FOR PARTICIPATING IN OCTOBER 5TH WALK-OUT
[Basically, these students were told that if they protested
they would be punished and the punishment was
carried out by their own school.
According to Bobby Young, the school Administrative
Assistant I spoke to, the Principal of The Emiliano
Zapata Street Academy, Patricia Williams-Myrick, warned
students that if they walked out of school in support of
the October 5th action against the war, they would
suffer the consequences. A state test was scheduled
that day and the students were also warned that they would not be
able to make-up that test which in some circumstances
could interfere with graduation.Then, the day after the students
walked out, when they came to school the next day,
they were not allowed in.
I tried calling all the people on the list below (not Larry
Felson, of course) and none of them had the guts to come
to the phone. And none have called back after I left
them all a detailed message.
We can't underestimate the seriousness of this
incident—children are being taught by their schools
that if they protest they will be punished.
I asked Mr. Young how the decision was made to
suspend the kids and not allow them to make up
their State test. He said that was the Principals decision.
I then asked if the school was a dictatorship
of the Principal? Are our schools dictatorships or
do they represent the sentiments of the communities
they serve? He claimed that their school participated
in antiwar marches before. Then, I asked, how can
you allow such a lesson to be taught to our
children—that if you protest you will be punished?
How can we teach our children how to live in
a democratic society and at the same time punish
them for practicing their right to free speech?
Unfortunately, there is no way to give back the
day of school these children were denied for their
exhibition of such strength of character. They
certainly can be allowed to re-take the test they
missed and the school owes them a tremendous
apology for putting them through this exhibition
of fascist tactics used by them to squelch
dissent. It is unforgivable and must be rescinded
or that principal should be fired along with the
whole school administration for allowing this
kind of atmosphere to exist in what is supposed
to be a free and democratic society.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein]
Here is Larry Felson's report:
Some twenty-five or more students from The Emiliano
Zapata Street Academy, a "small school"
within the Oakland Unified School District, walked
out of school on Thursday, October 5th to take part
in a march and rally in San Francsico in connection
with nationwide World Cant Wait/Drive Out the Bush
Regime protest activities involving thousands
of people in over two hundred cities. These students
were amongst the hundreds of high school students from
all over the Bay Area who played an active and spirited
role in the San Francisco protest.
Upon returning to school the next morning, these
Street Academy students were literally locked out
of the school and informed they were being suspended
for the day.
In California, students cannot be summarily suspended
from school for cutting class. This action of suspending
students for taking part in a political protest is an
outrageous act of reprisal and selective punishment
and is in clear vioation of California State Education
Codes requiring school officials to exercise due process
and seek alternate forms of discipline in connection
with students who cut class, including phone calls
home, parent conferences and/or after-school detentions.
This attempt to stifle student dissent goes hand in hand
with the Bush regime's program of poltical repression
like the Patriot Act, the attacks on immigtrants and the
recent bill to eliminate Habeas Corpus.
These students must be supported. This suspension
cannot be allowed to stand and should be rescinded
immediately.
Contact information for Emiliano Zapata Street Academy:
Patricia Williams-Myrick.Principal
417 29th Street
Oakland, Ca. 94609
510-879-3130
Oakland Superintendent of Schools:
Kimberly Statham, 510-879-8200.
Office of Alternative Education for Oakland:
Monica Vaughan, Coordinator
510-879-2904
For more information contact:
Larry Felson
Oakland High School
510-684-8270
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Defend Columbia Students: Join over 1200
who have signed the online petition!
The defense of Columbia students who
protested the racist Minutemen is now
in full swing. Your help is urgently needed.
Please take a moment to sign an
online petition at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/nominute/petition.html
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL LEGAL UPDATE:
Mumia Abu-Jamal - Legal Update on new
filing deadline [Please Circulate]
Dear Friends:
Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Third Circuit, Philadelphia, granted our motion
for an extension of time to file the Reply Brief
on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal. It is now due
to be filed by October 16, 2006.
This case is of enormous complexity and concerns
issues of great constitutional significance. Our goal
is to win a new and fair trial, and see that
Mr. Abu-Jamal is freed.
Thank you for your support in this struggle
for human rights.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Lynne Stewart ALERT, ALERT, ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
10/16 is Sentence Day.
OK, we all want and need to do all we can to keep
Lynne out of Federal Prison, right?
Two old friends (one from college, one from pre-
kindergarten) were hanging out near DC last weekend,
and worrying about Lynne and washing it all down
with vino when they thought up a great idea...
Everybody can make CONTACT Where you live,
work, pray, meet, talk, speak, draw, cook, etc.
Many of Lynne’s supporters are in Chicago, Portland,
Oakland, St. Petersburg, Burlington, Boston,
San Diego, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Providence,
Atlanta....... Not in the NYC area, Unable to Attend Events
Get on your RADIO/ TV (call in to talk shows and
make your comment relevant to Lynne’s sentencing,
ask the people who host radio, tv,web sites
to feature Lynne’s story in the next two weeks)!
Write a letter to the Editor–tie it to something
recent ie destruction of habeas corpus!
Get a local paper to publish a Lynne story
or take out an ad with others!
Where people gather–church, Your livingroom,
temple, mosque-Make an announcement, say
a prayer, show the video, distribute a hand bill!!
Artists, Poets–go to the Malls, the Squares, the
Monuments–Draw, Paint Dedicate it to Lynne,
Speak, Show Videos. Read her letters of Support!!
Host a dinner in your apartment or home, show
the Lynne Stewart video “The Struggle Continues”
or Paul Chan’s (see website) Politics meets Poetics.
Raise funds for the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.
Go to: www.lynnestewart.org
Call us 212-625-9696
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY!
No reprisals against the students!
Support the anti-Minutemen protesters!
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr007=e4abpuyud1.app6a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=185
Watch video of students kicking out Minuteman Jim Gilchrist
at Columbia University in New York
http://www.bwog.net/index.php?page=post&article_id=2265
Minutemen suffer defeat at Columbia University
Jim Gilchrist terminates speech in face of angry opposition
www.answercoalition.org
Please circulate widely
A major demonstration tonight resulted in a serious setback
for the Minutemen organization. Jim Gilchrist, the founder
of the Minutemen, an organization which dispatches armed
vigilantes at the U.S.-Mexican border, was invited by the
Columbia University Republicans to speak at the Roone
Arledge auditorium on campus.
Many hundreds of protesters filled up the blocks outside
the auditorium, in a demonstration initiated by the Chicano
Caucus of Columbia University and supported by the ANSWER
Coalition. Inside the hall, the overwhelming number of
attendees were clearly opposed to the racist message
of the Minutemen. When Gilchrist began to speak, the
students inside exercised their Free Speech rights by
loudly protesting the presence of this fascist on their
campus. More than 20 students - including several ANSWER
activists - occupied the stage where they were violently
attacked by thugs working with the Minutemen. In spite
of the violent attacks against them, they held their ground,
and Gilchrist terminated his speech.
Minutemen thugs tear at ANSWER banner"Progressive students
of all backgrounds -- immigrant and non-immigrant, Black,
Latino, Asian, Arab and white -- mobilized to meet this racist
provocation. Jim Gilchrist was hoping to sell his message of hate
but the people were not buying. Let tonight be a model for others
around the country. And let it be a lesson to the Minutemen:
wherever they go, they will be confronted. We have an obligation
to the millions of immigrants in this country who are being
demonized and targeted by the Minutemen, KKK and other
racists," said Karina Garcia, Political Chair of Chicano Caucus.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 323-464-1636
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
Seattle: 206-568-1661
*Full statement of those who occupied the stage*
October 6, 2006
In the aftermath of the protest on the night of October 4 against Jim
Gilchrist and the racist Minutemen at Roone Arledge auditorium, we want to
state clearly: We are proud to send the message to the country that racist
and fascist groups are not welcome at Columbia or in New York City.
As Chicanos and Latinos, alongside African Americans and progressive people
of other nationalities, we took it as our responsibility to give voice to
the undocumented immigrant families who live in fear at terrorist vigilante
groups like the Minutemen. Armed patrols by these groups force more and more
people desperate for work to find even more hazardous ways into the United
States. Over 3,000 people—including hundreds of children—have died in the
desert. Their blood is on the hands of Gilchrist and his thugs.
Fascist scapegoating is not up for academic discussion. Like Hitler in
pre-Nazi Germany, Gilchrist and the Minutemen attempt to demonize
foreign-born poor people, blaming "illegals" for society's problems. His
group doesn't present reasoned debate. It spouts racism and hatred, aiming
to divide people against one another.
Regardless of how Gilchrist tries to sanitize his message for national
audiences, more candid moments tell the real story. Gilchrist is a member of
the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, which is now notorious for
referring to Mexicans as "savages." Speaking about Mexicans and Central
American immigrants, Minuteman co-founder Chris Simcox once said, "They have
no problem slitting your throat and taking your money or selling drugs to
your kids or raping your daughter and they are evil people."
This vile racism translates directly into violence on the ground. "It should
be legal to kill illegals," said one Minutemen volunteer. "Just shoot 'em on
sight. That's my immigration policy recommendation." It is no wonder that
neo-Nazi organizations like the National Alliance praise the Minuteman
Project in their publications, and have members signing up for Minutemen
militias.
We are sure that if the Nazi party held a public meeting on campus, Jewish
groups would be there to challenge them—so would we. We are sure that if the
Ku Klux Klan held a public meeting on campus, African American groups would
be there to challenge them—so would we. The Minutemen are no different.
We are pleased that an overwhelming number of people answered our call to
demonstrate against the racist, fascist Minutemen the night of October 4.
The hundreds of people outside Roone Arledge chanting, "Minutemen, Nazis,
KKK, racists, fascists, go away!" represented students and community people
from all walks of life. Inside the auditorium, perhaps as much as 80 percent
of the crowd was repelled by the Minutemen's message of hate.
When we walked on stage last night with anti-racist banners for immigrant
rights, we were met with violent attack by Gilchrist's goons. We were the
ones who were punched and kicked. We are proud that despite these attacks,
we held our ground. When Gilchrist walked off stage, it was because he and
his Minutemen outfit were isolated.
This is not an issue of free speech. The Minutemen were able to reserve a
hall at our university and had the protection of campus security and the
NYPD—all to espouse their hate speech. We along with hundreds of others
expressed our right to speak and protest.
Over the last 50 years, throughout the Civil Rights movement and the women's
rights movement, ultra-right wing groups have routinely used violence,
lynchings, armed assaults and bombings against oppressed people. Yet when we
organize to oppose them to express our contempt for their violence, we are
criticized for inhibiting the free speech of the ones who perpetrate
violence.
We thank everyone who joined our protest last night, inside and outside of
the auditorium.
Shame on the Columbia University administration for launching an
investigation of peaceful protesters, and failing to condemn the
perpetrators of violence. Shame on the College Republicans for inviting this
fascist thug and provoking such outrage on our campus.
OPEN LETTER TO COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
By Bonnie Weinstein
The Minutemen, by their very definition
of themselves as a private
military force dedicated to carrying
our their own interpretation of the
law--are terrorists--real terrorists.
They have killed and murdered innocent
people just trying to get to a place where
they can survive--live--work--raise their
children.
These Minutemen hunt them down like
they are animals. And have killed!
They sabotage humanitarian efforts to
leave water to prevent people from
dying of thirst--a horrible death
that hundreds succumb to every year
in their ever longer and more difficult
journey!
The Minutemen slash humanitarian bottles
of water when they come across them. They
have even shot people and, have expressed
publicly, that they wish they could use their
guns routinely! They are Minutemen because
they would like to be able to shoot
to kill anyone trying to cross the
border into this, the country
of immigrants--the USA.
Freedom and justice-loving people have
every right to stand up and protest them
at every conceivable opportunity that they
use to spread their hatred and violence!
Yes, they have the right to speak but
we have the right to speak louder!
When they speak their racist hatred
we shall shout louder still!
This is not a question of the Minutemen's
freedom of speech, but of the guns they
reserve for defenseless immigrant families--
the night vision goggles and the U.S. military
drones--the heat seeking, night-vision unmanned
planes that relay their images to Minutemen
loaded with high-tech guns and equipment.
They work together with the U.S. border patrol
--just good old boys helping out with their finger
on the trigger itching to get the go-ahead
to commit mass slaughter.
They even went to the home of a recluse.
An independent-minded woman who lives
alone in the Arizona desert with her pets.
She had noticed the remains of people trying
to cross the border and using her property
as a resting stop. Knowing how far away
she herself was to any source of water,
(she had her water trucked in regularly)
and not wanting anyone to die of thirst
so close to her water supply and on her
land, she put out bottles of water for
whoever needed it.
The Minutemen got wind of this and invaded
her land and destroyed the bottles!
And, if the new immigration laws are put into
effect she can be charged as a criminal for
her humanitarian effort on her own property.
What kind of society makes humanitarian
efforts towards human beings looking for work
a crime, and torture of prisoners legal? And how
is trying to look for work wherever one can find
it become a crime anyway? What about the basic
human right to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness?
Why is it OK for American businesses to rake in
billions of dollars of profits from the Fair Trade
Agreement and NAFTA etc., that put much of the
Mexican people out of work, and it is a crime for
those very same people to seek work in the country
raking in the profits across those same borders?
And on land that was, for a large part, originally
theirs in the first place!
Why is it legal for profits to cross all borders back
into the deep, deep pockets of American big business
and it's a crime for a Mexican-born worker to work
on American soil?
And "protecting our borders" is not helping American
workers. On the contrary, being able to hire cheap
labor in the first place is what's hurting the American
worker. The best defense American workers have is to
unite with their brothers and sisters struggling to
survive all over the world--and demand that those
workers get the same decent wages and
benefits as they get! Every worker has a
right to a decent life! And workers united are a powerful
force. This is the side of decency!
The Minutemen are on the side of U.S. big business
who are stealing from the poor and giving to the wealthy.
Their modus operandi is to make a scapegoat of
Latin American workers. To portray them as enemies
--as rats that are infesting our land and stealing
our jobs when it is American big business seeking
out the poorest paid workers throughout the world
to manufacture their Nikes and IPods who are the
thieves! To pay those workers a tiny fraction
of what their American counterparts were making
until they were laid off, that is, while raking in
the profits at the highest rates ever before.
It is in the interests of all workers to defend the
most oppressed workers among us no matter
where they are in the world against such
organizations as the Minutemen
and against the U.S. government--the most
violent government that has ever existed.
Both Democrats and Republicans voted
100 to 0 to approve the Pentagon budget--
the biggest war budget ever, for the most
violent government in the world.
The division between the rich and the poor
is not just growing in numbers, it is growing
psychologically, emotionally, spiritually,
concretely, socially and politically!
We will not stand by as you persecute those opposed
to this violence and racism and who bravely
stand up against it! It is our duty to stand up and
fight for the kind of world we want and against
the return to barbarism and rule by force of violence
and intimidation and para-military assault on our own
citizens in their own school!
I am appalled that the Columbia administration has
rushed to defend these criminals, and I demand that
no reprisals be taken against the courageous protesters,
who stood up against these armed racist vigilantes.
The world is watching what you do!
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
U.S. Out of Iraq Now! We Are the Majority!
End Colonial Occupation from Iraq,
to Palestine, Haiti, and Everywhere!
October 28, 2006, 12 Noon, U.N. Plaza, S.F.
Part of the Locally Coordinated Anti-War Protests from Coast to Coast
Vote With Your Feet … and Your Voices, and Banners, and Signs!
Let Every Politician Feel the Power of the People!
415-821-6545
answer@actionsf.org
http://answer.pephost.org/site/News2?abbr=ANS_&page=NewsArticle&id=7836
For more info or to volunteer,
call 415-821-6545.
The endless stream of lies from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. cannot
disguise the reality that both the war and the casualties in Iraq
are escalating. So, too, is the war in Afghanistan. and the economic
strangulation of the Palestinian people. The U.S.-Israeli assault left
a legacy of death, destruction and a million unexploded cluster
bombs in Lebanon. And the saber-rattling against Iran, Korea
and Venezuela continues, posing the threat of even wider wars.
There are now 20,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq than there were
three months ago. 100 Iraqis are being killed on average every
day. Reported U.S. casualties in September were the highest since
the annihilation of Fallujah in November 2004 with 75 killed
and more than 800 wounded. In the first week of October,
27 U.S. soldiers were reported killed and more than 300 wounded.
The Iraq war costs over $3,000 per second, more than
$270 million every day.
No one should rely on the politicians -- Democrat or Republican
-- to stop the war. Last week, the Senate vote on the “defense”
budget, including Iraq and Afghanistan, was 100-0. The Democratic
leadership made sure that there was no serious struggle against
the Torture Legalization Bill (as it should be called) passed by
Congress and signed by Bush. The Democrats are following a
“strategy of ambiguity” on the war and torture, as it is politely
labeled in the corporate media. In other words, they’re ducking
the issues, the most important issues.
What is needed now more than ever are protests in the streets
-- only the people can stop the war!
That is why the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition has called for protests
and a “people’s vote on the war” on Saturday, October 28 in
cities across the country. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT,
YOUR ENDORSEMENT AND YOUR PARTICIPATION.
There are important ways you can get involved:
* Please endorse today nd help us out by making a contribution.
http://www.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage
* Join us at the Tuesday evening A.N.S.W.E.R. volunteer meetings
at 7pm at our office in San Francisco, 2489 Mission St.,
Rm. 28 (corner 21st St.).
* Organize your group, friends, fellow students or workers
to join the Oct. 28 protest here in San Francisco, 12 Noon,
United Nations Plaza, Market St. between 7th & 8th Sts,
near Civic Center BART.
* If you are too far away to join the San Francisco rally
and march, organize a protest, a public meeting, or tabling
in your city or town. We can help provide materials flyers,
posters, the People’s Vote on the War ballot, etc.
Call us at 415-821-6545.
* Download flyers and posters from our website and
distribute or post them in your neighborhood, campus,
mass transit stop, workplace.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Make a tax-dedctible donation to A.N.S.W.E.R.
by credit card over a secure server, learn how
to donate by check.
Unsubscribe from this list - if you experience
a problem please email answer@actionsf.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
!VIVA FIDEL! LONG LIVE FIDEL! LONG LIVE THE CUBAN REVOLUTION!
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
SCROLL DOWN TO READ:
EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTS
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
ARTICLES IN FULL
LINKS ONLY
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
EVENT ANNOUNCEMENTS
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Taking Aim with Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone available now
on TV. Berkeley Public Access TV - Channel 28 - is the first
to carry the series. Monday, 7:00 a.m., with the program
repeated Wednesday and the following Sunday at 7:00 a.m.
Live stream at: http://www.betv.org
Oct. 9, 11, and 15: "The Terror State Targets Lynne Stewart,
part 3: From Operation Cyclone to P2OG"
Oct. 16, 18 and 22: "The Terror State Targets Lynne Stewart,
part 4: The Relentless Assault On Democratic Rights"
See the Program Archive at http://www.takingaim.info
for audio versions of parts 1 and 2. 060502 "The Terror
State Targets Lynne Stewart: The Destruction of Democratic
Rights" and 060919 "The Terror State Targets Lynne Stewart,
part 2: A Modern Inquisition."
Taking Aim with Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone can
be heard live each week in the Bay Area at 2:00 p.m.
streamed on http://www.wbai.org
Contact Mya Shone at takingaim@pacbell.net
if you would like to schedule Taking Aim for
broadcast on your local public access TV station.
