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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, the San Francisco school board made history by voting to phase
the Pentagon's Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corp (JROTC) out of our schools.
JROTC is one of the military's primary recruitment tools. The schooboard took this action because, after years of war in Iraq, the people
of San Francisco do not want military recruiters in our schools, and do
not support a program that discriminates against the lesbian and gay
community with its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policies. JROTC costs San
Francisco taxpayers nearly $1 million per year.
Now JROTC supporters have countered by placing an initiative on the
November ballot, asking San Francisco voters to declare themselves in
favor of keeping JROTC in our schools.
On Election Day, November 4, the people of San Francisco will tell the
world that military recruitment targeting children as young as 14 in our
schools is simply wrong.
However, in order to make sure the people know what this initiative is
about, we will need to run a well-organized and professional campaign.
This is a national issue. The Bush administration has more than doubled
the operational budget for JROTC. Military organizations from around the
country are funding the campaign to keep JROTC in San Francisco schools,
along with the SF Chamber of Commerce and the SF Association of
Realtors.
Anti-war and counter-recruitment forces throughout the country know that
if San Francisco can not defeat this initiative, our movement will be
set back immeasurably.
We need your financial support to mount the best campaign we can. And we
need that financial support NOW.
Thank you for your time and your support.
For No Military Recruitment in Our Schools,
Alan Lessik, Regional Director, American Friends Service Committee
(AFSC)
Dan Kelly, Former member, San Francisco School Board*
Riva Enteen, Parent of SF school district graduates
Mike Wong, Member, Veterans for Peace*
Stephen Funk, SF Chapter President, Iraq Vets Against the War*
*For ID purposes only
Please send checks to:
No Military Recruitment in Our Schools
2467 - 28th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94116
Those contributing $25-$99 must provide a name and address.
Those contributing $100 and above must also provide their occupation and employer.
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AMERICANS DO NOT SANCTION THE RECRUITMENT OF CHILDREN!
Say NO! to "America's Army"
Video-Game Targets Children as Young as 13.
South Park Game Companies Profit from Illegal Recruitment Program!
Rally and Action
Wednesday, August 6, 12 Noon
South Park - between 2nd and 3rd, Bryant and Brannan streets.
actagainstwar.net takedirectaction@riseup.net
“America’s Army” is a game developed by the U.S. military to instruct players in “Army values,” portray the army in a positive light, and increase potential recruits. The “game” is the property and brainchild of the US Army, which admit freely, and with pride, that it is one of their principal recruitment tools.
America’s Army has been available since 2002 as a free download or as a CD available in recruiting stations. It is published and distributed by Ubisoft right here in South Park. Ubisoft is not the only South Park neighbor engaged in the development of the game, Gameloft is working on the cell phone application and Secret Level was a designer on the 2005 Xbox version. The game has been granted a “teen” rating, allowing 13 year olds to play.
The military recruitment of children under the age of 17, however, is a clear violation of international law (the U.N. Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict). No attempt to recruit children 13-16 is allowed in the United States, pursuant to treaty. In May, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report that found the armed services regularly target children under 17 for military recruitment. The report highlighted the role of “America’s Army,” saying the Army uses the game to “attract young potential recruits . . . train them to use weapons, and engage in virtual combat and other military missions”, adding that the game “explicitly targets boys 13 and older.”
It is also important to consider the effects of the game within the context of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Undoubtedly, soldiers now recruited through “America’s Army” will serve in these wars. The invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are violations of international law, and contributing to their continuation through the propagation of the game is, if not a criminal violation, a moral outrage.
The game is having an effect. An informal study showed that 4 out of 100 new recruits in Ft. Benning, Georgia credit America’s Army as the primary factor in convincing them to join the military. 60% of those recruits said they played the game more than five times a week. And a 2004 Army survey found that nearly a third of young Americans ages 16 to 24 had some contact with the game in the previous six months.
This August 6, on the 63rd Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, come out and ask the Producers and developers of America’s Army to stop helping the Army recruit children.
We are asking you to consider three steps:
1. Support for our campaign against America’s Army
2. Sign our letter and endorse this campaign.
3. Participate in our upcoming event on Hiroshima Day (Wed., Aug. 6), at noon, in South Park (btw 2nd/3rd, Bryant/Brannan), asking these companies to either withdraw from their Army contracts or provide a warning label: “This game is designed to recruit children in violation of international law. Military service can be hazardous to your health.”
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August 6th
5pm @ Powell and Market St. San Francisco
NO WAR ON IRAN
Come Join the World Can't Wait
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In front of the Marine Recruiting Station on Shattuck Ave
AUGUST 6TH @ 12NOON - 4pm
Press Conference @ 12:30pm
Join CodePINK, MECA, Courage to Resist, Women in Black, Gray Panthers and others;
To PROTEST the use of nuclear bombs on this horrific 'anniversary' of the bombing of HIROSHIMA, marking us as the ONLY nation in the world to use atomic weapons against a civilian population!
STAND STRONG against the threatened bombing of Iran, again in our name!
And find out what support there is in Berkeley for free speech and the right to protest!
JOIN US at the MRS (Marine Recruiting Station), noon to 4:00pm - with our constitutional rights and responsibilities to protest.
Your presence is crucial!!! Stand with us for peace, our Constitutional rights, AND in remembrance of the lives lost in Hiroshima!
We are also still looking for entertainment for the day, like spoken word, theater, or anything else! If you, or someone you know would like to perform at this event, please call KEIKO at (707) 334-7071
PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO APPROPRIATE E-MAIL LISTS!!!
Call Keiko 707-334-7071 or Judy 415-51906355 for more info or email info AT bayareacodepink DOT org.
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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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OCTOBER 11, 2008 End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Now!
http://oct11.org/
Dear Readers,
The date of October 11, 2008 was designated as a day of localized national actions against the war at the National Assembly to End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this past June. Demonstrations are already being planned. Here is the call from the Greater Boston area--hopefully we can pull something together for October ll here in San Francisco.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War
Hi all,
Below is an outreach letter that will be going out to various organizational lists
and individuals all over the Greater Boston area. Please feel free to circulate
this letter as an example of what is happening in Boston as you seek support
for October 11 in your various localities.
Adelante (forward),
John Harris
Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition
Dear Friends,
March, 2008 ushered in the sixth year of war and occu pati on “without end” on Iraq . In an act of arrogance and impunity, Congress in a bipartisan vote approved another
$162 billion in funding for the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan . Stepped up threats against Iran and the increased likelihood of a U.S. troop “surge” into Afghanistan point to an imperative for action and an independent voice from the peace and justice movement.
In light of these developments, grass roots forces from around the country gathered together at the end of June for the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation in Cleveland, Ohio. At the conference an action plan for the months ahead was discussed and approved in a democratic vote. As part of this plan, over 95 percent voted in favor of supporting pre-election protests being organized in cities and localities around the country on October 11, 2008.
It was on October 11, 2002 that Congress approved the “ Iraq War Resolution” granting the Bush administration authorization to invade Iraq . The weeks ahead promise to be filled with debate as the election campaigns gear up. Instead of being spectators who watch the media pundits put their spin on the political pronouncements of the candidates, the October 11 protests present us with an opportunity to be engaged in injecting our agenda, the antiwar agenda, into the intensifying debate.
Please join us in an initial planning meeting as we prepare a Boston protest demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all occupation forces from Iraq and the closing of all military bases. All are invited. Looking forward to seeing you there.
Saturday, August 9, 3:00 PM
Encuentro 5
33 Harrison Avenue, 5th Floor
Boston (in Chinatown )
In Peace and Solidarity,
Marilyn Levin
*Arlington/Lexington United for Justice with Peace, New England United
Liam Madden
*IVAW – Boston Chapter
Suren Moodliar
Mass Global Action
Ann Glick
Newton Dialogues for Peace
Nate Goldshlag
Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 Veterans for Peace
Paul Shannon
American Friends Service Committee
John Harris
Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition
* Organization for identification purposes only
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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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Sami Al-Arian Subjected to Worst Prison Conditions since Florida
Despite grant of bail, government continues to hold him
Dr. Al-Arian handcuffed
Hanover, VA - July 27, 2008 -
More than two weeks after being granted bond by a federal judge, Sami Al-Arian is still being held in prison. In fact, Dr. Al-Arian is now being subjected to the worst treatment by prison officials since his stay in Coleman Federal Penitentiary in Florida three years ago.
