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MUMIA ABU-JAMAL BREAKING NEWS: [please circulate]
Federal ruling regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row, Pennsylvania
Legal Update
July 22, 2008
From: Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia: Today our Petition for Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc, submitted on behalf of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Simply put, we did not receive the needed majority vote from the nine sitting judges; at least five votes for a rehearing were necessary. However, Justice Thomas L. Ambro continues to urge the granting of relief on the issue of racism in jury selection. That position, as detailed in his brilliant dissenting opinion of March 27, 2008, will continue to serve as a beacon of hope as we press on for a new trial and Mumia’s freedom. Judge Ambro said that the “core guarantee of equal protection, ensuring citizens that their State will not discriminate on account of race, would be meaningless were we to approve the exclusion of jurors on the basis of . . . race. . . . I respectfully dissent.” A copy of today’s decision is attached.
Reaction: Mumia and I had a legal conference this afternoon. He, as I, was stunned by the federal court’s refusal to grant relief since it flies in the face of established legal precedent in both the U.S. Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. I am furious because racism continues to raise its ugly head in this country, and should have no place in our legal system. The indisputable facts are that the prosecutor engaged in racism in selecting the jury in this case, and that bigotry lingers today in Philadelphia. It would be naive not to realize that this case continues to reek of politics and injustice.
U.S. Supreme Court: We will be seeking relief in the Supreme Court. The Petition for Writ of Certiorari will be filed by October 20, 2008, unless there is an extension. The racism issue will be presented, along with the fact that the prosecutor made misrepresentations to the jury in order to obtain a murder conviction against Mumia.
Conclusion: My goal remains a complete reversal of the conviction, even though the federal court has already granted a new jury trial on the question of the death penalty. We will not rest until Mumia is free.
Yours very truly,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
[RobertRBryan@aol.com
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NEXT Meeting to defeat pro-JROTC referendum set for November Ballot in SF
TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 7:15-9:00 pm
Friends Meeting House
65 9th St, San Francisco (between Mission and Market Sts)
To RSVP or for additional information, please contact Alan Lessik at AFSC at 565.0201, x11 or alessik@afsc.org.
Dear Friends:
In 2006 San Francisco won attention across the country when the School Board voted to become the first large school district to eliminate an existing JROTC program. Now this achievement is being threatened by a group that recently submitted petitions for a ballot proposition on the November 2008 ballot in support of continuing JROTC in the San Francisco Unified School District. This group has been well organized, using as their base the JROTC students and instructors, as well as those in the community who are for military recruitment in our schools. We understand that pro-recruitment groups outside of San Francisco are interested in backing this proposition because of the devastating effect it would have if it was passed of anchoring JROTC in our schools.
We cannot let this happen. San Francisco voters are on record with past ballot propositions that expressed our desire to end military recruitment in our schools. We would like to invite you to attend an initial organizing meeting to create a campaign committee with the sole purpose to defeat this proposition. We would like to build a coalition of labor, peace groups, faith communities, students, parents, teachers and representatives from political clubs and constituencies across San Francisco.
The purpose of this organizing meeting is to set up our committee, to determine what resources organizations and individuals may be able to contribute to staff the committee and to run a successful campaign.
The meeting will take place on AUGUST 5, 7:15-9:00 pm at the Friends Meeting House, 65 9th St, San Francisco (between Mission and Market Sts). The American Friends Service Committee will convene this initial meeting.
To RSVP or for additional information, please contact Alan Lessik at AFSC at 565.0201, x11 or alessik@afsc.org.
We look forward to you and your organization's help in defeating this initiative.
American Friends Service Committee
JROTC Must Go
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STOP WAR ON IRAN !
An Emergency Call to Action AUGUST 2:
• An Attack could be Imminent
• We Can’t Afford to Wait
• Take It to the Streets This Summer
• U.S. out of Iraq, Money for human needs, not war!
MASS MARCH IN NYC
SATURDAY, AUGUST 2
Assemble 12 p.m.
at Times Square
43rd St. & Broadway
AN APPEAL TO ORGANIZERS AND ACTIVISTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND AROUND THE WORLD:
Consider as soon as possible if you can organize a STOP WAR ON IRAN protest in your locality during the weekend of August 2 – 3. Let us know
YET ANOTHER U.S. WAR?
The U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is hated by the people there. These wars have no support at home and are ruining the domestic economy. Instead of pulling out, the Bush administration is preparing for still another warÅ]this time against Iran . This must be stopped!
AGRESSION TOWARDS IRAN IS ESCALATING
On June 4, George Bush, with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at his side, called Iran a “threat to peace.” Two days before, acting as a proxy for the Pentagon, Israel used advanced U.S. fighter planes to conduct massive air maneuvers, which the media called a “dress rehearsal” for an attack on Iran ’s nuclear facility. Under pressure from the U.S. , the European Union announced sanctions against Iran on June 23. A bill is before Congress for further U.S. sanctions on Iran and even a blockade of Iran.