Three announcements:
1. Taking Aim enters a new era this week with the
television broadcast of Taking Aim on Berkeley Community
Access Television, Channel 28.
Taking Aim will appear Monday, 7:00 a.m., with the
program repeated Wednesday, 7:00 a.m. and the
following Sunday at 7:00 a.m, too.
Oct. 9, 11, and 15 at 7:00 a.m.: "The Terror State Targets
Lynne Stewart, part 3: From Operation Cyclone to P2OG"
Oct. 16, 18 and 22 at 7:00 a.m.: "The Terror State Targets
Lynne Stewart, part 4: The Relentless Assault On
Democratic Rights."
Berkeley Community Media provides a live stream at
http://www.betv.org
Thanks to Peoples Television (PTV) for filming us as
we record our weekly radio broadcast of Taking Aim.
Contact us at takingaim@pacbell.net or phone us
at 707.552.9992 if you have a regularly scheduled public
access TV slot or can establish one on your local access station.
2. WBAI is in the midst of its fall fund drive. This Tuesday,
October 10, we present a special edition of Taking Aim.
We are scheduled from 9:00 pm to midnight (ET) which is
6:00 pm to 9:00 pm (PT) but also may broadcast in our
regular time-slot from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm.
We have prepared a special DVD package: "Apocalypse Now:
The U.S. And Israeli Master Plan for the Middle East" a video
of our presentation August 17 in Berkeley, CA:
There are three sections to the more than 3-hour program:
A. The War in Lebanon: An Inside View including Mya Shone's
graphic photos from 1982 Sabra/Shatila massacre and the
devastation of Beirut and southern Lebanon;
B. Ralph Schoenman's dramatic lecture
C. Discussion period with questions from the audience.
3. Ralph will speak at several events in New York City
next weekend. He hopes to see you there.
* Rally and Tribute in Harlem in Support of Lynne Stewart
Now We are Standing Up for Lynne Stewart_ A Tribute to her
Legal Career & Political Life. On the Eve of Her Sentencing
Friday, October 13, 2006, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. St. Ambrose
Episcopal Church 9 West 130th Street (Between Fifth and Lenox
Avenues) Speakers include: Attorney Michael Tarif Warren,
Attorney Roger Wareham, Elombe Brath, Camille Yarbrough,
Playthel Benjamin, Herman Ferguson, Father Luis Barrios,
Viola Plummer, Rosa Clemente, Larry Holmes, Dr. Andree-
Nicola McLaughlin, Dr. Sam Anderson, Willie Camacaro, Mae
Jackson, Poet George Edward Tait, Louis Reyes Rivera, Nellie
Hester Bailey, Ralph Schoenman and more. Entertainment
includes music by Ngoma! For additional information:
212-234-5005.
* There will be a mass rally in support of Lynne Stewart,
Sunday, October 15 (the day before the sentencing hearing)
from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Riverside Church, South Hall.
And ... Prepare to be at the sentencing hearing, Monday,
October 16, 10:00 a.m. in the Federal Court House in Manhattan,
Courtroom of Hon. John G. Koeltl, 500 Pearl Street, Courtroom 12B.
For more information see http://www.lynnestewart.org
* After the Sunday rally, the NY 9/11 Truth invites you to its
weekly series at St. Mark's Church. The topic, October 15 is
Planning for the Pandemic" and features Ralph Schoenman and
Melissa Ennen. St. Marks Church, 2nd Avenue & 10th Street
(The event begins at 6:30 p.m. with Melissa Ennen's presentation.)
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
South Bay Mobilization and Friends of South Asia
present
"One Country:
A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse"
A Talk by Ali Abunimah
Saturday, October 14th, 2:00 pm
Clear-eyed, sharply reasoned, and compassionate,
One Country proposes a radical alternative: to revive
an old and neglected idea of one state shared by two
peoples.
Ali Abunimah shows how the two are by now
so intertwined—geographically and economically—
that separation cannot lead to the security Israelis
need or the rights Palestinians must have.
Ali Abunimah is a prominent Palestinian author, media
voice, and frequent commentator on KPFA. He is the
founder of Electronic Intifada, electronicintifada.net,
an internet gateway about Palestine and the Palestine
– Israeli conflict.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
JROTC IN SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
The issue of JROTC in S.F. public schools will be addressed
at the San Francisco Board of Education
Budget and Business Services Meeting:
Wednesday, October 18, 2006, 7:00 P.M.
And a vote is scheduled to be taken on a resolution to phase out
JROTC at the regular Board Meeting on:
Tuesday, November 14th, 7:00 P.M.
555 Franklin Street, 1st Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102
To get on the speakers list for the Regular Board Meeting call:
415/241-6427
(Call on Monday, the day before the meeting from 8:30 A.M. until 4:00 P.M.
or Tuesday, the day of the meeting from 8:30 A.M. until 3:00 P.M.
You do not need to call ahead to speak at the Budget meeting--it's
first come first serve.)
Please organize as many people as possible to come and speak
at these meetings--everyone opposed to the military presence
in our schools should mobilize. Nationwide, over 45 percent
of JROTC cadets eventually end up in some branch of the
military. That is why the Pentagon puts hundreds of millions
of dollars in their coffers. JROTC teachers are child abusers
who knowingly brainwash our children. We want our
children to learn how to live a healthy and productive
life--not to learn how to obey orders and kill on command!
We especially encourage other students to
come prepared to reach out to the students in JROTC who
will be organized to be there in force. We need to convince
those students that there are healthy alternatives to military
discipline and training. We need to convince them
that we are for them, not against them; that war is not the
answer; and that there are other, peaceful, non-military
ways build character and solve disputes.
Here are some links to JROTC facts:
Review of the JROTC Curriculum
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/militarism-in-schools/JROTC-review.htm
Making Soldiers - PDF
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/militarism-in-schools/msitps.pdf
Report Says JROTC Benefits Students; Calls for More Funding for Programs
By Julie Blair
September 29, 1999
http://www.jrotc.org/jrotc_benifits.htm
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Urgent call from October 22 Coalition against Police Brutality, SF
October 22 Coalition against Police Brutality, Repression
and Criinalization of a generation
National Day of Protest, March and Rally in SF, Planning
NO MORE STOLEN LIVES ! NO MAS VIDAS ROBADAS !
Contact:
mesha Monge-Irizarry
Idriss Stelley Foundation
(415) 595-8251 24HR Bilingual Spa. Crisis line
iolmisha@cs. com
How: Already involved are : October 22 Bay Area, Idriss
Stelley Foundation, SF CEDP (Campaign to End the Death
Penalty, ISO (International Socialist Organization, Bay Area),
Bay Area Families of Victims and Survivors of Police brutality,
Code Pink
http://www.october22.org/
GET INVOLVED: To join our mailing list, please write to:
sf1022-talk-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
Appeal for Endorsement, SF OCT22
Against Police brutality
March and Rally
Dear Friends and Community Activist,
October 22nd Coalition
to Stop Police Brutality, Repression,
and the Criminalization of a Generation
SF Chapter
is appealing for your support!
We will march from Haight and Stanyan to the Fillmore
on Oct 22, 2pm
Please let us know if your organization is endorsing the call !
October22 National day of Protest promises to be the largest
ever in San Francisco, pleasse scroll down for growing list
of endorsers (45)
We especially encourage the families of Victims of Police
Brutality to endorse, open the March and Rally and speak
to honor the memory of their loved ones and demand Justice !
meshá
meshá Mongé-Irizarry
Idriss Stelley Foundation
ISF, director
iolmisha@cs.com
24 HR Crisis Line (415) 595-8251
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/idrissstelleyfoundation/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/isf23/
www.myspace.com/isfoundation
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U.S. Out of Iraq Now! We Are the Majority!
End Colonial Occupation from Iraq,
to Palestine, Haiti, and Everywhere!
October 28, 2006, 12 Noon, U.N. Plaza, S.F.
Part of the Locally Coordinated Anti-War Protests from Coast to Coast
Vote With Your Feet … and Your Voices, and Banners, and Signs!
Let Every Politician Feel the Power of the People!
http://answer.pephost.org/site/News2?abbr=ANS_&page=NewsArticle&id=7836
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
End Canada's Occupation of Afghanistan!
Call for action on October 28, 2006
This call for a pan-Canadian day of action, co-signed by the
Canadian Peace Alliance, the Canadian Islamic Congress, the
Canadian Labour Congress and the Montreal coalition Echec
a la Guerre, is being distributed and discussed at the World Peace
Forum now taking place in Vancouver. -SV The Collectif Échec
à la guerre, Canadian Peace Alliance, the Canadian Labour Congress,
and the Canadian Islamic Congress are jointly calling for a pan-
Canadian day of protest this October 28th, 2006, to bring Canadian
troops home from Afghanistan.
On that day, people all across the country will unite to tell
Stephen Harper that we are opposed to
his wholehearted support for Canadian and U.S. militarism.
This October marks the fifth anniversary of the invasion and
occupation of Afghanistan, and the people of that country are
still suffering from the ravages of war. Reconstruction in the
country is at a standstill and the needs of the Afghan people
are not being met. The rule of the new Afghan State, made
up largely of drug running warlords, will not realize the
democratic aspirations of the people there. In fact, according
to Human Rights Watch reports, the human rights record
of those warlords in recent years has not been better than
the Taliban.
We are told that the purpose of this war is to root out terrorism
and protect our societies, yet the heavy-handed approach of
a military occupation trying to impose a US-friendly
government on the Afghan people will force more Afghans
to become part of the resistance movement. It will also
make our societies more -- not less -- likely to see terrorist
attacks.
No discussion on military tactics in the House of Commons
will change that reality. Indeed, violence is increasing with
more attacks on both coalition troops and on Afghan civilians.
While individual Canadian soldiers may have gone to Afghanistan
with the best of intentions, they are operating under the
auspices of a US-led state building project that cares little
or the needs of the Afghan people. US and Canadian interests
rest with the massive $3.2 billion Trans Afghan Pipeline (TAP)
project, which will bring oil from the Caspian region through
southern Afghanistan (where Canada is stationed) and onto the
ports of Pakistan.
It has been no secret that the TAP has dominated US foreign
policy towards Afghanistan for the last decade. Now Canadian
oil and gas corporations have their own interests in the TAP.
Over the last decade, the role of the Canadian Armed Forces
abroad has changed, and Canadian foreign policy has become
a replica of the US empire-building rhetoric. The end result
of this process is now plain to see with the role of our troops
in Southern Afghanistan, with the enormous budget increases
for war expenditures and "security," with the Bush-style speeches
of Stephen Harper, and with the fear campaigns around
"homegrown terrorism" to foster support for those nefarious
changes.
It is this very course that will get young Canadian soldiers killed,
that will endanger our society and consume more and more
of its resources for destruction and death in Afghanistan.
We demand a freeze in defense and security budgets until
an in-depth public discussion is held on those issues across
Canada. The mission in Afghanistan has already cost Canadians
more than $4 billion. That money could have been used to fund
human needs in Canada or abroad. Instead it is being used
to kill civilians in Afghanistan and advance the interests
of corporations.
On October 28th, stand up and be counted.
Canadian Troops Out of Afghanistan Now!
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
VOICES OF A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 7:30 pm
Berkeley Community Theatre, 1930 Allston Way
Voices of a People's History of the United States
Dramatic Readings Celebrating the Enduring Spirit of Dissent
The Middle East Children's Alliance, Speak Out,
Vanguard Public Foundation and KPFA 94.1FM present:
The Bay Area Premiere of Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Close the SOA and Change Oppressive U.S. Foreign Policy
Nov. 17-19, 2006 - Converge on Fort Benning, Georgia
People's Movements across the Americas are becoming increasingly more
powerful. Military "solutions" to social problems as supported by
institutions like the School of the Americas were unable to squash their
voices, and the call for justice and accountability is getting louder each
day.
Add your voice to the chorus, demand justice for all the people of the
Americas and engage in nonviolent direct action to close the SOA and
change oppressive U.S. foreign policy.
With former SOA graduates being unmasked in Chile, Argentina, Colombia,
Paraguay, Honduras, and Peru for their crimes against humanity, and with
the blatant similarities between the interrogation methods and torture
methods used at Abu Ghraib and those described in human rights abuse cases
in Latin America, the SOA/WHINSEC must be held accountable!
Visit http://www.soaw.org to learn more about the November Vigil, hotel
and travel information, the November Organizing Packet, and more.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Shop for a Donation at Al-Awda!
Interested in furthering your knowledge about Palestine
and its people?
Want to help make the Palestinian Right to Return a reality?
Looking for ways to show your support for Palestine and
Palestinian refugees?
Why not shop for a donation at Al-Awda
http://al-awda.org/shop.html
and help support a great organization and cause!!
Al-Awda offers a variety of educational materials including interesting
and unique books on everything from oral histories, photo books
on Palestinian refugees, to autobiographies, narratives, political
analysis, and culture. We also have historical maps of Palestine
(in Arabic and English), educational films, flags of various sizes,
and colorful greeting cards created by Palestinian children.
You can also show your support for a Free Palestine, and wear with
pride, great looking T-shirts, pendants, and a variety of Palestine pins.
Shop for a Donation at Al-Awda!
Visit http://al-awda.org/shop.html for these great items, and more!
The Educational Supplies Division
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-685-3243
Fax: 360-933-3568
E-mail: info@al-awda.org
WWW: http://al-awda.org
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC), is a broad-
based, non-partisan, democratic, and charitable organization of
grassroots activists and students committed to comprehensive public
education about the rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their
homes and lands of origin, and to full restitution for all their confiscated
and destroyed property in accordance with the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, International law and the numerous United Nations
Resolutions upholding such rights (see FactSheet). Al-Awda, PRRC
is a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3)
organization as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the
United States of America. Under IRS guidelines, your donations
to Al-Awda, PRRC are tax-deductible.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Before You Enlist
Excellent flash film that should be shown to all students.
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=ZFsaGv6cefw
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
In an interview in March 1995 entitled, "Jesse Helms: Setting the
Record Straight" that appeared in the Middle East Quarterly, Helms
said, "I have long believed that if the United States is going to give
money to Israel, it should be paid out of the Department of Defense
budget. My question is this: If Israel did not exist, what would
U.S. defense costs in the Middle East be? Israel is at least the
equivalent of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East. Without
Israel promoting its and America's common interests, we would
be badly off indeed."
(Jesse Helms was the senior senator from North Carolina and the
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time.)
http://www.meforum.org/article/244
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
A CALL TO SUPPORT THE CASE OF ELVIRA ARELLANO
Stand in solidarity with all immigrants, documented and undocumented
The IAC urges you to support the case of Elvira Arellano. Elvira is
an undocumented worker who is taking a heroic stand against
deportations and fighting for her rights. She is a native of Michoacán,
Mexico who came to the U.S. like many of the other 12 million
undocumented in this country, in search of work and a better life.
In 2002, Elvira was detained by Homeland Security agents in an
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweep at O’Hare Airport
in Chicago under the guise of allegedly looking for “terrorists”. She
was detained by the Department of Homeland Security for using
a false social security number on her job at O’Hare.
On August 18, 2006 Elvira Arellano and her seven year old son,
Saul who is a US citizen, took sanctuary in Adalberto United Methodist
Church in Chicago instead of reporting for deportation, primarily
because Saul has health problems. She has pledged to live indefinitely
in the church until granted a reprieve.
Elvira is a well known activist, representing many families in
Congressional hearings and speaking on behalf of immigrant rights.
She worked to organize in July 2005 a march of 50,000 for immigrant
rights in Chicago, and went on a hunger strike to support workers who
were picked up by ICE prior to the historic May 1st boycott in 2006.
Arellano was a founder of both La Familia Latina Unida and the
Coalition of African Arab Asian European and Latino Immigrants
of Illinois (CAAAELII).
The case of Elvira Arellano is a just case
Elvira Arellano has become the symbol of resistance to the heartless
and callous deportations that are sweeping the country. Despite
a legislative standstill in Congress, not only are deportations
escalating, local officials around the nation are implementing
de facto immigration policy that amount to a witch-hunt against
immigrants. A case in point is the anti-immigrant ordinance that
passed in July in Hazelton, PA.
Due to her heroic stand, a group of Black ministers spoke last
week at Adalberto Methodist of the comparisons of Arellano
to Rosa Parks. Reverend Albert Tyson said he hopes “their
support would increase the bonds between Latinos and African-
Americans.” At the meeting Arellano said, “I don’t only speak
for me and my son, but for millions of families like mine.”
Supporters from the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood
chanted, “Luchando mano y mano, Boriqua y Mexicano!”
(“Fighting hand in hand, Puerto Rican and Mexican!”)
Elvira Arellano is the perfect example that the anti-immigrant
hysteria sweeping the country is an inhumane situation that
has become intolerable. The human rights of immigrants are
being cruelly violated under the guise of fighting terrorism
or stopping “illegal” immigration. In fact, no human being
is illegal and whether in the U.S. documented or undocumented,
immigrants have a right to live in peace, without fear of evictions
from their homes or the country.
How you can help Elvira:
1. Write letters to Illinois Senators Richard Durbin and Barack
Obama as well as your own legislator urging them to prevent
her deportation.
For Senator Durbin visit: http://durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm#contact
For Senator Obama: http://obama.senate.gov/contact/index.php
2. Send Letters to the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune
asking them to stop demonizing Elvira as well as all immigrants.
Their emails are letters@suntimes.com and ctc-tribletter@tribune.com.
3. Send letters of support directly to Elvira at the organization she works
with and who has been spearheading her support, Sin Fronteras
at Centro Sin Fronteras 2300 S. Blue Island Ave., Chicago IL 60608
or visit the website: www.legalizationyes.com
For Spanish speakers visit:
www.legalizacionsi.com
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
TWO AMICUS BRIEFS FILED FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL WITH
THE 3RD CIRCUIT FEDERAL APPEALS COURT IN JULY 2006
These pdf files can be found on Michael Schiffmann's web site at:
http://againstthecrimeofsilence.de/english/copy_of_mumia/legalarchive/
The first brief is from the National Lawyers Guild.
The second brief is from the NAACP Legal Defense
and Educational Fund, Inc.
Howard Keylor
For the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.laboractionmumia.org.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
SIR! NO SIR!
I urge everyone to get a copy of "Sir! No Sir!" at:
http://www.sirnosir.com/
It is an extremely informative and powerful film
of utmost importance today. I was a participant
in the anti-Vietnam war movement. What a
powerful thing it was to see troops in uniform
leading the march against the war! If you would
like to read more here are two very good
publications:
Out Now!: A Participant's Account of the Movement
in the United States Against the Vietnam War
by Fred Halstead (Hardcover - Jun 1978)
and:
GIs speak out against the war;: The case of the
Ft. Jackson 8; by Fred Halstead (Unknown Binding - 1970).
Both available at:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/103-1123166-0136605?search-alias=books&rank=+availability,-proj-total-margin&field-author=Fred%20Halstead
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Endorse the following petition:
Don't Let Idaho Kill Endangered Wolves
Target: Fish and Wildlife Service
Sponsor: Defenders of Wildlife
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/664280276?z00m=99090&z00m=99090<l=1155834550
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
Stop funding Israel's war against Palestine
Complete the form at the website listed below with your information.
Personalize the message text on the right with
your own words, if you wish.
Click the Next Step button to send your letter
to these decision makers:
President George W. Bush
Vice President Richard 'Dick' B. Cheney
Your Senators
Your Representative
Go here to register your outrage:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Idriss Stelley Foundation is in critical financial crisis, please help !
