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Iraq Union Leader Attacked, Beaten, Almost Kidnapped, Shot at and Target of Death Threats
YOUR ACTION IS NEEDED NOW!!!
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/
Register Your Protest:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2488/t/4187/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25407
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Take Action to Defend RNC Protesters!
Stop the Police Riot in St. Paul!
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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NO ON PROPOSITION V! NO ON JROTC! NO MILITARY RECRUITMENT IN OUR SCHOOLS!
Next meeting: Tuesday, September 9, 7:15 P.M.
Friends Meeting House
65 9th St, San Francisco (between Mission and Market Sts)
To RSVP or for additional information, please contact Alan Lessik at AFSC at 565.0201, x11 or alessik@afsc.org.
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A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Film Series “Machuca”
Thurs. Sept. 11, 7:30pm
ATA (Artists’ Television Access), 992 Valencia St. at 21st, SF
$6 donation, no one turned away for lack of funds.
Call 415-821-6545 for more info.
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Labor Beat: National Assembly to End the War in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Highlights from the June 28-29, 2008 meeting in Cleveland, OH. In this 26-minute video, Labor Beat presents a sampling of the speeches and floor discussions from this important conference. Attended by over 400 people, the Assembly's main objective was to urge united and massive mobilizations in the spring to “Bring the Troops Home Now,” as well as supporting actions that build towards that date. To read the final action proposal and to learn other details, visit www.natassembly.org. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is affiliated with IBEW 1220. Views expressed are those of the producer, not necessarily of IBEW. For info: mail@laborbeat.org,www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video or YouTube and search "Labor Beat".
http://blip.tv/file/1149437/
Open Letter to the U.S. Antiwar Movement
The following “Open letter to the U.S. Antiwar Movement” was adopted by the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations on July 13, 2008. We urge antiwar organizations around the country to endorse the letter. Please send notice of endorsements to natassembly@aol.com
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
In the coming months, there will be a number of major actions mobilizing opponents of U.S. wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to demand “Bring the Troops Home Now!” These will include demonstrations at the Democratic and Republican Party conventions, pre-election mobilizations like those on October 11 in a number of cities and states, and the December 9-14 protest activities. All of these can and should be springboards for very large bi-coastal demonstrations in the spring.
Our movement faces this challenge: Will the spring actions be unified with all sections of the movement joining together to mobilize the largest possible outpouring on a given date? Or will different antiwar coalitions set different dates for actions that would be inherently competitive, the result being smaller and less powerful expressions of support for the movement’s “Out Now!” demand?
We appeal to all sections of the movement to speak up now and be heard on this critical question. We must not replicate the experience of recent years during which the divisions in the movement severely weakened it to the benefit of the warmakers and the detriment of the millions of victims of U.S. aggressions, interventions and occupations.
Send a message. Urge – the times demand it! – united action in the spring to ensure a turnout which will reflect the majority’s sentiments for peace. Ideally, all major forces in the antiwar movement would announce jointly, or at least on the same day, an agreed upon date for the spring demonstrations.
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations will be glad to participate in the process of selecting a date for spring actions that the entire movement can unite around. One way or another, let us make sure that comes spring we will march in the streets together, demanding that the occupations be ended, that all the troops and contractors be withdrawn immediately, and that all U.S. military bases be closed.
In solidarity and peace,
National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations
http://natassembly.org/members/index.php?org-id=2
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OCTOBER 11, 2008 End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Now!
http://oct11.org/
Dear Readers,
The date of October 11, 2008 was designated as a day of localized national actions against the war at the National Assembly to End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this past June. Demonstrations are already being planned. Here is the call from the Greater Boston area--hopefully we can pull something together for October ll here in San Francisco.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War
Hi all,
Below is an outreach letter that will be going out to various organizational lists
and individuals all over the Greater Boston area. Please feel free to circulate
this letter as an example of what is happening in Boston as you seek support
for October 11 in your various localities.
Adelante (forward),
John Harris
Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition
Dear Friends,
March, 2008 ushered in the sixth year of war and occupation “without end” on Iraq . In an act of arrogance and impunity, Congress in a bipartisan vote approved another
$162 billion in funding for the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan . Stepped up threats against Iran and the increased likelihood of a U.S. troop “surge” into Afghanistan point to an imperative for action and an independent voice from the peace and justice movement.
In light of these developments, grass roots forces from around the country gathered together at the end of June for the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation in Cleveland, Ohio. At the conference an action plan for the months ahead was discussed and approved in a democratic vote. As part of this plan, over 95 percent voted in favor of supporting pre-election protests being organized in cities and localities around the country on October 11, 2008.
It was on October 11, 2002 that Congress approved the “ Iraq War Resolution” granting the Bush administration authorization to invade Iraq . The weeks ahead promise to be filled with debate as the election campaigns gear up. Instead of being spectators who watch the media pundits put their spin on the political pronouncements of the candidates, the October 11 protests present us with an opportunity to be engaged in injecting our agenda, the antiwar agenda, into the intensifying debate.
Please join us in an initial planning meeting as we prepare a Boston protest demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all occupation forces from Iraq and the closing of all military bases. All are invited. Looking forward to seeing you there.
Saturday, August 9, 3:00 PM
Encuentro 5
33 Harrison Avenue, 5th Floor
Boston (in Chinatown )
In Peace and Solidarity,
Marilyn Levin
*Arlington/Lexington United for Justice with Peace, New England United
Liam Madden
*IVAW – Boston Chapter
Suren Moodliar
Mass Global Action
Ann Glick
Newton Dialogues for Peace
Nate Goldshlag
Smedley D. Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 Veterans for Peace
Paul Shannon
American Friends Service Committee
John Harris
Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition
* Organization for identification purposes only
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A.N.S.W.E.R.Calendar of Upcoming Anti-war Events
Bring the Anti-War Movement to Inauguration Day in D.C.
January 20, 2009: Join thousands to demand "Bring the troops home now!"
On January 20, 2009, when the next president proceeds up Pennsylvania Avenue he will see thousands of people carrying signs that say US Out of Iraq Now!, US Out of Afghanistan Now!, and Stop the Threats Against Iran! As in Vietnam it will be the people in the streets and not the politicians who can make the difference.
On March 20, 2008, in response to a civil rights lawsuit brought against the National Park Service by the Partnership for Civil Justice on behalf of the ANSWER Coalition, a Federal Court ruled for ANSWER and determined that the government had discriminated against those who brought an anti-war message to the 2005 Inauguration. The court barred the government from continuing its illegal practices on Inauguration Day.
The Democratic and Republican Parties have made it clear that they intend to maintain the occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and threaten a new war against Iran.
Both Parties are completely committed to fund Israel’s on-going war against the Palestinian people. Both are committed to spending $600 billion each year so that the Pentagon can maintain 700 military bases in 130 countries.
On this the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we are helping to build a nationwide movement to support working-class communities that are being devastated while the country’s resources are devoted to war and empire for for the sake of transnational banks and corporations.
Join us and help organize bus and car caravans for January 20, 2009, Inauguration Day, so that whoever is elected president will see on Pennsylvania Avenue that the people want an immediate end to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and to halt the threats against Iran.
From Iraq to New Orleans, Fund Peoples Needs Not the War Machine!
We cannot carry out these actions withour your help. Please take a moment right now to make an urgently needed donation by clicking this link:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1121&JServSessionIdr011=23sri803b1.app2a
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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NEWS RELEASE
From: Radical Women, 5018 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118
Contact: Anne Slater: office 206-722-6057; cell 206-708-5161; home 206-722-3812
RE: PUBLIC CONFERENCE
Radical Women Conference Aims to Expand and Embolden Feminist Movement
October 2 - 6
Women's Building
3543 18th Street,in the Mission District, near the 16th Street BART stop.
Wheelchair accessible.
Registration is $15 per day; students and low income $7.50 per day.
Register at www.RadicalWomen.org.
For more information, phone 206-722-6057.
Radical Women Conference Aims to Expand and Embolden Feminist Movement
Optimistic rebels from all walks of life are invited to participate in a national Radical Women conference, „The Persistent Power of Socialist Feminism,‰ to be held at the San Francisco Women‚s Building, October 3-6, 2008. The major goal of the four-day public event is to produce a concrete education and action plan to focus and strengthen the feminist movement. Speakers include activists and scholars from Central America, China, Australia and the U.S.
Highlights on Friday, Oct. 2 include a 9:30am keynote address by Nellie Wong on „Women and revolution˜alive and inseparable.‰ Wong is an acclaimed Chinese-American poet, whose works include Stolen Moments, the Death of Long Steam Lady, and Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park. A former Senior Analyst of Affirmative Action, she is also a founding member of Unbound Feet, an Asian American writers group. Afterwards, Laura Mannen will present proposals and spearhead a discussion on how to build a strong, independent, grassroots U.S. feminist movement. Mannen is a bilingual teacher, mother of two and seasoned antiwar organizer from Portland, Oregon. The afternoon will feature a roundtable of female unionists on „Standing our ground on labor‚s frontlines.‰
At 7:30pm Friday evening Lynne Stewart will address „Radical dissent: The righteous response to an unjust system.‰ Stewart, embattled human rights attorney, was convicted in 2005 of providing support for terrorism by delivering a handwritten press release to Reuters from a client. Though prosecutors sought a 30-year prison term, Stewart was sentenced to serve 28 months. The shorter sentence, the judge said, was in recognition of her „service to the nation‰ as a representative of the poor and unpopular. The government is appealing her shorter sentence. Stewart is appealing the conviction.
„Magnificent warriors: female leadership in the global freedom struggle, ‰ a panel presentation on Saturday, October 4 at 9:00am, will include Debbie Brennan, workplace delegate for the Australian Services Union and Melbourne RW president; Dr. Raya Fidel, an Israeli-American feminist and supporter of Palestinian rights; Patricia Ramos, a Costa Rican labor lawyer and leading organizer against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA); and Wang Zheng, a University of Michigan Women‚s Studies professor and co-chair of the U.S. based Chinese Society for Women's Studies.
Christina López, Chicana-Apache advocate for reproductive justice and frontrunner in the battle for rights for undocumented workers, will present her paper „Estamos en la lucha: Immigrant women light the fires of resistance‰ at 11:30am.
Interactive workshops in the afternoon include Challenging the Minutemen; ABC‚s of Marxist feminism; Women‚s stake in the struggle for union democracy; Federally funded childcare NOW; End the war on women˜in Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S.; On the barricades for reproductive justice; Confronting movement sexism; Free trade is a feminist issue; and Young queer radical˜what are we fighting for?
Sunday, Oct. 5 begins at 9:00am with a panel on „The galvanizing impact of multiracial organizing in a society divided by racism.‰ Sharing first-hand experiences will be author Christina López of Seattle, reproductive rights activist Toni Mendicino of San Francisco, and campus organizer Emily Woo Yamasaki of New York City.
The remainder of Sunday will be devoted to issues and skills workshops. Topics include Power to the poor!; Radical campus organizing; For affirmative action not „civil wrongs‰; Alternative feminist radio; Radical youth and rebel elders; Disabled rights activists on RX for toxic healthcare. There will also be sessions on getting media attention, confident speaking and writing, knowing your rights as a worker, and producing effective fliers and banners.
The conference concludes on Monday, Oct 6, 10:00am with a National Organizer‚s report and action plan presented by Anne Slater, veteran campaigner for queer rights, the environment and women‚s equality.
All sessions will be held at the Women‚s Building, 3543 18th St., in the Mission District, near the 16th Street BART stop. Wheelchair accessible. Registration is $15 per day; students and low income $7.50 per day. Register at www.RadicalWomen.org. For more information, phone 206-722-6057.
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Get Pad and Pen: The School Supply List Is Long
By LISA W. FODERARO
August 30, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/nyregion/30supplies.html?ref=education
2) Hurricane Warnings
Editorial
September 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02tue1.html?hp
3) As Throngs of Protesters Hit Streets, Dozens Are Arrested After Clashes
By PATRICK HEALY and COLIN MOYNIHAN
September 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us/politics/02protest.html?ref=u
4) Take Action to Defend RNC Protesters!
Stop the Police Riot in St. Paul!
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
Demand the release of Salazer and Kouddous and Amy Goodman
CALL NOW:
651-266-9350 (press extension 0)
5) Hard Times Hitting Students and Schools
By SAM DILLON
September 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/education/01school.html?ref=education
6) Living in the Car After Gustav
By BILL QUIGLEY
New Orleans Journal
September 2, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.com/quigley09022008.html
7) Despite Lower Oil Prices, Little Relief for Consumers
By LOUIS UCHITELLE and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
September 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/business/03commodities.html?ref=business
8) Ramsey County Charges RNC 8 Under State Patriot Act, Alleges Acts of
Posted by k under Civil Liberties , Democracy
Minnesota Chapter of National Lawyers Guild
Bruce Nestor, President
Minnesota Chapter of National Lawyers Guild
3547 Cedar Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
http://www.dhafirtrial.net/2008/09/03/ramsey-county-charges-rnc-8-under-state-patriot-act-alleges-acts-of/
9) American Forces Attack Militants on Pakistani Soil
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH, ERIC SCHMITT and JANE PERLEZ
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/asia/04attack.html
10) 19-Square-Mile Ice Sheet Breaks Loose in Canada
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:47 a.m. ET
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Arctic-Ice-Shelf.html?ref=world
11) Memo From Jerusalem
Support for 2-State Plan Erodes
By ISABEL KERSHNER
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/middleeast/04state.html?ref=middleeast
12) Pre-Emptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC
Tuesday 02 September 2008
by: Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t | Report
http://www.truthout.org/article/pre-emptive-strikes-against-protest-rnc
13) U.S. Missiles Killed at Least Six People on Afghanistan-
Pakistan Border, Residents Say
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH and JANE PERLEZ
September 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/world/asia/06pstan.html?ref=world
14) 24/7 School Reform
The Way We Live Now
By PAUL TOUGH
September 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07wwln-lede-t.html?ref=education
15) Fuel Prices Squeeze School Districts
By PAT WIEDENKELLER
Published: September 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/07Rbus.html?ref=education
16) A playful Army experience at Franklin Mills
By Robert Moran
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Posted on Fri, Aug. 29, 2008
http://www.philly.com/philly
/news/20080829_A_playful_Army_experience_at_Franklin_Mills.html
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1) Get Pad and Pen: The School Supply List Is Long
By LISA W. FODERARO
August 30, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/nyregion/30supplies.html?ref=education
Among parents with school-age children, it is known simply as the List.
