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SAVE RENT CONTROL! NO ON PROP. 98!
http://leftinsf.com/blog/index.php/archives/2492
We All Hate that 98!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVwxGgLBpoU
[The catch is, that while it's true that the landlord can increase rents to whatever he or she wants once a property becomes vacant, the current rent-control law now ensures that the new tenants are still under rent-control for their, albeit higher, rent. Under the new law, there simply will be no rent control when the new tenant moves in so their much higher rent-rate can increase as much as the landlord chooses each year from then on!!! So, no more rent-control at all!!! Tricky, huh?...BW]
READ ALL OF PROP. 98 at: http://yesprop98.com/read/?_adctlid=v%7Cwynx8c5jjesxsb%7Cwziq39twoqov52
"- Government may not set the price at which property owners sell or lease their property.
"...SECTION 6. EFFECTIVE DATE
The provisions of this Act shall become effective on the day following the election ("effective date"); except that any statute, charter provision, ordinance, or regulation by a public agency enacted prior to January 1, 2007, that limits the price a rental property owner may charge a tenant to occupy a residential rental unit ("unit") or mobile home space ("space") may remain in effect as to such unit or space after the effective date for so long as, but only so long as, at least one of the tenants of such unit or space as of the effective date ("qualified tenant") continues to live in such unit or space as his or her principal place of residence. At such time as a unit or space no longer is used by any qualified tenant as his or her principal place of residence because, as to such unit or space, he or she has: (a) voluntarily vacated; (b) assigned, sublet, sold or transferred his or her tenancy rights either voluntarily or by court order; (c) abandoned; (d) died; or he or she has (e) been evicted pursuant to paragraph (2), (3), (4) or (5) of Section 1161 of the Code of Civil Procedure or Section 798.56 of the Civil Code as in effect on January 1, 2007; then, and in such event, the provisions of this Act shall be effective immediately as to such unit or space."
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Stop fumigation of citizens without their consent in California
Target: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Joe Simitian, Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Assemblymember John Laird, Senator Abel Maldonado
Sponsored by: John Russo
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-fumigation-of-citizens-without-their-consent-in-california
Additional information is available at http://www.stopthespray.org
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A CALL TO ACTION MAY 1
ALL OUT ON MAYDAY TO STOP THE WAR!
ILWU-called May Day Labor Antiwar Demo
Meet at 10:30 a.m. at Mason & Beach (Fisherman's Wharf)
March at 11:00 a.m.
Rally at Noon at Justin Herman Plaza
SF Immigrant Rights May Day Demo
Meet at Dolores Park at 2pm
March at 3:30 pm
Rally at 6:00 pm in Civic Center Plaza
Oakland Immigrant Rights May Day Demo
Meet at 3:00 pm Fruitvale Plaza (35th & International Blvd.)
March at 4:00 pm
Rally at 6:00 pm at Oakland City Hall Plaza
At the start of the Iraq War in 2003, many working people were opposed to the invasion. Now the overwhelming majority want to end the war and withdraw troops. Yet, both major political parties continue to fund the war. Marches and demonstrations have not been able to stop the war. The Longshore Union (ILWU) will stop work for 8 hours in every port on the West Coast on May 1st. This action shows that working people have the power to stop the war.
Don't work on May 1st! MAKE MAYDAY A "NO PEACE, NO WORK HOLIDAY"!
We'll march from the Longshore Union hall at the corner of Mason and Beach Streets (Fisherman's Wharf area), along the Embarcadero--where San Francisco was forged into a union town in the 1934 General Strike. A rally will be held in Justin Herman Plaza across from the Ferry Building at noon.
--Stop the war!
--Withdraw the troops now!
--No scapegoating immigrant workers for the economic crisis!
--Healthcare for all!
--Funding for schools and housing!
--Defend civil liberties and workers'rights!
MAKE MAYDAY A "NO PEACE, NO WORK HOLIDAY"!
Port Workers' May Day Organizing Committee
http://maydayilwu.googlepages.com
ILWU MAY DAY PROTEST OF WAR: Big news below!
NY Metro APWU votes May Day action against the war--ILWU website-Stop work in W Coast ports to stop the war--ILWU letter to John Sweeney about May Day
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/03/01/18482849.php
2 minutes of silence May 1st in all postal stations -- backing ILWU & NALC May Day actions
7,000-member NY Metro Area Postal Union (APWU) votes May Day action to protest 'unjust' US war in Iraq
Scroll down for ILWU's decision to Stop Work to Stop the War on May 1st
in West Coast ports, and ILWU appeal to John Sweeney to "spread the word" on May Day labor actions
The New York Metro Area local of the American Postal Workers Union will observe a "2-minute period of silence at 1:00 AM, 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM" during all three shifts on May 1st, 2008 - International Workers Day - to show their opposition to the Iraq war and occupation and Bush's threats to attack Iran and Syria.
The resolution, "in support of labor actions to stop the war," passed without opposition at the general membership meeting March 19th. NY Metro is the largest local in the APWU, representing many thousands of clerks and other postal workers in Manhattan, the Bronx and several large mail processing facilities in New Jersey.
The vote by NY Metro is "in solidarity with the actions of our brothers and sisters in the ILWU," which plans to shut down all West Coast ports for 8 hours on May 1st, and with San Francisco Branch 214 letter carriers, who voted to have a 2-minute period of silence (at 8:15 AM) on May Day in all carrier stations, in opposition to the war.
The resolution also urged NY Metro members in all postal facilities to "wear a button, ribbon, badge or some other symbol in protest of the war on May Day." On March 22, NY Metro leaders and members marched with other unionists in the "River to River Against the War" protest on the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war. They marched on 14th Street in both directions, from the East River to the Hudson, meeting up for a rally at Union Square with wounded veterans of the war and military families.
N.Y. METRO APWU RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF LABOR ACTIONS TO STOP THE WAR
WHEREAS New York Metro has long opposed the U.S. war against and occupation of Iraq as unnecessary and unjust; and
WHEREAS the Bush administration is threatening to expand the war to Iran and Syria; and
WHEREAS the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is planning to shut down all Pacific Coast ports on 1 May 2008---International Workers Day, or Mayday---to protest the war; and
WHEREAS National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 214 in San Francisco is requesting its members to observe a 2-minute period of silence in all stations on Mayday in solidarity with the ILWU;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that New York Metro requests that all its members in all its stations observe a 2-minute period of silence at 1AM, 9AM and 5PM on Mayday in solidarity with the actions of our brothers and sisters in the ILWU and NALC; and
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that New York Metro requests all its members to wear a button, ribbon, badge or some other symbol in protest of the war on Mayday. -- Adopted without opposition March 19, 2008
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ILWU website on May Day Stop Work to Stop the War
protest in West Coast ports
ILWU Longshore Caucus calls for Iraq war protest at Pacific ports on May 1
Nearly one hundred Longshore Caucus delegates voted on February 8 to support a resolution calling for an eight-hour "stop-work" meeting during the day-shift on Thursday, May 1 at ports in CA, OR and WA to protest the war by calling for the immediate, safe return of U . S . troops from Iraq .
“The Caucus has spoken on this important issue and I’ve notified the employers about our plans for 'stop work' meetings on May 1,” said ILWU International President Bob McEllrath .
Caucus delegates, including several military veterans, spoke passionately about the importance of supporting the troops by bringing them home safely and ending the War in Iraq . Concerns were also raised about the growing cost of the war that has threatened funding for domestic needs, including education and healthcare . Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist Linda J. Bilmes recently estimated that the true cost of the War in Iraq to American taxpayers will exceed 3 trillion dollars--a figure they describe as "conservative . "
The union’s International Executive Board recently endorsed Barack Obama, citing his opposition to the War in Iraq as one of the key factors in the union's decision-making process .
Caucus delegates are democratically elected representatives from every longshore local who set policy for the Longshore Division .
ILWU International President Robert McEllrath has written letters to President John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO and President Andy Stern of the Change-to-Win Coalition, and to the presidents of the International Transport Workers Federation and the International Dockworkers Council to inform them of the ILWU's plans for May 1 . [From ILWU website]
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Text of ILWU letter to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, dated February 22, 2008
ILWU President asks Sweeney's help "spreading the word" about May 1 action opposing Iraq war
President Sweeney,
"ILWU delegates recently concluded a two-week caucus where we reached agreement on our approach for bargaining a new Pacific Coast Longshore Contract that expires on July 1, 2008. We expect talks to begin sometime in March and will keep you informed of developments.
"One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008, to express their opposition to the war in Iraq.
"We're writing to inform you of this action, and inquire if other AFL-CIO affiliates are also planning to participate in similar events on May 1 to honor labor history and express support for the troops by bringing them home safely. We would appreciate your assistance with spreading word about this May 1 action."
In solidarity,
Robert McEllrath
ILWU International President
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S.F. Labor Council backs ILWU May Day action in West Coast ports
Whereas, the San Francisco Labor Council has a longstanding position calling for an immediate end to the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq; therefore be it
Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council supports the decision of the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) to stop work for eight hours on Thursday, May 1, 2008—International Workers Day—at all West Coast ports, to demand "an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East." The Council supports the decision of Branch 214 of the National Association of Letter Carriers to observe two minutes of silence in all carrier stations at 8:15 a.m. on May 1, in solidarity with the ILWU action and to express their opposition to the war in Iraq; and be it further
Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council encourages other unions to follow ILWUs call for a “No Peace-No Work Holiday” or other labor actions on May Day, to express their opposition to the U.S. wars and occupations in the Middle East; and be it finally
Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council send a letter of congratulations to ILWU President Bob McEllrath for his union's bold initiative to use the occasion of International Workers Day to stop work to stop the war.
—Resolution adopted by the San Francisco Labor Council March 24, 2008, by unanimous vote.
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Rock for Justice-Rock for Palestine
FREE outdoor festival
May 10th, 2008
Civic Center, San Francisco
Dear Comrade,
I am involved in the Local Nakba Committee (LNC), which is made up of Palestinians and allies for justice in Palestine from the San Francisco/Bay Area. Our purpose for coming together is to raise awareness, unite, and mark 60 years since the ongoing Palestinian Nakba and struggle for self-determination and the right of return. We are promoting a very special day-long FREE Palestine, Peace and Solidarity Festival-with an amazing program of Palestinian, and other musicians for peace and justice. The FREE outdoor festival will be held at the Civic Center in downtown San Francisco, May 10th, 2008.
The purpose of the Solidarity Festival is to raise the voices of Palestinian and other artists who resist the domination of their communities, through music and to initiate a public discourse of our issues. Palestinians are the largest and longest displaced refugee community in the world as a result of Israel's occupation, Apartheid-wall and illegal settlements. We intend to use resistance music and issue a rallying call for those in solidarity to build a mass popular movement and support the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and right of return.
In order reach out beyond our existing allies, the event will serve as an opportunity to outreach broadly and educate youth and those who are interested in understanding the historical context of Palestine. The event is a first step to historical and political education, and for those interested, the LNC is planning youth programs and educational workshops for both the day of, and to follow the event.
I am contacting you on behalf of the Local Nakba Committee to request a demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian people. To make this historic gathering possible, will require tremendous amount of labor and financial contribution. The concert will only happen with the generosity of donors such as yourself. Thank you for recognizing the urgency of this time in the Palestinian people's struggle, and helping make it possible to hear these important voices.
Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition is acting as the fiscal sponsor of the event (www.al-awda.org). Please feel free to contact me with for additional information and questions.
Thank you for your support!
Local Nakba Committee Coordinator
Please make your tax-deductible donation, payable to 'Palestine Right to Return Coalition' or 'PRRC/Palestine Solidarity Concert'
Mail to:
Local Nakba Committee (LNC)
PO Box #668
2425 Channing Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
Event Sponsorship - If your organization or business wishes to sponsor the event, have a booth, and/or to be listed in all related promotional material, please see, and be in full agreement with the points of unity below.
For a detailed budget breakdown and itemization of artist & logistic expenses that your contribution will go directly towards, please email: right2return@gmail.com requesting specific sponsorship opportunities.
For more information about individuals who make up the Local Nakba Committee, please email us at the above address for a list of bio's.
For more information about, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition, see: www.al-awda.org.
For regular concert updates see our website at: http://www.araborganizing.org/concert.html
You can donate online at the Facebook Cause 'Nakba-60, Palestine Solidarity Concert' at: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/causes/19958?h=plw&recruiter_id=6060344
List of confirmed artists:
Dam, featuring Abeer, aka 'Sabreena da Witch'–Palestinian Hip-Hop crew from Lid (1948, Palestine).
Dead Prez
Fred Wreck–DJ/Producer, for artists Snoop Dogg, Hilary Duff,
Brittany Spears and other celebs.
Ras Ceylon –Sri Lankan Revolution Hip Hop
Arab Summit:
Narcicyst - with Iraqi-Canadian Hip Hop group Euphrates
Excentrik- Palestinian Producer/Composer/MC
Omar Offendun- with Syrian/Sudani Hip Hop group The N.o.m.a.d.s
Ragtop- with Palestinian/Filipino group The Philistines
Scribe Project – Palestinian/Mexican Hip Hop/Soul Band
Additional artists still pending confirmation.
Coalition Building: The LNC is working with a coalition of social justice groups and organizations. Our primary goal is to further reach out to natural allies and communities who are affected by the similar issues as Palestinians. We are calling on Native communities to commemorate with those who have died, or been killed by fighting for self-determination, and Hurricane Katrina Solidarity groups with their solidarity message to Palestinians of the "right to return" to New Orleans. More generally, we are calling on groups organizing youth & communities around issues of social justice, indigenous/land/human rights, and international law.
Online video streaming: The goal is to provide online video steaming technology of the concert, so that it can be watched from Palestine and anywhere in the world.
Points of Unity for Concert Sponsorship
An end to all US political, military and economic aid to Israel.
The divestment of all public and private entities from all Israeli corporations and American corporations with subsidiaries operating within Israel.
An end to the investment of Labor Union members' pension funds in Israel.
The boycott of all Israeli products.
The right to return for all Palestinian refugees to their original towns, villages and lands with compensation for damages inflicted on their property and lives.
The right for all Palestinian refugees to full restitution of all confiscated and destroyed property.
The formation of an independent, democratic state for its citizens in all of Palestine.
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For Immediate Release
UPDATE: SIXTH AL-AWDA CONVENTION TO MARK 60 YEARS OF PALESTINIAN NAKBA
Embassy Suites Hotel Anaheim South, 11767 Harbor Boulevard,
Garden Grove, California, 92840
May 16-18, 2008
The 6th Annual International Al-Awda Convention will mark a devastating event in the long history of the Palestinian people. We call it our Nakba.
Confirmed speakers include Bishop Atallah Hanna, Supreme Justice Dr. Sheikh Taiseer Al Tamimi, Dr. Adel Samara, Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, Dr. Ghada Karmi, Dr. As'ad Abu Khalil, Dr. Saree Makdisi, and Ramzy Baroud. Former Prime Minister of Lebanon Salim El Hos and Palestinian Legislative Council member Khalida Jarrar have also been invited.
Host Organizations for the sixth international Al-Awda convention include Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Palestinian American Women Association, Free Palestine Alliance, National Council of Arab-Americans, Middle East Cultural and Information Center - San Diego, The Arab Community Center of the Inland Empire, Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid - Southern California, Palestine Aid Society, Palestinian American Congress, Bethlehem Association, Al-Mubadara - Southern California, Union of Palestinian American Women, Birzeit Society , El-Bireh Society, Arab American Friends of Nazareth, Ramallah Club, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, International Action Center , Students for Justice in Palestine at CSUSB, Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, Students for Justice in Palestine at UCR, Students for International Knowledge at CSUSB, Muslim Students Association at Palomar College, Muslim Students Association at UCSD, and Muslim Students Association at Mira Costa.
BACKGROUND
In May of 1948, with the support of the governments of the United States, Britain, and other European powers, Zionists declared the establishment of the "State of Israel" on stolen Palestinian Arab land and intensified their full-scale attack on Palestine. They occupied our land and forcibly expelled three quarters of a million of our people. This continues to be our great catastrophe, which we, as Palestinians with our supporters, have been struggling to overcome since.
The sixth international Al-Awda convention is taking place at a turning point in our struggle to return and reclaim our stolen homeland. Today, there are close to 10 million Palestinians of whom 7.5 million are living in forced exile from their homeland. While the Zionist "State of Israel" continues to besiege, sanction, deprive, isolate, discriminate against and murder our people, in addition to continually stealing more of our land, our resistance has grown. Along with our sisters and brothers at home and elsewhere in exile, Al-Awda has remained steadfast in demanding the implementation of the sacred, non-negotiable national, individual and collective right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands.
The sixth international Al-Awda convention will be a historic and unique event. The convention will aim to recapitulate Palestinian history with the help of those who have lived it, and to strengthen our ability to educate the US public about the importance and justness of implementing the unconditional right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands. With symposia and specialty workshops, the focus of the convention will be on education that lead to strategies and mechanisms for expanding the effectiveness of our advocacy for the return.
