*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Video: March on the Pentagon, March 17th
http://www.pephost.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8353&JServSessionIdr001=cjzhm7cai2.app8a
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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Iraq: US and Iraqi Forces Raid Trade Union Offices-Petition
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=202
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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST
THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH
MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING
THE TROOPS HOME NOW.
It starts out with a statement by Fred Mason on behalf of the AFL-CIO
in favor of "Bring the troops home Now". This marked the first time
the AFL-CIO has come out against a U.S. War.
The speeches concentrate on the need to call for immediate and
unconditional withdrawal of troops as opposed to a gradual (even
for only a month or two) withdrawal of troops. Very strong arguments
are given by a variety of people in support of Bring the Troops Home Now.
Gerry Gordon gives a great statement for immediate and unconditional
withdrawal from Iraq and for Congress to de-fund the war.
Howard Wallace is in this video and he does a good job as a representative
of the San Francisco Labor Council in support of USLAW and the importance
of massive demonstrations to bring the troops home now.
Anthony Arnov gives a fantastic presentation placing the blame where
it lies--on the U.S. Government and nailing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton
and the Democrats as being the new owners of the war! He quotes from
Obama and Clinton and videos of them are cut into his speech exposing
their ultimate support for the war and for a U.S. "victory" in Iraq.
There are moving interviews with Iraq Veterans Against the War--some
who are taking the courageous stance of refusing to return to Iraq who
have experienced unimaginable horrors.
All of the speakers call for continued mass actions against the war
to Bring the Troops Home Now!
I highly recommend this video...BW.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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SF BAY AREA EVENT TO SUPPORT IRAQ WAR VETERAN
AND WAR RESISTER ARMY SPC. AGUSTIN AGUAYO!
Agustín Aguayo, a 35-year-old Army medic and conscientious
objector, will face court martial on March 6 for resisting
redeployment to Iraq. He has been formally charged by the
Army with desertion and missing movement. If convicted
of all charges, Agustín faces a maximum of seven years
in prison for following his conscience and refusing to
participate in war. He is currently imprisoned pending
trial at a military brig in Manheim, Germany.
More info: http://couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/252/36/
Saturday, March 2 at 7:00 PM to 2:00 AM
*PRAXIS* Party to Benefit Agustin Aguayo
Capoeira Angola Center 2513 Magnolia St., Oakland
*PRAXIS* party to benefit Agustin Aguayo and other soldiers
who refuse to fight! Wicked performers and stylin' djs. Including
ICAF-Oakland, Taiko Ren, Queen Deelah & Cov Records Artists,
Zazous, Fuga, DJ Zahkee, and Qbug. Good times for good causes
- Conscientious Objector Agustin Aguayo and Courage to Resist.
If you can't make the event, please consider an urgently
needed and much appreciated tax-deductible donation to
Agustin's defense fund. Online at
http://couragetoresist.org/donate
or make check payable to "Courage to Resist / IHC",
note "Agustin Aguayo defense" on the memo line,
and send to: COURAGE TO RESIST
484 LAKE PARK AVE #41, OAKLAND CA 94610
http://www.couragetoresist.org/donate
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You are invited to
Witness to War: Revisiting Vietnam in Contemporary Art
at the Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco State
University,
1600 Holloway Ave @ 19th Ave, SF
Open through March 15, 2007
Visit our website at:
http://www.sfsu.edu/~gallery/
Please join us. Spread the word, bring a friend!
Thurs, Mar 1, 1:00 p.m.
Witness to War Artist Panel Discussion
Sat, Mar 10, 1:00 p.m.
Artists Binh Danh, Thai Bui and Long Nguyen moderated
by art historian Boreth Ly.
Nguyen Dance Company
Dance Performance
Sat, Mar 10, 2:30 p.m.
West Coast Premiere of Documentary Film The Rain on
the River
Sat, Mar 10, 3:30 p.m.
Hope to see you there.
Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
March 17: March on the Pentagon-1967/2007
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0gIIzg9hpN8
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
MARCH ON THE PENTAGON
SATURDAY, MARCH 17
WASHINGTON, D.C .
Free Speech Victory! Permits Secured for Pentagon Demonstration
http://www.internationalanswer.org/
MARCH AND RALLY IN SAN FRANCISCO
SUNDAY, MARCH 18, 2007
(The annual St. Patrick's Day Parade is taking
place on Sat., March 17 in SF.)
ASSEMBLE 12:00 NOON
JUSTIN HERMAN PLAZA -
MARCH TO CIVIC CENTER
For more information:
http://www.actionsf.org/#local4
answer@actionsf.org
Phone: 415-821-6545
Fax: 415-821-5782
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
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Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A Girl Like Me
7:08 min
Youth Documentary
Kiri Davis, Director, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Producer
Winner of the Diversity Award
Sponsored by Third Millennium Foundation
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1091431409617440489
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Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ARTICLES IN FULL:
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) UFPJ Finally Mentions the March on the Pentagon March 17, in D.C.
A letter VIA Email from Leslie Cagan to UFPJ member groups
to the UFPJ list: ufpj@lists.mayfirst.org
lesliecagan@igc.org
2) Open Letter to Lesie Cagan, National Coordinator, UFPJ
In Response to her letter to UFPJ Member Groups (Above).
by Bonnie Weinstein
www.bauaw.org
3) Chávez says he has no plans to eliminate individuals'
private property in Venezuela
Bloomberg News
CARACAS:
Sunday, February 25, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/25/business/chavez.php
4) Junior ROTC takes a hit in L.A.
"At Roosevelt High, a coalition of teachers and students works
to end the program, and its numbers are dropping."
By Sonia Nazario
Times Staff Writer
February 19, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jrotc19feb19,0,6116682.story?coll=la-home-he
5) Government by Law, Not Faith
Editorial
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/opinion/28wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
6) Low Pay and Broken Promises Greet Guest Workers
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28labor.html?hp
7) Chávez Shares Some Airtime With Castro
By SIMON ROMERO
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/world/americas/28cuba.html
8) Jailers Testify About Padilla’s Confinement
By DEBORAH SONTAG
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28padilla.html?ref=us
Update:
U.S. Judge Finds Padilla Competent to Face Trial
By DEBORAH SONTAG
March 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/us/01padilla.html
9) Service Members Sign Appeal Calling for Troop Withdrawal
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28appeal.html
10) After Inquiry, Grand Jury Refuses
to Issue New Indictments in Till Case
By SHAILA DEWAN
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28till.html
11) F.B.I. Is Reopening Civil Rights Deaths
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28fbi.html
12) Some Immigrant High Schoolers Receive a Lesson in Disappointment
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/education/28education.html?ref=nyregion
13) Two Victims and Three Officers to Testify in Shooting Inquiry
By AL BAKER
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/nyregion/28grand.html?ref=nyregion
14) 5 Ex-Managers Plead Guilty in Hiring of Illegal Immigrants
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/business/28workers.html
15) US's Iraq oil grab is a done deal
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times (Hong Kong)
Feb 28, 2007
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB28Ak01.html
16) In Medieval Architecture, Signs of Advanced Math
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
February 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/science/27math.html?ref=science
17) What Castro and Chavez spoke about
The following is the transcript of the conversation between Venezuela's
President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. It has been
edited for brevity.
February 28, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6403683.stm
18) Slavery Is Not Dead. It’s Not Even Past.
By BOB HERBERT
March 1, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/opinion/01herbert.html?hp
19) The Big Meltdown
By PAUL KRUGMAN
FEB. 27, 2008
March 2, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/opinion/02krugman.html?hp
20) Killing Highlights Risk of Selling Marijuana, Even Legally
By KIRK JOHNSON
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/us/02cannabis.html
21) U.S. Reviewing Safety of Children’s Cough Drugs
By GARDINER HARRIS
"The agency has for decades promised to review systematically
the safety of all old drugs, but for a variety of reasons like
budgetary constraints, time and popularity of a particular
drug has not done so."
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/health/02cough.html
22) House Passes Bill That Helps Unions Organize
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/washington/02union.html
23) Proposed Increases in Fees for U.S. Residency
and Citizenship Stir Protest in Newark
By LAURA RIVERA
"'I have no savings,' she said in Spanish. 'If I couldn’t pay before,
imagine now, with this increase.' The cost for her family
to apply would rise to $3,620 from $1,300."
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/nyregion/02protest.html
24) Councilor Turner attacked after
City Council passes anti-war resolution
By Phebe Eckfeldt
Boston
Published Mar 1, 2007 9:44 PM
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/boston-anti-war-0308/
25) Cuba oil boom may complicate U.S. embargo
BY JANE BUSSEY
MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Fri, Mar. 02, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/884/story/28682.html
SHERRITT INTERNATIONAL REPORT:
http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2007/03/01/21/030107cubaoil.source.prod_affiliate.56.pdf
26) U.S. House Democrats seek more war funds than Bush
01 Mar 2007 23:53:19 GMT
By Richard Cowan
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N01426347.htm
27) Inmates to fill the void in farm fields
"Pilot program to help farmers replace workers driven
off by state's new immigration laws."
By CHARLES ASHBY
CHIEFTAIN DENVER BUREAU
http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1172581202/1
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) UFPJ Finally Mentions the March on the Pentagon March 17, in D.C.
A letter VIA Email from Leslie Cagan to UFPJ member groups
to the UFPJ list: ufpj@lists.mayfirst.org
lesliecagan@igc.org
Dear UFPJ Member Groups,
In a short while the national office of UFPJ will be sending out an email
notice to our full national email list and we wanted to give you - the
member groups of UFPJ - a bit of advanced notice about this one.
Here's why...
In the blast that is sent out you will see a reference to the demonstration
that ANSWER is calling for March 17th in Washington, DC, as well as
an effort being organized by the Troops Out Now Coalition, also in
Washington, DC right before the weekend of the 4th anniversary
of the war. We want you to know that this does not mean UFPJ has
endorsed either of these activities, and it certainly does not mean that
we have changed our own call for local, decentralized actions all around
the country to mark the 4th anniversary.
In the alert we are sending to our full list there are examples of some
local and regional actions also taking place that weekend, as well as
a list of ways people can get involved. In other words, the full text
makes it clear that we believe local antiwar activities - using the full
range of tactics available to our movement - is the critical next step
for our work. We also know that some people would like to be in
Washington and there is no reason for us to dissuade them. In fact,
many actions against the war in Iraq and against a new war on Iran
are needed.
Here is a part of the message we'll soon be sending out to the
national list:
"On March 19th the fifth year of this illegal, immoral, disastrous war
will begin, and we must mark this occasion with the loudest and
widest demonstrations for peace that we can muster. ANSWER is
organizing a March on the Pentagon on March 17, and Troops Out
Now Coalition is calling for an Encampment to Stop the War beginning
March 12 in Washington, DC. We encourage you to attend these actions
if you are able to do so. At the same time, United for Peace and Justice
knows that our movement must also be vocal and visible in every
community across the country, around the 4th anniversary and beyond.
"We must capture the momentum of the huge numbers of new people
coming to the realization that this war must be stopped. UFPJ member
groups and allies from Alaska to Florida are working hard to organize
a wide array of actions, including vigils, marches, rallies, nonviolent
civil disobedience and more, to mark this tragic milestone and to raise
the demand to bring the troops home
"We urge you to take a moment now to find an event to participate in,
to begin planning one or to make your arrangements to go to DC.
Whatever you do to mark the 4th anniversary, start spreading the
word now to ensure a great turnout! To make Congress, the White
House, the media and our communities take notice, we need to be
loud and we need to be everywhere, saying, END THE WAR and
BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!"
We also want to remind you - and encourage you - to post any
antiwar events or activities you know about on the calendar on the
UFPJ web site. And to do so right now! There are several reasons
to do this:
1) Each day more and more people are looking for ways to get involved.
By posting your activities on the calendar you will make it possible
for more people to find out what's happening in their area.
2) Activists and organizers often look at the calendar to see what
other groups are planning. By posting your activities you might
inspire others to plan something in their town or community.
3) Reporters and journalists look at the UFPJ calendar to get a sense
of what's going on around the country, including in their own city
or state. Let's show them how widespread our movement really is!!
peace,
Leslie Cagan
National Coordinator
UFPJ
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Open Letter to Lesie Cagan, National Coordinator, UFPJ
In Response to her letter to UFPJ Member Groups (Above) .
by Bonnie Weinstein
www.bauaw.org
Dear Leslie,
As a UFPJ member group, we are encouraged that finally, UFPJ will,
at least, be mentioning the March 17, March on the Pentagon in D.C.,
in your calendar of events and in your announcement.
http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage
http://www.actionsf.org/
It is a step forward from completely ignoring that the event is even
taking place, but a far cry from what is needed by the Iraqi people,
our troops and the American people.
What we need, is the greatest united force possible to be organized
in opposition to the war and for the immediate and unconditional
withdrawal of all U.S. Troops and “support-services” from Iraq NOW;
as well as against a myriad of other atrocities committed by the U.S.
Government that we all can agree upon!
Although it can be a difficult process at times, there is no excuse
for refusing to work together toward a massive outpouring of protest
on the fourth anniversary of this ongoing and expanding human
catastrophe--now on the verge of expanding to monumental proportions;
or for refusing to continue our cooperation and unification around these
goals for as long as it takes to achieve them.
Of course there is room for all kinds of protests in addition to mass,
peaceful demonstrations. But these actions should be viewed as ways
to link more individuals to united and massive, peaceful protests as
a culmination of events or as the launching of further, united, ever
larger outpourings of peaceful protest, up until our goals
are met and our troops are brought home and the will of the
majority is honored.
The U.S. escalation of the war and its continued and expanded
assault on the democratic process; on human rights across the globe;
the continued use of torture, imprisonment and rendering of innocent
people; the wanton disregard for the troops on the ground or the
troops tragically wounded; and, most of all, for the Iraqi people who
have suffered the greatest atrocities; compels the movement to bury
their differences and come together to make these protests as large
as possible. This isn’t a popularity contest this is a matter of peoples
lives and of human decency.
We urge UFPJ to go further and endorse, support and build the March 17
March on the Pentagon as well as the mass demonstrations organized for
Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere the weekend of March 17/18
as a first step toward the reorganization of the U.S. Antiwar movement
into a real, democratically structured, united front against the war.
Let’s utilize the full length and breadth of the movement to unify it and
bring more people into the fold. The more people who are involved
in the day to day organizing of the movement toward democratically
agreed upon unified goals--the easier our job will be and the faster
we can achieve our goals—which is the main point of our protests.
Clearly, by the sheer number of appeals for unity in the antiwar
movement recently from groups and individuals across the country—
this is what the people want.
Since it was UFPJ who stated categorically that it would not ever work
with A.N.S.W.E.R. again—it has the responsibility to make the first
move toward unity around the March on the Pentagon, March 17
in D.C.--and give it its full support.
The entire movement has the obligation to work together toward
these same unified goals.
ALL OUT MARCH 17 IN D.C. AND 18 IN SAN FRANCISCO:
MARCH ON THE PENTAGON
SATURDAY, MARCH 17
WASHINGTON, D.C .
Free Speech Victory! Permits Secured for Pentagon Demonstration
http://www.internationalanswer.org/
MARCH AND RALLY IN SAN FRANCISCO
SUNDAY, MARCH 18, 2007
(The annual St. Patrick's Day Parade is taking
place on Sat., March 17 in SF.)
ASSEMBLE 12:00 NOON
JUSTIN HERMAN PLAZA -
MARCH TO CIVIC CENTER
For more information:
http://www.actionsf.org/#local4
answer@actionsf.org
Phone: 415-821-6545
Fax: 415-821-5782
U.S. Out of Iraq Now!
From Iraq to New Orleans, Fund People's Needs NOT the War Machine
End Colonial Occupation: Iraq, Palestine, Haiti, Afghanistan & everywhere
U.S. Hands Off Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Somalia, Philippines North Korea
Shut Down Guantanamo
In solidarity for antiwar unity and an end to the war,
Bonnie Weinstein, www.bauaw.org
If you would like to receive the Bay Area United Against War (BAUAW )
newsletter via email please send your name and email address to:
giobon@sbcglobal.net
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3) Chávez says he has no plans to eliminate individuals'
private property in Venezuela
Bloomberg News
CARACAS:
Sunday, February 25, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/25/business/chavez.php
President Hugo Chávez says that there are no plans to eliminate
private property in Venezuela even as the country overhauls its
eight-year-old Constitution this year in line with his vision for
"21st century socialism."
