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Excellent YouTube video on recruiting youth to the military including from JROTC:
Financial incentives boost US Army enlistment - 23 Mar 08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ix4rMfL1E
NEXT Meeting to defeat pro-JROTC referendum set for November Ballot in SF
TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 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.
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Labor Beat: National Assembly to End the War in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Highlights from the June 28-29, 2008 meeting in Cleveland, OH. In this 26-minute video, Labor Beat presents a sampling of the speeches and floor discussions from this important conference. Attended by over 400 people, the Assembly's main objective was to urge united and massive mobilizations in the spring to “Bring the Troops Home Now,” as well as supporting actions that build towards that date. To read the final action proposal and to learn other details, visit www.natassembly.org. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is affiliated with IBEW 1220. Views expressed are those of the producer, not necessarily of IBEW. For info: mail@laborbeat.org,www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video or YouTube and search "Labor Beat".
http://blip.tv/file/1149437/
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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A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Film Series
Banished:
American Ethnic Cleansings
Thurs. Aug. 14, 7:30pm
ATA, 992 Valencia St. at 21st, SF $6 donation
Between 1860 and 1920 the Black residents of hundreds of U.S. cities, towns and entire counties were expelled from their homes. “Banished” vividly recovers the too-quickly forgotten history of racist “ethnic cleansing,” when thousands of African Americans were driven from their communities by violent, racist mobs.
“Banished” raises the larger question: Will the United States ever make meaningful reparations for the human rights abuses suffered, then and now, against its African American citizens? Can the long and terrible history of racism and national oppression be overcome without them? 2007, 84 min.
Sponsored by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, 415-821-6545.
Volunteers Needed!
Upcoming Outreach Worksessions
Help with postering, flyering and making alert phone calls for upcoming events. You can also pick up flyers and posters for upcoming events anytime at the SF office. Call for East Bay Office hours.
East Bay
Thurs. Aug. 7, 6pm and Sat. Aug. 9, 1pm
meet at 636 9th St. at MLK, Oakland. (near 12th St. BART)
Call 510-435-0844 for more info.
San Francisco
Tues. Aug. 12, 5-8pm
meet at 2489 Mission St. #24, at 21st St., SF (near 24th St. BART/#14, #49 MUNI)
Call 415-821-6545 for more info.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.answersf.org
answer@answersf.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Make a tax-deductible donation to A.N.S.W.E.R. by credit card over a secure server, learn how to donate by check.
Unsubscribe from this list - if you experience a problem please email answer@actionsf.org
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Thursday, 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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Iraq Moratorium Aug. 15 -- new website and links
The Iraq Moratorium will mark its 12th month of locally-based, grassroots actions on August 15, the Third Friday of the month, with events across the country. There have been more than 1,200 events in 41 states and 240 communities, and the list keeps growing. Rice Lake, Wisconsin just announced yesterday that it would begin monthly vigils in August.
We have a new website address, www.IraqMoratorium.com We hope you'll like the new look and new logo. Please check it out, and while you're, there make sure that if you are planning an August event,it is on the list. If it's not listed, please email the details to moratoriumiraq@gmail.com and we'll get it posted for you.
We'd also ask that you change any links from your website, bookmark the new site, and feel free to use the new logo, which is attached as a jpg file.
Your comments, suggestions and reactions to the changes are most welcome. We'd like to hear from you.
Thank you for all that you do.
The Iraq Moratorium Committee
www.IraqMoratorium.com
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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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Iraq War resister Robin Long jailed, facing three years in Army stockade
Free Robin Long now!
Support GI resistance!
* Donate to Robin's defense
* Write to Robin in jail
By Courage to Resist
August 7, 2008
Last month 25-year-old U.S. Army PFC Robin Long became the first war resister since the Vietnam War to be forcefully deported from Canadian soil and handed over to military authorities. Robin is currently being held in the El Paso County Jail, near Colorado Springs, Colorado, awaiting a military court martial for resisting the unjust and illegal war against and occupation of Iraq. Robin will be court martialed for desertion “with intent to remain away permanently”—Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice—in early September. The maximum allowable penalty for a guilty verdict on this charge is three years confinement, forfeiture of pay, and a dishonorable discharge from the Army.
In order to expedite Robin’s trial, it appears that his unit command, the Fourth Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division is opting to not charge Robin with speech-related violations of military discipline; opting to try and convict Robin as fast as possible.
Jennifer Johnson, Ryan Johnson, and Dale Landry rally for Robin Long in Toronto, Canada
Robin went absent without leave (AWOL) from the Army in 2005, realizing that he had significant moral opposition to the war and the lies he had been told regarding the reason for invasion and occupation of Iraq. After being transferred to an Iraq bound combat unit, Robin went to Boise, Id. (his home town) where he stayed for several months, before traveling to Canada.
Robin recently talked to Courage to Resist about why he enlisted. “When the U.S. first attacked Iraq, I was told by my president that it was because of direct ties to Al-Qaida and weapons of mass destruction.” Robin explained that while he was uneasy about his personal role in fighting, the Iraq War seemed justified. So when his recruiter promised him a non-combat position within the U.S., he took it. Regarding his decision to resist later, Robin explained, “I made the best decision. Regardless of what hardships I go through, I could have put Iraqi families through more hardships. I have no regrets.” When asked by the Boise Weekly, in May of 2006, if he was prepared to go to jail, Robin replied, “Yeah if it came down to that, I'd be willing to go to prison because I know I did the right thing and I can sleep at night and my conscience is still good.”
Garrett Reppenhagen of IVAW speaks to a reporter about Robin Long, Pioneer Park, Colorado Springs 7/27/08
On July 27th, 2008 Garrett Reppenhagen of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Lee Zaslofsky of the War Resisters Support Campaign (Canada), members of the Springs Action Alliance and more joined James Branum, Robin Long’s civilian lawyer in Pioneer Park to demand Robin Long’s freedom. Garrett praised Robin, declaring “I support Robin Long because he is a Soldier of Conscience. There is a huge propaganda campaign in this country to get young men to join the military. He bought the hype. He signed up for a promised [non-combat] job, but it turned out not to be so. He decided to go to Canada and follow his conscience instead.”
As Robin awaits trial by military tribunal, a general court martial, he sits in the El Paso County Jail – surrounded by other military inmates, as well as civilians serving time on convictions or awaiting criminal prosecution. In the past Robin would have been held in pretrial confinement in an Army stockade, but with rising troop level needs, the Army has chosen to shut down many stockades and outsource confinement of soldiers to civilian authorities. With the exception of Robin’s Lawyer, James Branum, all of Robin’s visitors must communicate with him via a camera and real time video screen. Robin is allowed out of doors for only one hour a day, and even then cannot see anything but a thin strip of sky, directly overhead.
Robin's lawyer James Branum (right) rallies for his client., Pioneer Park, Colorado Springs. 7/27/08
Despite the deprivations of the El Paso county jail, Mr. Branum reports that Robin is “…in considerably good spirits, especially considering all that he is going through.” In a recent phone interview with Courage to Resist Robin reported that he was very happy with Mr. Branum calling him “awesome” as well as his military assigned defense lawyer “a smart cookie” in Robin’s words. He has received many visitors – pastors and members of local congregations, members of the IVAW among them. He wants everyone to know that the cards and the letters of support he receives are most welcome and give him of true sense of the support that is swelling for him, outside the confines of his cell. Lee Zaslofsky, of the Canadian WRSC reports that Robin is “..aware of what he might have to face, and is prepared to face it with courage and without bitterness.”
The fact remains, however, that the Iraq War is unjust and illegal. The U.N. Charter, the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg principles all bar wars of aggression. The U.S. Constitution makes such treaties part of American law as well. Robin Long is a hero for not only recognizing these truths, but putting his future on the line to courageously resist participating in an immoral occupation. The least we can do is support Robin, and demand his immediate freedom.
What you can do now to support Robin
1. Donate to Robin's legal defense
Online: http://couragetoresist.org/robinlong
By mail: Make checks out to “Courage to Resist / IHC” and note “Robin Long” in the memo field. Mail to:
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave #41
Oakland CA 94610
Courage to Resist is committed to covering Robin’s legal and related defense expenses. Thank you for helping make that possible.
Also: You are also welcome to contribute directly to Robin’s legal expenses via his civilian lawyer James Branum. Visit girightslawyer.com, select "Pay Online via PayPal" (lower left), and in the comments field note “Robin Long”. Note that this type of donation is not tax-deductible.
