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What Should the Anti-War Movement Do Now?
A Proposal from the ANSWER Coalition
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
Meetings Tuesdays, 7:00 p.m.
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
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The Bases Are Loaded
Video of the Week
Alternet Focus
Will the U.S. ever leave Iraq? Official policy promises an eventual departure, while warning of the dire consequences of a "premature" withdrawal. But while Washington equivocates, facts on the ground tell another story. Independent journalist Dahr Jamail, and author Chalmers Johnson, are discovering that military bases in Iraq are being consolidated from over a hundred to a handful of "megabases" with lavish amenities. Much of what is taking place is obscured by denials and quibbles over the definition of "permanent." The Bases Are Loaded covers a wide range of topics. Gary Hart, James Goldsborough, Nadia Keilani, Raed Jarrar, Bruce Finley Kam Zarrabi and Mark Rudd all add their observations about the extent and purpose of the bases in Iraq.
http://www.alternatefocus.org/
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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Annette T. Rubinstein, a friend and comrade of Paul Sweezy, Leo Huberman, and Harry Magdoff from the founding of Monthly Review in 1949 died on June 20th, aged 97. An active socialist for 75 years, Annette was the author of more than 20 essays and reviews on literary and political subjects for MR, as well as innumerable articles in Mainstream, Science & Society
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Stop the Blue Angels!
Write to the Board of Supervisors today and demand they be banned from our skies!
Here is my letter:
Dear Supervisors,
I am writing to all of you although I live in Bernal Heights. The Blue Angels fly and terrorize all of us in this city and in the Bay Area. Lethal weapons flying close to the ground right over our heads is neither celebratory nor fun. The noise is deafening--and no one can avoid it by choice--just as we can't avoid the war on Iraq and Afghanistan by choice--so much for our "democracy" that ignores the voice of its people!
We shouldn't have to plead with our supervisors to carry out what is surely the will of the people of San Francisco who have already voted twice to end the war and the military recruitment in our city.
We, the people, have made our wishes clear already. We are against the war; against the military industrial complex that is the U.S. Military that is personified by the Blue Angels--the "Angels of Death."
That our war planes are the fastest and that our pilots are the best trained to bring death and destruction does not comfort us or make us proud. It is an abomination and a condemnation of our government and its brutal, world war, domination plan!
And if this isn't enough, the Blue Angels' "performances" are wrought with danger already resulting in 26 fatalities. How can this threat to the wellbeing of the people of San Francisco be considered fun entertainment?
There is no excuse for their presence in our air! They should all be grounded permanently.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-824-8730
Here is the list of Supervisors:
District 1
Jake McGoldrick
Phone: (415) 554-7410
Fax: (415) 554-7415
Email: Jake.McGoldrick@sfgov.org
District 2
Michela Alioto-Pier
Phone: (415) 554-7752
Fax: (415) 554-7843
Email: Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.org
District 3
Aaron Peskin
Phone: (415) 554-7450
Fax: (415) 554-7454
Email: Aaron.Peskin@sfgov.org
District 4
Ed Jew
Phone: (415) 554-7460
Fax: (415) 554-7432
Email: Ed.Jew@sfgov.org
District 5
Ross Mirkarimi
Phone: (415) 554-7630
Fax: (415) 554-7634
Email: Ross.Mirkarimi@sfgov.org
District 7
Sean Elsbernd
Phone: (415) 554-6516
Fax: (415) 554-6546
Email: Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org
District 8
Bevan Dufty
Phone: (415) 554-6968
Fax: (415) 554-6909
Email: Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org
District 9
Tom Ammiano
Phone: (415) 554-5144
Fax: (415) 554-6255
Email: Tom.Ammiano@sfgov.org
District 10
Sophie Maxwell
Phone: (415) 554-7670
Fax: (415) 554-7674
Email: Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org
District 11
Gerardo C. Sandoval
Phone: (415) 554-6975
Fax: (415) 554-6979
Email: Gerardo.Sandoval@sfgov.org
I suggest you send a copy to our Mayor:
Gavin Newsom
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Trove of F.B.I. Files on Lawyers Guild Shows Scope of Secret Surveillance
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
June 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/nyregion/25archives.html
2) Delphi Deal Is Blow to Jobs Bank
By NICK BUNKLEY
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/business/25cnd-delphi.html?ref=business
3) Doubting the Police
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 26, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/opinion/26herbert.html?hp
4) Three Bad Rulings
NYT Editorial
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/opinion/26tue1.html?hp
5) A Plot to Assassinate Castro Was Approved By CIA Director Allen Dulles
By Amy Zegart
June 26, 2007, 2:19 pm
http://washington.blogs.nytimes.com/
6) New Scrutiny as Immigrants Die in Custody
By NINA BERNSTEIN
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/us/26detain.html?ref=us
7) Vote Against Banner Shows Divide on Speech in Schools
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/washington/26speech.html
8) Delphi Workers May Give Up Their Layoff-Pay Benefit
"Pay for newly hired employees would start at $14 an hour. Delphi originally proposed cutting wages to $12.50 an hour."
By NICK BUNKLEY
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/business/26auto.html
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1) Trove of F.B.I. Files on Lawyers Guild Shows Scope of Secret Surveillance
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
June 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/nyregion/25archives.html
One entry, dated April 14, 1954, was about I. F. Stone, who was described as being a writer from New York. Mr. Stone, it was noted, condemned Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s “persecution of innocent citizens” and likewise the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate’s corresponding committee.
Another on Oct. 24, 1966, noted that as a result of a F.B.I.-approved counterintelligence operation, Richard Lawrence Davis, who was running for a seat on the state committee of the Michigan District Communist Party, was cast under a cloud of suspicion as part of an effort to sow division in the group.