The one for Myung Kim’s sixth grader in Ardsley, N.Y., ran to 30 items, including three packages of clay and a protractor. In Manhattan, Ellen Schorr’s 9-year-old had hers broken into three categories: “student supplies,” “community supplies” and “materials to have at home.” Increasingly, amid the requisite three-hole punch and colored pencils are items with double-digit price tags — flash drives, scientific calculators and disposable cameras.
And the lists are heavy on hygiene: Lysol, Band-Aids, hand sanitizer, tissues and paper towels, things the custodian or school nurse used to have on hand.
“I’m assuming that 10 boxes of baby wipes is a typo,” said Ms. Schorr, a writer and class parent at Public School 163 on the Upper West Side, where her 5-year-old, Isadora, is starting kindergarten. “I’m not buying 10 boxes.”
As school districts both poor and prosperous struggle to finance such basics as teacher salaries, utilities, building maintenance and textbooks, many are asking parents to purchase more — and more particular — school supplies. Gone are the days when back-to-school shopping meant making sure each child had new shoes and a three-ring binder. Now, according to the New York State School Boards Association, supplies run an average of $100 for high school students and $60 for middle schoolers.
The trend has even touched the toddler cohort. At Eladia’s Kids Child Care Center in Brooklyn, the parents of an 18-month-old were asked to provide, among other things, a backpack, a two-pocket folder (for daily communications and periodic assignments) and special-occasion stickers (“special because they’re from you!”).
Many New York teachers extended their lists this year after the City Council cut the Teacher’s Choice fund, created two decades ago to reimburse teachers for personal spending on classroom supplies, to $13 million from $20 million. Teachers who used to receive an allotment of $240 each now can count on $150.
But opposition to the ever-growing lists has led some school districts to put on the brakes.
In the suburbs of Rochester, the Gates Chili Central School District last year capped the amount that parents were expected to spend on supplies at $10 a child, adding $100,000 to the budget to make up the difference. The sprawling Fayette County Public Schools in Lexington, Ky., set a limit this fall of $120 a child for the year, including field trips. At Springhurst Elementary School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., teachers have agreed on a standard list so the parent organization can buy in bulk, handing each family a shrink-wrapped package costing $37 to $44 this week.
“I think we have an obligation to provide a free public education,” said Superintendent Rick Stein of Gates Chili, which has 5,000 students, a third of them poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. “I think a youngster needs to come to school on a level playing field, and it’s much harder for some families to accomplish that than others. Our long-term goal is to get it to zero.”
Amy Ellen Schwartz, director of the Institute for Education and Social Policy at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University, said that the shifting of responsibility for supplies from schools to families reflected two competing ideals in public education: equity and parental involvement.
While many teachers tuck things like paper towels and tissues at the bottom of their lists, under a “donations” heading, Dr. Schwartz cautioned that such optional requests could create an atmosphere of favoritism. “The parents who are most able to provide the resources might garner attention for their children,” she said. “Do we have evidence that this happens? No. Is it far-fetched that it could? No.”
David Albert, a spokesman for the New York State School Boards Association, said the cost of school supplies was “a burgeoning issue right now” because of the weak economy and high fuel and food costs, particularly among poorer families or those with many children. “You hear grumblings from different districts where parents look at these lists of supplies and ask whether they’re all necessary,” he said.
Indeed, many parents interviewed this week expressed frustration not only at the length, specificity and oddball nature of some lists, but also at the inefficiency of asking each parent in a class to buy a single ream of paper when school districts could undoubtedly get discounts for large quantities. Others cringe at seeing the things they searched for on store shelves sit unused.
“I spent $198 last year on supplies, and there are so many markers and highlighters and pencils they don’t use,” said Ms. Kim, the Ardsley mother of two who was shopping in a CVS.
“We barely touched the clay,” added her 12-year-old daughter, Grace, who is going into the seventh grade.
Lisa Deffendall, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky school district that set the $120 limit, said the school board there also banned requiring students to provide communal items like cleaning supplies and copy paper, and asked principals to review all lists. “We wanted to make a commitment to our families that the items you send in with your child are really going to be used by your child,” she said.
At a Staples in Scarsdale, N.Y., the other day, Dee Thompson, a subway conductor and single mother who lives in the Bronx, was fretting over folders for her daughter Nazaria, who won admission to the Salk School of Science, a selective middle school in Gramercy Park. “They’ll say folders, but they have plastic folders, vinyl folders, folders with three holes, and you don’t know what kind they mean,” she said.
Nazaria’s list of 24 items included 8 optional ones marked as “donations.” Among the must-haves were a flash drive, a dictionary, a thesaurus, a scientific calculator and graph-paper composition notebooks — which presented a problem, since Staples had graph-paper pads, but not notebooks. At the top of the list was an additional sticker shock: notice of a $50 lab fee. “I can’t afford a private education for her,” Ms. Thompson said, “so this is my payback.”
Maria Baez, the manager of a laundry service in Brooklyn, spent $125 the other day on supplies for her daughter, Mireya, who is about to start the seventh grade, and still needed to find a calculator — and it had to be by Texas Instruments.
“We need help because it’s a lot of stuff, especially if you have three kids,” said Ms. Baez, who also has a kindergartner and a college student, and was shopping for back-to-school clothes at Cookies in the Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn.
But Ajith Nair, the father of a first grader and a fifth grader in Dobbs Ferry, opted against the elementary school’s prepackaged supplies and headed to a nearby Staples, even though he knew it would most likely cost more. “I love to do this,” he said. “This is something I can do for my kids — to give it a personal touch.”
And Tory Perry, who lives on the Upper West Side with three school-age children, said she did not think the lists were excessive. “It would be wonderful if they were included in the budget, but the reality is that there’s no funding for supplies,” Ms. Perry said as she shopped at Staples on Broadway at 80th Street. “We’re fighting for reduction in class size and really basic things. This is a way of supporting the teacher.”
Teachers themselves say they feel caught in a bind, especially given dwindling resources for supplies from the main office. “I try to limit it,” said Cara Cashman, who teaches first graders at P.S. 280 in Norwood, in the Bronx, referring to her list. “I’ve seen lists that are ridiculous.”
Ms. Cashman, like so many other teachers, spends her own money for supplies, and keeps eyes peeled for specials and giveaways, like the free pocket folders available at most Staples locations through Saturday. (OfficeMax is offering protractors and compasses for a penny from Sunday through Sept. 6.)
Ms. Cashman clutched 28 white pocket folders, one for each of her students, at the Staples store on Central Avenue in Scarsdale. “They had free glue sticks a couple of weeks ago, so I stocked up on glue,” she said.
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2) Hurricane Warnings
Editorial
September 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02tue1.html?hp
Like most Americans, we watched anxiously on Monday as Hurricane Gustav slammed into the Gulf Coast. That anxiety was heightened by the knowledge that — three years after the Katrina debacle — New Orleans’s levees still are not ready to handle another gigantic storm. There also have been serious questions about whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which failed so spectacularly and shamefully during Katrina, is fully up to the job.
Gustav turned out to be a less-potent storm than forecasters had feared, and it did not hit New Orleans full on. Even so, by Monday night, water was lapping at the top of some levee walls.
Local officials deserve credit for ordering an evacuation of New Orleans. Most residents sensibly followed that order, and local, state and federal officials appear to have worked well together to facilitate the movement of nearly two million people from the region.
When only 200 of a planned 700 buses showed up to help move people from New Orleans, other buses were found. The Defense Department oversaw the airlift of 1,000 patients from regional hospitals and nursing homes. Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans declared a curfew and said that police and National Guard troops would patrol the streets to make sure there would be no repeat of the looting and chaos that followed Katrina.
The biggest question is whether the levees will hold. The levees are stronger than they were before Katrina, but not strong enough. A $15 billion project by the Army Corps of Engineers to upgrade the system of earth and concrete levees, floodwalls, pumps and gates is only about one-quarter complete. Local officials have been questioning the Corps’ sense of urgency and whether it will make its 2011 deadline. Even then, the promised protection would not be enough to withstand another storm of Katrina’s ferocity.
FEMA is under new management. Instead of the hapless, heckuva-job Michael Brown, it is now led by R. David Paulison, a former chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Department, which has long experience with hurricanes. His top deputy is a vice admiral in the Coast Guard. Officials said they had personnel, equipment and supplies at the ready.
Still, there are worrisome questions about whether the agency has fully learned its lesson. FEMA was a year late in delivering a new strategy for housing disaster victims. And instead of a full plan, the agency produced, by its own description, “a precursor to a plan.” Most of the major issues Congress ordered it to address — including how to house the poor and the disabled, how to house victims close to their jobs and how to manage large camps for evacuees — were left unanswered.
Officials said that a task force of experts would soon address these issues. We hope that Gustav’s evacuees won’t need too much help, because as of last week that task force had yet to be appointed. Meanwhile, forecasters said the season’s fourth hurricane, Hanna, was gathering strength and that another tropical storm, Ike, had formed farther out in the Atlantic.
Gustav was a warning, once again, of nature’s unpredictability and ferocity. It is also a frightening reminder of how much more work still needs to be done to protect New Orleans — and all of us.
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3) As Throngs of Protesters Hit Streets, Dozens Are Arrested After Clashes
By PATRICK HEALY and COLIN MOYNIHAN
September 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us/politics/02protest.html?ref=us
ST. PAUL — Thousands of protesters, many of them demonstrating against the war in Iraq, marched on Monday through the streets outside the arena where the Republican National Convention is being held, with some smashing windows and battling with the police in clashes that led to more than 250 arrests.
Although most of the protesters were peaceful, the police used pepper spray and long wooden sticks to subdue some; several demonstrators also said police officers fired projectiles at them.
In one confrontation downtown, as several dozen demonstrators milled around and danced in the streets, police officers wearing helmets, padded vests and shin guards converged on the group. As the two sides faced off and tensions rose, the police squirted pepper spray into the crowd.
“I saw the cops shooting,” said a man who gave his name as Jude Ortiz. Orange foam lay on the pavement, along with a red cloth object the size of a finger that contained beads.
A commander in the St. Paul Police Department, Doug Holtz, said he knew nothing about projectiles being used near Jackson Street, where one of the most intense confrontations took place.
Commander Holtz said officers had fired “less lethal” 40-millimeter projectiles in a park near the Mississippi River, where he said demonstrators had thrown bottles and other objects at officers. He said 75 people or more had been arrested there.
These scenes from the first day of the Republican convention contrasted sharply with the more muted demonstrations at the Democratic convention in Denver last week. The protests Monday in St. Paul were much more pitched, and the number of protesters and police officers here was far greater.
At one point, a group of about 200 protesters — many wearing black bandannas across their faces and some wearing black balaclavas — roamed through downtown, shouting and chanting and throwing street signs and concrete planters in the road. At another point, a police officer grabbed one of the youths. Others wrested him away, then appeared to knock the officer to the ground. On one knee, the officer released an arc of pepper spray.
Elsewhere in St. Paul, a prominent Democratic Party strategist, Donna Brazile, was hit by pepper spray while trying to walk around protesters outside the convention hall, Ms. Brazile said in an interview.
“I got a strong whiff — just toxic — and my head and throat are still hurting,” said Ms. Brazile, who appears on CNN as a political analyst. “I’ll avoid the protesters tomorrow.”
Along the highways leading to downtown, protesters stood on overpasses with signs demanding the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, war crimes charges against the Bush administration and new laws on equal pay.
In one of the most chaotic moments, members of the Republican delegation from Connecticut said they were shoved and spat upon by protesters near the convention hall, according to the state party’s executive director, Heath Fahle. He wrote an item on the party’s blog describing a “human chain” of protesters who tried to block Republicans at a security perimeter near the convention site. Besides the shoving and spitting, the protesters shouted epithets at the dozens of delegates, Mr. Fahle wrote.
As the protests grew, scores of National Guard troops in riot gear and gas masks fanned out around the Xcel Energy Center, where the convention is being held, and set up a blockade about three blocks away. Police helicopters buzzed over St. Paul throughout the day. Humvees painted in fatigue green ferried water to police officers working in the 88-degree heat, and city dump trucks were used to block traffic on some streets.
Republican officials said about 30 agencies were policing the city on Monday, including the St. Paul and Minneapolis Police Departments and the Ramsey County and Hennepin County Sheriff’s Departments.
