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OCT. 27 COALITION EVALUATION MEETING WILL TAKE PLACE:
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1 P.M. AT CENTRO DEL PUEBLO.
474 Valencia Street, SF (Near 16th Street)
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My impressions of the school board meeting last evening:
Hi all,
First, thanks to Sandra Schwartz for the following:
"JROTC no longer can be substituted for PE, which makes JROTC
a VERY expensive elective and/or after school activity. The numbers
enrolled in JROTC really diminish after the 10th grade PE requirement so if
kids can only take JROTC as an elective they probably won’t have enough
students to keep the program in the schools. They are trying all kinds of
shenanigans to keep JROTC as a PE class; but again the important part here is
that PE classes must be taught by a PE credentialed teacher, not a retired
military commander with or without a college degree of any kind."
I didn't know this but it was mentioned at the board meeting last evening.
What was so disturbing about this meeting was the state of mind of the
hundreds of children from JROTC who were at the meeting. Those of them who
spoke expressed very severe and disturbing emotional distress over the idea
of no JROTC. They have been worked up into such a frenzy that I fear for
some of them. One young man presented himself as "the top person in his
school!" In my opinion, these kids are being mentally and emotionally abused
by this program and I'm not kidding. I would love to have seen a
psychologist at this meeting to observe these kids--especially the ones who
spoke. They are being brought to the breaking point by these vicious
brainwashers.
I am really frightened by what went on at that meeting. And I am more frightened
by the lack of turnout from the antiwar movement.
We should have been there and packed that meeting as well.
I do not find it encouraging that they are tabling this issue--meanwhile
these impressionable children are being "rendered" by the U.S. military!
This must come to a stop. We have to organize against this abuse of our
children!
I urge people to come to the meeting on Monday, November 26, 7PM, 474
Valencia Street to assess what we can do about this dire situation.
Also, the military will be all out and about during the holidays to lure
kids in.
If they can do this with impunity in San Francisco, imagine what they are
doing elsewhere!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
GET JROTC OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS—AGAIN!
Remember when SF made history a year ago when the Board of Education voted to phase out JROTC from our public schools? Well it seems like the military forces have succeeded in delaying, if not stopping, the phase out. Even previously anti-JROTC school board members are wavering.
In 2004, 63 percent of San Franciscans voted to withdraw all troops from Iraq. In 2005, 59 percent of San Franciscans voted to end military recruiting in our public schools. In 2006 the school board, the first in the country, voted to phase out JROTC. San Franciscans clearly do not support the military taking our children. We MUST muster enough support to hold the school board to its courageous vote last year.
Attend a meeting:
Monday, November 26
7:00 P.M.
474 Valencia Street
(Near 16th Street, San Francisco)
For more info, call: 415-824-8730
In solidarity,
Medea Benjamin
Eric Blanc
Riva Enteen
Bob Forsberg
Vickie Leidner
Cristina Gutierrez
Tommi Avicoli Mecca
Millie Phillips
Carole Seligman
Bonnie Weinstein
Please sign this letter and pass it along to all those opposed to JROTC in our schools.
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Illinois: Students Allowed to Return to Class
By CRYSTAL YEDNAK
Students who faced possible expulsion for participating in an antiwar protest at their suburban Chicago high school will be allowed to return to class, school officials said. More than two dozen students were at risk of being expelled after holding a sit-in Nov. 1 at Morton West High School in Berwyn. Four students deemed more culpable for the protest against the war in Iraq will remain suspended until Friday, school officials said.
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/15brfs-CHICAGO.html?ref=us
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MONEY AS DEBT
http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279
http://www.moneyasd ebt.net/
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Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
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Help end the war by supporting the troops who have refused to fight it.
Please sign the appeal online
"DEAR CANADA: LET U.S. WAR RESISTERS STAY!"
"I am writing from the United States to ask you to make a provision for
sanctuary for the scores of U.S. military servicemembers currently in
Canada, most of whom have traveled to your country in order to resist
fighting in the Iraq War. Please let them stay in Canada..."
To sign the appeal or for more information:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/canada
Courage to Resist volunteers will send this letter on your behalf to three
key Canadian officials--Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley, and Stéphane Dion, Liberal
Party--via international first class mail.
In collaboration with War Resisters Support Campaign (Canada), this effort
comes at a critical juncture in the international campaign for asylum for
U.S. war resisters in Canada.
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Child sweatshop shame threatens Gap's ethical image
An Observer investigation into children making clothes has shocked the retail giant and may cause it to withdraw apparel ordered for Christmas
Dan McDougall
Observer
Sunday October 28, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2200573,00.html
2) On the Bottle, Off the Streets, Halfway There
By DAN BARRY
SEATTLE
November 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/us/11land.html?ref=us
3) Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
By Lindsay Beyerstein
November 1, 2007
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3388/
4) U.S. Congress approves $155 million weapons package for Israel
Saed Bannoura - IMEMC
November 08, 2007
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=38041&s2=09
5) Bring the Real World Home
By ROGER COHEN
Op-Ed Columnist
November 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/opinion/12cohen.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1194883212-EkOs92xeeaXrtl76g//GFw
6) Security Guard Fires From Convoy, Killing Iraqi Driver
By JAMES GLANZ
November 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/world/middleeast/12contractor.html?hp
7) For U.S. Exporters in Cuba, Business Trumps Politics
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
November 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/world/americas/12cuba.html?ref=world
8) Increased Compensation Puts More College Presidents in the Million-Dollar Club
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
November 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/us/12compensation.html?ref=us
9) Ford Workers Ratify Contract
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
November 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/business/14cnd-ford.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
10) Letter from Mumia Abu-Jamal's attorney Robert R. Bryan
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
11) Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth
Iran, Russia and Venezuela Feel the Benefits
By Steven Mufson
The Washington Post
November 10, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/AR2007110902
573_pf.html
12) Illness [cholera] Strikes Disabled Children in Baghdad Home, Killing One
By QAIS MIZHER and ALISSA J. RUBIN
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/world/middleeast/15cholera.html?ref=world
13) ID Cards for Residents Pass a Vote in California [San Francisco]
By JESSE McKINLEY
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/15frisco.html?ref=us
14) Killed by the Cops
By Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
Issue #41, Nov/Dec 2007
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=255
15) Chicago Police Abuse Cases Exceed Average
By SUSAN SAULNY
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/15chicago.html?ref=us
16) 5 Officers Who Killed Man Never Shot Anyone Before
By AL BAKER
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/nyregion/15shooting.html?ref=nyregion
17) Ford to Offer Buyouts and Scrap Plan for Plant
By NICK BUNKLEY
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/business/15cnd-ford.html?ref=business
18) Chiquita Brands accused of funding death squads
By RICH SCHAPIRO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, November 14th 2007, 4:56 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/11/14/2007-11-14_chiquita_brands_accused_of_funding_death.html
19) An exclusive interview with Mariela Castro Espín, director of Cuba‚s
National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX).
By: Hinde Pomeraniec
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1625.html
CLARIN (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
ORIGINAL
04.11.2007
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/11/04/elmundo/i-03201.htm
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1) Child sweatshop shame threatens Gap's ethical image
An Observer investigation into children making clothes has shocked the retail giant and may cause it to withdraw apparel ordered for Christmas
Dan McDougall
Observer
Sunday October 28, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2200573,00.html
Amitosh concentrates as he pulls the loops of thread through tiny plastic beads and sequins on the toddler's blouse he is making. Dripping with sweat, his hair is thinly coated in dust. In Hindi his name means 'happiness'. The hand-embroidered garment on which his tiny needle is working bears the distinctive logo of international fashion chain Gap. Amitosh is 10.
The hardships that blight his young life, exposed by an undercover Observer investigation in the back streets of New Delhi, reveal a tragic consequence of the West's demand for cheap clothing. It exposes how, despite Gap's rigorous social audit systems launched in 2004 to weed out child labour in its production processes, the system is being abused by unscrupulous subcontractors. The result is that children, in this case working in conditions close to slavery, appear to still be making some of its clothes.
Gap's own policy is that if it discovers children being used by contractors to make its clothes that contractor must remove the child from the workplace, provide it with access to schooling and a wage, and guarantee the opportunity of work on reaching a legal working age.
It is a policy to stop the abuse of children. And in Amitosh's case it appears not to have succeeded. Sold into bonded labour by his family this summer, Amitosh works 16 hours a day hand-sewing clothing. Beside him on a wooden stool are his only belongings: a tattered comic, a penknife, a plastic comb and a torn blanket with an elephant motif.
'I was bought from my parents' village in [the northern state of] Bihar and taken to New Delhi by train,' he says. 'The men came looking for us in July. They had loudspeakers in the back of a car and told my parents that, if they sent me to work in the city, they won't have to work in the farms. My father was paid a fee for me and I was brought down with 40 other children. The journey took 30 hours and we weren't fed. I've been told I have to work off the fee the owner paid for me so I can go home, but I am working for free. I am a shaagird [a pupil]. The supervisor has told me because I am learning I don't get paid. It has been like this for four months.'
The derelict industrial unit in which Amitosh and half a dozen other children are working is smeared in filth, the corridors flowing with excrement from a flooded toilet.
Behind the youngsters huge piles of garments labelled Gap - complete with serial numbers for a new line that Gap concedes it has ordered for sale later in the year - lie completed in polythene sacks, with official packaging labels, all for export to Europe and the United States in time for Christmas.
Jivaj, who is from West Bengal and looks around 12, told The Observer that some of the boys in the sweatshop had been badly beaten. 'Our hours are hard and violence is used against us if we don't work hard enough. This is a big order for abroad, they keep telling us that.
'Last week, we spent four days working from dawn until about one o'clock in the morning the following day. I was so tired I felt sick,' he whispers, tears streaming down his face. 'If any of us cried we were hit with a rubber pipe. Some of the boys had oily cloths stuffed in our mouths as punishment.'
Manik, who is also working for free, claims - unconvincingly - to be 13. 'I want to work here. I have somewhere to sleep,' he says looking furtively behind him. 'The boss tells me I am learning. It is my duty to stay here. I'm learning to be a man and work. Eventually, I will make money and buy a house for my mother.'
The discovery of the sweatshop has the potential to cause major embarrassment for Gap. Last week, a spokesman admitted that children appeared to have been caught up in the production process and rather than risk selling garments made by children it vowed it would withdraw tens of thousands of items identified by The Observer.
He said: 'At Gap, we firmly believe that under no circumstances is it acceptable for children to produce or work on garments. These allegations are deeply upsetting and we take this situation very seriously. All of our suppliers and their sub-contractors are required to guarantee that they will not use child labour to produce garments.
'It is clear that one of our vendors violated this agreement, and a full investigation is under way. After learning of this situation, we immediately took steps to stop this work order and to prevent the product from ever being sold in our stores. We are also convening a meeting of our suppliers where we will reinforce our prohibition on child labour.
'Gap Incorporated has a rigorous factory-monitoring programme in place and last year we revoked our approval of 23 factories for failing to comply with our standards.
'We are proud of this programme and we will continue to work with government, trade unions and other independent organisations to put an end to the use of child labour.'
In recent years Gap has made efforts to rebrand itself as a leader in ethical and socially responsible manufacturing, after previously being criticised for practices including the use of child labour.
With annual revenues of more than £8bn and endorsements from Madonna and Sex and The City star Sarah Jessica Parker, Gap has arguably become the most successful brand in high-street fashion. The latest face of the firm's advertising is the singer Joss Stone.
Founded in San Francisco in 1969 by Donald Fisher, now one of America's wealthiest businessmen, Gap operates more than 3,000 stores and franchises across the world. In Britain Gap, babyGap and GapKids are very successful, their own-brand jeans alone outselling their retail rivals' lines by three to one.
Last year, the company embarked on a huge advertising campaign surrounding 'Product Red', a charitable trust for Africa founded by the U2 singer Bono and backed by celebrities including Hollywood star Don Cheadle, singers Lenny Kravitz and Mary J Blige, Steven Spielberg and Penelope Cruz. As part of the fundraising endeavour, Gap launched a new, limited collection of clothing and accessories for men and women with Product Red branding, the profits from which are being channelled towards fighting Aids in the Third World.
On its website the company states that all individuals who work in garment factories deserve to be treated with dignity and are entitled to safe and fair working conditions and not since 2000, when a BBC Panorama investigation exposed the firm's working practices in Cambodia, have children been associated with the production of their brand.
Gap has huge contracts in India, which boasts one of the world's fastest-growing economies. But over the past decade, India has also become the world capital for child labour. According to the UN, child labour contributes an estimated 20 per cent of India's gross national product with 55 million children aged from five to 14 employed across the business and domestic sectors.
'Gap may be one of the best-known fashion brands with a public commitment to social responsibility, but the employment [by subcontractors ultimately supplying major international retail chains] of bonded child slaves as young as 10 in India's illegal sweatshops tells a different story,' says Bhuwan Ribhu, a Delhi lawyer and activist for the Global March Against Child Labour.
'The reality is that most major retail firms are in the same game, cutting costs and not considering the consequences. They should know by now what outsourcing to India means.
'It is an impossible task to track down all of these terrible sweatshops, particularly in the garment industry when you need little more than a basement or an attic crammed with small children to make a healthy profit.
'Some owners even hide the children in sacks and in carefully concealed mezzanine floors designed to dodge such raids,' he explains.
'Employing cheap labour without proper auditing and investigation of your contractor inevitably means children will be used somewhere along the chain. This may not be what they want to hear as they pull off fresh clothes from clean racks in stores but shoppers in the West should be thinking "Why am I only paying £30 for a hand-embroidered top. Who made it for such little cost? Is this top stained with a child's sweat?" That's what they need to ask themselves.'
· The investigation was carried out in partnership with WDR Germany.
· This article was amended on Sunday October 28 2007.
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2) On the Bottle, Off the Streets, Halfway There
By DAN BARRY
SEATTLE
November 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/us/11land.html?ref=us
The Moocher introduced them years ago down by the ferry terminal, near that “No Loitering” sign scratched up to read “Know Loitering.” It was Ed, meet Daryl, Daryl, Ed, between sips and slugs of bottom-shelf whiskey and high-octane beer.
Soon, in the blathering small talk that kills time, Ed Myers and Daryl Jordan identified a bond beyond a shared dislike for the Moocher, who drank but never bought. They both had survived the same firefight in Vietnam, it seemed; brothers now, in blood and booze.
Together they panhandled with Nam Vet Needs Help signs at the highway entrance, converted their proceeds into Icehouse beer and Rich & Rare whiskey, and shared their nights in the perpetual dusk beneath the elevated highway, taking turns seeking the full sleep that never came, so loud was the traffic above, so naked were they below, in addled vulnerability.
Now and then they came in from the elements, sometimes to the same shelter, sometimes to separate shelters, sometimes to the Sobering Support Center on Boren Avenue, where you store your shoes and coat in a black plastic bag, have your vitals checked, accept the soup and juice or not, then fold up on a thin mat over concrete.
If separated, Daryl would spend the early morning pacing the dark streets, until finally here would be Ed, already to drinking to quell those first shakes of the day. And the two would return to Know Loitering.
They came to know the jagged pieces of each other’s bottle-shattered past, the broken marriages, the lost jobs, the ghosts. Daryl still sees what he saw in Vietnam. As for Ed, he was working on a fifth one day in his Iowa hometown when suddenly, there before him, stood his father and grandfather, telling him for shame. That both were dead only underscored the point.
Ed dumped the bottle and didn’t drink for 12 years — until one day he did. Back he fell to the hard, hard streets, which at least offered up another man who understood. Daryl.
Hell, Daryl was there that Thanksgiving time when a woman slipped Ed two twenties; they gave thanks with two days of beer, whiskey and chicken-fried-steak dinners. And Daryl was there when some young cop poured out most of a fifth and tossed the bottle on the ground, prompting Ed to say he didn’t appreciate littering.
Early last year, some people, not cops, tracked Daryl down at the sobering center, where he had slept off a drunk 360 times in one calendar year. They were from a homeless outreach organization and they had some news, good for a change.
The organization had just built a 75-unit residence for homeless chronic alcoholics at 1811 Eastlake Avenue, and was offering rooms to the frailest and costliest to the system, as determined by time spent in the sobering center, the emergency room and jail. The idea: provide them first with housing and meals, gain their trust, then encourage them to partake of the available services, including treatment for chemical dependency.
No mandatory meetings or church-going. And one more thing, crucial to all: You can drink in this place.
Welcome, Daryl. A month later: Welcome, Ed.
“I damn near bawled,” Ed recalls.
The $11 million project has endured the angry complaints of some that it uses public money to enable, even reward, chronic inebriates. And Bill Hobson, the director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center, has met that anger with some of his own.
First, he says, the complaints reflect no understanding of the grip of alcoholism: Do you really think these men and women would rather live on the streets? Second, the cost to the public appears to have dropped as the number of visits to the emergency room, jail and the sobering center has plummeted.
Finally, he asks, what kind of equation of humanity is this: Since you refuse to stop drinking, since you refuse to address your disease, you must die on the streets.
“These guys have nothing going for them,” he says. “They could not be more dispossessed.”
So, welcome. Pay a third of your disability income for rent, and remember to behave; this isn’t a party house.
The handsome building at 1811 Eastlake stands on the shores of Interstate 5, a short walk from both the sobering center and a convenience store that sells cheap staples like cans of Icehouse and Midnight Special tobacco. Its first floor includes a laundry, a nurse’s office, counseling rooms and a bulletin board adorned with photos of smiling residents.
Captured in those snapshot smiles, evidence of this life: missing teeth, ill-fitting clothes, faces disfigured by subdural hematomas — from beatings and falls to the pavement. Some residents snatch these photos to decorate their rooms, along with the cardboard signs they once used while panhandling.
Above are three floors of studio apartments, including one for Daryl and one for Ed, both immaculately maintained. Daryl, 59 and with a left forefinger burnt orange by tobacco, was July’s resident of the month. Ed, 61 and with a taste for western-style clothes, was August’s. The poster boys for visiting journalists , forever twinned, it seemed.
Then something happened. On July 1, one day not blurred in memory, Ed felt he needed some nutrients, so he fixed himself a tomato beer: tomato juice and a can of Rainier. He took a sip, winced, took another sip, winced, and that was that. He hasn’t had a drink since.
“It didn’t taste good anymore,” Ed says.
Ed has been drinking ginger ale, and Daryl has been struggling. For a long while Daryl would not go to Ed’s apartment, with its coffee table and La-Z-Boy, and the occasional sound of a resident falling to the floor upstairs. He didn’t want to drink in front of Ed because he didn’t want to tempt his friend, and because, because — “I’m done trying,” he says, eyes tearing.
The other day Daryl was back in Ed’s cozy apartment. Ed was drinking coffee he had just brewed, and Daryl was drinking a can of Rainier from that six-pack Ed never finished. They talked around old and fresh wars for a while, but it was clear that whatever Ed was looking at, Daryl could not yet see.
Online: Voices from Seattle’s 1811 Eastlake Project. www.nytimes.com/danbarry
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3) Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
By Lindsay Beyerstein
November 1, 2007
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3388/
The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act passed the House of Representatives on Oct. 23 by a vote of 404-6. The wide margin is indicative of a growing concern among U.S. authorities about the potential for so-called “homegrown terrorism” in the United States.
“The impetus is that homegrown terror is something that we now see in Western Europe. It’s by far the number one threat to security in Britain,” Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who introduced the bill, told In These Times.
Some of the most infamous terrorist attacks in U.S. history have been carried out by citizens, including the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Harman doesn’t believe homegrown terrorism is a major threat to U.S. security today, but she says that it is important to learn from experiences in other countries like Britain and Canada, where citizens have been inspired to commit terrorism at home by Islamic propagandists reaching out over the Internet.
One of the findings of the bill is that, “the Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”
“A chief problem is radical forms of Islam, but we’re not only studying radical Islam,” Harman says. “We’re studying the phenomenon of people with radical beliefs who turn into people who would use violence.”
That worries Mike German, policy counsel for the ACLU, who calls the legislation “wrongheaded” because it focuses on ideology, rather than criminal activity. The bill calls for heightened scrutiny of people who believe, or might come to believe, in a violent ideology. German wants the government to focus on people who are actually committing crimes, rather than those who are merely entertaining violent ideas, something perfectly legal.
Harman’s bill would convene a 10-member national commission to study “violent radicalization” (defined as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change”) and “homegrown terrorism” (defined as “the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States […] to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives”).
The bill also directs the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to designate a “center of excellence,” a university-based research center where academics, policy-makers, members of the private sector and other stakeholders can collaborate to better understand and prevent radicalization and homegrown terrorism.
Some experts have raised concerns about whether politics will unduly influence which institution DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff will pick.
“The bill replicates what already exists without peer review and safeguards,” says Chip Berlet, a senior policy analyst for Political Research Associates, an independent non-profit research organization that studies political violence, authoritarianism, and homegrown terrorism.
The bill stipulates that the research center be chosen on the basis of merit and according to existing DHS protocols.
However, Amy Kudwa, a spokeswoman for DHS, says she “would be surprised” if the selection process were peer-reviewed. Kudwa could not supply the full details of the selection process and funding arrangements as of press time.
Berlet characterizes the proposed research center as “a slush fund for politically connected people inside the Beltway.”
Mark Hamm, a former warden and current professor at Indiana State University who studies radicalization in prisons, expressed confidence in the good intentions of the Homeland Security administrators, but he echoed Berlet’s concerns about the potential for insularity.
“Government tends to reach out to the people that are known within the government to do this type of work,” Hamm says. “When the government reaches out in the area of terrorism, they reach out to Washington, they reach out to the Beltway.”
Rep. Harman strongly disputes the notion that political concerns will influence the selection of Commission members or the selection of the center of excellence.
“We’re not looking for political cronies,” Harman says.
But each of the 10 commission members will be appointed by a high-ranking elected official. The appointers include the president, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Speaker and ranking member of the House, the Majority and Minority leaders of the Senate, and senior members of the House and Senate committees overseeing homeland security.
The FBI already has a domestic terrorism unit. The U.S. intelligence community also monitors the homegrown terrorists and overseas networks that might be reaching out to US residents. The July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate included a section headed, “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland.” But Harman argues that a national commission on homegrown terrorism could benefit the country in much the same way as the 9/11 Commission, the Silberman/Robb Commission or other high-profile national security inquiries.
Whatever the merits of a commission, they seem to be separate from the arguments for a center for excellence. After all, Congress can request testimony from the experts of its choice. There are other ways to fund research into domestic terrorism, including research grants awarded by peer review. One of the amendments to the bill emphasized the importance of international cooperation between U.S. authorities and experts in countries that have already contended with homegrown Islamic terrorist plots, but there is nothing stopping Congress from consulting with those experts now.
Berlet questions why the country needs the Secretary of Homeland Security to channel resources through a handpicked “center of excellence” when there are already so many scholars organizations studying political violence in America. He cited the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center as long-established, institutional sources of expertise on homegrown terrorism. Their efforts are complimented by independent scholars and writers across the country.
“Congress could just read their books,” he says.
Harman says she did not know who would be chosen to sit on the Commission. Nor did she suggest any names that might appear on the short list. She also told In These Times that it hasn’t been determined which institution will be chosen to host the Center for Excellence.
Hamm believes DHS might look to preexisting Centers of Excellence, such as the START program at the University of Maryland, which already has a working group on terrorist group formation and recruitment.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill will cost approximately $22 million over four years.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) voted against the bill because he objected to the government spending new money on this project when the House just passed a $37 billion appropriations bill for Homeland Security, Flake’s spokesman told In These Times.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) issued a statement saying that the money could be better spend funding preexisting law-enforcement efforts, rather than funding another commission. None of the three Democrats who voted against the bill—Reps. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii), and Jerry Costello (Ill.)—was available for comment.
The bill’s broad language and loose definitions of “violent radicalization” and “homegrown terrorism” also arouse the concerns of many civil libertarians.
The broad wording of the bill leaves open many questions. If homegrown terrorism is defined to include “intimidation” of the United States government or any segment of its population—could the Commission or the Center of Excellence task itself with investigating groups advocating boycotts, general strikes, or other forms of non-violent “intimidation”?
“While we wholeheartedly support efforts to curtail terrorism, primarily coming from white supremacists, we would also like to see legislation that more vigorously defends civil rights,” says Devin Burghart, an expert on domestic terrorism at the Center for New Communities, a national civil and human rights organization based in Chicago.
Rep. Harman is careful to emphasize the language in the bill that states that the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts “shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents.” However, the bill also directs the DHS to write its own rules to protect civil rights and puts the Department’s office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in charge of making the rules for the commission and the research center as well as administering the audits.
The ACLU’s German says that an internal civil liberties and privacy review is no substitute for independent oversight.
“Nobody should be fooled that such an office would have authority to address policies that are approved at a high level of the administration,” German says.
Lindsay Beyerstein is a National Political Reporter for In These Times.com, who also works as a national correspondent for Raw Story and as a metro reporter for Chelsea Now. Her work can also be read at her blog, Majikthise.
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4) U.S. Congress approves $155 million weapons package for Israel
Saed Bannoura - IMEMC
November 08, 2007
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=38041&s2=09
The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to approve $155 million worth of weapons for Israel, in an addendum to a $460 billion military spending bill that was approved on October 1st in the U.S. Congress.
The gift of more weapons to the U.S. ally comes at a moment when tensions are high and diplomacy is delicate between Israel and the Palestinians, and analysts point out that the gift of additional weapons to Israel at this particular moment could have an effect on the Summit planned for the end of November between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The bill still needs to be approved by the full bodies of the House and Senate before going to the president for approval, but it is unlikely that lawmakers would make changes before a vote.
Most of the money, $98 million, would go to the development of a 'Hetz' missile defense system, which would be built in a US factory (Boeing) by an Israeli firm (Israel Aerospace Industries).
The main focus of the missile defense system would be a potential war with Iran, although Israeli sources claim that the system is also meant to fight possible attacks by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, or the Syrian military.
:: Article nr. 38041 sent on 09-nov-2007 09:01 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=38041
Link: www.imemc.org/article/51359
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5) Bring the Real World Home
By ROGER COHEN
Op-Ed Columnist
November 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/opinion/12cohen.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1194883212-EkOs92xeeaXrtl76g//GFw
In the gym at the NATO base in Kabul, U.S. soldiers hit the treadmills every morning and gaze at TV screens broadcasting Al Jazeera’s English news channel. When Osama bin Laden makes news, as he did recently with a statement about Iraq, America’s finest work out beneath the solemn gaze of their most wanted enemy.
This sounds like a scene from Donald Rumsfeld’s private hell. The former secretary of defense dismissed Al Jazeera as a “mouthpiece of Al Qaeda.” He once called the network, which is based in and owned by Qatar, “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.”
In an indication of what the Bush administration thinks of Al Jazeera journalism (and habeas corpus), it has locked up one of the network’s cameramen, Sami al-Hajj, in Guantánamo Bay for more than five years without charging him.
The choice of viewing at the NATO gym is a lot wiser than Rumsfeld’s choice of words or the terrible treatment of Hajj. America, and not just its front-line soldiers, needs to watch Al Jazeera to understand how the world has changed. Any other course amounts to self-destructive blindness.
The first change that must be grasped is America’s diminished ability to influence people. Global access to information now amounts to an immense à la carte menu. Networks escape control. To hundreds of millions of people accessing information for the first time, from central China to Kenya’s Rift Valley, the United States can easily look exclusive and less relevant to their future.
The second essential change is the erosion of American power. Samantha Power, the author and Harvard professor, calls this “the core fact of recent years.”
America’s hard power — its military — is compromised by intractable counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its economy is strained; witness the ever feebler dollar. Its soft power — the resonance of the American idea — has been hurt by a loss of legitimacy (Hajj languishing) and by incompetence (Iraq).
The third essential change is the solidification of anti-Americanism as a political idea. Jihadist Islamism is the most violent expression of this, but its agents benefit from swimming in a sea of less murderous resentments.
In response to all this, America can say to heck with an ungrateful world. It can mutter about third, even fourth, world wars. Therein lies a downward spiral. Or it can try to grasp the new, multinetworked world as it is.
To this world Al Jazeera English offers a useful primer. The network can be tendentious — bin Laden’s face up there for several minutes — in stomach-turning ways. But, over all, its striving for balanced reporting from a distinct perspective seems genuine.
A year after its launch, it reaches 100 million households worldwide. Its focus is on “reporting from the political south to the political north,” as Nigel Parsons, its managing director, put it. The world it presents, more from the impact than the launch point of U.S. missiles, is one that must be understood.
Yet, the network has been sidelined in the United States. Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, told me: “There’s definitely an attitude here that these guys are the enemy. But in the Mideast, Asia and Europe they have a credibility the U.S. desperately needs.”
Moran met recently with Al Jazeera English executives seeking to extend the service’s Lilliputian reach here. Right now, you can watch it in Toledo, Ohio, through Buckeye Cablesystem, which reaches 147,000 homes.
Or, if you’re in Burlington, Vt., a municipal cable service offers the network to about 1,000 homes. Washington Cable, in the capital, reaches half that. Better options are YouTube or GlobeCast satellite distribution.
These are slim pickings. Al Jazeera English is far more accessible in Israel. Allan Block, the chairman of Block Communications, which owns Buckeye, told me: “It’s a good channel. Sir David Frost and David Marash are not terrorists. The attempt to blackball it is neo-McCarthyism.”
Block, like other cable providers, got protest letters from Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog. Cliff Kincaid, its editor, cites the case of Tayseer Allouni, a former Afghanistan correspondent jailed in Spain for Al Qaeda links. This is evidence, he suggests, that “cable providers shouldn’t give them access.”
Most cable companies have bowed to the pressure while denying politics influenced their decisions. “It just comes down to channel capacity and other programming options,” Jenni Moyer, a Comcast spokeswoman, told me.
Nonsense, says Representative Moran, blaming “political winds plus a risk-averse corporate structure.”
These political winds hurt America. Counterinsurgency has been called armed social science. To win, you must understand the world you’re in.
Comparative courses in how Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC and U.S. networks portray the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be taught in all U.S. high schools and colleges. Al Jazeera English should be widely available.
You are invited to comment at my blog: www.iht.com/passages
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6) Security Guard Fires From Convoy, Killing Iraqi Driver
By JAMES GLANZ
November 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/world/middleeast/12contractor.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Nov. 11 — An Iraqi taxi driver was shot and killed on Saturday by a guard with DynCorp International, a private security company hired to protect American diplomats here, when a DynCorp convoy rolled past a knot of traffic on an exit ramp in Baghdad, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Sunday.
Three witnesses said the taxi had posed no threat to the convoy, and one of them, an Iraqi Army sergeant who inspected the car afterward, said it contained no weapons or explosive devices.
“They just killed a man and drove away,” Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said in his office on Sunday afternoon. He added later, “We have opened an investigation, and we have contacted the company and told them about our accusations, and we are still waiting for their response.”
It was the latest in what the Iraqi government has said are unprovoked shootings on the streets of Baghdad by security companies hired by the State Department or contractors affiliated with it. On Sept. 16, guards with another of those concerns, Blackwater, opened fire a few miles south of Saturday’s shooting, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and wounding at least 24, according to Iraqi investigators.
The Iraqi government has accused Blackwater of involvement in at least six questionable shootings in Baghdad since September 2006. DynCorp has not drawn the same scrutiny, though it is unclear whether it has been involved in any other episodes in which Iraqis have been killed.
The shootings have stoked outrage among Iraqis, driven efforts to hold private security companies legally accountable for their actions in both the United States and Iraq, and created new challenges for American officials who were already forced to do much of their business within Baghdad’s protected Green Zone.
The latest episode came as senior officials from the Pentagon and the State Department were due to arrive in Baghdad on Sunday to arrange new measures to tighten control over security firms and coordinate their movements more closely with the United States military.
Mirembe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the United States Embassy in Baghdad, said the officials expected in Baghdad were Gregory Starr, acting assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, and P. Jackson Bell, deputy under secretary of defense for logistics and matériel readiness.
“They will meet with U.S. Embassy and military officials concerning private security company operations in Iraq,” Ms. Nantongo said in an e-mail message, adding that Mr. Starr also planned to meet with senior Iraqi officials, including the interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani.
As in several previous shootings involving security companies affiliated with the State Department, witnesses to Saturday’s shooting said they saw no reason for the guards to open fire on the car, a white Hyundai with a taxi sign on the roof, driven by Mohamad Khalil Khudair, 40. It was unclear where the convoy was headed, or whether it carried any American officials.
“The poor cabdriver was stopped here,” said one witness, Raafat Jassim, 36, who said he was standing outside a barbershop near the exit ramp at the time. “He had his hazard lights flashing, and the convoy was a long way away from him,” Mr. Jassim said, pointing to a spot about 50 yards down the ramp, which comes off a bridge over the Tigris River in a neighborhood called Utafiya.
An official at the local police headquarters said that the victim’s brother had insisted on pressing charges against the company and that as a result, the case had been referred to an Iraqi judge. But legal loopholes and immunities in Iraqi and American law have raised questions about whether private security companies operating in this country can be called to account in any court.
Both the State Department and DynCorp confirmed that there had been a shooting involving one of the company’s convoys on Saturday. Possibly because the convoy sped away after the shooting, neither the company nor the State Department could immediately confirm that Mr. Khudair had been killed.
But Gregory Lagana, a DynCorp spokesman, said the details of the encounter in which Mr. Khudair died appeared to match the one in which DynCorp guards reported discharging a weapon on Saturday. “We’re assuming it’s the same incident,” he said.
“We’ve stood down that particular team,” Mr. Lagana said, pending an investigation. “We take this kind of thing very seriously.”
He added: “We run a very disciplined, very restrained security operation. We’re trying to ascertain the facts. We’ll work with the Ministry of Interior and the State Department every step of the way.”
Mr. Lagana said the DynCorp guards reported that they were unaware that they had wounded or killed anyone.
“We knew that we had fired at the front of the vehicle,” he said. “We were kind of surprised that there was a death.”
One witness, Sgt. Ahmad Hussein, 32, who was stationed near the spot where the shooting took place, said the convoy consisted of six vehicles, including three white trucks or sport utility vehicles with tinted glass, and three sedans, which he believed were Peugeots.
The convoy came barreling down the exit ramp from the bridge around midday, Sergeant Hussein said. “We saw them coming, so we ordered the traffic to stop,” he said.
The crowded traffic on the ramp came to a stop, but as Mr. Khudair tried to pull closer to the side of the road, a gun in the rear truck of the convoy fired several shots into his car, Sergeant Hussein said. At least one bullet went through the windshield and struck Mr. Khudair on the right side of his chest, the sergeant said.
Another witness, who gave his name only as Ahmad, said that as the convoy sped away, he and several other people rushed to the car and found Mr. Khudair with his chest smeared in blood.
“We got him out of the car and put him in another car to take him to a hospital,” Ahmad said. He added that Mr. Khudair’s gearshift was in neutral when they pulled him out.
Sergeant Hussein said that Mr. Khudair was alive when he began the journey to the hospital but that he died along the way. “He didn’t make it to the hospital,” he said.
Two witnesses said that while Westerners appeared to be wielding the guns in the white trucks, at least some of the passengers in the sedans appeared to be Iraqis.
A United States official said that DynCorp was under contract to the State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau, to protect both embassy personnel and affiliated contractors. The official, who requested anonymity, did not specify who was in the convoy.
Ms. Nantongo, the embassy spokeswoman, said that according to DynCorp’s own report to the State Department on the episode, the DynCorp guards first used “nonlethal means to warn the driver of the vehicle to stop.”
In Iraq, the term “nonlethal means” often indicates that guards threw water bottles, waved or fired a small flare to get the attention of a driver.
But DynCorp told the State Department that the vehicle continued forward, and that a guard “discharged his weapon to disable the vehicle,” Ms. Nantongo said. “There are conflicting accounts as to whether anyone was injured or killed,” she said.
Mudhafer al-Husaini and Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting.
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7) For U.S. Exporters in Cuba, Business Trumps Politics
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
November 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/world/americas/12cuba.html?ref=world
HAVANA, Nov. 11 — A trade fair in Communist Cuba is perhaps the last place you would expect to find a Republican governor from the American heartland. Yet last week, Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska was here to sign a deal to export $11 million worth of his state’s wheat to the island.
Asked the obvious question about whether longstanding American trade sanctions should be lifted, Governor Heineman ducked and weaved like a professional boxer. “Well, I try not to get into that, because that’s up to the president and the Congress, but I will say expanding trade relationships is good for Nebraska and altogether good for America,” he said.
Just weeks after President Bush delivered an address calling on the world to isolate Cuba, officials from Minnesota, Alabama and Ohio — and more than 100 American businesses — were working the giant Havana International Fair, trying to secure part of the $1.6 billion the Cuban government spends each year to import sugar, wheat, livestock, poultry and beans, among other staples.
Those business interests clash with the Bush administration’s anti-Castro policies, as well as the need of both Democrats and Republicans to court Cuban exiles in Florida, a crucial voting bloc. So while some trade with Cuba is allowed, it is fraught with restrictions. A 1992 law, for instance, denies ships access to American ports for six months after they have docked in Cuba, making shipping tricky, to say the least.
Several Americans here said they were frustrated that the sanctions have proved more a source of irritation for those who want to do business with Cuba than a crippling blow to Fidel Castro.
“They are doing everything they can to make it difficult,” said Ralph Kaehler, a Minnesota farmer who sells cattle feed in Cuba. “It’s unfortunate.”
American businesspeople and state officials have been coming to the fair for six years, ever since Congress gave in to pressure from the agriculture lobby in late 2000, during the waning days of the Clinton administration, and lifted a four-decade ban on selling food to Cuba.
Since then, the number of farm states and agribusinesses who want a piece of the Cuban market has been growing, despite the Bush administration’s steady tightening of sanctions. For farm states, the need for jobs has trumped cold-war politics.
“It’s helped our economy,” said Ron Sparks, the Alabama agriculture commissioner, as he talked with people near the booth for the Mobile Port Authority. “It’s helped our farmers. I don’t talk national policy.”
Now in its 25th year, the annual trade fair drew more than 1,000 companies from 53 countries to a sprawling fairground known as Expocuba just outside Havana.
The atmosphere was festive, with more than a dozen restaurants where people drank Havana Club rum and puffed on Cuba’s famous cigars, a treat several Americans appeared to enjoy. The five-day fair, which ended Saturday, also attracted hundreds of ordinary Cubans.
Aside from state officials, the American delegation included several shipping companies and large agricultural outfits like Pilgrim’s Pride, Cargill and Purdue. Their sales representatives worked in the booths all day before returning to the Hotel Nacional, an art deco landmark, and then heading out to enjoy the Havana night life.
Some Americans at the fair predicted that Cuba’s market would open up more after Fidel Castro gave up power permanently, and they said they wanted to get a head start on deal making. Many envision a return to the prerevolution days when the United States was Cuba’s biggest trading partner, as wheat and durable goods flowed south while sugar, tobacco and rum flowed north.
But financial and travel restrictions have never been tighter, as the Bush administration has quietly stepped up the prohibition of tourism to and from Cuba and invented new ways to squeeze the island financially. It has also increased efforts to fine international banks that handle transactions in dollars for the Cuban government as well as companies that do business in both Cuba and the United States.
American farmers complain that Washington has also tried to find ways to hinder agricultural sales to the island. Since the ban was lifted in 2000, an exception to the general trade embargo against Cuba, sales from American farmers to the island have risen to about $500 million a year, Cuban officials say.
But the Bush administration has required the purchases to be made in cash and, since 2004, that the payment must be received before shipment. The system has created immense logistical headaches for American shippers and food exporters. Loads of grain and poultry end up waiting for days on a dock until proof of payment arrives, shippers said.
“There are lot of delays in loading because of that,” said Eric T. Junker, the owner of Americana Marine Services, which ships grain to the island.
President Bush and other supporters of the sanctions maintain that every dollar that enters Cuba helps support a despotic regime. In his speech on Oct. 24, Mr. Bush asked Congress to maintain the embargo and said the transfer of power from Fidel Castro, who has been ill, to his brother Raúl, amounted to “exchanging one dictator for another.” He called for elections after Fidel Castro’s death.
Cuban officials argue the embargo hurts American farmers more than it does the government here. But they also acknowledge the American attempts to punish foreign companies for doing business here have hurt them in dozens of small ways, from limiting their ability to buy to certain medicines to making it impossible to get spare parts for scientific equipment.
“The blockade makes doing business here insecure,” said Pedro Álvarez Borrego, the chairman of Alimport, the government-owned company that imports food.
The biggest blow, however, has been to tourism. The minister for tourism, Manuel Madero, said that before Mr. Bush took office, about 80,000 Americans visited Cuba every year, usually going through Mexico or another country. He declined to give a number for the current year, but said it had been reduced to trickle.
Luis M. Morejón, who operates a small tour company, said he used to arrange tours for at least 30 Americans a year in the late 1990s. “Now this whole year I haven’t had one,” he said.
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8) Increased Compensation Puts More College Presidents in the Million-Dollar Club
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
November 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/us/12compensation.html?ref=us
Soaring compensation of university presidents, once limited to a few wealthy institutions, is becoming increasingly common, with the number of million-dollar pay packages at private institutions nearly doubling last year, and compensation at many public universities not far behind.
Presidents at 12 private universities received more than $1 million in the 2005-6 school year, the most recent period for which data on private institutions is available, up from seven a year earlier, according to an annual survey of presidential pay to be released today by The Chronicle of Higher Education. The number of private college presidents earning more than $500,000 reached 81, up from 70 a year earlier and just three a decade ago.
The survey also found that the number of public university presidents making $700,000 or more rose to eight in 2006-7, the reporting period for public institutions. Only two public university presidents made $700,000 in the previous period. The survey did not include E. Gordon Gee, who took over at Ohio State University earlier this year and whose $1 million pay package, before bonuses, is probably the highest of any public institution.
“If your aspiration is to be a college president, that is a way to become a millionaire,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in San Jose, Calif. “That was inconceivable 20 years ago.”
The survey results continue a trend, even as some students, their families and lawmakers have questioned whether such generous packages for college presidents have contributed to the rising cost of college.
“The public has kind of lost confidence in the altruistic mission of higher education,” Mr. Callan said. “They see higher education as just another institution that’s in it for its own bottom line.”
John W. Curtis, director of research and public policy at the American Association of University Professors, said rising pay to presidents was consistent with a “corporate mindset” at colleges, reflecting “the idea that you have a single person who essentially is running the place.”
But officials at high-pay institutions defend the salaries, saying they result from intense competition to hold onto talented executives necessary to help build institutional wealth and prestige. They say that running a large university is increasingly similar to running a corporation.
For example, Howard E. Cosgrove, chairman of the University of Delaware board, in a statement described the growth in his institution’s endowment and in the number of grants and contracts to faculty during the tenure of David P. Roselle, who retired this summer as the university’s president and who was the top earner at a public institution, not counting Mr. Gee. Mr. Roselle received $874,687 in salary and benefits and for serving on a corporate board. Mr. Cosgrove called Mr. Roselle’s work “outstanding in every aspect.”
The other top earners at public institutions in 2006-7 were John T. Casteen III of the University of Virginia, with $753,672, and Mark A. Emmert of the University of Washington, with $752,700.
The survey identifies Richard M. Freeland of Northeastern University as the highest paid president of a private university in 2005-6, with annual compensation of nearly $2.9 million. James P. Gallagher of Philadelphia University comes next with just under $2.6 million, and William R. Brody of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore is third with slightly more than $1.9 million. Mr. Freeland stepped down in 2006 and Mr. Gallagher in 2007.
For the first time the survey, which reported on 1,017 institutions, included presidents of community colleges, who generally earn less than their counterparts at public and private four-year institutions even though some community colleges are larger than some public universities.
The presidents at half of the 68 community colleges surveyed make less than $250,000 a year. The most highly paid president in 2006-7 was Michael B. McCall of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, with $610,670 in total compensation.
Richard Bean, chairman of the board of regents of the system, said the pay package was appropriate and added that Mr. McCall got the same percentage raise as members of the faculty.
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9) Ford Workers Ratify Contract
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
November 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/business/14cnd-ford.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
DETROIT, Nov. 14 — United Automobile Workers members at Ford Motor approved a new four-year contract by the widest margin of any auto company, the union said today.
Over all, 79 percent of union members approved the agreement, which is similar to contracts reached at General Motors and Chrysler. The union said 81 percent of production workers voted in favor of the contract, while 71 percent of skilled trades workers approved it.
The Ford agreement covers 54,000 active workers. Like those at the other Detroit companies, it expires in 2011.
The approval wraps up a tumultuous and landmark set of negotiations that prompted brief strikes at G.M. and Chrysler before the agreements were reached. Both those companies announced job cuts soon after workers approved their respective deals.
Unlike those companies, the deal at Ford was reached without a walkout and without union leaders setting a strike deadline.
The U.A.W. “came away with a creative agreement that addresses the concerns of our members, and also gives the company the opportunity to move forward,” the union’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, said in a statement. “Now it’s up to Ford to successfully bring to market the top-quality vehicles our members are building in U.A.W. Ford factories.”
Approval of the Ford contract seemed likely after the company pulled back on plans to close a number of factories which it had planned to shut under a restructuring program.
Ford had originally planned to close 16 factories, but had identified only 10. Under the deal, the remaining six will be spared, although Ford keeps the ability to indefinitely shut plants if its sales deteriorate.
Ford also said it would delay the closing of two plants, in St. Paul and Cleveland, for a year. Both were scheduled to close in 2008.
The highlight of the new union contracts is the creation at each company of a voluntary employee benefit association, or VEBA, which will take responsibility for retiree health care benefits.
The automakers will shift responsibility for nearly $100 billion in current and future liabilities to the VEBA trusts, which will be run by a board that includes union representatives.
G.M., Ford and Chrysler are contributing cash and stock to start the trusts, which are expected to be created in 2010 after court and regulatory approval.
The other main feature of the new contracts is a two-tier wage system under which newly hired workers will receive sharply lower wages and less-generous benefits than current employees.
Each company also is expected to offer buyouts and other incentives to senior workers to encourage them to retire. Tens of thousands of auto workers in Detroit took advantage of such offers before the labor negotiations began.
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10) Letter from Mumia Abu-Jamal's attorney Robert R. Bryan
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Dear Friends:
There are many developments on the legal and other fronts concerning my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal. We remain in active litigation before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and also have issues pending in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Mumia has been honored by fellow writers through acceptance into a prestigious organization, a Nobel Prize winner recently visited him, an excellent new book was released in France, a leading British newspaper has published a major article on Mumia, and a superb film recently premiered in London and Rome. The following are the highlights.
PEN membership Mumia has been accepted into the membership of PEN, the worldwide human-rights organization of prominent writers. This is a great honor. He was thrilled upon learning that the application I filed on his behalf last spring was granted. In two decades of knowing each other, I have not seen Mumia so happy. The recognition from his peers is well deserved.
In a quarter of a century of being locked up in a small cell on Pennsylvania's death row, Mumia's literary output has been prodigious. He has written five outstanding books that are published in various languages, and also writes weekly commentaries that are published and broadcast internationally.
PEN was founded in 1921 to dispel national, ethnic, and racial hatred, to promote understanding among all countries, and defend the freedom to write. PEN American Center, into which Mumia has been accepted, is the largest of the 145 centers in 104 countries of International PEN. It exists to fight for freedom of expression, represent the conscience of world literature, and foster friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. It is the world‚s oldest human rights organization and also the oldest international literary group.
The support provided by Alice Walker, E.L. Doctorow, Bell Chevigny and other members of the PEN American Center, New York, was invaluable. I am especially grateful to the kindness of Salman Rushdie, former President of PEN. Throughout the application process, I was impressed by the paramount concern of the PEN membership for human rights and protecting the independence of writers.
Bishop Desmond Tutu On October 23, 2007, Bishop Desmond Tutu met with Mumia. It is was a moving experience. Later that afternoon Mumia expressed to me how touched and humbled he was by meeting with this wonderful person, who received the Nobel Peace Price in 1984 and the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986. Mumia is particularly grateful to Martha Conley, Esq., of Pittsburgh, who initiated and arranged the visit, drove Bishop Tutu and his assistant to the prison, and joined them in the visit on death row. Last week Bishop Tutu issued the following statement concerning Mumia and capital punishment:
"I oppose the death penalty on principle in every case and I support the plea for
a retrial for Mumia Abu-Jamal."
The Most Reverend Desmond M. Tutu, O.M.S.G., D.D., F.K.C.
Anglican Archbishop Emeritus
Cape Town, South Africa
5 November 2007
Legal developments Last month the prosecution submitted a Notice of Supplemental Authority with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia, arguing that a recent ruling and related decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court affects the pending issues pertaining to the death penalty and racism in jury selection. Consequently on November 1, 2007, we filed a Reply To Notice of Supplemental Authority, explaining with legal analysis that the contentions of opposing counsel should be rejected because they are without merit and do not alter the major constitutional violations that occurred in this case.
I remain in contact with the court. It is not known exactly when there will be a federal decision. If the court follows the law and the U.S. Constitution, we will win. In my experience of successfully litigating well over a hundred capital murder cases at trial and on appeal, I know that courts are not always just. They can make terribly tragic mistakes. Nevertheless, I have not seen a case more riddled with such significant constitutional violations, racism, fraud, and unfairness. My goal remains to achieve a reversal of the conviction, and at a new jury trial win a jury acquittal so that Mumia can go home to his family -- a free person.
In Prison My Whole Life, British film on Mumia On October 25, 2007, the new documentary film In Prison My Whole Life premiered simultaneously at the London Film Festival and Rome Film Festival. It is a superb movie which does much to expose the many wrongs including racism and politics that have infected the case from the outset, the American legal system, and our society. Amnesty International is officially supporting the film. The picture is hard hitting and reveals the death penalty for what it is: legalized murder. Mumia and I are indebted to Colin and Livia Giuggioli Firth, along with Marc Evans, William Francome, Nick Goodwin Self, Katie Green, and the others who had the courage to make this film and tell the truth.
New French book on Mumia In September an excellent book on Mumia was published on September 15, 2007, in France. It is Mumia Abu-Jamal un homme libre dans le couloir de la mort, by Claude Guillaumaud-Pujol, with a foreword by Robert Meeropol, son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Founder, Rosenberg Fund for Children. Claude is deeply involved in the Collectif, a group of over 80 French organizations that aggressively support our campaign for a new and fair trial for Mumia and his freedom. She knows Mumia well, and last visited with him on November 11. Claude has donated her book to help in the struggle for Mumia's freedom. Mumia says "the book is beautiful." It can be purchased though various booksellers in France.
Guardian (England) article: "I Spend My Days Preparing for Life, Not for Death" Recently there was an excellent article in the Guardian newspaper. It concerns a fascinating death row interview with Mumia, and can be found at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2198415,00.html
Tax-Deductible Donations to Mumia's Legal Defense My office continues to receive extensive e-mail from people confused as to how and where they may send donations for Mumia's legal defense. With Mumia's authorization, a process exists which guarantees that all donations in the U.S. go only to the legal defense. The contributions are tax-deductible. Checks should be made payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left), and mailed to:
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
Your interest is appreciated.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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11) Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth
Iran, Russia and Venezuela Feel the Benefits
By Steven Mufson
The Washington Post
November 10, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/AR2007110902
573_pf.html
High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in
history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for
crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more
than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing
nations this year alone.
The consequences are evident in minds and mortar: anger at Chinese
motor-fuel pumps and inflated confidence in the Kremlin; new weapons
in Chad and new petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia; no-driving
campaigns in South Korea and bigger sales for Toyota hybrid cars; a
fiscal burden in Senegal and a bonanza in Brazil. In Burma, recent
demonstrations were triggered by a government decision to raise fuel
prices.
In the United States, the rising bill for imported petroleum lowers
already anemic consumer savings rates, adds to inflation, worsens the
trade deficit, undermines the dollar and makes it more difficult for
the Federal Reserve to balance its competing goals of fighting
inflation and sustaining growth.
High prices have given a boost to oil-rich Alaska, which in September
raised the annual oil dividend paid to every man, woman and child
living there for a year to $1,654, an increase of $547 from last
year. In other states, high prices create greater incentives for
pursuing non-oil energy projects that once might have looked too
expensive and hurt earnings at energy-intensive companies like
airlines and chemical makers. Even Kellogg's cited higher energy
costs as a drag on its third-quarter earnings.
With crude oil prices nearing $100 a barrel, there is no end in sight
to the redistribution of more than 1 percent of the world's gross
domestic product. Earlier oil shocks generated giant shifts in wealth
and pools of petrodollars, but they eventually faded and economies
adjusted. This new high point in petroleum prices has arrived over
four years, and many believe it will represent a new plateau even if
prices drop back somewhat in coming months.
"There's never been anything like this on a sustained basis the way
we've seen the last couple of years," said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard
University economics professor and former chief economist at the
International Monetary Fund. Oil prices "are not spiking; they're
just rising," he added.
The benefits, to the tune of $700 billion a year, are flowing to the
world's oil-exporting countries.
Two of those nations -- Iran and Venezuela -- may be better able to
defy the Bush administration because of swelling oil revenue.
Venezuela has used its oil wealth to dispense patronage around South
America, vying for influence even with longtime U.S. allies. And Iran
could be less vulnerable to sanctions designed to pressure it into
giving up its nuclear program or opening it to inspection.
The world's biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, is using its
rejuvenated oil riches to build four cities. Projects like these are
designed to burnish the country's image, develop a non-oil economy
and generate enough employment to maintain social stability.
One is King Abdullah Economic City, a mega-project on the kingdom's
west coast. According to Emaar, a real estate development firm in
Dubai, the city will cost $27 billion and be spread across an area
three times the size of Manhattan. A contractor who works there said
a wide, palm tree-lined boulevard cuts a dozen miles across an ocean
of sand and ends at the Red Sea. Construction workers in hard hats
are navigating excavators, dredging land and digging foundations for
a power plant, a desalinization plant and a port. The project will
eventually include an industrial district, a financial island, a
university and a residential area, and is expected to house 2 million
people.
Despite mega-projects like this, Saudi Arabia is running a budget
surplus. It has paid down much of the foreign debt it accumulated in
the late 1990s and is adding to its foreign-exchange reserves.
Russia, the world's No. 2 oil exporter, shows oil's transformational
impact in the political as well as the economic realm. When Vladimir
Putin came to power in 2000, less than two years after the collapse
of the ruble and Russia's default on its international debt, the
country's policymakers worried that 2003 could bring another
financial crisis. The country's foreign-debt repayments were
scheduled to peak at $17 billion that year.
Inside the Kremlin, with Putin nearing the end of his second and
final term as president, that sum now looks like peanuts. Russia's
gold and foreign-currency reserves have risen by more than that
amount just since July. The soaring price of oil has helped Russia
increase the federal budget tenfold since 1999 while paying off its
foreign debt and building the third-largest gold and hard-currency
reserves in the world, about $425 billion.
"The government is much stronger, much more self-assured and
self-confident," said Vladimir Milov, head of the Institute of Energy
Policy in Moscow and a former deputy minister of energy. "It believes
it can cope with any economic crisis at home."
With good reason. Using energy revenue, the government has built up a
$150 billion rainy-day account called the Stabilization Fund.
"This financial independence has contributed to more assertive
actions by Russia in the international arena," Milov said. "There is
a strong drive within part of the elite to show that we are off our
knees."
The result: Russia is trying to reclaim former Soviet republics as
part of its sphere of influence. Freed of the need to curry favor
with foreign oil companies and Western bankers, Russia can resist
what it views as American expansionism, particularly regarding NATO
enlargement and U.S. missile defense in Eastern Europe, and forge an
independent approach to contentious issues like Iran's nuclear
program.
The abundance of petrodollars has also led to a consumer boom evident
in the sprawling malls, 24-hour hyper-markets, new apartment and
office buildings, and foreign cars that have become commonplace not
just in Moscow and St. Petersburg but in provincial cities. Average
income has doubled under Putin, and the number of people living below
the poverty line has been cut in half.
But many economists have called petroleum reserves a bane, saying
they enable oil-rich countries to avoid taking steps that would
diversify their economies and spread wealth more equally. Russia, for
example, has rising inflation, soaring imports and a lack of new
investment in the very industry that is fueling the boom.
'Our Oil Wealth Is a Curse'
The problems are worse in Nigeria, which is battling an insurgency
that has curtailed output in the oil-rich Niger River Delta. The
central government has been disbursing its remaining oil revenue,
though corruption has undermined the program's effectiveness. The
government has also cut domestic gas subsidies, raising prices
several times over in the name of improving health, education and
infrastructure.
"Our oil wealth is a curse rather than a blessing for our country,"
said Halima Dahiru, a 36-year-old housewife, as she waited for a bus
near a Texaco station in Kano, the commercial capital of northern
Nigeria. Billows of dust enveloped the gas station as vehicles
frenetically cruised along the laterite-covered road, adding to the
harmattan haze that blankets the city.
"You go to bed and wake up the next morning to hear the government
has increased the price of petrol, and you have to live with it," she
said. "The only sensible thing to do is to adjust to the new reality
because nothing will make the government listen to public outcry."
Newly oil-exporting countries such as Sudan and Chad and the
companies operating there -- including Malaysia's Petronas and
France's Total -- are winners. Sudan's capital, Khartoum, is booming,
with new skyscrapers and five-star luxury hotels, despite U.S. and
European sanctions aimed at pressuring the country to halt attacks
against people in the western Darfur region.
Chad's government has used some of its oil revenue to buy weapons
rather than develop the country's economy. In eastern Chad, there are
hardly any gas stations; people buy their gas -- often for
motorcycles, not cars -- from roadside stands that sell it out of
glass bottles.
Oil-importing countries face their own challenges. The hardest hit
are the poorest. Last year, Senegal's budget deficit doubled,
inflation quickened and growth slowed. The cash-strapped state-owned
petrochemical business had to shut down for long periods.
In China, the government increased domestic pump prices on Oct. 31 by
nearly 10 percent with shortages, rationing and long lines throughout
the country. Violence broke out at some gas stations, including an
incident last week in Henan province in which one man killed another
who had chastised him for jumping to the front of a line for gas.
A scarcity of diesel fuel even hit China's richest cities -- Beijing,
Shanghai and trading ports on the east coast -- which in the past
have been kept well supplied. In Ningbo, a city south of Shanghai,
the wait at some gas stations this week was more than three hours,
and lines stretched more than 200 yards.
Rumors circulated that gas stations or the government was hoarding
fuel in anticipation of further price increases, prompting the
official New China News Agency to warn that anyone caught spreading
rumors about fuel-price increases will be "severely punished."
Li Leijun, 37, a taxi driver, said he was so angry that he was unable
to buy fuel that he argued with gas station attendants and called the
police. "I still didn't get any diesel," he said.
Since shedding orthodox Maoist economic policies, China's leaders
have unleashed decades of pent-up demand. China consumes 9 percent of
world oil output, up from 6.4 percent five years ago, according to
the International Energy Agency. Yet it still subsidizes fuel. As a
result, consumption this decade has skyrocketed at an 8.7 percent
annual rate despite soaring prices and concerns about the
environmental impact of profligate fuel use.
Consumption in South Africa is also defying high prices as
long-impoverished blacks join the middle and upper classes. Cars are
a status symbol, and gasoline consumption jumped 39 percent in the
decade after the end of apartheid in 1994. New-vehicle sales last
year rose 15.7 percent over 2005.
Highly developed consumer nations have been better able to adapt. In
Japan, which relies on imports for nearly 100 percent of its fuel,
nearly everyone is a loser -- with the big exception of Toyota.
Yet Japan has been weaning itself off oil for years. It now imports
16 percent less oil than it did in 1973, although the economy has
more than doubled. Billions of dollars were invested to convert
oil-reliant electricity-generation systems into ones powered by
natural gas, coal, nuclear energy or alternative fuels. Japan
accounts for 48 percent of the globe's solar-power generation --
compared with 15 percent in the United States. The adoption rate for
fluorescent light bulbs is 80 percent, compared with 6 percent in the
United States.
Still, rising fuel prices are pushing up the prices of raw and
industrial materials, as well as food, which relies on fertilizers
and transportation. Because of rising wheat prices, Nissin Food
Products, the instant-noodle industry leader, will increase prices 7
to 11 percent in January, the first price hike in 17 years.
A winner is Toyota. Soaring gasoline prices have buffed the image of
the hybrid Prius and Toyota's other fuel-efficient models, such as
the Camry and Corolla. Although stagnant in Japan, sales were strong
in North America, Europe, Asia and emerging markets. In October,
Prius sales stood at 13,158 vehicles, up 51 percent from 8,733 in
October last year. Worldwide, the number of hybrid cars sold by
Toyota surpassed 1 million in May.
Britain's national average gasoline price topped 1 pound per liter,
or about $8 a gallon, for the first time this week because of record
oil prices.
"But there is very little publicity about it -- you don't see many
headlines saying, 'Oil at all-time record high,' " said Chris
Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, a published by the Energy
Institute in London. "It's different from the United States. Here,
everyone has just accepted that it is expensive."
While British drivers are feeling the pinch, the government is
gaining revenue, Skrebowski said, because about 80 percent of the
cost of gas is tax. Because Britain produces almost all the oil it
consumes, its economy has been cushioned against increasing oil
prices, Skrebowski said.
But Britain's North Sea oil production is dwindling, having peaked in
1999 at 2.6 million barrels per day. Today, production is 1.4 million
to 1.6 million barrels per day, Skrebowski said, while domestic oil
consumption is about 1.7 million barrels a day. Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, who took office in June, has made energy independence a
priority.
Meanwhile, analysts said, Europeans buying oil priced in dollars are
finding the rising prices somewhat cushioned by the strength of their
currency. The value of the dollar has been sliding to record lows
against the euro and the British pound.
Argentina has tried to keep fuel prices for consumers at artificially
low levels.
President Nestor Kirchner in recent years has leaned heavily on
energy companies to keep prices down, going so far as to call for a
public boycott of Royal Dutch Shell when the company raised pump
prices. Individual suppliers -- wary of attracting the ire of the
government -- have adopted a policy of raising prices gradually and
by small amounts.
As the market pressures have mounted, Kirchner has signed a series of
agreements with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. This year, the
two created a project called Petrosuramerica, a joint venture
designed to promote cooperative energy projects and provide energy
security to Argentina.
In Brazil, the region's largest economy, high oil prices have had a
different political effect. Last year, the country became a net oil
exporter, thanks to major increases in domestic oil exploration and
the country's broad use of sugar-based ethanol as a transport fuel.
But new oil wealth can trickle away even more easily than it comes.
Last month, Standard & Poor's downgraded Kazakhstan's credit rating
after the country's banks lost billions on purchases of subprime
mortgages.
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12) Illness [cholera] Strikes Disabled Children in Baghdad Home, Killing One
By QAIS MIZHER and ALISSA J. RUBIN
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/world/middleeast/15cholera.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD, Nov. 14 — One child from a Baghdad home for the severely disabled died and 12 others were hospitalized over the weekend with serious diarrhea and dehydration, government officials and doctors acknowledged Wednesday.
There was some confusion about whether the children, residents of Al Hanan Home for the Severely Handicapped, were ill with cholera or another infection.
Initial tests indicated that at least two of the children had been infected with cholera, a water-borne disease, which has recently been detected in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. But a second group of tests indicated that the children were ill with enteritis, an infection that causes some similar symptoms, but is generally not as lethal.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, which is responsible for Al Hanan, apparently instructed its employees not to discuss the cases of illness, just as it did last summer in a case involving severely disabled children who were being starved and abused.
A spokeswoman for the ministry confirmed the death and hospitalizations, but spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They will fire me if the high officials know that I talked about this situation,” she said. “They want me only to speak about good news.” She said the episode was being investigated.
A senior doctor at the Kadhimiya Teaching Hospital, where the children were treated, said they were 6 to 15 years old. All but four were released, the doctor said.
Dr. Hussain Nasif, a professor at Al Nahrain University College of Medicine, said disabled children were physically vulnerable. “Children with handicaps often have other diseases from birth and low resistance to germs,” he said. He added that the quality of care in the state homes had deteriorated and that the children were badly in need of better conditions.
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13) ID Cards for Residents Pass a Vote in California [San Francisco]
By JESSE McKINLEY
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/15frisco.html?ref=us
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 14 — The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has given preliminary approval to an ordinance allowing municipal identification cards to be issued to anyone living in the city, regardless of their legal status.
The proposal passed the first of two required votes on Tuesday night, putting San Francisco, with a population of 725,000, on track to become the largest city in the nation to issue identification cards to anyone who requests one and proves residence.
In June, New Haven, Conn., passed a similar measure, believed to be the first in the nation. Since then, several other cities, including New York, have floated the idea.
In San Francisco, supporters said that the ordinance was intended to make life easier for the large number of illegal immigrants working in the city, many of whom cannot get access to services because they have no formal identification. The city already has a “sanctuary” policy forbidding local law enforcement or other officials to assist with immigration enforcement.
“I think it’s admitting the reality of the situation that we depend on, our tourist and hotel industry depends on, a labor force that’s supplied by, for lack of a better term, undocumented residents,” said Tom Ammiano, the supervisor who sponsored the bill. Mr. Ammiano described the measure as “a passport of sorts,” to “take the kid to the library or open a bank account, or report a crime without being deported.”
Supporters and opponents of such measures said states and cities were more likely to take up issues like this one since Congress rejected a comprehensive immigration bill this year.
“The brass ring collapsed in Congress, so the people on the ground are still trying to think of things that are going to help this issue down the road,” said Steven A. Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which advocates stronger enforcement of current laws.
And while Mr. Camarota said the card’s uses would be largely symbolic, he said passage of the ordinance might force Democratic presidential candidates to talk more about immigration, an issue that public opinion polls show is of concern to many voters and has already been part of the Republican campaign.
“It keeps the issue on the front burner,” he said.
Supporters of the ordinance say it has more practical effects, including crime prevention. John Trasviña, the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Los Angeles, said he had recently received several reports of so-called SOM, or Sock on Mexican, attacks in the Los Angeles area, crimes he hoped might be reduced if victims came forward.
“The victims are living in a cash economy, and they are reluctant to go to the police,” Mr. Trasviña said. “Having an ID card addresses both of those issues: it reduces the reliance on cash, because it opens up the opportunities for banking, and it takes away a barrier between community and police.”
Mr. Ammiano said the card would also be useful to other groups without government-issued identification, including the elderly, students and transgendered people, who have long found a sympathetic home here.
The bill, which passed the first vote by 10 to 1, will be taken up by the board again before going to Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has indicated his general support.
If the experience in New Haven is any indication, the demand for the card here could be strong. More than 4,800 cards have been handed out since late July, said Kica Matos, the New Haven community services administrator, with a “significant number” going to illegal immigrants.
“The second day there was a line halfway down the block, and by the third it was all the way down,” Ms. Matos said.
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14) Killed by the Cops
By Jeff Kelly Lowenstein
Issue #41, Nov/Dec 2007
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=255
"There is a crisis of perception where African American males and females take their lives in their hands just walking out the door."
This project was conducted with research assistance by Aliza Appelbaum, Beandrea Davis, Erin Dostal, Lynne Nguyen, Marine Olivesi,Julianne Ong Hing, Brittany Petersen, Alena Scarver, Seth Wessler and Shelley Zeiger.
This summer ColorLines and The Chicago Reporter conducted a joint national investigation of fatal police shootings in America’s 10 largest cities, each of which had more than 1 million people in 2000. Several striking findings emerged.
To begin, African Americans were overrepresented among police shooting victims in every city the publications investigated.
The contrast was particularly noticeable in New York, San Diego and Las Vegas. In each of these cities, the percentage of black people killed by police was at least double that of their share of the city’s total population.
"There is a crisis of perception where African American males and females take their lives in their hands just walking out the door," said Delores Jones-Brown, interim director of the Center on Race, Crime and Justice at John Jay College in New York.
"There is a notion they will be perceived as armed and dangerous. It’s clear that it’s not just a local problem."
The shootings may be explained in part by implicit bias on the part of police officers, according to research by University of Chicago Assistant Professor Joshua Correll.
A second significant point: Latinos are a rising number of fatal police shooting victims.
Starting in 2001, the number of incidents in which Latinos were killed by police in cities with more than 250,000 people rose four consecutive years, from 19 in 2001 to 26 in 2005. The problem was exceptionally acute in Phoenix, which had the highest number of Latinos killed in the country.
Despite these persistent problems of disproportionate police force in communities of color, a disturbing lack of accountability plagues several of the cities examined.
In Chicago, for example, an examination of media accounts shows that only one shooting out of the 84 fatal police shootings occurred since 2000 has been found unjustified. Monique Bond, spokeswoman at the Chicago Police Department, said that more than one shooting had been determined to have been outside department guidelines, but could not provide specific numbers.
The good news is that police shootings are not inevitable.
After five consecutive years of more than 200 reported incidents of fatal police shootings in cities with more than 250,000 people during the early 1990s, the numbers for these cities fell during most of the decade, dropping as low as 138 in 1999 before resuming a general upward climb to 170 in 2003. These figures may be low due to underreporting by some departments to the federal government.
Washington, D.C., which had the nation’s highest rate of police shootings during the 1990s, has cut the rate of shootings dramatically through a combination of training and accountability. Others point to a small but growing number of police departments like Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. that are looking not so much at whether the shootings are justified or not, but about the decisions police and supervisors took that led up to the shootings.
Signs of progress aside, much work remains.
About 9,500 people nationally were killed by police during the years 1980 to 2005–an average of nearly one fatal shooting per day.
And the failure to address unjustified shootings frankly is likely to lead both to greater community distrust of police and an increased probability that the hostile interactions that often precede the shootings will continue.
"Unless we begin to hold these officers accountable in these cases, they’ll only grow in number and significance," Jones-Brown said.
Below is a complete list of the articles in this special web issue of ColorLines.
Unequal Protection
Even with the change in administration and a drop in crime, the number of people killed each year by the NYPD remains steady.
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=251
Why So High?
The Phoenix metropolitan area, with the highest rate of fatal police shootings among the 10 biggest U.S. cities, is also the most dangerous in the nation for Latinos.
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=252
Missed Signals
The Chicago Reporter found that 45 percent of Chicago police officers named in wrongful death suits have had multiple lawsuits against them but receive minimal internal discipline.
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=253
Race as a Trigger
Would an unarmed black man be spared a barrage of 41 bullets fired by police officers if he were white?
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=254
Turning to Tasers
Phoenix police became the first in the country to use Tasers, but will that decrease shootings?
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=260
Black, Latino Suburbs Have Most Shootings
Using news articles and court records, The Chicago Reporter gathered information on police shootings reported since 2000.
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=261
Audio: Losing My Brother
Malissia Clinton's brother, James Deon Lennox, was shot to death by Phoenix-area police.
http://www.colorlines.com/police_shooting_documents/malissia.html
Video: Bullets in the Hood
Excerpt from 2004 documentary produced by ProTV and the Downtown Community Television Center.
http://www.colorlines.com/article_video.php
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15) Chicago Police Abuse Cases Exceed Average
By SUSAN SAULNY
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/15chicago.html?ref=us
CHICAGO, Nov. 14 — Chicago police officers are the subject of more brutality complaints per officer than the national average, and the Police Department is far less likely to pursue abuse cases seriously than the national norm, a legal team at the University of Chicago reported Wednesday.
The report, “The Chicago Police Department’s Broken System,” comes amid troubled times for the force, the nation’s second largest, which is mired in accusations of misconduct and is the subject of open feuding among elected officials who disagree on aspects of its management.
The department also needs a new superintendent since Philip J. Cline, a longtime officer, resigned in April after an outcry over the lack of swift discipline against officers accused of involvement in two beatings of civilians captured on videotape.
According to the new report, rogue police officers abuse victims without fear of punishment, and the lack of accountability has tainted the entire department, resulting in a loss of public confidence. Patterns of abuse and disciplinary neglect were worst in low-income minority neighborhoods, said the authors, Craig B. Futterman, H. Melissa Mather and Melanie Miles.
The national average among large police departments for excessive-force complaints is 9.5 per 100 full-time officers. For a department of Chicago’s size (13,500, second only to New York), that would correspond to 1,283 complaints a year. From 1999 to 2004, however, citizens filed about 1,774 brutality complaints a year against Chicago officers. Less than 5 percent of the department was responsible for nearly half of abuse complaints, from 2001 to 2006.
Although a great majority of the department is not abusive, the report said, “This does not mean that it bears no responsibility,” adding, “The police code of silence contributes to the machinery of denial.”
Analyzing a broader array of complaints in another breakdown, the authors said that from 2002 to 2004 civilians filed 10,149 complaints accusing officers of excessive force, illegal searches and false arrests, and of abusing them sexually or because of race.
The rate at which the department found enough evidence to believe that the charge of abuse might have occurred in order to sustain a case was 1 percent (124 of the 10,149 complaints), the report said, compared with a national average of 8 percent from 2002, the most recent year for which national data is available.
Just 19 of the 10,149 complaints in Chicago led to suspensions of a week or more, said Mr. Futterman of the University of Chicago.
A spokeswoman for the Police Department did not respond to a call and an e-mail message seeking a response. Last month, in a measure of how hard it is to get data about the department, the City Council began to consider suing the city for access to information on police misconduct. In July, the Council voted to overhaul the department’s office that investigates abuses.
“As the numbers detailed above illustrate plainly,” the report said, “‘not knowing’ about police abuse in Chicago requires a great deal of active effort.”
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16) 5 Officers Who Killed Man Never Shot Anyone Before
By AL BAKER
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/nyregion/15shooting.html?ref=nyregion
None of the five officers who fired 20 bullets in Monday’s fatal shooting of a troubled 18-year-old man in Brooklyn had ever shot at a person before in a combined 62 years of police service, law enforcement officials said yesterday.
Two of the officers fired to defend themselves from pit bulls in three separate confrontations. One, a sergeant who has spent his entire 15-year career in the busy areas of northern Brooklyn, fired his gun once to fend off a pit bull as he chased a suspect sought in a rape case across a rooftop last year, the officials said.
The sergeant, William Prokesch, 45, hit the dog once, killing it, after the suspect set the dog after him. The suspect escaped.
In 2000, Officer Gregory Scalcione, 42, fired at two pit bulls that had attacked him and his partner, wounding both animals. In 2003, he shot and killed a pit bull that had attacked him after it broke from a leash held by a suspect.
But none of the other officers had ever pulled the trigger in the line of duty to shoot at anyone or anything, officials said.
A portrait of the officers who opened fire on Monday night began to come into focus yesterday, two days after the 18-year-old, Khiel Coppin, was shot on a sidewalk outside his home when he pulled a hairbrush from beneath his sweatshirt and pointed it as if it were a gun.
The officers involved in the shooting came from the department’s precinct, housing and detective units that had responded to a 911 call of a family dispute involving a gun at Mr. Coppin’s Gates Avenue address in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Meanwhile yesterday, the police released an audiotape of a conversation in which a 911 operator phoned Mr. Coppin’s mother, Denise Owens — two minutes after Ms. Owens had called 911 — to get a better physical description of her son. In the audiotape, Ms. Owens, rather than saying that her son was not armed, as a police transcript that was released on Tuesday indicated, actually questioned the operator by saying, “Who says he does not have a firearm?”
Mr. Coppin’s killing has left his family distraught, said W. Taharka Robinson, the chairman of the nonviolence committee of the National Action Network, the civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Mr. Robinson was among those who visited the Coppin home on Gates Avenue yesterday. An aunt, Betty Jones, 51, arrived in the morning and said that just hours before the shooting, Ms. Owens tried unsuccessfully to get a crisis team from a local hospital to come and evaluate her son.
Later yesterday, Ms. Owens left the home with two of her daughters, Jannah, 11, and Khadijah, 14. When they returned an hour later, the two young girls added a pale green votive candle to a memorial on a spot on the sidewalk near where their brother was shot 10 times. They put a note for him there that said, “You taught us to live in the moment.”
A wake for Mr. Coppin will be held on Monday at the Nazarene Congregational Church, in Brooklyn , and the funeral at the same church at noon on Tuesday.
The five officers range in age from 34 to 45. In addition to Sergeant Prokesch, who is assigned to the housing bureau’s Public Service Area 3, another sergeant, Carl Carrara, 32, a 10-year-veteran who is assigned to Brooklyn’s 79th Precinct, was among them.
Sergeant Carrara is also a vocalist and guitarist in a punk-rock band called EDP, which, in police parlance, is an acronym for emotionally disturbed person.
When asked about Sergeant Carrara’s band, and its choice of a name, Paul J. Browne, who is the department’s chief spokesman, declined to comment.
Mr. Browne said that working as a musician, or in a band, does not violate the department’s policy regarding off-duty activity.
Yesterday, a day after the shooting, EDP’s debut album, “Next Stop: Bleaker Street,” was released, said Perry Serpa, the band’s publicist and the owner of a company called Good Cop Public Relations. A review of EDP posted on the Internet said, “Carl Carrara is a New York City police sergeant by day, but when Brooklyn clubs own the night, you will probably find his band EDP playing at one of them.”
Besides the two sergeants, two of the officers involved in the shooting are housing police officers, also assigned to Public Service Area 3, and each with 12 years on the force: Officer Scalcione, who is a delegate for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, and Keith Livingston, 36. The union declined to comment on their careers.
The lone detective in the group, George Harvey, 35, is a 13-year veteran who is trained in hostage negotiations and who is assigned to Brooklyn’s 79th Precinct detective squad. On Monday, he fired one round.
“The fact that he is in the Seven-Nine detective squad is indicative of how active he really is,” Michael J. Palladino, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, said of Detective Harvey. “He is an ambitious, hard-working detective.”
Officer Scalcione fired six shots, Sergeant Carrara fired five shots, and Officers Livingston and Prokesh fired four shots each.
Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said Sergeant Prokesch has “about a dozen medals,” for meritorious and excellent police duty. Sergeant Prokesh and Officers Scalcione and Livingston have taken four illegal guns off the streets in arrests in the last month.
“If you were calling for the police, you would want this guy to show up because he would help you,” Mr. Mullins said of the sergeant. Mr. Mullins added, “I know this is troubling for him.”
Kate Hammer and Carolyn Wilder contributed reporting.
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17) Ford to Offer Buyouts and Scrap Plan for Plant
By NICK BUNKLEY
November 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/business/15cnd-ford.html?ref=business
DETROIT, Nov. 15 — The Ford Motor Company said today that it would offer more buyouts to unionized workers and that it had canceled plans to build a new low-cost assembly plant in North America.
The plans, which are part of Ford’s newly ratified agreement with the United Automobile Workers union, were revealed in a presentation posted online before a conference call with executives this morning.
The company did not say how many jobs it wants to eliminate with the buyouts. Ford, which lost $12.6 billion last year, already cut about 30,000 hourly jobs through a recent buyout program that gave workers as much as $140,000 to leave without any benefits or $35,000 to retire.
The buyouts are part of a new Job Security Program created by the contract. The program shortens the time that workers can continue receiving most of their pay and benefits after being laid off to two years from four years, or less if there is an opening at another factory.
The plan to build a low-cost assembly plant was part of Ford’s restructuring, called the Way Forward, which the company unveiled in January 2006, and later expanded. Ford touted the low-cost assembly plant as part of its strategy to become “America’s car company,” as William Clay Ford Jr., then its chief executive, said when he announced the plan.
Ford never identified a location for the plant, which some analysts said they expected would be built in Mexico. The Canadian Auto Workers union also made a strong case for building the plant in Canada, using empty space inside one of Ford’s factories. But the strong Canadian dollar, as well as Ford’s falling American market share, worked against that idea.
Ford is scrapping the plan after it agreed, as part of the deal with the U.A.W., to keep open five factories that were designated to be closed. The company for the first time identified the saved plants today as being in Dearborn, Wayne and Ypsilanti, Mich., and in Louisville.
Ford agreed to keep those plants open at least through September 2011, when the four-year contract expires, but today’s presentation suggested that they could close soon after that.
Over all, Ford said it now planned to close 15 North American plants by 2012, one fewer than the latest version of the Way Forward called for. Six factories already have closed since last year, and four others have been told they will close by 2010, leaving five closures that have yet to be announced.
“This agreement will help us remain on track to deliver our key business and financial goals over the next few years,” the presentation said.
The contract allows Ford to pay newly hired workers as little as $14.20 an hour, about half of what workers make now. Ford said its costs for each new hire will be $26 to $31 an hour, including benefits but excluding post-retirement costs, compared with $60 for current workers.
After 2010, retiree health care costs will be paid by an independent trust financed in part by Ford.
The U.A.W. said Wednesday that 79 percent of workers had voted to approve the contract.
Micheline Maynard contributed reporting.
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18) Chiquita Brands accused of funding death squads
By RICH SCHAPIRO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, November 14th 2007, 4:56 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/11/14/2007-11-14_chiquita_brands_accused_of_funding_death.html
Banana importer Chiquita Brands International got hit with a multi-billion dollar lawsuit yesterday filed by the families of nearly 400 murdered or tortured Colombian civilians who accuse the U.S.-based company of funding terrorists.
The $7.86 billion suit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court, notes that Chiquita has recently pled guilty to criminal charges of making payments to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC, between 1997 and 2004.
"While Chiquita paid a fine to the United States government of $25 million, none of that money went to any of the victims," said attorney Jonathan Reiter.
"Chiquita has admitted to making payments to the AUC and now it should be held accountable by the families of people who were murdered by this organization.
In their suit, the 393 plaintiffs allege that the $1.7 million Chiquita gave to the right-wing paramilitary group contributed to the murders of thousands of Colombians during the country’s bloody civil conflict.
Chiquita has maintained that the payments were necessary to protect the lives of their employees.
"We reiterate that Chiquita and its employees were victims and that the actions taken by the company were always motivated to protect the lives of our employees and their families," Chiquita spokesman Michael Mitchell said in a statement.
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19) An exclusive interview with Mariela Castro Espín, director of Cuba‚s
National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX).
By: Hinde Pomeraniec
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1625.html
CLARIN (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
ORIGINAL
04.11.2007
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/11/04/elmundo/i-03201.htm
She arrived in Buenos Aires to talk about what she knows best. The
daughter of Raúl Castro, currently Cuba‚s strongman, and Vilma Espín,
a former guerrilla who for years headed the Federation of Cuban Women
(FMC), Mariela Castro Espín (1963, married, three children) is the
director of her country‚s National Center for Sex Education. To many
people‚s surprise, she‚s also the spirit behind a bill to make
sex-change operations legal and modifying identity documents for
Cuban transsexuals possible. Castro Espín welcomed Clarín in the
Communist Party‚s headquarters at Entre Ríos Street, a picture of Che
Guevara hanging on the wall above her.
Q: Where does your interest in these topics come from?
„I got involved in sexuality while I was working for the Pedagogical
University. At the time I was the youngest professor, so when
research teams were established all the others got the most
high-sounding topics and they asked me to take this one. I started
with sex education for children and then for teenagers. I had always
felt curious about how the issue of homosexuality was approached in
Cuba, and knowing it mad me feel unhappy; I was very uncomfortable
about homophobia and certain attitudes, even at institutional level,
towards homosexuals. I thought it was awful to see that neither the
Communist Party nor the Young Communist League would accept them as
members. I was in total disagreement and always voiced my opposition
in the relevant places, first as a student and later as a professor.‰
Q: Did you have gay friends?
„No particular or close friends, but I always listened to those who
told me their stories or the things that happened in the 1960s or
70s. I used to ask people because I wanted to be sure about what it
was like, even to those who knew from their own experience. However,
there was no resentment in their tales, as if they understood why it
happened.
Q: Are you talking about the work camps where they were sent?
„Those were not camps, but military units in support of production
set up as a military service of sorts to make it easier for the
children of workers and peasants to get a qualification and thus
better paid jobs. That‚s what the new Ministry of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces had set out to do. Those days were marked by a
prevailing state of unrest: there was a revolutionary nation in the
making, and the Cuban people were the victims of attacks prompted by
a State terrorism aimed at making everything very difficult for them.
That‚s when this idea came up. In some of those units the homosexuals
suffered humiliation, inflicted by those who thought they had to be
Œchanged‚ and therefore put to work so they could become Œmen‚. Such
was the fashionable mindset in Cuba and elsewhere. Even the
psychiatrists had therapy sessions conceived to make heterosexuals
out of them.‰
Q: Were lesbians discriminated against too?
„Gay men took most of the humiliation because women tend to be more
careful and keep a lower profile than men. However, no one went
missing or submitted to torture; contrary to those who are always
trying to distort Cuba‚s realities, never has any hate crime based on
sexuality been committed in Cuba. But it‚s true that the whole thing
was in violation of these people‚s rights.‰
Q: You were saying that you suddenly took an interest in the issue of
sexual diversity...
„Though my work was not directly related to it, I somehow managed to
broach the subject of homophobia in my sex education courses, either
on radio and TV programs or even in one or two interviews published
in the newspaper Granma in 1990. Before that, in the 1970s and 80s,
my mother[1] had brought it up in the Federation of Cuban Women, who
always took a stand against homophobic attitudes even inside the
Party, but with little or no success, considering their expectations.
Nevertheless, they smoothed the way for us, and thanks to those first
steps we can now do what we do.‰
Q: When did you first take concrete steps regarding the sexual
diversity policy?
„In 2004, when a group of more than 40 transvestites and transsexuals
in Havana came to see me at CENESEX to complain about their problems
with the police in the downtown area around La Rampa Street, their
usual hangout then ˆand since. The police were arresting them on a
whim and then releasing them with no charges, because the population
usually protested against that practice.‰
Q: Did they engage in prostitution?
„Some did, but not all of them. The police would take them away to
silence the protests, but in fact there were other kinds of
individuals there. In addition to transvestites and transsexuals,
there were some people who were robbing and harassing the tourists.
They had to curb those incidents, but not the way they did it,
putting these transvestites and transsexuals on a level with the
local scum. We thought it was the wrong treatment, requested to meet
with the police and agreed to stop the isolated efforts in favor of a
nationwide strategy to provide health, social, educational and
employment services to transvestites and transsexuals. From it
stemmed the guidelines for a Law on Gender Identity and amendments to
our Family Code approved in 1975.‰
Q: Did you have in mind the possibility of providing for gay
marriages?
„By 1975 we had already set our sights on something along those
lines. My mom in particular used to talk about marriage as the Œunion
of two persons‚. Yet, it went no further than that, since people
voted against the proposal when it was submitted to a popular vote.‰
Q: Why do you think it happened? Was it because of Catholic
traditions, because of machismo?
„It was both machismo and the hegemonic heterosexuality that prevails
in our cultures, and also because these issues were not the object of
public discussion as they are today, so the process was slower. Our
Family Code could only go as far as the Cuban people‚s analytical
capability at the time allowed it to go. All along the 1970s, 80s and
90s we worked nonstop with the FMC and other institutions who had
joined the sex education program until new amendments were made. Now
we are drafting another article related to people‚s right to a free
sexual orientation and gender identity which includes same-sex Œlegal
unions‚. Talking about marriage would entail changes to the
Constitution. This provision will protect the same patrimonial and
personal rights of a legal marriage, including adoption, which is
precisely what most people are reluctant to accept. The same thing
happens in Europe, though.‰
Q: You mentioned the 1980s. What did the appearance of AIDS in Cuba
mean?
„Actually, it was Fidel who had the broadest and clearest views about
AIDS, since he kept up to date with what was going on in the world.
So back in ‚85 or ‚86 he asked the staff at the Tropical Medicine
Institute whether they had thought about what they would do about
AIDS, for he believed ˆhe told themˆ that it would grow to become the
epidemic of the century. ŒHave you thought about what to do to keep
it out of Cuba or prevent its progress?,‚ and they answered, ŒNo, we
haven‚t, but if you tell us what to do∑‚ So they went to France, got
in touch with Luc Montagnier and learned all about the latest
developments. A series of tests began, mainly with comrades returning
home from assignments in Africa, and it was precisely among them
where the first cases were detected.‰
Q: Are there [antiretroviral Œdrug] cocktails‚ in Cuba?
„Yes. Fidel‚s question triggered the Cuban Strategy for AIDS Control
and Prevention. That‚s the kind of name he likes (laughter), and
right after that a whole government team was established to be
directly supervised by our Commander together with the Ministry of
Public Health, which makes it possible to make very quick decisions,
mainly of budgetary nature. AIDS-related healthcare is very
expensive, and the Cuban State covers all expenses. Fidel said the
United Nations may take care of prevention expenses, but medical
attention is every State‚s responsibility.‰
Q: What‚s the male-female proportion among AIDS patients?
„Males account for 80% of the cases, and of them 85% are men who have
sex with other men, often in connection with prostitution.‰
Q: Are condoms available?
„Free of charge; it‚s a state subsidy. And they are for sale in
drugstores at hardly half the price the State pays for them in Europe
or Japan, since the U.S. blockade keeps us from buying condoms there,
or anything else for that matter.‰
Q: I read in an article that you wrote part of a soap opera script∑.
„That idea came from our TV authorities who decided to make a soap
opera called ŒThe hidden face of the moon‚, divided into several
stories that included one about a married man who finds himself
attracted to a homosexual. It was the first time such things were
seen in Cuban TV, and it caused a huge stir, even if our approach was
rather moderate. There was some stereotyping too, but what matters is
that it paved the way for social debate. TV dramas are a great
favorite with everybody, be they marginals, newspaper readers, smart
or dumb people.‰
Q: Who promote change the most in Cuba, men or women?
„Cuban women have changed a lot. As early as in his revolutionary
program History Will Absolve Me, Fidel referred to the awful
situation of exploitation Cuban women suffered. A very high percent
of women in Cuba had no choice but to become prostitutes. They would
go to Havana looking for jobs as servants and ended up as working
girls. So one of the Revolution‚s first measures was to give these
women medical attention, teach them to read and write, qualify them
for better jobs∑ Their life changed, and they were recognized as
victims instead of criminals, unlike their pimps, who do violate the
law that forbids exploitation of a human being by another human
being.‰
Q: Prostitution made a comeback with the arrival of tourism∑
„We had already got rid of that, but then tourists began to come and
our people were deeply hurt when women turned to prostitution all
over again after the Revolution had given them back their dignity.
That they resorted to prostitution was deemed unworthy of these
capable, skilled women to whom Cuban law guarantees employment by any
means, our hardships notwithstanding. We were, and still are, so
sorry that it happened. Cuban women have benefited from the most
significant changes at subjective level and hence our men in turn
have changed. Not that they have a choice: their women got jobs and
things at home changed as a result, for they have been forced to take
on housework.‰
Q: What about gays in the military?
„I always say where there‚s humanity there‚s diversity, and the
military is not the exception. They have gays too, who of course try
to keep it in the closet, conscious that their presence in such
milieu is rejected. The proper conditions to make any changes are yet
to exist. Well, my dad, the Minister of the Armed Forces, tells me:
ŒLook, I think that as people change so will the Army. So go on with
your work, raise awareness, do things, change Cuban society and thus
you will change all the rest, including our institutions...‚."
Q: What was it like to grow as a woman in a family with so many
important men?
„Fighting like crazy, quarreling and making demands all the time, and
we all keep up the fight, otherwise they will make mincemeat of us,
as you can imagine. Women are now showing their worth in every
patriarchal society, lest they be trampled on.‰
Q: Can you envision a future government headed by a woman?
„Yes, of course. Many Cuban women have leadership qualities; there
are female ministers, deputy ministers and directors of
institutions.‰
Q: Are people in Cuba ready to be governed by a woman?
„Yes, they are.‰
Q: Would it have been possible 10 years ago?
„I never thought about it 10 years ago. But in the last few years
there have been policies to promote women issues. Right now we are
doing research on voluntary childlessness. Like in Italy, Cuban women
give birth once, twice at most, and have no intention whatsoever of
being slaves to their household and children. They have made great
strides in their studies and gained in self-sufficiency, but only if
and when your standards of living improve will you risk having many
children. One thing is certain: women will no longer be bound to
their homes. It‚s getting more and more common to find them in
managerial and decision-making positions. Many women, including some
very young ones, won Parliament seats in our last election.‰
Q: Do you get to travel much to exchange views with colleagues in
other countries?
„Quite a few times, but if I don‚t go, my colleagues do it in my
stead.‰
Q: Do you ever go to the United States?
„We never get a visa. I was there once, and I was invited to go on
two occasions after that, but they never replied to my applications
for a visa, and there‚s no reason for me to beg anything of the
Americans. In the end, the U.S. professionals come whenever they want
through a third country, and we have excellent relations and contacts
by e-mail.‰
Q: Tell us about the bill on sexual diversity.
„We submitted it to the CP, and they put us in touch with the
relevant State bodies. I don‚t know when it will be approved; many
big issues are under discussion in Cuba as we speak that I guess have
taken precedence. It will be approved, that much we‚ve been told. The
Party has asked us to raise public awareness and work with the media
to that end so that everyone is familiar with this subject when the
bill is passed.‰
Q: How many people are waiting for gender reassignment surgery?
„There are 27 transsexuals waiting, and as soon as the medical team
is ready ˆthey are being trained nowˆ they will proceed. We already
have a resolution by the Ministry of Public Health to implement
integral medical attention procedures, and even a special unit for
transgenders has been approved.‰
Q: Is there any country where the treatment of sexual diversity
sounds ideal to you?
„Ideals are always a wonderful thing; practice is what comes as the
hard part. Today in Cuba we are discussing the socialism we want, how
to make it more to our liking, and what to do to provide the economic
structure we need to sustain it, avoiding at all times any kind of
exploitation of a human being by another human being, which is the
essence of capitalism. That‚s what we‚re doing.‰
Copyright 1996-2007 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
Director: Ernestina Herrera de Noble
[1] Raúl Castro‚s recently deceased wife Vilma Espín.
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Waterboarding and U.S. History
by William Loren Katz
"U.S. officers in the Philippines routinely resorted to what they called ‘the water cure.'"
November 14, 2007
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=435&Itemid=1
Writers Set to Strike, Threatening Hollywood
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
November 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/business/media/02cnd-hollywood.html?ref=us
Raids Traumatized Children, Report Says
By JULIA PRESTON
Hundreds of young American children suffered hardship and psychological trauma after immigration raids in the last year in which their parents were detained or deported, according to a report by the National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute. Of 500 children directly affected in three factory raids examined in the report in which 900 adult immigrants were arrested, a large majority were United States citizens younger than 10. With one or both parents deported, the children had reduced economic support, and many remained in the care of relatives who feared contact with the authorities, the study said. Although the children were citizens, few families sought public assistance for them, the study found.
November 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/us/01brfs-raids.html?ref=us
Newark: Recalled Meat Found in Store
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Jersey consumer safety officials said yesterday that state inspectors bought recalled frozen hamburgers at a store weeks after the meat was recalled because of fears of E. coli contamination. The 19 boxes were bought in Union City on Wednesday, nearly four weeks after the manufacturer, the Topps Meat Company, issued a nationwide recall of 21.7 million pounds of frozen patties. Officials would not name the store yesterday because of the investigation, and investigators have not determined when the store received the meat, said Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Consumer Affairs.
New Jersey
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/nyregion/26mbrfs-meat.html?ref=nyregion
Florida: Sentence for Lionel Tate Is Upheld
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An appeals court has upheld a 30-year probation violation sentence for Lionel Tate, who for a time was the youngest person to be sentenced to life in an American prison. The ruling Wednesday by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach sets the stage for Mr. Tate’s trial on robbery charges that could carry another life term. Mr. Tate, 20, had sought to have the sentence thrown out based on procedural mistakes. Mr. Tate was 12 at the time of the 1999 beating death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. An appeals court overturned his murder conviction in 2004, and he was released but was on probation. In May 2005, the police said, Mr. Tate robbed a pizza delivery man, and he was found to be in possession of a gun even before that, a violation of his probation.
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-lionel.html?ref=us
Submarine’s Commanding Officer Is Relieved of His Duties
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The commanding officer of the nuclear-powered submarine Hampton was relieved of his duty because of a loss of confidence in his leadership, the Navy said. The officer, Cmdr. Michael B. Portland, was relieved of duty after an investigation found the ship had failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission. Commander Portland will be reassigned, said Lt. Alli Myrick, a public affairs officer. [Aren't you glad they are out there making the world safe for democracy?...bw]
October 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/26brfs-sub.html?ref=us
Britain: New Claim for Sovereignty in Antarctica
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Europe
Britain plans to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by 386,000 square miles, the Foreign Office said. Argentina wants some of it, and its foreign minister said his country was working on its own presentation. May 13, 2009, is the deadline for countries to stake their claims in what some experts are describing as the last big carve-up of maritime territory in history.
October 18, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/europe/18briefs-claim.html?ref=world
California: Veto of 3 Criminal Justice Bills
By SOLOMON MOORE
Bucking a national trend toward stronger safeguards against wrongful convictions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bills that would have explored new eyewitness identification guidelines, required electronic recordings of police interrogations and mandated corroboration of jailhouse informant testimony. Mr. Schwarzenegger cited his concern that the three bills would hamper local law enforcement authorities, a contention shared by several state police and prosecutor associations. The proposals had been recommended by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a bipartisan body of police officials, prosecutors and defense lawyers charged by the State Senate to address the most common causes of wrongful convictions and recommend changes in criminal justice procedures.
October 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/us/16brfs-VETOOF3CRIMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Illinois: Chicagoans May Have to Dig Deeper
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chicagoans would have to spend 10 cents more on a bottle of water, pay higher property taxes and spend more for liquor under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s proposed budget for next year. Also financing Mr. Daley’s $5.4 billion budget are higher water and sewer fees and more expensive vehicle stickers for people driving large vehicles, $120 a vehicle sticker, up from $90. Mr. Daley announced his budget to aldermen, calling it a last resort to ask taxpayers for more money. His budget closes a $196 million deficit and avoids service cuts and layoffs. Budget hearings will be held, and a city spending plan will require a vote by aldermen.
Midwest
October 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/us/11brfs-CHICAGO.html?ref=us
Wisconsin Iraq vet returns medals to Rumsfeld
By David Solnit, Courage to Resist / Army of None Project.
"I swore an oath to protect the constitution ... not to become a pawn in your New American Century."
September 26, 2007
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Russell Means Speaking at the Transform Columbus Day Rally
"If voting could do anything it would be illegal!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lri1-6aoY
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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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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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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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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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
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My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
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Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
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Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
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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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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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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.Peace Articles at Libraryofpeace.org">
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