Prop. 8 MUST GO! EQUAL RIGHTS AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!
Dear all,
So now, not only is JROTC deemed NOT a military recruiting tool; that it does not discriminate against lgbt youth, [even though the military still does]; but it has been declared by the San Francisco Board of Education to be a benign character-building institution! And now it is ruled that same sex marriages are now illegal--all because the politicians cave into the war machine every time; and bigotry still exists among the voters of California!
Because our politicians support the current and past U.S. war governments, and a majority of voters [or a majority of those who voted this time] are bigoted, does not make the U.S. wars or the voters' bigotry any less criminal, unjust and unconstitutional!
These are terrible set-backs that underscore the need for a strong, independent and united antiwar/human rights movement that can respond to these attacks and appeal to what I really think IS the majorities' opinions, i.e., opposition to the wars, to JROTC and military recruiting in our schools, and opposition to the banning of gay marriage and to the withholding of equal rights to the lgbt community.
Solidarity against these backslides into blatant injustice will rally our majority to speak out and take action in the streets against these things and express to the world that we are, indeed, the majority.
It's time to get together!
U.S. Out Now! From Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all U.S. bases around the world; End all U.S. Aid to Israel; Get the military out of our schools and our communities; Demand Equal Rights and Justice for ALL!
TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR! MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
(If you would like to be added to the BAUAW list-serve and receive this newsletter via email, send your name (opitional) and email address to: bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com -- it's free. Please put "Add me to the list" in the subject line.)
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Thursday, 5/28: Protest the $7 Fee at the Aboretum (inner sunset / UCSF)
Hall of Flowers (County Fair Building) next to the entrance to San Francisco Botanical Gardens at Strybing Arboretum (9th/Lincoln) Time: 6:30-8:00 PM
Reply to: event-nefjc-1183747345@craigslist.org
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eve/1183747345.html
The Park and Recreation Department, in conjunction with the Botanical Garden at
Strybing Arboretum management, are planning to charge those, who can not show a San Francisco ID at the gate, $7 to enter the gardens. This means many visitors will have to pay to sit on the grass, sit on the benches, or watch the ducks. All except two of the five entrances are will be closed. This is outrageous!
Download a poster here:
http://www.savethemanatee.com/Community%20Meeting_5.28.09.pdf
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
SF Single Payer Rally - Friday, Noon, May 29
Put Single Payer on the Table for Discussion
Support HR 676
List of 32 national rallies plus Healthcare Now news.
Dear Single Payer Healthcare Activist,
We invite you to help build and attend our May 29 rally at the SF Federal Building. The noon rally will be at 450 Golden Gate. We will be demanding that Congress Member Nancy Pelosi foster a discussion on the single payer legislation, HR 676, the US National Healthcare Act. Our rally will be one of over 30 national rallies. See list below.
We also need help calling our phone tree and sending out a mailing for this event. The mailing party will be held at the home of Susan Cieutat at 531 Grove St. in San Francisco. We will send out the mail on Thursday, May 21 between 2pm and 10pm, and on Friday, May 22 from 11am to 9pm.
Below is the latest alert from Healthcare Now. It contains information on national single payer events. I encourage you to join their action alert list at http://www.healthcare-now.org/campaigns/may-30th-day-of-action/
Please let us know if you can attend the rally, help with our mailing party, or help call our phone tree.
___ I plan to attend the May 29th noon rally in San Francisco.
___ I can help call our phone tree.
___ I can attend the mailing party on Thurs., May 21 between 2pm and 10pm.
___ I can attend the mailing party on Friday, May 22 between 11 and 9pm.
___ I have forwarded this message.
Thank you.
Don Bechler
415-695-7891
www.singlepayernow.net
Rally for Healthcare Minus the Insurance Companies
Tell Congress Member Nancy Pelosi to:
Put Single Payer Healthcare on the Table.
Support HR 676, the US National Healthcare Act
Fri. Noon, May 29
450 Golden Gate - SF
( The Federal Building )
Sponsored by Senior Action Network, the California Alliance for Retired Americans, San Francisco Gray Panthers, and Single Payer Now.
For more information, call 415-695-7891 or email dbechler@value.net labor donated
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
MEETING TO DISCUSS THE CASE OF KEVIN COOPER
AND THE ONGOING FIGHT AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 7:00pm at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland
SPECIAL APPEAL FROM KEVIN COOPER:
"I, Kevin Cooper, am asking you to get involved in a life and death struggle. This struggle is not just about me. Even though the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just denied my petition, if you read the 101 page dissent you will see that many of the judges acknowledged my innocence. They write that the evidence was tampered with, and that my constitutional rights were violated. I have been fighting, and will continue to fight. And I am asking you to fight, too.
You best believe that this state is now working very, very hard to have the legal obstacles to starting executions again removed. By the time this brief moratorium is over, there may be close to 20 inmates in here without any appeals left. Just think how many more men, and maybe women, will have their appeals denied by the court, and will be sitting here waiting to be tortured and murdered by this state?! This state will become 'Texas West' if they restart this killing machine in California! So what are we going to do about it? Are we ready for it, because it's coming?!"
INTRODUCTION:
Dear Friends,
Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on death row, was denied by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on May 11th. His case will next go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kevin got support from a substantial minority of justices who voted against the denial. Judge Fletcher, who wrote the dissenting opinion, began his dissent: "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." The dissent describes in detail the case for Kevin's innocence, the tampering, planting, and mishandling of evidence, police and prosecution misconduct, and the constitutional violations.
At the same time, a public comment period on the lethal injection process for the state of California has begun, and will end June 30th with a public hearing in Sacramento. The wrangling over the issue of lethal injection has stopped the State from executing anyone. If the courts approve the latest method, executions will restart.
Kevin, his friends and allies would like to invite you to a meeting to discuss Kevin's case and the state of the death penalty in California, and plan a course of action.
The meeting will be held Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 7:00pm at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
May 18, 2009 interview with Kevin Cooper on Flashpoints radio show:
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/50927
Kevin Cooper's website: www.savekevincooper.org
Contact:
Campaign to End the Death Penalty
phone: 510-394-8625
e-mail: california@nodeathpenalty.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
End the Siege of Gaza! Rally in San Francisco on June 6
Solidarity Day on the 42nd Anniversary of Israel's seizure of Gaza
Support the Palestinian Right of Return! Stop U.S. Aid to Israel!
Saturday, June 6
12:00 noon
UN Plaza (7th and Market Sts.)
Saturday, June 6 marks the 42nd anniversary of the Israeli seizure of Gaza. Organizations and individuals in solidarity with the people of Palestine will be taking to the streets once again to demand: End the Siege of Gaza!
The world looked on in horror this past winter as Israel mercilessly starved and bombed the people of Gaza, killing around 1,200 Palestinians (at least a third of whom were children). The Arab world now refers to the dark days from the end of December to mid-January "The Gaza Massacre." Although the mainstream media no longer focuses on Gaza, the suffering continues there nonetheless. Using the pretext of combating terrorism, Israel has refused to allow in even one truckload of cement into Gaza. In other words, the city that was reduced to rubble still lies in rubble today. All these months later, people are still living in tents and are scarcely able to secure the necessities of life.
People of conscience around the world continue to raise their voices in outrage at this crime against humanity, and in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Gaza. We will also stand for all Palestinian people's inalienable right to return to their homes from which they were evicted. Let your voice be heard -- join us Saturday, June 6, at 12 noon at UN Plaza in San Francisco (7th and Market Sts.). There will be a joint action in Washington DC on June 6.
Sponsoring organizations include ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom, National Council of Arab Americans (NCA), Free Palestine Alliance (FPA), Al-Awda - Palestine Right of Return Coalition, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and more!
Contact us at 415-821-6545 or answer@answersf.org to endorse or volunteer!
The June 6 demonstration is a major undertaking and we can't do it without the support of the large number of people who are standing with Palestine. Please click this link right now to make a generous donation:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1443&JServSessionIdr010=5e0ldsoh91.app6a
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Appeals court to hear Pinkney defense June 9, 2009
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
The Michigan Citizen
http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=1&twindow=&mad=&sdetail=7344&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1070&hn=michigancitizen&he=.com
To sign a petition in support of Pinkney:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/624471377
On June 9, the State Appeals Court of Michigan will hear defense arguments in the case of Rev. Edward Pinkney. Pinkney, who is the leader of the Benton Harbor Black Autonomy Network of Community Organizers (BANCO), was convicted by a Berrien County, all-white jury in March 2007 on trumped-up charges related to false allegations of voter fraud.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan has taken Pinkney's case and was successful in winning his release on bond in December 2008, pending the outcome of the appeal.
Pinkney was convicted of four felony counts and one misdemeanor after heading a successful recall campaign against a City Commissioner.
As a result of the recall, the courts in Berrien County overturned the election results citing irregularities. The first trial against Pinkney ended in a hung jury in 2006. The charges were reinstated leading to Pinkney's conviction and subsequent house arrest. He was initially sentenced to one year in jail and four years probation by Berrien County Judge Alfred Butzbaugh.
Pinkney was placed on a tether and not allowed to step outside of his home. His phone calls were monitored and he was prohibited from engaging in community or church activities in Berrien County.
When Pinkney published an article in the Chicago-based People's Tribune newspaper criticizing Judge Butzbaugh's actions in his case, Berrien County hauled Pinkney into courtroom in December of 2007. He was charged with threatening the life of the trial judge and sentenced to three to 10 years in state prison because in the article he had quoted the Book of Deuteronomy 28:14-22.
Over the next year Pinkney was transferred to over six correctional facilities throughout the state.
A nationwide campaign in his defense drew worldwide attention to the pastor's plight as a political prisoner. Even though Pinkney was released on appeal bond on December 24, 2008, his conditions of probation are draconian.
Rev. Pinkney's bond hearing was held in the same Berrien County court system. Under his appeal bond he is denied the right to preach, grant interviews, write articles, address crowds or engage in politics.
Support Builds for Appeals Hearing
In March three friend-of the court briefs were filed in support of overturning the conviction of Rev. Pinkney. A broad-based group of religious organizations, law professors and free speech advocates submitted the legal documents.
"We are thrilled with the overwhelming support from the religious community, constitutional scholars and free speech organizations," said Michael J. Steinberg, ACLU of Michigan Legal Director. "The groups persuasively argue for the fundamental American principle that a preacher cannot be thrown in prison for his religious speech even if some find it offensive."
The religious freedom brief encompasses the views of numerous faith-based organizations.
Another brief was submitted by 18 law professors from various universities including Wayne State Law School, University of Detroit Law School and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. The brief states that "In this country, under this Constitution, and on this Court's watch, he must not be imprisoned for speaking his conscience."
Also the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression argued in its brief that "In finding that Rev. Pinkney's newspaper editorial violated his conditions of probation, the lower court punished speech at the core of First Amendment protection: public criticism of the judiciary."
Berrien County and American Apartheid
This southwest Michigan county is a stark representation of racism and national oppression in the United States. Benton Harbor, which is over 90 percent African American, is one of the most underdeveloped cities in the state of Michigan. In neighboring St. Joseph, a nearly all-white city, the standard of living is much higher and it is the seat of the county where the court is located.
Over the last several years a so-called development project, Harbor Shores, has unveiled plans to take control of large sections of Benton Harbor to construct a golf course and residential enclave for the wealthy. These plans, along with astronomical foreclosure and unemployment rates, are forcing many residents of Benton Harbor to leave the area.
According to an article published by Dorothy Pinkney, the wife of the persecuted minister, the presiding trial Judge Butzbaugh has interests in the Harbor Shores development project. The Whirlpool Corporation, which is highly-influential in the region, is major promoter of the Harbor Shores scheme.
"My husband was denied due process and the right under state law to an impartial decision maker because the trial judge, Alfred Butzbaugh, had a financial interest in the development of Harbor Shores. This huge development project is what motivated my husband to seek the recall of the corrupt Benton Harbor City Commissioner Glen Yarbrough," Dorothy Pinkney wrote.
She continues by pointing out that "The trial court's financial interest in the Harbor Shores project was not known to my husband until after the trial. The Harbor Shores project which has been primarily pressed by Cornerstone Alliance on behalf of Whirlpool Corporation began in 1998 when the community economic development corporation was formed by John Dewane of the law firm Butzbaugh and Ryan." (BANCO website, April 2009)
The Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice (MECAWI), the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO) and the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR) are mobilizing people to attend the appeals hearing for Rev. Pinkney on June 9.
The hearing will take place in Grand Rapids at the Court of Appeals Building, 350 Ottawa St at 9:00 a.m.
For information on transportation from the Detroit area please call MECAWI at 313.680.5508. [For other Michigan transportation, contact
lynnmeadows@provide.net]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Urgent News
Hearing on Death Penalty June 30, Sacramento
Please: SIGN-UP TO ATTEND!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/t/5820/signUp.jsp?key=4279
On May 1st, the State of California announced that it is moving forward with developing execution procedures in order to comply with a recent legal ruling and resume executions, which have been on hold for more than three years.