"The Bolivarian revolution, I repeat, doesn't exclude, prohibit
or have any kind of plan to eliminate private property," Chávez s
aid over the weekend, referring to his program to transform
Venezuela in honor of the 19th-century South American
revolutionary, Simon Bolivar.
While preserving private property, a revised Constitution would
also protect "social" and "collective" property, like the country's
large oil reserves, Chávez said, without giving further details.
Constitutional changes, to be drafted by a presidential committee
and submitted for public approval in a national referendum
this year, are the first of "five engines" of change Chávez has
outlined for Venezuela since beginning his second, six-year
term in office on Jan. 10.
He has since used decree powers to nationalize the country's
largest telephone and electricity companies and seize a larger
stake in foreign oil joint ventures. His government "temporarily
expropriated" two meat-processing plants on Friday, further
raising concern that private property rights would soon
disappear.
"Private property isn't the only kind of property," Chávez said
Saturday. "When the conquistadors arrived here by sea, there
was social property, collective property, and everyone was
the owner of everything."
"This is a debate that should deepen," he said.
Chávez declared that methods for measuring poverty rates,
used elsewhere in the world, "aren't valid in Venezuela," which
officially reported 39.7 percent household poverty at the end
of 2005, according to the National Statistics Institute.
Chávez also questioned the central bank's method of measuring
inflation, which reached 18.4 percent last month, the highest
annual rate in Latin America. The move echoes his vows
to reduce the bank's autonomy, which he has called
a "neo-liberal" and "perverse" concept unsuited to his
vision for Venezuela.
He asked last month for constitutional changes to grant
him greater access to the country's international currency
reserves, in order to finance social programs in case of
a budget shortfall. Current law allows him to use reserves
only in excess of $29 billion; the bank currently holds $36 billion.
Venezuela's current Constitution, drafted and approved
by referendum shortly after Chávez first took office in 1999,
introduced new education, health care and environmental
rights and eliminated the country's bicameral legislature, creating
a single assembly now entirely controlled by Chávez supporters.
Revisions Chávez proposed this year would ban the sale of state
assets, designate more property as "communal," and eliminate
limits on the number of terms a president may serve, allowing
for his re-election indefinitely.
Chávez dismissed U.S. President George W. Bush's planned trip
to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala next month
as a diplomatic offensive designed to contain him and "destined
for the abyss of defeat."
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Junior ROTC takes a hit in L.A.
"At Roosevelt High, a coalition of teachers and students works
to end the program, and its numbers are dropping."
By Sonia Nazario
Times Staff Writer
February 19, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jrotc19feb19,0,6116682.story?coll=la-home-he
First Sgt. Otto Harrington — tall, muscular, his head cleanshaven —
has soldiered through battles in Bosnia, Kuwait and Somalia.
He has patrolled Korea's DMZ.
None of that prepared him, though, for the attacks he has faced
as senior teacher in the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps
at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, where students and
teachers have launched a crusade against military recruiting
and JROTC.
FOR THE RECORD:
Junior ROTC: A photo caption accompanying an article in Monday's
Section A about the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps
at Roosevelt High School identified Jennifer Gonzalez as a second
lieutenant. Although she was subsequently promoted to second
lieutenant, Gonzalez was a master sergeant at the time the
photo was taken.
Harrington blames their campaign for cutting the number
of cadets at Roosevelt by 43% in four years, from 286 to 162.
Some teachers urge students not to sign up for JROTC, he said,
and have worked to end involuntarily placement in the program.
"They seem to think I'm some evil, horrible soldier down here
trying to sacrifice our kids to Iraq," Harrington said in describing
the increasing tensions on the Eastside campus.
The program's critics see JROTC as a Trojan horse targeting
students in low-income minority schools with high dropout rates.
"We are a juicy target," said Roosevelt social studies teacher
Jorge Lopez.
At Roosevelt and other schools in the Los Angeles Unified
School District, the anti-JROTC movement has helped drive
a 24% drop in enrollment since 2003-04, Harrington and his
critics said. The decline runs counter to enrollment nationwide,
which grew 8% to 486,594 cadets between 2001 and 2006,
fueled by a 57% jump in federal funding, according to the
Department of Defense.
Roosevelt's "Rough Rider Battalion" was once among JROTC's
finest, a powerhouse that routinely bested rivals in citywide
competitions. In 1990, when the program had 400 cadets,
the battalion's girls' drill team won the national championship.
JROTC students have uniforms and attend one cadet class
each day, learning skills that include financial planning, map
reading and how to give a PowerPoint presentation.
The Department of Defense-sponsored program, which is in
30 of L.A. Unified's 61 high schools, also includes physical
education, target practice and marching drills. JROTC
participants have no obligation to join the military, but
students who complete the program are entitled to higher
starting pay if they enlist.
Roosevelt 11th-grader Jesse Flores said that as recently as his
freshman year, students didn't think less of kids for being
in JROTC; some even stopped cadets to admire ribbons and
medals pinned to their uniforms. "Now," Jesse said, "everyone
says JROTC is bad."
Teacher opposition
Many teachers are openly hostile toward JROTC, Jesse said,
and some wear T-shirts that say "A War Budget Leaves Every
Child Behind."
Arlene Inouye, a speech therapist formerly at Roosevelt, said
she thinks anti-military advocacy by teachers is a counterbalance
to a strong military presence on campus. She said she once
counted 14 recruiters approaching lunchtime crowds of students
in Roosevelt's quad, handing out "Join the Army" book covers
and promising adventure, travel and money for college.
In 2003, concerned that students weren't hearing the other side,
she founded the Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools.
The group has spread to 50 Los Angeles-area schools, providing
member teachers with literature, speakers, films and books.
Their efforts are possible in part because of a U.S. 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals ruling in 1986 that requires public schools
that allow recruiters on campus to give counter-recruiters
a shot at addressing students.
At Roosevelt, the coalition teamed with United Students,
a group of students and teachers working to improve education
on the Eastside and get more Latinos into college.
United Students' 100 Roosevelt members began keeping track
of when military recruiters were scheduled to visit so they could
conduct counter-recruiting the day before.
At its annual Education Justice Week, students in the group
invite college recruiters to campus and encourage students
to continue their schooling rather than enlisting. They also
have presented in 60 classrooms a program called "Students
Not Soldiers," which aims to expose the dark side of military
life.
Nearly two dozen teachers have also shown the films
"Arlington West," put out by Veterans for Peace, and "The
Ground Truth," a documentary in which veterans condemn
the war in Iraq and their treatment by the military on their
return home.
Lopez, the social studies teacher, keeps a stack of glossy
brochures propped on his chalkboard titled "Don't Die in
a Dead-End Job! Information for Young People Considering
the Military" that show a soldier saluting flag-draped coffins.
Prominent on his wall is a poster called "Ten Points to Consider
Before You Sign a Military Enlistment Agreement."
"I want to see more Latinos go to college," Lopez said.
Lunchtime maneuvers
The warren of six JROTC rooms at Roosevelt is decorated
with drawings of tanks. On the front wall of Harrington's
classroom is a row of brown- and gold-framed photographs
of the chain of command, from President Bush to the secretary
of defense to JROTC instructors.
At lunch, cadets stream in, grab unloaded Springfield rifles
from four gun racks and practice spinning them. The four
people in the color guard, wearing white gloves and chrome
helmets, maneuver their rifles in unison.
Teacher Gillian Russom said this kind of training instills the
wrong values: following orders, dressing the same and
relying on rote memorization rather than critical thinking.
"That's necessary for a successful military, but does
it create the kind of citizens we want?"
A 1999 Center for Strategic and International Studies report,
the last comprehensive assessment of JROTC, found that
about 40% of students who graduated from high school with
two or more years of JROTC ended up in the military.
Harrington said few of his Roosevelt students join the armed
services. Only 5% of his cadets would even qualify to enlist,
he said, because the rest are in the country illegally, couldn't
pass the military aptitude test, are in trouble with the law
or are overweight.
"This is the worst school on the planet for a recruiter to come
and think they will be successful," he said, adding that only
three Roosevelt cadets in three years have enlisted out
of high school.
Still, many Roosevelt students and teachers are angered that
JROTC programs are concentrated in low-income, primarily
minority communities, and they tell potential cadets that
JROTC is a thinly disguised effort to make more Latinos
cannon fodder. Nationwide, 59.9 % of JROTC participants
are students of color, according to a study by Cal State
Northridge. In Los Angeles, the program is in nearly half
of the city's high schools, but none on the affluent Westside.
Teachers who oppose JROTC are also dismayed that despite
a zero-tolerance policy on weapons, 10 Los Angeles high
schools, including Roosevelt, have JROTC firing ranges.
"This is learning to shoot at a target, preparing a mind-set
to be able to kill," said Inouye, the founder of the Coalition
Against Militarism in Our Schools.
Harrington said the air rifles, which shoot pellets, are used
as a sport, not for combat training. "Some people," he said,
"don't understand shooting an air rifle isn't shooting an M16."
Opponents of JROTC say it drains resources from more important
courses. Although the Defense Department pays half of JROTC
instructors' salaries, L.A. Unified pays the rest, as well as benefits,
for a total of $3.1 million this school year. That money, United
Students said, should instead be spent adding more of the
15 academic courses students need to go to college. Those
classes make up 52% of the offerings at Roosevelt.
But many JROTC students can't imagine Roosevelt without
the program.
A second chance
"For some students, the biggest reason to come to school
is for JROTC," said Harrington, noting that his students
often come in at 6:30 a.m. even when they are on vacation.
Daniel Segura, a soft-spoken 16-year-old with a mop of
brown hair and an easy smile, is one of them. He said his
grades spiraled after his father died of diabetes two years
ago. "I felt there was no point," he said.
He started ditching class to go to the Santa Monica Pier and
failed half his classes. Urged by a counselor to enroll in JROTC,
he was at first resistant and defiant during class time.
Harrington told him not to attend the program, then
agreed to give him another chance if he followed the rules.
Slowly, Harrington gave Daniel more responsibility, putting
him on the flag and armed drill teams and on JROTC's
courtesy patrol, which helps translate for parents at teacher
conferences.
Hoping to be named to the JROTC staff and earn more
responsibility, Daniel said, he plans to pass all his classes
this semester and is getting a B in English.
Roosevelt students tell him he is being brainwashed to go
into the Army, but he said he thinks they don't understand
what the program really is. It has taught him leadership
and discipline, he said, and he has thrived on its boundaries
and rules.
In a bewildering school with nearly 5,000 students, JROTC
has been a beacon, a place to belong.
"JROTC made me try again," he said. Several JROTC cadets
describe feeling as if they are under hostile fire from
anti-military teachers.
Last year, Jesse, the 11th-grader, a master sergeant
and JROTC flag detail commander, was the only student
wearing a JROTC uniform in Martha Guerrero's first-period
world history class. He said that Guerrero, who often wears
a "War is not the answer" T-shirt and has a flag of the
revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara hanging in her classroom,
sometimes asked him pointed questions in the middle of class.
"Jesse, are you going to go to Iraq and die?" she asked. "Why
are you wearing a uniform? Aren't you embarrassed?" Jesse
said he felt singled out by the question and told his JROTC
instructor about it.
Angered by what he saw as bullying of his student, he confronted
Guerrero, who apologized to Jesse. She said she wasn't harassing
the student. "I just tell them things I know are right or wrong.
I stand against war, against JROTC."
In July, after hearing about a United Students talk in the classroom
of social studies teacher Carlos Castillo, Harrington was fed up.
He stormed into Castillo's classroom.
"I have a problem with you calling me a recruiter," he told the
other teacher. A flier handed out in Castillo's class contained
distortions, Harrington said, adding that he believes Castillo
shouldn't be allowed to discourage students from enrolling
in his class.
Castillo told Harrington that JROTC's only purpose was to
promote the military.
Ground rules
Principal Cecilia Acosta Quemada told the two sides they had
to get along. She also established ground rules: Working against
enlistment of students was acceptable; overtly telling them
to drop JROTC class was not.
But the battles are likely to continue. Some Los Angeles activists
are pushing to follow in the footsteps of San Francisco
and Lowell, Mass., both of which have taken steps to
abolish JROTC.
"I want to get them completely off campus," Castillo said.
If that happens, Harrington won't be around to see it. Sick
of the battles, he is leaving Roosevelt — and JROTC —
at the end of the school year.
sonia.nazario@latimes.com
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5) Government by Law, Not Faith
Editorial
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/opinion/28wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
The Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that could have
a broad impact on whether the courthouse door remains open
to ordinary Americans who believe that the government
is undermining the separation of church and state.
The question before the court is whether a group seeking
to preserve the separation of church and state can mount
a First Amendment challenge to the Bush administration’s
“faith based” initiatives. The arguments turn on a technical
question of whether taxpayers have standing, or the right
to initiate this kind of suit, but the real-world implications
are serious. If the court rules that the group does not have
standing, it will be much harder to stop government from
giving unconstitutional aid to religion.
Soon after taking office, President Bush established the White
House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and
faith-based offices in departments like Justice and Education.
They were intended to increase the federal grant money going
to religious organizations, and they seem to have been highly
effective. The plaintiffs cited figures showing that from 2003
to 2005, the number of federal grants to religious groups
increased 38 percent. The Freedom From Religion Foundation
and several of its members sued. They say that because the
faith-based initiatives favor religious applicants for grants over
secular applicants, they violate the Establishment Clause of the
First Amendment, which prohibits government support for religion.
These are profound issues, but because the administration
challenged the right of the foundation and its members to sue,
the courts must decide whether the plaintiffs have the right
to sue in this case before they can consider the constitutionality
of the faith-based programs. An appeals court has ruled, correctly,
that the plaintiffs have standing.
In many cases, taxpayers are not in fact allowed to sue to challenge
government actions, but the Supreme Court has long held that they
have standing to allege violations of the Establishment Clause.
Without this sort of broad standing, many entanglements between
church and state would never make it to court.
The Bush administration is pushing an incorrect view of standing
as it tries to stop the courts from reaching the First Amendment
issue. Taxpayers can challenge the financing of religious activity,
the administration claims, only when a Congressional statute
expressly authorizes the spending. There is no statute behind
the faith-based initiative.
In his decision for the appeals court, Judge Richard Posner of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago,
convincingly explained why this argument is inconsistent with
the Supreme Court’s precedents on the Establishment Clause.
Procedural issues like standing can have an enormous impact
on the administration of justice if they close the courthouse door
on people with valid legal claims. The Supreme Court has made
it clear that taxpayers may challenge government assistance
to religion. The justices should affirm Judge Posner’s ruling
so the courts can move on to the important question: Do the
Bush administration’s faith-based policies violate the Constitution?
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6) Low Pay and Broken Promises Greet Guest Workers
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28labor.html?hp
To a rice farmer from Thailand making $500 a year, the recruiter’s
pitch was hard to resist — three years of farm work in North Carolina
that would pay more than 30 times as much as he earned at home.
The pitch was so persuasive that the farmer, Worawut Khansamrit,
put his farm up as collateral to pay the recruiter $11,000 to become
a guest worker. “The amount of money they promised was very attractive,”
said Mr. Khansamrit, a slight, soft-spoken 40-year-old with a 15-year-old
daughter he wants to send to college.
But after he arrived in North Carolina with 30 other Thai workers,
he found there was only about a month’s work. He was then taken
to New Orleans to remove debris from a hotel damaged by Hurricane
Katrina — work he says he was never paid for. This month, he and
other Thai workers filed a federal lawsuit asserting that they were
victims of illegal trafficking.
Mr. Khansamrit’s tale highlights the abuses that many guest workers
face at a time when President Bush and many in Congress are pushing
to expand the guest worker program as part of an overhaul of the
nation’s immigration laws.
Each year 120,000 foreign workers receive visas to do farm work
or other low-skilled labor, usually for three to nine months. These
programs grew out of the World War II bracero program, in which
hundreds of thousands of Mexicans worked on farms and railroads,
often in deplorable conditions.
Labor experts say employers abuse guest workers far more than
other workers because employers know they can ship them home
the moment they complain. They also know these workers cannot
seek other jobs if they are unhappy.
“I’d say a substantial majority of U.S. guest workers experience
some abuses with their paycheck,” said David Griffith, a professor
in the anthropology department at East Carolina University and
author of the new book “American Guestworkers: Jamaicans
and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market.” “It’s the recruitment
process especially where they get cheated.”
The abuses take many forms. Guest workers often pay exorbitant
fees and are frequently given fewer weeks of work and lower wages
than promised. Many employers fail to make good on their
commitment to pay transportation costs. The Thai workers,
who were supposed to be paid $16,000 a year for three years,
ended up earning a total of just $1,400 to $2,400. Most of the
Thai workers had their passports taken away after they arrived,
leaving them trapped.
