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COMMUNITY ALERT:
SFPD Gone Wild In Bayview Hunters Point! JOIN US:
San Francisco Police Commission meeting
Wednesday, December 5 5:30pm
City Hall room 400
Public Safety Committee meeting: Hearing on Gang Injunctions
Monday, December 10 10am
2nd floor, City Hall
On Thanksgiving Day, one of POWER’s leaders and her family were terrorized by several San Francisco Police officers. At the time, the woman was taking a shower while her children were downstairs. The police entered her home, terrorized her children, assaulted and arrested one of her family members, and removed her from the shower and held her, in front of her children, with no clothes on.
This woman is not alone. Dozens of families in Bayview Hunters Point, the Mission District, and the Fillmore/Western Addition are being terrorized by the SFPD and gang injunctions that protect developers, not families. These racist gang injunctions need to be stopped, and the SFPD needs to be held accountable.
WE DESERVE:
-Community policing, not policing for Lennar and other developers
-The removal of these officers from the community
-Community education and control over the terms and enforcement of the gang injunctions
-Police Accountability—including contact information and badge numbers of all officers in the community, and an anonymous complaint line
SFPD SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO RUN WILD
IN BAYVIEW HUNTERS POINT OR
ANY OTHER COMMUNITY!
For more information, please call POWER (Alicia or Jaron):
(415) 864-8372 ext. 302/303
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GET JROTC OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS! LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD OVER THE U.S. MILITARY! WE ARE AN ANTIWAR CITY! WE WANT THE MILITARY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!
SPEAK OUT AT THE BOARD MEETING TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 6:00 P.M.
555 Franklin Street, 1st Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
415/241-6427 or (415) 241-6493
(To get on the speaker’s list, call the Monday before the meeting from 8:30 AM - 4:00 PM or Tuesday, the day of the meeting from 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM. You will get at most, two minutes and most probably only one minute to speak. BRING SIGNS! WRITE LETTERS TO THE BOARD! (A sample letter will be posted soon.)
JROTC Campaign: Fight to Win?
by Marc Norton, 2007-12-04
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5163
GOOD NEWS... The San Francisco school district administration has decided not to give physical education (PE) credit to JROTC students next year. Beyond Chron has been informed of this decision by Gentle Blythe, head of the school district's public affairs office. Up to now, students could take JROTC as a substitute for PE classes. By eliminating this option, the number of students likely to enroll in JROTC should be greatly reduced.
This policy change appears to be the result of a new state law, SB 601, which was signed by the governor in October. This new law clarifies existing law relating to high school physical education and requires that all PE classes be taught by a certified PE teacher. JROTC instructors, all retired military officers, do not have certification to teach PE.
BAD NEWS... Why is the district talking about JROTC classes next year anyway? According to the resolution passed by the school board over a year ago, there should be no more JROTC classes after the end of the current 2007-2008 school year.
The answer to this question, unfortunately, is obvious. Some of the current school board members are backsliding on the decision reached last year. On November 13, almost a year to the day after the original board decision to phase out JROTC, the board came within a hair's breadth of considering a resolution to extend JROTC for an additional year, although with certain qualifications. In the end, after community pressure from all sides, this resolution was withdrawn, at least for the time being.
It may seem that a one-year extension of the phase out is not that big a deal. Think again. The school board is going to be much different a year from now.
The most resolute school board opponent of JROTC, Dan Kelly, lost his seat in the November, 2006 election. He was a lame-duck member a week later, when he voted to phase out JROTC. Kelly doesn't talk much about it, but he refused induction in 1967 during the Vietnam war, and served two years in jail for his convictions. Whatever Kelly's accomplishments and failings as a school board member, he was an unswerving opponent of the militarization of our schools.
Only two members of last year's anti-JROTC majority remain on the board -- Mark Sanchez and Eric Mar. Both of their terms end in January, 2009, and both are running for supervisor in next year's election. Sanchez is running in Ammiano's District 9, centered on the Mission, and Mar is running in the relatively-conservative District 1 out in the Richmond. The complicated politics of running for Supervisor in this town make it hard to predict just exactly how much political capital either Sanchez or Mar will be willing to expend on banishing JROTC once and for all. Indeed, it was Sanchez who was the lead sponsor of last month's resolution to extend JROTC for another year.
The rest of the school board is even more problematical. That includes Green Party member Jane Kim, the object of the death threat Beyond Chron reported on last week.
Daniel Chin, a student leader of the pro-JROTC movement, was apparently not too happy with Kim when he issued his now-infamous death threat. Yet the Chronicle recently reported that Kim is "willing to support JROTC, but only if there were a way to address the military's discriminatory hiring practice involving homosexuals. She suggested a JROTC diversity curriculum or a cadet campaign against the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy."
This same Chronicle article also reported that the other four current school board members were "open to keeping JROTC alive."
And, of course, nobody knows who will replace Sanchez and Mar on the board.
Given this tenuous situation for anti-JROTC forces, it would seem that any extension of JROTC only buys time for the pro-JROTC side to continue marshalling their forces. Indeed, the Chronicle editorialized recently in favor of JROTC, and claimed that "supporters of JROTC are considering a ballot measure to overturn the 2006 vote."
The school board needs to follow through on the 2006 resolution, not look for excuses to delay and pass the buck.
Despite the spin, the chief proponents of JROTC are not the students. It is the "military-industrial complex," as former President Dwight Eisenhower put it. These are the same people who have brought us Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, who spend billions on all sorts of fantastical high-tech weapons, who organize the butchery of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan -- and of our young men and women sent to fight these wars. They don't want to see San Francisco kick them out of our schools. God only knows what they are capable of doing to prevent it.
The JROTC students are being used by the military just like our troops are used -- as cannon fodder in a much bigger game of war.
Eric Blanc, one of the youth leaders of the movement against JROTC, emailed me after my last Beyond Chron article, providing some more details of the death threat he received. He got a phone call from a guy who "said his daughter was in the army, we were putting her life in peril by organizing against JROTC, and thus if something happened to her 'he would come after me, chop off my head, and shit down my neck.'" Sounds a lot like those terrorists we are supposed to be fighting, doesn't it?
The movement to remove JROTC from our schools needs to take itself very, very seriously if we actually want to win.
---
Still to come: The JROTC Task Force and "alternatives" to JROTC.
When the school board passed the resolution to phase out JROTC, it adopted an amendment calling for the creation of a task force to find "alternative" programs. The best I can tell, the main thing this task force has done is ask for a delay in the implementation of the 2006 resolution. Last Friday, I emailed Assistant Superintendent Margaret Chiu, the district contact for the task force, and asked the following questions:
1- Why did it take from November, 2006 to May, 2007 to convene the task force?
2- Who selected the members of the task force?
3- Who made the decision to close meetings of the task force to the public?
4- When is the next meeting of the task force?
I'll let you know what I hear.
Copyright © 2007 by Marc Norton
Marc Norton is a bellman at a small hotel in downtown San Francisco. Contact him at nortonsf@ix.netcom.com, or through his website at www.MarcNorton.us.
NEXT MEETING OF CITY-WIDE COMMITTEE TO GET RID OF JROTC:
Monday, January 7, 7:00 P.M., at 474 Valencia Street, First Floor, Room 145 (To the left as you come in, and all the way to the back of the long hallway, then, to the right.)
See:
JROTC-Perpetrator of Jane Kim Death Threat Identified
November 29, 2007
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/
The original version of this article
was published in Beyond Chron
on November 29, 2006.
Copyright © 2006 Marc Norton
http://www.marcnorton.us/98827/99108.html
JROTC Supporters Threaten JROTC Opponents
by Marc Norton‚ Nov. 22‚ 2006
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3940
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SUPPORT THE DAY AFTER DEMONSTRATIONS TO FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
From: LACFreeMumia@aol.com
A ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Mumia's case, based on the hearing in Philadelphia on May 17th 2007, is expected momentarily. Freeing Mumia immediately is what is needed, but that is not an option before this court. The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal calls on everyone who supports Mumia‚s case for freedom, to rally the day after a decision comes down. Here are Bay Area day-after details:
OAKLAND:
14th and Broadway, near the Federal Building
4:30 to 6:30 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or on Monday if the ruling comes down on a Friday.
Oakland demonstration called by the Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black Leagues, to be held if the Court upholds the death sentence, or denies Mumia's appeals for a new trial or a new hearing. info at (510) 839-0852 or pdcbayarea@sbcglobal.org
SAN FRANCISCO:
Federal Courthouse, 7th & Mission
5 PM the day after a ruling is announced,
or Monday if the decision comes down on a Friday
San Francisco demo called by the Mobilization To Free Mumia,
info at (415) 255-1085 or www.freemumia.org
Day-after demonstrations are also planned in:
Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver
and other cities internationally.
A National Demonstration is to be held in Philadelphia, 3rd Saturday after the decision
For more information, contact: International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, www.mumia.org;
Partisan Defense Committee, www.partisandefense.org;
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), www.freemumia.com;
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL IS INNOCENT!
World-renowned journalist, death-row inmate and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is completely innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. Mountains of evidence--unheard or ignored by the courts--shows this. He is a victim, like thousands of others, of the racist, corrupt criminal justice system in the US; only in his case, there is an added measure of political persecution. Jamal is a former member of the Black Panther Party, and is still an outspoken and active critic of the on-going racism and imperialism of the US. They want to silence him more than they want to kill him.
Anyone who has ever been victimized by, protested or been concerned about the racist travesties of justice meted out to blacks in the US, as well as attacks on immigrants, workers and revolutionary critics of the system, needs to take a close look at the frame-up of Mumia. He is innocent, and he needs to be free.
FREE MUMIA NOW!
END THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY!
FOR MASS PROTESTS AND LABOR ACTION TO FREE MUMIA!
In 1995, mass mobilizations helped save Mumia from death.
In 1999, longshore workers shut West Coast ports to free Mumia, and teachers in Oakland and Rio de Janeiro held teach-ins and stop-works.
Mumia needs powerful support again now. Come out to free Mumia!
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222, Oakland CA 94610
510.763.2347
LACFreeMumia@aol.com
November 2007
ACTION ALERT: Ensure Fairness For Mumia Abu-Jamal on NBC’s The Today Show!
On Dec. 6, NBC’s The Today Show intends to air a show about Michael Smerconish and Maureen Faulkner’s new book “Murdered By Mumia.” According to the announcement on Michael Smerconish’s website, the show is planning to feature both Smerconish and Faulkner as guests.
The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (FreeMumia.com), Journalists for Mumia (Abu-Jamal-News.com), and Educators for Mumia (EmajOnline.com) have initiated a media-activist campaign urging people to write The Today Show at today@msnbc.com asking them to fairly present both sides of the Mumia Abu-Jamal / Daniel Faulkner case, by also featuring as guests, Linn Washington, Jr. (Philadelphia Tribune columnist and Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple University ) and Dr. Suzanne Ross (Clinical Psychologist and Co-Chair of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC).
A sample letter (http://www.abu-jamal-news.com/pr/TodayShow.doc), accompanied by an extensive informational press pack (http://www.abu-jamal-news.com/pr/PressPackNov07.pdf) has been created to use for contacting The Today Show. Please take a minute and contact them to ensure fair media coverage of this controversial and important case.
Sincerely,
The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (FreeMumia.com)
Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal (Abu-Jamal-News.com)
Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal (EmajOnline.com)
SAMPLE LETTER:
Dear Today Show,
In December 2007, the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal will be entering the 27th year. In the course of those years, much of the media coverage has contained pure speculation and falsehoods. Media watchdogs like FAIR.ORG have sharply criticized this coverage as being biased against Abu-Jamal.
We understand that on Dec. 6, the Today Show intends to air a show about Michael Smerconish and Maureen Faulkner’s book “Murdered By Mumia.” Interestingly, the scheduled interview regarding the new book focusing on Mrs. Faulkner comes at a time of many startling new developments in this historic case, generating international attention.
Reflecting the international interest in this case, in 2003, Abu-Jamal was named an honorary citizen of Paris , and in 2006, the city of St. Denis named a street after him. While this was largely motivated by opposition to the death penalty, they also cited strong evidence of both an unfair trial and Abu-Jamal’s innocence.
One of these developments centers on extraordinary photos of the 1981 crime scene taken by Philadelphia-based press photographer Pedro Polakoff (viewable at Abu-Jamal-News.com) that reveal manipulation of evidence, and completely contradict the prosecution’s case, including Officer James Forbes’ testimony that he properly handled both Abu-Jamal’s and Faulkner’s guns (the photos show Forbes holding both guns in his bare hand). Also the photos reveal that there were no large bullet divots or destroyed chunks of cement where Faulkner was found, which should be visible in the pavement if the prosecution’s scenario was accurate, according to which Abu-Jamal shot down at Faulkner and allegedly missed several times while Faulkner was on his back. Of particular note, this photographer twice attempted to provide these photos to the District Attorney for both the 1982 trial and the 1995 PCRA hearings, and was ignored both times.
Since his incarceration, Abu-Jamal has published six books and countless articles, and has delivered hundreds of speeches, including keynote addresses for college graduations. As a prolific writer and tenacious journalist, he has earned the respect (and support) of such notable prize-winning authors as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman, and Salman Rushdie. Just recently, he was accepted into the PEN American Center , one of the highest honors a writer can achieve. Additionally, at the time of his arrest, he was president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Association of Black Journalists, and was awarded the PEN Oakland award for outstanding journalism after the publication of his first book, Live from Death Row. Since Live, he has garnered a following of dedicated readers around the world, including scholars, college educators, and journalists. His work is, in part, testament to the dignity he has demonstrated for the past 25 years he has been on death row.