The State will be holding a hearing on Tuesday, June 30th from 9am to 3pm in Sacramento to hear public comments about the proposed execution procedures.
Death Penalty Focus, along with our allies, will be organizing a critical Day of Action to End the Death Penalty on June 30th.
What You Can Do to Help:
1. Please plan to attend the hearing on June 30th in Sacramento. We will be organizing buses from the SF Bay Area (more details to be announced very soon).
Please: SIGN-UP TO ATTEND!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/t/5820/signUp.jsp?key=4279
We need to pack the room with more than 300 hundred supporters. More than one hundred individuals will be needed to give public comment. If they cannot accommodate everyone who signs up to speak, it is possible they will have to schedule another hearing.
After the hearing, we will head to the Capitol to share ours views with elected officials.
2. Please plan to submit a written comment to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). In just a few days we will be sending out suggestions for your comments and instructions on how to submit your comments. The CDCR is required by law to review and respond to every written comment. We need to generate thousands of comments from across the state, country and globe. We need to flood them with paperwork.
Please help us make this Day of Action a success!
Legislative Successes
Colorado
Colorado came very close to ending the death penalty this month when their State Senate voted 17-18 in favor of replacing the death penalty with life without parole and redirecting funding to solve murders. The State House has already passed the bill by a vote of 33-32.
Connecticut
On May 13, the Connecticut House voted 90-56 in favor of ending the death penalty. The bill now moves on to the Senate.
Several abolition bills are still active in other states, including New Hampshire, Illinois, Washington, and also in the U.S. Senate.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ATTEND THE JULY 10 NATIONAL ASSEMBLY CONFERENCE IN PITTSBURGH!
REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE and DOWNLOAD PRINTABLE BROCHURE (8.5 X 14) at:
https://natassembly.org/Home_Page.html
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
On behalf of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, we are writing to invite you and members of your organization to attend a national antiwar conference to be held July 10-12, 2009 at La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The purpose of this conference is to bring together antiwar and social justice activists from across the country to discuss and decide what we can do together to end the wars, occupations, bombing attacks, threats and interventions that are taking place in the Middle East and beyond, which the U.S. government is conducting and promoting.
We believe that such a conference will be welcomed by the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Iran, who are the victims of these policies. It will also be welcomed by victims of the depression-type conditions in this country, with tens of millions losing jobs, homes, health care coverage and pensions, while trillions of dollars are spent bailing out Wall Street and the banks, waging expansionist wars and occupations, and funding the Pentagon's insatiable appetite.
This will be the National Assembly's second conference. The first was held in Cleveland last June and it was attended by over 400 people, including top leaders of the antiwar movement and activists from many states. After discussion and debate, attendees voted - on the basis of one person, one vote - to urge the movement to join together for united spring actions. The National Assembly endorsed and helped build the March actions in Washington D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, and the April actions in New York City.
We are all aware of the developments since our last conference - the election of a new administration in the U.S., the ongoing occupation of Iraq, the escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the horrific Israeli bombing of Gaza, and the extreme peril of an additional war in the Middle East, this time against Iran. Given all this, it is crystal clear that a strong, united, independent antiwar movement is needed now more than ever. We urge you to help build such a movement by attending the July conference and sharing your ideas and proposals with other attendees regarding where the antiwar movement goes from here.
For more information, please visit the National Assembly's website at natassembly.org, email us at natassembly@aol.com, or call 216-736-4704. We will be glad to send you upon request brochures announcing the July conference (a copy is attached) and you can also register for the conference online. [Please be aware that La Roche College is making available private rooms with baths at a very reasonable rate, but will only guarantee them if reserved by June 25.]
Yours for peace, justice and unity,
National Assembly Administrative Body
Zaineb Alani, Author of The Words of an Iraqi War Survivor & More; Colia Clark, Chair, Richard Wright Centennial Committee, Grandmothers for Mumia Abu-Jamal; Greg Coleridge, Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC) and Economic Justice and Empowerment Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); Alan Dale, Iraq Peace Action Coalition (MN); Donna Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Jerry Gordon, Former National Co-Coordinator of the Vietnam-Era National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC) and Member, U.S. Labor Against the War Steering Committee; Jonathan Hutto, Navy Petty Officer, Author of Anti-War Soldier; Co-Founder of Appeal for Redress; Marilyn Levin, Coordinating Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace, Middle East Crisis Coalition; Jeff Mackler, Founder, San Francisco Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice; Fred Mason, President, Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO and Co-Convenor, U.S. Labor Against the War; Mary Nichols-Rhodes, Progressive Democrats of America/Ohio Branch; Lynne Stewart, Lynne Stewart Organization/Long Time Attorney and Defender of Constitutional Rights [Bay Area United Against War also was represented at the founding conference and will be there again this year. Carole Seligman and I initiated the motion to include adding opposition to the War in Afghanistan to the demands and title of the National Assembly.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Don't let them kill Troy Davis
The case of Troy Davis highlights the need for criminal justice reform in the United States.
Please help us fight for the rights -- and life -- of Troy Davis today by signing the petition below, asking Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue to act on behalf of justice and commute Troy Davis's death sentence to ensure that Georgia does not put to death a man who may well be innocent.
Mr. Davis has a strong claim to innocence, but he could be executed without a court ever holding a hearing on his claims. Because of this, I urge you to act in the interests of justice and support clemency for Troy Davis. An execution without a proper hearing on significant evidence of innocence would compromise the integrity of Georgia's justice system.
As you may know, Mr. Davis was convicted of the 1989 murder of police officer Mark MacPhail, a conviction based solely on witness testimony. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted or contradicted their trial testimony.
The courts, citing procedural rules and time limits, have so far refused to hold an evidentiary hearing to examine these witnesses. Executive clemency exists, and executive action - and your leadership - is required to preserve justice when the protections afforded by our appeals process fail to do so.
Thank you for your attention.
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/2446/t/4676/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=369
See also:
In the Absence of Proof
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/opinion/23herbert.html?_r=1
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
PETITION IN SUPPORT OF PAROLE OF LEONARD PELTIER
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/parole2008/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Ex-Soldier Gets Life Sentence for Iraq Murders
"At least four other soldiers have pleaded guilty or were convicted in military courts for their roles in the rape and murders. While most received long prison terms, none are facing the death penalty, and all will be eligible for parole in 10 years or less."
By JAMES DAO
May 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/us/22soldier.html?ref=world
2) Plan to Charge Working Homeless Draws Fire, Again
By Julie Bosman
May 22, 2009, 11:36 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/plan-to-charge-working-homeless-draws-fire-again/
3) City Temporarily Stops Charging Rent to the Working Homeless
By JULIE BOSMAN
May 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/nyregion/22homeless.html?ref=nyregion
4) The top 10 enemies of single-payer
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER
April 15, 2009
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=489
5) In the Absence of Proof
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/opinion/23herbert.html?_r=1
6) President's Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
May 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/us/politics/23detain.html?hp
7) Informer's Role in Bombing Plot
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and KAREEM FAHIM
May 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/nyregion/23informant.html?hp
8) New Requirements on Border ID Stir Worries at Crossings
By GINGER THOMPSON
"Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary who forged her political career on the southern border and plans to travel to the northern border next week, makes no apologies for the tightened security measures, including using unmanned Predator aircraft from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota to patrol the border with Canada. Ground sensors were added along the border in Vermont, and towers equipped with cameras and sensors are being built around Buffalo."
May 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/world/americas/24border.html?ref=us
9) A Prom Divided
By SARA CORBETT
May 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24prom-t.html?ref=us
10) Amid Housing Bust, Phoenix Begins a New Frenzy
By DAVID STREITFELD
May 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/business/24phoenix.html?ref=business
11) State of Paralysis
[Here's a thought for Paul Krugman: TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!...BW]
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/opinion/25krugman.html
12) Job Losses Push Safer Mortgages to Foreclosure
By PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY
May 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/business/economy/25foreclose.html?hp
13) Fate of Missing Iraqis Haunts Those Left Behind
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and SUADAD AL-SALHY
May 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/world/middleeast/25missing.html?ref=world
14) California Supreme Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban
By Karen Gullo
May 26, 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKQo8hsiFUpk
15) Ex-Detainee Describes His 7 Years at Guantánamo
By STEVEN ERLANGER
May 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/world/europe/27paris.html?ref=world
16) France Opens First Military Bases in the Gulf
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
May 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/world/europe/27france.html?ref=world
17) French Repression after General Strike Victory in Guadeloupe
The UGTG (General Union of Workers of Guadeloupe) issues call to the democratic and workers' movement internationally:
Elie Domota
Secretary General
General Union of Workers of Guadeloupe (UGTG)
ugtg@wanadoo.fr
http www.ugt.org
18) Antitrust Laws a Hurdle to Health Care Overhaul
"Antitrust lawyers say doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and drug makers will be running huge legal risks if they get together and agree on a strategy to hold down prices and reduce the growth of health spending." [Wouldn't you know? It's illegal to cut healthcare costs!...bw]
By ROBERT PEAR
May 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/health/policy/27health.html?ref=health
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Ex-Soldier Gets Life Sentence for Iraq Murders
"At least four other soldiers have pleaded guilty or were convicted in military courts for their roles in the rape and murders. While most received long prison terms, none are facing the death penalty, and all will be eligible for parole in 10 years or less."
By JAMES DAO
May 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/us/22soldier.html?ref=world
A jury in Kentucky sentenced a 24-year-old former soldier to life in prison without parole on Thursday for raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdering her, her parents and a younger sister in Iraq.
The verdict spared the defendant, Steven D. Green, death for a crime that prompted Iraqi demands for retribution and raised questions about Army oversight of its combat-stressed forces.
After deliberating for just one day, the 12-member jury, sitting in Paducah, Ky., declared itself hung late Thursday afternoon, resulting in the lesser sentence, said Dawn Masden, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, based in Louisville.
The verdict seemed likely to anger Iraqis who had argued that Mr. Green and the other soldiers involved in the murders should have been tried by an Iraqi court and who had asserted that only a death penalty could satisfy the family and fellow villagers.
At least four other soldiers have pleaded guilty or were convicted in military courts for their roles in the rape and murders. While most received long prison terms, none are facing the death penalty, and all will be eligible for parole in 10 years or less.
Mr. Green's trial was the first capital punishment case tried under a 2000 law allowing federal criminal courts to try crimes committed overseas by former members of the military, military dependents, contractors and other civilians, legal experts said. Mr. Green left the Army, with an honorable discharge on a diagnosis for a personality disorder, just weeks before he was arrested in 2006.
The March 2006 murders in Mahmudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, were so bloody that American and Iraqi authorities first thought they were the work of insurgents. The American soldiers were implicated after at least one acknowledged to fellow soldiers a role in the crimes.
At the time, the Iraq insurgency was near its violent apex, and American forces were suffering heavy casualties. Private Green's unit, Bravo Company, First Battalion, 502nd Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division, was sent to a particularly violent area that soldiers called the Triangle of Death soon after arriving in Iraq in the fall of 2005.
The battalion quickly suffered casualties, including a sergeant close to Private Green. In December, Private Green, along with other members of his platoon, told an Army stress counselor that he wanted to take revenge on Iraqis, including civilians. The counselor labeled the unit "mission incapable" because of poor morale, high combat stress and anger over the deaths, and said it needed both stronger supervision and rest. It got neither, testimony at Mr. Green's trial showed.
On March 11, 2006, after drinking Iraqi whiskey, Private Green and other soldiers manning a checkpoint decided to rape an Iraqi girl who lived nearby, according to testimony. Wearing civilian clothing, the soldiers broke into a house and raped Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. Soldiers in the group testified that Private Green killed the girl's parents and a younger sister before raping and then shooting the girl in the head with the family's own AK-47, which it had kept for self defense.
At his trial, Mr. Green's lawyers built a case intended less to deny his role in the crime than to plant questions about whether he deserved the death penalty.
Mr. Green, who was reared in Midland, Tex., came from a broken and chaotic home, defense witnesses testified, and despite scoring well on intelligence tests, was highly impulsive and did poorly in school. He got into the Army in 2005 on a so-called morals waiver, having had problems with alcohol and drug abuse.
On May 7, the same jury that issued the life sentence convicted Mr. Green on 17 counts, including premeditated murder.
In the sentencing phase of the trial, the Army stress counselor, Lt. Col. Karen Marrs, a mental health nurse practitioner, testified that Private Green was disturbed by deaths in his unit and had expressed a desire to hurt Iraqi civilians. But Colonel Marrs also said such sentiments had been expressed by other members of the unit and were not uncommon among troops in combat. On questioning from the prosecution, she also said that she thought Private Green clearly understood that hurting civilians would be wrong and that he had no plans to act on his anger.