ISF is in critical financial crisis, and might be forced to close
its doors in a couple of months due to lack of funds to cover
DSL, SBC and utilities, which is a disaster for our numerous
clients, since the are the only CBO providing direct services
to Victims (as well as extended failies) of police misconduct
for the whole city of SF. Any donation, big or small will help
us stay alive until we obtain our 501-c3 nonprofit Federal
Status! Checks can me made out to
ISF, ( 4921 3rd St , SF CA 94124 ). Please consider to volunteer
or apply for internship to help covering our 24HR Crisis line,
provide one on one couseling and co facilitate our support
groups, M.C a show on SF Village Voice, insure a 2hr block
of time at ISF, moderate one of our 26 websites for ISF clients !
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/idrissstelleyfoundation/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/isf23/
Report Police Brutality
24HR Bilingual hotline
(415) 595-8251
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Justice4Asa/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Appeal for funds:
Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches
Visit the Dahr Jamail Iraq website http://dahrjamailiraq.com
Request for Support
Dahr Jamail will soon return to the Middle East to continue his
independent reporting. As usual, reporting independently is a costly
enterprise; for example, an average hotel room is $50, a fixer runs $50
per day, and phone/food average $25 per day. Dahr will report from the
Middle East for one month, and thus needs to raise $5,750 in order to
cover his plane ticket and daily operating expenses.
A rare opportunity has arisen for Dahr to cover several stories
regarding the occupation of Iraq, as well as U.S. policy in the region,
which have been entirely absent from mainstream media.
With the need for independent, unfiltered information greater than ever,
your financial support is deeply appreciated. Without donations from
readers, ongoing independent reports from Dahr are simply not possible.
All donations go directly towards covering Dahr's on the ground
operating expenses.
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Legal update on Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case
Excerpts from a letter written by Robert R. Bryan, the lead attorney
for death row political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
...On July 20, 2006, we filed the Brief of Appellee and Cross
Appellant, Mumia Abu-Jamal, in the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia.
http://www.workers.org/2006/us/mumia-0810/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Today in Palestine!
For up to date information on Israeli's brutal attack on
human rights and freedom in Palestine and Lebanon go to:
http://www.theheadlines.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
For a great car magnet--a black ribbon with the words, "Bring
the troops home now!" written in red, and it also comes in a
lapel pin!--go to:
(Put out by A.N.S.W.E.R.)
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Ecommerce?store_id=1621
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF ZIONISM
BY RALPH SCHOENMAN
Essential reading for understanding the development of Zionism
and Israel in the service of British and USA imperialism.
The full text of the book can be found for free at:
http://takingaim.info/hhz/index.htm
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
JOIN THE LYNNE STEWAR DEFENSE
For those of you who don't know who Lynne Stewart is, go to
www.lynnestewart.org and get acquainted with Lynne and her
cause. Lynne is a criminal defense attorney who is being persecuted
for representing people charged with heinous crimes. It is a bedrock
of our legal system that every criminal defendant has a right to a
lawyer. Persecuting Lynne is an attempt to terrorize and intimidate
all criminal defense attorneys in this country so they will stop
representing unpopular people. If this happens, the fascist takeover
of this nation will be complete. We urge you all to go the website,
familiarize yourselves with Lynne and her battle for justice
www.lynnestewart.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO FREE THE CUBAN FIVE
Comité Nacional por la Libertad de los Cinco Cubanos
Who are the Cuban Five?
The Cuban Five are five Cuban men who are in U.S. prison, serving
four life sentences and 75 years collectively, after being wrongly
convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami, on June 8, 2001.
They are Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero,
Fernando González and René González.
The Five were falsely accused by the U.S. government of committing
espionage conspiracy against the United States, and other related
charges.
But the Five pointed out vigorously in their defense that they were
involved in monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups,
in order to prevent terrorist attacks on their country of Cuba.
The Five’s actions were never directed at the U.S. government.
They never harmed anyone nor ever possessed nor used any
weapons while in the United States.
The Cuban Five’s mission was to stop terrorism
For more than 40 years, anti-Cuba terrorist organizations based
in Miami have engaged in countless terrorist activities against
Cuba, and against anyone who advocates a normalization
of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. More than 3,000 Cubans
have died as a result of these terrorists’ attacks.
Gerardo Hernández, 2 Life Sentences
Antonio Guerrero, Life Sentence
Ramon Labañino, Life Sentence
Fernando González, 19 Years
René González, 15 Years
Free The Cuban Five Held Unjustly In The U.S.!
http://www.freethefive.org/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Eyewitness Account from Oaxaca
A website is now being circulated that has up-to-date info
and video that can be downloaded of the police action and
developments in Oaxaca. For those who have not seen it
elsewhere, the website is:
www.mexico.indymedia.org/oaxaca
http://www.mexico.indymedia.org/oaxaca
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
REMINDER TO ALL GROUPS: BE SURE AND POST ALL ACTIONS AND
EVENTS TO WWW.INDYBAY.ORG TO REACH THE MOST PEOPLE
AGAINST THE WAR IN THE BAY AREA!
http://www.indybay.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Iraq Body Count
For current totals, see our database page.
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr13.php
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
The Cost of War
[Over three-hundred-billion so far...bw]
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
"The Democrats always promise to help workers, and the don't!
The Republicans always promise to help business, and the do!"
- Mort Sahl
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
"It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
- Emilano Zapata
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Join the Campaign to
Shut Down the Guantanamo Torture Center
Go to:
http://www.shutitdown.org/
to send a letter to Congress and the White House:
Shut Down Guantanamo and all torture centers and prisons.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.actionsf.org
sf@internationalanswer.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Great Counter-Recruitment Website
http://notyoursoldier.org/article.php?list=type&type=14
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
DEFEND IMMIGRANT RIGHTS AND
CIVIL RIGHTS!
Last summer the U.S. Border Patrol arrested Shanti Sellz and
Daniel Strauss, both 23-year-old volunteers assisting immigrants
on the border, for medically evacuating 3 people in critical
condition from the Arizona desert.
Criminalization for aiding undocumented immigrants already
exists on the books in the state of Arizona. Daniel and Shanti
are targeted to be its first victims. Their arrest and subsequent
prosecution for providing humanitarian aid could result in
a 15-year prison sentence. Any Congressional compromise
with the Sensenbrenner bill (HR 4437) may include these
harmful criminalization provisions. Fight back NOW!
Help stop the criminalization of undocumented immigrants
and those who support them!
For more information call 415-821- 9683.
For information on the Daniel and Shanti Defense Campaign,
visit www.nomoredeaths.org.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
FYI
According to "Minimum Wage History" at
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html "
"Calculated in real 2005 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was the
highest at $9.12. "The 8 dollar per hour Whole Foods employees
are being paid $1.12 less than the 1968 minimum wage.
"A federal minimum wage was first set in 1938. The graph shows
both nominal (red) and real (blue) minimum wage values. Nominal
values range from 25 cents per hour in 1938 to the current $5.15/hr.
The greatest percentage jump in the minimum wage was in 1950,
when it nearly doubled. The graph adjusts these wages to 2005
dollars (blue line) to show the real value of the minimum wage.
Calculated in real 2005 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was the
highest at $9.12. Note how the real dollar minimum wage rises and
falls. This is because it gets periodically adjusted by Congress.
The period 1997-2006, is the longest period during which the
minimum wage has not been adjusted. States have departed from
the federal minimum wage. Washington has the highest minimum
wage in the country at $7.63 as of January 1, 2006. Oregon is next
at $7.50. Cities, too, have set minimum wages. Santa Fe, New
Mexico has a minimum wage of $9.50, which is more than double
the state minimum wage at $4.35."
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
NO BORDERS! NO WALLS! NO FENCES! GENERAL AMNESTY FOR ALL!
OUR HOMELAND IS WHERE WE LIVE!
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
REPEAL THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT IN 2007!
Check out: 10 EXCELLENT REASONS NOT TO JOIN THE MILITARY
http://www.10reasonsbook.com/
Public Law print of PL 107-110, the No Child Left Behind
Act of 2001 [1.8 MB]
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html
Also, the law is up before Congress again in 2007.
See this article from USA Today:
Bipartisan panel to study No Child Left Behind
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
February 13, 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-02-13-education-panel_x.htm
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/decind.html
http://www.usconstitution.net/declar.html
http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/02/1805195.php
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
Bill of Rights
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html
http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/02/1805182.php
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
ARTICLES IN FULL:
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
1) Poor, Black and Dumped On
By BOB HERBERT
October 5, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp
2) Police to Start Inspecting Bags on Boston Subway
By KATIE ZEZIMA
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/us/05boston.html?ref=us
3) U.S. Eavesdropping Is Allowed to Continue During Appeal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/us/05nsa.html?ref=us
4) American Axle Offers Buyouts
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/business/05axle.html
5) Intelligent, Emotional, Ingenious: the Amazing Truth
about Whales and Dolphins
by Michael McCarthy
October 5, 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1799465.ece
6) Transcript of Sgt. Ricky Clousing describing war crimes in Iraq
On September 16th, Sgt. Ricky Clousing spoke on his witnessing of US war
crimes in Iraq and why he became a resister to this war. The transcript, with
the Q and A session, is available at http://www.traprockpeace.org
8) Deeper and Deeper
New York Times Editorial
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/opinion/05thu2.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials
9) The War Against Wages
By PAUL KRUGMAN
October 6, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/opinion/06krugman.html?hp
10) Kicked While Down
New York Times Editorial
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/opinion/07sat2.html?hp
11) ‘We Will Not Recognize Israel,’ Palestinian Premier Affirms
By GREG MYRE
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/world/middleeast/07mideast.html?ref=world
12) New Orleans Population Is Reduced Nearly 60%
By ADAM NOSSITER
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/us/07population.html?ref=us
13) After 21 Years, DNA Testing Sets Man Free in Rape Case
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/nyregion/07rape.html
14) An Economic War
The Truth About the "Embargo" on Cuba
By RICARDO ALARCÓN
"To bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government"
State Department, April 6, 1960
October 5, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/alarcon10052006.html
15) Middle-class families in worse shape than ever, study finds
Typical families have not stashed enough money; struggling
to pay for home, insurance, and education according
to Center for American Progress.
September 28 2006: 4:41 PM EDT
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/28/news/economy/middle_class.reut/index.htm?postversion=2006092816
16) Protecting a Freedom to Insult
October 9, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/opinion/09mon1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
17) An Unknown City Erupts
Inter Press Service
Ali Al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail
http://dahrjamailiraq.com
18) What Happened That Night
A New Look at the Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal
By ROBERT WELLS
September 30 / October 1, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/wells09302006.html
19) American Prison Camps Are on the Way
By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet
Posted on October 9, 2006, Printed on October 9, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/42458/
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1) Poor, Black and Dumped On
By BOB HERBERT
October 5, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/opinion/05herbert.html?hp
Most of the carnage — the terrible illnesses and the premature
deaths — is hidden.
“The people in those agencies who issue the permits, and then
do very little monitoring and very little enforcement in our
communities, they don’t go with us to the emergency rooms
where the children are suffering from serious asthma attacks.
And they certainly don’t go with us to the funeral homes where
we bury people who are 40 years old and have died of cancer.
They don’t see the terrible damage that this stuff is doing.”
Monique Harden, a lawyer and director of a human rights
agency in New Orleans, was talking about a problem that will
get no attention at all in the Congressional elections, which
are primarily about foolishness and the compulsion to deceive.
The evidence has been before us for decades that black people,
other ethnic minorities and some poor whites have been getting
sick and enduring horrible deaths from the filth that they
breathe, eat, drink and otherwise ingest from the garbage
dumps, landfills, incinerators, toxic waste sites, oil refineries,
petrochemical plants and other world-class generators
of pollution that have been deliberately and relentlessly
installed in the neighborhoods where they live, work,
worship and go to school.
Two colossal environmental debacles occurred, for example,
in West Anniston, Ala., a neighborhood that is mostly black
and mostly poor. A chemical plant conveniently located there
produced thousands of pounds of potentially deadly
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB’s) each year. For years
after the danger was apparent, residents were left uninformed.
Some were later found to have the highest concentrations
of PCB’s in their bloodstreams of anyone ever tested.
But the PCB’s from the chemical plant were just one of
many risks faced by the residents. In 2003 the military
began burning deadly chemical weapons stored at the
Anniston Army Depot in West Anniston. Emissions
associated with burning chemical weapons include
dioxins, PCB’s, furans, heavy metals and trace amounts
of nerve and mustard gas agents.
The Rev. Henry Sterling, a pastor in Anniston, told me
with great sadness how he had buried his niece who had
died from cancer when she was just 30, and then two
days later had to bury two other women in their 20’s,
and then the following week two more women in their
late 20’s.
He added, “My secretary was from here, and she was just
32 when she died from cancer. We have young men dying,
too. But during that short period it just happened to be
all women. ”
We’ve known — or should have known — since at least
1987, when a landmark study was published by the
Commission on Racial Justice of the United Church of
Christ, that wildly disproportionate numbers of hazardous
waste sites have been placed in communities with large
concentrations of black and Latino residents.
Since then an enormous amount of data has been compiled
showing that government and industry alike have used
black and poor neighborhoods as dumping grounds
for the vilest and most dangerous of pollutants. You
go to these communities, where the air can be thick
enough to make you gag, and you find that the rates
of cancer, heart disease, stroke and the like are off
the charts.
The largest hazardous waste landfill in America is near
the small, rural town of Emelle, in Sumter County, which
is part of the so-called “black belt” of Alabama. It takes
in hazardous materials from 48 states and some foreign
countries. More than 70 percent of the Sumter County
population, and more than 90 percent of the population
of Emelle, is black.
The systematic placement of garbage dumps, chemical
plants, oil refineries and other hazardous facilities
in communities inhabited primarily by blacks and other
disadvantaged groups is nothing less than an unconscionable
extension of the devastating Jim Crow policies that have
existed in one form or another, legally or illegally,
since slavery.
More than 70 environmental, human rights and public
health groups participated in a bus tour last week —
dubbed “The Environmental Justice for All Tour” —
that visited communities across the country that have
suffered terrible damage from these blatantly
discriminatory policies.
The tour was enthusiastically received at each stop,
but got hardly any attention from the larger society.
The message to blacks and others struggling with these
hideous policies could not have been clearer: we are not
in the least interested in you.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
2) Police to Start Inspecting Bags on Boston Subway
By KATIE ZEZIMA
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/us/05boston.html?ref=us
BOSTON, Oct. 4 — The police will begin inspecting passengers’
bags on the Boston subway system in the next few days,
Gov. Mitt Romney said on Wednesday.
The inspections will be random for the most part, but could
be mandatory at some stations, Mr. Romney said in an interview.
The program was not in response to a specific threat against
the transit system here, he said, but to the general threat
of terrorism.
“I think we recognize globally that transit systems, airport
systems and the like have been targets,” Mr. Romney said, “and
therefore we have to adjust our security parameters to no longer
focus on just crime, but to add the additional threat of terror.”
Boston was the first American city to randomly inspect bags
on its subways. At the Democratic National Convention
in 2004, police officers inspected bags on the subway
and searched the bags of people standing in lines near
the convention site. Both practices were stopped after
the inspections, which were compulsory, were challenged
in federal court.
The decision to resume inspections comes nearly two months
after a federal appeals court upheld the constitutionality
of random visual inspection of bags on the New York City
subway system, which started in July 2005 in response
to the London train bombings.
Rather than conduct visual searches, Boston police officers
will swab a bag, its seams and its handles with an electronic
device that checks for traces of explosives. They will search
a bag if they think there is probable cause.
In addition, behavior-recognition teams will be dispatched
throughout the subway and bus system as part of the program.
Those officers will be authorized to search a person’s bag
if they believe it is warranted.
Mr. Romney, a Republican, and Joseph C. Carter, chief of the
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority police, which will
be conducting the searches, said they believed the Boston
system was in line with the system ruled constitutional
in New York, because the searches would be short and
would be done in public and with advance notice.
“They affirmed the right of transit agencies to carry out this
kind of a security program,” Mr. Romney said. “We believe
the program will fall within the parameters the court outlined.
It is not discrimination based on racial profiling. The hallmark
of the program is the lack of predictability.”
Mr. Romney said there would be no pattern to where police
officers were stationed or how many of a person’s bags
would be searched.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
3) U.S. Eavesdropping Is Allowed to Continue During Appeal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/us/05nsa.html?ref=us
CINCINNATI, Oct. 4 (AP) — The Bush administration can continue
eavesdropping on the international communications of some
Americans without a court warrant while it appeals a judge’s
ruling that the program is unconstitutional, the federal appeals
court here ruled Wednesday.
President Bush has said the wiretapping program is needed
in the campaign against terrorism; opponents say it oversteps
constitutional boundaries on free speech, privacy and
executive powers.
The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit gave
little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph
ruling, the judges said they considered the likelihood that
an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both
sides and the public interest.
Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of Federal District Court in Detroit
ruled on Aug. 17 that the program was unconstitutional,
saying it violated the rights to free speech and privacy
and the separation of powers in the Constitution.
The Justice Department had urged the appeals court to
allow it to keep the program in place while it argued its
appeal, claiming that the nation faced “potential irreparable
harm.” The appeal is likely to take months.
The program monitors international phone calls and e-mail
messages to or from the United States involving people whom
the government says it suspects of having links to terrorism.
A secret court can grant warrants for such surveillance, but
the government says it cannot always wait for that court
to take action.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit seeking
to stop the program on behalf of journalists, scholars and
lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them
to do their jobs because of concerns that telephone
conversations with overseas contacts will be monitored.
Similar lawsuits challenging the program have been filed
by other groups, too.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
4) American Axle Offers Buyouts
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/business/05axle.html
American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings is offering union workers
at five auto parts plants up to $100,000 to leave the company
because of declining demand from automakers.
About 6,000 members of the United Automobile Workers union
in New York and Michigan are eligible for buyout or retirement
packages, American Axle, which is based in Detroit, said yesterday.
Plans also call for salaried jobs to be cut as part of a North
American restructuring. No plants are scheduled to close.
American Axle withdrew its earnings and cash-flow guidance
for the year and said it would spend $150 million to $250 million
on restructuring in 2006. The company gets 77 percent of its
sales from General Motors, which along with other American
automakers plans to build fewer vehicles in the second half of 2006.
American Axle builds almost all of the axles for G.M.’s light
trucks and its sales in that category have declined 13 percent this year.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
5) Intelligent, Emotional, Ingenious: the Amazing Truth
about Whales and Dolphins
by Michael McCarthy
October 5, 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1799465.ece
Jumping through watery hoops? Forget it. They can solve problems and
use tools. They exhibit joy and grief. They live in complex societies.
And although we have always instinctively thought that cetaceans -
whales, dolphins and porpoises - are special members of the animal
kingdom, scientific evidence is piling up that they are truly out of
the ordinary in terms of their intelligence.
A growing number of behavioural studies strongly suggest that whale
and dolphin brain power is matched only by the higher primates,
including man, according to a new review of the scientific literature
by one of Britain's leading save-the-whale campaigners.
It means that the potential impact of whaling may be far greater than
it appears, and we should adopt a new approach to the conservation of
these species which takes into account their intelligence, societies,
culture - and potential to suffer, says Mark Simmonds, director of
science for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.