The ethical interests in balance and fairness in presenting “news” regarding the Abu-Jamal case, arguably requires providing Today Show viewers with information evidencing Mr. Abu-Jamal’s innocence and unfair trial. To represent this other side, and to provide perspectives addressing the informational needs of your viewers, I ask that you also feature experts Linn Washington, Jr. (Philadelphia Tribune columnist and Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple University ) and Dr. Suzanne Ross (Clinical Psychologist and Co-Chair of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC) as guests on your Dec. 6 show (they can be contacted via Journalists for Mumia: hbjournalist@gmail.com).
While Mrs. Faulkner certainly has a “story” and is entitled to her opinions, your viewers should be privy to other facts, such as the prosecution withholding key evidence, witness coercion, racist jury selection, and evidence that Judge Albert Sabo boasted about his desire to help the prosecution “fry the nigger,” as enclosed in the press packet provided here for you: http://www.abu-jamal-news.com/pr/PressPackNov07.pdf
I also write to provide you with information (inclusive of material from Abu-Jamal’s lawyer) in the interests of journalistic balance, fairness and integrity. The press packet includes 1) A recent Black Commentator article by Philadelphia lawyer/journalist David A. Love describing the significance of the Polakoff photos, 2) An Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal press release about the Polakoff photos, written by Princeton University Professor Mark L. Taylor, 3) Criticism of the 1998 ABC 20/20 program about Abu-Jamal, 4) Background on the case, focusing on both the 1982 trial and 1995-97 PCRA hearings, with a focus on Abu-Jamal’s alleged “hospital confession,” ballistics evidence, and the testimony of Veronica Jones, 5) Recent police intimidation of Abu-Jamal’s supporters, including reported death threats against Sgt. DeLacy Davis, of Black Cops Against Police Brutality, and more.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Your Name
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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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Next Antiwar Coalition meeting Sunday, January 6, 1:00 P.M.
474 Valencia St.
The OCT. 27 COALITION met Saturday, November 18. After a long discussion and evaluation of the Oct. 27 action, the group decided to meet again, Sunday, January 6, at 1:00 P.M. at CENTRO DEL PUEBLO, 474 Valencia Street, SF (Near 16th Street) to assess further action.
Everyone felt the demonstration was very successful and, in fact, that the San Francisco demonstration was the largest in the country and, got the most press coverage. Everyone felt the "die in" was extremely effective and the convergence added to the scope of the demonstration.
Please keep a note of the date of the next coalition meeting:
Sunday, January 6, 1:00 P.M.
EXPLORATORY LETTER: UNIFIED NATIONAL ACTION DURING MARCH 2008:
The regional antiwar demonstrations on October 27th were a great success.. The Boston mobilization organized by New England United (NEU) drew about 10,000 people, including many new activists and young people. Nationally, tens of thousands demanded an end to war and occupation now.
The NEU-sponsored action on October 27 was endorsed by a broad range of over 200 organizations. At a follow-up meeting, many members of NEU believed that we should build on this momentum by bringing together the antiwar movement in unified national protest in the spring for the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.
Reasons given included: 1) March will be the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and the antiwar movement must come together to demand an end to this war now; 2) The war plans against Iran are intensifying, and we have to fight now to stop a war on Iran before it's too late. At the same time, it was recognized that successful national action in the spring would require a broad base of support from antiwar organizations around the country. Therefore, NEU decided to create a working group to assess the level of support for such an action, and report back to our next general meeting in December with both an assessment of support, and a detailed proposal for a unified national mobilization in the spring. As an indication of growing interest in national action, Cindy Sheehan is convening a peace summit in San Francisco in January to help develop a unified strategy for the peace movement and to develop a plan for a unified national mobilization in DC during the March anniversary of the Iraq war.
A strong base of support from the grass-roots organizations around the country will be necessary to make unified national action a reality. If your organization is interested in planning for unified national action in March, please contact us as soon as possible at the following email address: spring2008@lists.riseup.net . Thank you. Spring Mobilization working group New England United http://www.newenglandunited.org/
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Mexico's Sugar Workers Say They Have Taken Over Mills
By Andres R. Martinez
Bloomberg
November 30, 2007
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a4VpjrVF9m2Q&refer=news
2) Business Lobby Presses Agenda Before ’08 Vote
By ROBERT PEAR
December 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/washington/02lobby.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
3) Filipino Protesters Storm U.S. Embassy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:45 a.m. ET
December 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Philippines-Anti-US-Protest.html?ref=world
4) Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts
By CELIA W. DUGGER
December 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html
5) Innovating Our Way to Financial Crisis
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
December 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/opinion/03krugman.html?hp
6) Opposition Cheers Defeat of Chávez Plan in Venezuela
By SIMON ROMERO
December 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/world/americas/04venezuela.html?hp
7) Secretary Gates Visits Base in Djibouti
See Military Map to locate Djibouti:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/images/040430-d-6570c-011.jpg
By THOM SHANKER
December 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/africa/04gates.html?ref=world
8) New Orleans Hurt by Acute Rental Shortage
By SUSAN SAULNY
December 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/us/nationalspecial/03renters.html?ref=us
9) In New Orleans, Ex-Tenants Fight for Projects
By ADAM NOSSITER
“The way they were constructed, it’s not law-enforcement friendly,” said Lt. Bruce Adams, a veteran police officer who grew up in the Desire project. “All those entrances and exists. The fact that it’s so condensed is causing the problem.”
December 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/us/nationalspecial/26housing.html
10) Hurricane Aid Is Extended for Some
By SHAILA DEWAN
"Of 5,100 public housing units in New Orleans that were occupied before the storm, only about 1,500 are now in use. HUD officials have said they will continue with plans to tear down the four largest projects and replace them with mixed-income housing."
July 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/us/24hud.html
11) Watch Video "Housing Anxiety in New Orleans"
"The Public Housing Authority has been given a green light to tear down most of the old projects. Thousands of new units may not come on line until 2010."
Monday, December 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/
12) History’s ‘Terrorists’
By Chris Anderson
December 4, 2007
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/11/16/history%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98terrorists%e2%80%99/?cat=6
13) Venezuela Solidarity Network (US) Statement on the Dec. 2, 2007 Referendum
Dec. 3, 2007
Rolandgarret@aol.com
14) Now and Forever
By BOB HERBERT
December 4, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04herbert.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
15) American Exception
Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers
By ADAM LIPTAK
Skip to next paragraph
American Exception
Murder, Once Removed
December 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/us/04felony.html?hp
16) Sloppy Police Lab Work Leads to Retesting
By THOMAS J. LUECK
December 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/nyregion/04lab.html?hp
17) Chavez Calls to Continue Strengthening Socialism in Venezuela
GRANMA
December 4, 2007
Walter Lippmann
18) Will Defeat Alter Chávez's Path?
Venezuela Leader's Failure
To Cement Power Expected
To Embolden Opposition
By JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA and JOHN LYONS
December 4, 2007; Page A4
WALL STREET JOURNAL
19) What's next for Venezuela?
An analysis of the referendum setback
By: Gloria La Riva
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7717&news_iv_ctrl=1016
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1) Mexico's Sugar Workers Say They Have Taken Over Mills
By Andres R. Martinez
Bloomberg
November 30, 2007
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a4VpjrVF9m2Q&refer=news
Mexico's sugar-cane workers said they shut down all of the country's mills
today, demanding an increase in prices from the mills ahead of the opening
of the Mexican market to U.S. sugar on Jan. 1.
The workers took control of the mills at 5 a.m. today, Catarino Bastin, a
spokesman for 106,000 sugar cane workers in 15 states, said today in a
telephone interview from Mexico City. Farmers and workers are asking for a 6
percent increase in the price paid for the crop.
``The mills are intransigent,'' Bastin said. ``We are not going to stop
until we get the price adjustment.''
Calls today and yesterday to the Sugar and Ethanol Chamber of Commerce,
which represents the mills, weren't returned. The workers prevented any cane
from being processed this morning.
Juan Cortina, president of the Sugar and Ethanol Chamber of Commerce, said
in an interview with Mexico City-based Radio Formula today that workers
blocked the mills.
Workers and farmers are concerned that the raw sweetener, which has fallen
28 percent at Mexico City's main market in the last year, will drop more on
Jan. 1, when the North American Free Trade Agreement opens the Mexican
market to U.S. sweetener.
Mills have been negotiating a price for the 2007-2008 crop for 11 weeks.
Talks moderated by the federal government today have been unsuccessful,
Bastin said.
Before today, Mexico's sugar cane farmers had blocked the delivery of 3
million metric tons of the crop to mills, said Carlos Blackaller Ayala,
president of the National Sugar Cane Union, which represents cane farmers.
Mexico was the sixth-largest producer of sugar cane in 2005, according to
the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
Mexico produced 50.1 million metric tons of sugar cane last year, according
to its National Statistical Agency. The country's mills produced about 5.1
million metric tons of sugar during that period.
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2) Business Lobby Presses Agenda Before ’08 Vote
By ROBERT PEAR
December 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/washington/02lobby.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — Business lobbyists, nervously anticipating Democratic gains in next year’s elections, are racing to secure final approval for a wide range of health, safety, labor and economic rules, in the belief that they can get better deals from the Bush administration than from its successor.
Hoping to lock in policies backed by a pro-business administration, poultry farmers are seeking an exemption for the smelly fumes produced by tons of chicken manure. Businesses are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back rules that let employees take time off for family needs and medical problems. And electric power companies are pushing the government to relax pollution-control requirements.
“There’s a growing sense, a growing probability, that the next administration could be Democratic,” said Craig L. Fuller, executive vice president of Apco Worldwide, a lobbying and public relations firm, who was a White House official in the Reagan administration. “Corporate executives, trade associations and lobbying firms have begun to recalibrate their strategies.”
The Federal Register typically grows fat with regulations churned out in the final weeks of any administration. But the push for such rules has become unusually intense because of the possibility that Democrats in 2009 may consolidate control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives for the first time in 14 years.
Even as they try to shape pending regulations, business lobbies are also looking beyond President Bush. Corporations and trade associations are recruiting Democratic lobbyists. And lobbyists, expecting battles over taxes and health care in 2009, are pouring money into the campaigns of Democratic candidates for Congress and the White House.
Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, said, “I am beefing up my staff, putting more money aside for economic analysis of regulations that I foresee coming out of a possible new Democratic administration.”
At the Transportation Department, trucking companies are trying to get final approval for a rule increasing the maximum number of hours commercial truck drivers can work. And automakers are trying to persuade officials to set new standards for the strength of car roofs — standards far less stringent than what consumer advocates say is needed to protect riders in a rollover.
Business groups generally argue that federal regulations are onerous and needlessly add costs that are passed on to consumers, while their opponents accuse them of trying to whittle down regulations that are vital to safety and quality of life. Documents on file at several agencies show that business groups have stepped up lobbying in recent months, as they try to help the Bush administration finish work on rules that have been hotly debated and, in some cases, litigated for years.
At the Interior Department, coal companies are lobbying for a regulation that would allow them to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys. It would be prohibitively expensive to haul away the material, they say, and there are no waste sites in the area. Luke Popovich, a vice president of the National Mining Association, said that a Democratic president was more likely to side with “the greens.”
A coalition of environmental groups has condemned the proposed rule, saying it would accelerate “the destruction of mountains, forests and streams throughout Appalachia.”
A priority for many employers in 2008 is to secure changes in the rules for family and medical leave. Under a 1993 law, people who work for a company with 50 or more employees are generally entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for newborn children or sick relatives or to tend to medical problems of their own. The Labor Department has signaled its interest in changes by soliciting public comments.
The National Association of Manufacturers said the law had been widely abused and had caused “a staggering loss of work hours” as employees took unscheduled, intermittent time off for health conditions that could not be verified. The use of such leave time tends to rise sharply before holiday weekends, on the day after Super Bowl Sunday and on the first day of the local hunting season, employers said.
Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, an advocacy group, said she was “very concerned that the Bush administration will issue new rules that cut back on family and medical leave for those who need it.”
That could be done, for example, by narrowing the definition of a “serious health condition” or by establishing stricter requirements for taking intermittent leave for chronic conditions that flare up unexpectedly.
The Chamber of Commerce is seeking such changes. “We want to get this done before the election,” Mr. Johnson said. “The next White House may be less hospitable to our position.”
Indeed, most of the Democratic candidates for president have offered proposals to expand the 1993 law, to provide paid leave and to cover millions of additional workers. Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut was a principal author of the law. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York says it has been “enormously successful.” And Senator Barack Obama of Illinois says that more generous family leave is an essential part of his plan to “reclaim the American dream.”
Susan E. Dudley, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said, “Research suggests that regulatory activity increases in the final year of an administration, regardless of party.”
Whoever becomes the next president, Democrat or Republican, will find that it is not so easy to make immediate and sweeping changes. The Supreme Court has held that a new president cannot arbitrarily revoke final regulations that already have the force of law. To undo such rules, a new administration must provide a compelling justification and go through a formal rule-making process, which can take months or years.
Within hours of taking office in 2001, Mr. Bush slammed the brakes on scores of regulations issued just before he took office, so his administration could review them. A study in the Wake Forest Law Review found that one-fifth of those “midnight regulations” were amended or repealed by the Bush administration, while four-fifths survived.
Some of the biggest battles now involve rules affecting the quality of air, water and soil.
The National Chicken Council and the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association have petitioned for an exemption from laws and rules that require them to report emissions of ammonia exceeding 100 pounds a day. They argue that “emissions from poultry houses pose little or no risk to public health” because the ammonia disperses quickly in the air.
Perdue Farms, one of the nation’s largest poultry producers, said that it was “essentially impossible to provide an accurate estimate of any ammonia releases,” and that a reporting requirement would place “an undue and useless burden” on farmers.