“The program has been rife with abuses, even during the best
of times,” said Cindy Hahamovitch, a history professor at the
College of William and Mary, who is writing a book about guest
workers. “There will never be enough inspectors to check every
labor camp, contract and field.”
For decades, farmers, tree-planting companies, and hotel and
restaurant owners have argued that they need guest workers,
citing a shortage of Americans willing to fill jobs in their industries.
In Washington, many supporters of an expanded guest worker
program say they want to strengthen protections to curb abusive
treatment.
“The business community supports the idea that these temporary
workers should have the exact same employment protections as
American workers,” said Randel Johnson, co-chairman of the Essential
Worker Immigration Coalition, a business group lobbying to expand
the guest worker program. “When an employer can’t find an American
worker to fill a job, the economy is helped if the employer can find
someone else.”
Critics, including many labor unions and immigrant groups, say
employers exaggerate the labor shortage because they are eager
for cheap, docile, temporary labor from abroad. The critics say
there would not be such a shortage of American workers
if employers offered a living wage for these jobs.
In Congress, proposals to expand protections for guest workers
include a provision to bar employers from retaliating when these
workers protest and one that would let them sue in federal court
over contract violations.
Earlier this month, Mr. Khansamrit and 21 other guest workers
sued several labor contractors and farmers in federal court in North
Carolina, accusing them of fraud, breach of contract, minimum wage
violations and illegal trafficking.
The lawsuit, brought by Legal Aid of North Carolina, asserts that
the contractors received recruitment fees that are illegal under Thai
law, provided far less work than promised, and violated federal law
by not paying transportation costs from abroad and not paying
three-fourths of the wages promised.
“None of them gave us what they promised,” said Pradit Wiangkham,
42, a Thai electrician turned guest worker. Mr. Wiangkham also worked
unpaid in New Orleans, where he said the contractor ordered the
workers to sleep in a foul-smelling hotel that had no electricity, lights,
hot water or potable water. In North Carolina, the living arrangements
were not much better; at times 33 Thai workers slept in a storage shed
behind the labor contractor’s house, the workers said.
The workers’ lawyers say federal officials should have detected that
something was awry because the contractors were applying to bring
in so many Asian workers to work just three months.
“Why would someone want to bring workers from Asia all the way
to the East Coast for such a short-term, low-wage job?” said Lori
Elmer, a lawyer for the workers. “They couldn’t break even unless
there was fraud.”
Seo Homsombath, the president of Million Express Manpower,
a small labor contracting company that works closely with recruiters
overseas, did not respond to faxes and a letter to his home
in North Carolina. Roy Raynor, another principal, declined
comment.
But in a separate lawsuit, Mr. Raynor testified that Mr. Homsombath
and he were supposed to receive payments from the recruiters
in Thailand. He said he was to receive $1,200 for each worker,
ostensibly for training them to pick cucumbers.
David James, a Labor Department spokesman, said the department
was investigating whether the contractor failed to provide adequate
wages and housing and failed to pay for transportation. He said the
department had no rules regarding the payment of recruitment
fees overseas.
Advocates say the Labor Department should require employers
to repay recruitment fees and transportation costs from abroad
when such costs effectively bring the workers’ wages below
the minimum wage.
The Thai guest workers are not alone in their complaints.
Legal Aid of North Carolina has also sued on behalf of three
Indonesians.
Several of the Indonesians and Thais have applied for special
visas available to workers who have been trafficked illegally.
With such visas, they hope to work in the United States
to repay their debts.
“I felt completely defrauded,” said Indra Budiawan, who had
been a waiter in Indonesia. “They never gave me any work
after I arrived.”
Mr. Budiawan, 28, paid $6,000 — 10 times his annual pay —
putting up his in-laws’ ancestral land as collateral after
a recruiter showed him a brochure about farm work in North
Carolina and about the good housing and food that guest
workers receive. “When I was at the airport in Jakarta, I felt
very happy,” he said. “I felt extremely proud about the job
I would have in America, given that there is so much poverty
and unemployment in Indonesia.”
But when he arrived, the head of the GTN Employment Agency,
Leeta Kang, told him there were no farm jobs. He was taken to
a sign-making store that was the contractor’s main business.
There, Mr. Budiawan slept on the storage room floor, waiting
for work that never materialized.
Mr. Budiawan told Ms. Kang that he wanted to leave. But he
said she demanded $2,000 for a return ticket and for the
passport she had taken from him. After two weeks without
work, Mr. Budiawan fled. He is now living in Miami with two
other Indonesian guest workers.
Mr. Budiawan called his father-in-law, whose land was used
as collateral, to explain his predicament. “I felt very ashamed,”
he said. “Everyone was depending on me. And now the bank
has taken steps to repossess our ancestral land.”
Ms. Kang insisted that it was not her fault there was no work
for Mr. Budiawan. “He showed up way behind schedule,” she
said. “By the time he arrived, the farm owner had already
canceled everything.”
Ms. Kang said a squash farmer had completed his harvest
and no longer needed Mr. Budiawan. She said she had tried
in vain to contact the recruiters in Indonesia to alert them
that she no longer needed Mr. Budiawan and several others.
“The agents in Indonesia were obviously just trying to get
money out of them,” Ms. Kang said. “Whatever these people
paid, none of it went to us.”
Mike Moore, the squash farmer, said Ms. Kang had asked him
to apply for far more guest workers than he needed. “She told
me to take 50,” he said. “I told her, ‘I might need five. I might
need 25.’ She said, ‘That’s no problem. Even if you don’t need
them, we have plenty of work for them in other places.’ ”
Some experts say abuses are more likely when contractors,
rather than farmers, bring in guest workers.
“The guest worker program is not for contractors who feel they
might be able to find work for other people,” said Mary Bauer,
director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty
Law Center. “It’s for people who have a compelling need to bring
in workers from abroad. There’s an enormous incentive for
contractors to bring in as many people as possible, even when
there isn’t enough work, because they often make money from
recruitment fees.”
Experts say that in some states, contractors bring in less than
10 percent of the guest workers, while in other states,
they bring in half.
Like the other Thai guest workers, Chinnawat Kompeemay,
who ran a grocery store near Bangkok, is in limbo, living
in temporary housing in Virginia.
“All I wanted was to provide my children with a better education
and living standards,” he said. “If my children get the education
I want them to have, they won’t be tricked the same way.
They won’t be taken advantage of like their father.”
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7) Chávez Shares Some Airtime With Castro
By SIMON ROMERO
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/world/americas/28cuba.html
CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 27 — “How are you?” President Hugo
Chávez asked Tuesday in his nightly live radio program after
a special guest phoned in from Havana.
“Very well,” replied Fidel Castro, speaking in what was believed
to be his first live broadcast since relinquishing power to his
brother last July.
That exchange was in thickly accented but politically pointed
English; then the two switched to Spanish for a chat that touched
on the plunge in the Chinese stock market on Tuesday, their
skepticism about using corn to produce ethanol and mockery
of President Bush’s coming visit to several Latin American
countries. (Venezuela and Cuba are not on the itinerary.)
“I feel I have more energy, more strength, more time to study,”
said Mr. Castro, whose voice sounded thin and frail on “Hello,
President,” which Venezuela hears five nights a week.
“You don’t know the happiness it gives us to hear your voice
and to know you are well,” Mr. Chávez said. “We send you a hug;
we are gratefully surprised.”
Critics of Mr. Chávez see echoes of Mr. Castro in his efforts
to consolidate his power, ruling by decree and creating a single
socialist party. Mr. Castro expressed only pride in Mr. Chávez,
crediting him with “raising the flag to save the species.”
Mr. Chávez, 52, has occasionally been seen on video with
Mr. Castro, 80, since the Cuban leader’s illness and seclusion
began last year. But some Cuba watchers initially said they believed
Mr. Castro’s illness might dilute Venezuela’s alliance with Cuba.
However, recent developments have dispelled such speculation.
Venezuela is financing the installation of fiber optic cable
to improve Cuba’s Internet and telecommunications systems
and is planning to send 100,000 Venezuelans to Cuba on
“revolutionary” tourism jaunts, in addition to maintaining
shipments to Cuba of about 100,000 barrels a day of subsidized
oil.
Cuba, meanwhile, has sent thousands of social workers to
Venezuela to install fluorescent light bulbs in homes to help
conserve energy. Thousands of other Cubans are at work
in Venezuela, providing subsidized medical care and advice
on mining and sugar cultivation.
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8) Jailers Testify About Padilla’s Confinement
By DEBORAH SONTAG
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28padilla.html?ref=us
MIAMI, Feb. 27 — As Jose Padilla dropped his head and grew still,
a senior official from the naval brig in Charleston, S.C., testified
on Tuesday in federal court here that he had twice observed
Mr. Padilla weeping in the electronically monitored cell where
the military detained him for three years and eight months.
The brig’s technical director, Sanford E. Seymour, also said
that Mr. Padilla, an American citizen who was designated an
enemy combatant in 2002, sometimes slept on a steel bunk
without a mattress, that the windows in his 80-square-foot
cell were blackened and that brig employees covered up their
nametags around him.
Mr. Seymour said that Mr. Padilla, a Muslim, occasionally visited
with an imam and that his Koran was taken from him periodically;
that he sometimes went outside to shoot baskets or sunbathe;
and that when Mr. Padilla believed he had been administered
LSD, it was really a flu shot.
These scattershot revelations, elicited by Mr. Padilla’s lawyers
in a hearing of sharply limited scope, did not add up to
a comprehensive portrait of Mr. Padilla’s time in the brig.
But they were nonetheless significant, marking the first time
Mr. Padilla’s military jailers were forced to speak publicly about
the conditions of his secretive confinement without charges.
That confinement ended a year ago when Mr. Padilla, 36, was
transferred into the civilian law enforcement system to stand
trial on terrorism conspiracy charges. But his lawyers argue that
the conditions of his military detention and interrogations
traumatized him so severely that he is incapable of assisting
them in his own defense. In essence, they say, the government
rendered him incompetent to stand trial, a position
the prosecution vehemently denies.
Three days of testimony in a competency hearing concluded
Tuesday with the brief appearance of two brig officials. After
both sides make concluding arguments on Wednesday, Judge
Marcia G. Cooke of Federal District Court will choose between
two starkly contrasting images of Mr. Padilla: the lucid, occasionally
jolly defendant with antisocial tendencies portrayed by the government,
and the twitching, fearful, damaged man presented by the defense.
In a 16-page report made public Tuesday, Rodolfo A. Buigas,
a Bureau of Prisons psychologist who examined Mr. Padilla
for the judge, recommended that he be found competent
to stand trial. Mr. Padilla refused to submit to psychological
testing, so Dr. Buigas evaluated him by talking to him for about
five hours, by examining his records and the reports of experts
hired by the defense, and by questioning lawyers and brig officials.
It is because Dr. Buigas interviewed brig officials that Judge Cooke
allowed them to testify Tuesday despite strong objections from
the government. But she allowed defense lawyers to ask the officials
only about their conversations with Dr. Buigas, saying that a more
general airing about conditions in the brig might be held if she
conducted a hearing on a defense motion to dismiss the indictment
because of “outrageous government conduct.”
Craig S. Noble, a psychologist at the brig, testified that he had
screened Mr. Padilla twice. He did an initial “brief evaluation” when
Mr. Padilla arrived in June 2002, finding that he was “responsive,
made good eye contact and, in fact, smiled periodically.” About
two years later, Dr. Noble said, he conducted a “cell front visit,”
in which he spoke to Mr. Padilla through a rectangular slot
on his door, and discovered no new signs of “distress or lethality.”
During the hearing, two mental health experts who spent over
25 hours evaluating Mr. Padilla for the defense testified that he
was disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his
experiences in the brig.
“I’m not sure that any of us know what happened at the brig,
but I know that something there put the fear into Mr. Padilla,”
said Patricia Zapf, a forensic psychologist who examined him.
“Mr. Padilla is an anxiety-ridden, broken individual who
is incapacitated by that anxiety.”
But the Bureau of Prisons psychologist, Dr. Buigas, disagreed
with the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He said
Dr. Zapf’s testing was invalidated by the fact that Mr. Padilla
was handcuffed during the tests, a condition imposed
on Dr. Zapf by prison officials.
Testifying on Monday, Dr. Buigas, whom defense lawyers
do not view as a neutral examiner, said that Mr. Padilla
possessed the capacity to work with his lawyers, and that
any failure to do so was “volitional.”
Dr. Buigas added that during his first encounter with Mr. Padilla,
“he was actually pretty happy.” Dr. Buigas testified that he had even
commented to his boss that Mr. Padilla seemed “happier than our
department,” referring to his colleagues in the mental health unit
of the Miami federal detention center.
Mr. Padilla, who sat placidly through much of the testimony, chatted
animatedly with his lawyers as Dr. Buigas talked. One of the lawyers,
Anthony Natale, rose to his feet for a cross-examination, and what
turned into an odd exchange.
”You used the word ‘happy,’ ” Mr. Natale said to Dr. Buigas.
“Do you know if that’s when he was allowed for the first time
to get a radio? Do you know if that’s when he was allowed to have
a shower with a curtain? ... So you don’t know why he was happy?”
Dr. Buigas said he could not recall the conversation clearly, but
he said, “In general, he was talking about being Puerto Rican.”
Prosecution lawyers scoffed at the idea the Mr. Padilla was mentally
incompetent, saying that his jailers had never reported any psychiatric
problems and that he had comported himself well during court hearings.
“Jose Padilla sits quietly,” said Brian K. Frazier, a prosecutor. “He
follows the instructions of the marshals. He turns around and
waves to Mama.”
Mr. Frazier said that in court Mr. Padilla manifested none of the
tics, grimaces and sweating that the defense describes, “despite
the fact that we talk about some pretty uncomfortable stuff.”
Prosecutors tried to introduce into evidence what they said
was an internal document from Al Qaeda that coached operatives
to be obstructionist if captured, to avoid revealing information
and to make a claim of torture even if no mistreatment had
occurred. This document, which they referred to as the “Manchester
manual” because it was found several years ago in Manchester,
England, was what guided Mr. Padilla, they said.
“Don’t I have to have some evidence that Mr. Padilla was aware
of this document and studied it?” Judge Cooke asked prosecutors.
In declining to admit the manual into evidence, she added that
the manual would have converted the competency hearing into
a debate over whether the defendant had been tortured in the brig.
Update:
U.S. Judge Finds Padilla Competent to Face Trial
By DEBORAH SONTAG
March 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/us/01padilla.html
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9) Service Members Sign Appeal Calling for Troop Withdrawal
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28appeal.html
In a small but growing sign of dissent, a group of active-duty military
personnel and reservists, including many who have served in Iraq,
is denouncing the war and asking Congress for the prompt withdrawal
of troops.
The service members, who number more than 1,600, have sent
an Appeal for Redress to their Congressional representatives, a form
of protest permitted by military rules. Most of those who signed the
appeal, at www.appealforredress.org, are enlisted soldiers in the
Army, from the lowest to the highest ranks.
“There is a sense of betrayal,” said Specialist Linsay Burnett, 26, who
recently returned from Iraq with the First Brigade combat team
of the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, on the
border of Kentucky and Tennessee. The division is readying for
its third deployment.
“These soldiers stand up to fight, to protect their country, but we
are now on the fifth reason as to why it is we are in Iraq,” added
Specialist Burnett, who has served as a public affairs specialist and
as a military journalist focusing primarily on the infantry. “How
many reasons are we going to come up with for keeping us over
there?”
The Appeal for Redress reads: “As a patriotic American proud
to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political
leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American
military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work
and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.”
The protest, which was started in October by two active-duty service
members and is sponsored by three antiwar groups, initially drew
65 signatures, growing to more than 1,300 by February. This week,
after the CBS News program “60 Minutes” reported on the appeal,
about 300 more active-duty soldiers joined the campaign, said Petty
Officer Third Class Jonathan Hutto of the Navy, a co-founder
of the group behind the appeal.
While the 1,600 make up a tiny part of the armed services, the
appeal is one of the first official signs of protest from people within
the military. An estimated 70 percent of those who have signed it are
on active duty; the rest are members of the Reserves or the National
Guard, and about 100 officers have signed it.
Describing themselves as supporters of the military but critics of the
Iraq war, leaders of the appeal say they believe it is their right and
duty under the Constitution to question the war and its mission,
a position not widely voiced in the military.
