SPREAD LOVE AND PEACE, NOT WARS AND OCCUPATIONS!
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War veterans and resisters say "All Out for March 20th-National March on Washington!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsLfG9JjF8
Bilin Reenacts Avatar Film 12-02-2010 By Haitham Al Katib
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chw32qG-M7E
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Watch the video: "Haiti and the Devil's Curse" at:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
or
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWqgOe0-0xA
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Qki6TrI7M&feature=related
It's a powerful and accurate history of Haiti--including historical film footage of French, U.S., Canadian, and UN invasions, mass murder and torture, exploitation and occupation of Haiti--featuring Danny Glover.
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New York Times Video: For Haitian Children, a Crisis Escalates
Front page of the Times today, February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/
This video shows the frustration of doctors that haven't the supplies or equipment to help severely wounded Haitian children. One child, the doctor explains, had her foot amputated by her family in order to free her from the rubble she was buried under. They finally got her to the hospital after two weeks. By then, of course, the wound was infected. But, not having enough antibiotics, her other foot got infected and that had to be amputated. She is still rotting away at the hospital that can't care for her properly--as hard as the doctors are trying--and they are trying hard.
As it stands now--they haven't got the antibiotics and surgical supplies and they can't get the children to a hospital in the U.S. Since the attempted kidnapping of children by the American missionaries, the children are not allowed out of the country without papers--even when accompanied by their parents. The thing is, nobody has papers in Haiti so the parents can't prove it's their child. Nobody has driver's licenses, birth cirtificates--not the parents nor the children--if such proof exists, it's buried under the rubble along with all their other belongings. So, again, the innocent suffer because of the inability/unwillingness of the wealthiest nation in the world to bring the stuff that is needed to the people who need it because they are experts at bringing bombs, daisy-cutters and white phosphorous, not humanitarian aid. ...bw
The article of the same title is:
Paperwork Hinders Airlifts of Ill Haitian Children
By IAN URBINA
February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/world/americas/09airlift.html?ref=world
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Gaza in Plain Language: a video by Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey
Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey have created an amazing video. The narrative is from an article published not long ago in Dissident Voice written by Mr. Mowrey. [See article with the same name, No. 14, below. A warning, however. This video is very graphic and very brutal but this is a truth we must see!..bw] A video that narrates just what happened, without emotion... just the facts, ma'am! Share it with those you know! Now on PTT TV so Google and YouTube can't censor this information totally.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/video-gaza-in-plain-language/
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STOP SPENDING TRILLIONS ON THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
FOOD NOT GUNS IN HAITI!
U.S. OUT OF IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN!
FREE PALESTINE!
MONEY FOR HEALTHCARE, JOBS AND EDUCATION!
U.S. HANDS OFF LATIN AMERICA!
SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY
SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 11:00 A.M., CIVIC CENTER
GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT MARCH 20!
Volunteers Needed!
Postering and Flyering Work Sessions every Tues. 7pm and every Sat. 2pm
Volunteers are needed to help put up posters, hand out leaflets and make alert phone calls to fellow activists. Call 415-821-6545 for more info and for office hours. Come by the office to pick up posters and flyers in English, Spanish or Chinese. Participate in an Outreach Work Session held every Tues. 7pm and Sat. 2pm, meeting at the ANSWER Coalition Office: 2489 Mission St. #24 (at 21st St.), San Francisco, near 24th St. BART/#14, #49 MUNI.
Call 415-821-6545 for leafleting and posting schedule.
DONATIONS NEEDED:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1443&JServSessionIdr004=nou1lpg115.app202a
NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, March 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
(Preceded by steering committee at 12 noon)
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
For more information call: 415-821-6545
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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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Educating, Advocating, and Organizing For The Return
Fifth Al-Awda West Coast Regional Conference
Hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine @ SDSU, UCSD and USD, and
Al-Awda San Diego, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
One-Day Conference
Saturday February 13, 2010, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
La Mesa Community Center, 4975 Memorial Drive, La Mesa, CA 91942
(note change of venue)
Fifth Al-Awda West Coast Regional Conference
LEARN about the Palestinian refugee crisis and what is happening here on the West Coast
The conference will be followed by
Banquet - Celebrating 10 Years of Al-Awda!
When: 6:30 pm - 10:00 pm (doors open 6:00 pm)
SHARE IDEAS
with fellow activists and help empower the right to return movement at large
ACT NOW!
your participation is urgently needed in the months ahead! This is your chance!
One-Day Conference
Saturday February 13, 2010, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Program: Strategy & tactics discussions will include panels on Student Activism, Refugee Support, Media Activism, and preparations for the upcoming Annual International Al-Awda Convention. Speakers will include Dr. Jess Ghannam, Chair of Al-Awda's National Coordinating Committee, Mazen Almoukdad, Al-Awda Refugee Support Activist, Adam Shapiro, activist filmmaker, among others. There will also be a special presentation of personal experience by a Palestinian refugee recently arrived from Al-Waleed camp in Iraq.
For a tentative schedule with more details of the one day conference, visit this page.
Conference is free of charge!!
The conference will be followed by
Banquet - Celebrating 10 Years of Al-Awda!
When: 6:30 pm - 10:00 pm (doors open 6:00 pm)
Banquet Includes: Keynote Address by Dr. Jamal Nassar, Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at California State University, San Bernardino; The Second West Coast Regional Dabke Competition; and Delicious Arabic Food (all Halal)
Banquet Dinner Tickets: General $25.00; Student $15.00; Children under 5 free
To get your tickets, please go to http://al-awdacal.org/dinner.html or contact 760-918-9441 Monday to Friday 9 AM to 5 PM
(Please note that attendance at the conference is not required for attendance at the dinner and vice versa)
Sponsorship: We welcome individual and organizational sponsorship of The Fifth Al-Awda West Coast Regional Conference. All Sponsors will be listed in the printed program of the conference and acknowledged at the Ten Years of Al-Awda Celebration Dinner unless otherwise requested. Underwriters will each also have a table for eight people reserved for them at the Dinner Celebration. For more information, please go to this sponsorship page.
Suggested accommodation for out of town guests see: Hotel circle http://www.hotelcircle.net
Directions to Conference and Banquet: Take the Spring St exit from I-8 E toward El Centro (6.8 miles). Merge onto 13A (85 ft). Slight left to stay on 13A (315 ft). Continue onto Spring Street (0.1 mile). Turn left at University Ave (0.4 miles). Turn left at Memorial Dr.
Parking is free. Plenty available.
For more information, contact:
SJP @ SDSU, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182; Tel: 661-992-3281 email: sjp.sdsu@googlemail.com or Al-Awda San Diego: info@al-awdasandiego.org, Tel: 760-918-9441
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-918-9441
Fax: 760-918-9442
Email: info@al-awdacal.org
WEB: http://al-awdacal.org
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Fueling Israeli Apartheid:
Corporate Profits and Accountability
a conversation with Dalit Baum of WhoProfits.org
Tuesday, February 16 • 7pm
El Centro Del Pueblo Auditorium
474 Valencia at 16th St. , San Francisco
Donations requested at the door
Israeli and international corporations are directly involved in apartheid and occupation: in the construction of Israeli colonies and infrastructure in the occupied territories, in the settlements' economy, in building walls and checkpoints, in the supply of specific equipment used in the control and repression of civilian populations. In 2007, the Coalition of Women for Peace initiated Who Profits from the Occupation, a unique on-line resource with research on hundreds of companies directly involved in the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, a major component of Israel 's apartheid structure, exposing many of the companies for the first time.
Dalit Baum, PhD, teaches Gender and the Global Economy at the Haifa university and Beit Berl College in Israel . She has coordinated the Who Profits project for the past 3 years.
Organized by BACEIA, a coalition of: Break the Siege, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (Bay Area), and Global Women's Strike. Co-sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee - Pacific Mountain Region, and Queers Undermining Israeli Terror.
More information: http://www.baceia.org/2010/02/fueling-israeli-apartheid/
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Frente Colombiano por El Socialismo
FECOPES SAN FRANCISCO PRESENTS
COLOMBIA: NARCO TRAFFIC, PARA MILITARY, GUERILLA, INTERVENTION AND REVOLUTION:
Thursday, February 18, 2010, 7:00 P.M.
474 Valencia Street. (Upstairs in auditorium)
San Francisco, CA 94103
MARIA CRISTINA GUTIERREZ
National representative of Frente Colombiano por El Socialism
Gloria La Riva
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Gloria Castro
Barrio Unido for a General and Unconditional Amnesty
Music by EQUIPTO
From Bored Stiff
Sponsored by: Barrio Unido for a General and Unconditional Amnesty; Frente Colombiano por El Socialism; Party for Socialism and Liberation; ANSWER; BALASC
415-431-9926
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Tues. Feb 16, 9am
Stop All MUNI Cutbacks and Fare Hikes!
Come Speak Out at the MTA Hearing!
SF City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 400
Since the Metropolitan Transit Agency (MTA) announced its plans to explore potential areas of revenue in September of 2009, the agency has played a political game, which pits different community groups against each other for their own benefit. They have attacked car drivers who can no longer afford MUNI; they have attacked MUNI janitorial workers who maintain MUNI. The MTA has attacked seniors, the youth, and the disabled who are the most vulnerable during these hard economic times by threatening to double their Fast Passes. They have vastly increased police harassment on MUNI - at great cost. Last year, the SFPD billed MUNI $18 million for "services." All in all, the MTA continues to attack poor and working families who are experiencing cuts, not only at the city level, but at the state and federal level as well.
The MTA has claimed to be sympathetic to the San Francisco community. They claim to understand these measures are "tough decisions," for the poor and working families. But not once has the board proposed a cut to their own bloated salaries and those of other MUNI and MTA management in order to show that their "understanding" has true meaning. The top heavy cost to maintain public services in San Francisco is just one of the symptoms of the larger problem with the City as a whole that avoids taxing those who have benefited from this economic crisis, the rich! We say it is time to stop making cuts and ratcheting up fares, meter hours and parking tickets and instead TAX THE RICH!
The current patchwork on the deficits in the MTA will not be solved by more cutbacks and more fare hikes. It is important to know that even if the MTA approves these devastating cuts to "solve" this year's $16.9 million deficit, next year's deficit amounts to $52.7 million! This means that we can expect the approved cuts to be added to a long list of new service and job cuts and new fare hikes.
This crisis cannot be solved on the backs of poor and working people. It is time to start cutting from the top! We call on community organizations, activists, MUNI riders, and the people of San Francisco who have had enough with the City's non-stop cuts to our salaries and services to demand that the rich pay instead!
Join us on Feb. 16, 9am to make our voices heard in the MTA hearing. Call 415-821-6545 for more information or to get involved in the campaign.
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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Please join IJAN for this exciting conversation about corporations that profit from apartheid, and how this research can support the BDS movement!
The Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid presents
Fueling Israeli Apartheid:
Corporate Profits and Accountability
a conversation with Dalit Baum of WhoProfits.org
Tuesday, February 16 • 7pm
El Centro Del Pueblo Auditorium
474 Valencia at 16th St., San Francisco
Donations requested at the door
Israeli and international corporations are directly involved in apartheid and occupation: in the construction of Israeli colonies and infrastructure in the occupied territories, in the settlements' economy, in building walls and checkpoints, in the supply of specific equipment used in the control and repression of civilian populations. In 2007, the Coalition of Women for Peace initiated Who Profits from the Occupation, a unique on-line resource with research on hundreds of companies directly involved in the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, a major component of Israel's apartheid structure, exposing many of the companies for the first time.
Dalit Baum, PhD, teaches Gender and the Global Economy at the Haifa university and Beit Berl College in Israel. She has coordinated the Who Profits project for the past 3 years.
Organized by BACEIA, a coalition of: Break the Siege, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (Bay Area), and Global Women's Strike. Co-sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee - Pacific Mountain Region, and Queers Undermining Israeli Terror.
More information: http://www.baceia.org/2010/02/fueling-israeli-apartheid/
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On February 20, the Black is Back Coalition will hold a National March and Rally to Defend Haiti, in Miami, Florida. "Our people in Haiti must have reparations, not self serving charity from France and the U.S."
http://www.blackisbackcoalition.org/haiti_mobilization.shtml
http://www.blackisbackcoalition.org/index.shtml
Sisters, brothers, and allies of the Black community, the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (BIBC) is calling on the African community to take up our responsibility to defend and uplift our sisters and brothers in Haiti in the wake of the earthquake of January 12, 2010.
The relief effort from others getting in touch with their humanity has some positives. However, African people everywhere and all who believe in justice are called on to join the in the National March and Rally to Defend Haiti, which is going to be held in Miami, Florida on February 20th 2010.
We believe the people of Haiti are part of the Black world and therefore African people everywhere have a special responsibility to step forward and address the tragic conditions of our people in Haiti. Furthermore, we understand that the dire poverty of Haiti is a result of French colonialism and U.S. military intervention in Haiti over the last 200 years and the earthquake of January 12, 2010 exacerbated the underdevelopment existent in Haiti since the beginning of its ongoing struggle for liberation. Our people in Haiti are representative of the spirit of resistance and pride that has to be emulated and replicated by the entire African world.
Our people need democracy and self determination, not more military interventions by the U.S., which has sent more than 10,000 troops to subdue our people. Our people in Haiti must have reparations not self serving charity from France and the U.S.
France and all of Europe have worked to make an example of Haiti by brutally starving us there as punishment for leading the first gloriously successful workers' revolution in the world and for creating a constitution that exposed the hypocrisy of the U.S., France and all of Europe by making Haiti a safe haven for anyone fleeing slavery and oppression.
Reparations and democracy for Haiti and the African world is the rallying call of resistance to all freedom loving people in this hour of great challenge. Sisters, brothers and allies, we can't let Haiti become the disaster for African people that hurricane Katrina was, where hundreds of Africans perished due to U.S. government policy. Join the resistance.
Join the March and rally to defend Haiti and demand:
* Reparations must be paid to Haiti by France as repayment for the billions of dollars that Haiti was forced to pay France following the struggle for the abolition of slavery and the creation of the First African Republic in the Western Hemisphere on the 1st January 1804. We also demand that the United States makes reparations to Haiti for its brutal and unjust occupation of Haiti from 1915 - 1934 that culminated in the looting of the Haitian Treasury. This should include the cancellation of all debt. We can't owe them if they owe us!
* The removal of all foreign military troops in Haiti including those from the United States, Canada, Europe and the combined imperial forces of the United Nations. No military occupation of Haiti.
* The repudiation of the Wet Foot/Dry Foot Policy that unfairly discriminates against Africans from Haiti and the establishment of an open door policy that allows Africans from Haiti to enter the United States, and any other country, unrestricted.
Saturday FEB 20th 10AM- Miami, FL
Rally @ Athalie Range Park - 525 NW 62nd St Miami, FL - 10:00AM
March to U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Center - 8801 NW 7th Avenue Miami, FL 12:00PM
More info: stpeteinpdum@yahoo.com (727) 821-6620
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PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE COMMITTEE, LABOR ACTION COMMITTEE AND PRISON RADIO PRESENTS:
FREE 'EM ALL! FREE MUMIA
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 6:30 P.M.
HUMANIST HALL
390 27TH STREET, OAKLAND, CA 94605
SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
PAM AFRICA
Spokeswoman for the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
POCC CHAIRMAN FRED HAMPTON JR.
Founder of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee; Former political prisoner; and son of the assassinated Black Panther leader.
RAMONA AFRICA
Survivor of the 1985 police bomb that was dropped on the MOVE house in Philly; Former political prisoner and member of the MOVE Organization.
POCC MINISTER OF INFORMATION JR
POCC organizer; founder of POCC: Block Report Radio; Associate editor of the San Fransisco Bay View; and one of the last defendants in the Oakland 100 case.
JACK HEYMAN
Executive Board Member, Local 10, of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU); Member of th eLabor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal; Organizer of the ILWU West Coast Port Shutdown to Free Mumia on April 24, 1999
Updates from:
PIERRE LABOSSIERRE
Of the Haiti Action Committee
Donations of $10-$1000 (No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.)
There will be a sneak preview of the full-length new film, "OPERATION SMALL AXE," with POCC Minister of Informaiton, JR and Director, Adimu Maoyun on hand...
This event is done in honor of the lifes of freedom fighters Minister Huey P. Newton (Birthday February 17, 1942) and El Hajj Malik Shabazz (Assassination Date, February 21, 1965)
www.blockreportradio.com
www.prisonradio.org
www.sfbayview.com
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RALLY FOR CALIFORNIA'S FUTURE!
Rally at Civic Center in Defense
Of Public Education and All Public-Sector Services!
Thursday, March 4, 5:00 P.M.
The San Francisco Labor Council calls on all labor affiliates, community organizations, and student groups to mobilize their memberships to attend the 5 p.m. rally and demonstration at the San Francisco Civic Center on March 4.
This rally is being organized and sponsored by United Educators of San Francisco, AFT Local 2121, and the California Faculty Association as part of the statewide March 4 Strike/Day of Action in Defense of Public Education that was called by a statewide conference of students, faculty, and staff unions held in Berkeley on October 24, 2009.
Responding to layoffs, furloughs and widespread cutbacks, the October 24 conference summoned all sectors of education to struggle collectively to save public education in California. The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and California Teachers Association (CTA) have endorsed the Day of Action. Massive demonstrations are being organized across the state on March 4.
The San Francisco Labor Council believes that those who work in the education sector should not be placed in competition with state workers, where each fights against the other for scarce funds.
That is why we are urging that California enact a program of progressive taxation. This could ensure that all our communities can thrive. We could create ample funds so that everyone has the opportunity, through quality, accessible education, to fully develop their potential and become productive members of society. And, at the same time, we could establish fully funded social services and job security for public workers.