But environmental groups told the Bush administration that “ammonia emissions from poultry operations pose great risk to public health.” And, they noted, a federal judge in Kentucky has found that farmers discharge ammonia from their barns, into the environment, so it will not sicken or kill the chickens.
On another issue, the Environmental Protection Agency is drafting final rules that would allow utility companies to modify coal-fired power plants and increase their emissions without installing new pollution-control equipment.
The Edison Electric Institute, the lobby for power companies, said the companies needed regulatory relief to meet the growing demand for “safe, reliable and affordable electricity.”
But John D. Walke, director of the clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the rules would be “the Bush administration’s parting gift to the utility industry.”
If Democrats gain seats in Congress or win the White House, that could pose problems for all-Republican lobbying firms like Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, whose founders include Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Loren Monroe, chief operating officer of the Barbour firm, said: “If the right person came along, we might hire a Democrat. And it’s quite possible we could team up in an alliance with a Democratic firm.”
Two executive recruiters, Ivan H. Adler of the McCormick Group and Nels B. Olson of Korn/Ferry International, said they had seen a growing demand for Democratic lobbyists. “It’s a bull market for Democrats, especially those who have worked for the Congressional leadership” or a powerful committee, Mr. Adler said.
Few industries have more cause for concern than drug companies, which have been a favorite target of Democrats. Republicans run the Washington offices of most major drug companies, and a former Republican House member, Billy Tauzin, is president of their trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
The association has hired three Democrats this year, so its lobbying team is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.
Loren B. Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a policy research organization, said: “Defense contractors have not only begun to prepare for the next administration. They have begun to shape it. They’ve met with Hillary Clinton and other candidates.”
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3) Filipino Protesters Storm U.S. Embassy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:45 a.m. ET
December 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Philippines-Anti-US-Protest.html?ref=world
MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- About two dozen protesters angry over a rape case involving a Marine stormed the American Embassy on Sunday, hitting a U.S. government seal on the gate with fists and a brick before surprised policemen pushed them away, police and witnesses said.
The protesters demanded the transfer to a Philippine jail of Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith, who was convicted a year ago of raping a Filipino woman but has remained under U.S. government custody and detained at the heavily fortified embassy.
Taking advantage of the absence of policemen, who usually stand guard outside the embassy, the protesters ran toward the gates and used their fists and a red brick to pound the bronze seal, an Associated Press photographer at the scene said.
It was unclear why policemen were not posted outside the embassy at the time. Officers later arrived and pushed the protestors away, but did not make any arrests.
''It has been one year, and he is still being protected by the United States government,'' said protest leader Vencer Crisostomo, adding that Washington should face the consequences of crimes committed overseas by its troops.
The protesters demanded the repeal of the bilateral Visiting Forces Agreement, which allows large numbers of American troops to join war exercises in the Philippines. The agreement spells out terms of how to deal with troops accused of crimes.
Smith was convicted by a suburban Manila court last year of raping a Filipino woman in a van as fellow Marines cheered him on. The court sentenced him to 40 years in prison for the crime, alleged to have been committed while he was on a break after joining military exercises north of Manila.
Smith, from St. Louis, claimed that the sex was consensual and appealed the court ruling.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's government agreed to allow Smith to be detained at the U.S. Embassy while appealing his conviction, angering women's groups and left-wing activists.
Smith's conviction has been hailed as a victory for women's rights and Philippine independence from its former colonizer.
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4) Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts
By CELIA W. DUGGER
December 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html
LILONGWE, Malawi — Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid.
But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.
In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children’s Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. “We will not be able to use it!” Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef’s deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly.
Farmers explain Malawi’s extraordinary turnaround — one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa — with one word: fertilizer.
Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.
Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi’s soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.
“As long as I’m president, I don’t want to be going to other capitals begging for food,” Mr. Mutharika declared. Patrick Kabambe, the senior civil servant in the Agriculture Ministry, said the president told his advisers, “Our people are poor because they lack the resources to use the soil and the water we have.”
The country’s successful use of subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in Africa and the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed, farmer education, credit and agricultural research.
Malawi, an overwhelmingly rural nation about the size of Pennsylvania, is an extreme example of what happens when those things are missing. As its population has grown and inherited landholdings have shrunk, impoverished farmers have planted every inch of ground. Desperate to feed their families, they could not afford to let their land lie fallow or to fertilize it. Over time, their depleted plots yielded less food and the farmers fell deeper into poverty.
Malawi’s leaders have long favored fertilizer subsidies, but they reluctantly acceded to donor prescriptions, often shaped by foreign-aid fashions in Washington, that featured a faith in private markets and an antipathy to government intervention.
In the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the World Bank pushed Malawi to eliminate fertilizer subsidies entirely. Its theory both times was that Malawi’s farmers should shift to growing cash crops for export and use the foreign exchange earnings to import food, according to Jane Harrigan, an economist at the University of London.
In a withering evaluation of the World Bank’s record on African agriculture, the bank’s own internal watchdog concluded in October not only that the removal of subsidies had led to exorbitant fertilizer prices in African countries, but that the bank itself had often failed to recognize that improving Africa’s declining soil quality was essential to lifting food production.
“The donors took away the role of the government and the disasters mounted,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who lobbied Britain and the World Bank on behalf of Malawi’s fertilizer program and who has championed the idea that wealthy countries should invest in fertilizer and seed for Africa’s farmers.
Here in Malawi, deep fertilizer subsidies and lesser ones for seed, abetted by good rains, helped farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007, according to government crop estimates. Corn production leapt to 2.7 million metric tons in 2006 and 3.4 million in 2007 from 1.2 million in 2005, the government reported.
“The rest of the world is fed because of the use of good seed and inorganic fertilizer, full stop,” said Stephen Carr, who has lived in Malawi since 1989, when he retired as the World Bank’s principal agriculturalist in sub-Saharan Africa. “This technology has not been used in most of Africa. The only way you can help farmers gain access to it is to give it away free or subsidize it heavily.”
“The government has taken the bull by the horns and done what farmers wanted,” he said. Some economists have questioned whether Malawi’s 2007 bumper harvest should be credited to good rains or subsidies, but an independent evaluation, financed by the United States and Britain, found that the subsidy program accounted for a large share of this year’s increase in corn production.
The harvest also helped the poor by lowering food prices and increasing wages for farm workers. Researchers at Imperial College London and Michigan State University concluded in their preliminary report that a well-run subsidy program in a sensibly managed economy “has the potential to drive growth forward out of the poverty trap in which many Malawians and the Malawian economy are currently caught.”
Farmers interviewed recently in Malawi’s southern and central regions said fertilizer had greatly improved their ability to fill their bellies with nsima, the thick, cornmeal porridge that is Malawi’s staff of life.
In the hamlet of Mthungu, Enelesi Chakhaza, an elderly widow whose husband died of hunger five years ago, boasted that she got two ox-cart-loads of corn this year from her small plot instead of half a cart.
Last year, roughly half the country’s farming families received coupons that entitled them to buy two 110-pound bags of fertilizer, enough to nourish an acre of land, for around $15 — about a third the market price. The government also gave them coupons for enough seed to plant less than half an acre.
Malawians are still haunted by the hungry season of 2001-02. That season, an already shrunken program to give poor farmers enough fertilizer and seed to plant a meager quarter acre of land had been reduced again. Regional flooding further lowered the harvest. Corn prices surged. And under the government then in power, the country’s entire grain reserve was sold as a result of mismanagement and corruption.
Mrs. Chakhaza watched her husband starve to death that season. His strength ebbed away as they tried to subsist on pumpkin leaves. He was one of many who succumbed that year, said K. B. Kakunga, the local Agriculture Ministry official. He recalled mothers and children begging for food at his door.
“I had a little something, but I could not afford to help each and every one,” he said. “It was very pathetic, very pathetic indeed.”
But Mr. Kakunga brightened as he talked about the impact of the subsidies, which he said had more than doubled corn production in his jurisdiction since 2005.
“It’s quite marvelous!” he exclaimed.
Malawi’s determination to heavily subsidize fertilizer and the payoff in increased production are beginning to change the attitudes of donors, say economists who have studied Malawi’s experience.
The Department for International Development in Britain contributed $8 million to the subsidy program last year. Bernabé Sánchez, an economist with the agency in Malawi, estimated the extra corn produced because of the $74 million subsidy was worth $120 million to $140 million.
“It was really a good economic investment,” he said.
The United States, which has shipped $147 million worth of American food to Malawi as emergency relief since 2002, but only $53 million to help Malawi grow its own food, has not provided any financial support for the subsidy program, except for helping pay for the evaluation of it. Over the years, the United States Agency for International Development has focused on promoting the role of the private sector in delivering fertilizer and seed, and saw subsidies as undermining that effort.
But Alan Eastham, the American ambassador to Malawi, said in a recent interview that the subsidy program had worked “pretty well,” though it displaced some commercial fertilizer sales.
“The plain fact is that Malawi got lucky last year,” he said. “They got fertilizer out while it was needed. The lucky part was that they got the rains.”
And the World Bank now sometimes supports the temporary use of subsidies aimed at the poor and carried out in a way that fosters private markets.
Here in Malawi, bank officials say they generally support Malawi’s policy, though they criticize the government for not having a strategy to eventually end the subsidies, question whether its 2007 corn production estimates are inflated and say there is still a lot of room for improvement in how the subsidy is carried out.
“The issue is, let’s do a better job of it,” said David Rohrbach, a senior agricultural economist at the bank.
Though the donors are sometimes ambivalent, Malawi’s farmers have embraced the subsidies. And the government moved this year to give its people a more direct hand in their distribution.
Villagers in Chembe gathered one recent morning under the spreading arms of a kachere tree to decide who most needed fertilizer coupons as the planting season loomed. They had only enough for 19 of the village’s 53 families.
“Ladies and gentlemen, should we start with the elderly or the orphans?” asked Samuel Dama, a representative of the Chembe clan.
Men led the assembly, but women sitting on the ground at their feet called out almost all the names of the neediest, gesturing to families rearing children orphaned by AIDS or caring for toothless elders.
There were more poor families than there were coupons, so grumbling began among those who knew they would have to watch over the coming year as their neighbors’ fertilized corn fields turned deep green.
Sensing the rising resentment, the village chief, Zaudeni Mapila, rose. Barefoot and dressed in dusty jeans and a royal blue jacket, he acted out a silly pantomime of husbands stuffing their pants with corn to sell on the sly for money to get drunk at the beer hall. The women howled with laughter. The tension fled.
He closed with a reminder he hoped would dampen any jealousy.
“I don’t want anyone to complain,” he said. “It’s not me who chose. It’s you.”
The women sang back to him in a chorus of acknowledgment, then dispersed to their homes and fields.
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5) Innovating Our Way to Financial Crisis
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
December 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/opinion/03krugman.html?hp
The financial crisis that began late last summer, then took a brief vacation in September and October, is back with a vengeance.
How bad is it? Well, I’ve never seen financial insiders this spooked — not even during the Asian crisis of 1997-98, when economic dominoes seemed to be falling all around the world.
This time, market players seem truly horrified — because they’ve suddenly realized that they don’t understand the complex financial system they created.
Before I get to that, however, let’s talk about what’s happening right now.
Credit — lending between market players — is to the financial markets what motor oil is to car engines. The ability to raise cash on short notice, which is what people mean when they talk about “liquidity,” is an essential lubricant for the markets, and for the economy as a whole.
But liquidity has been drying up. Some credit markets have effectively closed up shop. Interest rates in other markets — like the London market, in which banks lend to each other — have risen even as interest rates on U.S. government debt, which is still considered safe, have plunged.
“What we are witnessing,” says Bill Gross of the bond manager Pimco, “is essentially the breakdown of our modern-day banking system, a complex of leveraged lending so hard to understand that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke required a face-to-face refresher course from hedge fund managers in mid-August.”
The freezing up of the financial markets will, if it goes on much longer, lead to a severe reduction in overall lending, causing business investment to go the way of home construction — and that will mean a recession, possibly a nasty one.
Behind the disappearance of liquidity lies a collapse of trust: market players don’t want to lend to each other, because they’re not sure they’ll be repaid.
In a direct sense, this collapse of trust has been caused by the bursting of the housing bubble. The run-up of home prices made even less sense than the dot-com bubble — I mean, there wasn’t even a glamorous new technology to justify claims that old rules no longer applied — but somehow financial markets accepted crazy home prices as the new normal. And when the bubble burst, a lot of investments that were labeled AAA turned out to be junk.
Thus, “super-senior” claims against subprime mortgages — that is, investments that have first dibs on whatever mortgage payments borrowers make, and were therefore supposed to pay off in full even if a sizable fraction of these borrowers defaulted on their debts — have lost a third of their market value since July.
But what has really undermined trust is the fact that nobody knows where the financial toxic waste is buried. Citigroup wasn’t supposed to have tens of billions of dollars in subprime exposure; it did. Florida’s Local Government Investment Pool, which acts as a bank for the state’s school districts, was supposed to be risk-free; it wasn’t (and now schools don’t have the money to pay teachers).
How did things get so opaque? The answer is “financial innovation” — two words that should, from now on, strike fear into investors’ hearts.
O.K., to be fair, some kinds of financial innovation are good. I don’t want to go back to the days when checking accounts didn’t pay interest and you couldn’t withdraw cash on weekends.
But the innovations of recent years — the alphabet soup of C.D.O.’s and S.I.V.’s, R.M.B.S. and A.B.C.P. — were sold on false pretenses. They were promoted as ways to spread risk, making investment safer. What they did instead — aside from making their creators a lot of money, which they didn’t have to repay when it all went bust — was to spread confusion, luring investors into taking on more risk than they realized.
