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DEFEND FREE SPEECH!
Six days left to stop new SF ordinance restricting picketing, protests
Importance: High
The city of San Francisco is planning to amend their Noise Ordinance in such a way as to severely restrict protests and picketing by unions and protest groups using bullhorns. The SF Board of Supervisors approved this ordinance on first reading on Tues. Nov. 4. The vote was 9-2. Final approval of the ordinance is scheduled for Tues. Nov. 18. My understanding is that no public comment will be allowed, because it was first taken up by the Rules Committee.
This is our last chance to stop this dangerous ordinance from becoming law.
Please contact the Board of Supervisors to let them know about your opposition to Section 2909 (c) of this ordinance, and your concern that it could be used by the police to stop labor and political protests.
Here is the link to the proposed ordinance:
http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/bosagendas/materials/0811
San Francisco law allows use of a 10-watt bullhorn without a loudspeaker permit before 10 PM. Many labor unions and protest groups use these bullhorns at their rallies.
Section 2909 (c) of the proposed ordinance will outlaw use of a bullhorn at a union picketing site or protest rally that exceeds 10 db over the ambient level 25 feet from the bullhorn. (This limit does not apply to events for which a loudspeaker permit has been issued by the Entertainment Commission.)
From my experience, almost all bullhorn use at rallies exceeds that decibel level. No warning needs to be given before a citation is written. The sound level need only exceed that decibel level for a few seconds.
Please contact the Board of Supervisors to let them know about your opposition to Section 2909 (c) of this ordinance, and your concern that it could be used by the police to stop labor and political protests.
This is our last chance to stop this dangerous bill from becoming law.
Here are the email addresses of the Board members:
Aaron.Peskin@sfgov.org [(415) 554-7450], Jake.McGoldrick@sfgov.org [(415) 554-7410], Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.org [(415) 554-7752], Tom.Ammiano@sfgov.org [(415) 554-5144], Carmen.Chu@sfgov.org [(415) 554-7460], Chris.Daly@sfgov.org [(415) 554-7970], Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org [(415) 554-6968], Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org [(415) 554-6516], Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org [(415) 554-7670], Ross.Mirkarimi@sfgov.org [(415) 554-7630], Gerardo.Sandoval@sfgov.org [(415) 554-6975]
Here is a sample letter that has been sent to the supervisors:
Dear Supervisor -----
I am 3rd generation San Franciscan and 5th generation Bay Area resident who comes into the city to protest our issues of the day and cherish the openness and liberty given to Constitutional Rights within the city. SF is among the top 10 cities in the US and as such is a vehicle for citizen concerns to be heard and to create visibility for important issues nationally.
Any curtailing of First Amendment Rights locally is troubling, and is quite frankly illegal. The anti-bullhorn ordinance before you now is another troubling manifestation of business interests attempting to circumvent citizen protest, and shut out visible disagreement with their ruthless profit objectives that enslave the working class in poverty or drive young people to die in their empirical wars.
In these modern technological times ACCESS to free speech is as important as free speech and must be considered a component of fulfilling First Amendment rights. If protest cannot be heard you are shutting it down and eliminating effective communications solely to those with deep pockets that can advertise or own media outlets editing what is seen and heard.
Please shut this initiative down. Current laws are sufficient to keep sleeping citizens protected while allowing protest to be heard during daylight hours.
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Hard Times in Philadelphia
The hardships of the current financial meltdown are expected to hurt the working poor more than any other group. Here are the voices of five young job seekers who are struggling in Philadelphia.
November 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/09/us/20081109_EMPLOY_AUDIO.html
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"Justice is a word that resides in the dictionary. It occasionally makes its escape, but is promptly caught and put back where it belongs." --Jack Black
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Courage to Resist Mailing and Pizza Party
Thursday, November 13
6:00 pm to 10:00 pm
Courage to Resist Workspace
3945 Opal Street, Oakland CA 94609 (map)
Pizza and soda provided! Help Courage to Resist support the troops who refuse to fight by stuffing, stamping, and sealing envelopes. Our national mass mail fund appeal/newsletter accounts for about half of our operating budget--so this is a great way to help out. This newsletter will highlight the courage of recent GI resisters Blake Ivey, Tony Anderson and Benji Lewis. Help end the war… support the troops with the courage to resist!
Can't make it Thursday night? Drop in Wednesday or Thursday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm to help us get ahead start with pre-mailing party prep.
tony
(Tony Anderson is scheduled to be court martialed for resisting Iraq deployment at Ft. Carson, Colorado Monday morning, November 17. He is one example of the troops you will be supporting.)
Note that the Courage to Resist office space is not near our Lake Park Avenue mailbox.
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NATIONAL ASSEMBLY STATEMENT URGING UNITY OF THE
ANTIWAR MOVEMENT FOR THE MARCH 2009 ACTIONS
October 23, 2008
For more information please contact:
natassembly@aol.com or call 216-736-4704
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations welcomes the ANSWER Coalition's call for UNITED mass mobilizations in Washington , D.C. and other cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami, on March 21, 2009 to mark six years of war and occupation and to Bring the Troops Home Now! We also welcome UFPJ's call for a week of Washington, D.C. mobilizations during the same period to demand an end to the war in Iraq now.
These actions are necessary and need not be contradictory as long as there is unity in supporting them. However, a divided movement is a weakened movement. At this time, more than ever, the movements for peace and social justice must work in concert to bring the full force of opposition to the government's criminal and destructive policies into the streets. It would be a tragic setback if all organizations and constituencies do not come together to act in a unified show of strength and determination in March.
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations was formed to promote a united, democratic, independent and mass action antiwar movement to bring the troops home now. Our objective was to do all in our power to achieve this by the Spring of 2009. It now appears that this critical objective is within reach.
We strongly urge and will participate in the formation of an ad hoc national coalition to make the March 21 actions a true expression of the opposition of this country's majority to U.S. wars and occupations. The National Assembly will make every effort to bring such a coalition into fruition and to urge all Assembly supporters to actively participate in the process.
ANSWER CALL:
Mass Actions on the 6th Anniversary of the Iraq War -- March 21, 2009
Bring All the Troops Home Now -- End All Colonial Occupations!
Fund People's Needs, Not Militarism & Bank Bailouts!
Marking the sixth anniversary of the criminal invasion of Iraq, thousands will take to the streets of Washington D.C. and other cities across the U.S. and around the world in March 2009 to say, "Bring the Troops Home NOW!" We will also demand "End Colonial Occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Everywhere," and "Fund Peoples' Needs Not Militarism and Bank Bailouts." We also insist on an end to the war threats and economic sanctions against Iran.
The ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is organizing for unified mass marches and rallies in Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and other cities on Saturday, March 21, 2009. Months ago we obtained permits for sixth anniversary demonstrations. ANSWER has been actively involved with other coalitions, organizations, and networks to organize unified anti-war demonstrations in the spring of 2009. ANSWER participated in the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations that was held in Cleveland, Ohio on June 28th-29th and attended by 450 people, including many national and local anti-war coalitions. The National Assembly gathering agreed to promote national, unified anti-war demonstrations in the Spring of 2009.
The war in Iraq has killed, wounded or displaced nearly a third of Iraq's 26 million people. Thousands of U.S. soldiers have been killed and hundreds of thousands more have suffered severe physical and psychological wounds. The cost of the war is now running at $700 million dollars per day, over $7,000 per second. The U.S. leaders who have initiated and conducted this criminal war should be tried and jailed for war crimes.
The war in Afghanistan is expanding, and both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and Congressional leaders have promised to send in more troops. Both have promised to increase the size of the U. S. military. Both have promised to increase military aid to Israel to continue its oppression of the Palestinian people, including the denial of the right of return.
While millions of families are losing their homes, jobs and healthcare, the real military budget next year will top one trillion dollars, $1,000,000,000,000. If used to meet people's needs, that amount could create 10 million new jobs at $60,000 per year, provide healthcare for everyone who does not have it now, rebuild New Orleans and repair much of the damage done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Federal bailouts of the biggest banks and investors many of whom have also made billions in profits from militarism, are already up to an astounding $2.5 trillion this year. None of that money is earmarked for keeping millions of foreclosed and evicted families in their homes.
Coming just two months after the inauguration of the next president, March 21, 2009 will be a critical opportunity to let the new administration in Washington hear the voice of the people demanding justice.
Click this link to endorse the March 21 Actions
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=yt-lBsIiOd2uSysOF36QLg..
If you're planning a local March 21 anti-war action, let us know by clicking this link.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=1IyrxEUAK_9D1ihMASLTRA..
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
www.answercoalition.org
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
UFPJ CALL:
CALL FOR 6TH ANNIVERSARY NATIONAL MOBILIZATION IN WASHINGTON, DC
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/
March 19, 2009 will mark the 6th anniversary of the "Shock and Awe" campaign that launched the US war and occupation in Iraq . Six long years of a war based on lies, a war that never should have happened. Six long years of death and destruction, of human suffering and economic waste.
United For Peace and Justice calls on people throughout this nation to join us in a national mobilization against this war. On the occasion of this horrendous anniversary next March, we will gather in massive numbers in Washington , DC to say enough is enough, this war must end, it must end now and completely!
We issue this call now, before the critically important election in just a few weeks, because it is vital that the antiwar movement make it clear that our work is far from over and we are not going away. We issue this call now as a way to send a strong message to all those who seek to represent us in Washington : the people of this nation want our troops to come home now -- not in 16 months and not in 100 years!
The war in Iraq has taken too many lives - Iraqi and US - and has taken a tremendous toll on our economy. While we are glad to see some candidates saying they want the war to end, we know this will only happen because the people of this country keep raising their voices, keep taking action, keep pressuring their government to end this nightmare.
Between now and next March much will happen here at home and around the world. We will have elected a new President and a new Congress and the political landscape the antiwar movement works in will have been altered. No one knows where our economic crisis is headed or how exactly it will affect the lives of millions of people in our communities. At the same time, there is danger of escalation of military action in Afghanistan , Pakistan , Iran and other places - and the possibility of a dangerous new arms race with Russia .
As we plan for the March mobilization we will take these critically important issues into account. We know that all of the issues our nation needs to address are impacted by the continued war and occupation in Iraq , and that no real progress will be made on anything else until we end this war.
