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Stop the Carnage, Ban the Cluster Bomb!
Only 20 percent of the hundreds of thousands of unexploded cluster munitions that Israel launched into Lebanon in the summer of 2006 have been cleared. You can help!
1. See the list of more than thirty organizations that have signed a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calling for Israel to release the list of cluster bomb target sites to the UN team in charge of clearing the sites in Lebanon:
http://www.atfl.org/orgs.htm
2. You can Learn more about the American Task Force for Lebanon at their website:
http://www.atfl.org/
3. Send a message to President Bush, the Secretary of State, and your Members of Congress to stop the carnage and ban the cluster bomb by clicking on the link below:
http://action.atfl.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6644&track=spreadtheword
Take action now at:
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/ATFL/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6644&t=
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SAVE TROY DAVIS
Dear friend,
Please check out and sign this petition to stay the illegal 9-23-08 execution of innocent Brother Mr. Troy Davis.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/troydavis
Thanks again, we'll keep you posted on how things turn out.
Sincerely,
The Death Penalty Abolition Campaign
Amnesty International, USA
Read NYT Op-Ed columnist Bob Herbert's plea on behalf of Troy Davis:
What’s the Rush?
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
September 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/opinion/20herbert.html?hp
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DEFEND ILWU WORKER'S RIGHTS:
There will be an Emergency Organizing Meeting 6PM Wed. Sept. 24 at ILWU Local 10 located at 400 North Point St. in the Fisherman's Wharf area of San Francisco. Two longshoremen were attacked last year by police and port security in the port of Sacramento while going to work (see the article by Mumia Abu-Jamal). Charged with resisting arrest, their trial is set for Oct. 6 in Woodland (near Sacramento). The initial hearing Oct. 4, 2007, was protested by some 300 longshoremen and supporters. Ken Riley, president of the Charleston, South Carolina longshore union addressed that rally. This year the ILWU has vowed to mobilize the labor movement behind this case, standing up to the "war on terror" being waged against port workers-- longshoremen, seamen and port truckers. Mexican American and African Americans have been especially targeted by police racial profiling in the Delta. This action follows ILWU's successful May Day shutdown of all West Coast ports to demand an end to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of troops. The ILWU will be chartering buses from SF to the Woodland courthouse. Please send representatives of your organization to this important meeting.
Defend Workers Rights, Drop the Bogus Charge, Jack Heyman
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Sept. 27: Money for Peoples Needs! Not War and Corporate Bailouts!
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran:
Who Pays? Who Profits?
• Almost 4,200 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, and nearly 900 in Afghanistan. No one on the Board of Directors of Halliburton, Exxon or Morgan Stanley has lost a daughter or son in these wars, because the troops are drawn from working class families and disproportionately from communities of color. The Pentagon takes advantage of the lack of educational and employment opportunities to target these communities with false promises of college money and job training.
• Many vets returning from Iraq & Afghanistan are suffering from physical and psychological injuries, only to find that veterans' hospitals are being shut down, programs are being cut, and facilities are filthy, under-equipped and understaffed.
• According to CostofWar.com, the Iraq war has cost more than $550 billion. This money has been stolen robbed from working people. We need this money for schools, job training, health care, repairing our crumbling infrastructure, rebuilding the Gulf Coast, and much more.
• While oil companies are making record profits, the price of gas, heating oil, groceries, and other necessities is skyrocketing.
• Meanwhile, the foreclosures and evictions crisis is growing. Washington is spending billions on war and on bailing out banks, while working people are being thrown out of their homes.
• Especially during difficult economic times, Wall Street and the corporate media work overtime to divide us. They want us to blame the people of Iraq or Iran or immigrant workers for the crisis, instead of uniting against the corporations who profit while working people bleed. Now, more than ever, we need to stand in solidarity against racism, sexism, anti-LGBT bigotry, and anything else they use to attempt to divide us.
March, rally, speak out, picket, teach-ins - in cities large or small, campuses & schools what you do can make a difference
NO October Surprise...NOT Another War...NO October Surprise...NOT Another War
This week Pres. Ahmadinejad will be in NYC at the UN, and the media will demonize him and the Iranian people, not Bush, who is the one responsible for bringing death, destruction, and threats of a new war. This makes the September 27 demonstrations even more important - go to www.StopWarOnIran to find out how you can get involved.
September 27
International Day of Action to Stop War on Iran!
Help build locally-coordinated actions in 100 cities
Stop the War on Iran before it starts!
Money for Jobs, Health Care, and Education, Not War and Occupation!
Washington's Budget:
• $3 Trillion on the War in Iraq*
• $ Billions for War against Iran
• $1 Trillion to bail out mortgage bankers**
We need money for:
• Housing
• Health Care
• Jobs with a Living Wage
• Rebuilding the Gulf Coast
• Education
*http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html
**http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/09/lawmakers-say-f.html
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NEWS RELEASE
From: Radical Women, 5018 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118
Contact: Anne Slater: office 206-722-6057; cell 206-708-5161; home 206-722-3812
RE: PUBLIC CONFERENCE
Radical Women Conference Aims to Expand and Embolden Feminist Movement
October 2 - 6
Women's Building
3543 18th Street,in the Mission District, near the 16th Street BART stop.
Wheelchair accessible.
Registration is $15 per day; students and low income $7.50 per day.
Register at www.RadicalWomen.org.
For more information, phone 206-722-6057.
Radical Women Conference Aims to Expand and Embolden Feminist Movement
Optimistic rebels from all walks of life are invited to participate in a national Radical Women conference, "The Persistent Power of Socialist Feminism," to be held at the San Francisco Women's Building, October 3-6, 2008. The major goal of the four-day public event is to produce a concrete education and action plan to focus and strengthen the feminist movement. Speakers include activists and scholars from Central America, China, Australia and the U.S.
Highlights on Friday, Oct. 2 include a 9:30am keynote address by Nellie Wong on "Women and revolution--alive and inseparable." Wong is an acclaimed Chinese-American poet, whose works include Stolen Moments, the Death of Long Steam Lady, and Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park. A former Senior Analyst of Affirmative Action, she is also a founding member of Unbound Feet, an Asian American writers group. Afterwards, Laura Mannen will present proposals and spearhead a discussion on how to build a strong, independent, grassroots U.S. feminist movement. Mannen is a bilingual teacher, mother of two and seasoned antiwar organizer from Portland, Oregon. The afternoon will feature a roundtable of female unionists on "Standing our ground on labor's frontlines."
At 7:30pm Friday evening Lynne Stewart will address "Radical dissent: The righteous response to an unjust system." Stewart, embattled human rights attorney, was convicted in 2005 of providing support for terrorism by delivering a handwritten press release to Reuters from a client. Though prosecutors sought a 30-year prison term, Stewart was sentenced to serve 28 months. The shorter sentence, the judge said, was in recognition of her "service to the nation" as a representative of the poor and unpopular. The government is appealing her shorter sentence. Stewart is appealing the conviction.
"Magnificent warriors: female leadership in the global freedom struggle," a panel presentation on Saturday, October 4 at 9:00am, will include Debbie Brennan, workplace delegate for the Australian Services Union and Melbourne RW president; Dr. Raya Fidel, an Israeli-American feminist and supporter of Palestinian rights; Patricia Ramos, a Costa Rican labor lawyer and leading organizer against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA); and Wang Zheng, a University of Michigan Women's Studies professor and co-chair of the U.S. based Chinese Society for Women's Studies.
Christina López, Chicana-Apache advocate for reproductive justice and frontrunner in the battle for rights for undocumented workers, will present her paper "Estamos en la lucha: Immigrant women light the fires of resistance" at 11:30am.
Interactive workshops in the afternoon include Challenging the Minutemen; ABCs of Marxist feminism; Women's stake in the struggle for union democracy; Federally funded childcare NOW; End the war on women--in Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S.; On the barricades for reproductive justice; Confronting movement sexism; Free trade is a feminist issue; and Young queer radical--what are we fighting for?
Sunday, Oct. 5 begins at 9:00am with a panel on "The galvanizing impact of multiracial organizing in a society divided by racism." Sharing first-hand experiences will be author Christina López of Seattle, reproductive rights activist Toni Mendicino of San Francisco, and campus organizer Emily Woo Yamasaki of New York City.
The remainder of Sunday will be devoted to issues and skills workshops. Topics include Power to the poor!; Radical campus organizing; For affirmative action not "civil wrongs"; Alternative feminist radio; Radical youth and rebel elders; Disabled rights activists on RX for toxic healthcare. There will also be sessions on getting media attention, confident speaking and writing, knowing your rights as a worker, and producing effective fliers and banners.
The conference concludes on Monday, Oct 6, 10:00am with a National Organizer's report and action plan presented by Anne Slater, veteran campaigner for queer rights, the environment and women's equality.
All sessions will be held at the Women's Building, 3543 18th St., in the Mission District, near the 16th Street BART stop. Wheelchair accessible. Registration is $15 per day; students and low income $7.50 per day. Register at www.RadicalWomen.org. For more information, phone 206-722-6057.
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LET OUR CHILDREN BE! NO ON V!
Keep Military Recruiters OUT of our Schools!
SAN FRANCISCO CITY-WIDE ANTIWAR OUTREACH DAY! NO ON V!
NO TO JUNIOR RESERVE OFFICERS' TRAINING CORPS (JROTC) MILITARY TRAINING AND RECRUITMENT PROGRAM!
MILITARY RECRUITERS OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11, 11:00 A.M. - 3:00 P.M., 24TH AND MISSION STREETS, S.F.
It was on October 11, 2002 that a bi-partisan Congress approved the “Iraq War Resolution” granting the Bush administration authorization to invade Iraq. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2008--exactly six years after Congress unleashed the dogs of war on Iraq--we will be launching a campaign to label San Francisco an antiwar city again this November, 2008.
In 2004 we voted Yes on N to bring the troops home from Iraq Now; in 2005 we voted Yes on I, College Not Combat, to get military recruiters out of our schools; this year we will vote NO on V, to get the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) military training and recruitment program out of our schools.
JROTC IS A MILITARY TRAINING AND RECRUITMENT PROGRAM THAT TEACHES STUDENTS TO FOLLOW THE LEADER WITHOUT QUESTION, NOT TO BECOME LEADERS!
Proposition V, is a pro-JROTC, pro-military training and recruitment program that is currently being phased out of our schools. Proposition V--a non-binding initiative designed to put pressure on the Board of Education to keep the program in the schools--has been put on the ballot with the financial contributions of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Party among many other pro-war contributors with big bucks!
WE MUST GET THE WORD OUT TO VOTE NO ON V!
NO ON V COMMUNITY OUTREACH DAY, OCTOBER 11, 11:00 A.M., 24TH AND MISSION STREETS, S.F.
We will assemble at 11:00 A.M. At 24th and Mission Street where flyers and posters for NO on V will be available for city-wide distribution. We will fan out across the city to distribute the material and talk with our fellow neighbors in the streets about how important it is to defeat Proposition V. And we will keep this campaign going each week until election day.
JROTC IS A MILITARY RECRUITMENT PROGRAM CONTROLLED BY THE MILITARY ALONE!
The issues surrounding Proposition V have been made less clear by the lies their campaign is telling about the program, i.e., that JROTC does not recruit students to the military, that it teaches leadership skills, that it keeps children from gang activity and that students should have a "choice" to enroll in JROTC at their school.
But, we don't want the schools used to recruit our children for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!
JROTC is a military recruitment program that has already been scheduled for phase-out by June 2009 by the San Francisco Board of Education.
JROTC doesn’t teach students the realities of war: that they are likely to kill civilians, or that they are more likely to die or return from war with devastating mental and physical disabilities than earn college degrees.
Proposition V argues that students should have a “choice” to enroll in JROTC, but if they join the military they have no choice about killing or dying. JROTC is a military recruitment program, and it does not belong in our schools!
JROTC is not the way to keep kids away from gangs. There are peaceful ways to keep kids safe. JROTC is not a leadership program. It teaches unquestioning obedience in preparation for military service.
The San Francisco School Board's decision to end JROTC has set a precedent for communities nationwide. Let’s not allow it to be reversed!
We will be outside in the streets October 11 to encourage a resounding NO vote on Proposition V and to join with parents everywhere trying to save their children from being sent to fight these unjust and illegal wars!
MONEY FOR BOOKS NOT BOMBS! COLLEGE NOT COMBAT! JOB-FAIRS NOT WARFARE! FORECLOSE THE WAR NOT MORTGAGES!
