*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ARTICLES IN FULL:
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Money Is Tight, and Junk Food Beckons
By TARA PARKER-POPE
November 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/health/nutrition/04well.html?ref=health
2) U.S. Airstrike Reported to Hit Afghan Wedding
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and MARK McDONALD
November 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/world/asia/06afghan.html?hp
3) As Capitalism Struggles, 'Das Kapital' Moves Units; A Boom in Red Flag
By ALISTAIR MACDONALD
Wall Street Journal
LETTER FROM THE CITY NOVEMBER 6, 2008
4) Obama Aides Tamp Down Expectations
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG
November 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/us/politics/06expect.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
5) 7 Afghan Civilians Die in Coalition Attack
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and SANGAR RAHIMI
November 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?ref=world
6) Franklin Delano Obama?
By Paul Krugman
Op-Ed Columnist
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html?hp
7) So We’ve Got a Date?
Editorial
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10mon1.html?hp
8) Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda
By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/washington/10military.html?hp
9) China Unveils Sweeping Plan for Economy
By DAVID BARBOZA
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/world/asia/10china.html?ref=world
11) Racial Imbalance Persists at Elite Public Schools
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
November 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/nyregion/08specialized.html?ref=education
12) As Schools Grapple With Crowding, Prospect of Rezoning Angers Manhattan Parents
By JENNIFER MEDINA
November 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/education/05rezone.html?ref=education
13) Paterson Says Schools and Medicaid Face Cuts
By DANNY HAKIM
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/nyregion/10budget.html?ref=nyregion
14) Newt Gingrich: Let's End Adolescence
Outside Shot
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says young people need to shift more
quickly from childhood to adulthood
October 30, 2008, 5:00PM EST
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_45/b4107085289974.htm
15) Beyond the Fat Cats
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
November 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/opinion/11herbert.html?hp
16) It’s About the Mortgages
Editorial
November 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/opinion/11tue1.html?hp
17) U.S. to Streamline Homeowner Assistance
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/business/12mortgage.html?hp
18) Venezuela Positions Itself as a Salon for the Left
By SIMON ROMERO
Caracas Journal
November 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/world/americas/11venez.html?ref=world
19) Georgians Flee Border Village as Russian Troops Leave
By OLESYA VARTANYAN and ELLEN BARRY
November 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/world/europe/11georgia.html?ref=world
20) Free the Atenco 13!
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[col.writ. 10/23/08] (c) '08
PrisonRadio.org
21) 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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Money Is Tight, and Junk Food Beckons
By TARA PARKER-POPE
November 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/health/nutrition/04well.html?ref=health
How much does it really cost to eat a healthy diet?
Economists, health researchers and consumers are struggling to answer that question as food prices rise and the economy slumps. The World Bank says nearly a billion people around the world live on a dollar a day, or even less; in the United States, the daily food-stamp allowance is typically just a few dollars per person, while the average American eats $7 worth of food per day.
Even middle-class people struggle to put healthful food on the table. Studies show that junk foods tend to cost less than fruits, vegetables and other healthful foods, whose prices continue to rise.
This fall a couple in Encinitas, Calif., conducted their own experiment to find out what it was like to live for a month on just a dollar a day for food. Overnight, their diets changed significantly. The budget forced them to give up many store-bought foods and dinners out. Even bread and canned refried beans were too expensive.
Instead, the couple — Christopher Greenslate, 28, and Kerri Leonard, 29, both high school social studies teachers — bought raw beans, rice, cornmeal and oatmeal in bulk, and made their own bread and tortillas. Fresh fruits and vegetables weren’t an option. Ms. Leonard’s mother was so worried about scurvy, a result of vitamin C deficiency, that they made room in their budget for Tang orange drink mix. (They don’t eat meat — not that they could have afforded it.)
Breakfast consisted of oatmeal; lunch was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Dinner often consisted of beans, rice and homemade tortillas. Homemade pancakes were affordable, but syrup was not; a local restaurant gave them a few free syrup packets.
One of the biggest changes was the time they had to spend in meal preparation.
“If you’re buying raw materials, you’re spending more time preparing things,” Mr. Greenslate said. “We’d come home after working 10 to 11 hours and have to roll out tortillas. If you’re already really hungry at that point, it’s tough.”
While he lost weight on the budget diet, Mr. Greenslate said, the larger issue was his lack of energy. During the experiment he was no longer able to work out at the gym.
A few times they found a bag of carrots or lettuce that was within their budget, but produce was usually too expensive. They foraged for lemons on the trees in their neighborhood to squeeze juice into their water.
Ms. Leonard said that after the 30-day experiment, one of the first foods she ate was a strawberry. “I almost cried,” she said.
The couple acknowledged that the experiment was something of a luxury, given that many people have no choice about how much to spend on food.
“People in our situation have the leisure to be concerned about issues like this,” Ms. Leonard said. “If we were actually living in this situation, I would not be taking the time to be concerned about what I could and could not have; I’d be worried about survival.”
Researchers say the experiment reflects many of the challenges that poor people actually face. When food stamps and income checks run low toward the end of the month, they often do scrape by on a dollar a day or less. But many people don’t know how to prepare foods from scratch, or lack the time.
“You have to know how to cook beans and rice, how to make tortillas, how to soak lentils,” said Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington. “Many people don’t have the knowledge or the time if they’re working two jobs.”
Last year, Dr. Drewnowski led a study, published in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, comparing the prices of 370 foods sold at supermarkets in the Seattle area. The study showed that “energy dense” junk foods, which pack the most calories and fewest nutrients per gram, were far less expensive than nutrient-rich, lower-calorie foods like fruits and vegetables. The prices of the most healthful foods surged 19.5 percent over the two-year study period, while the junk food prices dropped 1.8 percent.
Obesity researchers worry that these trends will push consumers toward less healthful foods. “The message for this year and next year is going to be affordable nutrition,” Dr. Drewnowski said. “It’s not the food pyramid, it’s the budget pyramid.”
The experiment in California was hardly the first of its kind, though the teachers’ budget was tighter than most. Last month Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan and her family took a weeklong “food stamp challenge,” spending only $5.87 per day per person on food — the Michigan food stamp allotment. She told reporters that she ended up buying a lot of macaroni and cheese. Last year Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski of Oregon lived for a week on his state’s $3-a-day food stamp allocation.
Ms. Leonard and Mr. Greenslate, who chronicled their dollar-a-day experience on their blog, onedollardietproject.wordpress.com, say they are looking at other ways to explore how difficult it is for people with limited income to eat a healthful diet.
“I challenge anyone to try to live on a dollar a day and eat fresh food in this country,” Mr. Greenslate said. “I would love to be proven wrong.”
well@nytimes.com
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) U.S. Airstrike Reported to Hit Afghan Wedding
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and MARK McDONALD
November 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/world/asia/06afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan — An airstrike by United States-led forces killed 40 civilians and wounded 28 others at a wedding party in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Wednesday. The casualties included women and children, the officials said.
The United States military and Afghan authorities were investigating the reports about the latest attack, the American military said in a statement, but it gave no confirmation of the strikes or any death toll.
The reports of the strike, in a region that has become a renewed front line in the battle against the Taliban, showed the raw tensions between the United States and Afghanistan over the toll suffered by civilians in the war, and came just hours after the election of Barack Obama as the next American president.
The reports recall an assault in August in western Afghanistan that was initially disputed by the United States, in which an American gunship killed at least 30 civilians. On Wednesday, at a news conference called to congratulate Mr. Obama, President Hamid Karzai said his first request to Mr. Obama would be “to end the civilian casualties.”
The American military statement said an investigation was under way in the village of Wech Baghtu. “If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences to the families and the people of Afghanistan,” said the statement, issued by Cmdr. Jeff Bender, deputy public affairs officer of United States forces in Afghanistan. But it also said that the facts were “unclear at this point.”
Zalmay Ayoby, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar, said the strike took place on Monday afternoon, when Taliban and American-led forces engaged in a firefight near the village, which is in Sha Wali Kot district. An airstrike was later called in and hit a compound where a wedding party was being held, he said.
“Unfortunately we should say that an airstrike on a wedding party had killed and injured a huge number of people in Sha Wali Kot,” he said.
Ahmad Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan president and leader of the provincial council in Kandahar, said that there were civilian casualties, but that it was unclear how many people had died.
He said he had spoken with some people who had been wounded in the attack and had been admitted to Kandahar’s main hospital. They told him that as many as 32 civilians were admitted, including women and children from the wedding party, he said.
Dr. Qudratullah Hakimi, a doctor at the Merwais Hospital in Kandahar, who was reached by telephone, said the hospital had admitted 22 women and six children after the attack. The children were from 1 to 11 years old, he said. He said the bride from the wedding party had undergone an operation but was stable.
“Five out of 28 are in serious condition and the others are stable,” he said. His patients reported that up to 90 people were killed or wounded in the attack, and that some were buried under the rubble, although this could not be independently confirmed.
Later, President Karzai condemned the attack in a statement and said that around 40 people had been killed and another 28 wounded.
Afghan anger over airstrikes and civilian casualties has been rising, adding to tensions with the United States over international operations to fight resurgent Taliban insurgents.
In the case, that the United States initially disputed, an American AC-130 gunship attacked a suspected Taliban compound on Aug. 22. Villagers and Afghan officials said that more than 90 civilians were killed, a majority of them women and children, and a United Nations human rights team who visited the area said it found “convincing evidence” that 90 civilians — among them 60 children — that number.
But the American military initially said that only five to seven civilians had been killed. Persistent accounts of a higher toll, and news reports bolstering the claims, prompted another military investigation, which concluded that more than 30 civilians had been killed.
At his news conference Wednesday, President Karzai referred to civilian casualties in the attack on Sha Wali Kot. “The fight against terrorism cannot be won by bombardment of our villages,” Mr. Karzai said. “My first demand from the new president of the United States when he takes his office will be to end the civilian casualties and take the fight to where the nests and sanctuaries are,” he said.
Abdul Waheed Wafa reported from Kabul, Afghanistan and Mark McDonald from New York. Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) As Capitalism Struggles, 'Das Kapital' Moves Units; A Boom in Red Flag
By ALISTAIR MACDONALD
Wall Street Journal
LETTER FROM THE CITY NOVEMBER 6, 2008
A Marx Revival Stirs in Britain
The credit crunch that has sent Britain reeling is providing a boon
for supporters of the man who predicted the country's economic
collapse more than a century ago -- Karl Marx.