In the coming weeks and months, United For Peace and Justice will be discussing the plans for the 6th anniversary national mobilization with our partners and allies in the peace and justice movements around the country. As the details of our activities in Washington , DC come together we will get word out far and wide. Now, we ask you to take note of this call, mark your calendars for the whole week, and start making plans for your community's participation in what will surely be a timely and necessary mobilization.
From the UFPJ National Steering Committee
Issued on October 18, 2008
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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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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Free the Atenco 13!
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[col.writ. 10/23/08] (c) '08
PrisonRadio.org
2) Five simple things you can do to organize war resister support in your community
By Courage to Resist. November 7, 2008
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/637/1/
3) Cindy Sheehan writes to George Bush
Cindy Sheehan
Mother of Casey Austin Sheehan
KIA in Sadr City, Baghdad
April 04, 2004
4) Buying Binge Slams to Halt
By DAVID LEONHARDT
November 12, 2008
Economic Scene
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/business/economy/12leonhardt.html?hp
5) Paulson Says Treasury Is Shifting Focus of Bailout
By DAVID STOUT
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/business/economy/13bailout.html?hp
6) Wall Street Lower After Retail Data
By JACK HEALY
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/business/worldbusiness/13markets.html?hp
7) Justices Rule for Navy in Sonar Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:08 p.m. ET
November 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Navy-Sonar.html?hp
8) 4 Dead in Israel Battle on Gaza Border
By ISABEL KERSHNER
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/world/middleeast/13gaza.html?ref=world
9) Working Poor and Young Hit Hard in Downturn
By ERIK ECKHOLM
November 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/us/09young.html
10) Shape of things to come. Bank chief warns of deep recession
-Deflation bigger risk than inflation
-Sharp rise in unemployment
Larry Elliott and Ashley Seager
guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 13 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/13/inflation-deflation-interest-rates-recession
11) Family homelessness rising in the United States
By Ross Colvin - Analysis
Wed Nov 12, 2008 1:07am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AB18I20081112
12) Foreclosure Prevention Lite
Editorial
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/opinion/13thu1.html
13) Tough Times Seen for Big Economies
By DAVID JOLLY
November 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/business/worldbusiness/14euro.html?hp
14) Report Sees New Pollution Threat
By ANDREW JACOBS
November 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/world/14cloud.html?hp
15) Former Guantánamo Captives Continue to Struggle, Report Says
By REUTERS
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/us/13guantanamo.html?ref=world
16) A School Chief Takes On Tenure, Stirring a Fight
By SAM DILLON
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/education/13tenure.html?ref=us
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1) Free the Atenco 13!
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[col.writ. 10/23/08] (c) '08
PrisonRadio.org
As economies crumble around the globe, states are becoming increasingly repressive, especially against those who are its political opponents and resisters.
This isn't a regional observation, but a global one.
That tendency is seen in the prosecution and unjust sentencing of men and women from Atenco, Mexico.
The state repression stems from popular resistance to police attacks on flower vendors in May 2006 in Texcoco, Mexico. People supported the flower vendors and not the police, who are among the most corrupt in the world.
But, as ever repression breeds resistance, for the struggle to support the flower vendors led to pitched battles between the people and the State police. For two days (May 3rd and May 4th, 2006) the two sides battled back and forth, baton and rock, Molotov cocktail and projectile, hand to hand, like the ebb and flow of the sea on the shore. When the state seized several townspeople, people in turn held some of their agents, demanding freedom for their captive comrades. The police then arrested more than 200 people, beating, sexually abusing, raping and indeed, torturing them. Two young boys were killed.
These struggles took place in the villages of Texcoco and in San Salvador Atenco. Atenco has a long history of resistance to the central government, dating from before Mexico's Revolution of 1910.
So, among the over 200 men and women arrested, the state keyed on organizers and leaders, and brought out heavy ammunition to destroy them, and through them, the growing popular resistance to government repression and seizures of peasant and indigenous lands.
In 2001, the poor of Atenco organized the Peoples' Front for Defense of the Land (Frante de Pueblo por Defensa de Terra) and stopped former Mexican President Vincente Fox from grabbing their farmlands. When they prevailed, a movement was born. It was this group which spearheaded the defense of the flower vendors of nearby Texcoco, and it was this group which was targeted by the state.
A year after the May 2006 street battles, three prominent leaders of the Peoples' Front (FPDT), Ignacio del Valle, Felipe Alverez, and Hector Galindo were sentenced to 67 1/2 years in maximum security. Last August, "nacho" del Valle was hit with an additional 45 years for the Atenco Resistance.
He was not alone in this.
Others - Oscar Hernandez, Alejandro Pilon, Julio Espinosa, Pedro Reyes, Juan Carlos Estrada, Jorge Ordonez, Narciso Arellano, Ines Rodolfo Cuellar, and Eduardo Morales were each sentenced to almost 32 years in prison for their roles in the Atenco Resistance.* One of the flower vendors, Patricia Romero, was given 4 years (she, her father and son are now out on bail).
Members of the Peoples' Front and other Atenco activists are determined to fight for their people, and their freedom. They urge you to support their struggle. You may sign a petition seeking freedom for the Atenco political prisoners at: contraimpunidad@gmail.com
FREE THE ATENCO 13!
--(c) '08 maj
[Dear Friends: Please note that this is an edited rewrite of the original text. maj]
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2) Five simple things you can do to organize war resister support in your community
By Courage to Resist. November 7, 2008
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/637/1/
Support networks are a vital part of the war resistance movement: providing political, emotional, and material support to military objectors and helping amplify their stories of resistance lays the foundation for a strong movement and ensures that resisters do not have to go it alone. Through collective aid and alliance, we can act directly to stop unjust war and occupation.
This document contains suggestions about how your local community can get involved in these efforts. Please keep in mind that this is not meant to be a blueprint for what your organizing must look like, but rather, a collection of ideas and possibilities, to provide a starting point for those who are not sure how to begin. Courage to Resist would love to work with you in the future to figure out how these ideas best fit in with your community.
1. Organize regular letter writing parties to show support for war resisters in prison
War Resister Letter-Writing Parties provide a concrete way to show emotional support for war resisters and establish human connections between civilian support networks and troops refusing to fight. The idea is for a group of people to come together and write letters of support to war resisters who are either in prison, awaiting trial, or about to refuse service. However, you are welcome to get as creative as you want with your letter-writing party. You could write letters to the Canadian government asking them to let war resisters stay or to resisters' families providing them emotional support during a hard time. It is up to you!
One of the benefits of a letter-writing party is that they are relatively easy to pull together. All you need is a space to hold it, paper, envelopes, stamps, and people to attend. We will provide you with a list of profiles and contact information for war resisters and instructions on how to get the letters to them.
Here is our process for organizing a letter-writing party:
* Set the time, date, and location.
* Do outreach via email lists, flyering, local radio and newspapers, and word of mouth
* Set up the space: provide envelopes, stamps, and paper; leave blurbs, articles, and photographs featuring the resisters in a place where all can see; provide snacks; pass around a sign-in sheet with space for email addresses and phone numbers. If you feel comfortable, we would love to get any contacts you make at these events (names, email addresses, phone numbers, as long as folks are willing to share that info with us). That way, we can integrate people into our broader G.I. support network.
* During the actual event, it is up to you how you want to proceed. You might want to leave time at the beginning to speak about each resister and/or have a moment of silence for all of those who have gone to military prison for refusing to fight and those civilians and troops who have died in this war. You also might want to have featured speakers.
Hosting letter-writing parties on a consistent basis is an effective way to build your local war resister support community. If you want to start people thinking about this issue but do not know how, letter-writing parties are a great way to start.
2. Host a War Resister Speaking Event
Bringing a war resister to your community is a great way to raise local awareness and support for the G.I. resistance movement, put anti-war activists in touch with each other, and directly support war resisters. These events can be held in community centers, indymedia spaces, churches, infoshops, or union halls and can incorporate a diverse lineup of other speakers, musicians, and other performers.
We are in touch with several resisters around the country who would be happy to do speaking events. Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind:
* Please contact us with as much advance notice as possible. At least a month's notice is ideal, but we will not turn anyone away for contacting us too late. There will not always be someone available to do a speaking event, but we will do what we can to meet your community's needs.
* Try to give yourself at least three weeks to do outreach for your event, which should include flyering, sending emails, radio PSA, newspaper calendar, and word-of-mouth communication.You can also try and schedule radio interviews with your local station talk shows and the resister.
* Courage to Resist will work with war resisters to decide on honorariums and travel expenses on a case-by-case basis. But please keep in mind that many of these folks have to take time off of their jobs to do these events and would greatly appreciate it if some of their expenses could be covered. You can either ask people for donations at the door or pass a basket after the talk.
3. Help raise money for resister support
Raising funds is an incredibly important part of this work. We currently rely on approximately 2,000 contributors across the U.S. The average donation we receive is just over $40, and about half of our budget goes directly to supporting individual resisters.
Anything your community can do with helping raise funds, either for Courage to Resist or for individual resisters, would be greatly appreciated. Here are some fund raising ideas:
* Host a benefit show
* Hold a raffle
* Host a speaking event
* Throw a fund raising house party
Contributions can be made directly on our website at: www.couragetoresist.org/donate or mailed to our office at 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, CA 94610. Please get in touch if you have any questions or want to throw around fund raising ideas.
4. Create your own media
Helping spread the word about war resistance is an essential component of the G.I. movement against the war. There are many things you can do to spread the word in your local community. Here are just a few:
* Write Op ed letters expressing support for war resisters.
* Do interviews with war resisters and publish them in local indymedia
* Syndicate our war resister radio show on your community radio station
* Write stories and articles and try to get them placed in local media
* Help spread the word about war resisters as their cases arise
* Contact your local radio talk show hosts and see if you can schedule interviews with resisters.
5. Build a base of support for war resisters in your local community
Each of the above organizing points serve the larger goal of building a base of people to provide war resister support in your local community. In the G.I. resistance movement, many emergent situations arise. Resisters might find themselves in need of a place to stay, legal funds, assistance with a family problem, or moral support. A national support campaign might call for rallies throughout the country, letter-writing to Canadian parliament, or speaking tours around the country. Building a community of allies ensures that there is a base in your community that can be mobilized in an emergency.