We want funding for education, healthcare, the environment, and jobs, not war! U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan now!
Join us in community outreach against the war and for NO on V, Saturday, October 11, 11:00-3:00 P.M., 24th and Mission Streets, San Francisco
For information on other actions taking place on October 11 around the country against the war go to:
http://oct11.org/
Bay Area United Against War
P.O. Box 318021, San Francisco, CA 94131-8021, 415-824-8730, www.bauaw.org
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The NO on Proposition V website is now up and running, at:
http://www.NoMilitaryRecruitmentInOurSchools.org
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San Francisco Proposition U is on the November ballot.
Shall it be City policy to advocate that its elected representatives in the
United States Senate and House of Representatives vote against any further
funding for the deployment of United States Armed Forces in Iraq, with the
exception of funds specifically earmarked to provide for their safe and
orderly withdrawal.
If you'd like to help us out please contact me. Donations would be wonderful, we need them for signs and buttons. Please see the link on our web site.
Thank you.
Rick Hauptman
Prop U Steering Commiittee
http://yesonpropu.blogspot.com/
tel 415-861-7425
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Bring the Anti-War Movement to Inauguration Day in D.C.
January 20, 2009: Join thousands to demand "Bring the troops home now!"
On January 20, 2009, when the next president proceeds up Pennsylvania Avenue he will see thousands of people carrying signs that say US Out of Iraq Now!, US Out of Afghanistan Now!, and Stop the Threats Against Iran! As in Vietnam it will be the people in the streets and not the politicians who can make the difference.
On March 20, 2008, in response to a civil rights lawsuit brought against the National Park Service by the Partnership for Civil Justice on behalf of the ANSWER Coalition, a Federal Court ruled for ANSWER and determined that the government had discriminated against those who brought an anti-war message to the 2005 Inauguration. The court barred the government from continuing its illegal practices on Inauguration Day.
The Democratic and Republican Parties have made it clear that they intend to maintain the occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and threaten a new war against Iran.
Both Parties are completely committed to fund Israel’s on-going war against the Palestinian people. Both are committed to spending $600 billion each year so that the Pentagon can maintain 700 military bases in 130 countries.
On this the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we are helping to build a nationwide movement to support working-class communities that are being devastated while the country’s resources are devoted to war and empire for for the sake of transnational banks and corporations.
Join us and help organize bus and car caravans for January 20, 2009, Inauguration Day, so that whoever is elected president will see on Pennsylvania Avenue that the people want an immediate end to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and to halt the threats against Iran.
From Iraq to New Orleans, Fund Peoples Needs Not the War Machine!
We cannot carry out these actions withour your help. Please take a moment right now to make an urgently needed donation by clicking this link:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1121&JServSessionIdr011=23sri803b1.app2a
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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National Assembly
Announcements:
Open Letter to the Anti-War 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
National Assembly’s Continuations Body (in formation):
Beth Adams, Connecticut River Valley Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Zaineb Alani, Author of The Words of an Iraqi War Survivor & More; Alexis Baden-Mayer, Grassroots Netroots Alliance; Steve Bloom, Solidarity; Michael Carano, Progressive Democrats of America/Ohio Branch; Jim Ciocia, AFSCME Staff Representative; Colia Clark, Chair, Richard Wright Centennial Committee; Grandmothers for Mumia Abu-Jamal; Greg Coleridge, Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC) and Economic Justice and Empowerment Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); Victor Crews, Wasatach Coalition for Peace and Justice (of Northern Utah); Alan Dale, Iraq Peace Action Coalition (MN); Donna Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO*, Representing U.S. Labor Against the War on the Continuations Body; Jamilla El-Shafei, Founder, Kennebunks Peace Department; Co-Founder and Organizer, Stop-Loss Congress; Mike Ferner, Secretary, Veterans for Peace; Paul George, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center; Jerry Gordon, Former National Co-Coordinator of the Vietnam-era National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC) and Member, U.S. Labor Against the War Steering Committee; John Harris, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition; Jonathan Hutto, Navy Petty Officer; Author of Anti-War Soldier; Co-Founder of Appeal for Redress; Tom Lacey, California Peace and Freedom Party; Marilyn Levin, Coordinating Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace, Middle East Crisis Coalition; Joe Lombardo, Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace, Northeast Peace and Justice Coalition; Jeff Mackler, Founder, San Francisco Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice; Christine Marie, Socialist Action; Logan Martinez, Green party of Ohio; Fred Mason, President, Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO and Co-Convenor, U.S. Labor Against the War; Atlee McFellin, Students for a Democratic Society, New School University Chapter, New York; Mary Nichols-Rhodes, Progressive Democrats of America/Ohio Branch; Northland Anti-War Coalition; Bill Onasch, Kansas City Labor Against the War; John Peterson, National Secretary, Workers International League; Dan Piper, CT United for Peace; Millie Phillips, Socialist Organizer; Andy Pollack, Adalah/NY; Adam Ritscher, United Steelworkers Local 9460*; Carole Seligman, Active in Campaign to Get Junior ROTC Out of San Francisco Schools; Peter Shell, Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee, Pittsburgh; Mark Stahl, Rhode Island Mobilization Committee to Stop War and Occupation; Lynne Stewart, Lynne Stewart Organization/Long Time Attorney and Defender of Constitutional Rights; Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War
Other endorsers (list in formation):
Haidar Abushaqra, Palestine American Congress,* CT; Adalah-NY; Campus Antiwar Network; Andy Anderson, Veterans for Peace, Duluth, MN; Jeff Anderson, Duluth, MN City Councilor; Kathy Anderson, Cuba Solidarity Committee, Duluth, MN; Arlington/Lexington (MA) United for Justice with Peace; Bay Area United Against War; Prof. Hal Bertilson, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Network of Spiritual Progressives; Scott Bol, Northeast Minnesota Citizens Federation; Heather Bradford, Co-Founder, College of St. Scholastica Students Against War, Superior, WI; Chicago Labor against the War; Coalition for Justice in the Middle East; Connecticut Coalition for Peace and Justice; CT River Valley Chapter, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; CT United for Peace; Every Church a Church of Peace; Sharla Gardner, Duluth, MN City Councilor; Sam Goodall, Positively 3rd Street Bakery, Duluth, MN; Grandmothers for Peace, Duluth, MN; Greater Boston Stop the War Coalition; Sadie Green, Teamsters Local 391, Duluth, MN; Jeannie Gugliermino, Middletown Alliance for Peace,* Middletown, CT; Rose Helin, Founder, University of Wisconsin-Superior Students Against War; Melissa Helman, former School of the Americas (SOA) protest prisoner of conscience, Ashland, WI; Iraq Peace Action Coalition (MN); Jeni Johnson, former news editor, Promethean newspaper, Superior, WI; Laurie Johnson, AFSCME Council 5 Business Representative, Duluth, MN; Kansas City Labor Against War; Lake Superior Greens, Superior, WI; Joan Linski, UNITE HERE Local 99; Loaves and Fishes, Catholic Worker Community; Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO; Dorotea Manuela -- Chair, New Mission High School Governing Board*, Co-Chair Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Committee*; Co-Coordinator Rapid Response Network/Boston May Day Coalition*; Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal/Northern California; Tess Moren, University of Wisconsin -Superior International Peace Studies Student Association; Michelle Naar-Obed, Christian Peacemakers Team; Network of Spiritual Progressives, Duluth, MN Chapter; Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC); Northland Anti-War Coalition, Duluth, MN; Frank O'Gorman, People of Faith,* Hartford, CT; Ohio State Labor Party; Cheryl Olson, Grandmothers for Peace, Superior, WI; Lyn Clark Pegg, Witness for Peace, Duluth, MN; Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Palo Alto, CA.; June Pinken, Manchester Peace Coalition,* Manchester, CT; Helen Raisz, Womens' International League for Peace and Freedom,* Hartford, CT; Rhode Island Committee to Stop War and Occupation; Lorena Rodriguez, International Partnership Coordinator of the Student Trade Justice Campaign, Chicago, IL; Mike Rogge, Co-Founder, College of St. Scholastica Students Against War, Superior, WI; Lucy Rosenblatt, We Refuse to Be Enemies,* Hartford, CT; Ahlam Shalhout, author, Recovering Stolen Memories, New London, CT; Socialist Organizer; Socialist Party of Connecticut; Solidarity; Troops Out Now Coalition (TONC); U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW); Veterans for Peace, Chapter 80, Duluth, MN; Wasatch Coalition for Peace and Justice of Northern Utah; Steve Wick, President, University of Minnesota- Duluth Students for Peace; Mike Winterfield, We Refuse to Be Enemies,* Hartford, CT; Women's International League for Peace and Freedom/Pittsburgh; Workers International League
* indicates for identification only
National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations
http://natassembly.org/members/index.php?org-id=2
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Fair Game
Your Money at Work, Fixing Others’ Mistakes
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
September 21, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21gret.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=YOUR%20MONEY%20AT%20WORK,%20FIXING%20OTHERS%20MISTAKES&st=cse&oref=slogin
2) In Turmoil, Capitalism in U.S. Sets New Course
By DAVID WESSEL
WALL STREET JOURNAL * SEPTEMBER 20, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122187076877559117.html
3) Free Market Ideology is Far From Finished
But with Wall Street rescued by government intervention, there's never been a better time to argue for collectivist solutions
By Naomi Klein The Guardian (UK) September 19, 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/19/marketturmoil.usa
4) ABIDING IN BOLIVIA
Saturday, September 20, 2008
90 experts on Bolivia and Latin America ask State Dept. to reveal Bolivia
funding
http://casa-del-duderino.blogspot.com/2008/09/90-experts.html
5) Cash for Trash
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
September 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/opinion/22krugman.html?hp
6) War and Drought Threaten Afghan Food Supply
By CARLOTTA GALL
"Of $15 billion of reconstruction assistance given to Afghanistan since 2001, 'a staggering 40 percent has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries,' the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said in a March report."
September 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/world/asia/19afghan.html
7) Russian Warships Sail to Venezuela
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/world/europe/23ships.html?ref=world
8) London Protesters Demand an End to US Coups
September 22nd 2008, by Paul Haste and Charley Allan - Morning Star
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index2.php/ex/examples
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3816
9) ‘Running Out of Time’ [U.S. War in Pakistan...bw]
Editorial
September 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/opinion/22mon1.html?hp
10) Iraqi Citizen Patrols Simmer in Face of Change
By ERICA GOODE
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/world/middleeast/23awake.html?hp
11) A Second Opinion?
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/opinion/23herbert.html?hp
12) Shell Opens an Office in Baghdad After a 36-Year Absence
By SAM DAGHER
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/world/middleeast/23iraq.html?ref=world
13) Housing Experts Say Bailout Proposal May Do Little for Homeowners
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/23mortgage.html?ref=us
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1) Fair Game
Your Money at Work, Fixing Others’ Mistakes
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
September 21, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21gret.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=YOUR%20MONEY%20AT%20WORK,%20FIXING%20OTHERS%20MISTAKES&st=cse&oref=slogin
IT looks as if we may get through this weekend without another scramble to save a troubled financial firm with a trillion-dollar balance sheet.
But that doesn’t mean taxpayers are out of danger. No, sir. No, ma’am. Because lawmakers are at work on a bailout fund that would buy the kind of distressed assets (defaulted mortgages, for example) that have ignited this firestorm.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has called the fund the “troubled asset relief program.” I’ll just call it TARP for short (you know, the kind of thing they spread over muddy fields so you don’t soil your Guccis).
And depending on how TARP is operated, and how the assets are valued before taxpayers are forced to buy them, it could bloat our final bill for this mess while benefiting the very institutions that got us into it.
Yes, we need a smart plan and a concerted effort to get the frozen credit markets up and running. But we also have to be certain that the types of conflicts of interest that riddle Wall Street aren’t visited upon TARP.
Consider: A bank wants to sell the TARPistas (also known as TAXPAYERS) a pile of stinky mortgage securities that it currently values at 60 cents on the dollar. Let’s assume that the most recent actual trade between market participants for similar assets was struck at 30 cents on the dollar.
So what’s a fair price that we TARPistas should pay for the assets?
If we bought at 60 cents, a price that the bank would argue is appropriate, we would most likely face a loss. The bank, however, would be much better off than if it had to dump at 30 cents.
