*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
DEMAND THE RELEASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN
The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate
release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Although
Dr. Al-Arian is no longer on a hunger strike we must still demand
he be released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier
plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning,
he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before
a grand jury in Virginia. He has long sense served his time yet
Dr. Al-Arian is still being held. Release him now!
See:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/16/1410255
ACTION:
We ask all people of conscience to demand the immediate
release and end to Dr. Al- Arian's suffering.
Call, Email and Write:
1- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Department of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Fax Number: (202) 307-6777
Email: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
2- The Honorable John Conyers, Jr
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov
3- Senator Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
(202)224-4242
senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov
4- Honorable Judge Gerald Lee
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314
March 22, 2007
[No email given...bw]
National Council of Arab Americans (NCA)
http://www.arab-american.net/
Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War of
Terror
By Charlotte Kates, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6767.shtml
Related:
Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America
This systematic censorship of Middle East reality
continues even in schools
Published: 07 April 2007
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ fisk/article2430 125.ece
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
Excerpt of interview between Barbara Walters and Hugo Chavez
http://www.borev.net/2007/03/what_you_had_something_better.html
Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Defend the Los Angeles Eight!
http://www.committee4justice.com/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway's homophobic remarks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcJoJZIcQW4&eurl_
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Iran
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Another view of the war. A link from Amer Jubran
http://d3130.servadmin.com/~leeflash/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Petition: Halt the Blue Angels
http://action.globalexchange.org/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=458
http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/289327
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Film/Song about Angola
http://www.prisonactivist.org/angola/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Cheyenne and Arapaho oral histories hammer history's account of the
Sand Creek Massacre"
CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning
documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by
Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about
what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral
histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial,
Colorado film company.
"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient
Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for
public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the
story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness
this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."
"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness
value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we
also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal
elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film
shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century
Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "
Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black
Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and
Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado
history professor, are featured.
The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus
$4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.
Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed
information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still
images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the
proposal page.
Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality
products that serve to educate others about the human condition.
Contact:
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
7078 South Fairfax Street
Centennial, CO 80122
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
ARTICLES IN FULL:
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) All That You Can Be
Risk Management
by Lauren Collins
April 9, 2007
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/04/09/070409ta_talk_collins
2) No hope in Guantánamo
BY JOSHUA COLANGELO-BRYAN
MIAMI HERALD
Apr. 05, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/851/v-print/story/64032.html
3) WE'VE BEEN SURGING FOR YEARS
By Don Monkerud
TomPaine.com
April 6, 2007
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/06/weve_been_surging_for_years.php
4) Permanent drought predicted for Southwest
"Study says global warming threatens to create a
Dust Bowl-like period. Water politics could
also get heated."
By Alan Zarembo and Bettina Boxall
Times Staff Writers
April 6, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-swdrought6apr06,0,122112.story?coll=la-home-headlines
5) Democrats at War
WALL STREET JOURNAL
EDITORIAL
April 6, 2007; Page A10
[Via Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]
6) Ford Pays Chief $28 Million for 4 Months’ Work
By NICK BUNKLEY
April 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/business/06ford.html?ref=businessspecial
7) Comcast Chief Executive Receives $26 Million
By GERALDINE FABRIKANT
March 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/business/businessspecial/30comcast.pay.html?ex=1176091200&en=a355f91bce1d207c&ei=5070
8) No Bonuses for Top G.M. Executives
By NICK BUNKLEY
March 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/businessspecial/29gmpay.html?ex=1176091200&en=b3bcb33a8bceaa23&ei=5070
9) Cuban jet bombing suspect ordered free on bail in U.S.
"Venezuela and Cuba want Luis Posada Carriles in a 1976 plane bombing
that killed 73. But in this country, the former CIA operative
is charged with lying to immigration officials."
By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer
April 7, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-posada7apr07,1,7020766.story?coll=la-news-a_section
10) City asks court to quit Abu-Jamal case
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer1
April 6, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070406/ap_on_re_us/mumia_abu_jamal
11) Hot and Cold
Editorial
April 8,2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/opinion/08sun1.html?hp
12) Doctor’s Index Predicts Fate for Migrants in the Desert
"...more than 100 adult male
immigrants had died of heatstroke annually in Pima
County."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/us/08immig.html
13) Trail of Tears
By ELIZABETH ROYTE
(RE: THE LONG EXILE
A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic.
By Melanie McGrath.
268 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.95.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Royte.t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1176050987-kCJ3ZpwQ2uOi7Yadi5MjcA
14) Sociable Darwinism
By NATALIE ANGIER
April 8, 2007
(RE:EVOLUTION FOR EVERYONE
How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the
Way We Think About Our Lives.
By David Sloan Wilson.
390 pp. Delacorte Press. $24.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Angier.t.html?ref=review
15) Sweet Little Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 9, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09krugman.html?hp
16) 6-Year-Olds Under Arrest
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
Avon Park, Fla.
April 9, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09herbert.html?hp
17) Guantánamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike
By TIM GOLDEN
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09hunger.html
18) Army Is Cracking Down on Deserters
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09awol.html?ref=us
19) CLOSE CONTACT
To Woo Afghan Locals,
U.S. Troops Settle In
Tactic Wins Friends,
Isolates Insurgents,
But Boosts Casualties
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
April 9, 2007; Page A1
WALL STREET JOURNAL
[VIA Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]
20) Crop Prices Soar,
Pushing Up Cost
Of Food Globally
New Demand for Biofuels
Feeds Inflation Pressure;
China, India Feel Pinch
By PATRICK BARTA
April 9, 2007; Page A1
The Wall Street Journal
[VIA Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]
21) Injured troops shipped back into battle
"Salon has uncovered further evidence that the military sent soldiers
with acute post-traumatic stress disorder, severe back injuries and
other serious war wounds back to Iraq."
By Mark Benjamin
April 9, 2007
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/04/09/injured_soldiers/print.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) All That You Can Be
Risk Management
by Lauren Collins
April 9, 2007
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/04/09/070409ta_talk_collins
In the wake of a rise in substantiated instances
of misconduct by its recruiters, the United States
military, it was reported last month, is considering
installing surveillance cameras in its recruiting
stations. The military may also want to assess the
tactics that its employees use in the virtual realm.
This admissions season, an Army recruiter has been
e-mailing recent college graduates with the offer
of hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarship
money to pay for medical school, in exchange for
four years of service. Nothing new there. What’s
surprising is his assertion to students that they
would be better off in Baghdad than in Georgetown.
Susan Kahane, who is twenty-two, graduated from
Columbia last spring. When she took the MCAT,
in August, she checked a box to signal that she
wished to receive information about outside sources
of financial aid. Soon, she was inundated with
e-mails from the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force
(“FREE MEDICAL SCHOOL!!!”). One, sent on January 31st
by Captain Christopher D. Mayhugh, of the Army
Medical Service Corps, stood out. “Upon finishing
your residency,” the message read, “you will be
assigned to one of a variety of locations including
Germany, Italy and Hawaii and your obligation will
be complete.” (The Medical Service Corps’s Web page,
in contrast, notes prominently that its officers
have participated in combat operations in Korea,
Kosovo, Somalia, Panama, and Iraq.)
Mayhugh’s omission of Iraq, Kahane recalled last week,
“seemed a little bit strange.” Still, she said,
“These e-mails were often slightly tempting to me,
because of my worries about paying for medical school.”
On March 14th, Kahane received another e-mail from
Mayhugh, with the subject “Medical school scholarships
still available.” This time, rather than invoking
European and tropical destinations, Mayhugh addressed
the prospect of being posted to a less than desirable
locale. “What if you get sent to Iraq?” he wrote
in the letter’s final paragraph. He continued:
Well, consider this: there has been an average of
160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during
the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that
gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000. The rate
in Washington, D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means
that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and
killed in our Nation’s Capitol, which has some
of the strictest gun control laws in the nation,
than you are in Iraq.
Kahane recalled, “After reading it once, I felt
strongly that something was wrong, but I didn’t
know what.” She looked up the figures and did the
math herself, and found that all the statistics
in the e-mail were either outdated or incorrect,
and that, even if they had been correct, Mayhugh
seemed to be comparing a yearly figure for Washington
with a monthly one for Iraq. (Going by Mayhugh’s
numbers, there would be nearly fifteen gun murders
in Washington every day. In reality, there were
about three murders, of any kind, per week in 2006.
In the same period, an average of sixteen American
troops died each week in Iraq.) Kimberly Thompson,
an associate professor of risk analysis and decision
science at Harvard’s School of Public Health, agreed,
last week, to evaluate Mayhugh’s claim and found the
discrepancy even starker. In her estimate, the risk
of being killed in Iraq is ten times higher than
the risk of being killed in Washington, D.C. “The
recruiter’s e-mail message is really amazingly
misleading,” she said.
It turns out, as Kahane learned with a subsequent
Google search, that “D.C. is more dangerous than
Iraq” is a well-worn canard. Representative Steve
King, a Republican from Iowa, promulgated a variation,
involving his wife’s safety, last year on the floor
of the House, while Mayhugh’s paragraph was plucked,
verbatim, from an e-mail that circulated in 2005.
The realization that Mayhugh’s message derived—one
could see, with nominal research—from a Web fallacy
was dispiriting to Kahane. She had written a letter
to Mayhugh, but didn’t send it. “I thought, I guess
he knows the math isn’t right, so what’s the point
of telling him?” she said.
Reached last week at his office in Maryland, Mayhugh
stood by the e-mail, saying, “Most people’s perception
of Iraq is that ‘Oh, my God, people are being murdered
over there by the thousands.’ I think if you look at
any type of situation where you have several hundred
thousand people on the ground and now you throw in the
fact that what they’re doing is dangerous and they
have very big heavy vehicles and firearms with live
ammunition, the number of people being killed over
there is pretty small.”
He acknowledged that the paragraph had come from
a forwarded e-mail, but said that, before pasting
it into his pitch, he had done “some simple calculations”
that supported its conclusions. “In what I’ve seen
in dealing with the war and the misperceptions of it,”
he said, “it seemed to me like those would be the right
numbers.” He went on, “I work in D.C. on a daily basis,
and I’m afraid to get out of my car in a lot of places.
I hear about police officers being murdered every day
in D.C. and Baltimore. And I’ve had thousands of friends
and colleagues go to Iraq and come back safely.”
Illustration: TOM BACHTELL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) No hope in Guantánamo
BY JOSHUA COLANGELO-BRYAN
MIAMI HERALD
Apr. 05, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/851/v-print/story/64032.html
On Monday, I was at Guantánamo Bay to meet with Jumah
Al Dossari, one of the detainees my firm represents.
As always, I spent the first few hours of our meeting
trying to convince Jumah to fight the desperation
and hopelessness that threaten what little spirit
he has left.
Jumah has been at Guantánamo for more than five
years. The government has never charged him with
a crime and does not accuse him of taking any action
against the United States. For several years, Jumah
has been held alone in solid-wall cells from which
he cannot see other detainees or communicate except
by yelling. He has spent 22 to 24 hours a day by
himself in these cells. He has been short shackled,
threatened with death and, once, severly beaten.
Interrogators have told him that he will be at
Guantánamo for the next 50 years and that there
is no law at Guantánamo.
Sometimes the idea of spending the rest of his
life locked up thousands of miles from his family
is too much for Jumah. On Oct. 15, 2005, I walked
into an interview room to visit him. There was
blood on the floor. I looked up and saw Jumah
hanging by his neck from the other side of a metal
mesh wall that divided his cell from our meeting
area. He was bleeding from a gash in his arm.
I couldn't reach Jumah because the door to the
cell was locked. I yelled for guards who came,
unlocked the door and cut the noose from Jumah's
neck. I was ordered out of the room but later learned
that Jumah had survived. Since that day, Jumah
has tried to kill himself three times. Last spring
he slashed his throat with a razor, spraying blood
on the ceiling of his cell.
During our meeting on Monday, we talked about Jumah's
court case, a bleak—and therefore dangerous—subject.
I explained again that the Bush administration insists
it may detain anyone it designates an ''enemy combatant''
forever without a trial. I explained how Congress blessed
that notion in last year's Military Commissions Act,
which bars foreign ''enemy combatants'' from going to
court to challenge that designation. I explained that
lawyers for the detainees had challenged the act as
unconstitutional, but that in February a federal appeals
had ruled against us on the grounds that people like
Jumah have no rights.
Desperately wanting to boost his spirits, I also told
Jumah that there was reason to be optimistic. We had
asked the Supreme Court to review the appeals court
decision and we felt pretty sure that our request
would be granted. Were that to happen, Jumah might
be a step closer to a court hearing.
At noon, I went to the galley—as the cafeteria at
Guantánamo is called—to get lunch for Jumah and myself.
While waiting for a burger, I glanced up at a television
tuned to CNN. Text ran across the bottom of the screen:
``Supreme Court refuses to hear Guantánamo detainee
appeals until alternative procedures are exhausted.''
Our request—the one reason I had given Jumah to be
optimistic—had been denied. The Supreme Court was
saying it might consider the detainees' cases, but
not until the detainees subjected themselves
to proceedings created by the Military Commissions Act.
It is a disturbing ruling because the government
says the purpose of these proceedings is not to
determine if a detainee is actually an ''enemy combatant''
but rather to determine if the military followed its own
rules in applying the ''enemy combatant'' label. For that
reason, detainees will have no chance to produce evidence
of their innocence that the military didn't consider
or to challenge the use of evidence obtained through
torture. Worse yet, these procedures will be held
before the same appeals court that recently found
the detainees have no rights at all.
I walked slowly back to the room where Jumah sat
shackled. I wondered if there was a good way to tell
a suicidal man that all three branches of our government
appear content to let him rot at Guantánamo. Nothing
came to mind.
Maybe I shouldn't have worried. Jumah's reaction
to bad legal news has become as muted as his emotions
generally. He long ago stopped believing that a court
will ever hear his case and thinks I'm naive for hoping
otherwise. Instead, Jumah believes that he has been
condemned to live forever on an island where there
is no law. He may well be right.
Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, an attorney, represents
several Guantánamo detainees.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) WE'VE BEEN SURGING FOR YEARS
By Don Monkerud
TomPaine.com
April 6, 2007
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/06/weve_been_surging_for_years.php
The number of U.S. forces involved in Iraq are at least twice the number
quoted in the media. The administration uses a number of deceptions,
definitional illusions and euphemisms -- including counting only "combat
forces" and "military personnel" -- to drastically undercount the invasion
force.
Even President Bush's January announcement of a "surge" of 21,500 U.S.
troops, opposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has now morphed into 30,000
troops with an additional "headquarters staff" of 3,000 -- or more than 50
percent more than the official number. The currently reported total U.S.
military in Iraq is 145,000, forces which are required to occupy a country
slightly more than twice the size of Idaho.
The real number is almost impossible to find in government-released
information, even with a great amount of interpretation. It’s hidden
because few in the administration want to disclose the true extent of vast
U.S. resources invested in personnel, material, and other costs.
GlobalSecurity.org is a public policy organization that provides
background information on defense and homeland security. They note that
keeping track of American forces has become "significantly more difficult
as the military seeks to improve operational security and to deceive
potential enemies and the media as to the extent of American operations."