Keeping these communities intact is important. Hold regular events to keep the issue of war resistance on the mind of your local community. Start a war resister support organization. Get in touch with your local Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and Veterans for Peace (VFP) chapters to find out how you can support them. Be prepared to organize rallies or vigils in support of war resisters when the need arises. And please stay in touch. We always appreciate knowing what you are up to and getting the contact information of allies in your area.
If you are interested in talking with Courage to Resist about organizing war resister support in your community, please send an email to: sarah@couragetoresist.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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3) Cindy Sheehan writes to George Bush
Cindy Sheehan
Mother of Casey Austin Sheehan
KIA in Sadr City, Baghdad
April 04, 2004
president@us.gov
November 11, 2008
George Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, DC
Dear George,
I am writing this to you on the fifth Veteran's Day I have mourned the death of my son, Casey Sheehan. Casey was a soldier in the Army. You killed my oldest son with your lies and greed for Empire. Casey never became a Veteran because he came home in one of those pesky flag draped coffins that your mother doesn't want to bother her "pretty mind" with.
During that other illegal and immoral war that you and your VP, Dick, had the good sense to dodge, your mother never had to go through one second of worry for your safety, did she? You were too busy doing your drugs and going AWOL to bother her "pretty mind" about that. What galls me the most when I think about my brave and honorable son's needless and untimely death, is that you were so cowardly and worthless when you were his age and you had the nerve to condemn thousands of our children to death or disability with your lies.
George, I have written you letters before. I have demanded your resignation and also promised you that I would work for your impeachment. If you remember, I even started a peace camp of thousands of protesters outside your Crawford ranch and I even tried to get into Congress so I could impeach your criminal hide. You never answer my letters and you have never had the integrity to tell me what "Noble Cause" killed my son. This is the last letter you will receive from me while you are infecting our Oval Office, but it won't be the last time you hear from me.
George, I guess I could "rest on my laurels" and allow you to slink off into the quiet desperation of leaving the White House as the most detested President in American history, but that is not enough for me: Millions are dead, wounded, displaced and suffering life-long pain because of your actions. You are the number one terrorist in the world today and this country catches, tortures and prosecutes "terrorists" doesn't it? Haven't you said so yourself? You have turned the USA into a nation of imperial mobsters and we have the ignominy of being torturers and you do not deserve to retire with any kind of peace or honor.
George, if Nancy Pelosi and the other complicit Congressional leaders won't hold you accountable, I will. This nation has a very short memory and we have been assaulted on a daily basis by your arrogance and stupidity and most of America is buying the hype of pre-packaged and aggressively marketed, Hope, but I don't have the option of burying your deadly legacy like it never happened and moving on. The hole in my heart that used to contain the living and breathing presence of my son will never heal and you are the one who put it there. If you think you are going to live a comfortable life in Dallas, or Paraguay, or wherever, a la Johnson, Nixon, McNamara or Kissinger, you are wrong.
George, this country too hastily moved on from the abomination of Vietnam and we never healed from that horror because we never did the hard work of holding American leaders accountable for crimes against humanity. If history repeats itself, as it tends to do, you won't be held accountable for your crimes, but I won't let you forget the faces of my son, Casey and his comrades or the legion of faces of the Afghan and Iraqi dead. Are your dreams haunted by the souls of the people massacred by your hubris?
If I have to buy or erect a billboard near your home and plaster it with the faces of the people you murdered, I will. I will also work with my contacts in the international community to have you indicted for crimes against humanity. I will do whatever it takes to be the thorn in your side as you have been my sorrow. There are many people around the world who thirst for justice and healing who will join me in this noble cause.
This Nation forgot the faces of the 58,000 plus Americans and millions of Vietnamese who were slaughtered for imperial greed, but they won't forget the faces of the ones you have sacrificed on your altar of deception or the ones who will be sacrificed for the President Elect's continued War OF Terror. If Obama does not declare a speedy and complete end to the USA's war of terror on the world, someone should set up camp at his vacation home (which I bet will be nicer than Crawford, TX in August).
On this Veterans Day, I make this pledge to you. Unless we stop the bloody tide of war for profit and US hegemony by seeking justice for your war crimes and crimes against our Constitution, more Casey's will die and more countries that unfortunately lie in the path of imperial conquest will be decimated.
On this Veteran's Day, I also send my love and support to the Vets from all wars who live on our streets and are substance abusers because they can't get help from this hypocritical government. My heart goes out to all Gold Star Mothers who have nothing but a box of medals, a triangular folded flag and memories of a dead child and regrets for a life not lived with him/her. The war machine in collaboration with our government chews people up and rolls on oiled with pain.
George you broke your oath to "faithfully" execute your office and you betrayed the troops that you command due to nothing but election fraud, but I will not break my promise to you.
Cindy Sheehan
Mother of Casey Austin Sheehan
KIA in Sadr City, Baghdad
April 04, 2004
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4) Buying Binge Slams to Halt
By DAVID LEONHARDT
November 12, 2008
Economic Scene
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/business/economy/12leonhardt.html?hp
Just as one crisis of confidence may be ending, another may be coming.
The panic on Wall Street has eased in the last few weeks, and banks have become somewhat more willing to make loans. But in those same few weeks, American households appear to have fallen into their own defensive crouch.
Suddenly, our consumer society is doing a lot less consuming. The numbers are pretty incredible. Sales of new vehicles have dropped 32 percent in the third quarter. Consumer spending appears likely to fall next year for the first time since 1980 and perhaps by the largest amount since 1942.
With Wall Street edging back from the brink, this crisis of consumer confidence has become the No. 1 short-term issue for the economy. Nobody doubts that families need to start saving more than they saved over the last two decades. But if they change their behavior too quickly, it could be very painful.
Already, Circuit City has filed for bankruptcy, and General Motors has said that it’s in danger of running out of cash. If the consumer slump continues, there is a potential for a dangerous feedback loop, in which spending cuts and layoffs reinforce each other.
“It’s a scary time,” Liz Allen, 29, a nursing student in Atlanta, told one of the Times reporters who fanned out across the country last weekend to ask people about the economy. “Worry can make the economy worse. If people worry too much, they won’t spend as much money. We’re seeing that happen, I think, already.”
It’s not entirely clear what anyone, including Barack Obama and his incoming administration, can do to temper the current worries. Mr. Obama has called for a stimulus package, which will make up for some of the consumer pullback. He and his advisers will also try to shore up confidence by projecting both a calm competence and a willingness to be more aggressive than the Bush administration. All of that should help.
But the stimulus package under discussion would bring no more than $150 billion in new government spending. The difference between a good year for consumer spending and a really bad one is about $400 billion.
So 2009 could turn out to be fairly miserable. The American consumer, long the spender of last resort for the global economy, may finally be spent.
You have heard such warnings before, I realize. For years, journalists and other economic worrywarts have been predicting a serious slump in consumer spending, and it did not happen. “Never underestimate the American consumer,” as a Wall Street cliché puts it.
Like most clichés, this one has some truth to it. Even before its recent housing-fueled boom, consumer spending was a bigger part of the American economy than of, say, the French or German economy. Americans like to buy things, and they also don’t tend to stay pessimistic for long.
Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, noted that his recent polls showed a sharp rise in the number of people planning to cut back on spending — but also a clear increase in the number who expected the economy to be in better shape next year. “What the American economy has going for it is the innate optimism of the public,” he said. “Americans get optimistic at the drop of a hat.”
Perhaps falling gas prices or Mr. Obama’s victory will shake them out of their torpor, Mr. Kohut said. A recent Gallup Poll found that consumer confidence rose slightly after the election. Based on recent history, it’s easy to imagine that the trend will continue and spending will soon bounce back.
Yet if the last year has proven anything, it’s that we should not assume something can’t happen simply because it hasn’t happened recently. Cold economic realities deserve the benefit of the doubt, even when they point to uncomfortable conclusions. And right now, the economic realities are pointing to a serious consumer recession.
Let’s start with the job market. It “already appears to be in worse shape than at any time during the recessions of the early 1990s or early 2000s,” says Lawrence Katz, a Harvard professor and former Labor Department chief economist. Unemployment is higher than the official rate suggests, and it is rising. Incomes, which for most families barely kept pace with inflation over the past decade, are now falling.
In all, the total amount of income taken home by American households will still probably rise next year, because the population will grow and government transfer payments (like jobless benefits) will surely increase. But total real income will rise a lot more slowly than it has been rising recently. One percent is a reasonable estimate.
The next question is how much of that income people will spend. For decades — from the 1950s through the 1980s — Americans spent about 91 percent of their income, on average, and put away the rest. In the last few years, they have spent close to 99 percent and saved only about 1 percent.
This simply cannot continue. For one thing, people need to pay down their debts and replenish their retirement accounts. For another, the psychology of spending and saving may well be changing. After the worst housing bust on record and one of the three worst bear markets of the last century, Americans are probably starting to realize that they can’t always fall back on ever-rising house values or stock values to make ends meet.
In the unlikely event that Mr. Obama decided to mimic President Bush’s post-9/11 plea for spending in the name of patriotism, it probably would not have the same impact. We’re not as flush as we were in 2001.
Economists are now busy trying to forecast how rapidly people will begin saving again, but it’s essentially an exercise in guesswork. There is no good historical analogy. A savings rate of about 3 percent seems plausible — higher, but not radically so — and that’s what some forecasters are projecting.
At that rate, consumer spending would decline about 1 percent next year, which is worse than it sounds. It would be the first annual decline since 1980, as I mentioned above, and the biggest since 1942. Relative to the typical increases from recent years, it would represent $400 billion in lost consumer spending. To find a stimulus package so big, you’d have to go to Beijing.
And get this: Spending in the last few months has actually been falling at an annual rate of 3 percent. So the seemingly pessimistic events I have sketched out here are based on the assumption that things are about to get better.
As Joshua Shapiro of MFR, an economic research firm in New York, puts it, the American consumer has quickly gone from being the world economy’s greatest strength to its Achilles’ heel. “Everything has changed,” he says. “The financial sector is deleveraging. Credit availability is severely constrained. Asset prices are deflating. And household balance sheets are severely stressed.”