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Note: UESF is calling on all teacher unionists and K-12 families to gather at 4 p.m. at the State Building on the corner of Van Ness & McAllister, before joining the mass rally at the Civic Center.
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NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, March 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
(Preceded by steering committee at 12 noon)
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
For more information call: 415-821-6545
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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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The US Social Forum II
" June 22-26, 2010 "
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Another World Is Possible! Another US is Necessary!
http://www.ussf2010.org/
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Glen Ford on Black Delusion in the Age of Obama
[A speech delivered to the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations conference. This is a great speech full of information.]
blackisbackcoalition.org
http://blip.tv/file/3169123
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NYT VIDEO:
Security in an Insecure Land
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/01/30/world/americas/1247466794033/security-in-an-insecure-land.html?hp
What the US/UN police and military are doing in Haiti -- really.
This video takes us to the poorest section of Port-au-Prince, Cité Soleil. It looks like a giant concentration camp in the middle of a desert. The UN Police caravan have nothing with them but cameras and guns! People--men, women, children, are standing alongside the road begging for help. They say they have had no help at all since the earthquake.
The UN police bring NO AID with them. No food, water--nothing! Then the police, guarded by soldiers with automatic weapons, and their camera stop among a large group of people. The UN cop, Alix Sainvil, a Haitian-American United Nations police officer who worked to secure Cité Soleil before the earthquake, is talking to the camera; he explains that since the jail collapsed and prisoners escaped after the earthquake, he worried about how the "gangs" are taking over again.
The camera pans the faces of ALL the men.
One "gang member" (synonym "male") overhears what Soleil is saying to the camera and speaks up and says, "Even if your not a looter, when you walk past a store police will just shoot you for no reason. That's the only thing you do!" That, of course, designates him a "gang member."
The cop, Soleil, says as they are driving away, "that young man is a 'troublemaker.'"
This video illustrates just what the UN has been doing in Haiti. They have been patrolling these slums with automatic weapons and targeting anyone who shows any signs of resistance to the deplorable state of poverty they live in. It is a heinous atrocity orchestrated by the U.S.!
Haiti is US/UN occupied territory now. AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T GIVEN OUT ANY MEANINGFUL AMOUNTS OF AID! They typically pull up with one-tenth of the supplies needed so that most go hungry and get nothing but their fury ignited. And who the hell wouldn't be furious? This is Katrina in powers of ten!
In another article in the Times, "Food Distribution Retooled; Americans Arrested," by DAMIEN CAVE, (number 19, below) "After two weeks of often chaotic food distribution, the United Nations announced plans on Saturday for a coupon-based system that aims to give rice to 10,000 Haitians a day at each of 16 locations around Port-au-Prince." (The article points out that the rice will be given to women only.)
AFTER TWO WEEKS THEY WILL BEGIN THIS WEEK?!?!? I guess they're thinking it'll be cheaper in the long run if more people die first. And that's the bottom line for this government! By the way, the ten Americans were arrested by the Haitian government for trying to take 33 Haitian children across into the Dominican Republic for "adoption." The thing is, they had no proof the children were orphans. I wonder how much they were going to charge for them?
--Bonnie Weinstein
Also see:
Haitian Law Enforcement Returns
The Haitian police are back on patrol in Port-au-Prince.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/americas/1194811622209/index.html#1247466794033
Haitians Scramble for Aid
France24 reports on desperate Haitians trying to get some aid food in the Cité Soleil district of Port-au-Prince.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/americas/1194811622209/index.html#1247466794033
HOW MANY CRIMES CAN THE U.S. COMMIT IN A CENTURY? EVIDENTLY THEIR PENCHANT FOR MORE AND MORE EGREGIOUS CRIMES ARE LIMITLESS! IT'S UP TO US TO STOP THEM! U.S. OUT OF HAITI NOW! LEAVE THE FOOD AND SUPPLIES AND GET THE HELL OUT! AND TAKE YOUR MARINES, GUNS AND TANKS WITH YOU!
U.S. Marines prevent the distribution of food to starving people due to "lack of security." They bring a truck full of supplies then, because their chain of command says they haven't enough men with guns, they drive away with the truckload of food leaving the starving Haitians running after the truck empty-handed! This is shown in detail in the video in the New York Times titled, "Confusion in Haitian Countryside." The Marines-the strong, the brave--turn tail and run! INCAPABLE, EVEN, OF DISTRIBUTING FOOD TO UNARMED, STARVING, MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN!
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/01/22/world/americas/1247466678828/confusion-in-the-haitian-countryside.html?ref=world
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Lost Generation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
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Sign the petition. Drop the charges against Alexis Hutchinson!
"...four separate court martial charges have been brought against Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single parent with a one-year old son, who missed deployment in early November 2009 when her childcare plan fell through at the last moment, due to circumstances beyond her control."
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/811/1/
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
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Alert! New Threat To Mumia's Life!
Supreme Court Set To Announce A Decision
On the State Appeal To Reinstate Mumia's Death Sentence
17 January 2010
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
Visit our newly-rebuilt and updated web site for background information on Mumia's innocence. See the "What You Can Do Now" page: www.laboractionmumia.org
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
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The Pay at the Top
The compensation research firm Equilar compiled data reflecting pay for 200 chief executives at 198 public companies that filed their annual proxies by March 27 and had revenue of at least $6.3 billion. (Two companies, Motorola and Synnex, had co-C.E.O.'s.) | See a detailed description of the methodology.
http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation?ref=business
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AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
The Unemployment Game Show: Are You *Really* Unemployed? - From Mint.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA
Video: Gaza Lives On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5Wi2jhnW0
ASSESSMENT - "LEFT IN THE COLD"- CROW CREEK - 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmfue_pjwho&feature=PlayList&p=217F560F18109313&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5
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FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
Mail tax free contributions payable to National Lawyers Guild Foundation. Write in memo box: "Lynne Stewart Defense." Mail to: Lynne Stewart Defense, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.
SEND RESOLUTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT TO DEFENSE ATTORNEY JOSHUA L. DRATEL, ESQ. FAX: 212) 571 3792 AND EMAIL: jdratel@aol.com
SEND PROTESTS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Department of Justice Main Switchboard - 202-514-2000
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line - 202-353-1555
To send Lynne a letter, write:
Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
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With a New Smile, 'Rage' Fades Away [SINGLE PAYER NOW!!!]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/08/health/20091208_Clinic/index.html?ref=us
FTA [F**k The Army] Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HlkgPCgU7g
Buffy Sainte Marie - No No Keshagesh
[Keshagesh is the Cree word to describe a greedy puppy that wants to keep eating everything, a metaphor for corporate greed]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKmAb1gNN74&feature=player_embedded#
Buffy Sainte-Marie - No No Keshagesh lyrics:
http://www.lyricsmode.com/?i=print_lyrics&id=705368
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The Story of Mouseland: As told by Tommy Douglas in 1944
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqgOvzUeiAA
The Communist Manifesto illustrated by Cartoons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUl4yfABE4
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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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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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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 501c)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) For Obama, Nuance on Race Invites Questions
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/us/politics/09race.html?ref=us
2) Army moves to strip jailed hip-hop soldier of due process and a public trial with Iraq transfer
By Courage to Resist
February 9, 2010
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
3) Greek Civil Servants Strike Over Austerity Measures
[ARTICLE AND VIDEO]
By DAN BILEFSKY and NIKI KITSANTONIS
FEBRUARY 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/world/europe/11greece.html?hp
4) Britain Discloses Data on Ex-Detainee
By JOHN F. BURNS
February 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/world/europe/11britain.html?ref=world
5) Slumburbia
By TIMOTHY EGAN
February 10, 2010, 9:30 pm
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/slumburbia/?hp
6) 2 Ex-Workers Accuse Blackwater Security Company of Defrauding the U.S. for Years
By MARK MAZZETTI
February 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/us/11suit.html?ref=world
7) For Detained Youths, No Mental Health Overseer
By JULIE BOSMAN
February 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/nyregion/11youth.html?ref=nyregion
8) A Fatal Ending for a Family Forced Apart by Immigration Law
By NINA BERNSTEIN
February 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/nyregion/12family.html?ref=world
9) Pacifica WBAI Chair Mitchel Cohen And The Case Of Lynne Stewart
by Taking Aim
Friday Feb 12th, 2010 11:59 AM
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/02/12/18637628.php
10) Troops Take Positions in Taliban Haven
By DEXTER FILKINS
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/world/asia/14afghan.html?hp
11) Afghan Offensive Is New War Model
News Analysis
By DEXTER FILKINS
February 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/world/asia/13kabul.html?hp
12) Doctors Haunted by Haitians They Couldn't Help
By DEBORAH SONTAG
February 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/americas/13doctors.html?ref=world
13) Arkansas: Migrants Win $2.75 Million
National Briefing | South
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
February 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/us/13brfs-MIGRANTSWIN2_BRF.html?ref=us
14) UK sentences six over 2009 Gaza war protests
Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:55:22 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118553§ionid=351020601
15) Afghan Civilians Killed in Offensive on Taliban
By ROD NORDLAND
February 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/world/asia/15afghan.html?hp
16) Wall St. Helped Greece to Mask Debt Fueling Europe's Crisis
By LOUISE STORY, LANDON THOMAS Jr. and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html?hp
17) Education Was Also Leveled by Quake in Haiti
By MARC LACEY
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/world/americas/14schools.html?ref=education
18) A Glimpse Inside a Troubled Youth Prison
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
February 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/nyregion/14juvenile.html?ref=nyregion
19) Wall St. Helped Greece to Mask Debt Fueling Europe's Crisis
By LOUISE STORY, LANDON THOMAS Jr. and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html?ref=business
20) A Long Slide in Union Membership
[EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT? ANYONE?...bw]
The Count
By PHYLLIS KORKKI
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/14count.html?ref=business
21) Top US Court Sends Mumia Abu-Jamal Closer to Execution
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man on death row. In two recent decisions, the US Supreme Court has ignored both evidence of his innocence and it's own precedents to deny Mumia's appeal and bring him closer to execution. In this statement, the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal lays bare the truth behind these actions, and proposes a course of workers' and mass action to free Mumia.
Cops, Courts and Politicians To Mumia:
We Will Kill You, and the Law Be Damned!
For Labor Action To Free Mumia!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, February 2010
For more information, view our web site at: www.laboractionmumia.org
See the article, "Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Labor Movement," at http://www.laboractionmumia.org/laborsfight1.html
And see, "What You Can Do Now," at http://www.laboractionmumia.org/whatyoucandonow.html
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1) For Obama, Nuance on Race Invites Questions
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/us/politics/09race.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The civil rights movement will come alive in song at the White House on Wednesday night, when President Obama plans to celebrate Black History Month with a star-studded concert.
And it came alive in quiet conversation on Martin Luther King's Birthday, when Mr. Obama installed a rare signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in the Oval Office and invited a small group of African-American elders and young people in for a private viewing.
The two events - a televised extravaganza with celebrities like Morgan Freeman and Queen Latifah, and an intimate discussion with people like Dorothy Height, the 97-year-old chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women - reflect the nuances in Mr. Obama's handling of the often incendiary issue of race in America. He is using his platform to advance racial consciousness, even as he has steered clear of putting race front and center in his administration.
It is a balancing act that has frustrated some black leaders and scholars, who are starting to challenge Mr. Obama's language and policies.
On Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed irritation that Mr. Obama has not created programs tailored specifically to African-Americans, who are suffering disproportionately in the recession. In December, some of them threatened to oppose new financial rules for banks until the White House promised to address the needs of minorities.
"I don't think we expected anything to change overnight because we had an African-American in the White House, but the fact still remains that we've got a constituency that is suffering," said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland. "I think he could do more, and he will do more."
Some black scholars say Mr. Obama has failed to lead on the race issue. The Kirwan Institute, which studies race and ethnicity, is convening a conference on Thursday to offer policy prescriptions. After analyzing the State of the Union address, the institute's scholars warned that "continued failure to engage race would be devastating."
Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University sociologist and longtime supporter of Mr. Obama, is exasperated. "All these teachable moments," he said, "but the professor refuses to come to the class."
In an interview in late December with American Urban Radio Networks, a group of black-owned stations, Mr. Obama conceded that there was "grumbling" among African-Americans, especially about his jobs policies. But he rejected the idea that he should pay special attention to them - an argument that Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a black author and political analyst, called "disingenuous at best, and an insult at worst."
Mr. Obama framed it this way: "I can't pass laws that say I'm just helping black folks. I'm the president of the United States. What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That in turn is going to help lift up the African-American community."
Until now, black leaders have tended to tread lightly in criticizing Mr. Obama, and some find it painful. Black Americans remain overwhelmingly supportive of Mr. Obama; a recent ABC News poll found that 96 percent approve of his job performance.
But Elinor Tatum, the editor and publisher of the black-owned Amsterdam News, says that if blacks were asked "Is he doing a good job for African-Americans?" his numbers would be lower.
"Every time someone brings up an issue that affects blacks, he says that's an issue that affects all of America," Ms. Tatum said. "But at the same time, if he were of a different race or ethnicity, he would be playing to the black community. So there's a double standard there. Should we be the victims in that?"
The conventional wisdom about Mr. Obama is that he tries to duck the issue of race, but close advisers say he is acutely aware of his role as the first African-American president and is trying to heighten racial sensitivity in constructive ways.
Many black leaders view this as wise. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who is working with Mr. Obama to close the achievement gap in education, says the president is smart not to ballyhoo "a black agenda."
Instead, Mr. Obama has been trying to shine a spotlight on the history that laid the foundation for his presidency, with events like Wednesday's concert and the celebration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, which offer a peek into his style.
Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, said the King event was intended as "an intergenerational conversation" in which guests could share their experiences in a "safe and private moment." Before the Oval Office tour, they gathered in the Roosevelt Room and Mr. Obama invited each to speak.
Dr. Height began with the story of her first encounter with the young Martin Luther King Jr., then 15 and trying, she said, to "analyze his own thoughts as he was trying to determine whether he wanted to enter the ministry, education or law."
A local pastor, John Pinkard, recounted his dinner with Dr. King. Participants said the session seemed as much for the president's benefit as their own.
"My impression was that it was deliberately something for him and for Michelle, and that it was kind of like medicine, it was healing for them," said the historian Taylor Branch, who also attended. "It seemed to answer something personal for them."
Race, of course, can be an incendiary issue in American politics: as a candidate, the biracial Mr. Obama was criticized as either too black or not black enough. He addressed the topic memorably in a speech in Philadelphia after the controversy involving his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
Ms. Jarrett said, "He has communicated quite clearly his thoughts on the subject."
As president, Mr. Obama learned the pitfalls of talking bluntly about race. His comment that police officers in Cambridge, Mass., "acted stupidly" when they arrested a black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., caused an uproar, and the ensuing "beer summit" at the White House proved a distraction.
Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who represented Mr. Gates and is close to Mr. Obama, said the president had never hesitated to talk about race but is more scripted now. "I think there is a carefulness - not a reluctance - but a carefulness about what should be said going forward," he said.
Professor Ogletree said he "finds puzzling the idea that a president who happens to be black has to focus on black issues."
Dr. Height agreed. Having counseled every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt on matters of race, she made a plea in a recent interview for Mr. Obama to be left alone.
"We have never sat down and said to the 43 other presidents: 'How does it feel to be a Caucasian? How do you feel as a white president? Tell me what that means to you,' " Dr. Height said. "I am not one to think that he should do more for his people than for other people. I want him to be free to be himself."
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2) Army moves to strip jailed hip-hop soldier of due process and a public trial with Iraq transfer
By Courage to Resist
February 9, 2010
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Fort Stewart, Georgia officials confirmed that the Army will attempt to separate Spc Marc A Hall from both his civilian legal team and his established military defender Capt. Anthony Schiavetti by immediately sending him to Iraq to face court martial.
The Army declared that, "The jurisdiction transfer ensures a full and fair trial for both Spc. Hall and the United States." Nothing could be farther from the truth, at least for Spc. Hall.
"It is our belief that the Army would violate its own regulations by deploying Marc and it would certainly violate his right to due process by making it far more difficult to get witnesses. It appears the Army doesn't believe it can get a conviction in a fair and public trial. We will do whatever we can to insure he remain in the United States," explains attorney David Gespass of Birmingham, Alabama.
Spc. Marc Hall produced and distributed an angry hip-hop song in July 2009 when he discovered that he would not be allowed to leave active duty due to the Army's "stop-loss" policy. Spc. Hall continued to serve with his unit for the next four months undergoing command and mental health counseling as requested. "I explained to [my first sergeant] that the hardcore rap song was a free expression of how people feel about the Army and its stop-loss policy. I explained that the song was neither a physical threat nor any threat whatsoever. I told him it was just hip-hop," explained Spc. Hall.
When Spc. Hall continued to express strong objections to redeploying to Iraq, his unit used the hip-hop song as a pretext to incarcerate Spc. Hall on Dec. 12, 2009. The command likely believed Spc. Hall would refuse to deploy anyway creating discomfort among other soldiers.
Spc. Hall was charged Dec. 17, 2009, with five specifications in violation of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Conduct, two of those for wrongfully communicating a threat based on song lyrics. Article 134 is the vague rule that outlaws anything "to the prejudice of good order and discipline."
Brenda McElveen, Spc. Hall's mother notes, "Marc served his tour of duty to Iraq honorably. To his dismay, he was told that he would be deployed again. When Marc voiced his concerns over this matter, his concerns fell on deaf ears. To let his frustration be known, Marc wrote and released the song. Marc is not now nor has he ever been violent."
On Feb. 1, 2010 Spc. Hall underscored his non-violent outlook by formally applying for discharge from the Army as a conscientious objector. His application explains the transformation he went through during his year-long deployment to Iraq. The Army's attempts to now deploy him violate AR 600-8-105 (Military Orders) and the Army's Conscientious Objector regulations among other errors.