According to John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, there are a number
of other reasons affecting the accurate counting of the number of military
forces involved in Iraq. Large numbers of troops are activated with
unspecified duties to unspecified areas; many small units from various
locations are being mobilized from the Army and National Guard, which
count units differently; and groups rotate in and out of Iraqi so quickly
it's impossible for anyone but the Pentagon to calculate how many are
there. The Pentagon tracks these numbers, but Pike says they aren't
telling.
"We only try to nail the numbers down when we think Americans are getting
ready to blow someone up," Pike says. "The Pentagon knows the numbers and
we have certainly not done anything to highball it. Certainly, if there's
a chance to release or hold numbers, they are parsimonious."
Additionally, private enterprise military "contractors" almost double the
number of U.S. forces in Iraq. After four contractors were hung from a
bridge in Fallujah in March 2004, the Bush administration stonewalled
congressional efforts to force the Pentagon to release information about
the number of contractors in Iraq. Finally, the Pentagon reported a total
of 25,000.
In "The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security,"
Deborah D. Avant, director for the Institute for Global and Internal
Studies at George Washington University, reports that official numbers are
difficult to find, but "This is the largest deployment of U.S. contractors
in a military operation."
In October, the military's first census of contractors totaled 100,000,
not counting subcontractors. And in February 2007, the Associated Press
reported 120,000 contractors (which would put Bush's "surge" closer to
50,000). Contractors, which some call mercenaries, provide support
services essential to maintaining the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Ten
times the number of contractors employed during the Persian Gulf War,
these contract mercenaries now cook meals, interrogate prisoners, fix flat
tires, repair vehicles, and provide guard duty.
Military personnel formerly filled these types of jobs until former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld instituted his "Total Force" plan,
which relies on a smaller U.S. military force with "its active and reserve
military components, its civil servants, and its contractors." Senator
Jim Webb of Virginia called this a "rent-an-army."
What are the total of U.S. forces are in Iraq? The government reported
145,000 U.S. military forces in Iraq, but John Pike estimates the current
total at 150,000. Another 20,000 will arrive as part of the "surge," a
last gasp public relations effort to save the operation from total
failure.
John Pike estimates another 30,000 are "in the theater" to provide
"Operation Iraqi Freedom" support. The Army and Marines have another
10,000 to 20,000 in Kuwait, and a nearby Air Force wing-bombing group has
5,000. Current naval exercises in the Persian Gulf, which represents a
show of force against Iran, include 10,000 U.S. personnel, the carrier
groups Eisenhower and the Stennis, and 15 warships.
Add the 120,000 contract mercenaries and the forces involved in the Iraqi
operation and the total comes to 300,000 to 360,000, more than twice the
"official" figure of 145,000 troops. This isn't counting the more than
5,000 British combat troops and navy, down from a high of 40,000 during
the initial invasion, or the ragtag remnants of the highly vaunted
"Coalition of the Willing," which has dwindled since the beginning of the
occupation to 27, mostly small, countries such as Armenia, Estonia,
Moldavia, and Latvia.
Manipulated figures and private military contractors provide the Bush
Administration with political cover to escape public scrutiny and keep
injuries, deaths, and secret operations out of the public eye. A more
accurate and honest view of participation in the Iraqi occupation by the
government could give Americans more reason to oppose the waste of lives
and resources on this ill-conceived, poorly planned, and disastrous
venture.
--Don Monkerud is an California-based writer who follows cultural, social
and political issues. He can be reached at monkerud@cruzio.com.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Permanent drought predicted for Southwest
"Study says global warming threatens to create a
Dust Bowl-like period. Water politics could
also get heated."
By Alan Zarembo and Bettina Boxall
Times Staff Writers
April 6, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-swdrought6apr06,0,122112.story?coll=la-home-headlines
The driest periods of the last century ˜ the Dust
Bowl of the 1930s and the droughts of the 1950s ˜
may become the norm in the Southwest United
States within decades because of global warming,
according to a study released Thursday.
The research suggests that the transformation may
already be underway. Much of the region has been
in a severe drought since 2000, which the study's
analysis of computer climate models shows as the
beginning of a long dry period.
The study, published online in the journal
Science, predicted a permanent drought by 2050
throughout the Southwest ˜ one of the fastest-
growing regions in the nation.
The data tell "a story which is pretty darn scary
and very strong," said Jonathan Overpeck, a
climate researcher at the University of Arizona
who was not involved in the study.
Richard Seager, a research scientist at
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia
University and the lead author of the study, said
the changes would force an adjustment to the
social and economic order from Colorado
to California.
"There are going to be some tough decisions on
how to allocate water," he said. "Is it going to
be the cities, or is it going to be agriculture?"
Seager said the projections, based on 19 computer
models, showed a surprising level of agreement.
"There is only one model that does not have
a drying trend," he said.
Philip Mote, an atmospheric scientist at the
University of Washington who was not involved in
the study, added, "There is a convergence of the
models that is very strong and very worrisome."
The future effect of global warming is the
subject of a United Nations report to be released
today in Brussels, the second of four installments
being unveiled this year.
The first report from the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change was released in February. It
declared that global warming had become a
"runaway train" and that human activities were
"very likely" to blame.
The landmark report helped shift the long and
rancorous political debate over climate change
from whether man-made warming was real to what
could be done about it.
The mechanics and patterns of drought in the
Southwest have been the focus of increased
scrutiny in recent years.
During the last period of significant, prolonged
drought ˜ the Medieval Climate Optimum from about
the years 900 to 1300 ˜ the region experienced
dry periods that lasted as long as 20 years,
scientists say.
Drought research has largely focused on the
workings of air currents that arise from
variations in sea-surface temperature in the
Pacific Ocean known as El Niño and La Niña.
The most significant in terms of drought is La
Niña. During La Niña years, precipitation belts
shift north, parching the Southwest.
The latest study investigated the possibility of
a broader, global climatic mechanism that could
cause drought. Specifically, they looked at the
Hadley cell, one of the planet's most powerful
atmospheric circulation patterns, driving weather
in the tropics and subtropics.
Within the cell, air rises at the equator, moves
toward the poles and descends over the subtropics.
Increasing levels of greenhouse gases, the
researchers said, warms the atmosphere, which
expands the poleward reach of the Hadley cell.
Dry air, which suppresses precipitation, then
descends over a wider expanse of the
Mediterranean region, the Middle East
and North America.
All of those areas would be similarly affected,
though the study examined only the effect on
North America in a swath reaching from Kansas to
California and south into Mexico.
The researchers tested a "middle of the road"
scenario of future carbon dioxide emissions to
predict rainfall and evaporation. They assumed
that emissions would rise until 2050 and then
decline. The carbon dioxide concentration in the
atmosphere would be 720 parts per million in
2100, compared with about 380 parts per million
today.
The computer models, on average, found about a
15% decline in surface moisture ˜ which is
calculated by subtracting evaporation from
precipitation ˜ from 2021 to 2040, as compared
with the average from 1950 to 2000.
A 15% drop led to the conditions that caused the
Dust Bowl in the Great Plains and the northern
Rockies during the 1930s.
Even without the circulation changes, global
warming intensifies existing patterns of vapor
transport, causing dry areas to get drier and wet
areas to get wetter. When it rains, it is likely
to rain harder, but scientists said that was
unlikely to make up for losses from a shifting
climate.
Kelly Redmond, deputy director of the Western
Regional Climate Center in Reno, who was not
involved in the study, said he thought the region
would still have periodic wet years that were
part of the natural climate variation.
But, he added, "In the future we may see fewer
such very wet years."
Although the computer models show the drying has
already started, they are not accurate enough to
know whether the drought is the result of global
warming or a natural variation.
"It's really hard to tell," said Connie
Woodhouse, a paleoclimatologist at the University
of Arizona. "It may well be one of the first
events we can attribute to global warming."
The U.S. and southern Europe will be better
prepared to deal with frequent drought than
most African nations.
For the U.S., the biggest problem would be water
shortages. The seven Colorado River Basin states
˜ Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico,
Arizona and California ˜ would battle each other
for diminished river flows.
Mexico, which has a share of the Colorado River
under a 1944 treaty and has complained of U.S.
diversions in the past, would join the struggle.
Inevitably, water would be reallocated from
agriculture, which uses most of the West's
supply, to urban users, drying up farms.
California would come under pressure to build
desalination plants on the coast, despite
environmental concerns.
"This is a situation that is going to cause water
wars," said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research
in Boulder, Colo.
"If there's not enough water to meet everybody's
allocation, how do you divide it up?"
Officials from seven states recently forged an
agreement on the current drought, which has left
the Colorado River's big reservoirs ˜ Lake Powell
and Lake Mead ˜ about half-empty. Without some
very wet years, federal water managers say,
Lake Mead may never refill.
In the next couple of years, water deliveries may
have to be reduced to Arizona and Nevada, whose
water rights are second to California.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Democrats at War
WALL STREET JOURNAL
EDITORIAL
April 6, 2007; Page A10
[Via Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]
Democrats took Congress last fall in part by opposing the war in Iraq,
but it is becoming clear that they view their election as a mandate for
something far more ambitious -- to wit, promoting and executing their own
foreign policy, albeit without the detail of a Presidential election.
Their intentions were made plain this week with two remarkable acts by their
House and Senate leaders. Majority Leader Harry Reid endorsed Senator Russ
Feingold's proposal to withdraw from Iraq immediately, cutting off funds
entirely within a year. He promised a vote soon, as part of what the
Washington Post reported would also be a Democratic offensive to close
Guantanamo, reinstate legal rights for terror suspects, and improve
relations with Cuba.
Meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her now famous sojourn to Syria,
donning a head scarf and advertising that she was conducting shuttle
diplomacy between Jerusalem and Damascus. If there was any doubt that her
trip was intended as far more than a routine Congressional "fact-finding"
trip, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos put it to rest by declaring
that, "We have an alternative Democratic foreign policy. I view my job as
beginning with restoring overseas credibility and respect for the United
States."
Americans should understand how extraordinary this is. There have been
previous battles over U.S. foreign policy and fierce domestic criticism.
In the 1990s, these columns defended Bill Clinton against "the Republican
drift toward isolationism and political opportunism" amid the Kosovo
conflict. But rarely in U.S. history have Congressional leaders sought to
conduct their own independent diplomacy, with the Speaker acting as a Prime
Minister traveling with a Secretary of State in the person of Mr. Lantos.
Yes, Congressional Republicans have visited Syria too. But Ms. Pelosi isn't
some minority back-bencher. Without a Democrat in the White House, she and
Mr. Reid are the national leaders of their party. Even Newt Gingrich, for
all his grand domestic ambitions in 1995, took a muted stand on foreign
policy, realizing that in the American system the executive has the bulk of
national security power. He also understood he would do the country no
favors by sending a mixed message to our enemies -- at the time, Slobodan
Milosevic.
What was Ms. Pelosi hoping to accomplish, other than embarrassing President
Bush? "We were very pleased with reassurances we received from the president
that he was ready to resume the peace process," she told reporters after
meeting with dictator Bashar Assad. "We expressed our interest in using our
good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria."
She purported to convey a message from Israel's Ehud Olmert expressing
similar interest in "the peace process," except that the Israeli Prime
Minister felt obliged to issue a clarification noting that Ms. Pelosi had
got the message wrong. Israel hadn't changed its policy, which is that it
will negotiate only when Mr. Assad repudiates his support for terrorism and
stops trying to dominate Lebanon. As a shuttle diplomat, Ms. Pelosi needs
some practice.
Mr. Lantos probably got closer to their real intentions when he told
reporters that "This is only the beginning of our constructive dialogue
with Syria, and we hope to build on it." The Pelosi cavalcade is intended
to show that if only the Bush Administration would engage in "constructive
dialogue," the Syrians, Israelis and everyone else could all get along.
This is the same Syrian regime that has facilitated the movement of money
and insurgents to kill Americans in Iraq; that has been implicated by a U.N.
probe in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; and that
has snubbed any number of U.S. overtures since the fall of Saddam Hussein in
2003. Perhaps if he works hard enough, Mr. Lantos can match the 22 visits to
Damascus that Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Warren Christopher made in
the 1990s trying to squeeze peace from that same stone.
In fact, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Lantos both voted for the Syria Accountability
and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 that ordered Mr. Bush to
choose from a menu of six sanctions to impose on Damascus. Mr. Bush chose
the weakest two sanctions and dispatched a new Ambassador to Syria in a
goodwill gesture in 2004. Only later, in the wake of the Hariri murder and
clear intelligence of Syria's role in aiding Iraqi Baathists, did Mr. Bush
conclude that Mr. Assad's real goal was to reassert control over Lebanon and
bleed Americans in Iraq.
With her trip, Ms. Pelosi has now reassured the Syrian strongman that
Mr. Bush lacks the domestic support to impose any further pressure on his
country. She has also made it less likely that Mr. Assad will cooperate with
the Hariri probe, or assist the Iraqi government in defeating Baathist and
al Qaeda terrorists.
* * *
Back in Washington, Harry Reid says his response to Mr. Bush's certain veto
of his Iraq spending bill will be to escalate. He now supports cutting off
funds and beginning an immediate withdrawal, even as General David
Petraeus's surge in Baghdad unfolds and shows signs of promise. If Mr. Bush
were as politically cynical as Democrats think, he'd let Mr. Reid's policy
become law. Then Democrats would share responsibility for whatever mayhem
happened next.
So this is Democratic foreign policy: Assure our enemies that they can
ignore a President who still has 21 months to serve; and wash their hands of
Baghdad and of their own guilt for voting to let Mr. Bush go to war. No
doubt Democrats think the President's low job approval, and public
unhappiness with the war, gives them a kind of political immunity. But we
wonder.
Once we leave Iraq, America's enemies will still reside in the Mideast; and
they will be stronger if we leave behind a failed government and bloodbath
in Iraq. Mr. Bush's successor will have to contain the damage, and that
person could even be a Democrat. But by reverting to their Vietnam message
of retreat and by blaming Mr. Bush for all the world's ills, Democrats on
Capitol Hill may once again convince voters that they can't be trusted with
the White House in a dangerous world.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Ford Pays Chief $28 Million for 4 Months’ Work
By NICK BUNKLEY
April 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/business/06ford.html?ref=businessspecial
The Ford Motor Company paid its new chief executive,
Alan R. Mulally, $28.18 million in his first four months
on the job, the automaker said in a regulatory filing
yesterday.
His compensation included an $18.5 million bonus that
Ford, which reported a record $12.7 billion loss last
year, disclosed in September when it hired him from
Boeing.
Figures in Ford’s annual proxy statement show that his
pay was more than three times that of any other executive
at the company. That includes the executive chairman,
William Clay Ford Jr., who has kept a 2005 promise not
to accept any new salary, bonus or stock awards until
Ford consistently earns a profit.
The second-highest pay, $8.67 million, was also for only
a few months’ work; it went to James J. Padilla, who
retired as president and chief operating officer in July.