INVITATION
We invite all Al-Awda members, and groups and individuals who support the implementation of the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin, and to reclaim their land, to join us in this landmark Sixth Annual International Convention on the 60th year of Al-Nakba.
MASS RALLY FOR THE RETURN TO PALESTINE
The convention will culminate in a major demonstration to mark 60 years of Nakba and to call for The RETURN TO PALESTINE. The demonstration will be held in solidarity and coordination with our sisters and brothers who continue the struggle in our beloved homeland.
DON'T DELAY! REGISTER TODAY!
Organizational endorsements welcome. Please write to us at convention6@ al-awda.org
For information on how to become part of the host committee, please write to convention6@ al-awda.org
For more information, please go to http://al-awda. org/convention6 and keep revisiting that page as it is being updated regularly.
To submit speaker and panel/workshop proposals, write to
info@al-awda. org or convention6@ al-awda.org
Until return,
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-685-3243
Fax: 360-933-3568
E-mail: info@al-awda. org
WWW: http://al-awda. org
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) is the largest network of grassroots activists and students dedicated to Palestinian human rights. We are a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America. Under IRS guidelines, your donations to PRRC are tax-deductible.
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Call for an Open U.S. National Antiwar Conference
Stop the War in Iraq! Bring the Troops Home Now!
Join us in Cleveland on June 28-29 for the conference.
Crown Plaza Hotel
Sponsored by the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
P.O. Box 21008; Cleveland, OH 44121; Voice Mail: 216-736-4704; Email: NatAssembly@aol.com
http://natassembly.org/thecall/
List of Endorsers (below call):
http://natassembly.org/thecall/
Endorse the conference:
http://natassembly.org/endorse/
THE PURPOSE OF THE CONFERENCE:
2008 has ushered in the fifth year of the war against Iraq and an occupation "without end" of that beleaguered country. Unfortunately, the tremendous opposition in the U.S. to the war and occupation has not yet been fully reflected in united mass action.
The anniversary of the invasion has been marked in the U.S. by Iraq Veterans Against the War's (IVAW's) Winter Soldier hearings March 13-16, in Washington, DC, providing a forum for those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan to expose the horrors perpetrated by the U.S. wars. A nonviolent civil disobedience action against the war in Iraq was also called for March 19 in Washington and local actions around the country were slated during that month as well.
These actions help to give voice and visibility to the deeply held antiwar sentiment of this country's majority. Yet what is also urgently needed is a massive national mobilization sponsored by a united antiwar movement capable of bringing hundreds of thousands into the streets to demand "Out Now!"
Such a mobilization, in our opinion, commemorating the fifth anniversary of the war -- and held on a day agreeable to the IVAW -- could have greatly enhanced all the other activities which were part of that commemoration in the U.S. Indeed, a call was issued in London by the World Against War Conference on December 1, 2007 where 1,200 delegates from 43 nations, including Iraq, voted unanimously to call on antiwar movements in every country to mobilize mass protests against the war during the week of March 15-22 to demand that foreign troops be withdrawn immediately.
The absence of a massive united mobilization during this period in the United States -- the nation whose weapons of terrifying mass destruction have rained death and devastation on the Iraqi people -- when the whole world will mobilize in the most massive protests possible to mark this fifth year of war, should be a cause of great concern to us all.
For Mass Action to Stop the War: The independent and united mobilization of the antiwar majority in massive peaceful demonstrations in the streets against the war in Iraq is a critical element in forcing the U.S. government to immediately withdraw all U.S. military forces from that country, close all military bases, and recognize the right of the Iraqi people to determine their own destiny.
Mass actions aimed at visibly and powerfully demonstrating the will of the majority to stop the war now would dramatically show the world that despite the staunch opposition to this demand by the U.S. government, the struggle by the American people to end the slaughter goes on. And that struggle will continue until the last of the troops are withdrawn. Such actions also help bring the people of the United States onto the stage of history as active players and as makers of history itself.
Indeed, the history of every successful U.S. social movement, whether it be the elementary fight to organize trade unions to defend workers' interests, or to bring down the Jim Crow system of racial segregation, or to end the war in Vietnam, is in great part the history of independent and united mass actions aimed at engaging the vast majority to collectively fight in its own interests and therefore in the interests of all humanity.
For an Open Democratic Antiwar Conference: The most effective way to initiate and prepare united antiwar mobilizations is through convening democratic and open conferences that function transparently, with all who attend the conferences having the right to vote. It is not reasonable to expect that closed or narrow meetings of a select few, or gatherings representing only one portion of the movement, can substitute for the full participation of the extremely broad array of forces which today stand opposed to the war.
We therefore invite everyone, every organization, every coalition, everywhere in the U.S. - all who oppose the war and the occupation -- to attend an open democratic U.S. national antiwar conference and join with us in advancing and promoting the coming together of an antiwar movement in this country with the power to make a mighty contribution toward ending the war and occupation of Iraq now.
Everyone is welcome. The objective is to place on the agenda of the entire U.S. antiwar movement a proposal for the largest possible united mass mobilization(s) in the future to stop the war and end the occupation.
Join us in Cleveland on June 28-29 for the conference.
List of Endorsers
http://natassembly.org/thecall/
Join us in Cleveland on June 28-29 for the conference.
Sponsored by the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
P.O. Box 21008; Cleveland, OH 44121; Voice Mail: 216-736-4704; Email: NatAssembly@aol.com
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Center for Labor Renewal Statement and Call for the Elimination of Two-Tier Workplaces
On Saturday, January 26, 2008, over 80 U.S. and Canadian auto industry worker/activists met in Flint, Michigan, birthplace of militant unionism in the Auto Industry in the late 1903s. The agenda was how to measure and respond to the crippling impact of the 2007 auto industry collective bargaining agreements. The daylong discussions led to the issuance of the following Statement and Call for a:
Campaign to oppose two-tier wages
The United States has never been an equal opportunity society. During periods of intense collective struggle workers made economic gains, but sustained progress in equity distribution has not been achieved. Capital’s effort to exploit labor is never put on hold for long. Over the past 30 years corporate America, often supported by government, has engaged in an all-out assault on working people. That relentless campaign has increased and extended social inequality to levels many had not thought possible without triggering a concerted rebellion from the ranks of labor. Such an upsurge of resistance has not yet coalesced but there are indications that worker anger and disillusionment is rising.
Corporate aggression, particularly in historically well-organized, higher wage industries is increasingly tied to capital’s global restructuring agenda, which is capitalizing on the low standard of living prevalent in impoverished countries and regions around the world. The rising demand for U.S. worker concessions in such sectors as auto, metalwork, electronics, communications, etc. is part of that restructuring process and, unchallenged, sweeps all workers into a downward spiral of wage and working conditions. Employer claims that competition necessitates wage and benefit reductions in order to save jobs has become the weapon of choice. Workers are told they have to choose between massive reductions for future generations of workers or no job at all.
That this is happening in the most heavily unionized industries reveals the effectiveness of the corporate strategy to both disarm and attract many union leaders and some portion of the base to accept the proposition that pursuing their agenda of “competitiveness” is in our mutual interest. The U.S. labor leadership has not put forward any meaningful alternatives to global corporate restructuring. Embracing the companies’ “competitiveness” agenda is a flawed, if not fatal strategy.
The corporations are demanding, and the unions are accepting, permanent two-tier wage schemes whereby new hires work side by side with workers earning substantially higher wages for the same tasks. This new, generalized wage retreat comes after years of unresolved wage inequities that have disproportionately affected women and workers of color in U.S. workplaces. The introduction of both two-tier and “permanent temporary” workers in auto plants adds more layers of blatant discrimination. We must continue to fight against all forms of discrimination in two-tier wage structures, whether directed at workers of color or women, or now “the new hire” and the defenseless temp workers.
Our acceptance makes us an accessory to corporate divide and conquer schemes
Allowing the employers to expand inequality, rather then resolve it fosters additional resentment among workers and recklessly severs solidarity between generations. Two-tier wage agreements and the use of permanent temporary workers make the union partners in the business of exploiting workers.
Big Three auto contracts institutionalize second-class workers
In the 2007 Big Three auto negotiations the UAW, a once powerful wage and benefits pacesetter, agreed to a radically reduced two-tier wage and benefit package. The Big Three auto agreement cuts wages for new workers by up to 50 percent (67 percent if you include benefits) for doing the same work as current workers. The need to help the companies be more “competitive” to insure “job security” was the advertised selling point. The 25-year history of concession bargaining in auto has not stopped the massive decline in the ranks of the Big Three from 750,000 in 1979 when the concession era began to 170,000 today. Yet contract after contract during that period were heralded as “historic job security” agreements.
In 200 the UAW negotiated a Supplemental Two-Tier Wage Agreement for new hires at Delphi Corporation, a former GM Parts division, which had been “spun-off” as an independent parts supplier in 1999. Members of one UAW-Delphi Local, Local 2151 voted to appeal the International Union’s decision not to permit the thousands of Delphi union members to vote on the Supplemental Two-Tier Agreement, which affected them. In defense of their decision to evade ratification the UAW International Executive Board argued that the “future hire group is a null class.”
The segregation of future union members into a “null class” is a ruthless act of discrimination against an entire generation, and another example of the failure of competitiveness to secure jobs. Delphi subsequently used bankruptcy as a strategy to further restructure and destroy jobs and incomes. Within four years 27,000 out of 33,000 union members were eliminated at Delphi and the remaining workers were brought down to the lower wage and benefit scale.
Wage costs are not the problem
Wages and benefits of assembly workers account for less than 10 percent of the cost of a car and differentials between companies are not significant, especially since GM, Ford, and Chrysler’s competitors are primarily building cars inside the U.S. Furthermore, productivity in the auto industry has been rising rapidly: real output per worker has more than doubled since 1987. Even the Harbour-Felax Report—which analysts consider the industry bible on productivity—has acknowledged that: the Big Three has now largely eliminated the productivity gap with Japanese manufacturers.
In a globally restructured auto industry, it was inevitable that the Big Three would not sustain their monopoly control of the domestic market. Their arrogance toward foreign producers is only matched by their greed and arrogance toward consumers. This resulted in decades of marketing second rate, unimaginative, and shoddily engineered products at the same time union workers were making concessions allegedly to help them be more competitive. Yet, coming on the heels of the Delphi bankruptcy, the 2007 negotiations were pitched as if the sacrifices of workers was the only thing that could help the domestic auto manufacturers out of the “competitiveness” hole they’d dug themselves into. Making workers pay for the bosses’ mistakes is as much a national pastime as baseball.
The new-hire wage rates in UAW contracts with the Big Three automakers are now set below the average industrial wage in the U.S. which is already below that of other major developed countries. The competitive spiral will accelerate as foreign transplants are relieved of the pressure to match union wages. The failure to protect wages, benefits, and working conditions means that it will be even more difficult for the UAW to organize new workers. Yet the real answer to the “competitiveness” question lies in organizing the workers employed by the anti-union foreign owned producers and taking wages, benefits, and working conditions out of competition through solidarity-unionism.
For Canadian Auto Workers whose collective agreements with the same Big Three companies expire in September of 2008, the reduced new worker hire rate and permanent two-tier precedents set in the U.S. will represent a huge challenge. CAW members have traditionally resisted the concession patterns of their neighbors to the South; their continued resistance in their negotiations this Fall would be reinforced by a rising tide of opposition from U.S. auto workers to slashing wages and attacks on worker dignity.
The Japanese companies have already introduced the two-tier half-wage system in Japan. The threat of unionization had, until now, blocked their trying it here. But with the implementation of two-tier in the Big Three plants, they can now do the same in this country. Net result: no shift in relative competitiveness, but a destructive further lowering of wages for all auto industry workers.
Furthermore, now that the new hire wage rate is set below the industry average for the Big Three, workers in the auto parts supply industry will be confronted with a stark choice: accept lower wages or their jobs will be outsourced, or more correctly “re-insourced,” to the big auto companies at the radically reduced new lower tier wages. Once again the net result is zero security for workers and a further collapse in living standards. As part and parcel of the concessions mentality, the auto union failed to pursue its own longstanding demand for single-payer national healthcare (for all). Instead, they agreed to relieve Big Three automakers of billions of dollars in legacy costs for retiree healthcare protection by accepting responsibility for future coverage through an under-funded Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, or VEBA.
The UAW is not the only union that has bargained away equality within the workforce. This trend is the deathwatch for the labor movement in our era. Union collaboration in wage discrimination for the sake of competitiveness is the counsel of despair. The future of active and retired workers is inextricably bound with the future of new workers. The segregation of future union members into a “null class” is an invitation for “payback” at some future time. If new hires are treated as a “null class,” one day they will in turn classify senior workers and retirees as a “null class.” There is no seniority date for dignity and should be no retirement from solidarity.
The corporate blitzkrieg on working people is subsidized with tax abatements while health, education, and social programs are slashed to the bone. The parrots of the status quo insist there is no alternative to an economic system that degrades workers, deprives the unfortunate of health care, undermines the security of the elderly, and desecrates the environment. It’s a lie. The degradation of the working class is chronic and contagious. We need strategic collective action with allies here and around the world.
History suggests that UAW members would have followed the lead of a progressive leadership to militantly resist the destruction of wage parity and other hard won gains in the workplace. But nearly 30 years of concession bargaining and yielding to the “logic of the competitiveness agenda” produced an opposite result.
Workers throughout all employment sectors face this same assault on wages, benefits, and working conditions in one form or another. It is time for all workers to reject the false logic of corporate competitiveness and reinvigorate the logic of solidarity.
Today, we stand at the crossroad knowing full well where both roads lead. One road leads to division, despair, and social isolation, and the other road points to hope, solidarity, and the dignity of collective struggle.
Call for national campaign
In conjunction with the Center for Labor Renewal, participants at the Flint, January 26, 2008 meeting issue the following Call:
In the face of the continuing assault on worker wages, benefits, and the quality of work life where rising economic injustice is destroying the stability and hopes of an increasing numbers of workers and their families, here and around the world; and where inequality and income discrimination are celebrated by a protected few at the desperate expense of so many others; we call on all workers of conscience everywhere to join a campaign to bring our collective strength and renewed solidarity to the struggle against the agenda of social devaluation and despair.
Workers in the auto industry have a critical role to play in this campaign given the destructive events in that industry which now, more than ever, seeks to validate the pitting of workers against workers, and communities against communities, and the glorification of the false dog-eat-dog, workplace agenda of the corporations today. In that world its “winner-take-all,” and the winner has been pre-determined. We call on all auto workers to reject all forms of wage discrimination and renew the fight for industrial democracy through worker solidarity, and to:
• Build within our workplaces, a movement against two-tier wages, and a renewal of solidarity unionism by means of varied communications vehicles including the internet; web sites; newsletters and plant gate handbills, etc.
• Promote crosscurrents of opposition against the creation of second-class workers in all workplaces.
• Where a two-tier system is in place, concretely demonstrate to the new workers that there is a strong base of resistance against the discrimination they face, and that we all need to remember the lesson that “an injury to one, is an injury to all.”
• Within the Big Three, or any auto workplaces, target the rejection of future agreements (2011 in the Big Three ) if they do not reverse the two-tier system.
• Promote internal democracy to encourage the inclusion and participation of the second tier workers alongside the entire rank and file to change the concessionary path followed by the current leadership.
Such a campaign will need mechanisms to facilitate links, exchange information, and assist in the coordination of future actions. Coming out of a meeting organized by the Center for Labor Renewal (CLR) of 80 activists in Flint, Michigan, the CLR commits to:
• Collect and develop material for building the necessary base in the workplace and its electronic dissemination. Assist in the development and proliferation of additional vehicles of communication.
• Develop an information clearinghouse to gather and disseminate reports and updates on local struggles and developments.
• Support regional forums to assist activists in developing the arguments and organizational capacities to build the solidarity program at the base
• Facilitate national meetings through which local activists can assess the campaign and collectively strategize on further events and actions.
• Promote the development of the analytical tools required by union activists to successfully integrate this campaign with a workers’ struggle that is increasingly global in dimension.
This fight is winnable. The U.S. working class needs a victory and it needs this victory in particular. The one-sided class war against workers has gone on far too long. The defeat of the two tier system is a crucial step in the struggle to address broader inequalities in our society. It’s time to draw the line.
—Center for Labor Renewal/
—Future of the Union/
—Factory Rat/
—Soldiers of Solidarity
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Help Save Troy Davis
Troy Davis came within 24 hours of execution in July, 2007 before receiving a temporary stay of execution. Two weeks later the Georgia Supreme Court agreed to hear his extraordinary motion for a new trial. On Monday, March 17, 2008 the court denied Mr. Davis’ appeal. Troy Davis was sentenced to death for the murder of Police Officer Mark MacPhail in Georgia. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony which contained inconsistencies even during the trial. Since then, all but two of the state's nine non-police witnesses from the trial have recanted or contradicted their testimony. Many of these witnesses have stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Troy Davis.