In a scientific paper published this month, Mr Simmonds surveys
recent cetacean research and highlights striking examples which have
been observed of whale and dolphin behaviour. For instance, captive
animals have been shown unequivocally to be able to recognise
themselves in a mirror, which was previously known to be the domain
only of humans and the great apes.
There are many other examples of intelligence, Mr Simmonds reports in
his paper Into the brains of whales, being published in the journal
Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Dolphins can "point" at objects with their heads to guide humans to
them, and they can also manipulate objects spontaneously, despite
their lack of fingers and thumbs. There is a well-documented use of
tools in an Australian population of wild Indo-Pacific bottlenose
dolphins, he says. "The animals (almost exclusively females) are
often seen carrying sponges on the ends of their beaks, probably to
protect them while they forage in the sediments on the sea floor
where spiny sea urchins might otherwise cause puncture wounds."
They show remarkably human-like emotions, ranging from joy to grief
to care for the injured. Mr Simmonds quotes a case of a 30-strong pod
of false killer whales which remained with an injured member in
shallows for three days, exposing themselves to sunburn and the risk
of stranding, until it died.
Group living, in fact, is at the centre of cetacean existence,
perhaps because the sea has few refuges from predators, and many
species "have nothing to hide behind but each other". It has led to
the evolution of many types of sophisticated co-operative behaviour,
from hunting, to young males banding together to secure mating
partners. And there is an "emerging but compelling argument", Mr
Simmonds says, that some cetacean species exhibit culture - behaviour
that is acquired through social learning.
He points out that since commercial whaling was put on hold in 1986,
some of the devastated populations have recovered, but some have not.
It is plausible, he says, that the whalers destroyed "not just
numerous individuals, but also the cultural knowledge that they
harboured relating to how to exploit certain habitats and areas."
But the jury is still out, he says, on whether the vast range of
sounds emitted by whales and dolphins constitutes language.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
6) Transcript of Sgt. Ricky Clousing describing war crimes in Iraq
On September 16th, Sgt. Ricky Clousing spoke on his witnessing of US war
crimes in Iraq and why he became a resister to this war. The transcript, with
the Q and A session, is available at http://www.traprockpeace.org
"Like I told commanders that their soldiers are creating the insurgency. The
behavior that the U.S. is inflicting upon the Iraqi population is creating the same
people that we're trying to stop. It's a cycle of nonsense that nobody seems to
understand how it's happening. And so it's this crazy, mindless cycle of violence
and death and killing and wasted money, and nobody seems to understand the
big picture." - Sgt. Ricky Clousing, 9/16/06
He is facing court martial on a charge of desertion. He spoke at Camp Democracy's
encampment at the National Mall in Washington, DC. before an overflow audience
that included activists from across the nation as well as many tourists.
More excerpts:
"I've never seen anybody die. I've never seen a dead body before in my whole life.
But I was looking down at this kid, this young boy who was trying to just drive
around town and took a wrong turn and tried to go the other direction, was shot at
and killed, and I'm looking down at him now. And we made eye contact for about
five seconds, and he just looked at me with the most empty, terrified, confused look
in his face that will never leave me in my whole life I'm sure. There was no dialogue
traded between us, but I could just feel the words inside of his head, just wondering
'why did this happen and what's going on? Why does this hurt so bad? What did I do?
What's happening now? I don't understand what is going on right now.' Really just
put me in shock, and I was glued standing there."
"I'm freaking out, like what? I look out the window, and we're slamming into vehicles
on the side of the road. I looked up at the vehicle in front of us, and they're driving
normally in the middle of the road, no problems, in the other lane. And then the driver
swerves back in the road, and they're laughing in the front seat. And then the guy in
the ... passenger rolls the window down, extends his baton, the driver smashes back into
the vehicle, side-swiping them, and they're smashing out windows as they're driving by.
And I just could not believe this was happening. So I yelled at the people in the vehicle,
like what the hell are you doing? Not only is that wrong, and they were harassing people,
but, from your own safety, they could have bombs in their car, and you're totally pissing
them off, and I don't understand why. So I yelled at the guys, and we kept driving. And
then, later on in that trip, it didn't even stop there, later on in that trip, the guys I was with,
there are four people in a Humvee and one of them on the turret standing up on the top of
the vehicle. We came to a point just before the base where there was an Iraqi man walking
his herd of sheep across the road. And I heard a couple rounds pop off from the turret. I
just heard *pop pop pop*, like two or three rounds. And then the soldier standing in the
turret ducks down and kind of says jokingly that he just shot a couple of the guy's sheep,
and I was livid. I could not believe that this was happening."
The audio recording of his talk may also be downloaded at http://www.traprockpeace.org
The audio is 1:09:54 in length (with Q and A) and recorded at 64 kbps mono and may be
replayed by radio and website. Attribution only is requested, with notice of its airplay.
In a stunning video clip (4:12 minutes), in high quality Quicktime format, Sgt. Clousing
describes a war crime - the gunning down of an innocent Iraqi teenager.
The video is available at http://www.traprockpeace.org
Learn more about Sgt. Ricky Clousing and his impending court martial
at http://www.sdmcc.org/rickyclousing/
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
7) Israeli Bomblets Plague Lebanon
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
October 6, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/world/middleeast/06cluster.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 29 — Since the war between Israel and
Hezbollah ended in August, nearly three people have been wounded
or killed each day by cluster bombs Israel dropped in the waning
days of the war, and officials now say it will take more than a year
to clear the region of them.
United Nations officials estimate that southern Lebanon is littered
with one million unexploded bomblets, far outnumbering the
650,000 people living in the region. They are stuck in the
branches of olive trees and the broad leaves of banana trees.
They are on rooftops, mixed in with rubble and littered across
fields, farms, driveways, roads and outside schools.
As of Sept. 28, officials here said cluster bombs had severely
wounded 109 people — and killed 18 others.
Muhammad Hassan Sultan, a slender brown-haired 12-year-old,
became a postwar casualty when the shrapnel from a cluster
bomb cut into his head and neck. He was from Sawane, a hillside
village with a panoramic view of terraced olive farms and rolling
hills. Muhammad was sitting on a hip-high wall, watching
a bulldozer clear rubble, when the machine bumped into a tree.
A flash of a second later he was fatally injured when a cluster
bomblet dropped from the branches. “I took Muhammad
to the hospital in my car, but he was already dead,” said
Yousef Ftouni, a resident of the village.
The entire village was littered with the bomblets, and
as Mr. Ftouni recounted Muhammad’s death, the Lebanese
Army worked its way through an olive grove, blowing
up unexploded munitions in a painfully slow process
of clearance.
Cluster bombs are legal if aimed at military targets and
are very effective, military experts say. Nonetheless,
Israel has been heavily criticized by United Nations officials,
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for using
cluster bombs, because they are difficult to focus exclusively
on military targets. Israel was also criticized because
it fired most of its cluster bombs in the last days
of the war, when the United Nations Security Council
was negotiating a resolution to end the conflict.
Officials calculate that if they are lucky, and money
from international donors does not run out, it will take
15 months to clear the area. There are now about
300 Lebanese Army soldiers and 30 other clearance teams,
each of up to 30 experts, working on the problem
of unexploded bomblets.
The United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center in
southern Lebanon recorded 745 locations across the south
where unexploded bombs had been found. Of the million
estimated to be scattered around, so far 4,500 have been
disposed of, according to the center.
“Our priority at the moment is to clean houses, main roads
and gardens so that the displaced people can return to their
villages,” said Col. Mohammad Fahmy, head of the national
mine clearing office. “The next stage will be cleaning
agricultural lands.”
In Lebanon there are two explanations of why Israel unleashed
cluster bombs at the end of the war: to inflict as much damage
as possible on Hezbollah before withdrawing, or to litter the
south with unexploded cluster bombs as a strategy to keep
people from returning right away.
The United States has sold cluster bombs to Israel in the past
and says it is investigating whether Israel’s use of cluster bombs
in its war with Hezbollah violated a secret agreement that
restricted when they could be used.
The final days of the war — a conflict that began when
Hezbollah launched rockets from Lebanon into northern
Israel and sent militiamen across the border to capture
Israeli soldiers — were marked by a huge Israeli offensive.
Israel hoped its final push would, in part, help force the
Security Council to adopt a tougher resolution on Hezbollah
than appeared to be taking shape.
Israel has said it leafleted areas before bombing and provided
Lebanon with maps of potential cluster bomb locations
to help with the clearing process. United Nations officials
in Lebanon say the maps are useless.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article on Sept. 12
anonymously quoting the head of a rocket unit in Lebanon who
was critical of the decision to use cluster bombs. “What we did
was insane and monstrous; we covered entire towns in cluster
bombs,” Haaretz quoted the commander as saying.
Repeated efforts to get Israeli officials to explain the rationale
behind the use of the bombs have proved fruitless, with
spokesmen referring all queries to short official statements
arguing that everything done conformed with international law.
In Lebanon the problem of the unexploded munitions
is magnified by the desire to return to villages and lives
in a region that is effectively booby-trapped. People want
to begin rebuilding and harvest their crops. In some cases
they have tried to clear the bomblets themselves, and some
people have begun charging a small fee to clear away bombs
— a practice that officials have discouraged as dangerous.
But the people are desperate.
“If I lost the season for olives and the wheat, I have no money
for the winter,”‘ said Rida Noureddine, 54, who farms a small
patch of land on the main road in the village of Kherbet Salem.
There was a small black object at the entrance to his farm,
and he thought it was a cluster bomb.
“I feel as if someone has tied my arms, or is holding me
by my neck, suffocating me because this land is my soul,”
he said.
The bomblets, about the size of a D battery, can be packed
into bombs, missiles or artillery shells. When the delivery
system detonates, the bomblets spread like buckshot across
a large area, making them difficult to aim with precision.
A fact sheet issued by the Mine Action Coordination Center
says cluster bombs have an official failure rate of 15 percent.
That means that 15 percent of the bomblets remain as hazards.
According to the fact sheet, the failure rate in this war is estimated
to be around 40 percent. “We estimate there are one million,”
said Dalya Farran, the community liaison officer of the mine
action center.
Ms. Farran has worked at the center for nearly three years.
It was set up in 2000 to help deal with the mines and unexploded
ordnance left behind after the Israeli occupation of southern
Lebanon and from other wars.
After this war, Ms. Farran said, there are two types of cluster
bomb fragments across the south. The most commonly found
type is known as M42, a deceptively small device resembling
a light socket.
She said a large percentage of the unexploded bomblets were
made in America, while some were produced in Israel. Each one
has a white tail dangling off the back, like the tail of a kite.
As they fall to the ground, the tail spins and unscrews the
firing pin.
When the device hits, the front end fires a huge slug while the
casing blasts apart into a spray of deadly metal fragments.
When they fail to detonate they cling to the ground, and with
their white tails look deceptively like toys, so children are
often those who are injured.
“This is what they are living with every day,” said Simon Lovell,
a supervisor with one of the clearance teams as he looked
at five unexploded bomblets poking out of the soft, rocky
soil of the Hussein family farm.
Across the street, Hussein Muhammad, 48, at home with his
wife and four children, waited for the clearance team.
His olive trees were heavy with fruit, but he could not
tend to the harvest.
“I feel that the land has become my enemy,” he said.
“It represents a danger to my life and my kids’ lives.”
Nada Bakri contributed reporting from Lebanon.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
8) Deeper and Deeper
New York Times Editorial
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/opinion/05thu2.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials
There is fresh evidence, if any more were needed, that excessive
borrowing during the Bush years will make the nation poorer.
For most of the past five and a half years, interest rates have
been low, allowing the government to borrow more and more —
to cut taxes while fighting two expensive wars — without having
to shoulder higher interest payments.
That’s over now. For the first time during President Bush’s
tenure, the government’s interest bill is expected to rise in
2006, from $184 billion in 2005 to $220 billion this year,
up nearly 20 percent. That increase — $36 billion — makes
interest the fastest-growing component of federal spending,
and continued brisk growth is likely. According to projections
by Congress’s budget office, the interest bill will grow to
$249 billion in 2007, and $270 billion in 2008.
All of that is money the government won’t have available
to spend on other needs and priorities. And much of it won’t
even be recycled back into the United States economy. That’s
because borrowing from foreign countries has exploded
during the Bush years. In 2005, the government paid about
$77 billion in interest to foreign creditors in China, Japan
and elsewhere.
And that’s not the worst of it. While foreign investors were
putting up most of the $1.5 trillion the federal government
has borrowed since 2001, they were also snapping up
hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector securities,
transactions that have been a big source of the easy money
that allowed Americans to borrow heavily against their homes.
The result, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week,
is that for the first time in at least 90 years, the United States
is now paying noticeably more to foreign creditors than
it receives from its investments abroad. That is a momentous
shift. It means that a growing share of America’s future
collective income will flow abroad, leading to a lower
standard of living in the United States than would otherwise
have been achieved. Americans deserve better than
this financial mess.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
9) The War Against Wages
By PAUL KRUGMAN
October 6, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/opinion/06krugman.html?hp
Should we be cheering over the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial
Average has finally set a new record? No. The Dow is doing well
largely because American employers are waging a successful war
against wages. Economic growth since early 2000, when the Dow
reached its previous peak, hasn’t been exceptional. But after-tax
corporate profits have more than doubled, because workers’
productivity is up, but their wages aren’t — and because companies
have dealt with rising health insurance premiums by denying
insurance to ever more workers.
If you want to see how the war against wages is being fought,
and what it’s doing to working Americans and their families,
consider the latest news from Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart already has a well-deserved reputation for paying
low wages and offering few benefits to its employees; last year,
an internal Wal-Mart memo conceded that 46 percent of
its workers’ children were either on Medicaid or lacked health
insurance. Nonetheless, the memo expressed concern that
wages and benefits were rising, in part “because we pay an
associate more in salary and benefits as his or her tenure
increases.”
The problem from the company’s point of view, then,
is that its workers are too loyal; it wants cheap labor that
doesn’t hang around too long, but not enough workers
quit before acquiring the right to higher wages and benefits.
Among the policy changes the memo suggested to deal with
this problem was a shift to hiring more part-time workers,
which “will lower Wal-Mart’s health care enrollment.”
And the strategy is being put into effect. “Investment
analysts and store managers,” reports The New York Times,
“say Wal-Mart executives have told them the company wants
to transform its work force to 40 percent part-time from
20 percent.” Another leaked Wal-Mart memo describes
a plan to impose wage caps, so that long-term employees
won’t get raises. And the company is taking other steps
to keep workers from staying too long: in some stores,
according to workers, “managers have suddenly barred
older employees with back or leg problems from sitting
on stools.”
It’s a brutal strategy. Once upon a time a company that
treated its workers this badly would have made itself
a prime target for union organizers. But Wal-Mart doesn’t
have to worry about that, because it knows that these days
the people who are supposed to enforce labor laws are
on the side of the employers, not the workers.
Since 1935, U.S. workers considering whether to join
a union have been protected by the National Labor Relations
Act, which bars employers from firing workers for engaging
in union activities. For a long time the law was effective:
workers were reasonably well protected against employer
intimidation, and the union movement flourished.
In the 1970’s, however, employers began a successful
campaign to roll back unions. This campaign depended
on routine violation of labor law: experts estimate that by
1980 employers were illegally firing at least one out of
every 20 workers who voted for a union. But employers
rarely faced serious consequences for their lawbreaking,
thanks to America’s political shift to the right. And now
that the shift to the right has gone even further, political
appointees are seeking to remove whatever protection
for workers’ rights that the labor relations law still provides.
The Republican majority on the National Labor Relations
Board, which is responsible for enforcing the law, has just
declared that millions of workers who thought they had the
right to join unions don’t. You see, the act grants that right
only to workers who aren’t supervisors. And the board,
ruling on a case involving nurses, has declared that millions
of workers who occasionally give other workers instructions
can now be considered supervisors.
As the dissent from the Democrats on the board makes clear,
the majority bent over backward, violating the spirit of the
law, to reduce workers’ bargaining power.
So what’s keeping paychecks down? Major employers like
Wal-Mart have decided that their interests are best served
by treating workers as a disposable commodity, paid as little
as possible and encouraged to leave after a year or two. And
these employers don’t worry that angry workers will respond
to their war on wages by forming unions, because they know
that government officials, who are supposed to protect workers’
rights, will do everything they can to come down on the side
of the wage-cutters.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
10) Kicked While Down
New York Times Editorial
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/opinion/07sat2.html?hp
In a blow to labor unions, the National Labor Relations Board recently
expanded the pool of workers exempted from union membership.
Specifically, the labor board found that registered nurses who
assigned others to some shifts or tasks were supervisors, and
thus not eligible to join unions. It was a bad decision, not only
because of the specifics of the case, but also in its broader
ramifications.
There are good reasons to bar managers from unionizing. It is
extremely difficult to run a large organization efficiently if the
people at the top are unable to easily hold their managers
accountable for overall success or failure. But responsibilities
like making out a schedule do not amount to management.
If they did, interns would be the only non- managers in many
of today’s workplaces.
Companies facing unionization drives have long found it
convenient to discover that employees who are basically rank-
and-file workers are actually managers. That seems to be the
case with the nurses. The board’s decision opens the door for
possibly millions of health-care workers and other professionals
to be disqualified from the option of union protection.
This is one more step curbing the power of organized labor
since President Bush came to office. The administration’s
philosophical vendetta against unions has come at a time
when their power is already on the wane. Membership has
fallen to 7.8 percent of the private work force in this country,
from over a third in the 1950’s. Far from balancing the scales,
the anti-union drive comes when workers are already at
a historic low in bargaining strength. Despite a growing economy
and rising productivity, hourly wages adjusted for inflation
have declined 2 percent since 2003. Corporate profits,
meanwhile, are at their highest share of gross domestic
product since the 1960’s.
We are getting closer and closer to a work force with no benefits
and no substantive protections. Some unions succumbed
to corruption and contributed to their own decline. But their
role in giving common workers a voice is essential to
a functioning society.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
11) ‘We Will Not Recognize Israel,’ Palestinian Premier Affirms
By GREG MYRE
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/world/middleeast/07mideast.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM, Oct. 6 — In a defiant speech delivered to a teeming
crowd of Hamas supporters, the Palestinian prime minister,
Ismail Haniya, insisted on Friday that his Hamas movement would
not recognize Israel despite the cutoff in Western aid that has
strangled his government.
“I tell you with all honesty, we will not recognize Israel, we will
not recognize Israel, we will not recognize Israel,” Mr. Haniya
said to thunderous applause from tens of thousands of
supporters, many waving green Hamas flags, at the
Yarmouk soccer stadium in Gaza City.
Mr. Haniya’s remarks appeared to be aimed at the Palestinian
Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who met Wednesday in the West Bank.
At that time, Mr. Abbas declared that talks between his secular
Fatah movement and Hamas on a Palestinian unity government
had broken down, and that the political stalemate could not
go on indefinitely.
Mr. Abbas says there is a need for a new Palestinian government
that will recognize Israel and deal with it. He also indicated that
he was prepared to invoke his presidential powers and dismiss
the current government, which is dominated by Hamas,
the radical Islamic movement.
Less than a month ago, on Sept. 11, Mr. Abbas and Mr. Haniya
agreed in principle to form a unity government in an effort to find
a way out of the worsening political and economic crisis facing
the Palestinians. The goal was to bring Fatah and other political
factions into the government. And the hope was that this would
persuade Israel, the United States and the European Union to
resume the flow of money that had been cut off when Hamas
assumed power.