Conversely, if the assets were sold at 30 cents, taxpayers could wind up making a profit on the purchase if the assets performed better than expected over time. But the bank would have to write down the value of the assets as a result of the sale, possibly threatening its financial standing yet again.
Do you think, perchance, that financial services lobbyists might be working their Hill contacts right this very minute to ensure that the TARP valuations are rigged in their favor?
You know the answer to that.
And you also know that we should steel ourselves for heavy losses as the TARP gets pulled over our eyes. Never mind that it was the banks, with their reckless lending and monumental leverage, that drove us into this ditch.
Such is our lot today: They break it. We own it.
Taxpayers deserve better than this, of course. But we have no lobbyists, so we get skinned.
IF federal regulators and political leaders want to earn back some trust, they could do two things. First, they could provide us with some transparency about whom precisely we are backing in the recent bailouts.
Take, for example, the rescue on Tuesday of the American International Group, once the world’s largest insurance company. It was pretty breathtaking. Since when do insurance companies, whose business models seem to consist of taking in premiums and stonewalling claims, deserve rescues from beleaguered taxpayers?
Answer: Ever since the world became so intertwined that the failure of one company can topple a host of others. And ever since credit default swaps, those unregulated derivative contracts that allow investors to bet on a debt issuer’s financial prospects, loomed so big on balance sheets that they now drive every bailout decision.
The deal to save A.I.G. involves a two-year, $85 billion loan from taxpayers. In exchange, the new owners — us — get 80 percent of the company. If enough of A.I.G.’s assets are sold for good prices, we may get our money back.
Credit default swaps, which operate like insurance policies against the possibility that an issuer of debt will not pay on its obligations, were the single biggest motivator behind the A.I.G. deal.
A.I.G. had written $441 billion in credit insurance on mortgage-related securities whose values have declined; if A.I.G. were to fail, all the institutions that bought the insurance would have been subject to enormous losses. The ripple effect could have turned into a tsunami.
So, the $85 billion loan to A.I.G. was really a bailout of the company’s counterparties or trading partners.
Now, inquiring minds want to know, whom did we rescue? Which large, wealthy financial institutions — counterparties to A.I.G.’s derivatives contracts — benefited from the taxpayers’ $85 billion loan? Were their representatives involved in the talks that resulted in the last-minute loan?
And did Lehman Brothers not get bailed out because those favored institutions were not on the hook if it failed?
We’ll probably never know the answers to these troubling questions. But by keeping taxpayers in the dark, regulators continue to earn our mistrust. As long as we are not told whom we have bailed out, we will be justified in suspecting that a favored few are making gains on our dimes.
A.I.G.’s financial statements provided a clue to the identities of some of its credit default swap counterparties. The company said that almost three-quarters of the $441 billion it had written on soured mortgage securities was bought by European banks. The banks bought the insurance to reduce the amounts of capital they were required by regulators to set aside to cover future losses.
Enjoy the absurdity: Billions in unregulated derivatives that were about to take down the insurance company that sold them were bought by banks to get around their regulatory capital requirements intended to rein in risk.
Got that?
Which brings us to Item 2 for policy makers. Stop pretending that the $62 trillion market for credit default swaps does not need regulatory oversight. Warren E. Buffett was not engaging in hyperbole when he called these things financial weapons of mass destruction.
“The last eight years have been about permitting derivatives to explode, knowing they were unregulated,” said Eric R. Dinallo, New York’s superintendent of insurance. “It’s about what the government chose not to regulate, measured in dollars. And that is what shook the world.”
And it will continue.
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2) In Turmoil, Capitalism in U.S. Sets New Course
By DAVID WESSEL
WALL STREET JOURNAL * SEPTEMBER 20, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122187076877559117.html
This past week marks a decisive turn in the evolution of American capitalism.
Black September, the biggest financial shock since the Great Depression, is prompting a Republican Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chairman to devise the most muscular government intervention in the economy since the Great Depression in an effort to prevent the economic devastation of the Great Depression.
Abandoning its one-rescue-at-a-time strategy of recent months, the government suddenly has shifted to a broad attack on what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson calls "the root cause of our financial system's stresses," the rot on the balance sheets of America's financial system.
Gone is the faith, shared by the nation's leadership with varying degrees of enthusiasm, that the best road to prosperity is to unleash financial markets to allocate capital, take risks, enjoy profits, absorb losses. Erased is the hope that markets correct themselves when they overshoot.
Also scrapped is the notion that government's role is to get out of the way, limiting itself to protecting consumers and small investors, setting the rules of the game and stepping in -- only rarely -- to cushion the economy from shocks like the 1987 stock-market crash or the 1998 collapse of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. Both of those episodes involved government jawboning and flooding the markets with money. In contrast to today, neither time did the U.S. take significant amounts of taxpayer money or anything approaching the nationalization of a major firm.
As recently as Spring 2007, Mr. Paulson, among others, was arguing that onerous regulations were crippling American finance in intensifying global competition. Those cries are silenced.
"The last 20 years saw people actually mouthing the idea that government should keep hands off," says Richard Sylla, a financial historian at New York University. "We had this free market ethos: Reagan's 'government isn't a solution, government is the problem.' Now people are saying, 'The market is the problem. The government is the solution.' "
The Depression triggered, among other things, sweeping new rules governing the financial system -- including the 1933 Glass Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banking until its repeal in 1999. The inevitable result of this crisis, once it ends, will be more government control of the financial system. The only questions now are how much tougher the new oversight will be, what form it will take and how long until the restrictions are loosened or evaded?
In March, the Federal Reserve shattered a half-century of tradition in which it had lent money only to banks whose deposits were insured by the government. Declaring circumstances to be "unusual and exigent," as required by a little-used statute, it lent to investment bank Bear Stearns and eventually risked $29 billion of taxpayer money to induce J.P. Morgan Chase to buy Bear. It seemed a very big deal at the time.
But in the past two weeks, the U.S. government, keeper of the flame of free markets and private enterprise, has:
-- nationalized the two engines of the U.S. mortgage industry, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and flooded the mortgage market with taxpayer funds to keep it going;
-- crafted a deal to seize the nation's largest insurer, American International Group Inc., fired its chief executive and moved to sell it off in pieces.
-- extended government insurance beyond bank deposits to $3.4 trillion in money-market mutual funds for a year;
-- banned, for 799 financial stocks, a practice at the heart of stock trading, the short-selling in which investors seek to profit from falling stock prices.
-- allowed or encouraged the collapse or sale of two of the four remaining, free-standing investment banks, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch;
-- asked Congress by next week to agree to stick taxpayers with hundreds of billions of dollars of illiquid assets from financial institutions so those institutions can raise capital and resume lending.
It was less than a week ago that Mr. Paulson appeared to draw a line at government bailouts, rebuffing Lehman's plea for a Bear Stearns-like rescue and allowing the investment bank to collapse into bankruptcy. "The national commitment to the free market lasted one day," Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, quipped earlier this week. That one day was Monday, Sept. 15. The day before the government rejected Lehman's cry for help; the day after it seized AIG.
The shift in strategy reflects the realization by Mr. Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the financial crisis was intensifying in recent days, endangering the entire economy. Confidence deteriorated markedly. Distrust spread. Credit markets weren't functioning and lending dried up. Normal business wasn't getting done. The two remaining free-standing investment banks were under severe pressure. The panic was spreading to ordinary Americans, who were beginning to pull money out of money-market mutual funds.
"This convulsion that we've had in the past two weeks? I don't think there's anything like it in history. I want to go back and check the week in 1933, when all the banks were closed," says Robert Aliber, a University of Chicago economic historian who updated Charles Kindleberger's 1978 classic and newly relevant book, "Manias, Panics and Crashes."
But there is a big difference between then and now. The authorities moved quicker this time. "In the '30s, the intervention that mattered came after the disaster," Mr. Sylla says. "Now the interventions are designed to prevent the disaster we had in the '30s." About the only pleasant surprise of the past year is that the U.S. economy hasn't done worse.
It is too early to say whether Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson have made the right call and will bring the crisis to a close, despite global stock markets' ebullient reaction Friday. If the fear does subside, then talk will turn to writing new rules for a financial system that has changed more in the past six months than in the previous decade. The government has bailed out financial institutions -- and particularly their creditors -- and taxpayers will pick up the tab for many of the institutions' bad decisions. That could encourage bad behavior in the future. So, the government needs to craft a new regulatory regime to reduce those incentives.
Some observers look to history, and predict the government will overdo the regulatory remedy. Bubbles often begin with products created to get around regulations, says Stephen Quinn, an economic historian at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. "Smart regulation looks forward to prevent the next regulation-circumventing ... idea from turning into a bubble without stymieing the flow of new ideas. Dumb regulation looks backward. You can guess which kind of regulation most crises produce."
But Frederic Mishkin, who recently left the Fed to return to teaching at Columbia University's business school, takes hope in the resolution of the savings and loan episode of the 1980s. "It was handled disastrously at first," he says. Regulators and politicians were slow to respond, allowing thrifts to make more and more bad loans instead of shutting them down. Then, in 1989, the first Bush administration swallowed hard, closed thrifts, paid off depositors and sold the thrifts' assets at fire-sale prices. The cost to the taxpayers came to about $124 billion.
Congress and the president moved to reduce the chances of a repeat, enacting a 1991 law that, among other things, increased the minimum amount of capital banks were required to hold. As a result, Mr. Mishkin says, big banks entered the current crisis with far more capital than they had in the early 1990s. "That's one reason this crisis hasn't led to a complete disaster. It put banks on a stronger footing so they had a larger cushion when they blew it," he says. The other reason, he says, is the Fed's rapid response to the current crisis.
The rub: The 1991 law didn't apply to institutions other than banks -- the investment banks, mortgage companies and even insurance companies that have been central to this episode. That puts writing new rules for them high on the agenda for the new president and the next Congress.
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3) Free Market Ideology is Far From Finished
But with Wall Street rescued by government intervention, there's never been a better time to argue for collectivist solutions
By Naomi Klein The Guardian (UK) September 19, 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/19/marketturmoil.usa
Whatever the events of this week mean, nobody should believe the overblown claims that the market crisis signals the death of "free market" ideology. Free market ideology has always been a servant to the interests of capital, and its presence ebbs and flows depending on its usefulness to those interests.
During boom times, it's profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalisation for deep cuts to social programmes, and for a renewed push to privatise what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are, sadly, too costly.
What we don't know is how the public will respond. Consider that in North America, everybody under the age of 40 grew up being told that the government can't intervene to improve our lives, that government is the problem not the solution, that laissez faire was the only option. Now, we are suddenly seeing an extremely activist, intensely interventionist government, seemingly willing to do whatever it takes to save investors from themselves.
This spectacle necessarily raises the question: if the state can intervene to save corporations that took reckless risks in the housing markets, why can't it intervene to prevent millions of Americans from imminent foreclosure? By the same token, if $85bn can be made instantly available to buy the insurance giant AIG, why is single-payer health care - which would protect Americans from the predatory practices of health-care insurance companies - seemingly such an unattainable dream? And if ever more corporations need taxpayer funds to stay afloat, why can't taxpayers make demands in return - like caps on executive pay, and a guarantee against more job losses?
Now that it's clear that governments can indeed act in times of crises, it will become much harder for them to plead powerlessness in the future. Another potential shift has to do with market hopes for future privatisations. For years, the global investment banks have been lobbying politicians for two new markets: one that would come from privatising public pensions and the other that would come from a new wave of privatised or partially privatised roads, bridges and water systems. Both of these dreams have just become much harder to sell: Americans are in no mood to trust more of their individual and collective assets to the reckless gamblers on Wall Street, especially because it seems more than likely that taxpayers will have to pay to buy back their own assets when the next bubble bursts.
With the World Trade Organisation talks off the rails, this crisis could also be a catalyst for a radically alternative approach to regulating world markets and financial systems. Already, we are seeing a move towards "food sovereignty" in the developing world, rather than leaving access to food to the whims of commodity traders. The time may finally have come for ideas like taxing trading, which would slow speculative investment, as well as other global capital controls.
And now that nationalisation is not a dirty word, the oil and gas companies should watch out: someone needs to pay for the shift to a greener future, and it makes most sense for the bulk of the funds to come from the highly profitable sector that is most responsible for our climate crisis. It certainly makes more sense than creating another dangerous bubble in carbon trading.