On July 12th, Judge Leonie Brinkema pronounced that Dr. Al-Arian was not a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and accordingly granted him bail before his scheduled August 13th trial. Nevertheless, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) invoked the jurisdiction it has held over Dr. Al-Arian since his official sentence ended last April to keep him from leaving prison. The ICE is ostensibly holding Dr. Al-Arian to complete deportation procedures but, given that Dr. Al-Arian's trial will take place in less than three weeks, it would seem somewhat unlikely that the ICE will follow through with such procedures in the near future.
Not content to merely keep Dr. Al-Arian from enjoying even a very limited stint of freedom, the government is using all available means to try to psychologically break him. Instead of keeping him in a prison close to the Washington DC area where his two oldest children live, the ICE has moved him to Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, VA, more than one hundred miles from the capital. Regardless, even when Dr. Al-Arian was relatively close to his children, they were repeatedly denied visitation requests.
More critically, this distance makes it extremely difficult for Dr. Al-Arian to meet with his attorneys in the final weeks before his upcoming trial. This is the same tactic employed by the government in 2005 to try to prevent Dr. Al-Arian from being able to prepare a full defense.
Pamunkey Regional Jail has imposed a 23-hour lock-down on Dr. Al-Arian and has placed him in complete isolation, despite promises from the ICE that he would be kept with the general inmate population. Furthermore, the guards who transported him were abusive, shackling and handcuffing him behind his back for the 2.5-hour drive, callously disregarding the fact that his wrist had been badly injured only a few days ago. Although he was in great pain throughout the trip, guards refused to loosen the handcuffs.
At the very moment when Dr. Al-Arian should be enjoying a brief interlude of freedom after five grueling years of imprisonment, the government has once again brazenly manipulated the justice system to deliver this cruel slap in the face of not only Dr. Al-Arian, but of all people of conscience.
Make a Difference! Call Today!
Call Now!
Last April, your calls to the Hampton Roads Regional Jail pressured prison officials to stop their abuse of Dr. Al-Arian after only a few days.
Friends, we are asking you to make a difference again by calling:
Pamunkey Regional Jail: (804) 365-6400 (press 0 then ask to speak to the Superintendent's office). Ask why Dr. Al-Arian has been put under a 23-hour lockdown, despite the fact that a federal judge has clearly and unambiguously pronounced that he is not a danger to anyone and that, on the contrary, he should be allowed bail before his trial.
- If you do not reach the superintendent personally, leave a message on the answering machine. Call back every day until you do speak to the superintendent directly.
- Be polite but firm.
- After calling, click here to let us know you called.
Don't forget: your calls DO make a difference.
FORWARD TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS!
Write to Dr. Al-Arian
For those of you interested in sending personal letters of support to Dr. Al-Arian:
If you would like to write to Dr. Al-Arian, his new
address is:
Dr. Sami Al-Arian
Pamunkey Regional Jail
P.O. Box 485
Hanover, VA 23069
Email Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace: tampabayjustice@yahoo.com
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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) A Hidden Toll on Employment: Cut to Part Time
By PETER S. GOODMAN
July 31, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/business/economy/31jobs.html?ref=us
2) Rising Oil Prices Swell Profits at Exxon and Shell
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JULIA WERDIGIER
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/business/01oil.html?ref=business
3) ‘The Jungle,’ Again
Editorial
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/opinion/01fri1.html?hp
4) Chevron Profit Soars, but Shares Dip
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Earns-Chevron.html?hp
5) Judge to Rule on Limits at Denver Convention
By KIRK JOHNSON
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/us/politics/01denver.html?ref=us
6) Profit Data May Explain U.S. Gloom
By FLOYD NORRIS
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/business/economy/01profit.html?ref=business
7) Cheap way to 'split water' could lead to abundant clean fuel
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday July 31 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/31/energyefficiency.energy
8) "Major Discovery" From MIT Primed to Unleash Solar Revolution
by: Anne Trafton, MIT News
Thursday 31 July 2008
http://www.truthout.org/article/major-discovery-from-mit-primed-unleash-solar-revolution
9) U.S. Sub May Have Leaked Radiation
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
August 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/world/asia/03japan.html?hp
10) Open Letter to the U.S. Antiwar Movement
The following “Open letter to the U.S. Antiwar Movement” was adopted by the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations on July13, 2008. We urge antiwar organizations around the country to endorse the letter. Please send notice of endorsements to natassembly@aol.com
11) Take Action to Denounce Political Killings in El Salvador
Government Officials Fail to Investigate New Wave of Politically
Motivated Assassinations
CISPES ACTION ALERT
2008 CISPES - The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
CISPES National Office
ph. 202-521-2510
1525 Newton St. NW, Wash.DC 20010
July 30, 2008
cispes@cispes.org
12) A Slow-Mo Meltdown
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
August 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/opinion/04krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
13) Ohio officer acquitted of killing mom holding baby
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:08 p.m. ET
August 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-SWAT-Shooting.html
14) Leaving the Trailer
Out of FEMA Park, Clinging to a Fraying Lifeline
By SHAILA DEWAN
August 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/us/04trailer.html
15) Millions With Chronic Disease Get Little to No Treatment
By REED ABELSON
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/05health.html
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1) A Hidden Toll on Employment: Cut to Part Time
By PETER S. GOODMAN
July 31, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/business/economy/31jobs.html?ref=us
The number of Americans who have seen their full-time jobs chopped to part time because of weak business has swelled to more than 3.7 million — the largest figure since the government began tracking such data more than half a century ago.
The loss of pay has become a primary source of pain for millions of American families, reinforcing the downturn gripping the economy. Paychecks are shrinking just as home prices plunge and gas prices soar, furthering the austerity across the nation.
“I either stop eating, or stop using anything I can,” said Marvin L. Zinn, a clerk at a Walgreens drugstore in St. Joseph, Mich., who has seen his take-home pay drop to about $550 every two weeks from about $650, as his weekly hours have dropped to 37.5 from 44 in recent months.
Mr. Zinn has run up nearly $2,000 in credit card debt to buy food. He has put off dental work. He no longer attends church, he said, “because I can’t afford to drive.”
On the surface, the job market is weak but hardly desperate. Layoffs remain less frequent than in many economic downturns, and the unemployment rate is a relatively modest 5.5 percent. But that figure masks the strains of those who are losing hours or working part time because they cannot find full-time work — a stealth force that is eroding American spending power.
All told, people the government classifies as working part time involuntarily — predominantly those who have lost hours or cannot find full-time work — swelled to 5.3 million last month, a jump of greater than 1 million over the last year.
These workers now amount to 3.7 percent of all those employed, up from 3 percent a year ago, and the highest level since 1995.
“This increase is startling,” said Steve Hipple, an economist at the Labor Department.
The loss of hours has been affecting men in particular — and Hispanic men more so. Among those who were forced into part-time work from the spring of 2007 to the spring of 2008, 73 percent were men and 35 percent were Hispanic.
Some 28 percent of the jobs affected were in construction, 14 percent in retail and 13 percent in professional and business services, according an analysis by Mr. Hipple.
“The unemployment rate is giving you a misleading impression of some of the adjustments that are taking place,” said John E. Silvia, chief economist of Wachovia in Charlotte. “Hours cut is a big deal. People still have a job, but they are losing income.”
Many experts see the swift cutback in hours as a precursor of a more painful chapter to come: broader layoffs. Some struggling companies are holding on to workers and cutting shifts while hoping to ride out hard times. If business does not improve, more extreme measures could follow.
“The change in working hours is the canary in the coal mine,” said Susan J. Lambert of the University of Chicago, a professor of social service administration and an expert in low-wage employment. “First you see hours get short, and eventually more people will get laid off.”
For the last decade, Ron Temple has loaded and unloaded bags for United Airlines in Denver, earning more than $20 an hour, plus generous health and flight benefits. On July 6, as management grappled with the rising cost of fuel, Mr. Temple and 150 other people in Denver were offered an unpalatable set of options: they could transfer to another city, go on furlough without pay and hope to be rehired, or stay on at reduced hours.
Mr. Temple and his wife say they cannot envision living outside Colorado, and they probably could not sell their house. Similar homes are now selling for about $180,000, while they owe the bank $203,000.
So Mr. Temple took the third option. He reluctantly traded in his old shift — 3 p.m. to midnight — for a shorter stint from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. He gave up benefits like paid lunches and overtime. His take-home pay shrunk to $570 every two weeks from about $1,350, he said.
Mr. Temple’s wife, Ali, works as an aide at a cancer clinic, bringing home nearly $1,000 every two weeks, he said. But collectively, they earn less than half of what they did.