Without that aid the Palestinian Authority has been unable to
pay salaries, provide services or govern in any meaningful way.
But the blunt public remarks by Mr. Abbas on Wednesday
and Mr. Haniya on Friday reflected what seems to be an
increasingly bitter power struggle that could dim the
prospects for a compromise.
Still, Mr. Haniya called on Mr. Abbas, who works in the
West Bank city of Ramallah, to return to Gaza to resume
talks on a broad-based government. “Come down to Gaza
to protect our people and declare our commitment
to a national unity government,” Mr. Haniya said.
But Mr. Abbas has given no indication that he plans
to accept the invitation any time soon. Mr. Haniya and
other senior Hamas officials are based in Gaza, and
Israel does not permit them to travel to the West Bank.
During the lengthy speech on a sweltering afternoon,
Mr. Haniya appeared on the verge of collapse at one
point and could not continue his remarks. Bodyguards
rushed to physically support him and whisked him
off the stage. During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan,
Mr. Haniya, like many Muslims, observes a dawn-to-dusk
fast, which apparently caused his weakness.
He re-emerged about 10 minutes later and continued.
“Our bodies may get tired, but our souls will not,”
Mr. Haniya said as the crowd roared.
The United States and the European Union are demanding
that the Palestinian government recognize Israel, renounce
violence and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian accords.
In negotiations, Fatah and Hamas have sought a formula
under which a new government would accept such positions,
though Hamas as a political party would not be forced
to endorse them. But Hamas has repeatedly rejected
the Western demands, and Fatah leaders say they see
no rationale for joining a unity government that will
continue to be ostracized by the Western countries
and much of the international community.
Israel, which is withholding more than $50 million a month
in taxes and customs duties it collects for the Palestinians,
refuses to deal with the Hamas government. Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert says he is willing to meet with Mr. Abbas, but
stresses that there is no prospect for progress until the
Palestinians release an Israeli soldier seized by Palestinian
militants and taken to Gaza on June 25.
Mr. Haniya, meanwhile, said that the Palestinians faced an
“unethical and unjust siege led by the United States administration,”
and that “many parties, internal and external, colluded in an
attempt to force us to surrender.” He noted that even Arab
governments had not invited him to visit, aside from Qatar.
The Fatah-Hamas friction boiled over into street fighting in
Gaza on Sunday and Monday, leaving 10 Palestinians dead
and more than 100 wounded in some of the worst internal
fighting in recent years. The violence has subsided, but the
tension remains.
Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
12) New Orleans Population Is Reduced Nearly 60%
By ADAM NOSSITER
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/us/07population.html?ref=us
NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 6 — The city’s population has dropped by nearly
60 percent since Hurricane Katrina, far more sharply than recent
optimistic estimates had suggested, according to an authoritative
post-storm survey released this week.
The population of New Orleans is now only 187,525, well under
half the pre-storm population of 454,863, according to the survey,
commissioned by several state agencies. The United States Census
Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised
those who carried out the door-to-door population count this summer.
“We actually knocked on doors and asked how many people
lived there,” said Dr. Alden Henderson of the centers. About
490 households were surveyed, and researchers went to more
than 1,100 dwellings, he said.
Mayor C. Ray Nagin has suggested that about half of New
Orleans’s former residents had returned, basing his projections
partly on utility users. But the new numbers indicate that
repopulation will take awhile to reach that level.
“The recovery is going to be slower than we anticipated,”
said David Bowman, an official with the Louisiana Recovery
Authority, which helped commission the survey. “It’s going
to take time to get the housing stock back online.”
The margin of error for the survey was relatively high, plus
or minus 12 percentage points.
The new figures also suggest that many more whites than
blacks have returned to New Orleans. The white and black
populations here are now separated by less than three
percentage points, according to the survey — a gap much
smaller than previously thought, and far less than the pre-
hurricane divide, when New Orleans was 67 percent black.
Whites now make up 44 percent of the population and blacks
46 percent, according to the new survey.
For months, neighborhood activists and housing advocates
have suggested that the city’s African-American population
has had a difficult time re-establishing itself. Much of the rental
housing was destroyed by the storm, rents have risen significantly
and federal housing aid has barely begun to flow. The new
numbers appear to bear out these concerns. They also suggest
that the relatively high black vote in last spring’s city elections
— as much as 57 percent of the electorate — was elevated
by citizens making the trip specifically to vote.
Still, officials expect these population figures to go up, eventually.
More than 11,000 people from New Orleans have applied for
federal rebuilding aid through the state’s Road Home program.
Some 80,000 housing units were destroyed in Orleans Parish
alone, and their reconstruction has hardly begun.
The new population count has taken analysts here somewhat
aback.
“The conventional wisdom was higher,” said Richard Campanella,
a Tulane University geographer. “It’s a little bit of a disappointment.
I don’t question the numbers, that’s for sure. This is the most
authoritative survey yet.”
Though officials acknowledged the new survey might not fully
account for all of the city’s daytime population — many are still
commuting in to work on their houses — they emphasized that
it was likely to be far more reliable than previous efforts, which
relied on measures like school enrollment and electricity use.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
13) After 21 Years, DNA Testing Sets Man Free in Rape Case
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/nyregion/07rape.html
If not for a chance inventory of DNA samples gathering dust
in a Connecticut warehouse, Scott Fappiano might still be lifting
weights in prison.
But after the samples were discovered by his lawyers last year,
Mr. Fappiano finally had the evidence he had sought for half
of his life. Yesterday, a State Supreme Court judge vacated his
conviction for the 1983 rape of a Brooklyn woman, after the
tests showed he had not committed the crime for which he
spent more than two decades in prison.
Several hours after the judge’s ruling, Mr. Fappiano shuffled
out a steel door into the hallway of a Brooklyn courthouse,
clutching a brown paper bag of personal items in one hand
along with every relative within arm’s length with the other.
“I just kept waiting,” said Mr. Fappiano, 44, stuffing his hands
into the pockets of his gray sweat pants as his mother,
a brother and several cousins looked on. “I’m just happy
that it’s over.”
His family and lawyers were less forgiving, their elation
warring with anger and frustration as they mulled the long
path that Mr. Fappiano traveled between conviction
and redemption, with 21 years of it in prison.
“The only thing I feel is that my son was kidnapped,”
said Rose Fappiano, his 69-year-old mother. “I couldn’t
believe this day had come.”
Mr. Fappiano was represented by lawyers from the Innocence
Project, a nonprofit legal clinic that works to exonerate
the wrongfully convicted through DNA testing. He was
the fourth person in the last year in New York State
to be exonerated by testing arranged by the project’s
lawyers, who yesterday called for a full-scale reform
of the city’s procedures for storing evidence.
“It is no small miracle that Scott is here today,” said Nina
Morrison, his Innocence Project lawyer. “Had Scott’s case
depended on the evidence storage and collection inventory
procedures of the New York City Police Department,
he would still be in prison today.”
In a statement, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s
deputy commissioner for public information, said that the
department had requested proposals for a more advanced
evidence tracking system to replace the current one. “The
advanced system will be used, in part, to improve retrieval
of old evidence, which has sometimes proven difficult
considering the extraordinary volume and the lack
of an automated system in the 1980’s and 1990’s,”
he said.
In a separate statement, the Brooklyn district attorney,
Charles J. Hynes, called Mr. Fappiano’s imprisonment
a “tragedy.” Mr. Hynes also said that while Mr. Fappiano
was convicted long before his tenure as district attorney,
his office “conducted extensive investigations into this
case and moved immediately to have him released” once
the new DNA tests were performed.
The Brooklyn woman, who was not named in court documents,
was raped several times in different rooms of her and her
husband’s house in December 1983. Her husband, a police
officer, had been tied up by the rapist in the couple’s
bedroom with a telephone cord. The rapist had broken
into the house and carried a gun, court documents said.
The woman identified Mr. Fappiano as her rapist while f
lipping through police photographs of men who matched
the general description of her assailant, and later picked
him out of a lineup, though he was five inches shorter
than the man she said had attacked her and had shorter hair.
But the woman’s husband did not identify Mr. Fappiano out
of the lineup. Though investigators retrieved nearly a dozen
pieces of physical evidence of the crime — including
cigarettes the rapist had smoked, vaginal swabs from
a rape kit and semen stains on a towel and on a pair
of sweat pants the victim put on after the attack —
blood tests failed to link any of it to Mr. Fappiano.
A jury deadlocked in his first trial, before a second jury
convicted him in 1985, with a sentence of up to 50 years
in prison.
“Going to jail for rape is hard,” Mr. Fappiano said yesterday,
recalling a prison pecking order in which only pedophiles
rated less respect than rapists. “Going to jail for rape when
a police officer’s wife is involved is really hard.”
He spent four years in prison before he first requested
DNA testing of the physical evidence in the case, after
reading about the process in a newspaper in 1989.
A judge agreed to send the victim’s sweat pants to Lifecodes,
a DNA laboratory, now defunct, for testing. But the technology
at the time was not sophisticated enough to produce
a DNA profile from the sample, and Mr. Fappiano remained
in prison.
In 2002, the Innocence Project agreed to represent
Mr. Fappiano, who hoped that more advanced DNA
testing would exonerate him. The Brooklyn district
attorney’s office agreed to help.
But after a yearlong search that covered the city agencies
that had had custody of the original physical evidence, the
officials could not find any of it. The district attorney’s office
did not have it. It was not in police storage at Pearson Place
in Queens. The sweat pants, the cigarette butts, the rape kit
— all the evidence seemed to have disappeared. Worse for
Mr. Fappiano, the paper trail appeared to end in 1985.
“No one could find the evidence,” Ms. Morrison said, “but
more troublingly, no one knows what happened to it.”
So Mr. Fappiano waited. When the parole board offered
to consider reducing his sentence in exchange for
an admission of guilt, he declined.
“I never gave up hope that I would come home,” he said
yesterday. “But I didn’t want to come home until I could
prove I was innocent.”
Lifecodes was later acquired by a Orchid Cellmark, a testing
laboratory based in Maryland and Texas, which also inherited
the Lifecodes testing materials from the 1980’s and 90’s.
The materials were stored in a warehouse in Connecticut
until last summer.
In August, an official at Orchid Cellmark contacted
Ms. Morrison to tell her that an inventory of those materials
had turned up the two test tubes with Mr. Fappiano’s case
number on it. They contained DNA material drawn from
the sweat pants, which was retested by the city medical
examiner this summer, along with a new DNA sample
from Mr. Fappiano. Last month, prosecutors informed
Mr. Fappiano that he had been conclusively ruled out
as the source of the samples.
He appeared briefly in court yesterday, near lunchtime,
standing before Justice L. Priscilla Hall as she considered
a motion for his release. When it was granted, his mother
stood and wept.
“Scott, we made it!” she cried.
But not quite. The wheels of justice turned no quicker for
Mr. Fappiano after his innocence was confirmed than they
had when his innocence was in doubt. It took four hours
for the requisite state and city officials to sign off on his
release, and it was not until late in the afternoon that he
emerged from custody, in good spirits and itching for
Italian food.
“It’s the easiest thing in the world to get into jail,” he said,
“and the hardest thing in the world to get out.”
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
14) An Economic War
The Truth About the "Embargo" on Cuba
By RICARDO ALARCÓN
"To bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government"
State Department, April 6, 1960
October 5, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/alarcon10052006.html
A few weeks from now, the UN General Assembly will pass, with
practical unanimity, a new resolution, the number 15, condemning
the blockade on Cuba, which Washington tries to describe as barely
an "embargo". The United States Government will try to justify
its policy once again without success. They have been doing this
for almost half a century now, concealing the truth behind their
fabrications and lies.
The truth is, however, contained in documents that were kept
secret by Washington until 1991. More than an embargo or blockade,
it is in fact an act of ¨economic warfare¨, as the then secretary of
state, Christian Herter, said in 1959. An economic warfare that
began with the triumph of the Revolution in January of 1959
and it is still in force today, a war which has always had the
same genocidal purpose: to bring about hunger, misery and
desperation among the people of Cuba.
Dictator Fulgencio Batista and his main accomplices plundered
the Republic's Treasury and upon fleeing Cuba in January
of that year they took with them more than 424 million dollars
which came to rest in the United States and form the economic
basis of a mafia often hailed by the US press as ¨successful
businessmen¨ of Miami. For Cuba the situation was critical
and Washington knew it. The Department of State described
it as such, saying in February 1959 that:
"the serious threat to the stability of the Cuba peso which
results from the fact that following the departure of the
Batista administration it was determined that the currency
reserve of the country is depleted", something which, "would
tax the governing abilities of any of the best leaders".
The Central Bank of Cuba sent a team of experts to Washington
to seek a modest loan that would alleviate such a crisis.
The issue was analysed by the National Security Council
on February 12, 1959. The decision was unequivocal: they
would listen to the Cubans but offer them nothing at all.
They didn't grant any kind of loan. They didn't even promise
to look into the matter. Needless to say, not one cent
of the money stolen from the Cuban people was ever returned.
The dispossession of Cuban bank reserves, which constitutes
a blatant act of economic aggression, took place long before
any revolutionary measure was adopted on the Island (the
first being the Law of Agrarian reform, passed on May 17
of that year).
On March 26, 1959, the National Security Council also
discussed the Cuba situation. At this meeting CIA's director,
Allen Dulles, said that: "it was quite possible that the
US Congress would do something which would affect
the sale of Cuban sugar in the US". Depriving Cuba
of its main source of income, sugar exports to the US
market, would become a recurrent theme of Washington's
secret meetings before, long before, relationships with
the Soviet Union were re-established and before socialism
was proclaimed to be Revolution's goal. They did that
when sugar was still being grown on large landed estates
and processed in factories -many of which were US owned-
that had not been expropriated and were still in the hands
of the Island's oligarchy and foreign companies.
US Government officials were aware of the consequences
of such action. A report from the Department of State
acknowledged that: "If Cuba were deprived of its quota
privilege, the sugar industry would promptly suffer an
abrupt decline, causing widespread further unemployment.
The large numbers of people those forced out of work
would begin to go hungry".
But they weren't just talking about sugar: "if we were
to cut the Cubans off from their fuel supply, the effect
would be devastating on them within a month or six weeks".
Nobody in Washington claimed to have been deceived.
They knew that the actions taken against the Revolution
would cause pain and suffering to all the Cuban people.
They did it with premeditation and full knowledge of the
effect, converting the act of genocide into a malicious
political instrument. An analysis from this same Department,
dated April 6, 1960 and approved with the signature
of Assistant Secretary, Roy Rubottom, offers us explicit
proof of this policy.
In this analysis it is flatly affirmed that:
"The majority of Cubans support CastroThe only foreseeable
means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment
and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction
and hardship it follows that every possible means should
be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life
of Cuba it should be the result of a positive decision
which would call forth a line of action while as adroit
and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest
inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba,
to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about
hunger, desperation and overthrow of government".
Note that they acknowledged they should act in
a manner "as adroit and inconspicuous as possible",
something that fits with a criminal behaviour, and not
just any crime, but rather one that has been particularly
condemned by humankind: the crime of genocide
clearly defined by the Geneva Convention of 1948
as any attempt to cause total or partial damage
to any human group. What is this if it isn't precisely
that: an attempt at ¨bringing about hunger
and desperation¨ among all Cubans?
It is probably the most prolonged act of genocide
in history. It began before the majority of Cubans
alive today were born, meaning that they have spent
their entire lives under the blockade.
Soon it will be condemned again by humankind
as a whole. Once again the US administration will
reveal its arrogance and ignore the demand being
made worldwide. When will it end?
NB: All quotes are from the official documents compiled
in the book published by the Department of State: Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1958-1960 Volume VI Cuba,
United States Goverment Printing Office, Washington, 1991.
Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada is Cuba's Vice President
and President of its National Assembly.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
15) Middle-class families in worse shape than ever, study finds
Typical families have not stashed enough money; struggling
to pay for home, insurance, and education according
to Center for American Progress.
September 28 2006: 4:41 PM EDT
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/28/news/economy/middle_class.reut/index.htm?postversion=2006092816
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The typical double-income family
is worse off financially than ever, a study released Thursday said,
warning that few Americans have saved enough to brace
for financial setbacks.
Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health
insurance, transportation and their children's college with wages
that have not kept pace with higher prices, according to the study
by a think tank headed by a former top aide to President Bill Clinton.
The middle class's financial condition has been a key issue ahead
of the November elections, as Democrats warn that this group
is fast losing economic ground amid skyrocketing prices and
tax cuts that offer them little benefit.
"In our estimates, it's becoming harder for families to afford what
we consider a typical middle-class lifestyle," said economist
Christian Weller of the Center for American Progress, the political
think tank headed by John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff.
Weller cautioned that while Americans are taking on more debt
to cover higher costs, wages have not kept pace.
The majority of Americans have not socked away enough money
to brace for financial setbacks such as a job loss or a medical
emergency.
According to the study, less than a third of all American families
have accumulated income equaling three months of their wages.
The trend is particularly pronounced among the 60 percent
income distribution that makes up the middle class: those
with dual incomes earning from $18,500 to $88,030 a year.
From 2001 to 2004, the proportion of middle-class families
that has saved three months' worth of income dropped to 18.3
percent from 28.8 percent, the study said.
Higher prices for a range of things - including health care,
energy, transportation, food and education - have put Americans
in this position as corporate profits have risen, the study said.
It said, that five years into the current economic recovery,
average job growth is one-fifth that of previous business cycles
and wages are flat when inflation is factored into the equation.
To maintain day-to-day consumption, families have taken on
a record amount of debt, equal to 126.4 percent of disposable
income in the first quarter of 2006, according to the study.
Commenting on the study, SEIU Labor Union President Andy
Stern said, "Of the total amount of our economy and income,
we have the greatest share going to profits in modern history
and the least amount going to wages in modern history."
"For most working Americans, things are far worse than any time
certainly in recent history and at a time of an incredibly growing
economy." said Stern, whose union represents 1.1 million health
care workers.
Health care industry leader Abbott Laboratories Inc. (Charts),
Johnson & Johnson (Charts), and Guidant Corp. (Charts) edged
higher late Thurday in New York.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
16) Protecting a Freedom to Insult
New York Times Editorial
October 9, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/opinion/09mon1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
President Bush has described today’s Iraq as a “young democracy.”
He even boasted at one point that the advance of democratic
institutions in Iraq is “setting an example” that others in the area
would be “wise to follow.” But when it comes to one of the most
basic tenets of democracy — freedom of speech and the press —
Iraq is not setting an example that even the youngest of democracies
would be wise to follow.
New laws in Iraq criminalize speech that ridicules the government
or its officials, and any journalist who “publicly insults” the government
or public officials can be subject to up to seven years in prison. Some
of the language is resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein’s
own penal code. It is hard enough for journalists to operate on
the ever-expanding battlefields of Iraq. That is true for foreign
journalists, who often have all the gear and protections of powerful
outside media. But it is even harder for Iraqi journalists, who now
face not only the dangers on the street but the threat of defamation
laws as well.
More than 130 journalists or other employees of news outlets
have been killed in this war, most of them Iraqis. Some died
accidentally, of course. But too many working journalists have
clearly been targeted, some even brutally tortured to death,
precisely because of what they were publishing. On one day
last August, a newspaper editor and a prominent columnist
were both shot to death by gunmen in different sections
of Baghdad.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has been tracking an
increasing number of journalists whose critical voices are
being muted or silenced in other ways. In the last year, about
a dozen Iraqi journalists have been formally accused of offending
public officials — a charge that can bring a fine or prison term
or both. In one case, a high school teacher was arrested after
he wrote in a small paper that the two party leaders in his
area were acting like pharaohs.
