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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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PROTEST! When Obama Announces Afghanistan Escalation
The World Can't Wait
Stop the Crimes of Your Government
News from the San Francisco
Bay Area Chapter
Emergency Response Plan for the SF Bay Area:
World Can't Wait is joining with other anti-war forces including the local chapters of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, Code Pink and others [list in formation] to mobilize
On the SAME WEEKDAY** that Obama announces the escalation:
5:00 PM at Fifth & Market (Powell St. BART): San Francisco street protest including die-ins
In the East Bay, feeder rallies and a BART march:
3:30 PM Rally: Marines Recruiting Station, 64 Shattuck Square, Berkeley
4:00 PM Rally: downtown Berkeley BART station then march by BART to arrive 5:00 PM at Fifth & Market in SF
** NOTE: If the news breaks on a weekend, these protests will happen the following MONDAY
The day of the announcement, the World Can't Wait SF office [(415) 864-5153] will have a recorded message confirming the protest times and locations.
Send us info on other campus and community protests that we can also publicize.
PROTEST IN THE STREETS THE DAY AN ANNOUNCEMENT IS MADE TO SEND MORE TROOPS INTO AFGHANISTAN
President Obama will soon announce the plan to expand the occupation of Afghanistan. The immediate response - that same evening, across this country - must be STREET PROTESTS & DIE-INS that boldly oppose this outrage. More protest and resistance must follow, yet that first night is crucial, since that is when the media -- and the rest of the world -- will be looking for a response from the people.
According to some media analysts, Obama may make his announcement sometime between Nov. 7 and Nov. 11, although it could happen earlier, or perhaps later. World Can't Wait is calling on all organizations and people of conscience to get ready for this. Read Elaine Brower's passionate call for our strength in unity and our determination in our demand at: worldcantwait.org
Whether Obama chooses a huge troop increase, or the covert operations & unmanned drone option to try to "win" in Afghanistan, we should be in the streets opposing ANY escalation. The only acceptable announcement to come from the administration would be that they're withdrawing combat troops, support troops, CIA drones, covert operations, and all private contractors NOW.
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago was an illegitimate war of aggression predicated on lies and waged as a war of terror by the Bush Regime. This invasion was and is a war crime. Just because the war now belongs to Obama doesn't make it any less a war crime. The war upon Afghanistan, like the war upon Iraq, is a war/occupation for U.S. Empire and nothing else.
People who argue that the Taliban will take control if the U.S. leaves and Afghan women will be in a far worse position should know that, since the invasion, the situation has deteriorated and gets uglier everyday for women there. The women and the people of Afghanistan have the right to self-determination. They should not be forced into choosing to live with a suffocating U.S. occupation or an Islamic fundamentalist theocracy. This is what U.S. military presence and involvement does - it forces the people there to make this horrible choice.
People of conscience in this country must take a bold and visible stand and say, "Stop the Escalation, Out of Afghanistan Now!" "The World Can't Wait/Stop the Crimes of Your Government!" Join us in resisting these U.S. wars/occupations and ongoing torture for Empire. An escalation of the war in Afghanistan, no matter how many U.S. troops are sent or frequency with which drones are used to bomb the people, is not the change that many in this country sought when they voted for Obama. This escalation perpetuates and intensifies the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan that has been a horrifying, living nightmare for the Afghan people.
STOP THE ESCALATION - OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW!
STOP THE CRIMES OF YOUR GOVERNMENT - THE WORLD CAN'T WAIT!
sf@worldcantwait.org
(415) 864-5153
sfbaycantwait.org
www.myspace.com/sfbaycantwait
World Can't Wait SF
2940-16th St., Rm. 200-6
San Francisco CA 94103
Bay Area United Against War endorses this emergency action.
bauaw.org
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Pro-Choice Activists Condemn Sexist Healthcare Bill
San Francisco Protest, Thursday, November 12, 2009, 5pm
BACORR
bay area coalition for our reproductive rights
625 Larkin Street, Suite 202
San Francisco, CA 94109
phone: 415.864.1278 fax: 415.864.0778
bacorrinfo@yahoo.com
www.BACORR.org
FROM: Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights
CONTACT:
Marit Knutson; 415-864-1278 (office),
206-354-2692 (cell)
myxomarit@yahoo.com (e-mail)
Community Activists Unite to Demand That Women NOT Be Excluded From Healthcare Legislation
The Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR) condemns the passage of this sexist Healthcare for America Act, or HR 3962, which was aided by the sneaky addition of the Sputak-Pitt Amendment, hailed by conservatives and yet supported by our "pro-choice" Democrats, including San Francisco's own first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. As women, we are not going to accept second class status and the passage of this healthcare bill sends women who are specifically in need of healthcare coverage, namely those who are poor, working class and single mothers of color, back to pre-Roe v. Wade days, when those who had money could afford safe abortions if they so sought, and those without would be left in the dust, without dignity or respect. If we have a society that does not honor women, we have a society completely void of compassion and love.
BACORR will be convening at Montgomery BART on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 5pm to say NO to healthcare legislation that denies women the reproductive health coverage that they deserve.
Some argue that the amended and anti-abortion healthcare bill just had to be passed - even a few members of the Pro-Choice Caucus held their breath and voted for it, striking down gender equality and supporting institutionalized sexism. We need to expose these Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi - they officially do not represent working class women of color, as they might have in the past.
With this bill's passage the US has instituted its own gag rule domestically, and it is an outright attack on women that BACORR refuses to accept. Ultimately the Healthcare for America Act with the Stupak-Pitt amendment leaves those women with the fewest resources in the most dire of situations, stuck with the consequences and without any support. We demand that this amendment be repealed and that a more just universal healthcare bill be put forth for vote. All people deserve access to quality care - no more moralizing and no more shaming of women who choose to take control of their own lives.
BACORR is a grassroots, multi-issue coalition comprised of individuals and groups in the Bay Area. Every year we stand our ground for reproductive justice, women's rights and abortion rights around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade as thousands upon thousands of anti-choice activists from California and beyond are bussed into our city to march against women's rights. This year will be no different. We will convene on SF's Embarcadero on Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 10 A.M. as we demand universal healthcare; free and accessible abortion on demand; no forced sterilization of women of color; pre- and post-natal care and childcare for all; safe and accessible contraceptives; an end to discrimination against people of color, queer, immigrant, and youth communities; embracing (not controlling or denying) sexuality; providing non-moralistic education in our public schools, and much more.
For more information, call Marit Knutson on her cell phone, 206-354-2692; at the office, 415-864-1278; email bacorrinfo@gmail.com, or visit www.bacorr.org.
In solidarity,
Bertha Johnson
510-849-1619
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A DAY OF ACTION FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL & MUSLIM POLITICAL PRISONERS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC
Special Note:
This mobilization replaces the one that The Peace And Justice Foundation and FUJA had initially planned for Nov 23rd.
The November 12 mobilization will include a press conference at the National Press Club, and a demonstration at the U.S. Department of Justice. This will be a joint mobilization effort involving The Peace And Justice Foundation, Families United for Justice in America (FUJA), and some deeply committed grassroots folk connected to International Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Volunteers are needed in the DC Metro area. To volunteer call (301) 762-9162 or e-mail: peacethrujustice@aol.com
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for immediate release:
Contact: Hendrik Voss
202-234-3440, media@soaw.org
Mass Mobilization to Shut Down the School of the Americas
November 20-22, 2009, Fort Benning, Georgia:
* The SOA graduate-led military coup in Honduras and the increasing U.S. military involvement in Colombia put a renewed focus on the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC) and the policies it represents.
* Thousands from across the Americas will converge on November 20-22 at Fort Benning, GA for a vigil and civil disobedience actions to speak out against the SOA/ WHINSEC and to demand a change in U.S. foreign policy.
* The vigil will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1989 SOA graduate-led Jesuit massacre in San Salvador, and the many other thousands of victims of SOA/ WHINSEC violence.
The military coup led by SOA graduates in Honduras has once again exposed the destabilizing and deadly effects that the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC) has on Latin America. Torture survivors and human rights activists from across the Americas, including Bertha Oliva, the founder of the Committee of the Family Members of the Disappeared (COFADEH) from Honduras and human rights defenders from Colombia will travel to Fort Benning, Georgia to participate in the mobilization.
The campaign to close the SOA/ WHINSEC is in a crucial phase right now. Despite promising comments from President Obama during his 2008 election campaign, the SOA/ WHINSEC is still in operation, the U.S. is poring millions into failing "military solutions" to combat the drug problems in Mexico and the Pentagon is moving forward with plans to use seven Colombian military bases in Colombia for offensive U.S. military operations.
"It is up to us to hold those responsible accountable and to push for to closing of the School of the Americas and a change in US foreign policy" said Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch. "Too many have died and continue to suffer at the hands of graduates of this notorious institute."
In the fall of 2009, opponents of the SOA/ WHINSEC achieved a victory when a joint House and Senate conference committee agreed to include language in the FY 2010 Defense Authorization bill that requires the Pentagon to release names of the graduates of the SOA/ WHINSEC to the public. The Pentagon had classified the names after the continued involvement of SOA/ WHINSEC attendees in human rights abuses became public.
For more information about the November vigil to close the SOA/ WHINSEC, lead-up actions and a complete schedule of events, visit www.SOAW.org
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"The End of Poverty"
Democracy Now Interview with Filmmaker Philippe Diaz
November 10, 2009
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/10/filmmaker_philippe_diaz_on_the_end
The film opens in San Francisco on December 4 at the 4-Star Theatre on Clement Street.
http://www.theendofpoverty.com/
Earlier this year, the IMF and the World Bank warned that the financial crisis posed a serious challenge to reducing poverty. The World Bank predicted that the economic crisis could push another 53 million people in the global South into poverty. Well, according to the latest numbers from the United Nations, we're now up to 2.7 billion people around the world who survive on less than two dollars a day, one billion of whom live on less than a dollar a day. Given the dire statistics and the widening gap between the rich and the poor, how can we see the eradication of poverty? That's the central question of a new documentary called "The End of Poverty"?
AMY GOODMAN: In his first speech before the United Nations General Assembly this September, President Obama optimistically pledged that the United States would not only support the Millennium Development Goals but would, quote, "set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time."
Earlier this year, the IMF and the World Bank warned the financial crisis posed a serious challenge to reducing poverty. The World Bank predicted the economic crisis could push another 53 million people in the global South into poverty. Well, according to the latest numbers from the UN, we're now up to 2.7 billion people around the world who survive on less than two dollars a day, one billion of whom live on less than a dollar a day.
Given the dire statistics and the widening gap between rich and poor, how can we see the eradication of poverty? That's the central question of a new documentary, The End of Poverty? It's narrated by actor and activist Martin Sheen. The film has been described as An Inconvenient Truth for global economics. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, opens in New York this Friday.
This is an excerpt that features political scientist Susan George discussing how debt repayment fuels poverty in the global South.
SUSAN GEORGE: Let me give you just one statistic, which I worked out in minutes, because otherwise it's incomprehensible. Sub-Saharan Africa, which is the poorest part of the world, is paying $25,000 every minute to Northern creditors. Well, you could build a lot of schools, a lot of hospitals, a lot of job-you could make a lot of job creation, if you were using $25,000 a minute differently from debt repayment. So there's this drain.
And I think people don't understand that it is actually the South that is financing the North. If you look at the flows of money from North to South and then from South to North, what you find is that the South is financing the North to the tune of about $200 billion every year.
AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from The End of Poverty? Philippe Diaz is the award-winning director of the film, joining us here in our firehouse studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
PHILIPPE DIAZ: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Is the end of poverty possible? Why did you do this film?
PHILIPPE DIAZ: Well, you know, I think it was for two reasons. The first one was to explain that we are in a very dramatic situation today, I think much more dramatic even than global warming, because, you know, if, as an expert says in the film, we are consuming today 30 percent more than what the planet can regenerate, we are in a very dramatic situation, because world population increases every year. And it simply means that we will have-for us, in the countries of the North, to be able to maintain these great lifestyles we have, we will have to plunge more and more people below the poverty line in the countries of the South, unless, as the same expert says, we can find six more planets with the same resources, you know, because if everybody in the world was living like we live in America, we would need six planets to have everybody, you know, happy and have the same lifestyle.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, to give a sense of the severity of the situation, every 3.6 seconds, another person dies of starvation in the world?
PHILIPPE DIAZ: That's correct.
AMY GOODMAN: Every 3.6 seconds.
PHILIPPE DIAZ: Yes, absolutely. And that's what we want to show, is that, you know, I think that-you know, as Miloon Kothari, also another expert, says in the film, you know, the economic system that we chose leads to the sacrifice of some people. So, how many people will we accept to let die or to-you know, to annihilate, until we wake up and want to change the situation, because it's where we are?
You know, until we thought that the resources of the planet were unlimited, you know, we could understand, you know, the other theories about global economics. But today we know they are limited, and we know that we are consuming more than we can regenerate. So what do we do?
AMY GOODMAN: Philippe Diaz, give us a brief history lesson. Go back centuries to 1492.
PHILIPPE DIAZ: Well, yeah. We decided, you know, after doing a lot, a lot of research, I thought that we cannot-you know, the most important for me was the actual time, meaning the present, and someone like John Perkins that you will see later explain clearly, you know, in the film-and he is, for me, the keynote speaker of the film-you know, how we do that actually, meaning how we create this fake debt for third world countries or we force countries to privatize, etc., etc.
But I think if we don't-I thought that if we don't go back in the past, we don't understand, you know, how this thing happened. It's not that one day we woke up and said, "Oh, we'll go take the resource of the South and to create a great lifestyle." You know? It started a long time ago, when, you know, Europe decided brutally to expand. And, you know, it was the Conquistador time in South America; after, it was the French and the British and the Dutch, of course, who went to Indonesia and to Africa. And we took all the resources from these countries.
The first resource that we took was the land. And you take land away from people, it clears that you create a slave, because if the person can't, you know, grow his own food, it means that he has to sell his workforce to survive. And that's the number one resource we take. After, we take all the other resources-water, timber, mineral, everything.
And clearly, we built a system-you know, it's very funny, like if you think about it, how do these small countries, like Great Britain or France or, even worse, Holland and Belgium, become these huge empires? They were very small countries with almost no resources whatsoever, and they became the greatest empires. How? Well, by taking by force, of course, all the resources from the South, creating therefore a huge workforce, you know, that-of course, the slaves that we use with-you know, more and more, bringing even slaves from Africa.
And after, of course, we created this system where-you know, today if the countries of the South say, "OK, we will stop to give you our resources and our workforce," the economies of the North collapse immediately-the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, etc. We cannot function without the resources of the South, and unpaid almost. We pay maybe, whatever, ten percent of the value of these resources. And it's why, if you want, because we are consuming more than what the planet can regenerate, it means that to maintain our lifestyle in the North, we will have to create more poverty in the South. And that's what we do every single year. There's no other way.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to an excerpt of your film that deals with sugarcane workers in Brazil. It features Jaime de Amorim of the Coordinating Landless People Movement and begins with Maria Luisa Mendonça, president of the human rights group Rede Social.
MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA: São Paulo is the largest state that produces ethanol in Brazil and, at the same time, is the richest state. And just to give you an example, last year seventeen workers died in the space where they work. They died of exhaustion. Another 419 workers have died in consequence of their work, in addition to several cases of slave labor in the sugarcane workers that the Ministry of Labor has been registered.
JAIME DE AMORIM: [translated] The grower sees the worker as a slave. They haven't rebelled, so today growers have a much easier way to accumulate wealth than during slavery. Back then, the boss was the slave's owner. He had to take care of the slave's health and food. He had to take care of shelter, even if it was the slave's quarters. Today the boss has no such concerns. He just has to drive the truck to the outskirts of the city. The truck loads up. He takes them back. No more worries.
AMY GOODMAN: How does that concept fit into your film, Philippe Diaz?
PHILIPPE DIAZ: Well, it's the same if you want-what I try to show is that from the beginning, we continue the same system up to today. Just the tools change. You know, like slavery never stopped, and the pressure put on Southern country never stopped. Now we use other kind of tools, like John Perkins explained very well in the film, the tool of the economic hit men. We create fake debt. You know, we force people to privatize.
And, by the way, just as a little example, you know, if I gave-you know, if I chose the title, The End of Poverty? with a question mark, it's to answer one of the eminent experts, you know, in America, which is Mr. Poverty in America, Jeffrey Sachs, you know, run around the world, [inaudible] the ministers and this and that, to explain that the way to end poverty is by giving mosquito nets and fertilizers. You know, in his book-you know, and he's credited, for example, in Bolivia for having ruined the economy of Bolivia by forcing massive privatization when he was an adviser to the then government.
You know, and if you look at-if you look at what's going on, in his-the most important part is that in his book called The End of Poverty, he goes back to the Bolivian experience and says, "Well, after all this time, you know, I can go back to the Bolivian experience and see what was really wrong." And I thought, "Oh, maybe he'll acknowledge that was a mistake. They should never have privatized, etc." He said, "No, no. The real problem with Bolivia is altitude. The country is too high in altitude, is why they are in poverty." So, you can imagine that if you have these kind of experts who are ready to say these kind of things, you know, we are in very serious trouble, because not only we have created this system, you know, for 500 years, where we have been taking all the resources from countries and transforming their people in slave, but on top of that we are continuing to broadcast these kind of absolutely absurd ideas that by, you know, bringing mosquito net and fertilizer we'll end poverty.
And, of course, as we know, this system has been built forever, and just the tool change. Now we are not taking the land and the resources by way of the gun; we are taking the resources by way of debt, privatization and other economic hit men who go there, you know, and buy, bribe or have the president killed, as John explained very clearly, you know, in order to continue the same policy.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you hope to accomplish with this film?
PHILIPPE DIAZ: I think to show people that we are in a situation more dramatic than global warming today, because, of course, global warming, as we all know, is extremely dramatic, and in the next ten years or twenty years people will start to die massively because of global warming, but today people are dying every day. You know the movie should be almost dedicated to the children of the world. It's why I put children all over the place, because they are the innocent victim of that in the movie and with this little child begging in the street. You know, today you have 20,000 children who die every day, you know, because of the poverty issue. And they only die-they only die because they are poor, and they are poor only because we are rich. You know, and unless we understand that and we take matter in our own hands-
AMY GOODMAN: And do what?
PHILIPPE DIAZ: And, well, the movie brings a lot of solutions, you know, from political solution, like agrarian reform, ending the monopoly over natural resources, changing the tax system. There should never be tax on consumption or labor. You know, there should be tax on property ownership. You know, and to the major-one of the major-one of the key experts at the end of the film said the solution is called "de-growth." And-
AMY GOODMAN: De-growth?
PHILIPPE DIAZ: De-growth, from the North, of course, because there is no other way. Either we accept that millions of people will die so we can continue to grow or even stay stable, or we will have to de-grow. De-grow doesn't mean necessarily drive more, eat less or etc. It means like-as he says, it means work less. What about if we work five hours a day and consume less, but consume better? You know, that's all the movement which is starting in the world. And there is no other way.
Again, it's a mathematical problem; it's not even a political problem. It's a mathematical problem. We have-today, because of the system we created, we cannot feed billions of people, clearly, when the resources of the planet are well sufficient to feed all these people. But because of our system, this inequality we created by way of the gun, you know, these people will die, you know, million by million.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Philippe Diaz, I want to thank you for joining us. The film is The End of Poverty?
And we're going to go to a clip of the film, where our next guest interviews the vice president of Bolivia. Yes, I'm talking about John Perkins, the bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He is back with a new book. It's called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded-and What We Need to Do to Remake Them. We go now to John Perkins, in this clip from The End of Poverty?, interviewing Bolivia's vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, for the film The End of Poverty?
JOHN PERKINS: [translated] Bolivia is a country with so many natural resources. Why does a country like this have so many poor people?
VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA: [translated] I think this has to do with what we call the colonial condition of our societies. Countries that have a collection of natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, seem to be condemned to be poor countries. It's paradoxical, isn't it? Unfortunately, colonialism is always a part of the development of capitalism. There is an emancipation process that happens through the implementation of a different global economic order than the current one. That's why a total, simple and definite break with colonialism allows us to imagine a world economic order, globalized in a different way than that which is driven by the accumulation of capital.
JOHN PERKINS: [translated] What things can Bolivia do, or should they do, to bring about necessary change?
VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA: [translated] This is a country of nine million inhabitants, where 62 percent of the population is indigenous, both in the cities and the farmlands. Bolivia is a country with mestizos, Aymaras, Quechas, Guaranis, Mojenio, Trinitarios, Irionos, thirty-two indigenous groups and nations. But, unfortunately, in the 181 years of the republic's political life, the indigenous people were never recognized as citizens with collective rights. Never. This continent is waking up. I like the idea of "a continent in movement" as a synthesis of what's been happening during the past five to six years in Latin America. There's a movement developing of world citizenship and planetary responsibility. There is something beautiful happening in these countries which makes them get involved in the situations of countries like Bolivia, a country that wants to live a better life, where 58 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day.
AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from the research done for The End of Poverty? That clip was actually made for Democracy Now! Thanks to Philippe Diaz and Cinema Libre Studio for that. the interview done with the Bolivian vice president by John Perkins, who will now join us in our firehouse studio after break.
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Four years ago activists around the world were mobilizing and organizing against the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. We need to continue that fight today.
Fourth Annual Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Summit
MOBILIZING THE MOVEMENT FOR JUSICE
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 13TH, 3:00-6:00 P.M.
MERRITT COLLEGE
Huey P. Newton/Bobby Seale Student Lounge
12500 Campus Drive, Oakland
For directions go to www.merritt.edu
For more information: 510-235-9780
KEVIN COOPER, TROY DAVIS, MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: THREE INNOCENT MEN ON DEATH ROW
Featuring:
Angela Davis, author and activist.
Barbara Becnel, co-author and friend of Stanley Tookie Williams
Martina Correia, sister of Troy Davis
Release of report, "What's Really Happening on California's Death Row?"
Messages from "The Three Innocent Men"
Sneak Preview, "The Justice Chronicles," dramatic presentation of prison writings
Memorial Movie, for Oscar Grant III
Sponsors:
Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network; Campaign to End the Death Penalty; Kevin Cooper Defense Committee, African American Studies Department, Merritt College
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U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!
FREE PALESTINE!
San Francisco March and Rally
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
11am, Civic Center Plaza
National March on Washington
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
Fri., March 19 Day of Action & Outreach in D.C.
People from all over the country are organizing to converge on Washington, D.C., to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan and Iraq.
On Saturday, March 20, 2010, there will be a massive National March & Rally in D.C. A day of action and outreach in Washington, D.C., will take place on Friday, March 19, preceding the Saturday march.
There will be coinciding mass marches on March 20 in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The national actions are initiated by a large number of organizations and prominent individuals. (see below)
Click here to become an endorser:
http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=5940&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&autologin=true&link=endorse-body-1
Click here to make a donation:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=2302&autologin=true&donate=body-1&JServSessionIdr002=2yzk5fh8x2.app13b
We will march together to say "No Colonial-type Wars and Occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine!" We will march together to say "No War Against Iran!" We will march together to say "No War for Empire Anywhere!"
Instead of war, we will demand funds so that every person can have a job, free and universal health care, decent schools, and affordable housing.
March 20 is the seventh anniversary of the criminal war of aggression launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. One million or more Iraqis have died. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops have lost their lives or been maimed, and continue to suffer a whole host of enduring problems from this terrible war.
This is the time for united action. The slogans on banners may differ, but all those who carry them should be marching shoulder to shoulder.
Killing and dying to avoid the perception of defeat
Bush is gone, but the war and occupation in Iraq still go on. The Pentagon is demanding a widening of the war in Afghanistan. They project an endless war with shifting battlefields. And a "single-payer" war budget that only grows larger and larger each year. We must act.
Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were predicated on the imperial fantasy that the U.S. could create stable, proxy colonial-type governments in both countries. They were to serve as an extension of "American" power in these strategic and resource-rich regions.
That fantasy has been destroyed. Now U.S. troops are being sent to kill or be killed so that the politicians in uniform ("the generals and admirals") and those in three-piece suits ("our elected officials") can avoid taking responsibility for a military setback in wars that should have never been started. Their military ambitions are now reduced to avoiding the appearance of defeat.
That is exactly what happened in Vietnam! Avoiding defeat, or the perception of defeat, was the goal Nixon and Kissinger set for themselves when they took office in 1969. For this noble cause, another 30,000 young GIs perished before the inevitable troop pullout from Vietnam in 1973. The number of Vietnamese killed between 1969 and 1973 was greater by many hundreds of thousands.
All of us can make the difference - progress and change comes from the streets and from the grassroots.
The people went to the polls in 2008, and the enthusiasm and desire for change after eight years of the Bush regime was the dominant cause that led to election of a big Democratic Party majority in both Houses of Congress and the election of Barack Obama to the White House.
But it should now be obvious to all that waiting for politicians to bring real change - on any front - is simply a prescription for passivity by progressives and an invitation to the array of corporate interests from military contractors to the banks, to big oil, to the health insurance giants that dominate the political life of the country. These corporate interests work around the clock to frustrate efforts for real change, and they are the guiding hand behind the recent street mobilizations of the ultra-right.
It is up to us to act. If people had waited for politicians to do the right thing, there would have never been a Civil Rights Act, or unions, women's rights, an end to the Vietnam war or any of the profound social achievements and basic rights that people cherish.
It is time to be back in the streets. Organizing centers are being set up in cities and towns throughout the country.
We must raise $50,000 immediately just to get started. Please make your contribution today. We need to reserve buses, which are expensive ($1,800 from NYC, $5,000 from Chicago, etc.). We have to print 100,000 leaflets, posters and stickers. There will be other substantial expenses as March 20 draws closer.
Please become an endorser and active supporter of the March 20 National March on Washington.
Please make an urgently needed tax-deductible donation today. We can't do this without your active support.
The initiators of the March 20 National March on Washington (preceded by the March 19 Day of Action and Outreach in D.C.) include: the ANSWER Coalition; Muslim American Society Freedom; National Council of Arab Americans; Cynthia McKinney; Malik Rahim, co-founder of Common Ground Collective; Ramsey Clark; Cindy Sheehan; Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK; Deborah Sweet, Director, World Can't Wait; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition; Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild; Ron Kovic, author of "Born on the 4th of July"; Juan Jose Gutierrez, Director, Latino Movement USA; Col. Ann Wright (ret.); March Forward!; Partnership for Civil Justice; Palestinian American Women Association; Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines; Alliance for Global Justice; Claudia de la Cruz, Pastor, Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas-UCC; Phil Portluck, Social Justice Ministry, Covenant Baptist Church, D.C.; Blase & Theresa Bonpane, Office of the Americas; Coalition for Peace and Democracy in Honduras; Comite Pro-Democracia en Mexico; Frente Unido de los Pueblos Americanos; Comites de Base FMLN, Los Angeles; Free Palestine Alliance; GABRIELA Network; Justice for Filipino American Veterans; KmB Pro-People Youth; Students Fight Back; Jim Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild - LA Chapter; LEF Foundation; National Coalition to Free the Angola 3; Community Futures Collective; Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival; Companeros del Barrio; Barrio Unido for Full and Unconditional Amnesty, Bay Area United Against War.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Oakland's Judge Jacobson ruled at 4:00PM Friday, October 16 to move the trial of Johannes Mehserle, killer of unarmed Oscar Grant, OUT OF OAKLAND. The location of the trial venue has not been announced.
In the case of an innocent verdict, folks are encouraged to head to Oakland City Hall ASAP to express our outrage in a massive and peaceful way! Our power is in our numbers! Oscar Grant's family and friends need our support!
For more information:
Contact BAMN at 510-502-9072
letters@bamn.com
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Tell City Hall:
All Renters Deserve Protection from Eviction!
Supervisor Avalos has proposed legislation that would extend "just cause" eviction protections to rentals build after 1979.
Without this protection, 16,000-23,000 renters can be arbitrarily evicted, suddenly and for no reason at all.
The Land Use Committee will be voting on Monday. Please call or email the following board members and the Mayor to urge them to support the "Avalos Just Cause Bill". A Sample email is below.
justcauseimage.gif
Mayor Gavin Newsom
Telephone: (415) 554-6141
Fax: (415) 554-6160
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org
Sup. Sophie Maxwell
(415) 554-7670 - voice
(415) 554-7674 - fax
Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org
Sup. Bevan Dufty
(415) 554-6968- voice
(415) 554-6909 - fax
Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org
Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier
(415) 554-7752 - voice
(415) 554-7843 - fax
Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.org
Sup. Carmen Chu
San Francisco, CA 94102-4689
(415) 554-7460 - voice
(415) 554-7432 - fax
Carmen.Chu@sfgov.org
Sup. Sean Elsbernd
(415) 554-6516 - voice
(415) 554-6546 - fax
Sean.Elsbrend@sfgov.org
Sample Letter/ Email
Dear Supervisor,
I am a renter in San Francisco and I am very concerned to learn that many renters here are not protected from evictions because their home was build after 1979.
There is no reason why a random group of renters could suddenly lose their housing at the drop of a hat.
Rents are still so high in this city. Getting evicted means quickly finding housing that you can afford, which is nearly impossible in this market.
Please support Supervisor Avalos's "Just Cause" ordinance. It is only fair.
Sincerely,
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HANDS OFF JUANITA YOUNG!
Statement from the NY October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality
http://www.petitiononline.com/JYoungNY/petition.html
Soon after 6:00am on October 27th, five cops raided the house of Juanita Young, the mother of Malcolm Ferguson who was gunned down by a plainclothes cop in 2000. They threatened to break down her door, tried to climb in through her bathroom window, put a gun in Juanita's face and took away her son, Buddy. The cops justified their outrageous and illegal behavior by citing a warrant, refusing to identify who or what the warrant was for. Later it was claimed that the warrant was for Buddy failing to appear in court for a Desk Appearance Ticket on October 13th, just two weeks earlier. This made it clear that it was both an unusually quick response and out of the ordinary violence for this offense.
