. Dozens of people stopped by
a memorial of candles and plastic flowers yesterday underneath
the elevated tracks at Westchester Avenue and Hewitt Place,
where Mr. Arzu’s minivan crashed after he was shot.

Kirsten Foy, a special assistant to the Rev. Al Sharpton,
appeared there with a daughter of Mr. Arzu, Katherine Arzu,
20, and a woman who described herself as a family spokeswoman,
at a news conference near the site of the shooting.

“I have no words,” Ms. Arzu said. “The cop shot my father
and he needs to pay for all of this.”

Mr. Foy, while saying that he did “not have all the facts,”
told reporters, “Mr. Arzu lost his life as a result of an
impromptu, impetuous and in our estimation, unnecessary
action by an off-duty police officer.”

But the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which has
offered to provide legal representation for Officer Lora,
cautioned yesterday against jumping to conclusions.
“Law enforcement has a legal obligation to conduct
a full and thorough investigation of the facts before
coming to any conclusion,” its president, Patrick J.
Lynch, said.

Details of what happened when Officer Lora confronted
Mr. Arzu remained unclear yesterday, and accounts varied
among people who described themselves as witnesses.
But the police said it started when Mr. Arzu drove
his red Nissan Quest into a parked car on Hewitt Place
around 11:40 p.m.

Officer Lora, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans
and armed with his handgun, ran from his home and
confronted Mr. Arzu, who may have been trying to leave
the scene of the accident. One witness said Officer Lora
displayed his badge to others who gathered around the
minivan, but not to Mr. Arzu; others said the badge
was fully visible to all.

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said yesterday that
witnesses described Officer Lora standing by the driver’s
side of the minivan, with the driver’s door open.

The two men were then heard yelling at each other, and
Officer Lora fired his first shot after the minivan
lurched forward, witnesses said.

The police said Officer Lora fired his 9-millimeter
Glock handgun five times, and the medical examiner ruled
on Saturday that Mr. Arzu was killed by a single shot
to his heart and a lung. The police said four bullets
from Officer Lora’s gun were found lodged in the vehicle’s
door frame, rear back panel and a panel over a taillight.

The minivan kept going for two blocks, eventually slamming
into a church and bursting into flames.

No one answered a knock at Officer Lora’s door yesterday
afternoon.

According to a person close to the investigation and
familiar with Officer Lora’s account, the officer said
he saw Mr. Arzu reaching for the glove compartment. But
no weapon was found in the car.

As is standard procedure in such cases, Officer Lora’s
gun was taken away and he was placed on “nonenforcement”
duty. Mr. Browne said yesterday that no one in the department
had interviewed Officer Lora because the police had to wait
for the district attorney to decide whether to present
the case to a grand jury.

Stephen Reed, a spokesman for the district attorney,
declined to comment on the case.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

16) Buyout to Form Big Company to Train and Treat Prisoners
By KEN BELSON
May 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/nyregion/21prison.html

A company based in New Jersey that provides training and
treatment programs to prison inmates is announcing today
that it has bought a similar Massachusetts company,
creating one of the largest correctional services
companies in the country.

The two companies — Community Education Centers of Roseland,
N.J., and CiviGenics of Marlborough, Mass. — are trying to
capitalize on the growing number of inmates and tight financing
for new prisons that have led federal, state and local
governments to contract out more of their operations
to private businesses.

States have also addressed the shortage of prison space
by trying to reduce recidivism with more training and
treatment programs for inmates. About 70 percent of
those released from prison return within three years,
according to some studies.

“There’s a tremendous focus on the re-entry of inmates,”
said John J. Clancy, chief executive of Community
Education Centers. “If people are going to continue
to get out of prison, the question is how they get out.”

The two privately held companies, which together are
expected to employ about 3,500 people in 22 states and
have close to $240 million in revenue next year, did
not disclose the financial terms of the agreement.
However, people with knowledge of the transaction said
Community Education Centers paid more than $100 million
for CiviGenics.

Currently, Community Education specializes in operating
halfway houses for prisoners awaiting release, whether
it is in helping them find jobs or overcoming substance
abuse and other hurdles. CiviGenics focuses on providing
substance abuse treatment to inmates and managing prisons
on behalf of county governments, one of the most profitable
segments of the industry.

In announcing the sale, Mr. Clancy said that by combining
their two specialties, the companies would be better
positioned to win contracts and expand operations. The
combined companies will, however, remain far smaller
than the industry’s three largest companies, which are
publicly held — Corrections Corporation of America, the
GEO Group and Cornell Companies.

Community Education Centers has six assessment and treatment
centers in New Jersey, including three in Newark, which
house up to 2,700 residents, or about half of its capacity
nationally.

New Jersey does more than most states to train inmates
before their release. The state spent $61.5 million last
year on residential community release programs, for which
Community Education Centers is the largest contractor.

Inmates leave with a “discharge plan” that includes the
addresses of doctors and clinics near their homes,
information on where to get Social Security cards and
social services, as well as other necessary information,
according to Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a spokeswoman for
the New Jersey Department of Corrections. Inmates also
go through a 12-week re-entry program before they are
released.

While the amount spent on these programs in New Jersey
is only about 6 percent of the budget of its Department
of Corrections, there is still plenty of business for
private operators, industry analysts said.

Federal, state and local governments spent $62 billion
on corrections in the fiscal year 2004, according
to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, 18 percent
more than in 2000 and 77 percent more than in 1994.

“The states are trying to hold off building new facilities,
yet demand continues to grow at 35,000 to 40,000 new
prisoners a year,” said Kevin Campbell, who covers the
prison industry for Avondale Partners, a securities
research firm.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

17) Prisons' budget to trump colleges'
"No other big state spends as much to incarcerate compared
with higher education funding."
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, May 21, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/21/MNG4KPUKV51.DTL

As the costs for fixing the state's troubled corrections
system rocket higher, California is headed for a dubious
milestone -- for the first time the state will spend more
on incarcerating inmates than on educating students
in its public universities.

Based on current spending trends, California's prison
budget will overtake spending on the state's universities
in five years. No other big state in the country spends
close to as much on its prisons compared with universities.

But California has all but guaranteed that prisons will
eat up an increasingly large share of taxpayer money
because of chronic failures in a system that the state
is now planning to expand.

Under a new state law, California will spend $7.4 billion
to build 40,000 new prison beds, and that is over and
above the current annual operating budget of more than
$10 billion. Interest payments alone on the billions
of dollars of bonds that will be sold to finance the
new construction will amount to $330 million a year
by 2011 -- all money that will not be available for
higher education or other state priorities.

"California is just off the charts compared with other
states in corrections spending," said Michael Jacobson,
director of the Vera Institute of Justice in New York,
a leading research organization. "Budgets are a zero-
sum game, essentially. The money for corrections comes
from other places. The shame of it is that California
could have improved crime rates and a better funded
higher education system if they ran things better."

In fact, even some supporters of the recent prison
reform legislation, AB900, say they harbor deep doubts
about the corrections department's ability to improve
things, no matter how much is spent. But they say there
is no choice, and that the result is that Californians
are going to have to accept throwing billions of dollars
more at the problem, while trusting a corrections
department that has a history of failure.

"I'm not defending the damn department," said Assemblyman
Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, the chairman of a state Assembly
committee overseeing the state's prison construction
efforts. "The department is a shambles. They couldn't
build their way out of a paper bag. Everyone has a reason
to be skeptical. Everyone is holding their breath, hoping
that this time they're successful."