Three executives received bonuses for their roles
in reducing manufacturing capacity, cutting costs
and achieving other goals as part of Ford’s overhaul
plan, known as the Way Forward. The awards were part
of a retention program that the company recently
abandoned.
Mark Fields, president of the Americas division, earned
$2.29 million of his $5.57 million in total compensation
from that program. Lewis W. K. Booth, executive vice
president for Europe, received a $1.7 million retention
incentive, while Don R. Leclair, Ford’s chief financial
officer, received $1.32 million.
Ford said it spent $517,560 to give Mr. Fields use
of a company jet in 2006, a perk he stopped using
in January after it received considerable negative
publicity. Ford now buys first-class commercial airfares
to fly Mr. Fields from company offices in Dearborn, Mich.,
to his family’s home in South Florida each weekend.
Executive compensation at all three Detroit automakers
has been closely scrutinized since they began revamping
plans that will close dozens of factories and eliminate
tens of thousands of jobs. They are trying to overcome
multibillion-dollar losses and compete better with
foreign-based rivals like Toyota and Honda.
This year, as the automakers negotiate a new labor
agreement with the United Automobile Workers union,
workers are certain to resist demands for concessions
if they consider executive salaries to be excessive.
Union members have criticized the awarding of restricted
stock option bonuses to top executives at General Motors
— although G.M. paid no cash bonuses for the second
consecutive year — and a proposal at Ford to pay bonuses
to executives there. Ford later announced a program
to pay modest bonuses of at least $300 to all employees.
Mr. Mulally earned a base salary of $666,667, or $2 million
annualized. He was granted a $7.5 million signing bonus
and $11 million to make up for bonuses and stock options
he forfeited by leaving Boeing. Ford valued the stock and
option awards he received last year at $8.68 million.
In his final year at Boeing, where he headed the commercial
airplanes division, Mr. Mulally earned a total
of $9.96 million.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Comcast Chief Executive Receives $26 Million
By GERALDINE FABRIKANT
March 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/business/businessspecial/30comcast.pay.html?ex=1176091200&en=a355f91bce1d207c&ei=5070
The Comcast Corporation, the nation’s largest cable company,
paid its chief executive, Brian L. Roberts, a total
of $26 million last year, according to its proxy
statement released today.
That figure included a salary of $2.5 million, a bonus
of $3 million and other payments including a cash
bonus of $8.4 million.
Mr. Roberts’s pay exceeded by just $2 million that
of his father, Ralph J. Roberts, who is chairman
of the executive and finance committees.
The pay package for Ralph Roberts, who was a founder
of the company but is no longer its chief executive
or chairman, has annoyed some investors over the years.
Mr. Roberts, who is 87, earned a total of $24.1 million
last year, a figure that included a salary of $1.8 million,
an option award of $3.7 million and another payment
of $10.3 million, which included $4.1 million related
to life insurance premiums.
David L. Cohen, the company’s executive vice president,
defended the compensation structure. "Our compensation
plan is carefully designed to align executive
compensation with the company’s annual and long-term
performance goals and with shareholder interests,”
he wrote in an e-mail message.
Comcast’s stock did better last year than it had done
previously, rising from $17.48 a share at the beginning
of the year to $28.22 a share at the end of the year.
In 2005, Glass Lewis & Company, a research firm that
advises institutional shareholders on governance issues,
argued that Brian Roberts, his father and three top managers
were grossly overpaid. At the time several investors said
privately that they were particularly annoyed that Ralph
Roberts continued to receive a lucrative pay package when
he was no longer chairman. In 2005, Comcast stock declined
21 percent. The company said that a portion of Ralph Roberts’
pay was determined by arrangements made when he was the
chief executive.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) No Bonuses for Top G.M. Executives
By NICK BUNKLEY
March 29, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/businessspecial/29gmpay.html?ex=1176091200&en=b3bcb33a8bceaa23&ei=5070
DETROIT, March 28 — General Motors, which significantly
improved its financial performance in 2006 yet did not
earn a profit, said on Wednesday that for a second
consecutive year, it would not pay cash bonuses
to top executives.
Such bonuses would undoubtedly have rankled members
of the United Automobile Workers union ahead of this
summer’s contract talks, although a G.M. spokeswoman,
Renee Rashid-Merem, declined to say whether the pending
negotiations were a factor.
“It’s a decision that’s made on an annual basis,”
Ms. Rashid-Merem said. She added that the decision
affected about 20 managers, including the chief
executive, Rick Wagoner, and the vice chairman,
Robert A. Lutz.
Full details on executives’ compensation will be
released next month when the company files its annual
proxy statement.
Last week, some U.A.W. members expressed anger
after G.M. disclosed in regulatory filings that
Mr. Wagoner and other top executives would receive
bonuses in the form of restricted stock options.
G.M. had not awarded stock options since 2003.
The union, which concluded a two-day collective
bargaining convention Wednesday in Detroit, also
grew irritated recently when executives at the
Ford Motor Company said they were considering
management bonuses. Instead, Ford said it would
give bonuses of at least $300 to all employees.
Union members say the leaders of Detroit’s automakers
should not receive incentives at a time that they
are eliminating tens of thousands of jobs and
cutting benefits for hourly workers and retirees.
Ford lost $12.7 billion last year, while G.M.
posted a $2 billion loss.
G.M.’s decision to forgo cash bonuses this year,
as it did in 2006 after the company lost $10.4 billion,
was first reported Wednesday afternoon
by Bloomberg News.
During this week’s bargaining convention, the U.A.W.’s
president, Ron Gettelfinger, repeatedly criticized
executives at the Delphi Corporation, the auto supplier
that declared bankruptcy in 2005, for collecting
bonuses while trying to cut hourly workers’ pay
and benefits. Delphi says the $37 million in incentive
pay recently approved by a bankruptcy judge is necessary
to keep top executives from leaving.
Mr. Gettelfinger did not specifically disparage executives
at the automakers, but he made clear that the union intended
to vigorously fight any demands made during the contract
talks that workers agree to concessions.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) Cuban jet bombing suspect ordered free on bail in U.S.
"Venezuela and Cuba want Luis Posada Carriles in a 1976 plane bombing
that killed 73. But in this country, the former CIA operative
is charged with lying to immigration officials."
By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer
April 7, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-posada7apr07,1,7020766.story?coll=la-news-a_section
MIAMI — A federal judge Friday ordered Cuban militant Luis Posada
Carriles freed from a New Mexico jail, ruling he be allowed to live
under electronic surveillance with his family in Miami while awaiting
trial May 11 on charges of lying to immigration authorities.
The move to free the 79-year-old, who is suspected of blowing up a
Cuban airliner in 1976 and bombing Havana hotels in the late 1990s,
sparked outrage in Cuba. The Communist Party newspaper Granma posted
the news on its website under a headline that read: "Blackmail Gets
Results."
Posada has never been charged in U.S. courts in connection with those
terrorist acts, his critics contend, because he likely threatened to
disclose other violence committed during his decades of covert work
with the CIA.
A Bay of Pigs veteran who once served time in Panama for plotting to
kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Posada has become a political
conundrum for the Bush administration. The president and his
Republican allies have benefited from the support of influential
Cuban exiles in Miami, many of whom view Posada as a patriotic
freedom fighter.
Posada entered the United States illegally in March 2005, about eight
months after he and three other Florida-based Cuban militants were
pardoned on illegal weapons and conspiracy charges by outgoing
Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso.
The move came four years into Posada's eight-year sentence, and was
seen as a favor to Bush, whose reelection in November 2004 was riding
on the continued backing of Miami Cubans.
The other three men, all U.S. citizens, arrived here to a hero's
welcome while Posada — Cuban-born and Venezuela-naturalized — made
his way home clandestinely. Posada held a Miami news conference,
fueling foreign outcry that the U.S. government was providing refuge
for a terrorist. He was arrested in May 2005. Cuba and Venezuela want
Posada extradited to stand trial for the Cubana de Aviacion bombing
that killed all 73 on board the Caracas to Havana flight.
Posada escaped from prison in Venezuela in 1985 while he awaited a
third trial in the jetliner bombing off Barbados. He was acquitted
twice.
After his 2005 arrest, Posada first was held in an immigration lockup
in El Paso — where he told officials he had made his way to the
United States with the help of a smuggler via Mexico and Texas.
Cuban media, however, reported that Posada actually was picked up
from Mexico's Yucatan peninsula by a shrimp boat owned by Cuban
American developer Santiago Alvarez and brought to a Gulf Coast
marina. Alvarez is in jail following a guilty plea on weapons
violations charges.
The El Paso immigration court ordered Posada deported in September
2005, but U.S. authorities were unable to persuade any of the seven
allied countries contacted to accept him. A federal judge ruled that
he couldn't be extradited to Cuba or Venezuela because of the
possibility he would be tortured or abused in the custody of those
governments.
Last fall, Posada's Miami lawyer, Eduardo Soto, filed a writ of
habeas corpus seeking his release. Another Texas judge ordered the
federal government to charge Posada with a crime by Feb. 1 or release
him.
Then a federal grand jury in January indicted Posada on immigration
violations and transferred him to a prison in Otero County, N.M. —
voiding the deadline by placing him in custody pending a criminal
proceeding.
On Friday, shortly before the court closed for Easter weekend, U.S.
District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso ordered Posada released.
She did not address a government request to keep him jailed pending
an appeal.
Posada's El Paso attorney, Felipe D.J. Millan, could not be reached
for comment. But he told the Associated Press it was unlikely Posada
would be released over the holiday weekend.
"He deserves to go home and live in peace and enjoy his family,"
Millan said. "Obviously we'll do whatever we need to do to post bond.
We'll try to get him [out] as soon as possible."
Cardone's nine-page ruling required Posada to post a $250,000 bond,
and mandated that his wife and two adult children put up $100,000
bond to ensure their compliance with other conditions of his release,
including 24-hour home confinement and wearing an electronic
monitoring device.
carol.williams@latimes.com
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) City asks court to quit Abu-Jamal case
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer1
April 6, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070406/ap_on_re_us/mumia_abu_jamal
Prosecutors want the entire 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to recuse
itself from the latest appeal for death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal because
Gov. Ed Rendell ˜ whose wife serves on the court ˜ was district attorney
during his trial.
Abu-Jamal, a former radio reporter and Black Panther, was convicted in
1982 of killing a police officer. In his latest appeal, his attorneys say
prosecutors practiced racial discrimination during jury selection; an
allegation prosecutors deny.
"Since Mr. Rendell was the elected district attorney at the time in
question, and so would have been responsible for the supposed 'routine'
racially discriminatory practices of Philadelphia prosecutors, Abu-Jamal's
accusations necessarily implicate Mr. Rendell personally," Assistant
District Attorney Hugh J. Burns Jr. wrote in a motion last week.
A federal judge in 2001 overturned Abu-Jamal's death sentence but upheld
his conviction. Both sides appealed that ruling to the 3rd Circuit, whose
members include the governor's wife, Marjorie O. Rendell.
Prosecutors could simply ask for Judge Rendell to recuse herself but they
want to avoid any possible grounds for a future appeal.
Abu-Jamal was convicted in the Dec. 9, 1981, shooting death officer Daniel
Faulkner after the officer pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother. He remains on
death row during the appeals.
His writings and taped speeches on the justice system have made Abu-Jamal
a popular figure among activists who believe he was the victim of a racist
justice system. Abu-Jamal is black; Faulkner was white.
Abu-Jamal's lawyer, Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco, opposes Byrne's
motion, according to court records. He did not return telephone messages
seeking comment.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Hot and Cold
Editorial
April 8,2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/opinion/08sun1.html?hp
Last week began with a Supreme Court decision declaring
that the federal government had the authority to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions and all but ordering the Bush
administration to do so. It ended with a report from
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the
world’s authoritative voice on global warming — warning
that failure to contain these emissions will have
disastrous environmental effects, especially in poorer
countries, which are least able to defend themselves
and their people against the consequences of climate
change.
One would hope that these events would shake President
Bush out of his state of denial and add his authority
to the chorus of governors, legislators and business
leaders calling for an aggressive regulatory and
technological response to the dangers of global warming.
They haven’t. When asked about the Supreme Court decision,
the president said he thought he was already doing enough.
He argued further that there was little point in the
United States’ doing any more unless other polluters
like China acted as well. That ignores the reality
that no developing country is going to move unless
the United States — which produces one-fourth
of the world’s emissions with only 5 percent
of its population — takes the lead.
The report from the intergovernmental panel was
the second of three due this year. The first
concluded with “90 percent certainty” that humans
had caused the rise in atmospheric temperatures
over the last half-century. The most recent
focused on the consequences, few of them positive.
The northern latitudes will have longer growing
seasons. But elsewhere climate change will lead
to more severe storms, the flooding of tropical
islands and coastlines inhabited by hundreds of
millions of people, the likely extinction of at
least one-fourth of the world’s species and,
in poorer countries in Asia and Africa, drought
and hunger.
Some of these changes have begun. “We’re no longer
arm-waving with models,” said Martin Parry, the
co-chairman of the team that wrote the report.
But the report also makes clear that while
emissions already accumulated in the atmosphere
make some damage inevitable, the worst can be
avoided if the world’s nations take swift action
to stabilize and then reverse emissions.
What must be avoided, the report said, is a rise
of 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which
truly devastating effects will begin to kick in.
But such a rise is almost inevitable over the
next century if the world continues to do
business as usual.
The panel’s next paper will discuss alternatives
to business as usual. These policies will almost
certainly require a major shift in the way energy
is produced and used, as well as massive investments
in new technologies. They will also be expensive.
But what the world’s scientists are telling us,
with increasing confidence, is that the costs
of doing nothing will be far greater than the
costs of acting now.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Doctor’s Index Predicts Fate for Migrants in the Desert
"...more than 100 adult male
immigrants had died of heatstroke annually in Pima
County."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/us/08immig.html
TUCSON, April 7 (AP) — An emergency room physician
has devised a scientific index to predict the likelihood
that illegal immigrants will die while walking through
the Arizona desert in extreme heat conditions.
The physician, Dr. Samuel Keim, concluded that the
probability of death reached 50 percent when the
temperature climbed to 104 degrees.
“It’s like a weather forecast,” said the Rev. Robin
Hoover, whose Humane Borders group maintains water
stations at desert sites in southern Arizona and
northern Mexico. “If he can forecast it to the
U.S. Border Patrol, more of their agents can be
scattered out looking for people in trouble.”
Dr. Keim said he hoped to begin issuing daily
forecasts by May, but he had not determined how
to disseminate the information and with whom
to share it.
“We’re still negotiating that with various different
entities,” he said, declining to give specifics
because of worries that the intense political
debate surrounding illegal immigration could
scare off participants.
Deaths of migrants on the Arizona-Mexico border
have soared in recent years as tighter border
security sends people to more-remote desert
areas. Some migrants cross 50 or more miles
of desert.
In July 2005, Border Patrol agents recovered
72 dead illegal immigrants in the agency’s
Tucson sector. Nearly all died from heat
exposure.
Ron Bellavia, commander of the Border Patrol’s
rescue operations in the Tucson area, said
an index like Dr. Keim’s “would be an appropriate
measure to probably reduce exposure or
environmental injuries.”