It would be silly to insist that a few terrible months meant the end of American consumer culture. But it would be equally silly to assume that culture could never change. It might be changing right now.
Robbie Brown, Sean Hamill and John Dougherty contributed reporting.
E-Mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com
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5) Paulson Says Treasury Is Shifting Focus of Bailout
By DAVID STOUT
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/business/economy/13bailout.html?hp
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. announced a major shift in the thrust of the $700 billion financial-rescue program on Wednesday, at the same time joining several agencies in prodding banks to speed up the thaw in the country’s credit system.
Mr. Paulson said the $700 billion would not be used to buy up troubled mortgage-related securities, as the rescue effort was originally conceived, but will instead be used in a broader campaign to bolster the financial markets and, in turn, make loans more accessible for creditworthy borrowers seeking car loans, student loans and other kinds of borrowing.
“During times like these with a slowing economy and some deterioration in credit conditions, even the healthiest banks tend to become more risk-averse and restrain lending, and regulators’ actions have reinforced this lending restraint in the past,” Mr. Paulson said at a news conference.
But, he added pointedly, with their financial foundations already shored up by recent government support, “our banks will be more confident and better positioned to play their necessary role to support economic responsibility.”
Mr. Paulson also pledged intensified government efforts to help struggling homeowners and said he and his aides “are examining strategies to mitigate” foreclosures.
Although Mr. Paulson did not mention possible penalties for banks that are reluctant to open their money spigots, there was no mistaking the tone of his message, coupled as it was with a statement from several financial-regulating agencies that they “expect all banking organizations to fulfill their fundamental role in the economy as intermediaries of credit to businesses, consumers and other creditworthy borrowers.”
Mr. Paulson also said the Treasury’s capital infusions through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, might also be aimed at other kinds of financial institutions.
“We are carefully evaluating programs which would further leverage the impact of a TARP investment by attracting private capital, potentially through matching investments,” he said. “In developing a potential matching program, we will also consider capital needs of non-bank financial institutions not eligible for the current capital program; broadening access in this way would bring both benefits and challenges.”
As for the struggling automobile industry, Mr. Paulson said, “My focus is on the financial sector.” Thus, while declaring that “we care about our auto industry,” he ruled out any role in the TARP effort for bailing out Detroit, an issue that is now occupying Congress, President-elect Barack Obama and President Bush..
Weeks ago, in lobbying Congress to enact the TARP legislation, the administration described the program as one to buy up the opaque and toxic mortgage-related assets that are at the heart of the housing crisis that set off the country’s worst financial ordeal since the Great Depression.
“Over these past weeks, we have continued to examine the relative benefits of purchasing illiquid mortgage-related assets,” Mr. Paulson said. Explaining the shift in emphasis, he said, “Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use TARP funds,” while stressing that he and others working on the bailout have not ruled out “targeted forms of asset purchase.”
The interagency statement that lent more force to Mr. Paulson’s remarks was issued by the board of the Federal Reserve System; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which protects the deposits of individual bank customers; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; and the Office of Thrift Supervision.
Both Mr. Paulson and the agencies emphasized that their message to banks was not meant only for those that have benefited directly from infusions of money from the government. “Lending to creditworthy borrowers provides sustainable returns for the lending organization and is constructive for the economy as a whole,” the agencies said.
Moreover, the agencies said, they “expect banking organizations to work with existing borrowers to avoid preventable foreclosures.”
The agencies also addressed an issue that has angered the American public: the enormous salaries paid to many high-ranking executives of the financial world, and the “golden parachutes” bestowed upon some of them as farewell gifts even as they are ousted for failing at their jobs.
“Poorly designed management compensation policies can create perverse incentives that can ultimately jeopardize the health of the banking organization,” the agencies said, adding that they expect banking institutions “to regularly review their management compensation policies.”
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6) Wall Street Lower After Retail Data
By JACK HEALY
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/business/worldbusiness/13markets.html?hp
Wall Street stumbled in midday trading on Wednesday after Best Buy warned of a sharp downturn in consumer spending, adding to pessimism about a holiday season that already appeared bleak.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 200 points shortly before 1 p.m., and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down nearly 3 percent as financial markets extended losses into a third day.
The financial markets had been trading down all morning, but began a sharp slide just before Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. appeared at a lectern to discuss the $700 billion financial bailout. Mr. Paulson said that government assets would not be used to buy up troubled assets, as originally planned, but would instead go to buying stock in banks and infusing money into other financial institutions.
As he spoke, markets headed for their session lows.
Wednesday began with more troubling news from the retail sector. Best Buy said its same-store sales could decline 5 percent to 15 percent from November until February. Best Buy lowered its earnings expectations to $2.30 to $2.90 a share, compared with an earlier prediction of $3.25 to $3.40.
“We had expected it was coming; it was just a matter of when,” said Christopher Horvers, senior retail analyst at J.P. Morgan.In a statement, Best Buy’s chief executive, Brad Anderson, called the economic changes of the last two months “seismic” and said the company was facing “the most difficult climate we’ve ever seen.”
“Best Buy simply can’t adjust fast enough to maintain our earnings momentum for this year,” Mr. Anderson said.
The dour outlook from Best Buy was the latest jolt from the retail sector, coming just days after its rival, Circuit City, filed for bankruptcy protection. It follows a litany of grim financial news from well-known companies like Neiman Marcus, Starbucks, Gap and Nordstrom that show consumer spending contracting and retail revenue shrinking.
And analysts said they expected the bleeding to continue through the holiday season.
“We’re not done,” said Stacey Widlitz, a retail analyst at Pali Research. “This is just the beginning. Retailers are saying they’ve never seen this kind of shift in consumer behavior in this short a period of time.”
Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, said the battered retail numbers were evidence that America’s years-long spending bender had finally ended. He said the bankruptcy filing of Circuit City, which continues to operate, helped to signal a “permanent shift” in the service economy, and said other companies would fail before the economic crisis abated.
“The old expression, ‘Shop till you drop’ — we did it,” he said.
Shares in General Motors and Ford Motor were trading higher Wednesday morning as lawmakers in Washington called for a lame-duck session to address the imperiled auto industry. Recent financial reports show Ford and G.M. burning through cash as their sales fall, and Congressional leaders called for emergency legislation to keep them from being forced into bankruptcy.
“In order to prevent the failure of one or more of the major American automobile manufacturers, which would have a devastating impact on our economy, particularly on the men and women who work in that industry, Congress and the Bush administration must take immediate action,” Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said in a statement.
Oil prices extended their decline on Wednesday, falling almost 5 percent, to $56.50 a barrel, their lowest level since March 2007. The drop came as the International Energy Agency, the world’s leading oil forecaster, suggested that oil consumption was falling faster than anticipated because of the global economic slump.
The slump means that oil prices could easily fall to $50 a barrel, according to oil specialists, as consumers cut their spending in response to the economic slowdown.
These concerns led OPEC’s president, Chakib Khelil, to repeat on Wednesday that the oil cartel could decide once more to trim its supplies when it meets in the Algerian town of Oran next month. He hinted that the group might even decide to reduce its production soon if prices keep sliding.
“Probably OPEC will not have a choice but to take another decision in Oran, if not before Oran, if the prices continue their decline in the market,” Mr. Khelil, who is also Algeria’s oil minister, told Reuters. At its last meeting, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to cut its production by 1.5 million barrels a day. The cuts were to take effect Nov. 1.
The price of gold fell $14 to $718 an ounce, and commodity prices ranging from coffee to soybeans to silver were also lower on falling demand.
Jad Mouawad contributed reporting.
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7) Justices Rule for Navy in Sonar Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:08 p.m. ET
November 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Navy-Sonar.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar in training exercises off the California coast, a defeat for environmental groups who say the sonar can harm whales.
The court, in its first decision of the term, voted to allow the Navy to conduct realistic training exercises to respond to potential threats by enemy submarines.
Environmental groups had persuaded lower federal courts in California to impose restrictions on sonar use in submarine-hunting exercises to protect whales and other marine mammals.
The Bush administration argued that there is little evidence of harm to marine life in more than 40 years of exercises off the California coast.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Six justices agreed with the outcome, although Justice John Paul Stevens did not join the majority opinion. Justice Stephen Breyer would have allowed some restrictions to remain, while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter said the prospect of harm to the whales was sufficient to justify limits on sonar use.
The court did not deal with the merits of the claims put forward by the environmental groups. It said, rather, that federal courts abused their discretion by ordering the Navy to limit sonar use in some cases and to turn it off altogether in others.
The overall public interest tips ''strongly in favor of the Navy,'' Roberts wrote. He said the most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of the marine mammals.
''In contrast, forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet,'' the chief justice wrote.
In dissent, Ginsburg said that the Navy's own assessment predicted substantial and irreparable harm to marine mammals from the service's exercises.
Ginsburg said that ''this likely harm ... cannot be lightly dismissed, even in the face of an alleged risk to the effectiveness of the Navy's 14 training exercises.''
Roberts pointed out that the federal appeals court decision restricting the Navy's sonar training acknowledged that the record contained no evidence marine mammals had been harmed.
The exercises have continued since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in February that the Navy must limit sonar use when ships get close to marine mammals.
A species of whales called beaked whales is particularly susceptible to harm from sonar, which can cause them to strand themselves onshore.
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8) 4 Dead in Israel Battle on Gaza Border
By ISABEL KERSHNER
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/world/middleeast/13gaza.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM — Four Hamas gunmen were killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers along the Gaza border on Wednesday, further testing a shaky truce that took effect last June.
The military said in a statement that its forces identified a group of gunmen attempting to place an explosive device near the border fence, leading to an exchange of fire. Four of the gunmen were hit and an Israeli soldier was lightly wounded, the statement said.
An army spokeswoman added that the military carried out two air strikes in open areas during the confrontation, and that the soldiers had chased the gunmen, who also fired mortars at the troops, inside Gaza.
Witnesses told the independent Palestinian news agency Maan that Israel fired two missiles, one near a mosque and another near a school or homes, while fighters were in the area.
Ayman Taha, a spokesman for Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, said the escalation, which he blamed on Israel, was dangerous. "There will be a painful response against the Zionist enemy," he told Reuters.