Why was this allowed to happen? At a deep level, I believe that the problem was ideological: policy makers, committed to the view that the market is always right, simply ignored the warning signs. We know, in particular, that Alan Greenspan brushed aside warnings from Edward Gramlich, who was a member of the Federal Reserve Board, about a potential subprime crisis.
And free-market orthodoxy dies hard. Just a few weeks ago Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, admitted to Fortune magazine that financial innovation got ahead of regulation — but added, “I don’t think we’d want it the other way around.” Is that your final answer, Mr. Secretary?
Now, Mr. Paulson’s new proposal to help borrowers renegotiate their mortgage payments and avoid foreclosure sounds in principle like a good idea (although we have yet to hear any details). Realistically, however, it won’t make more than a small dent in the subprime problem.
The bottom line is that policy makers left the financial industry free to innovate — and what it did was to innovate itself, and the rest of us, into a big, nasty mess.
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6) Opposition Cheers Defeat of Chávez Plan in Venezuela
By SIMON ROMERO
December 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/world/americas/04venezuela.html?hp
CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 3 — Boisterous Venezuelans celebrated in Caracas early today after voters narrowly defeated a proposed overhaul to the constitution in a contentious referendum over granting President Hugo Chávez sweeping new powers.
It was the first major electoral defeat in the nine years of his presidency. Voters rejected the 69 proposed amendments 51 to 49 percent, according to the Election Commission.
The political opposition erupted into celebration, shooting fireworks into the air and honking car horns, when electoral officials announced the results at 1:20 a.m. The nation had remained on edge since polls closed Sunday afternoon and the wait for results began.
The outcome is a stunning development in a country where Mr. Chávez and his supporters control nearly all of the levers of power. Almost immediately after the results were broadcast on state television, Mr. Chávez conceded defeat, describing the results as a “photo finish.”
“I congratulate my adversaries for this victory,” he said. “For now, we could not do it.”
Opposition leaders were ecstatic. “Tonight, Venezuela has won,” said Manuel Rosales, governor of Zulia State and the opposition’s candidate in presidential elections last year.
At 2 a.m., hundreds of people flocked to Plaza Altamira in relatively prosperous eastern Caracas. People played drums, jumped up and down, exchanged hugs and chanted antigovernment slogans. Most were students. Many were sipping from bottles of rum or whiskey.
“I didn’t think we were going to win,” said Diana Cocho, 24, who has a real estate business. “The government took us into account, took our vote into account.”
“I thought Chávez looked scared, like he expected something different,” she said about the president’s speech accepting defeat.
Extending their celebration into the wee hours of Monday, the students blocked traffic in all directions by parking their cars in the middle of the street around the plaza. They chanted, “Long live the university,” and “The government will fall.”
In recent weeks, members of previously splintered opposition movements joined disillusioned Chávez supporters in an attempt to defeat the referendum on constitutional changes. The plan would abolish term limits, allow Mr. Chávez to declare states of emergency for unlimited periods and increase the state’s role in the economy, among other measures.
The defeat slows Mr. Chávez’s socialist-inspired transformation of the country. Venezuela, once a staunch ally of the United States, has become a leading opponent of the Bush administration’s policies in the developing world. It has also taken the most profound leftward turn of any large Latin American nation in decades.
The referendum followed several weeks of street protests and frenetic campaigning over the amendments to the Constitution proposed by Mr. Chávez and his supporters. It caps a year of bold moves by the president, who forged a single Socialist party among his followers, forced a television network critical of the government off the public airwaves, and nationalized oil, telephone and electricity companies.
In Caracas on Sunday, turnout in poorer neighborhoods, where support for Mr. Chávez is strong, indicated that the referendum was drawing a mixed response. Lines were long in some areas and nonexistent in others.
“The whole proposal is marvelous,” said Francis Veracierta, 52, a treasurer at a communal council here, one of thousands of local governing entities loyal to Mr. Chávez that he created this year. After awakening to predawn fireworks, she said she joined a line at 6 a.m. to vote at a school in Petare, an area of sprawling hillside slums here.
“The power is for us in the community,” said Ms. Veracierta, wearing a red shirt, red cap and belt with Che Guevara’s face on it. She said she credited Mr. Chávez’s government for giving her a $3,800 loan to start a small clothing business.
Some of Mr. Chávez’s populist proposals, including an increase in social security benefits for some workers, have been praised even by his critics.
Turnout in some poor districts was unexpectedly low, indicating that even the president’s backers were willing to follow him only so far. Some Chávez supporters expressed concern that if they voted against the measures they might be retaliated against. Turnout of registered voters was just 56 percent.
There was no line in front of the voting center at the Cecilio Acosta school in Petare on Sunday morning, as a few dozen people who had already voted milled about the street. Some volunteers working the voting machines sat idle, waiting for more voters to arrive. Other voting centers in Petare had lines outside, but they were less than half a block long.
“I’m impressed by the lack of voters,” said Ninoska González, 37, who sells cigarettes on the street. “This was full last year.” She described herself as a “Chavista” who voted for the president in last year’s presidential elections, but said she voted against his proposed changes on Sunday.
“I don’t agree with some articles,” Ms. González said. Asked about the measure to pay social security benefits to workers in the informal economy like her, she said, “That’s a lie.”
Confusion persisted Sunday over the amendments, with a major complaint among the president’s supporters and critics that they had too little time to study the proposals.
Unlike in past votes here, this time the government did not invite observers from the Organization of American States or the European Union, opening itself to potential claims of fraud.
The voting seemed to unfold largely without irregularities, though there were isolated reports of fraud and violence in parts of the country. Recounts are allowed under Venezuelan law, but would have to be approved by the Supreme Court, which is controlled by Mr. Chávez’s supporters.
In recent weeks, Mr. Chávez has adopted an increasingly confrontational tone with critics abroad, who have been multiplying even in friendly countries with moderate leftist governments like Brazil and Chile.
In the days before the referendum, Mr. Chávez recalled his ambassador from Colombia and threatened to nationalize the Venezuelan operations of Spanish banks after Spain’s king told him to shut up during a meeting. Mr. Chávez said he would cut off oil exports to the United States in the event of American interference in the vote.
The United States remains the largest buyer of Venezuela’s oil, despite deteriorating political ties, but that long commercial relationship is starting to change as Mr. Chávez increases exports of oil to China and other countries while gradually selling off the oil refineries owned by Venezuela’s government in the United States.
Venezuela’s political opposition, normally divided among several small political parties, found common cause in calling on its members to vote against the amendments. An increasingly defiant student movement also protested here and in other large interior cities against the proposed charter.
In a move that alarmed the opposition, electoral officials over the weekend revoked the observer credentials of Jorge Quiroga, a former president of Bolivia and an outspoken critic of Mr. Chávez. Mr. Quiroga accused security forces here of following him after his arrival in Caracas. “They’ve taken my credential but not my tongue,” Mr. Quiroga said.
Mr. Chávez, whose followers already control many powerful institutions — the National Assembly, the federal bureaucracy, the national oil company, the Supreme Court and all but a handful of state governments — relied on an unrivaled political machine to gather support for the measures.
Uncertainty over Mr. Chávez’s reforms, meanwhile, has led to accelerating capital flight as rich Venezuelans and private companies rush to buy assets abroad denominated in dollars or euros. The currency, the bolívar, currently trades at about 6,100 to the dollar in street trading, compared with an official rate of 2,150.
Venezuela’s state-controlled oil industry is also showing signs of strain, grappling with a purge of opposition management by Mr. Chávez and a retooling of the state oil company to focus on social welfare projects while aging oil fields need maintenance.
Petróleos de Venezuela, the state oil company, says it produces 3.3 million barrels a day, but OPEC places its output at just 2.4 million barrels. And private economists estimate that a third of oil production goes to meet domestic consumption, which is surging because of a subsidy that keeps gasoline prices at about seven cents a gallon.
Still, Mr. Chávez already has unprecedented discretionary control over Venezuela’s oil revenues, valued at more than $60 billion a year. “Because of its oil, Venezuela has global reach in OPEC and the rest of Latin America,” said Kenneth R. Maxwell, a professor of Latin American history at Harvard University.
Jens Erik Gould contributed reporting.
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7) Secretary Gates Visits Base in Djibouti
See Military Map to locate Djibouti:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/images/040430-d-6570c-011.jpg
By THOM SHANKER
December 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/africa/04gates.html?ref=world
CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti, Monday, Dec. 3 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived in the Horn of Africa today to inspect one of the most unusual missions in the American military, one that has not captured or killed a single terrorist or foreign fighter, yet is viewed by Pentagon officials as a model military deployment.
The mission of the Task Force Horn of Africa is an application of the “soft power” Mr. Gates advocated in a Nov. 26 speech, when he told an audience at Kansas State University that American counterterrorism efforts require not just combat operations, but a broader range of economic development and diplomacy.
American combat personnel here train regional armed forces to build up their own counterterrorism abilities. Combat engineers build schools and hospitals and dig wells in an effort to promote social stability and prevent terrorists from taking root.
Task force commanders speak of “waging peace,” and note that here in the Muslim world, where critics of American policy accuse the Bush administration of waging a campaign against Islam under the cover of counterterrorism, American military engineers have even been invited to repair mosques, for example in Ethiopia.
In his first trip to Djibouti, referred to by some as the hottest full-time inhabited place on earth, Mr. Gates was scheduled to visit Camp Lemonier, a former French Foreign Legion compound. The post is home to the 2,000 troops in the task force and support missions, an operation that already is shaping how the Pentagon will organize its efforts in coming years.
The American military is organizing a new Africa Command, the first American combatant command dedicated solely to Africa. The lessons learned from the operation in Djibouti will shape the new command’s emphasis on defense as well as diplomacy and development, according to senior Pentagon officials.
The mission has evolved significantly since Task Force Horn of Africa was established in late 2002 at a base so primitive that the most serious security threat came from attacks by roaming hyenas and jackals on soldiers doing their daily physical training runs.
The mission initially was devised to trap terrorists expected to flee Afghanistan along traditional smugglers’ routes down the Persian Gulf, into the Arabian Sea and past the Horn of Africa.
But the overlapping ground, maritime and air patrols across the region seem to have deterred the use of that route, prompting some fighters for Al Qaeda and the Taliban to hunker down in Pakistan along the Afghan border.
American intelligence and military officers express certainty that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups continue to transit through the region, with small numbers believed to be operating in ungoverned corners of Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Yemen, where they may be able to enhance the abilities of local terrorist or anti-government groups.
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8) New Orleans Hurt by Acute Rental Shortage
By SUSAN SAULNY
December 3, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/us/nationalspecial/03renters.html?ref=us
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 2 — Inside trailer No. 27 here at the A. L. Davis Playground, where the government set up a camp last year for displaced residents of Hurricane Katrina, Tracy Bernard’s meager possessions are all packed up, even though she has nowhere to go.
About a month ago, workers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency swept through her trailer park, a bleak tableau of housing of the last resort, taping eviction notices on the flimsy aluminum doors. Thousands of other trailer residents across Louisiana were informed by FEMA last week that they too would be evicted in the next six months.
But few of them will be able to return to the city from which they were flooded out 27 months ago.
More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is suffering from an acute shortage of housing that has nearly doubled the cost of rental units in the city, threatening the recovery of the region and the well-being of many residents who decided to return against the odds. Before the storm, more than half of the city’s population rented housing. Yet official attention to help revive the shattered rental home and apartment market has been scant.
In some core middle- and lower-income areas, blighted dwellings stretch for blocks on end, and the city has been slow to come up with ideas for what to do with those that have been abandoned. Last week, the city housing authority approved the demolition of 4,000 public housing units at five projects damaged by the storm. In their place, the authority plans to build mixed-income projects, large parts of which will not be affordable to previous residents.
Although repairs are being made and more housing is available now than a year ago, demand is still outpacing supply.
Ms. Bernard, a veteran worker for the local public transportation agency who has to move by Monday, has been scouring the city for a place to rent. Properties in her price range, if they exist at all, routinely come without finished walls or stoves. In New Orleans, decent affordable housing remains a casualty of the storm.
“A lot of the city is still boarded up,” said Ms. Bernard, who rented a one-bedroom house in eastern New Orleans for $300 a month before Hurricane Katrina. “Where are we supposed to go?”
One of the more striking changes to appear lately in New Orleans is the highly visible number of homeless men and women living under bridges and in parks. Social service groups say about 12,000 homeless people are living in the city, about double the number before the storm.
The sense of an impending housing crisis grew stronger last week with FEMA’s announcement on Wednesday that it would close all the trailer camps it runs for victims of the 2005 hurricanes on varying schedules by the end of May. More than 900 families are living in FEMA trailer parks around the city.
The agency said its action was intended to hasten the move of residents to permanent housing from trailers. It said counselors would assist every resident in the transition. “We’re with them every step of the way,” Diane L. W. Perry, a FEMA spokeswoman, said Wednesday.
But in interviews at trailer parks last week, a reporter found that some residents had not spoken with a caseworker in weeks, even though they were scheduled to be evicted within days.
“The caseworker is very hard to get in touch with,” said Martin Blossom, a pizza cook who lives in a trailer and who is not sure where he will move in the next few days. “I haven’t talked with the caseworker for two weeks.”
Others said the information they got from caseworkers was useless. Ramona Jones said her counselor gave her several listings, but some of the apartments were not ready for habitation by her eviction date — or they were, in her words, “rat holes.” Landlords are asking $1,100 a month or more. Though Ms. Jones and others are eligible for financial assistance to help pay the high rents, many are reluctant, knowing that, like the trailers, the assistance could disappear, leaving them stranded with huge bills.