But the crisis we are seeing calls for even deeper changes than that. The reason these junk loans were allowed to proliferate was not just because the regulators didn't understand the risk. It is because we have an economic system that measures our collective health based exclusively on GDP growth. So long as the junk loans were fuelling economic growth, our governments actively supported them. So what is really being called into question by the crisis is the unquestioned commitment to growth at all costs. Where this crisis should lead us is to a radically different way for our societies to measure health and progress.
None of this, however, will happen without huge public pressure placed on politicians in this key period. And not polite lobbying but a return to the streets and the kind of direct action that ushered in the New Deal in the 1930s. Without it, there will be superficial changes and a return, as quickly as possible, to business as usual.
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4) ABIDING IN BOLIVIA
Saturday, September 20, 2008
90 experts on Bolivia and Latin America ask State Dept. to reveal Bolivia
funding
http://casa-del-duderino.blogspot.com/2008/09/90-experts.html
To Dr. Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State
Cc: Phillip Goldberg, U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia
Henrietta Fore, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development
Representative Eliot Engel, Chair, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere,
Committee of Foreign Affairs
Senator John McCain
Senator Barack Obama
Dear Dr. Rice,
We are writing out of deep concern over recent events in Bolivia that have
left dozens dead and cost millions of dollars in lost revenue to the
Bolivian government and the Bolivian people. We are especially concerned
that the United States government, by its own admission, is supporting
opposition groups and individuals in Bolivia that have been involved in the
recent whole-scale destruction, violence, and killings, above all in the
departments of Santa Cruz, Pando, and Chuquisaca.
Since the United States government refuses to disclose many of the
recipients of its funding and support, there is currently no way to
determine the degree to which this support is helping people involved in
violence, sabotage, and other extra-legal means to destabilize the
government of Bolivia.
Yet since the democratic election of Evo Morales in December 2005, the U.S.
government has sent millions of dollars in aid to departmental prefects and
municipal governments in Bolivia. In 2004, the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) opened an "Office of Transition Initiatives" (OTI) in
Bolivia, which provided some $11 million in funds to "build on its
activities designed to enhance the capacity of departmental governments."[1]
The OTI in Bolivia sought to "[build] the capacity of prefect-led
departmental governments to help them better respond to the constituencies
they govern," and even brought departmental governors to the U.S. to meet
with state governors.[2] Some of these same departmental governments later
launched organized campaigns to push for "autonomy" and to oppose through
violent and undemocratic means the Morales government and its popular
reforms.
According to the OTI, it ceased operations in Bolivia about a year ago;
however some of its activities were then taken up by USAID, which refuses to
disclose some of its recipients and programs. USAID spent $89 million in
Bolivia last year. This is a significant sum relative to the size of
Bolivia's economy; proportionally in the U.S. economy it would be equivalent
to about $100 billion, or close to what the United States is currently
spending on military operations in Iraq.
U.S. taxpayers, as well as the Bolivian government and people, have a right
to know what U.S. funds are supporting in Bolivia.
On August 10, a national recall referendum was held in which Bolivian voters
had the opportunity to vote on whether the President, the Vice-President,
and eight of nine departmental prefects should continue in office. President
Evo Morales and Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera won with more than 67
percent of the vote, much more than President Morales' original electoral
victory in 2005, which had the largest margin in the country's electoral
history.
The recent opposition violence appears to be an organized response to this
mandate, attempting to use extra-legal means to win what the opposition
could not gain at the ballot box. This includes the National Democratic
Council (CONALDE), composed of "five provincial governors, business
associations, conservative civic groups, and legislators of the rightwing
Podemos party led by former president Jorge Quiroga."[3]
Perhaps most alarming is the recent evidence of close collusion and
cooperation between the departmental governments and violent groups such as
the UJC (Unión Juventud Cruceña, or Union of Santa Cruz Youth) and the Santa
Cruz Civic Committee. As a new campaign of violence began following the
August 10 recall referendum, a Reuters journalist interviewing Santa Cruz
opposition leader and prominent businessman Branko Marinkovic witnessed UJC
members going into Marinkovic's office and coming out with baseball bats.[4]
Even more startling is evidence that the events of the past two weeks are
the result of a deliberate decision by the opposition coalition CONALDE to
pursue a campaign of violence. Media reports describe how opposition Podemos
legislators were ejected from an early September CONALDE meeting after
voicing opposition to the violent methods under discussion.[5]
News articles in the past week further noted the support from some
departmental prefects and other regional government officials' for the
violence. "The conservative governors are ∑ encouraging the protesters in
their actions," Agence France Presse reported, adding that, "The opposition
coalition, which also includes town mayors, have focused their attention on
the main source of Bolivia's income: the natural gas fields that lie in
their eastern half of the country," and "Militants linked to the opposition
group set up road blocks to add pressure to the governors' demands for more
control over gas revenues." [6]
The racist nature of the UJC and other hate groups is well known and
documented. These groups have focused their attacks mostly on indigenous MAS
(governing party) supporters. In May, for example, members of the
"Interinstitutional Committee," composed of civic and local leaders, and
other youth militants forcibly marched indigenous and peasant supporters of
President Morales to the city center of Sucre (Chuquisaca), beat them,
stripped them of clothing, and forced them to chant anti-Morales slogans
while berating them with racist taunts.[7]
As you know, at least 15 people have been killed in the past several days in
Pando alone - the great majority of them Bolivian peasants and farmers - in
what eyewitnesses describe as a massacre by assassins with machine guns. The
Bolivian government has arrested Pando prefect Leopoldo Fernández in
connection with the killings.
This violence, which has been accompanied by sabotage that has caused
extensive economic damage, is utterly deplorable, and should be condemned
from every quarter. Yet the U.S. government response has been weak. Before
the extent of the massacre was known, and before the Bolivian government had
declared U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg to be persona non grata, many had
already been killed and economic damage done. Yet as of September 12,
according to its website, the U.S. State Department had said only that it
regrets the expulsion of Ambassador Goldberg and that this "reflects the
weakness and desperation [by President Evo Morales]" and "an inability to
communicate effectively internationally in order to build international
support," and suggested that the Bolivian government is not improving the
well-being of its citizens.[8]
The State Department website shows no statement between May 5, 2008 and
September 11, 2008,[9] indicating that the State Department failed to
condemn the violence in recent months, and also failed to congratulate
President Evo Morales on his overwhelming victory in the August 10
referendum.
We call on the U.S. government to turn a new page in its relations with
Latin America by clearly and unequivocally condemning the violent,
destructive and anti-democratic means employed by members of Bolivia's
pro-"autonomy" opposition. Most importantly, Washington must also disclose
its funding for groups inside Bolivia - through USAID and other agencies -
and reveal the names of the recipients of these funds. The U.S. government
must cease any and all support - financial or otherwise - to any group or
person in Bolivia and other Latin American countries that engages in
violent, destructive, terrorist, or anti-democratic activities such as we
have witnessed with great shock and sadness in the past weeks in Bolivia.
Sincerely,
Ben Achtenberg, Refuge Media Project, Boston, MA
Emily Achtenberg, Housing Policy & Development Consultant, Boston MA
Robert Albro, Assistant Professor of Antrhpology, School of International
Service, American University
Juan Manuel Arbona, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College
Byrna Aronson, Boston, MA
Teo Ballvé, Journalist, former editor of North American Congress on Latin
America Report on the Americas
Ericka Beckman, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Charles Bergquist, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Washington
John Beverley, Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University
of Pittsburgh
Michelle Bigenho, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Hampshire College
Lina Britto, Ph. D. Candidate, Department of History, New York University
Beverlee Bruce, Ph.D., Program Associate, Planning Alternatives for Change,
New York City
Marisol de la Cadena, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of
California-Davis
Joaquín Chavez, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, New York University
Mike Davis, Distinguished Professor of Non-Fiction, University of
California-Riverside
Nicole Dettmann-Quisbert, Sudbury, MA
Luis Duno-Gottberg, Associate Professor of Hispanic Languages and
Literatures, Rice University
Arturo Escobar, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Duke
University
Nicole Fabricant, Ph. D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern
University
Samuel Farber, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Brooklyn College
Sujatha Fernandes, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Queens College
Lesley Gill, Professor of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University
Marcial Godoy-Anativia, Associate Director, Hemispheric Institute of
Performance and Politics, New York University
Daniel Goldstein, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University
Manu Goswami, Associate Professor of History, New York University
Greg Grandin, Professor of History, New York University
Bret Gustafson, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Washington University
Charles R. Hale, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas-Austin,
former president of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA)
Jack Hammond, Professor of Sociology, Hunter College and CUNY Graduate
Center
Daniel Hellinger, Professor of Political Science, Webster University
Eric Hershberg, President, Latin American Studies Association (LASA)
Doug Hertzler, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Eastern Mennonite
University
Kathryn Hicks, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Memphis
Connie Hogarth, Center for Social Action, Manhattanville College
Forrest Hylton, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, New York University
Rachel Kahn-Hunt, Professor Emerita of Sociology, San Francisco State
University
Caren Kaplan, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, University of
California-Davis
Laura Kaplan, Bronx Community College
Steven Karakashian, Milwaukie, OR
Marie Kennedy, Visiting Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA, Professor Emerita
of Urban Planning, University of Massachusetts-Boston
Eben Kirksey, Ph.D., National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Santa
Clara University
Naomi Klein, Journalist
Benjamin Kohl, Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple
University
James Krippner, Associate Professor of History, Haverford College
Richard Krushnic, City of Boston, Department of Neighborhood Development,
Boston, MA
Maria Lagos, Associate Professor Emerita of Anthropology, Lehman College,
CUNY
Amy S. Lang, Professor of English and Humanities, Syracuse University
Daniel Lang/Levitsky, New York, NY
Brooke Larson, Professor of History, State University of New York-Stony
Brook
Catherine LeGrand, Associate Professor of History, McGill University
Florencia E. Mallon, Julieta Kirkwood Professor of History, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Angela Marino Segura, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Spanish & Portuguese,
New York University
Francine Masiello, Acker Professor of Humanities, University of
California-Berkeley
Marie-Josée Massicotte, Director, International Studies and Modern
Languages, University of Ottawa
Richard Monks, Vice-President, International Union of Operating Engineers,
Local 877
Elizabeth Monasterios, Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures,
University of Pittsburgh
Pablo Morales, Editor, NACLA Report on the Americas, New York, NY
Mary Nolan, Professor of History, New York University
Lisette Olivares, Ph.D. Candidate, History of Consciousness, University of
California-Santa Cruz
Almerindo E. Ojeda, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Center for the
Study of Human Rights in the Americas, University of California-Davis
Andrew Orta, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
Deborah Poole, Professor of Anthropology, Director, Program in Latin
American Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Nancy Postero, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of
California-San Diego
Seemin Qayum, Independent Scholar and Development Consultant, New York, NY
Peter Ranis, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, City University of New
York Graduate Center
David C. Ranney, Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning and Policy, University
of Illinois-Chicago
Gerardo Renique, Associate Professor of History, City College-CUNY
Marcus Rediker, Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh
Christina Rojas, Director, Program for International Studies, Carleton
University, Montreal, CA
Nancy Romer, Brooklyn College & Professional Staff Congress/CUNY, AFT #2334
Fred Rosen, Senior Analyst, North American Congress on Latin America
Karen B. Rosen, Cambridge, MA
Karin Rosemblatt, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of
Maryland, College Park
Frances Rothstein, Professor of Anthropology, Montclair State University
Ethel S. Ruymaker, Oakland, CA
Tamara Lea Spira, Ph.D. Candidate, History of Consciousness, University of
California-Santa Cruz
Kent Spriggs, Spriggs Law Firm, Tallahassee, FL
Diana Steinberg, Boston, MA
Marcia Stephenson, Associate Professor of Spanish, Purdue University
Steve Striffler, Zemurray Chair in Latin American Studies, University of New
Orleans
Estelle Tarica, Associate Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese,
University of California-Berkeley
Sinclair Thomson, Associate Professor of History, New York University
Marilyn Young, Professor of History, New York University
George Yudice, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, American Studies, and
Latin American Studies, University of Miami
Jeffrey R. Webber, Ph. D. Candidate, Political Science, University of
Toronto
Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research,
Washington, DC
John Womack, Robert Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics,
Harvard University
Patricia A. Wright, Retired Urban Scholar, University of Illinois-Chicago
Carol Zuckerman, MD, Boston, MA
Rosanna Zuckerman, Boston, MA
[1] USAID/OTI Bolivia Field Report, July - September 2006.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Franz Chávez, "BOLIVIA: Divisions Emerge in Opposition Strategy." Inter
Press Service. September 4, 2008.