Asked if the prison spending accurately reflected the
state's values and priorities, several politicians
insisted it did not, and some suggested it was something
of an embarrassment for a state that in other areas, such
as environmental programs, likes to think of itself as
a pioneer in smart policymaking.

"I'll tell you what, it's clearly not a statement of our
priorities," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los
Angeles. "Our policies are hurting the economy of California.
This is a disservice to our economy."

Núñez blamed the prison spending on a get-tough-on-crime
mentality among politicians that equates more prison spending
with safer streets, when that is hardly the case.

"A budget is a statement of priorities," said Bill Shiebler,
president of the University of California Student Association,
which has been fighting sharp increases in state university
tuition fees for several years. "I do think our state's got
its priorities wrong. The governor is burdening people who
work the hardest with what are tax increases. It seems
they're more interested in locking people up than giving
people an opportunity in life."

Michael Genest, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's finance
director, said that he, too, was uncomfortable with the
state committing such a large sum to prisons, but that
mismanagement and failed rehabilitation programs in the
past made it unavoidable.

"I don't think it's a good thing," said Genest. "It's
unfortunate."

He said that one of the key drivers was the fact that
the state pays the guards and other prison employees
far more than any other state, a policy choice the state
had made in past years. In addition, he said, the porous
border allowed too many lawbreakers from Mexico to enter
the state, where they eventually ended up in prison.

But Genest defended the increases in spending as needed
to institute better rehabilitation programs, which would
eventually save money, although he said it was uncertain
when or if they would show results.

"It's not going to happen overnight, and no one can say
how much it's going to save," said Genest. "But it should
eventually save money."

According to the May revisions of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's
budget, the state will spend $10 billion on prisons
in fiscal 2007-08, a 9 percent increase from last year.

Higher education spending will come to $12 billion, a nearly
6 percent increase. Moving forward, the legislative analyst
says, spending on higher education probably will grow around
5 percent a year, while prisons spending will grow by at
least 9 percent annually.

Steve Boilard, a legislative analyst, said that actual spending
on the state university systems is already at about parity
with prisons spending. The budgets, he said, for the University
of California, the California State University and the community
colleges come to $10.5 billion in fiscal 2007-2008. The rest
of the higher education budget includes financial aid for
student and other noninstructional programs.

Following the historic growth rates, in fiscal 2012-2013,
prisons spending will come to about $15.4 billion a year
while overall higher education spending will come to
$15.3 billion.

Some politicians are calling the new construction spending
and new rehabilitation programs an investment that eventually
will pay off in the form of reduced recidivism. California has
among the highest recidivism rates in the country, with
70 percent of released inmates ending up back in prison
within three years. But even advocates of reform say that
payoff will be long in coming.

"We all have a wish that prison spending would take
a smaller percentage of our budget," said Spitzer. "However,
that's a decade away, in my opinion. For another decade we're
going to need large infusions of money to deal with this and
our off-the-chart recidivism rates."

California is alone among big states in spending so much
on prisons. Texas, for instance, will spend $4.5 billion
on higher education in 2007 and $2 billion on prisons,
according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Florida will spend $3.9 billion on its universities and
$2.1 billion on prisons, while New York has budgeted $3.5
billion on its universities and $2.2 billion on prisons.

According to the conference of legislatures, seven small
states, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware,
spend nearly as much on prisons as higher education, but
most states budget two or even three times as much for
universities.

The new reform program, AB900, includes about 40,000 new
prison beds, about 8,000 of those for medical and mental
health care. Currently, there are about 173,000 inmates
in the state prisons, which is about double the design
capacity. The legislative analyst projects that the
population will grow by another 17,000 over the next
five years.

Jacobson of the Vera Institute said one of the greatest
problems in California is not just that it spends so much
on prisons but that it gets such poor results. New York
state, for instance, is enjoying both a declining inmate
population and declining crime rates.

"When you think about some of the alternatives for spending
that kind of money, there are much better things you can
do for public safety that would be a lot more effective,"
he said.

E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

18) Missile kills Hamas official's family
"At least 8 killed, 13 wounded in attack, officials
say; earlier attacks kill 3."
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:17 p.m. ET May 20, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18732661/

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel's air force fired a missile at a house in
Gaza City late Sunday, killing at least eight people, residents and hospital
officials said. The strike followed a decision to step up attacks against
Islamic militants in response to rocket fire from Gaza.

Israeli air attacks on militant targets earlier in the day killed another
three Palestinians.

The attack on the house was the deadliest airstrike since Israel started
reprisals Tuesday for the rocket barrages.

The house belonged to Hamas lawmaker Khalil al-Haya, who was not at home. He
was one of the Hamas representatives in cease-fire talks with Fatah and was
attending an Egyptian-sponsored truce meeting just before the strike,
residents said.

The missile hit a room used as a meeting place for the extended family,
relatives said. Hospital officials said eight people were killed and 13
injured.

All the dead and wounded were relatives and neighbors, al-Haya's wife said.
Hamas said two of the dead were militants.

The Israeli military said the missile hit a group of armed militants outside
a house.

At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, there was pandemonium as cars brought in the
victims, some of them dismembered by the blast. Al-Haya went to the hospital
to visit his wounded relatives.

"We will go ahead despite the challenges, despite the martyrs, despite the
pain that I am suffering and my people are suffering," he told reporters at
the hospital, in remarks carried by local radio stations.

'This escalation is very serious'

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said those killed were civilian members of
the al-Haya family, and the attack was a sign that Israel is targeting
"everyone - civilians and leaders."

"This escalation is very serious," he said. "All options are open" for
responding to this. A Hamas statement called for its military wing to
"respond with all means to these crimes."

Three people, including at least one Hamas militant, were killed earlier
Sunday in an airstrike on a car in Gaza City. In another airstrike, Israel
said it targeted an Islamic Jihad weapons workshop in northern Gaza, but the
shop owner said his stereo and video store was apparently hit by mistake.

Later in the day, an Israeli shell exploded in northern Gaza, wounding
three, Palestinian security officials said. The military had no comment.

Israeli aircraft struck twice in Gaza City early Monday, killing a Hamas
militant. The military said the targets were Hamas and Islamic Jihad weapons
factories. Palestinians said one was a cement factory and the other was a
house.

In a statement, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for international
pressure to stop the Israeli attacks.

Despite the sixth straight day of strikes, Gaza militants fired at least 12
rockets at southern Israel. Several exploded in the battered town of Sderot,
causing damage but no serious injuries. One destroyed a popular Indian
restaurant in a nearby village at nightfall.

Israel's Security Cabinet said it had decided to keep up attacks aimed at
the two main Islamic militant groups in Gaza, but stopped short of approving
a large-scale ground invasion.

"The operations will focus on Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, who are
responsible for the current escalation," the government said in a statement.

36 Palestinian deaths in a week

After a Security Cabinet meeting, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said
Israel would not differentiate between militant and political leaders in its
strikes.

"Everyone who deals with terror against us should take cover," Dichter told
Channel 2 TV. The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, is from Hamas,
but analysts said he was not a likely target.

Since last week, 36 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli airstrikes.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned the strikes could intensify. "If the
diplomatic and military efforts we have taken do not bring calm, will have
to escalate our response," he said.

Israel's bombardment appears to have pushed Palestinians to calm bloody
factional fighting in Gaza. A truce between warring Palestinian factions
took hold after a week of fierce fighting.