Other journalists were arrested for writing about a top official’s
dispute over a telephone bill. A woman reporter was charged
with defamation when she quoted a protester comparing
today’s police with those of Saddam Hussein.
Three journalists for a small newspaper in the southern
city of Kut could go to prison for 10 years and pay heavy
fines for a number of articles on local corruption. One article
compared Iraqi’s present judicial system with that of the
Hussein regime; another reprinted Washington Post charges
of corruption in the Iraqi police force.
After suffering under grinding repression, Iraqi journalists
began enjoying more freedom to report after Saddam Hussein
was ousted. Now the country is moving backward with efforts
to shut down television offices and jail journalists who criticize
public officials. Surely any crackdown on freedom of speech
and the press is not what the American people had in mind
when the Iraq invasion began.
Letter to the Editor of the New York Times
RE: Protecting a Freedom to Insult
By Bonnie Weinstein
Dear Editor:
Your October 9, 2006 editorial entitled, "Protecting
a Freedom to Insult," has been misnamed. Speaking
the truth about a brutal occupation is not a simple insult.
The people of Iraq—reporters included—are not allowed
to disagree with U.S. occupation! The punishment is death!
The 100-0 votes in favor of the Pentagon budget prove
that both Democrats and Republicans back this form
of "democracy."
How would the American people have voted on this budget
had we had the chance? Would we vote for using our wealth
and resources for a never-ending war on the world or for
solving basic human needs and the needs of the planet
we inhabit?
We need to institute true democracy—the right for the
overwhelming majority to rule in its own interests over
the interests of a tiny, despotic, war-mongering minority.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein
375 Winfield Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-824-8730
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
17) An Unknown City Erupts
Inter Press Service
Ali Al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail
http://dahrjamailiraq.com
*BAQUBA, Oct 9 (IPS) - The little known city of Baquba is emerging as
one of the hotbeds of resistance in Iraq, with clashes breaking out
every day.*
The violence in this city 50km northeast of Baghdad is also now
spreading elsewhere around Diyala province.
"The new waves of terror are now forming a variety that we predicted
long ago," a political leader in the city told IPS. "The Iraqi people
have complained to everyone, but naturally no one will do anything about
it. We know who is in charge and who is responsible and eventually who
is to be dammed. It is the government of the United States of America."
The local leader, speaking from his home in Baquba, said the situation
in the area was becoming dire in the face of the recent violence.
"The worst is the direct participation of the national security forces
in criminal acts, and the U.S. Army's sudden disappearance from the
scene as soon as those murderers show up," he said. Many have been
killed, and hundreds arrested in the province, he said.
The al-Tawafuq Sunni party has demanded a full investigation into the
violence in Baquba, and immediate release of the detained civilians. "We
are sure the arrests were made under sectarian flags and those detainees
are innocent farmers captured in their own plantations," the group said
in a statement.
An Iraqi army colonel told reporters in Diyala last week that that U.S.
troops had arrested 10 Iraqi soldiers suspected of sectarian killings.
There was no official U.S. comment.
Iraqi MP Muhammad al-Dayni appeared on al-Jazeera television to say that
Brigadier al-Kaabi, leader of the fifth division in charge of Diyala
province security, had led the arrest of 400 civilians. Hundreds of
houses had been looted, he said. Al-Dayni accused the parties in power
of supporting such acts, referring to the Shia parties in parliament.
The fighting has intensified now, but Baquba has long been a city of
fierce resistance to the occupation. Resistance groups have often
frustrated the efforts of the Multi-National Forces (MNF) and Iraqi
security forces to bring the city under their control.
Residents of Baquba told IPS that an Iraqi police brigadier-general had
used loudspeakers to announce dire warnings to residents.
"We were used to hearing our own government calling us terrorists,
Saddamists and Zarqawis before, but this man added new words to the
vocabulary like bastards and expressions of that sort," Abu Omar, a law
student at Diyala University told IPS. "Yet we were not surprised
because we know he was just repeating what his green zone masters have
always said."
Mazin al-Zaidy, a resident of Baquba, told IPS that the situation in
Diyala province could be the worst in Iraq because people of many
ethnicities live in the area. "The MNF and militias concentrate on
clearing it of the Arab Sunnis prior to any federalism plan."
Al-Zaidy said "there are Kurds, Shias and Sunnis who share the province,
and that has to be altered for the benefit of the first two groups."
Al-Zaidy was referring to the towns Mendily, Jalowlaa and surrounding
areas that are marked Kurdish on the Kurdistan map.
The influence of each group changes often. "Each day I wake up I don't
know who is in control of my city," said a religious sheikh in Baquba
who asked to be referred to as Sheikh Ahmed. "One day it is the
Americans, the next day a militia, the next day a resistance group."
Diyala province gets little media attention "because of the journalists'
fear of going in," said al-Zaidy.
The new violence has ripped apart old traditions, he said. "The people
of the province do not understand how these powers could turn it into a
sectarian city from a wonderful 1,400 years of community peace and
intermarriages."
The U.S. military has announced meanwhile that bomb attacks in Baghdad
have hit an all-time high. The number of U.S. soldiers killed is now
approaching the 3,000 mark.
The number of Iraqi casualties runs into hundreds of thousands.
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
18) What Happened That Night
A New Look at the Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal
By ROBERT WELLS
September 30 / October 1, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/wells09302006.html
In the early morning hours of December 9, 1981, a policeman
was shot and killed in the downtown red-light section of Philadelphia.
What at first may have seemed like just another sordid after-hours
tragedy quickly became a sensation, and then in the years since
has exfoliated as the corruption behind the murder has become
more and more exposed.
What was meant to appear like the gunning down of a hero
cop by a small-time street hood was actually a murder conspiracy
that started to unravel almost before it began. Very much like
the attempted murder of Officer Frank Serpico ten years earlier,
the killing of policeman Daniel Faulkner was set up by crooked
cops to silence an officer who they were sure was informing
to the FBI about police corruption. Other Philadelphia cops had
been assaulted or killed for the same reason both before and
after Daniel Faulk-ner's death.
The police and organized crime had arranged for two shooters
that night; while the first one attacked Faulkner the second was
to be shot and killed by cops at the scene, thereby writing the
next day's headlines, covering up the murder, and closing the case.
Except that when police tried to shoot the second shooter they
missed, only lightly grazing his shoulder. He went on to shoot
Faulkner too and both killers fled the scene.
But then, in an incredible stroke of luck for the police, a famous
journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, barged into the assassination, not
entirely by coincidence, so the cops shot him instead, and when
he didn't conveniently die they charged him with the murder.
Though this all took place at roughly four o'clock in the
morning there were actually a fair number of people about
in the after-hours Center City neighborhood, what with the
clubs, the cabdrivers, the prostitutes, the tow-truck drivers,
people going to work. Accounts of numerous witnesses
eventually testified to the picture of two killers dressed
in army fatigues shooting Daniel Faulkner and running away.
("Eventually" because at first witness testimony was distorted
by police intimidation.)
But what also underlines this story has been the concerted
effort over the years by all levels of Philadelphia law
enforcement to airbrush the real killers out of the picture
(and to eliminate them physically) in order to focus the
murder on Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Two assassins. Who were they?
The first was Kenneth "Poppi" Freeman, a graduate of the
University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance.
Freeman was a longtime friend of Mumia Abu-Jamal's family
and, with Mumia's younger brother Billy Cook, co-owner
of a streetcorner news-stand in the Center City area.
(Before he changed his name Mumia's name was Wesley
Cook.) Billy Cook says that in those days, after he and
Freeman closed up their newsstand, they would often
spend the rest of the night barhopping in the Center City.
Billy's brother Mumia was President of the Philadelphia
Black Journalists Association; he had been a reporter on
FM radio where he won a national first place news award
for his coverage of Philadelphia police brutality. After he
lost his radio job-some say be-cause of police pressure-
Mumia started driving a cab while reporting as a freelancer.
Billy said that from time to time, when Mumia was driving
his cab at night, the two brothers would arrange to meet
in the Center City in the early morning hours.
The car that Daniel Faulkner stopped at 3:45 on the
morning of December 9, just before he was killed, was
Billy Cook's Volkswagen. In Cook's affidavits describing
what happened he said he was driving around the Center
City with Kenneth Freeman in the passenger seat when he
was pulled over by the police car. As Cook tells it he got out
of the Volkswagen to talk to Faulkner and a fight erupted;
some people said they saw Cook throw the first punch,
Cook says he didn't, but in any case Faulkner apparently
hit Cook several times with his flashlight before telling
him to get back in the car and look for his registration.
While Officer Faulkner stood near the front of the Volkswagen
Billy Cook rummaged in the back seat for his papers. Cook
says he heard several shots and saw flashes out of the
corner of his eye. He got out to see what had happened.
Officer Faulkner was lying on the sidewalk and Kenneth
Freeman was gone.
Other police were there almost immediately. Mumia
Abu-Jamal who was parked nearby in his taxicab rushed
over to see what was happening with his brother. He was
shot by the police, then beaten at the scene, beaten again
at the hospital, charged with the murder of Officer Faulkner
and convicted and sentenced to death the following summer
in a trial that was a constitutional horror story.
Billy Cook went to court the following March on assault
charges for the fight with Officer Faulkner. Prosecutor Joseph
McGill introduced a witness, a Center City street-walker named
Cynthia White, who described the confrontation between Billy
Cook and the cop. When McGill asked Cynthia White who had
been present, she said four men: Billy Cook, the policeman,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a man who got out of the passenger
side of the Volkswagen. Several other witnesses reported
a man in a green jacket leaving the scene.
Only weeks later in June, the same prosecutor, Joseph McGill,
was trying Mumia Abu-Jamal for murder. McGill introduced the
same witness, Cynthia White, and asked her how many men had
been present at the scene. This time she said three: Mumia
Abu-Jamal, the dead policeman, and Mumia's brother Billy.
(At an evidentiary hearing years later another Center City
prostitute testified that she'd seen Cynthia White getting favors
from the police in jail and that Cynthia White said in jail that
she'd lied at Mumia's trial because of police intimidation.
Ms. White could not be found for the 1995 hearing and
may have died.)
Prosecutor McGill made a great deal out of the proposition
that only three men were present at the killing: pantomiming
the shooting in front of the jury he said that since the officer
was dead and Billy Cook was not a suspect, that meant Mumia
had to be the murderer.
This had a telling effect in convincing the jury to decide
Mumia was guilty.
In one of the stranger aspects of this already strange case,
the prosecution did not reveal to defense attorneys until 1995,
thirteen years after the trial, that police had found in Officer
Faulkner's possession that night a driver's permit that did
not belong to any of the men supposedly at the scene.
The permit belonged to a man named Arnold Howard,
another friend of the Cook family. Howard proved he was
in another part of town, far from the Center City, when
the murder took place. He had loaned his permit that
night to a friend.
Who was the friend?
Kenneth Freeman, Billy Cook's business partner.
Police took Howard and Freeman into custody, though
neither man was arrested. They put them both into lineups.
Cynthia White, the Center City streetwalker, twice picked
Kenneth Freeman out of the lineups as the man she'd seen
get out of the car at the site of the shooting. (This was
shortly after the killing took place.)
A number of years later Billy Cook swore out an affidavit
as to what had happened. He said he and "Poppi" Freeman
were driving around the Center City that night in the Volkswagen.
Freeman was wearing a green army jacket. Earlier that evening
his brother Mumia had come by the newsstand. After the shooting,
Cook said, Freeman had disappeared from the car. "Later Poppi
talked about a plan to kill Faulkner. He told me that he was armed
that night and participated in the shooting. He was connected
and knew all kinds of people."
Freeman was never arrested on suspicion of murder. He was
arrested two months later on a weapons charge when police
found him hiding in his house with a gun, a supply of ammunition,
and a stash of explosives.
Some three years later, on May 13, 1985, Philadelphia law
enforcement firebombed the headquarters of the MOVE
organization, a Black collective greatly detested by the police
that coincidentally, Mumia Abu-Jamal was close to. The fire destroyed
the commune, killing eleven people including five children, burning
out an entire West Philadelphia Black neighborhood.
In the shadow of the media extravaganza around the MOVE
fire, Kenneth Freeman was found dead that night, naked and
handcuffed in a vacant lot in Philadelphia. Some said he died
of a drug "hotshot." The official cause of death was listed as
"Natural Causes: Heart Attack," age 37.
Was there a second assassin?
In the mid-nineties a team of attorneys led by noted radical
lawyer Leonard Weinglass started working on the case, building
toward a new evidentiary hearing under Pennsylvania's Post-Conviction
Relief Act (PCRA). One of the attorneys, a New York lawyer named
Rachel Wolkenstein, kept hearing from a Center City street
criminal named Arnold Beverly that Mumia was innocent, that
Daniel Faulkner's murder had been a set-up by organized
crime and crooked cops. Beverly said he knew who the killer
was, but he wouldn't tell Wolkenstein.
Months of badgering by Rachel Wolkenstein stretched into years,
until finally, in the summer of 1999, Arnold Beverly swore out
an affidavit stating "I was hired with another guy to shoot and
kill Faulkner. . . . Jamal had nothing to do with the shooting."
Beverly said he had waited in a Speedline subway entrance until
Faulkner's car pulled up across the street. "I was not worried
about [other] police being there since I believed that since
I was hired by the mob to kill Faulkner, any police officers
on the scene would be there to help me."
When Beverly heard shots and saw the officer go down he
left the station to cross the street. "I heard another shot and
it must have grazed my shoulder. I grabbed at my shoulder
and got blood on my hand."
Beverly said he stood over the prostrate officer and shot
into his face. "Jamal was shot shortly after that by
a uniformed police officer who arrived on the scene.
"I left the area underground through the Speedline system
and by pre-arrangement met a police officer who assisted
me when I exited the Speedline underground about three
blocks away. A car was waiting for me and I left the
Center City area."
Maybe it was because of the bullet that nicked his shoulder,
or maybe he didn't like where the officers were going, but
when the car slowed he opened the door and rolled out.
His fear was not misplaced.
After Beverly confessed to attorney Wolkenstein in 1999,
Wolkenstein thought she saw a chance to get the story into
the media. Beverly, wisely, declined. But a radio host used
the story anyway and put out Beverly's name on the air.
Although the advice probably wasn't necessary, Wolkenstein
told Beverly to get out of town fast. He said later that as the
Crown Victorias were pulling up in front of his house, he was
exiting out the back. He left Philadelphia, left Pennsylvania,
and only returned once, briefly, two years later, to take one
of Mumia's new lawyers on a walk-through of the crime scene.
Aside from that he hasn't been near the state of Pennsylvania
in almost seven years.
Lead attorney Leonard Weinglass refused to use the Beverly
confession in Mumia's appeals, to the point that in 1999
Rachel Wolkenstein and another lawyer quit the legal team
in protest.
In 2001 Mumia fired the entire team including Weinglass and
replaced them with attorneys Marlene Kamish of Chicago,
Eliot Grossman of California, British barrister Nick Brown, and
J. Michael Farrell of Philadelphia. (He has since replaced them
with Robert Bryan of San Francisco.) The new team promptly
moved to have Arnold Beverly come into court to be questioned
and cross-examined about his confession. That was okay with
Beverly, but the D.A.'s office objected and the judge overruled
the motion: even though they had a third-party confession
in a capital murder case, Philadelphia law enforcement was
determined to suppress whatever Beverly might have to say
about the killing.
Before Beverly disappeared again, in case anything happened
to him down the line, the new lawyers had him repeat his
confession on videotape. Then he was gone.
Since then the seven-minute video of Beverly confessing
has been shown at meetings, conferences, conventions.
Sometimes people who see it claim they don't believe him,
that he doesn't look convincing. That, of course, is not the
point. The way to test the truth of what Beverly says is to
bring him into court, depose him, cross-examine him,
and investigate what he has to say.
The point is that Philadelphia law enforcement has blocked
that; the question is, what have they got to hide?
People don't want to believe that Beverly's telling the truth;
they don't want to believe that Mumia's innocent because
they don't want to face what it means if he is.
While casual viewers might choose to dismiss Arnold Beverly,
Philadelphia law enforcement and the Fraternal Order
of Police take him very seriously.
Beverly's Pennsylvania driver's license expired on his birthday
three summers ago. Several weeks later he went with a private
investigator to a motor vehicles office in a western state,
far from Pennsylvania, to apply for a new one. After looking
at his computer the clerk behind the window hesitated, and
then said, "I'm sorry, Sir, I'm not able to renew your driving
privilege at this time." He told Beverly it looked like he had
an outstanding warrant for a hit-and-run that had taken
place in Philadelphia three weeks earlier on his birthday.
Needless to say, Arnold Beverly had not been anywhere
near the state of Pennsylvania for years. But he knew the
Pennsylvania warrant was no mistake nor any kind of computer
glitch. He gathered up his papers and he and the man he was
with quickly left the DMV office, left the city, left the state.
(On the interstate net the bogus hit-and-run warrant has
since been replaced with a failure-to-appear warrant-
equally bogus.)
To hit this on the head: Police in the Philadelphia department
could have issued an interstate murder warrant for Arnold
Beverly-after all, he has confessed to assassinating a police
officer. But if they did they'd be admitting that Mumia Abu-Jamal
is innocent. So they used their access to law enforcement computer
systems so that they-or someone-could get their hands on
Arnold Beverly without opening up the question of who really
killed Daniel Faulkner and why.
In 1982 Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed and sent to Death Row for
a murder he didn't commit. A leading conservative legal
commentator, attorney Stuart Taylor, Jr., legal affairs editor
of The National Journal, has described his trial and sentencing as
"grotesquely unfair" and "clearly unconstitutional." Over the years,
following the lead of the Fraternal Order of Police, every level
of law enforcement from crooked cops in the station house
to the highest levels of American politics and government have
connived to grease Mumia Abu-Jamal toward execution rather
than see the spectacle of cops killing other cops to protect
corruption exposed to public view.
Robert Wells, a former Dispatch News Service investigative
reporter, is a longtime member of the Free Mumia movement.
Sources for this article include trial transcripts; the transcript
of the 1995 PRCA hearing; sworn affidavits of William Cook,
Arnold Beverly, Rachel Wolkenstein, and Mumia Abu-Jamal;
newspaper and other pub-lished accounts of the case;
and personal interviews.
Sidebars
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
Mumia Abu-Jamal became the Minister of Information of the
Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party when he was
fifteen years old. He was a Panther during the ferocious
repression by Philadelphia police under the notorious
racist, Chief Frank Rizzo.
After he left the Panthers and started a family Mumia began
working as a news reporter on FM radio. He was elected
President of the Philadelphia Black Journalists Association,
and won a Major Armstrong National First Place: News
Award, adminis-tered by the Columbia University Graduate
School of Journalism, for his coverage of police brutality
in the Black community. His coverage of community issues
earned him the name "The Voice of the Voiceless."
During his 25 years on Death Row, after being framed
for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman, Mumia finished
college and earned a Master's degree in History; he is currently
working toward a doctorate from California State University.