[4] Eduardo Garcia, "Foes of Morales stage general strike in Bolivia."
Reuters. August 19, 2008. Found at
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1925747220080819
[5] Franz Chávez, "BOLIVIA: Divisions Emerge in Opposition Strategy." Inter
Press Service. September 4, 2008.
[6] Agence France Presse, "Bolivia orders US ambassador out, warns of civil
war." September 11, 2008.
[7] Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Press Release, "IACHR Deplores
Violence In Bolivia And Urges Punishment Of Those Responsible." N° 22/08.
May 29, 2008. Accessed at
http://www.cidh.org/Comunicados/English/2008/22.08eng.htm on September 16,
2008, 5:52pm EST.
[8] U.S. Department of State Press Statement, "Expulsion of U.S. Ambassadors
to Venezuela and Bolivia." September 12, 2008. Accessed at
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2008/sept/109534.htm on September 16, 2008,
4:46pm EST.
[9] U.S. Department of State website: Bolivia - Releases. Accessed at
http://www.state.gov/p/wha/ci/bl/c7579.htm on September 16, 2008,4:35pm EST.
Posted by El Duderino at 6:33 PM
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5) Cash for Trash
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
September 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/opinion/22krugman.html?hp
Some skeptics are calling Henry Paulson’s $700 billion rescue plan for the U.S. financial system “cash for trash.” Others are calling the proposed legislation the Authorization for Use of Financial Force, after the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the infamous bill that gave the Bush administration the green light to invade Iraq.
There’s justice in the gibes. Everyone agrees that something major must be done. But Mr. Paulson is demanding extraordinary power for himself — and for his successor — to deploy taxpayers’ money on behalf of a plan that, as far as I can see, doesn’t make sense.
Some are saying that we should simply trust Mr. Paulson, because he’s a smart guy who knows what he’s doing. But that’s only half true: he is a smart guy, but what, exactly, in the experience of the past year and a half — a period during which Mr. Paulson repeatedly declared the financial crisis “contained,” and then offered a series of unsuccessful fixes — justifies the belief that he knows what he’s doing? He’s making it up as he goes along, just like the rest of us.
So let’s try to think this through for ourselves. I have a four-step view of the financial crisis:
1. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to a surge in defaults and foreclosures, which in turn has led to a plunge in the prices of mortgage-backed securities — assets whose value ultimately comes from mortgage payments.
2. These financial losses have left many financial institutions with too little capital — too few assets compared with their debt. This problem is especially severe because everyone took on so much debt during the bubble years.
3. Because financial institutions have too little capital relative to their debt, they haven’t been able or willing to provide the credit the economy needs.
4. Financial institutions have been trying to pay down their debt by selling assets, including those mortgage-backed securities, but this drives asset prices down and makes their financial position even worse. This vicious circle is what some call the “paradox of deleveraging.”
The Paulson plan calls for the federal government to buy up $700 billion worth of troubled assets, mainly mortgage-backed securities. How does this resolve the crisis?
Well, it might — might — break the vicious circle of deleveraging, step 4 in my capsule description. Even that isn’t clear: the prices of many assets, not just those the Treasury proposes to buy, are under pressure. And even if the vicious circle is limited, the financial system will still be crippled by inadequate capital.
Or rather, it will be crippled by inadequate capital unless the federal government hugely overpays for the assets it buys, giving financial firms — and their stockholders and executives — a giant windfall at taxpayer expense. Did I mention that I’m not happy with this plan?
The logic of the crisis seems to call for an intervention, not at step 4, but at step 2: the financial system needs more capital. And if the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.
That’s what happened in the savings and loan crisis: the feds took over ownership of the bad banks, not just their bad assets. It’s also what happened with Fannie and Freddie. (And by the way, that rescue has done what it was supposed to. Mortgage interest rates have come down sharply since the federal takeover.)
But Mr. Paulson insists that he wants a “clean” plan. “Clean,” in this context, means a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached — no quid pro quo on the part of those being bailed out. Why is that a good thing? Add to this the fact that Mr. Paulson is also demanding dictatorial authority, plus immunity from review “by any court of law or any administrative agency,” and this adds up to an unacceptable proposal.
I’m aware that Congress is under enormous pressure to agree to the Paulson plan in the next few days, with at most a few modifications that make it slightly less bad. Basically, after having spent a year and a half telling everyone that things were under control, the Bush administration says that the sky is falling, and that to save the world we have to do exactly what it says now now now.
But I’d urge Congress to pause for a minute, take a deep breath, and try to seriously rework the structure of the plan, making it a plan that addresses the real problem. Don’t let yourself be railroaded — if this plan goes through in anything like its current form, we’ll all be very sorry in the not-too-distant future.
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6) War and Drought Threaten Afghan Food Supply
By CARLOTTA GALL
"Of $15 billion of reconstruction assistance given to Afghanistan since 2001, 'a staggering 40 percent has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries,' the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said in a March report."
September 19, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/world/asia/19afghan.html
YAKOWLANG, Afghanistan — A pitiable harvest this year has left small farmers all over central and northern Afghanistan facing hunger, and aid officials are warning of an acute food shortage this winter for nine million Afghans, more than a quarter of the population.
The crisis has been generated by the harshest winter in memory, followed by a drought across much of the country, which come on top of the broader problems of deteriorating security, the accumulated pressure of returning refugees and the effects of rising world food prices.
The failure of the Afghan government and foreign donors to develop the country’s main economic sector, agriculture, has compounded the problems, the officials say. They warn that the food crisis could make an already bad security situation worse.
The British charity Oxfam, which conducted a provisional assessment of conditions in the province of Daykondi, one of the most remote areas of central Afghanistan, has appealed for international assistance before winter sets in. “Time is running out to avert a humanitarian crisis,” it said.
That assessment is echoed by villagers across the broader region, including in Bamian Province. “In all these 30 years of war, we have not had it as bad as this,” said Said Muhammad, a 60-year-old farmer who lives in Yakowlang, in Bamian. “We don’t have enough food for the winter. We will have to go to the towns to look for work.”
Underlying the warnings are growing fears of civil unrest. The mood in the country is darkening amid increasing economic hardship, worsening disorder and a growing disaffection with the government and its foreign backers, particularly over the issue of government corruption.
Returning refugees are already converging on the cities because they cannot manage in the countryside, and they make easy recruits for the Taliban or other groups that want to create instability, said Ashmat Ghani, an opposition politician and tribal leader from Logar Province, south of Kabul, the nation’s capital.
“The lower part of society, when facing hunger, will not wait,” he said. “We could have riots.”
The Afghan government, together with United Nations organizations, was quick to mount an appeal at the beginning of the year to prevent a food shortage as world food prices soared and neighboring countries stopped wheat exports.
The World Food Program, which was assisting 4.5 million of the most vulnerable Afghans with food aid in recent years, widened its program to include an additional 1.5 million Afghans and extended it further because of the drought to reach a total of nine million people until the end of next year’s harvest.
Several weeks ago, Oxfam warned in a letter to ministers responsible for development in some countries assisting Afghanistan that the $404 million appeal by the government and the United Nations was substantially underfinanced.
“If the response is slow or insufficient, there could be serious public health implications, including higher rates of mortality and morbidity, which are already some of the highest in the world,” the letter said.
It also warned of internal displacement of families who had no work or food, and even of civil disturbances. “The impact as a whole could further undermine the security situation,” Oxfam said.
The United States government announced this week that it would supply nearly half the emergency food aid requested in the appeal.
Susana Rico, the director of the World Food Program in Afghanistan, said last-minute contributions had come in to cover the immediate emergency. But there is still a rush to get supplies to the countryside before the first winter snows arrive next month, she said.
Development officials say that deteriorating security has made it harder to do that job in the countryside. Aid workers have become the targets of an increasing number of attacks from insurgents and criminals.
The dangers have restricted the scale and scope of aid operations, said the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella group of nongovernmental organizations.
Those dangers, the agency says, have even spread to areas previously considered relatively secure. In the first seven months of the year, it reported, 19 workers for nongovernmental organizations were killed, more than the number in all of 2007.
The agency appealed for governments to take a broad range of measures, beyond the military, to combat the escalating insurgency.
“The conflict will not be brought to an end through military means,” the agency said in a statement. “A range of measures is required to achieve a sustainable peace, including strong and effective support for rural development.”
Neglecting a lifeline as vital as agriculture has been dangerous for stability in Afghanistan, as people are unable to feed themselves, several provincial governors said in interviews.
The governor of Bamian, Habiba Sarabi, has repeatedly complained that because her province has been one of the most law-abiding and trouble-free, it has been forgotten in the big distribution of resources from international donors.
Donors, and in particular the United States government, have spent far larger amounts in the provinces in the south and southeast to help combat the dual problems of the insurgency and narcotics, she said.
Hasan Samadi, 23, the deputy administrator of Yakowlang District in Bamian Province, said, “The economic situation of the people here is very bad and the government is not focused to help.
“They focus on other provinces and unfortunately not on Bamian, and not on remote districts of Bamian,” he said.
Daykondi, adjacent to Bamian, is one of the most underfinanced provinces in the country. It receives half the budget of its neighbor to the south, Oruzgan, which has two-thirds the population and a poor record on combating insurgency and the cultivation of the opium poppy, said Matt Waldman, a spokesman for Oxfam in Kabul.
In Daykondi, 90 percent of the population relies on subsistence farming, yet the provincial Department of Agriculture has a budget of only $2,400 for the whole year, he added.
The imbalance in aid to the provinces is being corrected now, Governor Sarabi said, but in the meantime it has put great strain on the people in her province.
She estimated that a quarter of Bamian’s population would need food aid this winter because of the drought. There have already been local conflicts over water supplies in two regions, she said.
Development officials warn that neglecting the poorest provinces can add to instability by pushing people to commit crimes or even to join the insurgency, which often pays its recruits.
While the severe drought contributed to the decline of poppy cultivation in the central and northern provinces, it also pushed farmers into debt. If they do not get help now, they could turn back to poppy-growing and lose their faith in the government, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Mr. Costa called for urgent assistance for farmers and regions that have abandoned poppy cultivation. He and others have also criticized the inefficiency of international aid.
Of $15 billion of reconstruction assistance given to Afghanistan since 2001, “a staggering 40 percent has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries,” the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said in a March report.
“Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world,” Mr. Costa said during a recent visit to Kabul. “I insist on the importance of increasing development assistance, making it more effective. Too much of it is eaten up by various bureaucracies and contractors.”
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7) Russian Warships Sail to Venezuela
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/world/europe/23ships.html?ref=world
MOSCOW — A squadron from the Russian Navy’s North Sea Fleet sailed for Venezuela on Monday, a Russian Navy spokesman said, in a bid by Russia to bolster military links in Latin America as relations with the United States continue to deteriorate.
The convoy — including the nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser Peter the Great and the anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko — left the fleet’s base in Severomorsk bound for the Venezuelan coast, where the ships will take part in joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan Navy sometime in November, said Igor Dygalo, a Russian Navy spokesman.
Stung by the West’s strong condemnation of Russia’s actions in last month’s war with Georgia, Moscow appears to have redoubled its efforts to strengthen ties with Venezuela, Cuba and other Latin American countries, in moves reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s proxy battles with the United States in the region during the Cold War.
Last week, two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers flew to Venezuela for exercises over the Caribbean Sea, and a Russian delegation led by Igor I. Sechin, a deputy prime minister and chairman of the Russian oil company Rosneft, visited Caracas and Havana for talks on expanding economic ties. It was Mr. Sechin’s second visit to the region in less than two months.
The decision to deploy Russian warships so close to the American coastline could also be linked to the Kremlin’s frustration over the presence of NATO and American naval vessels in the Black Sea, a region Moscow considers its sphere of influence. Earlier this month, an American naval ship delivered humanitarian aid to Georgia in one of the country’s Black Sea ports.
Russia has denied that the war in Georgia had any connection to the Russian navy’s planned exercises with Venezuela. “These exercises were planned long before the Georgian-Ossetian conflict,” Mr. Dygalo said. “They are not linked to the conflict.”
Meanwhile, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, plans to visit Russia this week, his second visit in two months.
In an interview broadcast by Russia’s Vesti 24 television on Saturday, Mr. Chávez said Latin America was freeing itself from the “imperial” influence from the United States and needed Russia’s friendship.