The forecasts could also be shared with groups
near Mexican migrant-staging areas, where the
warnings could be posted, Mr. Hoover said.
For years, the Border Patrol and the Mexican
government have issued announcements about the
desert’s heat-related perils, but Dr. Keim said
he did not know whether migrants read or heeded
them.
Dr. Keim matched heatstroke victims with dates
of death and desert temperatures using data
collected from 2002 to 2006 in Pima County.
Dr. Keim, an associate professor at the University
of Arizona and an emergency room physician in Tucson,
said that in recent years more than 100 adult male
immigrants had died of heatstroke annually in Pima
County.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Trail of Tears
By ELIZABETH ROYTE
(RE: THE LONG EXILE
A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic.
By Melanie McGrath.
268 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.95.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Royte.t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1176050987-kCJ3ZpwQ2uOi7Yadi5MjcA
Throughout human history, seemingly simple turns of events
have changed the fates of individuals and nations. In 1906,
Thomas Watt Coslett invented a way to keep iron corset
stays from rusting, and the bottom fell out of the
whale-bone market. The whalers who remained on the
eastern shore of Hudson Bay switched to trading for
the creamy pelts of the Arctic fox, which local Inuit,
on the Ungava Peninsula, began to trap in ever greater
numbers. But when prices for skins fell in 1950, at
a time when fox populations had also crashed, trappers —
formerly subsistence hunters — moved to trading posts
and begged rations from the Canadian police.
Meanwhile the cold war raged, and the Canadian
government became increasingly concerned about
its sovereignty in the east Arctic archipelago.
The United States and Canada jointly ran a weather
station on Ellesmere Island, but Canadian officials
wanted permanent residents there. The remedy to both
the geopolitical and welfare problems was simple:
uproot the Ungava Inuit and plant them 1,200 miles
north, on Ellesmere. In “The Long Exile,” Melanie
McGrath tells the story of this forced relocation —
a tale of almost unrelenting horror — with so much
moral vigor and descriptive verve that one quits
reading only long enough to shake one’s head in
disbelief. And then, with a shiver, reads on.
To succeed on Hudson Bay, the Inuit needed to know
everything about their immediate surroundings: the
landmarks, the animals’ travel and migration routes,
the location of fresh-water springs, berries, bird
eggs and willow-worm cocoons to dip into seal fat
for dinner. Describing the land’s natural features
with lyrical precision, McGrath emphasizes that
the harsh physical realities of this place shaped
not only how the Inuit lived but also their
personalities, making a strong case that psychology
is destiny. At one time, expressing rage, lust or
ambition were considered so threatening to Inuit
group survival that persistent offenders were
banished. But while serenity and self-restraint
were adaptive in the Inuit’s ancestral environment,
their unwillingness to speak out, on Ellesmere,
would almost kill them.
It was the late summer of 1953 when the Canadian
government deposited three reluctant Inuit families,
including a master carver named Paddy Aqiatusuk,
on a narrow Ellesmere beach. They had been promised
abundant game and a return ticket in one year’s
time if they were unhappy. They were, in fact,
instantly miserable.
At 81 degrees north latitude, Ellesmere is, McGrath
notes, the harshest terrain that humans have ever
continuously inhabited. A high arctic desert, its
interior is “an impenetrable mass of frozen crags
and deep fjords.” The Inuit soon learned that marine
mammals were scarce, as were caribou, fox and fresh
water. Their clothing wasn’t warm enough, and their
sleds and harnesses were all wrong for the rocky
terrain. The rough waters made hunting by kayak
impossible, and the dry wind made their dogs’ lungs
bleed. Sufficient snow for snow houses arrived late,
leaving the settlers in flimsy canvas tents until
late winter. There wasn’t enough fuel for fires.
The air was almost 30 degrees colder than back home,
and the near constant wind made it feel more than
50 degrees worse. Four months of darkness “made
hunting an almost daily terror,” McGrath writes.
Ellesmere supported a small musk ox population,
but the police detachment, 40 miles from the Inuit
encampment, forbade killing them. The starving
Inuit ate bird feathers, made broth from boot
liners. “The children leaked diarrhea then vomit
which the women in the camp fed to the dogs rather
than have it go to waste.”
Too reticent to complain, even when to save her
family from starvation, Aqiatusuk’s 6-year-old
granddaughter was forced onto the ice to hunt in
total darkness, the Inuit persevered. When they
finally screwed up their courage and asked to go
home, the police refused. It was logistically
complicated: the Inuit must cope. Government careers
were on the line: the colony had to succeed. Its
inhabitants were the equivalent of national flags
fluttering in the wind.
McGrath, wickedly talented, brings every bit of
this to life (helped by her Inuit subjects’
preternatural memory for details). We hear the
gnash of the ice (“a terrible, raw, geologic sound”),
feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. We feel, too,
the Inuit’s aching sense of abandonment and betrayal,
their utter disorientation in a land where they knew
nothing of the animal routes, the sea’s eddies and
currents or the habits of wind and ice. Such details
are not a matter of comfort, they are a matter
of survival. McGrath is a meticulous researcher
— she took the trouble to learn the names and
colors of lichens that grow on rocks beneath
bird colonies and fox lookouts — and she writes
as if she’d lived in the Arctic for years. The
book moves quickly, to a drumbeat of doom. As
the Inuit approach their new home, “the frail
summer had already begun to sicken and the sky
pressed down on the land like a dead hand.”
McGrath, who has written three previous books,
is smart to focus on Aqiatusuk and his extended
family. They humanize her tale, which includes
a history of exploration in the eastern Canadian
Arctic and of the relentless exploitation of Inuits
by whites. Aqiatusuk was the adoptive father of
a boy named Josephie, whose real father was the
American Robert Flaherty, the director of “Nanook
of the North.” Filmed on the Ungava Peninsula
in the 1920s, the so-called documentary idealized
the Inuit as innocents in an unblemished land.
The movie colored the Western view of Inuit life
in the Arctic for generations as it traveled the
globe winning prizes, immortalizing a world that
never existed. Actually, the Inuit way of life
was already tainted by white fur traders by the
time Flaherty arrived (he himself was financially
backed by a trader), and the film’s starring family
was entirely contrived, just like the settlement
on Ellesmere, a place with no history or purpose
beyond politics. According to McGrath, Flaherty
made Nanook out of admiration for the Inuit’s “raw
unquestioning confidence,” qualities shattered by
the move to Ellesmere. As an adult, Josephie Flaherty,
whose mother starred in “Nanook” (and cohabited
with Flaherty), would follow Aqiatusuk to Ellesmere
and die there, a broken man. But his daughter Martha,
the child hunter and granddaughter of Robert Flaherty,
eventually escaped and later forced the Canadian
government to reckon with its crimes.
As the years wore on, the Inuit gradually learned
how to survive on Ellesmere. They constructed huts
from scrap wood, revamped their sleds and dog harnesses.
They learned the beluga’s migration route and would
eventually hunt over a range of 6,864 square miles
each year. In 1962, the government sent a teacher
to the island, but only two school books: one on
how to run a bank, the other called “The Roads
of Texas.”
Forty years after the first families left Ungava
for Ellesmere, the Canadian government held hearings
to investigate the relocation program. At its conclusion,
the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples called
the relocation “one of the worst human rights violations
in the history of Canada.” The country was shocked
by the abuse and arrogance of its leaders, who
eventually made financial reparations of 10 million
Canadian dollars to the survivors and their families.
But the government has yet to apologize.
Elizabeth Royte, whose “Garbage Land: On the Secret
Trail of Trash,” has recently been published
in paperback, is a frequent contributor to the Book Review.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Sociable Darwinism
By NATALIE ANGIER
April 8, 2007
(RE:EVOLUTION FOR EVERYONE
How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the
Way We Think About Our Lives.
By David Sloan Wilson.
390 pp. Delacorte Press. $24.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/books/review/Angier.t.html?ref=review
Just as in the classic clashes of nature, where every
mutational upgrade in a carnivore’s strength or cunning
is soon countered by a speedier or more paranoid model
of antelope, so the pitched struggle between evolutionary
theory and its deniers has yielded a bristling diversity
of ploys and counterploys. The heavyhanded biblical
literalism of creationist science evolves into the
feints and curlicues of intelligent design, and the
casual dismissiveness with which scientists long
regarded the anti-evolutionists gives way to a belated
awareness that, gee, the public doesn’t seem to realize
how fatuous the other side is, and maybe it’s time
to combat the creationist phylum head on. And so,
over the last few years, scientists have unleashed
a blitzkrieg of books in defense of Darwinism,
summarizing the Everest of supportive evidence
for evolutionary theory, filleting the arguments
of the naysayers or reciting, yet again, the story
of Charles Darwin, depressive naturalist extraordinaire,
whose increasingly pervasive avuncular profile has
lofted him to logo status on par with Einstein and
the Nike swoosh.
David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at
Binghamton University, takes a different and decidedly
refreshing approach. Rather than catalog its successes,
denounce its detractors or in any way present
evolutionary theory as the province of expert tacticians
like himself, Wilson invites readers inside and shows
them how Darwinism is done, and at lesson’s end urges
us to go ahead, feel free to try it at home. The result
is a sprightly, absorbing and charmingly earnest book
that manages a minor miracle, the near-complete
emulsifying of science and the “real world,” ingredients
too often kept stubbornly, senselessly apart. Only when
Wilson seeks to add religion to the mix, and to show
what natural, happy symbionts evolutionary biology
and religious faith can be, does he begin to sound
like a corporate motivational speaker or a political
candidate glad-handing the crowd.
In Wilson’s view, Darwin’s theory of evolution by
natural selection has the beauty of being both
simple and profound. Unlike quantum mechanics or
the general theory of relativity, the basic concepts
behind evolutionary theory are easy to grasp; and
once grasped, he argues, they can be broadly applied
to better understand ourselves and the world — the
world both as it is and as it might be, with the
right bit of well-informed coaxing. Wilson has long
been interested in the evolution of cooperative and
altruistic behavior, and much of the book is devoted
to the premise that “goodness can evolve, at least
when the appropriate conditions are met.” As he sees
it, all of life is characterized by a “cosmic” struggle
between good and evil, the high-strung terms we apply
to behaviors that are either cooperative or selfish,
civic or anomic. The constant give-and-take between
me versus we extends down to the tiniest and most
primal elements of life. Short biochemical sequences
may want to replicate themselves ad infinitum, their
neighboring sequences be damned; yet genes get together
under the aegis of cells and reproduce in orderly
fashion as genomes, as collectives of sequences,
setting aside some of their immediate selfish urges
for the sake of long-term genomic survival. Cells
further collude as organs, and organs pool their
talents and become bodies. The conflict between being
well behaved, being good, not gulping down more than
your share, and being selfish enough to get your fair
share, “is eternal and encompasses virtually all species
on earth,” he writes, and it likely occurs on any other
planet that supports life, too, “because it is predicted
at such a fundamental level by evolutionary theory.”
How do higher patterns of cooperative behavior emerge
from aggregates of small, selfish units? With carrots,
sticks and ceaseless surveillance. In the human body,
for example, nascent tumor cells arise on a shockingly
regular basis, each determined to replicate without
bound; again and again, immune cells attack the
malignancies, destroying the outlaw cells and themselves
in the process. The larger body survives to breed, and
hence spawn a legacy far sturdier than any tumor mass
could manage.
As with our bodies, so with our behaviors. Wilson
explores the many fascinating ways in which humans
are the consummate group-thinking, team-playing animal.
The way we point things out to one another, for example,
is unique among primates. “Apes raised with people
learn to point for things that they want but never
point to call the attention of their human caretakers
to objects of mutual interest,” Wilson writes, “something
that human infants start doing around their first birthday.”
The eyes of other apes are dark across their entire span
and thus are hard to follow, but the contrast between
the white sclera and colored iris of the human eye makes
it difficult for people to conceal the direction in which
they are looking. In the interdependent, egalitarian
context of the tribe, the ancestral human setting,
Wilson says, “it becomes advantageous for members
of the team to share information, turning the eyes
into organs of communication in addition to organs
of vision.” Humans are equipped with all the
dispositional tools needed to establish and maintain
order in the commons. Studies have revealed a deep
capacity for empathy, a willingness to trust others
and become instant best friends; and an equally
strong urge to punish cheaters, to exact revenge
against those who buck group rules for private gain.
Of course, even as humans bond together in groups
and behave with impressive civility toward their
neighbors, they are capable of treating those outside
the group with ruthless savagery. Wilson is not naïve,
and he recognizes the ease with which humans fall into
an us-versus-them mind-set. Yet he is a self-described
optimist, and he believes that the golden circles
of we-ness, the conditions that encourage entities
at every stratum of life to stop competing and instead
pool their labors into a communally acting mega-entity,
can be expanded outward like ripples on a pond until
they encompass all of us — that the entire human race
can evolve the culturally primed if not genetically
settled incentive to see our futures for what they are,
inexorably linked on the lone blue planet we share.
Toward the end of the book he offers a series of
evolutionarily informed suggestions on how we might
help widen the geometry of good will, beginning with
the italicized, boldface pronouncement that “we are
not fated by our genes to engage in violent conflict.”
Our bloody past does not foretell an inevitably bloody
future, and violent behaviors that make grim sense
in one context can become maladaptive in another.
“The Vikings of Iceland were among the fiercest people
on earth, and now they are the most peaceful,” he
observes. “In principle, it is possible to completely
eliminate violent conflict by eliminating its preferred
‘habitat.’ ” For their universal appeal and basal power
to harmonize a crowd, he recommends more music and
dancing and asks, “Could we establish world peace if
everyone at the United Nations showed up in leotards?”
He also believes that the world’s religions should
be tapped for their “wisdom.” This is a fine idea
in the abstract, but given current events and the
fissuring of the world along so many theo-sectarian
lines, I wish we could forgo the sermon and just
strike up the band.
Natalie Angier is a science columnist for The Times.
Her latest book, “The Canon: A Whirligig Tour Through
the Beautiful Basics of Science,” will be published in May.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Sweet Little Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
April 9, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09krugman.html?hp
Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent
threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power
of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official
claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their
leaders being dishonest about such things.
But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has
sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation
invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another,
and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power.
Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that
the person facing all these accusations must have done
something wrong.
For a long time, basically from 9/11 until the last remnants
of President Bush’s credibility drowned in New Orleans,
the Bush administration was able to go big on its deceptions.
Most people found it inconceivable that an American president
would, for example, assert without evidence that Saddam and
Al Qaeda were allies. Mr. Bush won the 2004 election because
a quorum of voters still couldn’t believe he would grossly
mislead them on matters of national security.
Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly
relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.
The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater,
Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate.
At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff
members trashed the White House on their way out.
Each pseudoscandal got headlines, air time and finger-wagging
from the talking heads. The eventual discovery in each
case that there was no there there, if reported at all,
received far less attention. The effect was to make
an administration that was, in fact, pretty honest and
well run — especially compared with its successor —
seem mired in scandal.