"The Army seeks to disappear Marc and the politically charged issues involved here, including: the unfair stop-loss policy, the boundary of free speech and art by soldiers, and the continuing Iraq occupation. The actual charges are overblown if not frivolous, so I'm not surprised the Army wants to avoid having a public trial," explained Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist (couragetoresist.org), an organization working in collaboration with Iraq Veterans Against the War (ivaw.org) to support Spc. Hall. Supporters have created stoplossmusic.org to support Spc. Hall and pay for his legal defense.
Ft. Stewart Public Affairs Chief Kevin Larson, (912) 435-9879, announced today that he will no longer provide information regarding Spc. Hall. Media should instead contact Iraq-stationed LTC Eric Bloom via email only at eric.bloom@mnd-b.army.mil. This alone underscores the lack of a fair and public trial available to Spc. Hall in Iraq.
The Army continues to implement its stop-loss policy despite President Obama's promise to end the unfair practice that involuntarily extends the active duty service term of many soldiers. According to the Pentagon 120,000 soldiers have been affected by stop-loss since 2001 and 13,000 are currently serving under stop-loss orders.
Urgent Action Required
Donate - We have raised less than $500 of the $2,500 already spent on Marc's legal fees. Please help make up the difference.
Petition - Sign and we'll mail the letters on your behalf
E-mail campaign - Also, send an email to the Army (via Vets for Peace)
"Free Marc Hall" PDF Leaflet - Print, copy and share
"Iraq court martial for Hip Hop song about stop-loss" by Sarah Lazare. Feb. 9, 2010
More stories about Marc in the news
stoplossmusic.org
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3) Greek Civil Servants Strike Over Austerity Measures
[ARTICLE AND VIDEO]
By DAN BILEFSKY and NIKI KITSANTONIS
FEBRUARY 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/world/europe/11greece.html?hp
ATHENS - Striking civil servants brought public services to a halt across Greece on Wednesday, in a vast but largely peaceful one-day protest against the tough austerity measures officials have said are necessary to stave off a mounting financial crisis.
Greece has been under mounting pressure from other members of the European Union to rein in its huge budget deficit and is in danger of failing to refinance some $28 billion in debt coming due in April and May. Fears of default in Greece and other struggling European countries have roiled financial markets around the world in recent weeks.
But the Greek government's proposals for deep spending cuts to rein in the deficit have met significant resistance.
"We won't pay for their crisis!" loudspeakers blared from Klafthmonos Square, otherwise known as "the square of the crying people," where disenchanted Greek workers have come to express their discontent for centuries. "Not one euro to be sacrificed to the bankers!"
In Greece, commentators said the economic problems had exposed a general ignorance about the harsh realities of the global economy, while laying bare the strong sense of entitlement in a country where one out of three Greeks is employed in a civil service that guarantees jobs for life.
"People in other countries like Germany, France and the United States learned about the workings of the economy the hard way, by seeing their jobs on the line," said Babis Papadimitriou, an economic analyst at the Skai radio and television group. "This hasn't been the case in Greece."
But the demonstrations were tinged with a sense of resignation that megaphones were no match for volatile financial markets.
Indeed, even many of those protesting said they realized they needed to make sacrifices, or risk falling over what Prime Minister George Papandreou, a Socialist, called the "edge of the cliff" last week. Others expressed hope that the European Union would rescue their proud democracy from becoming the next Iceland.
"We feel humiliated and we understand that things cannot remain the same as they were before," said Vasiliki Revithi, 56, a biochemist at the National Organization for Medicines, noting that a monthly cut of about $950 to her salary would mean no new car and cheaper makeup. "But we gave the world democracy, and we expect the European Union to support us."
The crisis in Greece is a credibility test for the eurozone, the 16 nation bloc that uses, where a one-size-fits-all monetary policy has laid bare the challenges of managing disparate economies during an economic downturn. Last week, the anxieties spread to Portugal and Spain, where investors increasingly fear that bloated budgets will not be slimmed. Late last year, Greece stunned investors by saying that its government deficit would be 12.7 percent of its gross domestic product, not the 3.7 percent the previous government had forecast earlier.
The government of Mr. Papandreou appears determined, however belatedly, to challenge a national consensus in which the state has been expected to provide for its citizens from cradle to grave.
The government has announced $2.75 billion in public spending cuts. It also aims to raise another $6.87 billion from new taxes and measures aimed at fighting tax evasion, which analysts said deprived the federal budget of $44.2 billion last year. It has frozen salaries, increased the average retirement age among men and women to 63 by 2015 and introduced new taxes, including 0.14 Euros in taxes on the price of a liter of regular unleaded gasoline.
While the changes have hardly been embraced, analysts said they believed that Wednesday's strikes would not expand into widespread social unrest, provided that the government's austerity measures produced results.
Yannis Stournaras, director of the Greek Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research, a leading economic-analysis group, argued that a majority of Greeks realized that the future of the country was at stake. "Greeks would rather see their wages reduced for a few years than to lose their deposits at the bank," he said. "No one wants for the country to commit suicide."
He also expressed cautious optimism that European Union leaders, who are to meet Thursday in Brussels to discuss Greece's economic woes, would not allow the country to default because the credibility of the eurozone as a whole was at stake.
"If the markets turn bad and deprive Greece of liquidity, we can end up with another Lehman Brothers in which the failure of a coordinated response led to collapse," Mr. Stournaras said. "It will open a Pandora's Box. The question is who would be next, a small country or a big country. If it's a big country, then the euro will be in big trouble. I don't believe European leaders will allow this to happen."
Analysts noted that Mr. Papandreou, whose Socialist government enjoys a strong majority of 160 seats in the 300-member Parliament, was determined not to be the first Greek prime minister since the Second World War to bring the country to economic disaster.
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4) Britain Discloses Data on Ex-Detainee
By JOHN F. BURNS
February 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/world/europe/11britain.html?ref=world
LONDON - The British government lost a protracted court battle on Wednesday to protect secret American intelligence information about the treatment of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee and immediately published details of what it called the "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" administered to the detainee by American officials.
The seven-paragraph summary published on the Foreign Office Web site summarized secret information provided by United States intelligence officials to Britain's Security Service, MI5, on the treatment of Binyam Mohamed, a 31-year-old Ethiopian. Mr. Mohamed, the son of an Ethiopian Airlines official, moved to Britain as a teenager and left for Pakistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a move he has said he made in order to get help in breaking a drug habit. He was arrested there in early 2002 on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks on targets in the United States.
Under intense American pressure, the Foreign Office had sought to prevent publication of the summary it provided in a secret submission to a British court of what it knew of Mr. Mohamed's treatment by his American captors. Over many months, Foreign Office lawyers had battled with Mr. Mohamed's lawyers, citing warnings from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, among others, that the summary's publication could cause irrevocable damage to intelligence-sharing between the United States and Britain - a relationship British officials said was essential to Britain's security, in particular to its counterterrorism operations.
As posted on the Foreign Office Web site, the summary said that while Mr. Mohamed had been in American custody before reaching the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he had been subjected to "continuous sleep deprivation," shackled during interrogations and exposed to "threats and inducements" that included playing on his fears of being "removed from United States custody and 'disappearing.' " The document said he had been kept on a suicide watch and cited that as evidence that the treatment was causing him "significant mental stress and suffering."
The details related to Mr. Mohamed's treatment after he was arrested by Pakistani officials on charges of using a false British passport at Karachi airport in 2002, then handed over to American officials who transported him to a "ghost prison" in Morocco, then to Bagram air base in Afghanistan and on to Guantánamo in 2004.
The United States military ultimately dropped terrorism charges against Mr. Mohamed, partly because evidence against him had been obtained under physical duress. Mr. Mohamed was flown back to Britain in February 2009, whereupon he filed a civil damages lawsuit against the British government, accusing it of complicity in his mistreatment.
The information in the newly released Foreign Office document contained few if any surprises. Previous disclosures by the Central Intelligence Agency had described in detail the so-called "stress" techniques used by American interrogators while questioning terrorist suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks.
What was starkly new, however, was the Foreign Office's conclusion that the treatment Mr. Mohamed endured, had it been carried out at the behest of British officials, would have amounted to a breach of Britain's international treaty commitments banning torture.
"Although it is not necessary for us to categorize the treatment reported, it could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities," the document posted on the Foreign Office Web site said.
The court order, issued by a panel of three judges, could have been further appealed by the Foreign Office. But Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the House of Commons in a statement that the government had decided not to pursue the issue because the appeal judges had reaffirmed unequivocally the so-called "control principle," that no government should publicly disclose intelligence provided by another government without that government's permission.
"We have fought this case and brought the appeal to defend a principle we believe is fundamental to our national security - that intelligence shared with us will be protected by us," Mr. Miliband said. "No one likes to lose a case, but the force of the judgment is that it firmly recognizes that principle."
Acknowledging Mr. Mohamed had been right to charge that he had been mistreated, Mr. Miliband added, "This judgment is not evidence that the system is broken; rather it is evidence that the system is working and the full force of the law is available when citizens believe they have just cause."
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5) Slumburbia
By TIMOTHY EGAN
February 10, 2010, 9:30 pm
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/slumburbia/?hp
LATHROP, Calif. - Drive along foreclosure alley, through new planned communities that look like tile-roofed versions of a 21st century ghost town, and you see what happens when people gamble with houses instead of casino chips.
Dirty flags advertise rock-bottom discounts on empty starter mansions. On the ground, foreclosure signs are tagged with gang graffiti. Empty lots are untended, cratered with mud puddles from the winter storms that have hammered California's San Joaquin Valley.
Nobody is home in the cities of the future.
In a decade, they saw real property defy reality in real time in these insta-neighborhoods that sprouted in what had been some of the world's most productive farmland.
In places like Lathrop, Manteca and Tracy, population nearly doubled in 10 years, and home prices tripled. After inhaling all this real estate helium, some developers and their apologists in urban planning circles hailed the boom as the new America at the far exurban fringe. Every citizen a homeowner! Half-acre lots for all! No credit, no problem!
Others saw it as the residential embodiment of the Edward Abbey line that "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
Now median home prices have fallen from $500,000 to $150,000 - among the most precipitous drops in the nation - and still the houses sit empty, spooky and see-through, waiting on demography and psychology to catch up.
In strip malls where tenants seem to last no longer than the life cycle of a gold fish, the bottom-feeders have moved in. "Coming soon: Cigarette City," reads one sign here in Lathrop, near a "Cash Advance" outlet.
Take a pulse: How can a community possibly be healthy when one in eight houses are in some stage of foreclosure? How can a town attract new people when the crime rate has spiked well above the national average? How can a family dream, or even save, when unemployment hovers around 16 percent?
Yet if these staggered exurbs, about two hours inland from San Francisco, were an illness, they would not quite be Abbey's cancer. Though sick, foreclosure alley is not terminal. This is not Detroit with sunshine. It will be reborn, remade, inhabited. The question is: as what?
Nationwide, a record 2.8 million homes received foreclosure notices last year - up 119 percent from two years ago. Just under 5 million homeowners - 1 in 10 mortgages - owe more than their houses are worth. The impulse is to walk away. Surrender. And many have.
What they leave behind, along with the gang presence, the vandalism and the absence of vested owners, is a slum. A new slum. In an influential article in the Atlantic in 2008, the writer Christopher B. Leinberger predicted that the catastrophic collapse of the new home market could turn many of today's McMansions into tenements.
I'm not sure of that. After several days in foreclosure alley, this broad swath of the Central Valley that has been rated by some economists as the most stressed region during the Great Recession, I can't see such apocalyptic forecasts coming true.
Yes, huge developments are empty, with rising crime at the edges, and thousands of homes owned by banks that can't unload them even at fire-sale prices.
But through it all, the country churns and expands, unlike most other Western democracies. That great American natural resource - tomorrow - will have to save the suburban slums.
Through immigration and high birth rates, the United States is expected to add another 100 million people by 2050. If you don't believe me, consider that we've added 105 million people since 1970. This is more than the population of France. More than Italy. More than Germany. Currently, we have a net gain of one person every 13 seconds.
At some point, the market will settle on proper pricing levels. At its peak, only 11 percent of the people in this valley could afford the median home price.
In the meantime, during these low, ragged years, a few lessons about urban planning can be picked from the stucco pile.
One is that, at least here in California, the outlying cities themselves encouraged the boom, spurred by the state's broken tax system. Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. They let developers plow up walnut groves and vineyards and places that were supposed to be strawberry fields forever to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.
Second, look at the cities with stable and recovering home markets. On this coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego come to mind. All of these cities have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers, many of them, hate these restrictions. They said the coastal cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty.
It hasn't happened. Just the opposite. The developers' favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls - Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley - are the most troubled, the suburban slums.
Come see: this is what happens when money and market, alone, guide the way we live.
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6) 2 Ex-Workers Accuse Blackwater Security Company of Defrauding the U.S. for Years
By MARK MAZZETTI
February 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/us/11suit.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security company of defrauding the government for years by filing bogus receipts, double billing for the same services and charging government agencies for strippers and prostitutes, according to court documents unsealed this week.
In a December 2008 lawsuit, the former employees said top Blackwater officials had engaged in a pattern of deception as they carried out government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The lawsuit, filed under the False Claims Act, also asserts that Blackwater officials turned a blind eye to "excessive and unjustified" force against Iraqi civilians by several Blackwater guards.
Blackwater has earned billions of dollars from government agencies in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, when the company won contracts to protect American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan. The former employees who filed the lawsuit, a married couple named Brad and Melan Davis, said there was little financial oversight of the money.
Last year, an audit by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction and the State Department's inspector general found that the State Department had overpaid Blackwater $55 million because the company had failed to adequately staff its teams assigned to protect American diplomats in Iraq.
The documents detailing the Davises' accusations were unsealed after the Justice Department declined to join in the case against Blackwater, which last year changed its name to Xe Services. A Xe spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment about the case.
In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Davis said that she and her husband had decided to proceed with the case because "it's the right thing to do," and that it was time for "the truth from inside the company" to be made public. If the government is able to recover money from Blackwater as a result of the lawsuit, the Davises could claim a percentage as whistleblowers.
Mr. Davis, a former Marine, performed a number of jobs for the company, including working as a private security guard in Iraq.
Ms. Davis was fired from the company, and she is challenging the legality of her dismissal. Mr. Davis voluntarily resigned from the company.
According to the lawsuit, Ms. Davis raised concerns about the company's bookkeeping with her bosses in March 2006, when she was handling accounts for the company's contracts with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The lawsuit claims she was told to "back off," and that she "would never win a medal for saving the government money."
Ms. Davis also asserts that a Filipino prostitute in Afghanistan was put on the Blackwater payroll under the "Morale Welfare Recreation" category, and that the company had billed the prostitute's plane tickets and monthly salary to the government.
She also said Blackwater management used a subsidiary company, Greystone Ltd., to double bill the government for plane tickets between the United States and Amman, Jordan, which served as a transit point for the company's employees in Iraq.
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7) For Detained Youths, No Mental Health Overseer
By JULIE BOSMAN
February 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/nyregion/11youth.html?ref=nyregion
Edwina G. Richardson-Mendelson has been the administrative judge of the New York City Family Courts for nine months, in charge of the judges responsible for the detention of dozens of young people charged with crimes, the vast majority of whom suffer from some form of mental illness.
But it was not until last September that she was informed of what struck her as a startling fact: The State of New York does not have a single full-time staff psychiatrist charged with overseeing the treatment of the 800 or so young people who are detained in state facilities at any given time.
"There wasn't one human being on-site overseeing all the mental health needs of the population," Judge Richardson-Mendelson said in an interview. "When we place these children in these facilities, we expect their needs to be met, especially their mental health needs."
Yet all 17 psychiatrists at the detention facilities in the state's deeply troubled juvenile justice system work on contract and part time. Weeks often pass between their visits with each troubled youth, and state officials say their turnover rate is very high.
"Those people turn over so quickly that there are often huge chunks of time when there is not even a contracted psychiatrist available to evaluate the youngster or provide needed follow-up services," said Judge Monica Drinane, the supervising judge in Family Court in the Bronx.
Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, the state agency that administers the juvenile prisons, declined to be interviewed.
Edward Borges, an agency spokesman, said, "The commissioner has said that we need more mental health professionals, that we need psychiatric help, and it's something that she's recognized." Ms. Carrión is in the process of hiring a "chief psychiatrist," who will work on salary or on contract, Mr. Borges said.
For now, then, the oversight of the mental health treatment of the young people in state facilities falls to several dozen psychologists who visit them for consultations, and staff members at the jails who run group therapy sessions despite often having no qualifications beyond a high school degree.
Aspects of the lack of mental health services throughout New York's juvenile prison system were described last August in a withering report from the federal Department of Justice that examined conditions at four notorious state juvenile prisons.
The report criticized the state for failing to properly diagnose juveniles' mental health problems, administering medication inappropriately and making inadequate treatment plans. Young people are frequently assigned several different diagnoses at the same institution, resulting in confused and ineffective treatment.
"One psychiatrist described his role as 'an outsider' and expressed frustration because, 'I have to beg, borrow and steal information,' " the report said.
The proposed state budget released by Gov. David A. Paterson in January included an additional $18.2 million to improve services in the juvenile prisons, particularly mental health care. And officials from the Office of Children and Family Services said they had begun more consistent screening of children for mental health issues, reducing the use of physical restraints in the facilities and hiring an additional 37 mental health professionals to work in state-run juvenile residential centers.
But Commissioner Carrión recently told a number of Family Court judges, who decide which children should be sent to prisons, that the conditions at many isolated facilities upstate made it hard to recruit psychiatrists to work there.
Lawyers for the Legal Aid Society said they had many examples of mentally ill children who had been mistreated while in prisons.