“Not only Venezuela, but all of Latin America needs friends like Russia,” Mr. Chavez said. “For economic development, for the support of all Latin America, for the lives of the people of our continent.”
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8) London Protesters Demand an End to US Coups
September 22nd 2008, by Paul Haste and Charley Allan - Morning Star
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index2.php/ex/examples
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3816
SCORES of solidarity campaigners picketed the US embassy in London on Wednesday night before a huge rally at the National Union of Journalists head office to demand an end to US interference in Latin America.
Responding to ongoing coup attempts in Bolivia and Venezuela, NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said that it was ironic that he was protesting outside the US embassy when its government had nationalised more of its economy in the last few days than Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had in the last decade.
"The US is standing up for privilege, for the interest of the few against the interest of the many and will go to any length to achieve it," he stormed.
"It will go to the lengths that it did in Chile and will drown the revolution in blood if it gets the opportunity," referring to the CIA-orchestrated coup against Salvadore Allende 35 years ago.
"But there is one big difference - we are prepared, we have learned the lessons and we are already organised."
The 100-strong crowd chanted "No More Coups" and waved colourful solidarity banners as embassy workers left for the day.
Dozens of people made speeches in English and Spanish, with some making the point that, in the dying days of US President Bush's regime, many people thought that he would attack Iran - yet it was clear that Latin America was the real target.
Loud cheers went up whenever speakers brought up the expulsion the US ambassador in Bolivia because of his links to coup-plotters and Venezuela doing the same in solidarity, with cries of "Yankee go home" filling Grosvenor Square.
At the NUJ headquarters, Bolivian ambassador Maria Beatriz Souviron explained how the traditional political system in Bolivia had been swept away with the election of=2 0Evo Morales.
"He has given people hope for the first time. There has not just been a change in who controls the state, but also a change in culture in a country that has been racist for so long."
Bolivia Solidarity Campaign organiser Amancay Colque, who helped organise the actions with Hands Off Venezuela, brought harrowing news from the northern state of Pando, where the far-right governor threatened to split from Bolivia and had paid mercenaries to machine-gun rural workers loyal to Morales.
She explained how the elite was fuelling racism to try to divide Bolivians and that, in the right's eastern stronghold of Santa Cruz, it was now impossible for an Aymara or Quechua indigenous Bolivian to walk down the street without being attacked.
John McDonnell MP pointed out that "what is happening is not a personal attack on Morales or Chavez but an attack on the seeds of socialism that they are spreading.
"What the US is terrified of is the prospect that socialism will catch light all across the Americas, so of course it has to go on the attack. But it is exactly for this moment that solidarity campaigns exist."
Venezuelan charge d'affaires Felix Plasencia said that he was "honoured to stand with Bolivia as all Latin America struggles for dignity, sovereignty and independence. We have finally thrown off the US Monroe Doctrine that treated us as their ‘backyard' for 200 years.
"The aim now is to extend this people's power throughout20Latin America and the solidarity shown to Bolivia as it fights back against counter-revolutionaries is a significant step in uniting our countries," he added to great applause.
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9) ‘Running Out of Time’ [U.S. War in Pakistan...bw]
Editorial
September 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/opinion/22mon1.html?hp
Pakistan’s military is threatening to shoot American troops if they launch another raid into Pakistan’s territory. Whether the threat is real or meant solely for domestic consumption, there is a real danger of miscalculation that would be catastrophic for both countries.
President Bush’s decision to authorize Special Operations forces in Afghanistan to go after militants in Pakistan’s lawless border region was a desperation move. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, admitted earlier this month that America and its allies were “running out of time” to save Afghanistan.
We certainly share his alarm and his clear frustration that the Pakistanis are doing too little to defeat the extremists or stop their attacks into Afghanistan. But Mr. Bush and his aides should be just as alarmed about Pakistan’s unraveling — Saturday’s horrific bombing at Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel is only the latest sign — and working a lot harder to come up with a policy that bolsters Pakistan’s fragile civilian government while enlisting its full support in the fight against extremists.
If an American raid captured or killed a top Qaeda or Taliban operative, the backlash might be worth it. But if there is any chance of permanently rooting out extremists from the tribal areas, that will have to be done by Pakistan’s military, backed up with sustained programs for economic and political development.
For that, Washington must finally persuade Pakistan’s leaders that this is not just America’s fight but essential to their own security and survival as a democracy. And Pakistan’s leaders must persuade their citizens.
We fear that a rising number of civilian casualties, on both sides of the border, is driving more people into the hands of the repressive Taliban and other extremist groups. These attacks are also making Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, look weak and irrelevant.
He is an undeniably flawed leader, with little political experience and a history tainted by charges of corruption. But he deserves a chance, and American support, to fulfill his promises to bolster democracy, clean up Pakistan’s intelligence services and work with the United States to defeat terrorism.
Mr. Zardari made a start, inviting President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to his inauguration. In a speech to Parliament on Saturday — hours before the bombing — he said his government would not allow terrorists to launch attacks on any neighbor from Pakistani soil, nor would it tolerate further American military incursions. Admiral Mullen made a fence-mending trip to Pakistan last week and Pentagon officials say they are reviewing the overall strategy. Any revised plan must do a lot more to avoid civilian casualties and support, rather than undermine, Pakistan’s civilian leaders. Congress can do its part by approving a $7.5 billion aid package, intended to strengthen Pakistan’s democratic institutions and its counterinsurgency capabilities.
The Pentagon also needs to quickly come up with a better strategy in Afghanistan. Commanders warn that Mr. Bush’s promise to send 4,500 additional troops falls far short. We fear that Admiral Mullen is right: there isn’t much time left — on either side of the border.
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10) Iraqi Citizen Patrols Simmer in Face of Change
By ERICA GOODE
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/world/middleeast/23awake.html?hp
BAGHDAD — In a neighborhood that only a year ago was among the most dangerous in Baghdad, the violence last week seemed almost negligible: A shootout near a checkpoint on Sunday left two people dead. Another man was killed on Monday by a small bomb placed under a car.
Some residents of Adhamiya hardly noticed.
But the deaths quickly drew the attention of the American officers stationed in the neighborhood. Both involved members of the Awakening Councils, the citizen patrols that have been paid by the Americans to fight the insurgency.
And both were seen as a worrisome sign of the tension and infighting that has rippled through the Sunni-dominated Awakening groups in recent weeks, just as the American military plans to hand over control for half the groups to the Shia-led Iraqi government.
For more than a year, American soldiers have built up the councils — made up of about 100,000 mostly Sunni Muslims, many of them former insurgents. The Americans credit them for helping to greatly reduce violence around the country.
But now in Adhamiya, and in some other areas of Iraq, the patrols have become increasingly unpredictable and problematic. Commanders quarrel and compete for money and territory. Finger-pointing and threats are common. There have been complaints that the men — not a few of them swaggering street toughs — use their power to intimidate neighborhood residents. Sometimes violence erupts.
“What you have is essentially armed factions, like mini-gangs that operate in a certain set of checkpoints in certain territories,” said Lt. Erick Kuylman, a patrol commander in the First Battalion, 68th Armor regiment, which operates in Adhamiya.
The Awakening Councils, he said, “met their intent” when they started, but “they have outlived, I think, their service since then.”
Some American officers say it is no coincidence that the problems have worsened at a critical juncture for the Awakening movement and for American forces. On Oct. 1, 54,000 Awakening members in and around Baghdad — including those in Adhamiya, a Sunni stronghold that was the last place Saddam Hussein was seen before his government fell in 2003 — will be shifted to the payroll of an Iraqi government dominated by Shia Muslims, who were long persecuted under Mr. Hussein.
American military commanders have said that the success of the transition is a vitally important test of whether reconciliation is possible at a time when American troops are starting to draw down.
“It’s a very big deal to us to make sure that this goes off well,” Brig. Gen. Robin Swan, a deputy commander for the American forces in Baghdad, said recently. “We are taking it seriously, as is the government of Iraq.”
The military has spent months working out the mechanics of the transition, hoping to head off problems. But some American officers have expressed concerns that should the transition go badly, the lure of working for the insurgency might prove too great for some Awakening members, in particular top leaders, who stand to lose lucrative management fees and higher salaries. The result could threaten the fragile stability attained in much of the country in recent months.
In Adhamiya, where horrific attacks by insurgents were once so frequent that American and Iraqi forces built a three-mile concrete wall around the neighborhood, the patrols may be especially susceptible.
Ghassan Mutar, an Awakening leader in the neighborhood, said on Monday that if the government did not deliver on its assurances, “People will be absolutely angry.
“If anyone offers them money to plant bombs or attack Americans, some might go back to the insurgency,” Mr. Mutar said.
Other areas of Iraq, like Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, where local leaders say Awakening groups have carried out kidnappings and killings aimed at other rival councils, may also be fertile recruiting grounds for insurgent groups.
Some Awakening leaders say they have little faith in Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki’s promises that about 20 percent of the Awakening members will be incorporated into the Iraqi army or police and the rest will be given civilian jobs or job training.
More likely, they say, is that government officials will dissolve the patrols and arrest any former insurgents who are viewed as a threat.
Iraqi army commanders have repeatedly said there will be no mass arrests after the transfer. But Awakening members in some areas say that their leaders are being pursued and driven out. The issue of arrests has clearly been a factor in discussions between American and Iraqi officers about the transfer.
In Adhamiya, nervousness about the transfer has worsened frictions.
“Because no one really knows how the transition is going to go, they’re all assuming the worst,” said Lieutenant Kuylman, who has become intimately familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the Awakening groups in Adhamiya in the three months he has been stationed there.
He said that how the Iraqi government handles the transfer is crucial.
“If they don’t have their pieces lined up before they start making moves it’s going to be disastrous,” Lieutenant Kuylman said, adding, “You’re faced with people put in power and they obviously aren’t going to want to give it up.”
For the last several weeks, he and other officers have spent much of their time trying to soothe fears, calm tempers and mediate disputes between one Awakening commander and another or between the Awakening councils and the Iraqi Army. On Sunday, an Iraqi colonel, Adel Hussain Ali al-Tahi, was appointed to oversee the patrols, because warring Awakening council factions could not agree on which commander would succeed the outgoing top leader, known as Abu Abed.
Last week, lines of American Humvees moved from checkpoint to checkpoint, the patrol commanders answering Awakening guards’ questions and offering assurances: “We’re not going to abandon you” and “We’re still going to be here.”
The attention has not been a mere formality. Early last week, an already tense situation rapidly escalated into a crisis.
As a dust storm settled over Baghdad, the son of a local council leader drove his Mercedes up to a checkpoint manned by Awakening guards in Adhamiya.
The guards, stationed near the line where the territories of two commanders meet, knew the council leader’s son, but they stopped his car anyway and searched it. An argument erupted. A few hours later there was a fistfight. Someone shot a Kalashnikov in the air and wild firing began on all sides. Two people were killed, one of them a cousin of a powerful Awakening commander.
News of the shootings spread quickly, and American and Iraqi army officers rushed in to defuse the situation. At 3 a.m., a meeting was held at the house of a tribal leader, with representatives of all sides present. They watched a videotape of the shootings, recorded by a camera at an American base about 325 yards away. Soon after, 19 men were arrested for questioning, 16 of them Awakening members, according to American officers. The men have since been released.
The next day, a small car bomb went off near the house of a senior Awakening leader who attended the reconciliation session, killing one of his guards.
Last Tuesday, as Awakening leaders met with officers from the Iraqi and American armies to discuss the details of the transfer of the councils, the discussion quickly dissolved into angry complaints and recriminations about the shootings and the arrests.
One commander, Ali Abdul Jabbar, whose cousin had been killed in the shootout, shouted: “I have my family waiting for me and they are crying. Why did they arrest my guys?”
Sheikh Sabri al-Mishhdany, whose guard was killed by the car bomb the day before, leaped to his feet and in turn accused Mr. Jabbar’s camp of planting the bomb.
“Why don’t tell they tell the truth?” Mr. Mishhdany said, speaking of the other Awakening leaders.
“I know what’s going on,” he said. “It’s all inside the Awakening. All the Awakening guys, you have problems with each other. Let everyone go home and let the Coalition Forces deal with Adhamiya, the Iraqi Army and the coalition forces, and there will be no more Awakening.”
Lt. Col. Michael Pappal, the commander of the 1-68, began the meeting by explaining the details of the transfer. It was still unknown, he said, whether the commanders would continue to receive higher salaries than the $300 paid to rank and file members. If the Iraqi government would not pay the salaries, he said, the American military was considering topping off the base pay with stipends, but no decision had yet been reached.
