BAUAW NEWSLETTER - TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2009

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Please spread the message where ever you will be during the next weeks!

Thank you so much,
Annette in Heidelberg - Germany
German Network Against the Death Penalty and to Free Mumia

Dear co-strugglers for Mumia,

this is our call for action - sign the online-petition to the Justices of
the US Supreme Court.
We launched it at the beginning of March in Germany and Austria - and it is
growing fast now.

It was already signed by Noam Chomsky, Frances Goldin, Robert Meeropol,
Harold Wilson, Colin Firth, Anthony Arnove,
Marc Taylor, Julia Wright, Pam Africa, Veronica Jones and so many others.
The updated letter with the 3500th signature was sent to the Justices this
Easter monday, April 13.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/supreme/petition.html

Support Mumia in this most dangerous state of his life.
Please spread it as far as you can! Post it, send it around, use all your
powerful means of creating news and attention.

German Network Against the Death Penalty and to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.inprisonmywholelife.com -
www.mumia-hoerbuch.de

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Community Forum: Stop the ICE Raids and Deportations! Build May 1!

7 pm - Wednesday April 15
Rm. 106 of Mission Campus of City College of San Francisco,
1125 Valencia st. (crosstreet 22nd), near 24th and Mission BART

Join us at this urgent community forum: All are welcome!

Despite the mandate for change expressed through the election of Obama,
the U.S. government continues its brutal, racist offensive against
undocumented immigrants and all workers.

Join us to discuss the following burning questions: How can we organize
to stop the ICE raids and deportations? What will it take to win papers
and equal rights for all? How can we build May 1st in our schools,
workplaces, and communities?

Speakers include: CCSF professor Pablo Rodriguez, Nicaraguan activist
Rodrigo Ibarra, and student organizer Kristina Jackson.

(Translation will be provided.)

7 pm - Wednesday April 15
Rm. 106 of Mission Campus of City College of San Francisco,
1125 Valencia st. (crosstreet 22nd), near 24th and Mission BART

Sponsored by Resistance: Committee for Immigrants Rights (CCSF), Student
Unity and Power, and The Organizer newspaper
Contact: may1protest@gmail.com, 415 646 6469

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Celebrate the release of the new book by Mumia Abu-Jamal:

"Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners vs. the USA"

Friday, April 24th (Mumia's birthday!), 6:30 P.M.
Humanist Hall
411 - 28th Street, Oakland

$25.00 donation or what you can afford.

Featuring:

Angely Y. Davis
Mistah F.A.B.
Lynne Stewart
Tory Serra
Avotcja
Kiilu Nyasha
JR Minister of Information POCC
Ed Mead
Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia
Molotov Mouths

Prison Radio, 415-648-4505
www.prisonradio.org
www.mumia.org

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

4/26/2009 SF Speak-out and Video With UE Chicago Republic Workers And Screening
Sunday April 26, 2006 2:00 PM
ILWU Local 34
2nd St and Embarcadero on the left side of AT&T Park

The UE Republic workers of Chicago who occupied their factory to demand their pay and compensation as a result of their factories closure will be speaking and screening a labor film of their occupation on Sunday April 26, 2009 at 2:00 PM in San Francisco at ILWU Local 34 next to AT&T at 2nd St & Embarcadero St. in San Francisco.
The meeting which is being hosted by ILWU Local 34 and also sponsored by Laborfest.net, UPWA.info, Transport Workers Solidarity Committee and other unions and organizations will be the first eye witness report of this important event which electrified the US labor movement. As a result of protests throughout the country including San Francisco at the Bank Of America, the workers won their demands. Bay area workers who are in struggle will also speak at this forum.
To endorse, support or to get more information about this labor solidarity event contact
(415)282-1908 or lvpsf@labornet.org

YouTube - Angry Laid-off Workers Occupy Factory in Chicago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNIQ1-ghsPs
http://www.ueunion.org/uerepublic.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Write a letter to Congress today!
'Right to Travel to Cuba' bills introduced in Congress

Thousands of people are writing to tell Congress: End the travel ban to Cuba. A "Right to Travel to Cuba" bill has been introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The bill is simple and self-explanatory: it would end all restrictions on travel from the United States to Cuba. The bill has received bipartisan support, and already has 123 co-sponsors in the House, and 20 in the Senate.

President Obama has proposed lifting travel restrictions on Cuban-Americans. These bills call for the lifting of travel restrictions for all people in the United States. The travel restrictions are part of the larger economic blockade of Cuba. The blockade, which uses food and medicine as a weapon against the Cuban people, must be brought to an end as well.

Please take a moment right now to write members and Congress and tell them you support these important bills. We suggest the following letter, but by clicking this link, you can customize it however you like.

https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=239

I fully support the Right to Travel to Cuba bills, H.R.874 and S.428, that were introduced in Congress, Feb. 2009. Polls show a strong majority of Americans support a lifting of the travel ban.

It is time that this policy--which harms those in Cuba as well as those in the United States--come to an end.

It is a welcome development that President Obama is lifting restrictions on travel to Cuba for Cuban-Americans, as well as the right to send remittances to their loved ones in Cuba.

Now Congress has the opportunity, and responsibility, to extend that right to all citizens and residents of the United States.

Please act today and become a co-sponsor of H.R.874 or S.428. If you have already done so, I appreciate your positive and just action on behalf of my right to travel to Cuba.

Please take a moment right now and forward this email to your friends and family members and on social networking sites. Thank you!

In Solidarity,

ANSWER Coalition

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

ARTICLES IN FULL:

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

1) Obama Seeks Quick Approval of More Money for Overseas Military Operations
"...White House officials said one final supplemental war bill was necessary because the legislation passed under the Bush administration provided only enough money to pay for the conflicts [Iraq and Afghanistan] through mid-year. 'The alternative to the supplemental is a sudden and precipitous withdrawal of the United States from both places,' Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said at a news conference with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. 'And I don't know anybody who thinks that's a good idea.'"
By CARL HULSE
April 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/us/politics/10military.html?ref=world

2) Campus Still Split After Jury Sides With Professor
[Readers should read the following article to get the truth about Mr. Churchill's so-called academic misconduct at:
Ward Churchill Redux
April 5, 2009, 10:00 pm
By Stanley Fish
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/ward-churchill-redux/ ]
By DAN FROSCH
April 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/education/10churchill.html?ref=education

3) Obama, Who Vowed Rapid Action on Climate Change, Turns More Cautious
By JOHN M. BRODER
April 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/us/politics/11climate.html?ref=us

4) Besieged Detroit Schools Face Closings and Layoffs
By NICK BUNKLEY
April 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/us/10detroit.html?ref=education

5) Longer Unemployment for Those 45 and Older
By MICHAEL LUO
April 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/us/13age.html?hp

6) 'Surgical' Bankruptcy Possible for G.M.
By MICHELINE MAYNARD and MICHAEL J. de la MERCED
April 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/business/13gm.html?ref=business