One 16-year-old boy received a diagnosis of moderate mental retardation, took powerful psychotropic medication and functioned on a first-grade educational level. Last July he was placed in a state residential facility by a Family Court judge who had ordered that he receive mental health services.
However, he was not placed in a mental health unit until five months later, after being harassed, taunted and restrained at least five times by the prison staff, according to the Legal Aid lawyers.
A 15-year-old girl with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder and adjustment disorder was sent to a juvenile prison last February. Since then, she has not received proper mental health treatment, and has been restrained by the staff more than 15 times, her lawyers said.
Surveys of youth prisons indicate that about two-thirds of the nation's juvenile inmates - about 92,800 in 2006 - have at least one mental illness.
"The system just isn't equipped to deal with children with serious mental health issues," said Tamara A. Steckler, the lawyer in charge of the Juvenile Rights Practice of Legal Aid. "We need to find another mechanism to treat those children."
A task force led by Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, recently examined conditions at state juvenile prisons.
"I think it's clear that for these young people to succeed while they're in these facilities and for them to succeed when they're coming home, many of them need extensive mental health services," Mr. Travis said. "And it's clear that the current services fall far short of professional standards."
The problem of ineffective psychiatric care in juvenile prisons stretches back decades. Michael A. Corriero, a recently retired judge who spent 16 years as an acting State Supreme Court justice presiding over Manhattan's courts that dealt with youth offenders, recalled sentencing a 15-year-old who had sodomized an 11-year-old boy.
He placed the teenager in a juvenile prison, sentenced him to a term of two to six years, and recommended that he receive intensive counseling.
"I said, 'You're going to have to get this kid appropriate psychiatric care, and it has to be one-on-one," Mr. Corriero said. "And the answer was, 'We don't have a psychiatrist.' "
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8) A Fatal Ending for a Family Forced Apart by Immigration Law
By NINA BERNSTEIN
February 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/nyregion/12family.html?ref=world
WEST BABYLON, N.Y. - Elizabeth Drummond was a single mother from a hardscrabble family whose roots go back to the Mayflower and an American Indian tribe. The man she married, Segundo Encalada, was a relative newcomer to the United States, sent illegally by his parents from Ecuador when he was 17.
He soon became "Daddy Segundo" to her little boy, coached her through the Caesarean births of two daughters, and worked construction and landscaping jobs here on Long Island to support them all.
In an earlier era of America's immigration history, they could have stayed together, and Mr. Encalada might still be alive. But in July 2006, when Mrs. Encalada was pregnant with their third daughter and immigration crackdowns were sweeping the country, her husband was ordered by immigration authorities to take "voluntary departure" back to Ecuador.
They thought of hiding, she says, but chose to follow the rules, accepting the wrenching separation that has become the only path to a legal family life for hundreds of thousands of such couples. Under laws affecting those who married after April 2001, foreign spouses who entered without a visa must leave and seek one from a United States Consulate in their native land.
Their lawyer said that would take two months to a year. Instead, one year turned into three; Mrs. Encalada lost their apartment, and her son was hospitalized for depression at age 8. In July, after she flew to Ecuador for a joint interview at the United States Consulate in Guyaquil, officials there rejected the couple's application with a form letter saying they had "a marriage of convenience."
Mrs. Encalada, 32, wrote the White House, the State Department and Congressional offices to plead for help. When most did not respond, she found a new lawyer and started over. But her husband, 28, apparently lost hope. On Dec. 15, facing another Christmas far from his family, he drank poison.
Over the years, many couples who had to separate have managed to reunite; others split up for good. Some lawmakers see the hurdle as necessary to deter illegal immigration and marriage fraud, while others say it needlessly tears families apart.
But no one really keeps track of the results. The visa ordeal that left Mrs. Encalada a widow with four young children hints at a hidden toll.
Public attention has focused on the visa a United States Consulate in Nigeria granted to the man accused in the Christmas bombing attempt. But under tougher immigration laws enacted in 1996, the system also gives distant consulates vast power to delay or deny visas to would-be immigrants trying to return to their American families.
"The State Department should be ashamed of itself in this case," said Representative Steve Israel, a Long Island Democrat whose staff found American consular officials unresponsive to several e-mail messages sent on Mrs. Encalada's behalf from August to November. "Immigration policy in the United States is dysfunctional no matter which side of the issue, or the border, you stand on."
Adriana Gallegos, a spokeswoman for the State Department, would not comment on the case. "It's against the law to talk about visa records," she said. "We can't explain why it was denied or what was the process." She added that her own efforts to learn more from consular officials in Guyaquil had been unsuccessful.
Aspects of the case are mystifying. Although Mrs. Encalada said she showed the consular interviewer copious evidence of her Feb. 3, 2005, marriage, including family photo albums and apartment leases, the consulate later informed Mr. Israel's office that it had no record of her being there.
Mrs. Encalada protested that assertion in an urgent e-mail message to the consulate on Oct. 22: "How can there be no proof at all that we were there for our interview on July 20th 2009 with an interview time of 2:00? Please let me know what our next step is in this process, I need my husband home and my children need their father back!!!"
There was no reply until Christmas Eve, the week after Mr. Encalada's suicide, when the consulate suddenly apologized for the delay and professed great concern about her case. Its e-mail message asked for her airline boarding pass, a description of the person who interviewed her and other information.
Mrs. Encalada has not replied. "Now he's gone, it doesn't matter anymore," she said.
She still seemed stunned on a recent afternoon, surrounded by clamoring children in a battered house they share with her divorced father, a 58-year-old Marine Corps veteran recently laid off from his construction job, and her sister, a receptionist with two children.
Mrs. Encalada and her parents said the family's troubles started with a gathering at her mother's house one Friday night in July 2004, when a drunken guest meddled in a family dispute, then summoned the police, claiming Mr. Encalada had threatened her. Mr. Encalada eventually pleaded guilty to harassment in the case, a misdemeanor, and served 30 days in jail in 2006.
Legally, the offense was too minor to affect the couple's pending petition for his green card, but in practice it resulted in his transfer to immigration custody. Released on $7,500 bond, he agreed to leave for Ecuador and seek a visa.
As Mrs. Encalada sifted through photos of their vanished life and their week's reunion in Ecuador, her children crowded around. Selena, 5, back from kindergarten, waved a picture she had found.
"Daddy's holding me; he's changing me when I was a baby," she crowed.
Hailey, 4, grabbed another photo and ripped it. Alanna, 3, born five months after her father left, was tired of being told she was not the baby photographed in his arms. "I want to be there, too!" she cried, throwing herself on the floor.
Only Griffin, 9, was silent, lying face down on a couch.
"He did take it very hard," Mrs. Encalada said later, recalling how the boy cried himself to sleep in his stepfather's arms the night before they parted, then began to misbehave at school or refused to go.
She had no car, she said, and as Griffin's absences mounted, she took him on foot, an hour's walk. Twice the school called Child Protective Services to investigate possible neglect, and twice the caseworker determined the allegation was unfounded, she said, only to have the school make a new referral.
"It got to the point I had to put him in a mental institution or C.P.S. would take him away," she said.
Griffin, a third grader, spent a week on a psychiatric ward with a diagnosis of "mood disorder," and given Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug. He returned to a home where he and his mother sleep on recliners in the living room and the girls share two couches.
"The C.P.S. worker said they need beds," Mrs. Encalada said, after patiently doling out noodle soup. "I have no money to buy beds."
Thousands of dollars went to legal expenses and filing fees, much of it borrowed, she said. Mrs. Encalada, who formerly worked as a cashier and for an insurance company, was warned by lawyers not to apply for public aid because it would jeopardize the immigration case.
"Thank God for my dad," she said. "If it were not for him, I wouldn't have a roof over my head for me and the children."
Recent research on children separated from parents through immigration enforcement has found that psychological distress and family hardship are typical. A bill sponsored by Representative José E. Serrano, a New York Democrat, would give immigration judges discretion to take family situations into account in deportation proceedings - leeway largely eliminated by the tougher laws of 1996.
But opponents see such measures as a back door to amnesty and a reward to illegal immigrants for having children.
Such policy conflicts mean little to Mr. Encalada's in-laws, who reproach him only for ending his life. "He was a wonderful father and a wonderful husband, a very hard worker," said Mrs. Encalada's mother, Liz Volz. "If he was here right now, I would yell and scream at him. But I have a lot of sympathy for what he was going through."
Only after the consulate denied the validity of their marriage, when Mrs. Encalada consulted a new lawyer, did the couple learn about a separate hurdle. The law imposes a 10-year ban on re-entry for having stayed a year or more in the United States without permission; it can be waived only through a show of extreme hardship.
The second lawyer had started that process when Mr. Encalada gave up.
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9) Single Mother Is Spared Court-Martial
"Raised in Oakland, Specialist Hutchinson was a member of the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps in high school and then enlisted in the Army upon graduation. She wanted, she said in a written response to questions, "to get away from home and try something new." Her son, Kamani, was born in January 2009."
By JAMES DAO
February 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/us/12awolmom.html?ref=us
Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old Army cook and single parent, was days from deploying to Afghanistan last fall when her mother backed out of an agreement to take care of her 10-month-old son for the duration of her one-year tour.
Specialist Hutchinson's mother, Angelique Hughes, had a child of her own at home and was also caring for a sick sister while running a day care center from her home in Oakland, Calif. Feeling overwhelmed, Ms. Hughes took the boy back to Savannah, Ga., where Specialist Hutchinson was based, and begged her to find someone else.
That is when Specialist Hutchinson did what might seem natural to a parent but to the Army was a serious offense: she stayed home with her child and missed her flight to Afghanistan. She was arrested and later charged with offenses that could have led to a court-martial and jail time.
On Thursday, Specialist Hutchinson received an other-than-honorable discharge, ending an impasse that had surprised many legal experts and spurred lively debate in military circles.
In a news release, the Third Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., said Specialist Hutchinson's rank had been reduced to private and that she would lose some Army and veterans' benefits.
The statement asserted that evidence from other soldiers and Specialist Hutchinson herself indicated that she "didn't intend to deploy to Afghanistan with her unit and deliberately sought ways out of the deployment."
Rai Sue Sussman, Specialist Hutchinson's lawyer in San Francisco, said the soldier was prepared to deploy and that they would have rebutted those accusations at trial. "This resolution will give Alexis closure and the ability to move on immediately, without a lengthy trial and possible jail term," Ms. Sussman said.
Legal experts said it would have been extraordinary if Specialist Hutchinson had been court-martialed over child care issues, saying they could not recall a similar case. However, hundreds and perhaps thousands of soldiers have been administratively discharged for such problems in recent years.
Some legal experts speculated that Specialist Hutchinson's commanders threatened court-martial to send a message to other single-parent soldiers in the brigade. Last year, more than 10,000 single parents on active military duty deployed overseas.
"It could be that they have a ton of single parents and deploy regularly and can't afford to have disruptions like this," said Michelle M. Lindo McCluer, a former Air Force lawyer who is now director of the National Institute of Military Justice, a nonprofit group in Washington.
In its statement, the Third Infantry Division noted that there were many other single parents or dual-military families in Specialist Hutchinson's unit who deployed to Afghanistan. "They have experienced similar challenges but have been able to overcome them so they could deploy with their units," the statement said.
Specialist Hutchinson's case unfolded about the same time as the division's commander was embroiled in another controversy. In December, the commander, Maj. Gen. Anthony A. Cucolo III, who oversees forces in northern Iraq, issued orders threatening to punish soldiers, married or single, who become pregnant. (Punishment was also threatened for sexual partners.) The general, who has sent home about eight soldiers from Iraq because of pregnancy, later backed off the threat of court-martialing such soldiers.
Raised in Oakland, Specialist Hutchinson was a member of the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps in high school and then enlisted in the Army upon graduation. She wanted, she said in a written response to questions, "to get away from home and try something new." Her son, Kamani, was born in January 2009.
Specialist Hutchinson declined to say anything about the boy's father, other than that he had never been involved with Kamani. Ms. Hughes said she believed he was a former soldier.
Single parents are required to file family care plans months before deployment. In her plan, Specialist Hutchinson listed her mother as a long-term caregiver and in October she used a two-week leave to take her son to Oakland.
But it took only a few sleepless nights of caring for the infant for Ms. Hughes, 42, to decide she was in over her head. "I was working a full day and then staying up all night with Kamani," she said.
Ms. Hughes said that she called Specialist Hutchinson's company commander to explain the problem and that he said the specialist could delay deployment for 30 days to find alternative care. But apparently the delay was never granted because Specialist Hutchinson was arrested in November when she returned to her post, Hunter Army Airfield, a day after missing her flight to Afghanistan. In January, she was charged with absence without leave, dereliction of duty, insubordinate conduct and missing movement.
Kevin Larson, a spokesman for Fort Stewart, said Specialist Hutchinson had been given a previous extension to work out her family care plan, though he could not say when. Mr. Larson also said that a "notable national veterans organization," which he declined to name, had offered to care for Kamani during Specialist Hutchinson's deployment, but that she refused the help.
The legal wrangling over Specialist Hutchinson's case stirred much discussion on blogs, with sympathizers wondering why the Army would prosecute a parent struggling with child care problems and critics questioning the soldier's motives.
Ms. Hughes has heard some of that criticism firsthand. "People have said to me: 'She signed this contract. She's supposed to go. That's her first priority,' " Ms. Hughes said. "My response is: 'I don't think so. This is her child. This is her family. This is her priority. The military is a job.' "
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9) Pacifica WBAI Chair Mitchel Cohen And The Case Of Lynne Stewart
by Taking Aim
Friday Feb 12th, 2010 11:59 AM
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/02/12/18637628.php
WBAI has slandered the supporters of civil rights lawyer and political activist Lynne Stewart. Taking Aim producers answer this attack.
WBAI Chair Mitchel Cohen And The Case Of Lynne Stewart
takingaim(at)pacbell.net
Subject: Mitchel Cohen re: Lynne Stewart - please distribute widely
Date: February 12, 2010 11:30:20 AM PST
To the Pacifica National Board and to the WBAI Local Station Board:
Dear Friends,
On February 9, Mitchel Cohen, Chair of the WBAI Local Station Board, wrote a
public letter attacking Lynne Stewart and the support movement that has been
galvanized in her defense.
His letter entitled "Pimping Lynne Stewart," compares her outrageously to a
prostitute whose sale of herself is controlled by nominal political
supporters for their own personal gain.
His attack upon Lynne Stewart and her supporters derives from his efforts to
have her removed from the Local Station Board (LSB) to which she was elected
by an overwhelming vote - more votes than any other candidate - and on which
she would make an outstanding contribution, whether or not she remains
incarcerated.
In his first letter, Mr. Cohen pretends to have been a supporter of Lynne
Stewart during her trial. This obviously is not true. He reinvents her case
and takes her subsequent comments out of context. [See Taking Aim programs
for a detailed description of the issues, trial and appeal as well as
conversations with Lynne Stewart. Available at
http://www.takingaimradio.com]
Mr. Cohen also claims that her supporters are "desperate fools ... who are
running around saying the stupidest and most reactionary things. ..." He makes
his political meaning clear by stating "the CIA couldn't have done a better
job in its disinformation campaign..."
Mr. Cohen swiftly enfolds Lynne Stewart in the putative perfidy of her
supporters, declaring that Lynne Stewart is fully cognizant of this
duplicity and colludes in the deception: "She allows the Stalinoids, spooks
and agents to speak in her behalf."
The next day, Mr. Cohen penned an additional letter in which he admitted
that he signed, without entitlement, his initial attack as "Chair, WBAI
Local Station Board," acknowledging without evident embarrassment that
members of the Local Station Board were neither privy to his letter nor had
they approved it.
What are the stakes here?
The movement supporting Lynne Stewart regards her case as a historic cause
comparable to the Dreyfus Affair, in which the crimes of the State itself
have been visited upon a scapegoat falsely accused - a Judas-goat impaled on
the sword of the State and so displayed the better to deceive, intimidate,
terrorize and subjugate the public at large.
Lynne Stewart has for her entire professional life defended those so
targeted by the State, the working poor, political dissidents, the daring
few with the courage and the integrity to defy injustice and act boldly
against oppression.
She was railroaded to prison for defending a man accused of acts of
sabotage, assassination and terror, acts authored in fact by the FBI, the
Mossad and highest levels of authority -- constituting in reality nothing
less than treason at the top. Now she faces 30 years in prison for her
zealous representation and defense of her client.
Her case has significance far beyond defense of our "Mother Courage." In
order to succeed in neutralizing any and all who would defend those falsely
accused and, in the course of so doing, expose the crimes of the State, the
government seeks through the persecution and prosecution of Lynne Stewart to
intimidate and cow the entire legal profession. If those in power succeed in
railroading Lynne Stewart, no lawyer will dare defend those accused of
threatening national security for fear that they were lending "material
support to terrorism."
If Lynne Stewart can be buried alive in the federal prisons and, let us be
unmistakably clear, should our silence and cowardice permit her to be
murdered in prison through control of her medical treatment and physical
well being, this will be a turning point in the rapid construction of the
architecture of the fascist state in America.
These are the real stakes and the abiding issues that inform the cause of
Lynne Stewart.
How then should we understand the words and actions of Mr. Cohen?
In his second letter, he writes:
"Strangely, no one has yet objected to characterizing some of those involved
as 'agents.' I guess some things are more self-evident than others."
Mr. Cohen thus asserts in a public letter that those involved in the
movement supporting Lynne Stewart are agents of the U.S. government -
betrayers of their friends and comrades and serving as instruments of the
FBI, CIA, police and intelligence.
This is a grave accusation. If Mr. Cohen has a scintilla of evidence to
support it, he has an absolute obligation to name those he claims to have
discovered to be such agents. He must present the evidence against them so
that members of Pacifica and WBAI may be forearmed.