“We’re trying to make the transfer as transparent as possible, meaning you would never know there was a change,” Colonel Pappal said.
He patiently answered questions and listened to several different accounts of how the shootings occurred and who was responsible. But his voice sharpened when one Awakening leader badgered him for details of the investigation into the shooting.
“I’m not discussing that,” he said. “Everybody was shooting that day. There will be no more S.O.I.-on-S.O.I. shooting at each other any more.”
Sons of Iraq, or S.O.I., is the name used by the American military for the Awakening Council members.
Colonel Pappal pleaded with the assembled leaders for information about who was planning a series of small car bombs in the neighborhood.
“I guarantee you there are people in this room that know where the sticky bombs are coming from,” he said.
He said later that at first he thought the bombs were planted by other Awakening members. But new intelligence, he said, indicated they came from “outside,” presumably Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led. In an e-mail message, he added that the frictions among the Awakening leaders made things easier for the insurgents.
Toward the end of the meeting on Tuesday, the door opened, and Maj. Gen. Mizher al-Azawi, the commander of the 11th Iraqi Army Division, entered the room.
He had heard, he said, about the shootings, and he wanted to hear what they had to say.
The Awakening leaders, who had not hesitated to interrupt or even talk over Colonel Pappal, suddenly fell silent.
The American commander might be their past and present, but the Iraqi general in front of them was now their future.
Reporting was contributed by Mudahfer al-Husaini, Riyadh Mohammed and Atheer Kakan from Baghdad and employees of The New York Times from Baghdad, and Diyala and Salahuddin provinces.
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11) A Second Opinion?
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/opinion/23herbert.html?hp
Does anyone think it’s just a little weird to be stampeded into a $700 billion solution to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression by the very people who brought us the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?
How about a second opinion?
Everything needs much closer scrutiny in these troubled times because no one even knows who is in charge, much less what is going on. Have you ever seen a president who was more irrelevant than George W. Bush is right now?
The treasury secretary, Henry Paulson — heralded as King Henry on the cover of Newsweek — has been handed the reins of government, and he’s galloping through the taxpayers’ money like a hard-charging driver in a runaway chariot race.
“We need this legislation in a week,” he said on Sunday, referring to the authorization from Congress to implement his hastily assembled plan to bail out the wildly profligate U.S. financial industry. The plan stands at $700 billion as proposed, but could go to a trillion dollars or more.
Mr. Paulson spoke on the Sunday morning talk shows about “bad lending practices” and “irresponsible borrowing” and “irresponsible lending” and “illiquid assets.”
The sky was falling, he seemed to be saying, and if the taxpayers didn’t pony up $700 billion in the next few days, all would be lost. No time to look at the fine print. Hurry, hurry, said the treasury secretary.
His eyes, as he hopped from one network camera to another, said, as salesmen have been saying since the dawn of time: “Trust me.”
With all due respect to Mr. Paulson, who is widely regarded as a smart and fine man, we need to slow this process down. We got into this mess by handing out mortgages like lollipops to people who paid too little attention to the fine print, who in many cases didn’t understand it or didn’t care about it.
And the people who always pretended to know better, who should have known better, the mortgage hucksters and the gilt-edged, high-rolling, helicopter-flying Wall Street financiers, kept pushing this bad paper higher and higher up the pyramid without looking at the fine print themselves, not bothering to understand it, until all the crap came raining down on the rest of us.
Yes, the system came perilously close to collapse last week and needs to be stabilized as quickly as possible. But we don’t know yet that King Henry’s fiat, his $700 billion solution, is the best solution. Like the complex mortgage-based instruments at the heart of this debacle, nobody has a real grasp yet of the vast implications of Mr. Paulson’s remedy.
Experts need some reasonable amount of time — I’m talking about days, not weeks — to home in on the weak points, the loopholes, the potential unintended consequences of a bailout of this magnitude.
The patchwork modifications being offered by Democrats in Congress are insufficient. Reasonable estimates need to be made of the toll to be taken on taxpayers. Reasonable alternatives need to be heard.
I agree with the economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, that while the government needs to move with dispatch, there is also a need to make sure that taxpayers’ money is used only where “absolutely necessary.”
Lobbyists, bankers and Wall Street types are already hopping up and down like over-excited children, ready to burst into the government’s $700 billion piñata. This widespread eagerness is itself an indication that there is something too sweet about the Paulson plan.
This is not supposed to be a good deal for business. “The idea is that you’re coming here because you would be going bankrupt otherwise,” said Mr. Baker. “You’re coming here because you have no alternative. You’re getting a bad deal, but it’s better than going out of business. That’s how it should be structured.”
The markets tanked again on Monday as oil prices skyrocketed. Time is indeed short, but alternative voices desperately need to be heard because the people who have been running the economy for so long — who have ruined it — cannot be expected to make things right again in 48 or 96 hours.
Mr. Paulson himself was telling us during the summer that the economy was sound, that its long-term fundamentals were “strong,” that growth would rebound by the end of the year, when most of the slump in housing prices would be over.
He has been wrong every step of the way, right up until early last week, about the severity of the economic crisis. As for President Bush, the less said the better.
The free-market madmen who treated the American economy like a giant casino have had their day. It’s time to drag them away from the tables and into the sunlight of reality.
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12) Shell Opens an Office in Baghdad After a 36-Year Absence
By SAM DAGHER
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/world/middleeast/23iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD — Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, completed a multibillion-dollar natural gas deal with the Iraqi government on Monday and said it had established an office in Baghdad — the first foreign petroleum giant to do so since Iraq nationalized its oil industry more than three decades ago.
The company described its decision to open an office here as a milestone that partly reflected the vast improvement in Iraq’s stability compared with conditions during the worst years of the war. But in a sobering reminder of the underlying dangers of doing business here, the company would not disclose the location of its office, and the senior Shell official who announced the gas deal was accompanied by a phalanx of armed guards.
“We are ready to establish a presence,” the official, Linda Cook, executive director of the company’s gas and power unit, said during a news conference in Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone.
Ms. Cook, who oversaw the signing of the gas deal with the Iraqi government, appeared with Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani.
The joint venture — to recapture gas that now goes to waste during oil extraction in Basra, in southern Iraq — is the company’s official return to Iraq after 36 years. Shell, along with the predecessors to BP, Exxon Mobil and Total, was among the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company before the companies lost their concessions to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose in the 1970s.
Much of the recaptured gas will go to power stations and industrial sites like petrochemical and fertilizer plants, Mr. Shahristani said.
The signing of the deal was expected; Shell is one of more than 30 foreign companies bidding on long-term contracts for six important oil fields. The winners are to be announced in 2009. A condition for any winning bid set by the Iraqi government is that the company be willing to establish a presence in Baghdad.
Shell was also among a smaller group of Western companies negotiating no-bid contracts to help Iraq increase production from existing oil fields, but the process was suspended earlier this month following criticism from several United States senators.
Mr. Shahristani praised the gas joint venture, which will be 51 percent owned by the Iraqi government through the South Oil Company and 49 percent by Shell, as a step to address Iraq’s chronic and crippling power shortages.
Besides their economic implications, the power problems have become a highly charged political and emotional issue for Iraqis.
The deal with Shell came on the heels of a $3 billion agreement with China to develop the Ahdab oil field in the south, which was signed last month.
Eleven people died in violence on Monday, and the American military said a soldier had been killed by small-arms fire in Baghdad on Sunday.
In Diyala Province, two people were killed when a roadside bomb was detonated near the car they were driving in, according to police officials in Baquba, the provincial capital.
In Hamam al Alil, a town about 10 miles south of Mosul, five children were killed and three were wounded when their soccer ball hit a roadside bomb on the street where they were playing.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated his car at midday near a Shiite mosque in the busy Karrada neighborhood, killing himself and two passers-by and wounding nine people. A mortar shell killed one person in the Tobchi neighborhood, on the west side of the Tigris.
Alissa J. Rubin and Atheer Kakan contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad, Mosul and Diyala.
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13) Housing Experts Say Bailout Proposal May Do Little for Homeowners
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
September 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/23mortgage.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON — Even if the Treasury Department reaches agreement with Democratic leaders in Congress on its $700 billion proposal to bail out for the mortgage industry, housing experts warned on Monday that the plan might do little to help troubled borrowers stay in their houses.
As House and Senate lawmakers struggled to reach a deal with the Bush administration, one of the most vexing battles was how much the plan should balance a rescue of financial institutions with a rescue of homeowners facing foreclosure.
Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, has put top priority on bailing out financial institutions by buying up soured mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, so banks and other lenders can clean up their balance sheets and get back to normal lending.
But Democrats are insisting that the Treasury Department also help restructure many of those loans, by lowering the interest rate or the loan amount, to make the mortgages affordable and reduce the number of people who lose their homes through foreclosure.
The Bush administration has been lukewarm to that idea, but many housing and mortgage experts say the government would have a difficult time modifying mortgages even if it were eager to do so.
The vast majority of subprime mortgages — 90 percent or more, by some estimates — are inside giant pools, or trusts, which have in turn sold bonds with different levels of seniority to institutional investors around the world.
Even if the government acquires hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities, finance experts say, the Treasury Department would be unlikely to acquire all the bonds tied to a particular mortgage pool. And if the government did not own all those bonds, it might not have the power to demand changes in the underlying mortgages.
“We are literally spending hundreds of billions of dollars on subsidies for financial institutions,” said Christopher Mayer, a professor of real estate finance and vice dean at the Columbia School of Business. “This won’t do anything to help the housing market. This plan is about buying mortgage-backed securities, not mortgages, and there is a big difference.”
Amanda D. Darwin, a partner at the law firm of Nixon Peabody who specializes in both bankruptcy and securities law, said the Treasury Department was likely to become bogged down in legal problems if it tried any relief more radical than the cautious framework adopted earlier this year by the American Securitization Forum, an industry group.
“In order to modify loans beyond that framework, you have to have the consent of 100 percent of the holders of the affected securities,” Ms. Darwin said. And some of those investors, especially those holding senior securities that are shielded from many of the losses, may not want to sell out or make concessions.
Because of that problem, House and Senate Democrats are also demanding that the final bill change the bankruptcy law to give troubled homeowners more bargaining power with their lenders.
Proposals put forward by Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate banking committee, would allow bankruptcy judges to reduce a person’s loan amount or interest rate in much the way that bankruptcy judges decide how much money most other creditors receive.
Under current law, bankruptcy courts have long been prohibited from touching the terms of mortgages on a person’s primary residence.
Community advocates and consumer groups have argued for months that changing the law would cut through the tangle of legal conflicts involving most mortgages and give borrowers a big increase in their bargaining power with lenders.
“That is by orders of magnitude the best thing that can be done to keep people in their homes,” said Eric Stein, senior vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit group based in North Carolina.
On Monday, 30 community and consumer groups from around the country sent an open letter to lawmakers to press their case.
“It is an illusion to assume that bailing out financial institutions is the same thing as providing relief to foreclosure-plagued American homeowners,” said the groups, which included the Consumers Union, the National Council of La Raza and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. “The only way to make sure that relief is achieved is to give Main Street Americans what they need: Chapter 13 bankruptcy relief.”
But Mr. Paulson and the Bush administration remain firmly opposed to the proposal, known informally as a “cram-down,” saying it would frighten even more investors away from the mortgage market.
The banking and securities industries, meanwhile, are fighting the change with all their might, as they did when it came up with the housing bill that was adopted in July.
“Authorizing write-downs of mortgages by bankruptcy judges will increase the risks of mortgage lending at a time when the market is already struggling, and this will harm consumers,” wrote Floyd E. Stoner, a top lobbyist for the American Banking Association, in a statement on Monday.
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Wisconsin: A Gloomy Assessment for Milwaukee Public Schools
By CATRIN EINHORN
National Briefing | Midwest
Members of the Milwaukee Public Schools board passed a resolution to explore dissolving the school system, but state education officials said the board did not have the authority to actually do so. The board’s 6-to-3 vote to research the possibility came after Superintendent William G. Andrekopoulos described the city’s school financing structure as “broken,” painting a bleak picture of steep property tax increases and deep budget cuts. But dissolving the public school system would require action in the Legislature, or else the City Council would have to change Milwaukee’s city classification, sparking other changes in governance, said Patrick Gasper of the Wisconsin Department of Education. While the full nine-member school board voted, it was a committee vote, and the proposal faces a final vote on Thursday.