The defense argued that the Army should have provided stronger leadership to Private Green's unit and should have removed Private Green from front-line duty for more intensive mental health care.
The prosecution strenuously rejected that argument, saying that many combat troops faced the same kinds of trauma and stress as Private Green and his platoon, but that few committed atrocities.
"The defendant failed to live up to his duty to protect the innocent people of Iraq," Marissa Ford, one of the federal prosecutors, said near the beginning of the penalty phase.
After the sentencing, Doug Green, 28, Mr. Green's brother, told The Associated Press: "I do think it gives him a chance to have some semblance of a life. We're grateful for that."
The team of defense lawyers, Scott Wendelsdorf, Darren Wolff and Patrick Bouldin, said in a statement: "The defense thanks the jury for their careful consideration and ultimate decision. There are no winners in a case like this that is tragic on so many levels."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Plan to Charge Working Homeless Draws Fire, Again
"The rent program is based on a 1997 state law that had not been enforced. The amount of rent owed varies based on factors that include family size and what shelter is being used, but it should not exceed 50 percent of a family's income."
By Julie Bosman
May 22, 2009, 11:36 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/plan-to-charge-working-homeless-draws-fire-again/
City Councilman Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn, the chairman of the General Welfare Committee, lashed out at city officials in a letter on Thursday for their role in a program charging rent to the working homeless in city shelters.
Addressing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Robert V. Hess, the commissioner of the homeless services department, Mr. de Blasio called the implementation of the state-mandated policy "premature and poorly planned."
"Homeless families in shelter are a vulnerable population with few resources," Mr. de Blasio wrote. "Any plan requiring payment from them, particularly one that comes with the threat of ejection from shelter for noncompliance, should have been better thought out prior to implementation."
The rent program is based on a 1997 state law that had not been enforced. The amount of rent owed varies based on factors that include family size and what shelter is being used, but it should not exceed 50 percent of a family's income.
After the program was implemented earlier this month, hundreds of shelter residents said that they had not received notice of their rent payments or that they had been overcharged.
On Thursday, Anne Heller, a deputy commissioner at the Department of Homeless Services, informed shelter providers that "technical issues" had forced officials to shut down the state-mandated program until the issues could be resolved.
Mr. de Blasio said he intended to question Mr. Hess about the program on Tuesday, during a budget hearing at City Hall.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) City Temporarily Stops Charging Rent to the Working Homeless
By JULIE BOSMAN
May 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/nyregion/22homeless.html?ref=nyregion
The Bloomberg administration has stopped charging rent to homeless people who have income and live in city shelters, temporarily suspending a state-mandated program that has been marked by mismanagement and the threat of a lawsuit.
In a memo sent by e-mail to 56 family shelter providers on Thursday morning, Anne Heller, a deputy commissioner at the Department of Homeless Services, said that "technical issues" had forced officials to shut down the program until the issues are resolved.
The three-week-old rent program was openly loathed by shelter providers, who hold contracts with the city and were forced to begin collecting rent from people who live in the shelters but have income from jobs.
"No one liked the idea, and we were quite shocked that they were even implementing it," said Manuela Schaudt, the executive director of Concourse House, a family shelter in the Bronx.
The state required the city to begin the program this month - based on a 1997 state law that had not been enforced. The amount of rent owed varies based on factors that include family size and what shelter is being used, but should not exceed 50 percent of a family's income, an official has said.
Immediately after the program went into effect, many shelter residents complained that they were not properly notified of their rights to contest the rent, and some residents were asked to pay far more than they were supposed to.
Michael Hayes, a spokesman for the State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, said a "technical glitch" caused notices to shelter residents to contain errors, or for some affected families not to receive notices at all.
Of the roughly 500 homeless families who were meant to receive notices advising them to begin paying rent, about 190 received notices with errors, including miscalculations in the amount of rent due, Mr. Hayes said. He said the Human Resources Administration, the city's welfare agency, was responsible for some of the errors, largely for some notices not getting out.
Steven Banks, the attorney in chief for the Legal Aid Society, threatened to sue the city, pointing to errors resulting in residents being locked out of their rooms in shelters and threatened with eviction. "We would hope that the entire concept would be re-evaluated," he said.
Robert V. Hess, the commissioner of homeless services, said the program would be revamped and expressed hope "that we can end up with a program that makes sense." Even as city officials became aware of problems with the program, they asked shelter providers to help them promote it.
Providers fumed over another e-mail message sent on Wednesday, this one on behalf of Ms. Heller, the deputy commissioner, requiring them to give the Department of Homeless Services examples of families who are working full time and successfully paying rent - so the department could "put a positive spin" on the rent program. "Anne wants to send a message that these are not the working poor, but individuals who are capable of contributing toward their cost of shelter," the e-mail read.
"I'm amazed by it," said Ralph Nunez, chief executive of Homes for the Homeless, a shelter provider. "I don't work for the Department of Homeless Services. I work for homeless families."
Heather Janik, a department spokeswoman, said that the message sent on Wednesday was sent in error and that Ms. Heller did not direct it to be sent.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) The top 10 enemies of single-payer
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER
April 15, 2009
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=489
Most people, when they arrive in Washington, D.C., see it for what it is - a cesspool of corruption.
Two reasonable reactions to the cesspool.
One, run away screaming in fear.
Two, stay and fight back and bring to justice those who have corrupted our democracy.
Unfortunately, many choose a third way - stay and be transformed.
Instead of seeing a cesspool, they begin seeing a hot tub.
The result - profits and wealth for the corporate elite - death, disease and destruction for the American people.
Nowhere does this corrupt, calculating transformation do more damage than in the area of health care.
Outside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the majority of doctors, nurses, small businesses, health economists, and the majority of the American people - according to recent polls - want a Canadian-style, single payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital, national health insurance system.
Inside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the corrupt elite will have none of it.
They won't even put single payer on the table for discussion.
Why not?
Because it will bring a harsh justice - the death penalty - to their buddies in the multi-billion dollar private health insurance industry.
The will of the American people is being held up by a handful of organizations and individuals who profit off the suffering of the masses.
And the will of the American people will not be done until this criminal elite is confronted and defeated.
(Remember, virtually the entire industrialized world - save for us, the U.S. - makes it a crime to allow for-profit health insurance corporations to make money selling basic health insurance.)
Before we confront and defeat the inside the beltway cesspool/hot tub crowd, we must first know who they are.
To wit, we present the Top Ten Enemies of Single Payer (listed here in alphabetical order):
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).
AARP, one of DC's most powerful lobbying groups, has worked inside the beltway for years to defeat single payer. Why? AARP makes about a quarter of its money selling insurance through its affiliate, United Healthcare Group, the nation's largest for-profit insurance company. AARP must defeat single payer - which if enacted, would wipe out that revenue stream.
American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).
The private health insurance industry. Public enemy number one. The health insurance corporations must die so that the American people can live. Of course, facing the death penalty, AHIP is the most aggressive opponent to single payer. No compromise with AHIP.
American Medical Association.
With a shrinking base of doctors (only 25 percent of doctors nationwide belong) - the AMA is the most conservative of the doctors' organizations. I just returned from a health care policy forum at the Center for American Progress. As usual, not one of the panelists mentioned single payer. Only during the question period did a self-identified patient/citizen ask the single payer question. And a pit bull-like Nancy Nielsen, president of the AMA, ripped into the questioner. "Sounds more like a statement than a question," Nielsen said. "And clearly you have a point of view about that. And I don't happen to share that point of view." Clearly she doesn't. But just as clearly, the majority of doctors, probably even a majority of doctors who belong to the AMA, support single payer. Nielsen is in denial and must be defeated.
Barack Obama.
He was for it when he was a state Senator in Illinois. Now, ensconced in the corporate prison that is the White House, he says single payer is off the table. To get off the list, Obama needs to put single payer back on the table.
Business Roundtable.
Dr. David Himmelstein, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), was at a health care forum a couple of years ago sponsored by the Business Roundtable. And the moderator asked the audience - made up primarily of representatives of big business - to indicate their preference of health care reforms. And the majority came out in favor of single payer. Why then is the Business Roundtable opposed? Himmelstein put it this way: "In private, they support single payer, but they're also thinking - if you can take away someone else's business - the insurance companies' business - you can take away mine. Also, if workers go on strike, I want them to lose their health insurance. And it's also a cultural thing - we don't do that kind of thing in this country."
Families USA.
A major inside the beltway liberal foundation and long-time foe of single payer. It's chief executive, Ron Pollack, was once an advocate for single payer. But no more. In November 1991, Pollack was at a Washington hotel debating Yale University professor Ted Marmor in front of then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Marmor was making the argument for single payer. Pollack against. A November 1994 article in the Washington Monthly, co-authored by Marmor, reported the result this way:
"After the two advocates finished, Clinton looked thoughtful, pointed to Marmor and said, 'Ted, you win the argument.' But gesturing to Pollack, Marmor recalls, the governor quickly added, 'But we're going to do what he says.' Even considering the Canadian system, everyone in the room agreed, would prompt GOP cries of 'socialized medicine' - cries that the press would faithfully report."
Health Care for American Now.
The largest coalition of liberal groups promoting a choice between a public plan and private insurance companies. "They are saying - we can't do single payer because Americans don't want it," said Kip Sullivan of the Minnesota chapter of PNHP. "That's based on junk research conducted by Celinda Lake for the Herndon Alliance. It is bad enough to say we can't do single payer because the insurance industry is too powerful to beat. But it is just plain insidious to say we can't do single payer because the American people don't want it. In fact, polling data indicates that two-thirds of Americans support a single payer system. And that level of support exists despite the fact that there is little public discussion about it."
Kaiser Family Foundation.
One of the most prestigious liberal inside the beltway think tanks on health reform policy. Saul Friedman is a reporter for Newsday. In February, Friedman wrote an article for Newsday arguing that single payer is suffering from a conspiracy of silence. And he says Kaiser is the most culpable of the co-conpsirators. Kaiser, funded initially by insurance industry money, regularly keeps single payer off the table, Friedman says. When single payer advocates released a study in January asserting that Congressman John Conyers' single payer bill (HR 676) could create 2.6 million new jobs and would cost far less than the private insurance currently paid for by individuals and employers, "the Kaiser Family Foundation's daily online report on health care developments at kff.org didn't mention it," Friedman reported. "Nor has Kaiser, the most comprehensive online source of health care information, made any mention of single-payer or the Conyers bill since it was introduced in 2003, despite widespread support for such a plan according to Kaiser's own polls." After a number of insistent inquiries, Kaiser told Friedman that they would publish charts in March comparing the Stark and Conyers bills. They never did.
The Lewin Group.
The go-to consulting firm for health reform studies. The most recent study, released last week and widely quoted in the press, of the public plan option, showed that the insurance industry would lose 32 million policy holders if a public plan is enacted. Lewin's health reform policy guru, John Sheils, told the Associated Press: "The private insurance industry might just fizzle out altogether." What the mainstream press didn't report was that The Lewin Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ingenix, which is in turn owned by UnitedHealth Group, the nation's largest health insurance corporation. Lewin Group has conducted studies on single payer at the state level - and their studies consistently show that single payer is the most efficient cost saving system. But Lewin Group has never done a study on HR 676 - which would create a single payer for the entire country and drive The Lewin Group's parent - UnitedHealth Group- out of business. When asked why Lewin Group never has done a study on HR 676, Sheils said - "the President didn't propose single payer, did he?" No, he didn't. That's why he too is on this list. (Sheils says The Lewin Group has studied national single payer. He points to a recent comparison of the different health reform proposals floating on Capitol Hill - including one by Congressman Pete Stark (D-California). Stark's bill would give every American the option of opting into Medicare. But that's not single payer, because it keeps the private insurance industry in the game. Sheils counters that he modeled the Stark bill as single-payer. "The employer coverage option under the Stark bill is made so unfavorable that no employer would do it. We have everyone in Medicare, with the resulting savings." Sheils says that of all the plans studied, the Stark bill saves the most money.)
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America (PHRMA).
PHRMA chief executive Billy Tauzin says that under single payer, the government would become a "price fixer." By which he means, the government, as a single payer, will have the power to negotiate drug prices downward, thus costing the drug corporations millions in excess profits. In recent years, PHRMA has infiltrated liberal sounding groups like America's Agenda - Health Care for All. PHRMA's Vice President for Government Affairs and Law, Jan Faiks, now sits on the board of America's Agenda and PHRMA contributes money to the group - which has worked in recent years to undermine single payer at the state level. (America's Agenda Mark Blum won't say how much money PHRMA gives to his group.)
We have met the enemy.
And they ain't us.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of Corporate Crime Reporter and founder of singlepayeraction.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) In the Absence of Proof
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/opinion/23herbert.html?_r=1
The options are running out for Troy Davis, a man who has been condemned to death for killing a police officer in Georgia, but whose guilt is seriously in question.