The message:
"I welcomed your decision to stay the execution of Troy Anthony Davis in July 2007, and thank you for taking the time to consider evidence of his innocence. When you issued this decision, you stated that the board "will not allow an execution to proceed in this State unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused." Because the Georgia Supreme Court denied Troy Davis a hearing, doubts of his guilt will always remain. I appeal to you to be true to your words and commute the death sentence of Troy Davis.
"This case has generated widespread attention, which reflects serious concerns in Georgia and throughout the United States about the potential for executing an innocent man. The power of clemency exists as a safety net to prevent such an irreversible error. As you know, Mr. Davis has been on death row in Georgia for more than 15 years for the murder of a police officer he maintains that he did not commit. Davis' conviction was not based on any physical evidence, and the murder weapon was never found.
"Despite mounting evidence that Davis may in fact be innocent of the crime, appeals to courts to consider this evidence have been repeatedly denied for procedural reasons. Instead, the prosecution based its case on the testimony of purported "witnesses," many of whom allege police coercion, and most of whom have since recanted their testimony. One witness signed a police statement declaring that Davis was the assailant then later said "I did not read it because I cannot read." In another case a witness stated that the police "were telling me that I was an accessory to murder and that I would…go to jail for a long time and I would be lucky if I ever got out, especially because a police officer got killed…I was only sixteen and was so scared of going to jail." There are also several witnesses who have implicated another man in the crime but the police focused their efforts on convicting Troy.
"It is deeply troubling to me that Georgia might proceed with this execution given the strong claims of innocence in this case. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that our criminal justice system is not devoid of error and we now know that 127 individuals have been released from death rows across the United States due to wrongful conviction. We must confront the unalterable fact that the system of capital punishment is fallible, given that it is administered by fallible human beings. I respectfully urge the Board of Pardons and Paroles to demonstrate your strong commitment to fairness and justice and commute the death sentence of Troy Anthony Davis.
Thank you for your kind consideration."
Messages will be sent to:
Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE
Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower
Atlanta, Georgia 30334-4909
Telephone: (404) 657-9350
Fax: (404) 651-8502
Clemency_Information@pap.state.ga.us
Please take a moment to help Troy Davis. On Monday, March 17, 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court decided 4-3 to deny a new trial for Troy Anthony Davis, despite significant concerns regarding his innocence. The stunning decision by the Georgia Supreme Court to let Mr. Davis' death sentence stand means that the state of Georgia might soon execute a man who well may be innocent.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/t/5820/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=23774
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"ANGOLA 3"
For 35 years, Jim Crow justice in Louisiana has kept Herman Wallace
and Albert Woodfox locked in solitary confinement for a crime
everyone knows they didn't commit.
Despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence, the "Angola 3",
spend 23 hours each day in a 6x9 cell on the site of a former
plantation. Prison officials - and the state officials who could
intervene - won't end the terrible sentence. They've locked them up
and thrown away the key because they challenged a system that deals an
uneven hand based on the color of one's skin and tortures those who
assert their humanity.
We can help turn things around by making it a political liability for
the authorities at Angola to continue the racist status quo, and by
forcing federal and state authorities to intervene. I've signed on
with ColorOfChange.org to demand an investigation into this clear case
of unequal justice. Will you join us?
http://www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=1798-532528
When ColorOfChange.org spoke up about the Jena 6, it was about more
than helping six Black youth in a small town called Jena. It was about
standing up against a system of unequal justice that deals an uneven
hand based on the color of one's skin. That broken system is at work
again and ColorOfChange.org is joining The Innocence Project and
Amnesty International to challenge it in the case of the Angola 3.
"Angola", sits on 18,000 acres of former plantation land in Louisiana
and is estimated to be one of the largest prisons in the United
States. Angola's history is telling: once considered one of the most
violent, racially segregated prison in America, almost a prisoner a
day was stabbed, shot or raped. Prisoners were often put in inhumane
extreme punishment camps for small infractions. The Angola 3 -
Herman, Albert and Robert - organized hunger and work strikes within
the prison in the 70's to protest continued segregation, corruption
and horrific abuse facing the largely Black prisoner population.
Shortly after they spoke out, the Angola 3 were convicted of murdering
a prison guard by an all-white jury. It is now clear that these men
were framed to silence their peaceful revolt against inhumane
treatment. Since then, they have spent every day for 35 years in 6x9
foot cells for a crime they didn't commit.
Herman and Albert are not saints. They are the first to admit they've
committed crimes. But, everyone agrees that their debts to society
for various robbery convictions were paid long ago.
NBC News/Dateline just aired a piece this week about the plight of the
Angola 3. And it's time to finally get some justice for Herman and
Albert. For far too long, court officials have stalled and refused to
review their cases. Evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and
constitutional violations have not swayed them.
It's now time for the Governor of Louisiana and the United States
Congress, which provides the funding for federal prisons like Angola,
to step in and say enough is enough. Please join us in calling for
Governor Bobby Jindal and your Congressperson to initiate an immediate
and full investigation into the case of the Angola 3.
http://www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=1798-532528
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Gaza's lost childhood - 23 March 08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCjEvet8s7g
Mike Prysner (Part 1 and Part 2 -- please watch both parts. Wow! This is powerful testimony. Thank you, Mike Prysner! ...bw)
Winter Soldier Testimonies
http://answer.pephost.org/site/News2?abbr=ANS_&page=NewsArticle&id=8795#video
or try:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iTdxBECos8
Winter Soldier Mike Prysner testimony, Pt1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i5ZUfpxnV0&feature=related
Winter Soldier Mike Prysner testimony Pt2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iTdxBECos8&feature=related
Tent Cities, USA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnnOOo6tRs8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmeHiFZUWtE&NR=1
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DEFEND FREE SPEECH RIGHTS ON THE NATIONAL MALL!
~ Please circulate this urgent update widely ~
The ANSWER Coalition is vigorously supporting the campaign launched by the Partnership for Civil Justice to defend free speech rights on the National Mall. We thank all the ANSWER Coalition supporters who have joined this campaign and we urge everyone to do so. What follows is an urgent message from the Partnership for Civil Justice about the campaign.
For those who already signed the Statement in Defense of Free Speech, Please take 30 seconds to let us know if we can publicize your name as a signer along with 15,000 others. If you signed up before, it is crucial that you take the next step by clicking this link.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=5CuaxCCJ405-xswGEWYIyw..
***********
OPPOSE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S ASSAULT ON FREE SPEECH
Save the National Mall as a place of protest!
The struggle to preserve Free Speech in Washington D.C. has entered a new phase. We are writing to you so that you can help in the next step of this critical struggle. If he gets his way, Bush will leave office having shredded fundamental rights to redress grievances and engage in dissent on the National Mall in the nation's capital. But we can stop this plan.
Because of the participation of you and so many other people around the country, the Bush Administration has been pushed on the defensive. Due to immense public pressure that has been mobilized in the last months the government is now resorting to a smoke and mirror campaign to derail those who are fighting to preserve cherished rights. The people can stop them.
We need you to take action right now:
We are planning on sending the Statement in Defense of Free Speech Rights on the National Mall -- with a list of its thousands of signers -- to the National Park Service and want to further publish the statement. Showing just how many people have already taken action will be an important part of the campaign to defend the National Mall and the First Amendment.
Before we send or publish the statement and signers, we want to confirm with you that we can include you as a signer. We value your privacy. Please take 30 seconds to fill out the form here if you have already signed the statement.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=l_L7UqoDP7L0x6bNveV0Iw..
Please take a moment and help this Free Speech movement take the next step. If you signed the Statement in Defense of Free Speech on the National Mall before it is crucial that you take the next step by clicking this link. You can also let us know on this same link if you do not want your name included publicly. Initial signers include, Howard Zinn, Cindy Sheehan, Ed Asner, Malik Rahim, Ramsey Clark, Kathy Kelly, Ron Kovic, Dennis Banks and many others.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=ej-8ZNv_oo8dsQWt_QHuzg..
Here is the situation: More than 15,000 letters flooded the National Park Service (NPS) supporting the centrality of free speech rights on the National Mall. The Bush Administration was shocked by the overwhelming response. They thought that they could essentially privatize the National Mall in Washington DC and quietly eliminate essential Free Speech activities. The plan is to go into effect the last month that Bush is in office in January 2009.
This insidious goal hasn't changed one bit but they have now quickly shifted their tactics to blunt the massive new movement that has arisen to defend Free Speech on the National Mall.
Bush's NPS has quickly revamped the web site. The phrase "First Amendment" now appears all over the site. You would think that they are re-organizing the National Mall in order to have more demonstrations, protests and rallies rather than try to banish or limit them. It is all smoke and mirrors. More untruths from the Bush Administration working in partnership with Corporate America.
This is a coordinated effort that we are seeing across the country - the privatization of our public spaces to make them off-limits for us to gather for free speech and assembly. While we have just been victorious in the fight for the Great Lawn of Central Park all eyes are now turning to the National Mall. This is the battle of most significance with repercussions that will be felt coast-to-coast.
Here is how you can help. It will take only a moment of your time but it will make a huge difference.
1) The Partnership for Civil Justice has set up an easy-to-use mechanism that will allow you to send a message directly to the National Park Service about their National Mall Plan. Click this link to send your message.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=8_RVxCikVreKjAjXZlb49Q..
2) Sign the Statement in Defense of Free Speech Rights on the National Mall.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=PKScBmTUgEZOZ_cxmhZbAg..
3) If you have already signed this statement, click this link right now to let us know if we can publicize you as a signer of this important statement.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=6kKl3z44MGnkeYbNr_pA_w..
4) If you are unsure whether you have already signed, you can sign the statement again, and all duplicate names will be eliminated.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=XoId_W834FDPRKYz6DjgfA..
Sincerely,
Mara Verheyden-Hillard and Carl Messineo, co-founders of Partnership
for Civil Justice
****************
More links
Background on the NPS initiative to restrict protesting on the National Mall
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=wuIJnWmxqhcuEOXlEiwung..
Washington Post article: The Battle to Remold the Mall
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=EWmH5pSb477zqvLc8c8WDw..
Alternet article: National Mall Redesign Could Seriously Restrict Free Speech
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=jdbtCB0LDdDpdEAvIgwtqg..
**********************
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
www.answercoalition.org
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 323-464-1636
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
If this message was forwared to you and you'd like to receive future ANSWER updates, click here:
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=Iq3nMIRe0R1mNhdk6PQ6_g..
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Inspiring!
Student Walkout Portland Oregon 3/20/08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBrxBQa8udw
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1uS58RzyhY&feature=related
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The Sand Creek Massacre (6 MINUTES)
http://moviehatch.com/jackson/movie/71
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Hello-
Thought you might enjoy this item I've posted about a 1970 antiwar
poster folio with a name similar to yours.
Lots of good history here.
Best-
Lincoln Cushing
www.docspopuli.org
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Crisis of Confidence
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/opinion/14krugman.html?hp
2) Housing Woes in U.S. Spread Around Globe
By MARK LANDLER
April 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/business/worldbusiness/14real.html?hp
3) Foreclosure Politics
Editorial
April 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/opinion/14mon1.html?hp
4) Co-Payments Go Way Up for Drugs With High Prices
By GINA KOLATA
April 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/us/14drug.html?hp
5) When Drug Costs Soar Beyond Reach
Editorial
April 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/opinion/15tues1.html?hp
6) Oil and Food Rises Stoke Inflation Fear
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
April 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/business/15cnd-econ.html?hp
7) Germany: Marijuana Smokers Were Poisoned With Lead in Leipzig
By DENISE GRADY
April 15, 2008
Global Update
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/health/15glob.html?adxnnl=1&ref=world&adxnnlx=1208279228-YsUlCA30oeHDr4vlgMD1Rw
8) Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing
By ANDREW MARTIN
News Analysis
April 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/business/worldbusiness/15food.html?ref=us
9) Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies
By MICHAEL BARBARO
April 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/business/15retail.html?ref=business
10) Area C strikes fear into the heart of Palestinians as homes are destroyed
Israelis defend rules that reject 94% of non-Jewish building applications
Rory McCarthy in Far'un
The Guardian,
Tuesday April 15 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/15/israelandthepalestinians
11) SEIU, AFL-CIO in war of words over confrontation
by Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/us/2008/04/15/D902HUB04_union_turmoil/index.html
12) Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution
By DAVID STOUT
April 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/us/16cnd-scotus.html?hp
13) Bloody Day of Fighting in Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER
April 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/world/middleeast/17mideast.html?hp
14) Fed: economy weakened further in the spring
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:05 p.m. ET
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fed-Economy.html
15) Iraqi Unit Flees Post, Despite American’s Plea
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/world/middleeast/16sadr.html?ref=world
16) U.N. Panel Urges Changes to Feed Poor While Saving Environment
By STEVEN ERLANGER
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/world/europe/16food.html?ref=world
17) Police Dept. Settles Suit by Protesters Over Tactics
By THOMAS J. LUECK
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/nyregion/16horses.html?ref=nyregion
18) Wall Street Winners Get Billion-Dollar Paydays
By JENNY ANDERSON
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16wall.html?ref=business
19) Merck Wrote Drug Studies for Doctors
By STEPHANIE SAUL
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16vioxx.html?ref=health
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1) Crisis of Confidence
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/opinion/14krugman.html?hp
The Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan has been tracking American economic perceptions since the 1950s. On Friday the center released its latest estimate of the consumer sentiment index — and it was a stunner. Americans are more pessimistic about their situation than they have been for more than a quarter century.
Meanwhile, a recent Pew report found that the percentage of Americans saying that they’re better off than they were five years ago is at its lowest level in 44 years of polling.
What’s striking about this bleak mood is that by the usual measures the economy isn’t doing that badly — at least not yet. In particular, the official unemployment rate of 5.1 percent, though rising, is still fairly low by historical standards. Yet economic attitudes are worse now than they were in 1992, when the average unemployment rate was 7.5 percent.
Why are we feeling so down?
Our bleakness partly reflects the fact that most Americans are doing considerably worse than the usual economic measures let on. The official unemployment rate may be relatively low — but the percentage of prime-working-age Americans without jobs, which isn’t the same thing, is historically high. Gross domestic product is up, but the inflation-adjusted income of the median family is probably lower than it was in 2000.
Beyond that, perceptions of the current economy are strongly influenced by the public’s sense of the larger pattern.
When Ronald Reagan famously asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?,” the correct answer was “Yes.” Median household income, adjusted for inflation, was higher in 1980 than it had been in 1976. But gas lines and double-digit inflation made people feel that things were falling apart.
Conversely, unemployment was still historically high when Reagan proclaimed “Morning in America.” But people were ready to hear an upbeat message, because the economic storm seemed to have passed.
More recently, economic confidence held up relatively well during the 2001 recession, maybe because people were willing to see it as no more than a temporary interruption of the great 1990s boom.
A major reason we’re feeling so down now is that for working Americans the boom never did come back. Job creation in the post-2001 recovery was pathetic by Clinton-era standards; wages barely kept up with inflation. Instead, corporate profits and the incomes of a tiny elite surged — sucking up so much of the economy’s growth that only crumbs were left for everyone else.
Now the boom that wasn’t has gone bust — and Americans, understandably, have lost confidence in the prospects for a return to real prosperity.
They have also, I’d suggest, lost confidence in the integrity of our economic institutions.
Early this decade, when the great corporate scandals broke — Enron, WorldCom, and so on — I expected big-business corruption to become a major political issue. It didn’t, partly because the march to war had the effect of changing the subject, partly, perhaps, because Americans weren’t ready to take a broadly negative view of the system that brought them the previous decade’s boom.
But my impression is that the subprime crisis — with its revelation that titans of finance were dealing in funny money and its tales of failed executives receiving hundred-million-dollar going-away presents — has resurrected the sense that something is rotten in the state of our economy. And this sense is adding to the general gloom.
The question is, can the next administration end America’s malaise?
Some of the causes of poor economic performance since 2000 are probably beyond any administration’s control. Raw materials were cheap in the 1990s, but in the years ahead the rise of China and other emerging economies will place increasing pressure on world supplies of oil, copper and so on, no matter what the next president does.
But reinvigorated regulation could help restore confidence to the financial system. A return to pro-labor policies could help raise real wages. Pro-competitive policies — which are not the same thing as giving powerful businesses whatever they want — could help America regain its leadership in information technology. In other words, there’s a lot that could be done to perk up our sagging confidence.
That won’t happen, however, unless the next president is someone who understands what went wrong. And right now, that doesn’t look at all certain.
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2) Housing Woes in U.S. Spread Around Globe
By MARK LANDLER
April 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/business/worldbusiness/14real.html?hp
DUBLIN — The collapse of the housing bubble in the United States is mutating into a global phenomenon, with real estate prices swooning from the Irish countryside and the Spanish coast to Baltic seaports and even parts of northern India.