The Communist Party of Britain is trying to make the most of what it
sees as a vindication of Marxism, or, at the very least, a renewed
curiosity in Marx in the country where he made his home.
After a decade of being largely ignored, copies of "Das Kapital" and
other Marxist tracts are starting to sell again, and Marxist academics
are back on the airwaves to revel in the misfortunes of capitalism.
In London, where Marx lived for the last 34 years of his life and
where he wrote his most famous works, the Communist Party is
struggling to keep up with demand for hammer-and-sickle enamel badges
at £2.50 ($4) apiece, and £7 red flags. The party, which has never had
much of a following in the U.K. compared with many other European
countries, has ordered 3,000 red flags so far in 2008, far more than
the 1,000 it normally needs in a year.
Party representatives also are finding themselves in demand.
Once, people would have crossed the road to avoid "some lefty wanting
to discuss the crisis," said Robert Griffiths, the general secretary
of the party. "Now people come up and ask, 'What about this crisis,
then?' " he said.
To capitalize on worries about capitalism, the party has two printers
constantly churning out leaflets, including a recent one titled "The
credit crisis: your questions answered."
Last week, a Halloween costume party titled "Dancing on the Grave of
Capitalism" was staged outside the former London headquarters of
failed investment bank Lehman Brothers.
"We wanted to celebrate. It is not the end of the world, it is just
the end of capitalism," said Chris Knight, a professor of anthropology
at the University of East London, who helped organize the event. Mr.
Knight, who describes himself as "hugely inspired" by Karl Marx, says
he and other like-minded academics had been ignored for the past 10
years. "But now the corpse is twitching," he said.
But both inside and outside the City, not everybody is greeting the
return of Marx with open arms.
Visitors to the German-born philosopher's grave site in northern
London sometimes protest the £2 entry fee to the famous resting place.
It isn't what Marx would have wanted, they say.
"What absolute rubbish," responds Jean Pateman, the 87-year-old head
of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery, a charity that operates the
burial ground. "He led the capitalist life," she said. "He even pawned
his wife's silver." [He and his family were starving at the time. While his wife's family was well-to-do, they never sent money. They sent things and even paid for a housekeeper but no money....bw]
Write to Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Obama Aides Tamp Down Expectations
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG
November 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/us/politics/06expect.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
President-elect Barack Obama has begun an effort to tamp down what his aides fear are unusually high expectations among his supporters, and will remind Americans regularly throughout the transition that the nation’s challenges are substantial and will take time to address.
Mr. Obama’s advisers said they were startled, if gratified, by the jubilation that greeted the news of Mr. Obama’s victory in much of the United States and abroad. But while the energy of his supporters could be a tremendous political asset as Mr. Obama works to enact his agenda after taking office in January, his aides said they were looking to temper hopes that he would be able to solve the nation’s problems or fully reverse Bush administration policies quickly and easily, especially given the prospect of a deep and long-lasting recession.
“We have talked about this,” said Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “It’s important that everybody understands that this is not going to happen overnight. There has to be a realistic expectation of what can happen and how quickly.”
Joel Benenson, Mr. Obama’s campaign pollster, said he thought that the public appreciated the problems that the president-elect was facing and would judge him against that backdrop.
“I don’t think they view him as a miracle worker who in two months is going to solve an economic crisis,” Mr. Benenson said. “It is a matter of being straightforward with people about what we are going to achieve and how fast it’s going to take.”
Mr. Obama will hit that theme at a news conference he is expected to hold over the coming days, and in most of his public appearances from here on out, aides said. They said they would discourage the traditional yardstick for measuring the accomplishments of a new president — the first 100 days. Mr. Obama told an interviewer toward the end of his campaign that it was more appropriate to talk about the first 1,000 days.
Mr. Obama’s advisers said that the tone of his victory speech on Tuesday night — sober and devoid of the arm-pumping that would typically be in an address of that sort — reflected his awareness of these circumstances. Mr. Obama warned that the promises that led Americans to embrace his candidacy — be they as specific as expanding health care or as broad as changing the tone of Washington — might take as long a term to carry out.
The caution reflected the inevitable perils of taking control of the White House at such a difficult time, particularly after a campaign that stirred so much hope among voters. The economic crisis will certainly complicate Mr. Obama’s more ambitious domestic efforts like broadening health care coverage and cutting taxes for most Americans. His call for a change in the tone in Washington would require a sharp shift in history. Even with substantial Democratic majorities in the Senate and the House, passing major legislation could still be time-consuming for Mr. Obama and require compromises.
Mr. Gibbs said one of the main challenges for Mr. Obama was tamping down expectations a bit without making anyone think he was moving away from the promises of his campaign.
“The flip side of this — and I want to make sure this is also clear — we also believe that it is paramount to begin doing everything we said we would do in the campaign,” Mr. Gibbs said. “We know expectations are high. But disappointment if we didn’t try to do the things that we said we were going to do would be far, far greater than anything else. People went to the polls and elected Barack Obama because they believed the fact not only that he could do what he said, but that he would try to do what he said.”
The challenge facing Mr. Obama today is similar to one that faced Bill Clinton in 1992, the last time a president arrived in Washington with anything approaching the level of excitement Mr. Obama’s election set off around the country.
As Election Day approached in 1992, it was apparent from the crowds that Mr. Clinton drew, in their size and their faces, that his supporters expected big things after a campaign in which Mr. Clinton had promised a dramatic revamping in health care coverage and programs for the poor. At the time, a senior adviser who was traveling with him, Paul Begala, warned Mr. Clinton to add some caveats to his speeches, to avoid voter letdown should it take time to accomplish things as president.
“I remember talking about this to him in the closing days of the campaign,” Mr. Begala said. “And he started saying, ‘We didn’t get into this overnight and we’re not going to get out of it overnight.’ ”
“So I remember him talking about it and doing it — and it didn’t have any effect on the citizens,” Mr. Begala said. That was one reason, he said, that Democrats lost control of Congress two years later.
A nearly 500-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday was a reminder that Mr. Obama’s election did not bring the financial crisis to a close, and that the economic downturn could limit his ability to pursue his full agenda right off the bat by demanding an immediate focus on trying to pull the nation out of recession. And, even if Americans are ready to bear with Mr. Obama as he pursues policy proposals, they may not as readily accept the sort of compromise that legislative accomplishment often requires.
With the Democrats holding a solid but not commanding majority in the Senate after the vote on Tuesday, his agenda will probably require some modicum of horse trading for Republican support. Further complicating the picture, Mr. Obama’s winning coalition includes new voters who will be watching him closely but may not have patience for the deliberative give and take that accomplishment in Washington often demands.
“He’s got to lower some expectations, indicate the limits he’s confronting,” said Leon Panetta, a former chief of staff to Mr. Clinton. “He’s got a story to tell about how he’s confronting the worst crisis that any president has faced in modern history, and I think he can make clear that he’s going to try to deal with these problems one at a time.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) 7 Afghan Civilians Die in Coalition Attack
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and SANGAR RAHIMI
November 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?ref=world
KABUL, Afghanistan — As Afghan officials reported more civilian casualties from coalition airstrikes on Thursday, United States forces offered their first account of an incident earlier this week in which a missile fired from an American aircraft reportedly killed 40 civilians and wounded 28 at a wedding party.
The American account said “insurgents” prevented civilians from fleeing an area caught in a firefight on Monday between coalition and Afghan Army forces and militants who ambushed them in the southern province of Kandahar.
It was the first time the United States forces had sought to explain and acknowledge civilian fatalities in the Shah Wali Kott district of Kandahar province last Monday.
Referring to fatalities in both that incident and the reported attack on Thursday, Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for United States forces, said, “we hope that it’s not from our fire, but we suspect it may well have been.”
In a telephone interview, Colonel Julian accused Taliban forces of “immersing themselves” among civilians on Monday to deter American forces from using airstrikes.
“Our close air support has been so devastating with the Taliban that they are trying to stop us using it” by provoking situations in which civilians are caught up in fighting and killed, he said.
Afghan distress over reports of civilian casualties has reached such a point that President Hamid Karzai greeted the election of Senator Barack Obama to the American presidency with a call on Wednesday for an end to the killing of non-combatants.
“The fight against terrorism cannot be won by bombardment of our villages,” Mr. Karzai said. “My first demand from the U.S. president, when he takes office, would be to end civilian casualties in Afghanistan and take the war to places where there are terrorist nests and training centers.”
Despite that appeal, Afghan officials reported seven more civilian deaths in the incident early on Thursday in northwestern Afghanistan, and witnesses of Monday’s attack in Kandahar said the death toll was much higher than the official figure of 40 and may have been as high as 90.
“I counted 90 dead bodies,” Abdul Rahim, 26, who described himself as a survivor of the family hosting the wedding party on Monday, said in a telephone interview. “I saw them with my own eyes. I discovered them under the debris.” He said he lost 15 members of his own family, including two brothers aged eight and 10, and several women and children.
Mr. Rahim said he was in a neighboring village collecting more food for the wedding party when the airstrike happened. Taliban insurgents, he said, had fired some shots from the top of a hill toward a convoy of American vehicles, and the Americans returned the fire, calling in an airstrike about one hour later.
Four houses, including the house where the wedding party was underway, were destroyed, Mr. Rahim said.
A tribal elder of Shah Wali Kott, who spoke in return for anonymity because he feared for his safety if identified by name, said he could not confirm the exact death toll but insisted the casualties were higher than the government’s estimate of 40.
The United States military said Thursday it would conduct a joint investigation with the Afghan authorities into the incident in Shah Wali Kott.
In a statement, which made no reference to airstrikes, the American military said militants “ambushed a coalition security patrol using rifles, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and mortars” and Afghan and coalition forces “responded with a variety of weapons fire.”
“Civilians reportedly attempted to leave the area, but the insurgents forced them to remain as they continued to fire” on Afghan and coalition forces, the statement continued. It quoted a local police commander as saying there had been reports of several civilians being injured while attempting to leave the area.
The United States statement said nine insurgents were killed, but did not refer to civilian casualties. However, in an earlier statement the United States command did seem to leave open the possibility of civilian deaths.
“Though facts are unclear at this point, we take very seriously our responsibility to protect the people of Afghanistan and to avoid circumstances where noncombatant civilians are placed at risk,” the command said. “If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences to the families and people of Afghanistan.”