It's bad enough that we still execute people in the United States. It's absolutely chilling that we're willing to do it when we're not even sure we've got the right person in our clutches.
Mr. Davis came within an hour of execution last fall. His relatives and his attorney, Jason Ewart, had come to the state prison to say goodbye. Mr. Davis had eaten his last meal, and Mr. Ewart was ready to witness his execution.
The mind-numbing tension was broken with a last-minute stay from the Supreme Court. The case then made its way to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, which ruled 2-to-1 last month against Mr. Davis's petition for a hearing to examine new evidence pointing to his innocence.
The countdown to the ghoulish ritual of execution resumed.
Mr. Davis was convicted of shooting a police officer to death in the parking lot of a Burger King in Savannah, Ga., in 1989. The officer, Mark Allen MacPhail, was murdered as he went to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped.
I'm opposed to the death penalty, but I would have a very hard time finding even the faintest glimmer of sympathy for the person who murdered that officer. The problem with taking Mr. Davis's life in response to the murder of Officer MacPhail is the steadily growing mass of evidence that Mr. Davis was not the man who committed the murder.
Nine witnesses testified against Mr. Davis at his trial in 1991, but seven of the nine have since changed their stories. One of those seven, Dorothy Ferrell, said she was on parole when she testified and was afraid that she'd be sent back to prison if she didn't agree to cooperate with the authorities by fingering Mr. Davis.
"I told the detective that Troy Davis was the shooter," she said in an affidavit, "even though the truth was that I didn't know who shot the officer."
Another witness, Darrell Collins, who was a teenager at the time of the murder, said the police had "scared" him into falsely testifying by threatening to charge him as an accessory to the crime. He said he was told that he would go to prison and might never get out if he refused to help make the case against Mr. Davis.
This week Mr. Davis's lawyers, led by Mr. Ewart of the Arnold & Porter law firm in Washington, filed a last-ditch, long-shot petition with the Supreme Court, asking it to intervene and allow Mr. Davis's claims of innocence to be fully examined.
An extraordinary group of 27 former judges and prosecutors joined in an amicus brief in support of the petition. Among those who signed on were William Sessions, the former director of the F.B.I.; Larry Thompson, a U.S. attorney general from 2001-2003; the former Congressman Bob Barr, who was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986-1990; and Rudolph Gerber, who was an Arizona trial and court of appeals judge from 1979-2001.
The counsel of record for the amicus brief is the Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree. The brief asserts that the Supreme Court should intervene "because Mr. Davis can make an extraordinary showing through new, never reviewed evidence that strongly points to his innocence, and thus his execution would violate the Constitution."
The very idea of executing someone who may in fact be innocent should also violate the nation's conscience. Mr. Davis is incarcerated. He's no threat to anyone. Where's the harm in seeking out the truth and trying to see that justice is really done?
And if the truth can't be properly sorted out, we should be unwilling to let a human life be taken on mere surmise.
There was no physical evidence against Mr. Davis, and no murder weapon was ever found. At least three witnesses who testified against him at his trial (and a number of others who were not part of the trial) have since said that a man named Sylvester "Redd" Coles admitted to killing the police officer.
Mr. Coles, who was at the scene, and who, according to witnesses, later ditched a gun of the same caliber as the murder weapon, is one of the two witnesses who have not recanted. The other is a man who initially told investigators that he could not identify the killer. Nearly two years later, at the trial, he testified that the killer was Mr. Davis.
Officer MacPhail's murder was a horrendous crime that cries out for justice. Killing Mr. Davis, rather than remedying that tragedy, would only compound it.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) President's Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
May 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/us/politics/23detain.html?hp
President Obama's proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in "prolonged detention" inside the United States without trial would be a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free.
There are, to be sure, already some legal tools that allow for the detention of those who pose danger: quarantine laws as well as court precedents permitting the confinement of sexual predators and the dangerous mentally ill. Every day in America, people are denied bail and locked up because they are found to be a hazard to their communities, though they have yet to be convicted of anything.
Still, the concept of preventive detention is at the very boundary of American law, and legal experts say any new plan for the imprisonment of terrorism suspects without trial would seem inevitably bound for the Supreme Court.
Mr. Obama has so far provided few details of his proposed system beyond saying it would be subject to oversight by Congress and the courts. Whether it would be constitutional, several of the legal experts said in interviews, would most likely depend on the fairness of any such review procedures.
Ultimately, they suggested, the question of constitutionality would involve a national look in the mirror: Is this what America does?
"We have these limited exceptions to the principle that we only hold people after conviction," said Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell. "But they are narrow exceptions, and we don't want to expand them because they make us uncomfortable."
In his speech on antiterrorism policy Thursday, Mr. Obama, emphasizing that he wanted fair procedures, sought to distance himself from what critics of the Bush administration saw as its system of arbitrary detention.
"In our constitutional system," Mr. Obama said, "prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man."
But Mr. Obama's critics say his proposal is Bush redux. Closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and holding detainees domestically under a new system of preventive detention would simply "move Guantánamo to a new location and give it a new name," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested this month that as many as 100 detainees might be held in the United States under such a system.
Mr. Obama chose to call his proposal "prolonged detention," which made it sound more reassuring than some of its more familiar names. In some countries, it is called "administrative detention," a designation with a slightly totalitarian ring. Some of its proponents call it "indefinite detention," which evokes the Bush administration's position that Guantánamo detainees could be held until the end of the war on terror - perhaps for the rest of their lives - even if acquitted in war crimes trials.
Mr. Obama's proposal was a sign of the sobering difficulties posed by the president's plan to close the Guantánamo prison by January. The prolonged detention option is necessary, he said, because there may be some detainees who cannot be tried but who pose a security threat.
These, he said, are prisoners who in effect remain at war with the United States, even after some seven years at Guantánamo. He listed as examples detainees who received extensive explosives training from Al Qaeda, have sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden or have otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans.
Other countries, including Israel and India, have had laws allowing indefinite detention of terrorism suspects, said Monica Hakimi, an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan who has written about the subject. But, she said, few provide for essentially unending detention, and several European countries have restricted preventive detention to days or weeks.
Mr. Obama's proposal, Professor Hakimi said, appears to be "an aggressive approach that is not commonly taken in other Western developed countries."
In a letter to the president on Friday, Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said he was not sure Mr. Obama's idea would prove constitutional, and added that "such detention is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world."
Some critics of the Bush administration, who have become critics of Mr. Obama as well, have long said they are skeptical that there are detainees who are a demonstrable risk to the country but against whom the government can make no criminal case.
But some proponents of an indefinite detention system argue that Guantánamo's remaining 240 detainees include cold-blooded jihadists and perhaps some so warped by their experience in custody that no president would be willing to free them. And among them, the proponents say, are some who cannot be tried, in part for lack of evidence or because of tainted evidence.
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Mr. Obama's proposal was contrary to the path his administration apparently hoped to take when he took office. But that was before he and his advisers had access to detailed information on the detainees, said Mr. Wittes, who in a book last year argued for an indefinite detention system.
"This is the guy who has sworn an oath to protect the country," he said, "and if you look at the question of how many people can you try and how many people are you terrified to release, you have to have some kind of detention authority."
Civil liberties lawyers say American criminal laws are written broadly enough to make it relatively easy to convict terrorism suspects. They say Mr. Obama has not made the case persuasively that there is a worrisome category of detainees who are too dangerous to release but who cannot be convicted. The reason to have a criminal justice system at all, they say, is to trust it to decide who is guilty and who is not.
"If they cannot be convicted, then you release them," said Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. "That's what it means to have a justice system."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Informer's Role in Bombing Plot
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and KAREEM FAHIM
May 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/nyregion/23informant.html?hp
Everyone called the stranger with all the money "Maqsood." He would sit in his Mercedes, waiting in the parking lot of the mosque in Newburgh, N.Y., until the Friday prayer was over. Then, according to members of the mosque, the Masjid al-Ikhlas, he approached the young men.
He asked Shakir Rashada, 34, if he wanted to come over for lunch. He offered Shafeeq Abdulwali, 39, a job, perhaps at his construction company. Jamil Muhammed, 38, said he was offered cellphones and computers.
The man, a Pakistani, occasionally approached the assistant imam of the mosque, proposing meetings, or overpaying for a sandwich he would buy at a mosque fund-raiser. In time, many of the mosque's older members had made the man for a government informant, according to mosque leaders. They said that he seemed to focus most of his attention on younger black members and visitors.
"It's easy to influence someone with the dollar," said Mr. Muhammed, a longtime member of the mosque. "Especially these guys coming out of prison."
The members of the mosque now believe that Maqsood was the government informant at the center of the case involving four men from Newburgh arrested and charged this week with having plotted to explode bombs at Jewish centers in New York City. The government has said that the four men, several of whom visited the mosque in Newburgh and all of whom spent time in prison, were eager to kill Jews, and prosecutors charged that they had actually gone so far as to plant what they believed to be bombs on the streets of New York, an act the F.B.I. captured on videotape.
The government case revolves significantly around the work of an informant who facilitated the men's desire to mount a terrorist attack.
The role of informants has been a constant in the terror cases made by federal and local authorities since 9/11. And just as constant have been the attempts by lawyers for those charged to portray their clients as dupes, people who would not have committed to do harm without the provocation of the informants.
Those attempts have typically failed. Juries, evidently unmoved by claims about the conduct and influence of the informants, have routinely convicted those charged in the terror plots, like the five men charged with wanting to kill soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and the young Pakistani immigrant from Queens charged with conspiring to plant a bomb in Herald Square.
And, it turns out, an entrapment defense failed in a case involving the informant in this week's bomb plot investigation.
The informant was not identified in court papers unsealed on Wednesday in Manhattan. But according to a person briefed on the case, the informant is Shahed Hussain, the central prosecution witness in a 2004 federal sting focusing on a pizzeria owner and an imam at an Albany mosque.
Lawyers for those men argued that Mr. Hussain, who had posed as a wealthy Muslim radical, had entrapped their clients in an ultimately fictional plot to kill a Pakistani diplomat with a missile. But a federal jury convicted the two men, and they were sentenced to 15 years in prison.
"Any defense attorney worth his salt is going to argue entrapment," Raymond W. Kelly, the New York police commissioner, said Friday when asked about the use of an informant in the Newburgh case. "The argument will be made in court. But in essence, the law says you have to be otherwise not disposed to do the crime to successfully use the defense of entrapment."
The government's court filings present the informant as someone who merely assisted the violent intentions of the four men. Federal authorities have asserted that one of the defendants, James Cromitie, was angry about the war in Afghanistan and was determined to strike at America, and later at Jews. The informant, who told the men he had connections to a Pakistani terror group, then provided the men with what they believed to be sophisticated explosives and a missile.
Asked whether he thought the four men were a serious security risk before they were approached by the informant, Joseph M. Demarest Jr., who heads the F.B.I.'s New York office, said: "It was their plot and their plan that they pushed forward. We merely facilitated. They asked for the explosives. They asked for the Stingers, or rockets, I think, is the way they described it. They did leave the packages of what they believed to be real explosives, the bags, in front of two temples in the Bronx."
Vincent L. Briccetti, who represents Mr. Cromitie, said he was aware of Mr. Hussain's role in the Albany case, which was reported on Friday in The New York Post.
"His history is of interest to us," Mr. Briccetti said.
Court records from the Albany case show that Mr. Hussain came to the United States from Pakistan in 1993 or 1994. He appears to have held a variety of jobs, and come to own a number of businesses and properties. But in 2002, he was charged with a scheme involving taking money to illegally help people in the Albany area get driver's licenses.
To avoid being deported, he agreed to assist the government - first taking part in a sting aimed at the driver's license scheme, and later in a heroin trafficking case. In 2003, the F.B.I. enlisted him in a more ambitious case. They wanted him to help them learn more about the intentions of a man who they worried might be supportive of terror, Yassin Aref, and toward that end, began to focus on his friend Mohammad Mosharref Hossain.
Under the coaching of a federal agent, and often wearing a recording device, he met with the men, and presented himself as what he later at trial called "a wealthy radical." Eventually, the government charged the two men with money laundering as part of a plot to acquire missiles, and perhaps use one to kill a Pakistani diplomat.
Mr. Hussain testified at length at the trial of the two men, and defense lawyers sought to portray him as a tool of an overly zealous government.
He said that he met with an F.B.I. agent before every encounter with the two men to go over his game plan.
"What Agent Coll used to tell me, I used to tell them exactly," Mr. Hussain testified under cross-examination about his dealings with the F.B.I. agent and the two men.
"So you did exactly what Agent Coll told you?" he was asked by a defense lawyer.
"True," he answered.
James E. Long, a lawyer who represented Mr. Hussain from 2002, when he was arrested, until 2006, refused to comment.
William C. Pericak, an assistant United States attorney in Albany who prosecuted Mr. Aref and Mr. Hossain, also would not comment about the informant. But after the convictions of the two men, he said, "You can't put a percentage on how likely these guys would have been to commit an act of terrorism. But if a terrorist came to Albany, my opinion is that these guys would have assisted 100 percent."