This is not the first time cops have run roughshod over the rights of Juanita and her family. Juanita Young has been an outspoken opponent of police brutality, fighting for justice not only for her son Malcolm, but for all victims of police brutality. This has made her a target of persistent persecution by the police:
--June 2003: During an illegal eviction carried out by the NYPD, Juanita was arrested for trespassing in her own home. She was handcuffed and aggressively pushed out of her apartment and building, falling twice and injuring her arm. In October 2007, a Bronx civil jury determined that the arresting officer used excessive force in her arrest.
--November 2005: After voicing her disapproval of a brutal arrest at a demonstration, Juanita was arrested after a commanding officer said, "Get her, too." She was refused medical attention that she needed due to an asthma attack. Young was hospitalized for three days and faced criminal charges, but before the date of her arraignment, she received notice in the mail that the charges were dropped.
--November 2006: Juanita was arrested after more than 8 cops entered her apartment during an ambulance call for her daughter. The cops jumped her, punched and kicked her. She was taken to the hospital, where she was handcuffed to the bed and tortured by police for four days, only to be handed a ticket on the last day an hour after a press conference about her attack took place. In October 2008, a Bronx jury acquitted Young of all charges.
--August 2009: During a cookout in front of Juanita's building, over a dozen cops broke down the front door, slammed her oldest son up behind the door, and beat him on the head. The cops also arrested her daughters. This was another attempt to intimidate Juanita Young - through striking out at her loved ones - in hopes of silencing this powerful voice against police brutality.
All these attacks are outrageous, illegitimate and illegal. We say: HANDS OFF JUANITA YOUNG! The NYPD must stop this intimidation and harassment of Juanita and her family. Speaking out against police brutality is no crime. But targeting someone in retaliation for speaking out is illegal.
From Juanita Young's statement to supporters:
"Not only have my rights been violated in the most blatant ways, but I feel physically and psychologically terrorized. I fear for my safety, my very life, and the lives of my children and grandchildren." (October 29, 2009)
We refuse to allow Juanita Young, this fighter against police brutality and injustice, to stand alone against this onslaught.
We demand:
1: The NYPD stop its persecution of Juanita Young!
2: Bronx DA Robert Johnson investigate the role of the 43rd Precinct in this persecution.
3: An investigation of the Warrant Squad and how they were charged, and how they went about, in serving the warrant at Juanita Young's house on October 27th.
Sign Petition Here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/JYoungNY/petition.html
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Cleve Jones Speaks At Gay Rights Rally In Washington, DC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvC3hVXZpc4
Free the SF8: Drop the Charges!
by Bill Carpenter ( wcarpent [at] ccsf.edu )
Monday Oct 12th, 2009 11:20 AM
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/10/12/18625220.php
Sony Piece of crap (Hilarious!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I-JByPDJm0
Sick For Profit
http://sickforprofit.com/videos/
Fault Lines: Despair & Revival in Detroit - 14 May 09 - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ7VL907Qb0&feature=related
VIDEO INTERVIEW: Dan Berger on Political Prisoners in the United States
By Angola 3 News
Angola 3 News
37 years ago in Louisiana, 3 young black men were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000-acre former slave plantation called Angola. In 1972 and 1973 prison officials charged Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King with murders they did not commit and threw them into 6x9 ft. cells in solitary confinement, for over 36 years. Robert was freed in 2001, but Herman and Albert remain behind bars.
http://angola3news.blogspot.com/2009/09/video-dan-berger-on-political-prisoners.html
Taking Aim Radio Program with
Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
The Chimera of Capitalist Recovery, Parts 1 and 2
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
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JROTC MUST GO!
The San Francisco Board of Education has re-installed the Junior Reserve Officer's Training Corps in San Francisco schools -- including allowing it to count for Physical Education credits.
This is a complete reversal of the 2006 decision to end JROTC altogether in San Francisco public schools. Our children need a good physical education program, not a death education program!
With the economy in crisis; jobs and higher education for youth more unattainable; the lure, lies and false promises of military recruiters is driving more and more of our children into the military trap.
This is an economic draft and the San Francisco Board of Education is helping to snare our children to provide cannon fodder for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and for over 700 U.S. military bases around the world!
We can't depend upon "friendly politicians" who, while they are campaigning for office claim they are against the wars but when they get elected vote in favor of military recruitment--the economic draft--in our schools. We can't depend upon them. That has been proven beyond doubt!
It is up to all of us to come together to stop this NOW!
GET JROTC AND ALL MILITARY RECRUITERS OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS NOW!
Write, call, pester and ORGANIZE against the re-institution of JROTC in our San Francisco public schools NOW!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
San Francisco Board of Education
555 Franklin Street, 1st Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
415/241-6427, (415) 241-6493
cascoe@sfusd.edu
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HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
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Showdown In Chicago
The Showdown in Chicago is underway! Thousands of Americans are in the midst of a series of demonstrations against Wall Street banks and their lobbyists to call for financial reform. Check out the latest news:
http://www.showdowninchicago.org/
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EYE WITNESS REPORTS FROM GAZA Video Free Gaza News October 22,2009
http://www.youtube.com/gazafriends#p/a/1/nHa-CzNCF3c
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ANSWER Statement on Proposed SF Parking Meter Hours
The ANSWER Coalition-SF Bay Area strongly opposes the proposal to extend parking meter hours in San Francisco. The SFMTA, the Metropolitan Transit Agency, is proposing to have parking meters in most of SF run until midnight Monday-Saturday, and from 11 am-6 pm on Sundays!
This is another attempt by the politicians to solve the city's budget crisis by squeezing every last dollar they can out of working people. They have outrageously jacked up MUNI fares, other city fees and parking fines. At the same time they have let the big banks, developers and other wealthy corporate interests-the ones who have created the current economic and budget crisis-off the hook.
The DPT (Department of Parking and Traffic) has already begun a policy of "enhanced enforcement," super-aggressively ticketing vehicles from 9:01 am to 5:59 pm, Monday-Saturday. Every day in every working class neighborhood of SF you can see the booted cars and trucks. On top of the $53, $63 and higher parking tickets, it costs over $200 just to get a boot removed! If your car gets towed, you have to pay $400 or more to get it back. This is causing many low-income people to lose their vehicles.
City officials are trying to mislead people by falsely claiming that the reason for extending meter hours is to collect more quarters and "open up more parking spaces." What they really want is to hit us with thousands more high-priced tickets, and then collect the ransom for booted and towed cars.
This is a class issue. The rich and the well-to-do don't have to worry about where to park in this small and crowded city. They have garages or can afford to pay for parking. It is overwhelmingly working class people who are being hit and who will be hit much, much harder if the new policy goes into effect. Many residents in neighborhoods with meters have no choice but to park at meters after 6 pm and move their vehicles before 9 am the next morning. There just aren't enough spaces otherwise.
As Cristina Gutierrez of Barrio Unido, an immigrant rights group opposed to the plan, asked: "What are we supposed to do, run out of our homes every hour at night to feed the meter?"
But the MTA board and some misguided individuals are trying to pose the issue as MUNI riders vs. car drivers. Some have even ignorantly asserted that if you own a car, you can't possibly be poor. Really? Tell that to the growing number of people forced to LIVE in their cars due to the depression!
The reality is that many people in SF both ride MUNI and own cars (some ride bikes, too). For a lot of people getting to work, shopping, medical appointments, etc. requires a car. That's especially true for families and for people whose jobs are outside SF or not easily accessible by mass transit. Posing the issue as bus riders vs. car riders is false and reactionary.
Does MUNI need more funding? Of course. Should MUNI fares be cut and service increased? No question about it. The issue is: Who should pay?
While taxes, fees, fines, fares, etc., etc, have been constantly increased for us, the taxes on corporate profits have been going down. Many big banks and corporations have been able to avoid paying income tax altogether. While we're told that there's no money for people's needs, $500,000,000 is spent every day on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trillions of dollars have been handed over to the biggest banks in just the last year.
It's time to say: Enough is Enough! It's time for the politicians to stop trying to make working people pay for the economic crisis that the rich created. It's time to make those who can afford it-big business-pay for the services that the people of the city, state and country need.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.answersf.org
answer@answersf.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
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This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
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Urgent: Ahmad Sa'adat transferred to isolation in Ramon prison!
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/
Imprisoned Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was transferred on August 11, 2009 to Ramon prison in the Naqab desert from Asqelan prison, where he had been held for a number of months. He remains in isolation; prior to his transfer from Asqelan, he had been held since August 1 in a tiny isolation cell of 140 cm x 240 cm after being penalized for communicating with another prisoner in the isolation unit.
Attorney Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for prisoners' and detainees' rights, reported that this transfer is yet another continuation of the policy of repression and isolation directed at Sa'adat by the Israeli prison administration, aimed at undermining his steadfastness and weakening his health and his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Sa'adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison and subject to fines, harsh conditions, isolation and solitary confinement, and medical neglect. Further reports have indicated that he is being denied attorney visits upon his transfer to Ramon.
Ahmad Sa'adat undertook a nine-day hunger strike in June in order to protest the increasing use of isolation against Palestinian prisoners and the denial of prisoners' rights, won through long and hard struggle. The isolation unit at Ramon prison is reported to be one of the worst isolation units in terms of conditions and repeated violations of prisoners' rights in the Israeli prison system.
Sa'adat is serving a 30 year sentence in Israeli military prisons. He was sentenced on December 25, 2008 after a long and illegitimate military trial on political charges, which he boycotted. He was kidnapped by force in a military siege on the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he had been held since 2002 under U.S., British and PA guard.
Sa'adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to protest at local Israeli embassies and consulates (the list is available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ About+the+Ministry/Diplomatic+mission/Web+Sites+of+Israeli+ Missions+Abroad.htm) and to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem..jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa'adat!
Ahmad Sa'adat has been repeatedly moved in an attempt to punish him for his steadfastness and leadership and to undermine his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Of course, these tactics have done nothing of the sort. The Palestinian prisoners are daily on the front lines, confronting Israeli oppression and crimes. Today, it is urgent that we stand with Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners against these abuses, and for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners and for all of Palestine!
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org
info@freeahmadsaadat.org
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
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Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501(c)(3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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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
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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/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Medical Industry Grumbles, but It Stands to Gain
By DUFF WILSON and REED ABELSON
News Analysis
November 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/health/policy/09industry.html?ref=business
2) Statement by California Nurses Association/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro on the House bill on healthcare:
November 9, 2009
http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/press-releases/2009/november/statement-by-cna-nnoc-executive-director-rose-ann-demoro-on-the-house-bill-on-healthcare.html
3) A Word, Mr. President
By BOB HERBERT
"Last Friday, a huge crowd of fans marched in a ticker-tape parade in downtown Manhattan to celebrate the Yankees' World Series championship. More than once, as the fans passed through the financial district, the crowd erupted in rhythmic, echoing chants of 'Wall Street sucks! Wall Street sucks!'"
Op-Ed Columnist
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/opinion/10herbert.html?hp
4) The Ban on Abortion Coverage
Editorial
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/opinion/10tue1.html
5) At Fort Hood, Some Violence Is Too Familiar
By MICHAEL MOSS and RAY RIVERA
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/us/10post.html?ref=us
6) Few Can Avoid Deployment, Experts Say
By TAMAR LEWIN
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/us/10army.html?ref=us
7) A Squeeze on Customers Ahead of New Rules
By ANDREW MARTIN and LOWELL BERGMAN
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/10rates.html?ref=business
8) 3 Top Obama Advisers Favor Adding Troops in Afghanistan
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and DAVID E. SANGER
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/asia/11policy.html?_r=1&hp
9) Blackwater Said to Pursue Bribes to Iraq After 17 Died
By MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11blackwater.html?hp
10) A Parent's Unemployment Stress Trickles Down to the Children
By MICHAEL LUO
November 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/us/12families.html?ref=us
11) Peace Movement Blues
by Jack A. Smith
November 5, 2009
http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/2009/11/activist-newsletter-nov-5-2009.html
12) American Sues F.B.I., Saying He Was Detained in Africa
By SCOTT SHANE
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11aclu.html?ref=us
13) 25 Chicago Students Arrested for a Middle-School Food Fight
By SUSAN SAULNY
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11foodfight.html?ref=us
14) Potential San Francisco Showdown Over Immigration
By JESSE McKINLEY
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11sanctuary.html?ref=us
15) Harmful Levels of Mercury Are Found
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11brfs-HARMFULLEVEL_BRF.html?ref=us
16) Survey Finds Deep Shift in the Makeup of Unions
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/business/11membership.html?ref=business
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1) Medical Industry Grumbles, but It Stands to Gain
By DUFF WILSON and REED ABELSON
News Analysis
November 9, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/health/policy/09industry.html?ref=business
For any industry, there has to be at least some good news any time Congress votes to expand the market by tens of millions of customers.
But the business world found plenty to complain about Sunday, as it assessed the House bill that would make sweeping changes in the health care system and extend insurance coverage to millions more Americans.
Insurers do not like the provision to create a new government-run insurance program. Drug makers oppose billions of dollars in rebates they would have to give to the government over 10 years. Makers of artificial hips, heart defibrillators and other medical devices are not particularly happy about the proposed 2.5 percent tax on their products.
And employers large and small oppose rules that, for many of them, would make health care coverage - long a job benefit - become a federally mandated obligation.
That is why, as attention now shifts to the Senate, where Democratic leaders are trying to merge two bills into one, virtually every business group with a stake in the outcome will be hoping to strike at least a slightly better deal than they found in the House version.
And they may indeed get a break from the Senate, where the need for Democrats to compromise to win 60 votes may ensure a more business-moderate outcome.
And yet, many analysts said on Sunday that even the House bill was not as bad for business as many in the health care industry might have feared when the overhaul effort began many months ago.
"All industries stand to gain from this legislation," Steven D. Findlay, senior health policy analyst with Consumers Union in Washington, said in an interview. "They're going to continue to fight their narrow issues and get the best that they can get. But all of them are aware they stand to gain significant new business and new revenue streams as more Americans get health coverage and money flows into the system for them."
Of course, new revenue streams apply only to companies in the business of selling medical goods and services. To employers required to provide worker health benefits or else, in many cases, pay some sort of financial penalty, the House legislation offers little to cheer about.
Employer groups complained on Sunday that the House bill would impose insurance obligations while doing little to rein in the medical costs that help drive premiums higher year after year. In fact, those groups argue, the bill's creation of a government-run insurance program, which may pay doctors and hospitals less than private insurers do, could end up shifting even more medical costs to the private insurance system that employers use.
"This won't just hurt business, it will hurt millions of workers who have coverage through their employers," said John J. Castellani, president the Business Roundtable, a group of chief executives of some of the nation's biggest companies.