The American military used almost identical language in a statement Thursday about the latest reported attack on three villages in northwestern Afghanistan.
In that incident, Abdullah Waqif, the district governor of the Ghormach area of Badghis Province, said a firefight with coalition and Afghan Army forces had provoked coalition airstrikes and seven civilians and 15 Taliban fighters were killed.
Qari Dawlat Khan, the provincial council leader in the area, said up to 20 civilians may have been killed as they slept in their homes in three villages. One provincial council member, Tawakal Khan, said he lost two sons, aged 35 and 12, and a grandson aged seven in the attacks.
A statement from the United States military in Afghanistan said the American command was aware of possible civilian casualties following an insurgent ambush in the area..
“If we find innocent people were killed in this incident, we apologize and express our sincere condolences to the families and the people of Afghanistan,” the statement said.
Colonel Julian, the United States spokesman, said the incident early Thursday happened after a Taliban ambush when two quick reaction units came to the assistance of the force under attack and called in air strikes.
Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sangar Rahimi reported from Kabul. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Franklin Delano Obama?
By Paul Krugman
Op-Ed Columnist
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html?hp
Suddenly, everything old is New Deal again. Reagan is out; F.D.R. is in. Still, how much guidance does the Roosevelt era really offer for today’s world?
The answer is, a lot. But Barack Obama should learn from F.D.R.’s failures as well as from his achievements: the truth is that the New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run. And the reason for F.D.R.’s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious.
About the New Deal’s long-run achievements: the institutions F.D.R. built have proved both durable and essential. Indeed, those institutions remain the bedrock of our nation’s economic stability. Imagine how much worse the financial crisis would be if the New Deal hadn’t insured most bank deposits. Imagine how insecure older Americans would feel right now if Republicans had managed to dismantle Social Security.
Can Mr. Obama achieve something comparable? Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s new chief of staff, has declared that “you don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste.” Progressives hope that the Obama administration, like the New Deal, will respond to the current economic and financial crisis by creating institutions, especially a universal health care system, that will change the shape of American society for generations to come.
But the new administration should try not to emulate a less successful aspect of the New Deal: its inadequate response to the Great Depression itself.
Now, there’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it’s important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.
That said, F.D.R. did not, in fact, manage to engineer a full economic recovery during his first two terms. This failure is often cited as evidence against Keynesian economics, which says that increased public spending can get a stalled economy moving. But the definitive study of fiscal policy in the ’30s, by the M.I.T. economist E. Cary Brown, reached a very different conclusion: fiscal stimulus was unsuccessful “not because it does not work, but because it was not tried.”
This may seem hard to believe. The New Deal famously placed millions of Americans on the public payroll via the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. To this day we drive on W.P.A.-built roads and send our children to W.P.A.-built schools. Didn’t all these public works amount to a major fiscal stimulus?
Well, it wasn’t as major as you might think. The effects of federal public works spending were largely offset by other factors, notably a large tax increase, enacted by Herbert Hoover, whose full effects weren’t felt until his successor took office. Also, expansionary policy at the federal level was undercut by spending cuts and tax increases at the state and local level.
And F.D.R. wasn’t just reluctant to pursue an all-out fiscal expansion — he was eager to return to conservative budget principles. That eagerness almost destroyed his legacy. After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits and led to a major defeat in the 1938 midterm elections.
What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.
This history offers important lessons for the incoming administration.
The political lesson is that economic missteps can quickly undermine an electoral mandate. Democrats won big last week — but they won even bigger in 1936, only to see their gains evaporate after the recession of 1937-38. Americans don’t expect instant economic results from the incoming administration, but they do expect results, and Democrats’ euphoria will be short-lived if they don’t deliver an economic recovery.
The economic lesson is the importance of doing enough. F.D.R. thought he was being prudent by reining in his spending plans; in reality, he was taking big risks with the economy and with his legacy. My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little.
In short, Mr. Obama’s chances of leading a new New Deal depend largely on whether his short-run economic plans are sufficiently bold. Progressives can only hope that he has the necessary audacity.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) So We’ve Got a Date?
Editorial
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10mon1.html?hp
The United Nations mandate that allows American troops to operate in Iraq expires at the end of December. And for months, the Bush administration and Iraq’s government have been wrangling over a so-called status of forces agreement to replace it.
The good news is that both Baghdad and the Americans (at least on paper) have agreed that it is time to start planning for a withdrawal of American troops. The other good news is that Iraqis are increasingly eager to run their own country.
The bad news is that the Bush administration fought the idea of a withdrawal for so long that it hasn’t done anything more than set a notional date. And the other bad news is that Iraq’s domestic politics are still so dysfunctional that its leaders can’t agree on much more than that they want the Americans gone.
President Bush went into these talks months ago looking for a legal authorization to keep American troops in Iraq for years to come. Luckily the Iraqis had different aspirations.
Mr. Bush has now agreed to move American troops out of urban areas by next June and to withdraw combat troops from the country by the end of 2011, leaving only military trainers and air traffic controllers behind.
Mr. Bush also gave ground on another sensitive issue. The Iraqis wanted American troops to be subject to their laws; the Americans wanted total immunity. Under the current compromise American forces would have immunity, except in cases of serious or premeditated felonies committed outside their official duties. Recent news reports suggest that the Americans may also be ready to commit not to launch attacks on Iraq’s neighbors from Iraqi soil.
It’s hard to know whether any concessions will be enough to get Iraq’s leaders to sign on. With provincial elections scheduled for January, no one wants to appear too pro-American. There are signs that the American election may be changing that dynamic, with some Iraqis citing greater confidence that President-elect Barack Obama will live by the agreement’s terms.
If the agreement is stymied, the United States and Iraq should ask the Security Council to extend its mandate. Or the two countries could agree to let the American forces keep operating until the pact is concluded.
The fact that the process is taking so long is also a reminder that there is no moving forward in Iraq without bringing Iran into the process — something Mr. Bush has fiercely resisted. Tehran has pressed key Iraqi Shiites to oppose any deal with the Americans and it continues to supply militias with training and weapons.
Mr. Obama says he wants to open a dialogue with Tehran. And last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent a letter to Mr. Obama congratulating him on his election. It would be even more encouraging if Mr. Ahmadinejad signaled a willingness to work with the new administration on stabilizing Iraq, instead of continuing to stir the sectarian furies that could yet tear the country apart.
When Mr. Obama takes office, he must come equipped not just with a strategy for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. He also needs a serious plan for engaging Iran and all of Iraq’s neighbors (there are about two million Iraqi refugees just in Syria and Jordan) in a broader security dialogue. That is essential for both stabilizing Iraq and for ensuring that Iraq’s troubles don’t spill even further over its borders.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda
By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/washington/10military.html?hp
WASHINGTON — The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.
These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.
In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.
Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the C.I.A., according to senior American officials, who said that in others, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of C.I.A.-directed operations.
But as many as a dozen additional operations have been canceled in the past four years, often to the dismay of military commanders, senior military officials said. They said senior administration officials had decided in these cases that the missions were too risky, were too diplomatically explosive or relied on insufficient evidence.
More than a half-dozen officials, including current and former military and intelligence officials as well as senior Bush administration policy makers, described details of the 2004 military order on the condition of anonymity because of its politically delicate nature. Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department and the military declined to comment.
Apart from the 2006 raid into Pakistan, the American officials refused to describe in detail what they said had been nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks, except to say they had been carried out in Syria, Pakistan and other countries. They made clear that there had been no raids into Iran using that authority, but they suggested that American forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using other classified directives.
According to a senior administration official, the new authority was spelled out in a classified document called “Al Qaeda Network Exord,” or execute order, that streamlined the approval process for the military to act outside officially declared war zones. Where in the past the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days when there were only hours to act, the new order specified a way for Pentagon planners to get the green light for a mission far more quickly, the official said.
It also allowed senior officials to think through how the United States would respond if a mission went badly. “If that helicopter goes down in Syria en route to a target,” a former senior military official said, “the American response would not have to be worked out on the fly.”
The 2004 order was a step in the evolution of how the American government sought to kill or capture Qaeda terrorists around the world. It was issued after the Bush administration had already granted America’s intelligence agencies sweeping power to secretly detain and interrogate terrorism suspects in overseas prisons and to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on telephone and electronic communications.
Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush issued a classified order authorizing the C.I.A. to kill or capture Qaeda militants around the globe. By 2003, American intelligence agencies and the military had developed a much deeper understanding of Al Qaeda’s extensive global network, and Mr. Rumsfeld pressed hard to unleash the military’s vast firepower against militants outside the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 2004 order identifies 15 to 20 countries, including Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and several other Persian Gulf states, where Qaeda militants were believed to be operating or to have sought sanctuary, a senior administration official said.
Even with the order, each specific mission requires high-level government approval. Targets in Somalia, for instance, need at least the approval of the defense secretary, the administration official said, while targets in a handful of countries, including Pakistan and Syria, require presidential approval.
The Pentagon has exercised its authority frequently, dispatching commandos to countries including Pakistan and Somalia. Details of a few of these strikes have previously been reported.
For example, shortly after Ethiopian troops crossed into Somalia in late 2006 to dislodge an Islamist regime in Mogadishu, the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command quietly sent operatives and AC-130 gunships to an airstrip near the Ethiopian town of Dire Dawa. From there, members of a classified unit called Task Force 88 crossed repeatedly into Somalia to hunt senior members of a Qaeda cell believed to be responsible for the 1998 American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
At the time, American officials said Special Operations troops were operating under a classified directive authorizing the military to kill or capture Qaeda operatives if failure to act quickly would mean the United States had lost a “fleeting opportunity” to neutralize the enemy.
Occasionally, the officials said, Special Operations troops would land in Somalia to assess the strikes’ results. On Jan. 7, 2007, an AC-130 struck an isolated fishing village near the Kenyan border, and within hours, American commandos and Ethiopian troops were examining the rubble to determine whether any Qaeda operatives had been killed.
But even with the new authority, proposed Pentagon missions were sometimes scrubbed because of bad intelligence or bureaucratic entanglements, senior administration officials said.
The details of one of those aborted operations, in early 2005, were reported by The New York Times last June. In that case, an operation to send a team of the Navy Seals and the Army Rangers into Pakistan to capture Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy, was aborted at the last minute.