Most importantly, those supporters of Lynne Stewart implicated by his
innuendo and thus accused of perfidy and betrayal must be accorded the full
opportunity to confront such accusations, and the accuser, and take such
action as they deem appropriate and necessary.
Should Mr. Cohen be shown to lack such evidence and should this grave
accusation be revealed as no more than a McCarthyite smear, he will have
been exposed as having acted in a manner consistent with the methods of
Cointelpro.
As such, he should be severed from association with WBAI, the Pacifica radio
network and from those who have been dedicated to the values, the personal
integrity, courage and life commitment of Lynne Stewart.
In Solidarity,
Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
Taking Aim with Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
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From: Mitchel Cohen
Date: February 10, 2010 9:38:05 AM PST
Subject: Correction to "Pimping Lynne Stewart"
Hi,
A few days ago (it seems like a month already) I sent a letter I'd written, "Pimping Lynne Stewart", which I'd signed and included, under my signature, "Chair, WBAI Local Station Board".
As I wrote this as my own commentary and not on behalf of the Board, obviously, I should have included an asterisk explaining exactly that. So please note that the words "Chair, WBAI Local Station Board" are for identification purposes only, and do not reflect the opinion(s) of the Local Station Board.
I will be updating this article in a few days, further substantiating the claims I've made as well as commenting on the mail I've already received, including objections sent to me for categorizing those involved as, among other things,
- "Stalinoids"
- "spooks"
- "faux supporters"
- "disruptors"
- "nincompoops"
- "stupid"
Strangely, no one has yet objected to characterizing some of those involved as "agents". I guess some things are more self-evident than others.
Sorry for any confusion over those who may have thought that the LSB itself had issued that letter.
Mitchel Cohen
"Pimping Lynn Stewart" -- Now Playing at WBAI Local Station Board?
Do you think that Lynne Stewart realizes how her once-serious court case and the widespread sympathy she evoked -- at least within activist circles on the Left (yea, say what you will about the Left) -- is being destroyed by desperate fools pretending to be her supporters in her faction at WBAI, who are running around saying the stupidest and most reactionary things in her name?
The CIA couldn't have done a better job in its disinformation campaign against her.
But, truth is, Lynne Stewart does know. She's kept informed, but has said nothing while nincompoops, Stalinoids and faux supporters cash-in the legitimacy of her important case against the U.S.A. Patriot Act and its attacks on civil liberties in order to score factional polemical points and fictional provocations, destroying the radio station she purportedly loves and her reputation along with it.
Originally, Lynne was charged with violating an order she'd signed (why she signed it instead of challenging it in court is one of the huge mistakes she'd made). The statement she signed, known as a "SAM", banned her from making public statements about the political views of her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The U.S. government claimed that Lynne's public statements on behalf of her client broke federal prison rules by using her legal meetings with the Sheik and press conferences following those meetings to pass messages to the Sheik's followers in Egypt, which led to them calling off a peace initiative and -- the U.S. government claimed -- to a number of avoidable deaths.
The Judge himself saw through this bogus claim, which is why he didn't sentence her to longer time in jail. But instead of appreciating the Judge's dilemma (and pressure he was under), Lynne came out of the Court at that time stupidly gloating, "I can do 28 months standing on my head." (I was there, one of her supporters, as I was at many of her court appearances. I personally heard her say this.)
The Appeals Court cited that statement, and then went on to say that "of course" the statement had nothing to do with their ordering the original Judge to reconsider her sentence based on a number of things, including whether or not she'd lied to the Court. Of course.
As the Appeals Court was considering the state's appeal, Lynne Stewart and the JUC cynically chose THAT moment to run her for the WBAI Local Station Board as the head of their ticket.
Lynne Stewart, meanwhile, said nothing in response to queries about how her pending imprisonment would improve the Board's ability to make decisions needed to govern the station.
Nor in the interim has Lynne Stewart issued a single word about how to improve the fulfillment rates during Pledge drives -- the main culprit in the financial crisis that WBAI again finds itself in.
Nor has Lynne issued an opinion on the detailed proposals pertaining to WBAI that have been submitted concerning credit card expansion, how to rectify the "locked box" situation, how to repair the bar-code disaster, mail out premiums or make phone calls to members -- you know, the kinds of things that the rest of the Board -- even one or two in her own faction -- are doing, to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities.
No, Lynne Stewart has, strangely (and unlike her prior statements on behalf of her legal clients), said nothing. Instead, she allows the Stalinoids, spooks and agents to speak in her behalf, disrupt the Local Board, and portray (or caricature) her views. Lynne, NOW is the time for you to be saying, "Not in my Name!"
As Chair of the Local Station Board, I wouldn't object to holding some of the Board's meetings in the prison itself so that she could attend them (if the officials allow it, and provide us with a suitable conference room and proper sound equipment). I suspect that her JUC collaborators would scratch and moan against such an arrangement -- should such in-prison meetings actually be allowed -- as it would require them as well as other attendees to provide not only their names and home addresses in order to get into the meetings but their fingerprints as well. Remember, these are the folks who whined against having to show IDs to security in the lobby of 120 Wall Street and who posted the exact words carved in stone in the bylaws and demanded that the Board follow them to the letter! (These are the same bylaws -- funny how they don't mention this -- that require Board members to be physically present at regular meetings in order to participate in the discussions and vote.)
So, Lynne Stewart, I ask again: What are your views on how to improve fulfillment rates on Magid Ali's premiums? And, will you continue to allow your faction operatives to destroy the radio station, in your name?
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10) Troops Take Positions in Taliban Haven
By DEXTER FILKINS
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/world/asia/14afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - American, Afghan and British troops occupied crucial positions across the Taliban stronghold of Marja on Saturday, encountering only sporadic fighting as they began the long and possibly bloody ordeal of house-to-house searches.
American Marines exchanged gunfire with Taliban insurgents throughout the day, and discovered several homemade bombs and other weapons. One American serviceman was reported killed in Marja on Saturday, and a British servicemen as well, officials said in Kabul. Three American soldiers were killed in neighboring Kandahar Province when the vehicle they were riding in struck a large explosive buried in the road.
American commanders said Saturday that the 6,000 American, Afghan and British troops who moved into the area earlier in the day had achieved every objective they had set for themselves. That included advancing into the city itself, seizing intersections, government buildings and one of the city's two main bazaars in the center of town.
Some military units held meetings with local Afghans, to reassure them and to ask for help in finding Taliban fighters and hidden bombs.
Mohammed Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand Province's governor, said Afghan and NATO forces had set up 11 posts across Marja and two in the neighboring town of Nad Ali. "We now occupy all the strategic points in the area," he said.
The invasion of Marja is the largest military operation of its kind since the American-backed war began eight years ago. The area, about 77 square miles of farmland, villages and irrigation canals, is believed to be the largest Taliban sanctuary inside Afghanistan.
In the prelude to the attack, Afghan and Americans commanders said that the area contained hundreds of Taliban fighters, several hundred homemade bombs and a number of opium factories that the insurgents use to finance their operations.
On the first full day of operations, much of the expected Taliban resistance failed to materialize. Afghan and NATO troops discovered some bombs, narcotics and weapons caches, but the fighting itself was relatively desultory. There was certainly none of the eyeball-to-eyeball fighting that typified the battle for Falluja in Iraq in 2004, to which the invasion of Marja had been compared.
Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister, said in a news conference in Kabul that the Afghan Army had suffered no dead at all and only a handful of wounded. He seemed a little surprised at the day's events.
"Actually, the resistance is not there," Mr. Wardak said. "Based on our intelligence reports, some of the Taliban have left the area. But we still expected there to be several hundred in the area. Just yesterday, we received reports that reinforcements had arrived from neighboring provinces."
It seemed possible that many insurgents had just faded away, or at least were waiting to show themselves. American and Afghan commanders took the unusual step of broadcasting their intention to clear Marja several weeks ago, in hopes that Taliban fighters would leave the city and thus make it easier to take hold of the place.
Dangerous days may yet lie ahead, though, officials said. Military officers estimate that the American, Afghan and British troops will need several days to clear most of the buildings in the area of fighters and bombs.
In addition, what has been advertised as the most important, and novel, aspect of the Marja operation has yet to begin. After clearing Marja, American and Afghan officials say, they intend to import an entire Afghan civil administration, along with nearly 2,000 Afghan police officers, to help keep the Taliban from coming back in.
Previous operations to clear the Taliban from towns and cities have failed in large part because the Americans and Afghans rarely leave a competent Afghan government or security force behind to hold the place. And so, typically, the Taliban did not stay away for long. This time, in Marja, things are supposed to be different.
"Our main goal in this joint operation is not to kill insurgents," Mr. Wardak said. "In fact, our primary goal is to expand the government's influence and protect the civilian population."
Afghans in Marja itself stayed mostly indoors. "Nobody can go out of his house," Palawan, a farmer in Marja, said in a telephone interview. "The government and the Taliban have told us to stay in our house. But there has been fighting in the area all morning."
"I don't have any information on the Taliban, neither where they are nor where they have gone," Mr. Palawan said. He seemed as mystified by the day's events as anyone. "I don't think they have gone anywhere, because Marja has been surrounded by Afghan and foreign forces on every side."
A local Taliban commander named Hashemi, also reached by telephone, said his men had fought through much of day, shooting at least six foreign soldiers. Mr. Hashemi said that six of his own men had been killed. "The Taliban are still resisting," Mr. Hashemi said. "We are strong and we won't give up. We will fight to death."
But American soldiers said Saturday that firefights with the Taliban had been mostly sporadic; a shot here, a shot there. In the afternoon, insurgents and Marines engaged in one long gun battle, which ended when the marines dropped a 500-pound bomb on the Taliban's position.
The Marines believed that many wounded and dead Taliban fighters lay in the field in front of them. But each time they ventured into the field, Taliban fighters opened fire. After a time, the Marines decided to leave the Taliban casualties in the field.
"Every time they try to go out," Capt. Joshua P. Biggers said of his men, "they get hammered."
An Afghan employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Helmand Province.
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11) Afghan Offensive Is New War Model
News Analysis
By DEXTER FILKINS
February 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/world/asia/13kabul.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - For all the fighting that lies ahead over the next several days, no one doubts that the American and Afghan troops swarming into the Taliban redoubt of Marja will ultimately clear it of insurgents.
And that is when the real test will begin.
For much of the past eight years, American and NATO forces have mounted other large military operations to clear towns and cities of Taliban insurgents. And then, almost invariably, they have cleared out, never leaving behind enough soldiers or police officers to hold the place on their own.
And so, almost always, the Taliban returned - and, after a time, so did the American and NATO troops, to clear the place all over again.
"Mowing the grass," the soldiers and Marines derisively call it.
This time, in Marja, the largest Taliban stronghold, American and Afghan commanders say they will do something they have never done before: bring in an Afghan government and police force behind them. American and British troops will stay on to support them. "We've got a government in a box, ready to roll in," said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American commander here.
Indeed, Marja is intended to serve as a prototype for a new type of military operation, based on the counterinsurgency thinking propounded by General McChrystal in the prelude to President Obama's decision in December to increase the number of American troops here to nearly 100,000.
More than at any time since 2001, American and NATO soldiers will focus less on killing Taliban insurgents than on sparing Afghan civilians and building an Afghan state.
"The population is not the enemy," Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the commander of the Marines in southern Afghanistan, told a group of troops this week. "The population is the prize - they are why we are going in."
To realize their goals, the Americans and their allies want to capture the area with a minimum amount of violence. American commanders say the attack on Marja is intended to be nothing like the similar size assault on the city of Falluja, Iraq, in November 2004. In that case, Falluja, under the control of hundreds of insurgents, was largely destroyed. The Americans killed plenty of guerrillas, but they did not make any friends.
"We don't want Falluja," General McChrystal said in an interview this week. "Falluja is not the model."
Sparing civilian life may not be easy, especially in the close-quarters combat that lies ahead. Hundreds of Taliban fighters are believed to be in the area. And the American-led force may yet get bogged down - by the network of irrigation canals, built by the United States in the 1950s, or by the hundreds of homemade bombs that Taliban fighters have planted in the roads and trails.
The chief worry among both American and Afghan commanders is that if a large number of civilians are killed, the Afghan government - including its sometimes erratic president, Hamid Karzai - could withdraw its support.
The Americans are hoping, too, that the largely Afghan composition of the invading force - about 60 percent of the total - will give Mr. Karzai's government sufficient cover if anything goes wrong.
But at some point the operation will end, and when it does General McChrystal has set goals for the Americans and the Afghans that are less dramatic, but far more ambitious, than fighting.
For the first time, NATO and Afghan officials have assembled a large team of Afghan administrators and an Afghan governor that will move into Marja the moment the shooting stops. More than 1,900 police are standing by.
Setting up a government in this impoverished country is no small task. Across Afghanistan, the Afghan government and its police are reviled for their inefficiency and corruption.
"We want to show people that we can deliver police, and services, and development," said Lt. Gen. Mohammed Karimi, the deputy chief of staff of the Afghan Army. "We want to convince the Afghans that the government is for them."
At a broader level, the attack on Marja is the first move in an ambitious effort to break the Taliban in their heartland. Over the next several months, the Americans are hoping to secure a 200-mile long horseshoe-shaped string of cities that runs along the Helmand River, through Kandahar and then on to the Pakistani border. The ribbon holds 85 percent of the population of Kandahar and Helmand Provinces, the Taliban's base of support. In the next several months, the Americans and Afghans are planning to pour thousands of troops into that area.
"We are trying to take away any hope of victory," General McChrystal said.
That would set the stage for a political settlement that General McChrystal believes is the only way the war will end.
The risks in the strategy are obvious enough. Eight years after being expelled from Kabul, the Taliban are fighting more vigorously, and operating in more places, than at any point since the American-led war began here in 2001. The Taliban have "shadow governors" in every province but Kabul itself. Twice the number of American soldiers were killed last year as the year before.
And there is some chance, even after the offensive, that the insurgents will simply flee to another part of the country. They have done it before; many of the fighters now inside Marja once operated in other Helmand towns.
Finally, there is only so much the Americans and their NATO partners can do. The rest is up to the Afghans themselves. Despite years of work, the Afghan Army cannot sustain itself in the field, the police are loathed in nearly every place they work, and the government of Mr. Karzai has only a few serious worldwide rivals in corruption and graft.
In a conversation this week, a senior American official in Kabul said that his greatest worry was not the Taliban, or even that the Marja operation would fail. "What do I worry about?" he said, "Dependency." That is, the fear that Afghanistan's leaders and people will not, in the end, stand up for themselves.
In that sense, who emerges as the victor in Marja may not be clear for many months.
C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from Helmand Province.
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12) Doctors Haunted by Haitians They Couldn't Help
By DEBORAH SONTAG
February 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/americas/13doctors.html?ref=world
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The foreign doctors who performed the first amputations after the earthquake used hacksaws. They relied on vodka for sterilization, substituted local numbing for general anesthesia, jury-rigged tourniquets from rubber gloves. Working around the clock in improvised operating rooms, they sacrificed limbs and lost patients to injuries that are no longer supposed to be disabling or deadly.
Now back in their antiseptic, high-tech offices in the United States and elsewhere, the medical professionals who initially flew to Haiti's rescue are haunted by their experiences, "overwhelmed by conflicting feelings of accomplishment and guilt," as Dr. Louisdon Pierre described it.
They witnessed what Dr. Laurence J. Ronan of Massachusetts General Hospital described as a "mass casualty horror show." They practiced what Dr. Dean G. Lorich of the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan called "Civil War medicine." They saved lives, probably by the thousands, but their accomplishments were limited by the circumstances.
Most of the doctors interviewed said they were committed to returning to Haiti and to marshaling the medical community's resources to deal with the thousands of Haitians who sustained permanently disabling injuries. The needs are staggering: from basic wound care to skin grafts, revision surgery, physical and occupational rehabilitation, prostheses and trauma therapy.
"Everything that everyone did during those first two heartbreaking weeks will have been for nothing if these patients don't get continuing care," said Dr. Elizabeth Bellino, a pediatrician based at Tulane University who worked in Haiti right after the earthquake.
In Uganda now on a project, Dr. Bellino, 34, said she closed her eyes and saw the beaming face of a 12-year-old Haitian boy named Mystil Jean Wesmer who ended up comforting her when she dissolved into tears. As she recounts it, Mystil smiled gently and, sensing that she was overwhelmed by the need around her at a field hospital run by Americans, said: " 'Go take care of the sicker kids. I'll be O.K.' "
He himself was waiting to have his leg amputated.
"All he wanted to know was how he was going to walk to school and church," Dr. Bellino said. "I said, 'Well, we'll figure that out.' But now I'm so worried about him, about all the kids."
Dr. Pierre, a Haitian-American who is the director of pediatric intensive care at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, said he thought constantly about the patients he left behind, too. Even as he plans his next trip - he and Dr. Stephen Carryl, the chairman of surgery at his hospital, will be returning with a prosthetics maker - a few memories plague him.
Back in Brooklyn, he still hears the loud, shrill cry of a mother at the moment her small son died of a raging infection on the lawn of a hospital in the Carrefour neighborhood. The mother and father, one child already lost to the earthquake, had implored Dr. Pierre to help their 4-year-old, who had been eviscerated by a concrete block and hurriedly stitched back together by a local doctor.
But the boy, lying in a crib under a tree, his heart rate racing, his breathing way too fast, was clearly suffering septic shock, and Dr. Pierre, equipped only with his stethoscope, could do nothing.
"I felt so helpless," he said, and not long afterward, while he was deeply sedating another patient for surgery, he heard the wail that told of the boy's death.
Later, amid the patients strewn across the hospital's grounds, Dr. Pierre spotted a wrapped bundle in what appeared to be an abandoned incubator. The bundle, mewling, was a premature infant whose mother had died in childbirth. Dr. Pierre and a pediatric nurse from Brooklyn, Sharon Pickering, frantically tried to find a way to hydrate the baby.