And the National Federation of Independent Business, representing many small businesses, said it was furious with the legislation. Susan Eckerly, senior vice president of the federation, attacked mandates, which she called punitive, and "atrocious new taxes." The legislation, she said, was "a failed opportunity to help small-business owners with their No. 1 problem - skyrocketing health care costs."
Another group, the Small Business Majority, praised the legislation but said the Senate needed to take more steps to lower costs.
Employers hope the final Senate legislation ends up looking more like the bill the Finance Committee passed, which does not require companies to insure their workers.
Meanwhile, the health insurance industry has been increasingly vocal about the emerging shape of the legislation, and it was sharply critical of the bill that passed on Saturday night.
"The current House legislation fails to bend the health cost curve and breaks the promise that those who like their current coverage can keep it," Karen M. Ignagni, the chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade association, said.
The reference to a broken promise refers, in part, to people enrolled in privately offered Medicare Advantage insurance plans, which would lose federal subsidies under the House bill. Ms. Ignagni warned of cuts that would "force millions of seniors out of the program entirely."
But the promise reference also refers to the bill's provision of a new government-run insurance plan that would compete directly with the health plans offered by private insurers. The insurance industry has long opposed such a move and warns that it will eventually force many people with private insurance into the government-run program.
That "public option," as it is known, was also in the Senate health committee bill approved in July. And the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, has also signaled that he intends to include some kind of public plan in whatever Senate legislation is reached.
But some observers say the House legislation is much less of a threat than the industry had feared. While insurers were worried that the government plan would be able to piggyback on the Medicare program in being able to demand lower prices than the private insurers get from doctors and hospitals, the House legislation does not give the government plan the same bargaining power as Medicare.
"The ability of that program to gain incredible market share and have the clout to severely undermine the market is minimized," Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consulting firm in Alexandria, Va., said in an interview.
Erik Gordon, a business professor and industry analyst at the University of Michigan, said insurers would find it difficult to price their new risks but might not be hurt too much by the competition - considering how many new customers they would have.
The drug industry expected harsh treatment from the House and got it. The bill would require drug makers to pay much more in rebates and discounts than in the $80 billion, 10-year deal that the industry struck in June with the White House and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus. The House bill tacked on $60 billion or so in rebates over 10 years, raising the total to around $140 billion.
But the White House and Mr. Baucus have said they will stay with their deal. It remains to be seen whether it survives the melding of Senate bills being directed by Mr. Reid.
"A good critic doesn't write his review at the end of the first act of a play," Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the pharmaceutical trade group the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in an interview. "We're hoping the second act is a lot better."
And while the House legislation allows direct government negotiation of Medicare drug prices - something specifically precluded in the Senate Finance bill - it does not allow Medicare to create a formulary, or list of limited drugs. Mr. Findlay, of Consumers Union, said that largely neutered Medicare's price-negotiating power, although it would represent a first step down the price-setting path that the industry is certain to fear.
In a victory for the biotechnology drug industry, the House bill would give biotech drugs, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year, protection from generic competition for 12 years.
Doctors were left holding a mixed bag. The American Medical Association supported the House legislation. But the doctors' group did not get its quid pro quo - the restoration of $210 billion in cuts to physicians' Medicare fees over the next 10 years, which were already scheduled before the current effort. Attempts in the House and Senate to restore those cuts have been set aside at least temporarily because the issue has been seen as a political distraction from the main health care overhaul effort.
Barry Meier and Andrew Pollack contributed reporting.
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2) Statement by California Nurses Association/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro on the House bill on healthcare:
November 9, 2009
http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/press-releases/2009/november/statement-by-cna-nnoc-executive-director-rose-ann-demoro-on-the-house-bill-on-healthcare.html
Of all the torrent of words that followed House passage of its version of healthcare reform legislation in early November, perhaps the most misleading were those comparing it to enactment of Social Security and Medicare.
Sadly no. Social Security and Medicare were both federal programs guaranteeing respectively pensions and health care for our nation's seniors, paid for and administered by the federal government with public oversight and public accountability.
While the House bill, and its Senate counterpart, do have several important reform components, along with many weaknesses, neither one comes close to the guarantees and the expansion of health and income security provided by Social Security or Medicare.
By contrast, if the central premise of Social Security and Medicare was a federal guarantee of health and retirement security, the main provision of the bills in Congress is a mandate requiring most Americans without health coverage to buy private insurance.
In other words, the principle beneficiary is not Americans' health, but the bottom line of the insurance industry which stands to harvest tens of billions of dollars in additional profits ordered by the federal government. Or as Rep. Eric Massa of New York put it on the eve of the House vote, "at the highest level, this bill will enshrine in law the monopolistic powers of the private health insurance industry, period."
Further, while Social Security and Medicare, two of the most important reforms in American history, were both significant expansions of public protection, the House bill actually reduces public protection for a substantial segment of the population, women, with its unconscionable rollback of reproductive rights in the anti-abortion amendment.
Why then so much cheerleading by many progressive and liberal legislators, columnists, and activists?
1- Passage of the bill was a clear defeat for the Republican opposition and those on the right who have so mischaracterized what boils down to modest reform that looks more like a "robust" version of the Medicare prescription drug benefit or the state children's health initiative.
2- Proponents of the bill, starting in the White House and running through the Democratic leadership in Congress, with the assistance and support of many in labor and liberal and progressive constituency groups, have so lowered expectations on healthcare reform that with eyes wide shut they can call this a sweeping victory.
To be sure there are commendable provisions in the House bill that bear note. Among the most important are:
- Expansion of Medicaid to millions of low income adults.
- Reduction of the "doughnut hole" in the Medicare drug coverage law making drug costs more affordable for many seniors.
- Increased federal funding for community health programs, such as home visits for nurses and social workers to low income families.
- Additional regulation of the insurance industry, mostly targeted to people who are presently without coverage rather than those with existing health plans. Those include limits on insurers ability to drop sick enrollees or refuse to sell policies to people with prior health problems, extending the age that dependent children can be on their parents' plan, and repeal of the anti-trust exemption for insurers.
- Extending the same health benefit tax benefits available to married couples to domestic partners.
- A progressive tax to help pay the bill through a surcharge on wealthy earners and required contributions from large employers, in sharp contrast with the Senate proposal to tax health benefits on misnamed "Cadillac" plans, comprehensive coverage available to many union members, for example.
But the acclaim now flowing from some quarters would have been better deserved had these provisions been enacted on their own -- not accompanied by the many shortcomings of the legislation. To cite a few:
Healthcare will remain unaffordable for many Americans. The bill does not do nearly enough to control skyrocketing insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital costs. Indeed, by various estimates, with no effective limits on the insurance industry's price gouging, out-of-pocket costs for premiums, deductibles and other fees by some estimates with eat up from 15 to 19 percent of family incomes by several accounts.
No meaningful reform of the rampant insurance denials of medical treatment the insurers don't want to for, for people with insurance.
Little assistance for individuals and families who presently have employer-sponsored health plans and face frequent erosion of their coverage and health security. No help for the healthcare cost-shifting from employers to employees.
Minimal expansion of consumer choice. The much debated public plan option will be available only to about 2 percent of people under age 65, mostly those now not covered who buy insurance on their own (it may or may not be expanded in 2015). Further, no additional plan options for those in the many markets dominated by one or two private plans, and no additional choice of doctor or hospital within existing plans.
The new limits on abortion extended to poor women.
Ultimately, the combination of the mandate to buy insurance, federal subsidies to low-income families to purchase private plans, failure to adequately control insurance prices or crack down on the abuse of insurance denials make the House bill -- and its Senate counterpart -- look a lot like a massive bailout for the private insurance industry.
Don't be misled by the howling from insurance industry which has been spending some $1.4 million a day to steer the direction of legislation. They would have preferred the status quo, but will be more than happy to count the increased revenues coming their way.
As Rep. Dennis Kucinich said on the House floor, "we cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem."
While some people will have improved access, the final accounting will be an even firmer private insurance grip on our healthcare system, with the U.S. remaining the only industrialized nation which barters our health for private profit.
Months ago, the Obama administration pre-determined this outcome by ruling out the most comprehensive, most cost effective, most humane reform, single payer, or an expanded and improved Medicare for all. Single payer proponents were shut out of White House forums, blocked from most hearings in the Senate, and single payer amendments stripped from the final House bill. Yet, through grassroots pressure, single-payer advocates forced consideration by the House of an improved Medicare for all until the very end.
But nurses and other single payer proponents who have heroically fought for this reform for years will continue the campaign, next in the Senate, where single payer amendments are expected to be introduced. The scene will also shift to state capitols, where vibrant single payer movements remain active and will escalate.
Proponents of comprehensive reform will never be silent, and never stop working for the real change we most desperately need.
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3) A Word, Mr. President
By BOB HERBERT
"Last Friday, a huge crowd of fans marched in a ticker-tape parade in downtown Manhattan to celebrate the Yankees' World Series championship. More than once, as the fans passed through the financial district, the crowd erupted in rhythmic, echoing chants of 'Wall Street sucks! Wall Street sucks!'"
Op-Ed Columnist
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/opinion/10herbert.html?hp
If I were a close adviser of President Obama's, I would say to him, "Mr. President, you have two urgent and overwhelming tasks in front of you: to put Americans trapped in this terrible employment crisis back to work and to put the brakes on your potentially disastrous plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan."
Reforming the chaotic and unfair health care system in the U.S. is an important issue. But in terms of pressing national priorities, the most important are the need to find solutions to a catastrophic employment environment that is devastating American families and to end the folly of an 8-year-old war that is both extremely debilitating and ultimately unwinnable.
We have spent the better part of a year locked in a tedious and unenlightening debate over health care while the jobless rate has steadily surged. It's now at 10.2 percent. Families struggling with job losses, home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies are falling out of the middle class like fruit through the bottom of a rotten basket. The jobless rate for men 16 years old and over is 11.4 percent. For blacks, it's a back-breaking 15.7 percent.
We need to readjust our focus. We're worried about Kabul when Detroit has gone down for the count.
I would tell the president that more and more Americans are questioning his priorities, including millions who went to the mat for him in last year's election. The biggest issue by far for most Americans is employment. The lack of jobs is fueling the nervousness, anxiety and full-blown anger that are becoming increasingly evident in the public at large.
Last Friday, a huge crowd of fans marched in a ticker-tape parade in downtown Manhattan to celebrate the Yankees' World Series championship. More than once, as the fans passed through the financial district, the crowd erupted in rhythmic, echoing chants of "Wall Street sucks! Wall Street sucks!"
I would tell the president that the feeling is widespread that his administration went too far with its bailouts of the financial industry, sending not just a badly needed lifeline but also unwarranted windfalls to the miscreants who nearly wrecked the entire economy. The government got very little in return. The perception now is that Wall Street is doing just fine while working people, whose taxes financed the bailouts, are walking the plank to economic oblivion.
I would also tell him that rebuilding the economy in a way that allows working Americans to flourish will require a sustained monumental effort, not just bits and pieces of legislation here and there. But such an effort will never get off the ground, will never have any chance of reaching critical mass and actually succeeding, as long as we insist on feeding young, healthy American men and women and endless American dollars into the relentless meat grinders of Afghanistan and Iraq.
We learned in the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was trumped by Vietnam, that nation-building here at home is incompatible with the demands of war. We've managed to keep the worst of the carnage - and the staggering costs - of Iraq and Afghanistan well out of the sight of most Americans, so the full extent of the terrible price we are paying is not widely understood.
The ultimate financial costs will be counted in the trillions. If you were to take a walk around one of the many military medical centers, like Landstuhl in Germany or Walter Reed in Washington, your heart would break at the sight of the heroic young men and women who have lost limbs (frequently more than one) or who are blind or paralyzed or horribly burned. Hundreds of thousands have suffered psychological wounds. Many have contemplated or tried suicide, and far too many have succeeded.
"Mr. President," I would say, "we'll never be right as a nation as long as we allow this to continue."
The possibility of more troops for the war in Afghanistan was discussed Sunday on "Meet the Press." Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania noted candidly that "our troops are tired and worn out." More than 85 percent of the men and women in the Pennsylvania National Guard have already served in Iraq or Afghanistan. "Many of them have gone three or four times and they're wasted," said Mr. Rendell.
More troops? "Where are we going to find these troops?" the governor asked. "That's what I want somebody to tell me."
While we're preparing to pour more resources into Afghanistan, the Economic Policy Institute is telling us that one in five American children is living in poverty, that nearly 35 percent of African-American children are living in poverty, and that the unemployment crisis is pushing us toward a point in the coming years where more than half of all black children in this country will be poor.
"Mr. President," I would say, "we need your help."
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4) The Ban on Abortion Coverage
Editorial
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/opinion/10tue1.html
When the House narrowly passed the health care reform bill on Saturday night, it came with a steep price for women's reproductive rights. Under pressure from anti-abortion Democrats and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, lawmakers added language that would prevent millions of Americans from buying insurance that covers abortions - even if they use their own money.
The restrictions would fall on women eligible to buy coverage on new health insurance exchanges. They are a sharp departure from current practice, an infringement of a woman's right to get a legal medical procedure and an unjustified intrusion by Congress into decisions best made by patients and doctors.
The anti-abortion Democrats behind this coup insisted that they were simply adhering to the so-called Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal dollars to pay for almost all abortions in a number of government programs. In fact, they reached far beyond Hyde and made it largely impossible to use a policyholder's own dollars to pay for abortion coverage.
The bill brought to the floor already included a careful compromise that should have satisfied reasonable legislators on both sides of the abortion issue. The vast majority of people expected to buy policies on the new exchanges would pay part of the premium and receive government tax credits to pay for the rest. The compromise would have prohibited the use of the tax subsidies to pay for almost all abortions, but it would have allowed the segregation and use of premium contributions and co-payments to pay for such coverage. A similar approach allows 17 state Medicaid programs to cover abortions using only state funds, not federal matching funds.
Yet neither the Roman Catholic bishops nor anti-abortion Democrats were willing to accept this compromise. They insisted on language that would ban the use of federal subsidies to pay for "any part" of a policy that includes abortion coverage.
If insurers want to attract subsidized customers, who will be the great majority on the exchange, they will have to offer them plans that don't cover abortions. It is theoretically possible that insurers could offer plans aimed only at nonsubsidized customers, but it is highly uncertain that they will find it worthwhile to do so.
In that case, some women who have coverage for abortion services through policies bought by small employers could actually lose that coverage if their employer decides to transfer its workers to the exchange. Ultimately, if larger employers are permitted to make use of the exchange, ever larger numbers of women might lose abortion coverage that they now have.
The restrictive language allows people to buy "riders" that would cover abortions. But nobody plans to have an unplanned pregnancy, so this concession is meaningless. It is not clear that insurers would even offer the riders since few people would buy them.
The highly restrictive language was easily approved by a 240-to-194 vote and incorporated into the overall bill, which squeaked through by a tally of 220 to 215. It was depressing evidence of the power of anti-abortion forces to override a reasonable compromise. They were willing to scuttle the bill if they didn't get their way. Outraged legislators who support abortion rights could also have killed the bill but sensibly chose to keep the reform process moving ahead.