Hamas and Fatah issued a joint statement Sunday ordering their gunmen to
observe the truce.

Residents who had holed up at home ventured out to stock up on supplies at
busy shops, children went back to school in time for final exams, and adults
returned to work.

More than 50 Palestinians were killed in factional clashes that broke out
after Abbas stationed thousands of loyalist security forces in Gaza City
without consulting Hamas, Fatah's partner in the Palestinian governing
alliance.

Public support waning for Olmert
Olmert's already shaky internal standing took another blow Sunday when
hardline Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened to pull his
small party out of the government unless a large-scale operation is ordered
against Hamas.

"Either Hamas is going to be dismantled, or the government is going to be
dismantled," Lieberman said in a statement. "This is not an ultimatum, but
these are the options." Olmert would still have a small majority if
Lieberman quit.

Olmert has lost much of his public support because of the inconclusive
outcome of last summer's war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

At the Vatican on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI denounced the Palestinian rocket
salvos and the factional fighting, and appealed for Israel to exercise
restraint.

"The clashes among Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip and the rocket
attacks against inhabitants of the nearby Israeli cities, which prompted
armed intervention, are provoking a bloody deterioration of the situation,"
Benedict told pilgrims in St. Peter's Square. "In the name of God, I beg
that an end be put to this tragic violence."

C 2007 The Associated Press.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

19) CANINE INTELLIGENCE
VIA Email from: Greg McDonald
sabocat59@mac.com

An engineer, an accountant, a chemist, an IT specialist and a
Colombian senator were bragging about how smart their dogs were.

The engineer told his dog, “Protractor, show what you can do.” The
dog gathered some bricks and boards, and built a small doghouse. All
agreed that it was incredible.

The accountant said his dog could do better. “Cash Flow, show what
you can do.” The dog went to the kitchen, returned with 12 cookies
and divided them into 4 piles of three cookies each. That was pretty
neat, all agreed.

The chemist said that his dog could do even better. “Oxide, show what
you can do.” Oxide walked to the refrigerator, took exactly 500
milliliters of milk, peeled a banana, used the blender and made a
smoothie. All agreed that it was impressive.

The IT specialist said he could beat them all. “Megabyte, do it!”
Megabyte crossed the room, turned on the computer, checked it for
viruses, upgraded the operating system, sent an e-mail and installed
an excellent game. All knew that this would be very hard to beat.

They turned to the Colombian politician and asked, “And your dog,
what can he do?”

The politician called his dog and said, “Paraco, show what you can do!”

Paraco jumped up, ate all the cookies, drank the smoothie, erased all
the files from the computer, “disappeared” the other four dogs,
declared himself to be an Uribe supporter, and took over the land
title to the doghouse.

Afterward, the politician insisted that he had never met the dog,
that he had never even seen it, and that a photograph showing them
together was faked...

(OK, maybe it was funnier in Spanish.)

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

20) Book Review: Revolutionary reflections
by Celia Hart Santamaría gives free rein
to her thoughts on the theory
of Revolution and the world today.
By: ULISES ESTRADA LESCAILLE
cultura@bohemia. co.cu

Located next door to the Abel Santamaría Museum, the "Centenario del
Apóstol" bookstore hosted the presentation of Apuntes revolucionarios
(Revolutionary thoughts), a book by journalist and writer Celia Hart
edited by the Federico Engels Foundation in Madrid, Spain.

CAPTION:
Graciela and Celia (center) at the presentation.

In her book -a collection of 36 markedly anti-imperialist articles
published at different times by a number of foreign media, Celia
gives her political insights on the Cuban Revolution, Venezuela's
socialist process, the illegal imprisonment of the Cuban Five, the
defeat of socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, socialism
worldwide, and what choices we have today.

Graciela Ramírez, the Argentinean torchbearer of the struggle to
release the Cuban Five, acknowledged Celia's political assets as much
as her new book, which confirms both the quality of her lineage and
her parents' impact on her political and ideological formation.

Celia reminisced about her initial hesitation and fears when the
Federico Engels Foundation talked of publishing the book, and stated
her satisfaction that it served to reveal her deepest thoughts,
forged in the course of many a battle waged as she searched for a
proper way to express her political concerns and commitment to
socialist revolutionary ideals and proletarian internationalism.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

21) ‘We’re the US and We’re Here
to Help Your Nation’
The Dark Side of Democracy Promotion
By Paul Bouchheit
http://www.counterpunch.org/buchheit05212007.html

The White House has clearly stated goals of promoting
democracy around the world. Does this work? Let’s consider
the past and present.

Guatemala

In 1950 Jacobo Arbenz was democratically elected president
of Guatemala. He tried to help native Mayan Indians regain
rightful ownership of their land, which had been appropriated
by the United Fruit Company (UFC). But the powerful
conservative base in the U.S. saw the land reforms as
communist activities. By 1954, after nearly 400,000 acres
of uncultivated land had been redistributed to the native
population, UFC launched a public relations campaign to
portray Arbenz as a Marxist and a threat to freedom. The
Eisenhower administration backed the idea of a coup. By late
1953 the CIA was excitedly planning the bribes, propaganda,
infiltration, and sabotage that would harass Arbenz into
a humiliating resignation.

After the 1954 overthrow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon
noted “this is the first instance in history where a communist
government has been replaced by a free one.” In the 40 years
following, over 100,000 Guatemalans, most of them native Mayans,
were slaughtered in one of the most brutal ethnic cleansings
in recent history. Anyone suspected of leftist influences was
subject to torture and death. This included priests, teachers,
students, lawyers, journalists, and anyone who might be capable
of organizing the people. A military mentality flourished
through the years as the U.S. continually supported the Guatemalan
army with money and military training. A Guatemalan Historical
Commission concluded in 1999 that US-trained and US-supported
military forces had been responsible for most of the human
rights abuses during the war. The commission estimated that
over 200,000 Guatemalans were killed. President Clinton admitted
U.S. involvement and issued a formal apology.

Dominican Republic

In 1962 the little country of the Dominican Republic was freed
from President Trujillo’s oppressive rule and Juan Bosch
became the country’s first democratically elected president
in 40 years. He introduced land reform, low-rent housing,
nationalization of businesses, and public works projects.
Nationalization and civil liberties, and especially Bosch’s
tolerance of communists, frightened Washington. Bosch was
forced out in 1963 by a military coup supported by the
United States [Under Lyndon Johnson]. Newsweek magazine
said, “Democracy was being saved from communism by getting
rid of democracy.”

In 1965 popular support appeared ready to return Bosch
to office, but the U.S. intervened again. President
Johnson and the CIA announced that communists had infiltrated
Bosch’s party. To placate the U.S. public they claimed
to be protecting the lives of Americans in the Dominican
Republic. 23,000 American troops invaded the country,
and the bombing of Santo Domingo was approved. About 3000
Dominicans, many of them civilians, were killed. Reputable
sources later showed that even Bosch’s opponents scoffed
at the idea of a communist takeover. In an eerie parallel
to the failed search for WMDs in Iraq 40 years later, the
search for communists turned up almost nothing, and American
troops remained in the country long after the invasion.

Chile

In 1970 Salvadore Allende was elected President of Chile.
The South American country had a strong democratic society
with a high literacy rate and bright prospects for its
sizable middle class. Allende was a passionate supporter
of people’s rights and the nationalization of industries
that were controlled by American companies. He was also
friendly with Cuba and China. In 1973 [Under Richard Nixon]
a CIA-supported coup assassinated him (or pressured him into
committing suicide) and installed General Augusto Pinochet,
who tortured and murdered thousands of people over the
next two decades.