Suddenly, they are having trouble making their $1,753 monthly mortgage payment, he said. They are relying on credit cards to pay the bills, running up balances of $2,700 so far. Gone are their dinners at the Outback Steakhouse. Mr. Temple recently bought cheap, generic groceries from a church that sells them to people in need.
“That’s the first time in my life I’ve had to do that,” he said. “We are cutting back in every way.”
Mr. Temple has been searching for another job, applying for a cashier’s position at Safeway and a clerk’s job at Home Depot, among others. But the market is lean.
“I’ve applied more than 20 times, and I haven’t had a single call back,” he said.
His search is constrained by the high price of gas. “I can’t afford to go drive my truck around and look for a job,” he said.
So Mr. Temple has done his search online — until he fell behind on the bills, and the local telephone company cut off Internet service. On a recent day, he bicycled to a Starbucks coffee shop with his laptop for the free connection.
The growing ranks of involuntary part-timers reflect the sophisticated fashion through which many American employers have come to manage their payrolls, say experts.
In decades past, when business soured, companies tended to resort to mass layoffs, hiring people back when better times returned. But as high technology came to permeate American business, companies have grown reluctant to shed workers. Even the lowest-wage positions in retail, fast food, banking or manufacturing require computer skills and a grasp of a company’s systems. Several months of training may be needed to get a new employee up to speed.
“Companies today would rather not go through the process of dumping someone and hiring them back,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “Firms are going to short shifts rather than just laying people off.”
More part-time and fewer full-time workers also allows companies to save on health care costs. Only 16 percent of retail workers receive health insurance through their employer, while more than half of full-time workers are covered, according to an analysis by Ms. Lambert, the University of Chicago employment expert.
The trend toward cutting hours in a downturn lessens the pain for workers in one regard: it moderates layoffs. Many companies now strive to keep payrolls large enough to allow them to easily adjust to swings in demand, adding working hours without having to hire when business grows.
But that also sows vulnerability, heightening the possibility that hours are cut when the economy slows and demand for goods and services dries up.
“There’s a lot of people at risk in the economy when they keep the headcount high and they only have so many hours to distribute,” Ms. Lambert said. “It really is a trade-off for society.”
Goodyear Tire has in recent months idled work for a few days at a time at many of it factories, as the company adjusts to weakening demand. At one plant in Gadsden, Ala., workers expect they will soon lose a week’s wages to another slowdown — something Goodyear would neither confirm nor deny.
“People are scared,” said Dennis Battles, president of the local branch of the United Steelworkers union, which represents about 1,350 workers there. “The cost of gas, the cost of food and everything else is extremely high. It takes every penny you make. And once it starts, when’s it going to quit? What’s going to happen next month?”
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2) Rising Oil Prices Swell Profits at Exxon and Shell
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JULIA WERDIGIER
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/business/01oil.html?ref=business
HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, reported on Thursday its best quarterly profit in history, but investors sold off shares in morning trading after expecting even higher earnings because of soaring oil and natural gas prices.
Record earnings for the world’s largest publicly traded oil company have become almost as predictable as the surge of gasoline prices at the pump in recent years, and for the second quarter income rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion.
It was the highest quarterly profit ever for any American company, as Exxon made nearly $90,000 a minute.
Such profits have made Exxon Mobil a target of politicians in recent years, propelling calls for windfall profits taxes to finance research and development for renewable fuels to replace oil.
The principal reason for the company’s banquet of riches is rising fuel prices. Crude oil prices in the second quarter averaged more than $124 a barrel, 91 percent higher than the same quarter in 2007, according to Oppenheimer & Company. Natural gas prices averaged $10.80 per thousand cubic feet, up 43 percent from the quarter a year ago.
But while high energy prices brought Exxon $10 billion in earnings from selling oil in the quarter, up about $4.1 billion or nearly 70 percent, not everything in its earnings report heartened investors. The company reported that its oil production decreased 8 percent from the second quarter of 2007, largely because of an expropriation of Exxon assets by the Venezuelan government and labor strife in Nigeria.
The company spent $7 billion, or nearly 40 percent more than the same quarter last year, to find and produce oil from new fields.
The company’s $1.6 billion in profits from refining was less than half than those in last year’s quarter because of lower worldwide refining margins. Earnings from its chemical business of $687 million were $326 million down from last year.
“Record crude oil and natural gas realizations were partly offset by lower refining and chemical margins, lower production volumes and higher operating costs,” Rex W. Tillerson, Exxon’s chairman, said in a statement.
Net income of $2.22 a share compared with $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, in the quarter a year ago. Revenue rose 40 percent, to $138.1 billion, from $98.4 billion in the quarter a year ago.
Excluding an after-tax charge of $290 million tied to an Exxon Valdez court settlement, earnings were $11.97 billion, or $2.27 a share.
Excluding one-time charges, analysts had expected Exxon Mobil to earn $2.52 a share on revenue of $144 billion, according to Thomson Financial.
With this quarter’s result, Exxon topped its own record of $11.66 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.
Wall Street did not respond positively to the results. Exxon shares sold off in mid-morning trading by more than 3 percent. Oil and natural gas prices continued their recent slide, as investors viewed the slowing economy increasing the probability that energy demand would slip over the next several months.
Earlier in London, Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, reported a 33 percent increase in second-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by a higher oil price even as production declined.
Like a smaller rival, BP, earlier this week, Shell profited from higher oil prices, , but a 13 percent drop from a record on July 11 raised some concern among investors about whether oil companies can keep up the pace of earnings growth. BP said earlier this week that higher oil prices have started to affect consumer demand for gasoline.
Shell’s profit rose to $11.56 billion from $8.67 billion in the period a year ago. BP reported a 28 percent increase in profit earlier this week and the Italian oil company Eni said on Thursday that profit in the second quarter rose 52 percent.
Oil companies are under pressure to find new reserves as their traditional fields age and are face increasing competition from state-run oil companies in Russia and the Middle East. Shell is also looking to make up for production lost in Nigeria, where militants attacked an offshore production vessel in June, and in Russia, where it had to sell its share in the Sakhalin Island oil and natural gas project to the state-controlled energy company, OAO Gazprom, last year.
Oil and gas production fell to 3,126 thousand barrels of oil equivalent a day from 3,178 thousand barrels.
Shell’s chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, pledged to continue investing to spur growth. “Shell is making substantial, targeted investments to grow the company for shareholders and help ensure that energy markets remain well supplied,” Mr. van der Veer said in a statement Thursday.
The company agreed two weeks ago to spend about $5.9 billion to buy the Duvernay Oil Corporation of Canada to increase its gas production from tough rock formations and is in talks with Iraq about some service contracts.
Clifford Krauss reported from Houston and Julia Werdigier from London.
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3) ‘The Jungle,’ Again
Editorial
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/opinion/01fri1.html?hp
A story from the upside-down world of immigration and labor:
A slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, develops an ugly reputation for abusing animals and workers. Reports of dirty, dangerous conditions at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant accumulate for years, told by workers, union organizers, immigrant advocates and government investigators. A videotape by an animal-rights group shows workers pulling the windpipes out of living cows. A woman with a deformed hand tells a reporter of cutting meat for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for wages that labor experts call the lowest in the industry. This year, federal investigators amass evidence of rampant illegal hiring at the plant, which has been called “a kosher ‘Jungle.’ ”
The conditions at the Agriprocessors plant cry out for the cautious and deliberative application of justice.
In May, the government swoops in and arrests ... the workers, hundreds of them, for having false identity papers. The raid’s catch is so huge that the detainees are bused from little Postville to the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo. The defendants, mostly immigrants from Guatemala, are not charged with the usual administrative violations, but with “aggravated identity theft,” a serious crime.
They are offered a deal: They can admit their guilt to lesser charges, waive their rights, including the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, spend five months in prison, then be deported. Or, they can spend six months or more in jail without bail while awaiting a trial date, face a minimum two-year prison sentence and be deported anyway.
Nearly 300 people agree to the five months, after being hustled through mass hearings, with one lawyer for 17 people, each having about 30 minutes of consultation per client. The plea deal is a brutal legal vise, but the immigrants accept it as the quickest way back to their spouses and children, hundreds of whom are cowering in a Catholic church, afraid to leave and not knowing how they will survive. The workers are scattered to federal lockups around the country. Many families still do not know where they are. The plant’s owners walk freely.
This is enforcement run amok. As Julia Preston reported in The Times, the once-silent workers of Agriprocessors now tell of a host of abusive practices, of rampant injuries and of exhausted children as young as 13 wielding knives on the killing floor. A young man said in an affidavit that he started at 16, in 17-hour shifts, six days a week. “I was very sad, and I felt like I was a slave.”