The man called Maqsood, before appearing in Newburgh, had first approached the Masjid Al-Noor mosque in nearby Wappingers Falls, according to members there. The imam and several board members said a man who called himself Maqsood started sporadically attending services there in 2007. He was flashy, they said, and bragged about his real estate business and properties. He drove a black Mercedes and always came alone.
Zubair Zoha, a former treasurer of the mosque, said the man asked him three times for the full list of members of the mosque, saying he wanted to approach potential customers. But he was largely ignored or dismissed.
He stopped coming, the members said, around June 2008.
It was then, according to the government's court papers, that their informant struck up a relationship with Mr. Cromitie at the mosque in Newburgh, a set of dealings that would result in the bomb plot.
The imam in Newburgh, Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, said he was angry that the informant had associated his mosque with the scheme that had nothing to do with regular members. He condemned the plot, but questioned whether the men who were arrested would have committed to it had the informant not shown up.
Mr. Muhammad said he wondered whether he should have done anything differently once he had suspicions about the man named Maqsood.
"How do you go to the government about the government?" he asked.
Colin Moynihan, Nate Schweber and Karen Zraick contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) New Requirements on Border ID Stir Worries at Crossings
By GINGER THOMPSON
"Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary who forged her political career on the southern border and plans to travel to the northern border next week, makes no apologies for the tightened security measures, including using unmanned Predator aircraft from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota to patrol the border with Canada. Ground sensors were added along the border in Vermont, and towers equipped with cameras and sensors are being built around Buffalo."
May 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/world/americas/24border.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - After years of delay and hundreds of millions of dollars in preparations, Customs and Border Protection officials said new security measures would go into effect on June 1, requiring Americans entering the country by land or sea to show government-approved identification.
Currently, Americans crossing borders or arriving on cruise ships can prove their nationality by showing thousands of other forms of identification. But after the start of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, Americans will be required to present a passport or one of five other secure identification cards.
Coming as the summer vacation season starts, the measure is expected to lengthen lines at least temporarily at border crossings and seaports. But the biggest impact is expected along the nearly 4,000-mile border that the United States shares with Canada, which both countries once boasted was the world's longest undefended frontier.
Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans and Canadians crossing that border were required to do little more than state their nationality. Security has been gradually increased since then, causing longer lines and a steady drop in casual cross-border excursions, according to business and travel associations that monitor border traffic.
Now some local and state officials are concerned that the new measures might further disrupt a major trading relationship for the United States and drive apart border communities that have deep economic and cultural ties.
"We treat Canada like going to Ohio or to Chicago for the weekend," said Sarah Hubbard of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce. "We have families living on both sides of the border. We have business partnerships on both sides of the border.
"We believe our community is unique because it is bi-national," Ms. Hubbard added. "It's seamless in many ways."
Nearly 20 percent of all land trade between the United States and Canada - valued at an estimated $130 billion - crosses the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Ms. Hubbard said some 461,000 trucks, buses and cars crossed the Ambassador Bridge each month.
She said an estimated 4,000 Canadian health care workers commuted into Detroit to work. And the manufacturing industry is so transnational, she said, that a single car can be sent back and forth across the border 12 times before the finished product is ready to be shipped to a dealer.
Still, she said, cross-border traffic has fallen since Sept. 11. Traffic across the Ambassador Bridge is down by nearly 100,000 crossings a month this year compared with last year, Ms. Hubbard said. Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said that at border crossings in her state, traffic was down 13 percent to 19 percent this year from what it was last year.
Ms. Hubbard said some of the decline had been caused by the recession. But some of it she attributed to "confusion about documents and hostile treatment by border officials."
"We have many people who come from Canada and tell us they don't feel welcome when they cross the border," she said. "We talk about those complaints with our friends on the border, and they tell us their job is security, not customer service."
Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary who forged her political career on the southern border and plans to travel to the northern border next week, makes no apologies for the tightened security measures, including using unmanned Predator aircraft from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota to patrol the border with Canada.
Ground sensors were added along the border in Vermont, and towers equipped with cameras and sensors are being built around Buffalo.
"One of the things that I think we need to be sensitive to is the very real feeling among southern border states, and in Mexico, that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border," Ms. Napolitano said at a recent conference on the northern border at the Brookings Institution.
Her comparisons between the northern and southern borders have stirred outrage in Canada, where 80 percent of the population lives within 100 miles of the border and the government considers itself one of America's most reliable allies.
Seizures of illegal drugs and the detention of immigrants along the northern border are a small fraction of what they are along the southern one, which is considered the busiest transshipment point for illegal immigrants and drugs in the world.
Still, Canadian officials said that their government, like the United States, had become much more sensitive to terrorism threats since Sept. 11. Canada has invested heavily, they said, in improving immigration controls, upgrading security at airports and seaports, sharing intelligence with its allies, and establishing its own homeland security agency, which includes joint American-Canadian border enforcement teams. And Canadian border guards began getting their first weapons in 2007, after years of debate about whether they should be armed.
A Canadian diplomat in Washington said his country's biggest diplomatic problem had been dealing with the American perception that Canada poses a threat because of its open immigration policy and concerns that it is a haven for terrorists. "We spend a lot of time trying to explain the fact that just because you don't have the National Guard or a fence along the border, it doesn't mean it's not secure," said the diplomat, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of his comments.
Plans to put the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative into effect two years ago were postponed because of a significant backlog in passport applications and delays getting sufficient staff and equipment in place.
In a meeting with reporters on Wednesday, Jayson P. Ahern, acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said Congress had allotted $350 million to help the agency resolve those problems.
Mr. Ahern said recent surveys of drivers across the border suggested that more than 80 percent of them had the required identification. The State Department, he said, has issued a million passport cards, wallet-size identification. And at least two million other people have gotten one of the four other kinds of acceptable border crossing cards.
"I don't expect any major delays or traffic jams as a result of this program," Mr. Ahern said. "There will be no story on June 1."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) A Prom Divided
By SARA CORBETT
May 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24prom-t.html?ref=us
About now, high-school seniors everywhere slip into a glorious sort of limbo. Waiting out the final weeks of the school year, they begin rightfully to revel in the shared thrill of moving on. It is no different in south-central Georgia's Montgomery County, made up of a few small towns set between fields of wire grass and sweet onion. The music is turned up. Homework languishes. The future looms large. But for the 54 students in the class of 2009 at Montgomery County High School, so, too, does the past. On May 1 - a balmy Friday evening - the white students held their senior prom. And the following night - a balmy Saturday - the black students had theirs.
Racially segregated proms have been held in Montgomery County - where about two-thirds of the population is white - almost every year since its schools were integrated in 1971. Such proms are, by many accounts, longstanding traditions in towns across the rural South, though in recent years a number of communities have successfully pushed for change. When the actor Morgan Freeman offered to pay for last year's first-of-its-kind integrated prom at Charleston High School in Mississippi, his home state, the idea was quickly embraced by students - and rejected by a group of white parents, who held a competing "private" prom. (The effort is the subject of a documentary, "Prom Night in Mississippi," which will be shown on HBO in July.) The senior proms held by Montgomery County High School students - referred to by many students as "the black-folks prom" and "the white-folks prom" - are organized outside school through student committees with the help of parents. All students are welcome at the black prom, though generally few if any white students show up. The white prom, students say, remains governed by a largely unspoken set of rules about who may come. Black members of the student council say they have asked school administrators about holding a single school-sponsored prom, but that, along with efforts to collaborate with white prom planners, has failed. According to Timothy Wiggs, the outgoing student council president and one of 21 black students graduating this year, "We just never get anywhere with it." Principal Luke Smith says the school has no plans to sponsor a prom, noting that when it did so in 1995, attendance was poor.
Students of both races say that interracial friendships are common at Montgomery County High School. Black and white students also date one another, though often out of sight of judgmental parents. "Most of the students do want to have a prom together," says Terra Fountain, a white 18-year-old who graduated from Montgomery County High School last year and is now living with her black boyfriend. "But it's the white parents who say no. ... They're like, if you're going with the black people, I'm not going to pay for it."
"It's awkward," acknowledges JonPaul Edge, a senior who is white. "I have as many black friends as I do white friends. We do everything else together. We hang out. We play sports together. We go to class together. I don't think anybody at our school is racist." Trying to explain the continued existence of segregated proms, Edge falls back on the same reasoning offered by a number of white students and their parents. "It's how it's always been," he says. "It's just a tradition."
Earlier this month, on the Friday night of the white prom, Kera Nobles, a senior who is black, and six of her black classmates drove over to the local community center where it was being held. Standing amid a crowd of about 80 parents, siblings and grandparents, they snapped pictures and whooped appreciatively as their white friends - blow-dried, boutonniered and glittering in a way that only high-school seniors can - did their "senior walk," parading in elegant pairs into the prom. "We got stared at a little, being there," said one black student, "but it wasn't too bad."
After the last couple were announced, after they watched the white people's father-daughter dance and then, along with the other bystanders, were ushered by chaperones out the door, Kera and her friends piled into a nearby KFC to eat. Whatever elation they felt for their dressed-up classmates was quickly wearing off.
"My best friend is white," said one senior girl, a little glumly. "She's in there. She's real cool, but I don't understand. If they can be in there, why can't everybody else?"
The seven teenagers - a mix of girls and boys - slowly worked their way through two buckets of fried chicken. They cracked jokes about the white people's prom ("I feel bad for them! Their prom is lame!"). They puzzled merrily over white girls' devotion both to tanning beds ("You don't like black people, but you're working your hardest to get as brown as I am!") and also to the very boys who were excluded from the dance ("Half of those girls, when they get home, they're gonna text a black boy"). They mused about whether white parents really believed that by keeping black people out of the prom, it would keep them out of their children's lives ("You think there aren't going to be black boys at college?"). And finally, more somberly, they questioned their white friends' professed helplessness in the face of their parents' prejudice ("You're 18 years old! You're old enough to smoke, drive, do whatever else you want to. Why aren't you able to step up and say, 'I want to have my senior prom with the people I'm graduating with?' ").
It was getting late now. KFC was closing. Another black teenager was mopping the floor nearby. A couple of the boys mentioned they had to wash their cars in the morning. Kera had an early hair appointment. The next night, they would dress up and dance raucously for four hours before tumbling back outside, one step closer to graduating. In the meantime, a girl named Angel checked her cellphone to see if any of the white kids had texted from inside their prom. They hadn't. Angel shrugged. "I really don't understand," she said. "Because I'm thinking that these people love me and I love them, but I don't know. Tonight's a different story."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Amid Housing Bust, Phoenix Begins a New Frenzy
By DAVID STREITFELD
May 24, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/business/24phoenix.html?ref=business
PHOENIX - Every weekday morning, Lou Jarvis drives the sun-baked suburban streets looking for investment gold: a family that will lose its house in a foreclosure auction within a few hours.
If the property looks promising, Mr. Jarvis puts in a bid on behalf of any of his dozens of clients eager to become landlords. When he wins, he offers to let the family stay in the house and rent for much less than their mortgage payment.
With this sweltering desert city enduring one of the largest tumbles in housing prices for any urban area since the Depression, there is an unrelenting stream of foreclosures to choose from. On some days, hundreds are offered for sale at the auctions that take place on the plaza in front of the county courthouse.
There is also a large supply of foreclosed families who can no longer qualify for a loan. And that is prompting a flood of investors like Mr. Jarvis, who wants to turn as many of these people as possible into rent-paying tenants in the houses they used to own.
Real estate got just about everyone into trouble in Phoenix, and the thinking seems to be that real estate is going to get everyone out.
The low end of the real estate market here - and in some equally hard-hit places like inland California and coastal Florida - is becoming as wild as anything during the boom.
One real estate agent was showing a foreclosed house to a prospective client when a passer-by saw the open door, came in and snapped up the property. Another agent says she was having the lock changed on a bank-owned home when a man happened by, found out from the locksmith that it was available, and immediately bought it. Bidding wars are routine.
Absentee buyers, who can be either investors or individuals purchasing a vacation property, bought nearly 4 of every 10 homes sold in the Phoenix metropolitan area in April, according to the research firm MDA DataQuick. That is up 50 percent since late 2007, and is nearly the same ratio as at the 2005 peak.
Once again, just about everybody seems to be buying as many houses as they can, positive it will make them rich - or at least allow them to recoup some of their losses.
"I bought too high a few years ago," said Jason Fischbeck, an entrepreneur who lives across the street from Mr. Jarvis and is one of his clients. "It cost $225,000. Now it's worth $110,000. So I just paid $80,000 cash for another. "
Mr. Jarvis, 47, the former co-owner of a wood moulding company that thrived in the boom and faltered in the crunch, also made some mistakes. Last spring, he contracted for three new homes in the distant suburb of Copper Basin, convinced that real estate was bottoming.