2. Send letters of support to Robin
Robin Long, CJC
2739 East Las Vegas
Colorado Springs CO 80906
Robin’s pre-trial confinement has been outsourced by Fort Carson military authorities to the local county jail.
Robin is allowed to receive hand-written or typed letters only. Do NOT include postage stamps, drawings, stickers, copied photos or print articles. Robin cannot receive packages of any type (with the book exception as described below).
3. Send Robin a money order for commissary items
Anything Robin gets (postage stamps, toothbrush, shirts, paper, snacks, supplements, etc.) must be ordered through the commissary. Each inmate has an account to which friends may make deposits. To do so, a money order in U.S. funds must be sent to the address above made out to "Robin Long, EPSO". The sender’s name must be written on the money order.
4. Send Robin a book
Robin is allowed to receive books which are ordered online and sent directly to him at the county jail from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. These two companies know the procedure to follow for delivering books for inmates.
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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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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) 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
2) 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
3) Army to grow its own high school grads
Pilot program to help young people get GEDs
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Aug 5, 2008 11:21:23 EDT
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/army_prepschool_080108w/
4) Korea: Stop arrests of trade union leaders
including Lee Suk-haeng, KCTU President.
Act NOW!
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=402
5) Italy Begins Military Effort to Quell Crime
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/world/europe/05italy.html?ref=world
6) Denver Police Brace for Convention
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC SCHMITT
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/us/politics/05security.html?ref=us
7) Suit Seeks Police Data on Race of People Shot by City Officers
“The reports for 1996 and 1997 include the race of both the officer and the person who was shot. Those reports said that, adding up the two years, 89.4 percent of those shot by the police were black or Hispanic.”
By AL BAKER
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/nyregion/05police.html?ref=nyregion
8) Mind
You’re Checked Out, but Your Brain Is Tuned In
By BENEDICT CAREY
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/research/05mind.html?ref=health
9) Bin Laden’s Former Driver Found Guilty in Split Decision
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/washington/07gitmo.html?hp
10) Coney Island Sideshow Has Guantánamo Theme
By ARIEL KAMINER
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/arts/design/06wate.html
11) South Africa Strike Hits Mining and Factories
By REUTERS
Filed at 5:39 a.m. ET
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-safrica-strike.html?ref=world
12) Texas Executes Mexican Despite Objections
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/us/06execute.html?ref=world
13) Inquiry Finds Under-Age Workers at Meat Plant
By JULIA PRESTON
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/us/06meat.html?ref=us
14) After Years in Prison, Now a Break
By JIM DWYER
About New York
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/nyregion/06about.html?ref=nyregion
15) Less Crime in Schools Last Year, City Reports
By JENNIFER MEDINA
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/nyregion/06crime.html?ref=nyregion
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1) 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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2) 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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3) Army to grow its own high school grads
Pilot program to help young people get GEDs
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Aug 5, 2008 11:21:23 EDT
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/army_prepschool_080108w/
Faced with a shrinking pool of eligible young recruits, the Army is getting into the business of granting diplomas at its own homegrown high school.
In a pilot program scheduled to begin Monday at Fort Jackson, S.C., qualifying high school dropouts will start a four-week curriculum at the new Army Preparatory School to earn a general equivalency diploma.
The plan was to start classes of 60 students each on four consecutive Mondays. As of Friday, only two students were enrolled for the first week, but 36 were expected to arrive for the second week’s class.
Within a few months, according to plans, the GED program will expand to eight weeks and students in those classes will earn a fully accredited high school diploma that will be recognized as equal to a diploma from any American high school.
The Army is working with new legislation in South Carolina to obtain accreditation as a charter high school. Later, the Army hopes to expand accreditation to other states so that soldiers enrolled in the prep school can get a diploma from their original high school.
All of it will be in exchange for a minimum enlistment in the Army, including any bonuses that apply to the soldier’s military occupational specialty, just before the new soldier goes through basic combat training.
Recruiting for the program began in mid-July.
“I’m stoked about it. It’s a big deal,” said Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of Training and Doctrine Command, whose subordinate Accessions Command is spearheading the effort.
“There are young people out there ... we can make fully qualified by doing something different, and this is something different,” he said.
According to initial rough estimates, Wallace said, there could be as many as 300,000 people who meet eligibility criteria for the prep school.
Wallace has sounded the alarm for the past two years about the waning eligibility of people between the ages of 17 and 24.
Studies and focus groups cited by Wallace show that only 28 percent of people in that age group meet the Army’s physical, intellectual and moral criteria for enlistment.
He sees the prep school program “as an opportunity to get at a segment of the population we can’t get at right now.”
“Whether it raises that 28 percent makes very little difference to me, as long as we can get all the young people who are smart but not educated and encourage them to get the education our society values and use that education in their future life, and part of that is a stop in the Army for three years or 30,” Wallace said.
He expects an Army prep school to be established at each of the Army’s other basic training sites.
The Army has been criticized in recent years for methods taken to meet recruiting demands, including the enlistment of increased numbers of high-school dropouts and those requiring waivers for criminal records.
Prospects for the prep school must score 50 or higher on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, and must be otherwise waiver-free.
The student-recruits will be part of a new company under the base support battalion at Fort Jackson, the largest of the Army’s five basic training posts, but their four weeks won’t be anything like basic training — and aren’t meant to be.
They will spend eight hours a day in class, five days a week, studying subjects like math, English and U.S. history.
The soldiers will be confined to post, live in barracks, wear the Army Combat Uniform and do physical training at 6 a.m., but unlike basic trainees, they will have access to cell phones for family support.
The curriculum will be taught by civilian contractors, and the company’s 17-member uniformed cadre will provide the military structure.
Four platoon sergeants, eight squad leaders, and training and supply noncommissioned officers will work with the students in a one-hour class familiarizing them with basic map reading, first aid, drill and ceremony, and customs and courtesies.
The soldiers selected to work in the new company are combat veterans, and their role is aimed at “soldierizing” the new recruits in preparation for Army life, commander Capt. Brian Gaddis said.
“I looked over the curriculum and I don’t know how much help we can give them,” Gaddis said of the standardized GED. “This is a very difficult test and I don’t foresee my cadre being tutors, but more supervising study halls, making sure nobody’s getting into trouble.”
Pvt. Kyle Rucker, 19, is one of two student-soldiers who will start in the first class at Army Preparatory School. He exemplifies the young people sought for the Army’s new GED program and has signed on for four years.
He dropped out of high school in Warren, Mich., in fall 2007 when he was a junior. He made the decision after his father died, saying he “wanted to grow up and get a job. I didn’t want to have to wait.”
“I’ve always been independent. I just wanted to work. I got bored with school,” he said.
Rucker had always wanted to join the Army, too, and walked into a recruiting station in March.
His recruiter aggressively helped him pursue his GED.
“He called me all the time, like twice a day, and he helped me find Web sites where I could study,” Rucker said.
In the meantime, Rucker took the ASVAB, filled out all the enlistment papers and was ready to ship when his recruiter learned of the Army’s GED program.
“It’s definitely a sense of a goal I’m working on accomplishing. I came this far, put as much work into it as I could, hoping to get the best out of it,” he said. He admitted he’s “a little bit nervous about basic training, but I guess everybody is.”
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4) Korea: Stop arrests of trade union leaders
including Lee Suk-haeng, KCTU President.
Act NOW!
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=402
Following a massive wave of protests and demonstrations, on 24 July the South Korean government issued arrest warrants for top leaders of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) including Lee Suk-haeng (President - pictured) and Lee Yong-shik (General Secretary). Ms. Jin Young-ok, First Vice-President of the KCTU has been arrested and detained.
The police surrounded the building where the main office of the KCTU is located, ready to move in and arrest the leaders. Arrest warrants have also been issued for other union leaders (see list below).
This anti-union repression threatens to return Korea to the dark days of the military dictatorship which ended two decades ago. Korean trade unionists are asking for a huge international campaign to pressure their government to respect human rights.
List of other trade union leaders for whom arrest warrants have been issued:
Jung Gab-deuk, President, KMWU
Nam Taek-gyu, First Vice-president, KMWU
Yoon Hae-mo, President, Hyundai Motor Branch
Kim Tae-gon, First Vice-president, Hyundai Motor Branch
Kim Jong-il, Vice-president, Hyundai Motor Branch
Jung Chang-bong, Vice-president, Hyundai Motor Branch
Joo In-koo, Vice-president, Hyundai Motor Branch
Jo Chang-min, Secretary,Hyundai Motor Branch
Register your protest here:
http://www.labourstart.org/kctu
If you are on Facebook, sign the new Cause we've created, here:
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/107071
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5) Italy Begins Military Effort to Quell Crime
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/world/europe/05italy.html?ref=world
ROME — Soldiers were deployed throughout Italy on Monday to embassies, subway and railway stations, as part of broader government measures to fight violent crime here for which illegal immigrants are broadly blamed.