The clashes between the police and protesters were mostly sporadic. One of the largest of the demonstrations, which had a permit from the local authorities, began around 1 p.m. at the Minnesota Capitol and unfolded peacefully for the most part along the designated route.
Near the start of the march, two women and a young man secured themselves with chains to a car that obstructed traffic.
Just after 5 p.m., Jerah Plucker, 33, a documentary filmmaker from Minneapolis, called a reporter to say that he was among about 300 people surrounded by officers in the park along the banks of the Mississippi facing Harriet Island.
Mr. Plucker, who works for an organization called Freespeak Media, said people had been listening to musicians in the park when officers formed a cordon.
“Over the loudspeaker they are saying, ‘You are being arrested,’ ” he said. “They’re telling us, ‘Sit down, put your hands on your head.’ ”
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4) Take Action to Defend RNC Protesters!
Stop the Police Riot in St. Paul!
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
Demand the release of Salazer and Kouddous and Amy Goodman
CALL NOW:
651-266-9350 (press extension 0)
Although it went virtually unmentioned in the corporate media, on Sept. 1, the largest anti-war march of 2008 took place outside the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. 30,000 people from all over the Midwest and the country gathered at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul and them marched to the Xcel Center, the site of the RNC. Large numbers of buses came from all over Illinois, Wisconsin, and the surrounding states.
The march was overwhelmingly young people, and was led by the veterans' and immigrant rights contingents. Other sizable contingents included a strong labor contingent, a poor people's contingent, and a contingent in solidarity with Palestine. The chant ""Iraq for Iraqis -- Troops Out Now" filled the streets, along with the crowd favorite, "Who's the Biggest Terrorists in the World Today? Bush, Cheney and the CIA!"
Among the many speakers at the Minnesota State Capitol, where the march gathered, was Michael Prysner, an Iraq war veteran who represented the ANSWER Coalition. Mike addressed the crowd, "I was sent to Iraq in 2003 not to save the Iraqi people, but to kill the Iraqi people. I was sent not to free the Iraqi people, but to imprison and torture the Iraqi people. I was sent not to liberate Iraq, but to occupy Iraq. There is no longer any question that this war was not for so-called “Iraqi freedom”, it was not an act of self-defense, and it was not simply a foreign policy error by the republican party- it was a well-calculated plan carried out by both parties to dominate the Middle East, killing as many innocent people as necessary and profiting from that human suffering."
Send a Letter Demanding the St. Paul Government Release All Protesters!
The police have engaged in a widespread riot against social justice organizations, resulting in the arrest of around 300 protesters. Most of the arrested are still in jail, and at least one person with a serious medical condition has been refused care.
Even before the Convention began, protesters had the organizing centers raided. Armed groups of police in the Twin Cities have raided more than half-a-dozen locations since Friday night in a series of “preemptive raids." The raids and detentions have targeted activists planning to protest the convention, including journalists and videographers from I-Witness Video and the Glass Bead Collective. These media organizations were targeted because of the instrumental role they played in documenting police abuses the 2004 RNC Convention. Their comprehensive video coverage helped more than 400 wrongfully arrested people get their charges thrown out.
Democracy Now! producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar -- who clearly identified themselves as members of the media -- were arrested, and could face suspicion of rioting charges, a felony. When Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! went to the scene to inquire with a police commander about the arrest of her producers, she too was arrested. A CodePink march and several breakaway marches were also met with police repression. Tear gas and concussion grenades have been used to disperse crowds.
There is an undeniable pattern of police repression at these conventions. In 2004, 1500 protesters were arrested at the RNC. Subsequent litigation on behalf of the protesters revealed that national and local enforcement conspired to deny protesters their civil liberties and civil rights. Protesters were held in miserable conditions, and only mass pressure forced the police to release them.
Please take a moment and click this link to send a letter to Chris Coleman, the mayor of St. Paul, demanding that all protesters and social justice organizers be released, and that all charged be dropped. The real criminals are the "law enforcement" authorities, who have systematically violated the free speech rights of protesters, and in more than a few cases carried out physical abuse.
This report was filed with information provided by John Beacham of the ANSWER Coalition.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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5) Hard Times Hitting Students and Schools
By SAM DILLON
September 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/education/01school.html?ref=education
Correction Appended
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — With mortgage foreclosures throwing hundreds of families out of their homes here each month, dismayed school officials say they are feeling the upheaval: record numbers of students turning up for classes this fall are homeless or poor enough to qualify for free meals.
“We’re seeing a lot more children in poverty,” said Lauren Roberts, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County school system, a 98,000-student district that includes Louisville and its suburbs.
At the same time, the district is struggling with its own financial problems. Responding to a cut of $43 million by the state in education spending and to higher energy and other costs, school officials in Jefferson County have raised lunch prices, eliminated 17 buses by reorganizing routes, ordered drivers to turn off vehicles rather than letting them idle and increased property taxes.
The Jefferson County system is typical this school year.
As 50 million children return to classes across the nation, crippling increases in the price of fuel and food, coupled with the economic downturn, have left schools from California to Florida to Maine cutting costs. Some are trimming bus service, others are restricting travel, and a few are shortening the school week. And as many districts are forced to cut back, the number of poor and homeless students is rising.
“The big national picture is that food and fuel costs are going up and school revenues are not,” said Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association. “We’re in a recession, and it’s having a dramatic impact on schools.”
Louisville’s pain is minor compared with the woes of some cities. Detroit has laid off at least 700 teachers, Los Angeles 500 administrators and Miami-Dade County hundreds of school psychologists, maintenance workers and custodians.
Schools in many states have cut bus stops to save diesel. Districts in California and Ohio have gone further and eliminated bus service either completely or for high schools, leaving thousands of students to find their own way to school.
In Maine, officials worried about the cost of heating their classrooms this winter have restricted travel for field trips to save money. Districts in Louisiana, Minnesota and elsewhere have taken a more radical measure and adopted four-day school weeks. Hundreds of districts, responding to higher food prices, are charging more for cafeteria meals.
In interviews, educators in many states said they were seeing more needy families than at any time in memory. Two charities in suburban Detroit announced in August that they would hand out student backpacks, attracting hundreds of families.
“They went through all 300 backpacks in three hours, boom, and that was that,” said Kathleen M. Kropf, an official in the Macomb Intermediate School District. “We’re seeing a lot of desperate people.”
There were no giveaways for Jacci Murray, 28, a single mother in West Palm Beach, Fla., who said she lost her job six months ago. Ms. Murray bought pencils and crayons for her son, Cameron, who is in the second grade, from a discount bin at Office Depot. Saying she felt “cheap and broke,” she pored fretfully over her school supplies list, afraid to waste gas by making more than one shopping trip.
“It’s been tough this year,” Ms. Murray said. “I’m depressed about school.”
And so are many educators.
West Virginia officials issued a memorandum recently to local districts titled “Tips to Deal With the Skyrocketing Cost of Fuel.” Last week, David Pauley, the transportation supervisor for the Kanawha County school system, based in Charleston, met with drivers of the district’s 196 buses to outline those policies. Mr. Pauley told them to stay 5 miles per hour below the limit, to check the tire pressure every day and to avoid jackrabbit starts.
The Caldwell Parish School District, in northern Louisiana, took a more sweeping approach to saving fuel by eliminating Monday classes. The district joined about 100 systems nationwide, most of them rural, that in recent years have adopted a four-day schedule.
The district’s superintendent, John Sartin, said the move should save $145,000 in a $15 million budget. The decision, made in June, came after crude oil prices had risen for 29 consecutive days, Mr. Sartin said.
“People here worry that they won’t have enough money to last through the month,” he said.
Similar concerns in the Southern Aroostook Community School District in Maine have delayed adoption of the budget.
“We’ve tried to pass it twice, and we’re trying a third,” said Terry Comeau, the superintendent, who has restricted field trips and taken a bus off the road.
“People are saying, ‘I don’t want my taxes to go higher; I need the money to pay my bills,’ ” said Mr. Comeau, adding that one worry is that heating costs will soar this winter.
The problems in many districts can be traced to battered state budgets. According to a July report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, 31 states had budget gaps totaling $40 billion, and many had cut school financing.
California still has a $15.2 billion budget gap, although many districts there have made cuts, including Los Angeles Unified, which sliced $400 million from its $6 billion budget in June partly by laying off 500 administrators and secretaries, though no teachers.
Many districts are serving increasing numbers of needy students. In Mobile, Ala., the number of homeless students tripled to about 2,500 at the end of the last school year from 850 in the 2006-7 term.
“And our numbers are going to be a whole lot higher this year,” said Larissa Dickinson, a school social worker there. “We’ve had phone call after phone call from families evicted over the summer.”
Officials in districts in a half-dozen states reported similar surges.
In Louisville, 7,600 homeless students were enrolled when the term ended in June, up from 7,300 the year before. But Anne Malone, who coordinates efforts to help homeless students, said the figure would be “way up over that this year.” Ms. Malone cited foreclosure statistics from the Metropolitan Housing Coalition in Louisville that about 10 families were evicted every day here.
The number of students whose family’s income qualifies them for subsidized meals is up, too.
Under the National School Lunch Program, children in a family of four whose parents earn no more than $39,220 a year qualify for a subsidized 30-cent breakfast and 40-cent lunch. If the parents earn no more than $27,560, the children qualify for free meals.
Last year, about 58,000 Jefferson County students were eligible for free or reduced-price meals. This year, the number is likely to reach 62,000, said Mary R. Owens, who coordinates the program here. In interviews, officials in California, the District of Columbia, Florida and Wisconsin also projected increases in the number of students who would qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
Nationally, 14.9 million students qualified for free lunches last year, according to data from the Agriculture Department; the Bush administration’s budget estimates that an additional 283,000 students will be eligible this year.
A department spokeswoman, Jean Daniel, said that subsidized meals were an entitlement and that no students would be turned away if participation exceeded estimates.
The office here where parents fill out forms to qualify for subsidized meals has seen a stream of anxious parents this year, often in tears, pleading for the free meals for their children because they do not have 70 cents a day to pay for the reduced-price meals, Ms. Owens said.
“We’ve had a lot of daddies coming in to say their check doesn’t cover like it used to,” she said.
Tom Collins contributed reporting from Florida, Joel Elliott from Maine and Sean D. Hamill from Pennsylvania.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 2, 2008
An article on Monday about the financial problems that many schools are having at the same time that some of their students’ families are struggling economically omitted the names of three contributing reporters. Tom Collins reported from Florida, Joel Elliott from Maine and Sean D. Hamill from Pennsylvania.
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6) Living in the Car After Gustav
By BILL QUIGLEY
New Orleans Journal
September 2, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.com/quigley09022008.html
The good news is that nearly two million people evacuated and were spared the direct hit of Gustave. Our sisters and brothers in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who were not able to leave the point of the storm, lost over 100 lives. The people of the U.S. were fortunate to be able to leave.
The bad news is that most people have not been allowed to return.
Since the storm, New Orleans and numerous other coastal communities have continued 24 hour curfews and prohibited people from returning by posting law enforcement at all entrances.
Officials argue that neighborhoods are without electricity and return would be challenging due to the presence of downed trees and power lines.
Locking people out is quite a hardship and also very challenging for the hundreds of thousands of displaced working families. As one local resident put it, "I understand that most public officials are saying for us to stay away as a safety aspect, but they do not realize that some of us cannot afford to stay away that long."
Garland Robinette, a respected radio voice of WWL radio, was also pleading with elected officials on air this afternoon, "What are you going to do about the poor people who cant afford another hotel room?"
When the average weekly wage for workers in the hotel and restaurant business is less than $400 a week, the least expensive hotel, plus gas and meals for a family since last Saturday or Sunday, can eat up a weeks wages in no time. Additionally, tens of thousands of people have also lost a week of work because most workers are not paid for the time during evacuation. That puts families two weeks of wages behind.
That it why there are widespread reports of families now parked on the side of the highway or in parking lots waiting for permission to come home.
Over 60,000 people are in 300 shelters across the South. Those who came by publicly paid buses will not be allowed to return until perhaps the weekend.
People who cannot come home are now being told to contact the Red Cross and local churches to see if they will provide bed space.
Despite our continuing problems, we are all thankful for the good fortune we have had. We are also grateful for the help of our neighbors, families and friends who have put us up, given us money for gas, and allowed us to shower and use their phones.
Nearly two million people cooperated in the evacuation. New Orleans and other coastal communities reported only a handful of arrests. This has worked really well so far. But unless officials are sensitive to the serious financial crunch that working and poor families are in, the risk is that next time large numbers of people will be less likely to evacuate.
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. His essay on the Echo 9 nuclear launch site protests is featured in Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland, published by AK Press. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com
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7) Despite Lower Oil Prices, Little Relief for Consumers
By LOUIS UCHITELLE and MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
September 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/business/03commodities.html?ref=business
As oil prices surged this year, manufacturers raised the prices of a lot of products — not just gasoline but lotions, toothpaste, plastics and many more items that use oil as a raw material. But now that oil costs are plunging, other prices are not following them lower — not yet, anyway.
Even though oil prices have fallen closer to $100 a barrel, from $147 about two months ago, many companies that cited higher energy costs for increasing prices are resisting a rollback, saying they still need to recover money lost in the run-up.
Crude oil prices slid Tuesday by $5.75, to $109.71 a barrel, down 25 percent from the high on July 11, as Hurricane Gustav passed near New Orleans without damaging oil production facilities. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped more than 220 points before falling as energy company shares lost ground.