And an entry on Feb. 20, 1974, described how a source had penetrated the Revolutionary Union in Baltimore and had been able to participate in forming a new chapter of the party in Washington, D.C. The source, it said, also had a close personal relationship with Dana Beal, a leader of the Yippies, and provided information on their activities.
From 1940 to 1975, thousands of reports like these were part of extensive files compiled by the F.B.I. while it carried out a clandestine surveillance campaign on the National Lawyers Guild, an organization founded in New York in 1937 and associated with the labor movement and liberal causes.
They are among a trove of documents that archivists are poring over for the first time. The files provide a detailed history of the lawyers guild and include memos to and from the office of J. Edgar Hoover, internal F.B.I. analysis of the organization, typed and handwritten reports from covert informants and papers identifying people used by the agency to spy on the guild and other groups.
As part of a lawsuit filed in 1977 by lawyers in the New York City chapter of the guild, the F.B.I. turned over copies of roughly 400,000 pages of its files on the group.
Under a 1989 settlement, the original documents are sealed until 2025, when they will be given to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington. But the copies were donated by the guild’s lawyers in 1997 to the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University with the understanding that they could be made available to the public this year.
The F.B.I. reports, some of which were reviewed recently by this reporter, include information about future members of Congress, law professors and journalists.
Although he had not seen the documents, Richard Gid Powers, a historian at the City University of New York Graduate Center and the author of books about the F.B.I. and Mr. Hoover, said, “These records would show how the F.B.I. is interested from the very outset in people critical of its operations.”
The surveillance operation used wiretaps and counterintelligence strategies to peer into the internal affairs of the guild and the lives of its members, whose clients included Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the so-called Hollywood Ten, a group of directors, producers and screenwriters who refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
“It is an extremely significant archive,” said Dr. Michael Nash, who heads the Tamiment Library and Wagner Archive. “In many respects, the F.B.I. has done a very good job in documenting the National Lawyers Guild relationships with the movements that shaped progressive politics in the United States from the 1930s through the 1970s.”
The F.B.I.’s surveillance of the guild was part of a broad monitoring operation mounted by the agency under Mr. Hoover against groups and individuals it deemed seditious, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The F.B.I. insisted that the guild was rife with communists who were directed by Moscow. Although some early guild members had been communists, there was scant evidence to show that the group was controlled by the Communist Party.
The surveillance spanned the administrations of seven presidents even though the Justice Department determined in 1958 and 1972 that the guild was not subversive or criminal.
Thousands of people were drawn into the inquiry’s orbit, whether as targets or peripheral figures, and the files provide an unusually revealing window into efforts that often focused on law-abiding citizens. The files include mentions of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the N.A.A.C.P., Students for a Democratic Society and Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
There was an F.B.I. report in 1954 on a meeting of the Chicago Committee for Academic and Professional Freedom describing the event as a “hit McCarthy rally,” attended by Earl B. Dickerson of the National Lawyers Guild and Mr. Stone. No unlawful activity was noted.
Another government document from 1964, stamped “confidential,” cites John Conyers Jr., now a congressman from Michigan and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The report says that Mr. Conyers had discussed a campaign for public office and a recent visit to Mississippi where he was said to have participated in civil rights activities.
Some reports detail how F.B.I. agents used ruses and deception to attack political opponents. In 1966, a memo from Mr. Hoover’s office instructed agents to derail the electoral efforts of George W. Crockett Jr., the guild vice president, who was running for a judgeship in Detroit.
Soon after, the agency sought to discredit him by linking him to the Communist Party. Agents wrote a letter under a false name assailing Mr. Crockett and mailed it to a right-leaning organization. Unaware of the true source of the letter, the group disseminated fliers emblazoned with a hammer and sickle and calling Mr. Crockett an “enemy collaborator.” F.B.I. agents then sent the fliers to political committees, the state bar association, unions and newspapers.
Still, Mr. Crockett won the election and later served 11 years as a congressman.
The files also identify several secret informants who were assigned code numbers by the F.B.I. One of the more well-known informants was a man named John Rees, who was paid by the F.B.I. and used an alias to masquerade as a member of left-leaning groups in the 1960s and 1970s while compiling secret intelligence newsletters about the groups that he circulated to law enforcement agencies.
His wife, Louise Rees, who also used a bogus identity, got a secretarial job with the guild. She reported to the F.B.I. about legal strategies developed by guild lawyers and was recommended for a raise in one F.B.I. document that described her as a valuable source.
Heidi Boghosian, the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, said the guild was still sometimes the subject of investigations.
In 2004, the F.B.I. issued a subpoena to Drake University in Iowa seeking records about an antiwar conference held by a guild chapter there. And surveillance documents by the New York Police relating to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, which were recently unsealed by a federal judge, included references to the guild.
“We work with the assumption that everything we do is being monitored by the government,” Ms. Boghosian said. “Unfortunately, we’ve become used to surveillance.”
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2) Delphi Deal Is Blow to Jobs Bank
By NICK BUNKLEY
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/business/25cnd-delphi.html?ref=business
DETROIT, June 25 — Unionized workers at the Delphi Corporation, the big auto parts supplier, could vote this week to throw out the jobs bank, the longtime program that lets them continue receiving most of their pay after being laid off.
If so, the jobs bank, which critics have held up as the epitome of the American auto industry’s outdated and inefficient labor practices, could be in its last months at all three Detroit automakers, too.