He has published five books: three on prison life, one on
the Black Panthers, and one on the history of Black religion
in America. Because of a court ruling, Prison Radio in San
Francisco is able to tape a short commentary from him each
week. Dozens of these commentaries, called "Live From
Death Row," have been aired on Pacifica and other small
radio stations and reprinted around the country.
In 1999 the Congressional Black Caucus expressed concern
that this case was a "serious miscarriage of justice," and
support for him has come from the European Parliament,
the African National Congress, Amnesty International,
and the city council of Paris, France, where Mumia has
been made an honorary citizen.
In this country dozens of writers, artists, union activists,
religious figures, scientists, and politicians have protested
the injustice of his case. He is supported by the National Black
Police Association, the National Lawyers Guild, and the National
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund has joined his appeal as
a Friend of the Court.
The federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals has certified
four of his issues (out of more than 29) for appeal, and
has "fast tracked" his case, which means there could
be some sort of final conclusion by the end of this
year or 2007.
THE PHILADELPHIA POLICE
In the years before and after Mumia Abu-Jamal was
arrested the Philadelphia Police Department was
one of the most notoriously brutal and corrupt
in the nation.
In 1979 the U.S. Justice Department went to court to take
the entire department into federal receivership. Mayor
Frank Rizzo (the former Police Commissioner) and
eighteen high-ranking commanders starting with the
current Commissioner were charged with promoting
systematic brutality in the department. The federal
lawsuit-the first such move against a local police
department in the history of the country-eventually
failed for lack of jurisdiction.
Federal investigations in the 1980s and '90s showed
that it was standard procedure in the Philadelphia Police
Department to obtain criminal convictions by bribing
or extorting false testimony from prostitutes. More than
fifty officers and commanders were arrested and convicted
and more than one hundred criminal cases had
to be thrown out, some for murder.
When Officer Daniel Faulkner was killed in 1981 three
simultaneous FBI investigations into the Philadelphia police
were taking place, one focused specifically on the Center
City division. When the indictments came down it was the
biggest police corruption case in the history of the nation
to that time. In the same year that Mumia was convicted
more than thirty policemen from the Center City division
went to prison, including a Deputy Commissioner, division
commanders, Captains, Inspectors, Lieutenants, Sergeants,
and rank-and-file officers. A third of these officers were
involved in Mumia's arrest and prosecution. The Inspector
who supervised Mumia's arrest was never called to testify
at the trial; the day after Mumia was convicted he resigned
from the department and was subsequently indicted and
convicted for corruption.
Both before and after Daniel Faulkner was murdered other
Philadelphia cops suspected of talking to the FBI were
attacked and some killed, in some cases by other cops.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
19) American Prison Camps Are on the Way
By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet
Posted on October 9, 2006, Printed on October 9, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/42458/
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of
detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush
administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone
noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also
U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."
Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens
to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their
majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans
rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.
Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of
"terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's
policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and
imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.
The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who
have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional
power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or
invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is
unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the
issue comes before it.
Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other
unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national
crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.
In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of
war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent
against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization
Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S.
because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.
The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and
deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the
United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S.
could have been expelled had France and America gone to war, but this
law was never used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation
of any non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S.
government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported
under it.
The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who
wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous and
malicious" with the intent to hold the government in "contempt or
disrepute." The Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress
criticism of the government in time of war. The Republicans objected
that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment, which had become
part of the Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively
against Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen
and newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.
Subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of
fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of
1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I,
the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World
War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).
During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate
the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in
widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who
had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed,
blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as
the FBI engaged in "red-baiting." One month after the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John
Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The
Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political
activists who protest government policies, and set forth an
ideological test for entry into the United States.
In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of
Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v. United
States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling
would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any
authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."
That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It
provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S.
citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists.
Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is
constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens
of thousands of undesirables.
In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis
Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in
insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without
understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned
Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."
We can expect Bush to continue to exploit 9/11 to strip us of more of
our liberties. Our constitutional right to dissent is in serious
jeopardy. Benjamin Franklin's prescient warning should give us pause:
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security,
deserve neither liberty or security."
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is
president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S.
representative to the executive committee of the American Association
of Jurists. Her new book, "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang
Has Defied the Law," will be published in 2007 by PoliPointPress.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/42458/
"Going to church no more makes you a Christian than sleeping in your
garage makes you a car.": Garrison Keiler
"...if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind,
someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who
cares about the welfare of the people- their health, their housing,
their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil
liberties.. if that is what they mean by a "liberal" then I am proud
to be a liberal. ": John F. Kennedy
NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security
Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice.
They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. You
have no recourse nor protection save to call for the impeachment of
the current President.
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
20) Mumia Abu-Jamal on Literacy, Liberation
and the Cuban Campaign of 1961
From: Catherine Murphy [mailto:catherine@theliteracyproject.org]
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 2:57 PM
One month ago, on September 8th, World Literacy Day was celebrated
for the 21st time. Three years ago, United Nations announced the
World Decade of Literacy (2003 to 2012) with the goal of reducing
global illiteracy by 50%. UNESCO estimates show 860 million illiterate
adults in the world today, two-thirds of who are women. Illiteracy
remains a persistent problem worldwide. Systematic exclusion,
privatization of education and deepening injustices makes work
toward full literacy look harder than ever.
Adult Illiteracy is often framed as a developing world issue, but
many developed nations have surprisingly low literacy rates --
most notably the USA. The most recent serious national study on
literacy, conducted in 2003, measured functional illiteracy in the
US at 22%. This means one in five US adults cannot fill out a job
application or a voting ballot, calling into question the idea and
possibility of democracy itself. Some communitites, states, and
regions have even higher rates. The Literacy Alliance of Greater
New Orleans found adult illiteracy up to 32% in the five parishes.
Some tell stories of families who could not claim FEMA benefits
following Hurricane Katrina because they could not read nor
fill out the forms.
Meanwhile, several undeveloped countries have taken great strides
to erradicate illiteracy. The most striking example is from the
island nation of Cuba. In 1961 over 100,000 young men and
women became the core of volunteer teachers who went into
rural mountains and urban shantytowns across the island,
teaching people often decades older how to hold a pencil
and write their names for the first time. Almost one million
people learned to read & write in less than 12 months.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the Cuban Literacy
Campaign.
Catherine Murphy speaks with journalist and visionary justice
activist Mumia Abu-Jamal on Literacy, Liberation and the
Cuban Campaign of 1961.
CM: Can you please start by talking about literacy as a social
justice issue -- as a social justice issue and a liberation issue?
MAJ: When you first wrote to me, I did some digging, and I found
some quotes from a book I had read many years ago, by a man
known as a liberation psychologist. His name is Ignacio Martín
Baró. He wrote a book called Writings for Literation Psychology.
He talked about the Salvadoran experience, and about how his
work in the liberation theology movement were trying to do was
to awaken critical consciousness among the peasantry and poor
people. The term he used was conscientización – conscientización
is the awakening of critical consciousness. Literacy is a part of that.
But what happens is that people are awakened to a new reality - they
are literally transfomed. That is the very essence of Revolution.
We think about Revolution in certain ways because of our history
and what we’ve been taught. But Revolution is always intensely
personal. It begins with the self. It begins with how that person
interacts with the society around. Literacy that teaches people their
history, progessive ideas, a way of challenging the society in which
they live… Ignacio Martin Baró said that literacy is really de-coding
because it teaches people who are poor and illiteracy how to
de-code the mechanisms of oppression that they´re living in
every day. How to question, how to develop a critical consciousness.
That is an important part of the Revolutionary process, no matter
where you are.
Of course, one cannot forget the lived example of Frederick Douglass,
who as a very young boy learned to read & write. And his experience,
what he found out, when his… shall we say “master” - and I hesitate
to use that word - found his wife teaching Frederick Douglass
to read, he gave her hell. He told her “you’ll spoil a nigger, don’t
you do anything like that” and forbade her. Frederick Douglass said
from that moment on, he learned an important lesson. For him and
for people of that time, and people subsequently of course, that was
a road to freedom. I think that is esentially and generally true. But
the problem isn’t whether one is literate - whether one can read
or write - but what one reads or writes. And in this culture,
it is possible to be literate - indeed to be considered educated -
but because you’ve been educated in an imperialist, backward
country, really, that you become a tool of neo imperialism of the
state. And the state uses various ways to subvert that tool by
misinforming, mis-educating people or teaching them the worst
lessons that people can learn: racism, sexism & looking down
on people from other cultures & other nations.
CM: The story of Frederick Douglass is very powerful in terms
of illustrating systematic exclusion from basic literacy. Could you
speak to the issue of exclusion from basic literacy as a tool
of oppression, and it's relation to the legacy of slavery in the US.
MAJ: What we see when we look around in this day and age are
city schools and public schools for the most part, and some charter
schools, that have failed miserably at the task of teaching kids
how to read and how to write. That isn’t an accident – there’s a
certain design. When I listen to a right wing and neo-fascist
or conservative radio show, and someone calls up, they won’t
use the words “public school”. They’ll say “government school”
and that is a subtle form of propaganda to attack the very notion
of public education - the right of every person to the fundamental
education about the world in which they live. Why is that that
America has some of the best higher education in the world,
and some of the worst primary education in the world? So that
the people who at the lowest levels and rungs of society -
because they can’t afford that commodity which is education -
and it is fast becoming a greater and greater commodity -
get the worst teachers, they get the worst schools.
I will never forget the imagery of Jonathan Kozol writing about
a school I believe in New Jersey and perhaps in New York -
with human waste running down the center of a hallway,
windows broken, with people not caring, frankly, about their
charges. This is an outrage – and it should be.
CM: What about the relation of illiteracy in the US
to mass incarceration?
MAJ: One of the greatest stories to come out of Black America in the
20th century was the story of Malcom X, who essentially taught
himself the fundamentals of reading. He could read, he was
a bright student, but in his autobiography, he´s told, when
he tells his cousel that he want to be a lawyer, she says,
“Be realistic. That’s not a realistic option for a n-i-g-g-e-r”.
And it crushed him, it crushed his young soul, but it wasn’t
until years later when he was in prison that he began reading
the dictionary from beginning to end, and studying words
& the roots of words, then studying ideas and then studying
philosophies – where he really educated himself.
What we have in the American Prison System today is a kind
of premium on ignorance. If there´s anything that works,
and the studies have shown this, it´s education. Why to cut
that from people and make it harder not easier shows that
people don’t really care about recidivism, They want people
stupid, that they want people to go out, re-offend and feed
the Prison Industrial Complex - and not to contribute
to their communities & the world at large.
CM: Let´s talk about models of hope. Cuba is one, but there
are also models in the US: Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights
Movement, the Panther Party as well. Can you talk about
some of that history?
MAJ: What we learned from all of those examples – Cuba,
the Black Panther Party, Freedom Schools, Liberation Schools –
is when people have an ideological motivation, if they are moved
& driven to not just teach teach, but when students hear the
message & it turns them on, then true learning happens! When people
are motivated, then they want to learn. Cuba certainly tapped into
that, the Party tapped into that, SNCC and Black Nationalist
organizations and other organizations tapped into that.
Education isn’t a one-way process – it’s multi-layered,
you see. It has to go both ways.
When I was reading the book about the Cuban Literacy Project,
there was a man named Juan Martinez. He seemed to be middle
-aged or an older man. He said “Until I learned how to read and
write, I never felt like I was truly Cuban.” It was a striking quote –
because everything is in there. He never felt like he was part
of the country until he understood what reading and writing
could do for him.
CM: Any other words on the Cuban campaign?
MAJ: They have done something that is absolutely remarkable.
I knew about it of course, but to read again about the campaign –
to read Kozol’s book Children of the Revolution and the other book
[In the Spirit of Wandering Teachers by Ocean Press], it made
me weep with admiration for their incredible, truly revolutionary
accomplishment. Amazing.
Catherine Murphy is the founder of The Literacy Project, a multi-
media oral history & documentation project on literacy in the Americas.
For more information, see www.theliteracyproject.org
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a renowned journalist and justice activist who
has been on death row in Pennsylvania since 1981. Mumia continues
to speak out. He has written several books, and his radio commentaries
and weekly columns are published around the world. His case is one
of the most important social justice struggles of our time.
For more information and updates on Mumia´s legal case and the
organizing to get him a new trial, see: www.freemumia.org
The audio track of this interview, along with Mumia´s radio
commentaries, can be found at www.prisonradio.org
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
LINKS ONLY
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
The Real Reasons Behind the So-called
‘War on Terrorism’
By Nat Weinstein
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/
School Financing Case Plays Out in Court, and in Classrooms
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
October 10, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/nyregion/10equity.html?ref=nyregion
Know Your Rights (All Three of 'Em)
The Democrats and the War on Civil Liberties
By JOSHUA FRANK
October 10, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.com/frank10102006.html
That Fish You Caught Was in Pain
Research challenges the myth among anglers that fish
can't feel pain from barbed hooks.
By Victoria Braithwaite
VICTORIA BRAITHWAITE, a behavioral biologist at Edinburgh
University, is on sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced
Study in Berlin.
October 8, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-braithwaite8oct08,0,7423086.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
Army and Other Ground Forces Meet ’06 Recruiting Goals
By THOM SHANKER
October 10, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/us/10recruit.html
Gone for Decades, Jaguars Steal Back to the Southwest
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
October 10, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/science/10jaguar.html?8dpc
In God’s Name
As Religious Programs Expand, Disputes Rise Over Tax Breaks
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
October 10, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/business/10religious.html?hp&ex=1160539200&en=498771bc7b8314bc&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Nuclear Weapons Around the World including North Korea
Nuclear Weapons Test.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,,1891085,00.html
E. Coli Worry Spreads to Lettuce; California Grower Issues Recall
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 9, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/us/09lettuce.html
After Tsunami, Intentions to Build but No Road Yet
By JANE PERLEZ
October 9, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/asia/09indo.html?ref=world
Where Faith Abides, Employees Have Few Rights
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
October 9, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/business/09religious.html?ref=business
Bush Urges Quick Action on North Korea
By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN O’NEIL
October 9, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/asia/09cnd-nuke.html?hp&ex=1160452800&en=e294c996e3f77f14&ei=5094&partner=homepage
No court-martial for Army deserter
The Courier-Journal
Army Spc. Darrell Anderson, who drew wide attention for deserting
the Army rather than face a possible second tour in Iraq, was
released Friday from Fort Knox and is expected to be discharged
without a court-martial, his lawyer said.
“It’s really great he doesn’t have to face a court-martial,” said
his attorney, Jim Fennerty of Chicago. “I’m all excited,
he’s excited.”
Fennerty said Anderson expected to receive papers within
30 days formally giving him a less-than-honorable discharge.
Anderson, 24, turned himself in at Fort Knox on Tuesday,
almost two years after fleeing to Canada. He said he could
not return to a war he believes is immoral.
“I am proud to be a resister of this war,” Anderson said
on Tuesday. He served in the 1st Armored Division and
received a Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq.
He said he has been suffering from nightmares and
other post-traumatic stress.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061006/NEWS01/61006031/1008
In New York Immigration Court, Asylum Roulette
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Tears streaked Meizi Liu’s face in 2003 as she told
an immigration judge in New York of being forcibly
sterilized in China. The judge, Jeffrey S. Chase, had
won awards as a human rights advocate before his
appointment to the bench in 1995. But now he had
1,000 pending cases, and he had heard it all before.
He insisted that she was lying, ridiculed her story
and, when she would not recant, denied her
petition for asylum.
October 8, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/nyregion/08immigration.html?hp&ex=1160366400&en=c7e37797967e85fc&ei=5094&partner=homepage
FOCUS | Lack of Balance, Diversity, Public at PBS NewsHour
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100806Y.shtml
FOCUS | Experts Warn of an Accidental Atomic War
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100706X.shtml
Robert Fisk: The Age of Terror - a landmark report
With chaos stretching from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean,
we have never lived in a more dangerous time. Over the next
15 pages and 7,000 words, our man in the Middle East looks
back over a lifetime of covering war and death, and lays out
a bleak future for all of us - one that even those living in the
comfort of the Home Counties cannot escape
Published: 08 October 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1814843.ece
Bombings as US Casualties Mount as Iraq has Worst Week Yet
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1005-02.htm
Deserter's Surrender Highlights War's Emotional Trauma
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1005-05.htm
Inadequate Equipment, Health Problems Face Iraq,
Afghanistan Veterans: Poll
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1005-01.htm
Bush Signings Called Effort to Expand Power
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1005-09.htm
The New Trade in Auto Parts
Made in (DeUnionized) America
By TIFFANY TEN EYCK and MARK BRENNER
Industry experts from Wall Street to Washington are busy writing
the obituary of the U.S. auto industry--but someone needs to tell
the Motor City. In sharp contrast to the current wave of buyouts
at Ford, General Motors, and Delphi, new auto parts plants continue
to spring up across Southeast Michigan.
Conditions in these plants-mostly non-union-bear little
resemblance to those at the Big Three automakers.
October 6, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/teneyck10062006.html
Weapons Experts: Pentagon Project Could Spark Atomic War
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1006-01.htm
Marine Scientists Report Massive "Dead Zones"
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1006-04.htm
FOCUS | Report: Thousands Wrongly on Terror List
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100706Z.shtml
Dahr Jamail | The US Occupation of Iraq: Casualties Not Counted
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100506J.shtml
Crisis Escalates as Marines Land in Oaxaca
Governor's Departure Now a National Demand, as Political
Figures Pledge to Travel to the State as "Human Shields"
in the Event of an Attack
By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
October 5, 2006
http://narconews.com/Issue43/article2125.html
Corpsman Who Failed to Halt Killing of Iraqi Receives Prison Sentence
By CAROLYN MARSHALL
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/us/07abuse.html
French Farm Town Is Fertile Ground for National Front
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/world/europe/07france.html?ref=world
Faith and War
For Recruiter, Saying ‘Go Army’ Is a Hard Job
[Recruiting Muslims!...bw]
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
October 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/us/07recruit.html?hp&ex=1160280000&en=d70ac8fda571df6d&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Brooklyn: Fines Upheld Against Unions
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
A state appellate court has upheld a lower court’s decision to impose
fines against three union locals involved in last year’s transit strike,
lawyers for the city said yesterday. The Appellate Division for the
Second Judicial Department in Brooklyn found that State Supreme
Court Justice Theodore Jones correctly imposed the fines after
deciding that the Taylor Law, which forbids public workers from
striking, was violated by the unions — Local 100 of the Transport
Workers Union of America, representing most city transit workers,
and Locals 726 and 1056 of the Amalgamated Transit Union,
whose members operate buses in Queens and Staten Island.
The judge fined Local 100 $2.5 million, Local 726 $125,000
and Local 1056 $187,500. A spokesman for Local 100 said his
union planned to appeal. A spokesman for Local 726 declined
to comment yesterday. Officials at Local 1056 could not be reached.
October 6, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/nyregion/06mbrfs-002.html
Gaza Strip: Israeli Strike Kills 2 Brothers
By GREG MYRE
An Israeli military strike killed two Palestinian brothers,
16 and 13, as they approached a rocket launcher near
northern Beit Hanun. The military said the two were
there to collect the launcher, used to fire five rockets
into southern Israel in recent days. Medical workers
at Kamal Adwan Hospital said it was not clear whether
the boys rode their bike toward the launcher to retrieve
it or out of curiosity.