“We done been through so much with FEMA till where it’s easy for the federal government to back out on their word,” Ms. Jones, a factory worker, said. “They did it before. Everybody’s looking at, ‘What if?’ ”
Time has already run out for some. Ms. Bernard, 40, and her two daughters got the final word on Friday that they were evicted, cast out of the only home they have had since the storm to whereabouts unknown. And they were not alone.
“I don’t know what’s going to become of us,” said Tiffany Farbe, who lives in a trailer park near the Mississippi River in the Uptown part of New Orleans with her son and mother. “They said get out. I’ve explained to them over and over again our situation. FEMA just makes you feel like dirt.”
The agency objects to that characterization, and says it is only trying to help.
“It’s the next step in the recovery,” said Ronnie Simpson, a FEMA spokesman. “It’s the individual’s responsibility to go out and find what’s suitable for them.”
While the agency provides listings, Mr. Simpson said it did not necessarily endorse the properties or know much about them beyond their locations and the basics, such as the number of bedrooms.
“We know it’s a tough decision, and that’s not lost on us,” he said, but “more and more housing becomes available every day, that’s a fact. The sooner you begin the process, the better. You want to start early and pick what’s right for your family.” He added: “We’re very sensitive to the fact that this isn’t an easy move. But it’s a necessary move.”
Before the hurricane, housing advocates estimated there were about 6,300 homeless people in New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish. Today, the count is 12,000 and growing. Experts said it was hard to ignore the link between the housing situation and homelessness.
“FEMA and the federal bureaucracy seem oblivious to the fact that virtually no new affordable rental housing has yet appeared in New Orleans to replace what was lost,” said Martha J. Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans, a group of 60 agencies that house and feed the homeless. “It will take a long time for enough replacement affordable housing to be built. To withdraw housing assistance to the neediest people is a shirking of federal responsibility for the design failure of the federal levees in New Orleans, which was the cause of most of the destruction of affordable housing here.”
In the past several months, a homeless encampment has sprung up on the steps of City Hall — partly because it is a safe open space and partly because it is a political statement. Tents and sleeping bags are aligned in rows. The crowd of hundreds is a mix of young and old, white and black.
Michael Reeves, 45, sleeps on the grass outside City Hall. He used to rent a one-bedroom in the Ninth Ward for $350 before the storm. “Ain’t nothing left but the ground,” he said. “We didn’t have nowhere to go so we came here.”
Not everyone in the park is a native of New Orleans. Some people came here after the storm to do construction work without realizing they would not be able to find a place to live. Some sleep on-site in unfinished buildings; others have taken up residence in abandoned buildings or in parks.
Ken Cimino, 48, sleeps outside of City Hall, too. He does odd jobs at the Superdome, mostly picking up trash after Saints football games. Mr. Cimino drove to New Orleans recently from New Haven, Conn.
“I came here for construction work, and found the situation wasn’t quite what I expected,” he said. “I thought I’d live out of my car for a few weeks until I found a place. Used up my savings. I just got caught off balance.”
Now, Mr. Cimino says he cannot afford to drive back to Connecticut. He is just one of many laborers who find themselves without options.
Ms. Bernard said she might end up on a friend’s mother’s couch until she wears out her welcome. Then what?
“I know I’m going to find something,” she said. “I have faith. I know God’s going to work something out for us.”
ONLINE: A video report on the housing crisis in New Orleans. nytimes.com/national
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9) In New Orleans, Ex-Tenants Fight for Projects
By ADAM NOSSITER
“The way they were constructed, it’s not law-enforcement friendly,” said Lt. Bruce Adams, a veteran police officer who grew up in the Desire project. “All those entrances and exists. The fact that it’s so condensed is causing the problem.”
December 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/us/nationalspecial/26housing.html
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 25 — The heritage of suspicion and misery separating this city’s poorest residents from its comfortable classes is playing out in a fierce battle over the future of the public housing projects here, a fight in which the shelter of as many as 20,000 people is at stake.
It has raged ever since the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans last June to demolish four of the largest projects in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and no amount of assurances that the agency wants to replace the crime-haunted, aging brick structures with something better has calmed the anger of former tenants.
This month, under pressure, HUD restated that it might allow some tenants to return while proceeding with redevelopment; a face-off in Federal District Court here Friday between tenant advocates and department lawyers could be decisive.
The struggle over housing in New Orleans raises the larger issue of how to reintegrate the most vulnerable residents after the hurricane, the ones most disrupted by the storm and still displaced 16 months later.
And it has brought sharply into focus how much the New Orleans housing projects were places apart, vast islands of poverty in an already impoverished city. HUD has already chosen two nonprofit developers to replace the Lafitte project, a forbidding complex of 1940s reddish brick dormitories near Interstate 10, with a mix of houses and apartments, some subsidized and some not. The new housing will “dramatically improve living conditions” for the former tenants, a legal brief by the department says.
The agency’s plans and the resistance of the tenants has become a cause célèbre for advocates of many stripes. They shouted down hapless housing officials at a tumultuous public meeting here last month; they demonstrated angrily outside Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s home two weekends ago; and the courtroom vituperation, in the lawsuit against HUD, has been unusually bitter.
Still, the advocates’ talk of ethnic cleansing, social engineering and HUD’s purported “violation” of international law has partly obscured the reality of what the projects were and what even some who question the planned demolition fear they could become again if the redevelopment project falls through.
“I think the romanticism that goes with the ‘good old days of public housing’ belies the harsh realities of crime and social malaise that had been created as a result of a concentration of low, low income folks,” said Michael P. Kelly, who directed the troubled Housing Authority of New Orleans from 1995 to 2000 and now runs its counterpart in Washington, D.C. “Women that would put their babies in bathtubs at the sound of gunfire, that was a reality; coming home from your job and having to walk through young people participating in drug trades.”
Working women trying to raise children, many of whom staff the low-wage tourist hotels here, often made that walk, as they do in public housing in other cities. But here the journey had a particularly tough edge, in keeping with the often violent city surrounding the projects.
The toughness was underscored in striking fashion at last month’s public meeting, notably by one of the many enraged former tenants who rose to criticize the federal housing department and the city housing authority.
“I’m a young man who grew up in the projects,” said that critic, Alvin Richardson. “I grew up in the Iberville project, the Desire, the Calliope, the St. Thomas, St. Bernard, and I survived them all. You can’t do nothing to me because I survived the ghetto.”
The peculiar physical environment of the projects, a confluence of their isolation, their dilapidation and the large numbers of vacant apartments, combined to create difficulties, some veteran police officers say. It was not the tenants who created problems, but nonresidents taking advantage of the dense clustering of small, low-ceilinged apartments.
“The way they were constructed, it’s not law-enforcement friendly,” said Lt. Bruce Adams, a veteran police officer who grew up in the Desire project. “All those entrances and exists. The fact that it’s so condensed is causing the problem.”
Don Everard, director of a social service agency that worked for years in one of the projects, said that with all the vacancies, “you didn’t know what was up the stairwell.”
“You didn’t know who was using an abandoned apartment,” Mr. Everard said.
Since August there have been at least five killings in the old Iberville project, abutting the French Quarter, even though the complex is only about one-quarter occupied. In the latest, a young man was found shot in the head, propping up the door of an abandoned apartment with a bag of crack cocaine at his feet.
At the St. Thomas project, the violent crime rate was more than seven times as high as the city’s as a whole, according to a paper done at the London School of Economics; only 2 percent of its residents were employed full-time.
At the C. J. Peete project, which is on the department’s demolition list, Lawrence Powell, a Tulane University historian, recalled a flourishing open-air drug market across the street.
Bernell Stewart, a nearby resident standing across from the empty Lafitte project, said, “Every time you looked around, somebody was getting killed on this corner.”
Even those critical of the housing department acknowledge that the projects, with all their troubles, had effectively cut off their inhabitants, an isolation reinforced by generations of living in them. Mr. Powell, who ran a social services agency at C. J. Peete in the 1990s, said he tried to “help people move out where they would become homeowners, to move back to the original goal where it was a way station, not warehouses.”
That alienation was starkly in evidence at the public meeting last month. “For once, I would like for us to live in y’all’s houses and let y’all live in ours,” Josey Willis, a displaced Lafitte resident, told the officials. “Let us change places and see what we feeling; then you can feel what we feeling.”
Other cities have seen similar resistance from public housing tenants fearful of change. But here the tenants’ extreme poverty and a legacy of mistrust fueled by years of official neglect has given the fight an edge. Misspent money caused the federal department to keep a close watch over the local housing authority in the mid-1990s, and the department finally took it over in 2002. The projects here were in such poor shape that “a lot of us said it shouldn’t even be considered affordable housing,” said Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution, who served as chief of staff for former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros.
This city’s politicians have been notably silent on the issue but have occasionally suggested that they, too, are wary of a return to the old days. “We don’t need soap-opera watchers right now,” President Oliver Thomas of the City Council said last February, commenting on the lives of displaced public housing residents.
The department’s goal is to deconcentrate the poor, in concert with the philosophy that developed during the early 1990s calling for redeveloping public housing as “mixed income” communities. The best-known example here, the redevelopment of St. Thomas after its demolition in 2000, is still a subject of fierce controversy, a mix of successes and shortcomings that has fueled suspicions.
The pleasant streets of pastel-colored houses that replaced the grim St. Thomas buildings have put life back into a Lower Garden District neighborhood that for years was fearful and moribund.
On the other hand, the new development has accommodated less than one in five of the old St. Thomas families, though the developer says expansion will add more. And those that are there feel threatened by tenant rules designed to make the neighborhood’s market-rate inhabitants comfortable, including occupancy restrictions, Mr. Everard said.
“Folks got cheated out of their dream,” Mr. Everard said. “The whole concept of the mixed-income community ended up dislocating the vast majority of poor people.”
Yet a return to the old days is an outcome that even some former tenants do not embrace.
“If they’re talking about redevelopment, I’m for it,” Natasha Dixon said at the meeting last month. “But why can’t y’all do it in phases? Why can’t that happen now, to get the people home?”
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10) Hurricane Aid Is Extended for Some
By SHAILA DEWAN
"Of 5,100 public housing units in New Orleans that were occupied before the storm, only about 1,500 are now in use. HUD officials have said they will continue with plans to tear down the four largest projects and replace them with mixed-income housing."
July 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/us/24hud.html
After persistent criticism of its policies regarding evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration announced an extension of aid yesterday for some of those still unable to return to New Orleans.
Housing assistance for those evacuees who lived in federally subsidized housing before the storm has been extended through June 2008, Alphonso R. Jackson, the secretary of housing and urban development said.
“As we approach the second anniversary of one of this nation’s worst natural disasters, I’m pleased HUD can extend the program for families who still need help,” Mr. Jackson said at an apartment complex in Houston that is now home to 80 displaced families, according to a HUD news release.
The extension’s effect will be far less sweeping than it sounds. It will not change things for the more than 40,000 families who owned or rented homes before the storm but are now in apartments, mobile homes or trailers paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Those families will begin contributing their own money toward their rent in March.
Nor will it mean much for the 11,400 families Mr. Jackson spoke of in his announcement. Most of those were on the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program, more popularly known as Section 8, before the storm, and they will revert to Section 8 at the end of the year. The transition should have no effect on their current living arrangements, said Donna M. White, a spokeswoman for HUD.
Only the 3,800 families who lived in public housing, including assisted living and senior citizen facilities, before the storm and are now using “disaster vouchers” will benefit from the extension. Those families, many of which are headed by single mothers, the elderly or the disabled, might have been forced onto waiting lists for public housing in their new cities had the vouchers expired in September, as originally planned.
Of 5,100 public housing units in New Orleans that were occupied before the storm, only about 1,500 are now in use. HUD officials have said they will continue with plans to tear down the four largest projects and replace them with mixed-income housing. But under public pressure fueled by a desperate need for low-income housing in the city, HUD, which directly controls the Housing Authority of New Orleans, has agreed to reopen more units. Ms. White said 339 were ready for returning families, and the department hopes 2,500 will be occupied by the end of the summer.
The disaster voucher extension will be paid for with existing HUD money, Ms. White said.
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12) History’s ‘Terrorists’
By Chris Anderson
December 4, 2007
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/11/16/history%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98terrorists%e2%80%99/?cat=6
U.S. history is generally portrayed as a steady, peaceful and inevitable unfolding of freedom, guided by benevolent statesmen and the invisible hand of the market. It is easy to forget that social and economic progress has repeatedly been won in this country through extra-legal actions that shook the status quo and confronted power holders with broad-based movements for change that could not easily be denied. Here are some American icons who might have been tagged as “domestic terrorists” if the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007” had been law during their time:
The Sons of Liberty:
Remembered today as some of the United States’ foremost Founding Fathers, the colonial “Sons of Liberty” did not shrink from engaging in politically motivated property destruction to make a point. Prominent members included Patrick Henry, John Hancock, John and Samuel Adams and Paul Revere.
Best known for orchestrating the Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty also tarred and feathered Torys and attacked the governor’s mansion in New York City. “If ye love wealth greater than liberty,” said Samuel Adams, “go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Harriet Tubman:
After using the Underground Railroad’s network of safe houses to escape from slavery in Maryland, Tubman herself became committed to helping other Blacks flee to safety in the North, eventually rescuing 115 African-Americans. Although the Underground Railroad was primarily a clandestine rather than military organization, it operated in direct violation of the 1850 Fugitive Slave law, and Tubman’s forays into the south were often described as “raids” or “expeditions.”
Emma Goldman:
Although the U.S. government attempted to link her to the shooting of industrialist Henry Clay Frick and the assassination of President William McKinley, the anarchist labor organizer, instigator of free love, defender of women’s rights and journalist was ultimately deported from the United States for her writings and activism. In 1917, she was arrested for violating the 1917 Espionage Act for publishing an article, “Why You Shouldn’t Go To War,” in the April issue of Mother Earth. For nearly a decade prior to her deportation, Goldman had been in much demand as a lecturer in New York and around the country, inspiring fervent working-class activism and clashes between her critics and supporters in equal measure.
Flint Sit-Down Strikers:
Thousands of General Motors autoworkers occupied two GM factories during a 44-day strike, which began Dec. 30, 1936. Sit-down strikes followed at other GM plants in Ohio and Indiana. When police later tried to remove workers from inside one of the Flint auto plants, they were repulsed by fire hoses and a barrage of car door hinges. The strike ended with the company recognizing the United Auto Workers union as the workers’ sole bargaining representative. The victory set the stage for organizing industrial workers across the United States.
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement:
Although King and others in the early Civil Rights movement are lauded today as “apostles of nonviolence,” their tactics were more than just symbolic.
Through sit-ins, boycotts and mass protests they sought to force change in state policy by imposing a social cost on local and national governments. By the time of his death in 1968, King was organizing a multi-racial Poor People’s March on Washington that was intended to besiege the nation’s capital for months with thousands of nonviolent protesters who would try to shut down roads, bridges and key government facilities until the government, ended the Vietnam War and reinvested resources in anti-poverty programs. “Timid supplication for justice will not solve the problem,” King said at the time. “We’ve got to confront the power structure massively.”
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13) Venezuela Solidarity Network (US) Statement on the Dec. 2, 2007 Referendum
Dec. 3, 2007
Rolandgarret@aol.com
With a registered voter turn-out of about 55%, Venezuelan voters rejected two referendum questions asking for approval of a total of 69 amendments to their constitution. Each question was defeated by a margin of 1.5 percentage points.
As a result, Venezuelans will not have a constitution that gives them a 36 hour work week, that gives informal sector workers social security, that recognizes the contributions of African and indigenous peoples to the building of Venezuelan identity, that eliminates discrimination in all forms. They also won't have a seven year presidential term without term limits, definitions for the four classes of property, and other changes that – on paper – would move the country more rapidly toward what is being called "21 st century socialism."
Venezuelans get to vote on constitutional amendments unlike citizens in the United States. In the US, two-thirds of both houses of Congress must approve an amendment and then it must be approved by three quarters of the state legislatures. Voters never get a direct say. Which country has the greater democracy? With 11 national votes in the past nine years since Hugo Chavez was first elected president in 1998, is it any wonder that Venezuelans follow only Uruguay among Latin Americans in their satisfaction with their democracy?
It is time for the US government and the US corporate media to acknowledge that Venezuela is a vibrant democracy and that Hugo Chavez is its elected president. He is not a dictator and he obviously does not have autocratic control of the system or the amendments he supported would not have been voted down.
It is time for the US government and the US corporate media to acknowledge that freedom of speech and assembly are alive and well in Venezuela. The wealthy opposition to the "Bolivarian process" owns the great majority of print and electronic media and was completely free to attack the proposed amendments and Chavez himself, which it did daily and in language that we would never see outside of blogs in the United States.
It is time for the US government and US corporate media to acknowledge that Venezuela's electoral process is free and fair. Its electronic voting machines issue paper receipts which make fraud almost impossible. We only can wish that electronic voting in the US were as reliable. A defeat by only 1-1/2 percent would have been converted to a victory by those in power in many countries. Mexico's long tradition of dirty elections easily comes to mind.
It is time for the US government to stop interfering in Venezuela's democracy and time for the US corporate media to stop aiding and abetting it. Reports are that the US government , through the US Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy, spent $8 million of US taxpayer's money to influence the vote on the referendum. That would be the equivalent of a foreign country spending $92.6 million on a national referendum – if we had such a democratic tool – in the US. Would we tolerate that? The Venezuela Solidarity Network organized a delegation to Venezuela in October of 2006 to investigate US government interference in that year's presidential election. The US embassy official who met with us freely admitted that the US was spending $26 million on Venezuela's presidential election. What would be the reaction in the US if Venezuela spent the equivalent $301 million on our upcoming presidential election?
It is time for the US government to close the Office of Transition Initiatives housed in the US embassy in Caracas. Venezuela's transition to a real democracy that began with the rejection of the old political parties of the elites in 1998 is alive and well and doesn't need any so-called "democracy building" from the United States. Indeed, there's a lot we could learn about democracy from the Venezuelans.
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14) Now and Forever
By BOB HERBERT
December 4, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04herbert.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Most of the time we pretend it’s not there: The staggering financial cost of the war in Iraq, which continues to soar, unchecked, like a rocket headed toward the moon and beyond.
Early last year, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the “true” cost of the war would ultimately exceed $1 trillion, and maybe even $2 trillion.
Incredibly, that estimate may have been low.
A report prepared for the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate warns that without a significant change of course in Iraq, the long-term cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could head into the vicinity of $3.5 trillion. The vast majority of those expenses would be for Iraq.
Priorities don’t get much more twisted. A country that can’t find the money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild the city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school system, is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a failed and endless war.
“The No. 1 reason that the war in Iraq should end,” said Senator Charles Schumer, chairman of the joint committee, “is the loss of life that is occurring without accomplishing any of the goals that even President Bush put forward.”
But “right below that,” he said, is the need to stop squandering incredible amounts of money that could be put to better use — helping to “make people’s lives better” — here at home. That colossal and continuing waste, he said, “should cause anxiety in anyone who cares about the future of this country. I know it causes me anxiety.”
President Bush’s formal funding requests for Iraq have already exceeded $600 billion. In addition to that, the report offers estimates of the war’s “hidden costs” from its beginning to 2017: the long-term costs of treating the wounded and disabled; interest and other costs associated with borrowing to finance the war; the money needed to repair or replace military equipment; the increased costs of military recruitment and retention; and such difficult to gauge but very real costs as the loss of productivity from those who have been killed or wounded.
What matters more than the precision of these estimates (Republicans are not happy with them) is the undeniable fact that the costs associated with the Iraq war are huge and carry with them enormous societal consequences.
Far from seeking a halt to the war, the Bush administration has been considering a significant U.S. military presence in Iraq that would last for many years, if not decades. There has been very little public discussion and no thorough analysis of the overall implications of such a policy.
What is indisputable, however, is that everything associated with the Iraq war has cost vastly more than the administration’s absurdly sunny forecasts. The direct appropriations are already roughly 10 times the amount of the administration’s original estimates of the entire cost of the war.
Senator Schumer and other Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee have been trying (not very successfully, so far) to get other policy makers and the public at large to focus on the sheer insanity of pumping hundreds of billions — if not trillions — of public dollars into a failed venture with no end even remotely in view.
There are myriad better ways to use the many millions of dollars that the U.S. spends on Iraq every day. Two important long-term investments that come to mind — and that would put large numbers of Americans to work — are the development of a serious strategy for achieving energy independence over the next several years and the creation of a large-scale program for rebuilding the aging American infrastructure.
To get to those, or any number of other important initiatives, the country’s leaders will have to somehow get past their bizarre reluctance to end this debilitating war.
I asked Senator Schumer how soon he thought U.S. forces should leave Iraq. He said: “You start withdrawing in three months and be out in a year. In my view, there would be a small force left — 10,000 or 15,000 — to deal with any Al Qaeda camps that might be set up. But that’s it.”
His words were echoed in another context by Senator Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat (and also a member of the Joint Economic Committee), who said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday that “it’s not in the strategic interest of the United States” to have a long-term military presence in Iraq.
Youngsters who were just starting high school when the U.S. invaded Iraq are in college now. Their children, yet unborn, will be called on to fork over tax money to continue paying for the war.
Seriously. How long do we want this madness to last?
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15) American Exception
Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers
By ADAM LIPTAK
Skip to next paragraph
American Exception
Murder, Once Removed
December 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/us/04felony.html?hp
This is the second in an occasional series of articles that will examine commonplace aspects of the American justice system that are actually unique in the world.
Previous Articles in the Series »
CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. — Early in the morning of March 10, 2003, after a raucous party that lasted into the small hours, a groggy and hungover 20-year-old named Ryan Holle lent his Chevrolet Metro to a friend. That decision, prosecutors later said, was tantamount to murder.
The friend used the car to drive three men to the Pensacola home of a marijuana dealer, aiming to steal a safe. The burglary turned violent, and one of the men killed the dealer’s 18-year-old daughter by beating her head in with a shotgun he found in the home.
Mr. Holle was a mile and a half away, but that did not matter.
He was convicted of murder under a distinctively American legal doctrine that makes accomplices as liable as the actual killer for murders committed during felonies like burglaries, rapes and robberies.
Mr. Holle, who had given the police a series of statements in which he seemed to admit knowing about the burglary, was convicted of first-degree murder. He is serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole at the Wakulla Correctional Institution here, 20 miles southwest of Tallahassee.
A prosecutor explained the theory to the jury at Mr. Holle’s trial in Pensacola in 2004. “No car, no crime,” said the prosecutor, David Rimmer. “No car, no consequences. No car, no murder.”
Most scholars trace the doctrine, which is an aspect of the felony murder rule, to English common law, but Parliament abolished it in 1957. The felony murder rule, which has many variations, generally broadens murder liability for participants in violent felonies in two ways. An unintended killing during a felony is considered murder under the rule. So is, as Mr. Holle learned, a killing by an accomplice.
India and other common law countries have followed England in abolishing the doctrine. In 1990, the Canadian Supreme Court did away with felony murder liability for accomplices, saying it violated “the principle that punishment must be proportionate to the moral blameworthiness of the offender.”
Countries outside the common law tradition agree. “The view in Europe,” said James Q. Whitman, a professor of comparative law at Yale, “is that we hold people responsible for their own acts and not the acts of others.”
But prosecutors and victims’ rights groups in the United States say that punishing accomplices as though they had been the actual killers is perfectly appropriate.
“The felony murder rule serves important interests,” said Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor in the Holle case, “because it holds all persons responsible for the actions of each other if they are all participating in the same crime.”
Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims’ rights group, said “all perpetrators of the underlying felony, not just the one who pulls the trigger” should be held accountable for murder.
“A person who has chosen to commit armed robbery, rape or kidnapping has chosen to do something with a strong possibility of causing the death of an innocent person,” Mr. Scheidegger said. “That choice makes it morally justified to convict the person of murder when that possibility happens.”
About 16 percent of homicides in 2006 occurred during felonies, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Statistics concerning how many of those killings led to the murder prosecutions of accomplices are not available, but legal experts say such prosecutions are relatively common in the more than 30 states that allow them. About 80 people have been sentenced to death in the last three decades for participating in a felony that led to a murder though they did not kill anyone.
Terry Snyder, whose daughter Jessica was the victim in Mr. Holle’s case, said Mr. Holle’s conduct was as blameworthy as that of the man who shattered her skull.
“It never would have happened unless Ryan Holle had lent the car,” Mr. Snyder said. “It was as good as if he was there.”
Prosecutors sometimes also justify the doctrine on the ground that it deters murders. Criminals who know they will face harsh punishment if someone dies in the course of a felony, supporters of the felony murder rule say, may plan their crimes with more care, may leave deadly weapons at home and may decide not to commit the underlying felony at all.
But the evidence of a deterrent effect is thin. An unpublished analysis of F.B.I. crime data from 1970 to 1998 by Anup Malani, a law professor at the University of Chicago, found that the presence of the felony murder rule had a relatively small effect on criminal behavior, reducing the number of deaths during burglaries and car thefts slightly, not affecting deaths during rapes and, perversely, increasing the number of deaths during robberies. That last finding, the study said, “is hard to explain” and “warrants further exploration.”
The felony murder rule’s defenders acknowledge that it can be counterintuitive.
“It may not make any sense to you,” Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor in Mr. Holle’s case, told the jury. “He has to be treated just as if he had done all the things the other four people did.”
Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Charles Miller Jr., the man who actually killed Jessica Snyder, but he was sentenced to life without parole. So were the men who entered the Snyders’ home with him, Donnie Williams and Jermond Thomas. So was William Allen Jr., who drove the car. So was Mr. Holle.
Mr. Holle had no criminal record. He had lent his car to Mr. Allen, a housemate, countless times before.
“All he did was go say, ‘Use the car,’ ” Mr. Allen said of Mr. Holle in a pretrial deposition. “I mean, nobody really knew that girl was going to get killed. It was not in the plans to go kill somebody, you know.”
But Mr. Holle did testify that he had been told it might be necessary to “knock out” Jessica Snyder. Mr. Holle is 25 now, a tall, lean and lively man with a rueful sense of humor, alert brown eyes and an unusually deep voice. In a spare office at the prison here, he said that he had not taken the talk of a burglary seriously.
“I honestly thought they were going to get food,” he said of the men who used his car, all of whom had attended the nightlong party at Mr. Holle’s house, as had Jessica Snyder.
“When they actually mentioned what was going on, I thought it was a joke,” Mr. Holle added, referring to the plan to steal the Snyders’ safe. “I thought they were just playing around. I was just very naïve. Plus from being drinking that night, I just didn’t understand what was going on.”
Mr. Holle’s trial lawyer, Sharon K. Wilson, said the statements he had given to the police were the key to the case, given the felony murder rule.
“It’s just draconian,” Ms. Wilson said. “The worst thing he was guilty of was partying too much and not being discriminating enough in who he was partying with.”
Mr. Holle’s trial took one day. “It was done, probably, by 5 o’clock,” Mr. Holle said. “That’s with the deliberations and the verdict and the sentence.”
Witnesses described the horror of the crime. Christine Snyder, for instance, recalled finding her daughter, her head bashed in and her teeth knocked out.
“Then what did you do?” the prosecutor asked her.
“I went screaming out of the home saying they blew my baby’s face off,” Ms. Snyder said.
The safe had belonged to Christine Snyder. The police found a pound of marijuana in it, and, after her daughter’s funeral, she was sentenced to three years in prison for possessing it.
Not every state’s version of the felony murder rule is as strict as Florida’s, and a few states, including Hawaii, Kentucky and Michigan, have abolished it entirely.
“The felony-murder rule completely ignores the concept of determination of guilt on the basis of individual misconduct,” the Michigan Supreme Court wrote in 1980.
The vast majority of states retain it in various forms, but courts and officials have taken occasional steps to limit its harshest applications.
In August, for instance, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Foster, the driver of a getaway car in a robbery spree that ended in a murder.
Mr. Holle was the only one of the five men charged with murdering Jessica Snyder who was offered a plea bargain, one that might have led to 10 years in prison.
“I did so because he was not as culpable as the others,” said Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor.
Mr. Holle, who rejected the deal, has spent some time thinking about the felony murder rule.
“The laws that they use to convict people are just — they have to revise them,” he said. “Just because I lent these guys my car, why should I be convicted the same as these people that actually went to the scene of the crime and actually committed the crime?”
Mr. Rimmer sounded ambivalent on this point.
“Whether or not the felony murder rule can result in disproportionate justice is a matter of opinion,” Mr. Rimmer said. “The father of Jessica Snyder does not think so.”
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16) Sloppy Police Lab Work Leads to Retesting
By THOMAS J. LUECK
December 4, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/nyregion/04lab.html?hp
The New York Police Department has begun to test thousands of drug evidence samples, as a review by the state’s inspector general has found that sloppy work by analysts in the department’s crime laboratory could have skewed drug evidence used by prosecutors.
But since the mistakes in the laboratory, the nation’s busiest, were found to have been made in 2002, some of the evidence has been destroyed, making any new tests very difficult, according to the review, which was released yesterday. Legal experts said this could open the door to appeals by those who want to have their convictions overturned or their sentences shortened.
The slipshod drug testing — which may have involved “dry-labbing,” or failing to test all the bags when many were seized — has been acknowledged by the Police Department, which transferred or disciplined three technicians who failed internal tests of their accuracy in 2002. Since 2002, the lab has been revamped and restaffed.
The department has said that the errors did not rise to the level of a criminal offense. But in March, the office of the state inspector general, Kristine Hamann, began its own investigation, and has now come to a different conclusion.
“The integrity of evidence is a cornerstone of law enforcement,” Ms. Hamann said yesterday. “These lapses were a threat not only to the prosecution of drug crimes, but to the public’s trust in our criminal justice system.”
She recommended that the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, consider criminal charges against the three former analysts, known as criminalists, and against W. Mark Dale, a former director of the criminal laboratory who retired in 2004. Attempts to reach Mr. Dale by phone last night were unsuccessful.
The drugs seized by the police are often the most important evidence in prosecutions, which can also involve witness testimony, often from undercover police officers who made drug purchases. The amount seized usually affects the severity of sentencing.
Since May, the report said, the Police Department has recalled for review evidence from 3,000 drug testing cases, including those performed by the three former criminalists and others who worked in the laboratory in 2002. Five analysts and a supervisor have been assigned to the review.
But by late September, the investigation hit a roadblock, after a property clerk determined that evidence for 709 of the 3,000 cases had been destroyed. So far, the report said, 413 cases have been reviewed, and “the laboratory states that no significant discrepancies have been discovered that would compromise the original findings.”
The inspector general’s report said that the 2002 drug testing errors were not brought to the attention of state officials until March 2007, and that the five intervening years had left a cold trail of evidence that had been destroyed or contaminated, making it difficult to determine how accurate the original testing had been.
It said officials of the crime laboratory also failed to inform the Laboratory Accreditation Board of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, an oversight group it had pledged to keep informed of any lapses in testing procedures.
Ms. Hamann said yesterday that the five-year lapse made it impossible to tell if others at the city laboratory, which employs 100 criminalists, had taken shortcuts in the sometimes tedious process of drug testing.
“If there had been a thorough investigation at the time, we might know,” she said. “The N.Y.P.D. is now valiantly trying to catch up, but I don’t think anyone can know” the extent to which erroneous drug test may have been used in prosecutions.
Peter Neufeld, a lawyer and co-founder of the Innocence Project, a legal group based in New York that uses DNA evidence to represent people it thinks have been wrongly convicted, said the inspector general’s findings “undermine God knows how many convictions” in drug cases. He said he expected many motions to dismiss or to amend the severity of sentences that are based on the amount or weight of the illegal substance tied to a defendant.
Both the police and Ms. Hamann said yesterday that major strides had been made by the crime laboratory since 2002, which was the first year of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly’s current tenure as the head of the department. (He also was police commissioner for slightly more than 14 months under former Mayor David N. Dinkins.)
Paul J. Browne, a spokesman for the department, said the laboratory’s management had been revamped and a committee of police officials and civilian forensic scientists had been set up to review its procedures. An inspection in October by the Laboratory Accreditation Board found that the lab satisfied more than 98 percent of the board’s criteria, including quality assurance, staffing and evidence storage.
But the report said senior officials in charge of the laboratory had been far too slow to respond when evidence of inaccurate drug testing was found in 2002, and allowed the same criminalists who failed internal tests to remain on the job. One was suspended after she failed a second internal test, but was responsible for 23 drug cases after she failed the first time, the report said, and another worked on 11 tests between his first and second internal tests, both of which he failed. Both criminalists should have been removed after failing a single test, the report said.
“The lab cannot conclusively state that no incorrect reports were issued by the three employees,” the report said.
Mr. Browne said advanced technology was being used to analyze the old drug evidence, even where the evidence had been destroyed or contaminated. In some cases, he said, the laboratory is taking scrapings from envelopes in which the now-discarded powder had been sealed.
The department has also changed its methods to avoid similar problems in the future, Mr. Browne said.
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17) Chavez Calls to Continue Strengthening Socialism in Venezuela
GRANMA
December 4, 2007
Walter Lippmann
CARACAS, December 3.- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Monday
that he would continue to raise the banner of socialism in his
country, waiting for the day when history would allow it to reach its
greatest height.
Chavez spoke on the Dando y Dando Venezuelan TV program, reflecting
on the close defeat Sunday of his constitutional reform proposal.
"Let's rally; let's study more to better understand socialism," said
Chavez after analyzing the reasons why his initiative was defeated.
He said that his initial conclusion after hearing the results was
that the people were not ready to take such a big leap towards this
model.
Chavez noted that abstention proved the greatest enemy of the
reforms, "We didn't even get the number of votes of all the members
of the United Socialist Party." He said the experience merits a
reflection on what went wrong and why three million followers of his
government stayed home instead of going to the polls.
President Chavez was buoyed up by the fact that nearly 50 percent
voted YES for socialism, and three million people who abstained
didn't say NO, "We are going to convince them that this project is
for them."
Chavez said that while an opportunity had been lost, "the rhythm and
the government program will continue on course."
"Beyond the media bombardment and our shortcomings -our inability to
properly explain and coming up short in our communications strategy-,
I might have chosen the wrong moment to put forth this proposal,"
said Chavez.
Nonetheless, he said his government would continue to make social
reforms where permitted by the constitution and will prepare to
present the proposal again when the right conditions for doing so
exist.
Chavez concluded his statements saying, "We didn't fail with this
proposal, nor do we have to find another. The proposal is there, and
it is positive, even for many who voted against it." (PL)
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18) Will Defeat Alter Chávez's Path?
Venezuela Leader's Failure
To Cement Power Expected
To Embolden Opposition
By JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA and JOHN LYONS
December 4, 2007; Page A4
WALL STREET JOURNAL
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's defeat in a
referendum on changing the country's constitution will energize the nation's
opposition, but the leader is likely to continue his quest to remain in
power and turn the country into a bastion of what he calls 21st-century
socialism.
Mr. Chávez's defeat in Sunday's vote shows a growing impatience among
Venezuelans, including surprising numbers of Mr. Chávez's supporters, about
his inability to substantially improve their lives, despite near-record-high
oil prices and the fact that he has governed the country for nearly a
decade. Mr. Chávez sought to amend the constitution of the world's
ninth-largest oil producer to allow him to concentrate nearly all power,
including scrapping limits on re-election.
Mr. Chávez's defeat will ripple across Latin America, hurting allies in
countries like Bolivia and Ecuador and boosting moderates in Brazil and
Chile. For the U.S. and Europe, a weaker Mr. Chávez is welcome news. The
former military officer has been increasingly hostile to Western interests
in the past few years, nationalizing key areas of the economy like the oil
industry, telecommunications and utilities.
Despite the result, Mr. Chávez will remain a major force. He still enjoys a
deep reservoir of support among the country's majority poor and working
class. He controls the country's courts, most of its media, the congress and
almost all local and state governments. He is also a recognized comeback
king. In 2002, he was knocked out of power for two days but came back. And
in 1998, only four years after being released from prison for his
unsuccessful 1992 coup attempt, Mr. Chávez was elected president of
Venezuela for the first time.
"He is wounded, but he's still very dangerous," says Fernando Ochoa, a
former defense minister. Now that the constitutional referendum has failed,
Mr. Ochoa warns that Mr. Chávez may try to keep pushing his agenda, perhaps
by calling for a constitutional convention.
[Hugo Chavez]
The main lesson for Mr. Chávez from the vote could be that he needs to focus
on issues of popular concern such as the economy and crime. His ideas about
so-called 21st-century socialism and performances on the international
stage, including his gibes at President Bush, didn't help him much with
voters.
"People are tired of his bombast after nine years of nearly constant
mobilization," says Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a
Washington think tank. "His magic and charm are wearing thin next to the
still poor quality of government services."
Mr. Chávez has used oil money to direct billions of dollars in health and
food subsidies. The spending has created make-work jobs and put money in
people's pockets, but other economic policies like price controls have
backfired. Basics like rice, sugar, milk and chicken are sometimes hard to
find in a country where the economy is booming from oil wealth.
Crime is another problem area. While Mr. Chávez gives Venezuela's oil money
to allies around Latin America, violent crime is rising in Venezuela's
cities. The poor -- Mr. Chávez's base -- suffer the most because the rich
insulate themselves behind bodyguards and high walls.
The outcome of the vote shows that Mr. Chávez is more out of touch with his
supporter base than his man-of-the-people image would suggest.
Mr. Chávez had predicted a 10-percentage-point victory in the referendum and
was seemingly unaware that many of his supporters could defect. One
explanation is a heavy travel schedule that leaves him less time for
domestic affairs. Another is the isolation that comes with power.
"Strongmen often surround themselves with sycophants who tell them what they
want to hear," said Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere Studies at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "They get carried away by the
soothing tones of their advisers."
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Chávez, whose political style has been one
of confrontation rather than conciliation, will heed the wake-up call he has
received. If he doesn't, Venezuela could face unrest as Mr. Chávez's
emboldened opposition presses for more space.
Jerrold Post, the head of George Washington University's Political
Psychology Program, recently completed a psychological study of Mr. Chávez
for the U.S. Air Force. Mr. Chávez, says Dr. Post, is "immensely
narcissistic" and "enormously self-absorbed."
Mr. Chávez's defeat should give succor to his opponents. One of the biggest
challenges for the middle- and upper-class leaders of the opposition parties
will be figuring out how to cross class lines and compete for the votes of
disillusioned Chávez supporters in working-class neighborhoods. While many
of these voters opposed the referendum, they also have a deep mistrust of
Venezuelan elites who governed the country for generations.
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19) What's next for Venezuela?
An analysis of the referendum setback
By: Gloria La Riva
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7717&news_iv_ctrl=1016
[A nice companion piece to read is FAIR's reminder, written on August 18, 2002,
of how U.S. newspapers hailed the 2002 coup:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1867]
The defeat of Chávez’s proposed constitutional reforms in the Dec. 2 referendum
does not signify by any means that the struggle for socialism is over.
It only shows there is an urgent need for a renewed drive to organize the people
to defend their gains and to build the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela
(PSUV) on the basis of fighting for socialist revolution.
It is true that supporters of the Bolivarian revolutionary process have suffered
a setback, but lessons can be learned from the experience to strengthen the
movement.
It is understandable that millions of Venezuelan people who believe in the
socialist vision of Chávez’s leadership might be temporarily demoralized by the
referendum’s defeat.
The fact that 5.7 million Venezuelans have signed on to become members of the
Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela shows that they share that vision of
reorganizing society to meet people’s needs.
The defeat shows that the people’s struggle and organization is more necessary
than ever. The counter-revolutionary forces, emboldened by its narrow victory,
have already gone on the offensive.
The U.S. imperialists have pumped tens of millions of dollars into Venezuelan
counterrevolutionary groups. That figure will surely be multiplied in the coming
period with the intention of reversing the Bolivarian gains already won, and to
promote student, military, corporate and worker opponents.
For instance, the former general Raúl Baduel, who on Nov. 5 defected to the
opposition and slandered the proposed reforms as a “coup,” is now announcing a
campaign to “reform” the 1999 popular Bolivarian constitution.
Baduel’s denunciation of the referendum was not a surprise. As the revolutionary
process advances, the more liberal elements among the former Chávez backers
inevitably fall away and turn actively against the process.
But an inexcusable betrayal of the masses was the action of a smaller group of
so-called socialist elements (those trying to find a “third road” between
revolution and counter-revolution) like Orlando Chirino, of the “Movement to
Build a Workers’ Party,” who urged a “null” vote, abstention, before the
referendum, or Heinz Dieterich, a petty-bourgeois intellectual who had proposed
“conciliation” between Baduel and Chávez.
These so-called supporters of the Bolivarian revolution who called for “no”
votes and abstention only helped confuse Chávez supporters. Regardless of any
differences they had with the proposed reforms, Chirino and Dieterich played the
role of strike-breakers. But their betrayal was on a much larger scale than a
union fight, for U.S. imperialism is leading the other side.
The 50.7 percent vote against the constitutional reforms does not invalidate the
progressive changes embodied in the 69 articles of reform, including the 6-hour
workday, social security for the marginalized sector of informal workers, a
prohibition on any type of discrimination, and an increase in institutional
power for local community entities.
Nor does it mean that the vast majority of people oppose those changes.
The referendum results point to the fact that socialism, a new social system,
cannot be achieved through elections alone.
While a referendum proclaiming socialism could conceivably win, getting the
capitalists to peacefully agree to give up their wealth and power is quite
another thing.
Why did the referendum lose? In absolute terms, compared to Chávez's landslide
presidential victory a year ago, the opposition only increased its vote by about
100,000. On the other hand, around 2.8 million people who voted for Chávez last
year abstained this year. What explains the abstentions?
For one, the capitalist class still possesses powerful instruments for shaping
public opinion, and organized a massive misinformation campaign full of
hysterical anti-communist lies. A CIA communiqué discovered only a few days
before the referendum, reveals that Washington played an active part in this
campaign. The U.S. government engineered a multi-pronged destabilization effort
that included falsifying poll statistics, claiming fraud after the referendum,
and potentially launching a military coup in the days after Dec. 2.
The newly formed PSUV still contains a non-revolutionary wing that in some areas
did not launch an aggressive offensive to counter the opposition. In addition,
the capitalists have organized wide-scale economic sabotage, which have led to
shortages of goods as basic as milk and eggs. Unemployment and poverty remain,
despite the many advances and mobilizations of the Bolivarian revolution. The
defection of Baduel and the social-democratic party Podemos—both of which
campaigned in the name of “21st century socialism” against the reforms—added to
the confusion.
A protracted year’s long political mobilization that seeks to incrementally move
a country in the direction of socialism entails the inevitable risk of creating
a degree of exhaustion, at least in some sectors of the working class. Over such
a long period of time, consciousness invariably ebbs and flows. The over 4
million people who voted for the 69 reforms consciously voted for socialism.
This in itself represents an enormous advance in class consciousness compared to
a few years ago. But other Chávez supporters undoubtedly will only mobilize in
the name of socialism once it has provided a concrete remedy to the economic
situation.
How will socialism come about?
A virtual dual power exists in Venezuela, with a revolutionary government headed
by Hugo Chávez, which has loosened the grip of international and Venezuelan
capitalists.
With the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the foreign oil companies
lost their longstanding control of the petroleum resources. Those that have
remained in Venezuela have been forced to pay higher royalties to the state.
The hundreds of billions of dollars in extra government funds, coupled with the
legislative moves of the pro-Chávez National Assembly, have allowed the
Bolivarian government to launch great changes in people’s lives.
Healthcare is now free to millions on demand, with the invaluable contribution
of 14,000 Cuban doctors, and the virtual replacement of the private-sector
capitalist healthcare system.
Private university education, another institution of the capitalist system, has
been supplemented by the creation of 14 popular universities providing free
education. In this way hundreds of thousands of working-class and poor youth are
being prepared for vital economic, social and administrative futures in a new
revolutionary society.
Significant progress has been made in the countryside where peasants have
mobilized to take advantage of their newly-won rights to confiscate land from
the wealthy.
The capitalists’ influence has been eroded, but tremendous power still remains
in the hands of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie.
They retain the right of private property, which is the right to own the means
of production, to hire and fire workers, and to shut down a workplace. This is
not to be confused with the right to personal property, which includes home
ownership. The landlords still have the right to throw tenants from their homes
and into the streets.
Chávez’s presidency and the many tremendous social and economic gains of the
Venezuelan people have defied the capitalists’ longstanding control of the
system and society, but the capitalists have not been vanquished.
The struggle, not elections brought Chávez to office
Notwithstanding Chávez’s election as president in 1998, it was in reality the
open struggle that brought Chávez to prominence. And it was this struggle that
propelled him to the presidency.
Chávez was swept into office by the Venezuelan people in December 1998 not
because he had money or a political machine that could deliver votes in the way
of traditional bourgeois elections.
It was not because Chávez had served as a congressman or senator previously and
thus had some traditional electoral sway; he never held public office before 1999.
Chávez was completely unknown to the population, until two seminal events
propelled him from anonymity into the spotlight, and launched the Venezuelan
masses onto the stage of history.
First was the 1989 Caracazo, a spontaneous rebellion of tens of thousands of
Venezuela’s poorest and most downtrodden. Although Venezuela is one of the
richest oil-producing countries in the world, 80 percent of the country suffered
in a desperate situation of poverty. In 1989, the poor came into the streets to
protest the country’s widespread poverty and the government’s food and energy
price hikes. The military killed thousands before suppressing the uprising.
The Caracazo was the people’s response to the country’s objective conditions.
What awoke the people’s struggle was not a convincing electoral campaign by
Chávez. The struggle came first. It is the struggle that has sustained the
revolutionary process to the present.
On Feb. 4, 1992, Chávez led a revolt by progressive forces in the military
against the rightwing government of Carlos Andrés Pérez. Though it failed,
millions of Venezuelans were deeply inspired by Chávez’s fighting spirit.
Chávez’s first electoral victory in 1998, when he was elected president, and the
subsequent electoral victories, have been products of struggle.
In April 2002—just three years into his administration, before today’s social
projects had been fully developed—Chávez was overthrown by elements in the
military. Then too it was the hundreds of thousands of the poorest and most
exploited people in society who spontaneously came into the streets, prepared
for battle, and restored their president.
As one young man I interviewed in 2004 said, “We came from Caricuao, Catia, from
all the neighborhoods, to bring Chávez back. Either we were going to bring back
our president, or we were going to die doing so. And we brought back our president.”
When the oil managerial class sabotaged Venezuela’s oil industry, shutting it
down from Dec. 2002 to Feb. 2003, the Bolivarian workers rescued it by
restarting the industry, and supporting the ouster of the saboteurs. It did not
require a referendum to justify their actions but they succeeded in regaining
control of the country’s oil.
The capitalists will not be dislodged by elections
In a society where the capitalists hold power, socialism will not be built by
electoral mobilizations—regardless of how popular some of the referenda have
been in the past.
As long as the capitalist class is not expropriated, it will continue to
mobilize, spread misinformation, prepare for counter-revolution and function as
a conveyor belt for U.S. imperialist aggression.
Many commentaries from pro-Chávez forces—in Venezuela and abroad—have been
issued in the hours since the defeat of the constitutional reform. Some have
lauded the “institutional maturity” of the elections, and assured the rightwing
that the Bolivarian masses and leadership, by respecting the outcome, hope that
in the future, the opposition will also abide by any future Bolivarian victory.
This argument is deeply flawed. Formal democracy is a false issue raised by
bourgeois' propaganda only when it fits into their plan to discredit the
revolution. The revolutionaries gain nothing by adopting the arguments of the
counter-revolution. The working people more than ever need a consistently class
conscious explanation of the referendum setback.
The opposition has no interest in any kind of democracy. It has learned time and
time again in the past nine years that its future as exploiters of the
Venezuelan people is threatened.
It is not even interested in preserving the bourgeois democracy that it used to
control society before 1999. If the U.S. imperialists and rightwing were to
succeed in overpowering the Bolivarian dual-power government, it would
immediately turn to violent counter-revolution, to crush the popular
organizations and the millions of working people who have awakened to political
life.
In the bourgeoisie’s 48-hour experiment during the short-lived April 2002 coup
that overthrew Chávez, Pedro Carmona, head of the country’s Chamber of Commerce
and the two-day coup “president,” annulled the constitution, dissolved the
National Assembly and Supreme Court and declared martial law. The police began
to round up known pro-Chávez activists. If not for the overturn of the coup,
there would have soon followed severe repression and killing of revolutionary
leaders.
All pretenses of democracy were instantly abolished. This provides a glimpse of
what Venezuela will look like should the opposition regain political power.
Although the right wing is howling that Chávez threatens "democracy,” what they
really fear is a workers’ democracy which necessarily includes nationalization
of the economy -- unfolding before their eyes. They fear a social system that
aims to do away with exploitation, misery and oppression.
The United States ruling class is determined to see that the revolutionary
vision of Chávez and the people is not only defeated but annihilated. The impact
of Venezuela’s revolutionary struggle, as well as Cuba’s, is reaching virtually
every corner of Latin America.
What is at stake is either socialist revolution or fascist repression. For the
Bolivarian masses, there can be no hesitation going forward.
Strengthening of the popular organizations and defense preparedness is critical.
The dangerous U.S. destabilization plots entailed in the Nov. 20 CIA memorandum,
if the referendum had passed, are only the tip of the iceberg. There can be no
vacillation or middle ground for the people of Venezuela.
It is critical to recognize that while the revolution has been dealt a setback,
it has not been defeated, and therefore can recover and carry the revolutionary
process forward. No true revolution has gone from success to success; all have
suffered setbacks.
December 2, 2007 is not like September 11, 1973, when the U.S.-backed coup led
to the physical destruction of the revolutionary and progressive forces in Chile.
The duty of progressive-minded people the world over is to defend the Venezuelan
revolutionary process and to demand the end of U.S. intervention.
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Senator Criticizes Genentech’s Limits on a Cheaper Drug
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Genentech’s plan to restrict the availability of Avastin so doctors cannot use it instead of a more expensive medicine for eye disease will cost taxpayers $1 billion to $3 billion a year, according to Senator Herb Kohl.
Senator Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, said in letters to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration that Genentech’s decision to limit access to the medicine by pharmacies that repackage drugs “is of great concern.”
He also sent the company a letter saying that his staff would investigate the restrictions.
The company, based in South San Francisco, wants specialists to buy its newer treatment, Lucentis, instead of Avastin.
November 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/business/29eye.html?ref=health
Weak Dollar Propels Sales at Tiffany
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Jewelry and luxury goods retailer Tiffany & Company’s third-quarter earnings more than tripled on strong sales growth and a gain on the sale and leaseback of its Tokyo flagship store, the company said yesterday.
It also raised its earnings outlook for the full year. However, the company’s stock fell $2.32, or 5 percent, to $46.43 a share, after a morning rally, as analysts expressed caution that its Manhattan flagship store has become a temporarily disproportionate driver of sales, helped by a flood of foreign tourists who are taking advantage of the declining dollar.
The company, based in New York, said net income climbed to $98.9 million, or 71 cents a share, from $29.1 million, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier.
Sales increased 18 percent to $627.3 million from $531.8 million a year earlier, helped by a 9 percent rise in global sales at stores open at least one year.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected profit of 25 cents a share.
December 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/business/01tiffany.html?ref=business
Israeli Court Upholds Gaza Fuel Cuts
By STEVEN ERLANGER
World Briefing | Middle East
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the government could continue cutting fuel supplies to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which it has done since Oct. 28. But it ordered a delay on plans to cut electricity until new details are offered by the groups challenging the plan.
December 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/world/middleeast/01briefs-gaza.html?ref=world
Canada: Man Dies After Shock From Taser
By IAN AUSTEN
World Briefing | Americas
November 23, 2007
A 45-year-old man who had been arrested on assault charges died, about a day after the police in Nova Scotia used a Taser to subdue him. The man was the third person to die in Canada in just over a month after being shocked by Tasers wielded by police officers. Justice Minister Cecil Clarke ordered a review of the use of the hand-held stun guns following the man’s death, the latest in a series of government inquiries into the use of Tasers by the police. Widespread outrage in Canada followed the broadcast of a video last month that showed another man being shocked at least twice with Tasers at a Vancouver airport by officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The man, a Polish immigrant who appeared extremely confused on the video, died. A Montreal man also died last month, three days after he was subdued by the police with a Taser while being arrested for drunken driving.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/world/americas/23briefs-taser.html?ref=world
California: Cards for Immigrants
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lawmakers have given final approval to a law making San Francisco the nation’s largest city to issue identification cards to illegal immigrants. The Board of Supervisors voted 10 to 1 to create a municipal ID program to help residents without driver’s licenses obtain access to services and feel secure dealing with local law enforcement. The measure is modeled after a program that started last summer in New Haven, Conn. Supporters say that along with immigrants, elderly people who no longer drive and transgender individuals whose driver’s licenses no longer reflect their appearances also would benefit from having the cards. The measure goes into effect in August.
November 21, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/us/21brfs-CARDSFORIMMI_BRF.html?ref=us
Manhattan: Teachers Criticize Review Unit
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, called for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor to apologize to the city’s 80,000 teachers yesterday, a day after the chancellor sent principals an e-mail message announcing the formation of teams of lawyers and consultants meant to help principals remove poorly performing tenured teachers. Ms. Weingarten said that the message seemed timed to the release yesterday of national reading and math test scores showing little progress among New York City students. “The first speck of bad news, all of the sudden they go after teachers,” Ms. Weingarten said. The mayor said yesterday that removing tenured teachers was “a last alternative.”
November 16, 2007
New York
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/nyregion/16mbrfs-TEACHERS.html?ref=nyregion
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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We Didn't Start the Fire
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html
I Can't Take it No More
http://lefti.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html#9214483115237950361
The Art of Mental Warfare
http://artofmentalwarfare.com/pog/artofmentalwarfarecom-the-warning/
MONEY AS DEBT
http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279
http://www.moneyasd ebt.net/
UNCONSTITUTIONAL
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6582099850410121223&pr=goog-sl
IRAQ FOR SALE
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6621486727392146155
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Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
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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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