"This is something we know how to do," he said they told each other. Finally, they managed to insert a needle in a bone cavity and get the baby some fluids. But the next morning, Dr. Pierre found the incubator empty.
Such losses were shattering but it was hard to react at the time, the doctors said. There was too much to do, and the circumstances were disorienting. Dr. Lorich, an orthopedic trauma surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery, said it was hard to adjust to the grim reality of mass amputations. "I am in the habit of saving legs," he said.
When his 13-member team from New York arrived at the Haitian Community Hospital, thousands of terribly injured Haitians lay on stretchers, boards, mattresses and the floor, among them tiny children with crushed legs, all by themselves.
The hospital had two functioning operating rooms, Dr. Lorich said, but the anesthesia machine did not work, the oxygen tanks were empty, there was no blood supply and the labs were not functioning. Still, the New York team plunged in, performing 40 amputations, 60 limb-saving operations and, to conclude three sleepless days, one Caesarean section - "a nice pink baby," Dr. Lorich said.
The departure, however, was unsettling. Dr. Lorich's team was exhausted, as were their supplies, but a flight that was supposed to be arriving with a fresh team of surgeons and nurses to replace them had been canceled. Outside the hospital, crowds seeking help pushed against barricaded doors, and they did not want the foreign doctors to abandon them. The doctors needed a military escort to leave.
In Uganda, three weeks away from her return to Haiti, Dr. Bellino said she could not stop wondering how the 12-year-old Mystil had fared after his amputation.
Through an uncle, the boy was found at the World Harvest Missions/New Life orphanage, where American volunteers are looking after wounded children who have been discharged from field hospitals.
Mystil was lying on a mattress on the concrete floor of a church with a roof damaged in the quake. On his plaid shirt he wore a SpongeBob sticker, which a volunteer said he had earned by doing several laps around a mango tree on his new crutches. Sarah Wimmer, a paramedic from Arizona, said that Mystil's wound was healing well, and that he was receiving some physical and emotional therapy. When his stitches are removed, he will be sent home to his parents, who are living outside their cracked house, but he will be considered an outpatient, Ms. Wimmer said.
Reached in Africa, Dr. Bellino sighed. "I can breathe now," she said after learning that Mystil was all right.
Lying on the mattress, with tired, sad eyes, Mystil had said he missed "Dr. Elizabeth." Asked if he wanted the doctor to bring him anything when she returned to Haiti, Mystil said: "Toys, I guess. I know - a bicycle!"
Then, looking down at his bandaged stump, the boy slapped his forehead and buried his face in a pillow. "I forgot," he said.
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13) Arkansas: Migrants Win $2.75 Million
National Briefing | South
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
February 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/us/13brfs-MIGRANTSWIN2_BRF.html?ref=us
An Arkansas tree-planting company has agreed to pay $2.75 million to settle a lawsuit in which foreign guest workers accused it of often paying less than the minimum wage and not paying for all hours worked. The money will go to 2,200 workers from Mexico and Central America in one of the largest settlements ever reached under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. The workers, who planted pine seedlings throughout the Southeast, entered the country under a guest worker visa program.
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14) UK sentences six over 2009 Gaza war protests
Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:55:22 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118553§ionid=351020601
Six British Muslim men have been jailed for clashing with police during the anti-Gaza war rally in front of the Israeli Embassy in London in January last year.
A court sentences the young men to periods of between one to years each in jail for violent conduct.
A Press TV correspondent said most of the convicts on Saturday were 19 to 20 years old, and had protested that they had been provoked by the police.
The charges against the six include hitting police officers and damaging property during huge protests outside the Israeli Embassy.
The six had been enraged by Israel's war on Gaza, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians after weeks of ceaseless air land and sea assaults.
This is while a human rights organization slammed the British police for mishandling the demonstrations by using heavy-handed tactics.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission also said the police had failed to investigate up to 30 complaints against the Metropolitan police force.
Dozens protesters more are expected to be jailed in the coming weeks.
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15) Afghan Civilians Killed in Offensive on Taliban
By ROD NORDLAND
February 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/world/asia/15afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - The top United States commander in Afghanistan confirmed that a rocket went astray during operations in the Marja area of Helmand province, killing 12 civilians, according to a statement issued by the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan Ministry of Defense.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ISAF commander, ordered the withdrawal of the type of rocket launcher used in the incident, a high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS), from operations "until a thorough review of this incident has been conducted," the statement said.
The American commander, who has made reducing civilian casualties a cornerstone of his policy in Afghanistan, apologized to President Hamid Karzai for the incident. "We deeply regret this tragic loss of life," General McChrystal said. "The current operation in central Helmand is aimed at restoring security and stability to this vital area of Afghanistan. It's regrettable that, in the course of our joint efforts, innocent lives were lost."
President Karzai, who has been critical of civilian casualties in the past, warned at the start of the operation to take the city of Marja back from the Taliban that coalition forces should make "every effort" to avoid civilian casualties.
The ISAF statement said the incident took place in Nad Ali district, where Marja is located, when coalition forces were responding to an attack on them from a compound where "insurgents were delivering accurate, direct fire on an Afghan-ISAF joint team." They responded with the HIMARS but missed their target by 300 meters, ISAF said.
A total of 15,000 Afghan and foreign forces are involved in the Marja operation, which began Saturday, about half of them in Marja itself. The foreign forces include American Marines, who are leading the offensive, along with United States Army and British, Canadian, Danish and Estonian troops.
On the second day of Operation Moshtarak, which means "joint operation" in Dari, the troops continued searches of the area using both mounted and dismounted patrols, according to British Royal Air Force Flight Lt. Wendy Wheadon, a spokeswoman for ISAF.
The troops were looking for weapons and carrying out controlled explosions of caches of ammunition, Lieutenant Wheadon said, adding that there were scattered firefights throughout the day. "There have been combined forces who suffered injuries as a result." She declined to be more specific on casualties.
Separately, ISAF issued a press release indicating that a non-American service member was killed Sunday by an improvised explosives device in southern Afghanistan, but did not specify whether that was as a result of the Marja offensive.
Two soldiers were killed in the first day of fighting in Marja, one American and one British.
Afghan officials put the death toll in the rocket incident at 10. "We just know that a rocket hit a civilian house and 10 people were killed," said Daoud Ahmadi, spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, by telephone. "We are investigating to find out the details of how they were killed. We don't even know if the rocket was from our side or the enemy. It was not an air strike for sure, it was a rocket that hit a civilian house in Marja."
ISAF said one Afghan national army soldier and one ISAF service member were injured by the insurgents in the incident leading to the rocket attack.
Although NATO officers have said they were refraining from air strikes except where necessary, residents in nearby communities said they saw numerous incidents of air raids on the first day of the action, but not on Sunday. ISAF said there has been no flight of residents from Marja as a result of the operation; previously Afghan government and ISAF officials had urged residents to remain in their homes.
So far, 25 Taliban insurgents had been killed in the fighting, according to Gen. Sher Mohammed Zazai, commander of the Afghan army's 205th corps, which has five brigades of Afghan soldiers in the operation, with national police units attached to them. General Zazai said no Afghan soldiers or police had been killed so far. In the offensive, which began Saturday, American, Afghan and British troops seized crucial positions across the Taliban stronghold, encountering intense but sporadic fighting as they began the treacherous ordeal of house-to-house searches.
More than 6,000 American, Afghan and British troops came in fast early on Saturday, overwhelming most immediate resistance. But as the troops began to fan out on searches, fighting with Taliban insurgents grew in frequency and intensity across a wide area; the searches and fighting continued on Sunday.
The pattern suggested that the hardest fighting lay in the days to come.
American commanders said the troops had achieved every first-day objective. That included advancing into the city itself and seizing intersections, government buildings and one of the city's main bazaars in the center of town.
Some Marines held meetings with local Afghans almost immediately to reassure them and to ask for help in finding Taliban and hidden bombs.
Mohammed Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand Province's governor, said Afghan and NATO forces had set up 11 outposts across Marja and two in the neighboring town of Nad Ali. "We now occupy all the strategic points in the area," he said on Saturday.
From those posts, Marines and soldiers began to go on patrols, searching door to door for weapons and fighters. This phase of the operation, considered the most dangerous, was expected to last at least five days. The biggest concern was bombs and booby-traps, of which there were believed to be hundreds, in roads, houses and footpaths.
The invasion of Marja is the largest military operation of its kind here since the American-backed war began eight years ago. The area, about 80 square miles of farmland, villages and irrigation canals, is believed to be the largest Taliban sanctuary inside Afghanistan. Afghan and American commanders believe there are also a number of opium factories that the insurgents control to finance their war.
On the first full day of operations, much of the expected resistance failed to materialize. Certainly there was none of the eyeball-to-eyeball fighting that typified the battle for Falluja in Iraq in 2004, to which the invasion of Marja had been compared.
"Actually, the resistance is not there," Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister, said in a news conference Saturday in Kabul. "Based on our intelligence reports, some of the Taliban have left the area. But we still expected there to be several hundred. Just yesterday, we received reports that reinforcements had arrived from neighboring provinces."
Dozens if not hundreds of insurgents probably fled Marja in the days leading up to the assault, according to military officers and local residents. American and Afghan commanders hoped to achieve just that result when they took the unusual step of broadcasting their intention to invade Marja days ahead of time.
But it seemed likely that many Taliban were still in Marja, lying in wait. One resident interviewed by telephone said that many insurgents had stayed behind.
"I don't have any information on the Taliban, neither where they are nor where they have gone," said Palawan, a farmer in Marja who goes by one name. "I don't think they have gone anywhere, because Marja has been surrounded by Afghan and foreign forces on every side."
What has been advertised as the most important, and novel, aspect of the Marja operation got under way on Saturday. After clearing Marja, American and Afghan officials say, they intend to import an entire Afghan civil administration, along with nearly 2,000 Afghan police officers, to help keep the Taliban from coming back in. The first of those, about 1,000 Afghan paramilitary police, were scheduled to begin arriving within 24 hours.
In some parts of the town, American and Afghan troops began holding meetings with residents, trying to win the Afghans' support. Previous operations to clear the Taliban from towns and cities have failed across Afghanistan, in large part because the Americans and Afghans have rarely left behind competent Afghan government or security forces to hold the places. That has meant that the Taliban have not stayed away for long. This time, in Marja, things are supposed to be different.
"Our main goal in this joint operation is not to kill insurgents," Mr. Wardak said. "In fact, our primary goal is to expand the government's influence and protect the civilian population."
Afghans in Marja itself stayed mostly indoors in the first hours of the invasion. "Nobody can go out of his house," said Mr. Palawan, the local farmer. "The government and the Taliban have told us to stay in our house. But there has been fighting in the area all morning."
A local Taliban commander named Hashemi, also reached by telephone, said his men had fought through much of day, shooting at least six foreign soldiers. That claim could not be verified. Mr. Hashemi said that six of his own men had been killed. "The Taliban are still resisting," Mr. Hashemi said. "We are strong and we won't give up. We will fight to death."
American soldiers said Saturday that firefights with the Taliban began sporadically but grew more frequent and more intense as the day went on. Late in the afternoon, insurgents and a company of Marines fought a two-hour gun battle at Marja's northern edge. It ended when the Marines dropped a 500-pound bomb on the Taliban's position.
C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from Marja, Dexter Filkins from Kabul, and an Afghan employee of The New York Times from Helmand Province.
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16) Wall St. Helped Greece to Mask Debt Fueling Europe's Crisis
By LOUISE STORY, LANDON THOMAS Jr. and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html?hp
Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.
As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street's help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.
Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November - three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety - a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.
The bankers, led by Goldman's president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece's health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.
It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe's monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe's deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.
Athens did not pursue the latest Goldman proposal, but with Greece groaning under the weight of its debts and with its richer neighbors vowing to come to its aid, the deals over the last decade are raising questions about Wall Street's role in the world's latest financial drama.
As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere.
In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come.
Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country's liabilities.
Some of the Greek deals were named after figures in Greek mythology. One of them, for instance, was called Aeolos, after the god of the winds.
The crisis in Greece poses the most significant challenge yet to Europe's common currency, the euro, and the Continent's goal of economic unity. The country is, in the argot of banking, too big to be allowed to fail. Greece owes the world $300 billion, and major banks are on the hook for much of that debt. A default would reverberate around the globe.
A spokeswoman for the Greek finance ministry said the government had met with many banks in recent months and had not committed to any bank's offers. All debt financings "are conducted in an effort of transparency," she said. Goldman and JPMorgan declined to comment.
While Wall Street's handiwork in Europe has received little attention on this side of the Atlantic, it has been sharply criticized in Greece and in magazines like Der Spiegel in Germany.
"Politicians want to pass the ball forward, and if a banker can show them a way to pass a problem to the future, they will fall for it," said Gikas A. Hardouvelis, an economist and former government official who helped write a recent report on Greece's accounting policies.
Wall Street did not create Europe's debt problem. But bankers enabled Greece and others to borrow beyond their means, in deals that were perfectly legal. Few rules govern how nations can borrow the money they need for expenses like the military and health care. The market for sovereign debt - the Wall Street term for loans to governments - is as unfettered as it is vast.
"If a government wants to cheat, it can cheat," said Garry Schinasi, a veteran of the International Monetary Fund's capital markets surveillance unit, which monitors vulnerability in global capital markets.
Banks eagerly exploited what was, for them, a highly lucrative symbiosis with free-spending governments. While Greece did not take advantage of Goldman's proposal in November 2009, it had paid the bank about $300 million in fees for arranging the 2001 transaction, according to several bankers familiar with the deal.
Such derivatives, which are not openly documented or disclosed, add to the uncertainty over how deep the troubles go in Greece and which other governments might have used similar off-balance sheet accounting.
The tide of fear is now washing over other economically troubled countries on the periphery of Europe, making it more expensive for Italy, Spain and Portugal to borrow.
For all the benefits of uniting Europe with one currency, the birth of the euro came with an original sin: countries like Italy and Greece entered the monetary union with bigger deficits than the ones permitted under the treaty that created the currency. Rather than raise taxes or reduce spending, however, these governments artificially reduced their deficits with derivatives.
Derivatives do not have to be sinister. The 2001 transaction involved a type of derivative known as a swap. One such instrument, called an interest-rate swap, can help companies and countries cope with swings in their borrowing costs by exchanging fixed-rate payments for floating-rate ones, or vice versa. Another kind, a currency swap, can minimize the impact of volatile foreign exchange rates.
But with the help of JPMorgan, Italy was able to do more than that. Despite persistently high deficits, a 1996 derivative helped bring Italy's budget into line by swapping currency with JPMorgan at a favorable exchange rate, effectively putting more money in the government's hands. In return, Italy committed to future payments that were not booked as liabilities.
"Derivatives are a very useful instrument," said Gustavo Piga, an economics professor who wrote a report for the Council on Foreign Relations on the Italian transaction. "They just become bad if they're used to window-dress accounts."
In Greece, the financial wizardry went even further. In what amounted to a garage sale on a national scale, Greek officials essentially mortgaged the country's airports and highways to raise much-needed money.
Aeolos, a legal entity created in 2001, helped Greece reduce the debt on its balance sheet that year. As part of the deal, Greece got cash upfront in return for pledging future landing fees at the country's airports. A similar deal in 2000 called Ariadne devoured the revenue that the government collected from its national lottery. Greece, however, classified those transactions as sales, not loans, despite doubts by many critics.
These kinds of deals have been controversial within government circles for years. As far back as 2000, European finance ministers fiercely debated whether derivative deals used for creative accounting should be disclosed.
The answer was no. But in 2002, accounting disclosure was required for many entities like Aeolos and Ariadne that did not appear on nations' balance sheets, prompting governments to restate such deals as loans rather than sales.
Still, as recently as 2008, Eurostat, the European Union's statistics agency, reported that "in a number of instances, the observed securitization operations seem to have been purportedly designed to achieve a given accounting result, irrespective of the economic merit of the operation."
While such accounting gimmicks may be beneficial in the short run, over time they can prove disastrous.
George Alogoskoufis, who became Greece's finance minister in a political party shift after the Goldman deal, criticized the transaction in the Parliament in 2005. The deal, Mr. Alogoskoufis argued, would saddle the government with big payments to Goldman until 2019.
Mr. Alogoskoufis, who stepped down a year ago, said in an e-mail message last week that Goldman later agreed to reconfigure the deal "to restore its good will with the republic." He said the new design was better for Greece than the old one.
In 2005, Goldman sold the interest rate swap to the National Bank of Greece, the country's largest bank, according to two people briefed on the transaction.
In 2008, Goldman helped the bank put the swap into a legal entity called Titlos. But the bank retained the bonds that Titlos issued, according to Dealogic, a financial research firm, for use as collateral to borrow even more from the European Central Bank.
Edward Manchester, a senior vice president at the Moody's credit rating agency, said the deal would ultimately be a money-loser for Greece because of its long-term payment obligations.
Referring to the Titlos swap with the government of Greece, he said: "This swap is always going to be unprofitable for the Greek government."
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17) Education Was Also Leveled by Quake in Haiti
By MARC LACEY
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/world/americas/14schools.html?ref=education
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Christina Julme was scribbling notes in the back of a linguistics class at the State University of Haiti when, in an instant, everything went black.
"You're in class, your professor is talking, you're writing notes and then you're buried alive," said Ms. Julme, 23, recounting how her semester came to a halt on the afternoon of Jan. 12 when the earthquake turned her seven-story university into a towering pile of wreckage, with her deep inside.
Ms. Julme, ailing and slipping in and out of consciousness, was pried from her collapsed classroom after two days of having her dead professor's leg touching her, an injured friend's face a few inches from her own and many of her classmates' bodies growing fetid.