7) Obama Opens Door to Cuba, but Only a Crack
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAMIEN CAVE
April 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/world/americas/15cuba.html?ref=world

8) War-shocked Gaza children 'want to die'
By Middle East correspondent Anne Barker for AM
AM | abc.net.au/am
Posted Mon Apr 13, 2009 6:30am AEST
Updated Mon Apr 13, 2009 2:08pm AEST
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/13/2541280.htm

9) Fending Off the Mortgage Industry: Savvy Activists Are Winning in Court and on the Streets, Keeping People in Their Homes
"How one Detroit community group is saving homes and protecting human rights over the right of a corporation to make a profit."
By Valeria Fernández , ColorLines.
Posted April 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/136309/fending_off_the_mortgage_industry%3A_savvy_activists_are_winning_in_court_and_on_the_streets%2C_keeping_people_in_their_homes/?page=entire

10) Unemployment Surges in Germany's Golden City
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Pforzheim Journal
April 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/world/europe/14germany.html?ref=world

11) You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
By Johann Hari
The Independent
January 5, 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

1) Obama Seeks Quick Approval of More Money for Overseas Military Operations
"...White House officials said one final supplemental war bill was necessary because the legislation passed under the Bush administration provided only enough money to pay for the conflicts [Iraq and Afghanistan] through mid-year. 'The alternative to the supplemental is a sudden and precipitous withdrawal of the United States from both places,' Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said at a news conference with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. 'And I don't know anybody who thinks that's a good idea.'"
By CARL HULSE
April 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/us/politics/10military.html?ref=world

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Thursday asked Congress for quick approval of $83.4 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other overseas initiatives through Sept. 30.

President Obama has pledged to end the Bush administration's practice of paying for the two wars through special so-called supplemental funding requests instead of including the costs in the annual budget. But White House officials said one final supplemental war bill was necessary because the legislation passed under the Bush administration provided only enough money to pay for the conflicts through mid-year.

"The alternative to the supplemental is a sudden and precipitous withdrawal of the United States from both places," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said at a news conference with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. "And I don't know anybody who thinks that's a good idea."

Senior Congressional officials said the administration was seeking nearly $76 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to bolster security in Pakistan and an additional $7 billion for diplomatic activities and foreign aid.

Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said the money was needed for the administration's plan to bolster the United States military presence in Afghanistan and to begin the process in Iraq that will lead to a withdrawal of American combat forces. Administration officials told Congress they would like the money to be approved by Memorial Day.

Though Congress is likely to be receptive to Mr. Obama's request, some Democrats are uneasy about spending significantly more money in Iraq and others worry about getting bogged down in Afghanistan.

Acknowledging heavy Democratic criticism of the Bush administration's exclusion of the supplemental war spending from annual military budgets, Mr. Gibbs said that this request was unavoidable and that it would be the last outside the normal budget process.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

2) Campus Still Split After Jury Sides With Professor
[Readers should read the following article to get the truth about Mr. Churchill's so-called academic misconduct at:
Ward Churchill Redux
April 5, 2009, 10:00 pm
By Stanley Fish
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/ward-churchill-redux/ ]
By DAN FROSCH
April 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/education/10churchill.html?ref=education

BOULDER, Colo. - A judge has yet to decide whether Ward L. Churchill, the controversial former University of Colorado professor, will get his job back, but on the campus here, some have already made up their minds.

"I don't think he should come back," said Marissa Jaross, a senior anthropology major. Though Ms. Jaross said she believed the university was looking for a way to get rid of him, she added: "I think he's kind of a shoddy academic. I wouldn't look at his work as great, or even worthy of my time."

Barbara Bintliff, a law professor and former chairwoman of the faculty assembly, shared that view.

"Everyone is just aghast at the prospect that he would be back on the faculty," Professor Bintliff said. "I can't imagine how he would function normally or what kind of relationship he could possibly have with the faculty."

Mr. Churchill, the former chairman of the ethnic studies department, caused a national uproar after it came to light in 2005 that he had written an essay referring to some victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as "little Eichmanns." He was fired two years later when a faculty committee concluded that he had plagiarized and falsified parts of his scholarly work on the persecution of American Indians.

Last week, a Denver jury determined that he had been wrongfully dismissed because of his political views, though he was awarded only $1 in damages.

Sometime in the coming months, Judge Larry J. Naves of Denver District Court will either reinstate Mr. Churchill to his tenured position, as his lawyer is requesting, or order the university to pay Mr. Churchill an annual salary for a period of time.

While faculty members initially leapt to defend Mr. Churchill's right to free speech after his essay came to light, support for him eroded after the faculty report.

"The guy is a liar," said Elizabeth Dunn, an associate professor of geography and international affairs. "It is really hard to conceive of working collaboratively with somebody that doesn't share the fundamental values of honesty and truthfulness in scholarship."

Still, there are those who feel that Mr. Churchill deserves to be back in the lecture hall.

"I would welcome his return to campus," said Margaret LeCompte, an education professor who said she had always thought the university wanted to get rid of Mr. Churchill because of his comments about Sept. 11.

"He is a well-respected teacher, even by students who disagree with him - the kind of a person who should be at a university, where a dialogue of controversial ideas can be held in a safe environment," Professor LeCompte said.

Among students, many of whom were not enrolled when the controversy first exploded, there is less familiarity with the nuances of the case but strong feelings nonetheless.

"I really hope for his presence back on campus," said Vince Amezcua, a junior ethnic studies and psychology major. "I've heard a lot of good things about him, and I know he has a ton of good ideas he could bring forth."

But Rachel Kimmel, a senior international affairs and psychology major, countered: "I definitely don't want him to come back. What he said was terrible and egregious, but the plagiarism alone is reason enough for him not to be a faculty member."

David Lane, Mr. Churchill's lawyer, said reinstatement was more important than any financial settlement.

"The symbolism of Ward Churchill walking back into the classroom after having his civil rights violated in a McCarthy-like manner is overwhelmingly powerful," Mr. Lane said.

Ken McConnellogue, a university spokesman, said Thursday that the institution was "strongly opposed" to Mr. Churchill's returning and would fight to keep him from doing so.

"The things he was found to have engaged in by his faculty peers is behavior that we can't have from our faculty or our students," Mr. McConnellogue said.

Mr. Churchill remains as defiant as ever. In an interview, he said he was not looking for money, despite an article in The Daily Camera, a Boulder newspaper, which reported his saying he would settle for $1 million.

Mr. Churchill said that he was speaking hypothetically, and that his goal was to get his job back.

"Being restored to the position not only signals pretty clearly that the findings of the so-called jury of my peers were fraudulent," Mr. Churchill said, referring to the faculty committee's report. "It also restores me to the implied integrity and dignity of my rank."

As for the possibility of being ostracized by some faculty members, Mr. Churchill said, "If somebody is uncomfortable with my being in that environment, they are free to leave."