Their decision to speak out and take their opposition outside the
chain of command has been criticized by some veterans’ groups
that argue that soldiers are obligated to follow orders, not change
policy. Critics also say that while service members cannot choose
where they will be deployed, they can choose to join the military
or not.
When the group sent its first letter in October, the White House
spokesman, Tony Snow, said it was “not unusual for soldiers in
a time of war to have some misgivings,” adding that the group
constituted a small minority of service members.
In a phone call yesterday with three signatories, including Petty
Officer Hutto, the service members said their decision to appeal
had not been taken lightly. The military does not allow service
members to organize and frowns on dissent.
“The Army has many ways to make your life very difficult,” Specialist
Burnett said, adding that she had come forward largely because
“there are not many voices out there for the men on the ground.”
Jeff Slocum, a chief master sergeant of the Air Force who is scheduled
to deploy to Iraq next year, said his high rank was one reason he had
signed the appeal. “I’m not antiwar, I’m not antimilitary,” said Chief
Master Sergeant Slocum, who added that the troops were feeling
“used and abused.”
That 1,600 service members have signed the appeal “shows just
how much we are willing to risk,” he said. “We are trying to raise
awareness that we need people to be sticking up for us, because
nobody else is.”
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10) After Inquiry, Grand Jury Refuses
to Issue New Indictments in Till Case
By SHAILA DEWAN
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28till.html
ATLANTA, Feb. 27 — After a new investigation of the notorious 1955
killing of Emmett Till, a grand jury in Leflore County, Miss., has declined
to issue any new indictments, effectively ending any further prosecution
of a crime that fueled the civil rights movement.
Two men, now dead, admitted to the killing in 1956 after they were
acquitted by an all-white jury in Sumner, Miss. But the Justice Department
reopened the case in 2004 in search of others who had participated
in the beating and shooting of Emmett, a black 14-year-old. By then,
so much time had passed that the country store where the victim was
said to have whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, was in ruins.
The new inquiry was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
which turned over a report of more than 8,000 pages to the district
attorney, Joyce L. Chiles. Ms. Chiles sought a manslaughter charge
against Ms. Bryant, 73, the last known living suspect in the case,
but the grand jury decided last week not to issue an indictment,
a court clerk said. The action was reported Tuesday in The Jackson
Clarion-Ledger.
“If Carolyn Bryant is truly not guilty in being involved in the killing
of Emmett Till or there is insufficient evidence to indict her, then
the grand jury did the right thing,” said Alvin Sykes, the president
of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign.
The grand jury’s decision illustrates the difficulty of prosecuting
such old cases, even as the Justice Department has begun its first
systematic effort to identify them. At a news conference on Tuesday
in Washington, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Robert
S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., said about a dozen such
cases had been selected, from a list of about 100, for immediate
action.
“New information, sometimes an innocuous small bit of information,
can be crucial to breaking these decades-old cases,” Mr. Gonzales
said. “A secret harbored for many years can be the piece of evidence
we need to make our case.”
Last month a federal grand jury in Jackson, Miss., indicted James
F. Seale, 71, on kidnapping charges in connection with the 1964
killing of two black men near Meadville, Miss. Mr. Seale is in custody
awaiting trial.
The Till case was reopened after Ms. Chiles and Justice Department
officials met with Mr. Sykes; Keith Beauchamp, a filmmaker who made
a 2005 documentary about the case; and Simeon Wright, the cousin
who was sharing a bed with Emmett when white men came to the
house and took him away in a pickup truck.
It is not clear how many people participated in what followed:
Emmett was beaten, shot, weighted down and thrown in the
Tallahatchie River. Some have speculated, based on a recollection
by Mr. Wright’s father, Mose, that he heard a “lighter” voice,
that Ms. Bryant was in the truck for all or part of the night.
Ms. Chiles declined to comment on the case, and grand jury
proceedings are secret.
Mr. Sykes has repeatedly expressed hope that the investigation
will ultimately be made subject to public scrutiny.
“We just want the truth,” he said, “and that’s all we want.
As much as the truth can be told and gained.”
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11) F.B.I. Is Reopening Civil Rights Deaths
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28fbi.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (AP) — The F.B.I. has reopened investigations
of about 12 suspicious deaths from the civil rights era, officials
said Tuesday.
The cases are among an estimated 100 being reviewed. Attorney
General Alberto R. Gonzales acknowledged that many cases might
be beyond what the government could prosecute but added that
they remained “on our radar.”
“Much time has passed on these crimes,” Mr. Gonzales told reporters
here. “The wounds they left are deep, and still many of them have
not healed. But we are committed to re-examining these cases
and doing all we can to bring justice to the criminals who may
have avoided punishment for so long.”
Addressing violators, Mr. Gonzales said: “You have not gotten
away with anything. We are still on your trail.”
Officials would not release details about the cases but said nearly
all were in 14 Southern states. Investigators confirmed, for example,
that the unsolved lynching of four sharecroppers in 1946 on Moore’s
Ford Bridge near Monroe, Ga., was among the cases.
The officials would not say whether another big case was included.
It involved Maceo Snipes, a black World War II veteran shot in the
back in 1946 by four white men a day after he voted for the first time.
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12) Some Immigrant High Schoolers Receive a Lesson in Disappointment
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/education/28education.html?ref=nyregion
Two winters ago, Pablo Oliva began the process of applying to public
high schools in New York. A complicated process at best, it looked
utterly byzantine to a 13-year-old who had only recently come to
America from Argentina. But there in the vast list of choices,
amazingly, Pablo found the ideal place.
It was a brand-new school, and would specialize in teaching English
to immigrant teenagers. It would be situated on the campus
at Kingsborough Community College, a 10-minute bus ride from
Pablo’s home in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. The school’s
partnership with Kingsborough meant that Pablo could use the
college library, swim in the college pool and, most important,
take classes for college credit.
Now, nearing the end of his sophomore year, Pablo has been
the victim of a bait-and-switch. What was initially called the
International High School at Kingsborough Community College
operates miles from that campus, sharing part of a middle school’s
building in Canarsie. Pablo’s commute to what is now simply
called International High School takes more than an hour each
way. He has no access to college facilities or classes. And like
a number of his classmates, he has been intimidated and robbed
just outside the building.
“It’s very awful,” he said during an interview last week. “I feel bad
and sad. I’m wasting time off my life.” Then he translated a comment
his father, Hernan, was making in Spanish: “The Department
of Education is lying to New York citizens. And they lied to us.”
Officials at the department acknowledge that they opened registration
for the school without having obtained the promised site on or near
the community college. And, even as the school is well into its second
year, the department does not have an alternative to the current site
at 755 East 100th Street.
“We were aggressive in opening the school,” said Garth Harries, the
chief executive officer of the department’s office of new schools.
While “one side of the balance sheet” was the lack of a better location,
he said, that concern was outweighed by the record of academic
success at several other high schools in the so-called Internationals
Network. “We understand that just as we make these trade-offs,
it creates trade-offs for parents and families,” he said, adding
that the department had not deliberately misled the 160 families
with children in the school.
Yet what remains starkly evident in speaking to a half-dozen
current students and their parents, as well as to educators and
immigration advocates familiar with the situation, is that none
of the immigrant families had any inkling about the abrupt change
in location and academic offerings until two weeks before the high
school opened in September 2005.
By then, it was too late for the pupils to apply elsewhere. They
and their families had no choice but to listen to repeated assurances
from the department that the school would move imminently to
a more suitable location. Late last fall, the principal, Michael Soet,
invited representatives from the department to address about
50 parents and students. At the last minute, the officials canceled
because they had no solution to offer.
“Nobody cares,” said Sohir Mikhail, an immigrant from Egypt whose
son, Fady, attends the school. “The guys at the board of ed are
not going to hear the voices of immigrants.”
What those voices express is a sense of betrayal. Even as many
students and parents praise the Canarsie school for its academic
program, they castigate the education department for its unkept
promise of a safe, convenient school with access to college courses.
MIGUEL LOPEZ, a clergyman, enrolled his sons Jeferson and Johantry
in the school because the Kingsborough campus was about 15 minutes
from their home in Flatbush. It takes the boys nearly 90 minutes by
a combination of subway and bus to reach the Canarsie site. On the
two days a week when physical education is scheduled, they must
leave home by 5:30 a.m.; the class starts at 7 because the school
gym is oversubscribed during regular periods.
The inconvenience might not matter so much if the students felt
secure in the neighborhood. But the immigrant teenagers have
become easy prey for criminals who linger just off school grounds.
A Haitian pupil was beaten up at a nearby bus stop recently, and
lost several teeth. A Dominican teenager’s gold chain was stolen
as he walked to the subway after his first day of classes. Pablo
Oliva was robbed even of his MetroCard.
Youstina Rafla, a ninth grader, said: “I’m afraid to stay after school
for yoga. I’m afraid to leave alone after dark. You have to come
as a group and go as a group.”
Mr. Harries and Jemina Bernard, another top executive in the
new-schools office, said they had been unaware of the safety
problems at the high school until this columnist recounted
several incidents.
But Mr. Soet, the principal, sent an e-mail message saying,
“All of the incidents that have been reported to me I have in turn
reported to the Department of Education through the appropriate
channels.” He added that he had made repeated requests — as yet
unanswered — to have a second school safety officer assigned.
Then there is the matter of the college courses. The flagship school
of the Internationals Network in New York, on the campus
of LaGuardia Community College in Queens, not only allows
students to take college classes but ultimately to earn an associate’s
degree. The families that chose the Brooklyn school had been led
by the education department to expect something comparable.
Instead, Jeferson Lopez discovered he would not be able to take
classes to prepare for a career in architecture. Youstina Rafla,
who aspires to be an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
has been unable to start amassing college credits. Pablo Oliva could
not even get permission to use the Kingsborough library on weekends.
Meanwhile, Ms. Bernard said the education department was “in
the process” of identifying a school site closer to Kingsborough,
with the prospect of opening it for the 2007-8 academic year.
The parents and pupils can be forgiven for hearing such words
with a tad of skepticism. “I still don’t believe what they’re telling
us,” said Pablo Oliva. “For two years, they’ve been telling us we
would move. I want to know the truth.”
Samuel G. Freedman is a professor of journalism at Columbia
University. His e-mail address is sgfreedman@nytimes.com.
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13) Two Victims and Three Officers to Testify in Shooting Inquiry
By AL BAKER
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/nyregion/28grand.html?ref=nyregion
A Queens grand jury weighing evidence in the fatal police shooting
of an unarmed black man on his wedding day in November is entering
its final stages with two prime witnesses set to testify on Friday.
Three of the five police officers who fired their guns that day are
also set to sit for the panel beginning next week.
Lawyers, a union official and others familiar with the process said
that the police officers and the two witnesses, both of whom were
injured in a hail of 50 police bullets that killed Sean Bell, were likely
to be among the final people to appear before grand jurors who
are now in their sixth week of hearing testimony and evidence
in the case.
The panel will determine whether any of the five police officers
involved in the shooting will face criminal charges. One official
said a decision could come as early as mid-March, though others
cautioned against pinpointing a date for such action.
Mr. Bell, 23, was killed on Nov. 25 when the officers fired into
his car outside a Jamaica strip club where he was celebrating
his bachelor party. Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, who
were Mr. Bell’s friends and were in his car with him, were
wounded and will tell their stories to the grand jurors,
lawyers for the men said.
“They will tell the truth as to what occurred,” said Michael Hardy,
a lawyer for the men. “I can’t give you substance.”
The office of the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown,
declined to comment last evening. The grand jury has been
at work since the week of Jan. 22, officials said, meeting
usually three times each week.
Four of the five police officers involved in the shooting have
voluntarily spoken to prosecutors and Michael J. Palladino,
president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, said that
beginning as early as Monday “at least three of the four detectives
are planning to testify,” before the grand jury.
“Since the beginning, they have been anxious to have their side
of the story told publicly,” Mr. Palladino said. “As far as I’m concerned,
I think the grand jury, in order to make an informed decision on this
very important case, has to hear from the detectives.”
Mr. Palladino said that after speaking with the union’s counsel, Philip
E. Karasyk, he understood that the three officers who were planning
to testify include Detective Marc Cooper and Detective Paul Headley
as well as a 28-year-old undercover detective who fired the first
of the 50 shots and is being represented by Mr. Karasyk.
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14) 5 Ex-Managers Plead Guilty in Hiring of Illegal Immigrants
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/business/28workers.html
ALBANY, Feb. 27 (AP) — Five former managers from a pallet and crate
maker pleaded guilty on Tuesday in the company’s hiring of illegal
immigrants, 10 months after raids in 26 states signaled a federal
crackdown on employers that break the law to get cheap labor.
James Rice, 37, of Houston, who was an executive regional general
manager at IFCO Systems, pleaded guilty in Federal District Court
in Albany to conspiring to employ illegal workers. Robert Belvin, 43,
of Stuart, Fla., former general manager of a suburban Albany plant,
pleaded guilty to two felony conspiracy charges.
The three other managers — Dario Salzano, 36, of Amsterdam, N.Y.;
Michael Ames, 44, of Shrewsbury, Mass.; and Scott Dodge, 44,
of Elmira, N.Y. — pleaded guilty to misdemeanors. Mr. Dodge was
foreman at an IFCO plant near Albany where Mr. Salzano was
assistant general manager. Mr. Ames was general manager
of a plant near Boston.
Charges are pending against two other IFCO managers, one in
Houston and one in Cincinnati.
In April, more than 1,100 people were arrested on administrative
immigration charges at more than 40 IFCO sites in the United States.
At the time, Department of Homeland Security officials said the raids
were part of an effort reduce illegal immigration by focusing on employers.
IFCO, based in the Netherlands, describes itself as the leading pallet
services company in America. It reported $108 million in profit
in 2006 on revenue of $647 million.
More than half of the company’s roughly 5,800 employees during
2005 had invalid or mismatched Social Security numbers, the
government said at the time of the raids.
Tina E. Sciocchetti, an assistant United States attorney, said Mr. Rice
and Mr. Belvin could each face 18 to 24 months in prison and a fine
of up to $250,000. The others face up to six months in jail and
a $3,000 fine for each illegal alien employed.
“Under the circumstances, we thought the only rational thing
to do was to plead guilty,” said Mr. Belvin’s lawyer, Terence L. Kindlon.
Mr. Rice’s lawyer declined to comment on the plea.
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15) US's Iraq oil grab is a done deal
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times (Hong Kong)
Feb 28, 2007
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB28Ak01.html
By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle
East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the
prize lies. - US Vice President Dick Cheney, then Halliburton chief
executive officer, London, autumn 1999
US President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney might as well
declare the Iraq war over and out. As far as they - and the humongous
energy interests they defend - are concerned, only now is the mission
really accomplished. More than half a trillion dollars spent and more
than half a million Iraqis killed have come down to this.
On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet in Baghdad approved
the draft of the new Iraqi oil law. The government regards it as "a
major national project". The key point of the law is that Iraq's immense
oil wealth (115 billion barrels of proven reserves, third in the world
after Saudi Arabia and Iran) will be under the iron rule of a fuzzy
"Federal Oil and Gas Council" boasting "a panel of oil experts from
inside and outside Iraq". That is, nothing less than predominantly US
Big Oil executives.
The law represents no less than institutionalized raping and pillaging
of Iraq's oil wealth. It represents the death knell of nationalized
(from 1972 to 1975) Iraqi resources, now replaced by production sharing
agreements (PSAs) - which translate into savage privatization and
monster profit rates of up to 75% for (basically US) Big Oil. Sixty-five
of Iraq's roughly 80 oilfields already known will be offered for Big Oil
to exploit. As if this were not enough, the law reduces in practice the
role of Baghdad to a minimum. Oil wealth, in theory, will be distributed
directly to Kurds in the north, Shi'ites in the south and Sunnis in the
center. For all practical purposes, Iraq will be partitioned into three
statelets. Most of the country's reserves are in the Shi'ite-dominated
south, while the Kurdish north holds the best prospects for future
drilling.
The approval of the draft law by the fractious 275-member Iraqi
Parliament, in March, will be a mere formality. Hussain al-Shahristani,
Iraq's oil minister, is beaming. So is dodgy Barnham Salih: a Kurd,
committed cheerleader of the US invasion and occupation, then deputy
prime minister, big PSA fan, and head of a committee that was debating
the law.