Both Hamas and Israeli officials have recently expressed their interest in renewing the six-month truce, which is due to expire in December. But over the past week it has begun to fray.
At least six Palestinian militants were killed in a clash and an Israeli air strike on Nov. 4 after an Israeli force entered Gaza for the first time in five months to destroy a tunnel Israel believed was intended for use in the abduction of a soldiers.
Over the following days, Palestinians fired dozens of rockets and mortar shells at Israel. All landed in open areas and caused little damage. In response, Israel closed down the commercial crossings where basic goods pass into Gaza, allowing in only a limited amount of fuel on Tuesday.
Christopher Gunness, the spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that provides assistance to Palestinian refugees, said on Tuesday that food distributions to 750,000 Gazans wouldcease on Thursday unless the organization was able to get in wheat and other essential goods.
Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said on Wednesday afternoon that no decision had yet been made regarding the reopening of the crossings.
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9) Working Poor and Young Hit Hard in Downturn
By ERIK ECKHOLM
November 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/us/09young.html
PHILADELPHIA — Harvey Shaw’s plans to move out of his parents’ house, finally, have been derailed. With a high school degree obtained belatedly at 21, he had held a full-time job for 26 months as a detailer at a car dealership here, sprucing up new and used cars.
But in early October, Mr. Shaw, now 24, recalled, “I came back from vacation, and they said they were cutting back and replacing me with part-time workers.”
Labor experts say the hardships of the gathering recession are sweeping down to hurt the working poor and younger job seekers most of all.
From the fall of 2007 to this October, the share of 16- to 19-year-olds working fell by 8 percent, the largest decline of any age group, and the outlook for youths and low-skilled workers in coming months is bleak, economists say, with the industries most apt to employ them, like home-building and retail sales, taking steep dives.
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 240,000 jobs disappeared in October alone, bringing the unemployment rate to 6.5 percent. But construction, for example, had the highest unemployment rate of any industry: 10.8 percent, compared with 6.1 percent a year ago, leaving entry-level applicants in the cold.
“Low-income people are the big losers when the economy turns down,” said Andrew M. Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.
With jobs scarce, many college graduates find themselves taking jobs that do not require a degree, and laid-off middle-income workers are taking lower-paying jobs in areas like retail sales. A kind of domino effect is beginning to squeeze out the least skilled or experienced workers — those already on the bottom of the ladder — who are settling for part-time employment and fewer hours if they can find work at all. Hardest hit of all are younger job-seekers, especially black males in their late teens or early 20s without more than a high school education.
Among those ages 16 to 19, access to part-time jobs, full-time jobs and summer jobs had already declined through this decade, and by last month only 31.4 percent had held some sort of employment. In the year ahead, Professor Sum predicted, “The teens will be thrown out of the labor market at record levels,” often causing hardship for poor families and causing youths to miss experience that, studies show, will gain them better jobs in the future.
Like Mr. Shaw, Kyuana Everett, 21, earned her high school degree at the YouthBuild charter school here, which helps dropouts complete high school and seeks to prepare them for a trade or higher education.
“I’ve tried for everything, retail sales, office work, but the employers all say they have too many staff and they’re not hiring now,” Ms. Everett said. “McDonald’s was the only place that would take me, but only part-time,” for $7.25 an hour.
Ms. Everett cannot afford to rent even a room, and stays secretly with her grandmother in a home for the elderly. She hopes to get a scholarship to a technical college for training as an electrician.
The one age group whose employment rate climbed over the last year was people over 65, who are starting to take the part-time and retail jobs once dominated by students and younger high school graduates, Professor Sum said.
A recession takes its largest tolls not only on the young but also in cyclical industries like construction, manufacturing of durable goods, retail trade, hotels and temp agencies — traditional avenues into the workplace for the less skilled.
The crash in construction jobs is most acute in housing, which tends to use a greater share of inexperienced labor than commercial construction does, said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America. Looking at economic projections, Mr. Simonson said, “I’d expect even more of those low-skilled jobs will be lost.”
Here in Philadelphia, Michael Stepnowski, who runs a small construction company mainly doing office renovations, has had to lay off four laborers in the last year, to a remaining staff of 17, because of declining contracts. “We’re worried about future business volume and jobs,” Mr. Stepnowski said.
On Thursday, most of the country’s major retailers, another major source of jobs for people without college degrees, reported annual sales declines of more than 10 percent and in some cases more than 20 percent, translating into enormous job cutbacks. Last Monday, Circuit City announced it was closing 155 stores and eliminating more than 7,000 jobs.
YouthBuild, which runs school and training programs around the country, has tried to adapt to the changing job market, not simply giving young people a high-school degree but helping them prepare for fields with a future, meaning technical schools or community colleges for some, four-year college for others.
But transitional jobs, to sustain graduates as they train, are harder to find. Miguel DeJesus, 21 and a graduate of the charter school, has two small children and plans to marry their mother soon, and his goal is to work while he gets certified in building maintenance.
In recent months Mr. DeJesus has been applying to retail stores and fast-food outlets, poring over classifieds and Craigslist and walking into places cold to inquire. But everywhere, he said, he is told that, far from hiring, employers expect to lay off workers.
“I have to put school on hold while I find a way to support my family,” Mr. DeJesus said. “If I could get a job anywhere now I’d be grateful.”
Low-income women with children can face particular challenges. Kristin S. Seefeldt, a sociologist at the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, has closely followed 43 low-income women since 2005, and as expenses have climbed while work hours declined, many have survived by building up large debt on credit cards and to utilities, where they make minimum payments to keep the heat and electricity from being turned off, but are unable to chip away at balances of several thousands of dollars.
Several of the women have temporary nonunion jobs with the Detroit area’s remaining auto-parts manufacturers. The jobs provide no benefits or security but may pay $12 an hour, as opposed to $8 in fast food or sales. With the auto industry in crisis, Ms. Seefeldt said, “the women are really concerned that the companies will go under and they’ll lose these jobs.”
Fred Davie, president of Public/Private Ventures, a group in Philadelphia that develops and studies antipoverty programs, said that as the federal government considered new stimulus measures, it could help the poor as well as the economy by investing in construction and increasing cash benefits for the needy, who will spend the money immediately.
“The new administration will have to think several levels down the ladder,” Mr. Davie said, “so the government invests not only in the top but also in infrastructure jobs and training for low-income people to get some of those jobs.”
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10) Shape of things to come. Bank chief warns of deep recession
-Deflation bigger risk than inflation
-Sharp rise in unemployment
Larry Elliott and Ashley Seager
guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 13 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/13/inflation-deflation-interest-rates-recession
The City was bracing itself last night for interest rates to be cut to a
record low of 1% next year, as the Bank of England seeks to prevent a
deepening recession from pushing the UK economy into deflation.
Sterling fell sharply yesterday after Mervyn King, the Bank's governor, said
that in "exceptional and difficult times" the nine members of the monetary
policy committee would do "what was needed" to prevent a period of falling
prices.
Financial markets believe the prospect of sharply lower growth and weakening
inflation may prompt the MPC to follow last week's 1.5 percentage point cut
with a further 1 point reduction in December, and that the bank rate may
drop to 1% early in the new year.
Official interest rates have not been lower than 2% since the Bank was
founded in 1694, but King signalled yesterday that a fresh easing of policy
would be needed to keep inflation as high as the government's 2% target
during 2009.
The governor said "the economic landscape had changed" since the Bank's last
in-depth analysis three months ago. Speaking shortly after official data
showed a hefty rise in unemployment in October, King said growing evidence
of recession, mayhem in the financial markets and the more than halving of
oil prices had prompted the Bank into taking decisive action on borrowing
costs.
King said it was "very likely that the UK economy entered a recession in the
second half of this year". He backed tax cuts from the government in the
pre-budget report - which the Treasury said yesterday would be on November
24 - provided they were short-term and part of a plan for controlling the
budget deficit.
"We have been expecting rates to fall to 2% by January, but we now favour
rates falling further to 1%," said James Knightley of ING Financial Markets.
"It is not impossible that the UK's bank rate falls to 0.5%, matching our
forecast for the Fed."
Nick Parsons, head of strategy for NAB Capital, said the Bank could not
afford to disappoint the City, which was braced for a 1 percentage point
drop in rates in December, taking the bank rate to 2%.
Official data showed the broadest measure of unemployment, the Labour Force
Survey, rose 140,000 in the July to September period from the previous three
months, to 1.825 million, its highest level since the end of 1997.
The narrower measure of joblessness, the claimant count, showed a 36,500
jump to 980,900 last month, the biggest rise since the depths of the early
1990s recession.
The figures also revealed a plunge in job vacancies to a five-year low,
while the number of redundancy announcements shot to a three-year high. Both
figures mean unemployment rose sharply.
In the last two recessions, of the early 1980s and early 1990s, both
measures of joblessness peaked at around the 3 million mark, and many labour
market experts expect that to happen again.
Alistair Darling acknowledged last night that Britain was "going into
recession". Speaking to the Independent, he defended a planned increase in
government borrowing, but appeared to concede that the cost would be met by
tax rises. "It is right to let borrowing rise. It is also important that we
come back into balance over the medium term," he said.
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said: "It's clear from
today's figures that we're heading for very high levels of unemployment with
falling inflation. This could soon become negative inflation, with prices
actually falling."
The Bank's gloomy outlook for the economy, combined with another big rise in
unemployment, pushed the pound below the $1.50 level to its lowest against
the dollar for six and a half years.
Sterling also fell to a fresh record low against the euro of 83.84, spelling
more expensive holidays for Britons travelling to Europe. Oil prices,
though, set a fresh 20-month low of just under $57 a barrel for US crude
futures. The FTSE 100 fell 1.5% to close at 4,182
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11) Family homelessness rising in the United States
By Ross Colvin - Analysis
Wed Nov 12, 2008 1:07am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AB18I20081112
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to help middle-class U.S. homeowners facing foreclosure, but he has said little about how he will help low-income families made homeless by a worsening economy.
Obama has spoken broadly about boosting affordable housing and restoring public housing subsidies. But with economists forecasting a deep recession in 2009, he may find it hard to find the money to fulfill those promises soon.