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

3) Obama, Who Vowed Rapid Action on Climate Change, Turns More Cautious
By JOHN M. BRODER
April 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/us/politics/11climate.html?ref=us

WASHINGTON - President Obama came to office promising swift and comprehensive action to combat global climate change, and the topic remains a surefire applause line in his speeches here and abroad.

Yet the administration has taken a cautious and rather passive role on the issue, proclaiming broad goals while remaining aloof from details of climate legislation now in Congress.

The president's budget initially included roughly $650 billion in revenue over 10 years from a cap-and-trade emissions plan that he wants adopted. But the administration, while insisting that its health care initiative be protected, did not fight to keep cap-and-trade in the budget resolutions that Congress passed last week, and it wound up in neither the House's version nor the Senate's.

Overseas, American officials are telling their counterparts that they need time to gauge the American public's appetite for an ambitious carbon reduction scheme before leading any international effort.

Has the administration scaled back its global-warming goals, at least for this year, or is it engaged in sophisticated misdirection?

Maybe some of both. While addressing climate change appears to be slipping down the president's list of priorities for the year, he is holding in reserve a powerful club to regulate carbon dioxide emissions through executive authority.

That club takes the form of Environmental Protection Agency regulation of the gases blamed for the warming of the planet, an authority granted the agency by the Supreme Court's reading of the Clean Air Act. Administration officials consistently say they would much prefer that Congress write new legislation to pre-empt the E.P.A. regulatory power, but they are clearly holding it in reserve as a prod to reluctant lawmakers and recalcitrant industries and as evidence of good faith to other nations.

Industry lobbyists and members of Congress who are engaged in writing energy and global warming bills say they are well aware of the E.P.A. process bearing down on them.

"Once the Supreme Court declared carbon dioxide to be a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, E.P.A. had no choice but to act," said Representative Rick Boucher, a moderate Democrat from a coal-producing region of Virginia. "Most people would rather have Congress act. We can be more balanced; we can take into account the effects on the economy. But if we don't undertake this, E.P.A. certainly will."

Still, the agency's regulations would take months to write and years to become fully effective. Meanwhile, Congress is already starting work on energy and climate legislation, though without significant guidance from the White House, at least in public.

Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy, issued a surprisingly bland statement last week when two top House Democrats unveiled a far-reaching plan to cap greenhouse gases and move the nation toward an economy less dependent on carbon-rich fuels like coal and oil.

Ms. Browner stopped short of endorsing that plan, issued by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, saying instead that Mr. Obama "looks forward to working with members of Congress in both chambers to pass a bill that would transition the nation to a clean-energy economy." She gave little clue as to what she and the president believe such a measure should say.

At an international climate conference in Germany that ended Wednesday, some delegates said they were disappointed in the Obama administration's lack of robust leadership. The explanation offered by Jonathan Pershing, a leader of the American delegation, was that the administration was waiting to measure the American technological and political capacity to address climate change and was looking to Congress to set specific targets for reducing carbon pollution.

Business lobbyists welcome the White House's go-slow approach, saying the issue is too complicated and too costly to be rushed, especially in a recession.

"We have not until now had a national debate on a climate change proposal, period," said Karen A. Harbert, a former senior Energy Department official who now heads the United States Chamber of Commerce's energy institute. "That has to happen for any piece of legislation to achieve broad support across the country."

Ms. Harbert and other business lobbyists also welcomed the administration's hesitancy to undertake regulation of climate-altering gases under E.P.A. authority, saying the matter should be fully aired before Congress so that all interests and regions could be heard.

Keith McCoy, vice president for energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, said his organization was "strongly opposed to an E.P.A. regulatory process for greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act."

Mr. McCoy said his members would prefer a binding international treaty that would cover all nations, particularly those whose industries compete with energy-intensive American manufacturers. "Absent that," he said, "we would prefer a robust and transparent debate within Congress."

The administration's caution leaves many environmental advocates frustrated, although most are reluctant to speak on the record for fear of alienating their allies inside government.

One environmental and energy lobbyist with close ties to the White House said the administration had been inhibited by a number of factors, including vacancies in many top policy jobs, an intense early focus on the financial and economic crises, and an unwillingness to alienate business and Congressional leaders with a heavy-handed approach.

"With those realities, coupled with the fact that the president himself realizes this is harder to do in the midst of recession, they are basically content to see what Congress will do," this lobbyist said. "Plus, Henry Waxman has put together a very serious piece of legislation, and that in my mind justifies their lack of forceful intervention. That's just where they are now."

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

4) Besieged Detroit Schools Face Closings and Layoffs
By NICK BUNKLEY
April 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/us/10detroit.html?ref=education

DETROIT - The state-appointed official overseeing the finances of Detroit's impoverished school district said Thursday that in an effort to close a $303 million budget deficit, he planned to shut more than a quarter of its 194 schools and eliminate the jobs of more than 10 percent of its teachers.

The plan calls for 23 schools to be permanently shut over the summer, leaving more than 7,500 students to be transferred to other schools, said the official, Robert C. Bobb, whom Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm appointed last month to address the district's rapidly growing deficit.

An additional 30 to 40 schools will close next year, Mr. Bobb said, and as many as 600 teachers will be laid off this year.

Mr. Bobb said big changes were needed to turn around one of the nation's most distressed school districts.

"We will have to grow smaller to grow larger," he said in a telephone interview after his announcement. "We cannot make these changes incrementally. We need a complete reform of this entire school system."

He said that to pay for improvements to the Detroit schools, he had asked the state for $200 million of Michigan's $1.5 billion in federal stimulus money. He proposes spending $25 million of that amount on safety and security measures, and $81 million to repair and expand buildings that will accommodate those students whose schools will close.

"These are shovel-ready projects that will create jobs for Michigan residents," Mr. Bobb said, "and they will improve the quality of life for students."

The district has already closed about 70 schools over the last decade because of enrollment that has been falling by about 10,000 students a year. It currently has about 95,000 students, the fewest since the city's population boom began around World War I, and 5,700 teachers.

Fewer than 900,000 people now live in Detroit, compared with more than two million half a century ago, but the district has not shrunk proportionally over the years. At the same time, the city's high poverty rate results in little tax revenue for the district, and years of mismanagement have compounded its problems.

Since arriving in Detroit, Mr. Bobb, former president of the District of Columbia Board of Education, has discovered that the budget deficit is twice as large as officials previously thought, and he has brought in auditors and criminal investigators to root out fraud and corruption.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

5) Longer Unemployment for Those 45 and Older
By MICHAEL LUO
April 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/us/13age.html?hp

When Ben Sims, 57, showed up earlier this year for a job interview at a company in Richardson, Tex., he noticed the hiring manager - several decades his junior - falter upon spotting him in the lobby.

"Her face actually dropped," said Mr. Sims, who was dressed in a conservative business suit, befitting his 25-year career in human resources at I.B.M.