But there was not much to be debated. The law was in essence drafted,
behind locked doors, by a US consulting firm hired by the Bush
administration and then carefully retouched by Big Oil, the
International Monetary Fund, former US deputy defense secretary Paul
Wolfowitz' World Bank, and the United States Agency for International
Development. It's virtually a US law (its original language is English,
not Arabic).
Scandalously, Iraqi public opinion had absolute no knowledge of it - not
to mention the overwhelming majority of Parliament members. Were this to
be a truly representative Iraqi government, any change to the
legislation concerning the highly sensitive question of oil wealth would
have to be approved by a popular referendum.
In real life, Iraq's vital national interests are in the hands of a
small bunch of highly impressionable (or downright corrupt) technocrats.
Ministries are no more than political party feuds; the national interest
is never considered, only private, ethnic and sectarian interests.
Corruption and theft are endemic. Big Oil will profit handsomely - and
long-term, 30 years minimum, with fabulous rates of return - from a
former developing-world stalwart methodically devastated into
failed-state status.
Get me a PSA on time
In these past few weeks, US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been crucial
in mollifying the Kurds. In the end, in practice, the pro-US Kurds will
have all the power to sign oil contracts with whatever companies they
want. Sunnis will be more dependent on the Oil Ministry in Baghdad. And
Shi'ites will be more or less midway between total independence in the
south and Baghdad's dictum (which they control anyway). But the crucial
point remains: nobody will sign anything unless the "advisers" at the
US-manipulated Federal Oil and Gas Council say so.
Nobody wants to have colonial-style PSAs forced down their throats
anymore. According to the International Energy Agency, PSAs apply to
only 12% of global oil reserves, in cases where costs are very high and
nobody knows what will be found (certainly not the Iraqi case). No big
Middle Eastern oil producer works with PSAs. Russia and Venezuela are
renegotiating all of them. Bolivia nationalized its gas. Algeria and
Indonesia have new rules for future contracts. But Iraq, of course, is
not a sovereign country.
Big Oil is obviously ecstatic - not only ExxonMobil, but also
ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP and Shell (which have collected invaluable
info on two of Iraq's biggest oilfields), TotalFinaElf, Lukoil from
Russia and the Chinese majors. Iraq has as many as 70 undeveloped fields
- "small" ones hold a minimum of a billion barrels. As desert western
Iraq has not even been exploited, reserves may reach 300 billion barrels
- way more than Saudi Arabia. Gargantuan profits under the PSA
arrangement are in a class by themselves. Iraqi oil costs only US$1 a
barrel to extract. With a barrel worth $60 and up, happy days are here
again.
What revenue the regions do get will be distributed to all 18 provinces
based on population size - an apparent concession to the Sunnis, whose
central areas have relatively few proven reserves.
The Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance) certainly has other ideas - as in
future rolling thunder against pipelines, refineries and Western
personnel. Iraq's oil independence will not go down quietly - at least
among Sunnis. On the same day the oil law was being approved, a powerful
bomb at the Ministry of Municipalities killed at least 12 people and
injured 42, including Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. Mahdi has always
been a feverish supporter of the oil law. He's a top official of the
Shi'ite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq
(SCIRI).
A whole case can be made of SCIRI delivering Iraq's Holy Grail to
Bush/Cheney and Big Oil - in exchange for not being chased out of power
by the Pentagon. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the SCIRI's leader, is much more
of a Bush ally than Maliki, who is from the Da'wa Party. No wonder
SCIRI's Badr Organization and their death squads were never the target
of Washington's wrath - unlike Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army (Muqtada is
fiercely against the oil law). The SCIRI certainly listened to the White
House, which has always made it very clear: any more funds to the Iraqi
government are tied up with passing the oil law.
Bush and Cheney got their oily cake - and they will eat it, too (or be
drenched in its glory). Mission accomplished: permanent, sprawling
military bases on the eastern flank of the Arab nation and control of
some of the largest untapped oil wealth on the planet - a key
geostrategic goal of the New American Century. Now it's time to move
east, bomb Iran, force regime change and - what else? - force PSAs down
their Persian throats.
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16) In Medieval Architecture, Signs of Advanced Math
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
February 27, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/science/27math.html?ref=science
In the beauty and geometric complexity of tile mosaics on walls
of medieval Islamic buildings, scientists have recognized patterns
suggesting that the designers had made a conceptual breakthrough
in mathematics beginning as early as the 13th century.
A new study shows that the Islamic pattern-making process, far more
intricate than the laying of one’s bathroom floor, appears to have
involved an advanced math of quasi crystals, which was not understood
by modern scientists until three decades ago.
The findings, reported in the current issue of the journal Science,
are a reminder of the sophistication of art, architecture and science
long ago in the Islamic culture. They also challenge the assumption
that the designers somehow created these elaborate patterns with
only a ruler and a compass. Instead, experts say, they may have
had other tools and concepts.
Two years ago, Peter J. Lu, a doctoral student in physics at Harvard
University, was transfixed by the geometric pattern on a wall in
Uzbekistan. It reminded him of what mathematicians call quasi-
crystalline designs. These were demonstrated in the early 1970s
by Roger Penrose, a mathematician and cosmologist at the
University of Oxford.
Mr. Lu set about examining pictures of other tile mosaics from
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, working with Paul J. Steinhardt,
a Princeton cosmologist who is an authority on quasi crystals and
had been Mr. Lu’s undergraduate adviser. The research was a bit
like trying to figure out the design principle of a jigsaw puzzle,
Mr. Lu said in an interview.
In their journal report, Mr. Lu and Dr. Steinhardt concluded that
by the 15th century, Islamic designers and artisans had developed
techniques “to construct nearly perfect quasi-crystalline Penrose
patterns, five centuries before discovery in the West.”
Some of the most complex patterns, called “girih” in Persian, consist
of sets of contiguous polygons fitted together with little distortion
and no gaps. Running through each polygon (a decagon, pentagon,
diamond, bowtie or hexagon) is a decorative line. Mr. Lu found that
the interlocking tiles were arranged in predictable ways to create
a pattern that never repeats — that is, quasi crystals.
“Again and again, girih tiles provide logical explanations for
complicated designs,” Mr. Lu said in a news release from Harvard.
He and Dr. Steinhardt recognized that the artisans in the 13th century
had begun creating mosaic patterns in this way. The geometric
star-and-polygon girihs, as quasi crystals, can be rotated a certain
number of degrees, say one-fifth of a circle, to positions from which
other tiles are fitted. As such, this makes possible a pattern that
is infinitely big and yet the pattern never repeats itself, unlike the
tiles on the typical floor.
This was, the scientists wrote, “an important breakthrough in Islamic
mathematics and design.”
Dr. Steinhardt said in an interview that it was not clear how well
the Islamic designers understood all the elements they were applying
to the construction of these patterns. “I can just say what’s on the
walls,” he said.
Mr. Lu said that it would be “incredible if it were all coincidence.”
“At the very least,” he said, “it shows us a culture that we often don’t
credit enough was far more advanced than we ever thought before.”
From a study of a few hundred examples, Mr. Lu and Dr. Steinhardt
determined that the technique was fully developed two centuries
later in mosques, palaces, shrines and other buildings. They noted
that “a nearly perfect quasi-crystalline Penrose pattern” is found
on the Darb-i Imam shrine in Isfahan, Iran, which was built in 1453.
The researchers described how the architects there had created
overlapping patterns with girih tiles at two sizes to produce
nearly perfect quasi-crystalline patterns.
In the report, Mr. Lu and Dr. Steinhardt said the examples they
had studied so far “fall just short of being perfect quasi crystals;
there may be more interesting examples yet to be discovered.”
In a separate article in Science, some experts in the math of crystals
questioned if the findings were an entirely new insight. In particular,
Emil Makovicky of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark said
the new report failed to give sufficient credit to an analysis
he published in 1992 of mosaic patterns on a tomb in Iran.
Mr. Lu and Dr. Steinhardt said they regretted what they called
a misunderstanding. They pointed out that the length of their
report was strictly enforced by journal editors, but it did include
two footnotes to Dr. Makovicky’s research. None of the referees
or editors who reviewed the paper, Dr. Steinhardt said, asked
for more attention to the previous research.
Although their work had some elements in common with
Dr. Makovicky’s, Dr. Steinhardt said in an interview that their
research dealt with not one but a “whole sweep of tilings”
interpreted through a few hundred examples.
The article quoted two other experts, Dov Levine and Joshua
Socolar, physicists at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa
and Duke University, respectively, as agreeing that Dr. Makovicky
deserved more credit. But, the article noted, they said the Lu-Steinhardt
research had “generated interesting and testable hypotheses.”
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17) What Castro and Chavez spoke about
The following is the transcript of the conversation between Venezuela's
President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. It has been
edited for brevity.
February 28, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6403683.stm
Chavez: Let's see who is calling from Havana. Bring me some coffee please.
Castro: Hello. Hello. Do you hear me?
Chavez: Who is calling?
Castro: Can you hear me?
Chavez: I hear you.
Castro: Distinguished and dear friend, how are you?
Chavez: [Words inaudible]
Castro: I am listening to you on Hello President. All the figures you have
cited, I find your argument very good regarding the growth of the GDP,
over the drop in unemployment. Many interesting things.
Chavez: How are you?
Castro: Go ahead, go ahead. Ask me.
Chavez: [In English] How are you?
Castro: [In English] Pretty well. [Laughter]
Chavez: You have no idea how happy it makes us to hear
your voice and to know you are well.
Castro: Thank you.
Chavez: We are surprised. We are pleasantly surprised. We were,
as almost always, talking about you a while ago. Now, you know that.
Castro: I always knew I would end up on Hello President.
Chavez: Now we broadcast daily.
Castro: No. [Words inaudible. Laughter] I am studying a lot, above all.
Chavez: What are you studying?
Castro: I see that you do not let go of the books. When do you sleep?
Chavez: I sleep a little in the early morning. I sleep some. I study
a lot. That is one of the responsibilities of every revolutionary.
We follow your example. I am now reading -
Castro: [Interrupting] Yes. You have been reading for a long while.
You have great talent to keep it all in, to remember everything.
The only thing you sometimes forget is figures.
Chavez: I forget numbers but not that much.
Castro: However, you have them all bookmarked and never miss one.
It is not easy to keep up with you.
Chavez: Do you know how many hectares of corn are needed
to produce one million barrels of ethanol?
Castro: To do what?
Chavez: To produce one million barrels of ethanol?
Castro: Ethanol. I believe you told me about that the other day.
Somewhere around 20 million hectares.
Chavez: [Laughing] Just like that.
Castro: Go ahead, remind me.
Chavez: Indeed, 20 million. You are the one with an
exceptional mind, not me.
Castro: Twenty million. Well, of course. The idea of using food
to produce fuel is tragic, is dramatic. No one is sure how high
the price of food will rise when soy is being used for fuel,
with the need there is in the world to produce eggs, milk,
to produce meat. It is a tragedy. One of many today.
I am happy to know that you have taken up the flag to save
the species because... there are new problems, very difficult
problems and therefore to see someone become a great preacher
of the cause, a champion of the cause, an advocate of the life
of the species. For that, I congratulate you. Continue fighting
[words inaudible] to educate the people so they can understand.
There are things that I read and review every day. I am very aware
of the threat of war, environmental threats and food threats.
We have to remember that there are billions of people famished.
These are realities, and for the first time in history, the governments
are getting involved. Governments that are able and have the moral
authority to do it, and you are one of those rare examples...
Forgive me for extending myself. I have stolen half of your show.
Chavez: No. Not extensive at all. It is 1949. We were remembering
you today. As you know, today is 27 February. One of the reasons
of the Caracazo is that when you came that time, you left here
hundreds of agitators that set the flats on fire, as we say. We were
analysing the causes including the topics of the foreign debt, Black
Friday, the plundering of the country, the flight of capital, privatisation,
inflation accompanied by a horrible recession, unemployment, the
collapse of the middle class. Well, as Einstein said, we were reading
it a while ago, I do not know if you heard it, when he reflects on
socialism and concludes that capitalism generates chaos.
So, Fidel, we were remembering you in connection with the Caracazo
[violent looting and disturbances in Caracas on 27 February 1989].
I was thinking that in those days I saw you from afar and I wanted to
get close to greet you, but I could not, but we were already involved
in the revolutionary movement. I wanted to tell the world I thought
this Hello President programme, now that I am listening and talking
to you, what an honour. Well, that day, the entire people rose against
neo-liberalism. Fidel, as you know, the Caracazo was the first
overwhelming and worldwide response to the neo-liberal plan
as the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall were falling, and the onset
of the end of history.
And 4 February stems from the Caracazo. You know that one does
not make sense without the other. Then came this whole path, our
revolution in which Cuba has always and will always be present,
Cuba with you at the helm. There is so much to thank Cuba for.
Without Cuba, the energy revolution would have been impossible.
Now, we will continue to move forward with you...
Castro: I think it is all wonderful... Venezuela has a territory of nearly
one million square kilometres. We are just a nut shell that the Gulf
current pushed too close to our friends to the north. [Chuckles]
Chavez: [In English] Our friends Fidel, listen.
Castro: Well, you say that I know English. I did at one time.
Chavez: Did you forget it?
Castro: The trauma afterwards has made me forget it. This is why
I no longer have that excellent memory you have, the capacity to
summarise or your musical ear, your talent to remember songs.
I cannot believe that you have partied so much as to remember
all those songs.
Chavez: I never partied as much as you.
Castro: I envy you that.
Chavez: Not as much as you. Not as much as you.
Castro: I am talking about the essence of ideas. You have the right
words. I have noticed that the [word inaudible] the exact words.
In the end, you will be one of the greatest writers in this hemisphere.
Do not worry, writers have increasingly more power with time.
Chavez: Can I ask you something?
Castro: Yes.
Chavez: What do you think of the latest news to have reached us?
That 67% of Americans disapprove of Bush's policy in Iraq. You
know that we are preparing to welcome Bush in South America?
Castro: Ah, you are going to welcome him. Yes, I have heard
something. That there will be mass organisations all in a very
peaceful and respectful spirit, but I bet that you do not know
about two big news today.
Chavez: Tell me.
Castro: For example, the Shanghai Stock Market fell 9% today and the
New York Stock Exchange, the queen of all stock markets, fell 4%.
It is one of the greatest drops in recent years and that really proves
our ideas.
Chavez: Well, those news -
Castro: [Interrupting] They lost there $800bn (£409bn). It is the
queen of the stock exchanges. The fall was greater than during
the South East Asia crisis. So, I do not know what will affect US leaders
or whoever leads the US by Moto Propio, if the news of what happened
there or his tour of South America.
Chavez: Yes. No. I tell you. I did not know the news of the fall of the
Shanghai or New York markets. However yesterday, you should
already know because you know everything, the [International]
Monetary Fund is in a crisis. I said yesterday and today that they
may have to ask [for] a loan from the Bank of the South.
The Monetary Fund does not have funds to pay wages.
They are selling their gold bars.
Castro: Yes. They are selling gold because that is the only thing
worth anything today. What they should be selling is paper.
Paper for the US to pay, or sell something. Well, the Bank
of the South is a serious bank. It aspires to be a serious bank.
Chavez: It will be a serious bank.
Castro: The International Monetary Fund was never so, the crisis
proves it. This happens three or more days before the fall
of the stock exchange.
Chavez: It is the same crisis, as you already know, the crisis
of the world economy, the capitalist system. Well, the alternative
at the national level. Each one has its own model. We have
socialism there in Cuba and here in Venezuela. [Words inaudible]
at the international level, we have the Alba [Bolivarian Alternative
for the Americas]. As you know, we are moving forward quickly.
Well, everyone asks for you. Yesterday I was in Martinique, pardon,
in Dominica. We went by Martinique. We were in Dominica and
Saint Vincent. The prime ministers sent their greetings...
Everyone asks about you and I tell them what I know about your
recovery, of your new Sierra Maestra [Cuban mountain range
which Castro used as a base for starting revolution], of that
struggle you are waging and in which we accompany you every
day. Praying to God, whom as you said is helping Chavez and
his friends, to continue helping you in your recovery. All of us.
We are millions, as you know, in the world that want to see
you again fully recovered as I am sure will be...
You are an example of resistance and now of offensive, Fidel.
I do not want to let go of the opportunity of your surprising
phone call that so encourages us and makes us happy to
continue reminding our people of the courage of Revolutionary
Cuba and your courage, your courage, your conscience. We were
remembering that you were here in 1959 when the so-called
democracy experience here, which failed miserably, was beginning.
That failure led to the Caracazo and that to 4 February, and from
there to what is happening here today. But you, Cuba and its
example of dignity, of battle, courage and its infinite solidarity
has always and will always be with us as an example.
Castro: Hugo, I wanted to tell you that I met the head of your
delegation and we were talking when the news from over there
arrived. So I am very happy. I will see if I can talk to him personally
or some of the other figures later on. They are working a lot with
great enthusiasm. Taking advantage of the short time we have left.
Time cannot be overlooked. In my opinion, we have limited time.
Chavez: As you know -
Castro: [Interrupting] We are increasingly more aware of that.
I thank you very much for your greetings, for your thoughts.
Overall, I remembered to give you back the microphone because
if I do not, I get going like you. I could not compete, but I can
imitate you a bit. I also want to thank you for the greetings from
the people of Venezuela, such heroic people that have undertaken
the responsibilities that it has now.
History is being rewritten. Two hundred years ago everything was
very different. The world has changed so much, especially in the
last 70 years, that is the time we must take advantage of and
over which we have to meditate a lot. I set time for that. I feel
good because there is nothing more important...
I cannot promise you that I will visit you soon and accompany
you one of these days, but I am gaining ground. I feel more
energetic, stronger and I have more time to study. I have
become a student all over again.
Chavez: Morals and Lights.
Castro: Morals and Lights. Those two words are stuck in my head.
I do not forget that. This is the first time I see someone trying to
win that moral battle on a foundation of winning the hearts and
minds of the people. I do not know if you still have more time,
but you were supposed to talk to Ramirez.
Chavez: No, I can talk to Ramirez tomorrow.
Castro: He is saying: what do I do?
Chavez: I can talk to Ramirez tomorrow. We are happily listening
to you and we are happy to hear you and to hear about your
recovery. Continue to recover. Do not forget about the tsunami.
Castro: No. No.
Chavez: Go ahead.
Castro: I almost forgot one thing. Everyone thanks you for relaying
news about me. I speak and then silence. Total silence. I cannot
be talking every day. They have to break the habit, the vice of
having news every day. I appeal for patience and calm from everyone.
I am happy. Everything is quiet. The country is marching along, which
is what matters. I also ask for tranquillity for me so that I can fulfil
my new tasks nowadays.
Chavez: Yes, Fidel. I have become, well, you have turned me into an
emissary, a source. Anyone who wants to know how Fidel is doing,
can come here, can call me, can talk to me. I always give them -
Well, I tell them the truth about what is happening. Your recovery,
your example, your perseverance. You have said that you cannot
accompany me here soon on a trip, but it is not necessary because
you are always here with us. I hope to return to Havana soon so we
can continue talking, working, and gaining ground as you have said...
Do you know how many people listen to the first hour of the programme?
Forty per cent. As you know, the audience of Hello President is huge.
Let's gain ground. We will win the battle for life. We will win that battle.
Thank you for your call.
Castro: A million thanks.
Chavez: Let's give Fidel a round of applause. [Applause] A hug.
Comrade, companion, and you know, I do not have any qualms
about calling you father in front of the world. Onward to victory.
Castro: Onward to victory.
Chavez: We will prevail.
Castro: We will prevail. [Applause]
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18) Slavery Is Not Dead. It’s Not Even Past.
By BOB HERBERT
March 1, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/opinion/01herbert.html?hp
The Rev. Al Sharpton seemed subdued, quiet, reflective —
which was unusual.
Just when we thought the news couldn’t get any weirder, we learned
this week, via The Daily News, that Mr. Sharpton’s great-grandfather
was a slave who was owned by relatives of Senator Strom Thurmond,
the longtime archsegregationist who ran for president as a Dixiecrat
in 1948.
“There’s not enough troops in the Army,” Mr. Thurmond told
a screaming crowd during that campaign, “to force the Southern
people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into
our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our schools and
into our homes.”
Mr. Sharpton seemed a little shaken by the revelation. “You’re always
kind of thinking that your ancestors were slaves,” he said. “But this
was my grandfather’s father. I knew my grandfather. It’s eerie when
it becomes so personal.”
The days of slavery are closer than we tend to think, and they were
crueler than we tend to realize. Mr. Sharpton’s great-grandfather,
Coleman Sharpton, was sent with his wife and two children from
South Carolina to Florida so a woman named Julia Thurmond
Sharpton could send them out as laborers to pay off debts
left by her late husband.
Julia Sharpton was a first cousin, twice removed,
of Strom Thurmond.
“They were sent there solely for that reason,” Mr. Sharpton said.
“To make money to pay her debt. It was just so clear that they
were nothing but property. The complete dehumanization —
I don’t think I fully understood it until this hit home.”
There’s a great deal that Americans don’t fully understand about
slavery. It’s such an uncomfortable subject that the temptation
is to relegate it to the distant past and move on. But the long
tentacles of that evil institution are still with us. Slavery was the
foundation of the thriving consumer society that we have today
and the wellspring of the racism that still poisons so many white
attitudes and black lives.
The sheer size of the phenomenon of slavery, which was woven
into the very being of the early Americas, is not well known today.
The historian David Brion Davis, in his book “Inhuman Bondage,”
tells us:
“By 1820 nearly 8.7 million slaves had departed from Africa for
the New World, as opposed to only 2.6 million whites, many
of them convicts or indentured servants, who had left Europe.
Thus by 1820 African slaves constituted almost 77 percent
of the enormous population that had sailed toward the Americas,
and from 1760 to 1820 this emigrating flow included 5.6 African
slaves for every European.”
For most of the time between the Revolutionary War and the Civil
War, the United States was governed by presidents who owned slaves.
One of the points Mr. Davis stressed was that the commodities
produced in such tremendous volume by slaves — sugar, tobacco,
coffee, chocolate, cotton — were crucial to the formation of the
world’s first global mass market.
“From the very beginnings,” wrote Mr. Davis, “America was part
black, and indebted to the appalling sacrifices of millions of
individual blacks who cleared the forests and tilled the soil.
Yet even the ardent opponents of slaveholding could seldom
if ever acknowledge this basic fact.”
Instead of reaping rewards for this seminal role in the creation
of a rich and powerful nation, blacks have been relentlessly vilified
by a profoundly racist society and frozen out of most of the nation’s
bounty. Consigned to the bottom of the caste heap after emancipation,
and denied some of the most basic human rights, blacks became
the convenient depository of whatever blame and negative stereotypes
whites chose to cast their way.
The abject state ruthlessly imposed upon blacks for so long became,
perversely, proof of their inferiority. Blacks gave whites of all classes
someone to look down upon.
Slavery, like the past, as Faulkner reminded us, is not dead. It’s not
even past. It’s not something that you can wish away.
The other night Reverend Sharpton flew into Miami to attend
a conference. At the airport someone asked for his autograph.
“It was the first time in my life that I thought about why my name
is Sharpton,” he said. “I mean this whole thing is as personal
as why your name is what it is. You’re named after someone
who owned your great-grandparents.”
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19) After the Sell-Off
Editorial
March 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/opinion/01thur1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
In a way, the stock market’s rebound yesterday was as troubling as Tuesday’s rout.
Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, managed to calm
the market, saying that one could reasonably hope for a stronger
economy by midyear if housing stabilized soon, and if manufacturing
strengthened. But those are big ifs.
The torrent of bad news on housing is only worsening, with a report
yesterday that new home sales for January had their steepest slide
in 13 years. And as David Leonhardt pointed out in yesterday’s Times,
manufacturing has already slipped into a recession, with activity
contracting in two of the last three months. How is it then that
investors took Mr. Bernanke’s words as a “buy” signal?
The short answer is that investors have a proclivity to hear what they
want to hear. On Tuesday, warning bells were simply too loud to ignore,
including the steep sell-off in stocks in Shanghai, downbeat reports
on the United States economy and an attempt in Afghanistan on the
life of Vice President Dick Cheney. Yesterday, investors needed only
the slightest prod to revert to “hear no evil” form.
The more complete answer is also more troubling. In recent years,
as housing and stock markets surged, even highly speculative investors
have been encouraged to an unusual degree by their bankers and
regulators, who are supposed to restrain investors’ more maniacal
bents, but instead have done little to quell or question excessive
risk-taking.
Just last week, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. and top financial
regulators said the government need not — and should not — provide
greater oversight for the $1.4 trillion hedge fund industry, or,
by extension, the trillions of dollars more in complex derivative
transactions spawned by the industry. That stance is mostly free-
market ideology run amok. But it is also based on the unproven
assumption that unregulated investing, which dispersed risk and
reduced volatility as markets surged, will continue to do so when
markets tank.
The upshot is a one-sided bet for investors. They have explicit
assurances from regulators and policy makers that almost anything
goes when the markets are hot, and implicit assurances — based on
past experience — that the Fed would lower interest rates to contain
a financial crisis should one erupt. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee
that easing up on rates would have the same powerful effect in a future
crisis as it had in the past.
The next crisis appears to be building around weakness in the United
States, not in Russia or Asia or South America. That means money
could flow out of the country if markets were rattled. That would
weaken the dollar and require speedy and complex remedial action
by the world’s central banks — not just a rate cut by the Fed. Tuesday’s
stock market decline could turn out to have been a garden-variety
correction. But major market participants would be wise to rethink
their assumptions.
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19) The Big Meltdown
By PAUL KRUGMAN
FEB. 27, 2008
March 2, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/opinion/02krugman.html?hp
The great market meltdown of 2007 began exactly a year ago, with
a 9 percent fall in the Shanghai market, followed by a 416-point
slide in the Dow. But as in the previous global financial crisis,
which began with the devaluation of Thailand’s currency in the
summer of 1997, it took many months before people realized
how far the damage would spread.
At the start, all sorts of implausible explanations were offered
for the drop in U.S. stock prices. It was, some said, the fault
of Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve,
as if his statement of the obvious — that the housing slump
could possibly cause a recession — had been news to anyone.
One Republican congressman blamed Representative John
Murtha, claiming that his efforts to stop the “surge” in Iraq
had somehow unnerved the markets.
Even blaming events in Shanghai for what happened in New
York was foolish on its face, except to the extent that the
slump in China — whose stock markets had a combined
valuation of only about 5 percent of the U.S. markets’
valuation — served as a wake-up call for investors.
The truth is that efforts to pin the stock decline on any
particular piece of news are a waste of time.
Wise analysts remember the classic study that Robert Shiller
of Yale carried out during the market crash of Oct. 19, 1987.
His conclusion? “No news story or rumor appearing on the
19th or over the preceding weekend was responsible.” In
2007, as in 1987, investors rushed for the exits not because
of external events, but because they saw other investors
doing the same.
What made the market so vulnerable to panic? It wasn’t
so much a matter of irrational exuberance — although
there was plenty of that, too — as it was a matter of irrational
complacency.
After the bursting of the technology bubble of the 1990s
failed to produce a global disaster, investors began to act
as if nothing bad would ever happen again. Risk premiums
— the extra return people demand when lending money
to less than totally reliable borrowers — dwindled away.
For example, in the early years of the decade, high-yield
corporate bonds (formerly known as junk bonds) were able
to attract buyers only by offering interest rates eight to
10 percentage points higher than U.S. government bonds.
By early 2007, that margin was down to little more than
two percentage points.
For a while, growing complacency became a self-fulfilling
prophecy. As the what-me-worry attitude spread, it became
easier for questionable borrowers to roll over their debts,
so default rates went down. Also, falling interest rates on
risky bonds meant higher prices for those bonds, so those
who owned such bonds experienced big capital gains, leading
even more investors to conclude that risk was a thing of the past.
Sooner or later, however, reality was bound to intrude. By early
2007, the collapse of the U.S. housing boom had brought with
it widespread defaults on subprime mortgages — loans to home
buyers who fail to meet the strictest lending standards. Lenders
insisted that this was an isolated problem, which wouldn’t
spread to the rest of the market or to the real economy. But it did.
For a couple of months after the shock of Feb. 27, markets
oscillated wildly, soaring on bits of apparent good news, then
plunging again. But by late spring, it was clear that the self-
reinforcing cycle of complacency had given way to a self-
reinforcing cycle of anxiety.
There was still one big unknown: had large market players,
hedge funds in particular, taken on so much leverage — borrowing
to buy risky assets — that the falling prices of those assets would
set off a chain reaction of defaults and bankruptcies? Now, as we
survey the financial wreckage of a global recession, we know
the answer.
In retrospect, the complacency of investors on the eve of the crisis
seems puzzling. Why didn’t they see the risks?
Well, things always seem clearer with the benefit of hindsight.
At the time, even pessimists were unsure of their ground. For example,
Paul Krugman concluded a column published on March 2, 2007,
which described how a financial meltdown might happen, by hedging
his bets, declaring that: “I’m not saying that things will actually play
out this way. But if we’re going to have a crisis, here’s how.”
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20) Killing Highlights Risk of Selling Marijuana, Even Legally
By KIRK JOHNSON
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/us/02cannabis.html
DENVER, March 1 — Ken Gorman, an aging missionary of marijuana,
was found murdered in his home here two weeks ago. The unsolved
crime is exposing the tangled threads at the borderland of the legal
and illegal drug worlds he inhabited.
Mr. Gorman, who was 60, legally provided marijuana to patients under
Colorado’s medical marijuana law, but he also openly preached the
virtues of illegal use, and even ran for governor in the 1990s on
a pro-drug platform.
In recent years, he had grown frightened as the mainstream medicine
of cannabis care bumped against the unregulated and violent terrain
of the illicit drug market. He had been robbed more than a dozen
times in his home on Denver’s west side, had recently gotten
a gun and also talked of installing a steel door and gates.
“Ken was really fed up with the barrage of robberies and he told
me it would never happen again,” said Timothy Tipton, a friend
and fellow medical marijuana supplier, who said Mr. Gorman
showed him the gun about two months ago.
Some legal experts say Mr. Gorman’s death could lead to
a reconsideration of how medical marijuana is administered
here and elsewhere. Providers are often left exposed and
vulnerable because of the nation’s conflicting drug laws, with
marijuana use illegal under federal law but legalized for some
medicinal purposes here and in 10 other states.
Since 1997, after the first medical marijuana law was passed
in California, as many as 20 legal marijuana providers have been
killed around the country, mostly in robberies, said Allen St. Pierre,
the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform
of Marijuana Laws, or Norml, a nonprofit advocacy group
in Washington.
Some in law enforcement, including Colorado’s attorney general,
John W. Suthers, say the Gorman killing illuminates more clearly
than ever that crime and marijuana cannot be disentangled.
“Mr. Gorman showed that the law is abused and can be abused,”
said Nate Strauch, a spokesman for Mr. Suthers.
Many people in the medical marijuana supply system say the
central risk comes down to the fact that they work in the shadows,
where law enforcement officials are often either conflicted
or hostile and crime is rampant.
At the Colorado Compassion Club, for instance, which opened
last year as a storefront support center in Denver, the 200 marijuana
patients served there go through as much as a pound of marijuana
a day. The club grows as much as it can, said its founder, Thomas
E. Lawrence, but must rely on buys on the illicit market for the rest,
usually made by one or two caregivers who have volunteered.
Mr. Gorman’s killing, legal experts say, has exposed the paradoxes
and ambiguities about medical marijuana that most states have
failed to grapple with.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which
administers the marijuana program, is not authorized, for example,
to provide information about where the 1,100 patients who are
certified under the program can obtain their drugs, according
to the department’s Web site.
The state also does not license marijuana providers, or inspect
the quality of the drug that patients obtain.
Colorado’s law allows patients with certain illnesses, as well their
doctors and others who provide care, the right to possess, grow
and transport marijuana.
But all those things remain illegal under federal law. And a chief
deputy district attorney for Denver, Greg Long, said that anyone
selling drugs illegally, even if the final recipient was legally entitled
to possess them, could still technically be violating state laws too
— though as a practical matter, Mr. Long said, prosecutors
do not generally pursue cases in which the drug being sold
is marijuana for certified medical use.
The portrait of Mr. Gorman is just as unclear. His friends say he
was quixotic and selfless, a man uninterested in financial gain
who tilted against the confining rules of society, especially
the drug laws.
A merry prankster at a time when marijuana advocacy groups
were becoming more adept at politics than protest, he had
become an anachronism, acquaintances say, whose counterculture
antics embarrassed and angered many people in the medical-
advocacy and legal reform movements.
“I have gray hair on my head and I attribute some of it to Ken
Gorman,” Mr. St. Pierre of Norml said.
Some critics said Mr. Gorman was caught up in his own image
as a rebel, thwarting even the rules about medical marijuana
that could further the causes he espoused.
Just one week before his death, for example, the local CBS
television news affiliate in Denver broadcast an investigative
story in which a young station employee with a hidden camera
captured Mr. Gorman happily explaining how to fake the medical
card that would make a drug transaction appear legitimate.
The story prompted an uproar in medical marijuana circles,
forcing Mr. Gorman to defend himself on a pro-marijuana
Internet forum from attacks by people who said he had betrayed
them by making medical marijuana look like a cover for old-
fashioned drug-dealing.
And he had become an angry, fearful man, his friends and
acquaintances said. Though he had served time in prison —
five years for a felony drug conviction in the mid-1990s —
and often seemed to scoff at the law, he had grown increasingly
frustrated about being a crime victim himself.
The Denver police have revealed little about the murder
investigation.
A spokesman, Sonny Jackson, said the police responded
to reports of shots fired at Mr. Gorman’s home around 7 p.m.
on Feb. 17 and found Mr. Gorman with a gunshot wound to the
chest. He died shortly thereafter.
Mr. Jackson said that there had been an incident the previous
night in Mr. Gorman’s home; someone had been arrested and
neighbors reported shots fired. But investigators said they did
not believe that incident and the slaying were connected.
Colorado’s medical marijuana law, enshrined in the state’s
Constitution by a statewide vote in 2000, protects people from
prosecution under state law. Acquiring the drug illegally, however,
puts those people in very dangerous company.
Mr. Gorman, his friends say, had no intermediary. The face that
was famous on television as Colorado’s most ebullient marijuana
advocate was the same one making the buys out on the market.
“It’s dangerous to help people,” said Mr. Tipton, who lives in
a suburb of Denver and said he had about 45 marijuana patients.
“We’re out there, exposed to abuse from patients, law enforcement,
robberies — it’s a long list.”
Lawyers and medical marijuana advocates in California — which
has the oldest and by far largest medical marijuana system
in the nation, with about 100,000 licensed drug recipients and
200 dispensaries — say that robberies and violence against
medical distributors, a problem in the earlier days of the system,
have become much less frequent because of improved security.
But many robberies also often go unreported, said Dale Gieringer,
the state coordinator for the California chapter of Norml.
“It usually gets hushed up,” Mr. Gieringer said.
Mr. Gorman’s home, still taped off by a police ribbon, has become
a kind of shrine to the subculture he celebrated.
On one night a few days after the killing, a group of more than
20 people — young men and teenagers, mostly — sat around
a bonfire in Mr. Gorman’s front yard, passing marijuana joints
and beer bottles as a Tupac Shakur song blared on a car stereo.
“He was the most compassionate, kind man I knew,” said a young
man who identified himself as Vuddah, as thick curls of smoke
shrouded the group. “We want to keep this place open so that the
patients can keep coming,” he added. “That’s what we’re going to do.
“That’s what Ken would have wanted,” he continued. “To us, he was
a medical marijuana freedom fighter.”
Dan Frosch contributed reporting.
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21) U.S. Reviewing Safety of Children’s Cough Drugs
By GARDINER HARRIS
"The agency has for decades promised to review systematically
the safety of all old drugs, but for a variety of reasons like
budgetary constraints, time and popularity of a particular
drug has not done so."
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/health/02cough.html
WASHINGTON, March 1 — Federal drug regulators have started
a broad review of the safety of popular cough and cold remedies
meant for children, a top official said Thursday.
The official, Dr. Charles J. Ganley, director of the office
of nonprescription drug products at the Food and Drug
Administration, said in an interview that the agency was
“revisiting the risks and benefits of the use of these drugs
in children” and that “we’re particularly concerned about
the use of these drugs in children less than 2 years of age.”
In higher than normal doses, cold medicines can affect the
heart’s electrical system, leading to arrhythmias. Some
medicines affect the blood vessels and, in high doses, have
been associated with hypertension and stroke. In rare cases,
children have been injured even when given recommended
doses.
In a recent study of hospital emergency room records from
2004 and 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
found that at least 1,519 children under age 2 had suffered serious
health problems after being treated with common cough and cold
medicines. Three of the children died, the disease control agency
found.
The F.D.A. said it was too early to predict whether the review
would lead to new regulations. Its comments came in response
to a petition filed on Thursday by a group of prominent
pediatricians and public health officials demanding that the
agency stop drug makers from marketing cold and cough
medicines for children under age 6. The petition says that
the medicines do not work and that in rare cases they can
cause serious injury.
Popular medicines like Toddler’s Dimetapp, Infant Triaminic
and Little Colds, which are marketed for use in children
as young as 2, should not be given to children younger than
6 under any circumstances, the petition says.
Like hundreds of older drugs, many of the medicines in these
products did not receive thorough safety reviews by the F.D.A.
“So many people use these products even though they have
no effect on colds, and there’s a real risk of a problem,” said
an author of the petition, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a pediatrician
and the health commissioner of Baltimore.
Dr. Ganley of the F.D.A. said most over-the-counter cold
and cough medicines had not been adequately tested
in children. The doses recommended on many of the products’
labels were no better than educated guesses, he said.
“We have no data on these agents of what’s a safe and effective
dose in children,” Dr. Ganley said.
Linda A. Suydam, president of the Consumer Healthcare Products
Association, a trade group of companies that market over-the-
counter cold remedies, said the remedies had been approved
by the F.D.A. and had been used for decades by millions
of Americans. Consumers should take only the recommended
doses, Ms. Suydam said.
Doug Petkus, a spokesman for Wyeth, which makes Toddler’s
Dimetapp, agreed, adding that “parents of children under the
age of 2 are encouraged to seek the advice of a physician before
administering any over-the-counter medicine.”
Such cautions “are clearly stated in product labeling,”
Mr. Petkus said.
The agency has for decades promised to review systematically
the safety of all old drugs, but for a variety of reasons like
budgetary constraints, time and popularity of a particular
drug has not done so.
The pediatricians who petitioned the drug agency acknowledged
that children’s cough and cold medicines were generally safe
when given in recommended doses. But they added that overdoses
were common, for a variety of reasons. Parents sometimes give
their children two different brands, unaware that they contain
the same active ingredients. Overdoses can also result when
frantic parents try to shove eyedroppers or cups of medicine
into the mouths of crying, spitting babies.
The safety problems might be worth risking, the petitioners
said, if the medicines worked to suppress coughs or clear
stuffy noses. But according to a growing number of studies
in children, the drugs are no better than placebos.
“There is widespread consensus that there is no good evidence
for the effectiveness of several of the compounds used in cold
medicines,” said Dr. Ian M. Paul, an assistant professor
of pediatrics at Penn State College of Medicine who has
studied the medicines. Last year, the American College
of Chest Physicians recommended that parents avoid using
cough and cold medicines in children, especially young ones.
Despite these growing worries, sales of the drugs are booming.
Most major pharmacies carry a dozen or more brands.
The market for the medicines is fed by parents looking for
anything to have their children sleep peacefully. Children suffer
an average of six to 10 colds each year, far more than adults.
A 1994 study found that during one 30-day span, more than
a third of the nation’s 3-year-olds were estimated to have been
given over-the-counter cough and cold remedies.
The products’ labels and advertising strongly suggest that
they work, many with flavors like grape and cherry.
Little Colds has a cartoon of a cheerful, crawling infant wearing
only a diaper. It promises that it “safely and gently relieves.”
Children’s Vicks NyQuil has a cartoon that shows a small,
sleeping child hugging a sleeping puppy.
“Parents will do anything for their kids,” Dr. Sharfstein said.
“They will buy expensive syrups if they think their kid will
do better.”
Most cough and cold concoctions have nasal decongestants,
antihistamines, cough suppressants or expectorants — common
ingredients with names like dextromethorphan, guaifenesin
and phenylephrine. Most of these drugs have been around
for decades and were approved for sale by the F.D.A. when
standards were far lower than they are today. Medicines were
often approved with little or no testing before 1970 to ensure
that they were safe or effective. Since then, the agency has
gradually tightened standards and occasionally revisits old
standards.
The agency has put all the compounds on a “monograph,”
meaning that manufacturers can use and combine them in pills
and syrups without doing any of the expensive and lengthy
studies that would be needed for a new drug. Because the
drugs are so widely available, there is no incentive for
manufacturers to perform such studies. Information about
their lack of efficacy and worrisome side effects have trickled out.
Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research
Group and a longtime critic of the F.D.A., noted that cold
medicines had a troubled history. A decade ago, many such
medicines contained phenylpropanolamine, or PPA, until studies
showing that it could cause hemorrhagic stroke led the F.D.A.
to ban it.
Given such problems, Dr. Wolfe said, the agency years ago
should have taken a closer look at all common cold medicines.
Dr. Sharfstein said there was now enough evidence about
the dangers of the drugs for the F.D.A. to act.
“There is this incredible disparity between how the products
are regulated and what the scientific evidence and consensus
states,” Dr. Sharfstein said.
John Schwartz contributed reporting from New York.
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22) House Passes Bill That Helps Unions Organize
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/washington/02union.html
Defying a veto threat from the White House, the House
of Representatives yesterday approved legislation that would
make it far easier for unions to organize workers.
The bill, whose prospects for enactment are troubled at best, would
enable employees at a given workplace to unionize as soon as
a majority signed cards saying they favored a union. Under current
law, companies have a right to insist on a secret-ballot election
determining their workers’ choice. Labor leaders and many Democrats
say such elections are often poisoned by employer coercion
and intimidation.
Yesterday’s vote, which followed a fierce debate, was 241 to 185,
largely along party lines. Thirteen Republicans voted for the bill,
and two Democrats against.
The measure is organized labor’s No. 1 legislative priority, and
Democrats call it vital to rebuilding unions and bolstering the
nation’s middle class.
But several Republicans described it as little more than
a Democratic reward for labor’s help in last November’s elections.
The Republicans argued that the bill, the Employee Free Choice
Act, was a betrayal of workers’ access to a secret-ballot election.
Some called it the “employee intimidation act,” maintaining that
the process of majority sign-up could well entail union organizers’
bullying workers into signing pro-union cards.
Republican leaders are already prepared to block the measure
in the Senate, and the White House said Wednesday that President
Bush would veto it should it emerge from Congress. Yesterday’s
vote fell short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed
to override.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the bill “the most important labor law
reform legislation of this generation,” adding: “But this legislation
is about more than labor law. It’s about basic workers’ rights.
It’s about majority rule.”
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23) Proposed Increases in Fees for U.S. Residency
and Citizenship Stir Protest in Newark
By LAURA RIVERA
"'I have no savings,' she said in Spanish. 'If I couldn’t pay before,
imagine now, with this increase.' The cost for her family
to apply would rise to $3,620 from $1,300."
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/nyregion/02protest.html
NEWARK, March 1 — Chanting “Stop the fee increase now” in Spanish
and carrying signs that read, “Don’t exclude us by raising prices,”
about 100 people rallied next to the United States Citizenship
and Immigration Services office on Thursday to protest proposed
fee increases for visa and citizenship applications.
Federal immigration officials announced a month ago that on June 1,
the price of applying for permanent residency would probably jump
to $905 from $325, and for citizenship, to $595 from $330, to meet
spiraling operational expenses. The immigration agency is accepting
public comment on the plan, and Thursday’s demonstration, which
attracted mainly civil rights advocates and Hispanic day laborers,
was a loud attempt at public comment.
Desirée Ramos, a spokeswoman for Senator Robert Menendez,
Democrat of New Jersey, announced at the rally that Mr. Menendez
planned to introduce legislation soon that would freeze current
application fees and appropriate other funds for the agency.
“For so many immigrants, it is impossible for them to get together
the funds they need as it is,” Ms. Ramos said. “We should
be encouraging citizenship, not putting up roadblocks to it.”
More than 90 percent of the agency’s money comes from
application fees, according to Sean Saucier, a spokesman
for the immigration agency. But Mr. Saucier said that as
recently as 2006, Congress appropriated tens of millions
of dollars to supplement the fees and help ease backlogs
on applications. He added that the agency’s budget was cut
to $154 million for the 2008 fiscal year from $184 million in 2007.
Carmen Gutiérrez, a protester who came to the United States
from Peru on a tourist visa six years ago, said that she and her
three immigrant children became eligible for residency status
last month. But Ms. Gutiérrez, 41, who said she earned money
by catering, carpooling, and cleaning her church, said she could
not afford even the current application rates.
“I have no savings,” she said in Spanish. “If I couldn’t pay before,
imagine now, with this increase.” The cost for her family
to apply would rise to $3,620 from $1,300.
Ms. Gutiérrez, whose eldest son, Abraham, 13, has a learning
disability, said she wanted the family to become permanent
residents in part so he could get better medical care, and
so she could enroll in a culinary arts program.
Amy Gottlieb, director of the immigrant rights program of the
American Friends Service Committee, the nonprofit group that
organized the rally, said she planned to lobby Washington
lawmakers next week on legislation related to immigration,
including Mr. Menendez’s proposal.
“We are looking for improvement across the board to overhaul
what has become a completely dysfunctional system,” she said.
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24) Councilor Turner attacked after
City Council passes anti-war resolution
By Phebe Eckfeldt
Boston
Published Mar 1, 2007 9:44 PM
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/boston-anti-war-0308/
The Boston City Council passed a resolution on Feb. 14 calling for
the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The resolution also stated that the billions of dollars being spent on
war have been taken from “programs that poor and working people
desperately need—jobs, healthcare, housing and education.” It called
for a reallocation of these funds in order to meet the needs of poor
and working people.
The resolution supported the March 17 Washington, D.C. demonstration
and march on the Pentagon as an expression of the desire of people
in the U.S. for funding for human needs and not war and to see the
troops brought home.
This historic resolution was written and introduced by African-American
City Councilor Chuck Turner and co-sponsored by Felix D. Arroyo,
Charles C. Yancey, Sam Yoon (who are all councilors of color and
call themselves “Team Unity”) and Michael Ross. It was passed 8-3.
The resolution makes a direct connection between the war abroad
and the war at home against poor and working people and especially
communities of color. Turner represents some of the most oppressed
sectors of Boston, which are hardest hit by the budget cuts. Cuts
in local and federal funding for such things as repairs to schools,
Section 8 vouchers, the Boston Housing Authority, affordable housing
subsidies, youth workers and HIV/AIDS programs are all detailed
in the resolution.
When news of the resolution’s passing hit the newspapers and TV,
it was hotly debated across the city for several days. Turner was
attacked by forces who said that the Boston City Council had no
right to debate U.S. foreign policy. The Boston Globe and Boston
Herald accused Turner of “wasting his time on the Iraq resolution,
as dozens die violently in his Hub City Council district.”
But activists across the city hailed Turner’s courageous stand and
call for action, as well as the statement making the critical connection
between ailing human needs programs and the increasing Pentagon
budget. The heart of the resolution was embodied in a quote in the
last clause of the resolution which states, in the words of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., in February 1967, “The security we profess to seek
in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs
in Viet Nam explode at home: they destroy the hopes and possibilities
for a decent America. Poverty, urban problems and social progress
generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national
obsession.”
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25) Cuba oil boom may complicate U.S. embargo
BY JANE BUSSEY
MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Fri, Mar. 02, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/884/story/28682.html
SHERRITT INTERNATIONAL REPORT:
http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2007/03/01/21/030107cubaoil.source.prod_affiliate.56.pdf
The discovery of oil in the Florida Straits and near the Cuban
shoreline -- potentially billions of barrels of reserves -- has
boosted Cuba's energy prospects and drawn the attention of the U.S.
oil industry.
Now, a small Canadian energy company, Sherritt International, says it
plans to export Cuban oil for the first time -- a move that could put
the crude on a collision course with the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.
Details are few, but questions about the move go to the heart of the
embargo: Where will the oil be refined? And how could Sherritt
International or subsequent handlers keep the Cuban crude out of fuel
being exported to the United States?
The issues rise as the oil and gas industry turns its gaze to the
prospect of oil drilling off Cuba -- currently forbidden fruit for
U.S. companies.
Sherritt International, in a report about its record 2006 earnings,
said that in 2007 it ``plans to export a portion of its Cuban
production as a consequence of anticipated production growth and
limited demand for domestic heavy oil.''
Sherritt, which had revenue of about $1 billion U.S. in 2006,
produces an estimated 68,000 barrels of crude oil in Cuba. Michael
Minnes, company spokesman, said plans for exporting the oil are still
under discussion.
''We respect U.S. law,'' Minnes said from Sherritt's Toronto
headquarters. ``We have no intention of selling it into a situation
that would affect the embargo.''