At the same time, advocacy groups and the country's czar for combating homelessness say immediate action is needed to halt the foreclosures of tens of thousands of homes and rehouse thousands of families amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
"President-elect Obama understands the economy will only get back on track if we end the foreclosure crisis. And he realizes that part of ending the crisis is both preventing and ending homelessness for families losing their homes," said Jeremy Rosen of the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness.
It is a quandary that will require help for the overall economy to aid people who slide into homelessness because they lose their jobs. Measures will also be needed to address the mortgage crisis, especially foreclosures on rental properties that house lower-income residents who then wind up homeless when their apartment buildings are repossessed.
Homeless advocacy groups have called for targeted housing subsidies that help homeless families get back into more permanent accommodation as well as helping those on the brink of foreclosure. But Obama will need to do more, and there are no magic wands.
Families are flooding homeless shelters across the United States in numbers not seen for years, camping out in motels or staying with friends and relatives, homeless advocates say.
"There are lots of families hemorrhaging into homelessness and we need to figure out how to put a tourniquet on the hemorrhaging," Philip Mangano, the homelessness czar appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002, told Reuters.
There is little time to waste. The U.S. unemployment rate is at a 14-year high and more job losses are forecast, while the Mortgage Bankers Association says nearly 1.5 million homes are in the process of foreclosure.
The U.S. Congress approved a massive housing market rescue bill in July that sets aside $3.9 billion that can be used partly by local authorities to buy foreclosed properties. Those could potentially house homeless families.
Mangano, whose official title is director of the Interagency Council on Homelessness, described the $3.9 billion as an "opening salvo" and said the new administration and Democratic-controlled Congress must be prepared to move quickly to invest more money to help homeless families and slow the flood of foreclosures.
MARIA'S STORY
While the latest official figures show the number of homeless declining by 12 percent from 2005 to 2007, Mangano said there was sufficient data and anecdotal evidence to suggest that family homelessness was now on the rise.
In New York, the number of newly homeless families entering shelters has hit a record high, according to the Coalition for the Homeless, which says 1,464 families entered the New York shelter system in September.
San Francisco's four shelters are "beyond full," according to Paul Boden of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, whose organization has identified 450 families with 800 children living in single-room hotels in the city.
In Virginia's Fairfax County, one of the richest counties in the United States, there are about 100 families on a waiting list to enter shelters, local officials say.
Maria Stephens, 38, a mother of three young boys, lived in one of the Fairfax shelters for seven months after two landlords were foreclosed on and she lost her job as a mortgage underwriter earning $80,000 a year.
"It was a hell of an experience for me. I went from having my own bathroom to having to share a bathroom with five families," said Stephens, who now works in a restaurant making $9 an hour and was helped by a local group, Reston Interfaith, to move into temporary accommodation in July.
The public perception is that newly homeless families borrowed money they were unable to repay or were the victims of greedy banks that sold them mortgages they could not afford.
But homeless advocates say most are actually renters whose landlords were foreclosed on, or who lost their jobs, and were then unable to find the first and last month's rent and security deposit to secure new accommodation.
Local and state homeless groups have seen a 61 percent rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007.
"There is an uptick, no question about it, in homelessness in most places in our country," Mangano said.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
© Thomson Reuters 2008.
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12) Foreclosure Prevention Lite
Editorial
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/opinion/13thu1.html
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. was notably absent from the rollout on Tuesday of the Bush administration’s newest foreclosure prevention plan. Maybe he was finally too embarrassed to stand before the American people yet again and offer yet another too-little, too-late solution.
He did send his protégé, the recently appointed bailout czar, Neel Kashkari, who dutifully mouthed the phrases that Mr. Paulson has used for a year now to describe the foreclosure crisis (“a necessary correction”) and to justify the administration’s pathetic responses (“there is no silver bullet”).
The nation’s banks and other financial firms also are undergoing a necessary correction for which there is no silver bullet. But that hasn’t stopped Mr. Paulson from intervening forcefully — using taxpayer dollars — on behalf of an ever-expanding cast of bailout recipients. The tight fist is reserved for homeowners.
That is a huge policy error. The whole point of the bailouts is to stabilize the financial system. But the system will not stabilize until house prices stabilize, and house prices will not stabilize until the government finds a way to stanch foreclosures on a large scale.
The Bush administration’s new plan applies to delinquent loans controlled by the government-run mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They will use a fast-track process to lower troubled borrowers’ monthly payments to an affordable level, either through a longer repayment term, a lower interest rate or deferral of payment on part of the principle.
The biggest problem with the plan is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac control relatively few of the types of loans that have driven defaults to crisis proportions. Even if the companies successfully restructured all of their troubled loans, more than three million Americans still stand to lose their homes this year and next. As long as homes are being lost by the millions, house prices will continue to drop, making Americans poorer, the financial system shakier and the economy weaker.
Administration officials have said that they hope other lenders will emulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The notion that the government might lead by example is an improvement over the administration’s previous tack — merely urging the mortgage industry to act voluntarily to stop foreclosures. But it’s still pie in the sky.
Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have announced stepped up anti-foreclosure efforts recently. But if history is any indication, their efforts will fall short. That’s because the banks do not directly control most of the loans that require restructuring; rather, the loans have been parceled out in pieces to various investors. The difficulty of getting the often-conflicting parties to agree to modified loan terms has derailed all previous attempts to stem mass foreclosures.
Not only has the government refused to compel the mortgage industry to act, but it has not provided strong incentives for them to do so. As if in tacit acknowledgement that the administration has not gone far enough, a Treasury spokeswoman said on Tuesday that the latest plan is not necessarily the last. Meanwhile, the damage is being done house by house, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.
The half measures have to stop.
As a candidate, President-elect Barack Obama favored amending the law so bankrupt homeowners could have their mortgages revised in court, an avenue currently denied them. The next Congress must move forward on the bankruptcy amendment first thing in January.
Hundreds of thousands of homeowners would qualify for bankruptcy, and hundreds of thousands more would be helped if lenders and investors opted to restructure bad loans rather than having to go to court. Better still, bankruptcy restructurings would cost the taxpayers nothing and concentrate the pain on those responsible: borrowers who took on more debt than they could handle, and lenders who made bad loans.
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13) Tough Times Seen for Big Economies
By DAVID JOLLY
November 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/business/worldbusiness/14euro.html?hp
PARIS — The world’s major industrial nations are headed for a major slowdown, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast on Thursday. The leading economies are all likely to contract in the fourth quarter, and many will slip into recession, the group said, as overall economic activity in its 30 member states shrinks in 2009.
Germany is already there: The country’s central statistical office announced on Thursday that gross domestic product fell 0.5 percent in the third quarter, following a 0.4 percent fall in the second; the widely accepted though unofficial definition of a recession is two or more consecutive quarters of decline in output. Figures expected Friday from other Western European nations like Britain, Italy and the Netherlands are likely to show declines as well.
The next report on United States economic output is due Nov. 25, updating preliminary figures from Oct. 30 that showed a 0.3 percent decline in the third quarter.
The worldwide financial crisis, with its sharp deterioration in housing and credit markets, is the chief culprit in the slowdown, the O.E.C.D. said. And the slowdown’s effects are likely to be felt in rising unemployment and falling inflation across the developed world.
Financial markets, hammered down for weeks by the gathering economic gloom and by policy makers’ struggles to respond to the credit crisis, fell sharply in Asia overnight, after a sell-off on Wall Street on Wednesday. European markets were broadly flat, as were American stocks early in the trading day, though they slipped later.
For Germany, “this is the second recession in six years, and shatters earlier hopes that Germany might hold up relatively well against the global downturn,” Jennifer McKeown, an economist in London with Capital Economics wrote in a research note. She predicted the German economy would contract next year by 0.5 percent.
The Bank of England also warned that the British economy would shrink significantly next year and that inflation would cool off, stoking expectations that the central bank would lower interest rates further. And the International Energy Agency issued new, reduced forecasts for oil demand this year and next because of the sour economic conditions.
The O.E.C.D. said that gross domestic product for its 30 member countries would probably decline 0.3 percent in 2009 from 2008, before recovering slightly to grow by 1.5 percent in 2010.
Jorgen Elmeskov, an economist at the organization, said that the outlook depended largely on the depth and duration of the financial crisis.
“The ongoing adjustment in housing markets still has a long way to go,” he said in a statement.
The slowdown in Germany had become increasingly obvious as the credit crisis reached a new and particularly destructive phase. On Wednesday, the nation’s most powerful industrial union, IG Metall, which had been seeking a raise of 7 to 8 percent, reached a scaled-down deal with German employers for an increase of 4.2 percent spread over 18 months.
The O.E.C.D. also predicted that the average unemployment rate in its member countries, estimated at 5.9 percent this year, would climb to 6.9 percent next year and reach 7.2 percent in 2010. It said inflation would continue to ease along with the decline in economic activity.
The sobering report came as officials from the Group of 20 nations were gathering in Washington for a summit meeting on Saturday to plot a coordinated response to the economic crisis. Central banks have already engaged in a round of interest rate cuts, and many national governments have discussed plans for new stimulus spending to spur growth.
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14) Report Sees New Pollution Threat
By ANDREW JACOBS
November 14, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/world/14cloud.html?hp
BEIJING — A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations.
The byproduct of automobiles, slash-and-burn agriculture, wood-burning stoves and coal-fired power plants, these plumes of carbon dust rise over southern Africa, the Amazon basin and North America. But they are most pronounced in Asia, where so-called atmospheric brown clouds are dramatically reducing sunlight in many Chinese cities and leading to decreased crop yields in swaths of rural India, say a team of more than a dozen scientists who have been studying the problem since 2002.
But the scientists who worked on the report said the blanket of haze might be mitigating the worst effects of greenhouse gases, by absorbing solar heat or reflecting it away from the earth. Greenhouse gases, by contrast, tend to trap the warmth of the sun and lead to a rise in ocean temperatures.
“All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to take on emissions across the planet,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, in Beijing, which the report identified as one of the world’s most polluted cities, and where the report was released. “The imperative to act has never been clearer.”
The brownish haze, sometimes more than a mile thick and clearly visible from airplanes, stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to the Yellow Sea. During the spring, it sweeps past North and South Korea and Japan. Sometimes the cloud drifts as far east as California.
The report identified 13 cities as brown-cloud hotspots, among them Bangkok, Cairo, New Delhi, Seoul and Tehran.
The report was issued on a day when Beijing’s own famously polluted skies were unusually clear. On Wednesday, by contrast, the capital was shrouded in a thick, throat-stinging haze that is the byproduct of heavy industry, coal-burning home heaters and the 3.5 million cars that clog the city’s roadways.
Last month, the government reintroduced some of the traffic restrictions that were imposed on Beijing during the Olympics; the rules forced private cars to stay off the road one day a week and sidelined 30 percent of government vehicles on any given day. Overall, officials say the new measures have remove 800,000 cars from the roadways.
According to the United Nations report, smog blocks from 10 percent to 25 percent of the sunlight that should be reaching the city’s streets. The report also singled out the southern city of Guangzhou, where soot and dust have dimmed natural light by 20 percent since the 1970s.
Rain can cleanse the skies, but some of the black grime that falls to earth ends up on the surface of the Himalayan glaciers that are the source of water for billions of people in China, India and Pakistan. As a result, the glaciers that feed into the Yangtze, Ganges, Indus and Yellow rivers are absorbing more sunlight and melting more rapidly, researchers say.
According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, these glaciers have shrunk by 5 percent since the 1950s and, at the current rate of retreat, could shrink by another 75 percent by 2050.
“We used to think of this brown cloud as a regional problem, but now we realize its impact is much greater,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, who led the United Nations scientific panel. “When we see the smog one day and not the next, it just means it’s blown somewhere else.”
Although the clouds’ overall impact is not entirely understood, Mr. Ramanathan, a professor of climate and ocean sciences at the University of California, San Diego, said they might be affecting precipitation in parts of India and Southeast Asia, where monsoon rainfall has been decreasing in recent decades, and central China, where devastating floods have become more frequent.
He said that some studies suggest that the plumes of soot that blot out the sun have led to a 5 percent decline in the growth rate of rice harvests across Asia since the 1960s.
For those who breathe the toxic mix, the impact can be deadly. Henning Rodhe, a professor of chemical meteorology at Stockholm University, estimates that 340,000 people in China and India die each year from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases that can be traced to the emissions from coal-burning factories, diesel trucks and kitchen stoves fueled by firewood.
“The impacts on health alone is a reason to reduce these brown clouds,” he said, adding that in China, about 3.6 percent of the nation’s annual gross domestic product, or $82 billion, is lost to the health effects of pollution.
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15) Former Guantánamo Captives Continue to Struggle, Report Says
By REUTERS
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/us/13guantanamo.html?ref=world
MIAMI (Reuters) — Former Guantánamo prisoners released after years of detention without charge went home to find themselves stigmatized and shunned, viewed either as terrorists or as United States spies, according to a report released Wednesday by a human rights group and a legal organization representing detainees.
The report urged President-elect Barack Obama to form an independent, nonpartisan commission with subpoena powers to investigate the treatment of detainees held by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
“We cannot sweep this dark chapter in our nation’s history under the rug by simply closing the Guantánamo prison camp,” said one of the study’s authors, Eric Stover, director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley.
The authors at the Human Rights Center and at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has coordinated detainees’ legal cases, interviewed 50 United States government officials, military experts and former guards and interrogators, as well as 62 former Guantánamo prisoners in nine nations.
Two-thirds of the former captives said they had psychological and emotional problems, which the authors called consistent with being held in extreme isolation for extended periods.
Only six had regular jobs, with many saying that employers would not hire anyone who had been held at Guantánamo.
“It doesn’t matter that they cleared my name by releasing me. We still have this big hat on our heads that we were terrorists,” a former detainee, one of eight Chinese Muslims who was settled in Albania in 2006, said in the report.
That group was still struggling to learn Albanian and had abandoned the hope of ever being reunited with family, according to the report.
The United States has released 520 men from Guantánamo since it opened the detention camp for those suspected of being part of Al Qaeda and the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks. About 250 detainees are now there.
The most notorious prisoners, who are accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bali nightclub bombings and attacks on United States embassies in Africa, were not taken to Guantánamo until 2006, when they were transferred from secret C.I.A. prisons.
Many of the former prisoners said that they had lost their homes and businesses or that their families had piled up debts in their absence because there was no one to support them.
One returned to find that his wife had divorced him and remarried. Another returned to learn that his father had been killed and that his estranged wife had taken their children and moved away. Others said they had received death threats.
Those who fared the best seemed to be Afghans from tightly knit villages, where several said they were greeted when they came home with celebrations that even some local police officers attended.
Of the 55 who discussed their interrogations, 31 said they were abusive and 24 said they had no problems. The majority held “distinctly negative views of the United States,” but many said that was directed at the United States government, not the American people.
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16) A School Chief Takes On Tenure, Stirring a Fight
By SAM DILLON
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/education/13tenure.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON — Michelle Rhee, the hard-charging chancellor of the Washington public schools, thinks teacher tenure may be great for adults, those who go into teaching to get summer vacations and great health insurance, for instance. But it hurts children, she says, by making incompetent instructors harder to fire.
So Ms. Rhee has proposed spectacular raises of as much as $40,000, financed by private foundations, for teachers willing to give up tenure.
Policy makers and educators nationwide are watching to see what happens to Ms. Rhee’s bold proposal. The 4,000-member Washington Teachers’ Union has divided over whether to embrace it, with many union members calling tenure a crucial protection against arbitrary firing.
“If Michelle Rhee were to get what she is demanding,” said Allan R. Odden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies teacher compensation, “it would raise eyebrows everywhere, because that would be a gargantuan change.”
Last month, Ms. Rhee said she could no longer wait for a union response to her proposal, first outlined last summer, and announced an effort to identify and fire ineffective teachers, including those with tenure. The union is mobilizing to protect members, and the nation’s capital is bracing for what could be a wrenching labor struggle.
Ms. Rhee has not proposed abolishing tenure outright. Under her proposal, each teacher would choose between two compensation plans, one called green and the other red. Pay for teachers in the green plan would rise spectacularly, nearly doubling by 2010. But they would need to give up tenure for a year, after which they would need a principal’s recommendation or face dismissal.
Teachers who choose the red plan would also get big pay increases but would lose seniority rights that allow them to bump more-junior teachers if their school closes or undergoes an overhaul. If they were not hired by another school, their only options would be early retirement, a buyout or eventual dismissal.
In an interview, Ms. Rhee said she considered tenure outmoded.
“Tenure is the holy grail of teacher unions,” she said, “but has no educational value for kids; it only benefits adults. If we can put veteran teachers who have tenure in a position where they don’t have it, that would help us to radically increase our teacher quality. And maybe other districts would try it, too.”
Ms. Rhee has significant public backing for her efforts to improve this district of 46,000 students, one of the nation’s worst-performing. Both presidential candidates lined up behind her in their final debate last month, with Senator Barack Obama calling her Washington’s “wonderful new superintendent.”
Ms. Rhee, 38, has convinced Washington that she means business since Mayor Adrian M. Fenty plucked her out of a nonprofit organization based in New York City, the New Teacher Project, and installed her in the chancellorship 17 months ago. She has fired or forced out hundreds of central office employees, principals and paraprofessionals, as well as 216 teachers who lacked licenses, her aides said.
“Fire all incompetent teachers — that makes a good sound bite,” said George Parker, the president of the Washington Teachers’ Union. “But remember that not only teachers are to blame for the problems in this district.” Mr. Parker cited a chaotic administration that has had seven superintendents in a decade and has paid little attention to problems like truancy and student discipline. “You can’t fire your way into a successful school system,” he said.
Mr. Parker said he had kept an open mind about Ms. Rhee’s proposals, which would raise star teachers’ salaries to $130,000, with bonuses, by 2010, and the two went together before several mass gatherings of teachers in July to explain them. But an August poll commissioned by the union found that teachers opposed Ms. Rhee’s proposal by three to one.
In the interview, Ms. Rhee said the raises would be financed largely by foundations that had given her commitments of $75 million a year for five years, of which a “significant portion” would go for teacher compensation.
“The foundations want to fund things that are innovative and will have national ramifications,” she said. Ms. Rhee has declined to name the foundations, however, raising worries among some teachers about the foundations’ motives and about whether their commitments would remain solid if the nation’s financial crisis were to be prolonged.
The talks have made little progress in recent weeks.
“Students cannot wait for accountable teachers while adults argue,” Ms. Rhee said on Oct. 2, announcing that the district would seek to dismiss even tenured teachers deemed ineffective, partly by training principals to manage a little-used procedure that allows them to identify teachers for a 90-day mandatory improvement plan. Those who fail to demonstrate progress could face dismissal.
Mr. Parker responded by promising that the union would help teachers use all procedures available to protect their jobs.
“I’m willing to be flexible and to try out-of-the-box things to raise achievement,” he said, “but I’m not willing to move along this track that’s just geared to busting the union.”
Of Mr. Parker, Ms. Rhee said, “We have a very good relationship — he drives me nuts.”
The two leaders appeared together on Oct. 23 at an awards ceremony, and Ms. Rhee said they spoke briefly about the negotiations.
“You’re killing me,” Ms. Rhee said she told Mr. Parker in a joking exchange during the ceremony.
“No, you’re killing me,” Mr. Parker responded, she said.
Ms. Rhee’s relationship is less cordial with Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York and, also, since July, the American Federation of Teachers, which is helping Mr. Parker’s local.
During Ms. Rhee’s decade-long tenure at the New Teacher Project, her group operated programs for the New York schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, and she helped him during negotiations with Ms. Weingarten in which Mr. Klein, too, initially attacked tenure and seniority rights.
Mr. Klein’s 2003 assault on tenure did not prosper, but those negotiations eventually changed the seniority system so that principals are no longer required to accept teachers in schools that are not a good fit for them and teachers are not required to go to those schools. Both sides say the change has improved school staffing, and Ms. Rhee has proposed it for Washington.
In May, hundreds of people at a convention of educational entrepreneurs here watched spellbound as Ms. Weingarten, a commanding presence onstage, and Ms. Rhee, challenging her from the floor, clashed over what should happen to tenured teachers whom no schools hire.