The fight will resume in the Senate, where the Finance Committee has approved a bill that incorporates the compromise just rejected by the House. We urge the Senate to stand strong behind a compromise that would preserve a woman's right to abortion services.
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5) At Fort Hood, Some Violence Is Too Familiar
By MICHAEL MOSS and RAY RIVERA
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/us/10post.html?ref=us
FORT HOOD, Tex. - Staff Sgt. Gilberto Mota, 35, and his wife, Diana, 30, an Army specialist, had returned to Fort Hood from Iraq last year when he used his gun to kill her, and then took his own life, the authorities say. In July, two members of the First Cavalry Division, also just back from the war with decorations for their service, were at a party when one killed the other.
That same month, Staff Sgt. Justin Lee Garza, 28, under stress from two deployments, killed himself in a friend's apartment outside Fort Hood, four days after he was told no therapists were available for a counseling session. "What bothers me most is this happened while he was supposed to be on suicide watch," said his mother, Teri Smith. "To this day, I don't know where he got the gun."
Fort Hood is still reeling from last week's carnage, in which an Army psychiatrist is accused of a massacre that left 13 people dead. But in the town of Killeen and other surrounding communities, the attack, one of the worst mass shootings on a military base in the United States, is also seen by many as another blow in an area that has been beset by crime and violence since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began. Reports of domestic abuse have grown by 75 percent since 2001. At the same time, violent crime in Killeen has risen 22 percent while declining 7 percent in towns of similar size in other parts of the country.
The stresses are seen in other ways, too.
Since 2003, there have been 76 suicides by personnel assigned to Fort Hood, with 10 this year, according to military officials.
A crisis center on base is averaging 60 phone calls a week from soldiers and family members seeking various help for problems from suicide to anger management, with about the same volume of walk-ins and scheduled appointments.
In recent days, Army officials have pledged to redouble their efforts to help soldiers cope with deployment. The base, which uses some of the most innovative approaches in the military, plans to expand a help center set up in September that provides a variety of assistance to soldiers, including breathing techniques for handling combat stress and goal-setting skills upon their return.
"Fort Hood is very attuned to this," said Col. William S. Rabena, who runs the help center known as the Resiliency Center Campus. "It's the only thing to do."
The Army has also sent an array of specialists to Fort Hood to help soldiers and their families, including chaplains, social workers, combat stress specialists, counselors and experts in crisis and disaster behavioral management. Army officials said more such assistance might be sent to the base.
But interviews with soldiers who have deployed one or more times to Iraq or Afghanistan, and with family members of those who died violently back here in Texas, show that the Army's efforts are still falling short. Even some alarm bells rung by the Army leadership have gone unanswered.
In July, two weeks after Sergeant Garza's death, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, then the base commander, told Congress he was in dire need of more mental health professionals. "That's the biggest frustration," he told a House subcommittee. "I'm short about 44 of what I am convinced I need at Fort Hood that I just don't have."
Among the medical personnel brought to Fort Hood to help deal with the growing mental health issues was Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who arrived in July. Major Hasan is accused in the attacks last week, but little is known about what might have driven him.
"Our soldiers are coming back and not getting the help they need," said Cynthia Thomas, an Army wife who runs a private assistance center for soldiers in Killeen called Under the Hood Café. "Whether it's self-medicating, anger or violence, these are the consequences of war, and you have to think about all the people affected by soldiers coming home, the parents, spouses, children, brothers, sisters, aunts and cousins."
Pfc. Michael Kern, of Riverside, Calif., said he tried unsuccessfully to obtain help for stress last year in Baghdad, but was ridiculed by an officer in front of his tanker unit. "He said he would have to impose mandatory sleeping times," said Private Kern, 22, "and that health care was for people with serious problems."
Back at Fort Hood, Private Kern said he had a breakdown that led to hospitalization and is now awaiting discharge at his request. If he had received therapy in Iraq, he said, "I might not be in this situation now."
Military officials say the crime and violence associated with Fort Hood must be viewed with the base's size in mind. With 53,000 soldiers assigned to the base, it has become the largest facility in the country, and much of the surrounding area is tied to the military through family or business.
Col. Edward McCabe, a Catholic chaplain at Fort Hood, said signs of fatigue and other strains are "rampant" on the base. "The numbers of divorces I've had to deal with are huge, the cases of physical abuse," Colonel McCabe said. "Every night in my apartment complex some soldier and his wife are screaming and shouting at each other."
The Army influences nearly every aspect of life in Killeen, a cotton town until the base moved in during World War II. About 55 miles north of Austin, the town straddles U.S. 190 and is split by a long corridor of strip malls. Most of the 102,000 residents are soldiers, their families or Army retirees. Business here and in the surrounding smaller communities like Belton and Harker Heights ebbs and flows around the first and 15th of each month - military paydays - and around deployments.
At The Killeen Daily Herald, which covers the base with a sympathetic ear to its military readers, employees see similar patterns play out with each troop rotation.
One day, it is a homecoming, with hundreds of families waving flags and homemade signs along T. J. Mills Boulevard leading into the base's main gate. The next day, crime reports increase, especially cases of domestic violence. "Unfortunately, you see the trend every time there's a homecoming, when the divisions come home," said Olga Pena, the paper's managing editor.
Nicolas Serna, the managing attorney of the local legal aid office, said requests for protective orders had steadily increased over the last several years.
He questioned whether Fort Hood was doing nearly enough for soldiers or for victims of domestic violence. A few years ago, he said, the base refused the group's offer to provide legal assistance and to help with protection orders for families on Fort Hood.
Some social workers in the area see it differently. The Army, while not perfect, has been trying to address the situation, said Suzanne Armour, the director of programs at the Families in Crisis shelter in Killeen.
Michael Sibberson, the principal of Killeen High School, which has 1,880 students, a little over half with military parents, said in one sense the wars had helped the students relate to one another. On the other side, Mr. Sibberson said, the students are not getting the parental guidance they need because so many have parents deployed. That has led to poor grades, and more behavioral problems.
"Kids are not getting the support at the dinner table they need because Mom or Dad is not there," he said, adding, "When you call the house you are likely to get Grandma, or a mom who says, 'I am so full I don't know what to do with him anymore.' "
Henry Garza, the district attorney for Bell County, which includes Killeen, said increases in crime might reflect the town's rapid growth, though the federal crime data is adjusted for population changes. But the data may be understated because it does not count crimes prosecuted by the military authorities, who sometimes handle serious felonies and misdemeanors by active-duty soldiers even when they occur off base.
Base officials declined to release crime data without a Freedom of Information Act request.
Whether civilian or military official investigate deaths, the proceedings often leave families frustrated by the lack of clear answers.
The list of medals awarded to Sergeant Garza (no relation to the district attorney) tell of a good soldier. After two tours in Iraq, he shared a tight bond with unit members and missed them greatly when the Army sent him to a base in Georgia for additional training after a second deployment. He was troubled by a breakup with a girlfriend. And though he seldom spoke with his family about his combat tours, he once confided to his mother that he had a killed a person in Iraq. "He said, 'It was him or me,' " Ms. Smith said. "But you could tell it troubled him."
His family believes he did not get the care he needed, despite signs he had fallen into despair.
In June, he left the Georgia base without permission, and the Army tracked him to a hotel room in Paris, Tex. In a suicide note he sent to a friend before leaving, he said he wanted to end it close to his friends. Among his purchases was a shotgun.
Sergeant Garza was brought back to Fort Hood and committed for psychiatric care, first to a civilian hospital because there was no room at the base hospital, said his uncle, Gary Garza, who lives in Killeen. After three days, he was transferred to the base hospital. He was released after two weeks and assigned to take outpatient counseling.
"We thought he was doing better," said his grandfather, Homer Garza, a retired command sergeant major who served in Korea and Vietnam and who himself had silently suffered for decades with post-traumatic stress.
In fact, Sergeant Garza had shared misgivings about his treatment at the base hospital with his uncle.
"He said he felt like he was getting really good treatment at the civilian hospital," his uncle said. "He said the civilian doctors seemed to care more. And for the military doctors, it was just like a job for them."
True or not, on July 7 Sergeant Garza received a message on his cellphone canceling what was to be his first outpatient appointment.
Though his family says the Army was supposed to be checking his apartment for guns and alcohol, that Sunday he put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. His mother later listened to the message.
"They said, 'Sorry, we don't have a counselor for you today,' " Ms. Smith said. " 'If you don't hear back from us by Monday, give us a call.' "
Clifford Krauss and Campbell Robertson contributed reporting from Killeen, Tex., and Griff Palmer from New York.
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6) Few Can Avoid Deployment, Experts Say
By TAMAR LEWIN
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/us/10army.html?ref=us
No matter how much a member of the armed services dreads being sent to a war zone, there is no easy option for an early discharge - especially when deployment is near.
"It's very hard," said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School and is president of the National Institute of Military Justice. "Particularly in the case of people who have received substantial and valuable training, like health providers or aviators, the military is very loath to allow people out prematurely."
Reports that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of last week's Fort Hood shootings, had explored leaving the military, in part to avoid being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, have spurred discussion about how much leeway was available to him.
Experts said that absent a clear mental health problem, it would have been very difficult for Major Hasan - whose active-duty obligation ran until May 2017, the Army said - to have won a discharge. Lawyers who deal with the military said the outcomes in such cases were difficult to predict, even if the client becomes desperate enough to desert.
"I know of no other officer in this pay grade who refused to comply with deployment orders," Mr. Fidell said. "The penalty for desertion with intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service is five years' confinement. But it varies, and who knows, the government might not have wanted to pick a fight with a senior Muslim officer."
Military law provides several routes to voluntary discharge, including conscientious objection, physical or mental conditions, family hardship or homosexual conduct. But as a practical matter, lawyers who handle such cases say, winning a discharge often depends on the commanding officer's discretion - and how much time remains before deployment.
"There are always surprises," said James Klimaski, a Washington lawyer who handles military cases. "I recently had a doctor who said it was financially impossible for him to stay in the service, and they let him out."
"If Major Hasan had called me, and told me he was seeing a lot of PTSD, that it was getting to him, I would have argued that he had a medical reason not to go," Mr. Klimaski said. "If he had said that his religion wouldn't allow him to go to this war, I would have made the case that they should accommodate his religion. But if he was calling two weeks before deployment, I pretty much would have told him to forget it."
Others agree that timing is important.
"The closer you are to deployment, the harder it is to deal with these issues," said J. E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience & War. "The commanding officer really has a full plate at that time, and doesn't have time to figure out what's legit and what isn't."
George Wright, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said that while commanding officers' "automatic bias" is to "want to deploy to combat with 100 percent strength," they also recognize the value of each soldier, and try to protect their well-being."
"They want their units fully capable to accomplish the mission," Mr. Wright said.
Winning a conscientious-objection discharge is a long and cumbersome process, lawyers say. According to the Army, only .01 percent of the force each year is discharged for conscientious objection.
"The odds of success," said James M. Branum, co-chairman of the National Lawyer's Guild's Military Law Task Force, "are very, very slim, because you must prove that you were not a conscientious objector when you enlisted, but that something happened to crystallize your beliefs in a different direction. Your views must be religious or from a deep place of conscience, not purely sociological or political. And you have to oppose all wars, not just a particular one."
While Congress has considered legislation that would allow selective conscientious objection - that is, objection to a particular war, such legislation has never gotten very far, Ms. McNeil said.
"Had we allowed for selective conscientious objection, we might not be looking at the horror we're looking at," she added.
Over all, lawyers said, mental health is the most common motivation for those seeking discharges.
But Mr. Branum pointed out that "military mental health professionals and doctors are trained to say, 'No, you're faking.' "
Ms. McNeil, a lawyer who has worked with the G.I. Rights Hotline for a decade, said that many military officers dismiss last-minute emotional problems as stage fright.
"I've never heard of anybody who had emotional problems and then didn't get deployed," she said. "From the military point of view, it's true that there are people who panic beforehand, and do just fine once they're deployed."
Voluntary discharges may also be available for those who have long-term family hardships, with no one else available to care for, say, a mother with cancer.
And while homosexual conduct in the military is not allowed, Mr. Branum said that as a practical matter, few enlisted men or women are able to win voluntary discharge for homosexuality, even if they present their commanding officers with incriminating photographs.
Often, those who have emotional problems, and want to get out of the military, turn to fighting, drinking, drugs or desertion in a conscious or not-entirely-conscious effort to be discharged.
"Some start acting out in ways that make them not interesting to the military, like using drugs to go tox positive, some go AWOL," Ms. McNeil said. "If they go AWOL, it's not like they all get court-martialed - but the ones most likely to be court-martialed are those who go AWOL right before deployment."
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7) A Squeeze on Customers Ahead of New Rules
By ANDREW MARTIN and LOWELL BERGMAN
November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/10rates.html?ref=business
Banks are struggling to make money in the credit card business these days, and consumers are paying the price. Interest rates are going up, credit lines are being cut and a variety of new fees are being imposed on even the best cardholders.
One recipient of new credit card terms is Anita Holaday, a 91-year-old in Florida, who received a letter last month from Citibank announcing that her new interest rate was 29.99 percent, an increase of 10 percentage points.
"I think it's outrageous they pursue such a policy," said Susan Holaday Schumacher, Ms. Holaday's daughter, who pays her mother's bills. "That rate is shocking under any circumstances."
While the average interest rates charged by banks are lower than Ms. Holaday's, her situation is not all that unusual. The higher rates and fees reflect the grim new realities of the credit card industry - the percentage of uncollectible balances has hit a record even as a new law may further limit the cards' profitability.
Banks began raising interest rates and pulling back credit lines about a year ago as delinquencies crept upward and regulators discussed reforms. As banks have become more aggressive in making changes, lawmakers have accused them of trying to impose rate increases before many of the new rules take effect in February.
On Monday, the Federal Reserve provided new evidence of the banks' actions. About 50 percent of the banks responding to the Fed's survey said they were increasing interest rates and reducing credit lines on borrowers with good credit scores. About 40 percent said they were imposing higher fees. The banks also said they were demanding higher minimum credit scores and tightening other requirements.
A study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, released late last month, concluded that the 12 largest banks, issuing more than 80 percent of the credit cards, were continuing to use practices that the Fed concluded were "unfair or deceptive" and that in many instances had been outlawed by Congress.
In response to voter complaints, the House of Representatives voted last week to make the law effective immediately. The bill now goes to the Senate, where a vote has not been scheduled. The Senate Banking Committee chairman, Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, meanwhile, is pushing legislation that would freeze interest rates on existing credit card balances until the law takes effect.
Whatever the starting date, the law makes it much harder for banks to change interest rates on existing balances, and requires more time and notice before a new rate can go into effect.
In their defense, banking officials say they have no choice but to raise rates and limit credit. Because of the new rules and the prolonged economic malaise, they say it is now far riskier to issue credit cards than it was just a few years ago.
"We sell credit; we don't sell sweaters," said Kenneth J. Clayton, senior vice president for card policy at the American Bankers Association. "The only way to manage your return is through the price of the product or the availability."