As oil tumbles, prices at the gas pump come down. But the costs of many other products have not. Procter & Gamble, for example, has raised by 7 percent to 10 percent the prices it charges retailers for items made with ingredients derived from oil. The company is planning to maintain the increase “to recover costs already incurred,” Paul Fox, a spokesman, said.
Such decisions will come as little relief for thousands of retailers and wholesalers that have been forced to squeeze margins instead of passing their elevated costs to consumers, who have cut back on consumption of finished goods as their bills for groceries and gas jumped.
P.& G., Dow Chemical, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, as well as other big users of oil-based raw materials, are waiting to see if oil prices will stay down or continue to fall before they commit to price cuts.
“Everybody still feels there is too much uncertainty to be clear about what action they should take,” said Ali Dibadj, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, who specializes in companies that use oil-based raw materials in making a variety of consumer products. “They won’t immediately drop their prices.”
Until recently, robust growth in Europe and a seemingly endless thirst for petroleum in China and developing nations lifted global demand for oil, and the price with it. But now some economies, especially in Europe, are weakening almost more rapidly than America’s, lifting the dollar. That should help relieve price pressures over all by making imports — as well as oil prices — cheaper.
This uncertainty helps to explain why Dow Chemical, for example, which had raised prices this year by nearly 50 percent for the oil-based raw materials that go into the manufacture of products like diapers and polystyrene, does not want to give up those increases until the company recovers its old profit margins. “Our prices continue to lag our cost increases,” the spokesman, David Winder, said.
And Goodyear Tire and Rubber, which has raised tire prices by 15 percent this year, said it was still making synthetic rubber tires from oil-based feed stocks bought at relatively high prices more than three months ago.
Keith Price, a Goodyear spokesman, said Goodyear could not consider canceling the price increase until it knew whether oil prices were going to stay down.
The decline in oil prices has also dragged the cost of other commodities sharply lower since early summer. Corn, in particular, has slumped: it settled on Tuesday at $5.69 a bushel, down 29 percent since June 27. Soybean prices are down 21 percent in the same period.
Despite the steep declines in the cost of raw ingredients, prices for packaged foods sold at supermarkets are likely to remain higher than they were last year, said Ephraim Leibtag, an economist who studies food markets for the Agriculture Department.
With oil prices in sharp decline, the nation’s millions of car owners are a little better off. The average price of a gallon of gas settled at $3.68 on Tuesday, down from a record $4.11 in mid-July. “That’s a 43-cent decline,” said Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, chief economist for the Ford Motor Company. “It’s almost like a tax cut for consumers.”
Just the opposite holds for commuters who travel on the nation’s airlines. The major carriers have pushed through 15 price increases since the beginning of the year, with 11 of them depicted as fuel surcharges. None of the domestic airlines has stated how or when the surcharges might be removed, making them the equivalent of price increases, said Rick Seaney, who runs FareCompare.com, a Web site offering information on plane fares.
Like Procter & Gamble, Dow Chemical and Goodyear, the airlines suggest that what they do with fares depends on what happens to the price of oil over the long run.
“We would love to see it come down and stay down,” said Betsy E. Talton, a Delta spokeswoman.
Interest rates were slightly lower with the rate on the 10-year Treasury note at 3.73 percent, down from 3.81 percent late Friday. The price, which moves in the opposite direction from the yield, rose 21/32, to 102 6/32.
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8) Ramsey County Charges RNC 8 Under State Patriot Act, Alleges Acts of
Posted by k under Civil Liberties , Democracy
Minnesota Chapter of National Lawyers Guild
Bruce Nestor, President
Minnesota Chapter of National Lawyers Guild
3547 Cedar Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
http://www.dhafirtrial.net/2008/09/03/ramsey-county-charges-rnc-8-under-state-patriot-act-alleges-acts-of/
In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector, face up to 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty.
Affidavits released by law enforcement which were filed in support of the search warrants used in raids over the weekend, and used to support probable cause for the arrest warrants, are based on paid, confidential informants who infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these
allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provacateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence.
“These charges are an effort to equate publicly stated plans to blockade traffic and disrupt the RNC as being the same as acts of terrorism. This both trivializes real violence and attempts to place the stated political views of the Defendants on trial,” said Bruce Nestor, President of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “The charges represent an abuse of the criminal justice system and seek to intimidate any person organizing large scale public demonstrations potentially involving civil disobedience, he said.”
The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally have engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. The complaints list all of alleged violations of law during the last few days of the RNC — other than violations of human rights carried out by law enforcement — and seeks to hold the 8 defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals. None of the defendants have any prior criminal history involving acts of violence. Searches conducted in connection with the raids failed to turn up any physical evidence to support the allegations of organized attacks on law enforcement. Although claiming probable cause to believe that gunpowder, acids, and assembled incendiary devices would be found, no such items were seized by police. As a result, police sought to claim that the seizure of common household items such as glass bottles, charcoal lighter, nails, a rusty machete, and two hatchets, supported the allegations of the confidential informants. “Police found what they claim was a single plastic shield, a rusty machete, and two hatchets used in Minnesota to split wood. This doesn’t amount to evidence of an organized insurrection, particularly when over 3,500 police are present in the Twin Cities, armed with assault rifles, concussion grenades, chemical weapons and full riot gear,” said Nestor. In addition, the National Lawyers Guild has previously pointed out how law enforcement has fabricated evidence such as the claims that urine was seized which demonstrators intended to throw at police.
The last time such charges were brought under Minnesota law was in 1918, when Matt Moilen and others organizing labor unions for the International Workers of the World on the Iron Range were charged with “criminal syndicalism.” The convictions, based on allegations that workers had advocated or taught acts of violence, including acts only damaging to property, were upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court. In the light of history, these convictions are widely seen as unjust and a product of political trials. The National Lawyers Guild condemns the charges filed in this case against the above 8 defendants and urges the Ramsey County Attorney to drop all charges of conspiracy in this matter.
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9) American Forces Attack Militants on Pakistani Soil
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH, ERIC SCHMITT and JANE PERLEZ
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/asia/04attack.html
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Helicopter-borne American Special Operations forces attacked Qaeda militants in a Pakistani village near the border with Afghanistan early Wednesday in the first publicly acknowledged case of United States forces conducting a ground raid on Pakistani soil, American officials said.
Until now, allied forces in Afghanistan have occasionally carried out airstrikes and artillery attacks in the border region of Pakistan against militants hiding there, and American forces in “hot pursuit” of militants have had some latitude to chase them across the border.
But the commando raid by the American forces signaled what top American officials said could be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces against the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, a secret plan that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been advocating for months within President Bush’s war council.
It also seemed likely to complicate relations with Pakistan, where the already unstable political situation worsened after the resignation last month of President Pervez Musharraf, a longtime American ally.
“What you’re seeing is perhaps a stepping up of activity against militants in sanctuaries in the tribal areas that pose a direct threat to United States forces and Afghan forces in Afghanistan,” said one senior American official, who had been briefed on the attack and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the mission’s political sensitivity. “There’s potential to see more.”
While most American troops in Afghanistan operate under a NATO chain of command, the Special Operations forces who carried out this attack answer only to American commanders.
The Bush administration has criticized Pakistan in recent months for not doing enough to curb attacks by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which keep bases inside the Pakistani tribal region and cross the border to attack American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The action by the American forces on Wednesday in the border village appeared to be an effort to stanch the raids by Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militants.
There were conflicting reports about civilian casualties in the operation. American officials said one child had been killed in the strike; a Pakistani military spokesman said the American troops had opened fire on villagers, killing seven people.
After the attack, Pakistan lodged a “strong protest” with the American government and reserved the right of “self-defense and retaliation,” said the Pakistani military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.
Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had weighed plans to kill or capture top leaders of Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, but Mr. Rumsfeld, for all his public bravado, wanted to tread cautiously in Pakistan for fear of undermining Mr. Musharraf. With Mr. Musharraf’s resignation, that issue is no longer a concern.
Many details of Wednesday’s attack remain unclear, including how many commandos and helicopters were involved, and whether the strike was planned earlier against the Qaeda targets or precipitated by militant attacks against allied forces in Afghanistan.
American military spokesmen at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., and the Pentagon declined to comment on the strike. The spokesmen did not deny that the attack had occurred.
Three other senior American officials provided some details of the attack, but only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding any aspect of the Joint Special Operations Command, whose “special mission units” carry out the military’s most secret counterterrorism missions.
In a telephone interview, General Abbas, the Pakistani military spokesman, said the soldiers from the International Security Assistance Force, which is made up of NATO and American forces, had created “new problems” for the Pakistani soldiers based along the border.
By killing civilians, General Abbas said, there was now a great risk of an uprising by the tribesmen who supported the Pakistani soldiers in the border area. The tribesmen, who oppose the Taliban and support the Pakistani forces, will now be extremely angry, he said.
“Such actions are completely counterproductive and can result in huge losses, because it gives the civilians a cause to rise against the Pakistani military,” he said.
The governor of North-West Frontier Province, Owais Ahmed Ghani, said the helicopter attack occurred about 3 a.m. and killed 20 people. Local residents said most of the dead were women and children, but this could not be confirmed.
One American official said that at least one child had been killed, and that several women who died in the attack were helping the Qaeda fighters.
The governor, the most powerful civilian leader in the province, which abuts South Waziristan, condemned the attacks and called for retaliation by Pakistan.
A senior Pakistani official called the commando raid a “cowboy action” and said it had failed to capture or kill any senior Qaeda or Taliban leaders.
“If they had gotten anyone big, they would be bragging about it,” he said.
The Pakistani official said that American military officers in the field had become increasingly vocal about the need for unilateral strikes inside the tribal areas, but that their intelligence about the location of militant leaders was no better than it had been in the past.
But in the past, the senior ranks of the Pakistani military have supported, in principle, these kinds of missions. The country’s civilian political leadership at a minimum may have to criticize such missions on the grounds of sovereignty and the risk of civilian casualties.
According to an earlier description of the military action on Wednesday given by a Taliban commander and local residents, the attack was aimed at three houses in the village of Jalal Khel, also known locally as Moosa Nika, in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan, near a stronghold of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and less than a mile from the border with Afghanistan.
The Taliban commander, known by the nom de guerre Commander Malang, said the attack took place close to a Pakistani military position on the border and killed 15 people. But the Pakistani military took no action, he said.
According to Commander Malang, three helicopters flew into the Pakistani side of the border and one of them, carrying soldiers, landed. Soldiers who came out of the helicopter opened fire on people in the village, he said, while the other two helicopters hovered overhead.
The commander, who is based in the town of Wana, said he was not at the scene. He received the description via radio, he said. The soldiers “killed innocent people” in the village adjacent to a security post of the Pakistani Frontier Corps. There was no immediate way to independently confirm the account of the Taliban leader.
General Abbas, the Pakistani military spokesman, said the American commandos spilling from the helicopter had opened fire on villagers, killing seven people.
Any incursion by American or NATO aircraft into Pakistan in so-called hot pursuit of Taliban militants is a contentious issue for Pakistan.
Publicly, the Pakistani authorities say their country’s sovereignty must be respected, and they always condemn such raids.
At the same time, Washington has become more vocal about increased attacks by Taliban and Qaeda forces crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan to fight coalition forces.
Last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met secretly with the Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, on an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea to discuss how to combat the escalating violence along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Officials briefed on the meeting said a wider campaign by American Special Operations forces in the tribal areas was not discussed, although there had been growing expectations among Pakistanis that American units would respond by attacking more forcefully into Pakistani territory.
The Angoor Adda area is on the border with Afghanistan, and its mud-walled compounds are known as a center of Taliban and Qaeda strength.
Sher Khan, a phone company employee in Angoor Adda, said in a telephone interview that 19 people were killed in the raid. He said most of the dead were women and children.
A Pakistani intelligence official in South Waziristan said in a telephone interview that a group of Taliban had crossed the border into Afghanistan before an attack late Tuesday. In response, the Afghan National Army called for air support, the intelligence official said, speaking in return for customary anonymity.
The helicopters chased the Taliban militants across the border back into South Waziristan, according to the intelligence official’s account.
But the Taliban militants escaped, the official said.
Pir Zubair Shah reported from Dera Ismail Khan, Jane Perlez from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mark Mazzetti contributed from Orlando, Fla.
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10) 19-Square-Mile Ice Sheet Breaks Loose in Canada
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:47 a.m. ET
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Arctic-Ice-Shelf.html?ref=world
TORONTO (AP) -- A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.
Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated Press that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and the 19-square-mile shelf is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean.
''The Markham Ice Shelf was a big surprise because it suddenly disappeared. We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic,'' said Mueller.
Mueller also said that two large sections of ice detached from the Serson Ice Shelf, shrinking that ice feature by 47 square miles -- or 60 percent -- and that the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has also continued to break up, losing an additional eight square miles.
Mueller reported last month that seven square miles of the 170-square-mile and 130-feet-thick Ward Hunt shelf had broken off.
This comes on the heels of unusual cracks in a northern Greenland glacier, rapid melting of a southern Greenland glacier, and a near record loss for Arctic sea ice this summer. And earlier this year a 160-square mile chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf disintegrated.
''Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses this summer,'' said Luke Copland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa. ''And extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years.''
Formed by accumulating snow and freezing meltwater, ice shelves are large platforms of thick, ancient sea ice that float on the ocean's surface but are connected to land.
Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s. All that is left today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 299 square miles.