Minnes said demand in Cuba for the oil has dropped because the island
is increasingly using diesel generators for electricity production
instead of burning crude.
Sherritt doesn't currently have offshore wells; instead, its onshore
equipment drills horizontally into petroleum reservoirs located under
the water.
The Sherritt International plans drew fire from Cuban-American U.S.
Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, R-Miami.
'Sherritt is on the `short list' of companies that will have very
serious civil as well as criminal legal problems in Cuba when the
Cuban people recover their sovereignty and have a government that
fights for their rights,'' Díaz-Balart said.
''Their oil investments will involve but a small part of their legal
problems once the rule of law returns to Cuba,'' the lawmaker said in
a statement e-mailed to The Miami Herald.
There was no immediate response to an e-mail and a phone call to the
Cuban Interests Section in Washington.
STICKY PROBLEM
Oil expert Jorge R. Piñon said Sherritt or any other oil company
would face the challenge of how to commercialize crude oil outside of
Cuba without breaking the U.S. embargo, in place since the early 1960s.
''Inevitably wherever this crude oil is processed in the Caribbean
region, there is a high probability that its byproducts will find
their way into the U.S. markets,'' said Piñon, a former oil executive
who is now a senior researcher at the Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Affairs at the University of Miami.
Sherritt International, in a joint venture with the Cuban government,
has been drilling for oil in Cuba for more than a decade, gradually
increasing production to the point that domestic production provides
almost half Cuba's petroleum needs. Venezuelan refined products make
up the rest.
But what has tantalized the oil industry was a report that Spanish
energy company Repsol-YPF struck offshore oil in 2005 -- even though
it wasn't a commercially viable well. In 2005, a U.S. Geological
Survey report estimated Cuba's potential petroleum reserves could run
some 4.6 billion barrels and natural gas reserves could total
trillions of cubic feet.
EXPLORATORY DRILLING
''This would make Cuba a major oil player in the region,'' Piñon
said.
With European, Asian and South American firms gearing up for more
exploratory drilling around Cuba, U.S. oil companies and equipment
and service suppliers are looking longingly at the potential bonanza.
U.S. OIL FIRMS OUT
The U.S. trade embargo bans American companies from doing business in
Cuba, with exceptions for food and medicine, and the Bush
administration has been increasingly aggressive about enforcing it.
''U.S. policy toward Cuba is to encourage a democratic,
market-oriented transition,'' said Eric Watnik, State Department
spokesman. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control
has oversight over enforcing the embargo.
Last year, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona
Republican, both critics of the embargo, introduced legislation to
broaden the exemptions to allow the oil and gas industry to bid on
Cuban contracts. But that effort went nowhere.
Legislators are currently discussing what form the bill should take
to be reintroduced in the new Democratic-controlled Congress.
© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com
[Jane Bussey is a serious journalist writing at the MIAMI HERALD. This is a very
important report on the latest developments with Cuba and oil. Washington's
desperation to stop U.S. companies from working with Cuba went to such an
extent that last year Washington broke up a meeting of U.S. oil industry execs
and their Cuban counterparts held at the Sheraton Hotel in Mexico City. This is
something which may finally break down if U.S. companies get serious about
wanting to work with and invest in Cuba, as they are welcome to, were it not
for U.S. legislation which prevents U.S. companies form doing this with Cuba.
Washington's fear of the Cuban revolution is growing deeper, as its ability to
enforce its blockade runs headlong into the interests of important sectors in
U.S. corporate life. If Washington's blockade can be reversed, and people as
well as businesses from the United States begin to get involved in Cuba, the
country can solve some of its deep economic problems. Washington has been
trying for nearly fifty years to starve the island into submission, in hopes the
Cuban people will rise up against their revolution. Cuba's leaders are trying
to face many of their challenges, problems and contradictions, and could do
even more, it seems to me, if they didn't have to deal with Washington's
constant efforts to overthrow the revolution. Naturally, other problems then
would come to the fore, but Cuba has stood up to the challenges already,
those of isolation and blockade.
The need of the hour: Normalize relations with Cuba now!
Walter Lippmann
Havana, Cuba
walterlx@earthlink.net ]
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26) U.S. House Democrats seek more war funds than Bush
01 Mar 2007 23:53:19 GMT
By Richard Cowan
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N01426347.htm
WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Democrats will
more than fully fund President George W. Bush's request for money to fight
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, but are still debating conditions
that could be attached, senior lawmakers said on Thursday.
"There will be $98 billion for the military part," about $5 billion above
the Bush administration's request, said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of a
defense spending panel overseeing war funds.
Murtha told reporters Democrats were still discussing provisions he wants to
attach requiring that U.S. troops have proper training, adequate equipment
and enough rest before being deployed into combat. "We don't have it yet.
We keep going back and refining it," Murtha said.
But he sketched out a certification process that could be tougher than one
floated earlier this week in which Bush would have been given flexibility to
"waive" Murtha's requirements.
Republicans and many conservative Democrats have expressed opposition to
adding such conditions. That has forced House Democratic leaders to try to
find a compromise that allows them to say they are working to phase out the
war while also fully funding troops already in Iraq.
The additional money House Democrats want to add in includes $1 billion more
for U.S. troops girding for a spring offensive in Afghanistan, Murtha said,
and nearly $1 billion more to treat wounded American soldiers suffering from
brain injuries and psychological problems related to combat.
With other add-ons to the massive spending bill, including more U.S. Gulf
Coast rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, possible aid to farmers who have
suffered crop losses and around $3 billion added in to help close some U.S.
military bases and modernize others, the price tag could rise significantly
above $100 billion, according to several lawmakers and congressional aides.
MURTHA'S CONCERNS
Rep. Bill Young of Florida, the senior Republican on the House
Appropriations defense panel, said lawmakers were still negotiating over
whether money should be included in the emergency war spending bill to fund
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets to replace F-16s lost in Iraq.
The airplanes, to be built by Lockheed Martin Corp.
delivered for another three years, according to some estimates. Young said
he supported funding the purchase now.
Murtha was one of the earliest and highest profile members of Congress to
call for an end to the Iraq war in late 2005 and since then he has come
under sharp attack from Republicans.
But in seeking conditions on war funds, Murtha has insisted that he is
simply calling on the Pentagon to follow its own criteria for the training
of soldiers and their duration in combat.
The former Marine says he is concerned about stressed American troops and an
overall weakening of the military four years after the Iraq war started.
Speaking to reporters, Murtha said that during a recent visit to a military
base he was looking at a seven-ton truck "and the damn seat fell out."
Humvee vehicles, used to move troops around Iraq, have been outfitted with
heavy armor, but lack strong enough suspension systems and engines to
support them, Murtha complained.
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27) Inmates to fill the void in farm fields
"Pilot program to help farmers replace workers driven
off by state's new immigration laws."
By CHARLES ASHBY
CHIEFTAIN DENVER BUREAU
http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1172581202/1
DENVER - It may not be too long before Pueblo County residents start
seeing inmates from state prisons working area farms.
Rep. Dorothy Butcher, D-Pueblo, has managed to work out, at least
in principle, a new program that would call on the Colorado
Department of Corrections to supply inmates to work area farms.
The new work program would operate under the department's
successful Correctional Industries Program, which helps inmates
obtain work while in prison and learn a skill at the same time,
DOC Executive Director Ari Zavaras said Monday.
"We have a lot of details to work out, but this probably will start
as a pilot program in Pueblo County," he said. "Depending
on how well it works, we'll see where it will go."
Zavaras, the newly installed DOC director, said the program
fits in with his and Gov. Bill Ritter's new emphasis on reducing
recidivism in state prisons. Their thinking is that by reducing
recidivism, the state can save money on having to build new
prisons, which under current growth estimates will cost the
state hundreds of millions of dollars over the next five years.
Butcher started the idea with a handful of area farmers who
were complaining that new state laws cracking down on illegal
immigration and the stringent document rules adopted by the
Department of Revenue under Gov. Bill Owens, have left them
short-handed in the field.
Immigrant workers, legal or otherwise, are too afraid to come
to Colorado because of the state's tougher immigrant laws,
Avondale farmers Joe Pisciotta and Phil Prutch told Zavaras
and House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in a special meeting
that Butcher had arranged.
The two men said that because of the new law that the Legislature
passed during a special session on illegal immigration - and the
new documents rules that have frustrated several Colorado
citizens who were trying to get driver's licenses and state
identification cards - they and other farmers are having
problems finding the workers they need.
"We're aware there was a problem (with illegal immigrants),
but you just created another problem," Prutch said.
"They've just given up and gone to other states that don't have
these new laws," Pisciotta said. "They just don't want to deal with it."
Like others around the state, the two Pueblo vegetable farmers
said they need from five to 20 workers and are willing to pay
up to $9.60 an hour, more than they've paid migrant workers
in the past.
But they can't find anyone to do the work.
That's why they turned to Butcher, who in turn went to Zavaras.
"The agricultural business will suffer and some could even
go out of business if we're unable to provide labor for them,"
Butcher said. "They're not asking for something for free.
They're willing to pay more than the minimum wage."
Zavaras said it will take some time to work out the details
to the new pilot project, but he is hopeful something will be
done before the farmers need them in May and June, when
the local growing season begins.
Romanoff said many of the stringent documents rules are
expected to be eased, but there's no guarantee on when
or if that will happen.
"It's something we tried to talk to the old administration
about and didn't get very far," Romanoff said. "Now we're
talking to the new administration."
©1996-2007The Pueblo Chieftain Online
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Groups Mum On Iraq, Despite Antiwar Tide
New Polling Research Finds Opposition Highest Among Jews
Nathan Guttman
"Washington - Even as a new study found that American Jews
are significantly more opposed to the Iraq War than are Christians,
Jewish organizations decided not to take up the issue at their
annual policy conference."
Fri. Mar 02, 2007
http://www.forward.com/articles/groups-mum-on-iraq-despite-antiwar-tide/
Fears of recession spark further turmoil in markets
By David Usborne in New York
"Fresh anxiety erupted about the health of the world's major economies
yesterday after investors in stock markets across Asia, Europe and the
United States once again staged significant retreats two days after
Tuesday's unexpected global equity sell-off."
Published: 02 March 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2318740.ece
Education class war
"What the battle of Brighton over a lottery for school admissions
really means for..."
Published: 01 March 2007
http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2314207.ece
Rape Cases Emerge From the Shadows
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily
"BAGHDAD, Mar 1 (IPS) - Reports of the gang-rape of 20-year-old
Sabrine al-Janabi by three policemen has set off new demands
for justice from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government."
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000544.php#more
Outrage over Imminent Execution of Iraqi Women
Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily
"BAGHDAD, Mar 2 (IPS) - Three young women accused of joining
the Iraqi insurgency movement and engaging in "terrorism" have
been sentenced to death, provoking protest from rights organisations
fearing that this could be the start of more executions of women
in post-Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000546.php#more
Soldiers Move to Small Posts in Baghdad's Most Violent Areas
"American soldiers are leaving their sprawling fortress-cities
and establishing many small outposts in the capital's most
violent neighborhoods in a major tactical shift under the
two-week-old Baghdad security plan. American soldiers
say these outposts pose new risks to their safety and
require pulling soldiers off patrols to protect their lodgings."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030107A.shtml
Walter Reed Hospital Officials Knew of Neglect for Years
"Top officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including
the Army's surgeon general, have heard complaints about
outpatient neglect from family members, veterans groups,
and members of Congress for more than three years."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030107B.shtml
Most Support U.S. Guarantee of Health Care
By ROBIN TONER and JANET ELDER
"A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee
health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing
to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York
Times/CBS News poll."
[TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR! MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!...BW]
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/washington/02poll.html?hp
Veteran Care to Be Reviewed After Firing of General
By DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, March 2 — President Bush has ordered a top-to-bottom
investigation into the medical care available to returning veterans,
the White House said today, a day after the firing of the two-star
general in charge of Walter Reed Army Medical Center over shabby
conditions there.
March 2, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/washington/02general.html?hp
National Guard Underfunded, Not Prepared for Crises
"The stress of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has hindered the National
Guard's ability to respond to another attack, major natural disaster
or other domestic crisis, a congressionally appointed commission
said Thursday. Retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro
explains the problem."
March 1, 2007
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june07/military_03-01.html
A Recession That Arrived on Cats’ Paws
By DAVID LEONHARDT
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/business/28leonhardt.html?ref=business
California: Immigration Seen Raising Worker Pay
By JULIA PRESTON
The huge influx of immigrant workers to California since 1990
generated a 4 percent increase in the wages of the average American
worker in the state, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute
of California, a nonpartisan research group. American workers moved
into higher-paying jobs as immigrants filled low-skilled occupations,
concluded the study by Giovanni Peri of the University of California,
Davis. The study also found no evidence that immigrants arriving
after 1960 had displaced American workers with the same education
in the state’s job market.
As Ethics Panels Expand Grip, No Field Is Off Limits
By PATRICIA COHEN
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/arts/28board.html?ref=us
Afghan Bombing Sends a Danger Signal to U.S.
News Analysis
By DAVID E. SANGER
"WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — The audacity of a suicide-bomb attack
on Tuesday at the gates of the main American base in Afghanistan
during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney underscores why
President Bush sent him there — a deepening American concern
that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are resurgent."
February 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/washington/28security.html?ref=world
Stock Market Gains After Steep Decline on Tuesday
By JEREMY W. PETERS and KEITH BRADSHER
"An estimated $600 billion loss in market value on Tuesday erased
all of 2007's gains." [Quote from slide show with article...bw]
March 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/business/31cnd-stox.html?hp
Fed up American GIs Petition Congress to End Iraq War
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0226-01.htm
Why Have So Many U.S. Attorneys Been Fired?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0226-05.htm
Congress Reexamining 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0226-07.htm
US Developing Contingency Plan to Bomb Iran: Report
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0225-02.htm
US Generals 'Will Quit' If Bush Orders Iran Attack
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0225-01.htm
Global Warming: Enough to Make You Sick
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0225-05.htm
US Rejects Ban on Cluster Bombs
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0224-02.htm
Nation of Islam's Farrakhan Gives Farewell Speech
by Rachel Martin
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7595408
Seeking New Israeli Settlers, Synagogue Draws Protesters
By TRYMAINE LEE
February 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/nyregion/26settle.html?ref=nyregion
Sharpton Learns His Forebears Were Thurmonds’ Slaves
By FERNANDA SANTOS
"On the eve of the Civil War, in segregated Florida, a white man died
in debt at age 40, leaving his wife, Julia Thurmond Sharpton, alone
to raise their four children and to honor his financial obligations.
Determined to offer a helping hand, Mrs. Sharpton’s father-in-law,
a plantation owner in South Carolina, gave her a gift: four slaves,
two adults and two children, who would work to pay off the
money owed."
February 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/nyregion/26sharpton.html?ref=nyregion
Film’s View of Islam Stirs Anger on Campuses
By KAREN W. ARENSON
"When “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,”
a documentary that shows Muslims urging attacks on the
United States and Europe, was screened recently at the
University of California, Los Angeles, it drew an audience
of more than 300 — and also dozens of protesters."
February 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/movies/26docu.html
Cheney Warns Pakistan to Act on Terror
By DAVID E. SANGER and MARK MAZZETTI
February 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/world/asia/26cnd-pakistan.html?ref=world
Feeding 18,000 Families a Month in One Neighborhood
The Right to Return to New Orleans
February 26, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley02262007.html
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
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A NEW LOOK AT U.S. RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS
Join us in a campaign to expose and stop the use of these illegal weapons
http://poisondust.org/
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You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4
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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
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URGENT APPEAL TO SAVE IRAQ'S ACADEMICS.
Call for action to save Iraq's Academics
A little known aspect of the tragedy engulfing Iraq is the systematic
liquidation of the country's academics. Even according to conservative
estimates, over 250 educators have been assassinated, and many
hundreds more have disappeared. With thousands fleeing the country
in fear for their lives, not only is Iraq undergoing a major brain drain,
the secular middle class - which has refused to be co-opted by the
US occupation - is being decimated, with far-reaching consequences
for the future of Iraq.
http://www.brussellstribunal.org/
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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.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?
JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177
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ENDORSE THE A.N.S.W.E.R. CALL TO ACTION
March 17-18, 2007
GLOBAL DAYS OF ACTION ON THE
4TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WAR!
http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?
SURVEY_ID=3400&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&JServSessionIdr011=
k7a3443r73.app8a
http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage
Please circulate widely
www.answercoalition.org
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Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.
Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:
Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.
You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.
Happy Holidays!
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.
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