Instead of receiving merciful treatment as defendants who also are victims, the workers have been branded as the kind of predator who steals identities to empty bank accounts. Accounts from Postville suggest that that’s not remotely what they were. “Most of the clients we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security number was or what purpose it served,” said Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish-language interpreter for many of the workers. “This worker simply had the papers filled out for him at the plant, since he could not read or write Spanish, let alone English.”
The harsh prosecution at Postville is an odd and cruel shift for the Bush administration, which for years had voiced compassion for exploited workers and insisted that immigration had to be fixed comprehensively or not at all.
Now it has abandoned mercy and proportionality. It has devised new and harsher traps, as in Postville, to prosecute the weak and the poor. It has increased the fear and desperation of workers who are irresistible to bottom-feeding businesses precisely because they are fearful and desperate. By treating illegal low-wage workers as a de facto criminal class, the government is trying to inflate the menace they pose to a level that justifies its rabid efforts to capture and punish them. That is a fraudulent exercise, and a national disgrace.
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4) Chevron Profit Soars, but Shares Dip
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Earns-Chevron.html?hp
Filed at 9:25 a.m. ET
HOUSTON (AP) -- Lifted by record crude prices, Chevron Corp. said Friday its second-quarter profit rose 11 percent from a year ago, capping another round of massive earnings for the major oil companies.
But results for the second-largest U.S. oil company missed Wall Street forecasts and shares dipped in premarket trading.
The San Ramon, Calif.-based company said it made $5.98 billion, or $2.90 per share, during the three months ended June 30, versus income of $5.38 billion, or $2.52 per share, a year earlier.
Revenue rose significantly to $82.9 billion from $56.1 billion a year ago.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected profit of $3.03 per share on revenue of $92.41 billion.
Like its competitors, Chevron made the bulk of it money at its exploration and production arm, also known as the upstream, where income nearly doubled from a year ago to $7.25 billion. The company benefited from oil prices in the quarter that were nearly double levels from a year ago. Higher natural gas prices helped too.
Soaring commodity prices provided a similar second-quarter lift to four of Chevron's biggest rivals -- Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips, BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC.
But the company's division that refines and sells gasoline actually swung to a loss of $734 million in the quarter after earning $1.3 billion a year ago. The culprit: those same crude prices that lifted upstream earnings.
Like its peers, Chevron doesn't produce enough oil on its own to feed its refineries, forcing it to buy some on the open market. And it wasn't able to raise the prices of gasoline and other refined products fast enough to recover its own rising costs for oil.
''The higher cost of crude oil used in the refining process was not fully recovered in the price of gasoline and other refined products,'' said Chairman and CEO Dave O'Reilly. ''As a result, our downstream operations incurred a loss in the second quarter, with most of the loss taking place in the United States.''
For the first six months of the year, Chevron reported net income of $11.14 billion, or $5.38 per share, compared with $10.09 billion, or $4.70 a share, for the first half of 2007.
Revenue climbed to $148.93 billion from $104.32 billion.
Chevron shares slipped 81 cents in premarket trading to $83.75 as the price of oil continued to slip.
Light, sweet crude for September delivery fell 77 cents to $123.31 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
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5) Judge to Rule on Limits at Denver Convention
By KIRK JOHNSON
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/us/politics/01denver.html?ref=us
DENVER — A federal trial in a lawsuit seeking to ease strict security provisions at the Democratic National Convention ended Thursday with repeated questions from the judge about how the rules impinge on free speech, as the groups behind the lawsuit have charged.
The judge, Marcia S. Krieger, also questioned a lawyer for one of the groups, Steven D. Zansberg of the American Civil Liberties Union, about what precisely the court might do to correct the problem with the convention only a few weeks away.
The lawsuit, filed by the A.C.L.U. and a coalition of protest groups led by an organization formed here about 18 months ago, Recreate 68, says security concerns for the three-day convention beginning Aug. 25 are exaggerated. It says alternatives exist that would allow protesters and the public to get closer — within “sight and sound” — to the convention hall.
Judge Krieger repeatedly interrupted Mr. Zansberg during his closing argument in the two-day trial, seeking clarification about what the groups were seeking.
“What do you mean, ‘sight and sound?’ ” she asked him. “From whose perspective?”
Mr. Zansberg said previous court rulings had established that public protest required both the ability to exercise free speech and to be seen by the intended recipients, in this case the Democratic Party delegates and the news media. If those rights are somehow curtailed because of security concerns, he argued, other means of expression must be provided as well as proof that the security needs could be met in no other reasonable way.
Lawyers for the City of Denver and the Secret Service, in their closing arguments, said Judge Krieger needed to consider the government’s significant interests, including public safety and the functioning of the city.
“The First Amendment is important, but it’s not the totality of the public interest,” said James M. Lyons, a lawyer for the city.
Judge Krieger said she would issue a written ruling as soon as possible.
At the heart of the case is a battle of perceptions.
Members of Recreate 68 and other protest groups who testified before Judge Krieger on Tuesday said close proximity to the Pepsi Center, where 40,000 delegates, guests and journalists will gather in downtown Denver for the convention, was crucial.
The political statement and symbolic imagery they want to convey with their protests, they said, hinged partly on having the convention arena as a backdrop for the cameras.
Preventing proximity, lawyers suggested in their questioning, was tantamount to abridging free speech unless the government could prove that a huge fenced security zone was really necessary.
The planned parade route through the city for convention-related events, in particular, now ends about a third of mile from Pepsi Center, which one leader of Recreate 68 said made a parade almost pointless.
“There’s no visual connection,” said Mark Cohen, a freelance writer and co-founder of Recreate 68. The result, Mr. Cohen said, would make it, “appear as though we’re marching with no particular purpose in mind.”
Government witnesses, led by Denver’s deputy police chief, Michael Battista, said perceptions about security needs — and the need to keep protesters at a safe distance from the convention — had been heightened by a manual on potentially violent street tactics that could be found on Recreate 68’s Web site and by other groups that have announced plans on the Internet to disrupt the convention.
“Do you take those threats seriously?” Mr. Battista was asked by a lawyer for the city.
“Yes,” he answered.
Witnesses from both sides said they had learned from the past: The Secret Service and the police in watching how bombings and attacks have been carried out in recent years around the world, and the protesters in how the expression of dissent is increasingly hindered, they said, by deliberately overcautious security tactics.
But the imagery of the lead protest group’s name also seemed to cast its own shadow. Mr. Cohen took pains in his testimony to tell Judge Krieger that the name of his group was meant to evoke the broader youth spirit of protest and change of 1968, not the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which was marked by street violence.
But under cross-examination, Mr. Cohen conceded that the group’s organizers did not know and could not know whether other people might be energized and drawn by Recreate 68’s message and come to Denver with other than peaceful ends in mind.
Government witnesses also declined to answer some questions about their security plans, thwarting lawyers for the protest groups who tried in their cross-examinations to pin down how security needs were being calculated.
“The more we put out, the more vulnerable we are,” said Steven Hughes, the Secret Service agent in charge of security at the convention, in declining to answer a question from a lawyer on the A.C.L.U. team about the height of the security fence.
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6) Profit Data May Explain U.S. Gloom
By FLOYD NORRIS
August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/business/economy/01profit.html?ref=business
Corporate profits earned in the United States rose much more rapidly from 2005 through 2007 than had been earlier reported, making the subsequent fall seem even more precipitous, government figures showed Thursday.
The revised figures may help to explain the sense of pessimism that has been reported in surveys of consumers and business executives, said Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG, an economic research company. Pointing to the previous profit figures, some commentators had suggested there was more gloom than the economic data seemed to justify.
First-quarter profits earned in the United States by American companies have fallen 18 percent from their peak, the revised figures show, rather than the 11 percent previously reported.
That decline has been partly offset by soaring overseas profits for American companies. On Thursday, the government raised its estimate of those profits in the first quarter, even as it reduced its estimate of profits earned in this country.
By the latest measure, first-quarter overseas profits were the highest they have ever been for American companies — up 25 percent from the third quarter of 2006, when domestic profits peaked.
Overseas profits, while important to shareholders, do not reflect the performance of the American economy or the prospects for employment in this country. Surveys show that both business executives and consumers expect declines in jobs in America in coming months.
The figures show that more than a third of profits earned by American companies are now made overseas. In the first three months of this year, the proportion was 35 percent, nearly twice what it was a decade ago.