At least 40,000 citizens of Chile were tortured under the
Pinochet government from 1973 until 1990. They suffered
rapes, beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation.
A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) in 2000, titled “CIA Activities in Chile”,
revealed that the CIA actively supported Pinochet.

Grenada

In the early 1980s, the small Caribbean nation of Grenada
achieved a 9 percent cumulative growth rate under socialist
-leaning Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Unemployment
dropped from 49 percent to 14 percent. The government
developed a diversified agricultural base that sharply
reduced imports. The literacy rate rose from 85 percent
to 98 percent. Free health care and secondary education
systems were established. Although there were aspects of
repression to Bishop’s government, the overall human rights
record was good. Bishop supported the Soviets, but his own
government was more of a ‘popular socialism.’

In 1983 military extremists killed Bishop. The U.S.
[Under Ronald Reagan], which had been hostile toward
Bishop and frequently hinted at Cuban or Soviet infiltration,
seized the opportunity to invade the island and take over
the government. The attack was called Operation ‘Urgent
Fury.’ The official reason for the invasion was the
protection of American lives, although employees of the
U.S. embassy reported no need for urgency.

Most of the world opposed the invasion. The United Nations
Security Council voted to condemn it, but this action was
vetoed by the United States. The General Assembly also
voted against the invasion. Despite post-invasion aid
from the U.S., the quality of life deteriorated for most
islanders. No pediatricians or psychiatrists remained
in the country (the U.S. bombed the mental hospital
during the invasion). Many foreign doctors and teachers
were arrested and deported by the U.S. The island’s only
radio station was taken over by the U.S. Navy and the
press was censored.

Haiti

In 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest, was
elected president in Haiti’s first free democratic election.
He was popular among the poor for his social programs,
and he opposed industry privatization measures that were
supported by the upper class. After a few months in office
Aristide was overthrown by a US-backed military coup
[Under George H.W. Bush].

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs stated after the coup:
“Under Aristide...Haiti seemed to be on the verge of
tearing free from the fabric of despotism and tyranny...”
In 2000 Aristide was re-elected president with over
90 percent of the vote. The US-led Organization of
American States claimed that the election was conducted
unfairly, and the U.S. began to withhold foreign aid from
Haiti. In 2003 the country was forced to send 90 percent
of its foreign reserves to Washington to pay off its debt.
Conditions in Haiti remain desperate, with crumbling roads
and infrastructure and nonexistent public services. Haiti
is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, with
unemployment at 70 percent and half the adults illiterate.
The great majority—over 85 percent of Haitians—live on
less than $1 (U.S.) per day. The richest one percent
of the population controls nearly half of all of Haiti’s
wealth.

Iraq

How about today in Iraq, where our democracy objective
is clearer than ever? A recent study by Peter Bergen and
Paul Cruickshank shows a sevenfold increase in the annual
rate of fatal terrorist attacks around the world since the
March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Even outside Iraq and Afghanistan
such attacks have increased by over one-third. Data was
taken from the MIPT-RAND Terrorism database
(terrorismknowledgebase.org), generally regarded
as the best public database on terrorism. Terrorist
attacks were defined as politically motivated jihadist
attacks on civilians with at least one fatality. And it’s
getting worse each year. According to Iraq Body Count,
“almost half (44 percent) of all violent civilian deaths
after the initial invasion phase occurred in the just-ended
fourth year of the conflict.”

May 21, 2007

Paul Buchheit is a Professor, Harold Washington College
in Chicago. He can be reached at: pbuchheit@ccc.edu
http://www.counterpunch.org/buchheit05212007.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

22) American Cities and the Great Divide
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 22, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/opinion/22herbert.html?hp

A public high school teacher in Brooklyn told me recently
about a student who didn’t believe that a restaurant tab
for four people could come to more than $500. The student
shook his head, as if resisting the very idea. He just
couldn’t fathom it.

“How much can you eat?” the student asked.

When I asked a teacher in a second school to mention
the same issue, one of the responses was, “Is this
a true story?”

A lot of New Yorkers are doing awfully well. There
are 8 million residents of New York City, and roughly
700,000 are worth a million dollars or more. The
average price of a Manhattan apartment is $1.3 million.
The annual earnings of the average hedge fund manager
is $363 million.

The estimated worth of the mayor, Michael Bloomberg,
ranges from $5.5 billion to upwards of $20 billion.

You want a gilded age? This is it. The elite of the
Roaring Twenties would be stunned by the wealth
of the current era.

Now the flip side, which is the side those public
school students are on. One of the city’s five counties,
the Bronx, is the poorest urban county in the nation.
The number of families in the city’s homeless shelters
is the highest it has been in a quarter of a century.
Twenty-five percent of all families with children
in New York City — that’s 1.5 million New Yorkers —
are trying to make it on incomes that are below the
poverty threshold established by the federal government.

The streets that are paved with gold for some are covered
with ash for many others. There are few better
illustrations of the increasingly disturbing divide
between rich and poor than New York City.

“I get to walk in both worlds,” said Larry Mandell,
the president of the United Way of New York City. “In
a given day I might be in a soup kitchen and also in
the halls of Fortune 500 companies dealing with the
senior executives. I’ve become acutely aware that the
lives of those who are well off are not touched at
all by contact with the poor. It’s not that people
don’t care or don’t want to help. It’s that they
have very little awareness of poverty.”

I’d always thought of the United Way as a charitable
outfit. But Mr. Mandell has committed his organization
to the important task of raising the awareness of Americans
and their political leaders to the pressing needs
of America’s cities, and especially the long-neglected,
poverty-stricken neighborhoods of the inner cities.

It’s a measure of how low the bar has been set for success
in America’s cities that New York is thought to be doing
well, even though 185,000 of its children ages 5 or younger
are poor, and 18,000 are consigned to homeless shelters
each night. More than a million New Yorkers get food
stamps, and another 700,000 are eligible but not receiving
them. That’s a long, long way from a $500 restaurant tab.

Only 50 percent of the city’s high school students graduate
in four years. And if you talk to the kids in the poorer
neighborhoods, they will tell you that they don’t feel safe.
They are worried about violence and gang activity, which
in their view is getting worse, not better.

This is what’s going on in the nation’s most successful
big city.

Mr. Mandell is upset that urban issues, which in so many
cases are related to poverty, have played such a minuscule
role in the presidential campaign so far. “People need to
become more aware of the issue of poverty,” he said. “It’s
discouraging, frankly, to have it barely mentioned at all
in the debates.

“It’s true that John Edwards is the one candidate who seems
concerned about it, but to actually have the issue come
up just briefly in the debates, and not at all in the
Republican debate — well, my view is that we have to
change that.”

The United Way of New York has issued a white paper on
“America’s Urban Agenda” that says, “The greatest single
challenge most American cities face lies in the increasing
divide between the haves and have-nots.”

There was a time, some decades ago, when urban issues
and poverty were important components of presidential
campaigns. Now the poor are kept out of sight, which
makes it easier to leave them farther and farther behind.
We’ve apparently reached a point in our politics when
they aren’t even worth mentioning.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

23) Macho Mistakes at Ground Zero
Editorial
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/opinion/22tue1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

As more and more workers who inhaled the dust at ground
zero fall ill, it has become increasingly clear that much
of the problem can be traced to the Giuliani administration’s
failure to insist that all emergency personnel and construction
workers at the site wear respirators.