This synchronized global slowdown, which has become increasingly stark in recent months, is hobbling economic growth worldwide, affecting not just homes but jobs as well.
In Ireland, Spain, Britain and elsewhere, housing markets that soared over the last decade are falling back to earth. Property analysts predict that some countries, like this one, will face an even more wrenching adjustment than that of the United States, including the possibility that the downturn could become a wholesale collapse.
To some extent, the world’s problems are a result of American contagion. As home financing and credit tightens in response to the crisis that began in the subprime mortgage market, analysts worry that other countries could suffer the mortgage defaults and foreclosures that have afflicted California, Florida and other states.
Citing the reverberations of the American housing bust and credit squeeze, the International Monetary Fund last Wednesday cut its forecast for global economic growth this year and warned that the malaise could extend into 2009.
“The problems in the U.S. are being transmitted to Europe,” said Michael Ball, professor of urban and property economics at the University of Reading in Britain, who studies housing prices. “What’s happening now is an awful lot more grief than we expected.”
For countries like Ireland, where prices were even more inflated than in the United States, it has been a painful education, as homeowners learn the American vocabulary of misery.
“We know we’re already in negative equity,” said Emma Linnane, a 31-year-old university administrator.
She bought a cozy, one-bedroom apartment in the Dublin suburbs with her fiancé, Paul Colgan, in May 2006, at the peak of the market. They paid $575,000 — at least $100,000 more than it would fetch today. “I sometimes get shivers thinking about it,” Ms. Linnane said, “but I’ll let the reality hit me when I go to sell it.”
That reality is spreading. Once-sizzling housing markets in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states are cooling rapidly, as nervous Western Europeans stop buying investment properties in Warsaw, Tallinn, Estonia and other real estate Klondikes.
Further east, in India and southern China, prices are no longer surging. With stock markets down sharply after reaching heady levels, people do not have as much cash to buy property. Sales of apartments in Hong Kong, a normally hyperactive market, have slowed recently, with prices for mass-market flats starting to drop.
In New Delhi and other parts of northern India, prices have fallen 20 percent over the last year. Sanjay Dutt, an executive director in the Mumbai office of Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate firm, describes it as an erosion of confidence.
Much of the retrenchment seems to be following the basic law of gravity: what goes up must come down. With low interest rates helping to inflate housing bubbles in many countries, economists said the confluence of falling prices was predictable, if unsettling.
This is not the first housing downturn to cross borders, but its reverberations have been amplified by the integration of financial markets. When faulty American mortgages end up on the books of European banks, the problems of the United States aggravate the world’s problems.
Consider Britain, which had one of Europe’s most robust housing markets, with less of an oversupply than in Ireland or Spain. Then last summer came the subprime crisis across the Atlantic.
Within two months, mortgage approvals dropped 31 percent, compared with the previous year. And by March, average housing prices had fallen 2.5 percent, the largest monthly decline since 1992.
“The boom in house prices was actually much bigger here than in the U.S.,” said Kelvin Davidson, an economist at Capital Economics in London. “If anything, people should be more worried than in the U.S.”
Britain has one of the most developed home-financing industries, not far behind that of the United States. The amount of outstanding mortgage debt, as a share of total economic output, is higher there than in the United States, according to a study by the International Monetary Fund.
“The U.K. followed the U.S. into never-never land, pushing mortgages out the door, believing that prices would go up forever,” said Allan Saunderson, the managing editor of Property Finance Europe, a newsletter for investors.
Still, the problems in Britain pale next to those of Spain and Ireland. Residential investment accounts for 12 percent of the Irish economy and 9 percent of the Spanish economy, compared with 5 percent in Britain and 4 percent in the United States, according to the I.M.F.
The glut of housing has brought new construction to a standstill, driving up unemployment and dimming the prospects for two of Europe’s stellar performers over the last decade.
“We’re waking up from the property dream and finding ourselves in a situation where prices are falling in Spain for the first time,” said Fernando Encinar, a founder of Idealista.com, a real estate Web site.
In Spain, more than four million homes were built in the last decade, more than in Germany, Britain and France combined. Average house prices tripled in parts of the country, as Spain’s torrid economy attracted immigrants and Northern Europeans snapped up holiday homes along the Costa del Sol.
Now, though, thousands of those houses stand empty. The I.M.F. estimates that property is overvalued by more than 15 percent. With mortgages drying up and prices swooning, speculators who once viewed Spanish property as a no-lose proposition are confronting hard reality.
In 2005, Julian Felipe Fernandez bought three small apartments, as an investment, in a huge development being built outside Madrid. He paid 100,000 euros as a deposit for the units, and now he is eager to sell them to avoid having to taking on a costly mortgage. But with the market stalled, Mr. Fernandez’s asking price is what he paid for them.
“Three years ago, it looked like I would be able to flip them for a nice profit before they were finished,” he said. “I just want to get them off my hands, to get rid of this headache.”
If he unloads them, he will be lucky. Enric Bueno, head of marketing for Ibusa, a real estate company in Barcelona, said his firm was closing six or seven sales a month, compared with 40 a month a year ago.
“Things are really bad,” Mr. Bueno said. “If this goes on for five years, we won’t make it.”
Economists have been busy cutting their growth forecasts for Spain, with a few saying that it may stagnate this summer. BBVA, a leading Spanish bank, forecasts that unemployment will rise to an average of 11 percent this year, from 8.6 percent in 2007.
Such cutbacks are well under way in Ireland, where the taxi drivers complain that their ranks are being swollen by laid-off home builders. The housing collapse has brought an abrupt end to more than a decade of pell-mell growth that earned Ireland the nickname “the Celtic tiger.”
Today, the mood in this country feels like a wake, and not an Irish one. Average house prices fell 7 percent last year, the most in Europe, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a British real estate group. They are likely to fall by a similar amount this year.
After a 16-year boom that was interrupted only briefly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Ireland has the most overvalued housing market among developed countries, according to the I.M.F. In its recent economic outlook, the fund calculated that prices are 30 percent higher than they should be, given Ireland’s economic fundamentals.
For many Irish, accepting that reality is like passing through the seven stages of grief. Some homeowners are still in denial, brokers said, asking $5 million for houses worth no more than $4 million. But developers have begun cutting prices for smaller apartments like the one owned by Emma Linnane.
“Last year was our ‘wake up in the middle of the night with sweat pouring down your face’ period,” said David Bewley, a director at the Lisney real estate agency. “Now we’ve grown up.”
Not all the omens are negative. Mr. Bewley said houses were selling again, albeit for 25 percent less. Ireland has not yet suffered widespread incidences of defaulting mortgages or foreclosures in this downturn, in part because lenders have not been as aggressive as those in the United States.
But some worry that the housing meltdown could spoil Ireland’s recipe for success. Like Spain, it attracted lots of foreign workers, many of whom came for well-paying jobs in the construction industry. That fueled the Irish rental market, which has remained buoyant and been a source of income for Ireland’s many real estate speculators.
“If the immigrants go back home, will this hurt the rental market?” asked Ronan O’Driscoll, a director in the Dublin office of Savills, a real estate firm. “If that happens, it would definitely cause foreclosures.”
Reporting was contributed by Victoria Burnett in Madrid, Eamon Quinn in Dublin, Heather Timmons in New Delhi and Julia Werdigier in London.
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3) Foreclosure Politics
Editorial
April 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/opinion/14mon1.html?hp
With foreclosures running at about 20,000 per week, at least 100,000 more families are likely to lose their homes before Congress passes a relief bill. And even then, the measure may fail to stanch the problem unless Congress comes up with something that is significantly better than proposals currently in either chamber.
To produce a worthy relief package, lawmakers will first have to scrap most of the provisions in a bill passed last week by the Senate.
That bill would cost $21 billion over 10 years, with $15 billion of the total going to tax cuts that offer no direct help to at-risk families or hard-hit communities. One set of cuts would subsidize renewable energy; another would let businesses take temporarily larger write-offs for losses. A proposed $7,000 tax credit for buyers of foreclosed homes could backfire, encouraging more foreclosures by allowing banks to charge more for repossessed property. A measure to let non-itemizers deduct property taxes is dubious tax policy and bad foreclosure prevention, since it does not target the neediest.
Lawmakers will also have to ditch an unhelpful item in a bill from the House Ways and Means Committee — a tax break for first-time home buyers. It makes no sense to encourage buyers to jump in when further price declines are likely. Scarce resources should be put toward preventing foreclosures.
There are parts of each of the bills that should be preserved, including money for foreclosure-prevention counseling, for issuing tax-exempt bonds to help refinance subprime mortgages and for local governments to buy up foreclosed properties. But that is only a start.
Democratic leaders want a final bill that would have as its centerpiece a bold plan for the Federal Housing Administration to guarantee the restructuring of mortgages for at-risk borrowers. An advantage of the plan, given the scale of the problem, is that loans could be modified en masse.
But the plan also has flaws. One is political: taxpayers could be on the hook if F.H.A. borrowers defaulted. Congress cannot ask taxpayers to step up without doing all it can to solve the problem without shifting the risk to taxpayers. The way to do that is to allow bankruptcy courts to modify mortgages for troubled homeowners.
The Senate dropped a provision from its recent bill that would have done just that. In the House, separate legislation on bankruptcy has stalled. It is up to Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to close ranks in support of the measure. Neither chamber can wait and hope that the other will stand up to the mortgage industry, which must not be allowed to undermine a policy aimed at fixing a problem it helped to create.
The plan for an F.H.A.-backed rescue also would rely on lenders to voluntarily reduce the loan balances to a level where the F.H.A. could take over. Volunteerism is not working. What’s needed is a stick like the bankruptcy amendment. Lenders will be more likely to modify a loan if they know the alternative is having a judge do it.
Lawmakers know what to do. They just need the political courage to confront the mortgage industry.
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4) Co-Payments Go Way Up for Drugs With High Prices
By GINA KOLATA
April 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/us/14drug.html?hp
Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.
With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.
The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.
No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without.
Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year.
But the result is that patients may have to spend more for a drug than they pay for their mortgages, more, in some cases, than their monthly incomes.
The system, often called Tier 4, began in earnest with Medicare drug plans and spread rapidly. It is now incorporated into 86 percent of those plans. Some have even higher co-payments for certain drugs, a Tier 5.
Now Tier 4 is also showing up in insurance that people buy on their own or acquire through employers, said Dan Mendelson of Avalere Health, a research organization in Washington. It is the fastest-growing segment in private insurance, Mr. Mendelson said. Five years ago it was virtually nonexistent in private plans, he said. Now 10 percent of them have Tier 4 drug categories.
Private insurers began offering Tier 4 plans in response to employers who were looking for ways to keep costs down, said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents most of the nation’s health insurers. When people who need Tier 4 drugs pay more for them, other subscribers in the plan pay less for their coverage.
But the new system sticks seriously ill people with huge bills, said James Robinson, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is very unfortunate social policy,” Dr. Robinson said. “The more the sick person pays, the less the healthy person pays.”
Traditionally, the idea of insurance was to spread the costs of paying for the sick.
“This is an erosion of the traditional concept of insurance,” Mr. Mendelson said. “Those beneficiaries who bear the burden of illness are also bearing the burden of cost.”
And often, patients say, they had no idea that they would be faced with such a situation.
It happened to Robin Steinwand, 53, who has multiple sclerosis.
In January, shortly after Ms. Steinwand renewed her insurance policy with Kaiser Permanente, she went to refill her prescription for Copaxone. She had been insured with Kaiser for 17 years through her husband, a federal employee, and had had no complaints about the coverage.
She had been taking Copaxone since multiple sclerosis was diagnosed in 2000, buying a 30 days’ supply at a time. And even though the drug costs $1,900 a month, Kaiser required only a $20 co-payment.
Not this time. When Ms. Steinwand went to pick up her prescription at a pharmacy near her home in Silver Spring, Md., the pharmacist handed her a bill for $325.
There must be a mistake, Ms. Steinwand said. So the pharmacist checked with her supervisor. The new price was correct. Kaiser’s policy had changed. Now Kaiser was charging 25 percent of the cost of the drug up to a maximum of $325 per prescription. Her annual cost would be $3,900 and unless her insurance changed or the drug dropped in price, it would go on for the rest of her life.
“I charged it, then got into my car and burst into tears,” Ms. Steinwand said.
She needed the drug, she said, because it can slow the course of her disease. And she knew she would just have to pay for it, but it would not be easy.
“It’s a tough economic time for everyone,” she said. “My son will start college in a year and a half. We are asking ourselves, can we afford a vacation? Can we continue to save for retirement and college?”
Although Kaiser advised patients of the new plan in its brochure that it sent out in the open enrollment period late last year, Ms. Steinwand did not notice it. And private insurers, Mr. Mendelson said, can legally change their coverage to one in which some drugs are Tier 4 with no advance notice.
Medicare drug plans have to notify patients but, Mr. Mendelson said, “that doesn’t mean the person will hear about it.” He added, “You don’t read all your mail.”
Some patients said they had no idea whether their plan changed or whether it always had a Tier 4. The new system came as a surprise when they found out that they needed an expensive drug.
That’s what happened to Robert W. Banning of Arlington, Va., when his doctor prescribed Sprycel for his chronic myelogenous leukemia. The drug can block the growth of cancer cells, extending lives. It is a tablet to be taken twice a day — no need for chemotherapy infusions.
Mr. Banning, 81, a retired owner of car dealerships, thought he had good insurance through AARP. But Sprycel, which he will have to take for the rest of his life, costs more than $13,500 for a 90-day supply, and Mr. Banning soon discovered that the AARP plan required him to pay more than $4,000.
Mr. Banning and his son, Robert Banning Jr., have accepted the situation. “We’re not trying to make anybody the heavy,” the father said.
So far, they have not purchased the drug. But if they do, they know that the expense would go on and on, his son said. “Somehow or other, myself and my family will do whatever it takes. You don’t put your parent on a scale.”
But Ms. Steinwand was not so sanguine. She immediately asked Kaiser why it had changed its plan.
The answer came in a letter from the federal Office of Personnel Management, which negotiates with health insurers in the plan her husband has as a federal employee. Kaiser classifies drugs like Copaxone as specialty drugs. They, the letter said, “are high-cost drugs used to treat relatively few people suffering from complex conditions like anemia, cancer, hemophilia, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and human growth hormone deficiency.”
And Kaiser, the agency added, had made a convincing argument that charging a percentage of the cost of these drugs “helped lower the rates for federal employees.”
Ms. Steinwand can change plans at the end of the year, choosing one that allows her to pay $20 for the Copaxone, but she worries about whether that will help. “I am a little nervous,” she said. “Will the next company follow suit next year?”
But it turns out that she won’t have to worry, at least for the rest of this year.
A Kaiser spokeswoman, Sandra R. Gregg, said on Friday that Kaiser had decided to suspend the change for the program involving federal employees in the mid-Atlantic region while it reviewed the new policy. The suspension will last for the rest of the year, she said. Ms. Steinwand and others who paid the new price for their drugs will be repaid the difference between the new price and the old co-payment.
Ms. Gregg explained that Kaiser had been discussing the new pricing plan with the Office of Personnel Management over the previous few days because patients had been raising questions about it. That led to the decision to suspend the changed pricing system.
“Letters will go out next week,” Ms. Gregg said.
But some with the new plans say they have no way out.
Julie Bass, who lives near Orlando, Fla., has metastatic breast cancer, lives on Social Security disability payments, and because she is disabled, is covered by insurance through a Medicare H.M.O. Ms. Bass, 52, said she had no alternatives to her H.M.O. She said she could not afford a regular Medicare plan, which has co-payments of 20 percent for such things as emergency care, outpatient surgery and scans. That left her with a choice of two Medicare H.M.O’s that operate in her region. But of the two H.M.O’s, her doctors accept only Wellcare.
Now, she said, one drug her doctor may prescribe to control her cancer is Tykerb. But her insurer, Wellcare, classifies it as Tier 4, and she knows she cannot afford it.
Wellcare declined to say what Tykerb might cost, but its list price according to a standard source, Red Book, is $3,480 for 150 tablets, which may last a patient 21 days. Wellcare requires patients to pay a third of the cost of its Tier 4 drugs.
“For everybody in my position with metastatic breast cancer, there are times when you are stable and can go off treatment,” Ms. Bass said. “But if we are progressing, we have to be on treatment, or we will die.”
“People’s eyes need to be opened,” she said. “They need to understand that these drugs are very costly, and there are a lot of people out there who are struggling with these costs.”
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5) When Drug Costs Soar Beyond Reach
Editorial
April 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/opinion/15tues1.html?hp
It doesn’t take a health policy expert to recognize that something has gone terribly wrong when patients have to pay thousands of dollars a month for drugs that they need to maintain their health — and possibly save their lives. Congress needs to determine why this is happening and what can be done about it.