Even in the post-9/11 environment, little lies never
went away. In particular, promoting little lies seems
to have been one of the main things U.S. attorneys,
as loyal Bushies, were expected to do. For example,
David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico,
appears to have been fired because he wouldn’t bring
unwarranted charges of voter fraud.
There’s a lot of talk now about a case in Wisconsin,
where the Bush-appointed U.S. attorney prosecuted the
state’s purchasing supervisor over charges that a court
recently dismissed after just 26 minutes of oral
testimony, with one judge calling the evidence “beyond
thin.” But by then the accusations had done their job:
the unjustly accused official had served almost four
months in prison, and the case figured prominently
in attack ads alleging corruption in the Democratic
governor’s administration.
This is the context in which you need to see the wild
swings Republicans have been taking at Nancy Pelosi.
First, there were claims that the speaker of the House
had demanded a lavish plane for her trips back to
California. One Republican leader denounced her
“arrogance of extravagance” — then, when it became
clear that the whole story was bogus, admitted that
he had never had any evidence.
Now there’s Ms. Pelosi’s fact-finding trip to Syria,
which Dick Cheney denounced as “bad behavior” — unlike
the visit to Syria by three Republican congressmen
a few days earlier, or Newt Gingrich’s trip to
China when he was speaker.
Ms. Pelosi has responded coolly, dismissing the
administration’s reaction as a “tantrum.” But it’s
more than that: the hysterical reaction to her trip
is part of a political strategy, aided and abetted
by news organizations that give little lies their
time in the sun.
Fox News, which is a partisan operation in all but
name, plays a crucial role in the Little Lie strategy
— which is why there is growing pressure on Democratic
politicians not to do anything, like participating
in Fox-hosted debates, that helps Fox impersonate
a legitimate news organization.
But Fox has had plenty of help. Even Time’s Joe Klein,
a media insider if anyone is, wrote of the Pelosi trip
that “the media coverage of this on CNN and elsewhere
has been abysmal.” For example, CNN ran a segment about
Ms. Pelosi’s trip titled “Talking to Terrorists.”
The G.O.P.’s reversion to the Little Lie technique
is a symptom of political weakness, of a party reduced
to trivial smears because it has nothing else to offer.
But the technique will remain effective — and the U.S.
political scene will remain ugly — as long as many
people in the news media keep playing along.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) 6-Year-Olds Under Arrest
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
Avon Park, Fla.
April 9, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09herbert.html?hp
When 6-year-old Desre’e Watson threw a tantrum in her
kindergarten class a couple of weeks ago she could not
have known that the full force of the law would be
brought down on her and that she would be carted off
by the police as a felon.
But that’s what happened in this small, backward city
in central Florida. According to the authorities,
there were no other options.
“The student became violent,” said Frank Mercurio,
the no-nonsense chief of the Avon Park police.
“She was yelling, screaming — just being
uncontrollable. Defiant.”
“But she was 6,” I said.
The chief’s reply came faster than a speeding bullet:
“Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we’ve
arrested?”
The child’s tantrum occurred on the morning of March 28
at the Avon Elementary School. According to the police
report, “Watson was upset and crying and wailing and
would not leave the classroom to let them study, causing
a disruption of the normal class activities.”
After a few minutes, Desre’e was, in fact, taken to
another room. She was “isolated,” the chief said.
But she would not calm down. She flailed away at the
teachers who tried to control her. She pulled one
woman’s hair. She was kicking.
I asked the chief if anyone had been hurt. “Yes,”
he said. At least one woman reported “some redness.”
After 20 minutes of this “uncontrollable” behavior,
the police were called in. At the sight of the two
officers, Chief Mercurio said, Desre’e “tried to
take flight.”
She went under a table. One of the police officers
went after her. Each time the officer tried to grab
her to drag her out, Desre’e would pull her legs
away, the chief said.
Ultimately the child was no match for Avon Park’s
finest. The cops pulled her from under the table
and handcuffed her. The officers were not fooling
around. In the eyes of the cops the 6-year-old was
a criminal, and in Avon Park she would be treated
like any other felon.
There was a problem, though. The handcuffs were
not manufactured with kindergarten kids in mind.
The chief explained: “You can’t handcuff them on
their wrists because their wrists are too small,
so you have to handcuff them up by their biceps.”
As I sat listening to Chief Mercurio in a spotless,
air-conditioned conference room at the Avon Park
police headquarters, I had the feeling that I had
somehow stumbled into the middle of a skit on
“Saturday Night Live.” The chief seemed like the
most reasonable of men, but what was coming out
of his mouth was madness.
He handed me a copy of the police report: black
female. Six years old. Thin build. Dark complexion.
Desre’e was put in the back of a patrol car and
driven to the police station. “Then,” said Chief
Mercurio, “she was transported to central booking,
which is the county jail.”
The child was fingerprinted and a mug shot was taken.
“Those are the normal procedures for anyone who
is arrested,” the chief said.
Desre’e was charged with battery on a school official,
which is a felony, and two misdemeanors: disruption
of a school function and resisting a law enforcement
officer. After a brief stay at the county jail,
she was released to the custody of her mother.
The arrest of this child, who should have been placed
in the care of competent, comforting professionals
rather than being hauled off to jail, is part of
an outlandish trend of criminalizing very young
children that has spread to many school districts
and law enforcement agencies across the country.
A highly disproportionate number of those youngsters,
like Desre’e, are black. In Baltimore last month,
the police arrested, handcuffed and hauled away
a 7-year-old black boy for allegedly riding a dirt
bike on the sidewalk. The youngster was released
and the mayor, Sheila Dixon, apologized for the
incident, saying the arrest was inappropriate.
Last spring a number of civil rights organizations
collaborated on a study of disciplinary practices
in Florida schools and concluded that many of them,
“like many districts in other states, have turned
away from traditional education-based disciplinary
methods — such as counseling, after-school detention,
or extra homework assignments — and are looking
to the legal system to handle even the most minor
transgressions.”
Once you adopt the mindset that ordinary childhood
misbehavior is criminal behavior, it’s easy to start
seeing young children as somehow monstrous.
“Believe me when I tell you,” said Chief Mercurio,
“a 6-year-old can inflict injury to you just
as much as any other person.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) Guantánamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike
By TIM GOLDEN
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09hunger.html
A long-term hunger strike has broken out at the American
detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, with more than
a dozen prisoners subjecting themselves to daily force-
feeding to protest their treatment, military officials
and lawyers for the detainees say.
Lawyers for several hunger strikers said their clients’
actions were driven by harsh conditions in a new maximum
security complex. About 160 of the roughly 385 Guantánamo
detainees have been moved to the complex since December.
Thirteen detainees are now on hunger strikes, the largest
number to endure the force-feeding regimen on an extended
basis since early 2006, when the military broke a long-
running strike with a new policy of strapping prisoners
into restraint chairs while they are fed by plastic
tubes inserted through their nostrils.
The hunger strikers are now monitored so closely that
they have virtually no chance to starve themselves.
Yet their persistence underscores how the struggle
between detainees and guards at Guantánamo has
continued even as the military has tightened its
control in the past year.
“We don’t have any rights here, even after your Supreme
Court said we had rights,” one hunger striker, Majid
al-Joudi, told a military doctor, according to medical
records released recently under a federal court order.
“If the policy does not change, you will see a big
increase in fasting.”
A military spokesman at Guantánamo, Cmdr. Robert Durand
of the Navy, played down the significance of the current
strike, calling the prisoners’ complaints “propaganda.”
But the protests come as criticism of Guantánamo
continues to rise in the United States and abroad. Last
week, after the Supreme Court denied a new appeal
on behalf of the detainees, the head of the International
Committee of the Red Cross delivered a rare public
reprimand to the Bush administration, saying the
prisoners’ ability to contest their detention was
inadequate.
Newly released Pentagon documents show that during
earlier hunger strikes, before the use of the restraint
chairs, some detainees lost more than 30 pounds in
a matter of weeks. By comparison, the current hunger
strike — in which 12 of the 13 detainees were being
force-fed as of Friday — seems almost symbolic.
For instance, the medical records for Mr. Joudi,
a 36-year-old Saudi, showed that when he was hospitalized
on Feb. 10, he had been fasting for 31 days and had
lost more than 15 percent of his body weight.
By the time he was transferred a few days later to
a “feeding block” where more serious hunger strikers
are segregated from other prisoners, his condition
had stabilized and his weight was nearly back to an
ideal level for a man his size. (His exact weight
gain was not recorded.) Mr. Joudi was subsequently
flown home and turned over to the Saudi authorities,
his lawyer said.
Lawyers for several detainees held in the new maximum
security complex, known as Camp 6, compared it to
“supermax” prisons in the United States. The major
differences, they said, are that the detainees have
limited reading material and no television, and only
10 of the Guantánamo prisoners have been charged.
The Camp 6 inmates are generally locked in their
8-foot-by-10-foot cells for at least 22 hours a day,
emerging only to exercise in small wire cages and
to shower. Besides those times, they can talk with
other prisoners only by shouting through food slots
in the steel doors of their cells.
“My wish is to die,” one reported hunger striker
in the camp, Adnan Farhan Abdullatif, a 27-year old
Yemeni, told his lawyer on Feb. 27, according
to recently declassified notes of the meeting.
“We are living in a dying situation.”
Commander Durand, the Guantánamo spokesman, dismissed
such accounts as part of an effort by the prisoners
and their lawyers to discredit the detention mission.
He described the new unit as much more comfortable
than the detainees’ previous quarters, and denied
that they suffered any greater sense of isolation
in the new cell blocks.
“This was designed to improve living conditions,”
Commander Durand said, “and we think it has.”
Camp 6 was originally designed as a modern, medium-
security prison complex for up to 200 inmates, with
common areas where they could gather for meals and
a large fenced athletic field where they could jog
or play soccer outside the high concrete walls.
But after a riot last May and the suicides of three
prisoners in June, the unit was retrofitted before
opening to limit the detainees’ freedom and reduce
the risk that they might hurt themselves or attack
guards, military officials said.
As Camp 6 was opening, senior officials expressed
concern about how prisoners would react to its greater
isolation. Most had been held in makeshift blocks
of wire-mesh cells that — while often hot, noisy and
lacking privacy — allowed them to communicate easily,
pray together and even pass written messages.
Guantánamo’s other maximum-security unit, Camp 5,
has cells that face each other across a short hallway,
allowing the roughly 100 detainees there to converse
fairly easily. In Camp 6, the prisoners can see one
another from their cells only when one of them is being
moved. At other times, they look out on the stainless-
steel picnic tables in the common areas they are not
allowed to use.
Lawyers for several Camp 6 detainees said their clients
were despondent about the move even though, as military
officials note, the new cells are 27 square feet larger
than the old ones and have air-conditioning, nicer toilets
and sinks, and a small desk anchored to the wall.
“They’re just sitting on a powder keg down there,” said
one lawyer, Sabin Willett, who, like others, described
growing desperation among the prisoners. “You’re going
to have an insane asylum.”
Lawyers who visited Guantánamo recently said the detainees
reported a higher number of hunger strikers than had
the military — perhaps 40 or more. Military officials said
there were sometimes “stealth hunger strikers,” who pretend
to eat or surreptitiously vomit after eating, but they
dismissed the detainees’ estimates as exaggerations.
Because reporters are prevented from speaking with detainees
or visiting most of their cell blocks, it is difficult
to verify the conflicting accounts.
Hunger strikes have been part of life at Guantánamo
almost since the detention center opened in January 2002.
They reached a peak in September 2005, when more than
130 detainees were classified as hunger strikers,
having refused at least nine consecutive meals, military
records show. As the strikes went on, some detainees
being force-fed continued to lose weight by vomiting
or siphoning their stomachs with the feeding tubes.
But by early February 2006, shortly after the military
began using restraint chairs during the forced feedings,
the number of hunger strikers plunged to three.
The number rose again sharply but briefly last May,
reaching 86 after three detainees attempted suicide
and a riot broke out as the guards searched for contraband.
Yet even then, no more than seven strikers were forced
into the restraint chair regimen.
Three detainees who had been hunger strikers hung
themselves on June 10. After July, no more than three
detainees subjected themselves to extended forced feeding.
That number began to grow again as detainees were
moved into Camp 6 in December. By mid-March, the
number of hunger strikers reached 17. For the first
time, as many as 15 detainees continued with the
strikes despite being force-fed in the restraint
chairs.
Military officials have described the restraint chair
regimen as unpleasant but necessary. They originally
said prisoners needed to be restrained while digesting,
so they could not purge what they were fed.
Now, the rationale has changed. The restraints are
generally applied “for safety of the detainee and
medical staff,” records show, and they are kept on
for as little as 15 minutes at a time, rather than
the two hours commonly used before. Afterward, the
prisoners are moved to a “dry cell” and monitored
to make sure they do not vomit.
Even so, some detainees describe the experience as
painful, even gruesome.
One Sudanese detainee, Sami al-Hajj, a 38-year-old
former cameraman for Al Jazeera, described feeling
at one point that he could not bear the tube for another
instant. “I said I would begin to scream unless they
took it out,” he wrote in a recent diary entry given
to his lawyer. “They finally did.”
Stephen H. Oleskey, who represents Saber Lahmar, an
Algerian religious scholar whom military officials
accused of propagating a religious legal ruling that
was linked to the suicides, said of his client: “The
man has been in segregation — virtual isolation —
for over nine months. Physically and emotionally,
he’s collapsing. We think this punishment does
exceed what the law allows, and that he won’t
survive.”
Military officials said Mr. Lahmar and other detainees
had received adequate medical attention.
Margot Williams and William Glaberson contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Army Is Cracking Down on Deserters
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09awol.html?ref=us
Army prosecutions of desertion and other unauthorized
absences have risen sharply in the last four years,
resulting in thousands more negative discharges and
prison time for both junior soldiers and combat-tested
veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army
records show.
The increased prosecutions are meant to serve as a
deterrent to a growing number of soldiers who are
ambivalent about heading — or heading back — to Iraq
and may be looking for a way out, several Army lawyers
said in interviews. Using courts-martial for these
violations, which before 2002 were treated mostly
as unpunished nuisances, is a sign that active-duty
forces are being stretched to their limits, military
lawyers and mental health experts said.
“They are scraping to get people to go back, and people
are worn out,” said Dr. Thomas Grieger, a senior Navy
psychiatrist. Though there are no current studies to
show how combat stress affects desertion rates, Dr. Grieger
cited several examples of soldiers absconding or refusing
to return to Iraq because of psychiatric reasons brought
on by wartime deployments.
At an Army base in Alaska last year, for example, “there
was one guy who literally chopped off his trigger finger
with an axe to prevent his deployment,” Dr. Grieger said
in an interview.
The Army prosecuted desertion far less often in the late
1990s, when desertions were more frequent, than it does
now, when there are comparatively fewer.
From 2002 through 2006, the average annual rate of Army
prosecutions of desertion tripled compared with the five-
year period from 1997 to 2001, to roughly 6 percent
of deserters, from 2 percent, Army data shows.
Between these two five-year spans — one prewar and one
during wartime — prosecutions for similar crimes,
like absence without leave or failing to appear for
unit missions, have more than doubled, to an average
of 390 per year from an average of 180 per year,
Army data shows.