IRAN “THREATS” A HOAX
Iran as a “nuclear threat” is as much a hoax as Bush’s claim of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq used to justify the war there. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which inspects Iran ’s nuclear facilities, says it has no weapons program and is developing nuclear power for the days when its oil runs out. Even Washington ’s 16 top spy agencies issued a joint statement that said Iran does not have nuclear weapons technology!
U.S. and Israel are the real nuclear danger. The Pentagon has a huge, nuclear-capable naval armada in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, with guns aimed at Iran . Israel , the Pentagon’s proxy force in the Middle East , has up to 200 nuclear warheads and has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran did sign it.
WAR HURTS U.S. ECONOMY
While billions of dollars go to war, at home the unemployment rate had the biggest spike in 23 years. Home foreclosures and evictions are increasing; fuel and food prices are through the roof. While the situation is growing dire for many, Washington ’s cuts to domestic programs continue. A new U.S. war will bring only more suffering.
WHAT WE DO RIGHT NOW CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
While the summer is a difficult time to call protests, the August recess of Congress gives the White House an opportunity for unopposed aggression against Iran . We must not let this happen! From the anti-war movement and all movements for social change, to religious and grassroots organizations, unions and schools, let us join forces to demand “No war on Iran, U.S. out of Iraq, Money for human needs not war! “
This call to action is issued by StopWarOnIran.org
Endorse the Emergency Call to Action for August 2 at
http://stopwaroniran.org/aug22008endorse.shtml
List your local action at
http://stopwaroniran.org/aug22008volorgcent.shtml
Sign the Petition at http://stopwaroniran.org/petition.shtml
Make an Emergency Donation at http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml
Tell a Friend
http://stopwaroniran.org/friend.shtml
Sign up for updates
http://stopwaroniran.org/updates.shtml
DONATE
Please help build a grassroots campaign to Stop War on Iran
http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml
• Endorse the Emergency Call to Action for August 2
• List your local action
• Sign the Petition
• Make an Emergency Donation
• Tell a Friend
• Sign up for updates
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Monday August 14 - 7:30 pm
David Rovics Concert
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists
1924 Cedar St. at Bonita, a block east of MLK Jr. Way, Berkeley 948709
The "musical version of Democracy Now" per Amy Goodman! "The peace
poet and troubador for our time" per Cindy Sheehan!
Rovics is a radical and progressive singer and songwriter.
$15
co-sponsored by BFUU's Social Justice Committee
wheelchair accessible
510 528 4941
www.bfuu.org
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American Joe
Lisa Reynal’s story about one soldier on his way to Afghanistan and the effect that America’s war on terror has had on the lives around him.
--Chronicle
Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 P.M. through August 15, 2008
fee/admission: $15-$35
Marsh Studio
1074 Valencia St. (at 22nd Street)
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 826-5750
(Mission/Bernal Heights)
www.themarsh.org
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SAN FRANCISCO IS A SANCTUARY CITY! STOP THE MIGRA-ICE RAIDS!
Despite calling itself a "sanctuary city", S.F. politicians are permitting the harrassment of undocumented immigrants and allowing the MIGRA-ICE police to enter the jail facilities.
We will picket any store that cooperates with the MIGRA or reports undocumented brothers and sisters. We demand AMNESTY without conditions!
BRIGADES AGAINST THE RAIDS
project of BARRIO UNIDO
(415)431-9925
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"Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
"Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.
"Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home." by: Tecumseh -(1768-1813) Shawnee Chief
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Indicted, Sami Al-Arian Faces Possible Life Imprisonment new
John Halliwell, July 1, 2008
Last March, Sami Al-Arian was given a choice: 1) damned if you do; and 2) damned if you don't; he chose "damned if you don't". Finally, a full three months after making that decision, he was formally charged last Thursday with contempt of court, a crime which has no maximum penalty. In other words, Dr. Al-Arian - a man whose innocence has been grudgingly admitted by even his worst enemies* - is now facing the possibility of life in jail all because he had the guts to stand up for what he believes in--read more at: http://www.freesamialarian.com/home.htm
1. Call Senator Patrick Leahy ((202) 224- 4242) and Congressman John Conyers ((202) 225-5126) - the Judicial Committee chairmen of the Senate and House respectively - and ask them to meet with the Attorney General and have him stop Assistant US Attorney Gordon Kromberg from going forward with this unlawful indictment. Even if you are not their constituent, they are obliged to listen to your opinion since their duties extend to all Americans.
2. Fax a letter to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the US Department of Justice: (202) 514-5050.
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"Canada: Abide by resolution - Let U.S. war resisters stay!"
Dear Canada: Let Them Stay
Urgent action request—In wake of Parliament win, please sign this new letter to Canada.
By Courage to Resist
June 18, 2008
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/499/89/
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) U.S. Perpetuates Mass Killings In Iraq
by Peter Phillips | Dissident Voice, July 19th, 2008
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/us-perpetuates-mass-killings-in-iraq/
2) Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
July 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/business/22jobs.html
3) Abu-Jamal loses latest appeal for new trial
By Emilie Lounsberry
Inquirer Staff Writer
July 23, 2008
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/philadelphia/20080723_Abu-Jamal_loses_latest_appeal_for_new_trial.html
4) Obama (and Big Media) Turn Blind Eye to Israeli Apartheid
By BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
July 23-29, 2008
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=714&Itemid=1
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1) U.S. Perpetuates Mass Killings In Iraq
by Peter Phillips | Dissident Voice, July 19th, 2008
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/us-perpetuates-mass-killings-in-iraq/
The United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi
deaths since the invasion five and half years ago. In a January 2008
report, a British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB)
reports that, "survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over
1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which
started in 2003…. We now estimate that the death toll between March
2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000.
If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey
data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and
1,120,000".
The ORB report comes on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by
Johns Hopkins University published in the Lancet medical journal that
confirmed the continuing numbers of mass deaths in Iraq. A study done
by Dr. Les Roberts from January 1, 2002 to March 18 2003 put the
civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. A second study published
in the Lancet in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths
in Iraq since the start of the US invasion. The 2006 study confirms
that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third
of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly
attributable to US forces.
The now estimated 1.2 million dead, as of July 2008, includes
children, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, cab drivers,
clerics, schoolteachers, factory workers, policemen, poets, healthcare
workers, day care providers, construction workers, babysitters,
musicians, bakers, restaurant workers and many more. All manner of
ordinary people in Iraq have died because the United States decided to
invade their country. These are deaths in excess of the normal
civilian death rate under the prior government.
The magnitude of these deaths is undeniable. The continuing occupation
by US forces guarantees a mass death rate in excess of 10,000 people
per month with half that number dying at the hands of US forces — a
carnage so severe and so concentrated at to equate it with the most
heinous mass killings in world history. This act has not gone
unnoticed.
Recently, Dennis Kucinich introduced a single impeachment article
against George W. Bush for lying to Congress and the American people
about the reasons for invading Iraq. On July 15, the House forwarded
the resolution to the Judiciary Committee with a 238 to 180 vote. That
Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's threat to the
US is now beyond doubt. Former US federal prosecutor Elizabeth De La
Vega documents the lies most thoroughly in her book U.S. v. Bush, and
numerous other researchers have verified Bush's untrue statements.
The American people are faced with a serious moral dilemma. Murder and
war crimes have been conducted in our name. We have allowed the
war/occupation to continue in Iraq and offered ourselves little choice
within the top two presidential candidates for immediate cessation of
the mass killings. McCain would undoubtedly accept the deaths of
another million Iraqi civilians in order to save face for America, and
Obama's 18-month timetable for withdrawal would likely result in
another 250,000 civilian deaths or more.
We owe our children and ourselves a future without the shame of mass
murder on our collective conscience. The only resolution of this
dilemma is the immediate withdrawal of all US troops in Iraq and the
prosecution and imprisonment of those responsible. Anything less
creates a permanent original sin on the soul of the nation for that we
will forever suffer.
Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University,
and Director of Project Censored, a media research organization. Read
other articles by Peter, or visit Peter's website.
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2) Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
July 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/business/22jobs.html
Across the country, women in their prime earning years, struggling with an unfriendly economy, are retreating from the work force, either permanently or for long stretches.
They had piled into jobs in growing numbers since the 1960s. But that stopped happening this decade, and as the nearly seven-year-old recovery gives way to hard times, the retreat is likely to accelerate.
Indeed, for the first time since the women’s movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.
When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.
But now, a different explanation is turning up in government data, in the research of a few economists and in a Congressional study, to be released Tuesday, that follows the women’s story through the end of 2007.
After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.
“When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.”
Hard times in manufacturing certainly sidelined Tootie Samson of Baxter, Iowa. Nine months after she lost her job on a factory assembly line, Ms. Samson, 48, is still not working. She could be. Jobs that pay $8 or $9 an hour are easy enough to land, she says. But like the men with whom she worked at the Maytag washing machine factory, now closed, near her home, she resists going back to work at less than half her old wage.
Ms. Samson knows she will have to get another job at some point. She and her husband still have a teenage daughter to put through college, and his income as a truck driver is not enough. So Ms. Samson, now receiving unemployment benefits, is going to college full time — leaving the work force for more than two years — hoping that a bachelor’s degree will enable her to earn at least her old wage of $20 an hour.
“A lot of women I know, all they did was work at the Maytag factory,” said Ms. Samson, who joined Maytag’s assembly line 11 years ago. “They can’t find another job like it and they deal with this loss by dropping out.”
The Joint Economic Committee study cites the growing statistical evidence that women are leaving the work force “on par with men,” and the potentially disastrous consequences for families.
“Women bring home about one-third of family income,” said Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York and vice chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. “And only those families with a working wife have seen real improvement in their living standards.”
The proportion of women holding jobs in their prime working years, 25 to 54, peaked at 74.9 percent in early 2000 as the technology investment bubble was about to burst. Eight years later, in June, it was 72.7 percent, a seemingly small decline, but those 2.2 percentage points erase more than 12 years of gains for women. Four million more in their prime years would be employed today if the old pattern had prevailed through the expansion now ending.
The pattern is roughly similar among the well-educated and the less educated, among the married and never married, among mothers with teenage children and those with children under 6, and among white women and black.