Haiti's best universities are in wreckage, their campuses now jumbles of collapsed concrete, mangled desks and chairs, and buried coursework. Hundreds of professors and students were entombed, although the exact number of dead is complicated by the fact that class lists and computer registries were also wiped out by the quake.
At St. Gerald Technical School, workers going through the wreckage with heavy machinery came across a classroom in which dead students were still at their desks. At Quisqueya University, much of the multimillion- dollar renovation work that had just been completed was shaken to bits. Joseph Chrislyn Bastien, 25, an engineering student, peered into a foot-high crevice of concrete where one could see shoes, books and flattened furniture. "This was a classroom," he said.
The obliteration of higher education is expected to have longstanding effects on this devastated country, where even in the best of times a tiny percentage of young people went on to college.
"What the earthquake has done to us, besides breaking buildings and killing much of the population, it has wiped out many of those who were the future leaders of the country," said Louis Herns Marcelin, a University of Miami sociologist who runs a research institute here. "The impact was huge, but we still don't even know how huge."
The country's main nursing school is gone, as is the state medical college. The science building at the state university has been ripped open, and the teacher's college teeters on its side. At the Graduate School of Technology, Jean Foubert Dorancy, 22, climbed atop the wreckage, littered with computer parts, and lamented: "This was the best computer school in Haiti. What do I do now?"
It was a troubled education system that fell. Many of its buildings were decaying, the result of decades of neglect. Classes were overflowing with students, and many had only mediocre preparation academically because students from the best high schools, the children of the elite, would often go to overseas universities and not come back.
In a country so poor, the sudden loss of educational opportunity is hard to fathom. "Most of my friends weren't studying but were just hanging on the street," said Jacques Gaspard, 38, who was enrolled in a trade school that collapsed. "Now I'm on the street, too. Everybody's on the street."
Protests, strikes and walkouts were a regular feature of Haitian university life, and hundreds of state university students had, in fact, left their classes to march around the National Palace to protest the killing of a popular sociology professor when the earthquake struck.
"That protest saved a lot of lives," said Beneche Martial, 26, a medical student who helped arrange it. "We were blocking the streets, yelling and marching. When the earth started to shake we were running in all directions."
Haiti's state university was the only place to earn a degree until the end of the long rule of the Duvaliers in 1986. Since then, scores of universities have opened, many of them slipshod institutions without accreditation, but others are well-run schools open to talented students regardless of their means.
In the days after the earthquake, the director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Irina Bokova, called on universities outside Haiti to help shoulder the burden. "Universities in the region and beyond should make every effort to take in Haitian students," she said in a statement, calling the damage to Haiti's education system "a catastrophic setback for a country already hit by other disasters."
Among the universities that have offered to help displaced students and faculty members is Dillard University in New Orleans, which suffered significant damage during Hurricane Katrina. A delegation of university deans from the Dominican Republic also recently visited President René Préval of Haiti to offer to help displaced Haitian college students. One proposal would allow Haitians to cross the border to attend some Dominican universities on weekends.
There are already plans to revive Haiti's universities using tents or temporary structures until more permanent structures can be built. And some early signs have emerged that Haiti's damaged university system may be rebuilt better. At Quisqueya, Evenson Calixte, the assistant dean of engineering, said all students would be required to study geology from now on so that they understood earthquakes. There will be a particular focus in the curriculum on building codes, he said.
It was arguably a shortage of educated professionals in Haiti that ensured so much of Haiti would collapse. "There's a total lack of qualified architects, urban planners, builders and zoning experts," said Conor Bohan, an American who founded the Haitian Education and Leadership Program, a scholarship program for students with top grades but few resources. "People were living in substandard housing in places where they shouldn't have been."
With classes canceled for the foreseeable future, many students are using their free time to help with the recovery effort. Future doctors are pitching in at field hospitals and helping arrange a major vaccination campaign. Psychology students are talking with displaced people about how they are holding up. Ms. Julme, who studied communications, managed to get a job at the United Nations radio station, although she focuses on music, not news, to get her mind, and the minds of her listeners, off of all the awful things that have occurred.
"The dean is dead," she said of her destroyed linguistics college. "The vice dean is dead. I don't see how the university can go on."
Haiti's educators hope that international rebuilding efforts ensure that universities are able to bounce back. "How are you going to have a critical mass of people to run the country if you don't invest in the next generation?" asked Mr. Marcelin, the sociologist, who is also the founder of the Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development, a consortium of universities that operate in Haiti. "If the international community overlooks this, we will spend our lives dependant on experts from the outside."
Deborah Sontag contributed reporting.
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18) A Glimpse Inside a Troubled Youth Prison
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
February 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/nyregion/14juvenile.html?ref=nyregion
THE guard made Edwin a deal.
He was an aspiring ultimate fighter, and he wanted to practice his holds. If he won, he would take the candy he knew Edwin had hidden in his desk. If he lost, he would bring Edwin some takeout from Burger King.
They grappled once, then a second time. The third time, the guard lifted Edwin and flipped him onto the floor, hard, though not enough to cause any lasting injury. But, Edwin said ruefully, "he got all my snacks."
For Edwin, it was just another day at the Highland Residential Center, a drab collection of run-down cottages planted in a forest not far from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., part of a state juvenile prison system under fire for its abysmal and sometimes dangerous conditions. He spent five months in a small, airless room at Highland last year, sent by a Queens family court on a graffiti charge, after a journey from skipped classes to drugs and alcohol, through counseling programs and failed stints in city-run group homes.
Highland is one of New York's 28 prisons for youths, most of them black or Hispanic boys from New York City. A state task force concluded last year that the entire system - currently holding more than 800 youths - was fundamentally broken. It now faces a federal takeover and a class-action lawsuit.
Edwin, who turned 18 on Tuesday, was released from Highland in July, and enrolled in a therapy program at Children's Village, a social services agency in Harlem that arranged for him to be interviewed on the condition that his last name not be published. His story provides a glimpse inside the much-maligned system and, according to critics, echoes those of hundreds of others: He feared for his safety, received little counseling and left no better prepared for life outside than when he arrived there.
By his own account, Edwin was no model prisoner. During his first months in state custody, in a facility near Middletown, N.Y., he fought constantly, cursing at counselors, throwing chairs. Like most youths in state prisons, he had emotional and behavioral problems, including attention-deficit disorder.
He boiled over with energy that too easily turned to fury - "I would just get tight," he explained. He sometimes palmed the Adderall he had been prescribed, sick of the torpor the pills left him in. Once, when an older youth refused to return an iPod charger, Edwin threatened to stab him with a pencil. His time served stretched to 12 months.
"To tell you the truth, I used to bug out," Edwin recalled, sitting in a coffee shop near his family's home in Queens. "I tried to change, but it was just too hard."
Wiry and small, with hard, watchful eyes, he spoke in a torrent, never quite finishing a sentence or an anecdote before the next one came spilling out.
Shortly after his 17th birthday, Edwin was transferred to Highland, strip-searched and assigned a room. Rolls of barbed wire topped the fences. The youths were tougher than at Middletown. No one seemed to care whether he took his pills, so he didn't.
Edwin's room had no air-conditioning. One hot spring day, he awoke in pain, his body aching, his lungs hurting. He asked to see a doctor, but it was after-hours. Edwin considered asking to go to the emergency room. But the guards warned that if he demanded a hospital visit and he turned out not to be seriously ill, there would be consequences. He agreed to stay put; as a reward, the guard cracked his door open for a few minutes, to let air in.
Violence was the greater threat, whether from other youths or the guards, who are known as youth counselors. The younger ones, he noticed, seemed to bring their personal problems to work. Any hint of insubordination could result in physical restraint, he said, despite the strict state rules limiting the use of force. It was common to see youths covered in rug burns from being shoved against the ground.
"Staff is young," Edwin said. "They don't like disrespect."
Edwin said he mostly avoided such punishments, though he was restrained once when he acted out in Highland's gym. He was not without sympathy for the guards, overworked and outnumbered, some barely older than he was. He was even close with some, like the aspiring ultimate fighter who wrestled him.
But it was risky, in any case, to file a complaint, Edwin said. Why you gotta be a snitch? guards would ask. Everyone knew what happened to snitches.
Highland held youths as young as 14 and as old as 18, and some of the older ones had spent time in adult jails. At lunch, the youths in special-education units would mix with everyone else. Fights were common.
To keep discipline, Edwin said, youths traveled everywhere in lines, eyes front and hands clasped behind. When two lines approached each other, guards would order one line to face the wall while the other passed, to avoid confrontation.
But that just left you vulnerable to being jumped, Edwin said. Usually he would look over his shoulder, taking the risk that he would be hauled out of line and pinned to the floor. It was better than taking a swing from behind.
"I would get tight," Edwin recalled. "I would need to speak to somebody."
But there was often nowhere to turn. In group therapy, Edwin said, "you don't want to show no weakness" in front of peers. The therapist assigned to him left; a replacement therapist promised she would take care of him. She came back once a few weeks later, and then never again.
It is difficult to confirm some details of his story, since juvenile court records are sealed. A spokesman for the Office of Children and Family Services, the agency that runs the state's youth prisons, said he was prohibited by state privacy laws from commenting on Edwin's case.
But in an interview, Gladys Carrión, the agency's commissioner, acknowledged that Edwin's account did not surprise her.
"Unfortunately, that is the experience of many young people in the system," Ms. Carrión said. "I have absolutely no reason to question his individual experience. They deserve better."
Edwin, she added, "makes my case for transformation of the juvenile justice system. He makes my case for why we need change."
Indeed, six teenagers currently in custody at Highland and one who left in January have joined a class-action lawsuit against the state accusing the prison of subjecting them to physical abuse and denying them mental health services. One, identified in court papers as L. B., threatened to commit suicide but was never seen by a mental health professional. Another, S. S., received diagnoses of multiple behavioral disorders and mild mental retardation, but likewise was never treated.
A third Highland resident, G. B., who was given a diagnosis of moderate mental retardation, was physically restrained at least five times, including one episode in which a worker banged his head against the floor.
"Is it the worst?" asked Steven Banks, attorney in chief at the Legal Aid Society, which brought the lawsuit, referring to Highland. "It's hard to say, among all the truly horrific facilities, which is the worst one."
Over time, Edwin grew tired of life at Highland and resolved to behave better; he received fewer demerits, and came within a few points of passing the G.E.D. test. When he left Highland last summer, he was assigned to Children's Village, which contracts with the state to provide counseling to youths after they are released. His therapist, Arelis Tejeda, said that hopes for Edwin were low at first.
"Everybody, the O.C.F.S. staff, the judge and lawyers, had lost confidence in him and thought he would be back in facility soon," Ms. Tejeda wrote in an e-mail message.
Instead, Edwin started intensive treatment known as multisystemic therapy, considered by many experts to be the benchmark for rehabilitating juvenile offenders. Ms. Tejeda worked with Edwin's mother to enforce a curfew and restore their fractured relationship. He completed his G.E.D. Now he is entertaining hopes of college, if he can find the money.
"The changes had to happen around him first," Ms. Tejeda said, "before he could see that being successful was a realistic option for him."
Edwin says he does not blame Highland for his troubles. He never expected much in the first place.
"You did commit a crime," he said. "You gotta pay for it."
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19) Wall St. Helped Greece to Mask Debt Fueling Europe's Crisis
By LOUISE STORY, LANDON THOMAS Jr. and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html?ref=business
Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.
As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street's help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.
Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November - three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety - a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.
The bankers, led by Goldman's president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece's health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.
It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe's monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe's deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.
Athens did not pursue the latest Goldman proposal, but with Greece groaning under the weight of its debts and with its richer neighbors vowing to come to its aid, the deals over the last decade are raising questions about Wall Street's role in the world's latest financial drama.
As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere.
In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come.
Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country's liabilities.
Some of the Greek deals were named after figures in Greek mythology. One of them, for instance, was called Aeolos, after the god of the winds.
The crisis in Greece poses the most significant challenge yet to Europe's common currency, the euro, and the Continent's goal of economic unity. The country is, in the argot of banking, too big to be allowed to fail. Greece owes the world $300 billion, and major banks are on the hook for much of that debt. A default would reverberate around the globe.
A spokeswoman for the Greek finance ministry said the government had met with many banks in recent months and had not committed to any bank's offers. All debt financings "are conducted in an effort of transparency," she said. Goldman and JPMorgan declined to comment.
While Wall Street's handiwork in Europe has received little attention on this side of the Atlantic, it has been sharply criticized in Greece and in magazines like Der Spiegel in Germany.
"Politicians want to pass the ball forward, and if a banker can show them a way to pass a problem to the future, they will fall for it," said Gikas A. Hardouvelis, an economist and former government official who helped write a recent report on Greece's accounting policies.
Wall Street did not create Europe's debt problem. But bankers enabled Greece and others to borrow beyond their means, in deals that were perfectly legal. Few rules govern how nations can borrow the money they need for expenses like the military and health care. The market for sovereign debt - the Wall Street term for loans to governments - is as unfettered as it is vast.
"If a government wants to cheat, it can cheat," said Garry Schinasi, a veteran of the International Monetary Fund's capital markets surveillance unit, which monitors vulnerability in global capital markets.
Banks eagerly exploited what was, for them, a highly lucrative symbiosis with free-spending governments. While Greece did not take advantage of Goldman's proposal in November 2009, it had paid the bank about $300 million in fees for arranging the 2001 transaction, according to several bankers familiar with the deal.
Such derivatives, which are not openly documented or disclosed, add to the uncertainty over how deep the troubles go in Greece and which other governments might have used similar off-balance sheet accounting.
The tide of fear is now washing over other economically troubled countries on the periphery of Europe, making it more expensive for Italy, Spain and Portugal to borrow.
For all the benefits of uniting Europe with one currency, the birth of the euro came with an original sin: countries like Italy and Greece entered the monetary union with bigger deficits than the ones permitted under the treaty that created the currency. Rather than raise taxes or reduce spending, however, these governments artificially reduced their deficits with derivatives.
Derivatives do not have to be sinister. The 2001 transaction involved a type of derivative known as a swap. One such instrument, called an interest-rate swap, can help companies and countries cope with swings in their borrowing costs by exchanging fixed-rate payments for floating-rate ones, or vice versa. Another kind, a currency swap, can minimize the impact of volatile foreign exchange rates.
But with the help of JPMorgan, Italy was able to do more than that. Despite persistently high deficits, a 1996 derivative helped bring Italy's budget into line by swapping currency with JPMorgan at a favorable exchange rate, effectively putting more money in the government's hands. In return, Italy committed to future payments that were not booked as liabilities.
"Derivatives are a very useful instrument," said Gustavo Piga, an economics professor who wrote a report for the Council on Foreign Relations on the Italian transaction. "They just become bad if they're used to window-dress accounts."
In Greece, the financial wizardry went even further. In what amounted to a garage sale on a national scale, Greek officials essentially mortgaged the country's airports and highways to raise much-needed money.
Aeolos, a legal entity created in 2001, helped Greece reduce the debt on its balance sheet that year. As part of the deal, Greece got cash upfront in return for pledging future landing fees at the country's airports. A similar deal in 2000 called Ariadne devoured the revenue that the government collected from its national lottery. Greece, however, classified those transactions as sales, not loans, despite doubts by many critics.
These kinds of deals have been controversial within government circles for years. As far back as 2000, European finance ministers fiercely debated whether derivative deals used for creative accounting should be disclosed.
The answer was no. But in 2002, accounting disclosure was required for many entities like Aeolos and Ariadne that did not appear on nations' balance sheets, prompting governments to restate such deals as loans rather than sales.
Still, as recently as 2008, Eurostat, the European Union's statistics agency, reported that "in a number of instances, the observed securitization operations seem to have been purportedly designed to achieve a given accounting result, irrespective of the economic merit of the operation."
While such accounting gimmicks may be beneficial in the short run, over time they can prove disastrous.
George Alogoskoufis, who became Greece's finance minister in a political party shift after the Goldman deal, criticized the transaction in the Parliament in 2005. The deal, Mr. Alogoskoufis argued, would saddle the government with big payments to Goldman until 2019.
Mr. Alogoskoufis, who stepped down a year ago, said in an e-mail message last week that Goldman later agreed to reconfigure the deal "to restore its good will with the republic." He said the new design was better for Greece than the old one.
In 2005, Goldman sold the interest rate swap to the National Bank of Greece, the country's largest bank, according to two people briefed on the transaction.
In 2008, Goldman helped the bank put the swap into a legal entity called Titlos. But the bank retained the bonds that Titlos issued, according to Dealogic, a financial research firm, for use as collateral to borrow even more from the European Central Bank.
Edward Manchester, a senior vice president at the Moody's credit rating agency, said the deal would ultimately be a money-loser for Greece because of its long-term payment obligations.
Referring to the Titlos swap with the government of Greece, he said: "This swap is always going to be unprofitable for the Greek government."
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20) A Long Slide in Union Membership
[EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT? ANYONE?...bw]
The Count
By PHYLLIS KORKKI
February 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/14count.html?ref=business
Some might say it's a good thing, others might say the opposite, but there's no denying that union membership is declining in the United States.
Last year, 12.3 percent of wage and salary workers were union members, compared with 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which the federal government compiled comparable data. A greater share of public- than private-sector workers belong to unions. Last year local government workers - like teachers, police officers and firefighters - had the highest rate of public sector membership, at 43.3 percent.
The figures show a gender differential. More men (13.3 percent) are union members than women (11.3 percent). But from 1983 to 2009, union membership for men dropped 11.4 percentage points, while for women it fell 3.3 points.
Geographic differences exist, with Pacific and mid-Atlantic states having higher membership rates. New York has the highest percentage of union members, at 25.2 percent; North Carolina, at 3.1 percent, has the lowest.