In total, the Army since 2002 has court-martialed
twice as many soldiers for desertion and other unauthorized
absences as it did on average each year between 1997
and 2001. Deserters are soldiers who leave a post
or fail to show up for an assignment with the intent
to stay away. Soldiers considered absent without leave,
or AWOL, which presumes they plan to return, are classified
as deserters and dropped from a unit’s rolls after 30 days.
Most soldiers who return from unauthorized absences
are punished and discharged. Few return to regular duty.
Officers said the crackdown reflected an awareness by
top Army and Defense Department officials that desertions,
which occurred among more than 1 percent of the active-duty
force in 2000 for the first time since the post-Vietnam era,
were in a sustained upswing again after ebbing in 2003,
the first year of the Iraq war.
At the same time, the increase highlights a cycle long
known to Army researchers: as the demand for soldiers
increases during a war, desertions rise and the Army
tends to lower enlistment standards, recruiting more
people with questionable backgrounds who are far more
likely to become deserters.
In the 2006 fiscal year, 3,196 soldiers deserted, the
Army said, a figure that has been climbing since the 2004
fiscal year, when 2,357 soldiers absconded. In the first
quarter of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1,
871 soldiers deserted, a rate that, if it stays on pace,
would produce 3,484 desertions for the fiscal year, an
8 percent increase over 2006.
The Army said the desertion rate was within historical
norms, and that the surge in prosecutions, which are
at the discretion of unit commanders, was not a surprise
given the impact that absent soldiers can have during
wartime.
“The nation is at war, and the Army treats the offense
of desertion more seriously,” Maj. Anne D. Edgecomb,
an Army spokeswoman, said. “The Army’s leadership will
take whatever measures they believe are appropriate
if they see a continued upward trend in desertion,
in order to maintain the health of the force.”
Army studies and interviews also suggest a link between
the rising rate of desertions and the expanding use
of moral waivers to recruit people with poor academic
records and low-level criminal convictions. At least
1 in 10 deserters surveyed after returning to the Army
from 2002 to mid-2004 required a waiver to enter the
service, a report by the Army Research Institute found.
“We’re enlisting more dropouts, people with more law
violations, lower test scores, more moral issues,”
said a senior noncommissioned officer involved in
Army personnel and recruiting. “We’re really scraping
the bottom of the barrel trying to get people to join.”
(Army officials agreed to discuss the issue on the
condition that they not be quoted by name.)
The officer said the Army National Guard last week
authorized 34 states and Guam to enlist the lowest-
ranking group of eligible recruits, those who scored
between 16 and 30 on the armed services aptitude test.
Federal law bars recruits who scored lower than
16 from enlisting.
Desertions, while a chronic problem for the Army,
are nowhere near as common as they were at the height
of the Vietnam War. From 1968 to 1971, for instance,
about 5 percent of enlisted men deserted.
But the rate of desertion today, after four years
of fighting two ground wars, is “being taken much more
seriously because we were losing so many soldiers out
of the Army that there was a recognized need to attack
the problem from a different way,” said an Army criminal
defense lawyer.
In interviews, the lawyer and two other Army lawyers
each traced the spike in prosecutions to a policy
change at the beginning of 2002 that required
commanders to welcome back soldiers who deserted
or went AWOL.
Before that, most deserters, who are often young,
undistinguished soldiers who have fallen out of favor
with their sergeants, were given administrative
separations and sent home with other-than-honorable
discharges.
The new policy, ordered by the secretary of the army,
effectively eliminated the incentive among squad
sergeants to urge returning AWOL soldiers to stay
away for at least 30 days, when they would be
classified as deserters under the old rules and
dropped from the roll.
But some unit commanders, wary of scrutiny from
their superiors, go out of their way to improperly
keep deserted soldiers on their rosters, and on
the Army’s payroll, two officers said in interviews.
To counter that, the Army adopted a new policy
in January 2005 requiring commanders to formally
report absent soldiers within 48 hours.
Such problems are costly. From October 2000 to
February 2002, the Army improperly paid more than
$6.6 million to 7,544 soldiers who had deserted
or were otherwise absent, according to a July 2006
report by the Government Accountability Office.
Most deserters list dissatisfaction with Army
life or family problems as primary reasons for
their absence, and most go AWOL in the United
States. But since 2003, 109 soldiers have been
convicted of going AWOL or deserting war zones
in Iraq or Afghanistan, usually during their
scheduled two-week leaves in the United States,
Army officials said.
With the Iraq war in its fifth year, a new subset
of deserter is emerging, military doctors and
lawyers said: accomplished soldiers who abscond
reluctantly, as a result of severe emotional
trauma from their battle experiences.
James, a 26-year-old paratrooper twice deployed
to Iraq and Afghanistan, went AWOL in July after
being reassigned to Fort Bliss, Tex., an Army
post in the mountainous high-desert region near
El Paso.
“The places I was in in Iraq and Afghanistan look
exactly like Fort Bliss,” said James, who agreed
to talk about his case on the condition that his
last name not be printed. “It starts messing with
your head — ‘I’m really back there.’ ”
In December, he and another deserter, Ronnie, 28,
who also asked that his last name not be used,
tried to surrender to the authorities at Fort
Bliss. A staff sergeant told them not to bother,
James said.
James and Ronnie, who both have five years of service,
suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and abuse
alcohol to self-medicate, said Dr. David M. Walker,
a former Air Force psychiatrist who has examined
both men.
With help from lawyers, James and Ronnie returned
to Fort Bliss on Tuesday. They were charged with
desertion and face courts-martial and possibly
a few months in a military brig.
“If I could stay in the military, get help, that’s
what I want,” said Ronnie, who completed an 18-month
combat tour in Kirkuk, Iraq, with the 25th Infantry
Division in 2004.
The Army said combat-related stress had not caused
many soldiers to desert.
Major Edgecomb, the spokeswoman, said more than
80 percent of the past year’s deserters had been
soldiers for less than three years, and could not
have been deployed more than once.
Morten G. Ender, a sociologist at the United States
Military Academy at West Point, said soldiers’
decisions to go AWOL or desert might come in response
to a family crisis — a threat by a spouse to leave
if they deploy again, for instance, or a child-
custody battle.
“It’s not just that they don’t want to be in a war
zone anymore,” Dr. Ender said. “We saw that a lot
during Vietnam, and we see that a lot in the military now.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) CLOSE CONTACT
To Woo Afghan Locals,
U.S. Troops Settle In
Tactic Wins Friends,
Isolates Insurgents,
But Boosts Casualties
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
April 9, 2007; Page A1
WALL STREET JOURNAL
[VIA Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]
WAYGAL, Afghanistan -- One sunny morning last month, a group of
bearded men stood beside the gurgling Waygal River and stared as a
helicopter loaded with heavily armed Americans dropped out of the
sky and into their cornfield. The moment the rear ramp opened, the
soldiers ran for cover behind stone terraces and leafless trees.
They had reason to be wary. These mountains are notorious for
sheltering Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, and the soldiers were the
first Americans to set foot in Waygal since the Afghan war began in
2001.
But instead of a hail of bullets, the soldiers got an invitation to
dinner. When First Lt. Eric Malmstrom, a fresh-faced University of
Pennsylvania graduate, approached the hirsute reception committee,
village leader Ghulam Sakhi's most pressing question was, "Why didn't
you come sooner?"
A year ago, U.S. commanders here would have been reluctant to insert
a small force of infantrymen into a remote village. But, along the
Pech River and tributaries such as the Waygal, one 750-man U.S. Army
battalion is trying a risky, grueling way to isolate the insurgents
and win the support of the villagers. Instead of operating out of
safe rear bases and commuting to the war, for the past year the
soldiers of the First Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment have lived on
the battlefield, in a series of small, rudimentary encampments
situated among the disputed villages themselves.
It's an intimate style of warfare and, for the Americans, a brutal
one. They go weeks without showers or decent food. They live every
day exposed to enemy fire, and it has cost them dearly. Over the past
year, 1-32 has lost 19 men, almost half of the deaths in the entire
5,000-man brigade.
The Americans and their Afghan National Army allies live among the
people on the valley floor, while the insurgents -- Taliban, al Qaeda
and other fighters of various stripes -- are up in the steep, rocky
ridges. When the insurgents attack, they fire down on American
soldiers and Afghan civilians alike. "The semiotics of it are great,"
says Lt. Col. Chris Cavoli, commander of 1-32, a unit of the 10th
Mountain Division. "You can't buy press like that. The way the fight
is constructed is to deliver one message: We're here to protect you,
and the bad guys are here to ruin your lives."
The battalion's progress comes amid warnings that elsewhere in
Afghanistan, the Taliban are resurgent and public faith is sagging in
the government of President Hamid Karzai. The United Nations
secretary general reported last month that the insurgents are
"emboldened by their strategic successes, rather than disheartened by
tactical failures." A February study by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a Washington think tank, said the situation in
Afghanistan is "both more perilous and more complex" than at any
other time since the U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban regime
after Sept. 11, 2001.
Critics say the setbacks have come in part because the U.S., distracted
by the war in Iraq, has too little manpower in Afghanistan to engage in
community policing.
Striking Results
Here, however, the results are striking. A year ago, the Pech Valley,
the main artery through the area, was a gantlet of roadside bombings
and rocket-propelled grenade fire. Lately there have been just two or
three roadside bombs a month, and the locals frequently report them
to Afghan or U.S. troops before they explode.
A year ago, it took five hours to drive the 19 miles from Asadabad,
the nearest big town, to Nangalam, site of the nearest sizable U.S.
military base. The road was little more than a goat trail. Now a
U.S.-funded, $7.5 million project is turning it into a two-lane,
paved road connecting the Pech Valley to, in effect, the rest of the
world.
Col. Cavoli, a 42-year-old Princeton graduate who spent much of his
youth in Italy, argues that the key to defeating the insurgents is
having a "persistent presence" among the people, not just "persistent
raiding." Placing American and Afghan troops around villages creates
a security bubble, he says, that allows the U.S. to pour money into
economic-development projects.
"The basic idea is to kill the enemy to convince the people that you
can and will protect them," says the colonel, a compact man with
receding hair and an easy grin. "Then in the breathing space created,
you've got to do something to connect the people to the government."
The road is central to Col. Cavoli's strategy: It demonstrates the
goodwill of the American and Afghan governments by giving the
residents a commercial link they desperately need. Already, a hotel
is under construction in Nangalam and gas stations are appearing
along the river. Once the hard surface is in place, it will be more
difficult for insurgents to plant roadside bombs.
The construction provides jobs to hundreds of local men who might
otherwise be tempted to join the insurgency. And the road lures the
insurgents out of the mountains in a way that, Army officers argue,
will inevitably alienate them further from the population. The road
is popular with the locals; attacking it is not. The Americans now
plan more roads, including a $7.5 million stretch to Waygal, the
village where Lt. Malmstrom and his men landed recently.
In December, the Army and Marine Corps issued a new counterinsurgency
doctrine that closely hews to Col. Cavoli's approach, arguing that
killing the enemy is less important than building ties to the local
populace -- and to do that, American troops may have to take on more
risk themselves. "If military forces remain in their compounds, they
lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared and cede the
initiative to the insurgents," the new manual says.
Col. Cavoli is "on the cutting edge of a new approach to
counterinsurgency," says Col. John Nicholson, commander of the 3rd
Brigade Combat Team. Col. Nicholson's brigade, which includes 1-32,
has tripled the number of outposts it inherited from the units it
replaced last year. But 1-32 did so in the most hostile part of the
brigade's turf. "There is no better case study of modern
counterinsurgency than the recent performance" of Col. Cavoli's men,
Col. Nicholson says.
Over the past couple of months, the Army has tried to put the tactic
to work in Iraq, as part of its desperate effort to quell insurgency
and sectarian violence in Baghdad. U.S. commanders there are setting
up neighborhood security stations, manned by Americans and Iraqis,
but it is still too early to see the results. Applying the technique
in Iraq is complicated because much of the mayhem is between one
Iraqi faction and another. U.S. troops are caught in the middle,
supporting an Iraqi government that many Sunni Muslims suspect is the
tool of their Shiite Muslim rivals.
Even replicating the battalion's progress elsewhere in Afghanistan
would be difficult. Col. Cavoli's 750 men have spent a year fighting
for public acceptance along just a few dozen miles of river valleys.
The military's counterinsurgency doctrine specifies that, at a
minimum, one soldier is required for every 50 residents. Although the
insurgency is concentrated in the east and south, applying the
formula to the entire country would require more than 600,000 troops,
a force a dozen times the size of the international coalition now in
Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, the Pentagon has taken notice of 1-32's gains, and Col.
Cavoli's next posting will be to teach counterinsurgency techniques
to officers from other NATO nations, which make up about half of the
coalition in Afghanistan.
For 1-32, the tactic developed almost by accident. The battalion
arrived in Afghanistan in early 2006, and it soon became apparent to
Col. Cavoli that the Pech Valley would have to be the focus of his
efforts.
The Marines they replaced had fought out of two large bases, in
Asadabad, where the Pech empties into another river, and upstream
near Nangalam. When the Marines attacked, the insurgents would fade
away, only to return to the valley as soon as the Americans went back
to their bases, according to Col. Cavoli.
Last April, he ordered one of his company commanders to fight his way
west and set up temporary outposts on the Pech between Asadabad and
Nangalam. At Patrol Base California, one of several along the river,
soldiers lived in the open -- rain, snow or sun -- and slept next to
their Humvees, using large, dirt-filled barriers to shield them from
insurgent attacks. They did without showers and ate packaged meals.
It was supposed to be a short-term fix. Days stretched into weeks and
weeks into months, however, as Col. Cavoli realized that his best
hope of separating the insurgents from the locals was to keep his men
in place. These days they have cots and have built themselves
cramped, sandbag bunkers with plywood roofs. But when it rains, their
hooches run deep with mud or water, and the small weight-lifting pit
turns into a café-au-lait pool.
Fending for Themselves
The men still clean themselves with baby wipes and use half of a
55-gallon drum as a toilet. Every couple of days they get trays of
hot food trucked in, but they frequently fend for themselves,
grilling pizzas, toasting biscuits or deep-frying chicken patties
over an open fire. Unlike at the major bases, there is no Internet or
phone service, no refuge from the war.
"I live like an animal here," says Spc. Marcus Whited, a 26-year-old
from Wichita, Kan., manning a machine gun atop a Humvee at the camp
entrance. "I've never in my life smelled odors like this."
When the soldiers got word in January that their yearlong combat tour
would be extended by four months, the colonel gave orders that each
platoon rotate to Asadabad every two weeks for showers and a couple
of days of rest.
"It's a hell of a thing to ask men to live like that day after day
after day," Col. Cavoli says. But it's no accident; the colonel
doesn't want his men living visibly better than their Afghan
neighbors.
The men at Patrol Base California have been in some 60 firefights.
Usually, insurgents move out of the mountains to stony redoubts on
the ridges overlooking the U.S. positions, then open fire with
machine guns, rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The Americans,
and the Afghan soldiers who share their encampments, return fire with
machine guns, automatic grenade launchers, mortars and missiles.