The women, in sum, are for the first time withdrawing from work with the same uniformity as men in their prime working years. Ninety-six percent of the men held jobs in 1953, their peak year. That is down to 86.4 percent today. But while men are rarely thought of as dropping out to run the household, that is often the assumption when women pull out.
“A woman gets laid off and she stays home for six months with her kids,” Ms. Boushey said. “She doesn’t admit that she is staying home because she could not get another acceptable job.”
The biggest retreat has been in manufacturing, where more than one million women have disappeared from payrolls since 2001. Like men, many have not returned to jobs in other sectors.
Wage stagnation often discourages them from pursuing new jobs, says Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “While pay was rising solidly in the 1990s, you had women continuing to move into the work force,” Mr. Katz said.
Pay is no longer rising smartly for women in the key 25-to-54 age group. Just the opposite, the median pay — the point where half make more and half less — has fallen in recent years, to $14.84 an hour in 2007 from $15.04 in 2004, adjusted for inflation, according to the Economic Policy Institute. (The similar wage for men today is two dollars more.)
Not since the 1970s has that happened to women for so long a stretch — and because this is a new experience for them, “women may be even more reluctant than men to accept declining wages,” said Nancy Folbre, an economist at the University of Massachusetts.
Joyce Call, 39, of Howell, Mich., near Detroit, certainly fits that description. She took an accounting job in January 2006 at Forming Technologies, which supplies plastic to auto companies.
The pay, $14 an hour — more than $25,000 a year — was acceptable, she said, but not the raises, which came to only 28 cents an hour over two years, or the Christmas bonus: $150 the first year and nothing the second.
“I was treated poorly,” she said, explaining her departure.
For the moment, Ms. Call is home-schooling one of her two sons, falling back on her husband’s $70,000 income as a plumber, and looking for another job, to return to a work force she has seldom left since finishing high school in 1988.
“People are just not hiring in Michigan,” she said. What’s more, she is reluctant because of the high cost of gasoline to commute more than an hour each way to the next job. “It would be a tough decision to accept a job that required me to go farther,” she said, adding that she and her husband were cutting back on discretionary spending until she is employed again.
What helped drive up the percentage of women in the work force were the thousands who came off welfare and took jobs in the 1990s, pushed to do so by the welfare-to-work legislation. A strong economy eased the way. So did tax credits and more subsidized child care. Now as the economy weakens and employers shrink their payrolls, many of these women struggle to find work.
Lisa Craig, 42, is among them. Raising three sons in her native Chicago, she had worked only occasionally since high school and started receiving welfare benefits in 1993. For the next seven years she took courses in office skills, was a volunteer in a day care center and served for a while as an unpaid intern for a college vice president.
And then in 2000 she went to work. For most of that year she earned $10 an hour as a salesclerk at a duty-free shop at O’Hare Airport, selling luxury items, but left the job to move to Milwaukee with her children to be near her sister.
“I was in a bad marriage,” she said, “and I was getting a divorce.”
Over the last eight years in Milwaukee she has worked only sporadically although, as she puts it, she has applied for hundreds of jobs, struggling to supplement a $628-a-month welfare check that goes almost entirely to rent, plus $500 a month in food vouchers. The longest tenure, 11 months, was as a salesclerk earning $7.75 an hour at a Goodwill Industries clothing store.
She lost that job last November, but is volunteering at the Milwaukee office of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, hoping to draw a modest salary soon as a community intern.
Ms. Samson, the former Maytag worker, says she can afford not to work because she qualified under the terms of the plant closing for two years of unemployment benefits as long as she is a full-time student. She lost health insurance but shifted to her husband’s policy.
His $40,000 income as a truck driver and her $360 a week in jobless benefits gets them by while she takes an accelerated program at a William Penn University campus near her home. Graduation is scheduled for January 2010.
“If I were a single parent or did not have benefits,” Ms. Samson said, “I would have had to find a job. I could not have gone back to school to get my degree and the promise it holds of a better job.”
That for Ms. Samson is a good reason to drop out. Just working, which she has done nearly all of her adult life, is unappealing, she says. Even interior design, for which she once earned an associate’s degree, does not excite her anymore, she says, mainly because people can no longer afford to fix up their homes.
“A business degree will put me in a position to work for any company,” Ms. Samson said, “and put me in a position to work up into a well-paid human resources job.”
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3) Abu-Jamal loses latest appeal for new trial
By Emilie Lounsberry
Inquirer Staff Writer
July 23, 2008
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/philadelphia/20080723_Abu-Jamal_loses_latest_appeal_for_new_trial.html
A federal appeals court yesterday refused to reconsider the decision denying a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal in the 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.
In a two-page decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Abu-Jamal's request for a rehearing of his appeal in the controversial case, which has helped fuel an international debate about the death penalty.
Abu-Jamal's lawyer, Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco, said he planned to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case.
In March, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit left intact Abu-Jamal's conviction but said a new jury should decide whether he deserved death or should be sentenced to life behind bars.
Deputy District Attorney Ronald E. Eisenberg said no decision had been made on whether his office would ask the high court to reinstate the death sentence.
Abu-Jamal and his lawyers contend that the panel should have ordered a hearing on their contention that prosecutors intentionally excluded blacks from his jury in violation of a later 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
They noted that one of the panel members, Judge Thomas Ambro, wanted a hearing held on that issue, though he was in the minority on that issue.
All three members of the panel, which also included Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica and Judge Robert E. Cowen, affirmed the December 2001 decision by U.S. District Judge William H. Yohn Jr., who threw out the death sentence.
Yohn concluded that the jury might have been confused by the trial judge's instructions and wording on the verdict form filled out when the jury decided on death.
He found that the jury might have mistakenly believed it had to agree unanimously on any mitigating circumstances - factors that might have persuaded the jury to decide on a life sentence, rather than death.
Abu-Jamal, 54, has been on death row since his 1982 conviction in the killing of Faulkner, who was shot to death near 13th and Locust Streets early on Dec. 9, 1981.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence in 1989, and also rejected three other appeals.
Unless the nation's high court agrees to hear the case, Abu-Jamal most likely would face a new Philadelphia jury to decide only whether the penalty should be life or death. The high court hears only a tiny percentage of all petitions filed each year.
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4) Obama (and Big Media) Turn Blind Eye to Israeli Apartheid
By BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
July 23-29, 2008
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=714&Itemid=1
Israel is now an apartheid state, according to the publisher of Ha'aretz, that country's largest circulation daily newspaper. The occasion was the recent renewal of Israeli citizenship laws, which refuse to recognize marriages and families among most of the Arabs living in that country. How can Barack Obama, himself the son of an American mixed marriage remain an apparently uncritical supporter of Israeli apartheid, and why does corporate media continue to pursue a longstanding "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward the odious policies of racial and ethnic discrimination in Israel?
The presidential campaigns of Democrats and Republicans are no more about placing issues before the US public than competing commercials for new cars or bottled water are about the facts. Brought to us by the same corporate marketers that sell us lifestyles and beer, mainstream presidential campaigns aim to establish and exploit visceral, fact-proof loyalties to the brand of a party or candidate. The fact-proof nature of the Obama brand, and the lengths corporate media go to protect it were on prominent display during the candidate's brief visit to Israel Palestine this week.
Barack Obama's smiling brown face and Kansas-Kenya parentage are key elements in the Obama brand, that hazy image of progressive, post-racial transformation at home and abroad which lie at the heart of his appeal. At the same time, Barack Obama is committed to preserving what he calls Israel's “identity as a Jewish state”, the polite term for what much of the rest of the world recognizes as an apartheid state.
A June 29 editorial by no less a member of the Israeli elite than Amos Schocken, the publisher of Ha'aretz, Israel's daily newspaper of record is titled “Citizenship Law Makes Israel An Apartheid State” The gist of it is that the Israeli government prohibits recognition of marriages or family reunions between Arabs with Israeli citizenship and Arabs who live within the borders of Israel-Palestine in the bantustans of Gaza and the West Bank --- inside the borders of Israel-Palestine but without Israeli citizenship.
“The law stipulates that the interior minister does not have the authority to approve residence in Israel for a resident of Judea and Samaria (unless, of course, they are Jews - that is, settlers). This is so even regarding family reunions, meaning marriage, when it comes to Palestinian spouses who are younger than 35 (for men) or 25 (for women). In effect, the law prevents young Israeli citizens from marrying the spouse of their choice and living with this spouse in Israel, if the spouse is a Palestinian from Judea and Samaria.
It is obvious that this has barely any effect on the right of young Israeli Jews to live in their country with the spouse of their choice, because there are hardly any marriages between Israeli Jews and Palestinians from Judea and Samaria. (These are Israeli names for the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza.) On the other hand, these Palestinians constitute Israeli Arabs' natural pool for choosing a spouse. For this reason, the law severely discriminates when comparing the rights of young Israeli Jewish citizens and young Israeli Arab citizens. ”
The Big Media correspondents who breathlessly cover Obama at home and abroad are not stupid or ignorant people. They (or someone in their offices) all read Ha'aretz daily, and none are ignorant of the facts of Israeli apartheid. They are professionals who know their jobs, and their boundaries. Each and every one realizes it would be career suicide to directly or indirectly ask the proud son of black African and white American parents, accorded the rights of full US citizenship through one parent, how he can uncritically support an apartheid state in Israel which awards and denies a host of citizenship rights on ethnic and religious grounds, from property ownership, education and the freedom to live where one likes to separate license plates (enable police profiling at a distance), bans on new Palestinian wells, water and electrical use, to Jewish-only roads and Palestinian-only checkpoints.
In this, it would be a mistake to believe that the Israeli tail is wagging the dogs of US presidential candidates and Big Media. The heavily militarized and nuclear armed state of Israel is entirely dependent upon US military aid, economic support, and political patronage. Israel is the direct recipient of more than six billion US tax dollars annually. Israel could not continue its brutal annexation policies, its militarized wall, its "settlement" of Palestinian lands or any of its other objectionable policies without the complete and bipartisan support of US ruling circles. For the US, Israel is a kind of offshore military base, a nuclear-armed white enclave in the middle of millions of brown people who sit atop a large share of the world's most accessible oil.