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21) Top US Court Sends Mumia Abu-Jamal Closer to Execution
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man on death row. In two recent decisions, the US Supreme Court has ignored both evidence of his innocence and it's own precedents to deny Mumia's appeal and bring him closer to execution. In this statement, the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal lays bare the truth behind these actions, and proposes a course of workers' and mass action to free Mumia.
Cops, Courts and Politicians To Mumia:
We Will Kill You, and the Law Be Damned!
For Labor Action To Free Mumia!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, February 2010
For more information, view our web site at: www.laboractionmumia.org
See the article, "Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Labor Movement," at http://www.laboractionmumia.org/laborsfight1.html
And see, "What You Can Do Now," at http://www.laboractionmumia.org/whatyoucandonow.html
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther, award winning journalist, behind-bars commentator on critical social issues--and an innocent man on death row. In April 2009, after more than two decades of court rulings that ignored mounting evidence of his innocence, the Supreme Court upheld his 1982 frame-up conviction without comment. Then, this January, the Court moved closer to reinstating his death sentence--which had been put on hold by lower court rulings.
The US Supreme Court has shown it will do anything necessary to support the rule of their big corporate bosses, as seen most recently in the Citizens United ruling, which threw out the ban on independent corporate spending during an election. Years of legislation was undone in a single blow, to further tighten the death grip of big money over politics in the US. But the courts also obey the commands of their armed thugs in the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), and politicians that support them, even if it means walking all over their own legal precedents and trampling on the most basic principles of justice.
Supreme Court "Vacates" the Stay of Mumia's Death Sentence
On January 19th the Supreme Court "vacated" the Third Circuit (federal appellate) ruling, which--after upholding Mumia's conviction--said that Mumia's death sentence had been imposed under faulty instructions to the jury. The Third Circuit had instructed Pennsylvania state courts that under Mills v Maryland--a 1988 Supreme Court precedent--Mumia's sentence should be decided again in a new sentencing hearing, or (if no such hearing was held) converted to a life sentence without the possibility of parole. In Mills, the Supreme Court had struck down a Maryland statute which said that juries in capital cases must be unanimous on any aggravating or mitigating factor when deciding the sentence. The Mills ruling said that while aggravating factors need be unanimous, factors that mitigate against imposing death required a simple majority only. The Third Circuit said Mills applied in Mumia's case, and so required reconsideration of the sentence.
But now, the Supreme Court has ordered the Third Circuit to reconsider this decision. They did so in light of their recent ruling on another case, Smith v Spisak. Having summarily tossed out Mumia's appeal against his conviction last year, the Court waited until now, after its Spisak ruling, to take up the cross-appeal by the Philadelphia DA, seeking to reinstate Mumia's death sentence. It was obvious that the Court planned to use its Spisak ruling against Mumia, and now it has. The clear implication was that the Third Circuit had just lost its reason (the Mills precedent) for setting aside Mumia's death sentence:
"Of the cases summarily decided [January 19th], one is especially noteworthy: the Court has granted the petition in Beard v. Abu-Jamal (08-652), vacating and remanding to the Third Circuit to consider in light of Smith v. Spisak." (http://www.scotusblog.com/)
Smith v Spisak stemmed from a case in Ohio of an avowed neo-Nazi, who confessed in court to murdering five people for racist reasons. Spisak's death sentence had been set aside, based on faulty jury instructions under the Mills precedent, similar to Mumia's, in two lower court rulings. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed these, and said Spisak should be executed. The Mills ruling had the effect of inhibiting, somewhat, the rush to execute. But in its current ruling in Spisak, the Court said that Mills may not apply in any given state, based on differing jury-instruction forms which may or may not be confusing to jurors on the issue of mitigating factors. Thus the Court watered down what was considered to be a binding national precedent, with language allowing different states to make their own interpretations--a "states rights" position.
A Long-Established Tactic of Deception
But that's just the beginning. It is important to see through the haze of legal gibberish here. In saying that Mills didn't apply in the Spisak case, the Supreme Court allowed itself to say, only days later, that Mills probably didn't apply to the politically more important case of Mumia Abu-Jamal either. The Court thus weakened its own precedent in order to reinforce and strengthen the death penalty generally. And at the same time, it used the case of a confessed racist murderer to set back the struggle of a world-renowned, innocent and anti-racist death-row prisoner--Mumia Abu-Jamal--a prisoner whom the FOP and US political establishment is falling all over itself to execute.
Taking precedent-breaking legal measures against hard right-wing targets in order to use them against the working-class left, is a long-established tactic of a ruling class which seeks above all to preserve its own power. But in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal particularly, breaking legal precedent in order to hasten his execution is the norm. In making its flat-out rejection of Mumia's appeal last April, the Supreme Court had to knowingly violate its own well-established precedent in Batson v Kentucky--the 1986 ruling which said that purging a jury on the basis of race was unconstitutional. One of the best-known legal precedents in modern US history, Batson required that convictions be thrown out for even one incident of racially-based juror exclusion. And, it was to be applied retroactively. In Mumia's 1982 trial, the prosecutor used at least ten out of 15 peremptory challenges to exclude blacks for reasons that were not applied to prospective white jurors.
Precedent? Hell, No! Courts Do What They Want
Many other precedents have been broken as well by appellate courts, which were then upheld by the Supreme Court. The Third Circuit reversed a well-established rule preventing prosecutors from undermining the principle of "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" in their summations to the jury. In Mumia's case, the prosecutor said that Mumia would go free immediately if acquitted, but would get "appeal after appeal" if convicted, thus saying to the jury that if in doubt they should convict, not acquit. Having tossed this practice in an earlier case involving the same prosecutor, they upheld it in Mumia's case, and this in turn was upheld by the Supreme Court. (In yet another case, the Third Circuit later restored the earlier precedent on this issue.)
Still more fundamental is the question of innocence itself. In order to convict and uphold Mumia's conviction the prosecution manufactured false confessions, planted evidence, and threatened "witnesses" into saying they saw what they didn't see. All of these illegal tricks were used against Mumia, yet no court has overturned the conviction because of them. Meanwhile, the real evidence--including witnesses who saw the real killer or killers run away, and a witness (William Singletary) who said Mumia didn't shoot anybody but who was not called to testify--should haven proven Mumia's innocence from the start. But more evidence of innocence has come in since the trial, including witness recantations, another man (Arnold Beverly) who confessed, and photos of the crime scene that show that police lied. Yet very little of this has ever been heard in court, and none of it has been used to throw out this blatantly obvious frame-up.
"Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is perhaps the most fundamental of all legal precedents, predating the US legal system itself. The whim of the feudal lord to execute whom he pleased, has (supposedly) been replaced in bourgeois society by the rule of law. And if the state has failed to really prove guilt or has ignored new evidence of innocence, but is still holding the prisoner, there is the ancient precedent of habeas corpus, under which the state must explain why it is still holding the person.
"Innocence Is No Defense"!
But in the US, where the term "lynch-law" entered the language, and where the legal system is based largely on the law of the slave-holders, both of these fundamental principles have been thoroughly undermined. In the Supreme Court's Herrera v Collins decision, and in the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (ATEDPA) signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, US legal precedent makes it nearly impossible to overturn a fraudulent conviction on appeal. The "facts" of the case as established in state courts must now be accepted in federal appeals courts regardless of merit, and the "timeliness" of appeal filings must be observed, thus gutting the right of habeas corpus. For US courts, if you're outside these narrow boundaries, and especially if you're targeted as an enemy of the state the way Mumia is, innocence is no defense!
A small handful of innocents on death row have been released for factors such as false confessions, police corruption of witnesses, ineffective assistance of counsel, or the confession of someone else to the crime. And more recently, DNA evidence has provided relief to some frame-up victims, although even this can be distorted by police, or studiously overlooked by the courts (see the Kevin Cooper case for instance. www.savekevincooper.org). In one state out of 50 (Illinois), death sentences were systematically tossed when half of death row inmates were found to be innocent. The death penalty is losing favor in the polls as more and more people become aware of its inherent brutality, and the fact that innocent people have been executed (Camron Todd Willingham in Texas is a recent example). But the Supreme Court is still breaking precedent to set up an innocent man, Mumia Abu-Jamal, for execution, as well as to reinforce the death penalty in general. Why?
The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal shows that the much-heralded "rule of law" in this so-called democracy is a fraud from beginning to end. For nearly half a century, Mumia has been hounded by the state's forces of "law and order." First targeted when he was 15 under the FBI's counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) for his political work as an activist exposing police racism and brutality, Mumia was framed on the spot in December of 1981 for killing a police officer who was probably talking to the Justice Department about the corruption of inner-city cops in his district. A man named Arnold Beverly later confessed that he was hired by corrupt cops to kill the officer, Daniel Faulkner, because Faulkner had been "interfering" with police pay-offs in downtown Philadelphia. Despite a federal prosecution aimed against police corruption, and despite the fact that it was some of the same corrupt cops who framed Mumia for the killing, the Justice Department never lifted a finger to save Mumia.
It's the System That's Guilty, Not Mumia Abu-Jamal
The twists and turns of the criminal justice system show beyond a reasonable doubt: it's the system that's guilty, not Mumia Abu-Jamal. Since his horrendously unfair trial before a racist judge (who was overheard to say privately that he was going to "help fry the n____r"), Mumia has been relentlessly pursued by a drum-beat campaign to execute him, spearheaded by the Fraternal Order of Police, many of whom are complicit in his frame-up, and possibly also in the Faulkner killing itself!
But this conspiracy of "legal" murder doesn't stop with the cops; it reaches all the way up the political ladder to the very top, where it continues unabated today. This includes Congress, which, under prompting from the FOP, pressured National Public Radio (NPR) to cancel a planned series of broadcasts by Mumia called "Live From Death Row" in 1994. Twelve years later, again under FOP pressure, Congress took the extraordinary step of condemning a city in France for naming a street after Mumia. By a vote of 368 to 31, Congress, including many prominent Democrats in the majority, demanded a reversal of the street-naming, defended all police world-wide, and declared Mumia a murderer.
Democratic and Republican officials in Pennsylvania are up to their eyeballs with the frame-up of Mumia, the cover-up, and the conspiracy to execute this innocent man. Since Mumia's trial, every candidate for Philadelphia district attorney has sworn to pursue death for Mumia, including Seth Williams, the current DA and the first black man to hold the office. Officials under then-Governor Tom Ridge, later named chief of Homeland Security by George W Bush, conducted a highly illegal surveillance (opening and reading) of Mumia's mail from his lawyer in 1995, in which they learned of an appeal Mumia's lawyers were planning. This information allowed Ridge, who had pledged to execute Jamal in his election campaign the year before, to try to sabotage the defense by preemptively signing a death warrant against Mumia just before the appeal filing. This trumped up deadline allowed the presiding judge--who was the same racist, Albert Sabo, that presided over the original trial--to ramrod and rig the proceedings.
Obama's Political Bandwagon of Death For Mumia
The Democratic Party establishment, both in Pennsylvania and nationally, is committed to the same "legal" murder of Mumia. The current governor, Ed Rendell, who was district attorney at the time of Mumia's trial and oversaw the frame-up, is on board with this on-going conspiracy. He was central to Obama's carrying of Pennsylvania in the 2008 election. For its part, the Fraternal Order of Police wasn't taking any chances with presidential candidates. The FOP interviewed both Obama and McCain, and included a question about Mumia, referring to the street-naming by the Paris suburb of St. Denis, France. "I deplore acts to harm or kill our nation's police officers," replied Obama, "and oppose efforts to glorify those who commit such acts."
Not to be left out, certain media pundits have weighed in against Mumia, helping those in the ruling circles to be sure about where their loyalties needed to be. Right wing Philadelphia talk show host Michael Smerconish, the co-author (with Faulkner's wife) of a lying diatribe called "Murdered By Mumia" (Lyons Press 2008), also weighed in with an interview of Obama during the campaign. When Smerconish asked him about Mumia, Obama said he didn't know much about the case, but added, "if somebody killed a police officer, they deserve the death penalty, or life in prison." On this basis, the Republican Smerconish backed Obama in the campaign, which helped to put Obama over the top in Pennsylvania.
Smerconish & Co. are starting to break through internationally as well. Mumia Abu-Jamal has long had a strong following around the world, where in most countries, the particular loyalties of the US ruling class to its police force don't apply. Support for Mumia has come from the European Parliament, Amnesty International, the city of Paris (which gave Mumia an honorary citizenship), and luminaries such as Nelson Mandela. Mumia supporters are particularly strong in France and Germany. But the FOP, and pundits such as Smerconish, have recently scored with an anti-Mumia hit piece based largely on the lies in "Murdered By Mumia," in der Spiegel, a major German weekly.
Eric Holder... and the Fraternal Order of Police
Although it supported McCain in the election, the Fraternal Order of Police backed the nomination of Eric Holder for attorney general. Holder subsequently spoke to an FOP "memorial" gathering, where he threatened "all those out there who would do harm to police officers... We are coming to get you," he continued, "you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted, and you will be sentenced to the full extent of the law." This ominous warning made the intentions of the Obama administration clear. As it took office at the head of the world's preeminent imperialist power, the new administration reassured the US ruling circles that despite being the first black president, Obama was not about to change 40 years of murderous wrongs committed against revolutionary activists such as the Black Panthers, and spokesmen such as Mumia Abu-Jamal.
In a commentary in August of 2008, anticipating the possible election of the first black president of the US, Mumia related the impending Obama victory to the experience with Carl Stokes, who was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1967. As a harbinger of "the emergence of black political power in major American cities," Stokes' election prompted many Blacks to see "the beginning of an age of freedom for our people," said Mumia. However, "From the 1960s to now, we most certainly have been disabused of that notion," he continued. Among other disappointments, Stokes hired a former US Army lieutenant general as "a kind of super police chief." This Vietnam-war honcho ordered 30,000 rounds of illegal hollow point bullets to go after the Cleveland Black Panther Party, and one of its support organizations.
"Black Faces In High Places Does Not Freedom Make"
"Just because [Stokes] was a Black mayor," said Mumia, "didn't mean he wasn't dedicated to destroying a Black organization. Indeed, in times of Black uprising and mass discontent, Black mayors seem the perfect instrument of repression, for they dispel charges of racism... But Black faces in high places," concluded Mumia, "does not freedom make." ("The Perils of Black Political Power," Aug 6th 2008).
We should also remember the experience with Wilson Goode, a black Democratic mayor of Philadelphia, who presided over the firebombing of the home of MOVE, the black community group which Mumia supports, in 1985. In "The Perils of Black Political Power," Mumia touched on a central truth: power in a society ruled by an economic elite, though racist to its core, will not be altered by replacing a few white individuals with black ones, even at the very top of the power structure.
Only by seeing the true nature of the enemy can we move forward. Mumia's case shows conclusively that a ruling-class power structure, not "the law," is pulling the strings. It's true that Mumia is up against a very big obstacle indeed: the system has targeted him as one of its highest profile enemies. In this, Mumia shares the stage with Leonard Peltier, an innocent activist with the American Indian Movement, who remains jailed for life because of a well-organized FBI vendetta against him. (He also shares this stage with earlier victims of the system such as Sacco and Vanzetti--frame-up victims of the "red scare" of the 1920's.) In his last day in office, President Bill Clinton refused to pardon Leonard Peltier after armed FBI agents mobilized in the streets in New York to oppose it. And it was the FBI's COINTELPRO program that led to the police killings of 38 Black Panthers in virtually scripted shoot-outs!
"Justice" System v Class Struggle
While we support pursuing all available legal avenues to defend Mumia in court, and we support and urge that donations be made to Mumia's legal defense fund, we find that there is no point in petitioning corrupt authorities such as Obama and the US Justice Department to correct wrongs which they themselves are either responsible for, or firmly committed to. Pleading with such a system to have a change of heart can only sow illusions, and undermine Mumia's defense. The petitions demand nothing, they only ask for an internal review of the system, by the system. These criminals--and they are criminals--are not about to turn around now and say, "Oops, sorry, we violated civil rights." They are committed to their side, and so should we be to ours.
In its effort to try to free Mumia, the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (LAC) recognized "that relief for Mumia cannot be expected from the biased and racist so-called 'justice' system in this country;" and we dedicated ourselves to, "educating workers about Jamal's case, and to promoting a class-struggle movement, including strikes and other job actions wherever possible, to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!" (LAC founding statement, January 1999). Several workers actions have taken place since that statement was made, including a West Coast port shutdown to free Mumia, conducted by longshore workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in April 1999. Oakland teachers conducted an unauthorized teach-in on Mumia and the death penalty, also in 1999; and Brazilian teachers in Rio de Janeiro have conducted many work actions to free Mumia, from 1999 through to 2008.
"An Injury To One Is An Injury To All! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!"
We have no quarrel with the millions of well-meaning individuals around the world who have already signed the two petitions (one to the US Justice Department under Holder, and another to Obama). The problem is rather one of leadership. Rather than working within a power structure that's dead set against us, let's ask how Mumia supporters can be mobilized to take positive action aimed against the system that's trying to kill Mumia. Labor and minorities share a common history of being victimized by the criminal justice system in this country, and both have long been aware of police repression and the unequal use of the death penalty against minorities and the poor.
When longshore workers shut down West Coast ports and marched through San Francisco streets in 1999, they chanted, "An injury to one is an injury to all! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal," thereby uniting the black freedom struggle and the workers movement in one powerful action. We know that if freedom is to be won for Mumia, a massive movement of working people must be mobilized. The system that victimizes innocent revolutionaries like Mumia is the same system that threatens all of us with police brutality, as well as oppression, exploitation and financial meltdown. This system can be brought to a halt through mass actions that mobilize the power of labor. But we must start out in that direction. Educate, agitate, organize and demonstrate. Build workers actions to free Mumia!
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