He was wrong. He managed to get out of two of the contracts but had to buy one of the houses, which is now substantially under water.
"You need to buy when there's blood in the streets," he said with a shrug. "Even if it's your own blood."
In January, Mr. Jarvis began working as director of investor relations for Brewer Caldwell, a property management firm that had been approached by the CBI Group, a real estate fund based in Calgary, Alberta. In its first foray into the American market, CBI is buying 175 rental houses in Phoenix.
One of them belonged to Mary Lou and Jorge Aguilar, who purchased it new for $111,000 in 1999. Three years ago, after a series of financial difficulties, they refinanced for $185,000 for reasons they no longer understand. "Our lender talked a pretty picture," Mrs. Aguilar said bitterly.
When the couple's mortgage payment adjusted to $1,242 a month, they fell behind and ended up in foreclosure. They now pay $1,014 in rent, which they say is bearable.
Still, their feelings are mixed. "It's not our house anymore; it's someone else's," said Mrs. Aguilar, who works for the state welfare department.
For CBI, the deal is sweet. At that rent, it would recoup the $52,000 it paid for the house in about five years. "This type of deal is absolutely not available in Canada," said Jarrett Zielinski, a CBI executive. "No city here has fallen by 50 percent, the way Phoenix has."
The investment group is opening a new fund this week to buy another 160 Phoenix homes.
As CBI continues to buy, it is planning investing seminars for its tenants. "Our goal is to be able to sell them their house back," Mr. Zielinski said. "Wouldn't that complete the circle?"
First up for Mr. Jarvis's inspection on a recent morning is a three-bedroom on a cul-de-sac in the suburb of Gilbert. A rival investment crew is already there. "You don't want this one," one fellow says. "It's no good." Mr. Jarvis just laughs.
Once they are inside, the reason he is trying to send Mr. Jarvis away becomes clear. The house, built in 1991, is clean and well proportioned, with an opening bid of $76,000 - $200,000 less than what it sold for three years ago.
Not every property gets his nod. He considers an older condominium but deems it unlikely to appreciate. A three-bedroom seems promising until he sees the power lines looming just feet from the back fence.
In the end, he makes just one bid this day, for the three-bedroom he saw first. He offers $110,000, which is not enough. At the courthouse, it goes for $114,000. Every week, the foreclosure market is more competitive.
As the day's auctions wind down, Mr. Jarvis goes back to the office to meet with a group that wants to put $5 million into the Phoenix housing market. A few miles away, the owner of that house with the monstrous power lines, Robert Corr, is being told his house was sold and he has five days to vacate.
Mr. Corr smiled when he heard the news, happy to be the latest of the 78,738 foreclosures in Phoenix since January 2005. He had already rented a van to take him and his family back to Alabama, where they would buy a mobile home and live on 10 acres of land.
Brewer Caldwell has bought about 125 houses this year for its clients. Only a quarter had owners who were living there already and willing to stay on as tenants. Filling up the rest, and all the other houses the company intends to buy, will depend on a steady supply of people who cannot afford to buy for themselves.
"If Phoenix loses population," Mr. Jarvis says, "then buying houses here is a bad bet."
As Mr. Jarvis scouts for houses, he sometimes finds a familiar one. In February, he saw a home that one of his brothers bought from a builder in 2005, camping out overnight for the opportunity. With its value now shrunk, the brother was letting it go to foreclosure.
Mr. Jarvis's daughter Jade also bought a house at the market's peak - in her case to live in. The other day she asked for advice: should she keep paying the mortgage on something that had declined in value by 60 percent? His conclusion: "probably not."
"Am I teaching my kids right by letting them walk away from something they made a commitment to?" Mr. Jarvis wonders.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) State of Paralysis
[Here's a thought for Paul Krugman: TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!...BW]
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/opinion/25krugman.html
California, it has long been claimed, is where the future happens first. But is that still true? If it is, God help America.
The recession has hit the Golden State hard. The housing bubble was bigger there than almost anywhere else, and the bust has been bigger too. California's unemployment rate, at 11 percent, is the fifth-highest in the nation. And the state's revenues have suffered accordingly.
What's really alarming about California, however, is the political system's inability to rise to the occasion.
Despite the economic slump, despite irresponsible policies that have doubled the state's debt burden since Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor, California has immense human and financial resources. It should not be in fiscal crisis; it should not be on the verge of cutting essential public services and denying health coverage to almost a million children. But it is - and you have to wonder if California's political paralysis foreshadows the future of the nation as a whole.
The seeds of California's current crisis were planted more than 30 years ago, when voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13, a ballot measure that placed the state's budget in a straitjacket. Property tax rates were capped, and homeowners were shielded from increases in their tax assessments even as the value of their homes rose.
The result was a tax system that is both inequitable and unstable. It's inequitable because older homeowners often pay far less property tax than their younger neighbors. It's unstable because limits on property taxation have forced California to rely more heavily than other states on income taxes, which fall steeply during recessions.
Even more important, however, Proposition 13 made it extremely hard to raise taxes, even in emergencies: no state tax rate may be increased without a two-thirds majority in both houses of the State Legislature. And this provision has interacted disastrously with state political trends.
For California, where the Republicans began their transformation from the party of Eisenhower to the party of Reagan, is also the place where they began their next transformation, into the party of Rush Limbaugh. As the political tide has turned against California Republicans, the party's remaining members have become ever more extreme, ever less interested in the actual business of governing.
And while the party's growing extremism condemns it to seemingly permanent minority status - Mr. Schwarzenegger was and is sui generis - the Republican rump retains enough seats in the Legislature to block any responsible action in the face of the fiscal crisis.
Will the same thing happen to the nation as a whole?
Last week Bill Gross of Pimco, the giant bond fund, warned that the U.S. government may lose its AAA debt rating in a few years, thanks to the trillions it's spending to rescue the economy and the banks. Is that a real possibility?
Well, in a rational world Mr. Gross's warning would make no sense. America's projected deficits may sound large, yet it would take only a modest tax increase to cover the expected rise in interest payments - and right now American taxes are well below those in most other wealthy countries. The fiscal consequences of the current crisis, in other words, should be manageable.
But that presumes that we'll be able, as a political matter, to act responsibly. The example of California shows that this is by no means guaranteed. And the political problems that have plagued California for years are now increasingly apparent at a national level.
To be blunt: recent events suggest that the Republican Party has been driven mad by lack of power. The few remaining moderates have been defeated, have fled, or are being driven out. What's left is a party whose national committee has just passed a resolution solemnly declaring that Democrats are "dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals," and released a video comparing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Pussy Galore.
And that party still has 40 senators.
So will America follow California into ungovernability? Well, California has some special weaknesses that aren't shared by the federal government. In particular, tax increases at the federal level don't require a two-thirds majority, and can in some cases bypass the filibuster. So acting responsibly should be easier in Washington than in Sacramento.
But the California precedent still has me rattled. Who would have thought that America's largest state, a state whose economy is larger than that of all but a few nations, could so easily become a banana republic?
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Job Losses Push Safer Mortgages to Foreclosure
By PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY
May 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/business/economy/25foreclose.html?hp
As job losses rise, growing numbers of American homeowners with once solid credit are falling behind on their mortgages, amplifying a wave of foreclosures.
In the latest phase of the nation's real estate disaster, the locus of trouble has shifted from subprime loans - those extended to home buyers with troubled credit - to the far more numerous prime loans issued to those with decent financial histories.
With many economists anticipating that the unemployment rate will rise into the double digits from its current 8.9 percent, foreclosures are expected to accelerate. That could exacerbate bank losses, adding pressure to the financial system and the broader economy.
"We're about to have a big problem," said Morris A. Davis, a real estate expert at the University of Wisconsin. "Foreclosures were bad last year? It's going to get worse."
Economists refer to the current surge of foreclosures as the third wave, distinct from the initial spike when speculators gave up property because of plunging real estate prices, and the secondary shock, when borrowers' introductory interest rates expired and were reset higher.
"We're right in the middle of this third wave, and it's intensifying," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "That loss of jobs and loss of overtime hours and being forced from a full-time to part-time job is resulting in defaults. They're coast to coast."
Those sliding into foreclosure today are more likely to be modest borrowers whose loans fit their income than the consumers of exotically lenient mortgages that formerly typified the crisis.
Economy.com expects that 60 percent of the mortgage defaults this year will be set off primarily by unemployment, up from 29 percent last year.
Robert and Kay Richards live in the center of this trend. In 2006, they took a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage - a prime loan - borrowing $172,000 to buy a prefabricated house. They erected the building on land they owned in the northern Minnesota town of Babbitt, clearing the terrain of pine trees with their own hands.
Mr. Richards worked as a truck driver, hauling timber from a nearby mill. His wife oversaw the books. Together, they brought in about $70,000 a year - enough to make their monthly mortgage payments of $1,300 while raising their two boys, now 11 and 16.
But their truck driving business collapsed last year when the mill closed. Mr. Richards has since worked occasional stints for local trucking companies. His wife has failed to find clerical work.
"Every month that goes by, you get a little further behind," Mr. Richards said.
Last June, they missed their first payment, and they have since slipped $10,000 into arrears. They are trying to persuade their bank to cut their payments ahead of a foreclosure sale.
From November to February, the number of prime mortgages that were delinquent at least 90 days, were in foreclosure or had deteriorated to the point that the lender took possession of the home increased more than 473,000, exceeding 1.5 million, according to a New York Times analysis of data provided by First American CoreLogic, a real estate research group. Those loans totaled more than $224 billion.
During the same period, subprime mortgages in those three categories increased by fewer than 14,000, reaching 1.65 million. The number of similarly troubled Alt-A loans - those given to people with slightly tainted credit - rose 159,000, to 836,000.
Over all, more than four million loans worth $717 billion were in the three distressed categories in February, a jump of more than 60 percent in dollar terms compared with a year earlier.
Under a program announced in February by the Obama administration, the government is to spend $75 billion on incentives for mortgage servicing companies that reduce payments for troubled homeowners. The Treasury Department says the program will spare as many as four million homeowners from foreclosure.
But three months after the program was announced, a Treasury spokeswoman, Jenni Engebretsen, estimated the number of loans that have been modified at "more than 10,000 but fewer than 55,000."
In the first two months of the year alone, another 313,000 mortgages landed in foreclosure or became delinquent at least 90 days, according to First American CoreLogic.
"I don't think there's any chance of government measures making more than a small dent," said Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital.
Last year, foreclosures expanded sharply as the economy shed an average of 256,000 jobs each month. Since then, the job market has deteriorated further, with an average of 665,000 jobs vanishing each month.
Each foreclosure costs lenders $50,000, according to data cited in a 2006 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, so an additional two million foreclosures could mean $100 billion in lender losses.
The government's recent stress tests of banks concluded that the nation's 19 largest could be forced to write off as much as a fresh $600 billion by the end of 2010, bringing their total losses to $1 trillion. The Federal Reserve concluded that these banks needed to raise another $75 billion.
Many economists pronounce that assessment reasonable, while cautioning that it could become inadequate if foreclosures continue to accelerate.
"The margin for error is not that big," said Brian Bethune, chief United States financial economist for HIS Global Insight. "It's kind of like, 'Let's keep our fingers crossed that we've seen the worst.' "
Among prime borrowers, foreclosure rates have been growing fastest in states with particularly high unemployment. In California, for example, the unemployment rate rose to 11.2 percent from 6.4 percent for the year that ended in March, while the foreclosure rate for prime mortgages nearly tripled, reaching 1.81 percent.
Even states seemingly removed from the real estate bubble are seeing foreclosures accelerate as the recession grinds on.
In Minnesota, three of every five people seeking foreclosure counseling now have a prime loan, according to the nonprofit Minnesota Home Ownership Center.
In Woodbury, Minn., Rick and Christine Sellman are struggling to persuade their bank to reduce their $2,200 monthly mortgage on their five-bedroom home.
Mr. Sellman, a construction worker, found some work putting in asphalt driveways last summer, but he is now receiving unemployment. Ms. Sellman's scrapbooking businesses shut down last summer. Since then, they have slipped $19,000 behind on their mortgage.
"We were always up on our house payments," Ms. Sellman said. "You work so hard to keep what you have, and because of circumstances beyond our control now, there's nothing we can do about it."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Fate of Missing Iraqis Haunts Those Left Behind
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and SUADAD AL-SALHY
May 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/world/middleeast/25missing.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD - During the worst of Iraq's sectarian violence three years ago, Anam Diham's 13-year-old son went out to buy vegetables one afternoon. He never returned.
Since then, Ms. Diham has exhausted her family's life savings trying to find the boy, who spent his days with his father searching Baghdad's streets for dropped coins.
She has traveled to big American prisons and small-town Iraqi cemeteries. And as have hundreds of other people, mostly women in black abayas, she often waits patiently in line outside government offices, waiting to meet with officials she hopes will have news. They never do. After all this time, no one can say whether her son is dead or alive.
"All I need is to find some clue about him," Ms. Diham, a mother of seven, said recently as she pored over hundreds of photographs of unidentified bodies at a morgue. "I'd like to build a grave to visit him. Nothing more than that."
She made it through about a quarter of the photos before she left, too upset to continue.
Ten thousand Iraqis are listed as missing since the American invasion six years ago - although the Iraqi government acknowledges that its figures are probably only a small fraction of the actual number. Most of those who disappeared are believed to be dead. But even those whose bodies have been found are not always identified quickly; Dr. Munjid Salah al-Deen, the manager of Baghdad's central morgue, said his staff was working to identify 28,000 bodies from 2006 to 2008 alone.
The authorities are hampered by some of the cruelties of war and the poverty it brings: some bodies are mutilated and hard to identify, and there is little money for new forensic workers to handle the huge caseload.
But families also question the Iraqi government's resolve in investigating cases, and groups like the Red Cross have become involved on the issue. "The problem of the missing is enormous," said Dibeh Fakhr, a spokeswoman for the Iraq office of the International Committee of the Red Cross. "Families have the right to know, and governments have an obligation to help find out what happened to their loved ones."
In some cases, the missing have been kidnapped and are released after ransoms are paid. Other times, their bodies are found years after they disappeared, after being fished out of a river or dug up from one of the mass graves that continue to be discovered around the country every few weeks.
Relatives say the lack of information from the government has left them in limbo: not wanting to admit that a loved one has probably been killed, but not believing that he or she is still alive either.
The toll of not knowing is not just emotional; in Iraq's male-dominated society, there is also a practical consequence.
In most cases, until a missing male head of a household is declared dead by the government, the wife is unable to collect benefits, hold a funeral, remarry or gain access to the family's bank account, usually in the husband's name, for four years.
Some families have resorted to claiming a body they know is not their loved one's, so the women can get access to the money they need to live, a Baghdad morgue official said.
Kamil Amin, a director at Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights, the agency charged with helping people track the missing, said recently that he believed that more should be done to aid the families of those who disappeared, especially those whose primary wage earners are missing.
His ministry, Mr. Amin said, is doing its best to cope with a heavy caseload. "The government is morally responsible to these families," he said. "We think almost all of the missing have been killed by terrorists, but the legal system needs evidence."
There are a variety of factors contributing to the delays in solving cases, according to aid organizations and the government. Iraq has only one DNA lab and a limited ability to freeze samples; almost half of the country's provinces have no forensic pathologists; and a lack of coordination among government agencies means that the Iraqi Army and the police frequently remove bodies from graves without first informing the Human Rights Ministry, often losing valuable identifying evidence in the process.
Further, Iraq has no central database to try to link the more than 15,000 unidentified bodies that have been buried anonymously in the past few years with a list of names of the missing. There is also no record of victims of sectarian violence who have been buried informally in unmarked plots.
Even if family members think they have found a missing relative, they often need the help of government labs to be sure. Many victims of sectarian violence were beheaded, had limbs amputated or had holes drilled into their skulls, making them less recognizable.
The bodies of others have decomposed, leaving only bits of bone, tattered clothing and plastic sandals as clues.
Identification sometimes comes down to a guess, a dim memory of a shirt worn the day a husband disappeared or of which tooth a son had lost years before in an accident.
Ghaniah Ayed Mudhi, who lives in the industrial city of Baiji, in northern Iraq, has had a brother, two cousins and two brothers-in-law disappear since 2006.
Her brother, Muhammad Ayed Mudhi, left behind 4 children and 11 other dependents. He disappeared after being pulled out of his truck at a checkpoint. Later, a stranger came to the family's house demanding the equivalent of $7,000 for his return. The family paid the ransom, but Mr. Ayed Mudhi, who would be 29 if alive, remains missing.
In the Shuala neighborhood of Baghdad, Fadhilah Harfish has kept the room that belonged to her 25-year-old son, Muhammad, as he left it - just a little tidier. The bed is made. The curtains are drawn. His shirts hang neatly in a closet. Relatives removed photos of Muhammad from the house because Ms. Harfish sometimes spent hours crying over them. The family has visited morgues, prisons and graveyards, and has even communicated with members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the Mahdi Army militia, to no avail.
Muhammad, who trained as a teacher, had been working as a taxi driver, a common job for Iraqis who cannot find career-oriented work. Driving cabs was also among the most dangerous jobs during the height of the sectarian killings. He disappeared one morning in December 2007, early in his workday.
"I can't sleep at night," said Ms. Harfish, sobbing. "I can't forget him. He's like my breath."
The family of Ms. Diham, whose 13-year-old son disappeared while buying vegetables, has been squatting at a former army base in Baghdad's Amiriya neighborhood.
They survive by recycling aluminum cans scavenged from a large garbage dump a few dozen yards away.
The glass on their windows has been knocked out by explosions from car bombs, and there is no proper front door, only a strip of white cloth.
One of the rooms is filled with piles of empty cans waiting to be bagged. Among the family's few possessions are two white mules and a television set.
Ms. Diham said she had decided to give up looking for her son, Meethaq, out of frustration and fatigue. But her husband, Basim, who cries at the mention of the child's name, vowed to keep searching.
"This case has exhausted our money," he said, sitting on a worn carpet. "But I won't stop until I find something."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) California Supreme Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban
By Karen Gullo
May 26, 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKQo8hsiFUpk
May 26 (Bloomberg) -- The California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, the ballot initiative passed in November that outlawed same-sex weddings, a practice that's now legal in Iowa and three other states.
The court ruled that 18,000 gay marriages performed before the ban remain valid. Gay rights advocates said they may ask voters next year to overturn Proposition 8, claiming opposition to gay marriage is waning. Fifty-two percent of voters supported the initiative, which amended the state constitution to recognize only marriages between a man and a woman. Sixty-one percent of voters supported a similar measure in 2000.
The California high court legalized gay weddings a year ago, ruling 4-3 that state laws against the practice were unconstitutional. The court ruled 6 to 1 today in favor of upholding Proposition 8, saying it was ruling only on the ability of voters to pass a ballot measure rather than whether gay marriage should be legal.
"The principal issue before us concerns the scope of the right of the people, under the provisions of the California constitution, to change or alter the state constitution itself through the initiative process," the court wrote, "not to determine whether the provision at issue is wise or sound."
The November ban sparked protests across California and led activists to create Web sites that identified individuals who donated money to support the measure and boycott donors' business. The 14-word ballot measure overrode the court's May 15, 2008, ruling, which at the time made California the second U.S. state after Massachusetts to legalize gay weddings.
Schwarzenegger's Prediction
"I believe that one day either the people or courts will recognize gay marriage," California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "Regarding the 18,000 marriages that took place prior to Proposition 8's passage, the court made the right decision in keeping them intact."
Supporters of gay marriage gathered at an emotional news conference at San Francisco City Hall, where hundreds of gay couples flocked in 2004 when the city issued marriage licenses before being halted by a court. Proposition 8 could be overturned by ballot measure next year, they said.
"It is clear this is not the end," said San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart, her voice trembling. "We have already seen a sea change in public opinion about the rights of gay couples."
Since Proposition 8 passed, Iowa, Vermont and Connecticut have legalized gay weddings. Maine lawmakers approved a gay marriage bill on May 5 that was signed by the governor and hasn't taken effect. Massachusetts legalized the marriages in 2004.
700,000 Signatures
Almost 700,000 signatures must be gathered in California by Sept. 25 to put an initiative to amend the state constitution on the June 2010 ballot.
Proposition 8 doesn't alter or affect the California Supreme Court's 2008 ruling that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to establish "an officially recognized family relationship," according to today's ruling. The proposition added the sentence, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California," to the constitution.
The measure doesn't change gay couples' legal rights, only their ability to have their partnerships designated as marriages, the court said. Proposition 8 wasn't a revision to the constitution that would require approval from lawmakers, as opponents argued, because it didn't change the way government operates, the court said.
California's domestic partner law gives gay couples the same rights as heterosexual couples regarding financial support, property, child custody and taxes.
'Escalate' tactics
"We believe it's time to escalate the tactics in this movement," said Joe Capley-Alfano, who wed his partner before Proposition 8 was passed. "We don't have the luxury of time to wait any longer."
Capley-Alfano says he lacks health insurance because his employer doesn't offer it and his partner's union-provided health care program isn't offered to him because the union doesn't recognize the couple's marriage or domestic partnership.
Supporters of Proposition 8 said they were pleased by the court's decision.
Years of Campaigning
"This is a great day for traditional marriage and the family," said Mathew Staver, an attorney who represented anti gay-marriage groups in court, in an e-mailed statement. "Political leaders who say that we should give up the battle on traditional marriage are out of touch with the American people,"
Efforts to repeal Proposition 8 would be "vigorously contested," Andrew Pugno, another attorney for groups supporting the measure, said in the statement.
"I'm happy that Prop 8 was upheld," said Jana Kulinich, 19, a student at American River College in Sacramento, who stood outside the courthouse today. "Marriage by nature is between a man and a woman."
Gay couples and the city of San Francisco, which briefly allowed gays to marry in 2004, sued to overturn the ballot initiative. They argued that it changed a fundamental civil right of a protected minority and amounted to a revision, not an amendment, to the constitution.
Revising the California constitution requires a two-thirds majority vote by the legislature before asking voters to weigh in, they argued in court papers.
Amendment, Not Revision
Proposition 8 supporters countered that the measure didn't revise the constitution because it didn't change the way the state government operates. The court can't overturn the will of voters, even if they made an unwise decision on individual rights, the measure's supporters argued in court papers.
A federal lawsuit filed May 22 in San Francisco seeks to overturn Proposition 8. The lawsuit, on behalf of two gay couples wishing to marry, was filed by Theodore Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general who represented former President George Bush during the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case that decided the presidential election, and by David Boies, who represented former Vice President Al Gore in the same case.
California has at least 92,000 same-sex couples, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than any other state.
"What do we want? Equality. When do we want it? Now," several hundred protesters opposing the ban chanted outside the state Supreme Court in San Francisco before the decision was announced. They switched their chant to "shame on you," upon learning of the ruling.
'Shell-Shocked'
"Honestly, I feel shell-shocked," said Lindasusan Ulrich, 40, who married her partner before Proposition 8 was passed and wore her wedding dress in front of the courthouse today. "It's really dehumanizing to have people vote on whether or not I'm a full citizen."
The cases are Karen Straus v. Mark Horton, S168047; Robin Tyler v. California, S168066; and San Francisco v. Mark Horton, S168078, California Supreme Court (San Francisco).
To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Gullo in the California Supreme Court in San Francisco at kgullo@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: May 26, 2009 21:15 EDT
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Ex-Detainee Describes His 7 Years at Guantánamo
By STEVEN ERLANGER
May 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/world/europe/27paris.html?ref=world
PARIS - A former Guantánamo detainee, an Algerian given a new home in France, is contending that he was interrogated at the Cuban detention center for 16 straight nights in 2003 - from midnight until 5 a.m., at least - and that he was force-fed through a nasal tube for more than two years when he went on a hunger strike.
The Algerian, Lakhdar Boumediene, 43, is the only Guantánamo detainee that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has agreed to accept so far to help the Obama administration close the detention center.
Mr. Boumediene was captured in 2001 in Bosnia and handed over to American officials. He was kept at Guantánamo from January 2002 until May 15 of this year as terrorism suspect No. 10005, when he was released and put aboard a plane to France. He was kept under observation in a French military clinic until Monday, when he emerged and told some of the details of his story to The Washington Post and Le Monde, which published them on Tuesday.
No. 10005 "was my name there," he said. "That's what they called me. Never Lakhdar or Boumediene," he told Le Monde.
He said he underwent more than 120 interrogations, mostly about foreign Muslims in Bosnia, before he stopped cooperating with his questioners. Details of his treatment could not be confirmed. He was the plaintiff in a 2008 Supreme Court case, Boumediene v. Bush, which gave detainees the right to judicial review, and he was later ordered released by a United States District Court judge in Washington.
Mr. Boumediene is one of about 60 detainees considered by the Americans to be safe to release, but Washington is finding it difficult to place them in other countries. An aid worker with the Red Crescent, he was originally suspected of being part of a plot to blow up the American and British Embassies in Sarajevo, but charges were dropped. Still, he was sent to Guantánamo and kept there for more than seven years, and was interrogated about his connections to another of the Algerians, Belkacem Bensayah, accused by investigators of being an operative for Al Qaeda in Bosnia.
Mr. Bensayah had come to his office at the Red Crescent, and Mr. Boumediene helped Mr. Bensayah's family, according to The Post.
During the 16-night period of interrogation, Mr. Boumediene said that "six or seven" interrogators would take turns questioning him, going from midnight to 5 in the morning, then resuming a few hours later. He insisted to Le Monde that "I was never an Islamist."
Upon his release from the hospital, Mr. Boumediene, thin and bearded, joined his wife and two daughters, 13 and 8, for a lunch of pizza and orange juice. "Of course I didn't recognize them," he said.
Detainee's Age in Dispute
KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - An Afghan who has spent over six years at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay was only about 12 when he was detained, not 16 or 17 as his official record says, an Afghan rights group said Tuesday.
Interviews with the family of Mohammed Jawad, who like many poor Afghans does not know his exact age or birthday, showed he was probably not even a teenager when he was arrested in 2002, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said.
He was picked up by the Afghan police in connection with a grenade attack in Kabul in which two United States soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were wounded. He was transferred to American custody and flown to Guantánamo in early 2003.
Commissioner Nader Nadery said Mr. Jawad was tortured and abused by the Afghan police and at Guantánamo. The commission is seeking his release and repatriation.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) France Opens First Military Bases in the Gulf
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
May 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/world/europe/27france.html?ref=world
PARIS - President Nicolas Sarkozy opened France's first military facilities in the Gulf on Tuesday, deepening the government's alliance with the United Arab Emirates and highlighting its shifting foreign policy priorities.
Mr. Sarkozy attended a ceremony to open French naval, air and army facilities in Abu Dhabi. The bases are the first permanent French military installations to be built outside of French territory since the process of decolonization began more than half a century ago.
The Gulf is of geopolitical importance both because of its gas and oil resources and because of its proximity to Iran. Abu Dhabi sits just 225 kilometers, or 140 miles, directly across the Gulf from Iran.
"The permanent French military installation in Abu Dhabi shows the responsibility that France, as a global power, agrees to assume with its closest partners, in a region that is a fault line for the whole world," Mr. Sarkozy said in the text of a speech delivered in the Emirate.
The new military presence comprises a French facility at the Emirate's Al Dhafra air base, which can accommodate Mirage and Rafale jets; a naval base of eight hectares, or about 20 acres, at the port of Mina Zayed, which can handle any French naval vessels except aircraft carriers, though these can berth in a nearby port; and an army camp at Zayed, specializing in urban combat training. There are also intelligence-gathering facilities.
Eventually, about 500 French military personnel will be permanently stationed at the sites.
France's main military base serving the Gulf region is in Djibouti, a former colony on the mouth of the Red Sea, which serves as a hub for its operations against pirates. Mr. Sarkozy said the new facilities would not affect the French presence in Djibouti.
France signaled a strategic policy shift last summer with a government "White Paper," which sought to better prepare the country for a world in which conventional military threats are being replaced by a multitude of complex, global risks. The paper also identified a strategic geographical axis of priorities from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
This was a rejection of the policies set under former President Charles de Gaulle, which stressed the independence of French foreign policy.
Under Mr. Sarkozy, France has rejoined the military command of NATO, has sent troops to Afghanistan and has joined the international effort at protecting vital shipping lanes in the Gulf.
"This initiative continues a longstanding cooperation between France and the Emirate, while also allowing France to extend its reach in a very strategic region," said Denis Bauchard, a senior fellow at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris.
The former presidents François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac deepened cooperation with Abu Dhabi through arms sales. Paris and Abu Dhabi also signed bilateral defense accords in 1991 and 1995, which were updated Tuesday.
Mr. Sarkozy also hopes that his trip will help secure the sale of Dassault Rafale jet fighters to replace Mirage 2000s in the Emirates Air Force, as well as satellite equipment and a civilian nuclear contract. France has been unable to sell the Rafale abroad, due in part to fierce international competition, especially from Lockheed Martin's F-16 Falcon.
The new French facilities were originally agreed upon in mid-2007 after an approach by the Emirate. The project has been managed by the Élysée Palace. Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest and most influential of the Emirates, paid for the installations.
The United States remains the major foreign military presence in the Gulf with strategic air bases, logistics operations and the headquarters of the 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
The agreement with France represents an insurance policy while the United States scales back in the region as the conflict in Iraq winds down, analysts said.
Last week, Tehran said that it had successfully tested a "Sajil" missile, a surface-to-surface weapon with a range of 2,000 kilometers. The reported launching followed efforts by the Obama administration to seek a new relationship with Tehran to forestall a nuclear program that Western countries allege is designed to build a nuclear bomb.
Separately, Mr. Sarkozy also used the two-day trip to press for talks between oil producers and consumers to find "a satisfactory level" for crude to avoid the "erratic movements" of prices seen last year. Such talks could cover stocks, transport, technology, the organization of markets and speculation.
Mr. Sarkozy said he planned to propose a mechanism at a summit of the Group of 8 leaders in Italy in July.
"Why don't we agree, producer countries and consumers, on general price guidelines to give to the market, I would say even a price range which would guarantee investments over the long term but which would not overwhelm consumer economies," he said during the speech.
His trip also included a visit to the future site of a branch of the Louvre Museum in the Emirate.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) French Repression after General Strike Victory in Guadeloupe
The UGTG (General Union of Workers of Guadeloupe) issues call to the democratic and workers' movement internationally:
Elie Domota
Secretary General
General Union of Workers of Guadeloupe (UGTG)
ugtg@wanadoo.fr
http www.ugt.org
Dear comrades, dear friends,
Again the French State, with the complicity of key elected officials from Guadeloupe, has used its repressive apparatus against the youth, workers, and people of Guadeloupe.
Failing to push back the movement underway for five months against pwofitasyon-the mass movement led by Guadeloupan organizations, especially the trade unions-the French State has now decided to use its judicial repressive apparatus toward this same goal. It is important to remember that this movement led to the signing of the Bino Agreement on February 26, 2009-an agreement that won a 200-euro increase in the monthly minimum wage-and of a Memorandum of Understanding on March 4, 2009, which lifted the general strike that began on January 20.
Now, as a backlash, we are witnessing a series of criminal investigations and trials against leaders of this movement, particularly against leaders of the UGTG trade union federation:
• March 8: opening of a judicial inquiry against Elie Domota, Secretary General of the UGTG and spokesperson of the LKP (The Collective Against Exploitation) coalition;
•
• May 15: Trial against youth from Gourbeyre;
•
• May 19: For having denounced the illegal wiretapping against them, Sarah Masters and Patrice Aristide Tacit were summoned to the court of Pointe à Pitre by a judge of the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris; the Attorney General of the Lower Court requested the removal of the case by the magistrate court of Pointe à Pitre;
•
• May 20: Summons to the judicial authorities issued for Michel Madassamy and Gabriel Bourguinion, leaders of the UGTG;
•
• May 26: Trial of Raymond Gautherot, former Secretary General of the UGTG; sentenced to three months in prison.
•
• May 29: Trial of Jocelyn Leborgne, member of the Union Council of UGTG;
•
• June 4: Trial of Comrade Max Delourneau for his participation in the mobilizations of the LKP.
•
• June 9: Trial of Brother Christopher, a member of Union Council of the UGTG.
•
Why this pattern of repression against the workers, youth, people of Guadeloupe?
Because the workers, with their unions, are refusing to capitulate to the attacks that are coming down from all sides: they have continued to organize strikes and mass demonstrations of striking employees to enforce the Bino agreement-against threats of all sorts and the blackmail or layoffs.
Because on May 1, 2009 there were more than 30,000 demonstrators in Petit Canal. Because the LKP continues to make gains in the negotiations on the platform of 146 points that are ongoing with the support of the population. Because thousands of youth, unemployed, workers, retirees, continue to participate in meetings in the municipalities in response to the call of LKP.
It is thanks to the determination of the workers and people of Guadeloupe, through the general strike of 44 days and the mobilization of the entire population, including a mass protest with 100,000 demonstrators, that we were able to obtain satisfaction of our demands. It is also thanks to your international solidarity.
On behalf of the rights of the workers and people of Guadeloupe to fight for their legitimate demands and against repression, we again call for your international solidarity.
Signed,
Elie Domota
Secretary General
General Union of Workers of Guadeloupe (UGTG)
Messages of protest should be sent to:
Prefect of Guadeloupe
Lardenoy Street, 97100 Basse-Terre.
Fax: International: 00 335 90 81 58 32, or: 00 590 590 8158 32
From France: 05 90 81 58 32
Yves Jego, Secretary of State for Overseas Department
27, rue Oudinot, 75007 Paris
Fax: International: 00 331 53 69 28 04
From France: 01 53 69 28 04
Tribunal de Grande Instance de Pointe à P itre Guadeloupe
Fax - International: 00 33 590 8361 04, or: 00 590 590 8361 04
From France: 05 90 83 61 04
Tribunal de Grande Instance de Basse-Terre Guadeloupe
Fax: International: 00 33 590 8063 61 or: 00 590 590 8063 61
From France: 05 90 80 63 61
Please send copies to:
UGTG, rue Paul-Lacavé, 97110 Pointe-à -Pitre, Guadeloupe.
Fax: International: 00 335 90 89 08 70, or: 00 590 89 08 70
From France 05 90 806361
http www.ugt.org
ugtg@wanadoo.fr
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Antitrust Laws a Hurdle to Health Care Overhaul
"Antitrust lawyers say doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and drug makers will be running huge legal risks if they get together and agree on a strategy to hold down prices and reduce the growth of health spending." [Wouldn't you know? It's illegal to cut healthcare costs!...bw]
By ROBERT PEAR
May 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/health/policy/27health.html?ref=health
WASHINGTON - President Obama's campaign to cut health costs by $2 trillion over the next decade, announced with fanfare two weeks ago, may have hit another snag: the nation's antitrust laws.
Antitrust lawyers say doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and drug makers will be running huge legal risks if they get together and agree on a strategy to hold down prices and reduce the growth of health spending.
Robert F. Leibenluft, a former official at the Federal Trade Commission, said, "Any agreement among competitors with regard to prices or price increases - even if they set a maximum - would raise legal concerns."
Already, some leaders of the health care industry who appeared at the White House on May 11 say the president may have overstated their cost-control commitment. Three days after the gathering, hospital executives said that they had agreed to help save $2 trillion by gradually slowing the growth of health spending, but that they did not commit to cutting the growth rate by 1.5 percentage points each year for 10 years.
White House officials say even the more limited commitment is significant. Under current law, federal officials predict that health spending will grow an average of 6.2 percent a year, to $4.4 trillion in 2018.
Mr. Obama is asking the industry for detailed proposals to control costs. But so far the administration has not offered the industry any relief from antitrust laws and has, in fact, vowed to step up enforcement.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama said consumers had suffered because of "lax enforcement" of antitrust laws in many health insurance markets.
In 1993, when President Bill Clinton made the last major effort to overhaul the health care system, the lobby for the drug industry, then known as the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, devised a voluntary cost-control plan. Under it, each drug company offered to limit the annual increase in the average price of its prescription drug products to the increase in the Consumer Price Index.
The Justice Department rejected the proposal, saying it would violate antitrust laws. In blocking the proposal, the department said the Supreme Court had made clear that agreements setting maximum prices were just as illegal as agreements that set minimum ones.
"Such maximum price-fixing agreements create the risk that the maximum prices will become minimum or uniform prices," the department said in a business review letter signed Oct. 1, 1993, by Anne K. Bingaman, then the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division.
In 1978, hospitals also asked the Justice Department for an assurance they would not be charged with antitrust violations when they undertook a "voluntary effort" to curb costs as an alternative to legislation proposed by President Jimmy Carter. The department would not provide such an assurance.
Many savings now envisioned by the health care industry would require much closer cooperation by independent doctors and hospitals, taking them into a gray area of the law where federal agencies have not provided clear guidance.
In a recent letter to the Senate Finance Committee, the American Hospital Association said uncertainty about enforcement of the antitrust laws "makes it difficult for a hospital and doctors to collaborate to improve care" and lower costs.
Doctors often want to collaborate and share information about prices without sharing financial risk or fully merging their office practices. The American Medical Association has asked Congress to revise antitrust laws so doctors can collectively negotiate with insurers over fees and other issues.
The Federal Trade Commission has repeatedly challenged such collective action as illegal price-fixing, even though doctors say they are at a severe disadvantage in trying to negotiate with giant insurance companies.
A new study by an economist at Northwestern University, Leemore S. Dafny, finds that a growing number of geographic markets are dominated by a handful of insurance companies, and that the decline in competition may contribute to higher prices.
Among the groups that say they have joined together to rein in health costs, besides the hospital and medical associations, are America's Health Insurance Plans and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Jamie Court, the president of Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, said he was wary of such joint efforts.
"When companies that control the health care system get together to change it, there is a serious risk that they are doing it to stifle competition at the expense of consumers," Mr. Court said.
The Federal Trade Commission says that while cooperation among health care providers can benefit consumers, it can also increase the bargaining power of hospitals and doctors, making it easier for them to set prices and eliminate competition.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
No comments:
Post a Comment