Later, in her office, after several perfunctory questions, the woman told Mr. Sims she did not believe the job would be "suitable" for him. And, barely 10 minutes later she stood to signal the interview was over.

"I knew very much then it was an age situation," said Mr. Sims, who has been looking for work since November 2007, a month before the economic downturn began.

The recession's onslaught has come as Mr. Sims and many others belonging to the post-World War II baby boom generation - the demographic burst from 1946 to 1964 that reshaped the country - remain years from retirement. But unemployed boomers, many of whom believed they were still in the prime of their careers, are confronting the grim reality that they face some of the steepest odds of any job seekers in this dismal market.

Unemployed workers ages 45 and over form a disproportionate share of the hard-luck recession category, the long-term unemployed - those who have been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

On average, laid-off workers in this age group were out of work 22.2 weeks in 2008, compared with 16.2 weeks for younger workers.

Even when they are finally able to land jobs, they typically experience a much steeper drop in earnings than their younger counterparts.

Older workers do hold some advantages. Many have avoided layoffs during this recession, and government statistics show that people 45 and older currently have a lower unemployment rate than younger workers.

Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, said companies were often reluctant to lose the experience of older workers, many of whom also have the protections that often come with age and seniority.

Recent data, however, has shown the advantage deteriorating. "If you are old and have a job, you are less likely - albeit less, less likely than in the old days - to be fired," Dr. Munnell said.

The unemployment rate in March for workers age 45 and over was 6.4 percent, the highest since at least 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking unemployment on a monthly basis.

But once older workers lose their jobs, Dr. Munnell said, "then it's horrible." They have a much harder time finding work again than younger job-seekers, and statistics appear to show that it is harder for them in this recession than previous ones.

(During earlier downturns, workers aged 45 and over were unemployed an average of 19 weeks in 1982 and just under 17 weeks in 2001.)

Many out-of-work baby boomers have despaired as they wonder whether to trim their résumés to avoid giving away their decades of work experience, or to dye their hair.

More of them are now choosing to fight back. Age discrimination complaints were up nearly 30 percent in fiscal year 2008 over the year before, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (The period ended just before the worst of the recession began.)

But the vast majority of those complaints involved layoffs. Discrimination in hiring is often almost impossible to prove.

"Especially in this day and age when you apply online, you're not even told why you can't get past the first screening," said Laurie McCann, a senior lawyer with AARP's Litigation Foundation.

Mr. Sims, in Texas, was so incensed by how he was treated that he tried to call the company's chief executive but was unable to get through. He never seriously considered filing a formal complaint.

"I know enough about H.R. procedures and H.R. situations, it would have never gone anywhere," he said.

Assessing just how pervasive age discrimination is in the job market is difficult. Certainly, older workers believe that it is rampant - an AARP survey in 2007 of workers from the ages 45 to 74 found that 60 percent said they had seen or experienced age bias.

Joanna N. Lahey, an economics professor at Texas A&M University, conducted a study published in 2005 in which she sent out 4,000 résumés on behalf of hypothetical job-seeking women ranging in age from 35 to 62 for entry-level jobs to companies in Boston and St. Petersburg, Fla., changing only the applicant's high school graduation year, an age indicator. Dr. Lahey found workers under age 50 were more than 40 percent more likely to be called back for an interview.

Older workers often accumulate knowledge specific to their firms that helps protect them from layoffs, Dr. Lahey said. But that background is often less useful to other employers.

Older workers must also battle stereotypes about their energy and adaptability, as well as the reality that their health care costs are higher.

The oldest baby boomers have already begun retiring. But with retirement accounts plunging in value, more older workers than ever are trying to stay in the work force. And some unemployed boomers, frustrated after months of fruitless searching, have concluded their only option is to turn their backs on successful careers and start over at much lower pay.

Jonathan Steinberg, 53, a former marketing executive, has been out of work for more than two years. With a résumé that includes an undergraduate degree from Yale and an M.B.A. from New York University, he had a career on a steady upward progression. His most recent position was as senior vice president for communications and marketing at a large organization for the care of the elderly, where he was paid about $170,000 a year.

But after applying for more than 100 jobs and getting few responses, he is now exploring work as a paralegal or a teacher. He believes his age and experience make for slim odds of landing even a junior-level marketing position at this point.

"I've got one to send to college next year, with two more behind her," Mr. Steinberg said. "I can't continue to wait for good news on the old job front."

Ron Higgins, 52, is one of about 100 former employees of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in the San Francisco Bay Area who filed an age-discrimination complaint against the lab after a round of layoffs in May.

The lab had promised to lay off workers with less seniority first, said Mr. Higgins, who had worked there for more than two decades. But Mr. Higgins believes he was picked because of his age, pointing out he cost the company more than many of his younger colleagues, with his salary climbing to about $80,000 a year and full medical benefits due to him in retirement if he continued working until he was 65.

Since his layoff, Mr. Higgins, who has two children of high school age at home, said he has applied for countless jobs and has gotten only one interview for a janitorial job with a school district. Once again, he said, he believes his age is to blame.

"They're saying, 'Wait a minute, this guy is almost done working,' " Mr. Higgins said.

After running through his severance pay and retirement savings, Mr. Higgins and his wife, who runs a struggling printing business from home, have now fallen two months behind on a risky mortgage on a home they purchased in 1999. They had already been struggling to make their house payments before his layoff and are now $40,000 in credit card debt. They recently got a notice in the mail that the bank would begin foreclosure proceedings in 30 days.

"Sometimes I just break down and start crying," he said, explaining his feeling of powerlessness. "I can't do anything about my situation."

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

6) 'Surgical' Bankruptcy Possible for G.M.
By MICHELINE MAYNARD and MICHAEL J. de la MERCED
April 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/business/13gm.html?ref=business

DETROIT - The Treasury Department is directing General Motors to lay the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing by a June 1 deadline, despite G.M.'s public contention that it could still reorganize outside court, people with knowledge of the plans said during the weekend.

Members of President Obama's automotive task force spent last week in meetings and on conference calls with G.M. officials and its advisers in Detroit and Washington. Those talks are expected to continue this week.

The goal is to prepare for a fast "surgical" bankruptcy, the people who had been briefed on the plans said. G.M., which has been granted $13.4 billion in federal aid, insists that a quick restructuring is necessary so its image and sales are not damaged permanently.

The preparations are aimed at assuring a G.M. bankruptcy filing is ready should the company be unable to reach agreement with bondholders to exchange roughly $28 billion in debt into equity in G.M. and with the United Automobile Workers union, which has balked at granting concessions without sacrifices from bondholders.

President Obama, who was elected with strong backing from labor, remained concerned about potential risk to G.M.'s pension plan and wants to avoid harming workers, these people said.

None of these people agreed to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the process. G.M. declined to comment and the Treasury Department did not comment.

One plan under consideration would create a new company that would buy the "good" assets of G.M. almost immediately after the carmaker files for bankruptcy.