The revised data shows that profits of American companies are down 7 percent over all, rather than the 2 percent previously reported.
The revised figures were contained in the revisions of the gross domestic product numbers issued Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a part of the Commerce Department.
Brent R. Moulton, the bureau’s associate director for national economic accounts, said the new figures reflected preliminary data from the Internal Revenue Service for 2006, and revised figures for 2005. For 2007 and 2008, the changes reflect assorted revisions in estimates of the performance of various industries.
Because the figures are largely based on tax returns, the eventual totals are used as clear indicators of overall economic performance of American businesses, both privately owned companies and those owned by shareholders.
The revised figures indicate that in the third quarter of 2006, when domestic profits of American companies peaked, the annual rate of profits was $1.27 trillion, $100 billion more than had previously been estimated. That figure fell to $1.04 trillion in the first quarter of this year, the lowest rate since the third quarter of 2005.
By contrast, the overseas profits of American companies came in at an annual rate of $557 billion in the first quarter of 2008, an increase of more than $100 billion from the 2006 quarter.
The profit figures in the government report represent operating profits, not changes in the value of assets. That policy means that the profit figures for financial industries estimated by the government are now far higher than the ones being reported to shareholders. Mr. Moulton said that write-downs of the value of securities, or write-offs of bad loans — which have cost banks tens of billions of dollars — are not included.
Were they included, it seems certain that the decline in profits earned in the United States by American companies would be even larger than was indicated by the figures released Thursday.
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7) Cheap way to 'split water' could lead to abundant clean fuel
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday July 31 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/31/energyefficiency.energy
Scientists have found an inexpensive way to produce hydrogen from water, a discovery that could lead to a plentiful source of environmentally friendly fuel to power homes and cars.
The technique, which mimics the way photosynthesis works in plants, also provides a highly efficient way to store energy, potentially paving the way to making solar power more economically viable.
Hydrogen is a clean, energy-rich fuel that many experts believe could become important as nations attempt to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The gas can be produced by splitting water but current techniques are expensive, use harsh chemicals and need carefully controlled environments in which to operate.
Daniel Nocera, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed a catalyst made from cobalt and phosphorus that can split water at room temperature, a technique he describes in the journal Science. "I'm using cheap, Earth-abundant materials that you can mass-manufacture. As long as you can charge the surface, you can create the catalyst and it doesn't get any cheaper than that."
He said the discovery could have major implications for the uptake of solar photovoltaic technology. One of the reasons, he said, why solar panels have not penetrated the consumer market properly is that no one has found a way to store energy in a way that, when the Sun is not shining, people still have electricity. "You can't think about an energy economy or a global energy system only when the sun is out."
Batteries could do the job but they cannot store anywhere near as much energy per unit mass as chemical fuels. Nocera's technique would allow the storage of excess energy from sunlight during the daytime. "You could imagine, during the day you have a photovoltaic cell, you take some of that electricity and use it in your house, then take the other part of that electricity for my catalyst, feed the catalyst water and you get hydrogen and oxygen."
At night, the hydrogen and oxygen could be recombined in a fuel cell to produce an electrical current to power a home or recharge an electric car. "So I've made your house a gas station and a power station. It's all enabled because we can use light plus water to make a chemical fuel, which is hydrogen and oxygen."
Converting an Olympic swimming pool of water into hydrogen and oxygen per second would create 43 terawatts of power. "In the next 50 years, the world needs 16 terawatts. By the end of the century, we'll need around 30," said Nocera. "There's a heck of lot of energy stored in chemical bonds."
For a home, Nocera said that it would be enough to split a few litres of water per day into hydrogen and oxygen. The water would be reformed when the gases were put through the fuel cell.
There is much work to be done in converting Nocera's idea into a commercial product. At the moment, his catalyst can only accept small amounts of electrical current at once, meaning that it would be an inefficient way to quickly store large amounts of energy. But Nocera is certain that engineers will iron out the issues and produce commercial-scale products within a decade.
James Barber, a leading researcher in artificial photosynthesis at Imperial College London, said Nocera's work was a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy. "This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind. The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Thursday July 31 2008. It was last updated at 19:05 on July 31 2008.
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8) "Major Discovery" From MIT Primed to Unleash Solar Revolution
by: Anne Trafton, MIT News
Thursday 31 July 2008
http://www.truthout.org/article/major-discovery-from-mit-primed-unleash-solar-revolution
Scientists mimic essence of plants' energy storage system.
In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.
Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.
The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity - whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source - runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.
Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.
The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," he said.
"Giant Leap" for Clean Energy
Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world's energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet's energy needs for one year.
James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.
"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."
"Just the Beginning"
Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.
More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.
"This is just the beginning," said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. "The scientific community is really going to run with this."
Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.
The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that "this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science."
The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources - governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.
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9) U.S. Sub May Have Leaked Radiation
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
August 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/world/asia/03japan.html?hp
TOKYO — An American nuclear-powered submarine may have leaked a small amount of radiation as it stopped by Japan in the spring and was then deployed throughout the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese government said Saturday.
The Japanese government said that it was informed Friday by the United States Navy that the submarine, the Houston, might have discharged an amount of radiation that was too small to be considered harmful.
The chief government spokesman, Nobutaka Machimura, said in a news conference that the radioactive amount — estimated at less than half a microcurie — was too insignificant to “affect the human body or the environment.”
The submarine spent a week in March in Sasebo, in western Japan, before cruising to Guam and then Hawaii, where the leak was discovered during an inspection late last month, the Japanese government said.
The Japanese government and American military have been trying to ease public resistance to the stationing in September of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the George Washington, in Yokokusa, southwest of Tokyo. The scheduled arrival of the George Washington, which will replace the diesel-powered aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, has caused protests in Japan, the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons.
The announcement also was an embarrassment for the government of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who shuffled his cabinet on Friday in a bid to raise his low approval ratings. Government officials learned of the leak Saturday from television reports even though the United States Navy had informed the Japanese Foreign Ministry a day earlier.
“I, too, came to know about it this morning on television,” the foreign minister, Masahiko Komura, said at a news conference on Saturday.
Last winter, a Japanese warship collided with a fishing boat early one morning, killing the boat’s two passengers. But naval officials were criticized for taking more than an hour to inform the defense minister at the time.
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10) Open Letter to the U.S. Antiwar Movement
The following “Open letter to the U.S. Antiwar Movement” was adopted by the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations on July 13, 2008. We urge antiwar organizations around the country to endorse the letter. Please send notice of endorsements to natassembly@aol.com
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
In the coming months, there will be a number of major actions mobilizing opponents of U.S. wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to demand “Bring the Troops Home Now!” These will include demonstrations at the Democratic and Republican Party conventions, pre-election mobilizations like those on October 11 in a number of cities and states, and the December 9-14 protest activities. All of these can and should be springboards for very large bi-coastal demonstrations in the spring.
Our movement faces this challenge: Will the spring actions be unified with all sections of the movement joining together to mobilize the largest possible outpouring on a given date? Or will different antiwar coalitions set different dates for actions that would be inherently competitive, the result being smaller and less powerful expressions of support for the movement’s “Out Now!” demand?
We appeal to all sections of the movement to speak up now and be heard on this critical question. We must not replicate the experience of recent years during which the divisions in the movement severely weakened it to the benefit of the warmakers and the detriment of the millions of victims of U.S. aggressions, interventions and occupations.
Send a message. Urge – the times demand it! – united action in the spring to ensure a turnout which will reflect the majority’s sentiments for peace. Ideally, all major forces in the antiwar movement would announce jointly, or at least on the same day, an agreed upon date for the spring demonstrations.
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations will be glad to participate in the process of selecting a date for spring actions that the entire movement can unite around. One way or another, let us make sure that comes spring we will march in the streets together, demanding that the occupations be ended, that all the troops and contractors be withdrawn immediately, and that all U.S. military bases be closed.
In solidarity and peace,
National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations
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11) Take Action to Denounce Political Killings in El Salvador
Government Officials Fail to Investigate New Wave of Politically
Motivated Assassinations
CISPES ACTION ALERT
2008 CISPES - The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
CISPES National Office
ph. 202-521-2510
1525 Newton St. NW, Wash.DC 20010
July 30, 2008
cispes@cispes.org
Take Action to Denounce Political Killings in El Salvador
Government Officials Fail to Investigate New Wave of Politically
Motivated Assassinations
Just six months before the 2009 municipal and legislative elections in
El Salvador, political violence is heating up. Since March 2006 when
Alex Flores Montoya and Mercedes Peñate de Montoya, two well-known
FMLN leaders, were found dead in the municipality of Coatepeque, at
least 23 leaders of the social movement and FMLN party have been
murdered (see FESPAD chart in Spanish here). 2008 is a pre-electoral
year and thus has been particularly violent for organized sectors of
the population. Such political violence doesn't contribute to the
democratic electoral process that Salvadoran people desire; rather, it
creates a climate of fear that threatens the upcoming elections.