Martin Jeffries of the U.S. National Science Foundation and University of Alaska Fairbanks said in a statement Tuesday that the summer's ice shelf loss is equivalent to over three times the area of Manhattan, totaling 82 square miles -- losses that have reduced Arctic Ocean ice cover to its second-biggest retreat since satellite measurements began 30 years ago.
''These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present,'' said Mueller.
During the last century, when ice shelves would break off, thick sea ice would eventually reform in their place.
''But today, warmer temperatures and a changing climate means there's no hope for regrowth. A scary scenario,'' said Mueller.
The loss of these ice shelves means that rare ecosystems that depend on them are on the brink of extinction, said Warwick Vincent, director of Laval University's Centre for Northern Studies and a researcher in the program ArcticNet.
''The Markham Ice Shelf had half the biomass for the entire Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf ecosystem as a habitat for cold, tolerant microbial life; algae that sit on top of the ice shelf and photosynthesis like plants would. Now that it's disappeared, we're looking at ecosystems on the verge of extinction,' said Mueller.
Along with decimating ecosystems, drifting ice shelves and warmer temperatures that will cause further melting ice pose a hazard to populated shipping routes in the Arctic region -- a phenomenon that Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to welcome.
Harper announced last week that he plans to expand exploration of the region's known oil and mineral deposits, a possibility that has become more evident as a result of melting sea ice. It is the burning of oil and other fossil fuels that scientists say is the chief cause of manmade warming and melting ice.
Harper also said Canada would toughen reporting requirements for ships entering its waters in the Far North, where some of those territorial claims are disputed by the United States and other countries.
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11) Memo From Jerusalem
Support for 2-State Plan Erodes
By ISABEL KERSHNER
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/middleeast/04state.html?ref=middleeast
JERUSALEM — Even among the most moderate Palestinians, the credo of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is beginning to erode.
Hamas, the Islamic group that refuses to recognize Israel, has already taken over Gaza, one of the two territories earmarked for a Palestinian state.
Now, with hopes fading for an agreement on statehood by the end of the year, leading pragmatists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, last bastions of Palestinian secular nationalism, are calling for a fundamental reassessment of their leaders’ strategies and goals.
A growing number propose dismantling the internationally financed Palestinian Authority as a first step, in order to expose the reach of Israel’s continued occupation of territories it conquered in the 1967 war and to make Israel bear the direct responsibility and cost until a political solution is found.
Prominent mainstream Palestinians are increasingly warning that if they fail soon to achieve the kind of state they want — sovereign and independent, with East Jerusalem as its capital — they will opt instead for a one-state solution based on a long-term fight for equal rights within the state of Israel, a struggle they compare with what took place in South Africa.
At one level the one-state ultimatums are intended as a pressure tactic to wring concessions out of Israel — granting equal voting rights to millions of Palestinians in the territories would ultimately spell the end of the Zionist project of Jewish self-determination and a Jewish state.
But now they also reflect an urge for a genuine reappraisal in the dwindling Palestinian nationalist camp as it despairs of achieving the kind of state it had envisaged and questions its own ability to survive.
“It is less of a scare tactic and more of trying to shake the traditional Palestinian leadership into strategic forward thinking,” said Sam Bahour, an American-born Palestinian businessman who moved to the West Bank and invested heavily there after Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed their first accord in 1993.
One of the first to articulate the shift was Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al-Quds University and one of the most cogent proponents of the two-state solution for the past 20 years.
“I know that people assume the sun will rise tomorrow, that it will always be possible to arrive at two states,” he told reporters here in July. “But I don’t think so.” If Israeli and Palestinian leaders fail to sign an agreement on Palestinian statehood in the coming weeks or months, he said, “We will have to prepare ourselves for the next stage.”
That, he said, meant “trying to cover the next few decades with the least pain” by fashioning “some kind of coexistence” in a single state.
In August, Ahmed Qurei, a veteran leader of the secular and nationalist Fatah movement and the chief of the Palestinian negotiating team, said at a meeting of his party in the West Bank city of Ramallah that if Israel continued to oppose the Palestinians’ terms for an independent state, then the team would demand a binational state.
The past few days have seen a flurry of statements, articles and reports. One, by the Palestine Strategy Study Group, a collection of personalities from the region and beyond, financed by a European Union grant, laid out possible situations, including the one-state option, concluding: “Palestinian alternatives to a negotiated agreement are difficult but possible. They are preferable to a continuation of the status quo.”
The Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, a well-established organization long dedicated to promoting the two-state solution, issued a paper on Monday examining possible policy options for the Palestinian Authority — including the one-state solution — should the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations end without a deal.
Mr. Bahour, a participant in the Palestine Strategy Study Group, said it was essential to put a deadline on what he called the “never-ending peace process,” which has sputtered along for the past 15 years.
That effort has been hampered by bouts of violence that culminated in the Palestinian suicide-bombing campaign in the years after 2000 and Israel’s subsequent military reinvasion of all the Palestinian Authority-controlled cities of the West Bank.
Then there is the complexity of the issues on both sides.
Israel has concerns about security, deepened by the rocket onslaught from Gaza that followed Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the area in 2005.
There are also considerable gaps between the sides on the most delicate issues, like sovereignty over Jerusalem, with its sacred Jewish, Muslim and Christian sites, and the Palestinian demand for the right of return for the refugees of the 1948 war and their descendants, now numbering millions, to their former homes in what is now Israel.
But what Palestinians view as the main obstacle to the realization of the two-state solution is Israel’s continued settlement construction in parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, strengthening a 40-year-old enterprise that was intended to guarantee a permanent Israeli presence and control.
“Where will the Palestinian state rise up?” asked Qaddurah Fares, a grass-roots Fatah leader in Ramallah, in an interview early this summer. “The Israeli nation is inside us already.”
In 2003 Mr. Fares signed on to the Geneva Accord, an unofficial blueprint for a two-state deal. “I am still for a two-state solution,” he said. “You don’t change visions every day. But it is not realistic.”
Palestinian public opinion polls show a clear majority still favors a two-state solution and the Fatah establishment remains committed to it, according to Khalil Shikaki, a well-respected political analyst in Ramallah.
But the warning from the chief negotiator, Mr. Qurei, “gave an indication of where Fatah might go,” he said.
Parts of Fatah are already coming over to binationalism, particularly among the frustrated Fatah young guard, now in their mid- to late 40s, who are using the reassessment as a way of asserting themselves.
Still, says Mahdi Abdul Hadi, who directs a research institute in East Jerusalem: “Nobody is spelling it out. They are not endorsing it publicly because of the absence of leadership and consensus.”
So far nobody is willing to put a date on ending the current peace effort, and nothing much has actually changed.
“No one will decide,” said Ghassan Khatib, a lecturer in cultural studies at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. “There is lots of debate, but few new ideas or conclusions.”
The details of the one-state option remain sketchy. Few believe it to be feasible in the foreseeable future, not least because it is something that Israel would vehemently oppose. Yet the Palestine Strategy Group states that in the long run, it is a “logical scenario” given “basic Western ideas” of individual freedom, democracy and rule of law.
In the meantime, encapsulating the Palestinian predicament, Mr. Fares, the Fatah leader in Ramallah, said that if Israel gave him the choice of a state in the 1967 territories or of living together in peace, “I’d choose the latter. But we don’t have the choice, not of this and not of that.”
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12) Pre-Emptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC
Tuesday 02 September 2008
by: Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t | Report
http://www.truthout.org/article/pre-emptive-strikes-against-protest-rnc
In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to pre-empt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.
Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted pre-emptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protesters by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.
"I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns," said Bruce Nestor, the president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protesters. "The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint."
The raids targeted members of "Food Not Bombs," an antiwar, anti-authoritarian protest group that provides free vegetarian meals every week in hundreds of cities all over the world. They served meals to rescue workers at the World Trade Center after 9/11 and to nearly 20 communities in the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina.
Also targeted, were members of I-Witness Video, a media watchdog group that monitors the police to protect civil liberties. The group worked with the National Lawyers Guild to gain the dismissal of charges or acquittals of about 400 of the 1,800 who were arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Pre-emptive policing was used at that time as well. Police infiltrated protest groups in advance of the convention.
Nestor said that no violence or illegality has taken place to justify the arrests. "Seizing boxes of political literature shows the motive of these raids was political," he said.
Further evidence of the political nature of the police action was the boarding up of the Convergence Center, where protesters had gathered, for unspecified code violations. St. Paul City Council member David Thune said, "Normally we only board up buildings that are vacant and ramshackle." Thune and fellow City Council member Elizabeth Glidden decried "actions that appear excessive and create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation for those who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights."
"So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do," Greenwald wrote on Salon.
Preventive detention violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires that warrants be supported by probable cause. protesters were charged with "conspiracy to commit riot," a rarely-used statute that is so vague, it is probably unconstitutional. Nestor said it "basically criminalizes political advocacy."
On Sunday, the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality filed an emergency motion requesting an injunction to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.
During Monday's demonstration, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. At least 284 people were arrested, including Amy Goodman, the prominent host of "Democracy Now!," as well as the show's producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. "St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city to be," Greenwald wrote, "with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations."
Bruce Nestor said the timing of the arrests was intended to stop protest activity, "to make people fearful of the protests, but also to discourage people from protesting," he told Amy Goodman. Nevertheless, 10,000 people, many opposed to the Iraq war, turned out to demonstrate on Monday. A legal team from the National Lawyers Guild has been working diligently to protect the constitutional rights of protesters.
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13) U.S. Missiles Killed at Least Six People on Afghanistan-
Pakistan Border, Residents Say
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH and JANE PERLEZ
September 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/world/asia/06pstan.html?ref=world
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A missile strike from a remotely piloted United States reconnaissance aircraft killed 6 to 12 people in a group of houses in southern Afghanistan, very close to the border with Pakistan, Pakistani residents of the area said Friday.
The strike came after the United States carried out a commando raid by Special Operations forces in South Waziristan in Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan on Wednesday.
It was the first of what American military officials said could be more raids to attack Taliban insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal region. After the raid on Wednesday, Pakistan lodged a “strong protest” with the American government and said it reserved the right of retaliation.
The spokesman for the Pakistani Army, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said the missile strike Friday did not take place on Pakistani territory. “There was no airstrike in Pakistan, or near Miran Shah or in North Waziristan,” General Abbas said. Miran Shah is the capital of North Waziristan, a tribal region in Pakistan that borders Afghanistan.
Residents in Miran Shah also said the missile strike on Friday morning hit a target inside Afghanistan, and not inside Pakistan. They said the attack struck two residential compounds in the village of Al Must, less than a mile from the Pakistani border.
According to reports from Al Must reaching Miran Shah, 6 to 12 people, including men of Arab descent, were killed, said Ahsan Dawar, a journalist in Miran Shah. Among the dead were two women and three children, Mr. Dawar said.
He said three missiles hit the two compounds, which he said belong to two residents of Al Must, Hakeem Khan and Arsala Khan. It is common for families in these areas to rent part of their compound to foreigners, especially Arabs who are involved in planning attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan, residents said.
Mr. Dawar said that on Thursday, a pilotless American aircraft struck a large house in another village, Chaar Kehl, about 16 miles west of Miran Shah. In that attack, about 5 p.m. Thursday, seven Arab men were killed, he said.
Al Must is on the Afghan side of the border region called Gurwak, which is considered the demarcation line between Pakistan and Afghanistan and is locally known as Ground Zero, Mr. Dawar said.
Another local resident, Mahmood Khan, said that pilotless aircraft were seen over Al Must at 9 a.m. Friday.
The strikes on Friday appeared to indicate that the United States was forging ahead with a tougher strategy to curb the escalating numbers of Taliban fighters crossing from Pakistan to attack American and NATO soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, the commander of American forces in eastern Afghanistan, told reporters at the Pentagon by teleconference on Friday that attacks against allied forces in Afghanistan had increased by 20 to 30 percent in the first eight months of this year, compared with the same period last year.
“The people that they’re killing, first and foremost, are innocent civilians, and then Afghan national security forces, predominantly police, Afghan National Army less so, and then the coalition forces even less after that,” General Schloesser said.
“They’re going to continue to drive a wedge between our international partners by deliberately causing civilian casualties, as well as attempting to weaken international resolve by targeting our alliance partner nations, their forces here,” he said.
The general said attacks on symbols of government authority were up 40 percent over last year, a trend he expected to continue.
Top American military commanders have warned Pakistan that they would start attacking Taliban havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas if the increased Taliban infiltration into Afghanistan did not stop.
The Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, told Parliament on Thursday that the American commando raid into South Waziristan on Wednesday violated national sovereignty and failed to attack militants.
No “high value target or known terrorist was among the dead,” he said. “Only innocent civilians, including women and children, have been targeted.”
Although the foreign minister used strong language, there was a growing belief that Pakistan was sharing more intelligence with the United States that allowed for more accurate targeting of Arab and other foreign militants who live among civilians in South and North Waziristan.
The Pakistani government summoned the American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, to the foreign office on Thursday and formally complained about the commando raid on Wednesday.
The raid by the Special Operations forces, which killed at least 20 people in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan on Friday, was broadly criticized in the Pakistani press. “A go-it-alone strategy by the U.S. inside Pakistan will spell nothing but trouble for everyone,” said an editorial in the Friday edition of Dawn, an English-language newspaper.
Reuters reported on Friday that health officials were seeing an outbreak of cholera in refugees in northwest Pakistan. An estimated 300,000 people have fled the fighting in the area, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
Pascal Cuttat, an agency official, said Friday at a news briefing: “The most immediate need remains access to clean water and sanitation. No food, health care or shelter is going to be of any good if people get water-borne diseases,” Reuters reported.
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14) 24/7 School Reform
The Way We Live Now
By PAUL TOUGH
September 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07wwln-lede-t.html?ref=education
In an election season when Democrats find themselves unusually unified on everything from tax policy to foreign affairs, one issue still divides them: education. It is a surprising fault line, perhaps, given the party’s long dominance on the issue. Voters consistently say they trust the Democrats over the Republicans on education, by a wide margin. But the split in the party is real, deep and intense, and it shows no signs of healing any time soon.
On one side are the members of the two huge teachers’ unions and the many parents who support them. To them, the big problem in public education is No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s signature education law. Teachers have many complaints about the law: it encourages “teaching to the test” at the expense of art, music and other electives, they say; it blames teachers, especially those in inner-city schools, for the poor performance of disadvantaged children; and it demands better results without providing educators with the resources they need.
On the other side are the party’s self-defined “education reformers.” Members of this group — a loose coalition of mayors and superintendents, charter-school proponents and civil rights advocates — actually admire the accountability provisions in No Child Left Behind, although they often criticize the law’s implementation. They point instead to a bigger, more systemic crisis. These reformers describe the underperformance of the country’s schoolchildren, and especially of poor minorities, as a national crisis that demands a drastic overhaul of the way schools are run. In order to get better teachers into failing classrooms, they support performance bonuses, less protection for low-performing teachers, alternative certification programs to attract young, ambitious teachers and flexible contracts that could allow for longer school days and an extended school year. The unions see these proposals as attacks on their members’ job security — which, in many ways, they are.
As the fall campaign and a new school year begin, both the unionists and the reformers find themselves distracted by the same question: Which side is Barack Obama on? Each camp has tried to claim him as its own — and Obama, for his part, has done his best to make it easy for them. He reassures the unions by saying he will reform No Child Left Behind so teachers will no longer “be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests,” and he placates reformers by calling himself a “strong champion of charter schools.” The reformers point to his speech in July to the National Education Association, during which he was booed, briefly, for endorsing changes to teachers’ compensation structure. The unionists, in turn, emphasize his speech a week later to the American Federation of Teachers, during which he said, “I am tired of hearing you, the teachers who work so hard, blamed for our problems.” On blogs and at conferences, the two sides have continued to snipe at each other, all the while parsing Obama’s speeches and policy pronouncements, looking for new clues to his true positions.
It’s possible, though, that both camps are looking in the wrong place for answers. What is most interesting and novel about Obama’s education plans is how much they involve institutions other than schools.
The American social contract has always identified public schools as the one place where the state can and should play a role in the process of child-rearing. Outside the school’s walls (except in cases of serious abuse or neglect), society is seen to have neither a right nor a responsibility to intervene. But a new and growing movement of researchers and advocates has begun to argue that the longstanding and sharp conceptual divide between school and not-school is out of date. It ignores, they say, overwhelming evidence of the impact of family and community environments on children’s achievement. At the most basic level, it ignores the fact that poor children, on average, arrive in kindergarten far behind their middle-class peers. There is evidence that schools can do a lot to erase that divide, but the reality is that most schools do not. If we truly want to counter the effects of poverty on the achievement of children, these advocates argue, we need to start a whole lot earlier and do a whole lot more.
The three people who have done the most to propel this nascent movement are James J. Heckman, Susan B. Neuman and Geoffrey Canada — though each of them comes at the problem from a different angle, and none of them would necessarily cite the other two as close allies. Heckman, an occasional informal Obama adviser, is an economist at the University of Chicago, and in a series of recent papers and books he has developed something of a unified theory of American poverty. More than ever before, Heckman argues, the problem of persistent poverty is at its root a problem of skills — what economists often call human capital. Poor children grow into poor adults because they are never able, either at home or at school, to acquire the abilities and resources they need to compete in a high-tech service-driven economy — and Heckman emphasizes that those necessary skills are both cognitive (the ability to read and compute) and noncognitive (the ability to stick to a schedule, to delay gratification and to shake off disappointments). The good news, Heckman says, is that specific interventions in the lives of poor children can diminish that skill gap — as long as those interventions begin early (ideally in infancy) and continue throughout childhood.
What kind of interventions? Well, that’s where the work of Susan Neuman becomes relevant. In 2001, Neuman, an education scholar at the University of Michigan, was recruited to a senior position in George W. Bush’s Department of Education, helping to oversee the development and then the implementation of No Child Left Behind. She quit in 2003, disillusioned with the law, and became convinced that its central goal — to raise disadvantaged children to a high level of achievement through schools alone — was simply impossible. Her work since then can be seen as something of a vast mea culpa for her time in Washington. After leaving government, Neuman spent several years crisscrossing the nation, examining and analyzing programs intended to improve the lives of disadvantaged children. Her search has culminated in a book, “Changing the Odds for Children at Risk,” to be published in November, in which she describes nine nonschool interventions. She includes the Nurse-Family Partnership, which sends trained nurses to visit and counsel poor mothers during and after their pregnancies; Early Head Start, a federal program, considerably more ambitious than Head Start itself, that offers low-income families parental support, medical care and day-care centers during the first three years of the lives of their children; Avance, a nine-month language-enrichment program for Spanish-speaking parents, mostly immigrants from Mexico, that operates in Texas and Los Angeles; and Bright Beginnings, a pre-K program in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in North Carolina that enrolls 4-year-olds who score the lowest on a screening test of cognitive ability and manages to bring most of them up to grade level by the first day of kindergarten.
Neuman’s favorite programs share certain characteristics — they start early, focus on the families that need them the most and provide intensive support. Many of the interventions work with parents to make home environments more stimulating; others work directly with children to improve their language development (a critical factor in later school success). All of them, Neuman says, demonstrate impressive results. The problem right now is that the programs are isolated and scattered across the country, and they are usually directed at only a few years of a child’s life, which means that their positive effects tend to fade once the intervention ends.
This is where Geoffrey Canada comes in. He runs the first and so far the only organization in the country that pulls together under a single umbrella integrated social and educational services for thousands of children at once. Canada’s agency, the Harlem Children’s Zone, has a $58 million budget this year, drawn mostly from private donors; it currently serves 8,000 kids in a 97-block neighborhood of Harlem. (I’ve spent the last five years reporting on his organization’s work and its implications for the country.) Canada shares many of the views of the education reformers — he runs two intensive K-12 charter schools with extended hours and no union contract — but at the same time he offers what he calls a “conveyor belt” of social programs, beginning with Baby College, a nine-week parenting program that encourages parents to choose alternatives to corporal punishment and to read and talk more with their children. As students progress through an all-day prekindergarten and then through a charter school, they have continuous access to community supports like family counseling, after-school tutoring and a health clinic, all designed to mimic the often-invisible cocoon of support and nurturance that follows middle-class and upper-middle-class kids through their childhoods. The goal, in the end, is to produce children with the abilities and the character to survive adolescence in a high-poverty neighborhood, to make it to college and to graduate.
Though the conveyor belt is still being constructed in Harlem, early results are positive. Last year, the charter schools’ inaugural kindergarten class reached third grade and took their first New York state achievement tests: 68 percent of the students passed the reading test, which beat the New York City average and came within two percentage points of the state average, and 97 percent of them passed the math test, well above both the city and state average.
Obama has embraced, directly or indirectly, all three of these new thinkers. His campaign invited Heckman to critique its education policy, and Obama has proposed large-scale expansions of two of Neuman’s chosen interventions, the Nurse-Family Partnership and Early Head Start. Most ambitiously, Obama has pledged to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 cities across the country. “The philosophy behind the project is simple,” Obama said in a speech last year announcing his plan. “If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can’t just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works.”
Obama has proposed that these replication projects, which he has labeled Promise Neighborhoods, be run as private/public partnerships, with the federal government providing half the funds and the rest being raised by local governments and private philanthropies and businesses. It would cost the federal government “a few billion dollars a year,” he acknowledged in his speech. “But we will find the money to do this, because we can’t afford not to.”
It remains to be seen, of course, whether Obama will convince voters with this position, and whether, if elected, he will do the heavy lifting required to put such an ambitious national program in place. There are many potential obstacles. A lot of conservatives would oppose a new multibillion-dollar federal program as a Great Society-style giveaway to the poor. And many liberals are wary of any program that tries to change the behavior of inner-city parents; to them, teaching poor parents to behave more like middle-class parents can feel paternalistic. Union leaders will find it hard to support an effort that has nonunion charter schools at its heart. Education reformers often support Canada’s work, but his premise — that schools alone are not enough to make a difference in poor children’s lives — makes many of them anxious. And in contrast to the camps arrayed on either side of the school-reform debate, there is no natural constituency for the initiative: no union or interest group that stands to land new jobs or new contracts, no deep-pocketed philanthropy devoted to spreading the message.
The real challenge Obama faces is to convince voters that the underperformance of poor children is truly a national issue — that it should matter to anyone who isn’t poor. Heckman, especially, argues that we should address the problem not out of any mushy sense of moral obligation, but for hardheaded reasons of global competitiveness. At a moment when nations compete mostly through the skill level of their work force, he argues, we cannot afford to let that level decline.
Obama’s contention is that the traditional Democratic solution — more money for public schools — is no longer enough. In February, in an interview with the editorial board of The Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee, he called for “a cultural change in education in inner-city communities and low-income communities across the country — not just inner-city, but also rural.” In many low-income communities, Obama said, “there’s this sense that education is somehow a passive activity, and you tip your head over and pour education in somebody’s ear. And that’s not how it works. So we’re going to have to work with parents.”
In the end, the kind of policies that Obama is proposing will require an even broader cultural change — not just in the way poor Americans think about education but also in the way middle-class Americans think about poverty. And that won’t be easy. No matter how persuasive the statistics Heckman is able to muster or how impressive the results that Canada is able to achieve, many Americans will continue to simply blame parents or teachers for the underperformance of poor kids. Obama’s challenge — if he decides to take it on — will be to convince voters that society as a whole has a crucial role to play in the lives of disadvantaged children, not just in the classroom but outside schools as well.
Paul Tough is an editor at the magazine. His book, “Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America,” will be published next week.
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15) Fuel Prices Squeeze School Districts
By PAT WIEDENKELLER
Published: September 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/07Rbus.html?ref=education
SCHOOL budgets are the rock. Surging fuel costs are the hard place. Crushed in between are districts across the area, beginning the school year with fleets of buses that typically get six miles to the gallon.
As the cost of diesel fuel has soared well past what many districts budgeted for last spring, school officials are rethinking their transportation needs, making big-ticket spending cuts and a host of surgical trims.
Some districts are eliminating field trips and after-school buses. Many are consolidating routes, causing some students to walk farther to their stops and others to lose their buses altogether. They are holding off on new teachers, counselors and textbooks, and teaming with neighboring districts for prekindergarten, special education and private school transportation.
“It’s affecting everybody, everywhere,” said Ingrid Reitano, president of the School Transportation Supervisors of New Jersey and transportation supervisor for Monroe Township in Middlesex County. “People are going to be giving up some things.”
How much will become clearer in the first weeks of school, when ridership patterns and bus routes firm up. But with fuel prices volatile (diesel costs have begun to level nationally at about $4.26 a gallon, up from $2.92 at this time last year), administrators are preparing for a year of budget nips and tucks and long-term strategizing.
They are not alone. In a national survey of superintendents released in July by the American Association of School Administrators, 99 percent said that rising fuel costs had forced across-the-board cuts.
“Everything is on the table,” said William Clark, chief operating officer for New Haven Public Schools, which is paying $1.9 million this year for fuel to transport 20,000 students, $623,571 more than last year.
New Haven, Connecticut’s second-largest district, has focused on consolidating bus runs. “You’re finding the furthest point out and picking up as many kids as you can on the way to school,” Mr. Clark said.
New Haven is also adjusting “bell times” to better “flow the routes” among its 50-odd schools, he said, and shoehorning field trips into the hours its 268 buses are contracted for.
Such efficiencies allowed the system to add a new school this year without adding the six new buses that it would normally have been required to contract for, at a cost of $68,000 per year per bus, said Teddi Barra, New Haven’s transportation director. If costs get worse, field trips may go, Mr. Clark said, along with other expenditures not required by the state, like after-school buses.
Field trips have already taken a hit in the Middle Country school district on Long Island, where Roberta A. Gerold, the schools superintendent, faced a 45 percent increase in fuel costs. “Where we have local field trips and can hire coaches” — meaning private buses — “we’ll try to do that,” she said. Students will take more “virtual field trips,” exploring places by computer, she said.
In New Jersey, some districts plan to pare “courtesy busing” for students who live closer than the distance required by the state for free busing — two miles for elementary students and two and a half miles for high school. Steven Cea, business manager for West Milford Township schools, is making cuts as he tries to cover an expected transportation shortfall of $78,000. About 3,500 students could be affected in the district, which covers 80 square miles, Mr. Cea said.
West Milford is reorganizing bus routes and teaming with districts to transport special-needs students and athletic teams, an approach many districts have taken or are considering.
To save on fuel costs, many districts in Connecticut have joined fuel-buying consortiums. Fred Hurley, the Newtown district’s director of public works, locked in diesel at $3.07 a gallon in March with the Capitol Region Purchasing Council.
In New York and New Jersey, districts often save money by buying fuel under a state bid. But many private bus companies provide their own fuel and have contracts that allow them to impose surcharges when fuel prices rise. Some districts are hoping to gain control of costs by curtailing such contracts and expanding their own fleets.
Ms. Reitano, the transportation supervisor in Monroe, N.J., fuels her 64 in-house buses, eight of which she added this year, with diesel bought under a state contract. About 75 percent of her fleet is district-owned, she said. “We can run our own buses for less money,” she said.
The Middle Country district is seeking savings through alternative fuels. It added one compressed-natural-gas-powered bus to its 120-bus fleet this year, and won bond approval last May for 18 more, Ms. Gerold, the superintendent, said.
IN Piscataway, N.J., where transportation costs are up about 4.5 percent from last year, the district bought 22 new buses this year to supplement 107 buses run by private companies with fuel-included contracts, said Brian DeLucia, business administrator for the Piscataway Township Schools. The district also signed on to the state’s fuel-purchasing contract. “We’re projecting a solid $200,000 — a nice little chunk of change — in savings this year,” he said.
For some districts, particularly those in the middle of multiyear agreements, such arrangements may simply postpone the pain. Brad A. Cohen, vice president of B and B Transportation in Bethany, Conn., said that some of his school contracts last year left him covering diesel increases, even as his costs for tires, parts and repairs increased.
In the future, B and B will put fuel clauses in every contract to pass on costs to districts, said Mr. Cohen, whose 75 buses serve three public school districts, Woodbridge, Bethany and Amity, and seven private schools.
Some districts are already getting a preview of the higher costs: In Milford, Conn., the price for busing of private school students tutored out-of-district went up 20 to 30 percent, said Phillip Russell, deputy superintendent of operations. And when Yonkers recently put out a bid for vans to be used during the school day, “the bids came back about 80 percent higher than the previous year we’d bid them out,” said Jerrilynne Fierstein, the district’s communications director. “We decided not to get them.”
Federal relief may be coming. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York plans to introduce bills this month calling for the Energy Department to award emergency grants to low-income districts and to expand tax credits to make hybrid school buses more affordable. Whether districts will invest in hybrids, which can cost $100,000 more than diesel buses, is far from certain.
“I don’t think in this climate you’re going to see districts going out and replacing buses that they don’t immediately need to replace,” said Lisa P. Davis, executive director of the Westchester-Putnam School Boards Association. “You’re going to find districts looking at ways to improve efficiency within what they’re already doing.”
A version of this article appeared in print on September 7, 2008, on page NJ3 of the New York edition.
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16) A playful Army experience at Franklin Mills
By Robert Moran
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Posted on Fri, Aug. 29, 2008
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20080829_A_playful_Army_experience_at_Franklin_Mills.html
Across from the skate park at Franklin Mills Mall, the Army has opened a high-tech recruiting experiment to give potential sign-ups a taste of what military life is like.
The 14,500 square-feet Army Experience Center features Disney-grade simulators that immerse visitors in missions aboard helicopters or a humvee. Visitors are re briefed on their missions at the TOC, or tactical operations center, which looks like a set from a Tom Clancy thriller.
Banks of Xbox 360s with plush chairs include speakers in the headrests. Participants can play popular "shooter" games like "Call of Duty 3" or kick back and just play "Madden 09" football.
As younger generations become increasingly tech-savvy and their habits and routines change, Army recruitment strategies are changing with them.
"You can come in here and be put in the life of a soldier," said Amy Lindstrom, who handled public relations for today's opening
Large touch-screen displays explain the more than 150 job types in the Army. One display uses Google Earth to identify Army bases around the world and has narration that explains the type of recreation and dining outside each base.
Anyone can walk in to look around, but to use or participate in anything, visitors must be at least 13, and then register and obtain a type of membership card. That means providing age and contact information.
Sgt. 1st Class Phil Cianchetti said a registrant can opt not to be contacted or receive any mail or e-mail.
"It's not, 'Hey, we got you phone number and address. We're going to send someone right over,' " Cianchetti said. "It's not that way at all."
And part of the strategy is to encourage passive recruitment. For example, the "Career Configurator" station lets people learn about jobs in the Army. They can touch the "contact a recruiter" button on the screen and a name, address, phone number and e-mail address for a recruiter pops up. If they want, they can then leave.
"Without talking to somebody, they can learn on their own," said Maj. Larry Dillard, project manager for the new center.
Since younger people are spending more time indoors playing video games or surfing the Internet, "what we did was, we got into their territory," said Cianchetti.
There are also a few things they can't get at home.
The stand-out attractions are the simulators of the UH-60 Black Hawk, the AH-64 Apache and the HMMWV, or humvee.
The Black Hawk simulator allows a visitor to sit in a gunner position as the helicopter flies above a convoy through hostile mountainous terrain. Once the mission begins, giant video screens encompass a player's vision with the battlefield. The Black Hawk vibrates and fans blow air to replicate the sensation of flying with the doors open.
It's realistic enough to be disorienting.
Players can fire a replica carbine rifle at enemy targets, and the rifle actually gives something of a kick.
It's cool, and that's the point. It's likely that not too many kids would sign up if the simulator made participants eat sand while carrying 70 pounds of gear on their backs.
The Army Experience Center is open during general mall hours.
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National Briefing | Rockies
Utah: Mine Collapse Case Goes to Prosecutors
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Federal mining officials have asked prosecutors to decide whether criminal charges are warranted in the deaths of nine people in last year’s collapse of the Crandall Canyon mine. The Mine Safety and Health Administration has been investigating two cave-ins at the mine in August 2007 that killed six miners and three rescuers. The safety agency has already fined the operator $1.34 million for violations that it says directly contributed to the deaths. Richard Stickler, an acting assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health, said the mine’s operator and its engineering consultants demonstrated reckless disregard for safety. Mr. Stickler said the safety agency had referred the case to the Justice Department for possible criminal charges.
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/us/04brfs-MINECOLLAPSE_BRF.html?ref=us
National Briefing | Immigration
Rabbis Endorse Certification Plan
By JULIA PRESTON
The organization of Reform rabbis endorsed a movement led by Conservative Jews to create an additional certification for kosher food that would show that the producer met ethical standards for the treatment of workers. In a resolution, the Central Conference of American Rabbis promised to work cooperatively with the movement known as Hekhsher Tzedek, meaning “justice certification,” to develop the new seal of approval, which would be applied only to food certified as kosher according to traditional Jewish dietary laws. It would confirm that the producer met certain standards for wages and employee safety. The resolution was evidence of a new interest in kosher practice by Reform Jews, who do not generally follow strict dietary laws. The Reform rabbis said reports of “abusive and unethical treatment of workers” at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, were “particularly distressing.”
September 4, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/us/04brfs-RABBISENDORS_BRF.html?ref=us
Illinois: School Financing Protest
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Midwest
More than 1,000 Chicago public school students boycotted the first day of classes in a protest over school financing and instead rode buses more than 30 miles north to try to enroll in a wealthy suburban district. About 1,100 elementary students and 150 high school students from Chicago filled out enrollment applications in the New Trier district in Northfield, said the New Trier superintendent, Linda Yonke. Boycott organizers acknowledged the move was largely symbolic: Students would have to pay tuition to attend a school outside their home district. In Illinois, property taxes account for about 70 percent of school financing, meaning rural and inner-city schools generally end up with less to spend per student than suburban schools.
September 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/us/03brfs-SCHOOLFINANC_BRF.html?ref=education
3 Civilians Killed at Checkpoint in Afghanistan
By REUTERS
BERLIN (Reuters) — Three civilians were killed in Afghanistan when a group of security forces, including German soldiers, opened fire at a checkpoint, Germany’s Defense Ministry said Friday.
The shootings occurred outside the city of Kunduz on Thursday, when two cars ignored officials’ calls to stop, said a Defense Ministry spokesman, Thomas Raabe. He said the checkpoint had been staffed by Afghan police officers and German soldiers.
August 30, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/world/asia/30afghan-002.html?ref=world
Mexico: City’s Abortion Law Is Upheld
By ELISABETH MALKIN
World Briefing | The Americas
The Supreme Court upheld Mexico City’s abortion law by an 8-to-3 vote on Thursday, allowing unrestricted abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy. The ruling sets a legal precedent that will allow other states to liberalize their abortion laws if they choose. It was a defeat for the Roman Catholic Church and President Felipe Calderón’s conservative government, which filed the constitutional challenge before the Supreme Court. Mexico City, which passed the law in April 2007, is the only place in Latin America except for Cuba that allows unrestricted abortions in the first 12 weeks.
August 29, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/world/americas/29briefs-CITYSABORTIO_BRF.html?ref=world
Texas: Militant Ordered to Stand Trial
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A federal appeals court ordered a Cuban militant, Luis Posada Carriles, to stand trial in El Paso on immigration fraud charges. A three-judge panel of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, ruled that Mr. Posada, 80, an anti-Castro militant, should stand trial on charges that he lied to federal authorities in his 2005 bid to become an American citizen. The criminal case had been dismissed last year when a federal district judge in El Paso, Kathleen Cardone, ruled that the government engaged in trickery and deceit by using a naturalization interview to build its case against Mr. Posada. Felipe Millan, one of Mr. Posada’s lawyers in El Paso, said Mr. Posada’s legal team was reviewing the decision and would decide on a course of action afterward.
August 15, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/us/15brfs-MILITANTORDE_BRF.html?ref=us
Canada: Rioting in Montreal
By IAN AUSTEN
World Briefing | The Americas
Three police officers were injured, one shot in the leg, during rioting in Montreal that erupted late Sunday in response to the killing of an 18-year-old by the police the day before. A fire station, fire trucks, cars and about 20 shops were vandalized or set ablaze. An ambulance worker was also injured. About 500 riot police officers quelled the violence.
August 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/world/americas/12briefs-RIOTINGINMON_BRF.html?ref=world
Arizona: Court Allows Fake Snow Opposed by Tribes
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
National Briefing | Southwest
A federal appeals court has ruled that a ski resort’s plan to use recycled wastewater for making snow would not violate the religious freedom of Indian groups who had claimed that the practice would be blasphemous to a mountain they hold sacred. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, ruling in a lawsuit against the Arizona Snowbowl near Flagstaff that was filed by 13 tribes and the Sierra Club, overturned a ruling by a smaller panel of the court that said the plan would violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The 1993 act is intended to ensure that government actions do not infringe on religious freedom. Lawyers for the tribes and the Sierra Club said they expected to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
August 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/us/09brfs-COURTALLOWSF_BRF.html?ref=us
Bolivia: Tin Miners Die in Clashes
By REUTERS
World Briefing | The Americas
At least two miners were killed and many more were injured Tuesday in clashes between the police and workers at the country’s largest tin mine, Huanuni, local radio reported. The violence erupted when police officers clashed with groups of striking miners who had blocked a road, Interior Minister Alfredo Rada said. The strike is in support of a drive by a labor federation for higher pensions and a lowering of the retirement age to 55.
August 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/world/americas/06briefs-TINMINERSDIE_BRF.html?ref=world
Proposed Kosher Certification Rules
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Conservative Jewish leaders are seeking to protect workers and the environment at kosher food plants like the one raided this spring in Iowa. They issued draft guidelines for a kosher certification program meant as a supplement to the traditional certification process that measures compliance with Jewish dietary law. The proposed “hekhsher tzedek,” or “certificate of righteousness,” would be awarded to companies that pay fair wages, ensure workplace safety, follow government environmental regulations and treat animals humanely, among other proposed criteria. Support for the idea has been fueled by controversies at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa, the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant. In May, immigration officials raided the plant, arresting nearly 400 workers.
August 1, 2008
National Briefing | Immigration
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/us/01brfs-PROPOSEDKOSH_BRF.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print
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12 year old Ossetian girl tells the truth about Georgia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5idQm8YyJs4
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SAN FRANCISCO IS A SANCTUARY CITY! STOP THE MIGRA-ICE RAIDS!
Despite calling itself a "sanctuary city", S.F. politicians are permitting the harrassment of undocumented immigrants and allowing the MIGRA-ICE police to enter the jail facilities.
We will picket any store that cooperates with the MIGRA or reports undocumented brothers and sisters. We demand AMNESTY without conditions!
BRIGADES AGAINST THE RAIDS
project of BARRIO UNIDO
(415)431-9925
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Canada: American Deserter Must Leave
By IAN AUSTEN
August 14, 2008
World Briefing | Americas
Jeremy Hinzman, a deserter from the United States Army, was ordered Wednesday to leave Canada by Sept. 23. Mr. Hinzman, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, left the Army for Canada in January 2004 and later became the first deserter to formally seek refuge there from the war in Iraq. He has been unable to obtain permanent immigrant status, and in November, the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear an appeal of his case. Vanessa Barrasa, a spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency, said Mr. Hinzman, above, had been ordered to leave voluntarily. In July, another American deserter was removed from Canada by border officials after being arrested. Although the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not backed the Iraq war, it has shown little sympathy for American deserters, a significant change from the Vietnam War era.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/world/americas/14briefs-canada.html?ref=world
Iraq War resister Robin Long jailed, facing three years in Army stockade
Free Robin Long now!
Support GI resistance!
Soldier Who Deserted to Canada Draws 15-Month Term
By DAN FROSCH
August 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/us/23resist.html?ref=us
What you can do now to support Robin
1. Donate to Robin's legal defense
Online: http://couragetoresist.org/robinlong
By mail: Make checks out to “Courage to Resist / IHC” and note “Robin Long” in the memo field. Mail to:
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave #41
Oakland CA 94610
Courage to Resist is committed to covering Robin’s legal and related defense expenses. Thank you for helping make that possible.