Ms. Rhee’s attitudes about teaching were forged in the 1990s in Baltimore, where she taught in an elementary school as a member of Teach for America, the nonprofit group that recruits college graduates to teach for two years in hard-to-staff schools, after which many leave for jobs in other professions.
“Michelle does not view teaching as a career,” Ms. Weingarten said in an interview. “She sees it as temporary, something a lot of newbies will work very hard at for a couple of years, and then if they leave, they leave, as opposed to professionals who get more seasoned.”
Teachers first won tenure rights across much of the United States early in the 20th century as a safeguard against patronage firings in big cities and interference by narrow-minded school boards in small towns, said Jeffrey Mirel, a professor of history and education at the University of Michigan.
“And the historical rationale remains good,” Dr. Mirel said, pointing to the case of a renowned high school biology teacher in Kansas who was forced to retire nine years ago because he refused to teach creationism.
“Without tenure,” Dr. Mirel said, “teachers can still face arbitrary firing because of religious views, or simply because of the highly politicized nature of American society.”
Ms. Rhee and Mr. Klein are hardly the first public officials to inveigh against tenure, but few have succeeded in weakening it. Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, persuaded Georgia lawmakers to repeal the state’s teacher tenure law in 2000. But two years later, angry teachers helped elect Georgia’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, who promptly restored job protections for teachers.
Officials may have been most successful in abolishing tenure in Louisiana, where they had the help of a hurricane. Teachers in the Recovery School District, which was given control over many of New Orleans’s schools after Hurricane Katrina, serve at the will of the state superintendent, a spokeswoman for the district, Siona LaFrance, said in an e-mail message.
Maggie Slye, 31, a former teacher in Teach for America who is a literacy coach in a Washington elementary school, said she liked Ms. Rhee’s proposal because her salary would rise to $90,000 from $61,000 under the green plan.
“Isn’t it funny? I don’t even know if I have tenure,” said Ms. Slye, who taught in Boston last year. “To me, tenure is not a motivator; I motivate myself. It just doesn’t mean a lot to me.”
By contrast, Kerry Sylvia, 38, said she opposed Ms. Rhee’s proposal.
Although she is an award-winning world history teacher and works long hours to help students at her high school improve, Ms. Sylvia said that without tenure she would nevertheless feel vulnerable to arbitrary firing because she has publicly opposed some Rhee initiatives and speaks out about things like her school’s decrepit heating system.
“Don’t ask me to give up tenure, not even for a moment,” Ms. Sylvia said.
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Women Gain in Education but Not Power, Study Finds
By REUTERS
GENEVA (Reuters) — Women still lag far behind men in top political and decision-making roles, though their access to education and health care is nearly equal, the World Economic Forum said Wednesday.
In its 2008 Global Gender Gap report, the forum, a Swiss research organization, ranked Norway, Finland and Sweden as the countries that have the most equality of the sexes, and Saudi Arabia, Chad and Yemen as having the least.
Using United Nations data, the report found that girls and women around the world had generally reached near-parity with their male peers in literacy, access to education and health and survival. But in terms of economics and politics, including relative access to executive government and corporate posts, the gap between the sexes remains large.
The United States ranked 27th, above Russia (42nd), China (57th), Brazil (73rd) and India (113th). But the United States was ranked below Germany (11th), Britain (13th), France (15th), Lesotho (16th), Trinidad and Tobago (19th), South Africa (22nd), Argentina (24th) and Cuba (25th).
“The world’s women are nearly as educated and as healthy as men, but are nowhere to be found in terms of decision-making,” said Saadia Zahidi of the World Economic Forum
Middle Eastern and North African countries received the lowest ratings over all. The rankings of Syria, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia declined in 2008.
The report said the inequalities in those countries were so large as to put them at an economic disadvantage.
“A nation’s competitiveness depends significantly on whether and how it educates and utilizes its female talent. To maximize its competitiveness and development potential, each country should strive for gender equality.”
November 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/world/13gender.html?ref=world
Syria: Uranium Traces Found at Bombed Site, Diplomats Say
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Briefing | Middle East
Samples taken from a Syrian site bombed by Israel last year contained traces of uranium combined with other elements that merit further investigation, diplomats said Monday. The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because their information was confidential, said the uranium was processed, suggesting some kind of nuclear link.
One diplomat said the uranium finding itself was significant only in the context of other traces found in the oil or air samples taken by International Atomic Energy Agency experts in June. Syria has a rudimentary declared nuclear program revolving around research for medical and agricultural uses, and the uranium traces might have inadvertently been carried to the bombed site.
November 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/world/middleeast/11briefs-URANIUMTRACE_BRF.html?ref=world
Italy: School Reforms Draw More Protests
By RACHEL DONADIO
World Briefing | Europe
Students and teachers took to the streets of Italy on Thursday for the third consecutive day to protest reforms and cutbacks by the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that would reduce the number of classroom hours and diminish the number of elementary school teachers. Elementary, middle and high schools were closed as union members went on strike and joined public marches that paralyzed Rome and other cities.
October 31, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/world/europe/31briefs-SCHOOLREFORM_BRF.html?ref=world
Wider Disparity in Life Expectancy Is Found Between Rich and Poor
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
World Briefing
The gap in life expectancy between rich and poor has increased to as much as 40 years within some countries, according to a new report by the World Health Organization. The disparity can be found not just within and between nations, but even within cities. In measurements of infant mortality, for example, the number of children who died in the wealthiest area of Nairobi, Kenya, was less than 15 per 1,000. On the other hand, in a poor neighborhood the death rate was 254 per 1,000, according to the report, which was released on Tuesday. Worldwide, average life expectancy was 81 years for people in the richest 10 percent of the population, while it was 46 years for people in the poorest 10 percent.
October 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/world/17briefs-WIDERDISPARI_BRF.html?ref=world
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
- Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/37700.html"
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COURAGE TO RESIST
Where we are at. An appeal for support
Jeff Paterson
Courage to Resist Project Director
October 15, 2008
couragetoresist.org/donate
I'm proud to report that we have more than doubled the number of military objectors advised or directly supported since last year. To do this, our organizing collective has stepped up to the challenge in major ways, and we increased our staffing as well.
We're now attempting to do this work in the context of an unprecedented economic meltdown that financially affects every one of us in some way. Even prior to that, we were competing with a historic presidential election campaign for your donation. Of course we hold out hope for a new foreign policy not based on brutal occupations, but we're not holding our breath. If change does happen, it will take time for any new foreign policy to trickle down to the courageous men and women who are refusing to fight today.
Quick facts about our budget:
--86 percent of our entire budget has come directly from folks such as you.
--We currently rely on approximately 2,000 contributors across the U.S.
--The average donation we receive is just over $40.
--About half of our budget goes directly to supporting individual resisters.
--The remaining 14 percent of our budget comes from small grants made by progressive foundations.
Recently, we brought on board Sarah Lazare as Project Coordinator who has hit the ground running working with resisters, publishing articles, and collaborating with our allies in the justice and peace movement. Sarah is a former union organizer, Democracy Now! intern, and volunteer at a refugee camp in Lebanon.
Also new to our staff is our Office Manager Adam Seibert, who like me is a former Marine. Adam served in Somalia prior to going UA / AWOL under threat of another combat deployment.
I've never felt better about our staff and organizing collective. We're undertaking urgent and unique work that directly contributes to ending war. However, we are currently running a $4,000 monthly deficit. Whether we can move forward with our work to support the troops who refuse to fight is in large part based on your shared commitment to this project.
For a review of our current work with resisters Tony Anderson, Blake Ivy, Robin Long, and our women and men fighting to remain in Canada, please check our homepage. We have also posted an organizational timeline of action that details our work since 2003.
Today I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $100 or more, or become a sustainer at $20 or more a month. With your direct assistance, I'm confident we'll be able to move forward together in challenging our government's policies of empire. Together we have the power to end the war.
couragetoresist.org/donate
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Courage to Resist Project Director
First U.S. military serviceperson to refuse to fight in Iraq
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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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WHAT ALL HUMANITY IS UP AGAINST (FROM "60 MINUTES")
[THIS IS TRULY TERRIFYING!...BW]
The Battle Of Sadr City
Weaponry so advanced that it spots the enemy and destroys it from nearly two miles above the battlefield made the difference in the fight for Sadr City last spring. Lesley Stahl's report shows rare footage of the weaponry in action.
October 13, 2008
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4516319n
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"Meditating on the current U.S. public debt-$10,266 trillions-that President Bush is laying on the shoulders of the new generations in that country, I took to calculating how long it would take a man to count the debt that he has doubled in eight years.
"A man working eight hours a day, without missing a second, and counting one hundred one-dollar bills per minute, during 300 days in the year, would need 710 billion years to count that amount of money." -Fidel Castro Ruz, October 11, 2008
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Check out this video of the Oct. 11 protest in Boston:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pPB5IR_hEg
Video: Peace Rally in Providence
October 11th, 2008
Rhode Island Community Coalition for Peace held an anti-war and pro immigration rally at Dexter Training Grounds, beside the Cranston Armory, followed by a march that ended up at Burnside Park around 4:30 p.m. There were 200 people at the rally and more joined the march along the way. Providence Journal video by Kathy Borchers
http://www.projo.com/video/?z=y&nvid=291998
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"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel."
- Abraham Lincoln, speech to Illinois legislature, January 1837
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Subprime crisis explanation by The Long Johns
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=z-oIMJMGd1Q
Wanda Sykes on Jay Leno: Bailout and Palin
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=tco5h_ZprMY
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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
U.S. Supreme Court stays Georgia execution
"The U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute reprieve to a Georgia man fewer than two hours before he was to be executed for the 1989 slaying of an off-duty police officer.
"Troy Anthony Davis learned that his execution had been stayed when he saw it on television, he told CNN via telephone in his first interview after the stay was announced."
September 23, 2008
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/09/23/davis.scheduled.execution/
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 continue keep you posted.
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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New on the Taking Aim Program Archive:
"9/11: Blueprint for Truth: The Architecture of Destruction" part 2 is
available on the Taking Aim Program Archive at
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
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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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