On June 26, student activist Ángel Martínez Cerón, coordinator of the
January 24 Revolutionary Socialist Student Bloc, was killed in the
city of Santa Ana. Then on July 2 Holman Riva, an employee of the
FMLN's municipal government in the municipality of Ilopango, was
killed along with his nephew. Most recently, 27 year-old Rafaela
Hernández Delgado, whose husband is an FMLN member of the municipal
government of San Pablo Tacachico, was shot dead in a bus. San Pablo
is the same town in which FMLN deputy Gerson Martinez' security guard
was shot to death three months ago.
Back in January of this year, in one of the most high-profile of such
cases, the mayor of Alegría Wilber Funes was killed alongside
municipal employee Zulma Rivera. The young, popular mayor had planned
to run for reelection as a member of the FMLN party in 2009. Such
killings could threaten support for the FMLN in the 2009 elections in
several municipalities as people become afraid to campaign for the
leftist party or support the social movement because of the concerns
about personal security. In reference to the several murders that
have taken place this pre-electoral year, FMLN deputy Benito Lara
recently stated that "here we have various cases that remain
unresolved, unclear, and it is difficult for us to accept the theory
that these are merely cases of common crime." For more information
check out the recent CISPES update "Political Violence Increases in El
Salvador."
On top of this, Salvadorans also fear repercussions coming from the US
government should the FMLN win. Back in 2004 – the last time there
were presidential elections – several US officials made declarations
denouncing the FMLN, including Rep. Tom Tancredo who threatened to
introduce legislation to halt remittances sent to El Salvador if the
FMLN were to win. Already this year US officials (including deputy
Secretary of State John Negroponte, who visited El Salvador in June)
have declared that the US government won't work with governments who
have "terrorist ties", a clear reference to the right-wing media
campaign connecting the FMLN to the Colombian FARC rebels. Like the
fear caused by political violence, such declarations could affect the
opinion of Salvadoran people preparing to vote in the 2009 elections.
In the context of this escalating violence and intervention, CISPES
joins the Salvadoran social movement in calling for international
solidarity to support an electoral process free of both US
intervention and political violence.
TAKE ACTION!
1. Sign onto CISPES People's Pledge to Defend the Right to Free &
Fair Elections in El Salvador and accompany the Salvadoran people by
standing in solidarity with them during their struggle for REAL
democracy. Go to www.cispes.org/pledge2009
2. Contact Felix Garrid Safie, Attorney General of El Salvador, by fax
at 011(503) 2528-6095or e-mail at fgsafie@fgr.gob.sv and tell him to
respect El Salvador's democratic process by carrying out a serious
investigation of these political murders. See below for sample letter
------------------------------------
SAMPLE LETTER
30 de Julio de 2008
Señor Fiscal General de la Republica Felix Garrid Safie
Fax (011 503) 2528-6095
Estimado Señor Fiscal General Felix Garrid Safie,
Le escribo con suma preocupación por el alarmante incremento de
asesinatos motivados políticamente que han ocurrido en El Salvador
durante este año pre-electoral de 2008. En los últimos dos años, la
represión política contra los sectores organizados ha alcanzado
niveles muy altos. En los últimos años han habido un sin numero de
arrestos ilegales, desapariciones, asesinatos de activistas del
movimiento social y miembros y líderes del partido FMLN.
El caso mas conocido de todos estos asesinatos es el del alcalde del
FMLN Wilmer Funes, en la municipalidad de Alegría, Usulután, quien fue
asesinado junto a la empleada municipal Zulma Rivera. La investigación
de este caso continua sin ser resulto al igual que la gran mayoría de
asesinatos motivados políticamente que viene ocurriendo desde el 2006.
Mas recientemente, Ángel Martínez Cerón, estudiante y activista, fue
asesinato el pasado Junio 26 en la ciudad de Santa Ana, de forma
similar. Martínez Cerón, coordinador del Bloque Estudiantil Socialista
Revolucionario 24 de Enero, fue balaceado ocho veces antes que sus
asesinos le asestaran el tiro de gracia en la cabeza.
Este proceder es similar a las acciones paramilitares del gobierno que
ocurrieron durante el conflicto armado en El Salvador, las cuales
todavía se encuentran el la impunidad. Esta impunidad en que se
encuentran los casos de Funes y Martínez Cerón, entre otros, no
contribuye a una estabilidad democrática, ni ayudan a que el proceso
electoral promueva la estabilidad democrática tan deseada por la
población de El Salvador. Le hacemos un urgente llamado a que
investigue estos asesinatos motivados políticamente; un contexto libre
de represión y violencia es necesario para que El Salvador pueda tener
un proceso electoral transparente y democrático.
El garantizar la libertad de expresión, y particularmente la expresión
política, es esencial en cualquier democracia. Ahora, en este año
pre-electoral, es crítico que el gobierno de El Salvador demuestre su
compromiso por la defensa del derecho de todas y todos los
salvadoreños y su expresión política.
Atentamente,
__________________ (name)
__________________ (state, country)
Translation
Dear Attorney General Felix Garrid Safie,
I am writing to you extremely concerned about the high number of
political motivated assassinations that have been happening in El
Salvador during this pre-electoral year of 2008. In the last couple
of years there has been a high amount of political repression against
Salvadoran organizers, such as illegal arrests, disappearances, and
murders of leftist activists and FMLN leaders and members.
The most well known of these murders is the assassination of Wilber
Funes, FMLN mayor of Alegria and his co-worker Zulma Rivera on January
9, 2008. This investigation is still unresolved as well as many others
that have occurred since 2006.
More recently, student activist Ángel Martínez Cerón was killed in a
similar fashion on June 26 in the city of Santa Ana. Martínez Cerón,
coordinator of the January 24 Revolutionary Socialist Student Bloc,
was shot eight times before his assassins delivered a final bullet to
the head.
Such murders recall para- military practices that occurred during the
armed conflict of El Salvador, which still remain in impunity. The
impunity of the cases of Funes y Martínez Cerón, among others, do not
contribute to the process of democratic stability desired by the
population of El Salvador. We urge you to fully investigate these
cases because in order to have a transparent democratic process in El
Salvador, it must be free of political repression and violence.
The guarantee of free expression, and particularly political
expression, is essential in a democracy. Now, in this pre-electoral
year, it is critical that the Salvadoran government demonstrate a
commitment to defend the rights of all Salvadorans who seek to express
themselves politically.
(c) 2008 CISPES - The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
CISPES National Office | ph. 202-521-2510 | 1525 Newton St. NW, Wash.
DC 20010| cispes@cispes.org
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12) A Slow-Mo Meltdown
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
August 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/opinion/04krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
A year ago, as the outlines of the current financial crisis were just becoming clear, I suggested that this crisis, unlike a superficially similar crisis in 1998, wouldn’t end quickly.
It hasn’t.
The good news, I guess, is that we’ve been experiencing a sort of slow-motion meltdown, lacking in dramatic Black Fridays and such. The gradual way the crisis has unfolded has led to an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin debate among economists about whether what we’re suffering really deserves to be called a recession.
Yet even a slo-mo crisis can do a lot of damage if it goes on for a year and counting.
Home prices are down about 16 percent over the past year, and show no sign of stabilizing. The pain from this bust is widely spread: there are millions of American families who didn’t buy mortgage-backed securities and haven’t lost their houses, but have nonetheless been impoverished by the destruction of much or all of their home equity.
Meanwhile, the job market has deteriorated even more than you’d guess from the jump in the headline unemployment rate. The broadest measure of unemployment, which takes into account the rapidly rising number of workers forced to take cuts in paid hours and wages, has risen from 8.3 percent to 10.3 percent over the past year, roughly matching its high point five years ago.
And there’s no end to the pain in sight.
Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve have cut the interest rates they control repeatedly since last September. But they haven’t managed to reduce borrowing costs for the private sector. Mortgage rates are about the same as they were last summer, and the interest rates many corporations have to pay have actually gone up. So Fed policy hasn’t done anything to encourage private investment.