By the time it is fully effective next week, the effort will flank regular police officers and the military police with 3,000 troops, a visible signal to citizens that the government “has responded to their demands for greater security,” Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa said in an interview on the Italian Sky News channel.
The conservative government of Silvio Berlusconi won elections in April while promising to crack down on petty crime and illegal immigrants. The new patrols of soldiers, who are not empowered to make arrests, do not seem aimed only at illegal immigrants, though the patrols were deployed to centers where illegal immigrants are housed.
“Security is something concrete,” Mr. La Russa said on Monday. The troops, he said, will be a “deterrent to criminals.”
Critics of the government have condemned the deployment as a superfluous measure that could prove counterproductive.
“Putting troops on the street sends a dramatic message that the situation is more serious than it is in reality,” said Marco Minniti, the shadow interior minister of the center-left Democratic Party, the largest opposition party.
Television news stations showed military officials searching immigrants’ suitcases at subway stations. Potential terrorist targets were also under greater scrutiny. In Milan, troops were stationed around the city’s Gothic cathedral, and in Naples they watched the American Consulate.
In the capital, troops are to be stationed around embassies, consulates and centers for illegal immigrants in outlying neighborhoods where they live. They will not be securing the city’s historic monuments because local officials fretted that the military presence could scare off tourists.
“They will only be in areas where they have no impact on normal citizens,” Rome’s center-right mayor, Gianni Alemmano, told reporters.
Critics of the effort, which was part of a larger anticrime package pushed through Parliament last month, also object to the use of troops rather than the police, saying the military is better suited for emergencies in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, where they are posted, than urban crises.
“You need to be specially trained to carry out some kinds of controls,” Nicola Tanzi, the secretary of a trade union that represents Italian police officers. “Soldiers just aren’t qualified.”
He also questioned whether the $93.6 million that will be spent for the extra deployment, called Operation Safe Streets, might not have been better used to increase the budgets for Italy’s police and military.
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6) Denver Police Brace for Convention
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC SCHMITT
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/us/politics/05security.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON — Federal and local authorities are girding for huge protests, mammoth traffic tie-ups and civil disturbances at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this month, fearing that the convention will become a magnet for militant protest groups.
Officials say that what makes Denver different than past conventions is the historic nature of Senator Barack Obama’s nomination, a megawattage event whose global spotlight could draw tens of thousands of demonstrators, including self-described anarchists who the police fear will infiltrate peaceful protest groups to disrupt the weeklong event.
The Secret Service is wary of discussing threats against the people they protect, but with Mr. Obama poised to become the first black presidential nominee, there are special worries. While law enforcement officials say there are no specific, credible threats against Mr. Obama, they expressed concern about low-level chatter on Web sites frequented by white separatists who spew hate about Mr. Obama’s race and what they perceive as his liberal agenda.
One recent scheduling change caused a major shift in security plans. When Mr. Obama announced last month that he would accept his party’s nomination not at the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver, where the convention is being held, but at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos, the Secret Service scrambled to work out plans with local authorities to secure the open-air stadium, which seats more than 75,000 people. Invesco is also adjacent to Interstate 25, a major corridor through the Northern Rockies that will most likely be closed for at least part of Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech.
“The magnitude of the event has expanded,” said John W. Hickenlooper, the mayor of Denver and a Democrat. “It’s bigger and more profound than we expected.”
Officials acknowledge that their projections for the number of protesters are based more on a worst-case chain of events than specific information about who will show up, but they say they cannot take any chances.
As a result, the Secret Service, the Pentagon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and scores of police departments are moving thousands of agents, analysts, officers and employees to Denver for the Aug. 25-28 convention. They will operate through a complex hierarchy of command centers, steering committees and protocols to respond to disruptions.
National political conventions are a chance for federal agencies to test their latest and most sophisticated technology, and this year is no different. There was a brief flare-up recently between the F.B.I. and the Secret Service, when each wanted to patrol the skies over the convention with their surveillance aircraft, packed with infrared cameras and other electronics. The issue was resolved in favor of the Secret Service, according to people briefed on the matter.
Both Denver and St. Paul, where the Republican National Convention will be held Sept. 1-4, are enlisting thousands of additional officers to help with security. Even so, their numbers will be only about a third of the 10,000 police officers that New York City fielded for the 2004 Republican convention, just three years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Denver Police Department will nearly double in size, according to federal officials involved in the planning. The city is bringing in nearly 1,500 police officers from communities throughout Colorado and beyond, even inviting an eight-person mounted unit from Cheyenne, Wyo. State lawmakers changed Colorado law to allow the out-of-state police officers to serve as peace officers in Denver.
The expressions of concern about security at the convention could have more immediate political and legal implications, too. A federal judge, Marcia S. Krieger of United States District Court in Denver, is expected to issue a decision this week in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking to ease security provisions at the convention. The A.C.L.U. has suggested that the Secret Service and the Denver police have exaggerated risks as part of a crackdown on dissent.
The case centers on whether the security zone around the Pepsi Center is so large, and the designated parade route through the city for marches and rallies so far away, as to unnecessarily stifle free speech. New worries about protests and anarchy could bolster the government’s case that the plans are justified.
Last month, under pressure from the A.C.L.U. lawsuit, the city released a list of expenses related to the convention showing that the police were preparing for large demonstrations and mass arrests and that the department had spent $2.1 million on protection equipment for its officers, $1.4 million for barricades and $850,000 for supplies related to the arrest and processing of suspects.
In disclosing the cost breakdown, city officials denied rumors that had circulated for weeks that they had contemplated buying exotic nonlethal weapons that fired an immobilizing goo, or that used radiation or sonic waves to incapacitate people or vehicles.
Similar preparations are under way for the Republican convention in Minnesota, but without the harsh glare that, at the moment, seems to be focused on Denver. St. Paul’s 600-member police force will grow nearly sixfold with about 3,000 additional officers arriving from around Minnesota, as well as from Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and the Dakotas, said Tom Walsh, a spokesman for the St. Paul Police Department.
“St. Paul isn’t New York,” he said. “We just don’t have the staffing.”
Kenneth L. Wainstein, the White House adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism, recently visited Denver and St. Paul, a trip that reflected the administration’s interest in the conventions. “In the post-9/11 world, you have to prepare and plan for all contingencies,” Mr. Wainstein said. “That means preparing for everything from a minor disruption and an unruly individual to a broader terrorist event. We need to plan for everything no matter what the threat level is on any particular day.”
Intelligence analysts, however, have not reported a heightened threat from Islamic extremists or domestic threats from antigovernment groups or environmental militants like the kind that operate in many Western states, according to federal officials. “We just aren’t seeing a credible threat,” said James H. Davis, the F.B.I. agent in charge of the Denver office.
Each convention has been designated a National Special Security Event, which makes the Secret Service the lead federal agency responsible for protecting dignitaries and providing overall security. Other agencies will be on standby.
The National Guard in Minnesota and Colorado will each have hundreds of troops on call to their governors to help civilian medical personnel or bomb squads, for instance, if needed. National Guard specialists trained to deal with biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons will also be available.
“There won’t be a visible military presence,” said Maj. Gen. Guy C. Swan III, director of operations for the military’s Northern Command, which is in charge of the military’s response to threats on American soil.
Each city has been awarded $50 million in federal funds for convention costs, a substantial part of which is being spent on security-related equipment and training. And each city has been enlisting the help of neighboring communities to provide more officers to help police the conventions.
The security and safety of convention delegates and visitors has become an increasingly significant issue in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul, where local officials were hoping to avoid complaints, heard in 2004 after the Democratic convention in Boston and the Republican convention in New York, that restrictive security arrangements had nearly locked down the convention sites.
From the start, the Democrats’ decision to hold their convention in Denver and the Republicans’ choice of St. Paul stirred concerns about whether local police in each city had enough officers to deal with a wide range of threats, including terrorist attacks or a lone gunman.
The most pressing fears, particularly in Denver, are that as many as 30,000 demonstrators may sweep into the city to disrupt the convention. Much of the city’s planning, in conjunction with federal authorities, has been based on the possibility of such protests, according to federal officials.