September 30, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/world/middleeast/30briefs-005.html
Colorado: Missing Marine
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A marine staged his own disappearance because he feared
harm at the hands of members of his own unit, some
of whom face murder charges in the death of a civilian
in Iraq, a friend who acknowledges aiding in the ruse told
a newspaper. The marine, Lance Cpl. Lance Hering, 21,
“thought if he would have gone back to Camp Pendleton
they would have killed him,” the friend, Steve Powers, told
The Daily Camera of Boulder. “He was terrified.” Corporal
Hering has been missing since late August, when Mr. Powers
reported that he had apparently wandered away after falling
while rock climbing near Boulder. After a huge manhunt,
Mr. Powers told the authorities that he had lied; he has been
charged with misdemeanor false reporting.
October 6, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06brfs-002.html
109th U.S. Congress (2005-2006)
H.R. 5295: Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006
The following summary is provided by the Congressional Research
Service, which is a government entity that serves Congress
and is run by the Library of Congress.
5/4/2006--Introduced.
Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006 - Requires states, local
educational agencies, and school districts to deem a search of any
minor student on public school grounds to be reasonable and
permissible if conducted by a full-time teacher or school official,
acting on any colorable suspicion based on professional experience
and judgment, to ensure that the school remain free of all weapons,
dangerous materials, or illegal narcotics.
Denies Safe Schools and Citizenship Education funds, provided
under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965,
to states, local educational agencies, and school districts that
fail to deem such searches reasonable and permissible.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=summary&bill=h109-5295
Global Warming on the Forest Floor
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/science/03observ.html
New Planets Astound Astronomers in Speed and Distance
By DENNIS OVERBYE
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/science/space/05planet.html?ref=science
Poor U.S. Scores in Health Care Don’t Measure Nobels and Innovation
By TYLER COWEN
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/business/05scene.html
Apple Says Jobs Knew of Options
By LAURIE J. FLYNN
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/technology/05options.html?ref=business
Hauppauge, L.I.: New Immigration Law
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, signed into law yesterday
a measure requiring companies with government contracts to verify
that their employees are in the United States legally. Last month,
the County Legislature passed the proposal by a 15-to-3 vote.
Opponents fear that the measure could exacerbate tensions
in a region that has seen an influx of day laborers from abroad.
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/nyregion/05mbrfs-008.html
Adults on Welfare With H.I.V. or AIDS Hit With Rent Increase
By SEWELL CHAN
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/nyregion/05aids.html
California: Governor Proclaims Prison Crowding Emergency
By CAROLYN MARSHALL
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an emergency proclamation
on prison overcrowding, the first legal step required before the
authorities can contract with out-of-state prisons to house an
overflow of state inmates. The proclamation states that all
33 state prisons are at capacity or above, with 29 so crowded
that the conditions pose “substantial safety risks.” Risks cited
include infection, potential harm to prison workers and the
threat of excessive violence. The California Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation has estimated that state
facilities will run out of beds as early as January 2007.
The emergency act would allow prison authorities to sign
three- to five-year housing contracts with out-of-state prisons.
[This is a horrible plan. It will make it impossible for prisoners
to get visitors. With the knowledge that most are in jail for
drug offenses--something they should be getting treatment
for and are not--this is truly cruel and unusual punishment...bw]
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/us/05brfs-001.html
Judges Zero In on Treatment of a Detainee
By NINA BERNSTEIN
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/nyregion/05immigrant.html
U.S. Opens Criminal Inquiry in Spinach Scare
By GARDINER HARRIS and LIBBY SANDER
October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/us/05spinach.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin
Sean Penn | The Arrogant, the Misguided, and the Cowards
Sean Penn writes: "We the people of the United States have
a unique opportunity. We can show each other and the world
that what the Bush administration claims is their mission
is not ours. And, by leading our country as a citizenry and
demanding of our government an immediate end to our own
military and profit investments in Iraq, display for the entire
world that democracy is a government of the people."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100406A.shtml
Kokomo Operations: Miller and Jordan Dialogue
(Steve Miller, Delphi CEO and Todd Jordan, Future of the
Union, Soldiers Of Solidarity have e-mail dialogue about the buyouts.)
http://futureoftheunion.com/?p=3290
Border Fence Could Spell Environmental Disaster
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1003-08.htm
Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of U.S.
By ERIC LIPTON
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/us/04monitor.html?ref=us
A Science Show Courts ‘Blue-Collar Intellectuals’
By FELICIA R. LEE
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/arts/television/03tyso.html
Fish Farms Also Harbor Deadly Lice
By CORNELIA DEAN
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/science/03lice.html
In the Jungles of Brooklyn, Nothing Can Stop Them
[I couldn't help sending this link. I'm from Brooklyn. I'm so glad
to hear that the fireflies are still there....bw]
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/science/03essa.html?ref=science
Commentary
Numbers Are Male, Said Pythagoras, and the Idea Persists
By MARGARET WERTHEIM
When I was a physics major in the late 1970’s, my very few fellow
female students and I had high hopes that women would soon
stand equal with men in science. But progress has proved slower
than many of us imagined. A report last month by the National
Academy of Sciences documents widespread bias against women
in science and engineering and recommends a sweeping overhaul
of our institutions.
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/science/03comm.html?ref=science
U.S. Steps Back on Drug Confiscations
By BLOOMBERG
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (Bloomberg News) — The Department of
Homeland Security agreed to stop confiscating prescription
drugs mailed to American consumers from Canadian pharmacies,
Senator Bill Nelson said Tuesday.
Mr. Nelson, a Florida Democrat, had asked the Senate Committee
on Homeland Security and Government Affairs in June to investigate
the seizing of prescription drugs by Customs and Border Protection
agents. The drugs had been bought by Americans.
The decision to stop the confiscations, which became effective
Monday, means that the Food and Drug Administration resumes
the job of overseeing drug imports from Canada.
Mr. Nelson still wants a Congressional investigation “to seek
answers on why the administration started the medicine seizures
in the first place,” his health counsel, Jon Cooper, said Tuesday
in an interview.
The senator raised the issue after being contacted by Lee and
Jean Edes of Mount Dora, Fla., who discovered that drugs they
were ordering from Canada were vanishing in the mail, having
been seized by federal agents.
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/health/index.html
Daimler and Chery of China Planning Subcompact for U.S.
By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG, Oct. 3 — DaimlerChrysler has reached a broad
understanding with Chery Automobile of China to set up
a joint venture to export cars to the United States for the
first time, according to two auto industry managers.
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/business/worldbusiness/04car.html
Bronx: Mayor Criticizes Maker of Cocaine Drink
By SEWELL CHAN
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has joined a chorus of elected
officials who have criticized the manufacturer of a new, heavily
caffeinated soft drink called Cocaine. “The bottlers ought
to have their heads examined,” the mayor said yesterday.
“Given we have a drug problem, particularly among kids,
to try to glorify something that is so destructive just is an
outrage.” James T. Kirby, the owner of Redux Beverages L.L.C.,
which makes the beverage, has said that he did not advocate
drug use but that “controversy sells.”
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/nyregion/04mbrfs-005.html
Manhattan: Ruling for Aid to Mentally Ill Inmates
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
An appellate court ruled yesterday that New York City must help
mentally ill inmates find psychiatric and other services when it
releases them from jail wards in city hospitals. Three years ago,
in settling a lawsuit, the city agreed that when it released mentally
ill prisoners from jails, it would help arrange their medical care,
psychotherapy, insurance and housing, rather than leaving them
to fend for themselves. But the city argued that the settlement
did not apply to prisoners discharged from city hospitals. The
plaintiffs reopened the case, and a State Supreme Court judge
ruled that the city’s policy violated the settlement. Yesterday,
a panel of the Appellate Division of Supreme Court in
Manhattan upheld that decision unanimously.
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/nyregion/04mbrfs-004.html
The Goldman Sachs Crew That’s Helping Run Trenton Government
By DAVID W. CHEN
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/nyregion/04goldman.html?ref=nyregion
Kentucky: Soldier Surrenders
By REUTERS
A decorated Army veteran who was wounded in Iraq and then
deserted to Canada to protest the war surrendered to the military.
The veteran, Darrell Anderson, 24, flashed a peace sign before
his mother and his wife drove him to the rear gate of the Army
base at Fort Knox under a negotiated surrender that will probably
see him released in a few days. His supporters said he was
expected to receive a less-than-honorable discharge but not
face a court-martial.
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/us/04brfs-003.html
Ohio: Immigration Case
By JULIA PRESTON
The president of a temporary-labor contracting company operating
in Ohio and Tennessee and two other people associated with the
company pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to send
hundreds of illegal immigrants to work for an air cargo business,
federal prosecutors and immigration officials said. As part of his
plea, Maximino Garcia, 43, president of the Garcia Labor Company,
agreed to forfeit $12 million in proceeds, including an office
building in Wilmington, Ohio. Also pleading guilty were Dominga
McCarroll, 53, Mr. Garcia’s sister and a former vice president
of the company, and Gina Luciano, 40, director of human relations.
Mr. Garcia admitted that he had sent more than 400 illegal
immigrants to work loading cargo at ABX Air in Wilmington
under contracts spanning five years. [Are there charges
pending against ABX Air? I bet not!...bw]
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/us/04brfs-002.html
Justices Ponder Conditions for Automatic Deportation
[I.E., the "justices" ponder extreme punishment for immigrants
for "crimes" like being caught with a joint--a "crime" that is
committed by millions of wealthy white people all the time
without so much as a slap on the hand.
If your poor, Black or non-white, or an immigrant the same
"crime" becomes a violent felony...bw]
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/washington/04scotus.html
Board Redefines Rules for Union Exemption
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/washington/04labor.html?ref=us
In Bill’s Fine Print, Millions to Celebrate Victory
By THOM SHANKER
October 4, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/washington/04victory.html?ref=us
Museum Field Trip Leaves Texas Art Teacher out of A Job
[This is an unbelievable story. I remember regular trips
to the Metropolitan, the Whitney, the Modern and Brooklyn
Museums with our classes from grade school on. We were taught
that the human body was beautiful and nothing to be ashamed
of and that there is a difference between art and pornography.
you know, we were "taught!" I'm talking about Brooklyn Public
School No. 127 circa 1950-56. Bravo, Ms. McGee!...bw]
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1002-07.htm
Venezuela's Oil Wealth Funds Gusher of Anti-Poverty Projects
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1002-06.htm
Trying to Keep TV Appeal as Housing Reality Sets In
By JEREMY W. PETERS
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/realestate/03reality.html?ref=business
Lawmakers Scold Maker of ‘Cocaine’ Drink
By SEWELL CHAN
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/nyregion/03cocaine.html?ref=nyregion
Suit on Behalf of Afghan Detainees
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lawyers for 25 men being held in Afghanistan filed a court challenge
to President Bush’s plan to prosecute and interrogate terrorism
suspects, demanding that the men be released or charged and
allowed to meet with lawyers. Such a filing is prohibited under
the legislation approved by Congress last week. That bill says
the military may detain enemy combatants indefinitely and,
if officials choose to bring charges against them, the cases
would be heard before a military commission, not before
a civilian judge. Mr. Bush has not signed the bill but has
indicated he will. [complete story...bw]
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/washington/03brfs-010.html
In Brazil Balloting, Leader Finds His Base May Turn to Sand
By LARRY ROHTER
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/world/americas/03brazil.html
Fly Away Home
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/science/03butter.html?8dpc
Out-of-Body Experience? Your Brain Is to Blame
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/health/psychology/03shad.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin
North Korea Vows First Nuclear Test
By CHOE SANG-HUN and JOHN O’NEIL
October 3, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/world/asia/04nukecnd.html?hp&ex=1159934400&en=dbe19294472a2cc0&ei=5094&partner=homepage
The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr
He was a child of jihad, a teenage soldier in bin Laden's army.
Captured on the battlefield when he was only fifteen, he has been
held at Guantanamo Bay for the past four years -- subjected
to unspeakable abuse sanctioned by the president himself
Jeff Tietz
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11128331/follow_omar_khadr_from_an_al_qaeda_childhood_to_a_gitmo_cell
Oaxaca Facing Imminent Attack
by via elenemigocomun.net ( solidarity [at] elenemigocomun.net )
Sunday Oct 1st, 2006 1:12 PM
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/10/01/18317093.php
University Set to Launch Academic Program in Cuba
After 18-month-long process, U.S. grants College
a one-year academic exchange license
Published On 10/2/2006 1:49:58 AM
By JUSTINE R. LESCROART
Contributing Writer
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=514630
A Farmer Fears His Way of Life Has Dwindled Down to a Final Generation
By CHARLIE LeDUFF
October 2, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/us/02album.html
Wait Ends for Father and Son Exiled by F.B.I. Terror Inquiry
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
October 2, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/us/02terror.html?ref=us
Global Sludge Ends in Tragedy for Ivory Coast
By LYDIA POLGREEN and MARLISE SIMONS
October 2, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/world/africa/02ivory.html?ref=world
Wal-Mart to Add Wage Caps and Part-Timers
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, is pushing to create
a cheaper, more flexible work force by capping wages, using more
part-time workers and scheduling more workers on nights
and weekends.
October 2, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/business/02walmart.html?hp&ex=1159848000&en=5b8b226214562a4a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Venezuela's Chavez says assassination attempt against him foiled
The Associated Press
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/30/america/LA_GEN_Venezuela_Chavez.p
hp
Happy Birthday, Bull Market. (Now, Make a Wish.)
By PAUL J. LIM
October 1, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/business/yourmoney/01fund.html?ref=business
Is the Corporate Profit Machine About to Sputter?
By NORM ALSTER
October 1, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/business/yourmoney/01profit.html?ref=business
Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court’s Rulings
By ADAM LIPTAK and JANET ROBERTS
October 1, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/us/01judges.html?ref=us
AWOL Iraq veteran Agustin Aguayo speaks out against war,
returns to Army base
Report and photos by Jeff Paterson. September 26, 2006
After escaping a second forced Iraq deployment via a window
in Germany, medic reports to Mojave desert Army base to continue f
ight for conscientious objector discharge...
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/09/27/18314785.php
Oregon: Military Police Officer Charged
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Army brought charges against a military police officer who
refused to return to Iraq after she said her supervisor had coerced
her into a sexual relationship. The police officer, Specialist Suzanne
Swift, 22, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., faces charges of being absent
without leave and missing movement. The latter means she was not
with her company when it left in January for a four-month tour
of duty in Iraq, said a Fort Lewis spokeswoman, Sgt. Maj. Yolanda
Choates. Specialist Swift could face a reprimand, a more serious
nonjudicial punishment or a court-martial, Sergeant Choates
said. Specialist Swift, who served in Iraq from February 2004
to February 2005, said she had been harassed or abused
by three officers, two in Iraq and one at Fort Lewis.
September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/us/28brfs-002.html
Where Are the Mass Protests?
The Antiwar Struggle, UFPJ and the Democrats
By JOE ALLEN
September 27, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/allen09272006.html
In Lebanon, a War's Lethal Harvest
Threat of Unexploded Bombs Paralyzes the South
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092501500.html
Bush Facing Growing Revolt among Top Military Commanders
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0926-03.htm
Global Temperature Highest in Millennia
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0926-06.htm
Supporters of ACLU Call for the Ouster of Its Leaders
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0926-01.htm
Bolivian Leaders Find Their Promises Are Hard to Keep
By SIMON ROMERO
September 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/world/americas/26bolivia.html
The Importance of Civil Disobedience
From the "looting" that occurred as people scavenged for food,
water and medicines, in the days following Katrina, to the refusal
of thousands to leave,
despite a mandatory evacuation order by gun point, civil
disobedience has taken its place as a survival tool in post-
Katrina New Orleans.
By Elizabeth Cook
Source: Austin Independent Media Center
http://austin.indymedia.org/newswire/display/34593/index.php
Center of E. Coli Outbreak, Center of Anxiety
By JESSE McKINLEY
September 25, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/us/25ecoli.html
Panel Urges Basic Coverage on Health Care
By ROBERT PEAR
September 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/washington/26health.html
The Choice: A Longer Life or More Stuff
By DAVID LEONHARDT
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/business/27leonhardt.html?ref=health
Justices to Hear Case on Use of Union Fees
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/washington/27scotus.html
Health Care Costs Rise Twice as Much as Inflation
By MILT FREUDENHEIM
“The cost of living keeps going up, but the cost of healthy
living is going up even faster.”
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/business/27insure.html?ref=business
House Passes Abortion Bill on Minors
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (AP) — Accompanying a minor across
a state line to obtain an abortion and avoid parental notification
in the girl’s home state would become a federal crime under
a bill the House passed Tuesday on a vote of 264 to 153.
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/washington/27cong.html
Senators Criticize Border Security Measures
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
The Republican architects of the Senate immigration bill criticized
the border security measures under consideration in Congress
as piecemeal and inadequate. Senators John McCain of Arizona,
Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Lindsey Graham of South
Carolina said they supported border security, including a measure
to add fencing to the border with Mexico. But they said that such
measures alone would fail to deal with the illegal residence in this
country of about 11 million immigrants as well as labor shortages
in particular industries. The senators called for an approach similar
to the Senate bill, which would tighten border security, toughen
penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants, put most
illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship and create a guest-
worker plan to address labor shortages. They acknowledged
that passage of such legislation was unlikely before the elections.
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/washington/27brfs-005.html
California: Teenager Gets Life in Murder
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A teenager convicted of murdering the wife of a prominent
defense lawyer was sentenced to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. The teenager, Scott Dyleski, was 16 when
he bludgeoned and stabbed his neighbor, Pamela Vitale, 45,
in October 2005. He was convicted last month of first-degree
murder. He avoided the death penalty because of his age.
Ms. Vitale was married to Daniel Horowitz.
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/us/27brfs-002.html
California: Official Admits Execution Was Bungled
By REUTERS
A state official admitted that prison guards had bungled the
execution of the gang leader Stanley Tookie Williams last
December, but denied that it constituted cruel and unusual
punishment. The official, Dane Gillette, senior assistant
attorney general, spoke at a federal court hearing in San Jose
on lethal injection. He said officials had failed to connect
a backup intravenous line to Mr. Williams’s left arm. Guards
typically attach two lines to condemned inmates to assure
the continuous flow of chemicals. “Williams was a lesson
well learned that will not happen again,” Mr. Gillette said.
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/us/27brfs-001.html
U.S. Pushes Anti-Castro TV, but Is Anyone Watching?
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/us/27marti.html?ref=us
G.M. Holds Talks With 2 Automakers
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/automobiles/27cnd-auto.html?hp&ex=1159416000&en=129a1794bc5b209f&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Monday Night Football at the Superdome
New Orleans is Back ... Without Blacks
By NATE MEZMER
September 26, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/mezmer09262006.html
Exclusive: AWOL Iraq Veteran Turns Himself In Instead
of Returning to Iraq
http://www.democrac ynow.org/ article.pl? sid=06/09/ 26/1415257
A Broken, De-Humanized Military in Iraq
By Dahr Jamail
http://www.truthout .org/docs_ 2006/092606A. shtml
Battle for Bayview
Redevelopment referendum tossed — so now what?
BY STEVEN T. JONES
http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=1708&catid=4&volume_id=147&issue_id=253&volume_num=40&issue_num=52
Army Warns Rumsfeld It's Billions Short
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092506J.shtml
Study of Iraq War and Terror Stirs Strong Political Response
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092506K.shtml
Halliburton Employees, Subcontractors Allege More Abuses
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092506M.shtml
A Detainee's Story: The Man Who Has Been to America
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092506P.shtml
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