The then-mayor and his agency heads put their emphasis
on a speedy cleanup and return to normalcy. In that, they
were remarkably successful, clearing the site in less than
10 months. Unfortunately, the price is now being paid
by thousands of workers who have developed lung and
other ailments.

The evolution of this tragedy was described by Anthony
DePalma in The Times and other analysts. In the immediate
aftermath of the collapse of the twin towers, it was
understandable that emergency workers would rush in
in hopes of rescuing victims, and hang the precautions.
But as rescue operations turned into a search for remains
and then debris-removal, workers continued to ignore
warnings from both city and federal officials that
respirators should be worn at the site.

There was some understandable delay rounding up enough
of the recommended respirators. But there was no excuse
for a lag in fitting the respirators to individual faces
and training the workers to use them. The more fundamental
problem was that many workers hate to wear respirators
because they can be uncomfortable and inhibit talking.
There was also a certain macho disdain, especially when
authorities were putting out mixed messages about the
safety of downtown air.

By late October, only 29 percent of workers at ground
zero were wearing the respirators, and even Mayor Giuliani
visited without wearing one, setting a terrible example.
This was a case where workers should have been protected
against their own destructive instincts.

Critics often blame the federal government — particularly
the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the
Environmental Protection Agency. But a federal district
judge, in allowing a suit against the city and other
defendants to go forward, noted that city agencies had
explicitly assumed responsibility for developing and
enforcing health and safety standards, including the
use of respirators. The suit may shed more light on who,
if anyone, can be held liable. But the clear lesson
is that Mr. Giuliani’s administration failed in its
duty to protect the workers at ground zero.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

24) Cocaine Wars Make Port Colombia’s Deadliest City
By SIMON ROMERO
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/world/americas/22colombia.html?ref=world

BUENAVENTURA, Colombia, May 15 — Visitors to this city can
be forgiven for thinking no place is safe here. Gunfire often
echoes through the slums surrounding its port, the country’s
most important on the Pacific coast. As larger cities have
calmed, Buenaventura has emerged as the deadliest urban center
in Colombia’s long internal war.

Soldiers search almost every car at checkpoints on the winding
road from Cali. Guerrillas recently fired mortar shells at the
police headquarters. The stately Hotel Estación, a neo-Classical
gem built in 1928, where executives come to hammer out deals
to import cars or export coffee, is guarded by dozens of soldiers
in combat fatigues.

“It’s as if we have a little Haiti within Colombia,” said Lt.
Nikolai Viviescas, 25, a police officer who was transferred
from Bogotá six months ago. “It feels like another country.”

Although Bogotá, the capital, and other cities have become
secure and prosperous enough that it is possible there to
forget about this country’s four-decade-old civil conflict
for a while, Buenaventura is a different story.

Killings in this city of about 300,000 climbed 30 percent
last year, to 408, giving Buenaventura the nation’s highest
homicide rate at 144 per 100,000, more than seven times the
rate in Bogotá and four times that of Medellín. And this
year, the police say, 222 people have been killed here.

A vast majority of the killings are the product of a narrow
territorial conflict over control of the edge of the city’s
slums, acres of wooden shacks built on stilts over the sea.
From these makeshift wharves, police and naval officials say,
fast boats depart with cocaine for points north. Buenaventura’s
geography, crucial in connecting Colombia to the global flow
of trade, also holds strategic cachet for drug traffickers.

Despite receiving more than $5 billion in antinarcotics and
counterinsurgency aid from the United States this decade,
making the country the largest recipient of American aid
in the hemisphere, Colombia remains the world’s largest
cocaine producer and the supplier of 90 percent of the
cocaine consumed in the United States.

Drug lords, rebels and resurgent paramilitary gangs all
draw on Buenaventura’s slum dwellers as their foot soldiers.

The police say that many of the combatants on the rebels’
side belong to the Manuel Cepeda Vargas Urban Front, a cell
of the main rebel group FARC that is based in Cali and opposes
the Autodefensas Campesinas del Pacífico, composed mostly
of former paramilitary fighters.

“Nothing in this fight is about ideology,” said Antero Viveros,
the head of a community group in Lleras, a large slum controlled
by the guerrillas. “It is about drugs, with members of one
ethnicity killing each other.”

Despite its emergence as Colombia’s most dangerous city,
people displaced by fighting in the countryside still see
Buenaventura as a refuge. About 42,000 refugees have arrived
here since 1998, mostly Afro-Colombians from rural areas,
according to the federal government. They swell the ranks
of what may be Colombia’s poorest slums.

“If you’re hungry, you’ll do whatever imaginable to survive,”
said Fernando Nuñez, 29, a Lleras resident who ekes out
a living repairing old cellphones.

President Álvaro Uribe has forcefully criticized the violence
here and sent new police and navy commanders to the city
at the start of the year. About 2,000 soldiers and police
officers, who also wear combat uniforms and carry semiautomatic
weapons, patrol Buenaventura.

Still, critics say authorities have long neglected Buenaventura’s
problems in part because Afro-Colombians receive scant federal
attention. Nongovernmental groups say Afro-Colombians account
for up to a quarter of the country’s population of 44 million,
by some measures giving Colombia the largest black population
in the Spanish-speaking world. And more than 80 percent
of Buenaventura’s residents are black.

This month, when the president chose Paula Marcela Moreno
Zapata as culture minister, was the first time an Afro-Colombian
ascended to a cabinet position in the country’s history.
Yet political analysts and black advocacy groups said the
appointment was largely to appease Democrats in Washington
who complain of racial exclusion in Colombia as they weigh
a trade agreement.

“The war in Buenaventura is not going to be ended by symbolic
actions from Bogotá,” said Rosaliano Riascos, a Buenaventura
native who fled the city after a wave of paramilitary-led
killings several years ago. Mr. Riascos, who heads an independent
black advocacy group in Bogotá, said it had been a year since
he returned to Buenaventura to visit family. “Buenaventura
is a no-man’s land,” he said.

The entrance to Lleras looks like that of any shantytown
elsewhere in Colombia, with cinder-block shacks and a few
paved streets. But deeper into the slum, the structures are
made from discarded wood, with newcomers squeezing into lean-
tos alongside older houses. Rusted barrels collect rain from
zinc roofs, the only source of fresh water.

Sewage bubbles down trash-strewn dirt roads before flowing
into the sea. Stereos blare vallenato and reggaetón music.
And precariously built homes are hoisted above the water
on spindly pieces of wood.

Many of the residents of these hovels hesitate to offer
their names out of fear of retaliation over what they might
say. One middle-aged man, offering a visitor a cup of rum
from the steps of his house, said he had worked as a stevedore
at the port years ago before losing that job. “Now,” he said,
“I do nothing.”

Some economists hold up Buenaventura as an example of the
risks of exposing certain areas of developing economies
to market forces. María del Pilar Castillo, an economist
at Valle University in Cali, said many residents lost
economic security when the city’s port was privatized
more than a decade ago, cutting its work force and reducing
benefits.

With taxes on the imports flowing through Buenaventura’s
port largely going directly to the central government,
the city reaps few benefits from international trade,
even as Colombia’s economy grows more than 6 percent
a year. So the poor in Buenaventura, with an unemployment
rate of about 28 percent, resort to the drug trade.