The problem is fear: private-sector finance has dried up because investors, burned by their losses on securities that were supposed to be safe, are now reluctant to buy anything that isn’t guaranteed by the U.S. government. And the proliferation of special rescue packages — the TAF, the TSLF, the Bear Stearns deal, the Fannie-Freddie thing — may have staved off blind panic, but has fallen far short of restoring confidence.
Oh, and those tax rebates Congress and the White House agreed to mail out have already done whatever good they’re going to do. Looking forward, it’s hard to see how consumers can keep spending even at their current rate — which means that things will probably get considerably worse before they get better.
What more can policy do? The Fed has pretty much used up its ammunition: nobody thinks that additional interest-rate cuts would accomplish much (and there’s a faction at the Fed that wants to raise rates to fight inflation).
And nothing much can or should be done to support home prices, which are still much too high in inflation-adjusted terms. Nor can Washington prevent a continuing credit crunch: overextended, undercapitalized financial institutions have to rein in their lending, and it’s not realistic to expect the public sector to pick up all the slack — especially when quasipublic institutions like Fannie and Freddie are also in trouble.
There is, however, a case for another, more serious fiscal stimulus package, as a way to sustain employment while the markets work off the aftereffects of the housing bubble. The “emergency economic plan” Barack Obama announced last week is a move in the right direction, although I wish it had been bigger and bolder.
Still, Mr. Obama is offering more than John McCain, whose economic policy mainly amounts to “stay the course.”
Incidentally, it’s surprising that the lousy economy hasn’t yet had more impact on the campaign. Mr. McCain essentially proposes continuing the policies of a president whose approval rating on economics is only 20 percent. So why isn’t Mr. Obama further ahead in the polls?
One answer may be that Mr. Obama, perhaps inhibited by his desire to transcend partisanship (and avoid praising the last Democratic president?), has been surprisingly diffident about attacking the Bush economic record. An illustration: if you go to the official Obama Web site and click on the economic issues page, what you see first isn’t a call for change — what you see is a long quote from the candidate extolling the wonders of the free market, which could just as easily have come from a speech by President Bush.
Anyway, back to the economy. I titled that column about the early stages of the financial crisis “Very Scary Things.” A year later, with the crisis still rolling, it’s clear that I was right to be afraid.
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13) Ohio officer acquitted of killing mom holding baby
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:08 p.m. ET
August 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-SWAT-Shooting.html
LIMA, Ohio (AP) -- A white police officer was acquitted Monday in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed black woman that set off protests about how police treat minorities in a city where one in four residents is black.
The all-white jury found Sgt. Joseph Chavalia not guilty of misdemeanor charges of negligent homicide and negligent assault. He had faced up to eight months in jail if convicted of both counts.
Chavalia shot 26-year-old Tarika Wilson and her year-old son she was holding, killing her and hitting him in the shoulder and hand, during a Jan. 4 SWAT raid on her house. One of the child's fingers had to be amputated.
Officers had been looking for Wilson's boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer.
Wilson's family members stormed out of Allen County Common Pleas Court before visiting Judge Richard Knepper finished dismissing the jury.
Outside the courthouse, Wilson's brother, Ivory Austin said he wasn't surprised by the verdict.
''Now he (Chavalia) gets to get back on with his life,'' he said. ''He took my sister's life.''
He said he was hoping someone from the police department would at least admit a mistake was made.
''I'm not saying he went up there to kill her,'' Austin said.
Lima Police Chief Greg Garlock said the jury made the right decision.
''They confirmed what our sense was and our belief was in this,'' he said.
Prosecutors said Chavalia recklessly fired into a bedroom where Wilson and her six children were gathered.
He fired three times at her even though he could not clearly see her or whether she had a weapon, prosecutor Jeffrey Strausbaugh said. ''He couldn't tell Tarika had a child in her arms,'' he said during closing arguments Monday.
Chavalia had testified that he thought his life was in danger when he fired the shots. He said he saw a shadow coming from behind a partially open bedroom door and heard gunshots that he thought were aimed at him. It turned out the gunfire he heard was coming from downstairs, where officers shot two charging pit bulls.
Following the shooting, many residents accused the police department of being hostile and abusive toward minorities. One group led a series of marches through the city to protest what they said was mistreatment by police.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson visited the city and demanded that the officer who fired the fatal shots and those who planned the raid be held accountable. Chavalia was the only person charged.
Black clergy leaders had criticized the two misdemeanor charges as too lenient.
Defense attorney Bill Kluge told jurors Monday that Chavalia should not be judged on what wasn't known until after shooting, including the fact that Wilson did not have a gun or pose a threat.
''It's Monday morning quarterbacking,'' he told jurors. ''Put yourself in Joe's shoes that night.''
The jury's decision, he said in closing statements, will affect officers across Ohio.
''What kind of world would it be if we didn't have police officers,'' Kluge said. ''Joe was doing his duty.''
Wilson's boyfriend, Anthony Terry, was arrested and pleaded guilty in March to charges of drug trafficking.
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14) Leaving the Trailer
Out of FEMA Park, Clinging to a Fraying Lifeline
By SHAILA DEWAN
August 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/us/04trailer.html
BATON ROUGE, La. — Two months ago, as he left the trailer park he called home after Hurricane Katrina, Alton Love, 41, just knew he was on the brink of getting a working car, an apartment and a good job to support the 9-year-old daughter he is raising on his own.
Doris Fountain was in a comfortable hotel, waiting on a water heater and an air-conditioner for her once-flooded house in New Orleans.
Matthew Bailey had just received his first check — $48 — for selling diet products via the Internet, a source of income he insisted would ultimately pull in $5,000 to $20,000 a month.
Their plans, the fragile products of battered optimism, have been derailed by bureaucratic obstacles and the evacuees’ own tenuous abilities to cope.
Mr. Love is living in an apartment paid for by an agency for the homeless but has no job or transportation. Ms. Fountain, still at the hotel, has the appliances, but new problems have cropped up at the house, including sparking electrical outlets and a strong odor of sewage. Mr. Bailey has moved to a studio apartment paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but is still paying far more for his membership in the Internet company than he is earning.
“Hopefully things will pick up, though,” Mr. Bailey, 43, said. “That’s the way I see it. Things are bound to pick up.”
At the end of May, the doors closed at Renaissance Village, the FEMA trailer park outside of Baton Rouge that had been home to hundreds of families, its end hastened by an official acknowledgment of unhealthy levels of formaldehyde in the trailers. Those who were left at the park at the end, most of whom were among the neediest of the evacuees, began moving out on their own.
In light of the early promise that the recovery from the hurricane would provide the chance to address New Orleans’s social ills, the farewell to the trailer park might have been an opportunity for a fresh start, with families fortified by more than three years of government support and charity programs. But when the park closed earlier than expected, government planners said they were left unprepared.
State and federal officials blamed each other for the plight of those whose mental limitations, physical afflictions or addictions, exacerbated by their exodus, have kept them from taking advantage of what help was available. Now those people have left their cramped quarters behind but taken their problems with them.
Support systems have been slow to catch up. Red Cross money for necessities like furniture, work clothes and, in some cases, cars, ran out just as Renaissance Village and most of the other trailer sites were closing, and many residents are making do with nothing but a mattress. A contract for case managers who helped evacuees get back on their feet ended in March, and a new case management pilot program is still in the planning stages almost three years after the storm.
“I know we’re behind the eight ball,” said Paul Rainwater, the executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. “People talk about recovery, but on one level, we’re still responding.”
The problems these families face are complex. Ms. Fountain, 65, could afford to fix the faulty repair work at her house if she had an award from the state’s Road Home program for homeowners. But Ms. Fountain’s husband of three decades died in 2007, and she cannot get the money until she can establish that the house is rightfully hers, a process that costs upward of $1,500. The legal service hired by the state to help low-income people with such issues has a long waiting list.
Meanwhile, Ms. Fountain, still in the Baton Rouge hotel, still grieving for her husband and worried about a son who has just been deployed to Iraq, has given in to incoherent fits of anger. Only recently, the lap dog she got after her husband’s death had to be euthanized.
“She’s had mental issues to break out before,” said Ms. Fountain’s daughter Jean Marie Selders, who is living with a friend in New Orleans and saving part of her paycheck to help with her mother’s house. “The longer it takes, the more distorted she gets.”
Many evacuees are not easy to help, especially when their situations are at least partly the products of their own bad decisions. Take Mr. Love, who back in May jauntily said, “I don’t have no sorrows.” Now, he is at what he calls an all-time low.
At Renaissance Village, Mr. Love took advantage of free job training to get his commercial driver’s license. But he lost his first job, at a cement plant, when he backed into another truck. With his tax refund this year, he bought a car that did not run. And when it came time to leave the trailer park, the first place that accepted him despite his bad credit and his history of arrests was miles from the cement companies where he had applied for jobs.
The commute, if it were even possible given the limitations of the Baton Rouge bus system, would mean leaving his daughter, Adrian, at dawn and getting home long after she returned from school. (Her mother, living in New Orleans, is a crack addict, Mr. Love said.) But the jobs within his reach — at Domino’s Pizza, say, or as a member of the support staff for Louisiana State University, struck Mr. Love as paying far too little for a man who used to make $20 an hour in the New Orleans shipyards.
Although a mechanic has declared the car worthless, Mr. Love has clung to the idea of using his federal stimulus check to salvage a junkyard motor for it. With a car, he said, “I know I can get a decent job. I know I can make this work.”
Sister Judith Brun, a nun who has been working with evacuees since before Renaissance Village was established, has offered to make up the difference between Mr. Love’s paycheck if he gets a job and the $13 an hour he would make driving a cement truck, putting the extra money into a savings account for a car. But Mr. Love, determined to use his commercial license, has yet to accept her offer.
On a recent afternoon, with Adrian away at a free camp in New Jersey, Mr. Love sat on his bed, poring over the help-wanted ads with some disgust. “I can’t get mad with nobody,” he said. “I got in this situation myself. But I’m not going to let this situation drown me, and I see I’m drowning.”
Because Mr. Love lived with his brother before the storm, he and Adrian are ineligible for the rental payments that most families who left the trailer park receive. For now, the Capital Area Homeless Alliance is paying Mr. Love’s $585 rent. In a month, he will be required to start contributing a third of it.
To help her charges become self-sufficient, Sister Judith has recently arranged for a team of psychologists to evaluate those who are willing, in hopes that it will dislodge them from the ruts that have only deepened — the comfort zones that have only contracted — since the storms.
The Homeless Alliance and the Community Initiatives Foundation, directed by Sister Judith, are part of a small consortium of agencies that is trying to keep those ineligible for FEMA assistance from becoming the homeless. Their clients include more than 200 households, and ineligible people continue to materialize — early this month, a Hurricane Rita evacuee was found sleeping in the doorway of a Baton Rouge office building with her newborn daughter.
No one is sure how many ineligible people there are, but what is certain is that their numbers far exceed expectations and many are mentally or physically disabled. In New Orleans, a program to prevent homelessness set aside only 9 of 91 housing vouchers for disabled people coming off FEMA assistance; most of the rest are for the chronically homeless, whose numbers have overwhelmed the city since the storm.
“It was never anticipated that the permanent supportive housing program was going to take responsibility for all of FEMA’s disabled clients,” said Martha Kegel, the executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans, which is running the federally financed program. “When we put this together we did not anticipate how much homelessness was going to explode. We had always been hoping that FEMA was going to continue to support these people instead of just dumping them on us.”
FEMA workers were supposed to refer disabled clients for the nine slots, Ms. Kegel said, but did not. Two were given to former Renaissance Village residents, Laura Hilton and her two younger children, and Theresa August, who has AIDS and shows signs of mental illness, after they were featured in an earlier article in The New York Times.
Ms. Hilton’s application has been approved and a two-bedroom apartment she found with the help of caseworkers is under inspection. Ms. August, who was living in an apartment that she paid for from her monthly disability income, was recently hospitalized after her new caseworkers took her to get medical attention for the first time in months. The other slots have been filled.
There is little other money in the system to aid those ineligible for FEMA rental payments. Of the $11.5 billion in federal community development block grants allocated for housing in Louisiana, $25 million has gone for homelessness prevention and $72 million for the supportive housing voucher program. A block grant for social services was much smaller, $220 million, of which some $100 million went to the state Department of Health and Hospitals for medical and mental health care. An additional $260,000 of that grant was recently given to the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps, a nonprofit group that works closely with the state recovery authority, which it plans to use for the ineligible people.
And it is not only that group that is in need of help.
For those who are eligible for FEMA-financed housing but have yet to find it, the agency has agreed to pay for a new case management program but not direct assistance like furniture, utilities or deposits.
Those who have found housing will have their rent paid through February 2009 but will receive little other assistance. Monette Romich, who moved with her eldest daughter and 3-year-old grandson to a town house in New Orleans when Renaissance Village closed, recently returned to Baton Rouge to have a cancerous kidney removed.
Ms. Romich, a seamstress, lost her Medicaid coverage when her youngest daughter turned 18. She has not yet qualified for disability payments and has no source of income other than the purses she makes and sells for $10 each. Except for three beds, the town house is unfurnished.
Katie Underwood, the relief and recovery program manager for Family Road of Greater Baton Rouge, another aid group, said caseworkers there had recently been assigned to families who moved out of the trailer parks months ago and were living in subsidized apartments. “They’re finding people with no furniture and their lights off,” she said.
But with few resources to help those people, the state is looking to the time when the rent subsidies expire, yet another transition for families who were placed in apartments they cannot afford on their own. “March 2009,” said Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Recovery Authority, “is a date that’s seared in our minds.”
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15) Millions With Chronic Disease Get Little to No Treatment
By REED ABELSON
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/05health.html
Millions of Americans with chronic disease like diabetes or high blood pressure are not getting adequate treatment because they are among the nation’s growing ranks of uninsured.
That is the central finding of a new study to be published Tuesday in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study, the first detailed look at the health of the uninsured, estimates that about one of every three working-age adults without insurance in the United States has received a diagnosis of a chronic illness. Many of these people are forgoing doctors’ visits or relying on emergency rooms for their medical care, the study said.
The report, based on an analysis of government health surveys of adults ages 18 to 64 years old, estimated that about 11 million of the 36 million people without insurance in 2004 — the latest year of the study — had received a chronic-condition diagnosis.
“These are people who, with modern therapies, can be kept out of trouble,” said Dr. Andrew P. Wilper, the study’s lead author. Therapies for someone with diabetes and hypertension “are routine and widely available, if you have insurance,” said Dr. Wilper, a medical instructor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The most recent government estimate of the number of people in this country without health insurance is 47 million, which means that if the proportions found in the study have remained constant, there might be nearly 16 million people in this country with a chronic condition but no insurance to pay for medical care.
Nearly a quarter of the uninsured with a chronic illness who were surveyed said they had not visited a health professional within the last year. About 7 percent said they typically went to a hospital emergency room for care.
“A lot of people are suffering from a lack of health insurance,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, another of the study’s authors, who is a physician and associate professor of medicine at Harvard.
People with high blood pressure, for example, are at risk for catastrophic medical events like a stroke if they are not getting the drugs they need or having a doctor monitor their disease, said Karen Davis, the president of the Commonwealth Fund. The fund, a foundation in New York that specializes in health care research, has done its own research into the lack of adequate medical care among the uninsured.
The study, being published Tuesday, may have underestimated exactly how many people who are uninsured have a chronic illness, because it includes only those who have already received such a diagnosis, the authors said. Individuals who have not had their conditions diagnosed because they are not seeing a doctor or nurse are not included.
The study’s authors say that their findings cast doubt on the common assumption that many of the uninsured tend to be young and healthy, requiring little in the way of medical care. Because so many actually have chronic conditions that may be expensive to treat, the cost of covering the uninsured is often underestimated, said Dr. Woolhandler, who advocates a nationalized system of health care.
In Massachusetts, she said, the state’s effort to overhaul its health insurance system to cover more residents is costing much more than expected and has not led to universal coverage because policy makers assumed that more people would be healthy. “The state experiments have all failed because of cost,” she said.
The study describes harsh consequences for neglecting easily treatable diseases in so many people. “For some of the 11.4 million uninsured Americans with serious chronic conditions, access to care seems to be unobtainable; many may face early disability and death as a result,” the study’s authors said.
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Proposed Kosher Certification Rules
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Conservative Jewish leaders are seeking to protect workers and the environment at kosher food plants like the one raided this spring in Iowa. They issued draft guidelines for a kosher certification program meant as a supplement to the traditional certification process that measures compliance with Jewish dietary law. The proposed “hekhsher tzedek,” or “certificate of righteousness,” would be awarded to companies that pay fair wages, ensure workplace safety, follow government environmental regulations and treat animals humanely, among other proposed criteria. Support for the idea has been fueled by controversies at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa, the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant. In May, immigration officials raided the plant, arresting nearly 400 workers.
August 1, 2008
National Briefing | Immigration
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/us/01brfs-PROPOSEDKOSH_BRF.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print
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.
###
Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
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