The plight of patients who have recently been hit with a huge increase in their insurance co-payments for high-priced prescription drugs was laid out in The Times on Monday by Gina Kolata. Instead of paying a modest $10 to $30 co-payment, as is usually the case for cheaper drugs, patients who need especially costly medicines are being forced to pay 20 percent to 33 percent of the bill (up to an annual maximum) for drugs that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, a year.
These drugs — what insurers call Tier 4 medicines — are used to treat such serious illnesses as multiple sclerosis, hemophilia, certain cancers and rheumatoid arthritis. And since there are usually no cheaper alternatives, patients must either pay or do without, unless they can get their medicines through some charitable plan.
There is little doubt that the so-called tiered formularies, in which co-payments rise along with the cost of the drugs, are a sensible approach for encouraging consumers to use the cheapest drug suitable for their condition. But the system seems to break down when it moves to Tier 4 drugs where co-payments can be huge and suitable alternatives don’t exist.
The insurers say that forcing patients to pay more for unusually high-priced drugs allows them to keep down the premiums charged to everyone else. That turns the ordinary notion of insurance on its head. Instead of spreading the risks and costs across a wide pool of people to protect a smaller number of very sick patients from financial ruin, insurers are gouging the sickest patients to keep premiums down for healthier people.
The health insurance system is so complex that it is hard to parse the blame for this injustice. The drug companies, especially the biotechnology companies, are at the root of the problem; they often charge exorbitant prices for monopoly drugs that were developed with heavy government assistance. Washington needs to rein them in by encouraging generic competition for biological drugs and allowing government programs to negotiate lower prices.
Employers, including the federal government, also bear responsibility. They have been pressing to reduce their prescription drug expenditures, and all health care expenditures, by shifting more of the burden to patients. One patient who had been paying only $20 for a month’s supply of a multiple sclerosis drug was shocked when the charge rose to $325 per month. (It has since been suspended.) Another patient found that his co-payment for a newly prescribed leukemia drug would exceed $4,000 for a 90-day supply, so he has deferred buying it.
If patients do without medicines or put off taking them, the likely result will be sicker patients, and higher costs, down the road.
What is not clear is whether insurers are primarily reacting to pressure from employers or are exploiting the situation to increase their profits. Congress needs to probe hard to find out how many patients are facing enormous drug bills and how best to protect them from medical and financial disaster.
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6) Oil and Food Rises Stoke Inflation Fear
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
April 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/business/15cnd-econ.html?hp
Businesses continued to grapple with steep inflation last month as oil and food costs reached record highs, leaving Federal Reserve policy makers in a difficult spot ahead of their meeting later this month.
A gauge of prices paid by American producers jumped 1.1 percent in March, the Labor Department said on Tuesday, after a 0.3 percent increase in February. Gasoline and home heating oil prices surged.
Economists had expected an increase of 0.6 percent in March.While the higher prices put pressure on businesses to pass on costs to consumers, the increases did not spread to popular products like automobiles and clothing. The closely watched core measure of the Producer Price Index, which excludes volatile costs of food and energy, rose 0.2 percent in March, falling back from an unexpected 0.5 percent rise in February.
The core rate number could take some of the pressure off of the Fed as it tries to balance rising inflation with the overall slowdown in growth. The central bank meets at the end of the month to consider another cut to its benchmark interest rate, which can help prop up growth but cause prices to rise.
But it will be difficult for the Fed to ignore the large cost increases in energy and food. Energy prices were up 2.9 percent in March, a steep increase from a 0.8 percent rise in February. Food costs rose 1.2 percent after declining 0.5 percent the month before.
Some economists said the housing slump and weakening job market could discourage businesses from raising their sticker prices.
“Given the weak nature of domestic demand now and going forward, it is unlikely that businesses will have as much success raising prices at the consumer level as they did in the not too distant past,” wrote Joshua Shapiro, an economist at the research firm MFR, in a note to clients.
A separate report on Tuesday showed that manufacturing activity in New York state grew in April, an unexpected recovery from its worst month on record.
A survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York eked into positive territory after falling to minus 22.2 in March, a sign of severe contraction. New orders rose, though employment appeared to fall slightly.
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7) Germany: Marijuana Smokers Were Poisoned With Lead in Leipzig
By DENISE GRADY
April 15, 2008
Global Update
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/health/15glob.html?adxnnl=1&ref=world&adxnnlx=1208279228-YsUlCA30oeHDr4vlgMD1Rw
They had stomach cramps, nausea, anemia and fatigue, and some even had a telltale bluish line along their gums — classic signs of lead poisoning. But the cases, last year in Leipzig, Germany, puzzled doctors. Lead poisoning is rare in Germany, and yet here were 29 cases in just a few months. The doctors noticed a pattern: the patients were young, from 16 to 33; they were students or unemployed; and they had body piercings and a history of smoking.
In a letter published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, the doctors wrote, “On questioning, all the patients eventually conceded that they were regular users of marijuana.”
Three provided samples for testing. Sure enough, their marijuana was full of lead. One bag bought from a dealer even contained lead particles big enough to see, which meant the lead must have been added deliberately, rather than being absorbed into the plant from contaminated soil.
The core temperature of a joint can reach nearly 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, the doctors noted — more than hot enough to melt lead, which can be absorbed through the respiratory tract.
The poisoning was widely reported by German newspapers and television, and an anonymous lead-screening program was set up for marijuana users. Among 145 people who showed up for testing, 95 more cases were found.
The authorities do not know where the tainted marijuana came from or why the lead was added, but the German police suspect that it was done to make money. The samples tested contained 10 percent lead by weight, which translates into an increased profit of about $682 per pound of marijuana.
The patients are recovering and taking medicines called chelating agents to help remove the lead from their bodies. But it could take years to clear it completely, particularly from bones. And some were quite disillusioned to learn that poison was added to what they thought was a pure, all-natural product, said their doctor, Prof. Michael Stumvoll of University Hospital in Leipzig, who commented, “How naïve!”
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8) Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing
By ANDREW MARTIN
News Analysis
April 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/business/worldbusiness/15food.html?ref=us
The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries. That strategy seemed to reach a high point last year when Congress mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels.
But now a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices.
In some countries, the higher prices are leading to riots, political instability and growing worries about feeding the poorest people. Food riots contributed to the dismissal of Haiti’s prime minister last week, and leaders in some other countries are nervously trying to calm anxious consumers.
At a weekend conference in Washington, finance ministers and central bankers of seven leading industrial nations called for urgent action to deal with the price spikes, and several of them demanded a reconsideration of biofuel policies adopted recently in the West.
Many specialists in food policy consider government mandates for biofuels to be ill advised, agreeing that the diversion of crops like corn into fuel production has contributed to the higher prices. But other factors have played big roles, including droughts that have limited output and rapid global economic growth that has created higher demand for food.
That growth, much faster over the last four years than the historical norm, is lifting millions of people out of destitution and giving them access to better diets. But farmers are having trouble keeping up with the surge in demand.
While there is agreement that the growth of biofuels has contributed to higher food prices, the amount is disputed.
Work by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington suggests that biofuel production accounts for a quarter to a third of the recent increase in global commodity prices. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicted late last year that biofuel production, assuming that current mandates continue, would increase food costs by 10 to 15 percent.
Ethanol supporters maintain that any increase caused by biofuels is relatively small and that energy costs and soaring demand for meat in developing countries have had a greater impact. “There’s no question that they are a factor, but they are really a smaller factor than other things that are driving up prices,” said Ron Litterer, an Iowa farmer who is president of the National Corn Growers Association.
He said biofuels were an “easy culprit to blame” because their popularity had grown so rapidly in the last two or three years.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called the recent criticism of ethanol by foreign officials “a big joke.” He questioned why they were not also blaming a drought in Australia that reduced the wheat crop and the growing demand for meat in China and India.
“You make ethanol out of corn,” he said. “I bet if I set a bushel of corn in front of any of those delegates, not one of them would eat it.”
The senator’s comments reflect a political reality in Washington that despite the criticism from abroad, support for ethanol remains solid.
Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he had come to realize that Congress made a mistake in backing biofuels, not anticipating the impact on food costs. He said Congress needed to reconsider its policy, though he acknowledged that would be difficult.
“If there was a secret vote, there is a pretty large number of people who would like to reassess what we are doing,” he said.
According to the World Bank, global food prices have increased by 83 percent in the last three years. Rice, a staple food for nearly half the world’s population, has been a particular focus of concern in recent weeks, with spiraling prices prompting several countries to impose drastic limits on exports as they try to protect domestic consumers.
While grocery prices in the United States increased about 5 percent over all in the last year, some essential items like eggs and milk have jumped far more. The federal government is expected to release new data on domestic food prices Wednesday, with notable increases expected.
On Monday, President Bush ordered that $200 million in emergency food aid be made available to “meet unanticipated food aid needs in Africa and elsewhere,” a White House statement said.
His spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, said the president had urged officials to look for additional ways to help poor nations combat food insecurity and to come up with a long-term plan “that helps take care of the world’s poor and hungry.”
Skeptics have long questioned the value of diverting food crops for fuel, and the grocery and live- stock industries vehemently opposed an energy bill last fall, arguing it was driving up costs.
A fifth of the nation’s corn crop is now used to brew ethanol for motor fuel, and as farmers have planted more corn, they have cut acreage of other crops, particularly soybeans. That, in turn, has contributed to a global shortfall of cooking oil.
Spreading global dissatisfaction in recent months has intensified the food-versus-fuel debate. Last Friday, a European environment advisory panel urged the European Union to suspend its goal of having 10 percent of transportation fuel made from biofuels by 2020. Europe’s well-meaning rush to biofuels, the scientists concluded, had created a variety of harmful ripple effects, including deforestation in Southeast Asia and higher prices for grain.
Even if biofuels are not the primary reason for the increase in food costs, some experts say it is one area where a reversal of government policy could help take pressure off food prices.
C. Ford Runge, an economist at the University of Minnesota, said it is “extremely difficult to disentangle” the effect of biofuels on food costs. Nevertheless, he said there was little that could be done to mitigate the effect of droughts and the growing appetite for protein in developing countries.
“Ethanol is the one thing we can do something about,” he said. “It’s about the only lever we have to pull, but none of the politicians have the courage to pull the lever.”
But August Schumacher, a former under secretary of agriculture who is a consultant for the Kellogg Foundation, said the criticism of biofuels might be misdirected. Development agencies like the World Bank and many governments did little to support agricultural development in the last two decades, he said.
He noted that many of the upheavals over food prices abroad have concerned rice and wheat, neither of which is used as a biofuel. For both those crops, global demand has soared at the same time that droughts suppressed the output from farms.
Elisabeth Rosenthal and Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting.
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9) Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies
By MICHAEL BARBARO
April 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/business/15retail.html?ref=business
The consumer spending slump and tightening credit markets are unleashing a widening wave of bankruptcies in American retailing, prompting thousands of store closings that are expected to remake suburban malls and downtown shopping districts across the country.
Since last fall, eight mostly midsize chains — as diverse as the furniture store Levitz and the electronics seller Sharper Image — have filed for bankruptcy protection as they staggered under mounting debt and declining sales.
But the troubles are quickly spreading to bigger national companies, like Linens ‘n Things, the bedding and furniture retailer with 500 stores in 47 states. It may file for bankruptcy as early as this week, according to people briefed on the matter.
Even retailers that can avoid bankruptcy are shutting down stores to preserve cash through what could be a long economic downturn. Over the next year, Foot Locker said it would close 140 stores, Ann Taylor will start to shutter 117, and the jeweler Zales will close 100.
The surging cost of necessities has led to a national belt-tightening among consumers. Figures released on Monday showed that spending on food and gasoline is crowding out other purchases, leaving people with less to spend on furniture, clothing and electronics. Consequently, chains specializing in those goods are proving vulnerable.
Retailing is a business with big ups and downs during the year, and retailers rely heavily on borrowed money to finance their purchases of merchandise and even to meet payrolls during slow periods. Yet the nation’s banks, struggling with the growing mortgage crisis, have started to balk at extending new loans, effectively cutting up the retail industry’s collective credit cards.
“You have the makings of a wave of significant bankruptcies,” said Al Koch, who helped bring Kmart out of bankruptcy in 2003 as the company’s interim chief financial officer and works at a corporate turnaround firm called AlixPartners.
“For years, no deal was too ugly to finance,” he said. “But now, nobody will throw money at these companies.”
Because retailers rely on a broad network of suppliers, their bankruptcies are rippling across the economy. The cash-short chains are leaving behind tens of millions of dollars in unpaid bills to shipping companies, furniture manufacturers, mall owners and advertising agencies. Many are unlikely to be paid in full, spreading the economic pain.
When it filed for bankruptcy, Sharper Image owed $6.6 million to United Parcel Service. The furniture chain Levitz owed Sealy $1.4 million.
And it is not just large companies that are absorbing the losses. When Domain, the furniture retailer, filed for bankruptcy, it owed On Time Express, a 90-employee transportation and logistics company in Tempe, Ariz., about $30,000.
“We’ll be lucky to see pennies on the dollar, if we see anything,” said Ross Musil, the chief financial officer of On Time Express. “It’s a big loss.”
Most of the ailing companies have filed for reorganization, not liquidation, under the bankruptcy laws, including the furniture chain Wickes, the housewares seller Fortunoff, Harvey Electronics and the catalog retailer Lillian Vernon. But, in a contrast with previous recessions, many are unlikely to emerge from bankruptcy, lawyers and industry experts said.
Changes in the federal bankruptcy code in 2005 significantly tightened deadlines for ailing companies to restructure their businesses, offering them less leeway.
And the changes may force companies to pay suppliers before paying wages or honoring obligations to customers, like redeeming gift cards, said Sally Henry, a partner in the bankruptcy law practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and the author of several books on bankruptcy.
As a result, she said, “it’s no longer reorganization or even liquidation for these companies. In many cases, it’s evaporation.”
Several of the retailers that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection over the last eight months, like the furniture sellers Bombay, Levitz and Domain, have begun to wind down — closing stores, laying off workers and liquidating merchandise.
In most cases, the collapses stemmed from a combination of factors: flawed business strategies, a souring economy and banks’ unwillingness to issue cheap loans.
Bombay, a chain with 360 stores, was considered a success in the furniture world, after its sales surged from $393 million in 1999 to $596 million in 2003.
Then the chain decided to move most of its stores out of enclosed malls into open-air shopping centers. It started a children’s furniture business, called BombayKids. And it started carrying bigger items, like beds and upholstered couches, with higher prices than its regular furniture.
Consumers balked at the changes, hurting Bombay’s sales and profits at the same time that its expenses for the ambitious new strategies began to grow. The timing was unenviable: By early 2007, the housing market began to falter, so purchases of furniture slowed to a trickle.
The company was running out of money, but banks refused to lend more. “They did not want to take the chance that we might not repay the loans,” Elaine D. Crowley, the chief financial officer, said in an interview.
In September 2007, Bombay filed for bankruptcy protection. The highest bid for the company came from liquidation firms, who quickly dismembered the 33-year-old chain. Bombay, which once employed 3,608, now has 20 employees left. “It is very difficult and sad,” Ms. Crowley said.
The bankruptcies are putting a spotlight on a little-discussed facet of retailing: heavy debt.
Stores may appear to mint money by paying $2 for a T-shirt and charging $10 for it. But because shopping is based on weather patterns and fashion trends, retailers must pay for merchandise that may sit, unsold, on shelves for long periods.
So chains regularly borrow large sums to cover routine expenses, like wages and electricity bills. When sales are strong, as they typically are during the holiday season, the debts are repaid.
Fortunoff, a jewelry and home furnishing chain in the Northeast, relied on $90 million in loans to help operate its 23 stores, using merchandise as collateral.
But by early 2008, as the housing market struggled, the chain’s profits dropped, meaning its collateral was losing value and the amount it could borrow fell.
In better economic times, the banks might have granted Fortunoff a reprieve. But with a recession looming, they refused, forcing it to file for bankruptcy in February. In filings, the chain said it was “facing a liquidity crisis.” (Fortunoff was later sold to the owner of Lord & Taylor.)
Plenty of retailers remain on strong footing. Arnold H. Aronson, the former chief executive of Saks Fifth Avenue and a managing director at Kurt Salmon Associates, a retail consulting firm, said the credit tightness and consumer spending slowdown have only wiped out the “bottom tier” companies in retailing.
“This recession dealt the final blow to these chains,” he said. But several big-name chains are looking vulnerable. Linens ’n Things, which is owned by Apollo Management, a private equity firm, is considering a bankruptcy filing after years of poor performance and mounting debts, though it has additional options, people involved in the discussions said Monday.
Whether more chains file for bankruptcy or not, it will be hard to miss the impact of the industry’s troubles in the nation’s malls.
J. C. Penney, Lowe’s and Office Depot are scaling back or delaying expansion. Office Depot had planned to open 150 stores this year; now it will open 75.
The International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group, estimates there will be 5,770 store closings in 2008, up 25 percent from 2007, when there were 4,603.
Charming Shoppes, which owns the women’s clothing retailers Lane Bryant and Fashion Bug, is closing at least 150 stores. Wilsons the Leather Experts will close 158. And Pacific Sunwear is shutting a 153-store chain called Demo.
Those decisions were made months ago, when it was unclear how long the downturn in consumer spending might last. If March was any indication, it is nowhere near over. Sales at stores open at least a year fell 0.5 percent, the worst performance in 13 years, according to the shopping council.
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10) Area C strikes fear into the heart of Palestinians as homes are destroyed
Israelis defend rules that reject 94% of non-Jewish building applications
Rory McCarthy in Far'un
The Guardian,
Tuesday April 15 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/15/israelandthepalestinians
In the end it came down to a single-page letter, written in Hebrew and Arabic and hand-delivered by an Israeli army officer who knocked at the front door. The letter spelt the imminent destruction of the whitewashed three-storey home and small, tree-lined garden that Bassam Suleiman spent so long saving for and then built with his family a decade ago.
It was a final demolition order, with instructions to evacuate the house within three days.
If Suleiman was in any doubt about the Israeli military's intentions he had only to look outside his back door where large piles of rubble and broken concrete mark the remains of the seven of his neighbours' houses that were demolished in the same way last year.
"How would you feel when you've spent 20 years finishing your life's project?" said Suleiman, 38, a teacher. He began moving his furniture out after the letter, from the civil administration of Judea and Samaria, the defence ministry department responsible for the Israeli-occupied West Bank, came on January 31. Now there are just a couple of plastic chairs in his front room and in the hallway the carpets are rolled up and ready to be moved. Clothes are piled on the floor and the shelves are empty, save for a stack of documents charting the story of the impending demolition. His brother, Husam, has already left the ground floor flat but the new washing machine and fridge stand still wrapped in plastic. Suleiman, his wife and two children wait for the bulldozers.
"Everything I did in my life was for what's now inside this house and now it's going to be destroyed," said Suleiman. "It's very hard for me to find somewhere else to live."
The Israeli authorities argue that Suleiman's house was built in a part of the West Bank known as area C, a designation from the era of the Oslo Accords which means Israel has full military and administrative control. In order to build, a Palestinian must apply for a permit from the Israeli authorities. If there is no permit - as in Suleiman's case - the building is liable for demolition.
Illegal
Area C covers 60% of the West Bank, home to around 70,000 Palestinians. It is also the area in which most Jewish settlements, all illegal under international law, are built. Compelling statistical evidence shows that while it is extremely hard for Palestinians to obtain building permits, settlements continue to grow rapidly.
Research by the Israeli group Peace Now found that 94% of Palestinian permit applications for Area C building were refused between 2000 and September 2007. Only 91 permits were granted to Palestinians, but 18,472 housing units were built in Jewish settlements. As a result of demolition orders 1,663 Palestinian buildings were demolished, against only 199 in the settlements. "The denial of permits for Palestinians on such a large scale raises the fear that there is a specific policy by the authorities to encourage a 'silent transfer' of the Palestinian population from area C," Peace Now said.
This year there has been a marked increase in demolitions. There were 138 demolitions between January and March, most in area C, compared with 29 in the last three months of 2007, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This year 400 Palestinians have been displaced as a result. At a time of a renewed peace process to create an independent Palestinian state, the reality in the West Bank is that Jewish settlements are growing and demolitions of Palestinian homes are on the increase.
The problems of the village of Far'un, south of Tulkarm, are complicated by the vast West Bank barrier, which here runs away from the 1949 ceasefire line that divides Israel and the Palestinian territories. The wide, steel fence, which passes just a few dozen metres from Suleiman's home, cuts off the village from a slice of its agricultural land and underground water reserves and has turned this area into a dangerous no-go zone: in December 2006, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl playing nearby was shot dead by an Israeli soldier.
Suleiman's house and that of his neighbour Emad Hassahsi, which has also received a demolition order, were built before the barrier arrived, in an area they were told - and they have letters that appear to support their claim - was area B, in which Palestinians have administrative control and therefore somewhere they thought they could safely build. Only later did the Israeli military announce it was in fact area C. There are similar disputes about the exact delineation of the different areas elsewhere the West Bank.
Israel's civil administration offered no explanation for the rise in demolitions but told the Guardian: "The procedures that are carried out before the materialisation of a demolition order include: issuance of an order to cease building that is usually issued in the early stages of the construction of foundations; numerous deliberations at the high planning and zoning committee and of course an open door to the supreme court of justice. These procedures are valid for both Palestinians and Israelis alike." It said the buildings demolished in Far'un were "built illegally without the required licences".
One effect of the strict planning curbs is to limit the growth of Palestinian villages. "If you look at the way the Israelis are enforcing planning and construction regulations you see they are being enforced in a one-sided way," said Avi Berg, research director of the leading Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which has worked on the Far'un case.
Settlement growth continues apace despite the fact that the current peace talks are based on the US Road Map, under which Israel is required to freeze settlement activity. In another report, Peace Now said that since the talks began at Annapolis last November, Israel was still building 500 homes in West Bank settlements and had issued tenders for 750 homes in East Jerusalem settlements. Reports suggest another 1,400 homes will be built in two settlements in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank.
The Israeli government defends the continued settlement construction particularly in the major settlements which it calls "population centres", saying it will not build new settlements or expropriate more land. "In the population centres and in Jerusalem the reality on the ground will not be the same in the future as it is today," Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said last month. "There will be more additional building as part of the reality of life and this is something that was explained ..."
Not all the cases of demolition involve homes. In January, Israeli forces uprooted 3,200 trees, destroyed water cisterns and stone terraces in fields near Beit Ula, close to Hebron, in the southern West Bank. Again this was in area C. The civil administration said the demolition was an "enforcement activity" carried out after legal warnings.
But in this case the target was a €64,000 (£51,000) project from the European commission which began two years ago to provide a livelihood for the villagers, several of whom also put their own money into the planting.
"It was a tragedy for us," said Sami al-Adam, 46, a farmer who had put in 45,000 shekels. "They're tearing me out by my roots. They want to destroy Palestinian farmers psychologically and economically."
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11) SEIU, AFL-CIO in war of words over confrontation
by Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/us/2008/04/15/D902HUB04_union_turmoil/index.html
Apr 15th, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- The nation's largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO, and the Service Employees Union International, the nation's largest union and member of a rival labor group, argued Tuesday over who was at fault for a scuffle in Michigan between union members.
What everyone agrees on is that union members tussled at the Labor Notes Conference in Dearborn, Mich., on Saturday, April 12.
The networking conference was sponsored by Labor Notes, a nonprofit organization and network for rank-and-file union members and grassroots labor activists.
The California Nurses Association, an AFL-CIO member, and the SEIU are competing to sign up nurses, with the SEIU complaining that the CNA is raiding its members.
CNA executive director Rose Ann DeMoro was scheduled to speak at the conference, but said she canceled when she heard rumors that SEIU would be there to protest. SEIU members tried to storm the conference's banquet to protest during what they expected to be DeMoro's speech, the CNA said.
"While breaking in the building, the SEIU staff, now joined by SEIU staff inside the building, physically assaulted a group of union members and activists at the door," CNA said in a news release. "At least one woman, a retired auto worker and former business manager for Labor Notes, was injured and went to the hospital after being pushed to the floor and hitting her head on a table."
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on Tuesday squarely blamed the SEIU, which left the labor federation in 2005 to form a rival federation called Change to Win, for the scuffle. "There is no justification -- none -- for the violent attack orchestrated by SEIU," Sweeney said.
But the SEIU says their people were the ones attacked.
"Contrary to the CNA's description of what happened, however, many of the protesters were being pushed, shoved, and even assaulted by conference participants," the SEIU said.
The SEIU said its people were there to protest the CNA, but "the protest was mostly peaceful."
"Unfortunately, a brief period of pushing and shoving occurred when conference organizers attempted to block the protesters from entering, which resulted in a number of unintentional injuries including several SEIU members and organizers."
And SEIU President Andy Stern said Sweeney "has the power to solve this problem."
"He should stop making excuses and protect workers," Stern said.
Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
On Developments in the SEIU-CNA Dispute
April 15, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For information: 202/637-5018
For several weeks I have been working to bring the
Service Employee International Union (SEIU) and the
California Nurses Association/NNOC (CNA) together to
resolve their escalating dispute over representation of
nurses. Unfortunately, the deplorable events of the
weekend set back the progress we hoped to make.
There is no justification - none - for the violent
attack orchestrated by SEIU at the Labor Notes
conference in Detroit. While there may well be
multiple sides to any dispute, violence in any form is
reprehensible. Violence in attacking freedom of speech
must be strongly condemned. Any attempt to deny the
right of free speech threatens the foundation of our
movement and the future of working people.
No union should understand the corrosive effect of
violence better than SEIU, which was founded by
courageous janitors in the face of employer violence in
the 1920s and 1930s. I call on the leaders of SEIU to
condemn what happened in Detroit.
Likewise, I call on the leaders of SEIU to withdraw
their recent appeal to their local unions across the
country to withhold dues from AFL-CIO state federations
and central labor councils as a pressure tactic in
their dispute with CNA. These organizations are not
involved in the controversy in any way, and withholding
resources at a time when we face the greatest political
challenges in our history is a damaging affront to the
determined, united efforts of the entire labor
movement.
It is time for the escalation to stop. Our
responsibilities as leaders demand that we rise above
our differences and disagreements for the greater good.
Last week the leaders of CNA agreed to meet with SEIU
to discuss these issues.
Today I am renewing the call for both parties to come
together and resolve the issues that divide them.
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12) Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution
By DAVID STOUT
April 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/us/16cnd-scotus.html?hp
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Kentucky’s method of putting criminals to death by lethal injection, not only clearing the way for Kentucky to resume executions but ending an unofficial moratorium in the 35 other states that have the death penalty.
However, Justice John Paul Stevens, while concurring reluctantly with the judgment of the court, wrote that he now believed capital punishment itself is unconstitutional, and that Wednesday’s ruling might serve to reignite the debate over whether it should exist in the United States.
By 7 to 2, the court rejected challenges to the Kentucky execution procedure brought by two death-row inmates, holding that they had failed to show that the risks of pain from mistakes in an otherwise “humane lethal execution protocol” amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned by the Constitution.
The prisoners had contended that the three-drug procedure used on death row — one drug each to sedate, paralyze and end life — was unconstitutional, and that in any event there were strong indications that Kentucky had bungled some executions, creating unnecessary pain for the condemned. Through their lawyers, they maintained that problems could be largely solved by administering a single overwhelming dose of a barbiturate, as opposed to the three-drug procedure.
The prisoners’ challenge had implications far beyond Kentucky. Of the 36 states with the death penalty, all but Nebraska, which uses the electric chair, rely on the same three-drug procedure that Kentucky uses. So does the federal government. Now, with the Kentucky challenge disposed of, other states that had set aside executions seem poised to begin them again.
Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia quickly announced that his state would lift its moratorium on executions, and the Rev. Pat Delahanty, head of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said, “We’re going to be facing some executions soon,” The Associated Press reported.
Executions across the country have been on hold since last September, when the Supreme Court decided to take the Kentucky case. About two dozen executions did not go forward as scheduled while the case was pending, death penalty opponents told the A.P. Because pre-execution procedures can be time-consuming, there was no immediate way to gauge how quickly they might resume. One prisoner who could be facing death soon, in view of the Governor Kaine’s remarks, is Edward Bell, who is on Virginia’s death row for killing a Winchester police officer. Mr. Bell’s execution had been set for April 8.
In a decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., which weighed the Kentucky prisoners’ claims that they faced an unacceptably high risk of suffering at the hands of their executioners, the court concluded that “Kentucky’s continued use of the three-drug protocol cannot be viewed as posing an ‘objectively intolerable risk’ when no other state has adopted the one-drug method and petitioners have proffered no study showing that it is an equally effective manner of imposing a death sentence.”
The prisoners who brought the challenge were Ralph Baze, who killed a sheriff and a deputy who were trying to serve him with a warrant, and Thomas C. Bowling, who killed a couple whose car he had damaged in a parking lot.
The procedure that they challenged uses a barbiturate, then pancuronium bromide, a paralyzing agent, followed by potassium chloride, which stops the heart and brings about death — but with terrible pain if the barbiturate does not work as intended, the condemned men’s lawyers maintained. And because of the paralyzing agent, a prisoner could appear peaceful and relaxed even while suffering, they argued.
Lawyers for the prisoners contended that the barbiturate-only method is widely used by veterinarians, who are barred in many states from using the same paralyzing agent employed in executing people. But the court rejected that argument, stating that “veterinary practice for animals is not an appropriate guide for humane practices for humans.” The justices who concurred in the judgment — with varying degrees of agreement — were Anthony M. Kennedy, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Stephen G. Breyer, as well as Justice Stevens.
Alluding to the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, the court said history leads to the conclusion that “an execution method violates the Eighth Amendment only if it is deliberately designed to inflict pain,” a standard that bars disemboweling, burning alive and other excruciating ways of bringing about death. “Judged under that standard, this is an easy case,” the court held.
But the deliberations were not easy, if the number of opinions is any indicator. Although seven members concurred in the judgment of the court, only Justices Kennedy and Alito (who filed a concurring opinion of his own) joined Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion. Justices Scalia and Thomas joined each other’s concurring opinions.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter dissented from the court’s judgment. “I would not dispose of the case so swiftly given the character of the risk at stake,” Justice Ginsburg wrote, declaring that she would have sent the case back to the Kentucky courts for further scrutiny of the condemned men’s claims.
Perhaps most interestingly, Justice Stevens filed an opinion concurring in the judgment of the court, but turning against capital punishment itself. Indeed, he asserted that recent decisions by state legislatures, Congress and the Supreme Court itself to preserve the death penalty “are the product of habit and inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process that weighs the costs and risks” of the ultimate punishment.
Justice Stevens noted that in the 1976 decision in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of capital punishment, Gregg v. Georgia, the court declared that “three societal purposes” justified the death penalty: “incapacitation, deterrence and retribution.”
“In the past three decades, however, each of these rationales has been called into question,” Justice Stevens said. The possibility of a life sentence without parole, he said, has often caused people to soften their positions in favor of inflicting death.
“Full recognition of the diminishing force of the principal rationales for retaining the death penalty should lead this court and legislatures to re-examine” the ultimate question, Justice Stevens wrote, using a phrase used by a former Texas prosecutor and judge: “Is it time to kill the death penalty?”
Coming from Justice Stevens, those words were especially significant. The justice (who will turn 88 on Sunday) was one of the seven justices who voted in 1976 to uphold capital punishment. Since then, he has heard many challenges to various aspects of the death penalty and the “evolving standards of decency” often invoked by its opponents. In 2002, Justice Stevens was in the majority as the court ruled that mentally retarded killers could not be executed, and in 2005 he was in the majority as the court banned the death penalty against juvenile offenders.
Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor, said further death-penalty litigation is all but certain in light of the court’s “heavily splintered” opinions on Wednesday, in part because the court recognized that “a risk of harm can qualify as an Eighth Amendment violation.”
On Wednesday, after handing down their opinions in the Kentucky case, the justices heard arguments in a death penalty case from Louisiana. The question was whether the Constitution allows capital punishment for the rape of a child who is not killed.
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13) Bloody Day of Fighting in Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER
April 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/world/middleeast/17mideast.html?hp
JERUSALEM — At least 18 Palestinians, many of them civilians including children, and three Israeli soldiers were reported killed in heavy fighting in Gaza on Wednesday, one of the bloodiest days in weeks.
The Israeli military said it had struck at, and hit, armed militants, and was checking the reports of civilian casualties.
Amid the violence, Israel resumed the pumping of emergency fuel supplies into Gaza after a week-long suspension. The flow stopped on April 9 after Palestinian militant groups attacked the sole fuel depot along Israel’s border with Gaza, killing two Israeli civilians who worked there.
The latest violence started on Tuesday night with an army operation in northern Gaza aimed at keeping suspected militants away from the border fence, the Israeli military said. During the ensuing clashes, the military said in a statement, Palestinian gunmen opened fire at Israeli soldiers from within a mosque used for storing explosives. One soldier and several Palestinian militants were wounded.
As that operation wound up in the morning, Israeli forces along the border spotted a group of Palestinian gunmen approaching the fence south of the fuel depot at Nahal Oz, and rushed to confront them, the military said. Three members of the Israeli force and four militants belonging to Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, were killed.
Hamas said its fighters had ambushed the Israelis. “Raiding our areas will never be a picnic,” Abu Obaidah, a spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, told reporters in Gaza.
Clashes and Israeli air strikes extended into the afternoon. The deadliest occurred in central Gaza where a total of 14 Palestinians were killed, according to Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, director of emergency services in Gaza. Dr. Hassanein said that all the dead were civilians, and that five were children under the age of 16. A local cameraman for the Reuters news agency, Fadel Shanaa, 23, was killed when one missile struck his clearly marked jeep in the area, the Reuters bureau in Gaza said.
Asked about the many civilian casualties, Maj. Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the Israeli army, said the military had struck at an armed group. “It could be that civilians were nearby, it would not be the first time,” she said.
Major Leibovich said that if a cameraman was indeed killed, “we apologize for that. It was not intentional,” she said, adding that journalists take a risk operating in fighting zones.
More than 10 rockets and 26 mortar bombs were fired from Gaza toward Israel on Wednesday, an Israeli army spokeswoman said, but they landed in open areas or in Palestinian territory and caused no injury.
A Hamas delegation left Gaza for Cairo on Wednesday afternoon, apparently for talks with Egyptian officials. A Hamas spokesman in Gaza said the delegation would also meet there on Thursday with former President Jimmy Carter, who has already angered Israeli and American officials with his insistence on meeting representatives of the group during his visit to the region. The United States, Israel and the European Union classify Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Egypt has been trying to broker understandings for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Israel has denied any contacts with the organization and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said that the daily rocket attacks against Israel from Gaza are “not a prescription for relaxation or compromise.”
An Israeli government spokesman, David Baker, said on Wednesday that Israel’s “defensive measures will continue unabated.”
The Israeli defense ministry had announced in advance that it would allow the resumption of essential fuel supplies to Gaza on Wednesday, but the violence delayed the delivery by a few hours. The Palestinians received fuel needed to run the Gaza power plant and cooking gas, but no gasoline for private cars.
Israel has been restricting the amount of fuel entering Gaza for months in what Israel has called a response to the constant rocket fire. International organizations say the amount sent to Gaza is inadequate.
The Israeli military said that the Nahal Oz terminal had reopened “despite the cynical use of strategic sites” by the militants.
Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting.
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14) Fed: economy weakened further in the spring
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:05 p.m. ET
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fed-Economy.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The country's economic health deteriorated further in the early spring as shoppers buckled under the strains of the housing and credit debacles and a weaker employment climate.
Manufacturers and others businesses, meanwhile, were walloped by zooming prices for energy and other raw materials. However, their ability to jack up retail prices to customers was mixed, with some companies restrained by competitive pressures, according to the Federal Reserve's new snapshot of nationwide economic conditions released Wednesday.
''Economic conditions have weakened,'' the Fed report stated.
Many analysts believe the economy has fallen into a recession, predicting that economic activity contracted in the first three months of this year and is still ebbing now. Even Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently acknowledged for the first time that a recession was possible. That was a rare utterance of the ''r'' word for a Fed chief. The government later this month will report on the economy's first-quarter performance.
Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransciso, in a speech Wednesday, said the economy ''has all but stalled and could even contract over the first half of the year.''
The report underscored the challenges facing Bernanke and his colleagues as they fight to keep the economy from sinking into a deep recession, while at the same time avoiding a flare-up of inflation. The report will figure prominently when the Fed meets April 29-30 to decide its next move on interest rates.
The Fed, which has been cutting rates since last September to bolster the economy, turned much more forceful in January, when conditions took another turn for the worse. Many economists believe the Fed will lower rates yet again at the April meeting to help shore things up.
The Fed snapshot ''either portayed a slowdown in already subpar economic growth or a deepening recession,'' said Michael Gregory, economist at BMO Capital Markets, who predicted a quarter-point rate reduction.
Even with the rate reductions, though, consumers have turned more cautious, the Fed report suggested. Consumers are major shapers of the economy because their spending accounts for such a big chunk of overall economic activity.
''Consumer spending was characterized as softening across most of the country, with some districts reporting year-over-year declines in retail and or auto sales,'' the Fed report said. Merchants -- other than auto dealers -- reported that sales were ''sluggish or declining'' in 10 of the Fed's 12 regions, the report said. With inventories of unsold goods starting to pile up, retailers in the Richmond, Va., and San Francisco regions have canceled orders, the report noted.
Lofty energy prices are squeezing businesses' profits and pinching consumers, leaving them with less money to spend on other things. That is putting a damper on economic growth and also adding to inflation pressures.
Oil prices topped $115 a barrel for the first time Wednesday. Gasoline prices have soared, too, marching toward $4 a gallon.
Businesses are having to cope with higher prices for food products, fuel and energy products and many raw materials, the Fed report said.
''Most manufacturers have or are planning to increase prices'' in response to such rising costs, the Fed said. However, the response of companies in the service sector has been more mixed, the Fed said, ''in part due to differences in competitive pressures.''
Overall, though, most of the Fed's regions reported ''little change in retail price inflation,'' the Fed report said, suggesting that producers -- and their profits -- are especially getting hit by rising energy and raw material prices.
The government reported on Wednesday that consumer prices went up by a relatively modest 0.3 percent in March. Producer, or wholesale, prices, meanwhile rose a lot faster -- by a whopping 1.1 percent.
On the manufacturing front, activity varied across the country.
The Fed regions of Chicago, Boston and Richmond, for instance, reported factory activity was rising -- but not substantially. But, the regions of New York, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Dallas all reported weakening factory production. The regions of St. Louis and Cleveland saw activity hold steady, while the regions of Atlanta, Minneapolis and San Francisco said it was mixed.
Nonetheless, most Fed regions saw a ''continued slide'' in demand for goods related to housing construction, the Fed said. Uncertainty about economic conditions the Fed added, is leading to a ''generally subdued'' outlook for manufacturers.
In a separate report Wednesday, the Fed said big industry production nationwide rose 0.3 percent in March, an improvement from a drop of 0.7 percent in February.
The housing market continued to be stuck in a rut.
Home building remained sluggish throughout the nation, although ''there were few signs of any quickening in the pace of deterioration,'' the Fed said. Declines or downward pressure on home prices were reported in many Fed regions. And, the regions of New York and San Francisco noted ''some incipient price declines in areas that had previously shown resilience.'
The Commerce Department, in yet another report Wednesday, said home building sank in March to its lowest point in 17 years, fresh evidence of the depth of the housing market's woes.
The Fed's survey is based on information supplied by the Fed's 12 regional banks. The information was collected before April 7.
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15) Iraqi Unit Flees Post, Despite American’s Plea
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/world/middleeast/16sadr.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD — A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.
The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led to a tense series of exchanges between American soldiers and about 50 Iraqi troops who were fleeing.
Capt. Logan Veath, a company commander in the 25th Infantry Division, pleaded with the Iraqi major who was leading his troops away from the Sadr City fight, urging him to return to the front.
“If you turn around and go back up the street those soldiers will follow you,” Captain Veath said. “If you tuck tail and cowardly run away they will follow up that way, too.”
Captain Veath’s pleas failed, and senior American and Iraqi commanders mounted an urgent effort to regain the lost ground. An elite Iraqi unit was rushed in and with the support of the Americans began to fight its way north.
This episode was a blow to the American effort to push the Iraqis into the lead in the struggle to wrest control of parts of Sadr City from the Mahdi Army militia and what Americans and Iraqis say are Iranian-backed groups.
That approach was intended to build up the Iraqi military’s fighting capacity and put an Iraqi face on the operation in Sadr City, which is occurring in a Baghdad bastion of support for Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric. Two weeks ago, more than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers deserted their posts during the fight against militias in Basra.
Tuesday’s desertions in Sadr City, although involving a particularly hesitant Iraqi unit, left many of the Americans soldiers wondering about the tenacity of their Iraqi allies.
“It bugs the hell out of me,” said Sgt. George Lewis, Captain Veath’s platoon sergeant in Company B, Third Platoon, First Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment. “We don’t see any progress being made at all. We hear these guys in firefights. We know if we are not up there helping these guys out we are making very little progress.”
Company B moved into Sadr City at the end of March as part of a broader effort to secure the southernmost portion of the densely populated Sadr City.
That area has been used by militias to fire 107-millimeter rockets toward the Green Zone. The Americans’ mission is to stop the rocket firings and help the Iraqi government establish a modicum of control.
Some Iraqi soldiers have fought hard. American soldiers have been regularly coaching them on how to protect their patrol bases, conserve ammunition and evacuate their wounded.
One big problem is that the Iraqi troops have responded to militia gunfire with such intense fusillades that the soldiers have endangered civilians, American soldiers and even their own forces. The barrage of Iraqi Army fire has become such a regular occurrence that some American soldiers are worried that militia fighters have tried to insert themselves between nearby Iraqi units to induce the Iraqi soldiers to fire on one another.
In a recent visit to the Iraqi forward position, First Sgt. Martin Angulo of Company B sought to coach the Iraqis on how to use their newly acquired M-16s to direct precision fire at a militia sniper who had been tormenting the Iraqi forces from an alleyway.
The problem on Tuesday, however, was more serious: an Iraqi retreat that left a gaping hole in the most forward position on a critical thoroughfare in the Tharwa section of Sadr City.
The episode began when Major Sattar, the leader of an Iraqi company that had taken up positions 700 yards in front of the Americans, suddenly appeared at Company B’s field headquarters in the southern part of Sadr City.
The major’s company had replaced a more battle-hardened Iraqi unit just two days earlier, and he had been unhappy to find that he would be occupying a position to the front of the better trained and equipped Americans.
“Every house in Sadr City probably has one of their sons in the Mahdi Army,” he observed when American soldiers visited his position on Monday. “So it is hard to convince people to believe in the Iraqi Army.”
When he arrived at the Americans’ position on Tuesday, the Iraqi officer reported that many of his soldiers had taken off their uniforms and deserted after other Iraqi Army commanders failed to send reinforcements during a gun battle with militias that he said had lasted several hours.
Major Sattar calmly explained that he was leading the remainder of his 80-man company away from the fight. As if to underscore the point, a convoy of Iraqi vehicles piled high with furniture was parked in front of the American position.
Abandoning the stronghold, however, would allow the militias to move in again and seed the road with roadside bombs. Other Iraqi units had stood their ground through several long firefights, and Captain Veath was surprised that the major’s unit was leaving after holding off another militia attack.
“You went through a whole battle and are now removing yourself?” Captain Veath asked incredulously. “Are any of your men dead?”
Major Sattar acknowledged that his unit had several wounded but none killed. But he and other Iraqi soldiers insisted that they were poorly equipped to battle the militias. Iraqi forces, they said, were short of ammunition, had only a few armored vehicles and were up against militia fighters they said were equipped and trained by the Iranians.
“We are not afraid,” the major responded.
He also complained that he had no means to communicate directly with the American troops.
“That is an excuse, and you know it,” Captain Veath shot back. He argued that one of the major’s platoons was situated just 100 yards from some of the American Stryker vehicles and that the two sides had agreed that the Iraqis could send a runner over to the vehicles to ask for help if necessary.
The Iraqi commander returned to his convoy and Captain Veath followed, promising a Stryker escort if the Iraqi soldiers would only return to their positions.
Dozens of excited Iraqi soldiers began to join in the discussion. As tempers flared and voices rose, Sergeant Angulo ordered the company’s soldiers to stay close to Captain Veath.
The Iraqi convoy drove off, and the Americans began to scramble to find a new Iraqi unit to plug the gap. Senior Iraqi commanders hurried to the scene and a special Iraqi reconnaissance unit was ordered to advance up the road. With the help of an American bomb-clearing unit, Stryker vehicles and attack helicopters, the Iraqis rumbled north, spraying rounds as they went. According to the last reports monitored by Company B, the Iraqis were stopped short by several roadside bombs, and planned to resume the push in daylight.
The furious Iraqi fire on their drive toward the abandoned base endangered the American soldiers who were bringing supplies to one of their platoons, and an American officer issued a plea over the tactical radio.
“They are lighting up everything,” he said. “Tell them to knock it off.”
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16) U.N. Panel Urges Changes to Feed Poor While Saving Environment
By STEVEN ERLANGER
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/world/europe/16food.html?ref=world
PARIS — Major agricultural countries must urgently change their policies to avoid a social explosion from rising food prices, a panel of United Nations experts warned Tuesday, adding their voices to new concerns about the proper balance between saving the environment and feeding the poor.
“Modern agriculture will have to change radically if the international community wants to cope with growing populations and climate change, while avoiding social fragmentation and irreversible deterioration of the environment,” said Salvatore Arico, a biodiversity specialist with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, summarizing the report by about 400 experts.
The report tries to provide a comprehensive view on how to produce food that is less dependent on fossil fuels; favors locally available resources, natural fertilizers and traditional seeds; and tries to preserve the soil and water supply.
The prices of basic food like rice, wheat and corn have been rising sharply, setting off violent popular protests in countries including Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Italy. The unrest has resulted in tens of deaths and helped lead to the dismissal on Saturday of the Haitian prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis, and the increasing cost of subsidizing bread prices is a major worry for key American allies like President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
Wheat prices have risen by 130 percent since March of last year, and soy prices have risen 87 percent, the United Nations said, with food now representing 60 percent to 80 percent of consumer spending in developing countries. In general, the World Bank has said that food prices have climbed about 83 percent worldwide over the past three years.
Three years in the making, the report — known as the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development — says that modern agriculture has brought significant increases in food production, but that the benefits have been spread unevenly and at “an increasingly intolerable price, paid by small-scale farmers, workers, rural communities and the environment.”
Even before the United Nations panel added its voice to the debate, major international organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had issued their own loud warnings at their annual meetings over the weekend about the dangers of the rising price of food, which has many causes.
These include bad weather, historically high prices for oil and transportation, increased demand for meat and dairy products in the richer Asian countries, and the Western push to use “biofuels” made from grain, especially corn, to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Robert B. Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, called on rich nations to provide an additional $500 million to the World Food Program of the United Nations. On Monday, President Bush ordered that $200 million in emergency food aid be made available to “meet unanticipated food aid needs in Africa and elsewhere,” the White House announced.
The World Bank intends to nearly double its agricultural lending to Africa next year, to $800 million, and the finance ministers who serve as the International Monetary Fund’s board of governors said the two institutions should work together to provide “an integrated response” to the crisis.
“As financial markets have tumbled, food prices have soared,” Mr. Zoellick said. “Since 2005 the prices of staples have jumped 80 percent.”
The United States has been criticized for pressing for the use of biofuels, especially corn-based ethanol, as a way to reduce oil consumption and to keep corn prices high for farmers. But the same prices that please farmers are causing shortages in basic grains used for food in the developing world.
The European Union has been rethinking its emphasis on the use of biofuels, even as the European Commission on Monday rejected an appeal from an advisory panel to suspend its goal of having 10 percent of its transportation fuel made from biofuel by 2020. That goal is seen as an integral part of the European Union’s pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by that year, as part of the effort to reduce global warming.
The United Nations special rapporteur for the right to food, Jean Ziegler, has said biofuels are “a crime against humanity” because they raise global food prices. But Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for the European Union environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said, “You can’t change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other objectives” of climate change and energy reform.
The British in particular have asked for an urgent review of biofuel programs. The French agriculture minister, Michel Barnier, has said “absolute priority” must be given to food production.
Other critics, however, have pointed to the way the European Union subsidizes its agricultural exports, which is to get rid of European surpluses to keep European farmers happy, while selling at a price well below the cost of production — thus undermining the ordinary market for local food production in Africa.
The quandary is an example of how environmental aims may have to give way to the needs of the poor — or, as the Unesco report urges, that agricultural methods will have to change.
Providing enough food for the poor, while taking care of health needs and the environment, means “reconciling contradictory objectives,” said Guilhem Calvo, a consultant to the Unesco Division of Ecological and Earth Sciences.
Among its findings, for instance, the Unesco panel’s report says that the growing involvement of women in agriculture in developing countries is creating worsening health and work conditions for them and is reducing their access to education. The report also highlighted the intensifying water shortage in large parts of Africa and central and western Asia.
Robert Watson, the report’s director, said that it repeated an old message about the cost of concentrating “on production alone,” resulting in “an increasingly degraded and divided planet.”
But it is a message not always heard, he said, adding, “If those with power are now willing to hear it, then we may hope for more equitable policies that do take the interest of the poor into account.”
Australia, China, the United States and Canada expressed reservations about some of the language in the report concerning biotechnology, especially genetically modified foods, which many believe have the potential to ease the food crisis, but others regard as potentially dangerous for the future.
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17) Police Dept. Settles Suit by Protesters Over Tactics
By THOMAS J. LUECK
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/nyregion/16horses.html?ref=nyregion
To settle a lawsuit, the New York Police Department has agreed to formalize changes it had made in its crowd-control procedures during political demonstrations, the authorities said on Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed in 2003 by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of antiwar protesters who said they had been treated harshly by the police. The suit charged that the police trapped protesters inside pens and blocked off “avenues of escape” while approaching on horseback, causing people to be knocked down.
The civil liberties group sued on behalf of three people: a woman who said she was trapped behind a police barricade and had her wheelchair broken by an officer when she tried to leave; a man who said he was stepped on by a police horse and injured; and another man who said he was knocked down by someone who had been struck by a police horse.