The nation's largest banks are scrambling to figure out a new business model that fits within the new rules and current economic conditions. Those banks made handsome profits over the last decade by charging high interest rates and penalty fees to a small group of customers who routinely paid late or exceeded their balances.
Already, banks are shifting to a model in which a smaller pool of Americans will be eligible for credit cards, and customers with cards will probably pay more for the privilege through annual fees and higher interest.
Meanwhile, the banks are in the process of shedding customers considered too risky. That means tens of thousands of Americans will no longer be able to splurge on Nike gym shoes or flat-screen televisions unless, of course, they have enough cash to pay for them.
Still, even consumer advocates have said that the banks were too quick in the past to give out credit. "You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you keep borrowing and borrowing in order to consume now, eventually you crash and burn," said Martin Eakes, chief executive for the Center for Responsible Lending. "That's what we're facing."
In the 12 months that ended in September, the number of Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover card accounts in the United States fell by 72 million, according to David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report, an industry newsletter. There are 555 million accounts still in the marketplace, he said.
In roughly the same time period, banks lowered credit limits by 26 percent, to $3.4 trillion, from $4.6 trillion, according to an analysis of government data by Foresight Analytics.
Interest on credit card accounts, meanwhile, has increased to an average of 13.71 percent, up from 11.94 percent a year ago, according to federal records.
As to credit card charge-offs - industry lingo for uncollectible balances - the number tracks the unemployment rate and, therefore, is hovering at around 10 percent.
For the banks, this is uncharted territory. In the modern financing era, credit cards were long a profit center, producing tens of billions in annual profits with a default rate that hovered around 4 percent until the recession.
"We know we are going to lose a lot of money next year in cards, and it could be north of $1 billion in both the first quarter and the second quarter. And that number will probably only start coming down as you see unemployment and charge-offs come down," Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said in an earnings call last month.
Banking officials said that because the new law limits their ability to reprice credit as a customer's risk profile changes, they will instead have to price for future risk at the start, when a cardholder applies for a new card.
That means fewer applicants will be approved for new credit cards, and those who are accepted will increasingly be charged annual fees or variable interest rates, rather than fixed rates. Currently, about 20 percent of credit cards charge annual fees, a percentage that is rising, said Bill Hardekopf, chief executive of LowCards.com. Current cardholders, too, will be affected.
Asked to explain its rate increases, Citibank issued a statement saying the "actions are necessary given the losses across the industry from customers not paying back their loans and regulatory changes that eliminate repricing for that risk."
Ms. Holaday Schumacher did not accept that explanation. She said she haggled with Citibank to try to get her mother's bills forwarded to her house in Washington and, during the process, two bills were inadvertently paid late, resulting in the rate increase.
"How unbelievably unfair for an older person who might not understand what this is all about," she said. Citibank declined to comment on the account.
Still, many of the nation's banks are trying to repair their tarnished reputations with consumers.
American Express and Discover Financial, for instance, have vowed to stop charging fees when cardholders exceed their credit limits. JPMorgan has started a program that can help consumers categorize their spending and pay down their balances more quickly.
And Bank of America is promoting a line of consumer products so simple that the terms and conditions fit on one page. The BankAmericard Basic Visa, for instance, has no rewards and a single interest rate.
Andrew Rowe, Global Card Services strategy executive at Bank of America, said the new products represented a sea change in the bank's attitude toward consumer products. Instead of benefiting from consumers who displayed risky behavior by penalizing them with fees, the bank is now trying to help them break those bad habits, he said.
"We succeed if our customers succeed," he said. "That's the paradigm shift."
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, for one, said he would welcome consumer products that were simpler and less risky. But, he added in an interview with the PBS documentary program "Frontline": "It's a bit of a late conversion. It would have been nice to happen earlier."
Edmund L. Andrews contributed reporting.
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8) 3 Top Obama Advisers Favor Adding Troops in Afghanistan
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and DAVID E. SANGER
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/asia/11policy.html?_r=1&hp
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan, but President Obama remains unsatisfied with answers he has gotten about how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan would help execute a new strategy, administration officials said Tuesday.
Mr. Obama is to consider four final options in a meeting with his national security team on Wednesday, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters. The options outline different troop levels, other officials said, but they also assume different goals - including how much of Afghanistan the troops would seek to control - and different time frames and expectations for the training of Afghan security forces.
Three of the options call for specific levels of additional troops. The low-end option would add 20,000 to 25,000 troops, a middle option calls for about 30,000, and another embraces Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's request for roughly 40,000 more troops. Administration officials said that a fourth option was added only in the past few days. They declined to identify any troop level attached to it.
Mr. Gates, a Republican who served as President George W. Bush's last defense secretary, and who commands considerable respect from the president, is expected to be pivotal in Mr. Obama's decision. But administration officials cautioned that Mr. Obama had not yet made up his mind, and that other top advisers, among them Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, remained skeptical of the value of a buildup.
In the Situation Room meetings and other sessions, some officials have expressed deep reservations about President Hamid Karzai, who emerged the victor of a disputed Afghan election. They said there was no evidence that Mr. Karzai would carry through on promises to crack down on corruption or the drug trade or that his government was capable of training enough reliable Afghan troops and police officers for Mr. Obama to describe a credible exit strategy.
Officials said that although the president had no doubt about what large numbers of United States troops could achieve on their own in Afghanistan, he repeatedly asked questions during recent meetings on Afghanistan about whether a sizable American force might undercut the urgency of the preparations of the Afghan forces who are learning to stand up on their own.
"He's simply not convinced yet that you can do a lasting counterinsurgency strategy if there is no one to hand it off to," one participant said.
Mr. Obama, officials said, has expressed similar concerns about Pakistan's willingness to attack Taliban leaders who are operating out of the Pakistani city of Quetta and commanding forces that are mounting attacks across the border in Afghanistan. While Pakistan has mounted military operations against some Taliban groups in recent weeks, one official noted, "it's been focused on the Taliban who are targeting the Pakistani government, but not those who are running operations in Afghanistan."
Mr. Obama himself seems to be hedging his bets, particularly on the performance of Mr. Karzai, who is considered by American officials to be an unreliable partner and is now widely derided in the White House. Mr. Obama told ABC News during an interview on Monday that given the weakness of the Karzai government in Kabul, his administration was seeking "provincial government actors that have legitimacy in the right now."
Officials said that while Admiral Mullen and Mrs. Clinton were generally in sync with Mr. Gates in supporting an option of about 30,000 troops, there were variations in their positions and they were not working in lock step. Admiral Mullen's spokesman, Capt. John Kirby, said that the admiral was providing his advice to the president in private and would not comment. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, would not comment on Mr. Gates's position.
A focus of Mr. Obama's meeting on Wednesday with his national security advisers, officials said, will be to discuss some of their differences as well as those of the president's other advisers. Officials also said there was a possibility that Mr. Obama might choose to phase in additional troops over time, with a schedule that depended on the timing of the arrival of any additional NATO troops and on how soon Afghan security forces would be able to do more on their own.
Officials said that no decision was expected from Mr. Obama on Wednesday, but that he would mull over the discussions at the meeting during a trip to Asia that begins Thursday. Mr. Obama is not due back in Washington until next Thursday. Officials said that it was possible that he could announce his decision in the three days before Thanksgiving, which is on Nov. 26, but that an announcement in the first week of December seemed more likely.
Should Mr. Obama choose to send about 30,000 troops, a military official said, brigades would most likely be sent from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. In addition, 4,000 troops would be sent as trainers for the Afghan security forces, the military official said. A brigade is about 3,500 to 5,000 soldiers.
Senator Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat who has been an influential adviser in the Afghanistan debate, said that one of the most difficult issues was determining the effects of a large American troop presence on the country.
"It's more about, hey, are we creating such a large footprint that it's easier for the Afghans to walk way from their responsibility?" Mr. Reed said. "I don't think that's one that can be resolved. You're making a judgment about that one, and not one you can solve with arithmetic."
Peter Baker, Eric Schmitt and Mark Landler contributed reporting.
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9) Blackwater Said to Pursue Bribes to Iraq After 17 Died
By MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11blackwater.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company's employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater's ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Four former executives said in interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then Blackwater's president, had approved the bribes and that the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where the company maintains an operations hub, to a top manager in Iraq. The executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.
Blackwater's strategy of buying off the government officials, which would have been illegal under American law, created a deep rift inside the company, according to the former executives. They said that Cofer Black, who was then the company's vice chairman and a former top C.I.A. and State Department official, learned of the plan from another Blackwater manager while he was in Baghdad discussing compensation for families of the shooting victims with United States Embassy officials.
Alarmed about the secret payments, Mr. Black cut short his talks and left Iraq. Soon after returning to the United States, he confronted Erik Prince, the company's chairman and founder, who did not dispute that there was a bribery plan, according to a former Blackwater executive familiar with the meeting. Mr. Black resigned the following year.
Stacy DeLuke, a spokeswoman for the company, now called Xe Services, dismissed the allegations as "baseless" and said the company would not comment about former employees. Mr. Black did not respond to telephone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment.
Reached by phone, Mr. Jackson, who resigned as president early this year, criticized The New York Times and said, "I don't care what you write."
The four former Blackwater executives, who had held high-ranking posts at the company, would speak only on condition of anonymity. Two of them said they took part in talks about the payments; the two others said they had been told by several Blackwater officials about the discussions. In agreeing to describe those conversations, the four officials said that they were troubled by a pattern of questionable conduct by Blackwater, which had led them to leave the company.
A senior State Department official said that American diplomats were not aware of any payoffs to Iraqi officials.
Blackwater continued operating as the prime contractor providing security for the United States Embassy in Baghdad until spring, when the Iraqi government said it would deny the company an operating license. The State Department replaced Blackwater with a rival in May, but the company still does some work for the department in Iraq on a temporary basis.
Five Blackwater guards involved in the shooting are facing federal manslaughter charges, and their trial is scheduled to start in February in Washington. A sixth guard pleaded guilty in December. The company has never faced criminal charges in the case, although the Iraqi victims brought a civil lawsuit in federal court against Blackwater and Mr. Prince.
Separately, a federal grand jury in North Carolina, where the company has its headquarters, has been conducting a lengthy investigation into it. One of the former executives said that he had told federal prosecutors there about the plan to pay Iraqi officials to drop their inquiries into the Nisour Square case. If Blackwater followed through, the company or its officials could face charges of obstruction of justice and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans bribes to foreign officials.
Officials at the United States Attorney's Office in Raleigh declined to comment on their investigation, and it is not clear whether the payment scheme is a focus of the grand jury.
Federal prosecutors in North Carolina have interviewed a number of former Blackwater employees about a variety of issues, including allegations of weapons smuggling, according to several former employees who say they have testified before the grand jury or been interviewed by prosecutors, as well as lawyers familiar with the matter. Two former employees have pleaded guilty to weapons charges and are believed to be cooperating with prosecutors.
Since 2001, Blackwater has undergone explosive growth, not only from security contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also from classified work for the Central Intelligence Agency that included taking part in a now defunct program to assassinate leaders of Al Qaeda and to load missiles on Predator drones.
The Nisour Square shooting was the bloodiest and most controversial episode involving Blackwater in the Iraq war. At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded.
The matter set off an international outcry and intense debates in Iraq and the United States over the role of private contractors in war zones. Many Iraqis condemned Blackwater, which they had long seen as an arrogant rogue operation, and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki declared that the Blackwater shooting was a challenge to his nation's sovereignty. His government opened investigations into the episode and previous fatal shootings by Blackwater guards, and threatened to bar the company from operating in the country.
Those responses deeply worried Blackwater officials. Before the Nisour Square shootings, the company had operated in Iraq without a license largely because the Iraqi government had never enforced the rules. Being blocked from the country would have been costly - the State Department deal was Blackwater's single biggest contract. From 2004 through today, the company has collected more than $1.5 billion for its work protecting American diplomats and providing air transportation for them inside Iraq.
"It would hurt us," Mr. Prince, the chairman, said in an interview in January about losing the diplomatic security contract. "It would not be a mortal blow, but it would hurt us."
The former Blackwater executives said it was not clear who proposed paying off Iraqi officials. But after Mr. Jackson, the former company president, approved the plan, the cash for the payoffs was taken from Amman and given to Rich Garner, then a top manager in Iraq, the former executives said. One of those executives said that officials in Iraq's Interior Ministry, which is responsible for operating licenses, were the intended recipients.
Mr. Garner, who still works for the company, could not be reached for comment. The former executives said they did not know whether Mr. Garner was involved in decisions about the bribery scheme.
At that time, Mr. Black was in a series of discussions with Patricia A. Butenis, the deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy in Baghdad, about compensation payments to the Nisour Square victims. According to former Blackwater officials, Mr. Black was furious when he learned that the payoff money was being funneled into Iraq, and he swiftly broke off the talks with Ms. Butenis.
"We are out of here," Mr. Black told a colleague, one former executive said. After returning to the United States, Mr. Black and Robert Richer, who had also joined Blackwater after a C.I.A. career, separately confronted Mr. Prince with their concerns about the plan, one former Blackwater executive said.
Mr. Richer left Blackwater in February 2008, followed by Mr. Black several months later, amid a battle inside Blackwater between former C.I.A. officers working at the company's office outside Washington and executives at Blackwater's headquarters in North Carolina.
The former officials said that Mr. Black, Mr. Richer and others believed that Blackwater had cultivated a cowboy culture that was contemptuous of government rules and regulations, and that some of the company's leaders - former members of the Navy Seals including Mr. Prince and Mr. Jackson - had pushed the boundaries of legality. Contacted by telephone, Mr. Richer would not discuss specifics of why he left the company.
Ms. Butenis, now the United States ambassador to Sri Lanka, declined to comment for this article. But other State Department officials confirmed that embassy officials had met with Blackwater executives to encourage them to compensate the victims of Nisour Square.
The United States military had a well-established program for paying families of civilian victims of American military operations, but at the time of the Nisour Square shooting, the State Department did not have a similar program, officials said.
In interviews, three Iraqis wounded in Nisour Square said that Blackwater had made payments of several thousand dollars to them and other victims. Still, some of them joined the civil lawsuit against Blackwater. Settlement talks collapsed Tuesday, according to Susan Burke, a lawyer for the victims.
Even after the furor that was set off by the shootings, State Department officials made it clear that they did not believe they could operate in Baghdad without Blackwater, and Iraqi officials eventually dropped their public demands for the company's immediate ouster.
Raed Jarrar, the Iraq consultant to the American Friends Service Committee, said in a recent interview that the Maliki government had gone too easy on Blackwater. "They had two different messages," he said. "The Iraqi public, and even the Iraqi Parliament, was told that all private contractors would be pulled out of the country, while the contractors and the State Department were told the opposite."
In late 2008, the Bush administration and the Iraqi government hammered out an agreement governing the role of security contractors in Iraq. Under the new rules, security contractors lost their immunity from Iraqi laws, which had been granted in 2004 by L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country after the start of the American-led war. The Iraqi government also made it mandatory for security contractors to obtain licenses to operate in the country.
In March 2009, the Iraqis said that the company would not be awarded a license. Two months later, the State Department replaced it with a competing security contractor, Triple Canopy.
Barclay Walsh contributed research from Washington, and Mohammed Hussein from Baghdad.
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10) A Parent's Unemployment Stress Trickles Down to the Children
By MICHAEL LUO
November 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/us/12families.html?ref=us
THE WOODLANDS, Tex. - Paul Bachmuth's 9-year-old daughter, Rebecca, began pulling out strands of her hair over the summer. His older child, Hannah, 12, has become noticeably angrier, more prone to throwing tantrums.
Initially, Mr. Bachmuth, 45, did not think his children were terribly affected when he lost his job nearly a year ago. But now he cannot ignore the mounting evidence.
"I'm starting to think it's all my fault," Mr. Bachmuth said.
As the months have worn on, his job search travails have consumed the family, even though the Bachmuths were outwardly holding up on unemployment benefits, their savings and the income from the part-time job held by Mr. Bachmuth's wife, Amanda. But beneath the surface, they have been a family on the brink. They have watched their children struggle with behavioral issues and a stress-induced disorder. He finally got a job offer last week, but not before the couple began seeing a therapist to save their marriage.
For many families across the country, the greatest damage inflicted by this recession has not necessarily been financial but emotional and psychological. Children, especially, have become hidden casualties, often absorbing more than their parents are fully aware of. Several academic studies have linked parental job loss - especially that of fathers - to adverse impacts on everything from school performance to self-esteem.
"I've heard a lot of people who are out of work say it's kind of been a blessing, that you have more time to spend with your family," Mr. Bachmuth said. "I love my family and my family comes first, and my family means more than anything to me, but it hasn't been that way for me."
A recent study at the University of California, Davis, found that children in families where the head of the household had lost a job were 15 percent more likely to repeat a grade. Ariel Kalil, a University of Chicago professor of public policy, and Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, of the Institute for Children and Poverty in New York, found in an earlier study that adolescent children of low-income single mothers who endured unemployment had an increased chance of dropping out of school and showed declines in emotional well-being.
In the long term, children whose parents were laid off have been found to have lower annual earnings as adults than those whose parents remained employed, a phenomenon Peter R. Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, mentioned in a speech last week at New York University.
A variety of studies have tied drops in family income to negative effects on children's development. But Dr. Kalil, a developmental psychologist and director of the university's Center for Human Potential and Public Policy, said the more important factor, especially in middle-class households, appears to be changes in family dynamics from job loss.
"The extent that job losers are stressed and emotionally disengaged or withdrawn, this really matters for kids," she said. "The other thing that matters is parental conflict. That has been shown repeatedly in psychological studies to be a bad family dynamic."
Dr. Kalil said her research indicated that the repercussions were more pronounced in children when fathers experience unemployment, rather than mothers.
She theorized that the reasons have to do with the importance of working to the male self-image, or the extra time that unemployed female breadwinners seem to spend with their children, mitigating the impact on them.
Certainly, some of the more than a dozen families interviewed that were dealing with long-term unemployment said the period had been helpful in certain ways for their families.
Denise Stoll, 39, and her husband, Larry, 47, both lost their positions at a bank in San Antonio in October 2008 when it changed hands. Mrs. Stoll, a vice president who managed a technology group, earned significantly more than her husband, who worked as a district loan origination manager.
Nevertheless, Mr. Stoll took unemployment much harder than she did and struggled to keep his spirits up, before he landed a new job within several months in the Kansas City area, where the family had moved to be closer to relatives. He had to take a sizable pay cut but was grateful to be working again.
Mrs. Stoll is still looking but has also tried to make the most of the additional time with the couple's 5-year-old triplets, seeking to instill new lessons on the importance of thrift.
"Being a corporate mom, you work a lot of hours, you feed them dinner - maybe," she said. "This morning, we baked cookies together. I have time to help them with homework. I'm attending church. The house is managed by me. Just a lot more homemaker-type stuff, which I think is more nurturing to them."
Other families, however, reported unmistakable ill effects.
Robert Syck, 42, of Fishers, Ind., lost his job as a call-center manager in March. He has been around his 11-year-old stepson, Kody, more than ever before. Lately, however, their relationship has become increasingly strained, he said, with even little incidents setting off blowups. His stepson's grades have slipped and the boy has been talking back to his parents more.
"It's only been particularly in the last few months that it's gotten really bad, to where we're verbally chewing each other out," said Mr. Syck, who admitted he has been more irritable around the house. "A lot of that is due to the pressures of unemployment."
When Mr. Bachmuth was first laid off in December from his $120,000 job at an energy consulting firm, he could not even bring himself to tell his family. For several days, he got dressed in the morning and left the house as usual at 6 a.m., but spent the day in coffee shops, the library or just walking around.
Mr. Bachmuth had started the job, working on finance and business development for electric utilities, eight months earlier, moving his family from Austin. They bought something of a dream home, complete with a backyard pool and spa.
Although she knew the economy was ultimately to blame, Mrs. Bachmuth could not help but feel angry at her husband, both said later in interviews.
"She kind of had something in the back of her mind that it was partly my fault I was laid off," Mr. Bachmuth said. "Maybe you're not a good enough worker."
Counseling improved matters significantly, but Mrs. Bachmuth still occasionally dissolved into tears at home.
Besides quarrels over money, the reversal in the couple's roles also produced friction. Mrs. Bachmuth took on a part-time job at a preschool to earn extra money. But she still did most, if not all, of the cooking, cleaning and laundry.
Dr. Kalil, of the University of Chicago, said a recent study of how people spend their time showed unemployed fathers devote significantly less time to household chores than even mothers who are employed full-time, and do not work as hard in caring for children.
Mr. Bachmuth's time with his girls, however, did increase. He was the one dropping off Rebecca at school and usually the one who picked her up. He began helping her more with homework. He and Hannah played soccer and chatted more.
But the additional time brought more opportunities for squabbling. The rest of the family had to get used to him being around, sometimes focused on his job search but other times lounging around depressed, watching television or surfing soccer sites on the Internet.
"My dad's around a lot more, so it's a little strange because he gets frustrated he's not at work, and he's not being challenged," Hannah said. "So I think me and my dad are a lot closer now because we can spend a lot more time together, but we fight a lot more maybe because he's around 24-7."
When Rebecca began pulling her hair out in late summer in what was diagnosed as a stress-induced disorder, she insisted it was because she was bored. But her parents and her therapist - the same one seeing her parents - believed it was clearly related to the job situation.
The hair pulling has since stopped, but she continues to fidget with her brown locks.
The other day, she suddenly asked her mother whether she thought she would be able to find a "good job" when she grew up.
Hannah said her father's unemployment has made it harder for her to focus on schoolwork. She also conceded she has been more easily aggravated with her parents and her sister.
At night, she said, she has taken to stowing her worries away in an imaginary box.
"I take all the stress and bad things that happen over the day, and I lock them in a box," she said.
Then, she tries to sleep.
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11) Peace Movement Blues
by Jack A. Smith
November 5, 2009
http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/2009/11/activist-newsletter-nov-5-2009.html
Where is the U.S. peace movement when the White House is preparing to escalate the Afghanistan war for the second time since President Barack Obama took office over 10 months ago?
The Bush era antiwar movement has ebbed and flowed a few times since it abruptly materialized just after 9/11 and then exploded into a massive force in the months leading up to President George W. Bush's unjust and illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003. This was actually the high point of mass activism. A decline began with the invasion and the bipartisan congressional declaration of support for the new war. Still, the movement remained huge and mounted many large national and local demonstrations for years.
The Democratic victory in the 2006 Congressional election signaled a further erosion of peace activities because of the erroneous assumption that the new Congress would end or limit the wars. Antiwar forces were hardly visible during the 2008 campaign, despite the mayhem in Iraq and Afghanistan, because many efforts were focused on electing Sen. Barack Obama, whom many Democrats considered to be a peace candidate.
The low point was reached earlier this year -- a remarkable development during two ongoing wars -- about the time President Obama reignited the Afghan war by ordering another 21,000 troops to the battlefield.
The hard core of the movement, though relatively small, has remained intact. The left wing and the pacifist sector are engaged and active, now focused on ending the Afghan war, and there will be growth as Obama continues to escalate the war. The national peace organizations and coalitions are also still in place; however, most of them have become less active as their numbers fell and funding diminished.
The mass base of the movement that confronted the Bush Administration's wars -- the Democratic voters -- are standing on the sidelines, unwilling to publicly criticize President Obama. This is despite the fact that opinion polls report a majority of the American people now oppose the Afghan war, including some 70% of Democrats.
Over the last year or so I've spoken to a number of local and national peace leaders and many rank-and-file activists about the drop in antiwar numbers. Everybody has felt the decline. As an organizer for the last 15 years in New York State's Hudson Valley region I have witnessed it up close.
For example, seven years ago in October 2002 our group at the time organized an antiwar demonstration of 2,500 people at Academy Green Park in the small city of Kingston. On the same day several buses full of local activists traveled to Washington to attend the ANSWER Coalition's big peace rally that drew up to 100,000 people. The war hadn't even started. It was five months away. This was the beginning stage of the largest "preemptive" antiwar movement in U.S. history.
On October 17 a couple of weeks ago in the same city park -- with two wars in progress, 20 co-sponsoring groups and an excellent speaker list -- our antiwar rally attracted 100 people. There was no Washington protest to draw crowds away, and the anticipated rain didn't fall. We knew half the participants by name. There were antiwar actions in some 40 cities that day, but the ones we heard from all had lower numbers than in the past. The Capital District movement to our north brought out between 200-250 people for a well publicized and organized Albany demonstration, but a couple of years ago they attracted a crowd of over 600.
Here's one more example. Over the years my co-organizer Donna Goodman and I have arranged for 22 bus trips to bring Hudson Valley activists to distant peace rallies, mostly in Washington. We average between three and five buses. That's roughly 150 to 250 people. Our biggest success was in January 2003, two months before the Iraq war, when we sent seven buses to DC to join an ANSWER protest that attracted a half-million people.
Six years later this March, as President Obama was expanding the war by deploying another 21,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, we managed to bring 37 people to a demonstration in Washington. Some 10,000 people showed up for a good rally and an exciting march. We were empowered by the rally and proud to have made the effort, but it was dismaying to see how our numbers had dwindled.
In our talks with people about the movement's decline, the main emphasis always pointed to the fact that the constituency for our broad peace movement was disintegrating. At issue is figuring out exactly why, and then how to help rebuild our forces.
The question of "why" isn't difficult. In addition to talks with a number of movement organizers and unwavering activists., we have communicated with quite a few readers about this matter in person and mainly by email (over 85% of our 3,500 Activist Newsletter readers voted Democratic last November). The conclusion is that the Democratic voters who have stopped showing up do so for one or more of three reasons: (1) The big majority simply don't want to publicly oppose a war waged by a Democratic president -- especially when he is under strong attack by the Republicans. (2) Some think it is a "good" war. (3) Some believe that peace demonstrations "don't do any good" and that we're "just talking to ourselves." Let's examine this point by point.
We've encountered point number one before. Many Democratic voters were extremely reluctant to criticize President Lyndon Johnson during the first couple of years in which he widened the Vietnam war. But by the end of LBJ's first full term many Democrats turned on him to the point that he decided not to run for reelection. He was responsible for the passage of progressive domestic legislation far beyond anything Obama will achieve, but his war policy destroyed him.
On the other hand, Democratic voters, with the liberals in the vanguard, stuck with President Bill Clinton during his unjust and illegal bombardment of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. Clinton learned the big lesson from Vietnam: launch a short war with few American deaths. He wisely did his dirty work in only three months. And while thousands of Serbian Yugoslavs were killed and much of the civilian infrastructure was wrecked, no American died because the war was conducted from the air beyond the reach of anti-aircraft fire. Now, of course, there are American drones assassinating people in western Pakistan. Sometimes they hit their target, sometimes a wedding party.
Bush served two terms despite his long imperialist wars, in part because the number of U.S. deaths is relatively low (the GI death toll in Vietnam was nearly 13 times greater). Bush was reelected in 2004 because the Democratic Party not only refused to oppose the war but candidate John Kerry kept telling the voters he would be much better at winning than blundering Bush. Given the choice between two pro-war candidates, the voters decided not to change warhorses in mid-carnage.
There was an active antiwar movement during Bush's 2004 reelection campaign but most peace people fell in line behind Kerry, as did United for Peace and Justice, the biggest coalition, and most moderate peace groups. ANSWER stood apart and picketed both political conventions. A week after Bush's depressing reelection we called a local rally to get people up and running again. I opened by remarking that "98% of the American people just voted for war." A woman in the front row interrupted, "No! We voted for Kerry!" Neither Kerry nor Obama (who made it clear in the campaign that he wanted to fight in Afghanistan) was a peace candidate, but most Democrats seemed to think they were.
The American peace movement has to win back the Democratic voters on the issue of ending the Afghan war, and bring them back into the streets to demand peace. Even if a majority of voters want an end to war, the ballot box is meaningless unless there is a candidate running on a genuine antiwar platform. We respect and support the antiwar members of Congress, such as our region's Rep. Maurice Hinchey, but they are up against a large pro-war bipartisan majority and almost always get aced out. Put a million people in the streets on the same day and we'll begin to get results; do it again and again, and we'll end a war.
This brings us to point two, the fact that some peace Democrats think the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is a good war. Government and mass media distortions have succeeding in confusing many people. The movement is partly responsible for focusing over the years almost exclusively on Iraq. Now that the Obama Administration is widening the Afghan war it is essential for the peace forces to increase their educational efforts.
We're trying to do our part in the November 5, 2009 issue of our newsletter. The two-part article on the U.S. in Afghanistan contains information that will be useful to the reader in assessing this war, particularly those who think it is just. The article on Afghan Women and the War is important because we're all worried about their situation, which remains deplorable, but the women quoted in this article perceive two oppressors: the Taliban and the U.S.-NATO occupiers (check out the CNN video link). Also, the Afghan war article by Bill Moyers ("Bring Back the Draft") provokes some interesting thoughts.
I've heard point three before, many times, regarding the alleged inefficacy of peace protests, and that we're talking to ourselves. The Vietnam era was filled with it, and yet -- as the Vietnamese government will tell you, the peace struggle in the U.S. was an essential ingredient in ending the war and reunifying the country.
Many people think that because the mass media usually ignores our actions that what we do has no effect. Some say, "We demonstrate and nothing happens." I've often been told that all we do is speak to each other. Some say we're so irrelevant the White House isn't even listening. All this is wrong, and I'll explain why.
It is important to understand that we are involved in a very long struggle for peace. We are trying to change the policies of history's most powerful military state, which has been engaged in a hot or cold war, openly or clandestinely, without interruption since it entered World War II, 68 years ago. Many of Washington's martial actions have been neither legal nor just. The mass media is a virtual adjunct of the government as far as foreign military policy is concerned. The U.S. is a militarist state and spends more money each year on wars past, present, and future than the military budgets of every other country in the world combined. It has between 700 and 1,000 military bases circling the globe.