Apartheid in South African was odious, to be sure. But apartheid South Africa was not of primary strategic or economic importance to the US. Apartheid Israel is.
US public opinion, like that in the rest of the world, persistently calls for a more just and even-handed US policy toward Israel-Palestine. But corporate media and the US political elite, including Barack Obama continue to ignore them. On this issue, as Salon's Glen Greenwald writes, public opinion is pretty well irrelevant.
If, as some Obama supporters claim, there is a "movement" which he listens to, and which potentially influences his positions, this would be a good time and place for it to speak up. If they can't or won't, it's one more piece of evidence that the Obama candidacy is as people-proof as any other corporate one, that there is and never was any "Obama movement" with an objective beyond November, and that Obama is just another brand name, like Monsanto, or Ford, or Exxon.
Bruce Dixon is based in Atlanta and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com
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5) Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state
By Amos Schocken
Last update - 21:57 29/06/2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/996697.html
The government's decision last week to extend the validity of the Citizenship Law (Temporary Order), for another year, is evidence that the legal barriers preventing severe discrimination against Israel's Arab citizens and harm to their civil rights have been removed.
This extension is the eighth since the law was first passed in 2003, and it shows just how naive Justice Edmond Levy's position was when he refused to join in the 2006 decision by five judges from the High Court of Justice, who stated that the law was unconstitutional, that it contravened the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom, and that it must be removed from the law books. Levy explained his refusal by saying that he saw no need to intervene because only two months remained until the law expired. However, at the end of the two months, the law was extended by a year, and now they want to extend it for yet another year.
Had Levy known that the law's limited validity was nothing but a deception aimed at preparing a discriminatory and unconstitutional law, there is no doubt he would have joined the five justices' majority opinion that it was unconstitutional and should be removed. We must hope that the High Court of Justice, when it rules on the new petition submitted against the law after it was extended in 2006, will take into account that the term "temporary provision," which both the government and Knesset take pains to stress, is a deception. We are talking about, in effect, a permanent law.
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The law stipulates that the interior minister does not have the authority to approve residence in Israel for a resident of Judea and Samaria (unless, of course, they are Jews - that is, settlers). This is so even regarding family reunions, meaning marriage, when it comes to Palestinian spouses who are younger than 35 (for men) or 25 (for women). In effect, the law prevents young Israeli citizens from marrying the spouse of their choice and living with this spouse in Israel, if the spouse is a Palestinian from Judea and Samaria.
It is obvious that this has barely any effect on the right of young Israeli Jews to live in their country with the spouse of their choice, because there are hardly any marriages between Israeli Jews and Palestinians from Judea and Samaria. On the other hand, these Palestinians constitute Israeli Arabs' natural pool for choosing a spouse. For this reason, the law severely discriminates when comparing the rights of young Israeli Jewish citizens and young Israeli Arab citizens.
When the law was first passed in 2003, supposedly as a temporary one-year measure, it was accompanied by security reasoning - the risk of implanting terrorists in Israel via marriage. The reasoning was faulty even at that time: Every Palestinian who wishes to enter Israel must be addressed individually. It is the Shin Bet security service's task to do this and thus carry out its mission - protecting the security of Israel's citizens such that the country remains democratic, with equal rights for all. However, as the years go by, it becomes clear that the security argument and the term "temporary measure" are merely a deception aimed at "koshering" discriminatory legislation for demographic reasons.
The claim that there are characteristics of an apartheid state in Israel is widely heard in the Western world. The word apartheid is catchy and understood in many parts of the world, which makes it useful to send a message that we resent and which we claim has no connection with reality in Israel. However, we do not need to replicate exactly the characteristics of South African apartheid within discriminatory practices in civil rights in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. The amendment to the Citizenship Law is exactly such a practice, and it is best that we not try to evade the truth: Its existence in our law books turns Israel into an apartheid state.
The government decided to add the Gaza Strip to the list of countries for which the interior minister does not have the prerogative to approve residence in Israel on the grounds of family reunions, regardless of age. Both the list and the new addition are superfluous and harmful. Since Hamas gained control, no one enters or leaves Gaza anyway, and the new restriction harms couples' cases from the time when there was passage between Israel and Gaza. There is no need for this affront.
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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North Carolina: Charges in G.I.’s Death
[What the title doesn't say is that the GI, a woman, was killed by a Marine who happened to be her husband...]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
The husband of an Army nurse at Fort Bragg’s hospital was charged with murder in her death, a day after her body was discovered by the authorities. Cpl. John Wimunc of the Marines, 23, was also charged with first-degree arson and conspiracy to commit arson in the death of his wife, Second Lt. Holley Wimunc, of Dubuque, Iowa. Her body was found Sunday, three days after a suspicious fire at her Fayetteville apartment. The authorities also charged Lance Cpl. Kyle Alden, 22, with first-degree arson, conspiracy to commit arson and accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.
July 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/us/15brfs-CHARGESINGIS_BRF.html?ref=us
Louisiana: Case of Ex-Black Panther [The Angola Three]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
The conviction of a former Black Panther in the killing of a prison guard in 1972 should be overturned because his former lawyer should have objected to testimony from witnesses who had died after his original trial, a federal magistrate found. The lawyer’s omission denied a fair second trial for the man, Albert Woodfox, in 1998, the magistrate, Christine Nolan, wrote Tuesday in a recommendation to the federal judge who will rule later. Mr. Woodfox, 61, and Herman Wallace, 66, were convicted in the stabbing death of the guard, Brent Miller, on April 17, 1972. Mr. Wallace has been appealing his conviction based on arguments similar to Mr. Woodfox’s. Mr. Woodfox and Mr. Wallace, with another former Black Panther, became known as the Angola Three because they were held in isolation for about three decades at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/us/12brfs-CASEOFEXBLAC_BRF.html?ref=us
Texas: Killer Is Executed
By REUTERS
National Briefing | Southwest
A convicted killer, Karl E. Chamberlain, was put to death by lethal injection in Texas, becoming the first prisoner executed in the state since the Supreme Court lifted an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty in April. Texas, the country’s busiest death penalty state, is the fifth state to resume executions since the court rejected a legal challenge to the three-drug cocktail used in most executions for the past 30 years. Mr. Chamberlain, 37, was convicted of the 1991 murder of a 30-year-old Dallas woman who lived in the same apartment complex. Mr. Chamberlain was the 406th inmate executed in Texas since 1982 and the first this year.
June 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/us/12brfs-KILLERISEXEC_BRF.html?ref=us
Tennessee: State to Retry Inmate
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
The Union County district attorney said the county would meet a federal judge’s deadline for a new trial in the case of a death row inmate whose trial was questioned by the United States Supreme Court. The state is facing a June 17 deadline to retry or free the inmate, Paul House, who has been in limbo since June 2006, when the Supreme Court concluded that reasonable jurors would not have convicted him had they seen the results of DNA tests from the 1990s. The district attorney, Paul Phillips, said he would not seek the death penalty. Mr. House, 46, who has multiple sclerosis and must use a wheelchair, was sentenced in the 1985 killing of Carolyn Muncey. He has been in a state prison since 1986 and continues to maintain his innocence.
May 29, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/us/29brfs-STATETORETRY_BRF.html?ref=us
Israel: Carter Offers Details on Nuclear Arsenal
By REUTERS
World Briefing | Middle East
Former President Jimmy Carter said Israel held at least 150 nuclear weapons, the first time a current or former American president had publicly acknowledged the Jewish state’s nuclear arsenal. Asked at a news conference in Wales on Sunday how a future president should deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, he sought to put the risk in context by listing atomic weapons held globally. “The U.S. has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union has about the same, Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more,” he said, according to a transcript. The existence of Israeli nuclear arms is widely assumed, but Israel has never admitted their existence and American officials have stuck to that line in public for years.
May 27, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/world/middleeast/27briefs-CARTEROFFERS_BRF.html?ref=world
Iowa: Lawsuit Filed Over Raid
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Midwest
The nation’s largest single immigration raid, in which nearly 400 workers at an Agriprocessors Inc. meat processing plant in Postville were detained on Monday, violated the constitutional rights of workers at a meatpacking plant, a lawsuit contends. The suit accuses the government of arbitrary and indefinite detention. A spokesman for the United States attorney’s office said he could not comment on the suit, which was filed Thursday on behalf of about 147 of the workers. Prosecutors said they filed criminal charges against 306 of the detained workers. The charges include accusations of aggravated identity theft, falsely using a Social Security number, illegally re-entering the United States after being deported and fraudulently using an alien registration card.
May 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/us/17brfs-LAWSUITFILED_BRF.html?ref=us
Senate Revises Drug Maker Gift Bill
By REUTERS
National Breifing | Washington
A revised Senate bill would require drug makers and medical device makers to publicly report gifts over $500 a year to doctors, watering down the standard set in a previous version. The new language was endorsed by the drug maker Eli Lilly & Company. Lawmakers said they hoped the support would prompt other companies to back the bill, which had previously required all gifts valued over $25 be reported. The industry says the gifts are part of its doctor education, but critics say such lavish gestures influence prescribing habits.
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/washington/14brfs-SENATEREVISE_BRF.html?ref=us
Texas: Sect Mother Is Not a Minor
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Southwest
Child welfare officials conceded to a judge that a newborn’s mother, held in foster care as a minor after being removed from a polygamous sect’s ranch, is an adult. The woman, who gave birth on April 29, had been held along with more than 400 children taken last month from a ranch run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was one of two pregnant sect members who officials had said were minors. The other member, who gave birth on Monday, may also be an adult, state officials said.
May 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14brfs-SECTMOTHERIS_BRF.html?ref=us
Four Military Branches Hit Recruiting Goals
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Washington
The Marine Corps far surpassed its recruiting goal last month, enlisting 2,233 people, which was 142 percent of its goal, the Pentagon said. The Army recruited 5,681 people, 101 percent of its goal. The Navy and Air Force also met their goals, 2,905 sailors and 2,435 airmen. A Defense Department spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said that if the Marine Corps continued its recruiting success, it could reach its goal of growing to 202,000 people by the end of 2009, more than a year early.
May 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/us/13brfs-FOURMILITARY_BRF.html?ref=us
Texas: Prison Settlement Approved
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Southwest
A federal judge has approved a settlement between the Texas Youth Commission and the Justice Department over inmate safety at the state’s juvenile prison in Edinburg. The judge, Ricardo Hinojosa of Federal District Court, signed the settlement Monday, and it was announced by the commission Wednesday. Judge Hinojosa had previously rejected a settlement on grounds that it lacked a specific timeline. Federal prosecutors began investigating the prison, the Evins Regional Juvenile Center, in 2006. The settlement establishes parameters for safe conditions and staffing levels, restricts use of youth restraints and guards against retaliation for reporting abuse and misconduct.
May 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/us/08brfs-PRISONSETTLE_BRF.html?ref=us
Michigan: Insurance Ruling
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Midwest
Local governments and state universities cannot offer health insurance to the partners of gay workers, the State Supreme Court ruled. The court ruled 5 to 2 that Michigan’s 2004 ban against same-sex marriage also blocks domestic-partner policies affecting gay employees at the University of Michigan and other public-sector employers. The decision affirms a February 2007 appeals court ruling. Up to 20 public universities, community colleges, school districts and local governments in Michigan have benefit policies covering at least 375 gay couples.
May 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/us/08brfs-INSURANCERUL_BRF.html?ref=us
Halliburton Profit Rises
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HOUSTON (AP) — Increasing its global presence is paying off for the oil field services provider Halliburton, whose first-quarter income rose nearly 6 percent on growing business in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, the company said Monday.
Business in the first three months of 2008 also was better than expected in North America, where higher costs and lower pricing squeezed results at the end of 2007.
Halliburton shares closed up 3 cents, at $47.46, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Halliburton said it earned $584 million, or 64 cents a share, in the three months that ended March 31, compared with a year-earlier profit of $552 million, or 54 cents a share. Revenue rose to $4.03 billion, from $3.42 billion a year earlier.
April 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/business/worldbusiness/22halliburton.html?ref=business
Illegal Immigrants Who Were Arrested at Poultry Plant in Arkansas to Be Deported
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Eighteen illegal immigrants arrested at a poultry plant in Batesville will be processed for deportation, but will not serve any jail time for using fake Social Security numbers and state identification cards, federal judges ruled. Magistrate Judge Beth Deere and Judge James Moody of Federal District Court accepted guilty pleas from 17 of those arrested last week at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant. Federal prosecutors dismissed the misdemeanor charges against one man, but said they planned to ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement to begin deportation proceedings against him. The guilty pleas will give the 17 people criminal records, which will allow prosecutors to pursue tougher penalties if they illegally return to the United States. They had faced up to up to two years in prison and $205,000 in fines. Jane Duke, a United States attorney, said her office had no interest in seeing those arrested serve jail time, as they were “otherwise law-abiding citizens.”
National Briefing | South
April 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/us/22brfs-002.html?ref=us
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Torture
On the Waterboard
How does it feel to be “aggressively interrogated”? Christopher Hitchens found out for himself, submitting to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of America’s use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere. VF.com has the footage. Related: “Believe Me, It’s Torture,” from the August 2008 issue.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/video/2008/hitchens_video200808
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Alison Bodine defense Committee
Lift the Two-year Ban
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com/
Watch the Sept 28 Video on Alison's Case!
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post.html
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The Girl Who Silenced the World at the UN!
Born and raised in Vancouver, Severn Suzuki has been working on environmental and social justice issues since kindergarten. At age 9, she and some friends started the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They traveled to 1992's UN Earth Summit, where 12 year-old Severn gave this powerful speech that deeply affected (and silenced) some of the most prominent world leaders. The speech had such an impact that she has become a frequent invitee to many U.N. conferences.
[Note: the text of her speech is also available at this site...bw]
http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=433
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MINIATURE EARTH
http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm
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"Dear Canada: Let U.S. war resisters stay!"
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/499/89/
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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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Award-Winning Writer/Filmmaker Donald L. Vasicek Launches New Sand
Creek Massacre Website"
May 21, 2008 -- CENTENNIAL, CO -- Award-winning filmmaker, Donald L.
Vasicek, has launched a new Sand Creek Massacre website. Titled,
"The Sand Creek Massacre", the site contains in depth witness
accounts of the massacre, the award-winning Sand Creek Massacre
trailer for viewing, the award-winning Sand Creek Massacre
documentary short for viewing, the story of the Sand Creek Massacre,
and a Shop to purchase Sand Creek Massacre DVD's and lesson
plans including the award-winning documentary film/educational DVD.
Vasicek, a board member of The American Indian Genocide Museum
(www.aigenom.com)in Houston, Texas, said, "The website was launched
to inform, to educate, and to provide educators, historians, students
and all others the accessibility to the Sand Creek Massacre story."
The link/URL to the website is sandcreekmassacre.net.
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Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
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