“This settlement is an important step toward assuring that the N.Y.P.D. will not be an obstacle to peaceful protest,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the civil liberties group, which made copies of the settlement available on Tuesday.
The agreement was approved on April 1 by Judge Robert W. Sweet of Federal District Court in Manhattan. Under the settlement, the department agreed to pay $125,000 in legal fees and damages to plaintiffs.
Connie Pankratz, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department, said on Tuesday that the court settlement “doesn’t require the N.Y.P.D. to implement new procedures, but rather, formalizes procedures that they already have in place.” She said the department had abided by similar crowd-control rules for many years, including in 2003, when the lawsuit was filed.
As part of the settlement, the police agreed to include new language on crowd control in its written guide for officers. For example, the new instructions say that police barriers should “not unreasonably restrict access to and participation in the event,” and the revisions say that officers on horseback are “to ensure that a crowd or group to be dispersed has sufficient avenues of escape and/or retreat.”
The rules also say that the public must be informed about access routes to demonstrations when sidewalks or roads are closed.
In June 2004, before the Republican National Convention was held in Manhattan that year, a preliminary injunction by Judge Sweet ordered the department to abide by rules similar to those now being formalized.
While the settlement order by Judge Sweet said that the city and the police “deny any liability arising out of the plaintiffs’ claims,” it said the city had agreed to pay $25,000 in damages.
The city also agreed to pay $100,000 to the civil liberties group for legal fees.
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18) Wall Street Winners Get Billion-Dollar Paydays
By JENNY ANDERSON
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16wall.html?ref=business
Hedge fund managers, those masters of a secretive, sometimes volatile financial universe, are making money on a scale that once seemed unimaginable, even in Wall Street’s rarefied realms.
One manager, John Paulson, made $3.7 billion last year. He reaped that bounty, probably the richest in Wall Street history, by betting against certain mortgages and complex financial products that held them.
Mr. Paulson, the founder of Paulson & Company, was not the only big winner. The hedge fund managers James H. Simons and George Soros each earned almost $3 billion last year, according to an annual ranking of top hedge fund earners by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, which comes out Wednesday.
Hedge fund managers have redefined notions of wealth in recent years. And the richest among them are redefining those notions once again.
Their unprecedented and growing affluence underscores the gaping inequality between the millions of Americans facing stagnating wages and rising home foreclosures and an agile financial elite that seems to thrive in good times and bad. Such profits may also prompt more calls for regulation of the industry.
Even on Wall Street, where money is the ultimate measure of success, the size of the winnings makes some uneasy. “There is nothing wrong with it — it’s not illegal,” said William H. Gross, the chief investment officer of the bond fund Pimco. “But it’s ugly.”
The richest hedge fund managers keep getting richer — fast. To make it into the top 25 of Alpha’s list, the industry standard for hedge fund pay, a manager needed to earn at least $360 million last year, more than 18 times the amount in 2002. The median American family, by contrast, earned $60,500 last year.
Combined, the top 50 hedge fund managers last year earned $29 billion. That figure represents the managers’ own pay and excludes the compensation of their employees. Five of the top 10, including Mr. Simons and Mr. Soros, were also at the top of the list for 2006. To compile its ranking, Alpha examined the funds’ returns and the fees that they charge investors, and then calculated the managers’ pay.
Top hedge fund managers made money in many ways last year, from investing in overseas stock markets to betting that prices of commodities like oil, wheat and copper would rise. Some, like Mr. Paulson, profited handsomely from the turmoil in the mortgage market ripping through the economy.
As early as 2005, Mr. Paulson began betting that complex mortgage investments known as collateralized debt obligations would decline in value, much as Wall Street traders bet that shares will drop in price. In that case, known as shorting, they borrow shares and sell them, wait for the price to fall, buy the shares back at a lower price and return them, pocketing the profit.
Then, over the next two years, Mr. Paulson established two funds to focus on the credit markets. One of those funds returned 590 percent last year, and the other handed back 353 percent, according to Alpha. By the end of 2007, Mr. Paulson sat atop $28 billion in assets, up from $6 billion 12 months earlier.
Mr. Soros, one of the world’s most successful speculators and richest men, leapt out of retirement last summer as the market turmoil spread — and he won big. He made $2.9 billion for the year, when his flagship Quantum fund returned almost 32 percent, according to Alpha. Mr. Simon, a mathematician and former Defense Department code breaker who uses complex computer models to trade, earned $2.8 billion. His flagship Medallion fund returned 73 percent.
Like Mr. Paulson, Philip Falcone, who founded Harbinger Partners with $25 million in June 2001, cast a winning bet against the mortgage market. He pulled in returns of 117 percent after fees in 2007 and made $1.7 billion. The trade thrust him from relative obscurity to hedge fund heavyweight: he now manages $18 billion. Harbinger recently won agreement from The New York Times Company to add two members to its board.
Hedge fund managers share their success with their investors, which include wealthy individuals, pension funds and university endowments. They typically charge annual fees equal to 2 percent of their assets under management, and take a 20 percent cut of any profits.
With a combined $2 trillion under management, the hedge fund industry is coming off its richest year ever — a feat all the more remarkable given the billions of dollars of losses suffered by major Wall Street banks.
In recent months, however, scores of hedge funds have quietly died or spectacularly imploded, wracked by bad investments, excess borrowing or leverage, and client redemptions — or a combination of those events.
“To some degree it’s a very gigantic version of Las Vegas,” said Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution.
As Alpha’s list shows, managers who reap big gains one year can lose the next.
Edward Lampert, the founder of ESL Investments and a member of the 2007 Alpha list, was absent this year. His fund fell 27 percent last year, according to Alpha. About 60 percent of ESL’s equity portfolio is invested in Sears, whose shares plunged 40 percent last year. ESL is also a major holder of Citigroup, whose abysmal performance matched that of Sears.
A manager who ranked high in the 2007 list and fell off in 2008 was James Pallotta of the Tudor Investment Corporation, who was 17th last year and earned $300 million. Mr. Pallotta’s $5.7 billion Raptor Global Fund fell almost 8 percent last year, according to Alpha.
A few who did not make the cut still made buckets of money. Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates and Barry Rosenstein at Jana Partners didn’t make the top 50. But Mr. Kovner earned $100 million, and Mr. Rothstein earned $170 million, according to Alpha. Spokesmen for the hedge fund managers either declined to comment on Tuesday or could not be reached.
Since 1913, the United States witnessed only one other year of such unequal wealth distribution — 1928, the year before the stock market crashed, according to Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Such inequality is likely to impede an economic recovery, he said.
“For a recovery to be robust and sustainable you can’t just have consumer demand at Nordstrom,” he said. “You need it at the little shop on the corner, too.”
Despite the explosive growth of the industry — about 10,000 hedge funds operate worldwide — it is relatively lightly regulated. On Tuesday, two panels appointed by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. advised hedge funds to adopt guidelines to increase disclosure and risk management.
And Mr. Gross, the fund manager, warned that the widening divide among the richest and everyone else is cause for worry.
“Like at the end of the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties, we are going the other way,” Mr. Gross said. “We are clearly in a period of excess, and we have to swing back to the middle or the center cannot hold."
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19) Merck Wrote Drug Studies for Doctors
By STEPHANIE SAUL
April 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16vioxx.html?ref=health
The drug maker Merck drafted dozens of research studies for a best-selling drug, then lined up prestigious doctors to put their names on the reports before publication, according to an article to be published Wednesday in a leading medical journal.
The article, based on documents unearthed in lawsuits over the pain drug Vioxx, provides a rare, detailed look in the industry practice of ghostwriting medical research studies that are then published in academic journals.
The article cited one draft of a Vioxx research study that was still in want of a big-name researcher, identifying the lead writer only as “External author?”
Vioxx was a best-selling drug before Merck took it off the market in 2004 over evidence linking it to heart attacks. Last fall, the company agreed to a $4.85 billion settlement to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits filed by former Vioxx patients or their families.
The lead author of Wednesday’s article, Dr. Joseph S. Ross of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said a close look at the Merck documents raised broad questions about the validity of much of the drug industry’s published research, because the ghostwriting practice appears to be widespread.
“It almost calls into question all legitimate research that’s been conducted by the pharmaceutical industry with the academic physician,” said Dr. Ross, whose article, written with colleagues, was published Wednesday in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. and posted Tuesday on the journal’s Web site.
Merck acknowledged on Tuesday that it sometimes hired outside medical writers to draft research reports before handing them over to the doctors whose names eventually appear on the publication. But the company disputed the article’s conclusion that the authors do little of the actual research or analysis.
The final work is the product of the doctor and “accurately reflects his or her opinion,” said a Merck lawyer, James C. Fitzpatrick.
And at least one of the doctors whose published research was questioned in Wednesday’s article, Dr. Steven H. Ferris, a New York University psychiatry professor, said the notion that the article bearing his name was ghostwritten was “simply false.” He said it was “egregious” that Dr. Ross and his colleagues had done no research besides mining the Merck documents and reading the published journal articles.
In an editorial, JAMA said the analysis showed that Merck had apparently manipulated dozens of publications to promote Vioxx.
“It is clear that at least some of the authors played little direct roles in the study or review, yet still allowed themselves to be named as authors,” the editorial said.
The editorial called upon medical journal editors to require each author to report his or her specific contributions to articles. “Journal editors also bear some of the responsibility for enabling companies to manipulate publications,” the editorial said.
JAMA itself published one of the Vioxx studies that was cited in Dr. Ross’s article.
In that case, in 2002, a Merck scientist was listed as the lead author. But Dr. Catherine D. DeAngelis, JAMA’s editor, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that, even so, it was dishonest because the authors did not fully disclose the role of a ghostwriter.
“I consider that being scammed,” Dr. DeAngelis said. “But is that as serious as allowing someone to have a review article written by a for-profit company and solicited and paid for by a for-profit company and asking you to put your name on it after it was all done?”
Although the role of pharmaceutical companies in influencing medical journal articles has been questioned before, the Merck documents provided the most comprehensive look at the practice yet, according to one of the study’s four authors, Dr. David S. Egilman, a clinical associate medical professor at Brown University.
In the Vioxx lawsuits, millions of Merck documents were supplied to plaintiffs. Those documents were available to Dr. Egilman and Dr. Ross because they had served as consultants to plaintiffs’ lawyers in some of those suits.
Combing through the documents, Dr. Ross and his colleagues unearthed internal Merck e-mail messages and documents about 96 journal publications, which included review articles and reports of clinical studies. While the Ross team said it was not necessarily raising questions about all 96 articles, it said that in many cases there was scant evidence that the recruited authors made substantive contributions.
One paper involved a study of Vioxx as a possible deterrent to Alzheimer’s progression.
The draft of the paper, dated August 2003, identified the lead writer as “External author?” But when it was published in 2005 in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the lead author was listed as Dr. Leon J. Thal, a well-known Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Thal was killed in an airplane crash last year.
The second author listed on the published Alzheimer’s paper, whose name had not been on the draft, was Dr. Ferris, the New York University professor. Dr. Ferris, reached by telephone Tuesday, said he had played an active role in the research and he was substantially involved in helping shape the final draft.
“It’s simply false that we didn’t contribute to the final publication,” Dr. Ferris said.
A third author, also not named on the initial draft, was Dr. Louis Kirby, currently the medical director for the company Provista Life Sciences. In an e-mail message on Tuesday, Dr. Kirby said that as a clinical investigator for the study he had enrolled more patients, 109, than any of the other researchers. He also said he made revisions to the final document.
“The fact that the draft was written by a Merck employee for later discussion by all the authors does not in and of itself constitute ghostwriting,” Dr. Kirby’s e-mail message said.
The current editor of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, Dr. James H. Meador-Woodruff, the chairman of psychiatry at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, said he was not the editor in 2005 but planned to investigate the accusations. “Currently, we have in place prohibitions against this,” Dr. Meador-Woodruff said.
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Coal Company Verdict in West Virginia Is Thrown Out
By ADAM LIPTAK
April 4, 2008
National Briefing | Mid-Atlantic
The State Supreme Court for a second time threw out a $50 million verdict against the coal company Massey Energy. The court decided to rehear the case after the publication of photographs of its chief justice on vacation in Monte Carlo with the company’s chief executive, Don L. Blankenship. The chief justice, Elliott E. Maynard, and a second justice disqualified themselves from the rehearing and were replaced by appeals court judges, but the vote was again 3-to-2 in favor of Massey. A third justice, Brent D. Benjamin, who was elected to the court with the help of more than $3 million from Mr. Blankenship, refused to recuse himself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/us/04brfs-COALCOMPANYV_BRF.html?ref=us
Utah: Miners’ Families File Lawsuit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Rockies
April 3, 2008
A lawsuit by the families of six men killed in August in a mine cave-in claims the collapse occurred because the mine’s owners were harvesting coal unsafely. The suit, filed in Salt Lake City, says the Murray Energy Corporation performed risky retreat mining last summer. It seeks unspecified damages. Three men trying to reach the miners died 10 days after the collapse in another cave-in at the Crandall Canyon Mine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/us/03brfs-MINERSFAMILI_BRF.html?ref=us
Regimens: Drug Samples Found to Affect Spending
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Vital Signs
Having doctors distribute free samples of medicines may do exactly what drug companies hope for — encourage patients to spend more money on drugs.
A study in the April issue of Medical Care found that patients who never received free samples spent an average of $178 for six months of prescriptions. Those receiving samples spent $166 in the six months before they obtained free medicine, $244 when they received the handouts and $212 in the six months after that.
Researchers studied 5,709 patients, tracking medical histories and drug expenditures; 14 percent of the group received free samples. The study adjusted for prior and current health conditions, race, socioeconomic level and other variables.
The authors acknowledge that the study results could be partly explained by unmeasured illness in the group given samples.
The lead author, Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, said although free samples might save some patients money, there were other ways to economize. “Using more generics, prescribing for three months’ supply rather than one month’s and stopping drugs that may no longer be needed can also save money,” Dr. Alexander said.
April 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/health/policy/01regi.html?ref=health
Rhode Island: Order to Combat Illegal Immigration
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | New England
Linking the presence of undocumented workers to the state’s financial woes, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri signed an executive order that includes steps to combat illegal immigration. The order requires state agencies and companies that do business with the state to verify the legal status of employees. It also directs the state police and prison and parole officials to work harder to find and deport illegal immigrants. The governor, a Republican, said that he understood illegal immigrants faced hardships, but that he did not want them in Rhode Island. Under his order, the state police will enter an agreement with federal immigration authorities permitting them access to specialized immigration databases.
March 29, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/us/29brfs-002.html?ref=us
North Carolina: Ministers Say Police Destroyed Records
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
Three ministers accused a Greensboro police officer of ordering officers to destroy about 50 boxes of police files related to the fatal shooting of five people at an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in 1979. The Revs. Cardes Brown, Gregory Headen and Nelson Johnson said an active-duty officer told them he and at least three other officers were told to destroy the records in 2004 or 2005, shortly after a seven-member panel that had been convened to research the shootings requested police files related to them. The ministers did not identify the officer who provided the information. On Nov. 3, 1979, a heavily armed caravan of Klansman and Nazi Party members confronted the rally. Five marchers were killed and 10 were injured. Those charged were later acquitted in state and federal trials. The city and some Klan members were found liable for the deaths in civil litigation.
February 27, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27brfs-MINISTERSSAY_BRF.html?ref=us
Gaza: Israeli Army Clears Itself in 21 Deaths
By ISABEL KERSHNER
World Briefing | Middle East
The army said no legal action would be taken against military officials over an artillery strike in Beit Hanun in 2006 in which an errant shell hit residential buildings and killed 21 Palestinian civilians. An army investigation concluded that the shell was fired based on information that militants were intending to fire rockets from the area, an army statement said. The civilian deaths, it said, were “directly due to a rare and severe failure” in the artillery control system. The army’s military advocate general concluded that there was no need for further investigation.
February 27, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/world/middleeast/27briefs-israelistrike.html?ref=world
World Briefing | Asia
Taiwan: Tons of Fish Wash Up on Beaches
By REUTERS
About 45 tons of fish have washed up dead along 200 miles of beach on the outlying Penghu Islands after an unusual cold snap. News reports said 10 times as many dead fish were still in the water.
February 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/world/asia/23briefs-TONSOFFISHWA_BRF.html?ref=world
Zimbabwe: Inflation Breaks the Six-Figure Mark
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
World Briefing | Africa
The government’s statistics office said the inflation rate surged to a new record of 100,580 percent in January, up from 66,212 percent in December. Rangarirai Mberi, news editor of the independent Financial Gazette in Harare, said the state of the economy would feature prominently in next month’s presidential and parliamentary elections. “Numbers no longer shock people,” he said. Zimbabweans have learned to live in a hyperinflationary environment, he added, “but the question is, how long can this continue?”
February 21, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/world/africa/21briefs-INFLATIONBRE_BRF.html?ref=world
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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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"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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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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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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