September 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/us/20brfs-AGLOOMYASSES_BRF.html?ref=us
California: Chief Wants Officers Fired for Misconduct
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | West
Police Chief William J. Bratton of Los Angeles has recommended that four officers be fired for misconduct when force was used to clear a park in a 2007 immigration rally. He also recommended that 11 other officers face discipline ranging from reprimands to suspensions of up to 10 days without pay. The rally ended when the police formed a skirmish line and swept through the crowd in MacArthur Park. Some officers struck peaceful rallygoers and journalists with batons and bean-bag rounds. A personnel investigation led to 80 accusations against 29 officers. The chief sustained 31 accusations against 15 officers.
September 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/us/17brfs-CHIEFWANTSOF_BRF.html?ref=us
Health Costs: More Burden on the Worker
By PHYLLIS KORKKI
The Count
Don’t cheer when you hear that health care cost increases are expected to ease slightly for employers in 2009. This is not a sign that medical costs are beginning to stabilize. Rather, it means that businesses are moving aggressively to shift the burden to their employees.
Mercer, the consulting firm, expects employers’ health benefit costs to rise 5.7 percent in 2009, based on preliminary results of a survey. Increases have hovered at about 6 percent a year since 2005.
If you are on your company’s health plan, you might want to brace yourself for higher deductibles, as well as higher co-payments, higher premiums or both. You might also end up joining a consumer-directed plan, in which, for example, you would pay a lower premium in exchange for a higher upfront deductible.
Businesses also say they intend to improve their health and wellness programs so that their employees don’t stay sick as long and — in the best-case situation — don’t become sick in the first place.
September 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/business/14count.html?ref=business
Bishops Want Immigration Raids to End
By JULIA PRESTON
National Briefing | Immigration
Roman Catholic bishops urged the Bush administration to halt workplace immigration raids, saying the “humanitarian cost” was “unacceptable in a civilized society.” Speaking on behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, John C. Wester, the bishop of Salt Lake City said that the escalating number of worksite raids over the past year had spread fear in immigrant communities and had made it difficult for detained immigrants to obtain legal representation. Bishop Wester also called on the Department of Homeland Security to refrain from conducting raids in churches, health centers and schools.
September 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/us/12brfs-001.html?ref=us
Mississippi: Conviction Overturned
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned the conviction of a reputed Ku Klux Klan member serving three life sentences for his role in the 1964 abduction and killing of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi. The man, James Ford Seale, 73, was convicted in June 2007 on kidnapping and conspiracy charges related to the abductions of the teenagers, Charles E. Moore and Henry H. Dee. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the statute of limitations for kidnapping had expired in the decades between the crimes and the charges.
September 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/us/11brfs-CONVICTIONOV_BRF.html?ref=us
Utah: Mine Collapse Case Goes to Prosecutors
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Rockies
Federal mining officials have asked prosecutors to decide whether criminal charges are warranted in the deaths of nine people in last year’s collapse of the Crandall Canyon mine. The Mine Safety and Health Administration has been investigating two cave-ins at the mine in August 2007 that killed six miners and three rescuers. The safety agency has already fined the operator $1.34 million for violations that it says directly contributed to the deaths. Richard Stickler, an acting assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health, said the mine’s operator and its engineering consultants demonstrated reckless disregard for safety. Mr. Stickler said the safety agency had referred the case to the Justice Department for possible criminal charges.
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/us/04brfs-MINECOLLAPSE_BRF.html?ref=us
National Briefing | Immigration
Rabbis Endorse Certification Plan
By JULIA PRESTON
The organization of Reform rabbis endorsed a movement led by Conservative Jews to create an additional certification for kosher food that would show that the producer met ethical standards for the treatment of workers. In a resolution, the Central Conference of American Rabbis promised to work cooperatively with the movement known as Hekhsher Tzedek, meaning “justice certification,” to develop the new seal of approval, which would be applied only to food certified as kosher according to traditional Jewish dietary laws. It would confirm that the producer met certain standards for wages and employee safety. The resolution was evidence of a new interest in kosher practice by Reform Jews, who do not generally follow strict dietary laws. The Reform rabbis said reports of “abusive and unethical treatment of workers” at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, were “particularly distressing.”
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/us/04brfs-RABBISENDORS_BRF.html?ref=us
Illinois: School Financing Protest
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Midwest
More than 1,000 Chicago public school students boycotted the first day of classes in a protest over school financing and instead rode buses more than 30 miles north to try to enroll in a wealthy suburban district. About 1,100 elementary students and 150 high school students from Chicago filled out enrollment applications in the New Trier district in Northfield, said the New Trier superintendent, Linda Yonke. Boycott organizers acknowledged the move was largely symbolic: Students would have to pay tuition to attend a school outside their home district. In Illinois, property taxes account for about 70 percent of school financing, meaning rural and inner-city schools generally end up with less to spend per student than suburban schools.
September 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/us/03brfs-SCHOOLFINANC_BRF.html?ref=education
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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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/
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12 year old Ossetian girl tells the truth about Georgia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5idQm8YyJs4
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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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Canada: American Deserter Must Leave
By IAN AUSTEN
August 14, 2008
World Briefing | Americas
Jeremy Hinzman, a deserter from the United States Army, was ordered Wednesday to leave Canada by Sept. 23. Mr. Hinzman, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, left the Army for Canada in January 2004 and later became the first deserter to formally seek refuge there from the war in Iraq. He has been unable to obtain permanent immigrant status, and in November, the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear an appeal of his case. Vanessa Barrasa, a spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency, said Mr. Hinzman, above, had been ordered to leave voluntarily. In July, another American deserter was removed from Canada by border officials after being arrested. Although the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not backed the Iraq war, it has shown little sympathy for American deserters, a significant change from the Vietnam War era.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/world/americas/14briefs-canada.html?ref=world
Iraq War resister Robin Long jailed, facing three years in Army stockade
Free Robin Long now!
Support GI resistance!
Soldier Who Deserted to Canada Draws 15-Month Term
By DAN FROSCH
August 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/us/23resist.html?ref=us
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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Yet Another Insult: Mumia Abu-Jamal Denied Full-Court Hearing by 3rd Circuit
& Other News on Mumia
This mailing sent by the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PLEASE FORWARD AND DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
1. Mumia Abu-Jamal Denied Full-Court Hearing by 3rd Circuit
2. Upcoming Events for Mumia
3. New Book on the framing of Mumia
1. MUMIA DENIED AGAIN -- Adding to its already rigged, discriminatory record with yet another insult to the world's most famous political prisoner, the federal court for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia has refused to give Mumia Abu-Jamal an en banc, or full court, hearing. This follows the rejection last March by a 3-judge panel of the court, of what is likely Mumia's last federal appeal.
The denial of an en banc hearing by the 3rd Circuit, upholding it's denial of the appeal, is just the latest episode in an incredible year of shoving the overwhelming evidence of Mumia's innocence under a rock. Earlier in the year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court also rejected Jamal's most recent state appeal. Taken together, state and federal courts in 2008 have rejected or refused to hear all the following points raised by Mumia's defense:
1. The state's key witness, Cynthia White, was pressured by police to lie on the stand in order to convict Mumia, according to her own admission to a confidant (other witnesses agreed she wasn't on the scene at all)
2. A hospital "confession" supposedly made by Mumia was manufactured by police. The false confession was another key part of the state's wholly-manufactured "case."
3. The 1995 appeals court judge, Albert Sabo--the same racist who presided at Mumia's original trial in 1982, where he said, "I'm gonna help 'em fry the n....r"--was prejudiced against him. This fact was affirmed even by Philadelphia's conservative newspapers at the time.
4. The prosecutor prejudiced the jury against inn ocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, by using a slimy tactic already rejected by the courts. But the prosecutor was upheld in Mumia's case!
5. The jury was racially skewed when the prosecution excluded most blacks from the jury, a practice banned by law, but, again, upheld against Mumia!
All of these defense claims were proven and true. But for the courts, these denials were just this year’s trampling on the evidence! Other evidence dismissed or ignored over the years include: hit-man Arnold Beverly said back in the 1990s that he, not Mumia, killed the slain police officer (Faulkner). Beverly passed a lie detector test and was willing to testify, but he got no hearing in US courts! Also, Veronica Jones, who saw two men run from the scene just after the shooting, was coerced by police to lie at the 1982 trial, helping to convict Mumia. But when she admitted this lie and told the truth on appeal in 1996, she was dismissed by prosecutor-in-robes Albert Sabo in 1996 as "not credible!" (She continues to support Mumia, and is writing a book on her experiences.) And William Singletary, the one witness who saw the whole thing and had no reason to lie, and who affirmed that someone else did the shooting, said that Mumia only arriv ed on the scene AFTER the officer was shot. His testimony has been rejected by the courts on flimsy grounds. And the list goes on.
FOR THE COURTS, INNOCENCE IS NO DEFENSE! And if you're a black revolutionary like Mumia the fix is in big-time. Illusions in Mumia getting a "new trial" out of this racist, rigged, kangaroo-court system have been dealt a harsh blow by the 3rd Circuit. We need to build a mass movement, and labor action, to free Mumia now!
2. UPCOMING EVENTS FOR MUMIA --
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA -- Speaking Tour by J Patrick O'Connor, the author of THE FRAMING OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, in the first week of October 2008, sponsored by the Mobilization To Free Mumia. Contributing to this tour, the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia will hold a public meeting with O'Connor on Friday October 3rd, place to be announced. San Francisco, South Bay and other East Bay venues to be announced. Contact the Mobilization at 510 268-9429, or the LAC at 510 763-2347, for more information.
3. NEW BOOK ON MUMIA
Efficiently and Methodically Framed--Mumia is innocent! That is the conclusion of THE FRAMING OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, by J Patrick O'Connor (Lawrence Hill Books), published earlier this year. The author is a former UPI reporter who took an interest in Mumia's case. He is now the editor of Crime Magazine (www.crimemagazine.com).
O'Connor offers a fresh perspective, and delivers a clear and convincing breakdown on perhaps the most notorious frame-up since Sacco and Vanzetti. THE FRAMING OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL is based on a thorough analysis of the 1982 trial and the 1995-97 appeals hearings, as well as previous writings on this case, and research on the MOVE organization (with which Mumia identifies), and the history of racist police brutality in Philadelphia.
While leaving some of the evidence of Mumia's innocence unconsidered or disregarded, this book nevertheless makes clear that there is a veritable mountain of evidence--most of it deliberately squashed by the courts--that shows that Mumia was blatantly and deliberately framed by corrupt cops and courts, who "fixed" this case against him from the beginning. This is a case not just of police corruption, or a racist lynching, though it is both. The courts are in this just as deep as the cops, and it reaches to the top of the equally corrupt political system.
"This book is the first to convincingly show how the Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney's Office efficiently and methodically framed [Mumia Abu-Jamal]." (from the book jacket)
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal has a limited number of THE FRAMING ordered from the publisher at a discount. We sold our first order of this book, and are now able to offer it at a lower price. $12 covers shipping. Send payment to us at our address below:
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610 • 510.763.2347
www.laboractionmumia.org • LACFreeMumia@aol.com
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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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Video: The Carbon Connection -- The human impact of carbon trading
[This is an eye-opening and important video for all who are interested in our environment...bw]
Two communities affected by one new global market – the trade in carbon
dioxide. In Scotland, a town has been polluted by oil and chemical
companies since the 1940s. In Brazil, local people's water and land is
being swallowed up by destructive monoculture eucalyptus tree
plantations. Both communities now share a new threat.
As part of the deal to reduce greenhouse gases that cause dangerous
climate change, major polluters can now buy carbon credits that allow
them to pay someone else to reduce emissions instead of cutting their
own pollution. What this means for those living next to the oil industry
in Scotland is the continuation of pollution caused by their toxic
neighbours. Meanwhile in Brazil, the schemes that generate carbon
credits give an injection of cash for more planting of the damaging
eucalyptus plantations.
40 minutes | PAL/NTSC | English/Spanish/Portuguese subtitles.The Carbon Connection is a Fenceline Films presentation in partnership with the Transnational Institute Environmental Justice Project and Carbon Trade Watch, the Alert Against the Green Desert Movement, FASE-ES, and the Community Training and Development Unit.
Watch at http://links.org.au/node/575
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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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