Elimination of the jobs bank is one provision of a tentative agreement signed last week by the United Automobile Workers union, Delphi and Delphi’s former parent, General Motors, after nearly two years of divisive negotiations. The agreement replaces the jobs bank — which gives laid-off employees 95 percent of their base pay — with $1,500 in severance pay for every month of service, to a maximum of $40,000, according to a 46-page memorandum of understanding that details the deal.
The memorandum was posted online today by the Soldiers of Solidarity, a faction of the U.A.W. that opposes the agreement.
Local U.A.W. chapters held meetings today to discuss the agreement, and Delphi’s 17,000 U.A.W.-represented workers are expected to vote on the deal later in the week. Labor experts say ratification of the agreement could force the union to make similar concessions as it negotiates a new labor contract with Detroit’s automakers this summer.
“The jobs bank doesn’t have much of a future,” said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “The U.A.W. will have an extremely difficult time getting the Big Three to preserve anything that it had to give up with Delphi.”
A Goldman Sachs analyst, Robert Barry, cited a greater likelihood that the union will give significant concessions to the automakers in upgrading G.M.’s stock to “buy” from “neutral” today. Shares of G.M. rose 81 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $36.26 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
“We think G.M. can make a compelling case to U.A.W. members that material wage and/or benefit cuts are needed,” Mr. Barry wrote in a note to clients. “And we suspect members and retirees are increasingly amenable to such cuts.”
The tentative agreement at Delphi provides for considerable wage cuts, a demand that the company had made since filing for bankruptcy protection in October 2005. The hourly pay of Delphi’s highest-paid employees — about 4,000 people hired before G.M. spun off the company in 1999 — would decrease to $14.50 to $18, from about $27 today.
In exchange for accepting the lower wages, those workers would receive three annual “buy-down” payments of $35,000, for a total of $105,000.
Workers also would be offered as much as $140,000 to leave their jobs voluntarily and give up all benefits except their pension. Those already eligible to retire could accept an incentive of $35,000 to retire with full benefits.
Similar options, with the exception of the buy-downs, were offered to employees at G.M. and the Ford Motor Company last year; more than 65,000 accepted.
The agreement would let Delphi close or sell all but four of its 18 plants, according to the memorandum signed last week. The company would maintain operations in Rochester and Lockport, N.Y.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; and Kokomo, Ind. Plants in Flint and Saginaw, Mich., and Dayton, Ohio, would be transferred back to G.M.
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3) Doubting the Police
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 26, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/opinion/26herbert.html?hp
The woman was reluctant to let her name be used. She said she had a teenage son and was afraid that he might be harassed by the police. But her desire to have the truth come out overcame her fears.
“You can use my name,” she told me, “because I did not like what the police did to those kids. My name is Greer Martin.”
Ms. Martin was standing outside her home on a quiet, tree-lined block of Putnam Avenue in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. This was the block on which, a few weeks ago, the police closed in on a large group of young men, women and children who were walking toward a subway station, on their way to a wake for a friend who had been murdered.
Thirty-two of the young people, including a 13-year-old, were arrested. Most were charged with unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. Commissioner Ray Kelly and others in the Police Department have been spreading the word that these youngsters had been out of control, walking on top of cars and illegally blocking traffic in the street and on the sidewalk.
It does not appear that any of that was true.
The arrests occurred right outside Ms. Martin’s first-floor windows. “I was shocked beyond shock,” she said. “My windows were open, and it didn’t look like the kids had done anything wrong. The police handcuffed them and lined them up right there, at the beginning of my fence. One young lady was crying, but they didn’t resist in any way.”
She said she asked a detective why the young people were being arrested. “He told me they were trying to defuse a situation,” she said. “He said they were going to take the kids in and have a talk with them.”
A man named Conroy, who asked that his last name not be used, said he witnessed the entire incident. He lives across the street from Ms. Martin, and his 2007 Chevrolet Suburban was parked on the same side of the street that the kids were walking along when they were arrested.
He also said he was shocked by the police action. “The kids weren’t doing anything wrong,” he said.
I asked if anyone had been walking on top of cars. Conroy laughed and gestured toward his gleaming black vehicle. “Don’t you think if they had been climbing on top of cars, I would have noticed?”
He pulled out his cellphone to show me photos of some of the youngsters handcuffed and in police custody. I asked if the youngsters had blocked traffic. Conroy said, “No, not at all. There wasn’t any traffic out here until the police cars swooped in.”
I have interviewed many civilians about this case, and none have supported the police version of events. This is not a small matter. It’s a terrible thing if the police have been lying about their reasons for arresting these youngsters.
The official charges make no mention of people climbing on top of cars. It took a while for that tale to develop. The first time I heard it was in an interview I did with Capt. Scott Henderson of the 83rd Precinct a few days after the arrests. He said he had seen people walking on top of cars and that several of the youngsters had red bandanas.
The bandanas would have signaled that the youngsters were affiliated with the Bloods, the violent and notorious street gang. I asked what had happened to the bandanas. Captain Henderson said he didn’t know.
I e-mailed a list of questions to Commissioner Kelly’s office, trying to get whatever information might be available to corroborate Captain Henderson’s version of events. I asked if there were any other officers who saw anyone on top of cars. I was told that that information could not immediately be tracked down.
I asked if there were any civilian witnesses to such activity. I was referred to the office of the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, which did not provide the identity of any witnesses.
I asked if the Police Department had the names of any youngsters who had climbed on top of a car. I was told no.
I believe that an outlandish miscarriage of justice has occurred here, that the youngsters arrested did nothing wrong and that the Police Department’s version of events is false. Commissioner Kelly could clear the matter up once and for all by mounting an honest investigation to determine what really happened.
David Brooks is on vacation.
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4) Three Bad Rulings
NYT Editorial
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/opinion/26tue1.html?hp
The Supreme Court hit the trifecta yesterday: Three cases involving the First Amendment. Three dismaying decisions by Chief Justice John Roberts’s new conservative majority.
Chief Justice Roberts and the four others in his ascendant bloc used the next-to-last decision day of this term to reopen the political system to a new flood of special-interest money, to weaken protection of student expression and to make it harder for citizens to challenge government violations of the separation of church and state. In the process, the reconfigured court extended its noxious habit of casting aside precedents without acknowledging it — insincere judicial modesty scored by Justice Antonin Scalia in a concurring opinion.
First, campaign finance. Four years ago, a differently constituted court upheld sensible provisions of the McCain-Feingold Act designed to prevent corporations and labor unions from circumventing the ban on their spending in federal campaigns by bankrolling phony “issue ads.” These ads purport to just educate voters about a policy issue, but are really aimed at a particular candidate.
The 2003 ruling correctly found that the bogus issue ads were the functional equivalent of campaign ads and upheld the Congressional restrictions on corporate and union money. Yet the Roberts court shifted course in response to sham issue ads run on radio and TV by a group called Wisconsin Right to Life with major funding from corporations opposed to Senator Russell Feingold, the Democrat who co-authored the act.
It opened a big new loophole in time to do mischief in the 2008 elections. The exact extent of the damage is unclear. But the four dissenters were correct in warning that the court’s hazy new standard for assessing these ads is bound to invite evasion and fresh public cynicism about big money and politics.
The decision contained a lot of pious language about protecting free speech. But magnifying the voice of wealthy corporations and unions over the voice of candidates and private citizens is hardly a free speech victory. Moreover, the professed devotion to the First Amendment did not extend to allowing taxpayers to challenge White House aid to faith-based organizations as a violation of church-state separation. The controlling opinion by Justice Samuel Alito offers a cockeyed reading of precedent and flimsy distinctions between executive branch initiatives and Congressionally authorized spending to deny private citizens standing to sue. That permits the White House to escape accountability when it improperly spends tax money for religious purposes.
Nor did the court’s concern for free speech extend to actually allowing free speech in the oddball case of an Alaska student who was suspended from high school in 2002 after he unfurled a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” while the Olympic torch passed. The ruling by Chief Justice Roberts said public officials did not violate the student’s rights by punishing him for words that promote a drug message at an off-campus event. This oblique reference to drugs hardly justifies such mangling of sound precedent and the First Amendment.
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5) A Plot to Assassinate Castro Was Approved By CIA Director Allen Dulles
By Amy Zegart
June 26, 2007, 2:19 pm
http://washington.blogs.nytimes.com/
For years, the public has known that the C.I.A. spent part of the 1960s concocting plans to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. None of these plots ever succeeded, and many — one explored the feasibility of sending Castro a poison-laced diving suit, another tried to rig exotic exploding seashells — seem ridiculous in retrospect. One of the $64,000 questions from that time is whether these plots were known and authorized by various C.I.A. directors and others outside the agency, including the president. The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, better known as the Church Committee, spent months in 1975 and thousands of pages of testimony examining who knew what, and when. The committee found that the evidence suggested that higher-ups inside and outside the C.I.A .knew about the various assassination plots, but it was not conclusive.
Now, the “family jewels” documents show that at least one plot to kill Castro — involving underworld figure Jonnny Roselli — was directly approved by C.I.A. Director Allen Dulles. The jewels document notes on page 12 that in 1960, Richard Bissell, Director of the C.I.A.’s covert operations branch, began searching for “assets” to assist in a “sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action” against Castro. According to the document, the C.I.A. Director “was briefed and gave his approval.”
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6) New Scrutiny as Immigrants Die in Custody
By NINA BERNSTEIN
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/us/26detain.html?ref=us
Sandra M. Kenley was returning home from her native Barbados in 2005 when she was swept into the United States’ fastest-growing form of incarceration, immigration detention.
Seven weeks later, Ms. Kenley died in a rural Virginia jail, where she had complained of not receiving medicine for high blood pressure. She was one of 62 immigrants to die in administrative custody since 2004, according to a new tally by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that counted many more deaths than the 20 previously known.
No government body is charged with accounting for deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of county jails, privately run prisons and federal facilities where more than 27,500 people who are not American citizens are held on any given day while the government decides whether to deport them.
Getting details about those who die in custody is a difficult undertaking left to family members, advocacy groups and lawyers.
But as the immigration detention system balloons to meet demands for stricter enforcement of immigration laws, deaths in custody — and the secrecy and confusion around them — are drawing increased scrutiny from lawmakers and from government investigators.
Spurred by bipartisan reports of abuses in detention, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment to the proposed immigration bill that would establish an office of detention oversight within the Department of Homeland Security. Detention capacity would grow by 20,000 beds, or 73 percent, under the bill, which is expected to be debated again today in the Senate.
Complaints focus on a lack of independent oversight and failures to enforce standards for medical care, suicide prevention and access to legal help.
The inspector general in the Department of Homeland Security recently announced a “special review” of two deaths, including that of a Korean woman at a privately run detention center in Albuquerque. Fellow detainees told a lawyer that the woman, Young Sook Kim, had pleaded for medical care for weeks, but received scant attention until her eyes yellowed and she stopped eating.
Ms. Kim died of pancreatic cancer in federal custody on Sept. 11, 2005, a day after she was taken to a hospital.
Some of the sharpest criticism of the troubled system has come from officials at one of the largest detention centers in the country, York County Prison in Pennsylvania.
“The Department of Homeland Security has made it difficult, if not impossible, to meet the constitutional requirements of providing adequate health care to inmates that have a serious need for that care,” the York County Prison’s warden, Thomas Hogan, wrote in a court affidavit last year.
Officials with the immigration agency say that some deaths are inevitable, and that sufficient outside scrutiny comes from local medical examiners. Detention expanded by more than 32 percent last year, and the average length of stay was cut to 35 days from 89, said Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman.
“We spend $98 million annually to provide medical care for people in our custody,” Ms. Zuieback said. “Anybody who violates our national immigration law is going to get the same treatment by I.C.E. regardless of their medical condition.”
She declined to release information about the 62 detention deaths since 2004, including names, dates, locations or causes.
Twenty deaths were reported over the same period in a recent briefing paper for the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants from a list compiled by civil liberties lawyers from reports by relatives, advocates and the news media.
Detention standards were adopted by the immigration agency in 2000, but are not legally enforceable, unlike rules for the treatment of criminal inmates. The Department of Homeland Security has resisted efforts by the American Bar Association to turns the standards into regulations, saying that rulemaking would reduce the agency’s flexibility.
“The deaths bring forward in the worst way the systemwide problems,” said Sunita Patel, a lawyer for Legal Aid who prepared the United Nations briefing paper.
Some advocates of curbs on immigration say the solution is quicker deportations.
“The taxpayer cannot be expected to underwrite the elaborate detention facilities that some of these organizations want,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
In the case of Ms. Kenley, a legal permanent resident of the United States for more than 30 years, detention interrupted her medical care for high blood pressure, a fibroid tumor and uterine bleeding. An autopsy attributed her death to an enlarged heart from chronic hypertensive disease. But a report by emergency medical services said that she had fallen from a top bunk, and that a cellmate had pounded on the door for 20 minutes before guards responded.
Ms. Kenley’s sister, June Everett, said her questions had gone unanswered.
“How did my sister die?” she asked, as Ms. Kenley’s daughter, Nicole, wept. “It’s a whole set of confusion, so who knows, really? And I would like to know.”
Ms. Kenley had been traveling with her 1-year-old granddaughter when she arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport, records show, and she was ordered to return without the baby to discuss two old misdemeanor drug convictions that had surfaced in an airport database.
She obeyed. A transcript shows she admitted a conviction for drug possession in 1984 and one in 2002 for trying to buy a small amount of cocaine. She described a life derailed by drug addiction after 11 years of working in a newspaper mailroom.
“I turned my life around,” Ms. Kenley told the immigration inspector, pointing to three drug-free years after probation and treatment, completion of a nursing course, and legal custody of the granddaughter, Nakita. She also showed that she was taking blood pressure medication and was scheduled for surgery.
The inspector arrested her, invoking the law: two drug-related convictions made her subject to exclusion from the United States.
“I am barely living,” Ms. Kenley later wrote her sister from Pamunkey Regional Jail, in Hanover, Va., “trying to hold on until you get a lawyer to help me.”
She died at Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Va.
Her only court appearances were by video monitor, waiting for a volunteer lawyer who never came.
Even detainees with legal counsel sometimes do not survive.
Abdoulai Sall, 50, a Guinea-born taxi cab mechanic in Washington with no criminal record, died in detention last December.
Mr. Sall, whose boss of 17 years had sponsored him for a green card, was at an immigration interview with a lawyer, Paul S. Allen, when he was unexpectedly arrested on an old deportation order — part of a legal tangle left when another lawyer abandoned his case in the 1990s, Mr. Allen said.
The case file shows that Mr. Allen’s office urged medical intervention for Mr. Sall, who had been taking medication for a serious kidney ailment at the time of his arrest. While in detention at the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, Va. he complained that he was not getting his medication and that his symptoms were worsening in a barracks-style unit.
Fellow detainees described Mr. Sall huddling next to the unit dryer for warmth, barely able to walk. “The medical staff told him they don’t have what he needs because immigration don’t pay enough money,” one detainee wrote.
The accusation was denied by Lou Barlow, the jail’s superintendent, who said Mr. Sall had received good care, including a visit to the local emergency room.
“We’ve never done anything unethical, illegal or immoral,” Mr. Barlow said.
Autopsy results are still pending.
Some deaths, like Ms. Kim’s, come to light well after the fact. Ms. Kim, a cook of about 60, was swept up in a raid on a massage parlor and detained for a month at the Regional Correctional Center in Albuquerque, a county prison operated by the Cornell Companies, a publicly traded corporation.
Months after her death, a lawyer in Santa Fe, N.M., Brandt Milstein, learned about the case from other Korean detainees, since deported. Mr. Milstein said that under New Mexico law, the death should have been reviewed by the state’s medical inspector, but officials had not reported it as a death in custody.
About two weeks ago — nearly two years after Ms. Kim died — the inspector general’s office called him, Mr. Milstein said. The investigation is now under way.
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7) Vote Against Banner Shows Divide on Speech in Schools
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/washington/26speech.html
WASHINGTON, June 25 — The Alaska high school student who unfurled a 14-foot banner with the odd message “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” insisted that it was a banner about nothing, a prank designed to get him and his friends on television as the Olympic torch parade went through Juneau en route to the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
The school’s principal insisted, to the contrary, that the banner advocated, or at least celebrated, illegal drug use, and that the student, Joseph Frederick, should be punished for displaying it. She suspended him for 10 days.
On Monday, by a narrow margin, the Supreme Court backed the principal in a decision that showed the court deeply split over what weight to give to free speech in public schools.
Six justices voted to overturn a federal appeals court’s ruling that left the principal, Deborah Morse, liable for damages for violating Mr. Frederick’s First Amendment rights.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. spoke, at least nominally, for five of the six. He said for the court that Ms. Morse’s reaction to the banner, which was displayed off school property but at a school-sponsored event, was a reasonable one that did not violate the Constitution.
While the banner might have been nothing but “gibberish,” the chief justice said, it was reasonable for the principal, who “had to decide to act — or not act — on the spot,” to decide both that it promoted illegal drug use and that “failing to act would send a powerful message to the students in her charge, including Frederick, about how serious the school was about the dangers of illegal drug use.”
He added, “The First Amendment does not require schools to tolerate at school events student expression that contributes to those dangers.”
Four other justices, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., signed the chief justice’s opinion, although Justice Thomas took a much different approach. He said that Mr. Frederick had no First Amendment rights to violate.
“In light of the history of American public education,” Justice Thomas said, “it cannot seriously be suggested that the First Amendment ‘freedom of speech’ encompasses a student’s right to speak in public schools.” The court’s precedents had become incoherent, he said, adding, “I am afraid that our jurisprudence now says that students have a right to speak in school except when they don’t.”
The sixth justice, Stephen G. Breyer, did not sign the chief justice’s opinion, but wrote separately to say that the First Amendment issue was sufficiently cloudy that the court should have avoided deciding it. Instead, he said, the court should have ruled in the principal’s favor on the alternative ground that she was entitled to immunity from the student’s lawsuit.
Under the court’s doctrine of “qualified immunity,” government officials may not be sued for damages unless they have violated “clearly established” rights “of which a reasonable person would have known.”
There were additional shades of opinion within the chief justice’s majority. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kennedy, wrote separately to emphasize what they said was the narrowness of the court’s holding. They said the decision should be understood as limited to speech advocating drug use, and noted that the court had not endorsed the much broader argument, put forward by the Bush administration, that school officials could censor speech that interfered with a school’s “educational mission.”
The breadth of that argument had alarmed religious conservatives, on the ground that school officials would get a license to enforce political correctness. Justice Alito, who had expressed a similar concern as an appeals court judge, said that the “educational mission” argument “strikes at the very heart of the First Amendment” by allowing school officials to “suppress speech on political and social issues based on disagreement with the viewpoint expressed.”
Writing for the four dissenters, Justice John Paul Stevens said that even limited to drugs, the majority opinion distorted the First Amendment by “inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment rule permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions drugs” in a way that someone might perceive as containing a “latent pro-drug message.”
Justice Stevens said that “carving out pro-drug speech for uniquely harsh treatment finds no support in our case law and is inimical to the values protected by the First Amendment.”
Noting that alcohol also posed a danger to teenagers, Justice Stevens wondered whether “the court would support punishing Frederick for flying a ‘Wine Sips 4 Jesus’ banner,” which he said might be seen as pro-religion as well as pro-alcohol.
The dissenters, who also included Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Breyer, agreed with the majority that the principal should not be held personally liable for monetary damages. The case was Morse v. Frederick, No. 06-278.
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8) Delphi Workers May Give Up Their Layoff-Pay Benefit
"Pay for newly hired employees would start at $14 an hour. Delphi originally proposed cutting wages to $12.50 an hour."
By NICK BUNKLEY
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/business/26auto.html
DETROIT, June 25 — Unionized workers at Delphi, the big auto parts supplier, could vote this week to throw out the jobs bank, a longtime program that lets them continue receiving most of their pay after being laid off.
If so, the jobs bank, which critics call the epitome of the American auto industry’s inefficient labor practices, could be in its last months at the three Detroit automakers.
Elimination of the jobs bank is one provision of a tentative agreement signed last week by the United Automobile Workers union, Delphi and Delphi’s former parent, General Motors, after nearly two years of divisive negotiations.
In place of the jobs bank, which gives the laid-off employees 95 percent of their base pay, the agreement would provide $1,500 in severance pay for every month of service, to a maximum of $40,000, according to a 46-page memorandum of understanding detailing the deal.
The memorandum was posted online Monday by the Soldiers of Solidarity, a faction of the U.A.W. that opposes the agreement.
Union chapters held meetings Sunday and Monday to discuss the agreement; Delphi’s 17,000 U.A.W.-represented workers are expected to vote on the deal this week. Labor specialists say ratification of the agreement could force the union to make similar concessions as it negotiates with the automakers this summer.
“The jobs bank doesn’t have much of a future,” said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “The U.A.W. will have an extremely difficult time getting the Big Three to preserve anything that it had to give up with Delphi.”
The U.A.W. has made a series of sacrifices in an effort to help the Detroit companies overcome severe financial turmoil. In 2005, the union agreed to have workers at G.M. and Ford pay part of their health care costs, although it refused to give Chrysler a similar deal. The U.A.W. also went along with the automakers’ plans to cut their payrolls through buyout programs, and it did not fight the numerous plant closings that all three automakers have announced.
The companies are expected to push for still more givebacks during the coming contract negotiations, which begin July 23.
A Goldman Sachs analyst, Robert Barry, upgraded G.M.’s stock to a buy rating from neutral on Monday, citing a greater chance that automakers would achieve their demands. Shares of G.M. rose 81 cents, to close at $36.27, a four-month high.
“We think G.M. can make a compelling case to U.A.W. members that material wage and/or benefit cuts are needed,” Mr. Barry wrote in a note to clients. “And we suspect members and retirees are increasingly amenable to such cuts.”
The tentative agreement at Delphi provides for considerable wage cuts, a demand the company had made since filing for bankruptcy protection in October 2005. Hourly pay for Delphi’s most highly compensated employees — about 4,000 people hired before G.M. spun off Delphi in 1999 — would decrease to a range of $14.50 to $18, from about $27 today.
In exchange for accepting the lower wages, those workers would get three annual “buy down” payments of $35,000, for a total of $105,000.
Pay for newly hired employees would start at $14 an hour. Delphi originally proposed cutting wages to $12.50 an hour.
Workers would also be offered as much as $140,000 to leave their jobs and give up all benefits except pensions. Those already eligible to retire could accept an incentive of $35,000 to retire with full benefits.
Similar options, with the exception of the buy downs, were offered to employees at G.M. and Ford last year; more than 65,000 accepted.
The agreement would let Delphi close or sell all but 4 of its 18 plants, according to the memorandum signed last week. The company would maintain operations in Rochester; Grand Rapids, Mich.; and Kokomo, Ind. Plants in Flint and Saginaw, Mich., and in Dayton, Ohio, would be transferred back to G.M.
General Motors has said it expects its liability for Delphi’s bankruptcy to be $7 billion, including a $1 billion charge against earnings this quarter.
Brian A. Johnson, an analyst with Lehman Brothers, said that replacing the jobs bank with severance pay might make newer workers who do not have the three years’ experience needed to qualify for the jobs bank more willing to approve the deal. But older workers who chose to remain at Delphi could miss out on tens of thousands of dollars if they were laid off later.
Ron Gettelfinger, the U.A.W. president, had harsh words for Delphi’s leadership Monday, as he often did during the negotiations. He thanked G.M.’s chief financial officer, Frederick A. Henderson, but criticized Delphi for publicly confirming that a deal had been signed before union leaders had a chance to discuss it fully.
“Once again, they had to be in front acting like they’re in charge and knowing what’s going on,” Mr. Gettelfinger said in a radio interview on WJR-AM in Detroit. Several hours after Delphi announced the deal in a news release Friday afternoon, Mr. Gettelfinger issued his own statement, in which he avoided mentioning Delphi by name.
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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28-Mile Virtual Fence Is Rising Along the Border
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/us/26fence.html?ref=us
U.S. Plan to Capture and Kill Insurgents in Baquba Fell Far Short of Goal, Officer Says
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
June 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/world/middleeast/26baquba.html
Army kidnaps six Palestinians from several parts of the West Bank
The Israeli army invades several cities and towns in the West Bank and kidnapped at least six Palestinians in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 49172
The Situation Room: Government officials, including the mayor, are concealing records of disastrously high levels of toxic dust from Lennar’s grading at the Hunters Point Shipyard by Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, M.D., http://www.sfbayview.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=222&Itemid=14
Boom times for banks in Venezuela
By JENS ERIK GOULD
www.latinamericanpost.com/index.php?mod=seccion&secc=4&conn=4860
The Big Profits in Biowarfare Research
Corporate America's Deadliest Secret
By SHERWOOD ROSS
June 22, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross06222007.html
How Could Blair Possibly Get This Job?
The Bumbling Envoy
By ROBERT FISK
Weekend Edition
June 23 / 24, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/fisk06232007.html
Nationwide, Black children 4-6 times more likely to die of asthma http://www.fpnotebook.com/LUN13.htm .
Nigeria: Strike - 50 Labour Leaders Arrested
Daily Champion (Lagos)
22 June 2007
Posted to the web 22 June 2007
Chukwudi Achife, Ufomba Uzuegbu, Akor Sylvester
Lagos
http://allafrica.com/stories/200706220007.html
Climate change blamed as Lake Superior shrinks
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 20 June 2007
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2679474.ece
General Strike Over Rising Fuel Price Takes Hold in Nigerian Cities
By SARAH SIMPSON
June 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/world/africa/21nigeria.html
At Least 12 U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq in 2 Days
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and GRAHAM BOWLEY
June 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/world/middleeast/21cnd-iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
The General's Report
By Seymour M. Hersh
The New Yorker
25 June 2007 Issue
"How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061707A.shtml
Medical Marijuana Measure Falls With Connecticut Governor’s Veto
By MATTHEW J. MALONE
June 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/nyregion/20rell.html
AP Blog: Living on Cuba's Rationed Food
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:18 p.m. ET
"AP Havana Bureau Chief Anita Snow is spending the month of June living on the ''libreta,'' a ration book for food consumption in Cuba. Here's her story."
June 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-INT-Cuba-Weblog.html?ex=1182916800&en=6f07cb599a5fd992&ei=5070&emc=eta1
The Earth today stands in imminent peril
" ...and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal."
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 19 June 2007
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2675747.ece
With Rise in Radiation Exposure, Experts Urge Caution on Tests
By RONI CARYN RABIN
June 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/health/19cons.html?ref=health
Conservancy Buys Large Area of Adirondack Wilderness
By ANTHONY DePALMA
June 19, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/nyregion/19adirondacks.html?ref=nyregion
Global: Hidden cancer epidemic kills hundreds of thousands each year
"A worldwide epidemic of occupational cancer is claiming at least one life every 52 seconds, but this tragedy is being ignored by both official regulators and employers. A new cancer prevention guide, reveals that over 600,000 deaths a year – one death every 52 seconds – are caused by occupational cancer, making up almost one-third of all work-related deaths."
http://www.hazards.org/cancer/index.htm
Preventing occupational cancer
"A new cancer prevention guide, reveals that over 600,000 deaths a year – one death every 52 seconds – are caused by occupational cancer, making up almost one-third of all work-related deaths."
IMF / News article
http://www.imfmetal.org/main/index.cfm?n=47&l=2&c=15708
A Harsh Lesson in Finances for After-School Students
By DAVID GONZALEZ
June 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/nyregion/18citywide.html?ref=nyregion
Long Reviled, Merit Pay Gains Among Teachers
By SAM DILLON
June 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/education/18pay.html?ref=us
Meadow Birds in Precipitous Decline, Audubon Says
By FELICITY BARRINGER
June 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/us/15birds.html?ref=science
Strike in South Africa expands
By Geoff Hill
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published June 12, 2007
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20070611-114232-8445r.htm
Oregon: More Than 165 Workers Are Detained After Raid
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
More than 165 workers were detained to be processed for possible deportation after federal agents raided the Fresh Del Monte Produce food-processing plant and two offices of a staffing company in Portland. Three people were indicted on immigration, illegal documents and identity theft charges. An official at Fresh Del Monte Produce Company headquarters in Coral Gables, Fla., said the company could not comment until federal investigators provided it with more information. Mayor Tom Potter of Portland criticized the raids. The three arrests were understandable, Mr. Potter said, but “to go after local workers who are here to support their families while filling the demands of local businesses for their labor is bad policy.”
June 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/us/13brfs-immigration.html
Robert Fisk: Lies and outrages... would you believe it?
It was Israel which attacked Egypt after Nasser closed the straits of Tiran
Published: 09 June 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2636206.ece
Judge Throws Out Sentence in Teen Sex Case
By BRENDA GOODMAN
June 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/us/11cnd-consent.html?hp
US Military Envisions "Post-Occupation" Force
"US military officials are increasingly envisioning a "post-occupation" troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061107J.shtml
Lieberman Backs Limited U.S. Attacks on Iran
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
June 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/washington/10cnd-policy.html
Biologists Make Skin Cells Work Like Stem Cells
By NICHOLAS WADE
June 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/science/07cell.html?ref=science
Report Confirms CIA Secret Prisons in Europe
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060807J.shtml
The Dirty Water Underground
By GREGORY DICUM
OAKLAND, Calif.
May 31, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/garden/31greywater.html
A Hot-Selling Weapon, an Inviting Target
By ANDREW PARK
June 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmoney/03rifle.html?ref=business
Surf’s Up, but the Water Is Brown
By MIREYA NAVARRO
June 3, 2007
Los Angeles
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/fashion/03beaches.html
When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?
By ELIZABETH WEIL
June 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/magazine/03kindergarten-t.html?hp
After Sanctions, Doctors Get Drug Company Pay
By GARDINER HARRIS and JANET ROBERTS
June 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/health/03docs.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Somalia: The Other (Hidden) War for Oil
by Carl Bloice; Black Commentator
May 07, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12768
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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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
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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ADDICTED TO WAR
Animated Video Preview
Narrated by Peter Coyote
Is now on YouTube and Google Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZwyuHEN5h8
We are planning on making the ADDICTED To WAR movie.
Can you let me know what you think about this animated preview?
Do you think it would work as a full length film?
Please send your response to:
Fdorrel@sbcglobal. net or Fdorrel@Addictedtow ar.com
In Peace,
Frank Dorrel
Publisher
Addicted To War
P.O. Box 3261
Culver City, CA 90231-3261
310-838-8131
fdorrel@addictedtow ar.com
fdorrel@sbcglobal. net
www.addictedtowar. com
For copies of the book:
http://www.addictedtowar.com/book.html
OR SEND CHECK OR MONEY ORDER TO:
Frank Dorrel
P.O. BOX 3261
CULVER CITY, CALIF. 90231-3261
fdorrel@addictedtowar.com
$10.00 per copy (Spanish or English); special bulk rates
can be found at: http://www.addictedtowar.com/bookbulk.html
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN
The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Although
Dr. Al-Arian is no longer on a hunger strike we must still demand
he be released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
a grand jury in Virginia. He has long sense served his time yet
Dr. Al-Arian is still being held. Release him now!
See:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/16/1410255
ACTION:
We ask all people of conscience to demand the immediate
release and end to Dr. Al- Arian's suffering.
Call, Email and Write:
1- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Fax Number: (202) 307-6777
Email: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
2- The Honorable John Conyers, Jr
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov
3- Senator Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202)224-4242
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov
4- Honorable Judge Gerald Lee
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314
March 22, 2007
[No email given...bw]
National Council of Arab Americans (NCA)
http://www.arab-american.net/
Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War of
Terror
By Charlotte Kates, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6767.shtml
Related:
Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America
This systematic censorship of Middle East reality
continues even in schools
Published: 07 April 2007
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ fisk/article2430 125.ece
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Excerpt of interview between Barbara Walters and Hugo Chavez
http://www.borev.net/2007/03/what_you_had_something_better.html
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
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'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html
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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
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THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en
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Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/
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George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
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Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
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Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327
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A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489
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Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories hammer history's account of the
Sand Creek Massacre"
CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning
documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by
Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about
what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral
histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial,
Colorado film company.
"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient
Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for
public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the
story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness
this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."
"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness
value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we
also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal
elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film
shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century
Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "
Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black
Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and
Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado
history professor, are featured.
The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.
Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed
information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still
images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the
proposal page.
Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality
products that serve to educate others about the human condition.
Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
7078 South Fairfax Street
Centennial, CO 80122
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
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A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use
of these illegal weapons
http://poisondust.org/
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You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4
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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
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[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]
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END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177
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Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.
Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:
Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.
You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.
Happy Holidays!
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.
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