Still, these officials acknowledge that they have little concrete intelligence indicating that such large or unruly demonstrations are being planned. But, officials said they had based their assessments on groups like Recreate 68, Tent State and other activist coalitions. Organizers insist the groups are nonviolent, but to the authorities their names alone raise the specter of violent confrontations like those at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.
In Denver, federal officials have expressed concern that demonstrators could try to shut down regular business at several major offices, including the Federal Reserve Bank, the United States Mint, and the federal courthouse.
“Because of the Internet, the ability of protesters to mobilize and share information has metastasized,” said Troy A. Eid, the United States attorney for Colorado. “That would be fine if it were peaceful, as we expect. But we have to plan accordingly.”
In recent days, domestic security officials issued a heightened awareness bulletin urging greater attention because of a number of factors, including the election and the conventions. But law enforcement authorities say they are trying to strike a balance between planning for every conceivable threat, including terrorist attacks and large public demonstrations, and not strangling a city’s commercial life in the process.
“We’re not looking to shut down an entire city,” said Malcolm Wiley, a Secret Service agent involved in security planning for the convention in Denver.
Kirk Johnson contributed reporting from Denver.
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7) Suit Seeks Police Data on Race of People Shot by City Officers
“The reports for 1996 and 1997 include the race of both the officer and the person who was shot. Those reports said that, adding up the two years, 89.4 percent of those shot by the police were black or Hispanic.”
By AL BAKER
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/nyregion/05police.html?ref=nyregion
The New York Police Department recently released 11 years of statistics on every bullet fired by its officers, including the reason for each shooting, the number of shots fired and how many bullets hit their target. But the reports stopped mentioning the race of the people shot after 1997 without saying why.
Testimony by a former police chief now offers an explanation. The former chief, Louis R. Anemone, said that while the data on people killed by officers were being compiled in 1998, the police commissioner, Howard Safir, ordered the department not to include the race of those killed by officers.
The testimony by Mr. Anemone, a former chief of department, did not say why Mr. Safir made his decision, but the shift appeared to have occurred during a public furor over race and the police’s use of deadly force in the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant, in February 1999. Mr. Diallo was killed in a barrage of 41 police bullets in the Bronx.
Mr. Anemone’s statements were submitted with a lawsuit filed on Monday by the New York Civil Liberties Union seeking access to the data on race. The group first sought the data after undercover detectives fired 50 bullets at a car in Queens in November 2006, killing its driver, Sean Bell, and wounding two of his friends. Like Mr. Diallo, Mr. Bell was black.
Mr. Safir, who was appointed commissioner in 1996 and resigned in 2000, did not respond to telephone or e-mail messages on Monday. An assistant to Mr. Safir, now the chairman of a security and investigative firm, SafirRosetti, said that he was traveling in Europe and that he had not responded to her message sent to his BlackBerry.
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said in an e-mail message that the “race of suspects shot by the police generally comports with the race of shooting suspects.” When asked why the department continued to omit the data on race from its annual firearms reports, he wrote, “They are internal tactical reports that focus on tactical considerations, such as lighting, weapons, distance between suspect(s) and officer(s), and not race.”
After the department denied the civil liberties group’s Freedom of Information Law request, the group sued the department on Monday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
“I don’t think there is any reasonable claim that the race of shooting victims is irrelevant,” said Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the civil liberties group. “It certainly is not something that the N.Y.P.D. should be hiding from the public, but that is exactly what they are doing. In a city where there have been lots of concerns about blacks being shot, I think this is information that needs to come out.”
The Police Department has said that the information on race is embedded in individual police reports on separate shootings that are “exempt from disclosure” because they are preliminary, include witnesses’ statements and are prepared as part of continuing inquiries, among other reasons. As a practical matter, police officials who brief the news media after police shootings routinely disclose the race of those shot.
The reports for 1996 and 1997 include the race of both the officer and the person who was shot. Those reports said that, adding up the two years, 89.4 percent of those shot by the police were black or Hispanic.
The 1998 report was the first to omit the data on race.
Mr. Anemone was the department’s top uniformed officer from January 1995 until his retirement in July 1999. He later became security director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. After he accused authority officials of impeding a corruption inquiry, the authority’s inspector general accused Mr. Anemone of fabricating a confidential source. Mr. Anemone denied the charge, but was fired.
In October 2004, while Mr. Anemone was being deposed for a civil suit in which he was named as a defendant, he testified that he could not provide certain information about the race of suspects killed by the police. He testified that it was because Mr. Safir had asked him to remove it from a copy of the 1998 firearms-discharge report that was specially prepared for the police commissioner.
While Mr. Anemone’s testimony referred to the version prepared for the commissioner, the change in policy apparently was also applied to the annual reports the department releases to the public.
Mr. Anemone testified that he did not agree with Mr. Safir’s decision to remove the data on race because it was too important, a view he reiterated in an interview on Monday. Although he could not say what motivated Mr. Safir’s decision, he said that work on the 1998 report was completed in the spring of 1999, “subsequent to the Amadou Diallo shooting.”
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8) Mind
You’re Checked Out, but Your Brain Is Tuned In
By BENEDICT CAREY
August 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/research/05mind.html?ref=health
Even the most fabulous, high-flying lives hit pockets of dead air, periods when the sails go slack. Movie stars get marooned in D.M.V. lines. Prime ministers sit with frozen smiles through interminable state events. Living-large rappers endure empty August afternoons, pacing the mansion, checking the refrigerator, staring idly out the window, baseball droning on the radio.
Wondering: When does the mail come, exactly?
Scientists know plenty about boredom, too, though more as a result of poring through thickets of meaningless data than from studying the mental state itself. Much of the research on the topic has focused on the bad company it tends to keep, from depression and overeating to smoking and drug use.
Yet boredom is more than a mere flagging of interest or a precursor to mischief. Some experts say that people tune things out for good reasons, and that over time boredom becomes a tool for sorting information — an increasingly sensitive spam filter. In various fields including neuroscience and education, research suggests that falling into a numbed trance allows the brain to recast the outside world in ways that can be productive and creative at least as often as they are disruptive.
In a recent paper in The Cambridge Journal of Education, Teresa Belton and Esther Priyadharshini of East Anglia University in England reviewed decades of research and theory on boredom, and concluded that it’s time that boredom “be recognized as a legitimate human emotion that can be central to learning and creativity.”
Psychologists have most often studied boredom using a 28-item questionnaire that asks people to rate how closely a list of sentences applies to them: “Time always seems to be passing too slowly,” for instance.
High scores in these tests tend to correlate with high scores on measures of depression and impulsivity. But it is not clear which comes first — proneness to boredom, or the mood and behavior problems. “It’s the difference between the sort of person who can look at a pool of mud and find something interesting, and someone who has a hard time getting absorbed in anything,” said Stephen J. Vodanovich, a psychologist at University of West Florida in Pensacola.
Boredom as a temporary state is another matter, and in part reflects the obvious: that the brain has concluded there is nothing new or useful it can learn from an environment, a person, an event, a paragraph. But it is far from a passive neural shrug. Using brain-imaging technology, neuroscientists have found that the brain is highly active when disengaged, consuming only about 5 percent less energy in its resting “default state” than when involved in routine tasks, according to Dr. Mark Mintun, a professor of radiology at Washington University in St. Louis.
That slight reduction can make a big difference in terms of time perception. The seconds usually seem to pass more slowly when the brain is idling than when it is absorbed. And those stretched seconds are not the live-in-the-moment, meditative variety, either. They are frustrated, restless moments. That combination, psychologists argue, makes boredom a state that demands relief — if not from a catnap or a conversation, then from some mental game.
“When the external and internal conditions are right, boredom offers a person the opportunity for a constructive response,” Dr. Belton, co-author of the review in the Cambridge journal, wrote in an e-mail message.
Some evidence for this can be seen in semiconscious behaviors, like doodling during a dull class, braiding strands of hair, folding notebook paper into odd shapes. Daydreaming too can be a kind of constructive self-entertainment, psychologists say, especially if the mind is turning over a problem. In experiments in the 1970s, psychiatrists showed that participants completing word-association tasks quickly tired of the job once obvious answers were given; granted more time, they began trying much more creative solutions, as if the boredom “had the power to exert pressure on individuals to stretch their inventive capacity,” Dr. Belton said.
In the past few years, a team of Canadian doctors had the courage to examine the fog of boredom as it thickened before their (drooping) eyes. While attending lectures on dementia, the doctors, Kenneth Rockwood, David B. Hogan and Christopher J. Patterson, kept track of the number of attendees who nodded off during the talks. They found that in an hourlong lecture attended by about 100 doctors, an average of 16 audience members nodded off. “We chose this method because counting is scientific,” the authors wrote in their seminal 2004 article in The Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The investigators analyzed the presentations themselves and found that a monotonous tone was most strongly associated with “nod-off episodes per lecture (NOELs),” followed by the sight of a tweed jacket on the lecturer.
In a telephone interview, Dr. Rockwood, a professor of geriatric medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, said when the material presented is familiar, as a lot of it was, then performance is everything. “Really, what it comes down to,” he said, “is that if you have some guy up there droning on, it drives people crazy.”
Dr. Rockwood and his co-authors have followed up with two more related reports and attribute the inspiration for the continuing project to Dr. Patterson.
Early on in one of those first dementia lectures, he went out cold.
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9) Bin Laden’s Former Driver Found Guilty in Split Decision
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/washington/07gitmo.html?hp
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — A panel of six military officers convicted a former driver for Osama bin Laden of one war crime Wednesday but acquitted him of another, completing the first military commission trial here and the first conducted by the United States since the end of World War II.
In a stinging setback for the military prosecutors, the commission acquitted the former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, of a conspiracy charge, arguably the more serious of two charges he faced. Mr. Hamdan’s conviction came on a separate charge of providing material support for terrorism.
The split verdict gave both sides in the long debate over the procedures here grounds for their competing claims. Supporters said that the system’s fairness was illustrated by the careful verdict while critics said the trial, which featured secret evidence and closed proceedings, demonstrated the injustice of the Bush administration’s military commission system.
Mr. Hamdan, who has said he is about 40, faces a possible life term. The sentence is to be set in a separate proceeding before the same panel that is to begin this afternoon. As the verdict was read, Mr. Hamdan, who has been in custody since he was detained in Afghanistan in November of 2001, stood passively at the defense table in a white headscarf, his head bent slightly down.
The conviction of Mr. Hamdan, a Yemeni who was part of a select group of drivers and bodyguards for Mr. bin Laden until 2001, was a long-sought, if somewhat qualified, victory for the Bush administration, which has been working to begin military commission trials at the isolated naval base here for nearly seven years.
Mr. Hamdan was convicted by a panel of six senior military officers who, according to an order of the military judge, could not be publicly identified. The panel deliberated for eight hours over three days. As permitted under the law Congress passed for trials here in 2006, the trial included secret evidence and testimony in a closed courtroom.
Critics have long claimed that the military commission system here does not meet American standards of fundamental justice, in part because the Military Commissions Law allows hearsay evidence and evidence derived through coercive interrogation methods. The public is not allowed in the courtroom, and legal documents are often never released.
After closing arguments Monday, Charles D. Swift, a former Navy lawyer who has represented Mr. Hamdan for years, said the two-week proceeding here had been a trial that did not follow the American rule of law and that the defense believed American courts would eventually correct the legal errors here. Mr. Swift called the military commission “a made-up tribunal to try anybody we don’t like.”
The not-guilty verdict on the conspiracy charge was a setback for the military prosecutors. The charge had asserted that Mr. Hamdan joined in the conspiracy that included the 2001 and other major terror attacks by helping transport and protect Mr. bin Laden.
But the verdict was also a vindication of sorts for the military commission system here, which critics had long said would simply rubber-stamp the charges of Pentagon prosecutors.
Michael J. Berrigan, the deputy chief defense counsel for Guantánamo, said the defense was encouraged by the verdict. “For a team that was expected to strike out at every pitch,” he said, “we at least hit a triple.”
He described the conspiracy charge that was rejected by the panel as the government’s main charge, and noted that when Mr. Hamdan was originally charged in 2003 the only charge he faced was conspiracy.
Defense lawyers have long argued that material support has not historically been part of the international law of war, which is the law applied by the military commissions here. In civilian law, material support for terrorism is a relatively recent concept, designed as a broad law-enforcement tool to contend with the new challenges of terrorism.
Prosecutors argue that, although the terminology “material support” may not have existed historically, the laws of war have long prohibited stealthy attacks on civilians, the mainstay of terrorism groups and the target of material-support charges. Mr. Berrigan said the defense would soon begin efforts to raise its challenges to material support charges here.
After an appeal to a military commission appeals court, convicted detainees are permitted to take their cases to American federal court.
The panel members rejected each of two specifications that would have supported a conviction for conspiracy. One of those asserted that Mr. Hamdan was part of the larger conspiracy with senior al Qaeda leaders and shared responsibility for terror attacks like the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2001 terror attack.
The second conspiracy specification asserted that Mr. Hamdan was part of a conspiracy to kill Americans in Afghanistan in 2001 with shoulder-fired missiles. When he was captured by Afghan forces on Nov. 24, 2001, he had two of the missiles in the car he was driving.
The charges concerning the missiles were among the most hard-fought at the two-week trial, and were prominent in bitter arguments Tuesday after the jury had begin deliberations. Prosecutors claimed that the military judge had improperly defined the allegation in his instructions to the panel members Monday. The prosecution claim was that the conspiracy involved “murder in violation of the law of war.”
But the panel voted to convict Mr. Hamdan of five of eight specifications that made up the charge of providing material support for terrorism. A guilty vote on a single specification would have been enough for conviction.
The specifications of which Mr. Hamdan was convicted included allegations that he drove Osama bin Laden, served as his bodyguard and knew al Qaeda’s goals. One specification said that he provided those services “knowing that by providing said services or transportation he was directly facilitating communications and planning for acts of terrorism.”
For the Bush Administration, a conviction on any charge represented a victory as the first in a legal system that has been the subject of bitter debate for years, and also because a case brought on behalf of the same accused detainee reached the Supreme Court in 2006. That case, Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, ended with a ruling that derailed the Bush administration’s first plan for military commission trials here.
Tony Fratto, the deputy White House press secretary, said the administration was pleased that Salim Hamdan received a fair trial, with an opportunity to present a defense against serious charges.
“The military commission convicted Hamdan of material support for terrorism,” he said in a statement. “The Military Commission system is a fair and appropriate legal process for prosecuting detainees alleged to have committed crimes against the United States or our interests. We look forward to other cases moving forward to trial.”Lawyers for Mr. Hamdan have been saying here this week that a conviction would certainly bring appeals, perhaps back to the Supreme Court, to deal with claims that the tribunals here do not meet American standards of fundamental fairness.
“History and world opinion will judge whether the government proved the system to be fair,” the defense said in a statement.
The case included references by both sides to the trials of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg decades ago that may be the best known modern war-crimes trials. Both sides employed Nuremberg references to make their points about Guantánamo.
Prosecutors, eager to shore up the image of the commissions here, presented a video that included graphic footage of Qaeda terror attacks and their victims.
The prosecutors titled their video “The al Qaeda Plan,” the filmmaker testified, in reference to “The Nazi Plan,” a film shown at Nuremberg to document the Holocaust.
The defense lawyers employed the Nuremberg references to argue that the Pentagon had overreached with its case against a bin Laden driver they described as a poorly educated worker without access to Qaeda’s terror plans. The defense noted that Hitler’s driver, Erich Kempka, was not prosecuted as a war criminal.
Much of the case against Mr. Hamdan was based on his own descriptions of his role as a driver collected by federal agents in more than 40 interrogations, including some that lasted many days.
A June decision by the Supreme Court said detainees have a constitutional right to challenge their detentions in federal court, a defeat for the Bush administration, which had long claimed that the Constitution had no application here.
Some lawyers said the June ruling suggested that the Constitution would have broader application here. But the military judge in Mr. Hamdan’s case, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, ruled that many of Mr. Hamdan’s statements to interrogators could be used against him even though he had not had a lawyer and had not been given warnings required in the United States that any statements could be used against him.
Prosecutors at the two-week trial called 14 witnesses, including 10 federal agents who interrogated Mr. Hamdan. Using what they said were his own words, the agents described Mr. Hamdan as an important link in Al Qaeda’s security operations.
They said he had protected and ferried around Mr. bin Laden to elude detection after several terror attacks, including the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
Defense lawyers argued that there was no evidence that Mr. Hamdan, a Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, was involved in planning any Qaeda operations or had advance knowledge of the specifics of any planned attacks. They claimed that his role as a driver was just a job for a father of two who “had to earn a living,” as one of his lawyers, Harry H. Schneider Jr., said.
To bolster their case, defense lawyers introduced written responses to questions they had submitted to the best-known detainee here, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of the 2001 attacks. Mr. Mohammed described Mr. Hamdan as a “primitive” Bedouin who was fit only for such tasks as changing tires and washing cars.
“He was not fit to plan or execute,” Mr. Mohammed’s statement said.
But the prosecutors portrayed Mr. Hamdan as a man who expressed, in the words of one federal agent, “uncontrolled passion or zeal” for Mr. bin Laden. That agent, Robert McFadden of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said that Mr. Hamdan, in an interrogation here in 2003, had sworn allegiance to Mr. bin Laden and had said that he was committed to killing Americans and Jews and expelling them from the Arabian peninsula.
Prosecutors at times appeared defensive that their first case after nearly seven years of trying to hold trials here was not against a senior Qaeda operative, but instead against a driver. But they argued that Mr. Hamdan’s culpability was clear.
“Whether he knew the specifics or not,” said a prosecutor, Clayton Trivett, “he knew Americans were going to be killed.”
The prosecution’s theme was that, however small his role may have been, people like Mr. Hamdan make al Qaeda possible.
“Without people like Mr. Hamdan,” George M. Crouch Jr., an F.B.I. agent testified, “bin Laden would enjoy no support, enjoy no protection, and would probably have been unable to elude capture up until this point.”
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10) Coney Island Sideshow Has Guantánamo Theme
By ARIEL KAMINER
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/arts/design/06wate.html
Some people look at Coney Island and see a paradise of carefree entertainment. Others see a cesspool of gritty squalor. Few are those who gaze upon its shrieking kids, grizzled wanderers and fast-talking flimflam artists and see an opportunity for engaged political discourse.
But it was just that improbable impulse that drove the artist Steve Powers to open the new “Waterboard Thrill Ride” on West 12th Street, just off Surf Avenue, in the shadow of the Cyclone and a mere corn dog’s throw from Nathan’s.
It looks at first like any other shuttered storefront near the boardwalk: some garish lettering and a cartoonish invitation to a delight or a scam — in this case there’s SpongeBob SquarePants saying, “It don’t Gitmo better!”
If you climb up a few cinderblock steps to the small window, you can look through the bars at a scene meant to invoke a Guantánamo Bay interrogation. A lifesize figure in a dark sweatshirt, the hood drawn low over his face, leans over another figure in an orange jumpsuit, his face covered by a towel and his body strapped down on a tilted surface.
Feed a dollar into a slot, the lights go on, and Black Hood pours water up Orange Jumpsuit’s nose and mouth while Orange Jumpsuit convulses against his restraints for 15 seconds. O.K., kids, who wants more cotton candy!
In interrupting a day at the beach with scenes of the United States government’s rougher practices, Mr. Powers is being deliberately provocative. “What’s more obscene,” he asks, “the official position that waterboarding is not torture, or our official position that it’s a thrill ride?”
But Mr. Powers — who is represented by a high-profile gallery and has won a Fulbright grant — doesn’t come across like a heavy-handed political artist. An easygoing guy with a tall fluff of hair, he was on a recent day wearing pink seersucker shorts and wheeling his 15-month-old son around the boardwalk. He says the purpose of his art isn’t to tell people what to think, just to get them thinking in the first place.
Fittingly, then, reactions have been all over the map.
Kevin Franke, a recent visitor, was appalled. “It’s not something to be made fun of,” he said. “It’s just something they’re trying to make a quick buck off, I guess.”
Carolyn Rice, a visitor from Massachusetts, was intrigued. “I think it’s educational because everyone hears about waterboarding, but no one really knows what it is,” she said
For Dave Winters, a Navy veteran, it reaffirmed his belief in the interrogation technique. “I feel it’s a good idea,” he said. “I feel more strongly about that, yes, having seen this.”
As for Janice Carter, who had her 10-year-old grandson, Roger, in tow, she saw the animatronic figures as just another Coney Island scam. “It’s a gimmick,” she said. “When they have the sideshow, you see real people. That’s legit. But this here? Uh-uh.”
Which is all part of Coney Island’s carnivalesque appeal, said Scott Baker, the outside talker (please: not “barker”) for the freak show next door. “I think it’s fabulous,” he said, “because it gives us a chance to be political and silly at the same time.”
Mr. Powers, who has undertaken many creative projects in Coney Island, said he started thinking about interrogation when he first saw the cramped, concrete room. “I thought, ‘This looks like a torture chamber,’ ” he said brightly.
But his initial idea was for real people to undergo real waterboarding, right there in real time. He’d be the first volunteer, then he’d perform it on the next guy, who’d turn the hose on the next one, and so on.
He said his wife was among the first to point out that that might be a tad over the line. (It’s fun to picture that conversation.) “In the meantime,” he said, “robot waterboarding became a way of exploring the issue without doing any harm. It’s the perfect Coney Island distraction — it’s not quite delivering what it offers, but it’s putting a unique experience on the table. And it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to look in there and say: ‘That’s really what’s going on? That’s crazy.’ ”
Just in case, on Aug. 15, Mr. Powers and some invited lawyers — “the group who most stands to benefit from the knowledge,” he says — will indeed have themselves waterboarded, albeit by a professional trained in interrogation techniques and in a private location. Then the whole macabre installation will move to the Park Avenue Armory, where it will be displayed along with a few dozen other projects from Democracy in America, a series sponsored by Creative Time, the public art fund.
In terms of novelty, submitting to harsh interrogation techniques isn’t what it once was. Daniel Levin, then the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, was waterboarded so he could better understand the issues before his office. Since then the artist Coco Fusco made an hourlong video called “Operation Atropos” about undergoing other interrogation techniques. And in the August issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens described the horror of being waterboarded — just months after he described the horror of having his private parts waxed.
Of course none of those people did it across the street from where the World’s Tiniest Lady once sat.
“There’s something so shocking about this,” said Anne Pasternak, president and artistic director of Creative Time. “Our hope is that it forces a consideration of an issue that people may not be thinking about — but they should be thinking about.” Especially, she said, when at the arcade next door people are shooting at Osama bin Laden in post-9/11 video games.
As it happens, the video games at the arcade run more to Super Bike and Big Buck Safari. And it’s hard to imagine any video game making the kids there rethink the social contract.
So does raising the issue in the incongruous setting of an amusement park, through the sarcastic metaphor of a joy ride, force people to confront their nation’s political demons? Or does it give them license to shrug them off?
Many people stroll by the installation without even stopping to look. As for those who do, Jodi Taylor, house manager for the freak show, said: “Adults find it very shocking, and kids are like, ‘That stinks.’ They’re so desensitized. They have no idea what the ethical issues are. They wish there was water spraying in their face.”
Last Monday a family of former New Yorkers now living in Israel climbed up the cinderblock steps and peered in the barred window. The first thing they saw in the darkened room was the orange-jumpsuited detainee — and Mr. Powers’s son, sitting atop him with a merry grin on his face. (His father was tinkering in the background.)
“I love it,” said Ricki Rosen, the mother of the family. “Hilarious!” Her daughter asked what it was all about, and Ms. Rosen responded: “Waterboarding, Sweetie, is a kind of torture where they pour water on people’s faces so they feel like they’re drowning. But then there was a big controversy because a lot of Americans are saying you shouldn’t torture people even if they are terrorists.” She paused. “The baby is hilarious!”
Finished with his tinkering, Mr. Powers opened the door from the cramped room and stepped back out onto the brightly lighted sidewalk. He told Ms. Rosen he had heard the explanation she’d given her daughter, and he really appreciated it.
Ms. Rosen asked him how people were responding to the installation. “Do they understand it?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. Then he told her where to get the best pizza in Coney Island.
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11) South Africa Strike Hits Mining and Factories
By REUTERS
Filed at 5:39 a.m. ET
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-safrica-strike.html?ref=world
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 6 (Reuters) - South Africa's giant mining companies were badly hit by a strike on Wednesday over rising power, food and fuel prices that threatened to bring the continent's biggest economy to a standstill.
As global mining leaders such as Anglo Platinum (Angloplat) , the world's top producer of the precious metal, counted their losses, powerful unions prepared for marches across the country.
Mines, refineries, car makers, textile factories, businesses and construction of stadiums meant for the 2010 Soccer World Cup could all be affected. Workers and students stayed at home after public transport was disrupted.