Howitzers located in big bases miles away rain shells down on the
mountaintops until the insurgents die or withdraw.
The proximity of the soldiers to the local residents has indeed led
to the intimacy that Col. Cavoli seeks. First Lt. Michael Harrison, a
platoon leader in the battalion's Dog Company, studied law and
nuclear engineering at West Point, where he was a minor troublemaker,
doing punishment marches for such offenses as keeping a rice cooker
in his room. But along the Pech River, the 25-year-old has a fan club
of neighborhood urchins -- a counterweight to insurgent propaganda
that, the military says, claims the Americans are here to convert
Muslims to Christianity and eat their children.
When the lieutenant approaches Patrol Base California, he lowers the
bullet-proof window on his Humvee, reaches out and slaps high-fives
with the children. "Michael!" they shout as he passes, mimicking his
two-finger peace sign.
"Whassup, Hussein? Haircut!" Lt. Harrison says to a close-shaved
orphan boy in a dirty-white jersey and loose trousers. He gives a set
of baby bottles to a boy whose sister died after giving birth.
When he isn't patrolling, the lieutenant spends much of his time
sounding out the locals, listening to their troubles and trying to
arrange solutions. One recent day he sat on a bit of carpet, sipping
sweet yellow tea with a group of police auxiliary officers outside
their sandbagged station. Ras Mohamed, a 34-year-old police chief,
pointed across the Pech to a small brown-brick house, halfway up the
valley wall.
"Last year the enemy was coming all the way down there and shooting
at jingle trucks," he said, referring to the decorated freight trucks
seen everywhere in Afghanistan. "Now they don't dare."
Authority of Elders
Another day Lt. Harrison chatted up village elders in a small police
bunker along the river. The Afghans talked about how they used to set
up roadblocks along the valley and ambush Russian tanks with
rocket-propelled grenades during the 10-year war with the Soviet
Union.
"We never talked to them; we just shot at them," said Mohammad
Shareen, a 45-year-old elder wearing a black watch cap with a Nike
swoosh.
The soldiers intentionally reinforce the authority of elders, who
traditionally have the power to expel or ostracize miscreants and can
serve as a bulwark against younger, hotter heads. The U.S. required
the Afghan road contractor to hire at least 450 workers from the Pech
Valley itself, but left it to the elders to decide who got what
positions.
Lt. Harrison "never does anything without asking the elders first,"
said Mir Azfal, a 25-year-old police auxiliary officer.
The Americans have provided other benefits as well, installing small
hydropower generators along the Pech River, handing out school
supplies for children and setting up makeshift clinics for the ill.
"The enemy is more isolated from the people than last year," says
35-year-old Lt. Col. M. Farid Ahmadi, who commands the 400-man Afghan
National Army battalion that lives and fights alongside 1-32. "When
we separate the...evildoers from the people, it's easy to kill,
capture or destroy them. It's difficult to do when the enemy is among
the people."
Some areas, particularly south of the Pech River, have proved
resistant to Col. Cavoli's approaches, however. Elders in the village
of Matin initially rejected a U.S. offer to build a bridge connecting
them with the new road -- a sign, the soldiers thought, of their ties
to the insurgency. Recently the elders changed their minds. Still,
Lt. Harrison's night patrols watch for insurgents leaving Matin and
crossing the shallows of the Pech to plant explosives on the valley
road.
Farther south, the Army has found few winnable hearts or minds in the
Korangal Valley, an area ethnically and linguistically distinct from
the northern bank of the Pech. The people of the Korangal have
longtime links to the insurgency, according to the military. The
fighting on the mountaintops in that area has been particularly
bloody over the past year.
"The ones who liked us before like us now," says Pvt. Adam Boguskie,
21, of Spencer County, Ky., his heavy machine gun pointing toward the
snowy ridgeline south of the Pech. "The ones who hated us before hate
us now. It's all about money. If the Taliban had money, the locals
would be bringing them Pepsis up there."
The men of 1-32 are due to go home to Fort Drum, N.Y., in June, some
16 months after they arrived in Afghanistan, and Col. Cavoli has been
worried that the troops who follow will abandon the relationships his
men have spent so much time establishing. Last month his replacement,
Lt. Col. Bill Ostlund of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, paid an advance
visit to Afghanistan, where Col. Cavoli pitched his
up-close-and-personal approach to counterinsurgency.
"It would be easy for me as a commander to put people in [rear bases
at] Asadabad and Jalalabad and spend a year painting rocks," Col.
Cavoli told Col. Ostlund. Pointing to the Pech Valley on a wall map,
he continued: "But the people we're trying to help are up here."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) Crop Prices Soar,
Pushing Up Cost
Of Food Globally
New Demand for Biofuels
Feeds Inflation Pressure;
China, India Feel Pinch
By PATRICK BARTA
April 9, 2007; Page A1
The Wall Street Journal
[VIA Email from: Walter Lippmann
walterlx@earthlink.net ...bw]
Soaring prices for farm goods, driven in part by demand for
crop-based fuels, are pushing up the price of food world-wide and
unleashing a new source of inflationary pressure.
The rise in food prices is already causing distress among consumers
in some parts of the world -- especially relatively poor nations like
India and China. If the trend gathers momentum, it could contribute
to slower global growth by forcing consumers to spend less on other
items or spurring central banks to fight inflation by raising
interest rates.
Politicians in markets where food costs are a particularly sensitive
matter are moving to counter rising prices before they take a bigger
economic toll or fuel unrest. But it remains unclear whether those
policies will be enough to contain the current pressures, or whether
a longer-term bout of food-price inflation -- similar in ways to the
recent climb in prices for oil and other commodities -- is in the
offing.
One of the chief causes of food-price inflation is new demand for
ethanol and biodiesel, which can be made from corn, palm oil, sugar
and other crops. That demand has driven up the price of those
commodities, leading to higher costs for producers of everything from
beef to eggs to soft drinks. In some cases, producers are passing the
costs along to consumers. Several years of global economic growth --
led by China and India -- is also raising food consumption, further
fanning the inflationary pressures.
Food-price inflation has been climbing -- in some cases sharply -- in
India, China, Europe, and even smaller economies like Turkey, South
Africa and Poland. In Hungary, it is running at more than 13% a year,
compared with less than 3% in 2005. In China, food prices are
climbing at a 6% pace, more than three times the speed of a year ago.
Prices are also up in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. They may
even be picking up in Japan, the world's second-largest national
economy, though the signs are tentative since overall prices there
are only just starting to rise after a prolonged economic downturn.
The U.S., too, is seeing some stirrings, with food costs rising 3.1%
in February from the year before -- a rate one percentage point
higher than in mid-2005. Economists say U.S. food prices are expected
to rise faster than the general rate of inflation this year.
Wholesale prices of meat, poultry and eggs have already increased.
If the trend continues, U.S. consumers are likely to see higher
prices at the supermarket for everything from milk to cereal to soda
pop, since corn is used to feed livestock and make high-fructose corn
syrup, a key ingredient in many soft drinks. A spokesman for the
National Chicken Council, a poultry-industry group, recently
testified to a congressional subcommittee that Americans should
expect higher chicken prices because of what the group described as
"the ethanol crisis."
Doomsday predictions of a major food shortage in China and elsewhere
have circulated for years but haven't materialized. And some
economists believe the recent increase in crop demand probably can be
met without severely straining the global economy. They think prices
could come back down over time, especially if some countries that
have more land that could be put under cultivation -- particularly
Brazil -- can greatly increase production. Technological advances,
such as better seed varieties, could also help boost production to
keep up with demand.
In the meantime, higher farm prices aren't bad for everyone. They
could help boost incomes for the rural poor in developing nations,
who have been bypassed by gains in the manufacturing and service
sectors. In some cases, the rising demand for food also reflects the
growing wealth of once-destitute populations around the globe.
So far, higher prices haven't sparked a major rise in overall global
inflation, which remains relatively low and stable by historical
standards. Moreover, food prices are notoriously volatile, and some
of the increases are due to short-term or local factors that could
reverse in time.
But many economists believe the forces causing the current bout of
food inflation will persist, or recur in years ahead. Many countries
are facing shortages of land and water that didn't exist during past
food-price spikes, so they can't easily plant more to ease the
strain.
Researchers at Swiss bank UBS AG note that average food prices in
China have grown faster in the past five years than in the previous
five, as more agricultural land is taken up for factories or
high-rise condominiums. Changes in diets are also exacerbating the
problem, as rising incomes allow the Chinese and consumers in many
other places to eat more.
Some economists contend that China and India appear to be reaching a
point at which nothing short of a bumper crop of key commodities will
be enough to meet local needs and prevent further surges in food
prices. In fact, China and India have achieved historically high
production of some crops in recent years, only to see prices continue
to climb.
Global grain stocks are at their lowest level in 30 years, after
several years of strong global economic growth, and could become even
tighter if farmers divert more crops to make ethanol or other fuels.
By some estimates, about 30% of the U.S. grain harvest is likely to
be devoted to ethanol production by 2008, up from 16% in 2006.
All of this puts the world's central banks in a bind. Although they
have confronted spurts in energy prices, many of them haven't had to
cope with prolonged increases in food prices since the 1970s. Since
then, food-price inflation has remained relatively benign, even as
incomes world-wide have climbed, allowing consumers to beef up their
diets.
In more recent years, central banks have tried to ignore surges in
food prices as long as they didn't get too out of hand, mostly
because they tended to be short-lived. A change in weather, for
example, could quickly turn a food shortage into a glut, sending
prices tumbling.
But a more sustained bout of food-price inflation, if it emerges,
could force banks to keep interest rates higher than they would
otherwise be. India, for one, has increased interest rates several
times over the past year in part to combat food-price inflation.
"In 1972, the last time grain stocks were this low, the story didn't
end well in terms of inflation," says Carl Weinberg, chief economist
at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y. In those days,
inflation soared not just because of higher oil costs but also
because of a global jump in food costs, all of which helped trigger a
major U.S. recession and a global slowdown. "Food prices were an
important part of what started [inflation] rolling" in the 1970s, Mr.
Weinberg says.
But since the 1970s, the Federal Reserve and some other central banks
have come to believe that they can avoid raising interest rates in
the face of transitory increases in food and energy prices if they
have established enough credibility as inflation fighters to keep
such price increases from spilling over to the rest of the economy.
Today, the inflation risks may be greatest in developing economies.
In the Philippines, food accounts for 50% of the basket of goods
included in the consumer-price index, an inflation benchmark. In
Thailand, it's about 35%, according to data from Macquarie Bank Ltd.
In the U.S., food makes up only about 15% of the CPI.
In one bustling open-air market in downtown Shanghai, shoppers say
they are paying as much as two times the price they paid last year
for green vegetables, and the cost of meat and vegetable oils have
also soared.
Such blows to the pocketbook "give us more pressure for daily life,"
says Xu Wen, a 53-year-old retiree who was purchasing some rolled
noodles in a small shop last week. Already, she says, she and her
husband are spending almost half their monthly income on food -- a
percentage that continues to increase over time. "We ordinary people
have no way out," she says. "This is something the government needs
to be concerned about."
Government officials are taking pains to show they are addressing the
problem. In December, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao toured a Beijing
supermarket to check up on prices, and China has begun limiting the
construction of corn-based ethanol plants to ensure there is enough
corn for humans and livestock. Chinese officials have even banned new
golf courses on farm land and have been unwinding subsidies they once
paid to grain distributors to sell excess corn overseas.
Still, analysts estimate Chinese stockpiles of surplus corn now stand
at only about 30 million metric tons, down from more than 100 million
tons at the end of the past decade, as demand picks up. (The Chinese
government doesn't provide official estimates of its stockpiles).
That would imply that China only has two to three months of surplus
supply based on current consumption trends, making the country highly
vulnerable if it has a bad crop. Although China remains a net
exporter of corn now, analysts believe it will become a net importer
sometime in the next few years.
Some economists say China will have to take more aggressive steps to
prevent future food problems. These changes could include allowing
the proliferation of large -- but more efficient -- corporate farms
similar to the ones that drove many small growers out of business in
the U.S. in recent decades. Such a push would be extremely difficult
for China because it needs to preserve jobs for the tens of millions
of people who live in rural areas.
Pressures are also building in India. Monika Katyal, a 32-year-old
homemaker, complains that she has had to cut back on purchases of
many luxuries, such as cosmetics, as her family's monthly bill for
groceries has climbed as much as 50% in recent months.
"I came here to do some shopping for myself, but now it doesn't look
like I will be able to do that," she said recently, as she studied
the price on a bottle of ketchup in a New Delhi grocery.
In addition to raising interest rates, Indian officials have also
lifted import duties on corn and barred exports of wheat, to make
sure supplies are available for domestic consumption.
But it isn't clear whether those and other moves will be enough to
make a big difference in the long run. The main problem is that
yields of some crops aren't growing fast enough to keep up with
India's rapidly increasing food demand. India's corn production, for
example, has climbed about 4% a year since 2001, says Amit Sachdev, a
New Delhi-area agriculture-industry analyst, while demand has been
increasing nearly 5.5% a year.
"If I look at the trend line, [it] indicates to me that the
requirements are going up much faster than what you can produce" in
India, he says.
--Lauren Etter, Conor Dougherty, Hanting Tang, Kersten Zhang and
Binny Sabharwal contributed to this article.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
21) Injured troops shipped back into battle
"Salon has uncovered further evidence that the military sent soldiers
with acute post-traumatic stress disorder, severe back injuries and
other serious war wounds back to Iraq."
By Mark Benjamin
April 9, 2007
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/04/09/injured_soldiers/print.html
Apr. 09, 2007 | On March 9, Army Spc. Thomas Smith was ordered to
board a plane from Fort Benning, Ga., to deploy back to Iraq, even
though he was known to be suffering from chronic post-traumatic
stress disorder from a previous tour there. Only weeks prior,
military doctors determined that Smith should not be allowed around
weapons because of his PTSD symptoms, which included bouts of sudden,
extreme anger. Smith's medical records, obtained by Salon, also show
that doctors had "highly recommended" that Smith not be deployed
because of his condition.
But that did not stop Smith's commanders from ordering him to Iraq as
his unit, the 3,900-strong 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division,
was rushing to move out as part of President Bush's so-called surge
plan for securing Baghdad.
"I was told to have my bags in at midnight that night," for the
flight, Smith said. "I was sitting there looking at these letters in
my hand from my doctors," he recalled in a telephone interview. In
order to follow the doctors' recommendations, Smith said, "I had to
check myself into the hospital." He avoided the flight by just a few
hours. Smith's condition was serious enough that the doctors there
kept him hospitalized for nearly two weeks.
On March 11, two days after Smith checked himself in, Salon reported
on claims by numerous soldiers from Smith's brigade that commanders
were pressing injured troops to deploy to Iraq. Soldiers at Fort
Benning said that two doctors from the division met with 75 injured
soldiers, including Smith, on Feb. 15, in what the troops said was an
effort to reevaluate -- and downgrade -- their health problems so
that they could be deployed with the rest of the unit. In several
cases, medical records provided to Salon supported those allegations,
showing the soldiers to be healthier, on paper, than they were prior
to that meeting.