Less desirable assets, including unwanted brands, factories and health care obligations, would be left in the old company, which could be liquidated over several years.

Treasury officials are examining one potential outcome in which the "good G.M." enters and exits bankruptcy protection in as little as two weeks, using $5 billion to $7 billion in federal financing, a person who had been briefed on the prospect said last week.

The rest of G.M. may require as much as $70 billion in government financing, and possibly more to resolve the health care obligations and the liquidation of the factories, according to legal experts and federal officials.

Since replacing Rick Wagoner on March 31, G.M.'s chief executive, Fritz Henderson, has sent increasingly clear signals that bankruptcy is probable unless agreements are reached with labor and the bondholders by the administration's June 1 deadline.

Unlike Mr. Wagoner, who refused until his final days at G.M. to consider a Chapter 11 filing, Mr. Henderson has deployed staff to work with legal and government advisers, although he does not agree a bankruptcy is inevitable.

Last week, he said G.M. was proceeding on a dual track, hoping to restructure out of court, but also preparing for a filing.

"If we need to resort to bankruptcy, we have to do it quickly," Mr. Henderson said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

John Paul MacDuffie, an associate professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said he saw little chance of an out-of-court restructuring, given that the Obama administration had rejected G.M.'s proposed revitalization plan in March. It was submitted without the concessions that were required from bondholders and the union, and which have still not been reached.

"The simplest way to frame it is that they took the loans, there were conditions on the loans, they didn't prove their case for financial viability, and they didn't meet the deadline, either," Professor MacDuffie said.

Lawyers for G.M. and the government have much work to do before any bankruptcy case can begin, executives with bankruptcy experience said last week.

First and foremost, G.M. would have to formulate a business plan that addresses virtually every aspect of the company that it hopes to transform while under bankruptcy protection.

It would have to show how it would save billions of dollars through agreements with its bondholders and unions, how many dealers it plans to keep, and the plants and offices it plans to either close or preserve.

The plan also needs to give a candid forecast of the car market, a tricky prospect given the sharp falloff in sales over the last few months, these executives said.

Treasury has hired the Boston Consulting Group to help with the business plan, according to a notice posted April 8 on FedBizOpps.gov, a government procurement Web site.

Participation from banks also may be needed, and because of the weak economic climate, lenders are likely to insist that G.M. wring as much out of its operations as possible.

"It's a complex system and you've got to be thinking big," Professor MacDuffie said.

Finally, legal experts said, G.M. would have to try to prevent panic among consumers in the event of a bankruptcy filing. The government has said it will guarantee G.M.'s vehicle warranties.

Since then, G.M. has started an aggressive advertising campaign stressing that car buyers should have confidence in the company, and offering to make nine months of payments, up to $500 each, for owners who lose their jobs.

One delicate issue for federal officials is the fate of G.M.'s employee pension plans, which could become the responsibility of the federal pension agency if G.M. seeks their termination.

G.M. faces an unfunded liability of about $13.5 billion for its plans, which had $84.5 billion in assets and $98 billion in liabilities as of Dec. 31. That amount could sink the pension agency, requiring its own bailout before a G.M. case could be resolved.

The White House has at least one option to protect the plan.

The Supreme Court, in a landmark 1990 case, ordered the LTV Corporation, a steel maker, to take back responsibility for its pension plans after it emerged from bankruptcy protection.

The pension agency had allowed the steel company to terminate its plans, only to see LTV negotiate a new plan with the United Steelworkers of America in which it agreed to make up a large portion of benefits that workers had lost.

LTV eventually sought bankruptcy protection again and liquidated in 2002, when the federal pension agency assumed the company's pension liabilities.

While Mr. Obama's auto task force has held only one meeting with G.M.'s bondholders - who had rejected the company's previous reorganization plan as too onerous - it is still seeking to win union support for a swift bankruptcy, one person involved in the discussions said.

But the task force is reasonably confident that its restructuring plan could still pass muster with a federal bankruptcy judge even if the union does not accede to the proposal, this person said.

A creditors committee for the "new G.M." would be formed in advance, to start working as soon as the case begins, while those with claims against G.M. would be asked by Treasury to quickly agree on terms to settle the claims.

Still, if the government and G.M. cannot bring all creditors on board, they are likely to argue that creating the new G.M. is an emergency move needed to preserve the value of the carmaker's good assets. Bankruptcy judges are given a lot of leeway to decide what is in the best interest of all parties in a bankruptcy case.

Another question hanging over G.M. is the fate of Delphi, the giant supplier of auto parts that has been in bankruptcy for more than three years.

Delphi, which was once owned by G.M., has been in talks with G.M., the auto task force and its lenders over its own restructuring. The administration has set an April 17 deadline for Delphi to reach an accord over G.M.'s continued support for the parts supplier, which could be pushed back as late as April 24, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Should Delphi fail to reach an agreement with G.M. and the administration, it could be forced to liquidate, this person said. In that event - a prospect that the task force is preparing for - the government and G.M. may acquire some parts of Delphi's business out of liquidation.

Micheline Maynard reported from Detroit and Michael J. de la Merced from New York.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

7) Obama Opens Door to Cuba, but Only a Crack
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAMIEN CAVE
April 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/world/americas/15cuba.html?ref=world

WASHINGTON - In abandoning longstanding restrictions on the ability of Cuban-Americans to visit and send money to family members on the island, President Obama demonstrated Monday that he was willing to open the door toward greater engagement with Cuba - but at this point, only a crack.

The announcement represents the most significant shift in United States policy toward Cuba in decades, and it is a reversal of the hard line taken by President George W. Bush. It comes as Mr. Obama is preparing to meet later this week in Trinidad and Tobago with Latin American leaders, who want him to normalize relations with Cuba and its leader, Raúl Castro.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro responded in a column published later Monday that the easing of restrictions toward Cuba did not go far enough, saying that real change in the relationship between the two countries would only come if Washington lifted its long-standing trade embargo.

Mr. Castro's response appeared on the Web site of Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, The Associated Press reported. In the announcing the easing of restrictions, "not a word was said about the blockade, which is the cruelest of measures," he wrote.He added: "The conditions are in place for Obama to use his talent in a constructive policy that ends something that has failed for nearly half a century." The White House made clear on Monday that Mr. Obama, who campaigned on improving relations with Cuba, was not willing to go as far as normalizing relations, at least not yet. Rather, the steps he took were modest, reflecting the complicated domestic politics around Cuba and the unpredictability of the Cuban response.

This volatility on both sides of the Florida Straits has bedeviled every president since Kennedy, and even Mr. Obama, who has vowed to make greater use of diplomacy with enemies as well as allies, seems to have recognized the threat.

Instead of lifting the trade embargo with Cuba, enacted in the 1960s in an unsuccessful attempt to force a change in government after Fidel Castro came to power, Mr. Obama is using his executive power to repeal Mr. Bush's tight restrictions and the looser restrictions under President Bill Clinton so that Cuban-Americans can now visit Cuba as frequently as they like and send gifts and as much money as they want, as long as the recipients are not senior government or Communist Party officials.

Mr. Obama is also allowing telecommunications companies to pursue licensing agreements in Cuba, in an attempt to open up communications there by increasing access to cellphones and satellite television. In a sign that the Cuba issue is a delicate one, the president left it to senior aides to explain his decision.

"This is a step to extend a hand to the Cuban people, in support of their desire to determine their own future," Dan Restrepo, the senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, said in announcing the move. "It's very important to help open up space, so the Cuban people can work on the kind of grass-roots democracy that is necessary to move Cuba to a better future."

In a sense, the policy shift is an admission that a half-century of American policy aimed at trying to push the Castros out of power has not worked - as the Cuban American National Foundation, the most powerful lobbying group for Cuban exiles in Miami, conceded last week. Cuba policy experts characterized Mr. Obama's moves as important humanitarian steps but said they still left open the broader question of how the United States and Cuba plan to engage in the future.

The State Department has said it was reviewing American policy toward Cuba, and Mr. Restrepo said the policy was not "frozen in time today" - a suggestion, some Cuba experts said, that the White House is laying a foundation for more far-reaching change.

"We really don't know yet what he's got in mind for the long term," said Sarah Stephens of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, which advocates a further loosening of the restrictions. She said the administration may be trying to take "baby steps toward building confidence" by letting the Cuban exile community in Miami, which has traditionally opposed any softening of American policy, get used to the idea.

Mr. Obama is also facing pressure from Capitol Hill. The House and the Senate are considering legislation that would lift travel restrictions to Cuba for all Americans, not just those with family in Cuba. And some experts, like Philip Peters, a Cuba specialist and vice president at the Lexington Institute, a policy research center, argue that a president who is willing to engage Iran and Syria ought to be willing to engage Cuba.

"This is a narrow set of measures," Mr. Peters said. "It doesn't at all get at the issue of broader contact between American society and Cuban society, and it leaves us in kind of an odd situation where one ethnic group has an unlimited right to travel to Cuba and the rest of us are under these cold war regulations."

Those who still support the Bush hard line denounced the decision. The Cuban government charges hefty fees on remittances, and critics like Representatives Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Florida Republicans and brothers who are Cuban-Americans, said Mr. Obama was making a "serious mistake" that would effectively put millions of dollars into the hands of the Castro regime.

Yet those old animosities are giving way to an emerging interest in dialogue that is working in Mr. Obama's favor, both in Washington and Florida.

In Miami, the conservative old guard could still be found. On Radio, a Spanish-language station that often acts as a megaphone for Cuban-American conservatives, Ninoska Pérez Castellón, a popular host, echoed the concerns of the Diaz-Balarts. At Latin Café 2000 in Hialeah, Fla., José Soberón, 71, said he would never consider sending money or visiting the island he left years ago.

But such opinions are no longer as dominant, especially among younger Cubans like Virgiro Lopez, 31, who said that while his entire family had left Cuba, he supported Mr. Obama's plan as a way to "help bring a spirit within the people to fight for themselves."

Francisco J. Hernandez, the president of the Cuban American National Foundation, said the new policy would "help the Cuban people to become protagonists of the changes in Cuba."

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington, and Damien Cave from Miami. Yolanne Almanzar contributed reporting from Miami.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

8) War-shocked Gaza children 'want to die'
By Middle East correspondent Anne Barker for AM
AM | abc.net.au/am
Posted Mon Apr 13, 2009 6:30am AEST
Updated Mon Apr 13, 2009 2:08pm AEST
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/13/2541280.htm

Little has changed in Gaza since the war in January, with thousands of families still living in tents and homes and schools still just rubble and ruins.

But life for many children has never been the same since Israel launched its offensive three months ago.

In January, Israeli bombs flattened the main building of this school in northern Gaza, destroying eight of the school's 20 classrooms.

The students had already evacuated but the three-storey block was crushed; the top floor still dangles dangerously over the schoolground and giant slabs of jagged concrete hang precariously in mid-air.

And the 22-month blockade imposed on Gaza means few if any materials are getting in to rebuild shattered areas.

English teacher Ghada Abu Ward still sees the daily impact on her students.

"They are hesitant, frustrated, depressed, thinking and dreaming all the time - daydreams - then after that we lose concentration, and [have] the bad achievements," she said.

"At the bravest times they've thought, 'I want to die. My father was dead in the Israeli attack - I want to be with them. So I want to die. There's nothing good about this life. At least when I die, I will be with my parents, and it will be heaven and paradise'."

Brother 'executed'

Twelve-year-old Omsyat Awaja faces a tougher ordeal than many; days before the school was hit, her family home was bombed.

Through a translator, she says her nine-year-old brother was shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Her parents too were shot and injured and now they live in a tent in a nearby camp.

"When my brother was between the hands of my father, and they executed him on purpose; they meant to kill, to shoot him," she said.

"I remember also when my parents got wounded and they were bleeding for five days.

"I hope that in the future there will be opening of border crossings, so the construction material will come in so I will have my house again. But the future will never bring me back my brother."

Israel's military has repeatedly described its armed forces as the "most moral in the world", saying they take care not to kill civilians.

It has justified the bombing campaign as retaliation for ongoing rocket fire into Israel by Hamas militants.

But Omsyat Awaja's father, Kamal, questions why his son had to die.

"The Israelis claimed through the whole war that they are democratic, they are civilised society," he said through a translator.

"But why did they execute my son? So all those, all the people, all the army, who's doing that, is not [civilised]."

For the Palestinians, there can be no peace while Gaza remains cut off from the outside world - a two-year blockade has kept Palestinians effective prisoners, and stopped essential supplies from reaching them.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

9) Fending Off the Mortgage Industry: Savvy Activists Are Winning in Court and on the Streets, Keeping People in Their Homes
"How one Detroit community group is saving homes and protecting human rights over the right of a corporation to make a profit."
By Valeria Fernández , ColorLines.
Posted April 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/136309/fending_off_the_mortgage_industry%3A_savvy_activists_are_winning_in_court_and_on_the_streets%2C_keeping_people_in_their_homes/?page=entire

How one Detroit community group is saving homes and protecting human rights over the right of a corporation to make a profit.

Before she was evicted from her own home, Kendra Washington took a walk around her Detroit neighborhood. She found an empty home and decided to squat with her two children. "I refused to get my kids put out on the street," said the single mother who moved into a vacant Housing and Urban Development house.

After government officials came knocking at Washington's door, attorney Jerry Goldberg, a long-time civil rights activist, persuaded them in court that it was in the government's interest to let Washington and her children stay. He argued that Washington had made improvements to the house and so maintained its value. Without her efforts, he explained, the house would have been vandalized.

Washington got to stay.

In the last year, Goldberg and his staff at Moratorium NOW!, a coalition of activists and union and religious leaders, have brought at least 50 cases to courts in Detroit on behalf of homeowners. They have been fighting to save homes literally one house at a time through picketing at the banks and legal action. Some of the people impacted are senior citizens with fixed incomes and also with medical conditions that have drained their savings. The houses have belonged to them for more than 20 years.

"We believe they have a right to a home and we defend their right to stay," Goldberg said.

Some politicians agree. A new bill introduced in Michigan's state legislature would create a two-year moratorium -- making it the lengthiest moratorium in the nation.

According to Goldberg, in many of his cases, people have been able to stay in their homes because he showed that the foreclosure was violating federal law like the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA), which was approved last July. The law requires financial institutions to modify default mortgages when this will result in a greater recovery of their value than a foreclosure.

"We argued that the loan modification would add a greater value to the property than the foreclosure will," he said.

In the cases of low-income homes insured by the Federal Housing Administration, Goldberg and his team have shown in court that the government hasn't played by its own rules.

Homeowners in danger of being evicted are supposed to get the chance to stay in the house through a lease agreement. But many homeowners are finding their requests to stay in the home denied, said Goldberg. Instead, the Federal Housing Administration has been paying the mortgage companies the full value of the house after it foreclosed, he added.

They don't always win in court though.

"When we don't have good luck through the courts, we have good luck through the streets," said Goldberg.

On at least six occasions, the coalition has picketed outside homes or banks just before people were about to be evicted. This is often the last resource when the actions can't be fought in court because there's no legal basis, Goldberg said.

On one occasion, a 78-year-old woman was able to get a new loan to stay in her home after the group picketed outside the bank Countrywide. The new loan allows her to stay in her home of 42 years.

•••

Washington made payments on her home of a decade for as long as she could after a foot surgery caused her to lose her $40,000 a year job. The lender wasn't willing to lower her payment on the $150,000 mortgage. As her savings ran out, Washington watched homes in the neighborhood being sold for as little as $500.

Michigan has been hit by a severe economic downturn for the last decade. It has lost half a million, mostly union, industrial jobs in the last five years. The crisis struck Detroit before it did the rest of the nation, and the sub-prime market of predatory lending completed the job. In Detroit, the average medium sales price for a home these days is $6,237, according to data from Multiple Listing Services. One in every 137 homes in Michigan is facing foreclosure.

"Our business is to sell foreclosed homes," said Carl Williams, chief executive of the Saturn Group. His real state company has sold at least five houses for $1 with buyers paying the realtor's commission.

"When the properties get evicted, the homes are immediately stripped and vandalized, losing all their value, tearing down the fabric of the community," said Goldberg.

That's exactly what happened with Washington's 1,625 square foot home when vandals came in, took everything and set the house on fire. The brick home had been remodeled, Washington said. She had put hardwood floors in the kitchen, new cabinets and ceramic tile. "The sad part about it is that [the bank] would have done better working with me; now they've got nothing," she said.
•••

A bill introduced in Michigan (SB 29) by State Sen. Hansen Clarke would approve the longest moratorium in the nation, allowing homeowners to remain in their house for two years while they make a monthly payment set by a trial judge based on their income.

"If you want to stabilize the markets you have to slow down the foreclosure rate, keep people in their homes, occupied and maintained," said State Sen. Clarke. It's a more responsible approach than borrowing millions of tax dollars to bail out financial institutions."

There's legal precedent for this, too. In 1934, the Supreme Court ruled that a moratorium on foreclosures was constitutional because of the crisis faced by the nation. Twenty-five states were able to institute them.

"In the 30s, there were organized committees all over the country, block by block. The sheriff would come and evict a family. After he left, they moved people back in," says Goldberg. "The moratorium was won on the streets."

California currently has a 90-day foreclosure moratorium. Connecticut's governor M. Jodi Rell supported a bill in progress for a six-month forbearance with a mandatory 60-day mediation period. Last April, Massachusetts passed a law that put in place a 6-month moratorium on mortgage foreclosures if people filed and claimed they were victims of unfair lending practices. Several banks including Citigroup Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley placed a moratorium on some foreclosures to give the Obama administration time to set into motion a rescue plan for homeowners.

"There's logic to these efforts of saying: "Let's hit the pause," said attorney Ellen Harnick, senior policy counsel on foreclosure issues at the Center for Responsible Lending. "People close to the crisis have been sounding the alarm for over two years, and there's an awful lot of sadness and disappointment with the fact that so many homes could have been saved had solutions been implemented earlier".

Some analysts and advocates though caution that a moratorium won't work on its own.

"You're just postponing the inevitable if you don't have the tools to work on this," said Jason Reece, senior researcher and expert on regional housing for the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity at Ohio State University.

Reece supports similar efforts in Ohio were 80,000 homes went in to foreclosure last year, and 40,000 others are at risk. But he contends a moratorium needs to be tied to system reforms, direct assistance to the communities that are most hit and the possibility of having bankruptcy judges alter the terms of a loan.

Yet, Sen. Clarke hopes the moratorium would prevent the need of families to go into bankruptcy. "I don't want it to get that bad for a family that they have to go to bankruptcy court," he says.

While the administrations' $75 billion modification and assistance program has received a warm reception, housing advocates believe it still has fallen short. Since only banks that receive additional Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, funds are required to participate, there's a concern on how the government will enforce it industry-wide.

"Why shouldn't it be mandatory for all the banks that already got the bail out money?" Goldberg complained. He believes the people should come first and need to organize from the grassroots to bring a change.

This is exactly what Take Back the Land, a grassroots volunteer organization in Miami, Florida is inviting people to do on vacant government housing and foreclosed homes.

Max Rameau, the group's founder, helps homeless families relocate into what he calls "liberated" houses. He makes sure the homes have electricity and water before they move in. "It's completely illogical and inhumane that you have all these houses and families are looking for homes," said Rameu.

Those who squat run the risk of getting arrested and charged with trespassing. But Rameu thinks they face a greater danger living in the streets.

"This is a solution coming from the community," said Rameu. "We value the human rights of housing over the right of a corporation to make a profit."

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

10) Unemployment Surges in Germany's Golden City
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Pforzheim Journal
April 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/world/europe/14germany.html?ref=world

PFORZHEIM, Germany - The family-run Opel car dealership here has closed after 80 years. After the local SinnLeffers department store shut down, the grocery store in the basement put beer and pasta displays in the store windows where the mannequins once stood. The unemployment rate is shooting up as industrial jobs vanish.

Until recently, this was a more or less typical scene in eastern Germany. But this was in the west, and in one of its richest regions, the state of Baden-Württemberg. Because of the nature of the world economic crisis, rising unemployment in Germany is largely bypassing the poor areas of the east and striking at the heart of the country's wealthy industrial areas in the western and southern regions.