This is a tough nut to crack. Our side, the peace and justice side, often doesn't win. And when we do win it sure doesn't happen overnight. Of course the mass media ignores us, but that doesn't invalidate our efforts. Sure, we often demonstrate and nothing happens. We're up against big odds. It's a matter of unceasing struggle, protest after protest, meeting after meeting, year after year.
Mass demonstrations are essential. They are the collective expression of the political opposition of the American people to the aggressive wars conducted in their name by their government, whether in Iraq and Afghanistan, or Yugoslavia and Nicaragua, or Vietnam and Haiti. Our mass protests are acts of public solidarity with the victims of unjust war, and help to strengthen their resistance. And mass protests in Washington, the seat of government and the Pentagon, are necessary to turn the spotlight directly on the warmakers.
Frequently we do speak to ourselves, and it is important to do so. That's why the great religions have been meeting once a week for thousands of years. It's what keeps their movement together, and ours as well. In our own experience, we have found that under normal conditions, between 15% and 20% of the people at every rally or bus trip we organize have shown up for the first time, and many come back. At the beginning stages of new wars the proportion is much higher.
It's untrue that the White House doesn't listen because we're irrelevant. All presidents make a show of indifference to our protests. But when we are of mass size they are supplied with detailed reports about the status of our forces. President Nixon made a big point of laughing off the peace movement, but if you read Robert Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger for instance, you will understand he was obsessed with the antiwar movement and carefully calculated its impact.
It is essential for us to keep on protesting against aggressive wars or Washington will run riot with military adventurism. The only significant opposition to a bigger war in Afghanistan will come from that sector of the peace movement willing to confront the power in Washington regardless of who is president. And some members of Congress will speak up, too, and they are strengthened knowing our mass movement is out there.
I believe without doubt that in the cynical and conservative atmosphere choking our country today this movement remains our principal instrumentality against Washington's unjust wars and imperialist escapades. Without this movement we have no voice! Let us make that voice ever louder as we rebuild the movement and go forward toward the attainment of peace.
Jack A. Smith is a former editor of the (US) Guardian Newsweekly and has edited the Activist Newsletter for the last decade:
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12) Opinion: U.S. is doing no good in Afghanistan
By Malalai Joya
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 11/10/2009 08:00:00 PM PST
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_13755903?nclick_check=1
As an Afghan woman who was elected to Parliament, I am in the United States to ask President Barack Obama to immediately end the occupation of my country.
Eight years ago, women's rights were used as one of the excuses to start this war. But today, Afghanistan is still facing a women's rights catastrophe. Life for most Afghan women resembles a type of hell that is never reflected in the Western mainstream media.
In 2001, the U.S. helped return to power the worst misogynist criminals, such as the Northern Alliance warlords and druglords. These men ought to be considered a photocopy of the Taliban. The only difference is that the Northern Alliance warlords wear suits and ties and cover their faces with the mask of democracy while they occupy government positions. But they are responsible for much of the disaster today in Afghanistan, thanks to the U.S. support they enjoy.
The U.S. and its allies are getting ready to offer power to the medieval Taliban by creating an imaginary category called the "moderate Taliban" and inviting them to join the government. A man who was near the top of the list of most-wanted terrorists eight years ago, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has been invited to join the government.
Over the past eight years the U.S. has helped turn my country into the drug capital of the world through its support of drug lords. Today, 93 percent of all opium in the world is produced in Afghanistan. Many members of Parliament and high ranking officials openly benefit from the drug trade. President Karzai's own brother is a well known drug trafficker.
Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans are living in destitution. The latest United Nations Human Development Index ranked Afghanistan 181 out of 182 countries. Eighteen million Afghans live on less than $2 a day. Mothers in many parts of Afghanistan are ready to sell their children because they cannot feed them.
Afghanistan has received $36 billion of aid in the past eight years, and the U.S. alone spends $165 million a day on its war. Yet my country remains in the grip of terrorists and criminals. My people have no interest in the current drama of the presidential election since it will change nothing in Afghanistan. Both Karzai and Dr. Abdullah are hated by Afghans for being U.S. puppets.
The worst casualty of this war is truth. Those who stand up and raise their voice against injustice, insecurity and occupation have their lives threatened and are forced to leave Afghanistan, or simply get killed.
We are sandwiched between three powerful enemies: the occupation forces of the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban and the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai.
Now President Obama is considering increasing troops to Afghanistan and simply extending former President Bush's wrong policies. In fact, the worst massacres since 9/11 were during Obama's tenure. My native province of Farah was bombed by the U.S. this past May. A hundred and fifty people were killed, most of them women and children. On Sept. 9, the U.S. bombed Kunduz Province, killing 200 civilians.
My people are fed up. That is why we want an immediate end to the U.S. occupation.
MALALAI JOYA spoke at San Jose State University Saturday and signed copies of her new political memoir, A Woman Among Warlords, co-written with Derrick O"Keefe. The survivor of four assassination attempts, she was elected to Afghanistan"s parliament in 2005 and kicked out in 2007 by the warlords. She wrote this article for the Mercury News.
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12) American Sues F.B.I., Saying He Was Detained in Africa
By SCOTT SHANE
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11aclu.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - A New Jersey man who contends that he was detained and mistreated in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia in 2007 with the approval of the United States filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against F.B.I. agents and other unidentified American officials who he says interrogated him and threatened him with execution.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, contends that the detention and treatment of the man, Amir Meshal, violated the Constitution and other laws and seeks unspecified damages. Mr. Meshal, represented by lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Yale Law School, asserts that his mental suffering amounted to torture and describes his forced transfers as an illegal use of rendition, the transport of a prisoner for interrogation.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman, Bill Carter, said officials would not comment on the lawsuit.
Mr. Meshal, 26, an American citizen and a Muslim whose parents immigrated from Egypt, said in the lawsuit that he traveled to Egypt in 2005 and then to Somalia in 2006, hoping to experience life under Islamist rule. In December 2006, he said he fled to Kenya as the Islamic courts that had seized power in Somalia faced off against rival Somali forces backed by Ethiopia.
He said that he was captured by soldiers in Kenya and that he was jailed and questioned by Americans who he believes were F.B.I. agents. The lawsuit asserts that the agents accused Mr. Meshal of working for Al Qaeda and threatened him, but it does not say he was physically harmed.
In February 2007, the lawsuit says, Mr. Meshal was flown to Somalia and then to Ethiopia, where he was held for more than three months and repeatedly questioned by American interrogators who he believes worked for the F.B.I. His hands were cuffed behind his back whenever he was in his cell, and he was sometimes kept in solitary confinement, the lawsuit says.
In May 2007, after inquiries about Mr. Meshal by news organizations and Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, he was released and flown back to the United States.
"No American citizen should ever be subjected to what Amir went through, and the government officials who were responsible for what happened should be held accountable," said Jonathan Hafetz of the A.C.L.U., who represents Mr. Meshal.
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13) 25 Chicago Students Arrested for a Middle-School Food Fight
By SUSAN SAULNY
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11foodfight.html?ref=us
CHICAGO - The food fight here started the way such bouts do in school lunchrooms most anywhere: an apple was tossed, a cookie turned into a torpedo, and an orange plunked someone in the head. Within minutes, dozens of middle-school students had joined in the ruckus, and spattered adults were ducking for cover.
By the end of the day, 25 of the students, ages 11 to 15, had been rounded up, arrested, taken from school and put in jail. A spokesman for the Chicago police said the charges were reckless conduct, a misdemeanor.
That was last Thursday afternoon. Now parents are questioning what seem to them like the criminalization of age-old adolescent pranks, and the lasting legal and psychological impact of the arrests.
"My children have to appear in court," Erica Russell, the mother of two eighth-grade girls who spent eight hours in jail, said Tuesday. "They were handcuffed, slammed in a wagon, had their mug shots taken and treated like real criminals."
"They're all scared," Ms. Russell said of the two dozen arrested students. "You never know how children will be impacted by that. I was all for some other kind of punishment, but not jail. Who hasn't had a food fight?"
The students were released into the custody of their parents on Thursday night, the police said. They were also suspended for two days by the school, the Calumet middle-school campus of Perspectives Charter Schools, in the Gresham neighborhood on the South Side.
Diana Shulla-Cose, president and co-founder of Perspectives Charter Schools, said that an on-campus police officer had called for backup as the food fight escalated and that the resulting heavy police presence had led in turn to the large number of arrests.
Ms. Shulla-Cose described the entire episode as "unfortunate" and added, "We don't take this lightly."
She also said the school was working individually with the families of students who were arrested to support them through a difficult time, and through the process of getting the youths back to classes.
School officials met with parents on Tuesday to explain the events from their point of view. But some parents questioned what they saw as the random nature of the arrests.
"My daughter said someone threw an apple at her, so she retaliated," Shirlanda Sivels said. "I said, 'Why didn't they grab you, too?' She said, 'I don't know.' She didn't feel good about it, seeing her friends taken away."
If the charges are not thrown out when the students go before a judge this month, criminal justice experts said, the accused will most likely be sentenced to community service or probation. Since they are juveniles, their records would remain confidential until adulthood - 17 under Illinois law - at which point the arrests would be expunged.
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14) Potential San Francisco Showdown Over Immigration
By JESSE McKINLEY
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11sanctuary.html?ref=us
SAN FRANCISCO - Setting up a potential showdown with the mayor, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors reinstated an ordinance on Tuesday requiring that juvenile offenders who are illegal immigrants be convicted of a crime before they are turned over to the federal immigration authorities.
The ordinance had been passed by the board in October but was quickly vetoed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who said that it very likely conflicted with federal immigration law. On Tuesday, the board overrode that veto on an 8-to-3 vote.
But the mayor says that he has no intention of abiding by the board's action and that the current policy of turning over juveniles at the time of their arrest would stay in place.
"This ship cannot sail," said Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom, who called the board's ordinance unenforceable. "We can't put our law enforcement officials in the precarious position of having to follow this new law."
After the veto override, the city attorney, Dennis Herrera, asked the United States attorney's office in San Francisco for assurances that city law enforcement authorities would not be prosecuted for violating federal law when the new law takes effect in early December.
Mr. Newsom instituted his policy of alerting federal authorities at the time of arrest last year after a series of embarrassing incidents in which city officials went to great lengths to shield juvenile offenders - including flying them out of the country with taxpayer money - as part of the city's so-called sanctuary policy, which forbids city money from being used in immigration efforts.
Mr. Newsom says he still strongly supports the sanctuary policy, which he says helps law enforcement by making immigrants comfortable approaching police officers about crimes. But immigration advocates complain that turning over juveniles at the time of arrest, rather than conviction, resulted in some youths being deported on unfounded charges.
"There are so many examples where kids have been incorrectly taken by our police department and because of what they look like, because of their surname, turned over to I.C.E.," said Supervisor David Campos, who sponsored the new ordinance, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On Tuesday, Mr. Campos urged the mayor "to follow the democratic process," and implement the ordinance. "We urge Mayor Newsom to do the right thing," he said.
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15) Harmful Levels of Mercury Are Found
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11brfs-HARMFULLEVEL_BRF.html?ref=us
About half of American lakes and reservoirs contain fish with potentially harmful levels of the toxic metal mercury, a federal study said. The Environmental Protection Agency found mercury, which is primarily released from coal-fired power plants, in all fish samples it collected from 500 lakes and reservoirs from 2000 to 2003. At 49 percent of those lakes and reservoirs, mercury concentrations exceeded levels that the E.P.A. says are safe for people eating average amounts of fish. Mercury consumed by eating fish can damage the nervous system and cause learning disabilities in developing fetuses and young children.
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16) Survey Finds Deep Shift in the Makeup of Unions
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
November 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/business/11membership.html?ref=business
A study has found that just one in 10 union members is in manufacturing, while women account for more than 45 percent of the unionized work force.
The study, by the Center for Economic Policy Research, a Washington-based group, found that union membership is far less blue-collar and factory-based than in labor's heyday, when the United Automobile Workers and the United Steelworkers dominated.
According to the study, "The Changing Face of Labor, 1983-2008," just 11 percent of union members work in manufacturing, down from nearly 30 percent in the 1980s. Indeed, for the first time since the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935, the percentage of factory workers who are in unions, 11.4 percent, has fallen below the percentage of all workers who are in unions - 12.4 percent last year. That is down from 35 percent in the 1950s. The membership of the U.A.W. has fallen to less than 500,000, from 1.5 million in 1979.
Many labor leaders argue that for unions to reverse their long-term decline, labor will need to win passage of federal legislation to make it easier to organize workers. And many labor leaders say that public-sector unions, like those representing teachers and municipal employees, which have grown rapidly in recent decades, should do more to back unionization efforts in the private sector.
The study found that white men represent just 38 percent of all union members and that women will come to represent more than half of all union members during the next decade.
About 48.9 percent of union members are in the public sector, up from 34 percent in 1983. About 61 percent of unionized women are in the public sector, compared to 38 percent for men.
Elizabeth Shuler, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s new secretary treasurer, said she found the study encouraging because of the increased female membership in unions. "It shows that the diversity initiatives we've been pushing have made a difference," she said. "Unions have been pushing hard to open their doors."
To help reverse the decline of union membership in the private sector, she called for enacting the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would make it easier to unionize. Business groups have denounced the bill, saying it would raise costs and make it harder for companies to make a profit and add more workers.
The study found that 38 percent of union members had a four-year college degree or more, up from 20 percent in 1983. Just under half of female union members (49.4 percent) have at least a four-year degree, compared with 27.7 percent for male union members.
The report, written by John Schmitt and Kris Warner, said that Hispanics represented 12.2 percent of the unionized work force, up from 5.8 percent in 1983. Immigrants represent 12.6 percent of union members, up from 8.4 percent in 1994.
Mr. Schmitt said globalization was making it harder to unionize factory workers because "globalization makes for a much more credible threat to say, 'We're going to shut down this plant if you organize.' "
He saw a few bright spots for labor, particularly the Pacific states, where there has been moderate union growth.
"And there's been growth among Latino, Asian and immigrant workers - so there is a little hope for the future," he said.
Blacks represent 13 percent of the unionized work force, which has remained relatively steady over the last quarter-century. During that time, the unionization rate for blacks has fallen steeply, to 15.5 percent, from 31.7 percent in 1983.
The typical union member is 45 years old, compared with 41 for the typical American worker. The age for both the typical union member and the typical worker is seven years older than a quarter-century ago.
According to the study, the most heavily unionized group was workers age 55 to 64 - 18.4 percent of them were in unions. The least unionized age group was 16- to 24-year-olds (5.7 percent were in unions.)
The percentage of men in unions has dropped sharply, to 14.5 percent in 2008, from 27.7 percent in 1983, while the percentage for women dropped more slowly, to 13 percent last year, from 18 percent in 1983. For the work force over all, the percentage of workers in unions dropped to 12.4 percent last year, from 20.1 percent in 1983.
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