Analysts say a complete shutdown of the economy could spook foreign investors and further dent slowing growth, seen at around 3 percent this year from an average 5 percent over the past four years.
"Workers have not shown up for early shifts," Lesiba Seshoka, spokesman for the 300,000-strong National Union of Mineworkers told Reuters.
The nearly 2 million-strong Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), an ally of the ruling African National Congress, says the action was a warning to employers not to sack workers because of a downturn in profits due to a power crisis.
In the mining sector -- backbone of the economy -- workers are particularly fearful of job cuts after a five-day power cut in January and the rationing of electricity to mines slashed output and earnings in this top precious metals producer.
"We are adamant that workers should not be asked to pay for government's failure to invest in electricity," Cosatu's spokesman Patrick Craven said.
POLITICAL BATTLE
Cosatu has previously said it also wants to fight President Thabo Mbeki's market-friendly and pro-business stance, and has urged the government to subsidise essential commodities while demanding higher wages for workers.
Unions are much closer to ruling party leader Jacob Zuma, who is the frontrunner to succeed Mbeki as president next year. Some investors fear Zuma would mean a shift to the left.
Angloplat said its biggest mine, Rustenburg, had been hit by 30 percent absenteeism due to the strike.
Harmony, the world's fifth biggest gold producer, said on Wednesday that all its South African mines had been affected by the protest, and it expected to lose up to 135 kg of gold.
Car maker Volkswagen's South African unit said it would have no production on Wednesday as a result of the strike, but there was no impact at the country's largest oil refinery located in east coast port city of Durban, officials said.
South Africa's Metrorail suspended all trains in Gauteng province, where the commercial hub Johannesburg is located, as workers failed to show up at work, SAPA news agency said.
The strike is supporting a recovery in world platinum prices , which have slipped sharply in recent days, though its impact has been muted by ongoing fears over the demand outlook.
South African markets shrugged off the strike and the Johannesburg's bourse's blue chip index soared 2 percent.
The rand was slightly weaker against the dollar, but analysts said the move was merely an extension of a long-awaited correction after a 7-week rally.
"I don't think it is specifically due to the strike, it is part of the correction that started late on Monday," Citibank sub-Saharan Africa specialist Leon Myburgh said.
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12) Texas Executes Mexican Despite Objections
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/us/06execute.html?ref=world
HOUSTON — In a case that has drawn international attention, Texas executed José E. Medellín on Tuesday night in defiance of an international court ruling and despite pleas from the Bush administration for a new hearing.
The execution came just before 10 p.m. Central time, shortly after the United States Supreme Court denied a last request for a reprieve. Protesters for and against the death penalty clamored in the rain outside the Huntsville Unit, about 70 miles north of Houston, where Mr. Medellín was executed by lethal injection.
“I’m sorry my actions caused you pain,” he said to the witnesses present. “I hope this brings you the closure that you seek. Never harbor hate.”
Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, rejected calls from Mexico and Washington to delay the execution, citing the torture, rape and strangulation of two teenage girls in Houston 15 years ago as just cause for the death penalty.
Mr. Medellín and five other teenage boys in his street gang took part in the rape and murder of the girls, Elizabeth Pena, 16, and Jennifer Ertman, 14. The gang raped the girls for an hour, then strangled them. Their corpses were found two days later.
Two other members of the gang were also sentenced to die. Two had their sentences commuted to life in prison. The sixth, Mr. Medellín’s brother, Vernacio, is serving a 40-year sentence.
Mr. Medellín’s case has become the focal point of a dispute between Mexico and the United States over whether some Mexicans have been denied fair trials because they were never given an opportunity to talk to a consul. A 1963 treaty requires foreigners accused of crimes to be given that opportunity.
Over the last five days, Mr. Medellín’s lawyers tried to stop the execution by arguing to the Supreme Court that it should be put off until Congress had a chance to pass pending legislation that would require a review of similar cases. They argued that Mr. Medellín would be deprived of life without due process if he died before Congress acted.
But the court, in a 5-to-4 decision, said the possibility of Congressional action was too remote to justify a stay. Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in dissent that to permit the execution would place the United States “irremediably in violation of international law and breaks our treaty promises.”
Mexico opposes the death penalty and has used the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to try to block the executions of Mr. Medellín and 50 other Mexicans in the United States. Moments after the execution, Mexico sent a formal diplomatic protest to Washington.
Twice in the last five years, the International Court of Justice, at the Hague, has said hearings should be held to determine if the 51 trials were fair.
Worried about fallout for Americans abroad, the State Department, the attorney general and the White House all urged Texas to delay the execution.
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13) Inquiry Finds Under-Age Workers at Meat Plant
By JULIA PRESTON
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/us/06meat.html?ref=us
State labor investigators have identified 57 under-age workers who were employed at a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, and have asked the attorney general to bring criminal charges against the company for child labor violations, Dave Neil, the Iowa Labor Commissioner, said on Tuesday.
“The investigation brings to light egregious violations of virtually every aspect of Iowa’s child labor laws,” Mr. Neil said in a statement announcing the results of a seven-month investigation at Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher meat plant.
In a raid in May, 389 illegal immigrant workers were detained there in the largest immigration enforcement operation ever at a single workplace.
Mr. Neil said that investigators had found multiple child labor law violations for each under-age worker at the plant. They included employing minors in prohibited occupations, exposing them to hazardous chemicals, and making them work with prohibited tools like knives and saws, he said.
In a statement, Agriprocessors said it was “at a loss to understand” the investigation results. The company said it had cooperated with the inquiry, providing documents and opening the plant to inspectors. Last year, Agriprocessors fired four workers who were under age but had provided false documents as evidence they were old enough to work, the statement said.
Kerry Koonce, a spokeswoman for Iowa Workforce Development, the state labor department, said the number of under-age workers was by far the largest in an Iowa child labor case.
If convicted on criminal charges, the company could face fines of $500,000 to $1 million, Ms. Koonce said.
On Friday, labor officials turned over a confidential report on the investigation to the Iowa attorney general, Tom Miller, who will now decide whether to bring charges. Mr. Neil said he had urged Mr. Miller to prosecute “to the full extent of the law,” making it very likely that charges would be brought.
A spokesman for Mr. Miller, Eric J. Tabor, said that prosecutors were examining the evidence but that no decision had been made.
Agriprocessors said that it had been informed by Iowa labor officials in April that under-age workers were employed at the plant, but that the officials had declined to identify the minors.
“As a result of the government’s decision, apparently those children may have continued to work at the plant and presumably at least some were arrested” in the May 12 raid, said the company’s statement, issued by Menachem Lubinksy, an Agriprocessors spokesman.
Because of the dangers of meatpacking, it is generally illegal under Iowa law for a company to employ a worker under 18 in the slaughter and packing areas of a meat or poultry plant.
Child labor violations are criminal misdemeanors in Iowa, carrying fines of no more than about $600. But Ms. Koonce said each violation was a separate offense each day that it occurred. Many of the minors worked at Agriprocessors for at least a year, she said.
At least 24 under-age workers, as young as 13, were arrested in the raid in May. Others who were not caught in the morning raid because they worked at night stopped going to jobs at the plant.
Hundreds of workers, mostly illegal immigrants from Guatemala, were prosecuted on criminal document fraud charges after the raid. Immigration authorities dismissed criminal charges against the minors, although many were put in civil deportation proceedings.
After the raid, many of the young workers said they felt they had nothing to lose in speaking out about their work at the plant. In interviews, they said they were forced to work long hours on night shifts, sometimes up to 17 hours a day, and were not paid all of their overtime. They said they were put to work on racing production lines using knives to cut meat and poultry with little or no safety training.
Elmer L., a Guatemalan who said he was 16 when he started work at the plant, said he was kicked by an Agriprocessors supervisor, causing one of his knives to cut his elbow. He asked that his last name not be used because he is a minor.
Most of the under-age workers said they were illegal immigrants who presented fraudulent Social Security cards or immigration visas stating they were at least 18 when they hired on at Agriprocessors.
But Iowa law requires employers to make an extra effort to determine the date of birth of workers who could be minors, including asking for a birth certificate or other official proof of age, labor officials said.
In recent months, Iowa labor officials have been criticized by unions and immigrant groups who said that enforcement was lax at Agriprocessors and that labor inspectors had responded to violations with light fines.
Some under-age workers could benefit if the attorney general presses charges against Agriprocessors. Sonia Parras Konrad, an Iowa immigration lawyer, has been working with investigators to get more than two dozen of the workers special four-year visas, known as U-visas, which are given to victims who cooperate with criminal investigations.