Nowhere is that more true than in Pforzheim, known as the Golden City for its history as the jewelry capital of Germany, and which now has the fastest-growing unemployment rate of any locality in the country. Unemployment is still far worse in the east, where it hovers around 20 percent in some regions. But the number of unemployed in the west rose by 31,000 in March, versus just 3,000 in the territories of the former east. Over the past year, Pforzheim has had the highest increase in its unemployment rate, rising 2.7 points, to 9.8 percent from 7.1 percent, taking it from below-average unemployment to above the nationwide average of 8.6 percent.

According to economists here, German consumers have been one of the few pillars of strength for the global economy, not having felt the effects of the recession as directly as have Americans. There was no real estate bubble here and relatively few rely on equities for their retirements or have credit-card debts, and job protections are much stronger. But as declining exports lead to ever more layoffs, the brunt of the crisis is expected to cause pain throughout Germany, Europe's largest economy, the way it already has in Pforzheim.

This town on the northern edge of the Black Forest traces its heritage as a jewelry center to 1767, when its overlord founded a factory for watches and jewelry at the local orphanage. In recent decades, as the production of lower-end necklaces, rings and bracelets migrated to cheaper labor markets in Asia, the highly trained metal workers here turned to making precision parts for the automobile industry.

But the combination of luxury goods and automobile parts proved a poor one in this economic downturn, leaving the town of around 120,000 exposed to the clampdown on spending by consumers, particularly in the United States. Pforzheim's experience is one small part of the losses inflicted by the broader plunge in exported goods around the country.

Locals say that the worsening economy is a constant topic of discussion. "I still get up every day at 5 o'clock in the morning," said Helmut Frey, 57, a goldsmith who lost his job at the end of December. Mr. Frey, who began learning the trade in 1965, said he had sent out some 18 job applications without getting a single interview. "For me, it's basically over," he said, waving away questions about his future.

The country has a strong social safety net. Mr. Frey said he could collect 60 percent of his salary for 18 months, but said he did not know how he would support himself on the more modest welfare payments he would receive if he had not found a job by then. Economists say that the worst is yet to come for workers. Companies have used government-subsidized short working hours - known as kurzarbeit - to avoid mass layoffs, but that still costs them money and is only a temporary solution.

In February exports fell 23 percent compared with the previous year. Industrial output shrank 20.6 percent for the month, compared with the year before. "We would need to see signs of improvement in summer or early autumn. Otherwise it becomes too expensive for companies to continue kurzarbeit," said Gernot Nerb, director of sector research at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich.

Last week some 14,000 Thyssen-Krupp employees demonstrated in Duisburg against plans by the company to cut back thousands of jobs. The German automaker Daimler, which has placed some 70,000 workers on short-hour status, said recently that it could no longer rule out job cuts.

That would mean more bad news for Pforzheim, where many people commute to nearby Daimler factories. The local branch of the German Federal Labor Office said that in Pforzheim and the surrounding region, there were roughly 10,000 unemployed but the same number had already been moved to short hours.

"What we cannot allow is for the mood to fall so low that people lose faith in themselves," said Christel Augenstein, the mayor of Pforzheim, in an interview while overlooking the city, which had to be almost entirely rebuilt after bombing raids during World War II. Yet she recalled a visit in March to the annual watch and jewelry industry convention in Basel that was nothing like her previous visits as mayor of the Golden City. "The Americans were missing. The Russians were missing. Those are our two biggest markets. The Asians were there but much more cautious."

What has astounded even older people, who have lived through recessions and restructurings in the past, was the speed with which business ground to a halt. "At factories that last summer were running seven days a week orders simply collapsed, and now they're running just two or three days a week," said Martin Kunzmann, a local representative for the union IG Metall.

Ralf Scheithauer, 49, lost his job at an electronics factory where he worked for 15 years, but was lucky enough to find an internship in occupational therapy that could lead to a full-time position. "People don't like to talk about it. You just find yourself thinking, 'What's he doing working in his garden during the day?' " Mr. Scheithauer said. "There's this sense that, if someone doesn't have work they must somehow be to blame."

At the Opel Hauser dealership on Karlsruher Strasse, the last few cars are in a corner facing the street, hiding the vast expanse of parking spaces as empty as the abandoned showroom. The manager of the bankrupt business was out himself on a recent afternoon, hosing and scrubbing the last of his inventory.

"Naturally, it is a bitter feeling to put your whole life, everything you have, into a business and be forced to shut down," said Bernd Hauser-Schmieg, 59. "It is bitter," he repeated, before returning to scrubbing one of the cars.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

11) You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
By Johann Hari
The Independent
January 5, 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy-backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the U.S. to China-is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell-and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy"-from 1650 to 1730-the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then-plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry-you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains-and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly-and subversively-that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age-a young British man called William Scott-should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia-in the Horn of Africa-collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since-and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury-you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, which seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation-and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100 kilometers south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia-and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters-especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking-and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes-but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause-our crimes-before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia's criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today-but who is the robber?

POSTSCRIPT: Some commentators seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place-wouldn't this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia's coastline is vast, stretching to 3300km. Imagine how easy it would be-without any coastguard or army-to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places-but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals, and stirred-up piracy. There's no contradiction.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

12) Civilians Died in Airstrike by NATO, Afghan Says
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
April 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/world/asia/14afghan.html?ref=world

KABUL, Afghanistan - An airstrike by NATO forces early Monday in mountainous eastern Afghanistan killed six civilians, including two children, a local Afghan official said, the latest accusation of civilian casualties leveled against NATO and American forces.

NATO officials confirmed the raid but said that only insurgents suspected of planning attacks on the alliance's outposts had been killed.

The Afghan official, Zalmay Yousufzai, the governor of Watapor district in Kunar Province, said that NATO helicopters destroyed one house and damaged several others. In addition to the 6 civilians killed, he said, 14 were wounded. Four of the wounded were hospitalized, he said.

The airstrike followed an attack in Khost Province last week by American-led forces that left at least four civilians dead.

Afghan and American military officials agreed this year to better coordinate airstrikes and raids in hopes of reducing civilian casualties. Mr. Yousufzai said there had been "no coordination with us" before Monday's raid.

A reporter for Agence France-Presse said the wounded at a nearby hospital included two men, a woman and a 14-year-old boy who said he had been told that four members of his family had been killed.

"We were asleep, and all of a sudden the roof collapsed," the boy, who gave his name only as Zakirullah, told the news agency. "I don't remember anything. I got to know here that my father, my mother, my brother and my younger sister have all been killed, and I am wounded."

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said that "multiple intelligence sources" identified the dead as "four to eight enemy fighters" and that the attack came after "intelligence intercepts indicated the hostile intent of the enemy" to attack outposts.

A force spokesman said it would investigate whether there were civilian casualties. "We deeply regret any possible civilian injuries caused by our operations against the enemy," said the spokesman, Capt. Mark Durkin.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*