Mr. Zawahri was believed by intelligence officials to be attending a meeting in Bajaur, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command hastily put together a plan to capture him. There were strong disagreements inside the Pentagon and the C.I.A. about the quality of the intelligence, however, and some in the military expressed concern that the mission was unnecessarily risky.
Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director at the time, urged the military to carry out the mission, and some in the C.I.A. even wanted to execute it without informing Ryan C. Crocker, then the American ambassador to Pakistan. Mr. Rumsfeld ultimately refused to authorize the mission.
Former military and intelligence officials said that Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who recently completed his tour as head of the Joint Special Operations Command, had pressed for years to win approval for commando missions into Pakistan. But the missions were frequently rejected because officials in Washington determined that the risks to American troops and the alliance with Pakistan were too great.
Capt. John Kirby, a spokesman for General McChrystal, who is now director of the military’s Joint Staff, declined to comment.
The recent raid into Syria was not the first time that Special Operations forces had operated in that country, according to a senior military official and an outside adviser to the Pentagon.
Since the Iraq war began, the official and the outside adviser said, Special Operations forces have several times made cross-border raids aimed at militants and infrastructure aiding the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.
The raid in late October, however, was much more noticeable than the previous raids, military officials said, which helps explain why it drew a sharp protest from the Syrian government.
Negotiations to hammer out the 2004 order took place over nearly a year and involved wrangling between the Pentagon and the C.I.A. and the State Department about the military’s proper role around the world, several administration officials said.
American officials said there had been debate over whether to include Iran in the 2004 order, but ultimately Iran was set aside, possibly to be dealt with under a separate authorization.
Senior officials of the State Department and the C.I.A. voiced fears that military commandos would encroach on their turf, conducting operations that historically the C.I.A. had carried out, and running missions without an ambassador’s knowledge or approval.
Mr. Rumsfeld had pushed in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks to expand the mission of Special Operations troops to include intelligence gathering and counterterrorism operations in countries where American commandos had not operated before.
Bush administration officials have shown a determination to operate under an expansive definition of self-defense that provides a legal rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries’ consent.
Several officials said the negotiations over the 2004 order resulted in closer coordination among the Pentagon, the State Department and the C.I.A., and set a very high standard for the quality of intelligence necessary to gain approval for an attack.
The 2004 order also provided a foundation for the orders that Mr. Bush approved in July allowing the military to conduct raids into the Pakistani tribal areas, including the Sept. 3 operation by Special Operations forces that killed about 20 militants, American officials said.
Administration officials said that Mr. Bush’s approval had paved the way for Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to sign an order — separate from the 2004 order — that specifically directed the military to plan a series of operations, in cooperation with the C.I.A., on the Qaeda network and other militant groups linked to it in Pakistan.
Unlike the 2004 order, in which Special Operations commanders nominated targets for approval by senior government officials, the order in July was more of a top-down approach, directing the military to work with the C.I.A. to find targets in the tribal areas, administration officials said. They said each target still needed to be approved by the group of Mr. Bush’s top national security and foreign policy advisers, called the Principals Committee.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) China Unveils Sweeping Plan for Economy
By DAVID BARBOZA
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/world/asia/10china.html?ref=world
SHANGHAI — China announced a huge economic stimulus plan on Sunday aimed at bolstering its weakening economy, a sweeping move that could also help fight the effects of the global slowdown.
At a time when major infrastructure projects are being put off around the world, China said it would spend an estimated $586 billion over the next two years — roughly 7 percent of its gross domestic product each year — to construct new railways, subways and airports and to rebuild communities devastated by an earthquake in the southwest in May.
The package, announced Sunday evening by the State Council, or cabinet, is the largest economic stimulus effort ever undertaken by the Chinese government.
“Over the past two months, the global financial crisis has been intensifying daily,” the State Council said in a statement. “In expanding investment, we must be fast and heavy-handed.”
The plan was unveiled as finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations met in São Paulo, Brazil, over the weekend.
It came less than a week before President Hu Jintao was scheduled to travel to Washington for a global economic summit meeting hosted by President Bush.
On Saturday, Mr. Hu spoke by telephone with President-elect Barack Obama about a variety of issues, including the global financial crisis and how their countries might cooperate to help resolve economic problems.
Asian markets welcomed news of the stimulus plan. The Japanese Nikkei index rose 5.6 percent in trading early Monday. Stocks in Hong Kong and Shanghai rallied strongly, jumping over 5 percent and lifting share prices that have been depressed for much of the year.
Although Beijing has indicated that it will focus on keeping its own economy on track, it is difficult to insulate any economy from a global downturn. After five years of growth in excess of 10 percent, China’s economy is beginning to weaken. Growth in exports and investment is slowing, consumer confidence is waning and stock and property markets are severely depressed.
The stimulus plan, though driven by domestic concerns, represents a fresh commitment by China to keep from adding to the economic and financial woes of the United States and Europe. It is also likely to cheer foreign investors in China’s economy by ensuring that the country remains a source of growth.
China’s package is not comparable to fiscal stimulus measures that are being discussed in Washington. In China, much of the capital for infrastructure improvements comes not from central and local governments but from state banks and state-owned companies that are encouraged to expand more rapidly.
The plan also differs from the $700 billion financial rescue package approved by Congress, which has helped strengthen bank balance sheets but did not directly mandate new lending or support specific investment projects in the United States.
China’s overall government spending remains relatively low as a percentage of economic output compared with the United States and Europe. Yet Beijing maintains far more control over investment trends than Washington does, so it has greater flexibility to increase investment to counter a sharp downturn.
It was unclear how Chinese officials arrived at the $586 billion figure or how much of the stimulus would be spending above what Beijing normally earmarks for infrastructure projects. Beijing said it was loosening credit and encouraging state-owned banks to lend as part of a more “proactive fiscal policy.”
The government said the stimulus would cover 10 areas, including low-income housing, electricity, water, rural infrastructure and projects aimed at environmental protection and technological innovation — all of which could incite consumer spending and bolster the economy. The State Council said the new spending would begin immediately, with $18 billion scheduled for the last quarter of this year.
State-driven investment projects of this kind have been a major impetus to Chinese growth throughout the 30 years of market-oriented reforms, a strong legacy of central planning.
The biggest players in many major Chinese industries — like steel, automobiles and energy — are state-owned companies, and government officials locally and nationally have a hand in deciding how much bank lending is steered to those sectors.
The investment numbers announced by China’s central government often include projects financed by a variety of sources, including state-backed entities and even foreign investors.
Beijing is struggling to cope with rapidly slowing economic growth. A downturn in investment and exports has led to factory closings in southern China, resulting in mass layoffs and even setting off sporadic protests by workers who have complained that owners disappeared without paying them their wages.
With many economists in China now projecting that growth in the fourth quarter of this year could be as low as 5.8 percent, and amid worries that the country’s economy could be walloped by the global financial crisis, Beijing is moving aggressively.
Analysts were expecting China to announce a big stimulus package, but they said they were surprised at its size. “That is much more aggressive than I expected,” said Frank Gong, an economist at J. P. Morgan who is based in Hong Kong. “That’s a lot of money to spend.”
Mr. Gong said that after the Asian financial crisis in 1997, Beijing undertook a similar, but much smaller, stimulus package, earmarking huge sums to build the country’s highway and toll-road system, projects that helped keep the economy growing.
Arthur Kroeber, managing director at Dragonomics, a Beijing-based economic research firm, said the government was concerned because people in China had suddenly pulled back on spending as a precautionary move because of worries about China’s suffering with the global economy.
“The government is sending a signal saying: ‘We’re going to spend in a big way,’ ” Mr. Kroeber said Sunday in a telephone interview. “This is designed to say to the market that people should not panic.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) City Is Cited for Insufficient Safeguards at School Campus Being Built on Brownfield
By MIREYA NAVARRO
November 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/nyregion/09brownfield.html?ref=education
New York City officials violated state environmental law when they began building a school complex on a contaminated site in the South Bronx without first coming up with a plan to ensure that students and the public would not be exposed to pollutants in the future, a state judge has ruled.
The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed in 2007 by a group of parents and community leaders trying to force the School Construction Authority to conduct a more comprehensive environmental review for the multischool campus, which is still under construction in Mott Haven in the South Bronx.
The suit accused the city of going ahead with the project without a plan to monitor air quality and check for other environmental problems after the city cleaned up the site — a 6.6-acre parcel that once contained a railyard, a laundry and a plant that made gas from coal. The school agency eventually came up with a plan, which is now under review by the State Department of Environmental Conservation.
City officials said on Friday that the court ruling would not derail construction of the Mott Haven school campus, a complex of four secondary schools and athletic facilities scheduled to open in the fall of 2010.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said they hoped to meet with the city to discuss the judge’s order, which requires the construction authority to submit a supplemental environmental impact statement laying out its plan for long-term monitoring.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said the ruling could set a precedent for future construction of schools on brownfields, polluted sites that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has singled out for cleanups and redevelopment because they are among the last parcels of vacant land in the city.
“It puts the School Construction Authority on notice that they would be breaking the law if they don’t put forth a detailed monitoring plan before the City Council approves the site,” said Dave Palmer, the lawyer who handled the suit, filed by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.
The ruling was handed down on Oct. 16 by Acting Justice Patricia Anne Williams of State Supreme Court in the Bronx, and the plaintiffs planned to announce it on Monday.
Carrie Noteboom, a senior counsel with the city’s Law Department, said city officials disagreed with the decision and were weighing their options. She said the school construction agency had provided enough information at the outset about how the site would be monitored over time to fully comply with the law, even if it had not produced a detailed plan.
Ms. Noteboom said it was more practical to come up with a plan after a cleanup had started so that the plan “can take into account the actual conditions at the site after the cleanup is done.” The cleanup at the Mott Haven site ended in October 2007.
But Mr. Palmer countered that an early plan is crucial, because an assessment of the needs and the cost of monitoring may persuade city officials to modify cleanup plans or look for another site. “If the City Council has the information up front, they are in a better position to demand improvements on cleanups before they say yes to a site,” he said.
In her decision, Justice Williams agreed, and said the city agency had failed to take “a hard look” at the long-term risks at the Mott Haven site.
D. Lee Ezell, chairwoman of Bronx Community Board 4 and a member of the Bronx Committee for Toxic Free Schools, on whose behalf the suit was filed, said she felt vindicated.