A federal labor investigation is also under way.
The number of minors makes the Iowa investigation “a huge case” by national standards as well, said Reid Maki, coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition, a group of teachers and consumer organizations that seek to stop employment of under-age workers. “It is especially troubling since this industry is as dangerous as it gets,” Mr. Maki said.
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14) After Years in Prison, Now a Break
By JIM DWYER
About New York
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/nyregion/06about.html?ref=nyregion
In May 1994, Kareem Bellamy stood outside his home on Beach Channel Drive in Far Rockaway, Queens, drinking a beer. He was violating the “open container” law. A detective car pulled up. Mr. Bellamy was handcuffed.
Without being asked more than his name, one of the detectives later testified, Mr. Bellamy blurted: “This must be a mistake — someone must have accused me of murdering someone.”
If that was a guess, it was a good one.
Six weeks earlier, a man named James Abbott had been stabbed to death outside a C-Town supermarket a few blocks away. What led detectives to Mr. Bellamy was a call from one of the supermarket cashiers. She said that a man who had been in the store with the victim just before the killing was, at that very moment, drinking a beer on Beach Channel Drive.
No one ever said Mr. Bellamy had any motive for the killing, or any real connection with the victim beyond his supposed presence in the supermarket that day. The sole eyewitness to the stabbing was not able to identify him with much certainty.
Even so, the words Mr. Bellamy uttered in the car effectively put him in prison, a judge ruled, because they showed a jury his “consciousness of guilt” and buttressed what was otherwise thin evidence.
The jurors struggled with their deliberations for four days, then returned to court — every man and woman weeping — and pronounced Mr. Bellamy, then 26, guilty of murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life.
Many years ahead of schedule, Mr. Bellamy, now 41, is due back in court on Thursday, no longer guilty of the murder. His conviction was vacated on June 27 by Justice Joel L. Blumenfeld of State Supreme Court in Queens. Mr. Bellamy will be seeking bail while prosecutors decide whether to try him again.
That Mr. Bellamy will have a second chance to fight the murder charge is due not to any particular diligence by law enforcement authorities, but rather because the final link in a chain of lucky breaks delivered him a secret tape recording. On it, a man says that he and another man actually did the killing.
Over the last two decades, DNA tests have been a powerful force in setting right many wrongs, but they were not a factor in Mr. Bellamy’s case. In fact the vast majority of crimes do not involve biological evidence, so DNA tests are of no use.
However Mr. Bellamy’s case turns out, the sequence of events that brings him back to court this week shows how many pieces must fall into place for most wrongly convicted people to get another meaningful day in court.
Four years ago, Thomas Hoffman, a defense lawyer in Manhattan, got a letter pleading for help from Mr. Bellamy.
He tossed it in the trash, thought better of it, then asked some of the city’s big law firms to help for no fee. Darin P. McAtee of Cravath, Swaine & Moore took on the case and hired private investigators.
In January 2008, word spread around Far Rockaway that those investigators, a retired homicide detective, Edward Hensen, and a retired F.B.I. agent, Joseph O’Brien, were trying to scare up evidence that would reopen Mr. Bellamy’s case. As they canvassed a housing project, a man rode up on a bicycle. He knew Mr. Hensen from his years as a detective. He said he had to talk to them.
Inside his home, he told the investigators that an old friend, Leon Melvin, had been upset that his girlfriend had become too cozy with Mr. Abbott. According to the informant, Mr. Melvin confided that he and another man had stabbed Mr. Abbott.
In fact, those same two men had been implicated 14 years earlier by another person — a woman who called the detective bureau to give their names. At the trial, the detectives said they couldn’t find the woman.
After the new informer surfaced this year, the private investigators wired him with a hidden tape recorder. On Feb. 2, the informer met with his jealous friend, and they spoke about a stabbing that took place somewhere near 40th Street in Far Rockaway. A partial transcript of the conversation was included in Judge Blumenfeld’s ruling.
“You mean you told him to leave her alone, and he wouldn’t leave her alone,” the informer says.
“Yeah, he wouldn’t listen to me, so I had to do what I had to do,” Mr. Melvin said.
“So you stabbed him?” the informer asks.
“Yeah,” Mr. Melvin says.
“How many times you stabbed him?” the informer asks.
“Stabbed him about seven times or something like that,” Mr. Melvin said.
No charges have been brought against Mr. Melvin. The district attorney’s office argued that it wasn’t clear in the taped conversation that they were referring to the murder of Mr. Abbott, but Justice Blumenfeld dismissed that. The police files showed, he said, that the killing of Mr. Abbott “was the only stabbing homicide in the Beach 40s for many years.”
Mr. Bellamy says that he was guilty only of drinking a beer.
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
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15) Less Crime in Schools Last Year, City Reports
By JENNIFER MEDINA
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/nyregion/06crime.html?ref=nyregion
Major and violent crimes in New York City’s public schools have dropped significantly in the last six years, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Tuesday, using the statistics to bolster his argument that his control of the school system has been effective.
The statistics, which were collected by the New York Police Department, reflect the number of felony crimes and violent misdemeanors reported at schools, as well as more minor fights and sexual assaults. They are part of a much broader list of misdeeds that each school is required to report separately to the state’s Education Department.
During the 2007-8 school year, 1,906 violent crimes were reported, compared with 2,117 the previous year, a 10 percent drop. Felonies — grand larceny, assault, burglary — dropped 11 percent from the 2006-7 school year, to 1,042, the mayor said. There were no homicides or rapes on school property last year or the year before, city officials said. In 2001 1,577 felonies were reported in schools, and 2,765 violent crimes.
At a news conference with Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, Mr. Bloomberg praised the police officers and school safety agents for working with teachers and principals.
The Education Department has been widely criticized for the way it collects and reports information on school safety. Last fall, City Comptroller William C. Thompson, a likely mayoral candidate, issued an audit showing that in a sampling of schools, several crimes that were recorded in school records were never reported to the state or the police.
Betsy Gotbaum, the public advocate and a frequent critic of Mr. Klein, said in a statement on Tuesday that she applauded the mayor and chancellor for the work to reduce crime, but added: “What has been done in the past year to address the problem of chronic underreporting and the questionable school safety data that results from it?”
At Tuesday’s news conference, Chancellor Klein said: “You certainly don’t want to suggest that there’s violent or major crime in the schools” that has gone unreported.
“Am I going to tell you that a single one hasn’t escaped report? I don’t know,” Mr. Klein added. “But I can assure you that these numbers are accurate.”
The most common crime in schools is assault. There were 248 felony assaults — typically, those involving a weapon or a serious injury — and 1,308 misdemeanor assaults reported last year, according to the numbers released on Tuesday.
Mr. Bloomberg attributed much of the change to the Impact School program, which he started four years ago to identify some of the most violent schools and provide them with extra police officers and other procedures to increase safety.
Since the program began, 19 of the 28 schools that have appeared on the so-called impact list have been removed after sharp drops in crime. The current list of nine schools will probably change before school begins again in September, officials said.
But those efforts and the policy, begun by the Giuliani administration, of placing school safety agents employed by the Police Department — as opposed to the school system handling its own security — has also led to complaints from City Council members and the New York Civil Liberties Union.
“Every few months, the city releases statistics to support their claim that everything is fine, but they continue to refuse to release the raw data about what happens in a school on a daily basis,” said Udi Ofer, the director of advocacy for the civil liberties union, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain individual school data in 2006 but has received no response. “School discipline has been taken from educators and handed over to the Police Department, and in some cases that is a real problem.”
Some parents and advocates, including the civil liberties union, have also complained that the school safety agents are often too aggressive, causing minor behavior problems to escalate into confrontations that end in an arrest.
Mr. Bloomberg dismissed such criticism on Tuesday, saying, “We have every reason to be proud of the protections that we’re giving to everyone.”
Fernanda Santos contributed reporting.
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Bolivia: Tin Miners Die in Clashes
By REUTERS
World Briefing | The Americas
At least two miners were killed and many more were injured Tuesday in clashes between the police and workers at the country’s largest tin mine, Huanuni, local radio reported. The violence erupted when police officers clashed with groups of striking miners who had blocked a road, Interior Minister Alfredo Rada said. The strike is in support of a drive by a labor federation for higher pensions and a lowering of the retirement age to 55.
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/world/americas/06briefs-TINMINERSDIE_BRF.html?ref=world
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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