Also: You are also welcome to contribute directly to Robin’s legal expenses via his civilian lawyer James Branum. Visit girightslawyer.com, select "Pay Online via PayPal" (lower left), and in the comments field note “Robin Long”. Note that this type of donation is not tax-deductible.
2. Send letters of support to Robin
Robin Long, CJC
2739 East Las Vegas
Colorado Springs CO 80906
Robin’s pre-trial confinement has been outsourced by Fort Carson military authorities to the local county jail.
Robin is allowed to receive hand-written or typed letters only. Do NOT include postage stamps, drawings, stickers, copied photos or print articles. Robin cannot receive packages of any type (with the book exception as described below).
3. Send Robin a money order for commissary items
Anything Robin gets (postage stamps, toothbrush, shirts, paper, snacks, supplements, etc.) must be ordered through the commissary. Each inmate has an account to which friends may make deposits. To do so, a money order in U.S. funds must be sent to the address above made out to "Robin Long, EPSO". The sender’s name must be written on the money order.
4. Send Robin a book
Robin is allowed to receive books which are ordered online and sent directly to him at the county jail from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. These two companies know the procedure to follow for delivering books for inmates.
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Yet Another Insult: Mumia Abu-Jamal Denied Full-Court Hearing by 3rd Circuit
& Other News on Mumia
This mailing sent by the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PLEASE FORWARD AND DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
1. Mumia Abu-Jamal Denied Full-Court Hearing by 3rd Circuit
2. Upcoming Events for Mumia
3. New Book on the framing of Mumia
1. MUMIA DENIED AGAIN -- Adding to its already rigged, discriminatory record with yet another insult to the world's most famous political prisoner, the federal court for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia has refused to give Mumia Abu-Jamal an en banc, or full court, hearing. This follows the rejection last March by a 3-judge panel of the court, of what is likely Mumia's last federal appeal.
The denial of an en banc hearing by the 3rd Circuit, upholding it's denial of the appeal, is just the latest episode in an incredible year of shoving the overwhelming evidence of Mumia's innocence under a rock. Earlier in the year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court also rejected Jamal's most recent state appeal. Taken together, state and federal courts in 2008 have rejected or refused to hear all the following points raised by Mumia's defense:
1. The state's key witness, Cynthia White, was pressured by police to lie on the stand in order to convict Mumia, according to her own admission to a confidant (other witnesses agreed she wasn't on the scene at all)
2. A hospital "confession" supposedly made by Mumia was manufactured by police. The false confession was another key part of the state's wholly-manufactured "case."
3. The 1995 appeals court judge, Albert Sabo--the same racist who presided at Mumia's original trial in 1982, where he said, "I'm gonna help 'em fry the n....r"--was prejudiced against him. This fact was affirmed even by Philadelphia's conservative newspapers at the time.
4. The prosecutor prejudiced the jury against inn ocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, by using a slimy tactic already rejected by the courts. But the prosecutor was upheld in Mumia's case!
5. The jury was racially skewed when the prosecution excluded most blacks from the jury, a practice banned by law, but, again, upheld against Mumia!
All of these defense claims were proven and true. But for the courts, these denials were just this year’s trampling on the evidence! Other evidence dismissed or ignored over the years include: hit-man Arnold Beverly said back in the 1990s that he, not Mumia, killed the slain police officer (Faulkner). Beverly passed a lie detector test and was willing to testify, but he got no hearing in US courts! Also, Veronica Jones, who saw two men run from the scene just after the shooting, was coerced by police to lie at the 1982 trial, helping to convict Mumia. But when she admitted this lie and told the truth on appeal in 1996, she was dismissed by prosecutor-in-robes Albert Sabo in 1996 as "not credible!" (She continues to support Mumia, and is writing a book on her experiences.) And William Singletary, the one witness who saw the whole thing and had no reason to lie, and who affirmed that someone else did the shooting, said that Mumia only arriv ed on the scene AFTER the officer was shot. His testimony has been rejected by the courts on flimsy grounds. And the list goes on.
FOR THE COURTS, INNOCENCE IS NO DEFENSE! And if you're a black revolutionary like Mumia the fix is in big-time. Illusions in Mumia getting a "new trial" out of this racist, rigged, kangaroo-court system have been dealt a harsh blow by the 3rd Circuit. We need to build a mass movement, and labor action, to free Mumia now!
2. UPCOMING EVENTS FOR MUMIA --
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA -- Speaking Tour by J Patrick O'Connor, the author of THE FRAMING OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, in the first week of October 2008, sponsored by the Mobilization To Free Mumia. Contributing to this tour, the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia will hold a public meeting with O'Connor on Friday October 3rd, place to be announced. San Francisco, South Bay and other East Bay venues to be announced. Contact the Mobilization at 510 268-9429, or the LAC at 510 763-2347, for more information.
3. NEW BOOK ON MUMIA
Efficiently and Methodically Framed--Mumia is innocent! That is the conclusion of THE FRAMING OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, by J Patrick O'Connor (Lawrence Hill Books), published earlier this year. The author is a former UPI reporter who took an interest in Mumia's case. He is now the editor of Crime Magazine (www.crimemagazine.com).
O'Connor offers a fresh perspective, and delivers a clear and convincing breakdown on perhaps the most notorious frame-up since Sacco and Vanzetti. THE FRAMING OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL is based on a thorough analysis of the 1982 trial and the 1995-97 appeals hearings, as well as previous writings on this case, and research on the MOVE organization (with which Mumia identifies), and the history of racist police brutality in Philadelphia.
While leaving some of the evidence of Mumia's innocence unconsidered or disregarded, this book nevertheless makes clear that there is a veritable mountain of evidence--most of it deliberately squashed by the courts--that shows that Mumia was blatantly and deliberately framed by corrupt cops and courts, who "fixed" this case against him from the beginning. This is a case not just of police corruption, or a racist lynching, though it is both. The courts are in this just as deep as the cops, and it reaches to the top of the equally corrupt political system.
"This book is the first to convincingly show how the Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney's Office efficiently and methodically framed [Mumia Abu-Jamal]." (from the book jacket)
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal has a limited number of THE FRAMING ordered from the publisher at a discount. We sold our first order of this book, and are now able to offer it at a lower price. $12 covers shipping. Send payment to us at our address below:
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610 • 510.763.2347
www.laboractionmumia.org • LACFreeMumia@aol.com
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Sami Al-Arian Subjected to Worst Prison Conditions since Florida
Despite grant of bail, government continues to hold him
Dr. Al-Arian handcuffed
Hanover, VA - July 27, 2008 -
More than two weeks after being granted bond by a federal judge, Sami Al-Arian is still being held in prison. In fact, Dr. Al-Arian is now being subjected to the worst treatment by prison officials since his stay in Coleman Federal Penitentiary in Florida three years ago.
On July 12th, Judge Leonie Brinkema pronounced that Dr. Al-Arian was not a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and accordingly granted him bail before his scheduled August 13th trial. Nevertheless, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) invoked the jurisdiction it has held over Dr. Al-Arian since his official sentence ended last April to keep him from leaving prison. The ICE is ostensibly holding Dr. Al-Arian to complete deportation procedures but, given that Dr. Al-Arian's trial will take place in less than three weeks, it would seem somewhat unlikely that the ICE will follow through with such procedures in the near future.
Not content to merely keep Dr. Al-Arian from enjoying even a very limited stint of freedom, the government is using all available means to try to psychologically break him. Instead of keeping him in a prison close to the Washington DC area where his two oldest children live, the ICE has moved him to Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, VA, more than one hundred miles from the capital. Regardless, even when Dr. Al-Arian was relatively close to his children, they were repeatedly denied visitation requests.
More critically, this distance makes it extremely difficult for Dr. Al-Arian to meet with his attorneys in the final weeks before his upcoming trial. This is the same tactic employed by the government in 2005 to try to prevent Dr. Al-Arian from being able to prepare a full defense.
Pamunkey Regional Jail has imposed a 23-hour lock-down on Dr. Al-Arian and has placed him in complete isolation, despite promises from the ICE that he would be kept with the general inmate population. Furthermore, the guards who transported him were abusive, shackling and handcuffing him behind his back for the 2.5-hour drive, callously disregarding the fact that his wrist had been badly injured only a few days ago. Although he was in great pain throughout the trip, guards refused to loosen the handcuffs.
At the very moment when Dr. Al-Arian should be enjoying a brief interlude of freedom after five grueling years of imprisonment, the government has once again brazenly manipulated the justice system to deliver this cruel slap in the face of not only Dr. Al-Arian, but of all people of conscience.
Make a Difference! Call Today!
Call Now!
Last April, your calls to the Hampton Roads Regional Jail pressured prison officials to stop their abuse of Dr. Al-Arian after only a few days.
Friends, we are asking you to make a difference again by calling:
Pamunkey Regional Jail: (804) 365-6400 (press 0 then ask to speak to the Superintendent's office). Ask why Dr. Al-Arian has been put under a 23-hour lockdown, despite the fact that a federal judge has clearly and unambiguously pronounced that he is not a danger to anyone and that, on the contrary, he should be allowed bail before his trial.
- If you do not reach the superintendent personally, leave a message on the answering machine. Call back every day until you do speak to the superintendent directly.
- Be polite but firm.
- After calling, click here to let us know you called.
Don't forget: your calls DO make a difference.
FORWARD TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS!
Write to Dr. Al-Arian
For those of you interested in sending personal letters of support to Dr. Al-Arian:
If you would like to write to Dr. Al-Arian, his new
address is:
Dr. Sami Al-Arian
Pamunkey Regional Jail
P.O. Box 485
Hanover, VA 23069
Email Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace: tampabayjustice@yahoo.com
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Video: The Carbon Connection -- The human impact of carbon trading
[This is an eye-opening and important video for all who are interested in our environment...bw]
Two communities affected by one new global market – the trade in carbon
dioxide. In Scotland, a town has been polluted by oil and chemical
companies since the 1940s. In Brazil, local people's water and land is
being swallowed up by destructive monoculture eucalyptus tree
plantations. Both communities now share a new threat.
As part of the deal to reduce greenhouse gases that cause dangerous
climate change, major polluters can now buy carbon credits that allow
them to pay someone else to reduce emissions instead of cutting their
own pollution. What this means for those living next to the oil industry
in Scotland is the continuation of pollution caused by their toxic
neighbours. Meanwhile in Brazil, the schemes that generate carbon
credits give an injection of cash for more planting of the damaging
eucalyptus plantations.
40 minutes | PAL/NTSC | English/Spanish/Portuguese subtitles.The Carbon Connection is a Fenceline Films presentation in partnership with the Transnational Institute Environmental Justice Project and Carbon Trade Watch, the Alert Against the Green Desert Movement, FASE-ES, and the Community Training and Development Unit.
Watch at http://links.org.au/node/575
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Torture
On the Waterboard
How does it feel to be “aggressively interrogated”? Christopher Hitchens found out for himself, submitting to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of America’s use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere. VF.com has the footage. Related: “Believe Me, It’s Torture,” from the August 2008 issue.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/video/2008/hitchens_video200808
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Alison Bodine defense Committee
Lift the Two-year Ban
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com/
Watch the Sept 28 Video on Alison's Case!
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post.html
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The Girl Who Silenced the World at the UN!
Born and raised in Vancouver, Severn Suzuki has been working on environmental and social justice issues since kindergarten. At age 9, she and some friends started the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They traveled to 1992's UN Earth Summit, where 12 year-old Severn gave this powerful speech that deeply affected (and silenced) some of the most prominent world leaders. The speech had such an impact that she has become a frequent invitee to many U.N. conferences.
[Note: the text of her speech is also available at this site...bw]
http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=433
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MINIATURE EARTH
http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm
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"Dear Canada: Let U.S. war resisters stay!"
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/499/89/
Russell Means Speaking at the Transform Columbus Day Rally
"If voting could do anything it would be illegal!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lri1-6aoY
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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We Didn't Start the Fire
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html
I Can't Take it No More
http://lefti.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html#9214483115237950361
The Art of Mental Warfare
http://artofmentalwarfare.com/pog/artofmentalwarfarecom-the-warning/
MONEY AS DEBT
http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279
http://www.moneyasd ebt.net/
UNCONSTITUTIONAL
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6582099850410121223&pr=goog-sl
IRAQ FOR SALE
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6621486727392146155
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Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
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My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
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Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
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Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
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Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
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'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html
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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]
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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
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[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Award-Winning Writer/Filmmaker Donald L. Vasicek Launches New Sand
Creek Massacre Website"
May 21, 2008 -- CENTENNIAL, CO -- Award-winning filmmaker, Donald L.
Vasicek, has launched a new Sand Creek Massacre website. Titled,
"The Sand Creek Massacre", the site contains in depth witness
accounts of the massacre, the award-winning Sand Creek Massacre
trailer for viewing, the award-winning Sand Creek Massacre
documentary short for viewing, the story of the Sand Creek Massacre,
and a Shop to purchase Sand Creek Massacre DVD's and lesson
plans including the award-winning documentary film/educational DVD.
Vasicek, a board member of The American Indian Genocide Museum
(www.aigenom.com)in Houston, Texas, said, "The website was launched
to inform, to educate, and to provide educators, historians, students
and all others the accessibility to the Sand Creek Massacre story."
The link/URL to the website is sandcreekmassacre.net.
###
Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