“There is no other viable industry here, so there are no
other viable jobs,” said Ana María Mercedes Cano, director
of Buenaventura’s Chamber of Commerce. “So we live in
a situation with violence all around us.”

Civilians are increasingly caught in the cross-fire.
Guerrillas were blamed for an attack earlier this year
in which five people, including one police officer, were
killed when a homemade mortar shell was fired at a police
truck. Security officials here say laws that are lax
on minors, who carry out many of the attacks, make
it difficult to reduce the killings.

“We have a justice system designed for Switzerland, yet
we have no Swiss here,” said Col. Yamil Moreno, the chief
of police in Buenaventura. In the same breath, Colonel
Moreno, who was transferred here from the north, callously
described Buenaventura’s dying combatants.

“These vagabonds,” he said, “are good only for drinking,
dancing and killing.”

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

25) Insights Into a Terrorist-Supporting Country
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
VIA email from: Howard Keylor
howardkeylor@comcast.net

What kind of country arms, pays and supports known terrorist
groups to kill, maim and kidnap another government’s soldiers
and officials?

What kind of country pays and arms known terrorist groups
to create chaos, loss of life and ethnic enmity in another
country?

When such questions are posed the usual responses are Syria,
Iran, or perhaps Saudi Arabia, for they seem to be tailor-made
references as states, which support either Hezbollah in Lebanon,
or Hamas in Occupied Palestine.

Yet I speak not of these examples, although it would be
understandable given the drumbeat in the nation’s media.
But, what the media whispers, the world knows. They know
that the answer is the U.S.A.

In February 2007, the London Daily Telegraph reported that
the U.S. is presently funding terrorist groups in Iran,
to create chaos, and sow dissension in the country.

In an article datelined Washington, February 25, the North
Carolina Asheville Global Report (AGR) (Mar. 17, 2002)
covered the story of U.S. secret funding of ethnic minority
terrorist groups in Iran, like the Mujahadeen-e Khalq,
an Iraq-based Iranian group, which has opposed Iran’s
present regime with bloody resistance.

That group is just one of several supported by the U.S.
CIA and its secret “slush fund.”

According to the list published by the U.S. State Department,
the Mujahadeen-e Khalq is a “terrorist organization.”
(Perhaps they should add an asterisk [*] for “ally.”)
Iran has millions of non-Persian minorities, who have
lived there for centuries, and yet chafe under the present
religious government. The most populous are the Ahwazi Arabs,
who number some 16 million (or 25 percent) in the predominantly
Persian country. There are millions of Kurds (as there is
in Iraq and Turkey). There are nearly a million Baluchi,
who live mostly in the border areas near Pakistan. The Baluchi’s,
a predominantly Sunni people, have supported the nationalist
movement, Brigade of God, which reportedly kidnapped and slew
8 Iranian soldiers in 2006.

The AGR report quotes the head of the think tank, Global
Security, John Pike, who attributes much of this unrest
to the CIA.

According to some published sources, Washington is now
debating whether to “unleash” the Mujahadeen fully, a move
that could have unforeseen consequences for the future.

And these are the dudes who blather about restoring “stability”
to the region!

What is perhaps most troubling (over and above the suffering
of Iranians who are the targets of these U.S.-backed terrorists)
is the simple fact that the U.S. is, once again, simply
repeating the stupidities of history.

Decades ago, it funded and supported the jihadis against
the Russians in Afghanistan. Those same forces morphed
into al-Queda, and became the core of the Taliban. Now,
the U.S. is supporting their blood kin in Iran.

It isn’t that they expect such groups to actually take
over the Shi’a theocracy, but in the event of either U.S.
or Israeli attack, they could do serious social and
psychological damage to the country.

The goal? To cow Iran into giving up its nuclear ambitions.
Because the U.S. has supported terrorism, should it now
attack itself?

Source: Asheville Global Report, (No. 424, Mar. 1-7, 2007);
www.agrnews.org Asheville Global Report (weekly),
P.O. Box 1504, Asheville, NC 28802). Phone: (828) 263-3103

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

26) Raul Castro's daughter blasts homophobia
VIA Email from: WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer - photographer - activist
http://www.walterlippmann.com

Havana, May 21 (EFE).- The daughter of acting Cuban President Raul
Castro spoke out in favor of tolerance and against gay-bashing on the
occasion of the International Day against Homophobia.

"The communications media have a big responsibility in the education
of the public, in developing a culture of respect for people due to
their sexual identity and sexual orientation," said Mariela Castro,
the head of the National Sex Education Center, in remarks broadcast
Sunday by state television.

Castro attended an unusual film-debate held in the "23 y 12" hall in
Havana, where organizers showed the U.S. film "Boys Don't Cry," which
tells a story based on real events of the difficulties,
discrimination and violence to which a young transsexual woman was
subjected.

"Starting with the advances we have had on these matters in our
country, it's that we (are) trying to better visualize the goal of
this international - and in this case national - day," said the
sexologist.

Castro said that "homophobia and transphobia still exist in the world
in a very strong, very cruel, very distriminatory way against
homosexual, transsexual and transgender people in a general sense
and, above all, as a result of ignorance."

The government of Fidel Castro, who provisionally handed over power
to younger brother Raul last July after undergoing major surgery, has
in the past displayed marked intolerance for homosexuals, imprisoning
gays and quarantining AIDS sufferers.

The National Sex Education Center, a teaching, research and
assistance institution created in 1989, has proposed in the Cuban
legislature a bill to legally recognize the sex changes undergone by
transsexuals, at the same time it has been pushing for some time an
awareness campaign in the state-controlled media.

The International Day against Homophobia was begun on May 17, 2005, a
decade after the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from
its list of mental illnesses.

Thirteen years after its first showing in movie theaters on the
island, on May 5, Cubans watched the first broadcast on local
television of the 1993 film "Fresa y chocolate" (Strawberry and
Chocolate), an allegory against intolerance and discrimination
against homosexuals. Recently, Cuban TV also showed "La mujer de mi
hermano" (My Brother's Wife), which also deals with the theme of
homosexuality. EFE

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

27) Tale of last 90 minutes of woman's life
County officials express dismay at the events surrounding
the recent controversial death at King-Harbor hospital.
One nurse has resigned.
By Charles Ornstein
Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-king20may20,0,6057993.story?coll=la-home-center

In the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor
Hospital, Edith Isabel Rodriguez was seen as a complainer.

"Thanks a lot, officers," an emergency room nurse told
Los Angeles County police who brought in Rodriguez early
May 9 after finding her in front of the Willowbrook hospital
yelling for help. "This is her third time here."

The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from
the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three
days for abdominal pain. She'd been given prescription
medication and a doctor's appointment.

Turning to Rodriguez, the nurse said, "You have already
been seen, and there is nothing we can do," according to
a report by the county office of public safety, which
provides security at the hospital.

Parked in the emergency room lobby in a wheelchair after
police left, she fell to the floor. She lay on the linoleum,
writhing in pain, for 45 minutes, as staffers worked
at their desks and numerous patients looked on.

Aside from one patient who briefly checked on her condition,
no one helped her. A janitor cleaned the floor around her
as if she were a piece of furniture. A closed-circuit
camera captured everyone's apparent indifference.

Arriving to find Rodriguez on the floor, her boyfriend
unsuccessfully tried to enlist help from the medical staff
and county police — even a 911 dispatcher, who balked
at sending rescuers to a hospital.

Alerted to the "disturbance" in the lobby, police stepped
in — by running Rodriguez's record. They found an outstanding
warrant and prepared to take her to jail. She died before
she could be put into a squad car.

How Rodriguez came to die at a public hospital, without
help from the many people around her, is now the subject
of much public hand-wringing. The county chief administrative
office has launched an investigation, as has the Sheriff's
Department homicide division and state and federal
health regulators.

The triage nurse involved has resigned, and the emergency
room supervisor has been reassigned. Additional disciplinary
actions could come this week.

The incident has brought renewed attention to King-Harbor,
a long-troubled hospital formerly known as King/Drew.

The Times reconstructed the last 90 minutes of Rodriguez's
life based on accounts by three people who have seen the
confidential videotape, a detailed police report, interviews
with relatives and an account of the boyfriend's 911 call.

"I am completely dumbfounded," said county Supervisor
Zev Yaroslavsky, who has seen the video recording.

"It's an indictment of everybody," he said. "If this woman
was in pain, which she appears to be, if she was writhing
in pain, which she appears to be, why did nobody bother …
to take the most minimal interest in her, in her welfare?
It's just shocking. It really is."

The story of Rodriguez's demise began at 12:34 a.m. when
two county police officers received a radio call of
a "female down" and yelling for help near the front
entrance of King-Harbor, according to the police report.

When they approached Rodriguez to ask what was wrong,
she responded in a "loud and belligerent voice that her
stomach was hurting," the report states. She said she
had 10 gallstones and that one of them had burst.

A staff member summoned by the police arrived with
a wheelchair and rolled her into the emergency room.
Among her belongings, one officer found her latest
discharge slip from the hospital, which instructed
her to "return to ER if nausea, vomit, more pain
or any worse."

When the officers talked to the emergency room nurse,
she "did not show any concern" for Rodriguez, the
police report said. The report identifies the nurse
as Linda Witland, but county officials confirmed that
her name is Linda Ruttlen, who began working for the
county in July 1992.

Ruttlen could not be reached for comment.

During that initial discussion with Ruttlen, Rodriguez
slipped off her wheelchair onto the floor and curled
into a fetal position, screaming in pain, the report said.

Ruttlen told her to "get off the floor and onto a chair,"
the police report said. Two officers and a different nurse
helped her back to the wheelchair and brought her close
to the reception counter, where a staff member asked
her to remain seated.

The officers left and Rodriguez again pitched forward
onto the floor, apparently unable to get up, according
to people who saw the videotape and spoke on the condition
of anonymity.

Because the tape does not have sound, it is not possible
to determine whether Rodriguez was screaming or what
she was saying, the viewers said. Because of the camera's
angle, in most scenes, she is but a grainy blob, sometimes
obstructed, moving around on the floor.

When Rodriguez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, returned to the
hospital after an errand and saw her on the floor, he
alerted nurses and then called 911.

According to Sheriff's Capt. Ray Peavy, the dispatcher
said, "Look, sir, it indicates you're already in a hospital
setting. We cannot send emergency equipment out there
to take you to a hospital you're already at."

Prado then knocked on the door of the county police,
near the emergency room, and said, "My girlfriend needs
help and they don't want to help her," according to the
police report. A sergeant told him to consult the medical
staff, the report said. Minutes later, Prado came back
to the sergeant and said, "They don't want to help her."
Again, he was told to see the medical staff.

Within minutes, police began taking Rodriguez into custody.
When they told Prado that there was a warrant for Rodriguez's
arrest, he asked if she would get medical care wherever she
was taken. They assured him that she would. He then kissed
her and left, the police report said.

She was wheeled to the patrol vehicle and the door was opened
so that she could get into the back. When officers asked
her to get up, she did not respond. An officer tried to
revive her with an ammonia inhalant, then checked for
a pulse and found none. She died in the emergency room
after resuscitation efforts failed.

According to preliminary coroner's findings, the cause
was a perforated large bowel, which caused an infection.
Experts say the condition can bring about death fairly
suddenly.

Hours after her death, county Department of Health Services
spokesman Michael Wilson sent a note informing county
supervisors' offices about the incident but saying that
that police had been called because Rodriguez's boyfriend
became disruptive.

Health services Director Dr. Bruce Chernof said Friday
that subsequent information showed Prado was not, in fact,
disruptive. Chernof otherwise refused to comment, citing
the open investigation, patient privacy and "other issues."

Peavy, who supervises the sheriff's homicide unit, said
that although his investigation is not complete, "the
county police did absolutely, absolutely nothing wrong
as far as we're concerned."

The coroner's office may relay its final findings to
the district attorney's office for consideration of
criminal charges against hospital staff members,
Peavy said.

"I can't speak for the coroner and I can't speak for
the D.A., but that is certainly a possibility," he added.

Marcela Sanchez, Rodriguez's sister, said she has been
making tamales and selling them to raise money for her
sister's funeral and burial. Her family has been called
by attorneys seeking to represent them, but they do not
know whom to trust.

She said the latest revelations, which she learned from
The Times, are very troubling.

"Wow," she said. "If she was on the floor for that long,
how in the heck did nobody help her then?

"Where was their heart? Where was their humanity? …
When Jose came in, everybody was just sitting, looking.
Where were they?"

Sanchez said her sister was a giving person who always
took an interest in people in need, unlike those who
watched her suffer. "She would have taken her shoes
to give to somebody with no shoes," she said. Rodriguez,
a California native, performed odd jobs and lived
alternately with different relatives.

David Janssen, the county's chief administrative officer,
said the incident is being taken very seriously.
In a rare move, his office took over control of the
inquiry from the county health department and the office
of public safety.

"There's no excuse — and I don't think anybody believes
that there is," Janssen said.

Over the last 3 1/2 years, King-Harbor has reeled from
crisis to crisis.

Based on serious patient-care lapses, it has lost its
national accreditation and federal funding. Hundreds of
staff members have been disciplined and services cut.

Janssen said he was concerned that the incident would
divert attention from preparing the hospital for
a crucial review in six weeks that is to determine
whether it can regain federal funding.

If the hospital fails, it could be forced to close.

"It certainly isn't going to help," Janssen said.

At the same time, he said, the preliminary investigation
suggests that the fault primarily rests with the nurse
who resigned. "I think it's a tragic, tragic incident,
but it's not a systemic one."

Supervisor Gloria Molina, who hadn't seen the videotape,
said she wasn't sure the hospital had reformed.

"What's so discouraging and disappointing for me is that
it seems that this hospital at this point in time hasn't
really transformed itself — and I'm worried about it,"
she said.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich said he believed care had
improved at the hospital overall, but added, "It's
unconscionable that anyone would ignore a patient
in obvious distress."

Rodriguez's son, Edmundo, 25, said he still couldn't
understand why his mother died. "It's more than negligence.
I can't even think of the word."

His 24-year-old sister, Christina, said, "It just makes
it so much harder to grieve. It's so painful."

charles.ornstein@latimes.com

Times staff writers Stuart Pfeifer and Susannah Rosenblatt
contributed to this report.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

28) REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
THE ENGLISH SUBMARINE
By Fidel Castro Ruz
May 21, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/reflexiones/ing-009.html

The press dispatches bring the news; it belongs to the Astute Class,
the first of its kind to be constructed in Great Britain in more than
two decades.

"A nuclear reactor will allow it to navigate without refuelling
during its 25 year of service. Since it makes its own oxigen and
drinking water, it can circumnavigate the globe without needing to
surface," was the statement to the BBC by Nigel Ward, head of the
shipyards.

"It‚s a mean looking beast", says another.

"Looming above us is a construction shed 12 storeys high. Within it
are 3 nuclear-powered submarines at different stages of
construction," assures yet another.

Someone says that "it can observe the movements of cruisers in New
York Harbor right from the English Channel, drawing close to the
coast without being detected and listen to conversations on cell
phones". "In addition, it can transport special troops in mini-subs
that, at the same time, will be able to fire lethal Tomahawk missiles
for distances of 1,400 miles", a fourth person declares.

El Mercurio, the Chilean newspaper, emphatically spreads the news.

The UK Royal Navy declares that it will be one of the most advanced
in the world. The first of them will be launched on June 8 and will
go into service in January of 2009.

It can transport up to 38 Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish
torpedoes, capable of destroying a large warship. It will possess a
permanent crew of 98 sailors who will even be able to watch movies on
giant plasma screens.

The new Astute will carry the latest generation of Block 4 Tomahawk
torpedoes which can be reprogrammed in flight. It will be the first
one not having a system of conventional periscopes and, instead, will
be using fibre optics, infrared waves and thermal imaging.

"BAE Systems, the armaments manufacturer, will build two other
submarines of the same class," AP reported. The total cost of the
three submarines, according to calculations that will certainly be
below the mark, is 7.5 billion dollars.

What a feat for the British! The intelligent and tenacious people of
that nation will surely not feel any sense of pride. What is most
amazing is that with such an amount of money, 75 thousand doctors
could be trained to care for 150 million people, assuming that the
cost of training a doctor would be one-third of what it costs in the
United States. You could build 3 thousand polyclinics, outfitted with
sophisticated equipment, ten times what our country possesses.

Cuba is currently training thousands of young people from other
countries as medical doctors.

In any remote African village, a Cuban doctor can impart medical
knowledge to any youth from the village or from the surrounding
municipality who has the equivalent of a grade twelve education,
using videos and computers energized by a small solar panel; the
youth does not even have to leave his hometown, nor does he need to
be contaminated with the consumer habits of a large city.

The important thing is the patients who are suffering from malaria or
any other of the typical and unmistakable diseases that the student
will be seeing together the doctor.

The method has been tested with surprising results. The knowledge and
practical experience accumulated for years have no possible
comparison.

The non-lucrative practice of medicine is capable of winning over all
noble hearts.

Since the beginning of the Revolution, Cuba has been engaged in
training doctors, teachers and other professionals; with a population
of less than 12 million inhabitants, today we have more Comprehensive
General Medicine specialists than all the doctors in sub-Saharan
Africa where the population exceeds 700 million people.

We must bow our heads in awe after reading the news about the English
submarine. It teaches us, among other things, about the sophisticated
weapons that are needed to maintain the untenable order developed by
the United States imperial system.

We cannot forget that for centuries, and until recently, England was
called the Queen of the Seas. Today, what remains of that privileged
position is merely a fraction of the hegemonic power of her ally and
leader, the United States.

Churchill said: Sink the Bismarck! Today Blair says: Sink whatever
remains of Great Britain‚s prestige!

For that purpose, or for the holocaust of the species, is what his
"marvellous submarine" will be good for.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*



LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Film Offers New Talking Points in Health Care Debate
By MILT FREUDENHEIM and LIZA KLAUSSMANN
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/business/media/22react.html?ref=business

Kentucky: Families Sue in Mine Blast
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The sole survivor of a mine explosion last year and relatives
of four of the five miners killed sued the coal company,
saying it had put production over safety. The suit cited
safety violations against the company, Kentucky Darby;
a supervisor, Ralph Napier; and Jericol Mining, which
provided management, planning, engineering and safety
training to the mine, Darby Mine No. 1. The plaintiffs
also seek damages against the manufacturer of the emergency
air packs that the victims used.
May 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/us/22brfs-FAMILIESSUEI_BRF.html

IRAQ: Educational standards plummet, say specialists
http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportId=72168

Exclusive: Secret US plot to kill Al-Sadr
By Patrick Cockburn In Baghdad
Published: 21 May 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2565123.ece

What's Next in Iraq? Juan Cole Interviews Ali A. Allawi
"Will a surge of U.S. troops make
a difference in Iraq? How viable is
the current Iraqi government? Will
an American withdrawal lead to
all-out civil war?
May 25, 2007
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i38/38b00601.htm

Black Media Delegation Returns from Darfur
Final Call, News Report, Jehron Muhammad,
Posted: May 20, 2007
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=b4a5f713b944aebb26047375d0629bf7

Soldier’s Smallpox Inoculation Sickens Son
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
"A 2-year-old boy spent seven weeks in the hospital
and nearly died from a viral infection he got from
the smallpox vaccination his father received before
shipping out to Iraq, according to a government report
and the doctors who treated him."
May 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/health/18smallpox.html?ref=health

My Dear Fellow Species
By MARY JO MURPHY
"THE Origin of Species” is almost 150 — a fit survivor
of the science canon even if not everyone has seen fit
to jump from the Ark to the Beagle on the matter of
evolution (three Republican presidential candidates,
for example). But Darwin himself was slow to come to
his ideas, and slower still to disclose them to
a skeptical public. Last week, the Darwin Correspondence
Project, based at Cambridge University, put about 5,000
letters to and from Darwin, some of them previously
unpublished, online at darwinproject.ac.uk, with thousands
more to follow. The searchable database lets anyone track
the painstaking development of his research and thinking
— on all kinds of topics, personal and professional,
and with a huge array of correspondents." MARY JO MURPHY
May 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/weekinreview/20word.html?ref=science

The Closing of the University Commons
by Michael Perelman
May 19, 2007
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/perelman190507.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN

The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Although
Dr. Al-Arian is no longer on a hunger strike we must still demand
he be released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
a grand jury in Virginia. He has long sense served his time yet
Dr. Al-Arian is still being held. Release him now!

See:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/16/1410255

ACTION:

We ask all people of conscience to demand the immediate
release and end to Dr. Al- Arian's suffering.

Call, Email and Write:

1- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Fax Number: (202) 307-6777
Email: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

2- The Honorable John Conyers, Jr
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

3- Senator Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202)224-4242
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

4- Honorable Judge Gerald Lee
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314
March 22, 2007
[No email given...bw]

National Council of Arab Americans (NCA)
http://www.arab-american.net/

Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War of
Terror
By Charlotte Kates, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6767.shtml

Related:

Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America
This systematic censorship of Middle East reality
continues even in schools
Published: 07 April 2007
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ fisk/article2430 125.ece

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]

Excerpt of interview between Barbara Walters and Hugo Chavez
http://www.borev.net/2007/03/what_you_had_something_better.html

Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY

My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic

Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE

Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o

Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories hammer history's account of the
Sand Creek Massacre"

CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning
documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by
Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about
what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral
histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial,
Colorado film company.

"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient
Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for
public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the
story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness
this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."

"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness
value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we
also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal
elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film
shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century
Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "

Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black
Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and
Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado
history professor, are featured.

The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.

Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed
information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still
images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the
proposal page.

Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality
products that serve to educate others about the human condition.

Contact:

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
7078 South Fairfax Street
Centennial, CO 80122
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use
of these illegal weapons
http://poisondust.org/

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html

On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.

Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:

Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.

You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.

Happy Holidays!

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103

"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html

SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.

No comments: