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September 15 — Turn Up the Heat in Washington DC!
Calendar of upcoming anti-war events
North/Central California "End the War Now" March:
Saturday, October 27, 2007, 11am, San Francisco Civic Center Plaza
Planning Meeting: Thursday, July 12, 7 p.m.
San Francisco Women’s Building, 3543 18th St. (btwn. Valencia & Guerrero)
Let's unite to build the broadest, most diverse and effective anti-war movement!
We want to thank the thousands of people and many organizations that have responded to ANSWER's May 31 Proposal to the Anti-War Movement. The essence of the proposal is for all the anti-war coalitions and organizations to come together to mobilize the largest single mass march on Washington DC under the demand End the War Now!
Most anti-war activists support this idea. At the national level some organizations support the call for building a united mass mobilization. Others are opposing it. The ANSWER Coalition will continue to promote and organize for a united action where organizations and coalitions can come together and organize a march of a million people to show the breadth and support of the anti-war sentiment in this country. March 2008 will mark the start of the sixth year of the Iraq war. If the anti-war organizations desire to unite, it would be an important moment to organize a huge show of force demanding an immediate end to the war. In unity there is great strength—it is that simple.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
(Call to check meeting schedules.)
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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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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) When Is Enough Enough?
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 30, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/30/opinion/30herbert.html?hp
2) Castro Reacts to C.I.A. Documents
By REUTERS
Filed at 11:05 a.m. ET
July 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/news-cuba-castro.html
3) The Killing Machine
By Fidel Castro Ruz
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html
4) A Much-Needed Second Chance
NYT Editorial
July 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/opinion/02mon1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
5) Just Say AAA
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
July 2, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/opinion/02krugman.html?hp
6) Afghans Say Weekend Airstrikes Killed 62 Rebels and 45 Civilians
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/world/asia/02afghan.html?ref=world
7) A $135 Million Home, but if You Have to Ask ...
By KIRK JOHNSON
July 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/us/02aspen.html?ref=us
8) Harassed in the Classroom
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
July 3, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/opinion/03herbert.html?hp
9) Soft on Crime
NYT Editorial
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/opinion/03tues1.web.html?hp
10) U.S. Says Iran Helped Iraqis Kill Five G.I.’s
By JOHN F. BURNS and MICHAEL R. GORDON
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html?hp
12) Juggling Figures, and Justice, in a Doctor’s Trial
By JOHN TIERNEY
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/science/03tier.html?ref=science
13) A Conversation With Elizabeth H. Blackburn
Finding Clues to Aging in the Fraying Tips of Chromosomes
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/science/03conv.html?ref=science
14) Subject: A Bucket of Blood
From: "Senator Ken Gordon, District 35-Denver"
kengordon@knowledgemessenger.com
Date: July 3, 2007 6:08:23 AM MDT
To: "dvasicek@earthlink.net"
Reply-To: ken@kengordon.com
15) Justice in Jena
by Jordan Flaherty
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
http://www.sfbayview.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=169&Itemid=14
16) Call Out the Instigator
Cindy Sheehan
http://www.traprockpeace.org/traprock_blog/
17) American dream still burns bright for many – but results vary
“Men in their 30s earn about $5,000 less in real terms than their
fathers' generation did, according to a new study.”
By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
July 03, 2007
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0703/p01s04-ussc.html
18) Iraqi Cabinet Moves Forward on Oil Measure
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
July 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/world/middleeast/04iraq.html?ref=world
19) E.P.A. and Dow in Talks on Dioxin Cleanup at Main Factory
By FELICITY BARRINGER
July 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/us/04dioxin.html
20) Insights: Big Yawn, Cooler Brain? Researchers Say Yes
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/health/03insi.html
21) Private contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq
New U.S. data show how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of the war-torn nation.
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer
July 4, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-private4jul04,1,6564316.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
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1) When Is Enough Enough?
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
June 30, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/30/opinion/30herbert.html?hp
Chances are you didn’t hear it, but on Thursday night Senator Hillary Clinton said, “If H.I.V./AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.”
Her comment came on the same day that a malevolent majority on the U.S. Supreme Court threw a brick through the window of voluntary school integration efforts.
There comes a time when people are supposed to get angry. The rights and interests of black people in the U.S. have been under assault for the longest time, and in the absence of an effective counterforce, that assault has only grown more brutal.
Have you looked at the public schools lately? Have you looked at the prisons? Have you looked at the legions of unemployed blacks roaming the neighborhoods of big cities across the country? These jobless African-Americans, so many of them men, are so marginal in the view of the wider society, so insignificant, so invisible, they aren’t even counted in the government’s official jobless statistics.
And now this new majority on the Supreme Court seems committed to a legal trajectory that would hurl blacks back to the bad old days of the Jim Crow era.
Where’s the outcry? Where’s the line in the sand that the prejudiced portion of the population is not allowed to cross?
Mrs. Clinton’s comment was made at a forum of Democratic presidential candidates at Howard University that was put together by Tavis Smiley, the radio and television personality, and broadcast nationally by PBS. The idea was to focus on issues of particular concern to African-Americans.
It’s discouraging that some of the biggest issues confronting blacks — the spread of AIDS, chronic joblessness and racial discrimination, for example — are not considered mainstream issues.
Senator John Edwards offered a disturbingly bleak but accurate picture of the lives of many young blacks: “When you have young African-American men who are completely convinced that they’re either going to die or go to prison and see absolutely no hope in their lives; when they live in an environment where the people around them don’t earn a decent wage; when they go to schools that are second-class schools compared to the wealthy suburban areas — they don’t see anything getting better.”
The difficult lives and often tragic fates of such young men are not much on the minds of so-called mainstream Americans, or the political and corporate elites who run the country. More noise needs to be made. There’s something very wrong with a passive acceptance of the degraded state in which so many African-Americans continue to live.
Mr. Smiley is also organizing a forum of Republican candidates to be held in September. I wholeheartedly applaud his efforts. But if black people were more angry, and if they could channel that anger into political activism — first and foremost by voting as though their lives and the lives of their children depended on it — there would not be a need to have separate political forums to address their concerns.
If black people could find a way to come together in sky-high turnouts on Election Day, if they showed up at polling booths in numbers close to the maximum possible turnout, if they could set the example for all other Americans about the importance of exercising the franchise, the politicians would not dare to ignore their concerns.
For black people, especially, the current composition of the Supreme Court should be the ultimate lesson in the importance of voting in a presidential election. No branch of the government has been more crucial than the judiciary in securing the rights and improving the lives of blacks over the past five or six decades.
George W. Bush, in a little more than six years, has tilted the court so radically that it is now, like the administration itself, relentlessly hostile to the interests of black people. That never would have happened if blacks had managed significantly more muscular turnouts in the 2000 and 2004 elections. (The war in Iraq would not have happened, either.)
There are, of course, many people, black and white, who are working on a vast array of important issues. But much, much more needs to be done. And blacks, in particular, need to intervene more directly in the public policy matters that concern them.
In the 1960s, there were radicals running around screaming about black power. But the real power in this country has always been the power of the vote. Black Americans have not come close to maximizing that power.
It’s not too late.
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2) Castro Reacts to C.I.A. Documents
By REUTERS
Filed at 11:05 a.m. ET
July 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/news-cuba-castro.html
HAVANA (Reuters) - Convalescing Cuban President Fidel Castro charged on Sunday the release of classified CIA documents detailing past abuses was a smoke screen behind which the Bush administration hoped to hide even worse methods.
"I think that this action could be an attempt ... to make people believe that these methods belong to another era and are no longer used," Castro wrote in an editorial published by the communist country's official media.
"Everything described in the documents is still being done, only in a more brutal manner around the entire planet, including an increasing number of illegal actions in the very United States."
The CIA declassified on Tuesday hundreds of pages of long-secret records that detailed some of the agency's worst illegal abuses during about 25 years of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying and kidnapping.
The documents are known in the CIA as the "Family Jewels" and some describe the agency's efforts to persuade Johnny Roselli, believed to be a mobster, to help plot the assassination of Castro.
"Sunday is a good day to read what appears to be science fiction," Castro began his three-page editorial, titled "The Killing Machine."
He went on to quote extensively from material covering the attempt on his life, as well as a New York Times analysis of all the documents.
Cuba charges that Castro has been the target of hundreds of assassination attempts. The Cuban leader has said numerous times that President George W. Bush has ordered him killed.
Castro also reiterated in detail his long-held belief that U.S. President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963, was the victim of a plot involving elements of the CIA and militant anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
Castro, a master sharp-shooter with a telescopic rifle, insists Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the only shooter in Dallas.
"You loose the target after every shot even if it is not moving and have to find it again in fractions of a second," he said.
Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July last year, when he handed over power temporarily to his younger brother, Raul.
But the 80-year-old revolutionary has returned to public life since March by writing occasional articles, called "Reflections of the Commander in Chief." He has been writing more frequently in recent weeks, fueling speculation that his health is improving.
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3) The Killing Machine
By Fidel Castro Ruz
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html
Sunday is a good day to read something that would appear to be science fiction.
It was announced that the CIA would be declassifying hundreds of pages on illegal actions that included plans to eliminate the leaders of foreign governments. Suddenly the publication is halted and it is delayed one day. No coherent explanation was given. Perhaps someone in the White House looked over the material.
The first package of declassified documents goes by the name of “The Family Jewels;” it consists of 702 pages on illegal CIA actions between 1959 and 1973. About 100 pages of this part have been deleted. It deals with actions that were not authorized by any law, plots to assassinate other leaders, experiments with drugs on human beings to control their minds, spying on civil activists and journalists, among other similar activities that were expressly prohibited.
The documents began to be gathered together 14 years after the first of the events took place, when then CIA director, James Schlessinger became alarmed about what the press was writing, especially all the articles by Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein published in The Washington Post, already mentioned in the “Manifesto to the People of Cuba.” The agency was being accused of promoting spying in the Watergate Hotel with the participation of its former agents Howard Hunt and James McCord.
In May 1973, the Director of the CIA was demanding that, “all the main operative officials of this agency must immediately inform me on any ongoing or past activity that might be outside of the constituting charter of this agency.” Schlesinger, later appointed Head of the Pentagon, had been replaced by William Colby. Colby was referring to the documents as “skeletons hiding in a closet.” New press revelations forced Colby to admit the existence of the reports to interim President Gerald Ford in 1975. The New York Times was denouncing agency penetration of antiwar groups. The law that created the CIA prevented it from spying inside the United States.
That “was just the tip of the iceberg,” said then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger himself warned, “blood would flow” if other actions were known, and he immediately added: “For example, that Robert Kennedy personally controlled the operation for the assassination of Fidel Castro.” The President’s brother was then Attorney General of the United States. He was later murdered as he was running for President in the 1968 elections, which facilitated Nixon’s election for lack of a strong candidate. The most dramatic thing about the case is that apparently he had reached the conviction that Jack Kennedy had been victim of a conspiracy. Thorough investigators, after analyzing the wounds, the caliber of the shots and other circumstances surrounding the death of the President, reached the conclusion that there had been at least three shooters. Solitary Oswald, used as an instrument, could not have been the only shooter. I found that rather striking. Excuse me for saying this but fate turned me into a shooting instructor with a telescopic sight for all the Granma expeditionaries. I spent months practicing and teaching, every day; even though the target is a stationary one it disappears from view with each shot and so you need to look for it all over again in fractions of a second.
Oswald wanted to come through Cuba on his trip to the U.S.SR. He had already been there before. Someone sent him to ask for a visa in our country’s embassy in Mexico but nobody knew him there so he wasn’t authorized. They wanted to get us implicated in the conspiracy. Later, Jack Ruby—a man openly linked to the Mafia—unable to deal with so much pain and sadness, as he said, assassinated him, of all places, in a precinct full police agents.
Subsequently, in international functions or on visits to Cuba, on more than one occasion I met with the aggrieved Kennedy relatives, who would greet me respectfully. The former president’s son, who was a very small child when his father was killed, visited Cuba 34 years later. We met and I invited him to dinner.
The young man, in the prime of his life, and well brought up, tragically died in an airplane accident on a stormy night as he was flying to Martha’s Vineyard with his wife. I never touched on the thorny issue with any of those relatives. In contrast, I pointed out that if the president-elect had then been Nixon instead of Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs disaster, we would have been attacked by the land and sea forces escorting the mercenary expedition, and both countries would have paid a high toll in human lives. Nixon would not have limited himself to saying that victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan. For the record, Kennedy was never too enthusiastic about the Bay of Pigs adventure; he was led there by Eisenhower’s military reputation and the recklessness of his ambitious vice-president.
I remember that, exactly on the day and minute he was assassinated, I was speaking in a peaceful spot outside of the capital with French journalist Jean Daniel. He told me that he was bringing a message from President Kennedy. He said to me that in essence he had told him: “You are going to see Castro. I would like to know what he thinks about the terrible danger we just experienced of a thermonuclear war. I want to see you again as soon as you get back.” “Kennedy was very active; he seemed to be a political machine,” he added, and we were not able to continue talking as someone rushed in with the news of what had just happened. We turned on the radio. What Kennedy thought was now pointless.
Certainly I lived with that danger. Cuba was both the weakest part and the one that would take the first strike, but we did not agree with the concessions that were made to the United States. I have already spoken of this before.
Kennedy had emerged from the crisis with greater authority. He came to recognize the enormous sacrifices of human lives and material wealth made by the Soviet people in the struggle against fascism. The worst of the relations between the United States and Cuba had not yet occurred by April 1961. When he hadn’t resigned himself to the outcome of the Bay of Pigs, along came the Missile Crisis. The blockade, economic asphyxiation, pirate attacks and assassination plots multiplied. But the assassination plots and other bloody occurrences began under the administration of Eisenhower and Nixon.
After the Missile Crisis we would have not refused to talk with Kennedy, nor would we have ceased being revolutionaries and radical in our struggle for socialism. Cuba would have never severed relations with the U.S.SR as it had been asked to do. Perhaps if the American leaders had been aware of what a war could be using weapons of mass destruction they would have ended the Cold War earlier and differently. At least that’s how we felt then, when there was still no talk of global warming, broken imbalances, the enormous consumption of hydrocarbons and the sophisticated weaponry created by technology, as I have already said to the youth of Cuba. We would have had much more time to reach, through science and conscience, what we are today forced to realize in haste.
President Ford decided to appoint a Commission to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency. “We do not want to destroy the CIA but to preserve it,” he said.
As a result of the Commission’s investigations that were led by Senator Frank Church, President Ford signed an executive order, which expressly prohibited the participation of American officials in the assassinations of foreign leaders.
The documents published now disclose information about the CIA-Mafia links for my assassination.
Details are also revealed about Operation Chaos, carrying on from 1969 for at least seven years, for which the CIA created a special squadron with the mission to infiltrate pacifist groups and to investigate “the international activities of radicals and black militants.” The Agency compiled more than 300,000 names of American citizens and organizations and extensive files on 7,200 persons.
According to The New York Times, President Johnson was convinced that the American anti-War movement was controlled and funded by Communist governments and he ordered the CIA to produce evidence.
The documents recognize, furthermore, that the CIA spied on various journalists like Jack Anderson, performers such as Jane Fonda and John Lennon, and the student movements at Columbia University. It also searched homes and carried out tests on American citizens to determine the reactions of human beings to certain drugs.
In a memorandum sent to Colby in 1973, Walter Elder who had been executive assistant to John McCone, CIA Director in the early 1970s, gives information about discussions in the CIA headquarters that were taped and transcribed: “I know that whoever worked in the offices of the director were worried about the fact that these conversations in the office and on the phone were transcribed. During the McCone years there were microphones in his regular offices, the inner office, the dining room, the office in the East building, and in the study of his home on White Haven Street. I don’t know if anyone is ready to talk about this, but the information tends to be leaked, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable in this case.”
The secret transcripts of the CIA directors could contain a great number of “jewels.” The National Security Archive is already requesting these transcripts.
A memo clarifies that the CIA had a project called OFTEN which would collect “information about dangerous drugs in American companies,” until the program was terminated in the fall of 1972. In another memo there are reports that manufacturers of commercial drugs “had passed” drugs to the CIA which had been “refused due to adverse secondary effects.”
As part of the MKULTRA program, the CIA had given LSD and other psychoactive drugs to people without their knowledge. According to another document in the archive, Sydney Gottlieb, a psychiatrist and head of chemistry of the Agency Mind Control Program, is supposedly the person responsible for having made available the poison that was going to be used in the assassination attempt on Patrice Lumumba.
CIA employees assigned to MHCHAOS—the operation that carried out surveillance on American opposition to the war in Vietnam and other political dissidents—expressed “a high level of resentment” for having been ordered to carry out such missions.
Nonetheless, there is a series of interesting matters revealed in these documents, such as the high level at which the decisions for actions against our country were taken.
The technique used today by the CIA to avoid giving any details is not the unpleasant crossed out bits but the blank spaces, coming from the use of computers.
For The New York Times, large censored sections reveal that the CIA still cannot expose all the skeletons in its closets, and many activities developed in operations abroad, checked over years ago by journalists, congressional investigators and a presidential commission, are not in the documents.
Howard Osborn, then CIA Director of Security, makes a summary of the “jewels” compiled by his office. He lists eight cases—including the recruiting of the gangster Johnny Roselli for the coup against Fidel Castro—but they crossed out the document that is in the number 1 place on Osborn’s initial list: two and a half pages.
“The No. 1 Jewel of the CIA Security Offices must be very good, especially since the second one is the list for the program concerning the assassination of Castro by Roselli,” said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive who requested the declassification of “The Family Jewels” 15 years ago under the Freedom of Information Act.
It is notable that the administration which has declassified the least information in the history of the United States, and which has even started a process of reclassifying information that was previously declassified, now makes the decision to make these revelations.
I believe that such an action could be an attempt to present an image of transparency when the government is at an all time low rate of acceptance and popularity, and to show that those methods belong to another era and are no longer in use. When he announced the decision, General Hayden, current CIA Director, said: “The documents offer a look at very different times and at a very different Agency.”
Needless to say that everything described here is still being done, only in a more brutal manner and all around the planet, including a growing number of illegal actions within the very United States.
The New York Times wrote that intelligence experts consulted expressed that the revelation of the documents is an attempt to distract attention from recent controversies and scandals plaguing the CIA and an Administration that is living through some of its worst moments of unpopularity.
The declassification could also be an attempt at showing, in the early stages of the electoral process that the Democratic administrations were as bad, or worse, than Mr. Bush’s.
In pages 11 to 15 of the Memo for the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, we can read:
“In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards with the objective of determining whether the Security Office had agents who could help in a confidential mission that required gangster-style action. The target of the mission was Fidel Castro.
“Given the extreme confidentiality of the mission, the project was known only to a small group of people. The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was informed and he gave it his approval. Colonel J. C. King, Head of the Western Hemisphere Division, was also informed, but all the details were deliberately concealed from officials of Operation JMWAVE. Even though some officials of Communications (Commo) and the Technical Services Division (TSD) took part in initial planning phases, they were not aware of the mission’s purpose.
“Robert A. Maheu was contacted, he was informed in general terms about the project, and he was asked to evaluate whether he could get access to gangster-type elements as a first step for achieving the desired goal.
“Mr. Maheu informed that he had met with a certain Johnny Roselli on several occasions while he was visiting Las Vegas. He had only met him informally through clients, but he had been told that he was a member of the upper echelons of the ‘syndicate’ and that he was controlling all the ice machines on the Strip. In Maheu’s opinion, if Roselli was in effect a member of the Clan, he undoubtedly had connections that would lead to the gambling racket in Cuba.
“Maheu was asked to get close to Roselli, who knew that Maheu was a public relations executive looking after national and foreign accounts, and tell him that recently he had been contracted by a client who represented several international business companies, which were suffering enormous financial losses in Cuba due to Castro. They were convinced that the elimination of Castro would be a solution to their problem and they were ready to pay $ 150,000 for a successful outcome. Roselli had to be made perfectly aware of the fact that the U.S. government knew nothing, nor could it know anything, about this operation.
“This was presented to Roselli on September 14, 1960 in the Hilton Plaza Hotel of New York City. His initial reaction was to avoid getting involved but after Maheu’s persuasive efforts he agreed to present the idea to a friend, Sam Gold, who knew “some Cubans.” Roselli made it clear that he didn’t want any money for his part in all this, and he believed that Sam would do likewise. Neither of these people was ever paid with Agency money.
“During the week of September 25, Maheu was introduced to Sam who was living at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. It was not until several weeks after meeting Sam and Joe—who was introduced as courier operating between Havana and Miami—that he saw photos of these two individuals in the Sunday section of Parade. They were identified as Momo Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficante, respectively. Both were on the Attorney General’s list of the ten most wanted. The former was described as the boss of the Cosa Nostra in Chicago and Al Capone’s heir, and the latter was the boss of Cuban operations of the Cosa Nostra. Maheu immediately called this office upon learning this information.
“After analyzing the possible methods to carry out this mission, Sam suggested that they not resort to firearms but that, if they could get hold of some kind of deadly pill, something to be put into Castro’s food or drink, this would be a much more effective operation. Sam indicated that he had a possible candidate in the person of Juan Orta, a Cuban official who had been receiving bribery payments in the gambling racket, and who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind.
“The TSD (Technical Services Division) was requested to produce 6 highly lethal pills.
“Joe delivered the pills to Orta. After several weeks of attempts, Orta appears to have chickened out and he asked to be taken off the mission. He suggested another candidate who made several unsuccessful [attempts].”
Everything that was said in the numerous paragraphs above is in quotes. Observe well, dear readers, the methods that were already being used by the United States to rule the world.
I remember that during the early years of the Revolution, in the offices of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, there was a man working there with me whose name was Orta, who had been linked to the anti-Batista political forces. He was a respectful and serious man. But, it could only be him. The decades have gone by and I see his name once more in the CIA report. I can’t lay my hands on information to immediately prove what happened to him. Accept my apologies if I involuntarily have offended a relative or a descendent, whether the person I have mentioned is guilty or not.
The empire has created a veritable killing machine that is made up not only of the CIA and its methods. Bush has established powerful and expensive intelligence and security super-structures, and he has transformed all the air, sea and land forces into instruments of world power that take war, injustice, hunger and death to any part of the globe, in order to educate its inhabitants in the exercise of democracy and freedom. The American people are gradually waking up to this reality.
“You cannot fool all of the people all of the time,” said Lincoln.
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4) A Much-Needed Second Chance
NYT Editorial
July 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/opinion/02mon1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
The United States now has more than two million people behind bars, a number that has been rising steadily for decades. But state lawmakers who once would have rushed to build new prisons have begun to see that prison-building is not the best or most cost-effective way to fight crime or protect the public’s safety.
Several states have instead begun to focus on developing community-based programs that deal with low-level, nonviolent offenders without locking them up. And they have begun to look at ways to control recidivism with programs that help newly released people find jobs, housing, drug treatment and mental health care — essential services if they are to live viable lives in a society that has historically shunned them.
Texas and Kansas have recently made important strides in this area. But corrections policy nationally would evolve much faster if Washington put its shoulder to the wheel. Congress needs to pass the Second Chance Act, which would provide grants, guidance and assistance to states and localities that are developing programs to reintegrate former inmates into their communities.
The states have made a good start, thanks in part to the efforts of the Council of State Governments and its prison policy arm, the Justice Center. The center’s analysis of corrections patterns has led to sweeping changes in Texas, where the Legislature was facing a projected upsurge in the prison population and a projected outlay of more than a billion dollars to build several new prisons.
The surge in Texas was not being driven by crime, which had risen only slightly, but by a breakdown in the parole and probation systems, which were unable to process and supervise the necessary numbers of released prisoners. Mental health and drug treatment services were also lacking. By expanding those services, along with other community-based programs, the Legislature projects that it could potentially avoid the need for any new prisons.
A similar solution was found in Kansas, where about 65 percent of the state’s admissions to prison were traced to technical violations of probation or parole, often by people with drug addictions or mental illnesses. The Legislature has expanded drug treatment behind bars and created a grant program that encourages localities to provide more effective supervision and services as a way of keeping recently released people away from crime and out of prison.
The social service networks that are necessary for this kind of work are virtually nonexistent in most communities. To put those networks together, the states need to require that disparate parts of the government apparatus work together in ways that were unheard of in the past.
It is encouraging that state officials are willing to break out of the old patterns. But they need help. The Second Chance Act would bolster the re-entry movement with money, training, technical assistance — and the federal stamp of approval.
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5) Just Say AAA
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
July 2, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/opinion/02krugman.html?hp
What do you get when you cross a Mafia don with a bond salesman? A dealer in collateralized debt obligations (C.D.O.’s) — someone who makes you an offer you don’t understand.
Seriously, it’s starting to look as if C.D.O.’s were to this decade’s housing bubble what Enron-style accounting was to the stock bubble of the 1990s. Both made investors think they were getting a much better deal than they really were. And the new scandal raises two obvious questions: Why were the bond-rating agencies taken in (again), and where were the regulators?
To understand the fuss over C.D.O.’s, you first have to realize that in the later stages of the great 2000-2005 housing boom, banks were making a lot of dubious loans. In particular, there was an explosion of subprime lending — home loans offered to people who wouldn’t normally have been considered qualified borrowers.
For a while, the risks of subprime loans were masked by the housing bubble itself: as long as prices kept going up, troubled borrowers could raise more cash by borrowing against their rising home equity. But once the bubble burst — and the housing bust is turning out to be every bit as nasty as the pessimists predicted — many of these loans were bound to go bad.
Yet the banks making the loans weren’t stupid: they passed the buck to other people. Subprime mortgages and other risky loans were securitized — that is, banks issued bonds backed by home loans, in effect handing off the risk to the bond buyers.
In principle, securitization should reduce risk: even if a particular loan goes bad, the loss is spread among many investors, none of whom takes a major hit. But with the collapse of the $800 billion market in bonds backed by subprime mortgages — the price of a basket of these bonds has lost almost 40 percent of its value since January — it’s now clear that many investors who bought these securities didn’t realize what they were getting into.
And it’s also becoming clear that in addition to failing to appreciate the risks of subprime loans, many investors were fooled by fancy financial engineering — those collateralized debt obligations — into believing they had protected themselves against risk, when they had actually done no such thing.
The details of C.D.O.’s are complicated, but basically they’re supposed to transfer most of the risk of bad loans to a small group of sophisticated investors, who are compensated for that risk with a high rate of return, while leaving other investors with a “synthetic” asset that is, well, safe as houses.
S.& P., Moody’s and Fitch, the bond-rating agencies, have gone along with the premise, telling investors that the synthetic assets created by C.D.O.’s are equivalent to high-quality corporate bonds. And investors have, in the words of a recent Bloomberg story, “snapped up” these securities “because they typically yield more than bonds with the same credit ratings.”
But the securities were never as safe as advertised, because the risk transfer wasn’t anywhere near big enough to protect investors from the consequences of a burst housing bubble. It’s not quite the metaphor I would have come up with, but here’s what the legendary bond investor Bill Gross had to say about C.D.O.’s in Pimco’s latest “Investment Outlook”:
“AAA? You were wooed Mr. Moody’s and Mr. Poor’s by the makeup, those six-inch hooker heels, and a ‘tramp stamp.’ Many of these good-looking girls are not high-class assets worth 100 cents on the dollar.”
Now we’re looking at huge losses to investors who thought they were playing it safe. Estimates of the likely losses on C.D.O.’s range from $125 billion to $250 billion, with some analysts warning that a wave of distress selling will deepen the housing slump even further.
Now, you might have thought that S.& P. and Moody’s, which gave Thailand an investment-grade rating until five months after the start of the Asian financial crisis, and gave Enron an investment-grade rating until days before it went bankrupt, would by now have learned to be a bit suspicious. And you would think that the regulators, in particular the Federal Reserve, would have learned from the stock bubble and the wave of corporate malfeasance that went with it to keep a watchful eye on overheated markets.
But apparently not. And the housing bubble, like the stock bubble before it, is claiming a growing number of innocent victims.
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6) Afghans Say Weekend Airstrikes Killed 62 Rebels and 45 Civilians
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/world/asia/02afghan.html?ref=world
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, July 1 (AP) — A local investigation into airstrikes that slammed into civilian homes in southern Afghanistan during a battle late Friday found that 62 insurgents and 45 civilians were killed, two Afghan officials said Sunday.
A suicide attack on Sunday in the same region killed a NATO soldier, officials said.
After the airstrikes, a local investigating team was sent to the Grishk district of Helmand Province, said Dor Ali Shah, the mayor of Grishk, and Muhammad Hussein Andewal, the provincial police chief. Both said the investigation found that 62 insurgents and 45 civilians had been killed.
Because of the site’s remote location, it was impossible to independently verify the casualty claims. Afghan officials said that air and ground forces were still patrolling the region and that the fighting continued into Sunday.
President Hamid Karzai ordered a team to conduct a more thorough investigation into the airstrikes, which came in Helmand Province during a battle between international forces and Taliban fighters, said Sher Muhammad Akhanzada, a member of Parliament from the province.
NATO has admitted that some civilians were killed Friday but says the number is far fewer than 45. “We will cooperate in any way that we can,” said Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. “We don’t mean to trivialize any of those who died, but we want to make it clear that we at this point believe the numbers are a dozen or less.”
Mr. Karzai has condemned the forces for carelessness and for viewing Afghan lives as “cheap.” He has also blamed the Taliban for using civilians as human shields.
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7) A $135 Million Home, but if You Have to Ask ...
By KIRK JOHNSON
July 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/us/02aspen.html?ref=us
ASPEN, Colo. — Some brokers have to shout to sell real estate in a glutted market, or employ ever more tortured elocutions of spin. Joshua Saslove whispers.
His company’s premier listing, called Hala Ranch, is a 95-acre estate built in 1991 for the family of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former ambassador to the United States from Saudi Arabia and the home’s only (occasional) occupant.
At $135 million, Hala, just northwest of downtown Aspen, is the most expensive single-family residential property in the nation on the market, Mr. Saslove said. Selling it mostly consists of saying no.
Mr. Saslove has received about 1,000 requests to tour the home since last October when it went on sale, and he, along with lawyers for the prince who review every call, have granted just 11 of them. This is what high-mountain hideaway money in Aspen has come down to: Even the ordinary rich can no longer press their noses to the glass.
In the marketing of Hala, which means “Welcome” in Arabic, nonbillionaires need not apply. Hala will almost certainly, Mr. Saslove believes, be a new owner’s second, third or fourth home.
Money on that scale does not just stumble in off the street. There are 946 billionaires, according to this year’s tally by Forbes magazine, keeping Mr. Saslove’s list of potential buyers relatively short.
He and Hala’s property manager, Martha Grimes, 57, who came to Aspen right after college, saw the place at its zenith, or others might say its nadir, as elements of the old hippie counterculture and Hollywood celebrity style melded. Ms. Grimes worked as a waitress and later a horse wrangler on the very ranch land that later became Hala.
“I remember this hill, this very hill, because I used to ride my horse through here,” she said as she led a tour through the house for a reporter and a photographer on a recent afternoon. “The 70s were really magical,” she added. “But the characters from those days are disappearing.”
Mr. Saslove said that people like Prince Bandar, who is now the secretary general of the Saudi National Security Council and is not spending as much time in the United States as he once did, helped establish Aspen’s newer style, which is much more about family, culture and art — and wealth that even Hollywood stars cannot match.
“I don’t see as much braggadocio as I used to,” said Mr. Saslove, a gruff 66-year-old with longish hair and a nonstop Blackberry.
In his 22 years as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, a tenure that ended in 2005, Prince Bandar was a powerful ally to a succession of presidents. Most recently, however, British media accounts have said that a major British arms contractor paid more than $2 billion clandestinely into bank accounts in Washington controlled by Prince Bandar. The prince has denied the allegations.
At 56,000 square feet, Hala is bigger than the White House, with a staff of 12. It has 15 bedrooms, 16 baths, a private barbershop and beauty salon just off the master suite and enough space for a party of 450 people.
Many of the rooms are huge, with banks of windows overlooking the Aspen valley and the mountains beyond. There are few proclamations of grandiosity beyond the occasional artwork, like the Albert Bierstadt painting that hangs over the main fireplace. (It does not come with the house.) Dark, gleaming wood beams, all with notched construction and not a single nailhead showing, pale plaster walls and television screens dominate the decor.
It is not a house for a family that putters in the kitchen, which is in the basement, the province of professional chefs with its stainless-steel everything and rows of hanging pots. Housekeepers were ironing the sheets in the nearby laundry, feeding them through a giant pressing machine.
Aspen certainly still has its glossy celebrities, of a sort. One of Prince Bandar’s nearest neighbors, for example, is Barbi Benton, the former Playboy playmate and actress who starred in B-movies like “Hospital Massacre” and “The Deathstalker” in the early 1980s. But the rising costs are rapidly squeezing out mere wealth.
Mr. Saslove, whose company, Joshua & Company, is an affiliate of Great Estates, the real estate arm of Christie’s auction house, said homes that cost about a million dollars in the 1970s now might sell for nine times that. On Aspen’s coveted west side, an ordinary lot, 60 feet by 100 feet, costs $3.5 million.
So far, through coincidence or not, Mr. Saslove said, a majority of the serious shoppers for Hala have come from old money, fortunes gained at least a generation ago. He is not sure why, and of course, he would not say who.
“There are a lot of stories that go along with it,” he said, “but in the interest of privacy and confidentially, I can’t talk about it.”
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8) Harassed in the Classroom
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
July 3, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/opinion/03herbert.html?hp
Michael Soguero was a first-rate principal at Bronx Guild High School. He loved his job, and he loved teaching in New York. He has not blamed the New York City Police Department for his departure to a school in Estes Park, Colo. Nevertheless, the facts are the facts.
Back on Feb. 3, 2005, a student came running into Mr. Soguero’s office at Bronx Guild to say that a police officer was in a classroom. “I jumped up and ran to the classroom,” Mr. Soguero told me in an interview last week. “I found this officer, Gonzalez, exchanging words with a female student.
“Everyone is sitting down except for the teacher and these two. The girl was saying, ‘What did I do? What are you talking to me about?’ ”
What was about to unfold was another episode of bizarrely excessive police activity inside a New York City public school.
The girl, who was 16, had apparently uttered a curse word in a hallway. While that is undoubtedly inappropriate behavior, it is hardly a criminal offense. The police officer, Juan Gonzalez, who was part of a security task force assigned to the school, had followed the girl into the classroom.
Mr. Soguero quieted things down and asked the officer to leave the room, which he did. “I got the girl to sit down and I told her I would talk to her later to address this,” Mr. Soguero said. He thought the crisis was over.
The principal was shocked when he walked out of the classroom. Officer Gonzalez was waiting and made it clear that he wanted the girl arrested.
“He told me,” said Mr. Soguero in the interview, “that I had two minutes to ‘bring her out here.’ I said, ‘I’m not bringing her out here.’ ”
The angry officer, according to Mr. Soguero, barged past him and into the classroom. “I followed him,” said Mr. Soguero, “and he’s pushing desks aside, walking through students to get at her, disrupting everything. She’s sitting in a chair. He grabs her arm, her left arm with his right hand, and he’s reaching back to grab his cuffs. At that point I walked around him and physically stood in between the two of them.”
This sort of thing, the police wildly overreacting to behavior by schoolkids that is not criminal, happens much more often than most New Yorkers realize. Officer Gonzalez behaved as if he were rounding up the James gang. He arrested the girl. He arrested Mr. Soguero. And he arrested a school aide who had tried to come to the principal’s defense.
Mr. Soguero was handcuffed in full view of everyone — students, teachers, staff — and marched out of the school. Later the police paraded him in front of news photographers in a humiliating “perp walk.”
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly supported Officer Gonzalez, telling reporters at the time, “The principal was simply wrong.”
But that was not the case. There was no evidence that a crime had been committed, and the charges were later dropped. Mr. Soguero, who was suspended by school authorities at the time of his arrest, was allowed to resume the post of principal.
Now, more than two years after the incident, I learned from the Police Department that Mr. Gonzalez is indeed a problem officer, despite the initial knee-jerk support he received from the commissioner, from the Bronx district attorney, Robert Johnson, and from others in the criminal justice system.
In response to a query last week, Commissioner Kelly’s office disclosed that Officer Gonzalez is currently on “modified assignment.” His gun and badge have been taken away. But the department declined yesterday to disclose further details.
The Soguero incident is among many outlined in a report from the New York Civil Liberties Union titled “Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools.” Students, teachers and principals who have done nothing wrong are frequently harassed, abused and in some cases arrested and jailed by cops who are supposed to be on the lookout for criminal activity.
It’s common for police officers to belittle and curse at students. And many students have complained about “pat-downs” and intrusive searches by the police.
This is part of what appears to be a widespread campaign of police harassment against young people in New York, especially young people who are black or Latino.
If Rudy Giuliani were mayor, much of the city would be in an uproar over this kind of behavior by the police. Instead, all we’re hearing is a disturbing silence.
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9) Soft on Crime
NYT Editorial
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/opinion/03tues1.web.html?hp
When he was running for president, George W. Bush loved to contrast his law-abiding morality with that of President Clinton, who was charged with perjury and acquitted. For Mr. Bush, the candidate, “politics, after a time of tarnished ideals, can be higher and better.”
Not so for Mr. Bush, the president. Judging from his decision yesterday to commute the 30-month sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. — who was charged with perjury and convicted — untarnished ideals are less of a priority than protecting the secrets of his inner circle and mollifying the tiny slice of right-wing Americans left in his political base.
Mr. Libby was convicted of lying to federal agents investigating the leak of the name of a covert C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. Mrs. Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson, was asked to investigate a central claim in Mr. Bush’s drive to war with Iraq — whether Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Africa. Mr. Wilson concluded that Iraq had not done that and had the temerity to share those conclusions with the American public.
It seems clear from the record that Vice President Dick Cheney organized a campaign to discredit Mr. Wilson. And Mr. Libby, who was Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, was willing to lie to protect his boss.
That made Mr. Libby the darling of the right, which demanded that Mr. Bush pardon him. Those same Republicans have been rebelling against Mr. Bush, most recently on immigration reform, while Democrats in Congress have pursued an investigation into whether Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney lied about Iraq’s weapons programs.
All of this put immense pressure on the president to do something before Mr. Libby went to jail. But none of it was justification for the baldly political act of commuting his sentence.
Mr. Bush’s assertion that he respected the verdict but considered the sentence excessive only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it’s committed by common folk. As governor of Texas, he was infamous for joking about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. As president, he has repeatedly put himself and those on his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law.
Within minutes of the Libby announcement, the same Republican commentators who fulminated when Paris Hilton got a few days knocked off her time in a county lockup were parroting Mr. Bush’s contention that a fine, probation and reputation damage were “harsh punishment” enough for Mr. Libby.
Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.
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10) U.S. Says Iran Helped Iraqis Kill Five G.I.’s
By JOHN F. BURNS and MICHAEL R. GORDON
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html?hp
BAGHDAD, July 2 — Agents of Iran helped plan a January raid in Shiite holy city of Karbala in Iraq in which five American soldiers were killed by Islamic militants, an American military spokesman said Monday. The charge was the most specific allegation of Iranian involvement in an attack that killed American troops, at a time of rising tensions with Iran over its role in Iraq and its nuclear program.
Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman here, said an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, a force under the control of Iran’s most powerful religious leaders, had used veterans of the Lebanese Islamic militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train, arm and plan attacks by an array of Shiite militant cells in Iraq.
One high-ranking Hezbollah commander from Lebanon was captured in Basra in March, and after weeks of pretending that he could not hear or speak, he gave American interrogators details of the Iranian role, the general said.
Earlier briefings by the American command on accusations about an Iranian role focused on technical analyses of arms said to have been supplied by Iran to Shiite militias in Iraq, including explosively formed penetrators, an exceptionally lethal form of bomb responsible for killing 170 American soldiers as of February and a substantial number since.
But some critics said the evidence was circumstantial and charged that the Americans appeared to be offering a new rationale for maintaining or increasing the military commitment in Iraq.
The briefings on Monday shifted the focus from the weapons to what General Bergner described as a network of secret militant cells armed, financed and directed by the Iranians. He said the information was drawn from interrogations of three men captured in a raid in Basra on May 20, and from documents found with them.
He identified the three men by name and said one was a Lebanese Hezbollah agent and two were Iraqi Shiites working as agents for the Quds Force, the elite Iranian unit. He did not present transcripts of the interrogations or the seized documents for inspection. The general said the captured men had been deeply involved in organizing Iranian-backed militia cells, including the one that killed the Americans.
It was the first time that the United States had charged that Iranian officials had helped plan operations against American troops in Iraq and had advance knowledge of a specific attack that led to the death of American soldiers. In effect, the United States is charging that Iran has been engaged in a proxy war against American, British and Iraqi forces here in an effort to shore up Iranian Shiite militant allies in Iraq and to raise the cost of the American military presence here.
General Bergner, seemingly keen to avoid a renewal of the criticism that the American command has used the allegations of Iranian interference here to lend momentum to the Bush administration’s war policy, declined to draw any broader political implications, although he did say that American intelligence indicated that “the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity.”
A statement by the Iranian Foreign Ministry rejected the American claims, describing them as “fabricated and ridiculous.”
Much of the briefing centered on the captured Hezbollah agent, known to the American command as “Hamid the Mute” because Hamid was part of the false name he gave after his capture and because of the weeks he spent after his capture pretending that he could not speak or hear. The man, identified as Ali Musa Daqduq, was said by General Bergner to be a Lebanese citizen with a 24-year history in Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group based in southern Lebanon.
General Bergner said Mr. Daqduq had previously commanded a Hezbollah special operations unit and “coordinated protection” for Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader. The general said Mr. Daqduq had been sent by Hezbollah to Iran in 2005 with orders to work with the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, to train “Iraqi extremists.”
In the past year, the general said, Mr. Daqduq made four trips to Iraq, to report on the training and operations of underground militia cells, and to organize them in ways that mirrored Hezbollah’s structure.
“He also helped the Quds Force in training Iraqis inside Iran,” the general said, taking groups of 20 to 60 Iraqis at a time to three camps in the vicinity of Tehran and instructing them in the use of shaped charges, mortars, rockets and “intelligence, sniper and kidnapping operations.”
The general said the cells had been responsible for much violence. “I think the reality of this is that they’re killing American forces, they’re killing Iraqis, they’re killing Iraqi security forces, and they are disrupting the stability in Iraq,” he said.
Another senior American official said Mr. Daqduq had pretended to be unable to hear or speak, probably to disguise his Lebanese-accented Arabic. Later, the official said, he admitted in notes to his interrogators that he could hear. Finally, he passed a note saying that he could speak but that he would not do so until May 1. Presumably, the temporary silence was intended to give others a chance to get away. On that day, the official said, “he did talk, and he’s been quite talkative ever since.”
The official said the shift had been achieved without harming Mr. Daqduq. “We don’t torture,” the official said. “We follow scrupulously the interrogation techniques in the Army’s new field manual, which forbids torture, and has the force of law.”
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Hosseini Ali Hosseini, said the American attempt to blame the Quds Force for instigating violence in Iraq was part of a wider pattern of baseless allegations. “It has been four and a half years that U.S. officials have sought to cover up the dreadful situation in Iraq, which is a result of their mistakes and wrong strategies, by denigration and blaming others,” he said.
When the Karbala attack was carried out on Jan. 20, American and Iraqi officials said it had been meticulously planned. The attackers carried forged identity cards, wore American-style uniforms and drove vehicles of a kind used by Americans here. One American was killed at the start of the raid, and the other Americans were captured, then shot to death and dumped beside the road.
Some officials speculated at the time that the goal of the raid might have been to exchange the Americans for Iranian officials American forces had seized in Iraq and identified as members of the Quds Force, not diplomats as the Iranians claimed. General Bergner said the evidence of Iranian involvement in the Karbala killings came from interrogations of Qais Khazali, an Iraqi Shiite who oversaw operations of the Iranian-supported cells in Iraq that were under the direction of Mr. Daqduq, and who was seized in the same raid, along with another militant, Laith Khazali, his brother.
Along with the three men, the Americans also seized a 22-page document they had on the Karbala attack, General Bergner said. That document, he said, showed that the Quds Force had gathered detailed information on the activities of American soldiers in Karbala, including shift changes and the defenses at the site where they were seized. The general said other information about attacks by the Iranian-supported groups came from Mr. Daqduq’s personal journal and other documents.
“Both Ali Musa Daqduq and Qais Khazali state that senior leadership within the Quds Force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers,” General Bergner said.
American officials said one reason for holding the briefing nearly 15 weeks after capturing the three Quds Force agents was that Shiite officials in Baghdad, reluctant to inflame relations with Iran’s ruling Shiite clergy, had resisted having the case against Iran made so publicly. At the same time, a senior American official said, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and other Shiites in the government seemed to have been shaken by the evidence of “the nefarious and lethal” Iranian role the American command had uncovered.
General Bergner said much of the Iranian activity had centered on ties with groups linked to the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia in Iraq that has mounted countless attacks on Americans and has killed thousands of Iraqi Sunnis. The Shiite cleric who founded the Mahdi Army, Moktada al-Sadr, has longstanding ties with Iran and spent months there this year, apparently fearful of arrest, American commanders have said.
The American command has long said that much of the worst violence by Mahdi Army groups appears to have been carried out by “rogue” groups that Mr. Sadr does not control. General Bergner said the groups under the Quds Force seemed to be in that category.
Another high-ranking American official said that Iranian financing for the Tehran-linked militias — said by General Bergner to amount to $750,000 to $3 million a month — had long been channeled through Mr. Sadr, and that American intelligence was not clear on whether some or all the money was still to him.
“One of the big questions is, ‘Who controls the secret cells, if anyone does?’ ” the official said. “The fact is, it’s hard to tell where the militias end and the secret cells begin. There is a pre-existing relationship between Sadr and the Iranians, but I think the answer is that some of them are out of control.”
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11) Arizona Governor Signs Tough Bill on Hiring Illegal Immigrants
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/us/03arizona.html?ref=us
Expressing frustration with the lack of a federal immigration law overhaul, Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona signed a bill yesterday providing what are thought to be the toughest state sanctions in the country against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
Ms. Napolitano, a Democrat, called the bill flawed and suggested that the Arizona Legislature reconvene to repair problems with it, but she nevertheless moved forward “because Congress has failed miserably,” she wrote in a statement.
The bill requires employers to verify the legal status of their employees. If they fail to do so, they risk having their business licenses suspended. A second offense could result in the “business death penalty,” a permanent revocation of the state business license, effectively preventing a business from operating in the state.
Ms. Napolitano said she was concerned, among other problems, that under the law hospitals and nursing homes could end up shuttered because of hiring one illegal immigrant. She also said the bill did not provide enough money for the state attorney general to investigate complaints.
Although federal law already makes it a crime to hire illegal workers, supporters of the Arizona bill have said enforcement is lax.
Ms. Napolitano sent a letter to Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, saying Congressional inaction on immigration was forcing states to act.
Ms. Napolitano’s decision had been anxiously awaited in Arizona, the state where more people cross illegally into the United States than any other.
Last year, Ms. Napolitano vetoed an employer-sanctions bill, saying that its language was flawed and that it would not achieve its goals.
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12) Juggling Figures, and Justice, in a Doctor’s Trial
By JOHN TIERNEY
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/science/03tier.html?ref=science
On April 14, 2005, the day Dr. William E. Hurwitz was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Karen Tandy called a news conference to celebrate the sentence and reassure other doctors. Ms. Tandy, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, held up a plastic bag containing 1,600 opioid pills.
“Dr. Hurwitz prescribed 1,600 pills to one person to take in a single day,” she announced. This bag showed that he was “no different from a cocaine or heroin dealer peddling poison on the street corner,” she said, and made it “immediately apparent” that he was not a legitimate doctor.
“To the million doctors who legitimately prescribe narcotics to relieve patients’ pain and suffering,” Ms. Tandy said, “you have nothing to fear from Dr. Hurwitz’s prosecution.”
Next week, Ms. Tandy will have another photo opportunity, when Dr. Hurwitz is again sentenced in federal court, after the reversal of his conviction and a retrial this year. But this time, Ms. Tandy may want to skip the show-and-tell.
Counting pills is a prosecutor’s trick, not a proper gauge of medical practice, and the trick didn’t even work at the retrial.
Dr. Hurwitz was cleared of most of the charges on which he was previously convicted, including the one involving the patient who received the prescription brandished by Ms. Tandy. The defense successfully argued that the patient was not a drug dealer and that Dr. Hurwitz never intended to give him 1,600 pills a day — that number was the result of a clerical error, not a plot to sell drugs. None of the jurors I interviewed considered Dr. Hurwitz anything like a street drug dealer, and they were appalled to learn after the trial that he had already served more time in prison than some of his patients who were caught reselling the drugs.
The only lesson for doctors I can see in Ms. Tandy’s bag of pills is, “Be afraid.”
No matter what you have learned in medical school, if you are prescribing opioids in doses that seems high to narcotics agents and prosecutors, you are at risk of a trial. And once you enter the courtroom, anything can happen.
At the first trial, Dr. Hurwitz was convicted of writing prescriptions that caused bodily injury, crimes that carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years. At the retrial, the judge dismissed the charges for the very good reason that there was no proof the prescriptions actually caused the injuries.
At the first trial, the 1,600-pill argument carried the day with the jury. The foreman cited that number in explaining to The Washington Post why, even though he was “not an expert,” he was sure Dr. Hurwitz was not a “legitimate” doctor, because the number of pills went “beyond the bounds of reason.” In Dr. Hurwitz’s retrial, the prosecution tried the same strategy by repeatedly mentioning the 1,600 pills and other high-dosage prescriptions. The defense presented reams of expert testimony that there was no recognized upper limit on the level of opioids that should be prescribed. Some chronic-pain patients need enormous amounts because they develop a tolerance.
One of those patients was Patrick Snowden, the man who was prescribed the 1,600 pills. His mother wrote Dr. Hurwitz a letter praising him for giving her son his life back by enabling him to deal with the pain of a foot injured so badly that he had undergone nine operations and been advised to amputate it.
There was no evidence that Mr. Snowden resold any of the pills prescribed by Dr. Hurwitz, including the famous 1,600 pills. According to the defense, that scary number was a one-time fluke resulting from a clerical error when Mr. Snowden was given two new prescriptions for pills of a lower strength because his pharmacy had run out of the usual pills. The defense maintained that Dr. Hurwitz never intended Mr. Snowden to take 1,600 pills in one day and that Mr. Snowden never did take them because he realized what his proper dosage was.
The prosecution fixated on the pill counts of other patients, too, often to baffling effect, because the only thing that seemed to matter was the number of pills, not their strength. When an F.B.I. agent, Aaron Weeter, prepared an elaborate chart listing the number of pills received by Dr. Hurwitz’s patients, he was questioned about its usefulness by Larry Robbins, a defense lawyer.
“Would you agree that, standing alone, we can learn nothing very important from the pill count alone?” Mr. Robbins asked.
“I’m not qualified to answer the question,” Mr. Weeter replied.
Mr. Robbins tried working through the math with him. Wouldn’t two 40-milligram pills be no more potent than a single 80-milligram pill? But the agent stood by his pill-count charts.
After the trial, the jurors told me that the defense had persuaded them to ignore the pill counts. I suppose that this could be counted as a victory for science, but it is an isolated one, because the pill-count prosecution strategy has repeatedly worked in other cases. Richard Paey, a chronic-pain patient in Florida who uses a wheelchair, was sent to prison for drug trafficking after a prosecutor argued that he could not possibly have been taking 25 pills a day himself.
Most other doctors could not hope to do as well in court as Dr. Hurwitz, who had unusual advantages at his second trial thanks to his prominence and the outrage over his conviction. He was supported by some of the leading pain experts and received a pro bono defense from two top criminal lawyers in Washington who led a legal team with more than 20 members. Paying for a defense like his would probably cost at least $3 million, beyond the means of most doctors in drug cases, because their assets are normally seized long before trial.
Even though Dr. Hurwitz’s defense cleared him of most of the charges, the jurors still convicted him of drug trafficking in some cases because they decided that he had ignored signs that the patients were reselling the drugs. I think that the jurors wrongly interpreted the law and the facts of the case, but I can also understand why they had a hard time figuring out what constitutes legal medical practice.
They were asked to render verdicts on dozens of prescriptions given to 19 patients — the equivalent of 19 different malpractice cases involving the treatment of pain and addiction, two of the most controversial areas of medicine. The jurors did not have the time or the expertise to sort through all the complexities.
After the trial, when they learned more about the pain-medicine debate and found out that Dr. Hurwitz might still be sentenced to 10 or more years in prison, several jurors expressed regret to me. They said they hoped that he was sentenced to the two and a half years that he had already served.
Even if Dr. Hurwitz does walk free next week, I wouldn’t take much solace in his victory if I were a doctor treating pain patients. I wouldn’t feel safe until doctors’ prescribing practices are judged by state medical boards, as they were until the D.E.A. and federal prosecutors started using criminal courts to regulate medicine. The members of those state medical boards don’t always make the right judgment, but at least they know that there is more to their job than counting pills.
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13) A Conversation With Elizabeth H. Blackburn
Finding Clues to Aging in the Fraying Tips of Chromosomes
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/science/03conv.html?ref=science
When Time magazine named Elizabeth H. Blackburn, a cell biologist, one of this year’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” it listed her age as 44.
“Don’t think I’m going to ask for a correction on that one,” Dr. Blackburn, 58, a biochemistry professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a recent visit to New York City. “If they want to turn back the clock, that’s lovely.”
Dr. Blackburn, a winner of the 2006 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, studies aging and biochemical changes in cells that are related to the diseases of old age.
Whatever Dr. Blackburn’s own chronologic age, the buzz in scientific circles is that she is likely to be the next woman awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Q. What are telomeres and telomerase?
A. Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes in cells. Chromosomes carry the genetic information. Telomeres are buffers. They are like the tips of shoelaces. If you lose the tips, the ends start fraying.
Telomerase is an enzyme. In cells, it restores the length of the telomeres when they get worn. As the ends of the chromosomes wear down, the telomerase comes in and builds them back up.
In humans, the thing is that as we mature, our telomeres slowly wear down. So the question has always been: did that matter? Well, more and more, it seems like it matters.
Q. Is there a link between telomere length and stress?
A. In my lab, we’re finding that psychological stress actually ages cells, which can be seen when you measure the wearing down of the tips of the chromosomes, those telomeres.
A few years ago, Dr. Elissa Epel, a psychologist who studies chronic stress, came to see me. She asked, ‘Does stress have any effect on cell aging?’ There’s always been this observation that people under great stress appear to be care-worn. They look haggard, right?
So Elissa designed this study where we looked at two groups of mothers. One had normal, healthy children. The other group had a child with a chronic illness. Physiological and psychological measurements were done on everyone. With the stressed group, we found that the longer the mothers had been caring for their chronically ill child, the less their telomerase and the shorter their telomeres.
This was the first time you could clearly see cause and effect from a nongenetic influence. Genes play a role in telomerase levels, but this was not genes. This was something impacting the body that came from the outside and affecting its ability to repair itself. By the way, we found similar effects in women who were primary caregivers for partners with dementia.
Q. Is this scientific proof of the mind-body connection?
A. It’s a proof. There have been others. Researchers have found that the brain definitely sends nerves directly to organs of the immune system and not just to the heart and the lower gut. In that way, too, the brain is influencing the body.
One of the things that came out of our study of these mothers is a link between low telomerase and stress-related diseases. We looked at the measures for cardiovascular disease — bad lipid profiles, obesity, all that stuff. The women with those had low telomerase.
We also looked at low telomeres and cancer. We wondered if a cell with worn down chromosome tips might divide in some abnormal way. Our findings have yet to be published, so I can’t tell you much here, but we think we’re onto something.
Q. Is your goal to find a drug to repair the telomeres?
A. Or an intervention. We know that stress is bad for cells. What about alleviating it? We’ve been collaborating on studies looking at the telomerase levels in people who practice meditation. We are looking at whether or not telomerase changes after a three-month program of meditation. We’ll know more soon.
One of the really interesting things about doing research these days is how interdisciplinary it has become. A few years ago, I never thought that I would be collaborating with psychologists. Ten years ago, if you’d told me that I would be seriously thinking about meditation, I would have said one of us is loco.
Q. How did you develop this specialty: studying the ends of chromosomes?
A. In the 1970s, I did a Ph.D. with Fred Sanger in Cambridge who was in the process of inventing ways to map what’s inside DNA. He later won the Nobel Prize. In his lab, I noticed you could sequence — or map — the very ends of DNA molecules. However, this was still a difficult task because DNA strands are very long and with the limited technology that existed then, it was hard to locate the ends.
Later, I did a post-doc at Yale with Joe Gall, who had discovered a class of very tiny linear chromosomes in a type of single-celled protozoa. These creatures — they are pond scum, literally — had lovely, accessible chromosomes. And I thought, ‘Oh, wonderful. I’ll sequence these.’ And right away, I found these strange molecular features about their ends: telomeres.
And over the next few years, things began to emerge from ours and other laboratories, saying there’s something very important about them. Till then, people had thought that only DNA could make other DNA. We — my wonderful then-graduate student Carol Greider and I — discovered this enzyme, telomerase, and it showed it actually made DNA.
Q. How did you get appointed to President Bush’s Council on Bioethics?
A. I received a call in the autumn of 2001 from Leon Kass, the chairman. He asked if I’d serve. I think he’d already called a lot of people who’d turned him down.
This was not too many days after 9/11. In that moment, I wanted to help the country, but didn’t know how. I thought, ‘I certainly know cell biology, and that’s what I can be useful for.’ So I accepted. But I had to be vetted by the White House office of personnel first. One question I was asked was, ‘Who did you vote for?’
Q. Once on it, did you feel the council had a preset political agenda?
A. Oh, yes. Especially about stem cells. Basically it was, ‘You don’t need any of those pesky embryonic stem cells because everything is wonderful with adult stem cells.’ When one would ask, ‘What’s the evidence?’ you’d hear, ‘Somebody wrote a review article about adult stem cells.’ And I’d say, ‘That is not the same as primary data. Anyone with a word processor can write a review article.’
There was a lot of that, and I was always saying, ‘Let’s look at the science.’ My persistence didn’t endear me to Leon Kass, I felt. One day, I was asked to call the White House personnel office where an official said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for serving.’ I asked him, ‘Why are you thanking me?’ ‘You will no longer be on the council.’ I was one of two members who hadn’t been reappointed for a second two-year term.
Q. Did the experience anger you?
A. It disappointed. Particularly this closed view on embryonic cells. To make a division between them and adult stem cells is foolish because they are all on a continuum. To understand how any of these work means researchers have to look at and compare them to each other. Why blind yourself to this fact?
Q. What’s your take on the news recently reported on these pages that researchers have been able to insert genes into skin cells of mice and give them the qualities of embryonic stem cells?
A. It’s an advance. But it will be a while before we know if it will work for human cells. Mouse cells have a history of not always being a good model for human cells.
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14) Subject: A Bucket of Blood
From: "Senator Ken Gordon, District 35-Denver"
kengordon@knowledgemessenger.com
Date: July 3, 2007 6:08:23 AM MDT
To: "dvasicek@earthlink.net"
Reply-To: ken@kengordon.com
During the 1980s when the United States was supporting the government in El Salvador and the Contras in Nicaragua, both right—wing military groups that engaged in atrocities against civilians, a group of protesters staged a form of guerilla theater by reenacting scenes from war in front of Senator Armstrong's office in Cherry Creek. Some of the protesters dressed as Contras in military garb, some dressed as peasants, a wrecked car was placed on the grass in front of the Senator's office, a tape recorder played the sounds of war. Pig blood was obtained from a local slaughterhouse. During the guerilla theater, peasants were shot, blood was spilled on them and adjacent structures—a point was made.
Later I represented a number of people that were arrested at the protest. In order to prepare I went down to the evidence bureau at the Denver Police Department to see what they had seized. After looking at what they had, the evidence custodian asked me if I wanted to see the bucket of blood in the evidence refrigerator. I said no and he said, "I can't wait until this trial is over. That bucket smells really bad."
During the trial a police officer witness brought the bucket into the courtroom wrapped in several layers of polyethylene. The police officer testified that this evidence was seized at the scene, and the prosecuting attorney said, "Open it up."
I was aware that this was going to be an unpleasant experience for everyone in the courtroom, so I stood up and said, "Your honor, I object. I will stipulate that there was blood used at the demonstration. I will stipulate that there is blood in that bucket, I will stipulate that the blood in that bucket is the blood that was seized at the demonstration. But I understand that it doesn't smell very good, and I don't think that there is any reason to open it up."
We were at a stage in the trial where the prosecutor was counter—suggestible, so he insisted that the policeman remove the polyethylene from the bucket; the Judge, noting perhaps that I actually didn't have any grounds for my objection, overruled it. I was happy in my knowledge that in a couple minutes the jury might remember that I had tried to save them from the experience.
The smell spread outwards in concentric circles. One could observe it travel down the row of jurors by watching them sequentially cover their faces. It got to the Judge about the same time it got to me. He called a recess and Judge, jurors, witnesses, attorneys and defendants all fled into the hall. The Judge made one of his clerks go into the courtroom and spray some Glade air freshener. A little while later one of the police officers went in to see, or rather smell the progress. When he came out I asked him how it was. He said, "It smells like someone bled to death under a pine tree in there."
At my urging, the jury eventually adopted an expansive view of the right to free speech and acquitted all of the defendants.
All of this is prelude to me sharing that a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War is engaging in a guerilla theater protest against the Iraq war here in Denver on Wednesday, July 4th. There are events all day throughout the city, but the beginning of the program is at Civic Center Park by the Veterans' obelisk at 11:00am. A press conference is planned for 12:30pm at the Military Entrance Processing Station at the New Customs House at 721 19th St (19th and Stout). I have been told that no incidents of civil disobedience are planned, and that at other protests in Washingon, D.C., New York, Los Angeles and Chicago no one has been arrested. If you would like to support the protest you are invited—I'm sure that these veterans will greatly appreciate any signs of support that you can give. Wear sunscreen.
For more information about Iraq Veterans Against the War visit www.ivaw.org. I hope you are well.
-Ken
Senator Ken Gordon, District 35-Denver Web: www.kengordon.com Email: ken@kengordon.com My Profile: Update My Profile
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to a friend.
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15) Justice in Jena
by Jordan Flaherty
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
http://www.sfbayview.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=169&Itemid=14
Speaking to a crowd of demonstrators in front of a rural Louisiana courthouse earlier this month, Alan Bean, a Baptist minister from the Texas panhandle, inveighed against injustice. "The highest crime in the Old Testament," he declared, "is to withhold due process from poor people, to manipulate the criminal justice system to the advantage of the powerful, against the poor and the powerless."
Bean was speaking at a rally organized by residents of Jena, Louisiana. In the space of a few weeks, more than 150 of this small town's residents have organized an inspiring grassroots struggle against injustice. The demonstrations began when six Black students at Jena High School were arrested after a fight at school and charged with conspiracy to attempt second-degree murder. The students now face up to 100 years in prison without parole in a case that King Downing, national coordinator of the ACLU's Campaign Against Racial Profiling, has said "carries the scent of injustice."
Local activists say that this wave of problems started last September when Black high school students asked for permission to sit under a tree at an area of the high school that had, traditionally, been used only by white students. The next day, three nooses were hanging from the tree.
The following week, Black students staged a protest under the tree.
At a school assembly soon after, Jena District Attorney Reed Walters, appearing with local police officers, warned Black students against further unrest. "I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of my pen," he threatened.
According to many in Jena, tensions simmered in the town over the fall, occasionally exploding into fights and other incidents. No white students were charged or punished for any of these incidents, including the students found to have been responsible for hanging the nooses. Bryant Purvis, one of the Black students now facing charges, explained to me after the incident, "There were a lot of people aggravated about it, a lot of fights at the school after that, a lot of arguments, a lot of people getting treated differently."
In the first weekend of December, a Black student was assaulted by a group of white students and a white graduate of Jena High School threatened several Black students with a shotgun. The following Monday, white students taunted the Black student who was assaulted over the weekend, and one of the white students was beaten up.
Within hours, six Black students were arrested. "I think the district attorney is pinning it on us to make an example of us," said Purvis. "In Jena, people get accused of things they didn't do a lot."
Soon after, their parents discovered that these students were facing attempted murder charges. "The courtroom, the whole back side, was filled with police officers," Tina Jones, Bryant's mother, recalls. "I guess they thought maybe when they announced what the charges were, we were gonna go berserk or something."
At last week's demonstration, family members and allies spoke about the issues at the center of the case. "I don't know how the DA or the court system gets involved in a school fight," said Jones. "But I'm not surprised – there's a lot of racism in Jena. A white person will get probation, and a Black person is liable to get 15 to 20 years for the same crime."
Alan Bean, director of an organization called Friends of Justice, began his activism in response to a string of false arrests in 1999 in Tulia, Texas, where he lives. Since then, he has dedicated himself to supporting community organizing around cases of criminal justice abuse in rural Texas and Louisiana. Small towns like Jena – which has a population of 2,500, and is 85 percent white – are often left out of the organizing support, attention and funding that struggles in metropolitan areas receive.
This disparity was not always the case. Rural Southern towns were the frontlines of the '60s civil rights movement. Groups like CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) were active throughout the rural South. And these rural towns have been important sites of homegrown resistance.
In 1964, in Jonesboro, Louisiana, just north of Jena, a group of Black veterans of the U.S. military formed the Deacons for Defense, an armed self-defense organization, in support of civil rights struggles. The Deacons went on to form 21 chapters in rural Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Outrageous violations still occur in many of these towns. A few months ago, Gerald Washington of Westlake, Louisiana, was shot three days before he was to become the town's first Black mayor. Less than two weeks after that, shots were fired into the house of another Black mayor, in Greenwood, Louisiana. Jena itself is a mostly segregated community that was also the site of the Jena Juvenile Correctional Center for Youth, a legendarily brutal prison that was shut down in 2000.
Jena residents formed their own defense committee, without the support of national organizations. They have been holding weekly protests and organizing meetings that have attracted allies from near and far. A recent gathering was attended by Bean, as well as allies from other northern and central Louisiana towns and representatives from the ACLU, NAACP and National Action Network.
Many parents questioned why the noose and other threatening actions were not taken seriously by the school administration. "What's the difference," asks Marcus Jones, the father of Mychal Bell, one of the students, about the disparity in the charges. "There's a color difference. There was white kids that hung up a noose, but it was Black kids in the fight." Sentencing disparity is a big issue in many of these small towns, where many see it as the modern continuation of the ugly Southern heritage of lynching.
Jones explains a litany of reasons why the children should not be charged with attempted murder. "The kid did not have life threatening injuries, he was not cut, he was not stabbed, he was not shot, nothing was broken. There is no evidence of conspiracy to commit attempted murder. You talk about conspiracy to attempt second-degree murder, you think about the mafia, you think somebody paid a sniper or something. We're talking about a high school fistfight. The DA is showing his racist upbringing, his racist acts and his racist nature, and bringing it into the law."
I asked Bryant Purvis how this has affected him. "One of my goals in life is to go to college, and not to go to jail, and that changed me right there," he tells me. "That crushed me, to be in a jail cell."
When asked how her life has changed, Purvis' mother described the sadness of having her son taken away from her without warning. "You wake up in the morning and your son is there. You lay down at night and he's there. Then all of a sudden he's gone. That's a lot to deal with."
Jordan Flaherty is an editor of Left Turn Magazine and a community organizer based in New Orleans. Many of his articles from New Orleans are online at www.leftturn.org/?q=node/624. Contact him at neworleans@leftturn.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or on myspace at www.myspace.com/secondlines. His podcasts are at www.nolahumanrights.org; click on "podcasts." Visit Friends of Justice at www.fojtulia.org.
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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16) Call Out the Instigator
Cindy Sheehan
http://www.traprockpeace.org/traprock_blog/
Call out the Instigator
Because there’s something in the air
We got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here
You know it’s right!
Thunderclap Newman
I’m not backing off. I tried to remove myself from the
political realm of the US, what BushCo is turning into
an Evil Empire, but the blatant audacity of George
commuting Scooter’s sentence (he’s not ruling out a
full pardon ---and you know he will) has dragged me
kicking and screaming back in. I can’t sit back and
let this BushCo drag our country further down into the
murky quagmire of Fascism and violence, taking the
rest of the world with them!
I have sat quietly back these past five weeks as the
slaughter in Iraq sorrowfully surges along with
George’s bloody escalation---and as the philosophical
opposition to the war has soared to almost four out of
every five Americans. I have remained silent when
Senator Barack Obama said that impeachment is only
reserved for “grave, grave” breeches! Well, BushCo has
created hundreds of thousands of graves dug by their
lies and greed. For cripes’ sake, George admitted to
breaking the FISA Act (which is a felony) that also
breeched the 4th Amendment to our Constitution that
already prohibited illegal search and seizure. How was
Bill Clinton’s offense graver than George's, Dick's,
or Scooter's? Did we ever think that the criminality
and arrogance of the Nixon White House would be
eclipsed in our time with nary a “baaaah” from the
Sheeple in Congress?
George has said that America doesn’t “do torture” when
we have all seen the images of torture from Abu Ghraib
(don’t believe your lyin’ eyes) and know that hundreds
of people sold to the US Army for an immoral bounty
are incarcerated within the inhumane confines of
Guantanamo Prison which is right in our own back yard.
I have had to bite my tongue---HARD---as the George
and Dick crime cabal, (formerly known has the
executive branch) have claimed that their offices are
not to be held up to the same standards of
accountability and control as any other entity in the
human race, governmental or private.
It has been recently reported that Nancy Pelosi said
that impeachment is not “worth it.” Her faulty
reasoning is that impeachment would take too much time
because they don’t have the votes. If they could
“whip” their own Democratic caucus into shape to
defend and protect our Constitution and the people of
Iraq and our soldiers as they whupped, cajoled,
threatened and browbeat the caucus into attaching
“non-binding” time lines onto the last war funding
bill, then impeachment would not only be possible, but
likely.
The recent commutation of I. Scooter Libby’s sentence,
however, was the straw that broke my camel’s back of
exhausted ennui. Patrick Fitzgerald is a thoughtful
and thorough prosecutor who did a heroic job of
bringing at least one of the Bush Crime Mob to
justice. Even though we were all very pleased, we knew
that it was not enough and that Mr. Fitzgerald would
delve deeper into the feces infested executive branch.
The lawlessness of the Bush Administration has reached
wild west proportions and the inmates definitely have
control of the US(A)sylum.
A very dear friend of mine, Rev. Lennox Yearwood of
the Hip Hop Caucus, is being harassed by the Air Force
for “Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and a Gentleman”
because “The Rev” fulfills his duty as an Officer and
a Gentleman honorably by protesting Iraq and the
Fascist Bush Regime almost constantly. The Rev is
still in Individual Ready Reserve so the Air Force
believes it is within its parameters to pursue the
charges, although every “Officer and Gentleman(woman)”
should be protesting the atrocious mistakes in the
Middle East. After The Rev’s hearing on July 12th, (in
Macon, GA) he is going to begin a “symbolic” walk from
the Reverend Martin Luther King’s grave (Atlanta, GA)
to DC---I am going to be there for him and to begin
the march, but I am not going to make it symbolic.
We are going to walk from Atlanta, GA to Congress
beginning July 13th and ending up in DC on July 23rd
to send the mis-leaders back home to face the music of
justice in their own districts.
It is about time us “peasants” (in the eyes of the
Fascist Ruling Elite) march on DC with our
“pitchforks” of righteous anger and our “torches” of
truth to demand the ouster of BushCo. I have a dream
of the detention centers that George has built and
filled being instead filled with Orange Clad neo-cons
and neo-connettes.
If Congress won’t dig BushCo’s political grave, it is
the People’s job to do so. Thomas Jefferson said that
we need a Revolution every 20 years, or so, to keep
our Republic honest. Over 225 years have passed since
our last Revolution (if you don't count the War
Between the States) and we are long overdue for one.
Turn off your TVs, kiss your pets goodbye, bring the
kids and flock to the federal seat of corruption, or
join us on our walk there, for a People's
Accountability Movement to be in the face of the
Criminal BushCo and the Complicit Congress for the
last week of session before they go on their
undeserved vacations (why do they get vacations when
the Iraqi parliamentarians don’t?)
On the eve of our first revolution: You know it’s
right!
Author’s note: Please, I already see “Attention Whore
Back.” If anyone thinks that I am going to walk
hundreds of miles in the Deep South during July for
attention, then please join us! We will be publishing
our route and plans for Accountability events along
the way, within the next few days. Stay tuned.
***
Charles Jenks
Chair of Advisory Board
Traprock Peace Center
103 Keets Road
Deerfield, MA 01342
http://www.traprockpeace.org
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17) American dream still burns bright for many – but results vary
“Men in their 30s earn about $5,000 less in real terms than their
fathers' generation did, according to a new study.”
By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
July 03, 2007
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0703/p01s04-ussc.html
If the American dream means doing better than your parents did, then
Mike Brockman's not living it. Single, with a 10-year-old daughter, he's
a server at a Black Angus restaurant in Mesa, Ariz. His father at his
age had a good, steady job as a machinist at TRW.
Today "there aren't the kind of jobs available you used to get with a
high school education, and work yourself up," says Mr. Brockman. "Now
you have to have training or experience to start – then you can work
your way up from there."
Norman Payne, on the other hand, thinks the American dream is alive and
well. An immigrant from Panama, he's lived in the US for 16 years – and
on June 28 in Boston he was sworn in as a US citizen.
Mr. Payne works in customer service at Kodak and has high hopes for his
young son and daughter.
"I don't think the American dream has changed," he says. "I am trying to
do everything I can do so that they can do better than I did."
Two hundred and thirty-one years after the 13 colonies declared their
independence from Great Britain, is the United States still the land of
opportunity, the light of hope for the poor of the world?
The economic dream that has united a diverse population for generations,
that children would be more prosperous than their parents, is in
question as perhaps never before.
Yet the nation's overall standard of living remains high. Immigrants
both legal and illegal arrive every year by the tens of thousands,
testament to the US economy's continuing dynamism.
Less mobility in US
Overall, there is actually less economic mobility in the US than in
Canada and many European countries, notes John Morton, Managing
Director, Program Planning and Economic Policy, for the Pew Charitable
Trusts.
But for immigrants "the economic assimilation machine is in fact still
very strong," says Mr. Morton, who is helping lead a long-term Pew
project on the American dream's health.
The phrase "American dream" is relatively recent. It was popularized in
the 1930s by historian James Truslow Adams, who in his day was a widely
read author on the major themes and figures of the nation, similar to,
say, David McCullough today.
Yet the idea expressed by the phrase, that the US was a land of
opportunity where generation after generation would keep doing better
and better, has always been the "gyroscope of American life," writes
Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson in his
book "Pursuing the American Dream."
In some periods the American dream has seemed more attainable than in
others, says Mr. Jillson. Most recently, it was alive and well in the
era from the end of World War II through the early 1970s.
But since 1973, median family income has been essentially flat, says
Jillson.
"This is one of those periods in American history when to many ... the
American dream seems illusory," Jillson says.
Some polls back up this contention. In a recent CBS News survey of 17-
to 29-year-olds, only 25 percent of respondents said their generation
would be better off than their parents. Forty-eight percent said they
would be worse off.
The American dream is "obsolete," says Adam Gandelman, a Boston bike
messenger. "It's a scam."
Single-earner families see fall in pay
Income figures show that the days are gone when a single, stable income,
typically earned by the father, was enough to launch the next generation
to greater prosperity, according to a Pew report on economic mobility
released this spring.
Today, men in their 30s earn about $5,000 less in real terms than did
their fathers' generation, according to Pew.
That fits with Brockman's experience. Neither he, nor his father,
graduated from college. Nor did his grandmother, but she worked her way
up from a secretarial position to the executive ranks at GE.
"I couldn't get the job my dad had at [age] 30 without a degree, or
waiting in line for years," he says.
However, overall family income is a different story. Families with men
in their 30s today have about $4,000 more in annual income than did
their parents' generation.
"The main reason that family incomes have risen is that more women have
gone to work, buttressing the incomes of men by adding a second earner,"
notes the Pew economic mobility report.
Katy Curtis, a real estate agent in north Scottsdale, Ariz., did not
work when she was in the family-rearing stage of life. "And we survived
quite well," she says.
But her two daughters, now in that thirty-something cohort, are finding
life economically more difficult, she says.
They see new cars and plasma TVs and other accoutrements everywhere, and
they want them, too. "I think there are more demands made upon them
materialistically, and it's harder," says Ms. Curtis. "Things have gone
up in price, and I don't think salaries are commensurate with that."
Some experts point out that income measures today are an inexact gauge
of family well-being.
Cash, for example, is just one part of compensation. "Total compensation
includes such increasingly important components of workers‚ pay as
health benefits, contributions to retirement plans, and paid vacations,"
writes Heritage Foundation labor expert James Sherk in a recent analysis
of economic mobility.
And the use of the Consumer Price Index to calculate inflation-adjusted
pay is a mistake, according to Mr. Sherk. Economists should use the more
accurate implicit price deflator instead.
"The result of this mistake is that wage growth will almost always
appear to lag far behind productivity growth, even when workers are
making gains," writes Sherk.
Nor does everyone judge the American dream to be purely based on
monetary gain.
Mike Heitmann is a Kansas City resident visiting his wife's family in
Boston, his four daughters in tow. "The American dream is having a
strong family and living in a place where we have freedoms like we do in
the US," says Mr. Heitmann. "Family is the most important thing."
More to American dream than money
Wallace Sheppard will return to Iraq for his third tour there in
October. The Army serviceman, based in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, is also
in Boston as a tourist.
"I define [the American dream] as being happy," he says. "Money doesn't
really mater if you make enough to sustain your family."
And for the masses in many other parts of the world, whether they are
huddled or not, the Statue of Liberty still stands as their dream
destination.
Joseph Nemorin today is a line cook at Nick's Italian Restaurant on
Ocean Drive in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He's been there 17 years.
He arrived in the US from Haiti when he himself was 17. Today he is a
legal permanent resident who says he has done better than his parents.
He expects his children will do better than he has, because they were
born in America.
The American dream is available for those who come to the US for the
right reason, he says. "If you come to work, you don't get in trouble
... you should be doing fine, just like me."
Faye Bowers in Phoenix, Bill Frogameni in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and
Bina Venkataraman in Boston contributed to this report.
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18) Iraqi Cabinet Moves Forward on Oil Measure
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
July 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/world/middleeast/04iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD, July 3 — The Iraqi cabinet took a step closer on Tuesday to completing work on an oil law that the United States Congress has demanded progress on before it authorizes additional money for the war.
The cabinet approved one part of the legislative package, known officially as the hydrocarbon framework law, and sent it to Parliament. The measure affirms that Iraq’s vast oil wealth belongs to all its citizens and sets out the role of a new, powerful federal oil and gas council, which will control oil and gas policy and review all contracts for oil field exploration and development.
The country’s proven oil reserves are in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south of Iraq. The reserves are estimated at 115 billion barrels, the third largest in the world.
If the country can agree on how to develop its oil and share the income, many Iraqi and American policy makers believe it would augur well for Iraq’s chances of remaining united and reconciling its violent sectarian and ethnic rivalries.
Undercutting those efforts is the daily drumbeat of violence, which on Tuesday included an evening car bomb in the poor Shiite neighborhood of Shaab. It set stores ablaze, burning a number of people to death. Early reports from Interior Ministry officials estimated that at least 18 people had been killed and dozens wounded, some severely.
Much of the oil measure approved Tuesday focuses on the relationship between the new council and Iraq’s regions and provinces. The Kurdistan regional government, which consists of three provinces, has a system already in place for entering into contracts for oil field exploration and development and did not want a new system to upend its authority. Retaining some regional control over oil contracting is also vitally important to Iraq’s Shiites, who plan to form a region in the south similar to Kurdistan.
The oil measure allows contracts to be reviewed by the new oil council, but sets limits on the council’s latitude to reject contracts. The law also permits foreign participation in oil field development. Agreement on this law was first reached in February, but then the measure was sent to the Shura Council, a body which reviews laws to ensure that they are compatible with Iraq’s constitution and with existing oil laws. The Kurdish Regional Government said it had yet to review the final text and would withhold its endorsement until its experts had read it.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki described the measure as “the most important legislation” to reach Parliament and laid out a schedule for moving ahead on other measures intended to improve relations between Iraq’s Shiite majority and Sunni Arabs.
The framework law, however, is only one part of the oil package. The second crucial element, the law establishing guidelines for dividing Iraq’s oil revenue, has yet to be approved by the cabinet, but Mr. Maliki and his aides said they hoped that there would be progress on that soon.
The American Embassy welcomed the momentum, although it fell short of the larger package of oil legislation on which the United States Congress has demanded movement.
“This is an important step in this Iraqi process,” said Philip Reeker, spokesman for Ryan Crocker, the United States ambassador.
Although the cabinet’s approval is significant, only 24 of 37 cabinet members were present because the Sunni Arab ministers are boycotting cabinet meetings, as are the six ministers who represent the faction that supports the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
Representatives of the Sunni bloc said they were not opposed to the law, but that there were a number of aspects of it that they wanted to discuss.
“We are astonished at the government’s rush to submit the law to Parliament,” said Salim Abdullah, a member of the Sunni bloc, Tawafiq. “We will not be an obstacle in the road of the law but we have some comments and reservations,” he said.
Complicating matters is the fact that members of the Sunni bloc are boycotting Parliament and cabinet meetings to protest an arrest warrant against the culture minister and to insist on the reinstatement of the speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashadani, a Sunni Arab, who had been asked to step aside by a majority in Parliament.
If their boycott continues, it is likely that discussion and passage of the oil framework law will be protracted.
The car bomb on Tuesday evening exploded at the gate of a busy market in Shaab that has been attacked several times. The place has streets lined with flimsy wooden and plastic market stands where people can buy cheap fruits and vegetables, groceries and household goods.
Market stalls, stores and cars were set on fire, witnesses said. People screamed as they burned and local residents rushed to throw earth on flaming bodies to smother the fires.
Najim al-Kaabi, a day worker in the market, was in a nearby Shiite mosque, or husseiniya, when the bomb exploded. “We saw fire everywhere, in the shops that sell birds,” he said. “I saw a lot of bodies, human flesh all over the place.”
“I saw the police loading the burnt bodies into the trucks and I recognized one of my neighbors; he owned a small shop, he burned to death in it. It was horrible, I cannot forget it,” Mr. Kaabi said.
Meanwhile, in the Amil neighborhood, once a mixed area, Sunni Arabs were fighting for survival. The Shiite militia linked to Mr. Sadr has been systematically taking ground, terrorizing and killing local Sunni Arabs.
On Tuesday, Interior Ministry commandos, who are believed to be predominantly Shiite, stopped a car with four guards for the Sunni Arab planning minister, Ali Baban. Mahdi militiamen indicated that they wanted to take the guards and the commandos allowed them to, according to two witnesses.
Sunni Arab neighbors were outraged. They marched to the gates of the local United States base on Tuesday to ask the Americans to interfere because the checkpoint is near the base. “We are going to stay here until they do something about this,” said Abu Hassan, a neighborhood resident who was camped out in front of the American base.
The United States military had not verified this account as of late Tuesday, but it is well established that the area is at the heart of a sectarian battle on the west side of Baghdad.
Eighteen dead bodies were found around Baghdad on Tuesday, according to an Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Abdul Razzaq al-Saedi, Ali Adeeb and Sahar Najeeb contributed reporting.
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19) E.P.A. and Dow in Talks on Dioxin Cleanup at Main Factory
By FELICITY BARRINGER
July 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/us/04dioxin.html
Dow Chemical is negotiating with the Environmental Protection Agency over the timing and procedures to clean up three areas of dioxin-contaminated sediments in a Michigan river that flows past its main manufacturing plant.
The negotiations were prompted last week when the agency decided to order the cleanup. A spokesman for Dow said it was already working on cleaning up the highly toxic dioxin.
Margaret Guerriero, director of the land and chemicals division for the environmental agency’s regional office in Chicago, said: “Our concern was that they were not moving fast enough, and this was going to get protracted because of the seasonal nature of the work. There is only a certain window every year when you can go in and do the work. We were worried that it was going to slip.”
The areas were discovered in November, a Dow spokesman, John Musser, said yesterday.
“A good bit of what they were asking us to do to — in their words, hurry the process up — we had already agreed to do, and to some extent gotten that work under way,” Mr. Musser said.
The sites are within six miles of the plant in Midland, Mich. One is not far from the plant, 30 to 70 feet from the riverbank.
The dioxin is in sediments 2 to 10 feet below the surface of the Tittabawassee River.
Although there is no indication that residents or workers in the area are directly exposed to the sites, studies have found slightly elevated levels of dioxin in some people who frequently consume fish from the river. The river often overflows in heavy rains and the spring thaw.
Dioxin, the popular name for a group of cancer-causing chemical compounds, was a standard byproduct of chemical and pesticide manufacturing and paper bleaching. It was made infamous by its discovery at the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and at Times Beach, Mo., a town that was evacuated more than 20 years ago.
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20) Insights: Big Yawn, Cooler Brain? Researchers Say Yes
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/health/03insi.html
Over the years, there have been many theories for why people yawn. It has been associated with sleepiness and boredom, and, incorrectly, with low oxygen levels in the blood.
“No one knows why we yawn,” says Andrew C. Gallup, a psychology professor at the State University of New York at Albany.
Now Dr. Gallup and fellow researchers have a new explanation: yawning, they said, is a way for the body to cool the brain.
Writing in the May issue of Evolutionary Psychology, they reported that volunteers yawned more often in situations in which their brains were likely to be warmer.
To prove their theory that yawning regulates brain temperature when other systems in the body are not doing enough, the researchers took advantage of the well-established tendency of people to yawn when those around them do — the so-called contagious yawn.
The volunteers were asked to step into a room by themselves and watch a video showing people behaving neutrally, laughing or yawning. Observers watching through a one-way mirror counted how many times the volunteers yawned.
Some volunteers were asked to breathe only through their noses as they watched. Later, volunteers were asked to press warm or cold packs on their foreheads.
“The two conditions thought to promote brain cooling (nasal breathing and forehead cooling) practically eliminated contagious yawning,” the researchers wrote.
The study may also help explain why yawning spreads from person to person.
A cooler brain, Dr. Gallup said, is a clearer brain.
So yawning actually appears to be a way to stay more alert. And contagious yawning, he said, may have evolved to help groups remain vigilant against danger.
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21) Private contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq
New U.S. data show how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of the war-torn nation.
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer
July 4, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-private4jul04,1,6564316.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.
More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Including the recent troop buildup, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.
The total number of private contractors, far higher than previously reported, shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq — a mission criticized as being undermanned.
"These numbers are big," said Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who has written on military contracting. "They illustrate better than anything that we went in without enough troops. This is not the coalition of the willing. It's the coalition of the billing."
The numbers include at least 21,000 Americans, 43,000 foreign contractors and about 118,000 Iraqis — all employed in Iraq by U.S. tax dollars, according to the most recent government data.
The array of private workers promises to be a factor in debates on a range of policy issues, including the privatization of military jobs and the number of Iraqi refugees allowed to resettle in the U.S.
But there are also signs that even those mounting numbers may not capture the full picture. Private security contractors, who are hired to protect government officials and buildings, were not fully counted in the survey, according to industry and government officials.
Continuing uncertainty over the numbers of armed contractors drew special criticism from military experts.
"We don't have control of all the coalition guns in Iraq. That's dangerous for our country," said William Nash, a retired Army general and reconstruction expert. The Pentagon "is hiring guns. You can rationalize it all you want, but that's obscene."
Although private companies have played a role in conflicts since the American Revolution, the U.S. has relied more on contractors in Iraq than in any other war, according to military experts.
Contractors perform functions including construction, security and weapons system maintenance.
Military officials say contractors cut costs while allowing troops to focus on fighting rather than on other tasks.
"The only reason we have contractors is to support the war fighter," said Gary Motsek, the assistant deputy undersecretary of Defense who oversees contractors. "Fundamentally, they're supporting the mission as required."
But critics worry that troops and their missions could be jeopardized if contractors, functioning outside the military's command and control, refuse to make deliveries of vital supplies under fire.
At one point in 2004, for example, U.S. forces were put on food rations when drivers balked at taking supplies into a combat zone.
Adding an element of potential confusion, no single agency keeps track of the number or location of contractors.
In response to demands from Congress, the U.S. Central Command began a census last year of the number of contractors working on U.S. and Iraqi bases to determine how much food, water and shelter was needed.
That census, provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, shows about 130,000 contractors and subcontractors of different nationalities working at U.S. and Iraqi military bases.
However, U.S. military officials acknowledged that the census did not include other government agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department.
Last month, USAID reported about 53,000 Iraqis employed under U.S. reconstruction contracts, doing jobs such as garbage pickup and helping to teach democracy. In interviews, agency officials said an additional 300 Americans and foreigners worked as contractors for the agency.
State Department officials said they could not provide the department's number of contractors. Of about 5,000 people affiliated with the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, about 300 are State Department employees. The rest are a mix of other government agency workers and contractors, many of whom are building the new embassy.
"There are very few of us, and we're way undermanned," said one State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We have significant shortages of people. It's been that way since before [the war], and it's still that way."
The companies with the largest number of employees are foreign firms in the Middle East that subcontract to KBR, the Houston-based oil services company, according to the Central Command database. KBR, once a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., provides logistics support to troops, the single largest contract in Iraq.
Middle Eastern companies, including Kulak Construction Co. of Turkey and Projects International of Dubai, supply labor from Third World countries to KBR and other U.S. companies for menial work on U.S. bases and rebuilding projects. Foreigners are used instead of Iraqis because of fears that insurgents could infiltrate projects.
KBR is by far the largest employer of Americans, with nearly 14,000 U.S. workers. Other large employers of Americans in Iraq include New York-based L-3 Communications, which holds a contract to provide translators to troops, and ITT Corp., a New York engineering and technology firm.
The most controversial contractors are those working for private security companies, including Blackwater, Triple Canopy and Erinys. They guard sensitive sites and provide protection to U.S. and Iraqi government officials and businessmen.
Security contractors draw some of the sharpest criticism, much of it from military policy experts who say their jobs should be done by the military. On several occasions, heavily armed private contractors have engaged in firefights when attacked by Iraqi insurgents.
Others worry that the private security contractors lack accountability. Although scores of troops have been prosecuted for serious crimes, only a handful of private security contractors have faced legal charges.
The number of private security contractors in Iraq remains unclear, despite Central Command's latest census. The Times identified 21 security companies in the Central Command database, deploying 10,800 men.
However, the Defense Department's Motsek, who monitors contractors, said the Pentagon estimated the total was 6,000.
Both figures are far below the private security industry's own estimate of about 30,000 private security contractors working for government agencies, nonprofit organizations, media outlets and businesses.
Industry officials said that private security companies helped reduce the number of troops needed in Iraq and provided jobs to Iraqis — a benefit in a country with high unemployment.
"A guy who is working for a [private security company] is not out on the street doing something inimical to our interests," said Lawrence Peter, director of the Private Security Company Assn. of Iraq.
Not surprisingly, Iraqis make up the largest number of civilian employees under U.S. contracts. Typically, the government contracts with an American firm, which then subcontracts with an Iraqi firm to do the job.
Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, a contractors' trade group, said the number of Iraqis reflected the importance of the reconstruction and economic development efforts to the overall U.S. mission in Iraq.
"That's not work that the government does or has ever done…. That's work that is going to be done by companies and to some extent by" nongovernmental organizations, Soloway said. "People tend to think that these are contractors on the battlefield, and they're not."
The Iraqis have been the most difficult to track. As recently as May, the Pentagon told Congress that 22,000 Iraqis were employed by its contractors. But the Pentagon number recently jumped to 65,000 — a result of closer inspection of contracts, an official said.
The total number of Iraqis employed under U.S. contracts is important, in part because it may influence debate in Congress regarding how many Iraqis will be allowed to come to the U.S. to escape violence in their homeland.
This year, the U.S. planned to cap that number at 7,000 a year. To date, however, only a few dozen Iraqis have been admitted, according to State Department figures.
Kirk Johnson, head of the List Project, which seeks to increase the admission of Iraqis, said that the U.S. needed to provide a haven to those who worked most closely with American officials.
"We all say we are grateful to these Iraqis," Johnson said. "How can we be the only superpower in the world that can't implement what we recognize as a moral imperative?"
t.christian.miller@latimes.com
--
(INFOBOX BELOW)
The back story
Information in this article is based in part on a database of contractors in Iraq obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, which allows the public access to government records.
The database is the result of a census conducted earlier this year by the U.S. Central Command.
The census found about 130,000 contractors working for 632 companies holding contracts in Iraq with the Defense Department and a handful of other federal agencies.
The Times received the database last month, four months after first requesting it. Because the Freedom of Information Act law requires an agency to provide only information as of the date of the request, the census is based on figures as of February. During interviews, Pentagon officials said the census had since been updated, and they provided additional figures based on the update.
--
Los Angeles Times
--
--
Contractors in Iraq
There are more U.S.-paid private contractors than there are American combat troops in Iraq.
Contractors: 180,000
U.S. troops: 160,000
--
Nationality of contractors*
118,000 Iraqis
43,000 non-U.S. foreigners
21,000 Americans
--
Top contractors
Company: Kulak Construction Co.
Description: Based in Turkey, supplies construction workers to U.S. bases
Total employees: 30,301
--
Company: KBR
Description: Based in Houston, supplies logistics support to U.S. troops
Total employees: 15,336
--
Company: Prime Projects International
Description: Based in Dubai, supplies labor for logistics support
Total employees: 10,560
--
Company: L-3 Communications
Description: Based in New York, provides translators and other services
Total employees: 5,886
--
Company: Gulf Catering Co.
Description: Based in Saudi Arabia, provides kitchen services to U.S. troops
Total employees: 4,002
--
Company: 77 Construction
Description: Based in Irbil, Iraq, provides logistics support to troops
Total employees: 3,219
--
Company: ECC
Description: Based in Burlingame, Calif, works on reconstruction projects
Total employees: 2,390
--
Company: Serka Group
Description: Based in Turkey, supplies logistics support to U.S. bases
Total employees: 2,250
--
Company: IPBD Ltd.
Description: Based in England, supplies labor, laundry services and other support
Total employees: 2,164
--
Company: Daoud & Partners Co.
Description: Based in Amman, Jordan, supplies labor for logistics support
Total employees: 2,092
--
Company: EOD Technology Inc
Description: Based in Lenoir City, Tenn., supplies security, explosives demolition and other services
Total employees: 1,913
--
Note: Data are as of February, which is most current available.
*Approximate - numbers rounded
Sources: U.S. Central Command, Times reporting
--
Paul Duginski Los Angeles Times
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Patterns: In Studies, Surprise Findings on Obesity and Heart Attacks
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
Two new studies shed light on the role obesity may play in causing heart attacks and, surprisingly, keeping them from being fatal.
In one study, published by the European Heart Journal, researchers followed more than 1,600 patients who were given angioplasty and, usually, stents after a type of heart attack known as unstable angina/non-ST-segment elevation. They found that the obese and very obese patients were only half as likely as those of normal weight to die in the three years after the attack.
Part of the explanation may be that obese people are more likely to have their heart problems detected by doctors and treated with medications that later help them recover from heart attacks.
Heart attack patients who are obese also tend to be younger. And other changes in the body that often occur with obesity may also help, the study said. (Of course, as the researchers noted, obesity is not desirable when it comes to heart disease; it causes medical problems that can lead to heart attacks in the first place.)
In the second study, presented at a recent meeting of the American Society of Echocardiography, researchers reported that excess weight was associated with a thickening of muscle in the left ventricle, the part of the heart that acts as a pump. The study was led by researchers from the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center.
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/health/03patt.html
New Scheme Preys on Desperate Homeowners
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and VIKAS BAJAJ
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/business/03home.html?ref=us
Keeping Patients’ Details Private, Even From Kin
By JANE GROSS
July 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/health/policy/03hipaa.html?ref=us
Lessons from Katrina
How to Destroy an African American City in 33 Steps
By BILL QUIGLEY
June 28, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/quigley06282007.html
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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