“What’s at stake here is life,” she said. “There are possible dangers here and you have to protect the people who use this facility.”
As it tries to ease overcrowding, the School Construction Authority has also leased buildings on contaminated property to turn into new schools. Problems have arisen on sites like the Information Technology High School in Long Island City, Queens, where increased levels of contamination were found in the soil beneath the school after it opened in 2003.
Margie Feinberg, a Department of Education spokeswoman, said a vapor extraction system had been installed and the site was being monitored.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Racial Imbalance Persists at Elite Public Schools
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
November 8, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/nyregion/08specialized.html?ref=education
Recent efforts to get more black and Hispanic students into New York City’s elite public high schools have fallen short, with proportionately fewer of them taking the admissions exam and even lower percentages passing it. The performance gap persists even among students involved in the city’s intensive 16-month test prep institute, designed to diversify the so-called specialized high schools, including the storied triumvirate of Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech.
Among the 21,490 public school students who last year took the exam, the single gateway to eight high schools, 6 percent of blacks and 7 percent of Hispanics were offered admission, compared with 35 percent of Asians and 31 percent of white students. The disparities were the worst at Stuyvesant, where 2 percent of blacks, 3 percent of Hispanics, 24 percent of whites and 72 percent of Asians were accepted. (Over all, 1 in 5 test-takers is offered a spot; racial data is not available on private school students.)
Parents of black and Hispanic students have long complained about the lack of diversity in the elite schools’ enrollment, and the Department of Education promised two years ago to study whether the demographic lopsidedness was the result of certain groups’ doing poorly on the grueling two-and-a-half-hour test, not taking the exam in high numbers, or simply choosing not to attend the schools. The city abandoned that effort, but an analysis by The New York Times shows that not only do blacks and Hispanics lag behind whites and Asians in succeeding on the exam, they are far less likely to take it.
Perhaps most surprising is a close look at the students enrolled in the city’s Specialized High Schools Institute, created 14 years ago to prepare students for high school and recently expanded by Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein. Black and Hispanic students who attend the institute are more likely to succeed on the test. While 90 percent of Asians and 85 percent of white students at the institute take the test, 65 percent of blacks and 70 percent of Hispanics do; last year, of the institute graduates taking the test, 58 percent of the Asians, 49 percent of whites, 21 percent of Hispanics and 19 percent of blacks were offered admission.
Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott said the data showed there was work to be done both to get black and Hispanic students to take the test and to help them pass it.
“I’m not ever happy when I see a low percentage of those students participating in schools that are high rigor,” he said. “It’s important for the halls of Stuyvesant, the halls of the Bronx High School of Science, to be reflective of the city itself.”
Instead, the schools that make up the upper crust of the public education universe belie the system they are part of and the city where they reside, and the disparity between the races has grown even more pronounced over the past decade.
In this city of 1.1 million public school students, about 40 percent are Hispanic, 32 percent are black, 14 percent are Asian and 14 percent white. More than two-thirds of Stuyvesant High School’s 3,247 students are Asian (up from 48 percent in 1999). At Brooklyn Technical High School, 365 of the 4,669 students, or 8 percent, are Hispanic; at the Bronx High School of Science, there are 114 blacks, 4 percent of the 2,809-student body.
The other schools in the elite group, considered a second tier, are more diverse: Brooklyn Latin School, for example, which became a specialized high school in 2007, is 23 percent Hispanic and 32 percent black (though it has 183 students, a fraction of the top three).
The portrait of test-takers from public schools is closer to the overall enrollment, but hardly a mirror: 28 percent of last year’s were black, 23 percent Hispanic, 30 percent Asian and 19 percent white.
Marcia V. Lyles, deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, acknowledged that racial diversity at the schools “is not where we would want it to be.”
Elizabeth Sciabarra, who oversees student enrollment planning, said the city had increased its efforts to inform families about the test, with the hope that interested students of all backgrounds might start preparing earlier. But, she noted: “It is a choice. There are kids who might be wonderful candidates for this who will just not sit for the test. That transcends ethnicity; that’s across the board.”
The test-prep institute, which includes a full-time five-week summer session and twice-a-week workshops during the school year, was a core part of the city’s strategy to diversify the ranks of the elite schools. But the intensive program has been hampered by a Supreme Court decision last year that ordered districts to remain race-neutral in efforts to diversify schools. Now the program gives preference to students based only on family income, not race.
And enrollment in the institute has fallen to 2,800 students at 10 sites this year, from 3,800 students at 17 sites in 2006. Education officials said that they reduced the number of sites to standardize the curriculum and that despite the drop in enrollment, more students were currently receiving the full test-prep regimen.
The test itself, consisting of 45 verbal questions and 50 math questions, measuring students’ ability, for instance, to put sentences in order and discern geometrical angles, has also become a subject of criticism.
Joshua N. Feinman, an economist who graduated from Stuyvesant and is the parent of a Bronx Science junior, recently released a study challenging the validity of the test, saying it had not undergone normal predictive bias studies to see if it was skewed toward any gender or racial groups. The study revives complaints from the 1960s, when civil rights groups charged that the tests were unfair to black and Puerto Rican children and should not be the only criterion determining access to the schools.
Department of Education officials said they were confident that the test, which is manufactured by Pearson and has been used since the 1970s, was reliable.
On a recent Saturday morning, as hundreds of anxious students lined up for the test outside the stately stone-gray facade of Brooklyn Tech, parents and students attributed the racial disparities to a lack of private tutoring, subpar middle schools that do not expose students to test material, transportation problems, cultural differences and a simple lack of motivation on the part of some students.
Tiffany Gomillion, a single parent, said families like hers were at a disadvantage. Her 15-year-old son, Dalon, attends Our Lady of Miracles, a Catholic school in Canarsie, Brooklyn, but is hoping to go to a specialized school.
“He didn’t really get the preparation that he needed because it was so expensive,” said Ms. Gomillion, a nurse. “Even at home, a lot of times children’s parents are working, so they don’t really have somebody there to supervise to make sure they are doing the work and they are studying.”
Dalon, who is black, began studying for the test days before it was given. He was the last to arrive at Brooklyn Tech, a few minutes before its scheduled start, because he and his mother had trouble finding the school, which is near Fort Greene Park.
Terrence Busby Jr., 13, who is also black, said many of his friends did not take the test because they did not know how to get to the school or have a parent available to take them. “They can’t get there or they don’t feel like they’re smart enough,” he said, suggesting that the city make the test mandatory for all eighth graders.
Ashley Wright, a black 13-year-old who has her eyes on Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant, said many of her black and Hispanic friends were simply not motivated to do well on the test. “I see a lot of people who have an opportunity at a good life, but they mess it up,” she said, her legs shaking in anticipation of the exam.
Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) As Schools Grapple With Crowding, Prospect of Rezoning Angers Manhattan Parents
By JENNIFER MEDINA
November 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/education/05rezone.html?ref=education
At Public School 199 in the heart of the Upper West Side, a music teacher who once had her own classroom now keeps her instruments in a small closet, stacking cymbals and drums onto a cart as she visits more than two dozen classes each week. Students who need tutoring in reading or math sit behind a makeshift wall of metal cabinets in the hallway. There are seven kindergarten classes this year, up from three in 2000.
And on a recent Friday afternoon, it took six staff members 15 minutes to find a room for a training workshop. P.S. 199 has 663 students in kindergarten through fifth grade this year, nearly 200 above its capacity in the West 70th Street building it has long shared with the Center School, a middle school that draws students from the Lincoln Center area north to Harlem. Public School 191, just nine blocks south, draws largely from the nearby housing projects and has more than 107 empty seats available.
It might seem that there are easy solutions to the overcrowding in District 3, which encompasses the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem. The district has neighborhoods facing a burgeoning school-age population, in part because of a high-rise building boom, with pockets where the number of children are in decline. Why not send some of P.S. 199’s overflow to fill the seats at P.S. 191, or move the Center School and let the popular P.S. 199 expand to take up the whole three-story building?
But in New York City, where real estate and access to good schools often lead to Olympics-level competition, even the specter of changing school boundaries can raise the hackles of parents who chose their high-priced homes precisely because of those boundaries. The topic of rezoning is so sensitive that education officials have referred to it as the “third rail” — and no one seems to remember the last time a significant boundary change was enacted.
For months now, officials and members of District 3’s Community Education Council, the elected board that must approve any rezoning plans, have gone back and forth on painstaking negotiations and proposals. At a meeting on Wednesday night, the council is expected to introduce its resolution, which members would vote on later this month.
The heated debate dividing neighbors is likely to repeat itself across town later this month, when city education officials begin discussing the rezoning of parts of District 2, which encompasses the Upper East Side and much of Lower Manhattan. District 2 is plagued by some of the city’s worst overcrowding, particularly in TriBeCa and on the Upper East Side.
In the debate over the fate of P.S. 199 and the Center School, there have been accusations of racism, and a flier calling one school administrator who opposed a move a dictator. Parents — and prospective parents — of P.S. 199 have set up an elaborate campaign against changing the school boundaries, using the Internet and old-fashioned petitions on clipboards to protest.
“You move to a neighborhood in no small part because you are attracted to the school — it’s a core decision you are making,” said Eric Shuffler, who is among the parents of 4-year-olds fighting for kindergarten spots in 2009 at P.S. 199. “Something that you had planned on is now being taken and it’s compounded by the fact that you don’t know what happens to your children once the decision is made.”
As Education Department officials and local community boards grapple with pockets of overcrowding in parts of Manhattan where real estate has boomed, they are trying to balance competing ideals.
Do young children who live within blocks of a school have inherent rights to enroll there? What about the middle school that has been housed in the building for more than two decades? Should school choice trump geography? Or should schools reflect precisely the neighborhoods that surround them, even if that means aligning with segregated housing patterns?
“What they need to do is look at how schools actually function,” said Jennifer Freeman, a member of the Community Education Council in District 3. “We’re trying to make as big of an improvement as possible with the least amount of disruption as possible.”
For many parents and their advocates, the only acceptable answer to the overcrowding is to build more schools. But the city’s capital plan, expected to be released on Wednesday, is unlikely to appease them. Facing a bleak economic picture and austere budget, the Education Department is scaling back its ambitions for new buildings or even modest additions. And city officials have been loath to devote scant capital resources to neighborhoods that it believes can and should address overcrowding within existing buildings.
“These are constant, ongoing reassessments: where the population is dynamic, where the population growth has been rapid, and where that is not the case,” said John White, the Education Department official with the task of addressing enrollment issues. “In some cases, by changing the specific manner that students choose a school we can address the issue.”
In District 3, education officials initially proposed changing zones to reassign residents of West 67th, 68th, 69th, 70th and 71st Streets, between Central Park West and Broadway, to Public School 87, a few blocks north, rather than P.S. 199. Mr. White said the city also suggested changing a districtwide policy that sets aside some seats at each school for people who live outside its boundaries. Many parents in the district bristled at both ideas, saying that they prized the diversity that the current policies create.
Several of the neighborhood’s schools attract students from surrounding areas because of gifted and talented, special education or dual-language classrooms.
The department also floated a plan to move schools that shared buildings, placing the Center School at Public School 9, and moving the Anderson School, a citywide gifted program, from its current location at P.S. 9 to Middle School 44 on 77th Street.
But the principal, teachers and parents of the Center School have protested, saying that it is unfair and damaging to move them from the building they have occupied since the school opened in 1983.
“We have no interest in changing, because the kids who have gone here come back here all the time,” said Elaine Schwartz, who has been the principal since the school opened. “For them it was a community that they recognize.” The school capped its enrollment at just under 300 years ago, Ms. Schwartz added, and the slightly crowded space is what they now “thrive” in.
“Moving would be very destructive,” she said with frustration. “Can I worry about the real estate situation in New York?” Of the P.S. 199 parents wary of P.S. 191, Ms. Schwartz said: “There’s a school right nearby — if they were being offered some trashy place, or no place at all, maybe I would understand better.”
At its core, the battle over rezoning is also about where parents are eager — or even willing — to send their children. Schools, for better or worse, have built up reputations over a number of years. At times, such reputations can change significantly with a new principal or new program. This year, for example, Public School 84, on 92nd Street, experienced a surge in popularity after a French dual-language program was introduced.
Parents who are delighted to send their children to Public School 75 — a school on West End Avenue and 95th Street whose dual-language Spanish program helped it reach capacity several years ago — are often wary of Public School 145 on 105th Street, which has less than half the students it can take. Similarly, parents of future students at P.S. 199 are skeptical that they would be as happy at P.S. 191 on 61st Street, where 64 percent of the students are in poverty, according to the Education Department, and 8 percent of the students are white (compared with 10 percent in poverty and 66 percent white at P.S. 199).
Privately, the parents confide in one another about their fears: They do not know anyone who goes to P.S. 191. They worry their children will feel out of place, or not be challenged academically (last year, 52 percent of P.S. 191 students met state standards in reading, and 70 percent did so in math, compared with more than 90 percent in both subjects at P.S. 199). Some see these fears as a kind of quiet racism, but the parents argue that they simply do not want to send their children to a low-performing school.
“Part of the reason you pay a premium is to be able to go to a local school,” said Nicole Auerbach, who chose to renovate her apartment and stay within P.S. 199’s zone, rather than follow many of her friends to the suburbs as the children reached school age. “Maybe if all of the folks I know who are upset about 199 were also going to go to 191, I might feel better.
“The problem is that they’ve caused sufficient panic that everyone is scrambling,” Ms. Auerbach added. “Some people might move, and some people might try to put their kids in private schools.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Paterson Says Schools and Medicaid Face Cuts
By DANNY HAKIM
November 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/nyregion/10budget.html?ref=nyregion
SAN JUAN, P.R. — Gov. David A. Paterson said in an interview on Sunday that he would almost certainly seek billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, as well as midyear reductions in school aid, to address New York’s worsening fiscal condition.
He also said he expected to urge labor unions to reopen the contracts they have struck on behalf of public employees as a way to avoid or decrease layoffs.
Such a step is reminiscent of measures taken by New York City in the financial crisis of the 1970s or moves made more recently by the Big Three domestic automakers to reduce their labor costs after years of granting steady raises and comprehensive health and pension benefits.
Those same types of wage and benefit concessions have long weighed on New York, though the catalyst for the state’s current predicament has been the collapse in tax revenue from Wall Street.
The governor, who spent more than two decades as a state senator representing Harlem, said he would be forced to cut even programs he sponsored as a legislator, and he expected to preside over a turbulent period for the state government.
“There’ll be protests, and because of the drastic nature of the cuts, those who protest will have very valid points, for which I don’t have any answer, other than ‘What’s your idea?’ ” Mr. Paterson said. “We’re not going to close a $12.5 billion deficit with 5 percent cuts to health and education.”
Asked if the cuts for education and health care programs would be in the billions of dollars next year, he said, “Unquestionably.”
His comments, made during an interview between sessions at a conference held here by Latino lawmakers from New York State, put to rest any doubts about the depth of the state’s fiscal crisis.
Some of the cuts will be sought when lawmakers return to Albany on Nov. 18 for a special session to help close a $1.5 billion budget gap for the current fiscal year, which ends in March, and to get an early start on next year’s budget. Any cuts would need support from the Legislature. And the governor will have to propose far steeper cuts when he introduces a budget next month for the fiscal year that ends in March 2010 — that budget will need to close a $12.5 billion deficit.
Cutting school aid in the middle of the school year, if it comes to pass, will represent an about-face from the sharp increases undertaken by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer to end years of court challenges by advocacy groups that contended that New York City schools were being shortchanged by Albany. The state has not made midyear school aid cuts since the early 1990s, and schools in New York City and elsewhere are already feeling the pinch as municipalities cut their own budgets.
Since taking over in March, after Mr. Spitzer’s resignation, Mr. Paterson has been aggressive in sounding the alarm about the state’s fiscal woes, at times even suggesting that his predecessor’s staff should have moved more quickly to prepare for the recession.
But the governor, who has sometimes made his liberal base uneasy with his newfound mantra of cost-cutting, has by far his toughest fights ahead of him. Reopening labor contracts would prove difficult, because state law bars the government from unilaterally altering the terms of such agreements, though the unions might face the threat of layoffs if they refused.
“They realistically see that it’s one of the options that I would have to examine, and I realistically understand that that really is a place that they don’t want to go,” Mr. Paterson said.
“There is only a harm if the union sees it as a harm,” the governor added. “As long as the union sees that as a viable option in lieu of layoffs, then I think you have a partnership.”
Mr. Paterson said he had not broached the issue with labor leaders in so many words, though he believed they knew it was a subject on the horizon.
“No one actually has said it, but we say things to each other like, what we said back in September was, ‘If this gets any worse, we know what we’re going to have to do,’ ” he said.
How the Legislature will respond remains to be seen; Mr. Paterson must negotiate with the Senate amid significant leadership turmoil.
Dean G. Skelos, the Senate majority leader and a Long Island Republican, has vowed to block education cuts in the Nov. 18 special session — “New York State must not balance its budget by offloading its costs to schools,” he said recently, and he has been hailed by teachers’ unions for ruling out such cuts.
But Democrats won 32 of 62 seats in the Senate in Tuesday’s election, winning a majority for the first time in more than four decades. Three Democrats, however, have yet to commit to supporting the Senate minority leader, Malcolm Smith, a Queens Democrat, as majority leader when the new Legislature is seated in January.
That leaves the Senate’s leadership uncertain at an inopportune moment. Mr. Smith said little to reporters this weekend. Both he and Mr. Skelos were here to woo two key Latino lawmakers who had not yet decided whom to support as leader.
Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the Legislature’s top Democrat, said, “The speaker has said repeatedly that everything is on the table and that we’re prepared to work with the governor and the Senate to make tough choices.”
Cuts in school aid and Medicaid are sure to be contentious. Unions representing teachers and hospital workers are among the most powerful special interests in Albany and have waged high-profile publicity campaigns in the past to ward off such cuts.
“Obviously, we will argue strongly against it,” said Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers.
“It’s not like putting off a construction project or an investment; you’re talking here about a year in a child’s life,” he said. “It’s hard to make that up.”
Mr. Iannuzzi’s union also encompasses the United University Professions, a local that represents tens of thousands of faculty members at state universities. While he acknowledged that layoffs were “a threat the governor has the ability to make,” he was cool to the idea of reopening labor contracts.
“If the only purpose in reopening it is to take something out, I don’t see a lot of our locals entering into that conversation,” he said. “If there is some incentive that appeals to them, then we’ll enter into that conversation.”
Mr. Paterson also said a number of steps were being considered, including long-term leases of state assets; he has already set up a commission to study such proposals.
“I don’t want to do things that affect the ability of future legislators and governors to govern,” Mr. Paterson said, “but I do want to find ways to leverage some of the assets we have.”
In more flush times, raising money through gimmicks or “one-shot” infusions of capital raised by selling assets or privatizing state resources was frowned on by budget watchdogs. But, the governor said, “we’re in a one-shot period” because of “the sheer volume of the deficit.”
Mr. Paterson said he was girding for the backlash.
“I don’t need a protest for it to bother me; I used to fight for some of these causes,” he said, adding that the situation would only worsen by waiting.
“I’ll feel pain in my stomach,” he said, “but my conscience will be clear.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Newt Gingrich: Let's End Adolescence
Outside Shot
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says young people need to shift more
quickly from childhood to adulthood
October 30, 2008, 5:00PM EST
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_45/b4107085289974.htm
It's time to declare the end of adolescence. As a social institution,
it's been a failure. The proof is all around us: 19% of eighth graders,
36% of tenth graders, and 47% of twelfth graders say they have used
illegal drugs, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug
Abuse and the University of Michigan. One of every four girls has a
sexually transmitted disease, suggests a recent study for the Centers
for Disease Control. A methamphetamine epidemic among the young is
destroying lives, families, and communities. And American students are
learning at a frighteningly slower rate than Chinese and Indian students.
The solution is dramatic and unavoidable: We have to end adolescence as
a social experiment. We tried it. It failed. It's time to move on.
Returning to an earlier, more successful model of children rapidly
assuming the roles and responsibilities of adults would yield enormous
benefit to society.
Prior to the 19th century, it's fair to say that adolescence did not
exist. Instead, there was virtually universal acceptance that puberty
marked the transition from childhood to young adulthood. Whether with
the Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah ceremony of the Jewish faith or
confirmation in the Catholic Church or any hundreds of rites of passage
in societies around the planet, it was understood you were either a
child or a young adult.
In the U.S., this principle of direct transition from the world of
childhood play to the world of adult work was clearly established at the
time of the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin was an example of this
kind of young adulthood. At age 13, Franklin finished school in Boston,
was apprenticed to his brother, a printer and publisher, and moved
immediately into adulthood.
John Quincy Adams attended Leiden University in Holland at 13 and at 14
was employed as secretary and interpreter by the American Ambassador to
Russia. At 16 he was secretary to the U.S. delegation during the
negotiations with Britain that ended the Revolution.
Daniel Boone got his first rifle at 12, was an expert hunter at 13, and
at 15 made a yearlong trek through the wilderness to begin his career as
America's most famous explorer. The list goes on and on.
It is true that life expectancy was shorter in those days and the need
to get on with being an adult could be argued. Nevertheless, early
adulthood, early responsibility, and early achievement were the norm
before the institution of adolescence emerged as a system for delaying
adulthood and trapping young people into wasting years of their lives.
To regain those benefits, we must develop accelerated learning systems
that peg the rate of academic progress to the student's pace and ability
to absorb the material, making education more efficient.
Adolescence was invented in the 19th century to enable middle-class
families to keep their children out of sweatshops. But it has
degenerated into a process of enforced boredom and age segregation that
has produced one of the most destructive social arrangements in human
history: consigning 13- year-old males to learning from 15-year-old males.
UNDERMINING COMMUNITIES
The costs of this social experiment have been horrendous. For the poor
who most need to make money, learn seriously, and accumulate resources,
adolescence has helped crush their future. By trapping poor people in
bad schools, with no work opportunities and no culture of
responsibility, we have left them in poverty, in gangs, in drugs, and in
irresponsible sexual activity. As a result, we have ruined several
generations of poor people who might have made it if we had provided a
different model of being young.
And for too many middle-class and wealthier young Americans, adolescence
has been an excuse to delay work, family, and achievement—and thus
contribute less to their own well-being and that of their communities.
It's time to change this—to shift to serious work, learning, and
responsibility at age 13 instead of age 30. In other words, replace
adolescence with young adulthood. But hastening that transition requires
integrating learning into life and work. Fortunately, innovations in
technology and in financial incentives to learn offer hope.
The Information Age makes it possible for young people to learn much
faster than our current failed bureaucracies and obsolete curriculums
permit. New systems such as Curriki, founded by Sun Microsystems (JAVA)
and now an independent nonprofit, allow a community of teachers and
learners to collaborate via the Internet to create quality educational
materials for free—giving every American access to learning 24 hours a day.
And experiments such as the one my daughter, Jackie Cushman, is running
in Atlanta—where poor children are paid the equivalent of working in a
fast- food restaurant to study and do their homework—are examples of a
more dynamic future.
In math and science learning, which are among the most important
indicators of future prosperity and strength, America lags far behind
such emerging powers as China and India. Studying to compete with Asian
counterparts in the world market is going to keep U.S. teens busier than
anyone ever imagined. This will require year-round learning, with
mentors available online, rather than our traditional bureaucratic model
of education. But we must go further, toward a dynamic, real-world
blueprint for learning.
Indeed, going to school should be a money-making profession if you are
good at it and work hard. That would revolutionize our poorest
neighborhoods and boost our competitiveness.
The fact is, most young people want to be challenged and given real
responsibility. They want to be treated like young men and women, not
old children. So consider this simple proposal: High school students who
can graduate a year early get the 12th year's cost of schooling as an
automatic scholarship to any college or technical school they want to
attend. If they graduate two years early, they get two years of
scholarships. At no added cost to taxpayers, we would give students an
incentive to study as hard as they can and maximize the speed at which
they learn.
Once we decide to engage young people in real life, doing real work,
earning real money, and thereby acquiring real responsibility, we can
transform being young in America. And our nation will become more
competitive in the process.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is founder of the Center for Health
Transformation.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Beyond the Fat Cats
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
November 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/opinion/11herbert.html?hp
The most important thing the Democrats and President-elect Obama can do with regard to the economy is bring back a sense of fairness and equity.
The fat cats who placed the entire economy at risk with their greed and manic irresponsibility are trying to lay claim to every last dime in the national Treasury. Meanwhile, we’re nowhere close to an economic recovery program that will help the people who are hurting most.
Back in September, with the credit markets frozen and the stock markets panicking, the treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, was telling anyone who would listen that his $700 billion bailout package had to be passed with lightning speed — no time to look at it too closely, no time for dissent.
The package was modified, but hurriedly. Now we learn that while all eyes were focused on this enormous new burden for American taxpayers, Mr. Paulson’s department was also engineering — separate and apart from the bailout — what The Washington Post described as “a quiet windfall for U.S. banks. ”
With virtually no public attention, and without the input of Congress, Treasury made a change in an obscure tax provision that benefited banks to the tune of well over $100 billion. Was this good policy? In the absence of proper scrutiny, how is it possible to know?
We’ve also learned that the government bailout of the giant insurer, the American International Group — already more than $100 billion — is apparently insufficient. Tens of billions more are needed.
When the Champagne and caviar crowd is in trouble, there is no conceivable limit to the amount of taxpayer money that can be found, and found quickly.
But when it comes to ordinary citizens in dire situations — those being thrown out of work or forced from their homes by foreclosure or driven into bankruptcy because of illness and a lack of adequate health insurance — well, then we have to start pinching pennies. That’s when it’s time to become fiscally conservative. President Bush even vetoed a bill that would have expanded health insurance coverage for children.
We can find trillions for a foolish war and for pompous, self-righteous high-rollers who wrecked their companies and the economy. But what about the working poor and the young people who are being clobbered in this downturn, battered so badly that they’re all but destitute? Can we find any way to help them?
In an article on Sunday, The Times mentioned a young woman in Philadelphia, Kyuana Everett, who is 21 years old, has a high school diploma and is desperate for work. “I’ve tried everything,” she said, “retail sales, office work, but the employers all say they have too many staff and they’re not hiring now.”
The article noted that Ms. Everett cannot even afford to rent a room for herself. She stays with her grandmother, secretly, in a home for the aged.
This is no ordinary recession. With brokerage houses, banks and a mammoth multinational insurance company depending on the Treasury for resuscitation, and with automakers like General Motors staring bankruptcy in the face, it has the feel of a monster downturn, a recession on steroids.
That kind of downturn buries people at the bottom of the economic ladder. We have an obligation to look out for them as well as for the banks and the A.I.G.’s of the world.
If I could place a message on the desk of the incoming president, it would have just one word: Jobs.
With credit cards maxed out, the stock market in the tank, family savings depleted and home equity evaporating, that weekly or monthly paycheck has never been so important.
Congress and the new administration need to think big — bigger than the stimulus package of $100 billion or so, which is being kicked around. Now is the time for a coast-to-coast “Rebuild America” infrastructure program. Put people to work repairing and rebuilding roads and bridges, decrepit schools and ancient sewer systems. Get the construction industry back on its feet.
And now is the time to get going on candidate Obama’s promise to move the country as close as possible to a system of universal health insurance. Pump the money from that vast project into the economy and get those jobs up and running.
And let’s get some help, quickly, to the families who are suffering most from the housing crisis — the ones trembling and heartbroken in the dark shadow of foreclosure.
The naysayers will claim that all of this is too expensive, that we can’t afford it. Where were they when we invaded Iraq? And how do they feel about the staggering amounts being funneled, with nothing like the proper oversight, to the banks and Wall Street?
Let’s try investing in America and its people for a change, rather than just hurling our billions into the abyss.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) It’s About the Mortgages
Editorial
November 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/opinion/11tue1.html?hp
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson does not seem like the sort of man who suffers fools gladly. Yet, he apparently is tolerant of, or powerless against, a White House that remains opposed to direct government action to prevent foreclosures — a program that is essential to keep millions of Americans in their homes and head off an even deeper financial catastrophe.
Nearly three weeks ago, Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, told Congress that the agency was working closely with Mr. Paulson’s department to develop a robust anti-foreclosure plan. Since then, the Treasury Department has balked and equivocated while the White House has argued that it is already doing plenty to help homeowners.
After a year of doing far too little to stem a flood of foreclosures, the problem is getting worse. Defaults lead to foreclosures that push down all house prices. Those falling prices — combined with rising unemployment, falling incomes and another expected surge in monthly payments on adjustable rate loans — will surely lead to more defaults and deeper price declines, threatening bank solvency and prolonging the credit crunch.
Clearly, the system won’t stabilize until house prices stabilize, and banks won’t lend freely until losses on defaulting mortgages abate.
The crisis may never have spun so far out of control if the government had initiated a rigorous effort last year to prevent mass defaults. Instead it kowtowed to the mortgage industry, backing voluntary, loan-by-loan renegotiations that have failed to solve the problem.
If the administration’s $700 billion bailout has any hope of working, it will have to address the foreclosure problem — now, not later.
The F.D.I.C. has developed a sensible plan that is being used, with promising early results, to rework defaulting mortgages at IndyMac, the failed Southern California bank. Under the plan, the banks restructure troubled mortgages — lowering the interest rate, extending the loan term or deferring payment on a portion of principal — so that they’re affordable. The goal is to reduce the monthly payment to about a third to two-fifths of a borrower’s after-tax income.
The deal also benefits mortgage lenders and investors, because, over time, the new loans would make more money than would be recouped in a foreclosure. If the loans default, the government would share in the losses.
It wouldn’t take much — when compared with $700 billion — to expand this plan nationwide: about $40 billion. It could be done without new legislation since the money could come from the bank bailout fund.
Critics warn that the plan would encourage homeowners to deliberately default on their current mortgages in hopes of getting a better deal. That assumes that homeowners in good standing would knowingly ruin their credit in order to catch a break. The plan also only applies to people whose mortgages are unaffordable based on their income. Might some freeloaders sneak in? Yes. Is that a reason not to move forward? No.
Within the administration, there has been talk about a possible new foreclosure plan that might temporarily reduce monthly payments, say, for five years, or would require the government to make direct payments to the lender to make up for lost cash flow. That would be a misuse of taxpayer dollars because temporary loan modifications would not stabilize the system in the long run.
All roads, into and out of this crisis, run through the housing market. Mr. Paulson should be pressing for a streamlined plan that includes permanent modifications to troubled loans. That is the only way to keep Americans in their homes, save the banks and the economy.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) U.S. to Streamline Homeowner Assistance
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/business/12mortgage.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) — In the latest effort to help troubled homeowners, the federal government and the mortgage industry on Tuesday will announce a plan to streamline the assistance process for delinquent loans held by the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which took control of the two mortgage finance companies in September, will announce the program Tuesday afternoon.
The program is expected to allow lenders to modify more delinquent loans by establishing broad criteria to speed the process while focusing on borrowers who are at least three months behind on their loans.
The announcement comes as major banks are stepping up their efforts to curtail losses from souring mortgages. More than 4 million American homeowners with a mortgage were at least one payment behind on their loans at the end of June, and 500,000 had started the foreclosure process, according to the most recent data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Citigroup, the banking giant, announced late Monday that it is halting foreclosures for borrowers who live in their own homes, have decent incomes and stand a good chance of making lowered mortgage payments. The bank also said it is also working to expand the program to include mortgages for which the bank collects payments but does not own.
Additionally, over the next six months, Citi plans to reach out to 500,000 homeowners who are not currently behind on their mortgage payments, but who are on the verge of falling behind. This represents about a third of all the mortgages that Citigroup owns, the bank said.
Late last month, JPMorgan Chase expanded its mortgage modification program to an estimated $70 billion in loans, which could aid as many as 400,000 customers. The bank has already modified about $40 billion in mortgages, helping 250,000 customers since early 2007.
Bank of America, meanwhile, has said that starting Dec. 1, it will modify an estimated 400,000 loans held by newly acquired Countrywide Financial Corporation as part of an $8.4 billion legal settlement reached with 11 states in early October.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Venezuela Positions Itself as a Salon for the Left
By SIMON ROMERO
Caracas Journal
November 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/world/americas/11venez.html?ref=world
CARACAS, Venezuela — The Nepalese Maoist smiled as he glanced around the lobby of the Hotel Alba Caracas. To his left, West African delegates to the World Meeting of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity chatted in French. To his right, the Egyptian author of a book on President Hugo Chávez puffed on a cigarette.
“This has been a most enjoyable forum, allowing us to learn from the glorious heritage of socialist revolution in Latin America,” said the Maoist, Chandra Prasad Gajurel, 60, a Politburo member of the Communist Party of Nepal, which put an end to that country’s monarchy in elections this year.
Mr. Gajurel joined some 200 other leftist thinkers from around the world who convened here for a few days in October to discuss transitions toward socialism, even as many people in advanced Western countries were losing sleep over the spreading financial crisis of global capitalism.
In hotel corridors where oilmen in business suits once hatched deals over glasses of whiskey, delegates in Birkenstocks and guayaberas discussed Marx and Antonio Gramsci, the leftist Italian writer. Such meetings have become a staple of life in Caracas, with Mr. Chávez’s government flush, at least for now, with petrodollars that can be used to attract sympathetic members of the chattering classes the world over.
Officials here have organized international encounters for philosophers, women’s rights advocates, the government spokesmen of nonaligned countries, poets and, in September, specialists in body painting.
Another event, Venezuela’s annual international book fair, began with fanfare here last week with the theme, “The book in the construction of Bolivarian socialism.” That was a bit toned down from the previous year’s fair, which had delegates pondering the question, “The United States: a possible revolution?”
Amid all the variety, few of these conferences offered as much optimism about shifting international events as the meeting for intellectuals a few weeks ago, which involved guided tours of Caracas’s slums for the delegates and panel discussions examining the evolving financial crisis.
“We must help the current capitalist model collapse, for on its own this will not happen,” José Déniz Espinós, an economist from Madrid, told attendees. “I do not know of one system that has collapsed on its own. For this reason, we must not succumb to euphoria.”
The conference, like most of the others, was held in the Alba, a luxury hotel taken over by the government last year from the Hilton chain. It is this country’s equivalent to the Hotel Habana Libre in Cuba: a drab complex once associated with American power that serves as a symbol of revolutionary change.
Not far from the welcome stand in the hotel lobby, the Alba’s curio shop featured souvenir statues of Mr. Chávez for 315 bolivares, about $147 at the official exchange rate (about twice the black market rate).
Those on a tighter budget could also stroll outside, where sidewalk vendors could regularly be found hawking a range of Chávez-emblazoned knickknacks for under $10. For the more daring, there were T-shirts championing Ilich RamÃrez Sánchez, the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, who is serving a life sentence in France.
“It is wonderful to be in Caracas,” said Mostapha el-Gammal, 56, an Egyptian and author of a new book, “Chávez: Charisma, Revolution, Dialectics.” “The city has some nice nature, and less traffic than in Cairo.”
Revolutionary tourism notwithstanding, Mr. Gammal said a highlight of his trip was the opportunity to debate his book, which he said the Venezuelan government was planning to translate from the Arabic and publish here. “Is Chávez a mere populist or a genuine revolutionary?” he asked, rhetorically, in an interview. “I dismiss the first idea.”
And he got a call-out from Mr. Chávez himself when the president addressed the conference. “Chávez spoke my name into the microphone and told me, ‘Thank you,’ ” said Mr. Gammal, beaming.
Venezuela’s government also earns high marks from some foreign scholars for its creation of the Miranda International Center, a policy research outfit in a high-rise across the street from the Alba, and for prizes like the Liberator Prize for Critical Thinking. Franz J. Hinkelammert, a German-born theologian living in Costa Rica, was the first winner of the $150,000 prize in 2006.
The conferences, the prizes, the slum tours with a government security detail: it is all too much for Mr. Chávez’s doubters, people like Fernando Mires, a Chilean historian and philosopher who was here for a separate conference at the Central University of Venezuela.
On his way out of town, Mr. Mires, 65, was detained by security forces and exhaustively interrogated about his visit before he was allowed to board the plane. Mr. Mires, an outspoken critic of Mr. Chávez, who described the incident in an article in a local newspaper, said he viewed the conference at the Alba with resignation.
“Yesterday it was Mugabe or Castro; today it’s Chávez,” Mr. Mires said in a telephone interview. “Many of the attendees to these events are emerging from political frustration and see a chance for their ideas in an impoverished country that has been democratized through intimidation.”
Still, some in attendance at the Caracas conference seemed prepared to cast a critical gaze on their host, but maybe with a wink.
“It’s admirable, but there are also so many questions to see whether this process is sustainable,” Vinod Raina, a theoretical physicist from India, said of Mr. Chávez’s Venezuela. “The important point is that he has taken on the mantle of crystallizing forces in opposition to the empire.”
Thom Walker contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) Georgians Flee Border Village as Russian Troops Leave
By OLESYA VARTANYAN and ELLEN BARRY
November 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/world/europe/11georgia.html?ref=world
PEREVI, Georgia — Dozens of Georgians clambered over one another to crowd into a rickety bus on Monday to flee this remote mountain village, which has become a flash point of mounting tensions on the boundary of South Ossetia.
They left behind a depopulated settlement whose remaining residents are afraid to come out onto the streets. Russian troops continued to withdraw from the main checkpoint at Perevi’s western edge, leaving Ossetian forces in charge.
Darejan Bakradze, 50, removed most of her valuables from Perevi on Monday morning, but returned in the afternoon to look after her mother-in-law. Passing the checkpoint, she grew pale and shaky at the sight of Ossetian soldiers.
“I want the Russians to come back,” Ms. Bakradze said. “They were perfect people.”
Russian troops swept into Georgia in August but agreed in a French-brokered peace accord to withdraw to the borders of South Ossetia and of Abkhazia, another pro-Russian, breakaway enclave. But as they have withdrawn, South Ossetian forces have moved into Perevi, an ethnically Georgian village on the border that is claimed by both sides.
European monitors urged both sides to remain calm on a day marked by tension along the boundary. Two Georgian policemen were killed near Dvani, another village, when a remote-controlled mine exploded near their car, said Shota Utiashvili, a senior official in Georgia’s Interior Ministry. When a patrol arrived to investigate, a second mine exploded, wounding three other policemen, he said.
Ambassador Hansjörg Haber, head of the European Union monitoring mission, called the blast “an unacceptable breach” of the cease-fire agreement.
“Today’s attack risks escalating the still-tense situation along the administrative boundary lines,” he said. “We repeat our call on all sides to prevent further provocations.”
South Ossetia’s interior minister, Valery Valiyev, said his forces had not been involved. “It is Georgian territory,” he said. “What happens there has nothing to do with us.”
No violence has occurred in Perevi, home to about 1,000 ethnic Georgians, but it was the focus of angry talk on Monday from both sides.
President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia vowed Monday to protect the village, which recent maps show on the Georgian side of the border.
“We will do everything not to yield to the occupants’ provocations,” he said. “We must understand that Georgia began a hard and long fight for the liberation of its lands. And in this fight we must act together with our partners.”
Ibragim Gaseyev, South Ossetia’s deputy minister of defense, said the village had belonged to South Ossetia “since time immemorial,” and promised to “give an adequate answer to any provocative act by the Georgian side on the territory of our republic,” according to South Ossetia’s government press service.
Irina Gagloyeva, a spokeswoman for South Ossetia’s government, said that Perevi was not controlled by South Ossetia before the war but that it had become necessary to protect it because Georgians “are trying to create tension here.”
Georgians in the village said they were frightened. The school has shut down, and many women and children have left. Zurab Tsertskhvadze, a local official, said Ossetian soldiers at the checkpoint refused entry to an ambulance on Monday, forcing a man to leave the village by foot to receive medical care.
The transfer came as a shock to Alik Dzhokhadze, 24, who was in the midst of toasting the Russian withdrawal when Ossetian soldiers entered, shooting in the air. Mr. Dzhokhadze said he had been hiding in his house for two days.
Violence has been reported from both sides in recent days. Last week, South Ossetian authorities said a man had been fatally shot by a sniper from the Georgian side of the line. They also reported that ethnic Ossetians living in Georgian-controlled villages were being forced from their homes and that Georgian troops had exploded a bridge in the village of Artsev.
Georgian authorities denied involvement in any of the episodes.
Olesya Vartanyan reported from Perevi, and Ellen Barry from Moscow.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) 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]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
21) 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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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"
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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=
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12 year old Ossetian girl tells the truth about Georgia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5idQm8YyJs4
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
MINIATURE EARTH
http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
'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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[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]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
No comments:
Post a Comment