It remains unclear how many injured troops from the 3rd Brigade were
deployed last month. But others continue to come forward who, like
Smith, had serious medical problems and narrowly avoided being
shipped back to Iraq. The concern of these soldiers is not only that
they could worsen their injuries by being deployed, but that they
could also be a danger to themselves and the soldiers around them.
Their stories add new evidence to accusations that brigade
commanders, in desperate need of more troops for the surge were
willing to deploy broken soldiers.
Hunter Smart, who until recently was a captain in the 3rd Brigade,
has experience preparing unit status reports. These detailed accounts
showing how many soldiers in a unit are able to deploy to a war zone,
make their way up to decision makers in the Pentagon. Smart says he
believes brigade commanders were manipulating the reports and
pressing injured soldiers to deploy to Iraq. "The unit status report
is a big deal," Hunter explained in a phone interview. "You list by
name and number the number of soldiers that are hurt and non-
deployable," he said. "There was a concerted effort to keep those
numbers down."
Smart was caught up in those efforts himself. He had suffered a back
injury during a previous tour in Iraq when his Bradley Fighting
Vehicle crashed, and his injuries were so severe, the Army finally
allowed him medical retirement last month, after determining he was
no longer fit to serve.
Medical retirement from the Army is a lengthy, paperwork-intensive
process, one that had started for Smart last December. But to his
astonishment, Smart's commanders pushed to deploy him in March, even
as the paperwork for his medical retirement was working its way
through the bureaucracy. "They were definitely wanting me to be
deployed," Smart said. "Up until a few weeks ago, I was set to go on
a plane," he said.
Smart saved an e-mail exchange in which his battalion commander, Lt.
Col. Todd Ratliff, suggests that if the paperwork for Smart's medical
retirement was not complete when the unit deployed, Smart might be
forced to come along. "If for some reason you are still around when
we deploy there is a chance we may take you to support us in Kuwait,"
Ratliff wrote in an e-mail to Smart on Feb. 16.
Smart fought against his redeployment, using the resources available
to him as an officer to carefully shepherd his medical retirement
papers through the Army bureaucracy just in time. But the experience
left him worried about injured enlisted soldiers who were not so
lucky -- and left him furious at those in charge. Military commanders
"could care less about the soldier's physical and mental welfare, as
long as they can shoot straight," Smart said. "Our military is
stretched to its breaking point," he added. "Commanders are being
backed into a corner in order to produce units that on paper are
ready to deploy. They are casting the moral and ethical implications
-- and soldiers -- to the side."
Smith, the enlisted soldier who was hospitalized, began noticing
symptoms of his PTSD within months of returning from Iraq in January
2005, a tour that included significant time in Ramadi, a hotbed of
the insurgency. It was nasty, face-to-face work, Smith said, which
included a lot of "kicking down doors."
Smith's medical records are sadly typical of soldiers beset by PTSD.
His doctors have documented agitation, irritability, anxiety,
nightmares, flashbacks and a heightened startle response. He has a
hard time going out in public. "My family had noticed some big
differences with me," after his tour in Iraq, he recalled, including
his sudden, intense anger. "They said, 'Hey, you need help.'"
Smith sought treatment, and doctors soon diagnosed chronic PTSD. He
is now heavily medicated, taking anti-psychotic pills and
antidepressants.
His records show him struggling with his symptoms as the brigade was
gearing up to deploy. On Feb. 8, several military doctors completed a
"report of mental status evaluation" on Smith. "It is highly
recommended that patient be placed on non-deployable status and have
no access to weapons," the doctors wrote. On Feb. 20, another doctor
circled "violence risk" on another of Smith's health-assessment forms.
But two weeks after that violence-risk notation, Smith found himself
just hours away from stepping on to a plane to Iraq. He was running
out of time and options. His company commander had already gone to
bat for him, with no luck. Smith claims that on two separate
occasions, his company commander took his doctors' notes to the
brigade commander, Col. Wayne W. Grigsby Jr., in an effort to
persuade Grigsby to leave Smith behind in doctors' care. "I've got to
hand it to my company commander for trying," Smith said. But Smith
said his company commander told him that Grigsby wouldn't budge.
Smith resorted to checking himself into the hospital.
Privacy rules restrict what Army commanders can say about an
individual soldier's medical file. Public affairs officials for the
3rd Infantry Division did not respond to questions for this report on
the plight of soldiers who were deployed with injuries. The division
surgeon, Lt. Col. George Appenzeller, confirmed in an interview last
month that medical officials met with 75 soldiers on Feb. 15.
However, Appenzeller maintained that it was to conduct medical exams,
update paperwork and make sure injured troops were getting the best
healthcare possible.
Grigsby, the 3rd Brigade commander, said in an interview last month
that the well-being of his soldiers was among his top priorities. He
did not deny deploying injured troops, but he asserted that the
injured soldiers who were deployed were to be confined to relatively
safe jobs. He said those troops would work in a capacity that
strictly followed each soldier's "physical profile," a document
prepared by doctors spelling out a soldier's physical limitations.
But one injured soldier who was deployed to Iraq in March wrote in an
e-mail to Salon that her back condition has worsened significantly.
"Now my left leg has started to go numb and they are telling me to
double up on my meds, which I can't," she wrote. "They are not
putting us in safe jobs at all. I still wear all of my gear and by
the end of the day the pain is more than unbearable," she added. "I
break my [physical] profile pretty much on a daily basis. At this
point I will either go back [home] in a wheel chair or paralyzed or
worse."
"Do what you can," she pleaded in the e-mail, "for the [injured
soldiers] that come after me."
As Salon revealed in a second report on March 26, the commanders of
the 3rd Brigade shipped dozens of injured soldiers to Fort Irwin,
Calif., in January as the brigade conducted a month of desert-warfare
training. The injured soldiers were put up in two large tents, doing
odd jobs and biding their time. Some military experts said they
believed commanders were attempting to artificially boost manpower
statistics by making it appear that a healthier percentage of the
brigade was out in the desert training for Iraq deployment.
Both Smith and Smart were among the dozens of soldiers who spent
weeks in those tents. Neither could properly train. Smith had already
been diagnosed with PTSD at that time, and would awaken at night
agitated by the sound of mortars going off in the desert that were
used for training. Neither Smith nor Smart was treated for his
medical problems while in the desert.
In Smart's case, that went directly against the recommendations of
his doctors. "I believe taking a month off from his treatment plan
will be detrimental to his condition," one chiropractor wrote in
Smart's file in late December. "Lack of treatment for this prolonged
period of time could cause a setback in his condition that may be
difficult to recover."
Military families are angered by the treatment of injured soldiers
based at Fort Benning. Janie Smith, Thomas' mother, says she was
horrified that the Army tried to send her ailing son back to Iraq,
which prompted her to contact the media about his predicament.
She described him as an outgoing, personable boy. But the 26-year-old
man who came back from Iraq is quiet, withdrawn and sometimes
suddenly, frighteningly angry, she says. In a restaurant, he sits
facing the door, ready to confront an enemy at any moment. His hands
constantly shake. "He is an entirely different person," Janie
explained in a phone interview.
Janie said she was glad when her son first joined the Army. "I was
really proud of him," she recalled. But while she is still proud of
her son, her feelings for the Army have changed. "They don't care,"
she said. "I don't know what I'm going to do now."
The Army's inspector general and the Government Accountability Office
have both launched inquiries since Salon first reported on the
deployment of injured troops. There is no indication of when either
will issue its findings.
-- By Mark Benjamin
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
American Tortured in Iraq Sues Rumsfeld
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040907J.shtml
And These Refugees Are Lucky
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/syria/000561.php#more
Bush Renews Effort on Immigration Plan
By DAVID STOUT
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/washington/09cnd-prexy.html?hp
Ranchers and Army Are at Odds in Old West
By DAN FROSCH
"DENVER, April 6 — Mack Louden worries that his 30,000-acre
ranch sits in the cross hairs of the Army’s plans to expand
its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site at Fort Carson, and he, along
with other Colorado ranchers, are increasingly upset
about the idea.
'Where we live, how we live, it’s all going to die a slow death
if the Army gets our land,' said Mr. Louden, a fourth-
generation rancher from Las Animas County, along the
southern edge of the state."
April 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09hearing.html?ref=washington
Big Coal Invokes Reverse Nuremberg Defense
Massey Energy's CEO: Just Giving Orders, Not Carrying Them Out
By CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
April 9, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/ccr04092007.html
The political situation in Venezuela – interview
with Yonie Moreno, member of the CMR in Venezuela
By Yonnie Moreno
Monday, 09 April 2007
www.handsoffvenezuela.org/political_situation_venezuela_moreno.htm
FOCUS | US Warplanes Attack Shiites as Civil War Rages in Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040807Z.shtml
FOCUS | Thousands in LA Demand Immigrant Rights
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040807Y.shtml
Pesticides Linked to Honeybee Population Decline
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4279.cfm
Executive Pay: A Special Report
More Pieces. Still a Puzzle.
By ERIC DASH
April 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/business/yourmoney/08pay.html?ref=business
Matt Renner | Pentagon Office Created Phony Intel on Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040607A.shtml
Number of US Uninsured Soars, Along with Big Pharma Profits
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/06/343/
Wolfowitz Accused of Nepotism at World Bank
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/06/341/
Leading article: The world's biggest polluters
can no longer ignore the evidence
Climate change presents one of the most serious
threats ever faced by human life on the planet
Published: 07 April 2007
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2430107.ece
Colombian Conflict Spills Across its Venezuelan Border
By: Humberto Márquez - IPS
Wednesday, Apr 04, 2007
www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=2007
FOCUS | Scientific Panel Issues Devastating Climate Change Report
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040707Z.shtml
What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?
Putting the Iran Crisis in Context
By Noam Chomsky
"The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds
without ridicule on the assumption that the United States
owns the world. We did not, for example, engage
in a similar debate in the 1980s about whether
the U.S. was interfering in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan."
04/06/07
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17491.htm
A civil rights revolution with 'netroots' origins
"A14-year-old black girl from tiny Paris, Texas, was sent
to a youth prison for up to seven years for shoving
a hall monitor at her high school.
The same judge sentenced a 14-year-old white girl
to probation for burning down her family's house."
April 5, 2007
http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/ci_5599216
Questions Linger About Bushes and BCCI Bank
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/05/326/
Canadian Seal Hunt Opens Again Amidst Outcry
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/05/332/
World Health Day: How Much Can Iraq Survive
Inter Press Service
Ali al-Fadhily
http://dahrjamailiraq.com
http://uruknet.info/?p=m31918&s1=h1
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37236
Federal Official in Student Loans Held Loan Stock
By JONATHAN D. GLATER and KAREN W. ARENSON
April 6, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/education/06loans.html?hp
Pope's book accuses rich nations of robbery
· Benedict hails Marx's analysis of modern man
· Publication planned for 80th birthday
John Hooper in Rome
Guardian
"Pope Benedict appeared to reach out to the anti-globalisation
movement yesterday, attacking rich nations for having
"plundered and sacked" Africa and other poor regions
of the world.
An extract published from his first book since being elected
pope highlighted the passionately anti-materialistic and
anti-capitalist aspects of his thinking. Unexpectedly,
the Pope also approvingly cited Karl Marx and his analysis
of contemporary man as a victim of alienation."
April 5, 2007
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2050255,00.html
None of the Democratic Contenders Has Called for the
Closure of the Guantanamo Prison Of Confessions and Torture
By MARGARET KIMBERLY
April 4, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/kimberly04042007.html
Quota Quickly Filled on Visas for High-Tech Guest Workers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The federal Citizenship and Immigration Services reached
its 2008 limit for skilled-worker visa petitions in a single
day and says it will not accept any more, to the dismay
of technology companies that rely on the visas to hire
foreign employees.
The agency began accepting petitions Monday for the fiscal
year starting Oct. 1 and said it received about 150,000
applications by midafternoon.
The temporary H-1B visas are for foreign workers with
high-technology skills or in specialty occupations.
Congress has mandated that the immigration agency
limit the visas granted to 65,000, although the cap
does not apply to petitions made on behalf of current
H-1B holders, and an additional 20,000 visas can be
granted to applicants who hold advanced degrees from
American academic institutions.
The agency said it would use computers to pick visa
recipients randomly from the applications received
Monday and Tuesday. It will reject the rest of the
applications and return the filing fees.
Employers seek H-1B visas on behalf of scientists,
engineers, computer programmers and other workers
with theoretical or technical expertise. About one-
third of Microsoft’s 46,000 employees in the United
States have work visas or are legal permanent residents
with green cards, said Ginny Terzano, a spokeswoman
for the company.
“We are trying to work with Congress to get the cap
increased,” Ms. Terzano said. “Our real preference
here is that there not be a cap at all.”
Compete America, a coalition that includes Microsoft,
the chip maker Intel, the business software company
Oracle and others, voiced its opposition to the
visa cap in a statement Tuesday.
“Our broken visa policies for highly educated foreign
professionals are not only counterproductive, they
are anticompetitive and detrimental to America’s
long-term economic competitiveness,” said Robert
E. Hoffman, an Oracle vice president and co-chairman
of Compete America.
April 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/business/05visa.html
California: Plea for a Shorter Sentence
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The lawyer and parents of John Walker Lindh, the American-
born Taliban soldier serving 20 years in prison after his
capture in Afghanistan, called on President Bush to commute
his sentence and set him free. The renewed call to shorten
the sentence was based on a nine-month term that David Hicks,
an Australian, received Saturday after pleading guilty to
supporting terrorism. “In the atmosphere of the time, the
best John could get was a plea bargain and a 20-year
sentence,” said Mr. Lindh’s father, Frank Lindh. The White
House did not return a call seeking comment.
April 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05brfs-PLEAFORASHOR_BRF.html
Castro Again Chides U.S. on Ethanol Plan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HAVANA, April 4 (AP) — The ailing Cuban leader Fidel
Castro returned to the public debate — if not view —
for the second time in less than a week on Wednesday
with a column in the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
Mr. Castro, 80, chided the Bush administration for its
support of ethanol production for automobiles, a move
that he said would leave the world’s poor hungry.
It was his second article on the issue in less than
a week, indicating that he is increasingly eager to
have his voice heard on international matters, eight
months after stepping down as Cuba’s president because
of illness.
Cuba has experimented with using sugar cane for ethanol
production, but now that the United States has embraced
the idea, Mr. Castro and his ally Hugo Chávez, the
president of Venezuela, have expressed concern that
rich countries will buy up the food crops of poor nations
to meet their energy needs, threatening millions with
starvation.
April 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/world/americas/05cuba.html
Havana rights
Calvin Tucker
March 28, 2007 8:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/calvin_tucker/2007/03/the_street_sce
ne_was_entertain.html
Marking Time, Making Do
By JOHN FREEMAN GILL
NY Times, April 1, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/nyregion/thecity/01subw.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
You may enjoy watching these.
In struggle
Che:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcezl9dD2c
Leon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkFVV5X0p4
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment